October 2008

The search for the next Vice President for Academic Affairs is on track. We held our second search committee meeting on September 11, 2008 and during our meeting finalized the search profile and discussed our advertising plan.

As you may be aware, the university has once again retained the services of Academic Search, Inc., a consulting firm with over 30 years’ experience in searches for presidents and senior administrators in higher education, to facilitate the search process. Maya Ranchod Kirkhope, a senior consultant at Academic Search, is also serving as the search consultant for our presidential search, which is currently ongoing.

Based on her research and campus conversations, Maya developed a job ad and position profile describing key needs and priorities, and a related set of desired characteristics for our next VPAA. We will post the job ad in a number of on-line publications including the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Women in Higher Education, Hispanic Outlook, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the American Conference of Academic Deans and the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.

We urge you to suggest people you know who could serve effectively as our next VPAA or those who might know potential candidates. Please forward their name(s) to Maya Kirkhope at maya.kirkhope@academic-search.com or (703) 440-1008. The success of our search will depend on the involvement, support and interest of all members of the Saint Martin’s University community.

Maya is working to generate a robust candidate pool. In addition to posting the job ad in key publications, she mailed source and prospect letters to a broad network of contacts, and will follow up on nominations submitted by you and other members of the higher education community.

The search committee will hold neutral site interviews in mid-December and expects to invite finalists to campus in late January 2009. It is our expectation that the VPAA will be appointed by February 2009 and take office during the summer. Faculty, students and staff will have opportunities to meet with VPAA candidates and share their feedback with the search committee during the candidate visits to campus. Furthermore, once appointed, the new Saint Martin’s University president will play an active role in the VPAA search and work closely with the search committee through the remainder of the search process.

A website has been created to provide regular updates on the search process at www.stmartin.edu/VPAASearch The website includes the detailed job profile and position advertisement, as well as information regarding the search process and committee composition.

You will receive another update on our VPAA search in a few weeks.

Thank you for your interest and support.