Interim Baylor president turns down candidacy

Interim Baylor president turns down candidacy

WACO, Texas — Contrary to expectations, Baylor University regents emerged from their Sept. 9 meeting without a new president for the 160-year-old Baptist school, and Interim President Bill Underwood announced he had removed his name as a candidate for the permanent president’s position.

“I had never wanted to be the long-term president of Baylor University,” Underwood told reporters. “I had concluded … that if I continued to be considered as a candidate for the long-term position as president, it would impair my ability to get done some of the things I needed to get done as interim. I also believe that because of some of the controversial decisions I’ve made … that my being a candidate for the permanent job would be unnecessarily divisive.”

Regents selected Underwood, a 49-year-old Baylor law professor, to become interim president June 1. He succeeded embattled President Robert Sloan, who stepped down to become university chancellor. At the time, regents left open the possibility Underwood could be tapped for the permanent post, and regents Chairman Will Davis insisted Underwood would not serve in just a caretaker’s role.

Although the university released no names prior to the regents’ meeting, sources said Linda Livingstone, 45-year-old dean of the school of business and associate professor of management at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., was the expected nominee. Before she joined Pepperdine’s business school in 2002, Livingstone was associate dean of graduate programs at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business.

But prior to the meeting, she reportedly received a phone call in California to tell her the board would not take any action at its  meeting.

Search committee Chairman Bill Brian of Amarillo, Texas, declined to verify the newspaper report or discuss any particular names. He confirmed that — other than Underwood — no one who had been seriously considered as a candidate by the committee had been ruled out for further consideration.