This post was written by Hatchet reporters Grace Aucella and Cory Weinberg.
The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences started scouring for its next dean this week, advertising the job to candidates who will advocate for liberal arts.
A committee of nine professors is looking for a leader who will help GW’s largest college stand out as the University juggles its future plans – and dollars – around other colleges and fields like international affairs and engineering.
The job qualifications, which include management experience and fundraising skills, was posted on The Chronicle of Higher Education website for the first time this week.
The next dean will need “to put CCAS front and center of the new strategic plan,” chair of the search committee Gail Weiss said at a forum Nov. 14.
“There’s a lot of details that aren’t worked out so we want the dean to be a strong advocate for us,” Weiss, a philosophy professor, said. She added that the next dean will also need to collaborate with other schools.
While a candidate must boast accomplishments in research and academics, the committee will also look for a top fundraiser. University President Steven Knapp ordered two years ago that fundraising must make up 40 percent of the dean’s job.
Weiss said the next dean must also be a keen manager, and could give associate deans stronger responsibilities. She said Provost Steven Lerman has floated the idea of creating positions for an associate dean for humanities and an associate dean for sciences to represent the college’s diverse fields.
“The dean is not going to be the one running the day-to-day operations of the college,” Weiss said. “They have to be an ambassador, working on establishing new partnerships, working with existing partnerships, fundraising, reaching out to donors and alumni – all these things we want our dean to do.”
The committee and the consulting firm Witt/Kieffer will comb through candidates until late January, when they will invite 10 for off-campus interviews.
The top five picks will meet on campus with students, administrators and faculty, a move that makes this search more open than the last high profile dean search. The GW Law School held more closed-door talks with the final candidates two years ago.
“If a candidate is not comfortable having their identity revealed, we will try to accommodate her/him as best as we can, but we will also let the candidate know that not having an open on-campus visit may hurt their chances of being a finalist for the position,” committee spokesman James Clark, also a biology professor, said in an email.
The next dean will replace Peg Barratt, who has led the college since 2007. She said last spring that she would step down in June 2013.
The announcement came about a month after professors criticized her deanship, saying in a survey that she lacks vision, leadership and an understanding of the school’s programs.
Barratt also steered the college during a time of growing enrollments, faculty positions and research dollars.
