Posts published in November 2025

Searches for a university president often go on for quite a long time. This one is lasting even longer.

The presidency at Boise State University was held for six years, until July, by Marlene Tromp (now at the University of Vermont). When she announced her departure, the whole replacement superstructure - committees, consultants and all the rest, running at substantial taxpayer cost - cranked up with the usual end goal of installing a new president at the end of the next academic year, in mid-2026.

That still may be possible, but it’s becoming more unlikely.

The procedure started in the usual way by forming review panels and hiring consultants who promote the opening and do an initial review of the application. The norm (not just in Idaho but in many places) is that after a series of local interviews, five candidates are announced, and they are brought to the institution for meetings, introductions and a public viewing.

That public review of the five finalists is actually built into Idaho state law. The procedure has worked smoothly in the past. Two years ago a new president of Idaho State University was chosen through the same process, when 80 unnamed candidates were winnowed down to five, whose names were released to the public. Current President Robert Wagner was the result.

If some elements of the process seem a little off - as some long have to me - this standard procedure still appeared to be on track until August, when the preliminary interviews were conducted.

Then on October 2, according to the Idaho Ed News (which did a careful review of available documentation about the search): “without five qualified candidates willing to go public, the search committee made a startling admission of defeat. The committee recommended putting the process on hold, allowing the State Board to review “both the approach and scope of the search.” A process that started on a fast track had hit a sudden slowdown.

Meaning the process seems to be stuck in neutral, with no prospective president in view and no clear explanation of what caused the derailment.

At a state Board of Education meeting after the preliminary interviews, two members said applicants saw the presidency as attractive (and well it should be, from a professional and compensation point of view), and a number of contenders seemed appropriately qualified.

But, the News said, “They also said candidates bristled at the one public aspect of the search - a law requiring the State Board to publicly announce five finalists, or release the entire list of applicants. Some presidents at other institutions would rather withdraw their application than go public …”

Such reluctance could be understandable (if you work at any job it’s not hard to understand), but this part of the process is not new, could not have been unexpected, and it is not limited to Idaho or to recent times.

So why the difficulty now?

How many candidates applied (compared, say, to the 80 for ISU in 2023)? How many of them were actually interviewed? At what point in the process did they drop out? Apart from the public element, what other concerns were expressed?

The whole thing starts to open more questions the more you think about it.

One of my questions is this: How many retracted their interest as they started to investigate, or paused to consider, the political and cultural environment they might be getting into upon moving to Idaho, and how that might relate to their career standing? What were the applicants told about the political and other conditions they would be entering? Tromp was not exactly a favorite of the state’s political leadership (no reflection on her personally), and a look at the recent history of the Idaho Legislature and public education might have led to causes for concern by some applicants.

Maybe that had nothing to do with it. But it seems plausible.

Of course, the state board still could handle this the easy way: Promote from within, from the upper (and substantially-sized) administrative ranks at Boise State. Very likely at least one competent contender, and probably more than one, could be found there.

And at the least, they’d know from the outset what they’d be getting themselves into.

The October 8 edition of the Owyhee Avalanche, the weekly newspaper in Homedale, led its news report with, “City council faces another mixed-use idea for Homedale.”

The thought that Homedale is facing a mixed-use proposal at all, much less yet another one, qualifies as a new idea. Not so many years ago Homedale, like nearby Marsing and much of the rest of high-rural and low-population Owyhee County, seemed more at risk of drying up than of facing stresses from growth.

The Avalanche article - take it as another indicator that this newspaper seems to be doing better than many of its counterparts - noted that a couple “who own a 122-acre parcel on the northwest corner of Pioneer Road and U.S. Highway 95 , are seeking annexation of a parcel with a proposed zoning of commercial and residential.” The area currently is agricultural; the idea is similar to another proposed development put before the city just a month ago.

These do not sound like tiny developments, and the parade of developments in the area does not seem near an end.

Drive around Homedale today, as I did recently for the first time in a few years, and you’ll see that in contrast to times past, such expansion is of a piece. You’ll see new subdivisions and new commercial development around town. Homedale is growing. And a few miles to the east, so is Marsing.

Bear in mind that what would be a flyspeck of growth in Meridian makes a huge difference in these communities south of the Snake River. Homedale’s population in 2020 was about 2,900 (itself a significant expansion from a decade before) and Marsing was about 1,200. Those numbers likely will be a lot larger in 2030.

Two related activities come to mind in looking at what’s happening in Owyhee County.

One is the recent construction of high-end estates on or near the south side of the Snake River, many in places which have been irrigated farmland. The numbers are not enormous but they have drawn attention and have a commercial and cultural effect.

The second development is the ferocious growth in the area south of Nampa and Caldwell, reaching south toward the Snake River. (You can see evidence of what the state expects to happen in the large road projects along thoroughfares like Highway 55.) There’s still plenty of farm land between those developments and the Snake River, but after a critical mass is achieved, development can leapfrog into new areas, and the growing number of jobs in Caldwell, Nampa and Meridian suggest that’s likely to happen.

What might this look like? Anyone who remembers Kuna from 30 or 40 years ago (when its population was about 1,900) compared to now (about 30,000) can get a sense of what this leapfrog development pattern can become if the forces in back of it are strong enough.

Much of the attention paid to rapid-fire development in the region around Boise has focused on Eagle and northern Meridian. (The development of Avimor north of Eagle, with its nascent small business district, and a large expected new development across the highway from it, deserve more attention than they’ve gotten.)

But the region to the south should be borne in mind too.

Owyhee County long has been rightly regarded as a dusty outpost of the old and barely-settled west, with a semi-active semi-ghost town (Silver City) and a courthouse in a community that isn’t an incorporated city. Much of the county in the vast mountain areas to the south really are remote and are likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

But the strip along the Snake River is apt to become something different in the next decade or two. Parts of it may look a lot different from what long-time residents are accustomed to.

Long-timers at Kuna probably could tell us something about that.