The Robert D. Clark Honors College is a liberal arts honors college within the University of Oregon. (Connor Cox/Emerald)
On May 23, Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Janet-Woodruff Borden announced the search for the new permanent dean of the Clark Honors College will be paused.
The new Clark Honors College dean search, launched in March, raised concerns that the search did not fit the rules and standards of a traditional UO position search.
According to Economics Professor Bill Harbaugh who operates the blog UO Matters, UO has a formal university-adopted policy that lays out the rules for a search, which included consulting with the University Senate and making sure that half of the search committee was university faculty and half of those faculty members were from the Clark Honors College.
Harbaugh said Borden’s search for the next dean did not meet that criteria.
“She didn’t do any of that,” he said. “Only two of the people on the search committee were faculty and they were only partly in the Honors College.”
Another concern about the search was the fact that it was an internal search, meaning it was only candidates within the university already.
According to Harbaugh, this was a cause for concern with the University Senate and the UO faculty union United Academics.
“It was an internal search which doesn’t always get very good candidates,” Harbaugh said. “So what’s the point of applying if they already know who they’re going to give the job to? The Provost screwed this up.”
Harbaugh is a former member of the University Senate leadership and had informed the Senate President of these concerns, who had brought it up with Woodruff-Borden. He said many members of the Clark Honors College were also unhappy with the search’s conduct and complained to Woodruff-Borden.
Woodruff-Borden addressed the students and the rest of the university staff about the pausing of the Clark Honors College dean search in a mass email.
“This will allow the opportunity to broaden the search committee and to launch a national search that will bring a larger pool of applicants, which may include both internal and external candidates,” Woodruff-Borden said in an email to the Honors College community.
The Union and the United Academics have both filed grievances against the search.