2 Purdue colleges are without leadership, and finding replacements may take years

In October of 2022, the search for a dean for the College of Education, which had stretched on for seven months by that point, finally came down to two candidates.

Punya Mishra, a professor at Arizona State University, and André Green, a professor at the University of South Alabama, were set to give presentations on why they should be the next head of Purdue’s nationally recognized education program.

But two years after the university touted Mishra and Green as finalists for the position, the dean spot still sits vacant, and the College of the Education remains without permanent leadership.

The College of Health and Human Sciences, too, has also been without a permanent dean for almost a year, despite the university announcing it was starting a search for candidates as early as December.

At Purdue, no other college has gone more than eight months between the announcement of the search and the appointment of their current deans, according to dates obtained from past Purdue press releases. Still, the search for deans has dragged on, and it’s unclear when it will end, if ever.

In the midst of the vacancies, communication from university officials has been vague if not outright confusing, making it hard to track how the searches have progressed. In the case of Health and Human Sciences, the beginning of the search was even announced twice — once in December, and again in August.

“There’s a growing lack of transparency that’s taking place at the administrative level, around anything really related to what’s happening on campus,” Stephanie Masta, an associate professor in the College of Education and the former president of the American Association of University Professors at Purdue, said in February, one month after the search for the Health and Human Sciences dean was supposedly set to begin.

The Exponent has been unable to confirm the status of the searches for the two dean positions. Purdue spokesperson Trevor Peters did not answer a detailed list of emailed questions about why the searches have dragged on for so long.

Long searches and long interims

At Purdue, and at most other universities in the country, an interim dean takes over to lead a college while a search for a permanent dean goes underway. Interim positions are often necessary to allow time for comprehensive searches and hiring processes to take place, but they aren’t intended to be long-term roles.

While the number of interim deans at Purdue is only three right now, it’s the length of those terms that raises the most concern.

Health and Human Sciences has been led by an interim dean for nine months, while the College of Education has had its interim dean for over two years, as searches for permanent deans have dragged on beyond average for Purdue’s other colleges.

In recent years, interim deans at Purdue, such as in the Polytechnic Institute or the College of Engineering, have only held their positions for up to eight months.

For the College of Education, Masta said she is concerned the slow moving search may be indicative of big changes looming over the school.

The initial dean search in 2022 resulted in two strong candidates, Masta said, but progress quickly stalled.

“After a delay, essentially we were told that they weren’t going to make an offer to either candidate,” Masta said. “Instead (they) wanted the College of Education to create a ‘pause and reflect committee’ to decide what they wanted the future of College of Education to be.”

Masta said the lack of transparency is a cause for concern for the future of the college.

“What the provost has said publicly has said that the functions of the College of Education will be present at Purdue University,” Masta said. “But has gone as far as not to indicate whether or not we will have a college.”

She worries the organization of the college as a whole.

“It has been now almost two years and we do not have any sort of sense of what the future of the college is going to look like,” she said. “We are continuing to do our excellent work, but it’s certainly more challenging.”

Problems with interims

The long interim terms in the College of Education and Health and Human Sciences fit into a national pattern of university colleges going without permanent administration for extended periods of time, which can contribute to a host of potential problems for a university, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported earlier this month.

Turnover in a leadership position undoubtedly invites growing pains and multiplying that turnover by cycling through temporary employees only increases the stress.

“Having interim administrators in place can slow down or even stall day-to-day work,” the Chronicle wrote.

Many aspects of a university can suffer when leadership is inconsistent, from preventing substantial progress on a continuous issue to leaving faculty without a familiar leader when crises inevitably occur.

Search for HHS dean starts — twice

Purdue originally announced in December it would be starting the search for a new Health and Human Sciences dean. But eight months later, the university announced again that it was starting a search, with no mention of the search that had supposedly already been going on.

“This is an exciting time as we begin the process for selecting a new leader for the College of Health and Human Sciences,” Vice Provost Patrick Wolfe said in a press release on Aug. 20.

The original announcement of a search in December said a search committee would begin meeting in January, but it’s unclear if any progress has been made in the time since then.

When the Exponent asked Peters why the announcement was made twice and inquired about the status of the searches, he sent a list of links to press releases related to other dean searches and hiring announcements.

Masta said her main concern for Health and Human Sciences is the language Purdue has used to describe the search.

“In Purdue Today, they indicated that they’re holding listening sessions for a leader, not a dean,” she said. “Purdue Today is meticulous for language ... Deans are deans and leaders are not deans.”

Masta said the issue is not the change itself, but the lack of transparency throughout it.

“Substantial changes to faculty should go through faculty, or at least they should be present for the conversation,” she said.