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No Timeline For Ball State President Search After Two Trustees Resign

Daniel Hartwig
/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dwhartwig/3934905914

Two Ball State University Board of Trustee members have resigned from the school’s governing board before their appointed terms were up.  The school has known about the resignations since December.

Two of the nine trustees – Frank Hancock and Marianne Glick – submitted resignation letters to Indiana Governor Mike Pence in mid-December.  The governor appoints trustees to all public university boards for four-year terms.  Both Hancock and Glick’s appointed terms were to end in 2017.

Ball State University did not announce Hancock and Glick’s resignations before last week’s board meeting.  No mention of their resignations was made officially in the meeting or in the university’s press release after.

Messages left for Ball State spokeswoman Joan Todd were not returned Thursday afternoon.

Hancock and Glick’s letters, published by Muncie’s Star Press newspaper, were both sent to the governor on December 17, before the announced resignation of university President Paul Ferguson. 

But in his letter, Hancock says the board needs “fresh faces” and “new ideas” with a new president that he calls “very much different” than previous president Jo Ann Gora.  In her letter, Glick says she’d rather serve on the board for Ivy Tech Community College.

Dustin Meeks is the board’s student trustee.  He told Ball State student media he believes Pence will quickly appoint new trustees, so the board can begin the process of replacing the school’s president.

“The governor has kind of the onus to make that transition quickly and I trust Governor Pence to give us the people who are going to be right for the Board quickly and so I don’t think that it will hinder our hiring process at all,” Meeks says. “We’ll get the new members of the board, they’ll be acclimated within a week, week-and-a-half and we’ll be on progress.”

Neither the Board of Trustees nor Ball State officials have released a timeline for that presidential search.

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