The search for the new Chief Operating Officer, Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of the Heller School will begin shortly, according to a March 11 email to the community from Interim University President Lisa Lynch and Interim Provost Irving Epstein.

According to the email, all three searches will begin within the month, with the goal of having a suitable appointee in place around July 1. The committee in charge of finding the new COO will be chaired by Lynch and will include Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Birren, Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel, Board of Trustees member Larry Kanarek ’76, Vice President for Advancement Services Tim Cross and Profs. Wendy Cadge (SOC), Ron Etlinger (Heller), Anita Hill (Heller) and Carol Osler (ECON). The new COO will replace Steve Manos, who has held the position at the University since 2012. Search firm Spencer Stuart — which aided in the recent search for President-elect Ronald Liebowitz — will also be assisting in the search for the new COO.

The search committee for the CDO — a newly created position that resulted from the Ford Hall 2015 negotiations in December 2015 — will be led by Epstein, with assistance from search firm Witt Kieffer. The remainder of the committee will be comprised of Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Kim Godsoe, Board of Trustees member Curtis Tearte ’73, Senior Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Sheryl Sousa ’90, Director of Employment and Employee Relations and Title IX Coordinator Linda Shinomoto, Program Coordinator for Sexuality and Gender Diversity Felix Tunador, Philip Cooper ’18 , Danni Tang ’19, Vivekanand Vimal Ph.D. ’16, Veronica Flores M.S. ’13 Ph.D. ’18, Profs. Charles Golden (ANTH), Jennifer Gutsell (PSYC), Liz Hedstrom (BIOL) and Govind Sreenivasan (HIST).

Epstein was quoted in a March 1 Justice article as saying that the CDO position will involve “coordinating, implementing and helping to shape the university’s plan for diversity and inclusion ... providing guidance for and having input into decisions about recruitment of faculty, staff and students; and strengthening access to all of our facilities for all of our community members.” He added that the committee will actively be looking for a “deep commitment to diversity and inclusion, relevant experience, understanding of Brandeis’s culture and mission, people skills, strength in management, leadership, innovation, collaboration and communication” in potential candidates.

The Heller Dean search will be chaired by Prof. Dolores Acevedo-Garcia (Heller), who will also be assisted by Spencer Stuart. Search committee members will include Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Joan Dassin, Robert Dunigan, Michael Doonan, Constance Horgan and Thomas Shapiro — all from the Heller School — as well as Prof. Sara Shostak (SOC), Heller Board of Overseers chair Constance Kane Ph.D ’85, alumna Sarah Emond MPP ’09 and two students to be selected by the Heller Graduate Student Association.

These searches are just part of the aftermath of the Ford Hall 2015 protest, the negotiations for which ended in the Draft Implementation Plan for Diversity and Inclusion at Brandeis University, which Lynch released to the community on Dec. 1. Other features of the plan included arrangements for the School of Arts and Sciences to review degree requirements and investigate ways to better incorporate discussions of race into the classroom.

In a Feb. 24 email to the community, Lynch gave updates on the plan, which included a brief discussion on the School of Arts and Sciences implementing diversity representatives to focus on diversifying the faculty and improving recruitment. In a March 1 email to the Justice, Birren said that the diversity representatives play an important role as part of the search committee for tenure-line hires in the School of Arts and Sciences. “Every search for a new tenure-line faculty member has a separate search committee that consists of faculty members from the hiring department, a faculty member from outside the department, and the diversity representative,” Birren wrote, noting that the school is carrying out 10 searches for tenure-line faculty this year, and thus have 10 diversity representatives to sit on each search committee.

She added that the role of the representatives is to help the committee “build the most diverse pool of candidates possible by suggesting outreach initiatives such as advertisements in publications that will reach diverse groups, and committee outreach to … organizations that might help to diversify the pool.”

While the diversity representatives are not voting members of the search committees, she noted, they “must certify to the dean that the hiring decision was arrived at through a fair and unbiased process.”