The Kansas Board of Regents is currently identifying potential candidates to chair the committee tasked with guiding the search for the next Wichita State president, Regents spokesman Matt Keith told The Sunflower.

“They’re usually looking for someone with some familiarity with the university and with the community, who can help organize a search committee and keep the process moving,” Keith said.

He said the Regents are still early on in the process of identifying candidates.

“I have no idea who they’re potentially looking at,” Keith said. “I don’t know if they’re looking at the community, if they’re looking for — I don’t know who they’re considering or how many candidates they might be considering at the moment.”

In addition to naming a chair, the Regents will also vote on each member of the search committee. Keith said the board could go about choosing committee members in a number of ways.

“The chair could propose names, the regents could propose names,” Keith said. He said campus and community stakeholders could also give recommendations.

“I’m sure that they’ll seek input from a lot of different sources.”

In the past, student leaders have typically had representation on presidential search committees.

In 2012, when John Bardo was recommended to the board as a finalist for the president’s job, both the student body president and the president of the Student Ambassador Society were on the search committee.

The committee also included representation for WSU faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, the Regents, and the Wichita community.

WSU Interim President Andy Tompkins was on the committee, as were former Spirit AeroSystems CEO Jeff Turner and Kansas Leadership Center CEO Ed O’Malley. The committee was chaired by local real estate developer and WSU alumnus Steve Clark — the namesake of the Steve Clark YMCA and WSU Student Wellness Center, which is currently under construction on Innovation Campus.

Keith said that if the Regents identify a favorable candidate before their next meeting on May 15, they will likely call a special section to expedite the vote and search committee process.