Applications. We are officially soliciting applications for President of Guilford College. You can see the advertisement and the materials describing the position. We believe the position profile will help attract a strong applicant pool by making an enthusiastic case that Guilford continues to be a place that changes lives for the better.

Alumni, supporters, and others have recommended several dozen people. If you know of anyone who should be considered, please send the name of the nominee(s) and a brief description why you think he or she is someone we should consider to be President of the College at this critical time in its history directly to melissa.trotta@AGBSearch.com. Dr. Trotta is a senior person in the firm managing the search. AGB Search will reach out to the person and explain the process for making a formal application. All nominations and all applications are held in the strictest of confidence.

Calendar and sequences. The deadline for applications is July 16. After that time, the application materials for all candidates will be reviewed by the 25-member Advisory Group. We continue to take pride in the fact that this is the largest and most diverse group ever to play a formal role in the selection of a Guilford President. The Advisory Group will discuss the applications, and each member will be able to offer candid evaluations of the applicants, including their preferences of who should move forward in the process.  

These observations and evaluations will be passed along to a Selection Committee. The Selection Committee will review the evaluations of the Advisory Group and winnow the field of candidates. The Selection Committee will recommend one or more candidates to the Board of Trustees as finalists.  

Pertinent background interviews and research will be done for all finalists. The Board will then decide whether to offer the position of President to one of the recommended candidates or to continue the search. As we have noted before, we do not have a hard-and-fast deadline for the end of the search and will continue searching until we find the right person to lead the College.

Selection Committee. We are pleased to announce the individuals who will comprise the Selection Committee.

• Harrison Hickman '75
• Jim Hood '79
• David Hopkins '91
• Barbara Lawrence
• Dan Mosca
• Brooks Raiford
• Tori Rosen '73
• Natalya Shelkova
• Ione Taylor '76
• Donn Weinholtz
• Jade Wilson '23
• Ed Winslow

The dozen people who will be serving on the Selection Committee include six trustees, five Guilford grads, one current student, one current faculty member, one current staff member, and the co-clerk of the Friends Committee on High Education. The big “news,” of course, is that Jim Hood '79, Dana Professor of English and Interim President, has agreed to add the Selection Committee to the many ways he serves the College.  

The process. We have received questions about whether the search will be “open” or “closed.” The past two searches for Guilford Presidents have been conducted according to what is best described as a hybrid model. The major part of the past two searches were “closed” with the identities of applicants held in confidence by the Search Committee. When the committee decided on the finalists, those applicants were invited to make campus visits where they met with groups of students, staff, and faculty.  At times in Guilford’s past, the searches were even more “closed,” with the identities of those being considered known to only a handful of individuals.

As we informed the Board of Trustees and other members of the college community in October 2020, our intention all along has been to follow a hybrid model of some type. Our overarching goal is and has been to generate the largest possible pool of qualified candidates to consider. Every one of the search firms we interviewed last fall said presidential searches have changed significantly since the most recent one at Guilford. They explicitly cautioned against having the type of “open” searches that some public institutions must use to comply with their state’s freedom of information laws. This is not to say all states have open searches. One major state university in what most would consider a state that values transparency recently announced its new President after a completely closed search; the new President’s identity was known only to the Search Committee and the Board prior to the announcement.   

The justification of this advice from the search firms is simple: an open search would eliminate between one-half to two-thirds of the best candidates who would otherwise be interested in our position. This is because many who would like to be considered for the position of President of Guilford College are currently employed and do not want their employer (or Board of Trustees) to be aware that they were seeking another position.     

While researching this issue, we learned of a high-ranking administrator in higher education whose promised confidentiality was compromised during the campus visit at another institution. When the candidate returned to his then-current position, the decision-making authority terminated him for seeking another position. It is unclear – and, quite frankly, unknowable – if he would have been given permission to seek the other position had he disclosed his interest to his then-employer. In any case, we want to avoid this type of thing during our search.

After the Search Committee has winnowed the applicants, we will determine how best to proceed. We will ask candidates to waive the confidentiality that will have been observed to that point in the process.  It is possible that some candidates will agree to the waiver while others will not. It will be necessary to decide how to proceed with those who choose not to allow us to disclose their identity. One possibility that has been recommended is to gather groups of students, staff, and faculty to have a dialogue with the candidates with the understanding that those selected to participate in the dialogues will honor any candidates’ request for confidentiality. It is also possible that some candidates will choose to withdraw from consideration under these circumstances. In any case, we will not purposefully disclose the names or identities of applicants without their permission. 

Our ultimate goal remains having a process that leads to the identification and nomination of the best possible president for Guilford College. We are providing this summary of the issues to make sure the community is aware that the question of “open” versus “closed” is not as simple as it might seem, and that flexibility might be required to ensure that the best candidates are available for consideration by the Board of Trustees. We continue to be committed to having the decision of who will become the next President of Guilford informed by the input of the largest and most diverse group that has ever been empowered to participate in the search process.  

Conclusion. Few of these decisions are easy ones, and few of them are without some anticipated or unanticipated negative consequence. We will continue to operate with the values and the best interest of the College as our guide, and we hope that our open and frequent communication about the process is a demonstration of this commitment.  

We would be shocked if everyone agrees with every decision we make, so please feel free to let us know how we could do better.     

David Hopkins '91
Harrison Hickman '75
Co-chairs
Leadership Succession Initiative