Milwaukee Area Technical College wants to choose a new president by April. What are the next steps?
The search is on for the next president of Milwaukee Area Technical College.
The goal: To select the new president in late April, with a start date of July 1, 2024.
With just over 29,000 students enrolled last fall, MATC is the largest of Wisconsin's 16 publicly funded technical colleges based on full-time-equivalent enrollment. Current president Vicki Martin, 69, announced in September her plans to retire after 35 years in various roles at the school.
The nine-person board overseeing MATC solicited bids from 17 executive search firms to lead the presidential search process. From eight proposals, the board on Nov. 10 selected a $120,000 contract with Greenwood Asher & Associates Executive Search on Nov. 10.
The board met in an open meeting Nov. 28 to outline a draft timeline for the monthslong search process. Some dates in that timeline could change. The college plans to post updates about the presidential search at https://rb.gy/z21ydu.
Public listening sessions begin Dec. 4
The search firm will hold virtual and in-person listening sessions during the weeks of Dec. 4 and Dec. 11 with students, faculty, staff, administrators, community members, and others who will be affected by the selection of a new president.
The search firm will also meet with members of the MATC board individually about their priorities.
Feedback from listening sessions, plus a written survey, will be used to create recruitment priorities for the search process. That includes language used in the advertisement for the position and the job description, according to the search firm.
The search firm will ask a series of standard questions during listening sessions and written anonymous surveys:
What personal qualities, skills and abilities will be important for your next president?
What are the key challenges and opportunities?
What does the new president need to accomplish in the next one to three years and next three to five years?
What do you want prospective candidates to know about MATC and this opportunity?
What are your points of pride? What brought you here? What keeps you here?
Those questions were predeveloped by the search firm, said Tracey Weldon, who is managing the MATC search for Greenwood/Asher & Associates. In response to a question from board member Bria Burris, Weldon said there is room to edit those questions but cautioned that listening sessions begin Monday.
"My experience on this is if people have something to say, they find a place within the questions to say what it is," said MATC board vice chair Lauren Baker. But that doesn't mean the board should not think about those questions to make sure participants can "dig deep and tell us the things they believe," she said.
Active recruitment between late December, early January
An eight-week active recruitment window will begin in late December or early January. By that time, the search firm and board will have finalized a position profile and advertisement.
The search firm will solicit applications using three main methods: responses to advertisements, nominations and active recruitment. In particular, the firm will look for candidates at two-year tech colleges in urban settings that are similar in size to MATC, community colleges with a "technical college mission" and employees of four-year institutions who have experience working with technical colleges.
Current faculty, staff and others at MATC are encouraged to nominate candidates for the role.
Anti-bias workshop in February
The MATC board will take part in an 1.5-hour anti-bias training led by Greenwood Asher & Associates as part of the search process.
The workshop's purpose is to "create awareness around the common occurrences of bias in the search, to explore the outcomes of bias" and discuss techniques to minimize bias in the process, Weldon told the MATC board on Tuesday.
The MATC board chair and vice chair will meet with the search firm ahead of the anti-bias workshop to review its slide deck, and to "get a sense of the campus climate and culture to make sure that we are using language that is consistent with the language that you typically use around diversity, equity and inclusion," Weldon said.
Board to narrow down candidates during series of spring meetings
The board and search firm will meet in late February to review applicants. The goal is to select 12 to 15 applicants for virtual interviews in early March.
Typically, those interviews last one hour each and include eight to 10 questions. Board members will ask questions preselected by the search firm, Weldon said Tuesday night.
The goal is to finish two days of early March interviews with a handful of candidates selected for whom to check references.
Week of April 15: Three final candidates travel to campus for in-person interviews
After two weeks of referencing calls, the board and search firm plan to meet in late March to review information gleaned during the reference process. At that point, the board will select three final candidates who will be invited to MATC's campus for in-person interviews.
Those finalists' names will be made public.
On-campus, in-person interviews are scheduled for the week of April 15, according to the draft timeline. Teachers, staff, faculty and others will again be asked for feedback about those finalists, which will be shared with the board.
On April 23, the board is scheduled to select the next president, according to the draft timeline.
Cleo Krejci covers higher education, vocational training and retraining as a Report For America corps member based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact her at CKrejci@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @_CleoKrejci.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What are the next steps for MATC's presidential search?
