Despite nearly eight months of official searching, a replacement dean for the School of Arts and Sciences still has not been selected.
All faculty and staff seem to be anticipating the appointment, but they vary in degree of uncertainty about what the future will hold once the successor to current Dean Samuel Preston -- who will step down in December -- is named.
"You just sort of wonder, 'Well, what's going to happen with a new dean?'" said Ann Matter, head of the Religious Studies Department. "Because all bets are off, in a way."
"If it's a [person] you don't know at all, that can be very scary," she said. "If it's someone you know, someone you've worked with over years at Penn, that's sort of less frightening, because you know what to expect from the person."
Expectations about the time frame of the search also vary among faculty.
"We expected to learn around now, but we didn't have a specific date in mind," Political Science Department Chairman Rogers Smith said. "It has not been a source of anxiety."
Matter said that the amount of time the staff is given to prepare for a new dean can affect the ease of transition.
"It would be good to know some months in advance," she said. "If the new dean is making the transition this semester, then when he or she actually takes office it will be a lot smoother for everybody."
The search committee members remain secretive about their progress and possible candidates.
Chaired by School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean Eduardo Glandt, the committee began work in April, a month after Preston announced his departure plans.
"I know much too well that the students -- as well as the staff and faculty -- are eager to know about the SAS dean search," Glandt wrote in an e-mail interview. "Unfortunately, there is nothing I could [release] without somehow jeopardizing the ultimate success of the search."
Many SAS department heads said that they remain confident in the search committee's judgment.
"I'm sure whoever they choose will have in mind the same general priorities we all have in mind for research and teaching and scholarship," Math Department Chairman Julius Shaneson said.
Though he said that there will be "some form of adjustment" once the new dean is installed, Shaneson said that he is not anticipating any major problems.
"There certainly will be some period of getting used to the way the dean likes to function, but we don't envision any big crisis at all," he said.
Smith described the atmosphere in the Political Science Department similarly.
The Political Science faculty members "were more concerned about who would be the next president of the United States," he said. "We're not making any special preparations."
Yet, as chairwoman of the SAS Committee on Teaching and Learning, Matter said that not knowing who the next dean will be has brought some of her committee's work to a standstill.
"Everybody's just in agreement that there's no sense in making any big plans until we find out who the dean is," she said, noting that the committee wants plans to fall in line with the dean's goals.
Though Shaneson said he foresees a relatively smooth transition, he noted that a dean with a "totally different agenda from anything we would expect" could make the transition challenging.
"If a dean comes in with a set of totally revolutionary ideas, then we need a period to adjust," he said.
The last search for a new SAS dean concluded with the temporary appointment of Acting Dean Walter Wales in 1996. He served until Preston came onboard at the beginning of 1998.
