Students must be an integral part of the search committee to find a new chancellor.

There are no hard-and-fast guidelines as to how many people will make up the search committee.

But 20 percent of the committee should be made up of students. This would allow for as much student diversity as possible without overcrowding or limiting other voices.

If the committee is made up of 30 people total, there would be six students. To join the committee, these students should go through an application and interview process. Ideally, students on the committee would be sophomores and juniors. They have spent a significant amount of time at the university, and they would still be on campus when the new chancellor is hired. Graduate students should also be included on the committee.

Though freshmen will still attend Syracuse University under a new chancellor, their experiences at SU right now are too limited. Seniors will graduate in the middle of the search process and will have little to no interaction with a new chancellor.

Students on the committee should represent a diverse range of the student body. Ethnicity, socioeconomic background, major and college, campus organization involvement and geographic diversity should all be taken into consideration.

In the search for Chancellor Nancy Cantor, a committee was formed in seven to 10 days. But to ensure a diverse range of student voices, it can take slightly longer to form the committee. Cantor announced her decision about 20 months before she will actually leave, so taking a couple weeks to form the committee will not put the search behind.

The chancellor is the face and voice of a university. Students must be a part of the process in finding the next voice of SU because the chancellor’s decisions affect them.

Published on October 25, 2012 at 3:00 am

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