{"id":286433,"date":"2026-05-27T17:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T17:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/286433\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T17:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T17:53:14","slug":"sole-finalist-to-become-ufs-next-president-to-engage-in-multiple-forums-with-schools-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/286433\/","title":{"rendered":"Sole finalist to become UF’s next President to engage in multiple forums with school’s community"},"content":{"rendered":"

The finalist to be the University of Florida\u2019s<\/a> next President will face a series of forums on the Gainesville campus next week amid criticism of the selection.<\/p>\n

Stuart Bell, current President of the University of Alabama<\/a>, was named the sole finalist<\/a> to lead Florida\u2019s flagship university by the school\u2019s Presidential Search Advisory Committee. UF has set up three forums for Bell at Emerson Alumni Hall President\u2019s Ballroom on the main campus to take place on Wednesday, June 3.<\/p>\n

The first forum will begin next Wednesday at 1 p.m. with university faculty followed by a student forum at 2:15 p.m. and capped off with an administrator and staff forum at 3:30 p.m. The UF Board of Trustees<\/a> is set to consider the final decision June 11. If he is approved, the Florida Board of Governors<\/a> would make the final decision.<\/p>\n

Bell, who has been President of Alabama for a decade, was named the only finalist by the Advisory Committee, which drew immediate backlash.<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott laid into the selection process.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I don\u2019t know Dr. Bell, it is clear to me that once again, UF has engaged in a search process that lacked any transparency or public input and failed to interview three\u00a0candidates as mandated under Florida law,\u201d Scott said in a terse letter<\/a> sent to State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues.<\/p>\n

Scott also griped about how the university handled its agreement with interim President Donald Landry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat remains unclear to me is why Dr. Donald Landry who has been interim president was\u00a0not considered,\u201d Scott wrote in his letter. \u201cWhat I do know is that Dr. Landy has a clause in his contract that he would be awarded a multimillion-dollar payout if he failed to become the permanent president at UF. That is crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landry is owed $2 million for being passed up for the UF President job,\u00a0according to media reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But criticism hurled at UF for naming Bell as the only finalist isn\u2019t limited to just politicians.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Chair of the Board of Governors, Alan Levine, sent a letter to Rodrigues raising questions over the process<\/a> and asked for a review of presidential searches at all public universities in Florida to see if they\u2019re following state regulations.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Gabrielle Russon of Florida Politics contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The finalist to be the University of Florida\u2019s next President will face a series of forums on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27510,42372,28,25812,30,29,5242,19115,3856,53975,117741,18724,2511,42375,117742,2512],"class_list":["post-286433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-alan-levine","tag-donald-landry","tag-florida","tag-florida-board-of-governors","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-president","tag-ray-rodrigues","tag-rick-scott","tag-state-university-system-of-florida","tag-stuart-bell","tag-ua","tag-uf","tag-uf-board-of-trustees","tag-university-of-alabama","tag-university-of-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}