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President Hoops Announces Retirement
Search for New President

USI President H. Ray Hoops will retire effective June 30, 2009 after a 40-year career in higher education, the last 14 years leading the University of Southern Indiana. He announced his retirement plans to faculty and administrative staff at the spring faculty meeting on Monday. To read excerpts from Hoops’s speech, click here.

In the six years prior to coming to USI, Hoops served as the vice chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Mississippi. When it was announced that Hoops would join USI as its second president, Sidney Rushing, president of the Board of Trustees for Ole Miss, told an Evansville reporter, “I don’t think you realize yet how lucky you are.”
Hoops

Success has marked the Hoops administration from 1995 into the next century with capital projects including the Science and Education Center, Liberal Arts Center, Fitness Center, Rice Library, residence halls, and the soon-to-be constructed Business and Engineering Center. Academic offerings continue to grow to meet the needs of the 10,000 students who attend USI. Since the graduation of the Class of 2007, alumni have increased to more than 25,000.

During his tenure, Hoops ordered two studies of USI’s impact on local workforce and economic development. The reports examined the University’s leadership and responsiveness in regional economic development and recommended academic and training programs that meet the future workforce and economic development needs of Southwestern Indiana.

The Board of Trustees for the University of Southern Indiana met in Indianapolis in January with an agenda that included plans for a presidential search. Sherrianne M. Standley, vice president emeritus for Advancement, will serve as coordinator of the search, and she is meeting with constituent groups within the University to begin the process. Standley retired in June 2007. Questions regarding the search can be directed to her at smstandl@usi.edu.

In business related to the presidential search, the trustees approved the composition and purpose of a search and screen committee and a proposed timeline. The search and screen committee will be composed of trustees, a support staff member, a senior administrator, five faculty members representing respective colleges, an Extended Services representative, the chair of the USI Foundation Board of Directors, community representatives, and an alumni representative. John Dunn, chair of the Board of Trustees, also will serve as chair of the search and screen committee.

The search and screen committee will review applications as received next September and October, reduce the pool to semi-finalists, interview semi-finalists, and recommend five finalists for on-campus interviews. The finalists will visit campus in January 2009 and trustees hope to announce an appointment by March 1, with the new president taking office July 1, 2009.

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