[Pols-l] FW: Political Science chair search - committee and chair

[Haider-Markel, Donald Patrick]

Colleagues, here is the first message Ben mentioned. I'm attaching our bylaws for your reference.

I'm sad to see PJ retire, especially since we will now need to select a new Parliamentarian for the department. PJ has been the Parliamentarian since before I arrived.

We wish you the best in the private sector PJ and hope to keep seeing you.
DHM

From: Eggleston, Ben <eggleston at ku.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2020 4:34 PM
To: Haider-Markel, Donald Patrick <dhmarkel at ku.edu>
Subject: Political Science chair search - committee and chair

Dear Don,

Thank you for coordinating my visit to the Political Science department this afternoon. I'm writing in regard to a few aspects of the process for selecting a new chair for your department. Much of the following may repeat points that we discussed, but I like to convey all of this in writing. You should feel free to share this message with your colleagues if you think it would be helpful for them to have this in writing, too.

The next step in the process is for the program to constitute a search committee. The CLAS guidelines (https://policy.ku.edu/CLAS/procedures-for-selection-of-chairs) say the following on this topic:

The search committee is formed at the unit level in accordance with the bylaws of the unit. The department/program has several options for constituting a search committee: election of members, entrusting the responsibility to an existing elected group within the unit, or serving as a committee of the whole. At the recommendation of the Dean, search committees may be augmented with faculty members from outside the unit to serve on the committee as external voting member(s). For interdisciplinary units, it is expected that faculty members will be drawn from the various discipline constituencies that comprise the unit. While University policy states that students may not serve as voting members on personnel committees, individual unit bylaws may allow staff members to serve on the search committee. In all searches, both student and staff input should be sought and considered in a way that protects their confidentiality.

The search committee shall elect a tenured faculty member from among its members to serve as committee chairperson. The search committee chairperson's responsibilities include close and continuous liaison with the Associate Dean for Administrative Affairs.

There are a few aspects of this that I want to clarify:

*         The first sentence says "The search committee is formed at the unit level in accordance with the bylaws of the unit." Many units' bylaws do not talk about how to form a search committee for a new chair or director. In such a case, any fair decision-making process is fine.

*         Regardless of what your bylaws say, a committee of the whole (except for anyone who is the current chair or director, or a candidate for the position, or a candidate's partner, including spouse) is always a welcome choice.

*         In regard to "faculty members from outside the unit to serve on the committee as external voting member(s)," I have no particular recommendations on this topic.

*         When the committee is electing its chairperson, they may want to know that person's duties. The main duties are (1) interacting with me and my assistant, Amanda Burghart, about administrative tasks and (2) writing up the results of the committee's recommendations about the applicants, and submitting that information to me for John Colombo's review.

Given all of the above, at your earliest convenience, would you have your colleagues constitute a search committee and ask that committee to determine its chair, and ask that person to contact me? After I hear from that person, I will send a draft of the position description for the search committee to review and comment on, before John and I finalize it for posting at https://employment.ku.edu.

Best,

Ben

Ben Eggleston
Associate Dean for Administrative Affairs,
     College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Kansas
Professor, KU Department of Philosophy

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