Grad dean search winds down

Kayla Webley
2005-01-05
The Daily

One year and three days after Graduate School Dean Marsha Landolt was killed when an avalanche hit her Idaho cabin, four finalists stand poised to fill her position.

Chaired by David Hodge, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the 11-member search committee will continue to conduct interviews of the remaining candidates throughout the month. Hodge said the committee hopes UW Presidet Mark Emmert will decide whom to hire by the end of February.

The search committee had originally selected five finalists, but following an on-campus interview, David Chapman, dean of the graduate school and associate vice provost of graduate studies at the University of Utah, withdrew his candidacy. According to search committee member Gary Farris, administrator of the UW Graduate School, the University of Utah made Chapman a competitive offer to stay.

"After reflection and a strong response from his own university he decided it wasn't the right time for him," said Hodge.

The remaining candidates are Johnella Butler, associate dean and associate vice provost of the UW Graduate School, John Slattery, dean of graduate studies at Indiana University, Suzanne Ortega, dean of the graduate school and vice provost for advanced studies at University of Missouri Columbia Campus, and Ramon Gutierrez, professor of the history of colonial Latin America at UC San Diego.

According to Farris, the finalists were selected based on their current positions and overall experience.

Faculty and administrators will be hearing this week from Butler, who will give a public forum on her vision for the future of the Graduate School. All candidates will be presenting on the same topic.

"They all believe that this is one of the strongest public institutions in the country and that the graduate school is at the heart of it," said Hodge. "But they will all have different views of what graduate education will look like in the future and how it might be changed."

According to Hodge, a graduate dean must be focused on maintaining national leadership and leading within the UW as a senior administrator.

"Three of the final [four] are existing graduate school deans at other campuses so that national perspective was important," Farris said. "But also just their style ... their knowledge of graduate education."

Hodge said the new dean would be primarily responsible for maintaining the school's reputation for having a nationally renowned post-graduate studies program.

"We need someone to maintain the national leadership that our graduate school has had and to be leading internally at the UW to strengthen our graduate programs," he said. "The dean is also one of the senior administrators at the University, so we are also looking for someone who will perform exceptionally well as a senior administrator at the UW."