With the candidates narrowed down to four, the search for a new Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences is almost complete.

CHASS has been in search of a new dean to fill the gap left by former dean, Toby Parcel since last Septemeber. Since Parcel left in May, Jeff Braden, a psychology professor, has served in the position as an interim dean. 

Executive Search Services is responsible for filling high-priority positions. The service contacts, interviews, and covers all general logistics of the search, Jessica Padgett, a search assistant, said.

“We recruit for [the University.] We’ll go and reach out to the [candidates] and say, ‘We have this position here,'” Padgett said. “We tell them a little bit about it, we’ll send them a job prospectus, and then we’ll see if they are interested…we create everything from scratch.”

The process has been long, with over a thousand emails sent to possible candidates. Aside from typical problems, finding available rooms on campus to headquarter the seaarch was one of the biggest challenges Padgett faced.

“There are not too many places near CHASS that can hold this many people and if there are then they are not available,” Padgett said.

These rooms are needed for interview forums between the candidates and faculty as well as between the candidates and students.

At the forum this past Tuesday, Braden, one of the four finalists for the job, was questioned by his peers and students regarding various aspects of his role as interim dean, his opinions on classroom issues, his current goals in light of the economic crises and his future aspirations.

“I hope to keep as many people employed and as many students in classes, and frankly, try and get us through some pretty stormy seas,” Braden said. “I don’t think there are going to be decisions made on the way things were. I think decisions will be made on the way we want them to be, and to me that is going to be really exciting.”

Hard work and organization are required in order to keep the search running smoothly and to be able to provide what Padgett calls “the red carpet treatment.”

“We chauffer around everyone, we make all the arrangements for flights and hotels and dinner reservations ñ anything that you can possibly think of that goes on in search we do it to truly show them the culture of N.C. State and to let them know what we have,” she said.

The four candidates that remain include Braden,  Todd Diacon, vice provost at the University of Tennessee, Steven  Lynn, senior associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina, and John Stevenson, an associate vice chancellor and an associate dean at the University of Colorado in Boulder.