The task of finding a new dean for the College of Education will begin next month, following the reassignment of Martin Kaufman, who has served as dean since 1992.
Kaufman assumed the role as leader of the University’s campaign to build a new education building Sept. 1. COE special-education professor Michael Bullis will serve as interim dean for the remainder of the academic year.
The University will form a committee next month that will look at candidates from across the country, Senior Vice President and Provost John Moseley said.
The search comes months after the COE faced accusations of racial discrimination and cultural insensitivity. Faculty, students and other community members held rallies in May and June to protest what they said was a history of discrimination in the COE.
Kaufman attributed the timing of his reassignment to “a convergence of streams that came together” in the COE.
He cited the curriculum audit that the COE has undergone over the past year and a half, the implementation of a new diversity plan, and the need to raise funds and plan for the new COE building as factors that led to the change.
With so much going on in the college, Kaufman said it makes sense to split the duties up.
“It’s just too much on any one plate,” Kaufman said, adding that the decision was made jointly between the administration and himself.
Kaufman will now devote his efforts to the new building, which he hopes will become a national model, as well as to teaching graduate courses in fall 2006.
Bullis said he has never been interested in administrative work, but took the position because he wanted to help the college.
“I have a profound sense of obligation that as the dean, I work for the college and the people in it – the staff,” Bullis said. “I was taught that you give more than you take, and this is my way to give.”
The search committee chairperson will be someone outside the COE, but Bullis anticipates that the COE will be an active participant in the search.
“They will try to involve members of the college regarding the kind of person we want, the kind of skills that individual should have,” he said.
Bullis said he does not expect to submit himself as a candidate.
“I think it would be good for the University to get some new blood,” he said.
As interim dean, Bullis will attempt to balance the demands of research with management. He said the COE’s goals for the year will be to encourage community and a quality education.
Bullis said these goals fit with the COE’s desire to better handle diversity issues.
“If we do more to address diversity issues, we will do more to improve the community of the college as well as the quality,” he said.
Moseley expects the search process to yield a dean who will value and support diversity.
“We would not hire a dean who could not be effective working with a diverse population,” he said.
Though a candidate’s ability to work with diverse groups will be an important factor in the search process, Moseley said that past accusations of discrimination will not cause the search committee to place extra emphasis on diversity issues.
Henry Luvert, president of the Eugene-Springfield chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said big changes must occur in order to foster a more diversity-friendly environment in the COE.
“You need someone who has experience working with diverse groups,” he said.
Luvert is not optimistic that his concerns will be addressed.
“The overall attitude at the University is that it is not a real problem but only a perceived problem on our part,” he said. “I would love for them to find someone who is capable and competent to deal with these problems, but they are trying to solve these problems from their perspective, their Euro-centric perspective.”
Bullis said real problems with discrimination do exist at the COE.
“I’ve come to believe that if an individual has an emotional belief about something, then it’s true,” he said.
On Friday, the COE held meetings with faculty, staff and students to discuss diversity issues. Carlos Cortes, a University of California-Riverside history professor and an expert on improving understanding between diverse groups, has been hired to help create a package of diversity training.
The changes at the COE come at a time when the college has reached a level of national prominence. In its 2006 graduate school rankings, US News & World Report ranked the COE the 13th best program in the country and seventh among public institutions.
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