Members of the joint Minnesota House and Senate committee on higher education voted Tuesday night on the four people they'd like to see fill the four open seats on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents.
Four candidates for U Board of Regents advance
February 8, 2017 at 5:10AM
The full House and Senate has the final say at a joint session later this month. Additional candidates could be nominated at that session.
The Regent Candidate Advisory Council received 36 applications for the four open seats. Of those, 17 candidates were selected to undergo a 45-minute interview in January. The council then referred 12 candidates to the joint committee.
Two additional candidates were nominated on the floor of the joint committee meeting. Steve Sviggum, one of those additional candidates, became the finalist for the open seat in the Second District.
Sviggum, of Kenyon, Minn., served in the state Legislature from 1979 to 2007 and was Republican Speaker of the state House from 1999 through 2006 and is a legislative fellow at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Tom Devine is the incumbent in the Second District; redistricting moved him to the Third District.
Darrin Rosha, of Independence, the incumbent, was the finalist in the Third District. He is general manager and corporate counsel for Crutchfield Dermatology in Eagan and a lieutenant colonel in the Minnesota Army National Guard. He served on the regents from 1989 to 1995 and again since 2015.
Incumbent David McMillan of Duluth was the finalist in the Eighth District. He is executive vice president at Minnesota Power. Becky Hall, a stay-at-home mom from Duluth, was the nominee from the committee floor who did not move forward.
The at-large finalist after three rounds of voting was Tom Devine of Chanhassen. He has served on the Board of Regents for the past five years and is an executive vice president at the Horizon Agency, an Eden Prairie-based insurance agency. Tammy Lee Stanoch was nominated from the floor for the seat as well; she also was a candidate in the Third District. The at-large incumbent Laura Brod did not seek another term.
Regents serve six-year unpaid terms on the 12-member governing board.
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