The Multicultural Center is close to hiring its new director and filling a new position that was approved by the ASUO Program Finance Committee last winter.
Members of the MCC hiring committee predict the new director might be hired next Wednesday and could begin work as early as July 1.
The MCC received about 20 applications for the position and interviewed three candidates, according to hiring committee member and ASUO President Wylie Chen and hiring committee co-chair Tana Atchley, who represents the MCC board on the committee.
The MCC director is designed to bring continuity to a program that, like many other student-run organizations, has experienced high turnover because students graduate and move on from the University, placing MCC student coordinators in the difficult position of having to start over nearly from scratch every year.
“That’s why we got that position, because students leave over the summer and graduate,” Atchley said.
Students had asked the PFC for and received a 121 percent budget increase of almost $39,000 that would allow for the creation of the new position. Although the PFC, which distributes incidental fee money to about 100 students groups, aimed to maintain a 0 percent benchmark compared to last year, it granted the large increase and made the creation of the MCC director position possible.
The MCC serves as an umbrella organization for a number of ethnic and cultural student groups and unions on campus and aims to provide support to these groups, in addition to promoting networking and coalition-building.
Chen said the hiring committee narrowed down the pool and interviewed three finalists. Javier Cervantes is a University alumni who currently works with high school students in Portland. Randall McCrillis of the University of Colorado at Fort Collins currently works on issues of diversity training, and Erica Fuller-Schindler is a doctoral student at the University of Florida who works with student mothers who demonstrate financial need.
Now, the hiring committee is torn between two finalists. A final decision might come as early as next Wednesday, provided the hiring committee can agree on a choice, Chen said.
“We’re actually in a pretty hard position right now because we have a couple of excellent candidates,” Chen said. “So many people have so many different ideas what the position should do.”
But Atchley said overall, the hiring committee is looking for the same qualifications in candidates.
“I don’t think we’re looking for different things,” she said. “We’re looking for someone who is going to do the best job. I think we all have that in common.”
ASUO President elect Jay Breslow, who is also on the hiring committee, said he has been pleased with the hiring process, but the final decision between what he said are two highly qualified candidates will be difficult.
“We brought in the candidates and lots of people got to meet them,” he said. “It’s always hard to find someone for a position like this.”
Breslow said in arriving at its decision, the hiring committee has to consider the community and the network that the MCC has already established, which only makes the choice that much more difficult because the new director will have to fit into an environment that has already been created.
Both Breslow and Atchley said they were hoping for a larger applicant pool. Atchley said the reason the committee only received 20 applications could be that it has been working on a tight time line and was only able to advertise for a brief amount of time.
Atchley said some excellent candidates applied, but nobody had all of the attributes she was hoping for, such as experience working with students on an equal basis, major commitments to diversity, working effectively with students and administrators, organizing and managing an office and budget and being able to help students realize their goals.
“I think that none of the candidates met every single criterion perfectly,” she said.
But she added that over time each of the three candidates still in contention has the potential to live up to all of the committee’s expectations.