None of the three candidates for the endowed Jean Chair who were invited to present lectures at Saint A’s have been hired. Many faculty, staff, and students attended these lectures and provided the Jean Chair search committee with feedback.

Professor Beth Salerno, chair of the history department and chair of the Jean Chair search committee told The Crier that the three final candidates “all had great strengths” but that “no one fit the definition of what we thought the chair should be.”

Because academic hires are on a cycle, the school only looks in October and hires in February. The search process will begin again in the fall of 2017.

Longtime supporter of Saint A’s and graduate of ’53, Joseph Jean donated $3.2 million to the college to create an endowed chair in the history and government department which existed during his time as an undergraduate. Saint A’s no longer has this department. The college now has the history department and the politics department.

Salerno said that while working within the perimeters that the Jean Chair be focused on history and government the college “can be pretty creative in defining what that is”.

During the first search, which took place this year, Salerno said “the administration wanted to define the position as a chair in American history and government and wanted it to be interdisciplinary in history and politics.”

Vice President for Academic Affairs Brother Isaac S. Murphy, O.S.B., Ph.D., is in charge of all academic hires at the college. Professor Salerno stated that once a job ad for the chair is created the process goes to the Jean Chair hiring committee made up of faculty from the history and politics department.

The Jean Chair search committee helps develop limiters to narrow the search. Some limiters include the type of position (associate professor, assistant professor etc.), duration, field of study, time period and specialty in teaching or research.

Salerno said the college is looking for a professor who teaches well, has a topic interesting to students, and would bring in new students who are interested in those fields.

Looking ahead to the process of re-defining the Jean Chair, Salerno said “now we have the opportunity to think through in what other ways we could define the chair that would best work for both [the history and politics] departments and be good for students”.