Don’t rush when hiring a new chancellor to replace John Bardo, one board of trustee member for Western Carolina University cautioned the university’s other top leaders last week during a two-day annual retreat in Cullowhee.

Echoing the sentiments of the search firm — Baker and Associates, which has offices in Winston-Salem and Atlanta — hired to help a newly constituted search committee find exactly the right candidates for chancellor, former Asheville Mayor Charles Worley urged his fellow board of trustee members to “be sure we’ve got the right one — even if it takes a little longer.”

The selection process is estimated to take five to six months.

Bardo announced Oct. 11 he planed to retire. He spent more than 15 years as WCU’s chancellor.

“It is very important that you keep control of the process,” board of trustee member George Little said, adding cautionary words to those by Worley. “That’s why you’re there (on the committee) as a board member — so that we will have the best candidate.”

Six board of trustee members, including Vice Chairman Worley and Chairman Steve Warren, were placed on a 16-member committee tasked with nominating candidates to the full WCU board of trustees. The board will forward the names of at least two nominees, probably three, to new University of North Carolina system President Tom Ross. The UNC president will present his top selection to the full UNC Board of Governors for consideration and approval.

Ross, acting as president-elect (Erskine Bowles is retiring this year, at age 65, as UNC system president), will “charge” the WCU search committee Nov. 16. That date also represents the first meeting of the new committee.

In addition to the trustees, the committee is made up of WCU faculty, students, community members, alumni and administration.

Warren said the search committee would actively solicit ideas on what is wanted from the next WCU chancellor, through a Website being built and more. He wants to see a “statement of position” for the chancellor crafted before candidates are identified.

Internal appointments made

In other WCU-related news, Bardo announced last week that Dianne Lynch, chief of staff for WCU, would assume the role of acting vice chancellor for operations, effective immediately. The move, Bardo said, is in response to several interim appointments at the university’s executive level and in recognition of his own pending retirement.

“I have made this decision because I anticipate a challenging legislative session and I expect to be spending a considerable amount of time in Raleigh once the legislature convenes in late January,” said Bardo, who owns a house near Raleigh. “This interim appointment ensures that Dianne has the delegated authority to make and/or approve institutional decisions for non-academic areas of the university that may become necessary when I am not on campus, and until the chancellor’s search is completed and that individual has been named.”

Bardo’s retirement announcement meant the suspension of national searches that had been under way to fill two top university leadership positions. Chuck Wooten retired as vice chancellor on Jan. 1, and internal auditor Robert Edwards last week was tapped interim vice chancellor for administration and finance.

Additionally, searches were taking place for a replacement for Kyle Carter, who left WCU’s provost office to become chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke on July 1. Linda Seestedt-Stanford, dean of WCU’s college of health and human sciences, is serving as interim provost.

The search committee

• Steve Warren, chair of the board of trustees who will also chair the selection committee.

• Charles Worley, trustee, an Asheville attorney and 2001-2005 mayor of Asheville.

• Gerald Kister, trustee, a 1969 graduate of WCU and resident of Columbia, S.C. Former chief executive officer of La-Z-Boy Inc.

• Joan MacNeill, trustee, a Webster resident who is the former president and chief operating officer of Great Smoky Mountains Railway.

• Virginia “Tommye” Saunooke, trustee, a Cherokee resident and an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who serves on Tribal Council. Earned two degrees at WCU.

• Teresa Williams, trustee, a Huntersville resident who serves as board secretary.

• A.J. Grube, head of WCU’s department of business administration and law, and sport management.

• Erin McNelis, current chair of the WCU Faculty Senate. Associate professor of mathematics and computer science.

• Billy Ogletree, head of WCU’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

• Daniel Dorsey, president of the Student Government Association. A senior from Decatur, Ga., majoring in communication.

• William Frady, chair of the WCU Staff Senate. Manager of instructional and student computing in the Division of Information Technology. Holds two degrees from WCU.

• Carol Burton, associate vice chancellor for WCU’s undergraduate studies. Holds two degrees from WCU.

• Betty Jo Allen, president of the WCU Alumni Association. A resident of Lincolnton and a 1968 graduate of WCU.

• Kenny Messer, former president of the WCU Alumni Association and past president of the Catamount Club Board of Directors. A Greenville, S.C., resident who is an executive with Milliken Corp.

• Phil Walker, former chair of the WCU Board of Trustees. Senior vice president with BB&T, a 1971 graduate of WCU, and chair of the recently completed campaign for WCU, which raised more than $52 million in private support.

• Scott Hamilton, president and chief executive officer of Advantage West, the regional economic development commission of Western North Carolina. Hamilton lives in Henderson County.

The Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University has created a new blog site designed to offer a nonpartisan glimpse into the world of North Carolina politics and policy.

The site, “Politics and Policy in the Tar Heel State,” features ongoing analysis and commentary about political issues.

After the election, the site will include posts designed to help explain what happened and what the results are likely to mean for North Carolina residents in the months ahead.

The site is the brainchild of Chris Cooper, director of WCU’s PPI and associate professor of political science and public affairs, and Gibbs Knotts, head of the WCU department of political science and public affairs.

“We intend to use this as a platform to add to the policy debate in the Tar Heel State,” Cooper said. “Most of our posts will try to connect findings in political science and public affairs to the real world of politics and policy in North Carolina.  Many of our posts will include original data analysis.”

To read the PPI blog, visit wcuppi.blogspot.com/

Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2, for the annual Madrigal Christmas Dinners at Western Carolina University.

Tickets for the 2010 Madrigal Christmas Dinners at Western Carolina University will go on sale at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2.

The dinners are re-creations of the pageantry, music and food of 16th-century England, with authentic madrigal entertainment and costumes. An annual event at WCU, they will be held this year at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 3, and Saturday, Dec. 4, in the Grandroom of the A.K. Hinds University Center. The menu will include a choice of three entrees (including a vegetarian option), side dishes and beverages; tables seat eight apiece.

This will be the final year that Robert Holquist of the School of Music will take a lead role in organizing the dinners. Holquist, who has been active in the madrigal dinners since he joined the WCU faculty in 1979, conducts the Early Music Ensemble, a chorus that performs at the dinners. This year marks the introduction of a new lord and lady, Boyd and Lynda Sossamon, owners of Radio Shack in Sylva and both alumni of WCU.

Tickets for the dinners can be purchased in the University Center administrative offices (on the second floor of the U.C.) or by calling 828.227.7206 for credit card orders.

The changing face of Appalachia is the subject of an upcoming photography exhibit at the Fine Art Museum at Western Carolina University.

“Seeing Rural Appalachia,” large-format photographs by Mike Smith, will run Sunday, Oct. 24, through Friday, Dec. 17. The public is invited to a free reception beginning at 2 p.m. Oct. 24.

Smith’s photographs expose the human impact on the landscape, from aged, weather-softened farm buildings that seem to be an organic part of the landscape to the jarring reality of big, bright, new gas stations. His photographs of rural Tennessee show the lush beauty of the land while they reveal the suburban encroachment that threatens much of rural Appalachia. This exhibit collects Smith’s work from the past five years.

“The natural mountain landscape immediately made a profound impression on me when I arrived in East Tennessee in 1981. So did the rural lifestyle of the population,” Smith said. “Weeks after I arrived, I began my attempt to define both with my camera. I continue that effort today.”

Smith is a professor of art at East Tennessee State University, a Guggenheim Fellow and a founding member of the Appalachian Photographers Project. His works have been acquired by major U.S. museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum. His monograph “You’re Not from Around Here: Photographs of East Tennessee” was published in 2004, and he’s exhibited work at the Whitney Museum and San Francisco MoMA.

The Fine Art Museum’s hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday. The museum also is open one hour before Fine and Performing Arts Center Galaxy of Stars performances and selected Saturday “Family Art Days.”

For more information, contact Denise Drury, curatorial assistant, at 828.227.3591 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Visit the museum online at fineartmuseum.wcu.edu.

Western Carolina University will mark five years of art and entertainment beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 22, at the Fine and Performing Arts Center with a gala featuring art, music and a theatrical revue of songs by George and Ira Gershwin.

Festivities move indoors at 7 p.m. for a performance by WCU’s resident Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet, followed by a 7:30 p.m. curtain time for “’S Wonderful.” The new off-Broadway revue transports the audience to different places in different decades with scenes set in New York in the ’20s, Paris in the ’30s, Hollywood in the ’40s and New Orleans in the ’50s. Musical numbers include classics such as “Swanee,” “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” “Nice Work if you Can Get It,” “Summertime,” “I’ve Got Rhythm” and “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

“It is time to celebrate and reaffirm the magic of this facility,” said Robert Kehrberg, founding dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at WCU and member of the committee that began planning the facility.

The gala, recognition of past FAPAC achievements as well as a look ahead, will begin with an outdoor cocktail reception held under tents in the FAPAC courtyard. Reception guests will experience the unveiling of WCU’s new outdoor sculpture exhibition and have the opportunity to preview a Fine Art Museum exhibit of contemporary images of Appalachia by photographer Mike Smith.

Tickets to the Gershwin revue plus entry to the cocktail reception $100. Orchestra seats for only “’S Wonderful” $50; club seating $35; and balcony seat tickets $25.

To buy tickets or for information call 828.227.2479 or fapac.wcu.edu.

A concert and free symposium to raise awareness of the intersection of environmental, health and indigenous issues related to mountain destruction will be held Thursday and Friday, Oct. 21-22, in the theater of the A.K. Hinds University Center at Western Carolina University.

WCU’s Division of Educational Outreach and Cherokee Studies Program are sponsoring the first “Rooted in the Mountains: Valuing Our Common Ground” with the Center for Native Health, which initiated the project.

The concert will begin at 6 p.m. on Thursday and will feature entertainment by Sheila Kay Adams, Tawodi Brown, John John Grant, Kate Larken, Sue Massek, Paula Nelson and the WCU Porch Music Club. Tickets are $5 in advance and $7.50 at the door, with proceeds benefiting iLoveMountains.org.

The symposium, free and open to the public, will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday. Keynote speaker, Silas House, an acclaimed writer and National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and other presenters, including Clara Sue Kidwell (enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa tribe), director, American Indian Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Evelyn Conley (Keetoowah), chair, Indigenous Education Institute; Tom Belt (Cherokee), WCU Cherokee language instructor; Heidi Altman, associate professor of anthropology, Georgia Southern University; Marilou Awiakta (Cherokee), author; ethnobotanist David Cozzo, a WCU faculty member and director of the Revitalization of Traditional Cherokee Artisan Resources; and Brian Byrd, WCU assistant professor of environmental health will be present.

Other sponsors include WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center, Watershed Association of the Tuckasegee River, the Canary Coalition and the Tuckasegee Community Alliance.

Preregister online at www.wcu.edu/27734.asp; for information, contact Pamela Duncan, symposium co-chair, at 828.227.3926.

A partnership between Western Carolina University and a Brazilian-based company could eventually result in up to 300 new jobs for the region — if Vale Soluções em Energia, as hoped, agrees to build its yet-to-be-designed turbines here.

A national search for a new Western Carolina University chancellor will start immediately following longtime leader John Bardo’s announcement this week he would leave the institution’s top post and join the faculty.

John Bardo, chancellor of Western North Carolina since 1995, announced this week he would step down. It’s been an extraordinarily long tenure for a university chancellor, and Bardo simply said it is time for a change at the top.

The “buzz bus” soon will be ferrying students from bars in Sylva back to the Western Carolina University campus.