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September 13, 2001

SAC plans flea market fund-raiser

Provost James V. Maher has asked the committee searching for a new dean of the School of Information Sciences (SIS) to recommend finalists to him by March 1.

Pitt's administration hopes to have a new dean in place by July 1 to succeed Toni Carbo, who announced last spring that she was planning to resign at the end of June 2002. Carbo has been SIS dean since September 1986. She will return to teaching and research as a professor in SIS and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

SIS search committee chairperson Andrew R. Blair said: "We've placed ads in a number of publications, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and several specialized journals relevant to SIS. I've written to all of the information science and library science deans around the country, soliciting applications and nominations, and the provost will be contacting his fellow provosts within the AAU [Association of American Universities]."

Blair, Pitt's vice provost for Faculty Affairs, said the search committee expects to contact plenty of candidates from outside the University but won't favor external over internal candidates, or vice versa. "We're just looking for the best possible dean," he said.

The search committee will hold an open hearing on Sept. 21, 9-11 a.m. in 405 IS Building, during which SIS faculty, staff, students and alumni will have the chance to voice opinions about qualities the committee should look for in the new dean.

The search committee, officially charged by Provost Maher in June, includes Blair and the following members:

* Faculty representatives Jose-Marie Griffiths and Christinger Tomer of the Department of Library and Information Science; Prashant Krishnamurthy, Douglas Metzler and Richard Thompson, Department of Information Science (DIS) telecommunications program; Paul Munro, DIS, and Sylvanus Dwosu, an affiliate faculty member in the engineering school.

* Staff representative Theresa Benedek of the Office of the SIS Dean.

* Joel Minnick, representing SIS undergraduates, and graduate student representative Stephen Pilachowski.

* Barbara M. Spiegelman, vice president of Churchill Associates, representing SIS alumni and the SIS board of visitors.

Applications and nominations for the deanship should be sent to Andrew R. Blair, chairperson, School of Information Sciences Dean Search Committee, 826 Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh 15260. To receive full consideration, applications and nominations should be sent by Dec. 15, although Blair said the committee probably will consider materials received after that date.

— Bruce Steele

Filed under: Feature,Volume 34 Issue 2

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