On Monday, the Florida Atlantic University Board of Trustees unanimously voted to name Adam Hasner as the eighth president of the university.

Hasner is a former Republican member of the state’s House of Representatives and the current executive vice president for public policy at The GEO Group, a for-profit prison corporation with longstanding ties to the university.

Florida State University College of Business Dean Michael Hartline and John Volin, an academic administrator at the University of Maine, were the other two finalists.

The search has been ongoing since 2022 when former President John Kelly stepped down. This is the second iteration of the presidential search, which started in July 2024.

A previous search ended after a violation of Florida law on Oct. 30, 2023. For this current attempt, the committee hired Tennessee-based search firm Buffkin/Baker to assist.

Stacy Volnick has served as the interim president since 2023 and will continue until the new president begins their first day in office.

In early July 2023, the FAU Presidential Search Committee named finalists for the first search attempt; however, it was suspended — which restarted the entire search process. The last search did not meet this point of the process of interviewing the finalists. 

The next step in concluding the presidential search is for the Florida Board of Governors to confirm the candidate chosen by the trustees, the date of the meeting has yet to be announced.

During the public forums on Feb. 7, Hasner acknowledged that many students and faculty were concerned that he didn’t have a traditional career in academia.

“I am not involved in partisan politics. I do not believe it is politically red or politically blue to be a university president,” he said.

BOT Chair Piero Bussani emphasized that the next president must possess the best possible skills to help navigate FAU through the upcoming years, or the university will risk being left behind. 

“That requires out-of-the-box thinking: Something that’s different, somebody that can energize and communicate extraordinarily effectively. Getting FAU its fair share of dollars from Tallahassee, navigating those borders, working with state [and] federal government to drive our research in R1,” Bussani said. “At the end of the day, this second part requires the best and most effective ambassador of this school when and only it is combined with an extraordinarily strong Provost.”

Faculty Senate President and Trustee Kimberly Dunn stated that the next step after the presidential search is to focus on finding a new Provost. Russ Ivy is currently the Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, a role he has been in since 2022.

Dunn says the ladder to becoming president of a higher education institution is to build your career in academics, serve as Provost and then the next step is becoming president. She appreciated Hartline for applying for the position but said he didn’t convince the trustees to the fullest with his experience as a dean. 

“And I think you will make an amazing president, somewhere someday but in 2025 in the state of Florida. Not today, not for us,” said Dunn, as she then voted for Hasner. 

Michael Cook is the Managing Editor for the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email michael17cook@gmail.com.