Acorn

Issue date: 2/22/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Charlotte Hammond Carol Haber was the second candidate for dean of the College of the Liberal Arts to speak to the campus.

University Center room 107 was silent. A crowd of faculty members and a handful of students listened to Carole Haber, chair of the History Department at the University of Delaware, speak about herself and why she is right for Drew University.

Haber is the second candidate for the dean of the College of Liberal Arts position that will be open after current Dean Paolo Cucchi steps down after this semester. The presentation was designed to introduce the candidates to campus and give the faculty a chance to interact with the potential dean.

In an e-mail announcing Haber's talk, Chair of the Search Committee Perry Leavell announced that the question and answer period for the faculty would be in an Executive session for voting members of the CLA faculty only. While this was not announced for the first Dean Candidate, Steve Roberson, Leavell said it came out of concern for the candidate's privacy. "We wanted faculty to feel free to ask any questions they might have, and we wanted candidates to know that we would protect their privacy when they answered the questions.

"Candidates might not answer questions candidly if they knew their words might be reported in a local paper and then read back on their home campuses," he added.

During the open session, Haber chose to speak first about her own educational history. She received her bachelor's at Washington University and both her master's and Ph.D. in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been chair of the History Department at the University of Delaware since 1998. While mainly focusing on her career as a scholar, Haber described her "strange path to administration."

"I was going to the dark side, they were those evil people," Haber said, drawing the first of many laughs from the crowd. But Haber, an admitted "academic junkie," saw her move to administration as creating a whole new way for her to look at scholarship. "It shaped the way I saw academics and my position as a teacher and scholar affected and shaped my administrative abilities," she said. "What ties us all together is a desire to be the best teachers and scholars."

Haber described her own accomplishments as an administrator who worked hard to increase alumni giving to the history department at the University of Delaware. "That dirty 'M word' is essential," she said in reference to money.

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