Dear Silver Community,
We are pleased to announce that virtual stakeholder meetings in the “discovery phase” of our
search for a Dean who will provide intellectual and strategic guidance to advance the School’s DEI mission started this week and will run through the end of the semester.
In regard to these meetings, which are scheduled for 45 minutes to an hour, Spelman Johnson consultants
Jim Norfleet and
Michel Frendian are very cognizant of your time and the rapidly approaching end of the academic year. Therefore, rather than scheduling many new meetings specifically for this purpose, we have sought to add stakeholder sessions to already scheduled meetings of faculty, staff, and student committees, teams, and groups, while also being mindful of their ongoing tasks and goals.
The topics that our consultants are most interested in are:
- Objectives for the inaugural associate dean: What do you want the new associate dean to accomplish? What are the desired outcomes for the role and for the School? How will you know in three to five years that the right person was hired? What will have happened?
- Qualifications, experience, and personal qualities: Based on the objectives identified, what do you think are the qualifications and experience of an ideal candidate? What is essential and what might be helpful? What are the personal attributes most important for this role?
- Silver School and our community: What qualities about Silver and our community will help us convince prospective candidates to consider applying for this position?
- Source and candidate recommendations: Finally, who should Spelman Johnson contact to source and identify candidates? The consultants will draw upon their own networks, but they want to tap into ours as well. This certainly means nominations and suggestions of possible candidates, but just as important, suggestions of good sources who might lead to strong candidates.
Please know these sessions are not being scheduled in any particular order of importance, since all of our community’s voices are essential to this process. We simply want to accommodate people’s already packed schedules by utilizing existing virtual spaces.
What Happens after the Discovery Phase is Complete?
After our consultants have completed the discovery phase in early May, they will use feedback gathered from the stakeholder sessions and survey to draft a position specification that will be used in our outreach and recruitment of prospective candidates. The position specification will also guide the work of our committee as we refine the selection criteria and carefully evaluate candidates for this inaugural position.
What Can I Expect Next?
We will be following up with more information on the sessions that have been scheduled and how you can participate.
We also invite all members of our community to participate in an online survey, which is available here.The survey will give everyone an anonymous way to provide feedback directly to the consultants.