The search for a new president of Chattanooga State Community College launches on Friday, Feb. 10, with a public forum on the campus and the orientation meeting of a 19-member Search Advisory Committee that will review candidates and recommend finalists for the office.
The public forum will allow the members of the campus and Greater Chattanooga communities to present their views about the qualities the committee should look for when reviewing candidates. The forum will be held from 9 to 10 a.m., Feb. 10, in Room 124 of the Albright Omniplex Building on the Chattanooga State campus.
The Search Advisory Committee will then convene at 10:15 a.m. in the same room for an organizational and orientation session. The committee will work with Greenwood/Asher & Associates to help identify a broad range of highly qualified candidates from around the country. Dr. Betty Asher, a partner in the firm, will lead the public forum.
The committee’s charge is to review applicants and prospects and identify three to five finalists, who will be invited to the campus for interviews with the committee, students, faculty, administration, staff and the public. After further review, including feedback from those campus meetings, one candidate will be recommended to the full Board of Regents for its consideration and approval.
The Board, in a special meeting on Jan. 27, approved criteria for the next president and announced the Search Advisory Committee members. The next president will succeed Dr. Flora Tydings, who assumed her new role as chancellor of the Board of Regents system on Feb. 1. Debbie Adams, Chattanooga State’s vice president of student affairs and workforce development, is interim president until the campus’s new leader is appointed and in place -- by July 1, under the board’s timeline.
Regent Tom Griscom of Chattanooga will chair the Search Advisory Committee. Regents Howard Roddy of Chattanooga and Danni Varlan of Knoxville are also members of the committee, along with 16 representatives of the faculty, students and staff of Chattanooga State and the Tennessee College of Applied Technology—Chattanooga, and of the Chattanooga area. TCAT-Chattanooga shares the campus and some administrative functions with the community college.
The criteria and details of the search are posted on the TBR website at https://www.tbr.edu/hr/executivesearches/president-chattanooga-state-community-college