Major search firm helping U. in provost hunt

Heidrick & Struggles has been aiding Penn in its search for a new provost since January. The faculty members, students and administrators currently seeking the University's next provost are getting some help from outside the ivory tower. The University has contracted the internationally known executive search firm of Heidrick & Struggles to aid the committee in identifying and reviewing qualified candidates, according to Bill Bowen, a vice chairperson at the firm. In mid-January, University President Judith Rodin appointed an 11-member search committee charged with finding a replacement for former Provost Stanley Chodorow, who resigned last October, effective December 31, 1997. The committee sent a short list of external candidates to Rodin in June, according to sources familiar with the committee. Only one of the four people on that list remains in contention, the sources said. As a result, Rodin reconvened the committee last month to consider a wider array of academics from both within and outside of Penn. The University will pay the Chicago-based headhunting firm an "industry rate," or approximately 1/3 of the first year's salary made by the officer being recruited, Bowen said. According to University tax records, former Provost Stanley Chodorow made $224,019 in base salary in his final full year in office. Heidrick & Struggles has been working with the University since January, according to Bowen, and has been involved in most of the major decisions so far. "We've worked with the search committee to identify potential candidates," he said. "We contact people that we know who would be appropriate to fill a position [and] we try to encourage them to take a look." "Anybody that applies or has been nominated [for the position], we've interacted with," he added. University spokesperson Ken Wildes praised Heidrick & Struggles --Ewhich commonly works with large corporations seeking to fill upper-level management positions -- as a "respected search firm." Bowen said that he has had about a dozen contacts with the search committee, but that he has not met face to face with the group in several months. This is not the first time that the University has used Heidrick & Struggles' services to fill a top administrative post. Members of the firm, including Bowen, came to campus in October 1994 to help find a replacement for former Executive Vice President Janet Hale, who resigned that summer. Rodin ultimately appointed current Executive Vice President John Fry in March 1995 at the conclusion of a search committee's six-month search. The team from Heidrick & Struggles identified and reviewed scores of candidates, including Fry, Bowen said. Bowen said that six months was the normal duration for searches, like the current provost inquiry, at academic institutions with which Heidrick has dealt. "Presidential searches are usually six months," he said. "Deans and provosts are usually shorter, but can take longer." Asked to explain the length of the University's search for a new provost -- now at nine months and counting -- Bowen said that "sometimes they take longer to make the right fit." Bowen also would not forecast how much longer it would take before the search process was resolved and a new provost named. "Any search committee makes its recommendations and the president makes [her] decision," he said. "It would be foolish of me to say it would take one day or three months [more]." Wildes, who himself was recruited by another firm to leave Northwestern University for his current job as Penn's director of University communications, said that executive-search firms are necessary to recruit candidates for open positions due to the quality of those contending for high-level posts. "The very best candidates aren't going to answer ads [or] send in resumes," he said. "The very best candidates are doing great work somewhere else. They help you find and identify the very best people, wherever they are." Wildes also emphasized the role of search firms in checking the backgrounds of prospective candidates for employment. Of the four candidates initially recommended by the search committee, one withdrew from the search while two others were rejected based on problems with their recommendations or stated qualifications, sources close to the committee said last week. Heidrick & Struggles was founded in 1953 and is the "oldest of the major international executive search firms," according to a statement on its World Wide Web site. Bowen said his firm has worked with several of Penn's Ivy League counterparts -- including Brown, Columbia and Cornell universities and Dartmouth College -- in filling upper-level administrative positions.