Provost appointed to full term

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Rather than spending about $250,000 to perform a national search to find the University’s next provost, an internal search resulted in the full-term appointment of Chaouki Abdallah to the position.
In an email to the University on Wednesday, UNM President Robert Frank announced his decision to appoint Abdallah as provost of the University until 2016.

In 2011, following an internal search, Abdallah was appointed to interim provost until 2013. Before his term began as interim provost, Abdallah was a chair member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

In the email, Frank said that as soon as he arrived at UNM, he learned that the provost was supported by members at many levels of the administration, such as former UNM President David Schmidly, the Faculty Senate and the Board of Regents. He said that his decision to appoint Abdallah as provost was supported by the members of the administration and the regents.

According to Board of Regent policy regarding the appointment and termination of key administrators, the UNM president must conduct a search “unless there are exceptional circumstances and the regents have been consulted.”

“I value their views and would not take this step in the absence of their support,” Frank said. “I have consulted with the faculty leadership groups, our deans and allowed a long time period to lapse after the conversations to see if any new ideas arose.”

Frank said a national search would have cost about $250,000, would require more than eight months to complete and would immobilize the Office of the Provost. He said that the role of the provost and stability of the provost’s office are critical to the University to implement academic policy.

“The search would consume the entire first academic year of my presidency,” he said in the email. “One person I spoke to said ‘Your best solution is to run a national search and then select Chaouki.’”

Frank said that although the tradition of a national search is valuable to the University, Abdallah would have been a candidate in that search. He said that a search would “validate Dr. Abdallah’s skills,” and that he would probably be selected because he has already proven to be valuable to the University.

“I think we would choose him from a pool based on his knowledge and experience with UNM,” he said. “In my mind, it is not worth eight months of searching and thousands of dollars to achieve this outcome.”

At a Board of Regents meeting Tuesday, Frank congratulated Abdallah for his appointment and gave credit to the provost for the University’s slight increase in freshmen retention.

Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Terry Babbitt reported at the meeting that the University has had a 2.5 percent increase in freshmen retention this year.

“I’d like to congratulate the provost and his team, it’s very hard to reverse that trend,” Frank said. “We’re going to extend his time in the provost’s office. He’s done a great job, so congratulations.”