News-Record.com

As today's editorial says, Harold Martin is a great choice to be A&T's next chancellor.

Good job by the search committee -- although I imagine its work was not so much searching as persuading Martin to accept the job. As senior vice president for academic affairs for the entire UNC system, you could say he's taking a bit of a step back to the campus level.

The speed here has been astonishing -- not so much the fact that the search committee only began its work two months ago because, as noted, it may have just focused on recruiting Martin -- but for the swift approval process by UNC system President Erskine Bowles and the Board of Governors.

It was only Tuesday that Joe Killian reported the selection of two finalists, whose names were passed to Bowles for his review.

Joe quoted search committee chairman Franklin McCain as saying:

“We’re not sure exactly when the decision will be made. But I think anyone who knows Erskine knows he’s giving this his full attention. He won’t be dragging his feet.”

The fast turnaround might be explained by three factors:

1. Bowles knows Martin very well. They've worked closely together for the past two years in Chapel Hill. And before that, when Martin was chancellor at WSSU, reporting to Bowles. There was no interview process required.

2. This in reality was decided whenever Martin applied for the job, with Bowles' support. There was only a second "finalist" because that is a required formality. And that person will never be publicly identified. For all practical purposes, he or she may as well not exist.

3. Bowles may get sucked more deeply into the Mary Easley affair. Better to get the A&T chancellor selection out of the way first.

Events have overtaken the A&T public information operation, such as it is. "The chancellor search news and information" page still says nothing about the announcement scheduled for tomorrow. We only know anything because of Joe's diligent reporting and the willingness of informed people to speak to him outside channels.

UNC system chancellor searches are usually secretive, which poorly serves the best interests of the public or the university communities. When an unknown is announced, there's no guarantee of a good match.

That won't be a problem this time, however. A&T clearly has a winner in Harold Martin.

Addendum: The chancellor search Web site wasn't terribly useful throughout the process.

For example, you can view minutes from the committee's first meeting on March 13, but not any subsequent meetings, which were scheduled for March 30, April 7, April 27 and May 11.

Probably the only really important meeting was when board members sat down with Martin. Maybe we'll hear more about that tomorrow.