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The trustees are meeting in private session at 1 p.m. at the Conrad Indianapolis downtown to interview the two finalists—Thomas P. Snyder, a former Remy International Inc. executive in Anderson, and Thomas D. Klincar, a commandant at Community College of the Air Force at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
The trustees have scheduled a public meeting for 5 p.m. at the Conrad, where they could vote on a successor to Ivy Tech President Gerald Lamkin, who’s scheduled to step down in June. The agenda for the public meeting says only that trustees will report on the status of the selection process for a new president.
IBJ was first to report last week that D’Amico, widely considered a shoo-in for the job, had been passed over. IBJ also reported that Pat Kiely, president of the Indiana Manufacturers Association, interviewed for the job but was eliminated because he lacked advanced academic degrees.
Gov. Mitch Daniels favored D’Amico for the job, people familiar with the search said.
"But a funny thing happened on the way to her anticipated anointment," the Indiana Education Insight newsletter reported. "A truly open search process that the Guv stayed out of until it was perhaps too late, and some folks working internally to derail her candidacy."
The newsletter said an anybody-but-D’Amico faction exerted influence within Ivy Tech.
If the trustees decide to reopen the search process and ultimately select D’Amico, "she will have gained the post without the same air of legitimacy that she would have had if she had been proposed by the [six-person] search committee," Indiana Education Insight said. "She will have to contend with the perception that she was elevated simply because of politics."
On the other hand, the newsletter added, looking beyond D’Amico could rile Lilly Endowment and Lumina Foundation, which both provide financial support to Ivy Tech. It said they might view passing over D’Amico as a "repudiation of Ivy Tech’s path to progress."
Ivy Tech has 14 trustees. Daniels, a Republican, has appointed nine of the trustees since he took office three years ago.
The institution has 23 campuses and more than 125,000 students.
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