Date: March 7, 2025
To: USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work community
From: Rickey Bluthenthal, PhD
Distinguished Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
I am serving as the chair of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck Dean Search Committee. With this memo, I am pleased to provide you with an update and status report on the dean search process, as well as names of individuals serving on the search committee. I am a Distinguished Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine, and am currently serving as the interim chair of that department, as well as the associate dean for Social Justice in the Keck School. Although not a faculty member within Social Work, many of my core interests and values are well aligned with those of the social work community. I understand how important this dean search is, not just for the school, but for the university as a whole, and am committed to working on your behalf to recruit the best!
The committee for this dean search includes representation of faculty, staff and students in Social Work, as well as broader representation across the health sciences schools, the health system, the board of councilors, the academic senate, and other individuals in non-health sciences schools who have an interest in recruiting the best candidate possible. The committee is listed below, along with titles, email addresses, and a link to that person’s short bio/webpage/or LinkedIn page. Every person on this committee is also committed to doing their best to recruit an excellent candidate for your school. I can tell from our first meeting, that everyone is ready to be deeply engaged in the process and looks forward to meeting the candidates.
Please understand that a large part of this process, particularly in the initial sessions, must remain confidential. Candidates may not want it to be known until later stages in the process that they are interested. We ask that you respect your colleagues on the committee and refrain from asking for information on the dean search. We will be sharing the position description with you, and would greatly appreciate hearing from both internal candidates about their interest in the position, as well as suggestions from you about who might be a great possible dean. Please provide those suggestions to me (Ricky.Bluthenthal@med.usc.edu) members of the search committee (as below), or to Jaimie Morgan (jmorgan@imsearch.com) or Alice Holland (aholland@imsearch.com) at Isaacson and Miller.
Thank you to all who participated in our listening sessions. Over the coming months, the search firm and the Search Advisory Committee will be working behind the scenes to develop a deep, diverse, and well-qualified pool of candidates for consideration. The search will progress throughout the Summer and into the Fall semester; the work between now and early Fall will largely be unseen and unheard outside of the search firm and the committee to ensure the integrity of the search and confidentiality of the candidate pool. We will continue to provide updates in the coming months and as we get closer to the announcement of our next Dean. In the meantime, we encourage your continued feedback and candidate suggestions via this survey.
Members of the Search Committee
- Chair: Ricky Bluthenthal, PhD
- Faculty Senate Representative: Rima Jubran, MD
- Members:
- Steve Chen, PharmD
- Sean Curran, PhD
- Judy Garner, PhD
- Michele Kipke, PhD
- Michalle Mor-Barak, PhD, MSW
- Manuel Pastor, PhD
- Jehni Robinson, MD
- Shawn Sheffield, MBA, MHSA
- Janice Kamenir-Reznik, JD, MSW
- Staff Representative: Devon Brooks, PhD, MSW
- Student Representative: Paloma Usquiano, MSW student