No finalists yet as provost search continues

Only one of the initial candidates remains among the group in contention to become Penn's top academic officer, sources say. Only one of the initial candidates remains among the group in contention to become Penn's top academic officer, sources say.This article was reported by Daily Pennsylvanian editors Yochi Dreazen and Michael Mugmon and staff writer Edward Sherwin, and written by Edward Sherwin. One of the four candidates -- all of whom are from schools other than Penn -- is still in contention for the job as Penn's chief academic officer. One of the others withdrew from the search, while the remaining two were rejected over questions about their resumes or recommendations, the sources said. The committee is also now looking more heavily at candidates from inside the University, the sources said, although internal candidates have been considered since the beginning. Also, an undisclosed number of external candidates not from the initial list continue to be evaluated, the sources said. The University has been without a permanent provost since December 31, when Chodorow left office. He had announced his intention to resign two months earlier while a candidate for the vacant presidency of the University of Texas at Austin. Chodorow had served as provost since 1994. Although Chodorow failed to win the Texas post, he accepted an offer last month to head up the California Virtual University, a consortium of California colleges offering distance-learning courses. The committee's continuing work -- and the fact that no finalists have been determined -- makes it unlikely that a permanent provost will be named in the near future. Administrators said in January that they hoped to fill the position by this past summer. Former Deputy Provost Michael Wachter has been serving as an interim provost for the last 10 months, and remains a potential candidate for the permanent job. In January, Rodin convened a search committee of 11 students and faculty members to search out and recommend potential successors to Chodorow. One of the sources indicated that the committee had classified the internal and external candidates into first-, second- and third-tier groupings during the evaluation process. Third-year Education graduate student Sandra Tilford -- one of the two graduate and professional students appointed to the committee -- said yesterday that the panel was brought together late last month for the first time since submitting its initial list of candidates to Rodin over the summer. "We reconvened to continue the search and consider other candidates," she said, though she declined to provide any specifics on the names or qualifications of the initial slate of candidates. Rodin could not be reached for comment last night. Outgoing Wharton School Dean Thomas Gerrity, who heads the provost search committee, declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of the process. Several other members of the committee also declined to comment, instead referring to Gerrity as the committee's sole spokesperson. At Penn, searches for top officers are conducted privately, with school officials not announcing the names or positions of any candidates until the final selection has been made. Sources close to the committee said that it is important to keep candidates' identities private so as not to "handicap" the University's chances of attracting a top academic administrator to the post. The sources also declined to confirm the names of any of the internal candidates being considered by the search committee for fear that they would withdraw from the search when identified or if the candidates discovered that they had not been the committee's top choice for the job. However, many other colleges -- in particular public schools receiving substantial state funding -- conduct open searches, for which a list of finalists' names are made public before the winning candidate is announced. In 1996, the state Circuit Court ordered the University of Michigan to release the names of the four finalists for its presidency -- which included Chodorow -- under the state's Open Meetings Act. Both external and internal candidates have been considered from the outset of the committee's deliberations, sources said. But the "balance may have changed a bit" in favor of internal candidates in the wake of concerns over the first slate of external candidates, one source said. Only two provosts in the University's history, including Chodorow, have been named from outside Penn. The identities of the internal candidates to replace Chodorow remain a closely guarded secret, with the committee refusing to disclose any information about their identities. Also, none of the candidates themselves have publicly admitted to being in contention. On Tuesday, however, outgoing Law School Dean Colin Diver acknowledged that several deans had approached him about entering the race for provost, but that he declined, citing a wish to return to teaching and research. Diver announced his resignation from the deanship of Law School Tuesday, effective next summer. Gerrity's resignation from the deanship of the Wharton School was also announced Tuesday, but it remains unclear whether the move will affect his chairmanship of the provost search committee. Gerrity said he will continue to teach in Wharton.