Two left in Presidental search

Who will be the next president of Georgia College & State University? After a five-month search, the Board of Regents and the University System of Georgia Chancellor Thomas Meredith announced two finalists for the presidency Nov. 4.
Dr. Dorothy Leland, vice president and professor of philosophy at the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University, and Dr. James W. Schmotter, dean and professor of management at Western Michigan University’s Harworth College of Business, were named as the top two candidates.
“We are very pleased with the outcome of this search,” said Chancellor Meredith in a press release by the University System of Georgia. “It drew a very large number of applicants, but these two finalists represent the cream of the crop. Both of them are highly qualified to lead Georgia College & State University in its mission as Georgia’s only public liberal arts university.”
Both candidates bring over 20 years of higher education experience to the position. They also have a deep understanding of the liberal arts mission, and both candidates have been thoroughly impressed by GC&SU overall.
“GC&SU is a university on the move,” Leland said. “It has earned statewide recognition as Georgia’s designated public liberal arts university and is well positioned to gain national prominence as well. The more I learned about GC&SU’s commitment to providing students with a superior liberal arts education, the more interested I became in joining the university community. During my visit to GC&SU, I met some extraordinary students and I was enormously impressed by the talent and dedication of faculty and staff.”
According to Schmotter, it was the liberal arts mission that first attracted him to GC&SU.
“While I’ve been a successful business school dean at two very good universities, my education and background are solidly in the liberal arts — a B.A., M.A. and PhD. in American History,” Schmotter said. “I think I’ve been able to do that because my education gave me the tools to learn new things, to conceptualize and solve problems and to communicate effectively. That’s what GC&SU is all about. It also has the benefit of affordable public university tuition, which means that students from many income levels can come and have their lives.”

Leland has held her current position at Florida Atlantic since 2001. She has nearly 20 years of experience in a variety of college and university positions, six of them at Florida Atlantic. She served as the university’s associate provost from 2000 to 2001, executive director of university strategic planning from 1998 to 2001 and special assistant to the provost from 1998 to 2000. From 1995 to 1998, she served as the director of Florida Atlantic’s Women’s Studies Center and executive director of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.
Leland has also chaired three administrative search committees and earned the President’s Leadership Award while at Florida Atlantic. Prior to her arrival in Florida, Leland spent 11 years at Purdue University. From 1993 to 1995, she served as the inaugural director of Purdue’s Women’s Resource Office, and from 1984 to 1993, she directed an interdisciplinary doctoral program in English and philosophy. Leland holds a B.A. in English, an M.A. in American Studies and a Ph.D. in philosophy, all earned at Purdue University.
“I am passionate about the individual and public benefits of liberal arts education,” Leland said. “GC&SU shares this passion. It is a great match for my educational values and academic and administrative background.”
Dr. Schmotter holds a B.A. in history from Muskingum College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history, both from Northwestern University. He also completed graduate course work in higher education administration at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College.
Schmotter has served in his current role since 1997. During his tenure at Western Michigan, he has led the faculty in developing a new B.B.A. curriculum that requires students to maintain an electronic professional portfolio and complete an internship, a study-abroad experience or a directed research project. Schmotter also led the planning and implementation of a ubiquitous wireless computing environment for WMU’s Haworth College, one of the nation’s largest business colleges. Prior to joining Western Michigan, he previously served as dean and professor of management at Lehigh University’s College of Business and Economics from 1992-1997. Schmotter also served as associate dean of Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management from 1984 to 1992.
“I’m really impressed by the campus, by Milledgeville and by the commitment that everyone I met has to the student-centered, public liberal arts mission and to improvement,” Schmotter said. “I’ve seldom seen such consensus and enthusiasm and I caught its contagion immediately.”
Both candidates seem to be very eager to take the next step in their professional career to possibly become the next president of GC&SU.
“I’m interested in being a president because, after 11 years as a dean, I’ve realized that what I like best is the diversity of the job,” Schmotter said. “I get to interact with all of the important stakeholder groups — faculty, students, alumni, donors, the local and state community — and sharing with them all the stories of our success is both fun and challenging. This is, in my estimation, much of what a president does. He or she has to understand where each of these groups are coming from and adjust the message accordingly. I’ve had lots of experiences working at two public universities, a strong private university and an Ivy League business school. I think I’m ready to put these all together, and a presidency — especially at a place I believe in like GC&SU — seems the best place to do that.”
“University presidents have unique opportunities to make a difference,” Leland said. “They serve as a catalyst for the genius of others and as stewards of the academic and educational values of their institutions. Although the job of a university president is extremely demanding, the rewards can be significant. These rewards are expressed in the success stories of students, the creativity and brilliance of faculty and the ingenuity and dedicated service of staff. They are also reflected in the many benefits that a university brings to its community, state and region.”
After Dr. Rosemary DePaolo left GC&SU in June, a search committee of students, faculty and staff was developed to aid in the search for a new president. The committee recently narrowed the number of candidates and sent a submission to Chancellor Meredith and the Board of Regents.
“We were fortunate to have sufficiently strong candidates to make a confident submission to the Chancellor,” said Dr. David Evans, chair of the presidential search committee and also chair of the English, Speech, and Journalism department at GC&SU.
Dr. Genie Snyder, president of the GC&SU Alumni Association, is a member of the search committee and believes that the search was a thorough one.
“Our campus is at a strategic point, as we were when President DePaolo was chosen,” he said. “The process that David Evans created and that the entire campus helped to develop was intense, but inclusive and revealing. It was exhilarating to be involved with so many members of the faculty, staff, students, community, Alumni Association, Foundation and candidates from across the nation. Our presidency is a highly desirable position because of the consistent work through recent years by all of these constituencies.”
The Board of Regents expects to make an announcement of the newly chosen president after its Nov. 18-19 meeting. After that, the new president will begin his or her tenure at the beginning of the spring semester.
“As far as I know at this point, it’s still in the cards that the new president will join the campus at the first of the year,” Evans said. “The timeframe is a bit short, but all of the candidates were very well apprised of the hope we and the Chancellor have to bring a new president to campus for the spring semester.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 14 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry