Social Work begins dean search

Six months after School of Social Work Dean Michael Austin announced he would leave the University next spring, a search committee has been formed and officially charged to fill his post. Associate Social Work Dean Peter Vaughan, who will chair the 11-member committee, said yesterday that the panel has met only once "to get the charge from the president and the provost" and has not devised a timetable or a definite plan of action yet. But Vaughan added that since Austin plans to leave in May to take a teaching post at the University of California at Berkeley, "the president and provost would like to name a dean in early spring." The committee's first step will be to decide how they want to conduct what Vaughan termed as a "national search" for a new dean. Vaughan, who has served on other committees in the past, added that the committee will publicize the search through a variety of media. Vaughan said that the committee is looking for a national leader and educator, someone with excellent leadership and development skills, and someone who can act as a mentor for junior faculty. "[But] that's what any dean is," Vaughan said. "[We want to] get the person who the committee sees as the absolute best person for our campus." Along with Vaughan, four members of the committee are faculty from the School of Social Work -- June Axinn, Jane Lowe, Roberta Sands and Mark Stern. Also on the committee are Frederic Burg, vice dean for education at the Medical School, Graduate School of Education Dean Marvin Lazerson, Assistant Nursing Professor Joan Lynaugh and University alumnus Wilbur Hobbes. Two students, who were elected by their peers in the School of Social Work, are also on the committee -- Anthony Butto and Katarzyna Malinowska. Dean Austin announced in May that he would be stepping down from the post he has held for the past seven years. Social Work becomes the tenth of the University's twelve graduate schools to lose or change a dean in the past two and a half years.

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