Timothy Law Snyder, who was hired this week as the new vice president for academic affairs at Loyola University in Maryland, will be missed by the University community.
In his six years as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Snyder oversaw the University’s rise to the status of one of the top universities in the region – something he surely deserves some credit for.
Snyder, who worked at Georgetown for 14 years as a professor of math and computer science before rising to the position of dean of science in 1995, has taught at both Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, giving him one of the most impressive resumes of anyone at Fairfield.
Academic Vice President Orin Grossman plans to appoint an interim dean next year, and to launch a year-long search for Snyder’s successor.
Whoever takes over will have an opportunity to build on many of the initiatives Snyder has helped to move forward.
Snyder oversaw the increased number of black faculty members – something he says is one of his proudest accomplishments, but something that can and must be built upon if the University is going to move out of its sad days of homogeneity.
And during the time Snyder served as dean, Fairfield rose to as high as second on the U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of the best regional universities in the North.
It should be the goal of every administrator, including Snyder’s successor, for the University to rise to the top of that and other lists.
As the dean of the largest of Fairfield’s four undergraduate schools, Snyder was on a short list of the most important administrators at Fairfield.
With that in mind, the University must conduct an all-inclusive search that features interviews with candidates who are not simply clones of current administrators.
In the past, this hasn’t always been the case, and faculty members and students have expressed disappointment at the lack of a true search for top-level officials.
Snyder is an outstanding dean. That does not mean, however, that his successor needs to be exactly like him.
We applaud the University for taking the time necessary to make a good choice in appointing the new dean. But we sincerely hope they will make good use of the time, and find someone who is capable of carrying forward much of what Snyder started.
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