| BAPTISTS TODAY
News Release www.baptiststoday.org |
November 30, 2005
MACON, Ga. — A press conference has been scheduled for Friday afternoon at which time Mercer University is expected to name Baylor University law professor William Underwood as president.
University officials and Underwood would not confirm his candidacy according to a Nov. 30 report by The Macon Telegraph. Yet both spoke positively of each other.
“I’m very interested, and I’m continuing to have discussions with (Mercer),” Underwood told the newspaper.
If elected, Underwood would succeed Kirby Godsey who will retire June 30, 2006 after leading Mercer for 27 years. The historic Baptist university has major campuses in both Macon and Atlanta, Ga., and enrolls more than 7,000 students.
Search committee chair David Hudson of Augusta, Ga., would not confirm Underwood’s selection but called him “a person of interest.” During a two-day visit earlier this month, Underwood met with numerous trustees, administrators and faculty. He is the only candidate that has surfaced publicly.
According to the newspaper report, Mercer spokesperson Emily Myers said she expects a vote on the new president to occur this Friday “unless something unexpected happens.”
Underwood, 49, was chosen as interim president at Baylor after the resignation of Robert Sloan following years of controversy over his leadership of the Baptist university in Waco, Texas.
Once considered a leading candidate for the Baylor presidency, Underwood removed his name from consideration prior to the selection of John Lilley on Nov. 3.
Mercer and Baylor have been two of three major Baptist universities searching for presidents at the same time. Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., has yet to name a successor to retiring president Tom Corts.
Mercer’s 172-year relationship with the now fundamentalist-controlled Georgia Baptist Convention (GBC) is coming to an end. GBC messengers attending the annual meeting in Columbus, Ga., Nov. 15, voted to begin a two-year process of severing ties with the university.
Pastor Fred Evers of Tifton, Ga., representing the GBC executive committee that brought the motion, said the convention and university are no longer compatible in theology or purpose, according to a report in The Christian Index, the convention’s newspaper.
Georgia Baptists do not select trustees for Mercer and, therefore, do not have strict control as with Shorter, Brewton-Parker and Truett-McConnell colleges. The convention’s relationship with the university in recent years has been primarily tied to providing significant scholarship funds for Georgia Baptist students.
If recommended by the search committee and elected by trustees, Underwood
would become Mercer’s 18th president.
(John Pierce is executive editor of Baptists Today, an autonomous,
national news journal based in Macon, Ga.)