After seven years as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, Terence Langan will be stepping down.

Langan will officially leave his position at the end of the 2016-17 academic year, but will be returning to the Economics Department faculty the following school year. Which begs the question – who will be the new dean?

Victoria Young, a professor and the chair of the Art History department, serves as the co-chair of a committee, along with Dean Robert Vischer, that will be selecting the new dean – a process that officially began with the first committee meeting on Oct. 19.

“That committee meeting was to talk about the process, just start to get input on what we’re looking for,” Young said. “That becomes a touchstone for us, but still it’s about really thinking about what matters here at the University of St. Thomas as we search for a new dean.”

Joining Young on the committee are eight other faculty members such as a CAS staff representative, the Dean of Students, the Vice President for Mission and the chair of the CAS Advisory Board in addition to a student representative. The committee members were selected by colleagues through the Committee for Faculty Nominations and Elections and appointed by the provost.

This week, they will begin crafting a job posting that will most likely be posted by Nov. 1, with a priority deadline sometime within the first week of January. A few days following that, the committee will review the applications and select eight to 12 candidates for an “airport interview.”

“(It’s) basically the committee out in a hotel by the airport for two days, meeting all these people as they fly in, turn around, and fly out,” Young said.

The pool will be further narrowed down to three to five candidates who will come on campus for two days throughout March. While they’re here, they will interact with students, staff, and faculty for the committee to get a sense of what they would become if they worked at St. Thomas.

“Any single one of them, from our vantage point, could be the next dean. And it’s up to them to prove it when they come to campus,” Young said.

After that, it’s time to make a decision.

“(The new dean) is somebody who can really creatively understand what it means to be the head of 23 units with the range that we have. That’s a big job. But I think for some people, that’s incredibly exciting too,” Young said. “With that comes the need to not only understand what that all means on a college level, but also to be able to communicate that effectively to the outside world.”

And if the search for a new dean comes up empty-handed, Young says they will keep looking.

“If we do not find that right candidate this year, we do the search again next year,” she said. “(But) in our minds, it doesn’t happen. This search is successful in our minds.”

Danielle Wong can be reached at wong0031@stthomas.edu.