This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the Free Press’ conversation with Provost Tim Marshall.
The search for the next dean of Parsons is months behind its original schedule. The university intended to have the next dean start in September 2018, but is now planning for a start date of January 2019 at the earliest, according to Provost Tim Marshall. The timeline changed because administrators involved in the search wanted to engage diverse community members in the process, according to Marshall.
The university originally intended to have the next dean start in September 2018, but is now planning for a start date of January 2019 at the earliest.
“We’ve slowed it down a little bit… We’ve just wanted to spend more time with the community, more time getting inputs than we’ve originally scheduled,” said Marshall, who was dean of Parsons before Joel Towers.
Towers had helmed Parsons, which in 2016 enrolled just under half the university population, for 10 years when he announced in October that he would step down. His tenure was marked by his overhaul of the undergraduate curriculum and the opening of the Making Center.
Towers held numerous positions at Parsons prior to becoming dean.
This is the first external search for the Parsons executive dean since Paul Goldberger was appointed in 2004.
Administrators have selected the Manhattan-based headhunting and consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates to help find potential candidates. A search committee made up of university members is close to being finalized, according to Marshall.
University administrators had hoped for the search committee to be decided by the end of November, according to an email Marshall sent to Parsons students that month.
As of Feb. 26, the search committee still had not been finalized, according to a university spokesperson. It is currently made up of 18 individuals representing faculty, staff and students from Parsons; Parsons school deans; board of governors; and New School executive deans. Maya Wiley, senior vice president for social justice and Anne Adriance, chief marketing officer are also members of the committee.
“We have to look at the whole [to make sure] that the balance of the committee is right in terms of gender and ethnicity,” Marshall said. “We probably need a couple more weeks to get it set.”
Towers said he is willing to stay in the position for as long as needed, to provide more leeway with the search timeline.
“I feel very strongly the responsibility to make sure that the transition that we are undergoing now happens smoothly and really identifies an extraordinary next dean. I’m not in any hurry to see that happen, so I’m here until that does happen and after as well,” Towers said in an interview with The New School Free Press in October.
Once the job description and job package are finalized, the Parsons deans and the board of governors, along with faculty and staff, will provide feedback. The search firm will build a pool of candidates from their networks and the university’s networks.
“We are looking at academia and industry. We don’t have a prescription about that,” Marshall said. “We also want to make sure that we are trapping a diverse candidate in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexuality.”
The search committee will conduct the primary interviews. Outside of the search committee, parallel groups of students, faculty, staff and members of the board of governors will meet with candidates to provide more input, though the exact structure of these was still unclear. The search committee will give their recommendation, but the final decision is made by President David Van Zandt and Marshall.
Marshall noted the difficulty of getting students involved in the selection process. “It’s a huge amount of work being on a search committee, so it’s not really in the students best interest to do that because of the workload. But it would be great to get them to meet a final three or four candidates,” Marshall said.
Part-time faculty are not currently represented on the search committee and face the same issue, Marshall said. In 2015, they made up 86 percent of the faculty at Parsons, according to statistics from the university.
Administrators are looking for ways to “let the broader community know the kinds of people we’re talking to,” Marshall said. However, Marshall noted, some candidates may require more confidentiality in order to protect their current employment.
Bjork Clarke, a junior at Parsons studying illustration, said she hopes the new dean continues creating spaces for students to work. “The Making Center is really helpful to students,” Clarke said. “I am really happy that the fourth floor was redone. I feel like before it didn’t have much purpose.”
Other students said they hope the dean will prioritize increasing student scholarships.
Marshall hopes the new dean will look at the issue of building other kinds of revenue that is not student tuition. He would like the dean to expand Tower’s curriculum work to a graduate level.
“These are kind of moments where the school gets to spend some time [thinking] about where it’s at and how it wants to improve,” Marshall said. “I think that it’s also really healthy that we get to spend some time thinking about what school we want, and how we want it to work, and how Parsons and the university relate to one another.”
Illustration by Ashlie Juarbe