After more than a year of nomination, selection, controversy and re-nomination, the Auburn University Board of Trustees is at full strength.
Tuesday, the Senate approved the last five nominees, the last of the nine seats to be filled.
The nine newly approved members of the board are B.T. Roberts, District 1; Clark Sahlie, District 2; Jimmy Rane, District 3; Jimmy Sanford, District 4; Robert Dumas, District 3-Lee County; Elizabeth Huntley, District 6; Sarah Newton, District 7; Jim Pratt, District 9; and Charles McCrary, At-Large.
Pratt, Dumas and Huntley will be new faces on the board.
"I'm very pleased," said Senate President Pro Tempore Del Marsh. "We last year had a concern about a lack of a process for submitting names and choosing applicants and people for the board, and I think that the process worked, and I was pleased with the process from the interview all the way to the point where these members came before the Senate confirmations committee."
All trustees' terms will begin immediately, except for Roberts, who will take his seat May 11.
"I think the trustees that just went through confirmation went through a very arduous, rigorous process," Pratt said. "(It) hopefully produced people who are very loyal to Auburn and very willing to think out of the box and creatively to make an Auburn an even greater University."
Sahlie said he thought the selection process was thorough.
"In the past that may not have been the case, but I thought that the selection committee this year did a great job of laying out the process, of following through with it, and the confirmation process was handled very well as well," Sahlie said. "I think the opportunity that Auburn has now to have some different perspectives, some fresh perspectives, will be very beneficial for it."
Gov. Robert Bentley first called for new trustee nominations March 31. About 200 nominations came in, and the selection committee chose nine nominees only a few days after the application period closed April 8.
Amid talk of the application period being too brief and the nomination process being swift and nontransparent, Marsh announced he would not bring the names before the Senate because of those problems, and Andrew Hornsby, past president of the Auburn Alumni Association, filed civil suit against Bentley for not adhering to Alabama's laws about open meetings.
"It's a great new day for Auburn," Hornsby said. "We're starting to see a Board of Trustees--we're not there yet--but for the most part, the current Board of Trustees at Auburn are independent and will do the right thing for Auburn and don't have a personal agenda."
Of particular concern to Hornsby and others during the original selection process was the possibility of the reappointment of Bobby Lowder, who began his tenure as an Auburn trustee in 1983.
Grandfathered in to the new trustee system of limited terms, it appeared Lowder would seek another term in a new district, transferring from District 2 to District 3-Lee County.
Amid controversy over his nomination, Lowder withdrew his name May 16, and Bentley announced a restart of the nomination process two days later.
During this time, concerns were raised that Auburn University would not receive accreditation if new trustees were not appointed. The University is up for reaccreditation in 2013.
"The last thing you want to do through that process is cause the University to perhaps lose accreditation because of a nonfunctioning board," Marsh said.
The problem arose because so many trustees' terms came up at once. Core requirement 2.2 from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools requires a functioning governing board of at least five members. If the Alabama Senate had failed to approve the nominees before the end of the 2012 session, the University would have been left with only five members of a 14-member board.
Hornsby said he was pleased with the second process, in which the selection committee whittled nominations down to 35 candidates for interviews before choosing the nine who have been approved.
"Gov. Bentley became the first governor who ever voted with the alumni delegates on a contested vote and not voted with the trustees," Hornsby said, commenting on the decision not to reappoint Virginia Thompson. "We'll be forever grateful."
Bobby Poundstone, Auburn Alumni Association president, said he is very excited the board of trustees appointment process is complete.
"It think it's made up of some extremely strong individuals with great skill sets," Poundstone said. "When you step back and look at the entire slate of new trustees and the ones that were nominated for another term, I think the whole is even stronger than the individual parts."
Poundstone said he didn't see a major impact for Auburn with Lowder gone, but that it would be good to have fresh viewpoints.
"I think in the big picture, in the grand scheme of things, you have to look at his service, and overall Auburn has made a lot of strides while he was on the board," Poundstone said. "(But) I think it's always a good thing to bring new blood onto a board like that."
Marsh said he thought Lowder was a "fine gentleman," but that he was aware of others' concerns.
"There are those who felt he had perhaps too much control on the board," Marsh said. "I think what you have now--I think with this new board there won't be any fears of any one individual having that type control."
Hornsby said Auburn will greatly benefit from Lowder's absence and will be in an even better place when Lowder's influence is completely eliminated.
"The overwhelming majority of Auburn alums for a long time have looked forward to this day," Hornsby said. "His legacy has blocked trustees who are not aligned with him from coming on the board.
"I think we'll have a board that acts in the proper role of the board."
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