He earned two degrees from Stanford and has fond memories of his time on the football team and in his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi. Now, after eight years on the Board of Trustees, James Ukropina has taken on his biggest Stanford project yet: finding the University's 10th president.
In November, a committee of seven trustees, six faculty members, two students, one staff member and one delegate representing alumni began soliciting nominations for the person who will succeed Gerhard Casper when he steps down on August 31. That group is combing the country, soliciting names of potential candidates. The committee has placed ads in major newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and in specialized education and ethnic publications. Ukropina, '59, MBA '61, a Los Angeles lawyer chairing the search committee, says he expects to receive hundreds of nominations.
The ideal candidate will be a world-class scholar with outstanding managerial and leadership skills and strong personal qualities and values, Ukropina says. Because Stanford is so strongly associated with technology, the search committee has made it a special priority to find someone who also will champion the humanities. The next president could come from a position in government, a corporation or a foundation, but he or she should qualify for a full professorship and would likely have spent significant time working in academia.
Even before the committee formally met, Ukropina had gathered the names of more than 25 potential candidates. He also has been consulting with fraternity brother John Lillie, '59, MS '64, MBA '64, a fellow trustee who led the last search for a president eight years ago.
Once the committee identifies a broad pool of nominees, members will begin the hard work of winnowing it down. The panel will break into four subcommittees, each of which will review and make recommendations on a quarter of the nominees. After the first cut, the committee will gather more information about each remaining candidate. (During the search that resulted in Casper's selection, this intermediate group numbered about 40.) Eventually, Ukropina expects to end up with a list of fewer than 10 candidates to interview. After the committee interviews those individuals, it will present up to four names to the full Board of Trustees, which will make the final selection. That should happen no later than June, Ukropina says.
Stanford is competing with other topflight schools also in the market for a new chief. Among them: the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. More will probably announce searches in the spring. "We are in a hunt with more hunters than is normally the case," Ukropina admits. But he adds that the chance to lead Stanford will attract many candidates.
The committee is accepting nominations through the middle of January. They can be sent to Presidential Search Committee, P.O. Box 60190, Palo Alto, CA 94306-0190, or via e-mail to: search@ohpca.com.
