Student Services Manager recruitment underway

September 14 , 2007

I want to thank the Student Services team for their dedicated work throughout the summer during this period of transition in leadership. Student Services is such a vital area of support for our students, faculty, and staff that I engaged the University’s Office of Human Resources (HR) in an in-depth analysis of the area during the summer. My objective has been to build on the extraordinary foundation established by Mary K and on the individual strengths of each staff member to make a strong team even stronger.

The Student Services team provided reflective, thoughtful, and insightful information to HR that contributed substantially to HR’s analysis and subsequent recommendations. The primary recommendation made by HR, which I have accepted, is to create a new Student Services Manager staff position at the Administrator-III level to provide strategic, tactical, and operational leadership to the School’s student services.

Due to the importance of this position and the necessity of assuring that we find the best qualified candidate, I have decided to conduct an open, extensive recruitment. The position will be posted on HR’s website and is expected to attract external candidates. I invite and strongly encourage internal candidates to apply, as well. The position will be posted within the next day or so. Candidates must apply online through PittSource. Theresa can provide a copy of the full position description to anyone interested in reviewing it.

Although not all of the details of the candidate review process have been finalized, I have made the following decisions:

All internal candidates will be considered and interviewed for the position.
The Student Services team will be given the opportunity to interview each of the candidates.
Program Chairs and senior staff will also be given the opportunity to interview the candidates.
On the advice of HR and the organization of student services offices in other schools at Pitt, Shabana Reza will join the Student Services team and administratively report to the new manager.

Assuming that the recruitment process is successful, I anticipate that the position will be filled in early October. I encourage you to invite highly qualified candidates to apply.