The University of Connecticut won’t wait for the election of a new governor before replacing school president Michael Hogan, who is leaving at the end of June to take a similar job at the University of Illinois, The Associated Press reports.
Finding a candidate who can work well with the governor and legislature will be an important part of the national search, said Lawrence McHugh, the chairman of the school’s board of trustees. But the school won’t wait until after the November election, he said.
“Gov. (M. Jodi) Rell is the governor right now, so we would prefer to move the process along as quick as we can, making sure all the university’s constituencies are involved,” McHugh said.
Rell, who also serves as president of the board of trustees, is not seeking re-election.
She said she was disappointed in Hogan’s decision to leave after less than three years on the job, especially after she just helped push through a $362 million project to overhaul the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington.
The far-reaching project, which Hogan championed, includes renovating the 35-year-old John Dempsey Hospital at the health center campus, building a new patient tower and increasing classroom and lab space for UConn’s medical and dentistry schools, boosting their national reputation.
“It’s a very short tenure for a university president,” she said Wednesday. “There are an awful lot of things that are going on right now, a lot of major decisions in the next couple of months and years … so, it’s going to be a difficult transition and time. But you now what, we’re very resourceful people.”
McHugh said the board will begin discussions in about a week about hiring an interim president. A search committee will then be formed to find a permanent replacement.
