School of Education Dean Search And Screen Committee Resignation

INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM
TO: DR. ABBAS MANAFY, CHAIR, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION DEAN SEARCH COMMITTEE
FROM: DR. KATHY JENKINS, SEARCH COMMITTEE MEMBER
SUBJECT: RESIGNATION FROM THE SEARCH COMMITTEE
DATE: 3/17/2005
CC: DR. JANICE CHAVEZ, ANDY VASQUEZ, NMHU FACULTY SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE , DR. TOM WARD, NMHU GLOBAL

I was honored to be selected to serve as a faculty member on the Search Committee for the Dean of the School of Education. I was voted on by my colleagues and approved for membership by the President. I was excited to serve on this committee because I believed that it would help set the future direction of the School of Education.

At this time, I am extremely concerned by the numerous process violations by our committee. I announced last week in our committee meeting on Tuesday, March 8th, 2005, that unless we started following the procedures that we agreed to in committee, that I did not feel comfortable being a part of this committee. I am hereby resigning from the search and screen committee for the Dean of the School of Education. After a lively discussion at our meeting last week, our committee came to a unanimous consensus (supported by a unanimous vote) that we would conduct 6 phone interviews of our top candidates. You told the committee that you would schedule these phone interviews after checking with the Provost and Andy Vasquez, to ensure that our actions were appropriate.

I spoke with two other members of our committee who agreed that we voted unanimously to hold phone interviews this week.

On 3/10/05, two days after our committee meeting, you sent an email stating that the administration had agreed to allow us to bring in 4 candidates for interviews and that the “top two” would be interviewed this week on campus. You stated that the other two candidates would be brought in for interviews the week after Spring Break.

You also announced in this email the itinerary for our “top two” candidates. Because of the university’s closure on Monday and Tuesday this week due to snow, you sent a revised itinerary for these candidates today. This itinerary indicated that the candidates both were scheduled to meet with the President, Provost, and HR this morning. Also, you announced that both candidates would be presenting an open forum on “Administrative Knowledge and Philosophy” this afternoon from 4-6 pm to all interested faculty, students, and community members.

This was all new information to me, and the other two members of the committee that I was able to contact today. We never agreed to these procedures. I am resigning for the following reasons:

1. We did not agree to label the two candidates that you scheduled today as our “top two” candidates.

2. We agreed as a committee that four screening tools were needed to evaluate our candidates: applications, phone interviews, reference checks, and interviews. To date, our committee has not conducted phone interviews or discussed checks of the references. And yet, two candidates began their interviews today.

3. We disagreed with the scoring system that you used in committee. You used a ranked scoring system, rather than the aggregate scores from the ratings sheets. Our committee did not agree to this. You directed us at our meeting on 3/3/05 to give the administration the top 3 candidates, followed by our next 3 in order. We did what you asked us to do. When I tired to bring up a discussion at our meeting on these choices, and reference checks, etc…, I was told we would meet again to discuss all of this.

4. After identifying our top candidates at our meeting on 3/3/05, we never agreed what the next step in our process would be. In our meeting on 3/10/05, we unanimously decided that our next step would be telephone interviews with all 6 candidates identified on 3/3/05. We agreed to this because the scoring system that you implemented did not differentiate enough between our candidates.

5. You scheduled four candidates to come to campus, you scheduled their interviews, and you scheduled what the candidates would present, without ever consulting with our committee.

6. Two candidates are giving their campus presentations today from 4-6 pm, together. The other candidates are going to give their presentations separately. In my mind, these candidates are not receiving the same interviewing process. I do not believe that some candidates should be allowed to present together and others forced to present alone. This is unfair. Also, it was never discussed by our committee.