The Gazette’s Peggy Curran apparently has the scoop on Concordia’s new president, quoting anonymous sources (no doubt among the search committee) that confirm it’s Judith Woodsworth, the current president of Laurentian University and a former Concordia professor and administrator. It’s unclear if this is supposed to be the “interim” job to be filled while a full bureaucratic search committee does its job, or if it’s the “permanent” position which would carry a five-year term (renewable for another five years). The wording seems to imply the latter.
If this is the case, it follows a disturbing trend in which search committees for Concordia University senior administrators have selected only a single candidate to present to the community for comment, instead of three or four shortlisted candidates. The first time they did this was also for the position of president, when they came up with only Claude Lajeunesse.
And we all know how that worked out.
UPDATE: Concordia confirms the recommendation in what I suspect was a rushed press release after the Gazette article.
I am a student at Laurentian University. Dr. Woodsworth has lead the University to a multi million dollar lawsuit against LU. In which she is being sued personally as a public official. There are 7-9 grievances filed with regards to the lockout of a research team and their Professor. The behavior from the admin resulted in the union receiving 50 000$ from the academic freedom fund from CAUT. CAUT stated they had never seen this type of behavior in 30 years. If Concordia is looking for someone who will destroy the creative environment or they are looking to target a specific individual then she is the right person. She will help make the place look very pretty and bring in some money but with regards to academia and morale she demonstrated no leadership whatsoever.
I hope she does more for Concordia than she did for LU.
Good luck Concordia!!
They’re actually required to only present one candidate not sue when this was implemented (or if it was different before) but the expectation for the search committee is that they return with only one name. Apparently six people were interviewed for the position…
Couldn’t have been implemented more than a year ago when they introduced two candidates for Provost.