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AUSTIN — Capping a 10-month search, University of Texas System regents voted Friday to name T. Taylor Eighmy vice-chancellor for research and engagement at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, as the sole finalist to be the next president of the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Eighmy, 60, is also a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the university. His strength and focus on research will greatly benefit UTSA, considering the system-wide effort to push the university toward Tier One status, said Steve Leslie, the UT System vice-chancellor of academic affairs.

“He comes in with a deep and broad experience in higher education,” Leslie said. “What we want for the new president and what the new president wants is what San Antonio expects, and that is to have a visionary new president who will advance the institution in relation to being a partner with San Antonio.”

Eighmy was vice president for research at Texas Tech University when a doctoral student was injured in a laboratory explosion in 2010 and the university found multiple violations of its own safety protocols, leading to a crackdown. Two accidental nitric acid explosions on the Lubbock campus caused evacuations but no injuries in 2011.

Four years later, as vice chancellor in Knoxville, Eighmy led a national task force to enhance safety in college and university laboratories, producing a guide to best practices that caused the Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Association to give him its annual leadership award in 2016.

Regents interviewed candidates in a closed session starting at 8 a.m. at the System’s offices in downtown Austin and emerged after lunch to vote. Eighmy left before the vote and could not be reached for comment.

The action triggered a state-mandated 21-day waiting period before regents can make it final with another vote. Pedro Reyes is currently UTSA’s interim president. Leslie said Eighmy’s start date has not yet been determined, though Reyes was hired until the end of August.

Reyes became the interim leader after longtime UTSA president Ricardo Romo was put on leave and later resigned in March after an internal investigation concluded he likely engaged in sexual harassment and sexual misconduct against some of his employees.

Romo had announced in September he planned to retire at the end of the spring semester this year. After almost 18 years at the helm, he was the university’s first Hispanic president and its longest-serving one, helping transform UTSA from a suburban commuter campus into a bustling university working toward Tier One recognition.

It currently enrolls 24,423 undergraduate students, 3,392 working toward master’s degrees, 741 doctoral and 403 post-baccalaureate students.

Female complainants had described Romo’s hugs as disgusting and even physically hurtful, according to a report of the investigation obtained by the Express-News through an open records request.

“The chancellor is correct in establishing there is no ‘abrazo exception’ for a 73-year-old retiring university president. I accept that this is the world we live in,” Romo said in a statement the day he resigned.

Asked if the resignation affected the search process for a new president, Leslie, who chaired the search committee, said it had not.

“Our total focus,” he said, “was looking forward and there were no discussions of anything in regard to the past or circumstances there. We were strictly focused on recruiting the next president.”

Eighmy received his bachelor’s of science in biology from Tufts University in 1980, and his master’s of science in civil engineering and doctorate in civil engineering from the University of New Hampshire.

“It has been gratifying to watch UT San Antonio’s ascent over the years, and my fellow regents and I believe that Dr. Eighmy is the right person to elevate the premium placed on student success and research prowess," said Sara Martinez Tucker, who chairs the board's academic affairs committee, in a statement.

Ernest Aliseda, a regent who served on the search committee, said the selection of Eighmy “proves that UT San Antonio is a destination for our nation’s top leaders in higher education.”

“Eighmy will be unrelenting in his efforts to increase student success, faculty engagement and the national stature of UTSA,” Aliseda said in a prepared statement. “And his leadership style will be an ideal fit for a national leading city like San Antonio.”

News researcher Mike Knoop contributed to this report.

sfosterfrau@express-news.net