The university is in the beginning stages of searches for a permanent provost and a new vice president for development, President Neil Kerwin announced Oct. 15 in an e-mail to the AU community.
The university decided to delay searches for both positions until the board completed the now-concluded presidential search, according to presidential Chief of Staff David Taylor.
"We needed to get closure to the search for a permanent president before we could start thinking about looking for people to take those positions on a more permanent basis," Taylor said. "A president needed to be in office to make those decisions."
The provost search has not officially begun because Kerwin is still formalizing the search committee's membership, he said.
AU faculty completed voting Friday for its three representatives. The three representatives are Anthony Ahrens, a College of Arts and Sciences professor; Philip Brenner, a School of International Service professor; and Robert Griffith, a CAS professor, said Stephen Silvia, vice chair of the Faculty Senate and an SIS professor.
Kerwin will appoint other members of the campus community to the committee now that the faculty have selected its members. As of Wednesday evening, Kerwin had not finalized the committee's membership, Taylor said.
Once Kerwin has appointed the remaining members to the committee, it will convene and will develop a search strategy. After the committee has decided on a strategy, it will compile names for the candidate pool. As in the presidential search, members of the AU community will be able to nominate possible candidates for the committee to consider. Under the current plan, this part of the search process should last from the latter part of this month into the middle of January, according to Kerwin's e-mail.
The committee will then narrow the list to a group of semifinalists. Once it conducts interviews with candidates, the committee will select a group of finalists. The finalists will go through a series of public interviews with Kerwin and campus constituencies. Once those interviews have concluded, the committee will make recommendations to Kerwin, and he will select a nominee.
The board of trustees will then decide whether to approve of Kerwin's nominee, according to the e-mail.
The search for a new vice president of development is also in the beginning stages, with a goal of selecting someone and having him or her in office by the beginning of the spring 2008 semester, according to the e-mail.
Interim Provost Ivy Broder took over that position Aug. 24, 2005. The move was necessary because Kerwin transitioned from provost to acting president after the board suspended then-President Ben Ladner during an investigation into accusations that Ladner had misused university funds.
Al Checcio, the last vice president of development, resigned from his position Jan. 1, 2006, to take a position at Fordham University. Abbey Silberman Fagin, senior director of development, has been the head of the department since then, Taylor said.
