To the entire UTC community:
             I have requested and received permission from Dr. John 
Friedl to
discuss his nomination to become UTC’s next chancellor.  I received the
nomination from a faculty member, and I followed my usual process of
notifying him (with a slight glitch to be noted below).  He responded
immediately with a gracious note indicating that he was deeply honored 
but
did not wish to be considered a candidate and would not be submitting 
his
application to Baker-Parker, the search firm we are using for this
chancellor search.

             Because today’s Echo has chosen to identify him as a 
nominee on
the basis of an email improperly received, I immediately contacted Dr.
Friedl and asked if I could break my pledge not to talk about nominees 
and
candidates.  I had talked with him earlier when I learned that the 
reporter
planned to publicize Dr. Friedl’s nomination, and he was quite 
understanding
and unbelievably charitable in his attitude about the mistake of his 
being
nominated reaching the campus newspaper and the possibility that the 
Echo
would choose to publish it.  I waited until publication of the Echo,
however, to ask his permission to make public the entire situation.  I
received that permission a short while ago and am following up.

             When I received a nomination of Dr. Friedl, I emailed Carla
Johnson, the administrative assistant for the Search Committee, an 
attached
copy of a letter to be printed and sent to Dr. Friedl notifying him of 
the
nomination.  My copy of the email (which I still have) indicates that’s
where it was sent.  Unfortunately, unknown to me at the time, my Address
Book in Eudora had become corrupted by a virus, and all my email 
addresses
had been scrambled (Yes, another worry for email users—and a good 
reason,
according to Kit Rushing—to be using an Apple machine!).  I realized the
email had been incorrectly sent to Echo reporter Robby Trail only when 
it
bounced back to me with one partial address (the reason for the bounce)
along with Robby’s complete email address.  I immediately wrote to 
Robby and
indicated (something that was also obvious from the email itself) that 
the
email was confidential and had been sent to him mistakenly.  He 
indicated
that he felt no obligation to keep it confidential.  I responded with 
the
following email.

“Robby, As a former journalist myself, I must say that it greatly 
surprises
me you would not feel any obligation to keep the email confidential, but
obviously I do not know you well enough to know your values or 
principles.
If you choose to print that Dr. Friedl has been nominated, I trust that 
you
will reveal precisely how you got that information since the email 
clearly
reveals that it was not addressed to you.  You also might want to 
consult
respected individuals in your profession regarding your decision.

             The Echo article did indicate that the email was 
“accidentally”
sent to the reporter.  Whether he consulted professionals and what they 
told
him, I cannot say.  I do know that standards for journalism vary
considerably by individual.  The justification by the Echo for printing 
the
information it contained seems to focus on the committee’s “decision to
conduct the majority of their search in secrecy.”  What is so puzzling 
about
this assertion is that the search is constantly compared to the “open”
search for the UT presidency.  At this point, every step we have taken 
has
been comparable to the process used in that search.  In fact, the whole
search is modeled along the lines of the presidential search.  Every 
single
meeting held thus far has been open to the public.  We are currently in 
a
“wait” mode while applications are coming in, and I anticipate providing
regular updates about the general nature and number of applicants.  
Once we
get a list of semi-finalists, that list will be released to the public
(EXACTLY as happened in the presidential search).  In the presidential
search there was a lot of talk and speculation about candidates in the 
media
and in the general public, but no confirmation of candidates (except 
when
candidates themselves chose to reveal their interest) until that 
release of
the semi-finalists.  That is our goal also.

             One step that we at UTC hope to make a bit different, based 
on
the desires expressed by many UTC faculty and by most Search Committee
members, is for the entire committee to have input into who makes it 
into
that semi-finalist pool (unlike the presidential search where 
Baker-Parker
chose the semi-finalists with input only from the committee chair and a 
few
key members, thus making it easier to keep names confidential but 
leaving
the decision in fewer hands).  The exact process we’ll use for 
accomplishing
this part of the search has not been determined.  If we choose to have
meetings, they will become “closed” meetings for this part of the search
only, and that would probably be the most beneficial way and certainly 
the
easiest.  Or we can follow the process used by the presidential search
committee of handling the decision through everyone individually 
looking at
the applications and discussing them via phone or personal conversations
(more difficult than in the presidential search because of the committee
size and our desire to involve all members).  Either way, the process 
will
be no different in essence from what happened in the presidential
search—names of the candidates will be released at exactly the same 
point in
the search.

             Apparently there has been some misunderstanding of the whole
chancellor search process by the media, and no doubt that is due to my
failure to provide adequate information and my rather naïve assumptions
about what the media already knew/didn’t know about how academic 
searches
are conducted and how the UT presidential search was actually conducted.
Making a search for a top campus administrator (obviously there is 
usually
very little interest in other searches) as open as possible while still
attracting a strong pool of candidates and, equally important, 
providing an
honest evaluation of those candidates is an on-going challenge for 
search
committees across the country.  I have gathered every possible piece of
literature on this problem and will be glad to share it with anyone
interested.  The Chancellor Search Committee has no agenda other than
finding the best possible Chancellor for UTC, and we can not accomplish 
that
goal without a lot of help and support.  We have received much thus far 
from
faculty, staff, and students, and we know that we can count on that
continuing.  Thanks!  And my sincerest public apology and thanks (to go 
with
the private ones already offered) to Dr. Friedl who was unfairly put in 
the
public spotlight.  He could not have handled the situation more 
graciously.



Verbie Prevost

Chair, Chancellor Search Committee