Michigan Technological University has been searching for a new president since current president, Glen Mroz, announced in April of this year that he intended to step down as president and return to a faculty position. The open letter penned by Mroz to “the Michigan Tech Community” did not give any explanation for the decision.
On Friday, June 2, MTU’s Board of Trustees appointed a 14-member presidential search committee, according to an article by Michigan Tech News. Later that month the Board of Trustees also hired Storbeck/Pimental & Associates, a Pennsylvania-based employment agency specializing in higher education executive recruitment, to assist in locating candidates for the position.
Since the beginning of the Fall semester, students, faculty and staff have been able to follow the course of the search for a new president through “Michigan Tech Community Memos” released by the university.
The first of these memos, released on Sept. 7, alerted readers to a community survey designed to help the presidential search committee select a president from potential candidates – a later memo said that around 550 people responded to the survey before it was closed. The Sept. 7 memo also included the names of the members of the presidential search committee and a link to a website dedicated to the presidential search (www.mtu.edu/president-search/).
Town hall meetings were held on campus on Sept. 13-14 to address public concerns and take input, and similar sessions were held later that week in Grand Rapids and Anne Arbor and on Oct. 5, in Commerce Charter Township to reach Michigan Tech Alumni and other supporters.
The responses to the survey and comments from the Town hall meetings were used to create search advertisements and a prospectus, according to a subsequent memo, released on Oct. 9.
Current hopes are that a new president will be found by April of 2018. Mroz is then to step down on June 30, 2018, with the new president officially starting on July 1, 2018.
