Temple’s Board of Trustees has officially established an advisory committee and selected a firm to lead the search for the university’s next president, wrote Board of Trustees Chairman Mitchell Morgan, in a message to the Temple community Thursday.
“Choosing the leader of this great institution is the single most important obligation of the Board of Trustees, and one that we undertake with the utmost care and humility,” Morgan wrote. “We know that selecting the 14th president of Temple University is also an opportunity to look ahead and start charting our path to the future. We can’t do this alone—this endeavor requires the support of the entire Temple community.”
The Board of Trustees unanimously voted to name JoAnne Epps the university’s acting president on April 11. She stepped into the role after former President Jason Wingard resigned in March as the university faced increasing scrutiny following the fatal shooting of Sgt. Christopher Fitzgerald and TUGSA’s 42-day strike.
The search advisory committee will consist of nine trustees, including Morgan. It will also include Shohreh Amini, president of Temple’s Faculty Senate, Temple Student Government President Rohan Khadka and Valerie Harrison, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion. Quaiser Abdullah, a professor at the Klein College of Media and Communication, is also on the committee.
A small group of trustees oversaw the process of selecting Spencer Stuart, an executive leadership search firm, to assist with the presidential search, Morgan wrote. The university is also retaining The Collective Genius, a research and strategy firm, to conduct surveys and listening sessions to include the community in the search.
A March 2023 poll conducted by The Temple News found that 92 percent of students disapproved of Wingard’s performance as president.
Epps served as dean of the Beasley School of Law from 2008-16 and as a senior advisor to Wingard before he reorganized his leadership in August 2021.
“I want to publicly thank Acting President JoAnne A. Epps for her devotion to Temple and her willingness to step in at a critical juncture,” Morgan wrote. “Her strong, steady presence has given us the gift of time, and the ability to proceed with the search in a thoughtful and deliberate manner.”
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