Possible end in sight?
The university is in the same position it was over the summer with its off-campus program vice president search.
Hopefully this time CMU won’t be taking the “third time’s the charm” approach in a few weeks.
CMU spent more than $50,000 to search for and bring to campus two prospective ProfEd leaders in Frank J. Sabatine and Michael Stockstill — only to decide neither were fit for the job.
“They (the finalists) had all the attributes, just not the whole package,” said Steve Smith, media relations director, in a July 19 Central Michigan Life story.
Apparently university officials figured spending the time and money was not enough, so they embarked on another search to find that whole package.
The university announced Monday the committee had found four more off-campus VP finalists, who will be on campus next week for open interviews.
After the interviews, the decision will be up to President Michael Rao and Executive Vice President/Provost Thomas Storch.
Why it matters
CMU has a history of long, fruitless national job-opening searches
Storch and Rao need to make a quick decision so they can wrap up this whole ordeal, which has lasted about two and a half years.
Rao has written guest columns and spoke numerous times about the importance of CMU’s off-campus program, so it would make absolutely zero sense to prolong this mess any more.
CMU has had a history of long, drawn-out national searches.
The search for the College of Business Administration dean comes to mind right away. The university again spent more than two years — and $67,000 — to finally name D. Michael Fields to the position last year.
And of course, there’s the recent searches for media relations director and vice president of Information Technology — two long searches that ended up taking the easy way out by simply giving the interim replacements the full title.
Yet even with those searches still fresh in the university’s mind, CMU maintains the off-campus search needed to take this long because it needed to find that “whole package.”
Well, the package has presented itself with four diverse candidates ready to impress the search committee, headed by Marvis Lary, dean of the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow College of Health Professions.
Now it’s CMU’s turn to make a choice.
Because if these four candidates still lack the whole package, there could be more to blame than just the search committee.
