Cory Wallack and a committee have spent the last two academic years looking for a qualified Health Services director. Now they’re hoping they’ve finally found one.

Health Services is in the formal decision-making process for a director and is performing reference checks on each of the three candidates, said Wallack, co-chair of the search committee and director of the Counseling Center. He said he anticipates the department will announce the new director before the end of the spring semester and have the candidate start work by July 1, he said.

‘It’s crucial for them to have someone who’s providing the senior leadership for their office,’ Wallack said.

Health Services officials declined to reveal the names of the candidates, but Wallack said none of them are from Health Services.

Without a director, Health Services has been lacking the person who leads and carries out the department’s mission. Directors are responsible for the oversight of all the policies and procedures in Health Services and for collaborating with the other health and wellness units on campus, said Rebecca Dayton, associate vice president of student affairs for health and wellness, in an email.

In the absence of a director, Dayton and Kristen Jones-Kolod, executive director of budget and operations within the Division of Student Affairs, shared responsibility for leading Health Services. Dayton said they worked hard to keep the system running as smoothly as possible, but did not take on new initiatives, policies or directions like a permanent director would.

Kathy VanVechten, special assistant to the director of Health Services, said the department has remained intact because of the staff’s dedication to providing quality service to students.

‘People here are very talented and self-directed,’ VanVechten said. ‘We’ve had an alternative to a director that has been very successful, and we’re very fortunate for that. I’m grateful to them for being so committed in this period of time.’

But Wallack said Health Services is struggling to interact with other campus health and wellness offices and to remain a visible presence on campus. He said some work isn’t getting done — not because of a lack of effort by the Health Services staff, but because Health Services employees see students on a day-to-day basis and have little time to do much else.

The search for a new director began in September 2009, when James Jacobs, the former director, took a job as the director of health services at Ohio State University, according to a Nov. 9, 2009, article published in The Daily Orange.

Dayton hired the search committee, made of administrators, in fall 2009 to conduct a national search for potential candidates. The search committee is co-chaired by Wallack and Colleen Bench, director of the Parents Office. Bench could not be reached for comment.

In the beginning of the search, the committee was only looking for medical doctors and ended up receiving a small pool of applicants, Wallack said. The committee eventually decided that the applicants weren’t qualified and refused to hire any of them, he said.

In spring 2010, Health Services began working with a consulting firm and loosened the previous requirements — accepting applications from medical doctors, nurse practitioners and those with a background in health administration or public health, which diversified the group of applicants, Wallack said.

The search was narrowed to three candidates several weeks ago; in February 2010, there were 10 candidates, Wallack said.

While at SU, the candidates ate lunch with four health and wellness interns who are doing their internships at Health Services, said Dayton, associate vice president of student affairs for health and wellness.

The students evaluated the candidates in terms of management style, vision for health services, understanding of college health, and passion for the position, Wallack said in an email. Students were also able to voice their opinions and meet the candidates during an open forum on campus, Wallack said.

Though the search has taken almost two full years, the Health Services staff feels it has been worth the wait, VanVechten said.

‘The university is committed to getting the best possible director here, and that can take time,’ VanVechten said.

Wallack said he was initially surprised how long it was taking to find candidates, but realized those with high levels of education and experience are less likely to leave their jobs due to the economic crisis. He has seen a decrease in the number of qualified applicants in other searches throughout the Division of Student Affairs, he said.

‘People don’t want to relocate families right now,’ Wallack said. ‘Selling houses is hard to do.’

egsawyer@syr.edu

Published on April 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Liz: egsawyer@syr.edu | @3sawyer