University Times

Search committees for a new business dean and a new dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) will select finalists soon.

Each committee has narrowed its list of candidates to six and will meet on the morning of April 29 to pick three finalists. Later in the day, the committees will meet with Provost James Maher to give him the names and discuss the finalists' qualifications.

The provost will be out of the country from April 30 through May 12, spending part of that time fulfilling a long-standing commitment to lecture at a physics conference in the Netherlands. But Maher said he will review the search committees' recommendations while he is away and may interview at least some of the finalists by telephone before he returns to Pittsburgh.

Maher said he may also want to meet face-to-face with the finalists before choosing the new deans.

The six semi-finalists for dean of the Katz Graduate School of Business and the undergraduate College of Business Administration (CBA) are:

* James B. Dworkin, associate dean of Purdue University's Krannert Graduate School of Management.

* Robert Forsythe, associate dean for faculty and development at the University of Iowa.

* Michael E. Granfield, dean of the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California-Riverside.

* Michael J. Houston, associate dean of faculty at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.

* Dana J. Johnson, dean of the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy at Wake Forest University. (Johnson is the only woman among the semi-finalists.) * Lyn D. Pankoff, professor of quantitative business analysis at the John M. Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis.

The new business dean will succeed H.J. Zoffer, who has been dean for 27 years and plans to retire this summer if a successor is found by then.

"I think the six semi-finalists are all qualified people. It's a solid group. I certainly believe there is a good dean among them," said search committee chairperson Edward Sell, Distinguished Service Professor of Law emeritus.

Some 60 other U.S. colleges and universities have been searching for new business deans since last summer, when Zoffer announced his upcoming retirement, Sell said. But according to Sell, the competition had little impact on Pitt's search because most of the openings were at business schools that are smaller and/or lower-ranking than Katz and CBA. "I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I really believe this is one of the most attractive business school deanships in the country, for a number of reasons, especially the strength of the faculty here," Sell said. "Of those 60 business schools, we really were competing only against a fairly small number of the outstanding ones." According to Sell, candidates did not seem to be concerned about the prospect of turnover in Pitt's top administration (the Board of Trustees is expected to announce a permanent chancellor in June) and the possible relocation of Katz and CBA from Mervis Hall to the Masonic Temple or a new building.

"Mainly, the feedback that we got from the candidates had to do with the [business] faculty. And, obviously, all of the candidates have their own ideas of how they would move the school forward. But they didn't have much to say about facilities or students or the chancellor," Sell said.

Semi-finalists for the GSPIA deanship are:

* Joel D. Aberbach, a UCLA professor of political science and director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, part of UCLA's Institute for Social Science Research.

* Carolyn Ban, associate professor of public administration and policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, State University of New York at Albany.

* David Eaton, Bess Harris Jones Centennial Professor of Natural Resource Policy Studies at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.

* Roger Kanet, professor of political science, director of international programs and studies, and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

* Mitchel Wallenstein, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for counterproliferation policy.

* Charles Wise, professor and associate dean, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University at Blooming-ton.

GSPIA has been without a permanent dean since Davis Bobrow resigned in January 1995, citing differences over management style and philosophy with the provost. GSPIA professor Martin Staniland has been the school's interim dean since March 1995.

Search committee chairperson Morton Coleman, a social work professor, said the committee achieved its goal of finding candidates with solid experience both as scholars and as public policy-makers and administrators.

For example, Wallenstein worked at the National Academy of Science before becoming a U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary. He also has held faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins and other universities and has published many scholarly articles, Coleman said. Ban, a university professor and the only woman among the semi-finalists, has extensive management experience at federal agencies, he added.

The four other candidates likewise have differing ranges of experience in academia and government, according to Coleman.

Some candidates told Pitt's search committee that they had received other deanship offers, but so far the GSPIA search has not suffered because of competition with similar schools that are looking for new deans, Coleman said. "Of course, that may come up as we begin to make offers" to the finalists, he noted.

The Pitt chancellor search had little if any effect on the GSPIA search, according to Coleman. "Given the [increasingly brief] length of tenure for presidents and chancellors at most universities these days, any dean candidate knows that the top man or woman may resign the next year anyway," he said.

— Bruce Steele