Whoever replaces Howard Smith as dean of the Anderson Schools of Management next May will be the 11th of UNM's 14 deans hired within the last three years.
UNM Provost Brian Foster, who at the end of the 2004 academic year will have hired eight new deans during his tenure, said there are a variety of reasons for the recent turnover.
"There really isn't a pattern to it," Foster said. "People carry a lot of baggage and these are very high-pressure jobs. People tend to be quite senior when they take deanships. Others just aren't good at it. The bottom line is that these people have to want to be working on administrative kinds of things."
The turnover in deans has happened at a time when many top UNM officials are also new to their jobs. Louis Caldera started as president in August and five of the seven members of the Board of Regents are 2003 additions.
Foster said all the "new blood" at the University is purely coincidental - there was no effort to bring in new leadership on so many levels all at once.
Joe Cecchi, dean of the College of Engineering and the first of Foster's hires three years ago, said he is impressed with the quality and diversity of the new deans.
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"Many of these people have been in higher education for some time and came from good places," Cecchi said. "Others know our University very well. It's a good mix."
Six of UNM's deans are women, eight are men and five are from "underrepresented groups," he added.
"This is a really interesting group of people," Foster said. "It looks like they're going to work well collegially together and that doesn't happen everywhere."
