While the position of university president may be the highest profile vacancy on AU's campus, several other executive-level positions also remain open. University leadership is on track to fill two of those top-level positions: athletic director and head librarian. Several of the other posts will remain open until after a new president is installed, including the vice president of development and the director for university marketing.
According to Presidential Chief of Staff David Taylor, the process to fill high-level vacancies on campus works in two ways. Some positions, such as the athletic director position, can be filled without depending on permanence in the president's chair. Other vacancies, such as those in the development and marketing offices, "would hinge on the closure of the presidential search," Taylor said.
The vice president of development is just one executive position that will remain open until a new university president is named. The position has been vacant since Jan. 1, 2006, when former Vice President of Development Al Checcio officially left AU to accept the same position at Fordham University.
The vice president of development has the primary responsibility of developing donor prospects - through alumni and other sources - and encouraging them to contribute money to AU. Because the vice president of development works so closely with the university president, this position will be filled with the help of the new president once he or she is selected.
Abbey Silberman Fagin is currently the senior director of development, the head of the department while the vice president's position remains vacant.
Fagin said during the absence of a vice president, various top university employees have increased their involvement in soliciting donors, including Interim President Neil Kerwin, Interim Provost Ivy Broder and each school's dean.
The Office of Development's main focus is still the AnewAU campaign, which has raised $133.5 million to date. The goal of the campaign for this fiscal year, which ends April 30, is $140 million, while the overall goal remains $200 million.
Fagin said the university will not see a large drop in funds without Checcio's presence, whether the rest of development is keeping up the pace or not. The reason is that from the time a university representative solicits a prospect, this person may not donate until months or years later.
However, despite stable fundraising for the university, the gap in the executive position is noticeable.
"We'd absolutely be in a better position if we had a vice president because we'd be building relations," Fagin said.
Other development vacancies
There are other lower-level vacancies within the development department that are aiming to be filled by the end of this semester. According to Fagin, the director of development in annual giving position will be filled by mid-March, and the department is actively searching for new directors of development in the School of Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences.
SPA Dean William LeoGrande said the lack of a development director within the school does slow down their ability to maintain contact with important donors.
"A vacancy in the director's position means that all of these functions suffer, despite the best efforts of everyone involved to keep moving forward while we fill the vacancy," LeoGrande said.
CAS Dean Kay Mussell said that while their internal development vacancy is noticeable, she does not feel the fundraising work of the school has slowed down. "We've had a lot of help from the central development office," Mussell said, adding that the position in CAS has only been empty for about six weeks.
Athletic director to be hired soon
Another executive post that has been empty for almost the entire academic year is that of the athletic director. The former athletic director, Joni Comstock, left in September 2006 to become the vice president of championships for the NCAA.
As the president's chief of staff, David Taylor is currently overseeing the athletic department. Taylor said he has two of the associate athletic directors, Athena Argyropoulos and Rob Acunto, running the day-to-day operation of the department, with Taylor serving as the liaison between the athletic department and the president.
After Comstock's departure, university officials discussed whether the search for a new athletic director should wait until the selection of a new university president, Taylor said.
"Overwhelmingly, the desire was 'let's go forth,' because an athletics director can come in and do what needs to be done in that department, working with whomever will eventually become the president," said Taylor.
Head librarian search on track
While the library is not tied as closely to the president's office as these other positions, a search committee with participants from across the university has been seeking a permanent university librarian since the end of 2005.
Former University Librarian Patricia Ward, who worked at Bender Library for many years, left in December 2005 to become the head librarian at Xayad Women's University in the United Arab Emirates. Since then, Diana Vogelsong, who has worked at the AU library for more than 12 years, has been the acting head librarian. The search committee hopes to fill the position Wand left open within the next two months.
"We're looking for someone who has been to institutions similar to American University," said Mussell, chair of the search committee. An ideal candidate, Mussell said, is one who can help maintain the high standards of Bender Library and assist with fundraising.
Despite the length of time this search has taken, Mussell said she is confident the process has been worthwhile and will result in a final decision, hopefully by late March.
"When you're searching for a senior position like this, it takes a while to get ready to do it," said Mussell. "You have to have some conversations around campus about what people are looking for."
Time for resturcturing
The lack of a permanent presidential figure has also brought forth the possibility of restructuring certain positions and departments, Taylor said. "You don't necessarily just rush out to fill a vacancy because you have a vacancy, if there's a chance that a unit may go through a more sophisticated evaluation or a redesign," he said.
Taylor said the position of director of university marketing will remain open until after the marketing department undergoes a "sophisticated evaluation," a process that will begin under the new president's administration.
"We have never on this campus had a free-standing communications and marketing structure," Taylor said. "This is an area that we'll want to take a look at going forward as to what is an appropriate structure and what kind of hiring do we need to do in certain positions. Do we want to add some? Do we want to refashion some?"
The Office of Development also came to similar conclusions about restructuring their department after hiring a consultant to help evaluate the director of annual giving position. The consultant showed them exactly what the position's duties should be and what they were missing within development that this position could oversee and do, according to Fagin.
A long-term search does not always mean that progress is stagnant, Fagin explained. Instead, it could mean that the position is being restructured for the better. Exploring this option to reorder the duties of a top-level position put them "in a much stronger position than [they] were before," Fagin said.
