Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees Joel Ferguson listens duing the Board of Trustees meeting on Oct. 26, 2018. —

Ferguson told The State News that he stepped down after learning Scott was interested in the position. He said he wanted to give her the opportunity to be on the committee.

Trustee Joel Ferguson has stepped down from Michigan State's presidential search committee and recently-elected Trustee Brianna Scott will take over the role.

Only four members of the Board of Trustees can be on the search committee, Ferguson said. Scott would have been the fifth. Since that wasn't possible, Ferguson decided to step down to give Scott his position after discussing the matter with search committee co-chair and fellow Trustee Melanie Foster.

"I stepped down directly for (Scott)," Ferguson said.

Scott learned on Monday that she would be joining the presidential search committee as Ferguson's choice for his replacement. She joins Trustees Melanie Foster, Dan Kelly and Dianne Byrum — also the board's chairperson — on the search committee. Both Foster and Byrum are co-chairs of the search committee.

According to both Scott and Ferguson, the search committee limits the number of board members on it to four. The reason for that rule is currently unclear. Scott said she assumes it's to keep the group from getting too large and to prevent "trustees from taking over the committee."

"I'm assuming that there is (a rule) because what I've been told is that they could not and would not be adding any other trustees," Scott said.

Scott said she expressed interest in joining the search committee as she was campaigning for her seat on the Board of Trustees.

"My thought was that I wasn't going to be able to be on it," Scott said. "We were told they weren't going to add anyone else to the committee."

But now, Scott said she hopes to bring a new and younger perspective to the search committee. Ferguson said Scott's younger perspective was key to why he allowed her to take his place.

Ferguson's advice to Scott included him telling her to "be true to herself" and that she could bring a lot to the search committee. He also told her that Trustees Foster, Byrum and Kelly would be vital to answering any questions she had.

"He told me that he thought that I would have a lot to bring to the committee and he thought that I would be able to in such a short amount of time catch up with everything that I have to catch up on," Scott said, "which is what I've been working on a lot today."

By joining, Scott said she hopes the search process for MSU's next president will be more transparent and open.

"My hope was that I could have some influence on hopefully getting the committee to agree to, at some point, change this to some sort of type of public forum — in which people would have the opportunity to engage with the actual perspectives without actually taking away their anonymity or revealing their identity," Scott said.

The committee is currently holding a closed search for MSU's next permanent president following Lou Anna K. Simon's resignation from the position on Jan. 24, 2018. The committee expects to announce a new president in June 2019.