University Provost Jeanne Brady, Ph.D., will complete her three-year term at the end of the academic year with a new provost set to be hired some time in the spring of 2019.
Hiring a candidate by next spring will significantly benefit the hiring of a dean for the new School of Health Studies and Education, said Usha Rao, Ph.D., chair of the Provost Search Advisory Committee.
“It will be helpful for those candidates to know who the provost would be that they will be reporting to,” Rao said.
According to an email sent to the university community in September, the new provost’s term will begin in the summer of 2019.
The initial search for candidates is being conducted by Philadelphia-based external search firm Storbeck/Pimentel and Associates, which selects candidates based on criteria supplied by the university’s search committee. Those candidates will then meet with the committee and a final pool of about three or four of those people will be chosen for the final list.
Ultimately, the search committee, which consists of administrators, faculty and one student, serves chiefly to advise university President Mark Reed, Ed.D., who will select the new provost from the list the committee provides.
Rao said the ideal candidate for the provost role is someone who is an experienced teacher and scholar with significant administrative experience and knowledge of financial management. The provost should also be able to work collaboratively with the different branches of the university as well as provide an ethical, data-driven approach to fulfilling the Jesuit mission of St. Joe’s.
“We need someone who understands the Jesuit mission of the university,” Rao said, “and not merely as a heritage of the University but as a living mission that all of us here are really driven by in many ways.”
A commitment to academic excellence is also extremely important for a provost to possess, said Marie Williams, chief marketing and communications officer and a member of the committee.
“Classroom teaching, research and discovery, innovation, I think, is an incredibly important way to look at it,” Williams said.
Ronald Dufresne, Ph.D., president of Faculty Senate and search committee member, said the new provost should also aim to fulfill the Jesuit mission, adding that the mission of Jesuit education extends beyond classroom learning.
“The provost for Saint Joseph’s, just like every staff member, faculty member and administrator, sees students as total humans that have many developmental aspects of their experience,” Dufresne said. “We wouldn’t be fulfilling our mission if we only offered a top-notch educational experience in the classroom.”