Lincoln University releases stats on presidential applicants

This August 2017 photo shows Scruggs University Center on the Lincoln University campus in Jefferson City.
This August 2017 photo shows Scruggs University Center on the Lincoln University campus in Jefferson City.

William Hudson Jr. and Jerald Jones Woolfolk were the top finalists from a group of 58 applicants to be Lincoln University's 20th permanent president, the school's search firm announced Tuesday.

Monroe "Bud" Moseley, vice president of the Boston-based Isaacson, Miller consulting firm, said 211 people had some contact with the firm about the LU presidency being filled after Kevin Rome left Jefferson City last summer to become the new president at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

However, only 58 of those potential candidates "expressed interest and subsequently shared their resumes and various related materials with the Presidential Search Committee," Moseley reported.

Hudson, currently vice president of Student Affairs at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, is in Jefferson City today, meeting with a number of different groups on campus, including the Board of Curators during a noon luncheon that is closed to the public.

Woolfolk, currently vice president for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management with the State University of New York at its Oswego campus, will visit Thursday, following the same schedule.

They were selected as finalists after the search committee conducted several face-to-face interviews with candidates in St. Louis about a month ago.

Moseley didn't give a number for those interviews, but said the candidates came from "backgrounds serving public, private, HBCU (historically black) and/or Predominantly White (PWI) institutions."

Without identifying the individual applicants, Mosley said 50 came from academic situations, including 16 from historically black colleges and universities and 34 from predominantly white ones.

He said 40 came from public institutions, while 10 were from private ones.

Seven of the applicants currently are presidents, two are provosts, 24 were vice presidents and seven were deans.

Another eight applicants were from business or industry, Moseley said.

There were 16 women and 42 men.

The most applications - 20 - came from the southeastern United States, with Missouri's 10 applications being the second-highest.

The northeastern region provided eight applications.

There were six applicants from Mid-Atlantic states.

The Midwest, not including Missouri, and the Southwest had five applicants each, while there were two applicants each from the northwestern United States and from outside the country.