The Arkansas Department of Higher Education received four additional applications for its director position before the end of its application period, including one from interim director Shane Broadway.
That means the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board will have a total of 20 resumes to consider for the position. A search committee assembled to review the candidates will schedule a meeting soon, committee chairman Kaneaster Hodges said Friday.
The department has been without a permanent leader since Jim Purcell left to lead Louisiana’s higher-education efforts in February 2011.
In addition to Broadway, a former state lawmaker, recent applicants were: Deborah Lachowsky Gangluff, whose resume said she is a department chairman at Capella University; Renaldo Hemphill, whose resume said he is an author and former data analyst for enrollment management at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff; and Ronald Natale, whose resume said he is a former provost of Glendale Community College in Arizona.
Some board members had previously hoped to hire Broadway, but he withdrew from the search shortly before the release of an attorney general’s opinion that showed he didn’t meet the statutory requirements for the job, which included experience on a higher-education campus.
State lawmakers have since revised the criteria, and Broadway meets the new requirements.
Board members recently reopened the search, using the new criteria in advertisements. Broadway has said he will take the position if it is offered to him.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 19 on 09/22/2013