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Search committee members felt ignored

After serving on six search committees at Texas A&M University for high-level posts, Jerry Cox thought he knew what to expect. But the 2007 search for Texas A&M University's president that ended with the selection of Elsa Murano, the alumnus said, was different.

"It's the first in my history that a search committee at that high a level has been completely ignored," said Cox, who also served on the advisory committee that recommended Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for the A&M presidency in 2002. "We were never given an explanation. We were just told they didn't like any of our three candidates, which was stunning to me because we had three outstanding candidates."

Instead of the three sitting university presidents that a diverse 14-person committee recommended, regents approved the selection of Murano -- then a vice chancellor and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences -- by an 8-1 vote after Chancellor Mike McKinney recommended her.

On Sunday, 17 months after she became president, Murano announced her resignation, following a deeply critical February job review of her by McKinney. The Board of Regents, at a 9 a.m. meeting Monday, is scheduled to discuss personnel issues that could include the dismissal of other employees within the Texas A&M University System, though exactly what action will be taken is unclear.

Some members of the advisory committee said their search and the current controversy is the result of the same problem: a lack of commitment to shared governance, a longstanding idea pushed hard by Gates, that as much input from as many stakeholders should be taken before major decisions are made.

The lack of an explanation left committee members with nothing more than their speculation. Committee member Bill Flores, after watching the current controversy unfold, said he believes the trio of candidates weren't selected because regents didn't want a strong, established leader.

"The regents wanted a candidate to sit in that role who would take orders from the chancellor and the regents," said Flores, a former president of the Association of Former Students who is currently president and CEO of Phoenix Exploration. "When they picked Dr. Murano, I think they were picking someone they thought they could push around. ... I think she surprised them."

McKinney's handwritten February performance evaluation of Murano -- which the president rejected in a strongly worded letter to the chancellor and regents -- states that she "refused to acknowledge her commitment to [the Board of Regents] or chancellor (re: VPR, Research Foundation)."

The "VPR" appeared to be a reference to the vice president for research. Murano went forward with a national search in which a committee -- made up of members from Texas A&M University constituency groups -- waded through dozens of candidates. The committee recommended three to Murano, who selected Jeffrey Seemann, a University of Rhode Island dean set to begin at Texas A&M next month. Many faculty pointed to the process as a shining example of shared governance.

The Eagle attempted to reach every member of the 2007 search advisory committee. Four agreed to interviews. The remaining members either couldn't be reached or referred inquiries to the chair of the committee, R. Douglas Slack.

Slack said he spent about the equivalent of a part-time job for nearly a year as head of that committee. Members sorted through several dozen candidates, debated amongst themselves, and woke up at 5:30 a.m. to drive to Houston to interview applicants.

Slack said that, in light of Texas A&M's stature with the departure of Gates, the committee wanted a proven leader, so a requirement was the candidate had to be a sitting university president.

The committee, which was created by McKinney, included alumni, current students, faculty, business leaders and even a pair of regents, Erle Nye and Lupe Fraga. Nye is no longer a regent.

In August 2007, they forwarded the names to the chancellor and regents. In December of that year, regents announced Murano as the sole finalist.

"They didn't explain their decision -- that's the long answer and the short one," said Slack, who earlier this week introduced talk in the faculty senate of drafting a "no confidence" resolution for McKinney.

In Murano's response in March to McKinney's evaluation, she referenced displeasure created because of the cloudy selection process. McKinney had rated her poorly for her ability to manage people.

"Especially troubling, and absolutely inaccurate, is his rating of '2' in terms of my ability to motivate people, especially given the tremendous turn-around in the morale of the faculty and staff from where it was a year ago during the controversy surrounding the search process for president," Murano wrote.

Nicholas Taunton, student body president at the time, said Murano was a viable candidate given her experience, but that he remains unsure about why one of the search committee's candidates wasn't chosen.

"I knew that it was an advisory committee and that we were merely giving recommendations, but I thought we put in a lot of good work, a lot of hard work, to get those candidates," said Taunton, now a 24-year-old law student who lives in Austin.

Cox said he respected the regents and McKinney's right to not select a candidate put forward by the committee. But the proper course, he said, would have been to declare the search a failure and start over, rather than pick another candidate in isolation.

"Dr. Murano has been disadvantaged by the way they selected her, and it's not her fault," said Cox, who has served as chairman of the boards of The Texas A&M Foundation and The 12th Man Foundation and is currently president of Cox & Perkins Exploration.

"Having been through this seven times, I have a greater appreciation than some for the notion of shared governance," he said. " It's critical in academia because you have a base faculty that's tenured and therefore tied to the university with a lifetime commitment. They above all should have an active voice in the selection of key management positions. In this case, they were completely excluded, and the backlash was considerable."