Purple Haize wrote: ↑February 4th, 2023, 8:03 pm
I understand what you are saying but I disagree. If LU wants to be a true National University then it needs to have some (positive) notoriety. In fact due to the little notoriety LU has had recently being negative, I would argue they need a huge splash of a hire that can create positive notoriety, at least in segments LU wants to reach.
I'm curious what segments LU is wanting to reach in your mind and do those segments care if our president is a relative nobody or not? I could see the argument either way. I'm not sure who would be considered a splash hire in the academic world that would be a good fit. If we tried to go out and hire away an ivy league president we would get an instant spike in credibility in many circles but we would be mixing oil with water.
Since I don't understand the academic world I'm just going to assume it works like hiring a football head coach which means we essentially have four options.
1) Hire a coordinator (Provost or other administrator) from a P5 (R1 University)
First thought that comes to mind here is Baylor since they are pretty similar culturally and already a R1. I would like to think there is at least one evangelical christian in the administration of the 136 other R1 schools that could work though. This is my preferred option since a person from one of these schools will better understand what "right" looks like.
2) Hire the Head Coach (president) from a smaller school
There are plenty of small Christian Universities out there with competent leadership. Whether or not they would be ready to take on a project this big is another debate.
3) Promote a coordinator that's already in house
This isn't a bad choice if we were a "winning program" but we need things to go in another direction so this is probably the worst choice.
4) Make a splashy celebrity hire (think Deion Sanders to JSU)
I would put any politician into this category. It's typically a risky/ high upside decision made out of desperation. Somehow out of these four options I think option 3 and then 4 is the most likely but I hope I'm wrong.