The search for the next School of Engineering dean has narrowed to three final candidates, each of whom will visit campus over the next two weeks.
Daniel Fleetwood, Patrick O’Shea and Gregory Washington will each have the opportunity to present and conduct an open forum with students, faculty and the community before the Provost makes a final decision.
Fleetwood, chair of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, was the first of the three to visit UNM. He said Wednesday that his main focus as dean would be to raise the
department’s national ranking in the U.S. News and World Report.
“If you are on the top 50, you get different kinds of students applying both at the undergraduate and graduate levels than if you are not,” he said. “Things like trying to recruit students with stronger records and trying to improve the reputation of the school among other universities and in the industry are essential. It is also important to try to have the more accomplished faculty become members of the National Academy of Engineering and also to build research funding.”
Those attending the forums have the ability to participate in the dean selection by filling out evaluation forms, said John Pieper, dean of the UNM School of Pharmacy and head of the selection committee.
“The purpose of the sheet is to allow us to collect standardized information on each of our three candidates that are coming,” he said. “We wanted a process where we could get a broad base of input from students, faculty, staff (and) alumni. The main reason is so that we can get as much information from a broad base of people as we can.”
John Farris, a graduate of UNM’s Engineering department said he was concerned about the University not receiving due credit for its accomplishments.
“One of my points of distress about UNM Engineering is the fact that they do a lot of neat things and get very little publicity,” he said. “I have been on some committees where we tried to correct that but it’s never taken hold. I think opportunities are being missed from the standpoint of attracting students to UNM. There are opportunities maybe being missed to attract faculty by not having that kind of publicity.”
The best publicity comes from active faculty conducting research while educating their students effectively, Fleetwood said.
“The best publicity for the school comes from the faculty members going out to conferences and being physical and presenting good work and from publishing papers in venues with high impact,” he said. “It also comes from students who go out and are advocates for the school in their professional careers. It’s nice and necessary to have the up-to-date Web site, to do the news releases, to do the brochures and the magazines, but it’s also very important to recognize that a lot of external recognition only comes as the faculty are recognized. The school’s recognition typically follows that.”
The importance of faculty unity is fundamental to a successful department, Fleetwood said.
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“It’s one thing to hire well, it’s another thing to help provide an environment in which people can perform well,” he said. “What I don’t like to see are the faculty members that just shut themselves in their office and try to do everything on their own because that is a recipe for failure. It is possible for someone to be successful there but the percentages are low.”
Fleetwood said his leadership style is leading by example.
“If you try to get folks to do something fundamentally different than what you do, that’s a recipe for failure,” he said. “If you say you should work very, very hard and you are not perceived as working really hard yourself, that’s not really going to work.”
With the other two candidates coming to UNM in the next weeks, Pieper said he encouraged students, faculty and staff to be active in the decision making process.
“The evaluations are critically important,” he said. “We will collect the information that we are receiving and add it to the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses and present that to the Provost who will make the decision.”
*Patrick O’Shea — March 1 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Stamm Commons, Centennial Engineering Center for students; 4:30 to 6 p.m. students, faculty, and community members in Centennial Engineering Center Auditorium
Gregory Washington — March 3 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Stamm Commons, Centennial Engineering Center for students; 4:30 to 6 p.m. students, faculty, and community members in Centennial Engineering Center Auditorium
More information available at School of Engineering’s Web site
Soe.unm.edu/welcome/dean.html
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