Ohio University Student Senate met Wednesday and heard from President Hugh Sherman regarding the current presidential search, the future of recruitment at the university and steps currently being taken towards inclusivity on campus.
Sherman said the university is in great shape, and the search committee has talked to people across the country who are “showing real interest and wanting to be a part of our university.”
The committee has hired a firm called Collective Genius to gather stakeholder input about characteristics, skills and experiences that the next president should have.
After that information is gathered, national advertisements will be posted targeting people with those experiences and desired characteristics. Those advertisements will go out in mid-October, Sherman said.
From the advertisements, the search committee will choose around eight to 10 people who could possibly take the president role and will interview all of them. Then, it will be narrowed down to three candidates, who will be invited to campus for visits.
Sherman said the search will hopefully wrap up by the end of March.
Sherman also talked about the amount of students in the current freshman class and the future of recruitment at the university.
He said the current freshman class is made up of 4,441 students, but the focus for the future is maintaining 4,000 students per class. He also discussed goals to improve retainment of students and graduation rates.
Sherman also spoke about inclusivity goals on campus, specifically in regard to the future of the Make Respect Visible campaign, which was brought back in full-force this academic year.
He said the campaign will involve programming, including training for RAs, first year students, faculty, staff and university leadership. Another aspect of the program involves a request of an audit that will look into university practices, policies and procedures, he said.
