On Friday, Spectator's News Desk sat down with Provost John Coatsworth, the University's chief academic officer, to talk about topics ranging from the search for a new SEAS dean to funding for faculty diversity. Some highlights from the interview:
- Administrators are in the process of hiring a search firm to work with the recently announced search committee for a permanent dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Coatsworth, who will chair the committee, described the ideal candidate for the job:
“We need somebody who can provide a vision and leadership for the school. We need someone who has managerial or administrative experience that can help the school realize that vision, expand, and do it in an orderly step-by-step way that will bring along the faculty and the students. And we need someone whose academic and other credentials are impeccable—who has made a contribution to some field of engineering that everybody recognizes as important.”
- The committee will consider both internal and external candidates, even though one of professors' main concerns with former dean Feniosky Peña-Mora---who resigned in July after a faculty revolt---was that he was an outsider to Columbia before being hired as dean in 2009. Coatsworth acknowledged that concern, but said that the committee would consider external candidates because "there are lots of folks with a sharp learning curve that might be able to do it."
