Dear Civil and Construction Engineering colleagues, Many of you participated firsthand in the on-campus interview visits for the five candidates that the search committee identified as having the potential skills and traits needed to be the next Bob Bowen Head of the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering. I want to thank you for the strong participation from faculty, staff, students, and advisory board members in the surveys about the candidates and for the engagement you had with members of the search committee to provide your inputs about the candidates. This afternoon (May 13), the search committee met to collect a final summary of all the inputs we received about each candidate. The surveys you completed and the discussions you had with colleagues on the committee were fundamental to our summary statements; the “pros and cons” of each candidate clearly reflected your inputs. We presented these summaries to Dean Arvind Raman and Mark Lundstrom late this afternoon. In addition to the committee’s summary statements, the committee members also provided our own poll response to the question: “Do you recommend that the Dean consider this candidate as the next LSCCE head? (Yes / No / Unsure)” Jett Pihakis, from the Russell Reynolds search firm, collected these responses and will share those with the Dean. The Dean will see where the committee might have had a uniform opinion and where we might have had a less uniform opinion. The members of the search committee did not see these responses, so we do not know the outcome. Arvind and Mark engaged the search committee with a few questions to be sure they understood our presentations to them, and they also allowed each search committee member to make comments. Near the end of the discussion, Arvind shared with the committee that he felt this head search committee had been very effective and that we had identified a pool of strong candidates. He also said that the College would “work fast and make strong offers” to keep the hiring process moving. There is a very high chance that the top candidate will be invited back to be sure they have a better view of the Indianapolis opportunity, and they can see the West Lafayette location at a more relaxed pace. There might be a need to have more than one top candidate visit campus as part of the process to hire a new head. If you are engaged in these follow up visits, please do keep in mind that we need to do as much recruiting of the candidate as possible. The top candidates are quite likely to have multiple opportunities, and we all want Purdue and the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering to be their top choice. Being part of providing the summaries to the Dean today might conclude my role as the search committee co-chair, even though I am likely to be involved in the next steps of recruiting as a fellow Purdue Engineering school head. I want to thank my colleagues on the search committee who did much of the “heavy lifting”: Melba Crawford, Ming Qu, Venkatesh Merwade, Panagiota Karava, Akanshu Sharma, Sogand Mohammadhasanzadeh, Brandon Fulk, Pablo Zaviattieri, Teresa DeMien, Eric Putman, and my co-chair from the CCE Advisory Board, Chris Burke. It has been a pleasure working with them. Regards, Bill Crossley -- ____________________ William A. Crossley, Ph.D. (he/him/his) Uhrig & Vournas Head of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Professor, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Director, PEGASAS, FAA Center of Excellence for General Aviation [cid:image003.png@01D748C2.76686F50] For calendar assistance, please contact Audrey Sherwood: asherwo@purdue.edu<mailto:asherwo@purdue.edu>
