Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

On Monday, the Presidential Search Committee met with our search consultants from WittKieffer to discuss the progress of the search effort. As you know, our search has been underway for approximately one month, and our search team has assured us that the effort is making excellent progress.

To this point, we have advertised broadly across multiple venues serving higher education generally and Jesuit and Catholic higher education in particular, as well as those publications focused on diverse demographics. Building from this base, our team has reached out directly to more than 2,100 people to solicit both personal interest and referrals or nominations. The team is currently following up on that outreach and has already connected with more than 800 people for direct conversations. Included in that group are 50 Jesuits.

It is far too early to predict who specifically will become a candidate for our presidency, but our partners at WittKieffer shared with the committee this morning their conviction that the candidate pool will be robust and diverse. The search committee will begin sorting through that candidate pool shortly after the beginning of the academic year.

Now is the ideal time for members of our community to recommend candidates for recruitment. If there are people whom you would recommend for consideration, please send the name, current institution (or contact information if you have it) and any supporting comment to SeattleUPresident@wittkieffer.com. Our search partners will follow up on any suggestion immediately and discretely.

Rest assured that your search committee will be working through the summer. We look forward to bringing to the campus community in the fall a group of finalists worthy of our wonderful institution. Further information regarding the search may be found on the university’s Presidential Transition webpage.

Sincerely,

Betty Woods and John Vassall, M.D.
Presidential Search Co-Chairs