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VOLUME XI, NUMBER 20

3 INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS aia TIN

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Selecting A Chief Instructional Officer:

The Palomar College Experience

Academic search committees are much like the little girl with the curl: when they are good they are very very good, but when they are bad they are horrid. A bad search is a frustrating and expensive waste of time if a successful candidate cannot be selected; selection of a candidate by a sloppy, rushed, or rigged process may devastate an institution. A good search is composed of

two diverse but complementary components: process -

and philosophy. Each is critical to the eventual success of the search and each requires proper care and plan- ning for appropriate implementation.

During 1987 and 1988 the Palomar Community College District undertook a nationwide search for an Assistant Superintendent/ Vice President for Instruction with a target date for employment of July 1, 1988. Appointment of the search committee occurred in the spring of 1987 with the active part of the search sched- uled to begin the following September. Each area of the college, including faculty, classified staff, executive administration, middle managers, and students, inde- pendently selected representatives. College President George Boggs charged the committee to recruit, inter- view, and recommend the best candidates available for his final consideration and recommendation to the Governing Board. Upon nomination by the committee he appointed me chair, while agreeing that the commit- tee would be free to select a co-chair to preside in my absence, as necessary. At the organizational meeting the newly formed committee received information on recruitment, affirmative action, and legal requirements from the Director of Human Resource Services and Affirmative Action, an ex officio member. The commit- tee agreed to meet again in September. At this time the President, having given us our charge and a deadline, stepped away from the process and allowed us to proceed with the assigned task. He received regular reports from the chair but allowed us the flexibility to operate independently for the remainder of the search.

The committee convened again in the fall to review timelines and establish ground rules. We determined a quorum (9 of 13 members) and decided to keep and ratify minutes of our meetings. The Chair and Director

of Human Resources proposed a timeline developed by working backwards from the target employment date. This schedule considered and allowed adequate time for advertising and recruiting, developing forms and questions, screening applications, selecting applicants to interview, checking references, and making site visits to finalists’ home institutions.

A difficult problem for any search committee is scheduling regular mecting times around the individual calendars of a very busy group of classroom instructors, administrators, and staff. Each committee member submitted a complete schedule which I plotted in graph form. Miraculously, a free hour appeared each week. (If this is not the case, the graph will likely show some hours in which only one or two people are unavailable. In that case, ] recommend selecting two alternate meeting times and staggering the meetings between these times. While one person may have to be absent from a meeting, it won’t be the same person each time.) Scheduling the interview blocks as far in advance as possible is also critical so that everyone may clear calendars or obtain substitutes for the period covered. We agreed that regular business would be conducted at each mecting once a quorum was established but that we would nol consistently backtrack due to the absence of any mernber. (It may be appropriate to establish a maximum number of absences before a member is replaced; however, this was not a problem with our group.)

Three subcommittees worked to develop an applica- tion form and screening documents from the applica- tions and interview questions. We found it much easier to edit forms and questions prepared by the subcom- mittees than to create them as a group of 13. The assis- tance of the Human Resources staff proved invaluable. Competent support staff and excellent advice from the Director ensured smooth operation within legal and institutional requirements. Acknowledgment of this work when the process is over is both appropriate and appreciated.

Proper scheduling allowed for efficient use of time. For example, screening forms were developed during

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THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD) Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin