Initial provost search narrowed to just one candidate

Norma Bouchard, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, will be the last candidate from the initial search pool of provost candidates to be interviewed. Graphic by HARRY LADA, Art Director

One provost to rule them all, one provost to find them, one provost to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. 

Norma Bouchard, the current dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, will be coming to Chapman University to interview for the provost position Feb. 14 and 15. Yet there’s one caveat to this visit — she’s the lone finalist to be considered within this initial search after months of deliberation and a pool of hundreds of candidates organized through search firm Heidrick & Struggles. 

If Bouchard is not ultimately selected, President Daniele Struppa told The Panther that he planned to reopen the provost search the next semester, meaning an interim candidate would likely be appointed after current Provost Glenn Pfeiffer retires at the end of the academic year. 

Originally the pool had been narrowed down to four finalists — Rhonda Phillips, Feniosky Pena-Mora, Walter Jacobs and Rhonda Gonzales — who came to campus and interviewed in December 2020 prior to the university’s winter break. However, all four candidates were evidently deemed unsuitable, after constituents such as senior staff, faculty, members of the Office of the Provost and the Student Government Association (SGA) provided feedback in the form of a Qualtrics survey. Struppa said there was a lack of general agreement amongst all parties.

“When I looked at the (curriculum vitaes) of the candidates that the committee (brought), I thought that they were all very good; the devil is always in the details,” Struppa said. “We weren’t able to find the right person on the first try.” 

Both Struppa and search committee leader Janeen Hill declined to comment further on what specific aspects of the candidates’ profile made them unfit for the position. However, Pena-Mora appeared to elicit dismay among both faculty and SGA due to a past record of faculty disapproval in previous positions. Gordon Babst, associate professor of political science at Chapman, said a lot of faculty felt like they “dodged a bullet,” with SGA’s provost interview committee penning a Dec. 13 private letter to Struppa about Pena-Mora’s being unfit for candidacy. 

“Pena-Mora seems like a really great scholar and he’d bring a lot of value, but our biggest concerns were some of the accusations raised at previous universities,” Goodrich said. “We put our support behind another candidate, so that’s the reason why we wrote that statement.”

Goodrich told The Panther that Struppa preferred a different candidate than Phillips, but declined to comment when asked who the president expressed support for. 

It is unclear where exactly Bouchard fell in the search committee’s minds with respect to the original four candidates. Struppa said that rankings of the finalists were relative, and that any candidate eventually selected would still be a “first-level choice.” Hill, meanwhile, declined to comment on whether the committee went back into the pool of candidates to pick out Bouchard as another option, but indicated they had a reevaluation of the search after the reaction to the original finalists.

“It became apparent that we should probably pause and take a look at the search pool again to see … if there was someone else we really need to bring in and speak with,” Hill said. “That’s where we are right now.” 

Bouchard’s curriculum vitae presents experience as a dean both at Drexel University and as the dean of San Diego State University’s (SDSU) College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. According to her SDSU experience, Bouchard was responsible for overseeing 657 faculty members, approximately one half of Chapman’s total number as an entire university. 

Babst, in particular, said he has no issue with the fact that none of the original four finalists were selected. He said that Bouchard’s achievements looked impressive on paper, but attested they weren’t “impressively different” from the previous four’s credentials. 

“She may lay out a vision that is super appealing and she may say so many of the right things … That’s why we do have to meet (her),” Babst said. “I don’t want to peg her right now, but just on paper, it’s not clear that she is in a completely other class than the rest — and that makes sense since they’re coming from the same pool.”

Bouchard did not respond to The Panther’s request for comment. 

Hill said the search committee was on track to bring in a new provost by February, despite Struppa’s indication that this round of candidates would end with Bouchard. She noted the extreme care the university was operating with in the search process, repeatedly stressing the need to “get it right” given a tumultuous last few months for the university in the form of the coronavirus and John Eastman’s impact. 

“The issues around social justice, COVID-19, those things have changed us; we will not go back to Chapman (in the) fall of 2019,” Hill said. “Chapman wants to ratchet itself forward with a very strong academic leader who can partner well with a president, who has the support of the faculty, who students believe is a person they can communicate and work with … That’s the combination that will allow us to become the next iteration of Chapman.”