Dear Editor:

You published a very nice article in Tuesday’s DE updating us on the search for a new SIUC Chancellor. Everyone has their own take on what kind of individual should fill the chancellor’s shoes, and some interesting perspectives emerged from the students interviewed. Professor Ford seems to be doing a great job in moving the search process along, and before too long, we should be able to see the committee’s short list. Hopefully there will be some solid candidates in the mix.

In the article professor Ford mentioned how the committee will “attempt to gauge the candidate’s ability to manage a large budget, fund-raising skills and overall leadership abilities.” These are important, of course, but I think there is at least one other important trait that our next chancellor must show: a truly genuine understanding and appreciation of academics and scholarship in the 21st century.

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Our new chancellor will not only need to know how to raise funds, but will need to recognize that SIUC is first and foremost an academic institution. That is, our new chancellor needs to know that SIUC is a university and not an “organization,” as one of our previous chancellors liked to call it (Wal-Mart is an organization; SIUC is a university). So, while financial wizardry is important, it is not and should not be an end in itself. Financial smarts should only be one of the many desirable traits our new chancellor displays.

Our new chancellor will also need to recognize that the university can only thrive if academic priorities are established and action is taken to mold university programs for the modern times that face us. The days of Delyte Morris’ vision of an academic program in everything will be maintained at our peril. Here’s where the leadership qualities of the new chancellor will come to bear. Do we modernize and become more relevant, or do we try to stretch our dollars even thinner? Only time will tell.

In the final analysis, let’s hope that we are blessed with a new chancellor that shows all the capabilities described by professor Ford, plus an inherent ability to guide us towards the right balance of past, present and future. If this happens, perhaps SIUC will someday reach the academic arena that our basketball teams, both the ladies and gentlemen, now enjoy in the athletic arena. Good luck Dawgs!

Michael T. Madigan professor of microbiology