Search for a Chief Academic Officer
2012-13 Chief Academic Officer Search
I am pleased to announce that Dr. Eric Eliason has accepted the position of Dean of the College and Vice President for Academic Affairs. He will begin his duties at Concordia August 1, 2013.
Dr. Eliason is currently Professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College, where he has been on the faculty since 1989. He served as Interim Dean of Faculty from 2005-2007, and then as Academic Dean from 2007-2009. During this time Dr. Eliason led major projects to successful conclusions, including a new social science building and a shift in the faculty load from seven courses to six. In 2011, he served as program director and instructor in Gustavus's Semester in Sweden Program, a low-cost study abroad option that maximized integration with the College's general education requirements.
A specialist in fourteenth-century British literature, Dr. Eliason was a founding partner in the National Endowment for the Humanities-supported Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, an early experiment in what has emerged as the field of digital humanities. He has contributed, collaboratively, two monograph-length electronic critical editions of important manuscripts to the archives.
Dr. Eliason is deeply respected by his colleagues and as a teacher has been twice recognized for his excellence. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Augustana College (IL) with majors in English and mathematics and computer science. He earned his MA and PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
Dr. Eliason brings to his new position a lived understanding of the relationship of the liberal arts to our faith tradition and a gift for collaborative decision making.
With you, I look forward to welcoming Dr. Eliason to Concordia and to working with him in fulfillment of our mission. Please join me in thanking our search committee for its splendid work: Linda Johnson, Chair, Linda Brown, Cynthia Carver, Meg Henrickson ’13, Linda Keup, Matthew Luther Lindholm, Mikel Olson, Larry Papenfuss, Tracey Moorhead, liaison to President’s Office.
William J. Craft
President
_____________________________________________________
To: The Concordia College Community
From: Linda L. Johnson, Chair, Dean of the College Search Committee
Subject: Update from the Dean of the College Search Committee
Date: February 11, 2013
I am writing with an update on the status of the search for the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dean of the College. We have completed the recruiting process, having received 41 applications. With a large number of very strong applications, the task of selecting candidates for further review has not been easy. At our meeting on January 31, we selected 16 candidates for further consideration and committee members have called their references.
On the basis of the candidates’ vitas, application letters, and information we received from references, we have narrowed the list to eleven candidates whom we have invited to participate in off-campus interviews with the search committee and President Craft. Following these interviews, we will select 3-4 candidates for campus interviews. Depending on the candidates’ schedules, we will interview the finalists on campus, March 11-20. At that time, you will have access to the candidates’ vitas and application letters and opportunities to interact with them. Following those interviews, we will solicit your observations and, along with the committee’s reflections and the consultant’s reference-checking information, we will share them with President Craft.
The Search Committee:
Linda Johnson, chair
Linda Brown
Cindy Carver
Meg Henrickson
Linda Keup
Matthew Lindholm
Tracey Moorhead, ex officio
Mikel Olson
Larry Papenfuss
_____________________________________________________
To: The Concordia College Community
From: Linda L. Johnson, Chair, Dean of the College Search Committee
Subject: Update from the Dean of the College Search Committee
Date: November 27, 2012
This is the second in a series of regular updates regarding the search for the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College. During the month of October, members of the search committee and our consultants from AGB Search, Rob Holyer and Judith Ward, met with members of the campus community. Thank you to everyone who participated in these conversations. Your thoughtful comments provided the groundwork for the search profile, the document used to solicit nominations and recruit candidates.
As you review the search profile, please pay particular attention to the lists of leadership priorities and qualifications. We urge you to nominate people whom you think might serve effectively in this position. Also, please suggest people we might contact who would be a good source of nominations. Please forward their names to Rob Holyer at rkh@agbsearch.com. Their names and information you send will be treated confidentially.
Over the next several weeks, we will generate the candidate pool through nominations received from you and others, advertisements in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, publications addressing diversity on college campuses, and the professional networks of our consultants, Rob and Judith. In January, the search committee will begin narrowing the candidate pool. Off-site interviews are planned for mid-February, with campus interviews in mid-March.
I will write again during subsequent stages of the search process. These updates, as well as other relevant documents from the search process, will be posted and archived here.
Please feel free to contact me, ljohnson@cord.edu, or other search committee members, with questions or comments.
The committee:
- Linda Brown
- Linda Keup
- Cindy Carver
- Matthew Lindholm
- Meg Henrickson
- Mikel Olson
- Linda Johnson
- Larry Papenfuss
- Tracey Moorhead, ex oficio
_____________________________________________________
Oct. 11, 2012
Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues:
Thanks to all who met this Monday and Tuesday with Robert Holyer and Judith Ward, our consultants from AGB Search, as we work to bring a new chief academic officer to Concordia. I write now to provide an update following their productive visit.
As you know, we have an eight-person search committee: Cindy Carver, Linda Johnson, Linda Keup, Matthew Lindholm, and Mikel Olson from the faculty; Linda Brown and Larry Papenfuss from the administrative staff; and Meg Henrickson, SGA President, representing our students. The committee received its charge from me at an organizational meeting last week, and the committee's members elected Linda Johnson as their chair. Tracey Moorhead serves with the committee as nonvoting liaison to the president’s office.
I am scheduled to meet with the committee again next week, at which time we will gather together what we learned from the faculty and staff conversations with our consultants. Those conversations will help the committee as it works with the consultants to shape the "profile" document that will be used to describe Concordia and to declare what credentials, experience, and gifts we will be looking for in our new chief academic officer.
The conversations this Monday and Tuesday will also help me as I work with colleagues here to address any questions or concerns that you may have about the shape and direction of the search. Expect another update from me in the next two weeks.
Once the ads for the position are posted, the committee itself will provide the updates. For now let me note, in response to some questions about what "chief academic officer" means, that this is not the title the new person will hold but rather the general description of the role that is used in academic circles. My next update will clarify the title we will in fact use.
I can also tell you the timeline we expect to follow, although there are almost always some adjustments once a search begins:
Please note that the committee will present its assessment of the finalists to me, and I will make my recommendation to the Board of Regents, which in accord with our by-laws names the person to whom we will offer this position.
William Craft
President
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