SIU Carbondale is restarting its internal search for an interim provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs after a last-minute addition to the position’s search committee led all original members to resign and raised questions about the university’s commitment to transparency and inclusivity. 

Sheryl Tucker, who has served as provost since July of 2023, is departing the role in June and will remain a chemistry professor at SIU. 

A search committee to identify potential replacements was formed on March 18 and quickly planned to begin interviewing candidates on April 17. While the committee featured an array of constituency groups on campus, the Black Staff and Faculty Council said it did not accurately reflect SIU’s racial demographics. 

David Shirley, Lane’s chief of staff, said in an email to the Daily Egyptian that to increase diversity, Chancellor Austin Lane added representation from four constituency groups to the committee on April 8 — nine days before interviews. 

The original committee members announced in a letter sent to Lane and distributed by email April 15 to SIU faculty and civil service LISTSERVs that they were resigning “en masse.” The committee said that while they value inclusive participation, the timing of the addition “compromised the transparency, credibility, and integrity of the search process.” They requested that the process be paused and a new committee formed. 

Shirley said the search was paused and invitations for new members were sent. He said the search resumed on April 21, and the new committee is working to hold interviews with candidates this week.

According to an April 13 email provided to the DE, five people applied for the interim position. Three SIU deans are moving forward to the next round: Xiaoqing “Frank” Liu (College of Engineering, Computing, Technology, and Mathematics), Robert Morgan (College of Health and Human Sciences) and Marc E. Morris (College of Business and Analytics). Shirley confirmed one candidate dropped out. It is not clear why the fifth candidate did not move forward. 

A virtual public forum for Liu was held Tuesday, April 28. Virtual public forums for Morgan and Morris are on April 29 and April 30 respectively, both set for 3 to 4 p.m on Microsoft Teams. Links to access the forums were provided in a campuswide email from HR. 

The interim will be allowed to apply for the permanent position, Shirley said. 

Transparency issues preceded the search 

According to documents obtained by the Daily Egyptian through a Freedom of Information Act request, Tucker, the incumbent provost, planned to announce her departure from the role in November of 2025, but Chancellor Lane told her in an email not to do so, saying that he would announce the departure after her contract ends in June 2026. 

The DE previously reported that Tucker’s departure became an open secret on campus for months. Lane said he followed protocol and that he would not announce it without a letter of resignation or documented departure agreement. But members of the Faculty Senate, the representative body of SIU faculty, expressed concern about what the delay would mean for current initiatives and the search for a new provost.

The Faculty Senate Executive Council and Lane met on Feb. 17. Khalid Meksem, faculty senate president, requested Lane create search committees for identifying and recommending suitable candidates for the interim and permanent provost. According to the report, Lane said he would commit to the council’s request, and that he is committed to shared governance and will consult with faculty before selecting either position. 

During the meeting, Lane said his legal counsel and Tucker’s legal counsel had ongoing transition negotiations, and that once it was settled, a formal announcement would be made. Lane later announced Tucker’s departure on Feb. 20 in an email to campus. 

On March 17, a nonbinding resolution regarding campus instability was unanimously passed by the Faculty Senate. The resolution stated that the original decision to not announce the provost’s departure until June violated the faculty’s right to a timely and collaborative search for a new provost, and suggested that interim leaders be appointed through collaboration with faculty and other constituencies. 

Diversity efforts and timing concerns 

In early March, various groups on campus were invited to submit nominees to serve on the interim provost search committee. On March 18, a committee of seven members, each from different constituencies, was formed. Jennifer S. Sherry (Faculty Senate) served as chair; the other members were Hannah Brenner Johnson (Dean of Simmons Law School), Rachel Frazier (AP Staff Council), Matthew Romero (Tenure and Tenure Track Faculty Association), Anahit Amiri (Graduate Assistants United), Mike Olsen (Non-Tenure Track Faculty Association) and Thomas Becker (Civil Service Council). 

According to an email between Shirley and the committee, the objective of the committee was to help narrow down candidates for the role of interim provost. After completing the interviews, the committee would make recommendations, which Lane would evaluate. Lane would then interview the candidates and make a selection of the interim. 

In an interview with the DE, Romero and Olsen, who serve as Faculty Association presidents for tenure/tenure track and non tenure track respectively, said the committee was under a compressed timeline but working effectively. They held two meetings the week following the creation of the committee, as well as one to finalize candidate questions on April 3. 

“Over those first two meetings, we laid out the job description, the timeline,” Olsen said. “We had set pretty quickly a target date of doing interviews by April 17 with the position opening to close on April 13.” 

A meeting between Lane and the Faculty Senate Executive Council took place on April 7. Shirley, Lane’s chief of staff, said that Lane shared “the need for SIUC to be steadfast in its commitment to expand diversity and representation on all searches — including the search for the Interim Provost role” during the meeting. 

The next day, Shirley alerted the search committee that members from four Board of Trustees-confirmed constituency groups — Black Staff and Faculty Council; LGBTQ+ Faculty and Staff Council; Asian Pacific Islander Faculty Staff Council; and Hispanic/Latino Staff and Faculty Council — were added to the search committee, according to an email provided to the DE with the new members’ names redacted. 

Romero and Olsen said they believe the constituency groups should have been on the committee from the beginning, but that adding them during a late stage compromised the autonomy of the committee and the fairness of the search. 

“It’s important to note that the norm on campus is that hiring committees are autonomous; that once formed, the committee goes and does its work,” Romero said. “We know our jobs, that’s exactly why we all fell in line. Then we report back either a choice or a recommendation to the hiring manager. That’s where the confusion came in — how can we be an autonomous group if we’re being augmented at this late stage in the process?” 

Olsen said that after this change, the original committee members met on April 10 to discuss their concerns. 

“The point that we kept coming back to was that we didn’t understand how we could function by adding so many members at such a late stage, given that those members were not a part of the conversations, forming the questions, the discussion that took place in the initial committee,” Olsen said. “The new members lacked any of that context, and we felt that it would be sort of unjust and unfair to the new members but also to the candidates themselves who would be interviewed by a committee that had been altered at such a late stage.” 

The committee’s resignation letter emphasized that they do not oppose the inclusion of more constituency groups but rather the timing, which Romero and Olsen reiterated. 

“Those constituency groups could have, and arguably should have, been on the committee from the very beginning,” Olsen said. 

In their letter, the committee recommended “pausing the process and forming a new committee with full representation from the outset” in order to protect the institution’s and search’s integrity. 

The Daily Egyptian sent a request for comment over email to all original committee members on April 17. Jennifer Sherry, the chair, said that she had no further comment about the resignation. The other original committee members did not respond.

The DE also reached out over text to Lane and Jeff Harmon, chief communications and marketing officer at SIU. 

“As we have said before, we will be inclusive and have diversity for our searches,” Harmon said in response. 

Administrators, faculty respond to resignation

At the SIU Board of Trustees meeting on April 16, SIU System President Daniel Mahony said that throughout his 40-year career in higher education, he has never seen a search committee for an administrative interim position. 

“I am not sure if there are many or any other chancellors or presidents in the country who would be as accommodating as (Lane) has been,” Mahony said. “So you can imagine my feelings when I saw the resignation from the search committee, when Chancellor Lane listened to other groups who were not a part of the original search committee, who represent diverse groups on campus and diverse voices, who wanted to be included and so he decided to bring those diverse voices to the committee…Particularly given the moment we are living in in history, opposing more inclusion, one of the three words that are frequently banned today, seems to be perplexing, strange and frankly disappointing.”

In the late afternoon of April 24, the executive board of the Black Faculty and Staff Council sent a letter regarding interim provost search committee concerns to Lane, with Shirley, Sherry and Nick Wortman, associate vice chancellor of human resources, copied. In the letter, the group raised concerns about the foundational reasoning behind the resignation. 

“As an institution that embraces inclusivity and diversity, the original committee lacked representation of all BIPOC groups and members from diverse ethnic and minority communities,” the group wrote. “This raises immediate concerns regarding inclusion, representation, and the integrity of the search process itself. Historically, hiring search committees are required to include representation from the recognized constituency groups.”

In the letter, BSFC said that they understand the timeline concerns, but that the resignation has broader implications. They said they did not receive an update from the committee regarding timeline and candidate material until April 13, and that the members’ resignation came without notification. 

“It is disheartening that the committee did not communicate their concerns directly with the additional BIPOC constituency groups,” the group wrote. 

BSFC also pointed to various benefits of a diverse hiring committee, including reducing biases, improving the quality of decision-making and creating more equitable hires.  

“Students, particularly those from historically marginalized backgrounds, look to institutional leadership as a reflection of their belonging and value within the campus community,” the group wrote. “What message does it send to these students when representation is contested rather than embraced in decisions as significant as a provost search?” 

In an April 27 joint statement to the Daily Egyptian, Romero and Olsen said that both Faculty Associations have reached out to the BSFC and other constituency groups regarding the resignation. 

“We welcome the opportunity to listen to their concerns, share our experiences on the committee, and to find common ground for the health of our organizations and SIU broadly,” they wrote. “The original committee members felt strongly that the additional constituencies should have been included at the onset of the search. Had their voices been included from the beginning, we feel it would have led to a different — and likely better — outcome and a more productive search.”

Members of BSFC could not immediately be reached for comment. 

Search will finish with new committee

In an email to the DE, Shirley, Lane’s chief of staff, wrote, “As requested by the now resigned committee, the process was paused, and an invitation for new members was sent to the groups (also adding Undergraduate Student Government and Grad Council). The groups were informed that if they could not provide a nominee, that their group would be offered an opportunity to interview candidates during the interview day that would be set for each candidate.” 

Shirley said the following groups provided nominees: Graduate Council; Graduate Assistants United; Undergraduate Student Government; AP Staff Council; Civil Service Council; Black Staff and Faculty Council; Hispanic/Latino Staff and Faculty Council; LGBTQ+ Faculty and Staff Council; and Asian Pacific Islander Faculty Staff Council.

The Faculty Senate and both Faculty Associations elected not to provide a nominee. 

Olsen said that he declined to send representation because he believed that the recommendation to pause the committee hadn’t been taken seriously. He received the email asking for representation just four hours after the committee had sent their resignation letter. 

Romero said he declined to send representation because he saw the process as polluted. “I wasn’t going to subject somebody else to it,” he said. 

Shirley said the new committee resumed on April 21 and were holding interviews throughout the following week. He said this will allow Chancellor Lane “time to evaluate the feedback and make an announcement of the new Interim Provost in early May.” 

Romero and Olsen said that while they feel the process was mishandled, they are ultimately glad that the new committee is diverse and wish them the best. 

The Daily Egyptian will update this story online as it develops.

Editor-in-Chief Carly Gist can be reached at [email protected]  

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