After stretching on for almost a year, the search for the first executive director of the Student Health Center is back to its first stages.
After stretching on for almost a year, the search for the first executive director of the Student Health Center is back to its first stages.
Last month, the University interviewed three people on campus and offered the position to the only suitable candidate, said Jean Hanson, administrative director for Student Health. The woman, whose name was not released, considered coming to Duke, but when her current university expanded her job and increased her salary, she declined Duke’s invitation.
After the preferred candidate told Duke she would not come, University officials decided they would re-start the search to find someone equally qualified. Hanson said the initial pool was “thin,” and none of the other candidates fulfilled the needs of the position.
“There was a fair amount of interest, but we’re looking for a very high caliber person that will be immediately credible,” Hanson said. “It’s a challenge to find somebody that understands all that’s involved, that has experience with the politics of it.”
The executive director position was created last year to refocus the Student Health Center’s role within the Duke University Medical Center, where teaching and research are emphasized, and within the student community, where care and wellness are the primary concerns.
As Student Health carves out its niche, the director will have to struggle with two separate administrations on the Medical Center and University sides. Historically, the demands from the two arenas have been varied, but with new leadership in both the Duke University Health System and the University, collaboration has increased. “We’ve got some kind of unified vision—and that’s new,” Hanson said.
The qualifications for the executive director have not changed since the search began, and the same outside firm, Diversified Search Inc., will continue to feed candidates to Duke. The firm is known for its success in finding qualified female and minority candidates, which Caroline Nisbet, chair of the search committee, said is a goal.
Because the University is hoping for an executive director with academic experience, the hiring cycle opens up at this time of year, when candidates can finish the school year before moving.
“This is more the time frame when people are looking, though one of the reasons you use a search firm is you’re trying to recruit people who aren’t really looking,” said Nisbet, assistant vice president for student affairs.
Administrators hope to have an executive director named sometime in the spring and in place before the fall semester.
Although Student Health has been without an official leader since it was restructured last summer, outreach efforts to promote wellness have not halted.
Megan Burns, a public policy graduate student who works with graduate student health issues, said attention to graduate student health has increased markedly over the past year, following a several year trend. She mentioned an increase in communication and programming.
Eventually the University hopes to conduct research on community wellness through the Student Health Center, but until a new director is hired, most of the growth will continue to focus on community outreach.
“The long-term goal is to bring educators, researchers from the Medical Center and the University—the academic component—in on this,” Hanson said. “The advantage will be that [a director] can spend the majority of the time building those relationships.”
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