How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Though the Faculty of Arts and Science had hoped to find a new dean by the start of the upcoming fall semester, the search for the right leader trudges on.
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Former FAS Dean, Richard Foley
When former FAS dean Richard Foley announced he was stepping down from the position in March 2009 to become vice chancellor of strategic planning at the university, a formal Search Committee banded together to find a new leader. The committee is composed mainly of faculty, but it has some student representation (undergraduate student Benjamin Levine, who is the opinion editor at the Washington Square News, and graduate student Marko Klasnja) and has met periodically to discuss possible candidates to fill the deanship.
Since Foley stepped down, economics professor and senior vice provost Jess Benhabib has served as interim dean for FAS. Benhabib will continue to hold this position until the search for a new dean is complete.
Sylvain Cappell, a mathematics professor and chair of the Search Committee, is optimistic about the work the Committee has done so far.
"We would have been thrilled if [Benhabib] could stay on board as dean," Cappell said. "We're looking for someone with the same concern for academic advancement at NYU [as Foley]. We have an appetite to go much further, and we need a leader who can capture that vision."
NYU spokesperson John Beckman agreed with Cappell.
"NYU is a unique institution, and FAS is its liberal arts core. As such, we need in a new dean not just someone with excellent scholarly credentials [or] someone who fully embraces the importance of the student," Beckman said. "We need someone who also really understands what NYU is about: our relationship to New York City, our efforts at creating a global network university and the importance of the investment we have been making these last few years in expanding the ranks of tenured and tenure-track faculty in FAS."
During the summer, a subgroup of the Search Committee will meet once a week to review applications and generate a preliminary list of candidates. After the list is whittled down, the Committee will meet in the fall to further discuss options.
According to Cappell, the Committee hopes to have a finalized decision by the end of the 2010-11 academic year. The committee had previously planned on filling the position by the end of 2009.
"NYU is the center of academic excitement, and people of great abilities are taking notice," Cappell said. "We have first-rate candidates."
