Washburn Regents narrow field to two presidential search firms to find Jerry Farley successor

The Washburn Regents are one step closer to picking a search firm to pick Jerry Farley's successor as university president.

The Regents on Thursday voted to narrow the list of search firm candidates to AGB Search and WittKiefer, two executive search firms with extensive experience picking university chiefs in Kansas.

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AGB Search most recently helped the Kansas Board of Regents hire Ken Hush as Emporia State University president, and WittKiefer did the same in Richard Linton's hire at Kansas State University.

"All four (bids) were very qualified search firms, so it was really hard to narrow it down," said Regents chair Terry Beck. "We had to get down to the real subtle differences. It was a sense of comfort, in that some of our Regents had prior context with AGB and WittKiefer."

A committee of Regents will interview representatives from the two firms and return in the next few weeks with a recommendation, at which point the Regents would negotiate for contract specifics.

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Next week marks halfway between Farley's retirement announcement and the date of that actual retirement on Sept. 30.

While the Regents won't have an exact timetable for completing a search until one of the two firms is hired, based on their proposals, Beck said the Regents are anticipating a process that will take through the end of 2022 or early spring.

It's increasingly likely that the Regents will hire an interim university president, even if only for 90 or so days, he said.

Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Washburn Regents to pick either AGB or WittKiefer for president search