Michael Amiridis named next president of USC in unanimous board vote

The University of South Carolina has selected a new president.

Michael Amiridis, USC’s former provost and the former chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago, was chosen by the USC board Friday afternoon in a unanimous vote.

While many things on campus have changed since he arrived in 1994, “What has not changed is the importance of the University of South Carolina system to this state, this nation and to the world,” Amiridis said during a news conference after he was chosen. “In fact I would argue the work this university does to produce cutting edge scholarship, address the issues of our time… is more indispensable than it has been before.”

He was selected from a pool of at least 50 serious candidates by a search committee comprised of board of trustee members, faculty, staff, a student, alumni and more.

Amiridis’ salary will be $900,000 and he will officially take over in either June or July, USC spokesman Jeff Stensland said.

During a set of meetings with students and faculty, Amiridis laid out his vision for the university in which he emphasized diversity, increasing the quality and availability of online classes, fixing infrastructure and recruiting top-tier faculty, The State reported previously.

“We need to be more accessible and more affordable. We need to focus more on the public good the university represents,” Amiridis said. “We need to improve the quality of life in South Carolina and we need to build the future of South Caroilna.”

USC is “well positioned to accomplish all of this,” said Amiridis, 59.

While he left campus in 2014, Amiridis kept ties to the university. His daughter Aspasia graduated from USC in 2019 and his son Dimitri is a senior Gamecock.

“We’re coming home, and it feels great to come back home,” Amiridis said.

USC closed the book Friday on a process that, a month ago, had seemed to be drawing to a close.

In early December, Thad Westbrook, a board of trustees member and the chair of the Presidential Search Committee, said one of the five candidates recommended to trustees was considered a favorite. That candidate was Mung Chiang, the engineering dean and a vice president at Purdue University, who later withdrew from the race, citing family concerns.

Amiridis and Chiang were two of three candidates identified as finalists by the board. The third was Cato Laurencin, a University of Connecticut distinguished professor who teaches orthopaedic surgery, chemical and biomolecular engineering, biomedical engineering and materials science. He is the CEO of The Connecticut Convergence Institute for Translation in Regenerative Engineering, a group at UConn that seeks to use multiple fields of study to treat disease.

Westbrook told the Faculty Senate he wanted to fast-track the preferred candidate because candidates are in high demand, and if USC waits too long, the preferred candidate could get hired by another university. Following the vote, USC Board of Trustees Chairman Dorn Smith said he was “delighted” to have Amiridis as the president-elect, saying he is “Imminently qualified to lead the university to the next level.”

Interim President Harris Pastides said he considers Amiridis a friend and believes he is qualified to do the job.

“The fact that he served as provost, dean of the college of engineering, a revered scholar at the university is icing on the cake. Michael would have been eminently qualified” even if he had never accepted a job leading another, major university, Pastides said.

Since Chiang dropped out of the search, USC’s board had been quiet publicly regarding the search until Thursday, when it announced that panel discussions between students, employees and Amiridis were scheduled for Friday.

The search began in May after former USC President Robert Caslen resigned following a disastrous graduation speech in which he mistakenly referred to graduates as being from the “University of California” and plagiarized a portion of his speech.

After Gov. Henry McMaster forced a yes-or-no vote on Caslen, the 2019 presidential search drew scrutiny from USC’s accrediting body and protests from students and employees. Following the search, USC’s board of trustees changed its bylaws and reformed how future searches would be handled. One of the key differences between the 2019 search and the 2021 search is the increased diversity on the presidential search commission.

USC’s presidential search process recently hit a snag when business magnate and mega-donor Lou Kennedy left the search committee after she says she was disrespected by Smith, the board chair, after pressing for diversity in presidential candidates.

Asked how the university could move forward from a rocky search process and the brief presidency of Caslen, Amiridis said: “General Caslen is an American hero and he has my respect and my gratitude for his service to this country.

“We’re looking forward.”

This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 4:34 PM.