Dean search has national and local scope

Committee wants to fill job by '97-98

The search for the new dean of the College will extend into the fall and will be a nationwide search, Professor of History Marcia Colish, the search committee's chair, said.

The committee hopes to have a new dean for the 1997-98 academic year. The position is available after Mary Ella Feinleib's resignation in March. Feinleib had been dean of the college for just seven months before resigning.

Colish is chair of the committee that was elected by college faculty members earlier this month. She said President Nancy Dye has agreed to continue the acting dean position currently filled by Professor of Classics James Helm through next year.

Colish said there hasn't yet been a decision on whether Helm will continue in the position or whether someone else will be appointed.

The search for a new dean will be national, though Colish said the committee will also actively seek candidates from within Oberlin. The deadline for applications will be Sept. 15.

College by-laws regulate the search committee's composition. No students are officially allowed to serve as members of the committee, though student senators - junior Chapin Beninghoff, senior Noah Bopp and first-year Josh Kaye - have advisory roles and met with the committee this week.

Because Bopp is graduating this spring, he will be replaced. Colish said she hopes his replacement will help the student liaisons to the committee reflect the campus's gender and racial make-up better. All three appointees are white males.

Colish visited Sunday's Student Senate meeting. There, she told senators that by-laws prevent the search committee from giving students full search committee membership.

"We have specific by-law guidelines that we must follow," Colish said. Later when talking about how by-laws influence the dean search, Colish said, "The by-laws do not give students voice." She added, "I think the group to lobby is the Board of Trustees. We are bound by the by-laws. We all have to work with that fact. We may not like it, but it's there."

Senator senior Matt Cole said, "I'm not impressed … I believe there was enough wiggle room [in the bylaws] to give students more power." Colish said, "You can't change the rules in mid-stream."

Cole replied, "I don't trust this process."

Bopp said in an interview Thursday that he's not satisfied with the amount of student involvement, but that it's better than it was last year. "One can make a very good argument that had students been full participating members of the committee, Mary Ella Feinleib would never have been hired," Bopp said.

The student liaisons met with the faculty committee for the first time Tuesday evening. "I think we were heard," Kaye said. He said students proposed a modification to the job description for the dean to include a willingness to work with students.

Colish said that next year students will host forums for deanship finalists. Similar forums will be held for faculty and administrators.

This dean search is the third since 1993. The first was to replace Professor of Philosophy Alfred MacKay, who served as dean for most of the College presidency of S. Frederick Starr. That search was aborted when Starr announced his resignation.

Colish, a member of that search committee, said one of the reasons that Starr resigned was that the search - which only included internal candidates - did not produce candidates willing to work with Starr.

The second search ended abort a year ago. Again, the search was attempting to replace MacKay. The search was national, and none of the three finalists were current Oberlin faculty members. After that search, Feinleb was appointed dean.

"The main point that we want to stress is that last year, the fact that it was a national search let people to think that the president wanted an outsider," Colish said. She said she wants internal candidates to know they're encouraged to apply.

Feinleib said when she resigned that the position was bigger than she expected. One of the roles of the new search committee is clearly defining the tasks involved in being dean.

Another decision that has not yet been made is whether to employ a head-hunting firm to help with the national part of the search. No head-hunter was used in last year's search, though one was used in the 1993 search for president that yielded Dye.