Hiring a dean entails almost as much work as the job itself.
Ohio University administrators invest a lot of time and money into hiring deans to ensure the best match for each individual college.
OU’s most recent hired dean was Scott Titsworth, in the E.W. Scripps College of Communication after serving as interim for a year. The Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and the College of Arts and Sciences have also hired deans, giving three of OU’s seven colleges new leaders in the past two years.
The hiring process, however, remains relatively similar.
Once a dean’s position opens up, OU’s search firm, R. William Funk and Associates, sends out advertisements via email and job sites which include qualifications for the position requiring applicants to submit a curriculum vitae and letter of application to be reviewed by an appointed search committee, said Ann Fidler, chief of staff for the provost and chief financial officer.
“When you’re writing a letter of application you’re trying to present yourself in a positive light and be responsive to what it is that is expected of a person in that position,” said Robert Frank, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who was hired in December 2011.
Search committees, organized through the Provost Office, are comprised of faculty members who will work closely with the applicants during the review process, Fidler said.
“We think it’s important to try and provide opportunities for everyone that will work with this individual to have a chance to meet them and ask questions if they want to,” she said.
The search committee will typically fly in seven to 10 applicants for a formal airport interview, before narrowing the search down to three finalists to be invited on campus. During each interview round the search committee asks each applicant the same questions, Fidler said.
On-campus interviews are a multi-day process that introduce the candidate to the school and give the administrators, faculty and students a chance to meet and evaluate the prospective deans.
The dean search process costs about $87,000 on average, which includes search firm fees, advertising, candidate and search committee travel expenses and hotel, meal and mailing costs, Fidler said.
Interview topics are centered around the school searching for a dean. During the recent search for Scripps’ new dean, the focus was media innovation, especially involving construction of Schoonover Center.
“(Schoonover’s construction is) a project that the more you get involved in, the more invested you become in wanting to see that building be the best possible academic facility that we can imagine for the college and university,” Titsworth said.
On-campus interview days also consist of many meetings with the search committee and with relevant administrators and faculty. Titsworth’s interview schedule was filled with meetings with Scripps directors, Scripps students, Executive Vice-President and Provost Pam Benoit and President Roderick McDavis.
“It’s a good process because you get to meet a lot of people, and you get a lot of questions put on you by a wide variety of stakeholders: faculty, staff, students, university administration,” said Kenneth Johnson, dean of OU-HCOM, hired in 2012.
Once a candidate is selected for a second interview, he or she gets a better feel for what the job as dean will entail, Johnson said. The second interview not only demonstrated what Johnson would be doing, but convinced him that he wanted the job.
“I felt like I had a really good amount of information that I could ask some next level questions that really helped me understand where things were at, what the most pressing needs were, whether I could meet those needs,” he said.
After the search committee picks its ideal candidate, it is up to the candidate to decide if he or she is a match for the leadership, the college and OU.
“I think that that process of clarifying (your goals as dean) for yourself so that you can communicate effectively with others really does give you a course of action that helps you really start the ground running when you take on a new position,” Titsworth said.
dk123111@ohiou.edu
