Boston University’s Metropolitan College Dean Jay Halfond said he is stepping down as dean in December to become more involved as a faculty member.
“I’ve been thinking about it for years, actually,” he said. “I’ve always been teaching and writing in and around being an administrator, and I always thought I’d like to allocate a significant part of my career to really being primarily, if not exclusively, a faculty member.”
Halfond will step down from his position as dean Dec. 31. MET Associate Dean for Academic Programs Tanya Zlateva will serve as interim dean beginning Jan. 1, 2013.
He will remain on campus for the spring 2013 semester to teach a School of Education class and assist with the transition.
“I’m staying at BU in the spring and I’m going to help Tanya Zlateva with those things that she’s not familiar with,” he said. “The spring is really a chance to make sure that I hand everything over smoothly and not abruptly. People change all the time in their careers, and transitions don’t have to be disruptive.”
Halfond joined the BU community in 1997 as associate dean and associate professor of administrative sciences. He became dean of MET in 2001.
“[The decision] was really just an anticipated lifestyle change,” Halfond said. “I don’t see this being any less work, but really just a change in style altogether. I feel like I’ve had a series of opportunities at being an administrator, and now I want to spend more time doing a number of things, primarily teaching.”
He said he is leaving the MET dean’s office more involved in outreach than when he entered it.
“When I came to MET initially, it was really much more a kind of a night school of campus, very local, geared toward evening classes,” he said. “We were not reaching accomplished working professional adults as much as we should.”
Halfond said he successfully developed MET to reach out to a working, corporate audience.
“It was a matter of changing the profile of both students and faculty,” he said. “Over time, we branched out into a number of areas, in particular, long-distance learning which is something I’m very proud of, because I feel like I took it on before it became fashionable.”
Developing a distance-learning program was difficult, Halfond said.
“It was a challenge to deal with something that had a negative connotation in the marketplace and to make it really worthy of BU,” he said, “and I think we did a great job of creating very rigorous, engaging, participatory programs that attracted thousands of students.”
University Provost Jean Morrison said Halfond was essential in developing MET’s programs.
“He’s done a wonderful job at ensuring that MET is at the forefront of adult education and online learning for the entire time he’s been the dean,” she said. “MET was really sort of out in front in terms of online offerings and innovative programming and Dean Halfond was largely responsible for those efforts.”
Morrison said BU does not plan to immediately launch the search for a new dean.
“Dean Zlateva will step up and serve as the interim while we look at MET and think about what the right timing and what the right structure is to go forward,” she said. “We’ll follow the standard procedures if and when we make the determination to go ahead and hire a permanent dean.”
Halfond is the third college dean at BU to announce stepping down in six weeks.
School of Hospitality Administration Dean Christopher Muller announced in September he would step down at the end of the fall 2012 semester and take a sabbatical before returning to teaching.
In October, College of General Studies Dean Linda Wells announced she will step down at the end of the spring 2013 semester, take a year-long sabbatical and return to BU in a reduced role.
Morrison said the closeness of the announcements is normal.
“It’s the normal part of the academic year where one is thinking ahead toward the next and planning for the next year,” she said. “It’s a logical time of the year for these kinds of changes to be announced … The timing of these allows for the search process to move forward.”
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