The university’s hiring approach acknowledges that Oregon, which already lacks some of the programmatic breadth of its peers, needs to be even more selective about where it spends money.
Mr. Schill says that the university needs to honestly assess where its strengths are, and that a president has to stay in place long enough to capitalize on those strengths.
"I don’t want to sound too egotistic or narcissistic, but what was missing here was leadership," says Mr. Schill, who is 56. "The last piece of the puzzle wasn’t here yet, which was a president who was going to stay and build a great university. I’d like to think I’m the person. History will look back and say whether I was."