The Georgia Southern University administration recently filled one dean seat, and still has two openings. The College of Science and Mathematics and the College of Health and Human Sciences are both lacking permanent deans, but there has only been work on searching for a dean for COSM. The search for the CHHS dean is not likely to begin until next year.

While a dean search is a process that requires many man-hours, the university should not confine itself to searching for just one dean at a time. The possibility of missing out on a highly qualified candidate for the dean of CHHS because the school isn’t looking even though the position isn’t permanently filled is a hard concept to swallow. As the lengthy searches for deans has proven, finding an interested, quality dean takes time and a little luck, so limiting the time that the school is searching for a permanent dean makes very little sense.

The university is right to prioritize finding deans for the larger colleges and taking its time to find quality dean candidates, but it should not completely neglect the other colleges while searching for one dean. The university should reconsider how it runs its search so that qualified candidates do not get passed over simply because they are unavailable when the university is looking.