The University of Vermont names 'Sole Finalist' for President Job

The University of Vermont has announced a single finalist for the main position in the campus.

Suresh Garimella, executive vice president of research and partnerships at Purdue University in Indiana, plans to visit the UVM campus at the end of next week. He is the "only finalist" to replace outgoing President Thomas Sullivan, according to an announcement published Monday by the chairman of the UVM Board of Directors, David Daigle.

"We had more than 90 outstanding individuals who applied for our presidency." The search committee personally interviewed 10 of the most qualified candidates in this exceptional group, "wrote Daigle. The candidates' confidentiality requirements require that we do not publicly identify the entire group of outstanding finalists. "

While he is the only finalist, Garimella is not guaranteed The Daigle statement explained that the board will decide "if you have the confidence that Dr. Garimella will be successful in directing our University" after the visit from February 13 to 15, which will include "a series of meetings and interactions." of open forums with groups of electors through the University. "The meeting l Then you will have a vote on whether to hire him.

"I would not call it an inevitable conclusion, but I would say there has been an incredible amount of research," Daigle said during an interview. interview on Monday, "and we would not be taking this step unless we had full confidence that this was the right direction for the university."

In the past , the university has publicly published the names of a group of finalists. Before Sullivan got the position in 2012, the university announced five finalists, all of them available for public forums.

Daigle said that the decision to name only one finalist is consistent with the trends and is known as a "hybrid" model for hiring, in which the majority of the process is done in private before a single finalist is appointed to the public for further review. He said that most of the applicants in the "phase semifinal "were not willing to participate in a public trial.

Ultimately, Daigle said, the board must balance its obligation to operate transparently with the need to hire the best possible candidate.

"It's pretty clear, based on all the information we have, that candidates working in private institutions are less likely to consider a public phase," he said. "Then, in our search, we could have excluded any candidate who needed confidentiality, but in doing so, we would have had a diminished reserve."

Daigle said that more than 90 candidates were examined closely, and a wide range of constituencies within the university participated during the private phase of the search. Now, he said, the board is requesting contributions from the entire university community as it weighs its final decision. The university will soon announce the schedules of the open forums and meetings with Garimella during his visit, according to Daigle.

A member of the staff of the Garimella office in Purdue forwarded the queries to the UVM.

Mechanical Engineer, Garimella was appointed by President Donald Trump to the National Council of Science in November. The panel advises Congress and the president on scientific policy.

Garimella's engineering expertise is important as UVM has been investing heavily in science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs and, four years ago, adopted a budget model that favors those thematic areas. Enrollment in the expansion of the Faculty of Engineering has more than doubled in the last decade, making it the second largest school in UVM, with 1,417 university students.

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In Purdue, Garimella heads the "diverse research enterprise" of the university, according to its faculty website, which says that the program funds hundreds of millions of dollars in scientific research each year.

According to the page of the faculty of Purdue de Garimella, he has 13 patents and founded the Center for Research on Cooling Technologies. He has focused his research on thermal management, climate change and renewable energies. He received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, his MA from Ohio State University and his BA from the Indian Institute of Technology of Madras.

Sullivan announced last August that he plans to leave work this summer.