Faculty, students and the community gathered in Howe Hall on Tuesday afternoon to begin the second portion of the meetings regarding the search for a new dean for Iowa State’s College of Engineering. The main focus of the meeting was on the audience questions.

Gary Mirka, professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering and former associate dean and department chair, and Luis Rico-Gutierrez, dean of the College of the Design, are the co-chairs of the dean search committee and led the listening session.

“It really is an opportunity for us to listen to faculty, staff and students from the College of Engineering on how they want that next dean of the college to look like,” Mirka said.

The due date for applications is Jan. 1, 2019, and the initial screening will be completed Jan. 18. Off site (airport) interviews will be Feb. 2 and 3. On campus interviews will be late February. The new dean will begin their work July 1.

The co-chairs said they are seeking nominations and their goal is to create a diverse pool of highly-qualified candidates. They asked the audience to explore their professional networks to identify candidates.

Mirka and Gutierrez asked the audience what characteristics and what challenges they feel the college is facing, emphasizing on the next dean skill set.

“We need leaders with different skill sets as time goes on,” Rico-Gutierrez said.

Some of the topics the audience discussed included bettering the dean’s collaboration with the college and maintaining the surge in engineering students. A concern was improving the retention of staff because of the great turn over in some positions. The audience felt the college needs a dean with a clear sense of the future and the mission of where they are going.

“They need to have good communications with people outside of the university such as legislators alumni industry and governments and to also be able to have super effective communication within the college of engineering and try to continue to retain the highest quality staff and students,” Mirka said.

Audience members also mentioned looking to attract candidates who appreciate and have the ability to be involved with graduate students.

The next step will be tomorrow to review the comments through the forums, advisory council and campaign committee.

“Every department has had an opportunity to interact,” Mirka said. “It’s been encouraging to see all of the high quality nominations. Hopefully during the month of December we will start to see more of those nominations rolling in and give us something to look at in January.” 

Audience members discussed why they felt Iowa State was a good college for a dean to want to apply to, discussing their love for Iowa State and their feelings on the college being “student focused.”

“The more we hear from people the more those opinions can be heard,” Rico-Gutierrez said.