The University of Virginia, way back in March, publicly paused its search for a full-time executive vice president and provost, the institution’s top academic officer, citing the desire to “achieve a better outcome in the long term, ensure institutional stability, and continue building trust in our community.”
Which is what the UVA Board of Visitors should have done with respect to hiring a new president, but that point has been made on this page already, and often.
The pause is over – UVA announced in a release on Thursday that it has relaunched the provost search.
Hoo-ray, indeed.
What happened in the intervening four months?
Your guess, as good as mine.
“The provost is core to all that happens on our Grounds, in our classrooms, labs and through digital and global learning,” said first-year UVA President Scott Beardsley, who got his job at the end of a rushed, overly political process intended to beat the deadline of Abigail Spanberger taking over as governor.
Turns out, the rush job was not necessary – Spanberger is just slightly to the center of the MAGAs who had been running things in Richmond the previous four years.
She made a public show of forcing out several appointees of her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, who then decided to put their rubber stamp on the hire of Beardsley, who is now, per the release that we got yesterday, “looking for a collaborative, visionary leader to guide academic and research excellence, bolster faculty distinction and awareness of their life-changing discoveries, and to build on UVA’s exceptional and accessible student experience” in the provost’s post.
The release tells us that Beardsley named Gregory Fairchild, the dean and CEO of UVA|Northern Virginia, to chair a reconstituted search committee that will identify and evaluate candidates and make recommendations to the president.
“Beyond identifying and cultivating outstanding candidates, a key part of the committee’s mandate is to engender trust by meeting these process aspirations,” Beardsley said.
Good effort at PR spin there.
An entity by the name of UVA Executive Search Group, which, we learned from the release, “will work with the committee to develop, review and evaluate an exceptional pool of internal and external candidates, with the goal of selecting a permanent provost in 2026.”
If you’re reading this story, and you think, you know, I might just make a good provost there at UVA, good news – the release outlined the qualifications with a handy position description outlines the qualifications, and advised that nominations, expressions of interest and applications may be submitted directly, and confidentially, through the Executive Search Group.
Good luck!
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Chris Graham
