Ohio University's vice president for finance and administration, who recently presented the Board of Trustees with a five-year financial plan, is a candidate for president at Florida Gulf Coast University.
William Decatur began working for the university on March 20, 2006, after leaving the University of Toledo. His annual salary is $221,450.
Decatur did not return repeated calls for comment this week.
FGCU will be a decade old in August and is the newest of the ten universities in the Florida State system. Although the 760-acre campus is still under construction, it has about 9,000 students and will be a division-I school in the fall.
In 2006, FGCU had 865 employees, 335 of which were faculty, according to a quarterly briefing given to its board of trustees. Its 2006-07 budget was nearly $67,250,000.
On August 3 there were 58 other candidates for the position, including Lloyd Benjamin, president of Indiana State University. Application season is open until August 16.
A university search subcommittee will narrow the field of applicants to 25 by August 17 and the full committee will halve that number. After those 12 are interviewed, six candidates will be selected for on-campus interviews. On August 24, the committee will recommend three candidates to the university's board of trustees, which expects to make a decision by the afternoon of August 25.
It's going to be very intense
said Susan Evans, university spokeswoman.
The firm conducting the search, Greenwood and Associates, recommended that the process be as short as possible to avoid jeopardizing the positions of applicants holding other jobs.
For its services, Greenwood and Associates will be paid a third of the president's total estimated cash compensation for his or her first year in office. 17
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