EL DORADO — The Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board selected two applicants to interview to direct the Arkansas Department of Higher Education on Thursday, leaving the door open to consider potential candidates who have not yet applied for the job.
Board members also discussed asking lawmakers to raise the salary for the position so the board may attract more qualified candidates or to change the statutory requirements so interim Director Shane Broadway or a similar candidate could fill the position permanently.
Broadway, a former lawmaker and Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, has filled the position temporarily since former Director Jim Purcell left to lead Louisiana’s higher education efforts in February 2011.
“We haven’t been going slowly so that we can filibuster or run out the clock,” board member Kaneaster Hodges said at a meeting at South Arkansas Community College.
“But we did not have the caliber of people apply this time that we’ve had before.”
The board voted to interview Cheryl Lovell, the former chief academic officer of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, and Mark Spencer, who was employed until January as the director of the Higher Education Coordinating Council in the United Arab Emirates, according to his resume.
Board Chairman Olin Cook will call the two candidates, who both applied more than three months ago, to tell them more about the position and see if they are interested in an interview, the board decided.
Board members said it would be difficult to find qualified candidates because the salary for the position — $192,000 — is low relative to other states. Some applicants may also be hesitant because the director serves at the will of the governor, board members said, and Arkansas is set to elect a new leader in 2014 to replace term-limited Gov. Mike Beebe.
Lovell and Spencer were the most favored among board members on a search committee. But Arkansas State University System President Charles Welch, also on the committee, was not interested in any of the applicants, Hodges said.
Board member Sarah Ar- gue said the board should consider future applicants, even as it moves forward with interviews.
“As long as we have a sense that we are looking for some additional mojo, for lack of a more professional word, we should continue looking,” she said.
Broadway — favored by Beebe, board members and the state’s campus leaders to take the position — does not meet legal requirements that the higher education director has “relevant experience on a campus of higher education.”
Arkansas Code Annotated 6-61-203 directs the board to appoint a director “through a search and selection process that includes substantial input, review and recommendation” from college and university leaders and subject to confirmation from the governor.
Citing family health concerns, Broadway withdrew his name from consideration shortly before the release of an attorney general’s opinion, which was requested by Republican state lawmakers.
That opinion affirmed the requirements of Arkansas Code Annotated 6-61-203.
After a year-long search, the board received 14 applications. One of those applicants withdrew.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 07/27/2012