Finalists for Dean of College of Arts and Sciences announced

Posted on by and
Cara Ciliano (Photo courtesy of Michigan State University), William Tolman (Photo courtesy of Washington University), Emily Todd (Photo courtesy of Westfield State University) and Mark Standsbury-O’Donnell (Photo courtesy of the University of St. Thomas) were named as the finalists for the position of Dean. (Owen Larson/TommieMedia)

An email sent out to St. Thomas students, faculty and staff Monday named the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences finalists and their presentation schedule for students.

Executive Vice President and Provost Eddy Rojas, who sent the email, also announced that each finalist would be given a chance to hold an open forum on campus and students will be allowed to provide feedback.

“We are pleased to announce the four College of Arts and Sciences Dean finalists,” Rojas said in the email. “We invite you to participate in the next step of the search process.”

Rojas stated that each finalist was given a prompt that they were to respond to in their assigned time. Once finished, the forum would be open for questions from the community, according to the College of Arts and Sciences webpage.

The search committee, headed by English Department Chair Olga Herrera and School of Engineering Dean Don Weinkauf, narrowed the position down to four finalists.

Emily Todd, the current acting chair of the department of English for Westfield State University, will visit campus Feb. 24 and 25, then will present first on Thursday, Feb. 24, from 1:30-2:30 p.m.

St. Thomas’ current Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Mark Stansbury-O’Donnell, will visit campus Feb. 28 and March 1, then will present on Tuesday, March 1 from 10:30-11:30 a.m.

Vice Dean of Research and Entrepreneurship at Washington University Bill Tolman will visit campus March 2 and 3, then will present Wednesday, March 2 from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies at the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University Cara Cilano will visit campus March 3 and 4, then will present on Friday, March 4 from 10:30-11:30 a.m.

Each presentation will be located in the O’Shaughnessy Education Center Auditorium, and will be recorded. Once the presentations are complete, members of the St. Thomas community will be able to access a candidate feedback form on the College of Arts and Sciences website.

The feedback survey will be open until Monday, March 14, at noon.

Owen Larson can be reached at orlarson@stthomas.edu.
Annabelle Wiskus can be reached at annabelle.wiskus@stthomas.edu.