Participate in interviews for next UNM president

Editor,

State of New Mexico law requires that the UNM regents' final decision concerning the selection of our 20th president take place at least 21 days, but no more than 30 days, after providing public notice of the names of the five finalists who were announced Wednesday. The University community - students, staff and faculty - will have the opportunity to meet with and learn about each of the candidates during their visits, which begin next week.

Please participate in the process. Show up at the interviews of as many of the candidates as possible and ask relevant, tough questions that may elicit informative responses. The opportunity now faces the University community to show the candidates and New Mexico that we, by our participation, genuinely care about who is selected as UNM's next president.

As you participate, think about the position of a University president. Certainly, opinions abound concerning what a University president should be, and how a single individual affects a complex institution of higher education. In The Creation of the Future, professor Frank H.T. Rhodes, who recently retired as president of Cornell University, writes, "... in spite of financial pressures and political concerns, in spite of public disenchantment and campus discontent, the academic presidency is one of the most influential, most important, and most powerful of all positions, and there is now both a critical need and an unusual opportunity for effective leadership. The college presidency is one of the most influential of all positions because the future leaders of the world sit in our classrooms. The academic presidency also is one of the most important of all positions because it is chiefly on the campus that knowledge - the foundation of the future - is created. The task of the college president, reduced to its essentials, is to define and articulate the mission of the institution, develop meaningful goals, and then recruit the talent, build the consensus, create the climate, and provide the resources to achieve them. All else is peripheral."

Over the next two-and-a-half weeks of candidate visits, please remember Rhodes' words. Consider the possibility, although this may come as a shock to most of you, that UNM's 20th president may be around for quite some time.

John W. Geissman

UNM faculty and chairman

of faculty

Committee on Governance