Mississippi’s College Board has announced the formation of a search committee to select the next president at Mississippi Valley State University.
Based on the first steps the board settled on Thursday, Acting President Jerryl Briggs would appear to be the leading contender.
According to Caron Blanton, a spokeswoman for the College Board, the search committee, headed by board member Shane Hooper of Tupelo, will first decide whether to use an expedited search process or the traditional 20-step process. The search committee will make that decision after gathering input from MVSU students, community, faculty, staff and alumni.
“I look forward to hearing from the Valley family about their thoughts on the future of the university,” Hooper said in a prepared statement.
In June, when then-Valley President William Bynum Jr. was selected to fill the presidential vacancy at Jackson State University, the College Board said it would be naming an interim president at MVSU this month.
The College Board has decided to bypass that step for now, saying that Briggs will continue as acting president.
The distinction is important. Under College Board policy, “interim” presidents cannot be considered for the permanent jobs at the institution where they are serving in the interim position, although “acting” presidents can.
The College Board, however, has added a new twist, according to Blanton. She said that acting presidents can only be considered for the permanent job in an expedited search process, not in a 20-step one.
This morning the Commonwealth asked Blanton in an email to indicate where that distinction exists in the College Board’s written policies. She did not immediately reply.
The expedited process is estimated to take three to four months. A traditional 20-step process takes at least six to seven months.
Briggs was brought in 2013 to the Itta Bena campus by Bynum to serve as executive vice president and chief operating officer. The two administrators had worked in concert at other universities, and Bynum had recommended Briggs for the acting president’s role.
In June, Mississippi’s higher education chief, Dr. Glenn Boyce, told the Greenwood Voters League that the College Board would be “looking for stability” in the choice of the next president at MVSU, the smallest of the state’s eight public universities.
“We don’t want Valley to be a testing ground. There’s momentum and trajectory in place at Valley, and we don’t want to bring somebody in to shake it up,” Boyce said.
At the same meeting, Briggs signaled his interest in the permanent position.
“I want to be at Valley,” he said. “I wanted to be here when I came.”
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
