After top candidate backs out, USC trustees to meet Monday about presidential search

The University of South Carolina’s board of trustees will meet Monday after the school’s preferred candidate for president backed out over the weekend.

The board meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the USC Alumni Center’s Floyd Boardroom. The only two items on the agenda are acknowledging recommendations for presidential search candidates from the university’s search committee and “authorization of chair and vice chair to schedule further steps in presidential search,” according to the meeting agenda. The board may also meet in executive session, a closed-door session in which board members are allowed to discuss certain items but not take votes.

The called meeting comes a day after Mung Chiang, an engineering dean and vice president at Purdue University who was reportedly the leading candidate for the job, backed out of the presidential search. Chiang cited family concerns as a reason for him no longer pursuing the USC job, according to a statement he sent through USC.

USC has sought to find a new long-term president since former President Robert Caslen resigned following a commencement speech where he mistakenly congratulated the graduates of the “University of California” and plagiarized a portion of his speech.

The presidential search had been running relatively smoothly until recent weeks, in which search committee member and prominent donor Lou Kennedy quit the search committee in protest and USC’s top candidate pulled out of the search.

This story was originally published December 6, 2021 at 11:40 AM.