A committee of 20 alumni, faculty, students and community members will help choose the next leader of Missouri State University.
Members of the Missouri State University Board of Governors made its selections to the presidential committee during a closed portion of a special meeting Wednesday.
Smart announced his retirement from the presidency effective at the end of the current school year, with a projected end date around the beginning of July.
Rob Fulp, a managing director with Great Southern Bank and community booster, has been named as the search committee’s chair. As board chair for CoxHealth Systems, he led a search that resulted in the pick of Max Buetow as the hospital’s president and CEO.
Amy Counts, who recently left the Board of Governors after serving nearly six years, has been named as the committee’s vice chair.
The committee members include:
- Board of Governors members Lynn Parman, Jeff Schrag and Chris Waters (chair of the Board of Governors).
- Community members and alumni Rob Fulp, Amy Counts, Trevor Crist, Ryan Sivill and Greg Spears.
- Faculty and Academic Leadership members Kim Church, Doug Gouzie, Shannon Wooden, Barri Tinkler, Shurita Thomas-Tate and Beth Walker.
- Administration and staff members Brad Bodenhausen, A’dja Jones and Laura Derrick.
- Students Bradley Cooper (a student member of the Board of Governors) and Elizabeth Simcoe.
- West Plains campus representative Crockett Oaks.
The ad hoc committee will play a central role in choosing the university’s next president. Throughout November and December it will meet and select semi-finalists who will be interviewed in January. A pool of finalists will be chosen from those interviews and brought to campus for interviews and forums in February. The Board of Governors will make the final selection from among those finalists.
The next step in the search process is a qualifications and input forum set for 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 2.
Designer selected for building to replace Art Annex
In other meeting business:
• The board hired Dake Wells Architecture to design a new building intended to replace the existing Art Annex on Grand Street. The contract is worth $1,461,600, and calls for the firm to work comprehensively, from pre-design to post-construction, said Matt Morris, vice president for administration and finance.
The university plans to hire a construction manager at risk for the project, instead of a traditional building process. Once hired, that manager will be able to work with designers and subcontractors simultaneously so that they can develop better cost estimates and move more quickly in the event of hold-ups.
Nicknamed a “front porch,” the building will be used for the university’s arts, social sciences and humanities programs. It was enabled with an eight-figure donation from the C.W. Titus Foundation, announced last month.
The project is hoped to expand into Craig Hall, if fundraising and state funding are adequate, said President Clif Smart during the meeting.
West Plains autism support center approved
The board approved an $8.6 million bid from RIHC Contracting to build an autism support center at the West Plains campus. The bid includes a base bid of $8,480,000 plus two alternates valued at $120,000.
A majority of the construction’s money, $8,000,547.97, comes from American Recovery Plan Act funds allocated by the state of Missouri and Howell County. The total budget for the project is $10,530,000.
