College of Health Dean Search Under Way

As Lehigh moves forward with plans for its new College of Health, a search team, supported by Diversified Search, has helped to identify a pool of potential candidates for founding dean, with finalists likely to come to campus for interviews before the end of the fall semester, Provost Pat Farrell told the Lehigh community at a Town Hall Tuesday.

Meanwhile, plans for the new Health, Science and Technology building, a hub for interdisciplinary research and the future home of the College of Health, are advancing, with its design now under development and a planned open in 2021.

To assess the university’s available resources and initiate the process of managing change, Lehigh has established six working groups of staff and faculty who are focusing on outreach across campus to inform some critical components of the new College: start-up organizational framework; recruitment, hiring and retention of faculty and staff; existing infrastructure and central services; messaging to prospective students, partners, and stakeholders; collaboration with existing academic programs; and allocation models for tuition revenue and research income.

More information on the groups and their work can be found on the Provost’s website.

Farrell said group members will put together draft recommendations for the incoming dean that will say, in essence, “We’ve thought a lot about, for example, the organization of this new College, and we have some ideas for you that we think will be very useful, based on our own experiences.” Farrell said those ideas might include approaches already in place and that work well at Lehigh, or approaches that the university has not yet tried but wants to make happen.

“We would like to get a head start on thinking about what this College might look like, all fitting under the broad heading of ‘here’s what we’re trying to do with the new College,’” said Farrell. “How do we think about these particular areas in ways that best complement or support what we’re trying to do? They might look different from how we do these things in current colleges. In fact, it’s possible they might look quite different.”

Farrell encouraged those attending the Town Hall to reach out to group members if they want to share any ideas or get involved in the planning.