A couple weeks ago I mentioned that we had interviewed a candidate who could be my new boss, and I alluded to the fact that said candidate is the spouse of a local blogger. I didn’t want to say any more at the time because there were still some negotiations underway. Everything has been resolved, though, so there’s no need to make a mystery of it any longer… drum roll please…
The local blogger is HammHawk, and his wife will take over directorship of my unit this August.
I’m pretty excited about the prospect of working with her. I was on the search committee, and I can say with confidence that her application was second to none. She’s exactly the sort of candidate we were looking for, and I think we were lucky to get her.
She had to endure a rather grueling interview marathon, which included everybody from the janitorial staff to the president, and people at every level were impressed with her qualifications, her intelligence and her ideas.
Prior to the interview, Janice and Olivia and I were talking about the applicants for the position. Olivia noted that the top two candidates were both female, which alarmed her. She exclaimed, “I don’t know if I could work for a woman!” Janice and I found this both outrageous and amusing. It led to my favorite moment on the day of the interview. When Olivia discovered that our prospective applicant was from Alabama, she expressed her delight. (Olivia’s from Birmingham.) Then she turned to me and announced, for everyone to hear, “I changed my mind.”
That still cracks me up.
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Hear, hear. I can’t tell you how excited she is to get started. Thanks for your part in giving her a clear look at the position and her colleagues. As you can tell, she’s big on relationships (in fact, that’s her research area outside of scholarship of teaching), and she’s enthusiastic about the people she’ll be working with. She’s not a blog reader (“I’d rather talk to you than read your blog”), which is why anyone reading this comment might think I’m presumptuous to speak for her. It’s a great fit for her and for the Center and the university, IMH (and unbiased, of course) O. I’m sure you’ll be able to do truly great things together. She’d be starting today if she could!
That is great news.
Now she can finally do something about that website!