Kathy Koch was appointed interim dean for the College of Education and Human Services on Thursday.

Julia Wallace, executive vice president and provost, spoke with the chairs of the college Monday and gave them 48 hours to offer feedback on the decision.

“I didn’t feel a rush to get started right into it a week after (Karen Adams) passed away,” Wallace said. “There’s a matter of respect you need to give to someone.”

Adams, who had been dean of the College of Education and Human Services since 2003, died April 7 at MidMichigan Health Center-Midland, following an allergic reaction to initial chemotherapy treatments for cancer. She was 58.

Koch, former associate dean of the College of Education and Human Services, was already acting interim dean when Adams was on sick leave.

“I will try to maintain consistency within the college. I wish I would have come into this situation in different circumstances,” Koch said. “We will try to maintain momentum that the college came in with under Karen Adams.”

Wallace said appointing an interim dean was hard for everyone involved in the college.

“Every time we look around, we cannot believe that happened (to Adams),” she said.

Koch said everyone in the college has been working as a team and she really appreciates it.

She hopes to have information about an interim associate dean for the college by next week. Koch guesses that a search for a new dean will not start until the fall, as summer is quickly approaching, but she does not know for sure.

“These things take time,” she said.

Phame Camarena, chairman of the department of Human Environmental Studies, said the department suffered a great loss after the death of Adams, as she was moving the college forward with new initiatives.

“I would especially hope that our interim dean would be able to provide some stability and offer calming leadership to help smooth the anxieties in this time of uncertainty,” Camarena said in an e-mail to Central Michigan Life.

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E-mail the author: Sarah Schuch