After serving five years as the dean of Boston University’s School of Education, Dr. Douglas Sears may be on the way out as early as July. He has been chosen as one of three finalists, from an initial pool of about 130 candidates, to head the rural Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.
Citing its outdoorsy free spirit, Sears, in his application for the vacant position, said Warren Wilson was an ideal fit for him, in part because it “blithely ignores marketing conventions.” According to the application, the school’s “simplicity” and its unforgettable personality would be worthy of “a good chunk” of his life.
Officials at Warren Wilson acknowledged Sears’s candidacy, and a spokesman, Ben Anderson, said the committee’s goal was to make a final decision by early March. After the decision, Anderson said, the school’s current president, Doug Orr, would step down into retirement on June 30, and the new president would be installed soon thereafter.
As of December 1, 2005, Sears was one among 15 candidates selected from a pool of about 130 in the first round of the applications process. It is not clear at what point Sears notified colleagues of his decision to apply.
As academic presidential searches go, the Warren Wilson search is unorthodox. Rather than maintaining candidates’ anonymity until the close of the process – as was the case at BU during the search the that selected President Robert Brown – the search committee chose to reveal the names of the top three candidates, who include Dr. John Masterson, provost of Texas Lutheran University and Dr. William Pheiffer, provost of Ramapo College of New Jersey.
According to an official memo from the chairman of the search committee describing the progress of the presidential search, “we can no longer promise confidentiality to these finalists” but does not explain why. The document goes on to implore readers to “bear in mind that each of [the candidates] holds a significant position elsewhere, and any inquiries you feel obliged to make about them should be handled with sensitivity and discretion.”
Sears is scheduled to visit Warren Wilson on Wednesday, Feb. 22, for a visit in which he will tour the college, share a personal dinner with Orr and face questions from faculty and students about his qualifications.
As of press time, Brown and Sears were not available for comment. BU spokesman Colin Riley declined to comment at this time.
Sears first entered the academic arena in 1988 after a five-year stint as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, according to the résumé he submitted to Warren-Wilson. He then served seven years at BU as the assistant to then-President John Silber.
“As the chief trouble-shooter on a university president’s staff, I learned everything from space management to admissions to financial aid,” his application statement read.
Then, between 1995 – the first year of Jon Westling’s term as BU president-elect – and 2000, Sears was named superintendent of the BU-managed Chelsea Public School system.
“I have responsibly overseen budgets ranging from the relatively small six-figure budget of [the BU] president’s office to the 40 million dollar plus budget of the Chelsea public schools,” he listed as a credential.
Warren Wilson’s wide-open campus is in stark contrast to the urban bustle of BU. Its primary major is environmental science, and its 75-acre campus lies amid an 1,100 segment of the Swannanoa Valley, next to a 300-acre farm that students are charged with plowing. The population itself consists of 800 students and 101 faculty members, according to an institutional profile provided by the university.
The school’s motto, as stated on its website, is “We’re not for everyone … but then, maybe you’re not everyone.”
