The School of Information Studies has selected three finalists to fill its vacant deanship, a list that includes current interim dean Elizabeth D. Liddy.

The other candidates are Thomas A. Finholt, from the University of Michigan and Richard Welke, from the University of Georgia.

Liddy has served as interim dean since the death of then-dean Raymond von Dran on July 23 of last year. Von Dran was dean for 12 years.

Margaret D. Costello Spillett, director of communications at the iSchool, said via e-mail that the candidates had visited campus in the past month to give presentations.

The search committee will meet Monday to review feedback about the candidates and prepare their recommendation to Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina, Spillett said.

‘All three of the final candidates have now been interviewed on campus by faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students and by university administrators,’ Mitchell Wallerstein, dean of the Maxwell School of Public Affairs and Citizenship and chair of the iSchool search committee, said in an e-mail to The Daily Orange.

Three other SU colleges besides the iSchool are in the midst of dean searches, including The College of Arts and Sciences, the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The Newhouse School and the iSchool are the only two to announce finalists.

Prior to her role as interim dean, Liddy served as a trustee professor in the iSchool. She also was the director of SU’s Center for Natural Language Processing, a job she began in 1999.

Finholt is the associate dean for research and innovation, research professor and director of collaborators for research on electronic work at the School of Information at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the design, deployment and use of cyber-infrastructure in science and engineering.

Richard Welke serves as a professor of computer information systems and the director of the center for process innovation at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business Administration. His research focuses on methodology engineering, repositories and business processes.

– News editor Melissa Daniels contributed reporting to this story.

 

Published on January 31, 2008 at 12:00 pm