A search committee has interviewed semifinalists for the Boise State University president’s vacancy — and a finalist could be named next month.
“The search for Boise State’s next president remains on schedule,” the State Board of Education said in a written update on the process.
Fourteen months after Marlene Tromp accepted the president’s job at the University of Vermont, the State Board is still looking for her permanent successor. The board now hopes to have a new president on the job by August, for the start of fall classes.
In the update — posted at Boise State’s website — the State Board offered new details on the process:
- Now that the semifinalists have been interviewed, the board “anticipates considering recommended finalists in May.”
- From that field, the State Board will choose a sole finalist for the job, most likely at its June 17-18 meeting at Boise State. That announcement would trigger a 10-day review period, before the board can make a hire. “The campus community will be provided with ways to engage with the finalist during the review period including remote options,” the board said.
- Boise State will have an acting president during the transition: Nancy Glenn, Boise State’s vice president of research and economic development. Glenn will succeed Jeremiah Shinn, who has been Boise State’s interim president for a year but has been hired for the president’s job at the University of Montana.
The State Board update sheds a bit of sunlight on a long and largely closed process.
The search began more than a year ago, shortly after Tromp accepted the Vermont job. But the board put the search on hold in October — and said state law hampered the process. Board leaders said candidates bristled at the prospect of being publicly named as finalists, as the law had required.
The 2026 Legislature responded by moving most of the search process behind closed doors. The State Board now must publicly name a sole finalist, not the field of five finalists required under the previous law.
Gov. Brad Little signed the law in February, and it went into effect immediately — just as the State Board resumed the Boise State search.
