Batten School Dean Harry Harding announced Thursday that he will step down from his position at the end of his five-year term, which expires in May. As the founding dean of the Batten School, Harding has helped set the foundation for the school and develop the school’s degree programs for both graduate and undergraduate students.
A search committee is already in place to recruit a replacement for Harding.
Harding said the approaching end of his five-year term gives him a good opportunity to assess his situation and make plans for the future. Though he has found his position as dean rewarding, Harding said he wants to move away from administrative work and get back to teaching and writing.
“I realized that I’ve been doing this work for 15 years,” Harding said. “For someone who is a scholar and a policy analyst at heart, I felt that it was time to get back to that activity.”
Harding said that he hopes to spend more time in Asia, a region that has been the focus of his scholarship.
“I would like to get back to both teaching and writing on those subjects, which is my core expertise,” Harding said. “I also would like to do some writing and maybe some teaching in leadership.”
Harding also spoke about the state of the Batten School and the strides it has made in the last five years, which he credited to the school’s entire faculty and staff. Included among these accomplishments are the establishment of a set of dual degree programs and the recruitment of 14 full-time faculty members.
“The school here is in very good shape,” Harding said. “It’s a good time to bring in somebody with a fresh look.”
The new dean will likely be someone with a lot of public policy experience who can help bring the University’s newest school to the next level, University spokesperson McGregor McCance said in an email.
“Qualified candidates will have deep experience in areas including public policy development, leadership education, higher education generally, and proven administrative successes,” McCance said. “[The] right leader will be able to identify growth areas while ensuring continued excellence in our core competencies that include teaching public policy at the undergraduate and graduate levels while infusing leadership skills that position our students.”
The new dean will have to deal with space constraints in the new building, focus on fundraising and chart a path for curriculum growth, said Education Prof. David Breneman, the chair of the dean search committee.
“At some point the new dean will have to grapple with space — we don’t have any classrooms in [Garrett Hall],” Breneman said. “[And the] new dean will have to decide whether he or she wants to expand the school into international waters.”
Harding joins three other deans who announced intentions to step down at the end of this academic year. The retiring deans include Kim Tanzer of the Architecture School, Meredith Woo of the College and Steven DeKosky of the Medical School.
McCance said that the recent string of resignations should not be seen as a cause for alarm, as all their terms began, and are now ending, at the same time.
“Deans and cabinet-level administrators typically work on a contract basis, often in five-year appointments,” McCance said. “Several dean appointments at U.Va. have occurred on roughly identical timeframes, and the decision by several deans to not seek reappointment has occurred at roughly the same time.”
McCance said the end of a dean’s term serves as a time for review of his or her work and as an opportunity to decide whether or not he or she wishes to seek reappointment.
McCance said the University has an organized process for reviewing a dean’s tenure and selecting a new dean when a dean decides to step down from his or her position.
“Each time a dean’s appointment approaches its contracted end date, the process includes establishment of a review committee and an invitation by that committee to receive input about the dean’s tenure, all of which is provided to the Provost for review,” McCance said.
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