Search Committee

After more than 50 years in one room, the town has outgrown Town Hall.Two large desks, several file cabinets and a long conference table fill the 12-by-15-foot former living room of a house at 1 W. Broadway. Add office equipment, and there's barely enough space for residents who have been attending council sessions in increasing numbers lately.Steps at the entrance, a narrow doorway and the lack of a bathroom make it inaccessible for disabled residents.And it's noisy."If people are talking in the office and you are on the phone, you can't hear anything," said Town Clerk Kathleen D. Kreimer.

The Orioles apparently are inching closer to the selection and hiring of a new head of baseball operations as the clock begins to tick on what could be a very important offseason for the struggling franchise. Toronto Blue Jays executive Tony LaCava was back in Baltimore on Monday to meet with owner Peter Angelos, according to team sources, but there has been no indication the club is about to announce a replacement for former president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail, and club officials are not ruling out the possibility that more candidates will be interviewed later this week.

The field of candidates to replace Padraic M. Kennedy as president of the Columbia Association has been narrowed to seven people who are being interviewed by a six-member search committee.Though members of the committee refuse to identify the candidates, two are known to be Rob Goldman, head of membership services for the association, and Buddy W. Roogow, the state lottery director, who lives in Ellicott City.Goldman said he was to be interviewed today by the search committee, which comprises three members of the Columbia Council and three other Columbia residents.

Maryland reached out to a number of high-profile candidates about its top football job before selecting University of Connecticut head coach Randy Edsall, a longtime defensive specialist who grew up a Terps fan and was this season's Big East coach of the year. Edsall, 52, whose Huskies advanced to the Fiesta Bowl and lost to Oklahoma, will appear Monday with athletic director Kevin Anderson at an afternoon news conference. He was introduced to many players and current assistant coaches at Gossett Football Team House Sunday afternoon.

Incoming University of Maryland president Wallace D. Loh said Wednesday that he expects to play a significant role in selecting the school's next athletic director, even though his appointment is not effective until Nov. 1. Loh's role might be unofficial -- for example, meeting with the athletic director finalists before Nov. 1 and offering his blessing to the top choice. "These are the kinds of searches that one has to move very quickly. One can't say, 'Well, we'll wait until the new president arrives,'" Loh said in a question-and-answer session with media members the day after his appointment was announced.

The NAACP has named a 15-member search committee to find a replacement for former president and CEO Bruce Gordon, who resigned from the Baltimore-based civil rights organization in March. The committee, made up of activists, scholars and business people, is working with the San Francisco-based firm HNCL Search. Along with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Chairman Julian Bond, the committee includes: Patrick R. Gaston, president of Verizon Foundation; Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal professor of American social thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania; Heather Booth, president of the Midwest Academy, a national training center for social change; Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Lamell McMorris, managing partner of the Washington-based firm Perennial Sports and Entertainment; and Ralph G. Neas, president emeritus of People for the American Way. Additional committee members include board members the Rev. Wendell Anthony, Cora Breckenridge, Gina Clayton, the Rev. Theresa A. Dear, David E. Goatley, Aubrey Hooper, Adora Obi Nweze and Jesse H. Turner Jr. Gordon's abrupt departure after 19 months on the job came after repeated clashes with board members over the organization's philosophy and leadership style.

The process to select a new chief executive to run Baltimore's beleaguered convention and visitors bureau is seriously flawed, heightening the odds that the wrong person will be hired for the job, national experts say. To begin with, those experts say, the atmosphere has been soiled by the decision to have its ousted top executive, Carroll R. Armstrong, help choose his successor. Even more troubling, the search for a top executive has been launched without the search committee knowing the details of what is believed to be a critical report on the organization's day-to-day operations.

Baltimore City Community College's board of trustees has appointed a 13-member search committee to help the board pick the college's next president, with three forums planned to solicit community input. The board is seeking to replace Sylvester E. McKay, who resigned in May 2004 after a report by the nonprofit Abell Foundation criticized the college's academic performance. Richard M. Turner III has been serving as interim president since McKay's resignation. On the search committee, trustees board member Kirsten Sandberg Caffrey will be chairwoman, and trustees board vice chairwoman Katrina Riddick will be vice chairwoman.

If the people who hired Haroon Ansari had studied his resume, they would have noticed he claimed to have directed a Kansas City mental health program in 1974, when he was 13.But no one did.Mr. Ansari, 33, who was chosen after a national search last year to oversee Crownsville Hospital Center, resigned from his $63,000-a-year job Monday after state officials discovered that he had falsified his resume. He was described by state officials as a con man who took advantage of a lapse in background checking.

A panel searching for a successor to William C. Richardson, president of the Johns Hopkins University, has retained a Chicago headhunting firm to help sort through candidates and has sent out letters to college presidents across the country asking for nominations.Hedrick & Struggles, which is based in Chicago, will help the 19-member search committee winnow down candidates, said Morris W. Offit, chairman of Hopkins' board of trustees.The American Association of University Professors has denounced the practice, saying it leads to candidates whose strengths lie in the financial realm rather than the world of academic values.

Army athletic director Kevin Anderson, a former Xerox Corp. executive with athletics management experience at four universities, has been selected from among three finalists to be Maryland's next AD, officials at the school said Saturday. Anderson, to be introduced on campus Tuesday, will become Maryland's first African-American AD, just as he was the first African-American to lead an athletic department at one of the military service academies. The search committee selected three finalists, then left it to Maryland's incoming president, Wallace Loh, to make the choice.

Incoming University of Maryland president Wallace D. Loh said Wednesday that he expects to play a significant role in selecting the school's next athletic director, even though his appointment is not effective until Nov. 1. Loh's role might be unofficial -- for example, meeting with the athletic director finalists before Nov. 1 and offering his blessing to the top choice. "These are the kinds of searches that one has to move very quickly. One can't say, 'Well, we'll wait until the new president arrives,'" Loh said in a question-and-answer session with media members the day after his appointment was announced.

A 17-member search committee has begun meeting to select the University of Maryland's next athletic director. "We're having a meeting today," committee member Len Elmore, a former Maryland and NBA basketball player, said in an interview Thursday. The committee will recommend a replacement for Debbie Yow, who left Maryland on July 10 to take the same position at North Carolina State. Elmore said he expected the committee would act in an advisory capacity to the university's next president.

Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow is expected to be named the next athletic director at N.C. State, two Maryland athletic officials said Thursday night. Yow was expected to be at N.C. State Friday. "I can tell you things are going to happen fast," said one Maryland official who declined to be named because no public announcement has yet been made. "She's expected to be offered the job. As far as I know, contracts have not been signed." Earlier, Yow said in an e-mail to the Baltimore Sun that she "decided to visit on campus with the search committee at N.C. State.

After nearly four years as Towson University's athletic director, Mike Hermann resigned this week. Hermann, whose resignation was made official Tuesday and was first reported in the Towerlight newspaper Thursday, said that although the resignation was not planned, "it was in the best interest of the program, given the overall situation at hand." He said he is proud of the progress made in Towson athletics. "I feel great about the things that have happened in the last four years," Hermann said.

The National Aquarium has formed a search committee to find a replacement for David Pittenger, the program's executive director. Aquarium board member Donald S. Pettit will chair the search committee. A new executive is expected to take the helm by spring 2011, but no transition specifics have been released yet. Pittenger has been with the aquarium for 25 years, serving the last 15 years as executive director. During his time there, the program has created two new structures — the Marine Mammal Pavilion in 1991 and Animal Planet Australia: Wild Extremes in 2006 — has acquired and cleaned up a brown field at the Middle Branch and has expanded its affiliation with the original National Aquarium in Washington.

Baltimore School Superintendent Richard C. Hunter is one of five finalists for the job of Detroit school superintendent, a Detroit search committee announced this week.A final decision is expected by the first week of April, according to Michele Edwards, spokeswoman for the Detroit Board of Education.The current Detroit superintendent, John Porter, is due to leave by June 1.Meanwhile, a selection committee in Baltimore continued its search for a replacement for Hunter, who is due to leave when his three-year contract expires July 31.In December, Mayor Kurt Schmoke decided not to offer Hunter a new contract, capping months of mounting mayoral dissatisfaction with the superintendent.

In an article in yesterday's editions of The Sun, a condensed quotation altered the meaning of comments by Jane Marvine, head of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's players committee, who was speaking about musicians' opposition to the conclusion of a search for a new music director. The full quotation should have read: "Our understanding is that the seven musician members of the search committee who represent the sentiments of the orchestra members are unanimous in their view that a decision at this time is premature and that the search process should continue."

— A popular diversity official at the University of Maryland is considering applying for the presidency of a historically black college in Virginia, nearly six months after the announcement that his position would be terminated amid budget cuts. The university publicized plans in November to replace associate provost for equity and diversity Cordell Black with a part-time administrator, effective June 30. The final decision fell to Nariman Farvardin, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, and spawned immediate protest, including a large November rally in support of Black's reinstatement.

To Phoebe Haddon, diversity is more than a buzzword or a proud achievement to be plastered on a brochure. It's an absolute key to the subject that makes her tick. Haddon, the new dean of the University of Maryland School of Law, loves to pick apart the history and meaning of our laws. Those conversations are far richer, she says, with input from the widest possible range of people. "I think women bring new dimensions to thinking about the law, because we ask different questions," says Haddon, a fourth-generation lawyer whose family has advocated for civil rights for more than a century.