The University of Colorado is launching three committees over the next two weeks to find a new president, review tenure and investigate fraud allegations against a controversial professor.

That's not to mention the committee that's hoping to find a new athletic director by May, or another upcoming search for a permanent chancellor.

CU Regent Steve Bosley said the number of boards is evidence not of a university in crisis but rather one that's addressing very public concerns.

"The opportunity to find the right president, the opportunity to review tenure and the next step in the due process for professor (Ward) Churchill are all moving forward," Bosley said. "We're addressing the problems."

The regents will meet April 7 to appoint the committee to find a president to replace Elizabeth Hoffman. Hoffman announced her resignation March 7 after a year of controversies at CU involving binge drinking, football-recruiting allegations and Churchill's writings.

Two other new committees — charged with the tenure review and the research-misconduct investigation — are expected to begin meeting in the next few days.

The board that will review tenure processes should appoint its leader — someone with "high stature" from outside the academic and political realms — this week, Bosley said.

Gov. Bill Owens and other lawmakers called for an examination of the school's policies granting tenure after learning that Churchill skipped the typical six-year probationary or "tenure-track" period in 1991. Tenured professors are difficult for universities to fire because they hold continual appointments rather than year-to-year contracts.

The standing committee that will examine research-misconduct allegations against Churchill also will meet by the end of the week, committee spokesman Joseph Rosse said. That board will examine claims that Churchill plagiarized work and misrepresented himself as an American Indian to gain credibility.

One of the first orders of business will be to discuss possible conflicts of interest on the committee, Rosse said.

An education professor on the committee, Steven Guberman, signed onto an ad appearing in the Daily Camera late last month that demanded an end to Churchill's review.

Two other research-misconduct committee members, law professor Richard Collins and physics professor Uriel Nauenberg, have been quoted in news articles about Churchill's Sept. 11, 2001, essay.

Collins said in early February that it would be tough to show that Churchill's work was so inaccurate that he is an unfit professor. Nauenberg told The New York Times that Churchill shouldn't be fired because of the essay.

Churchill ignited national controversy with the essay, which compared victims in the World Trade Center to a notorious Nazi bureaucrat.

Administrators announced Thursday that Churchill's opinions were constitutionally protected. But they forwarded academic fraud allegations to the 12-member research-misconduct committee.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Elizabeth Mattern Clark at (303) 473-1351 or clarke@dailycamera.com.