The committee searching for a new head of the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences will meet early this week, armed with the recommendations of administrators, faculty and students.
Five candidates to replace Geography Professor George Demko as the center's director have visited campus this summer to meet with the search committee.
Jim Brennan, the student intern at the Rockefeller Center, said the Rockefeller Student Council recommended Colgate University Psychology Professor Jack Dovidio '73 to be the new head of the center.
"We grouped our recommendation in some sort of rank order," Brennan said. He said most students said they would be happy with "most of the candidates," but liked Dovidio the most.
"He had a lot of ideas to increase student involvement and increase the academic involvement of the center," Brennan said. "He's very interested in students concerns."
Each candidate had lunch with the student council for about one or two hours, Brennan said. He said because Dovidio is an alumnus, he interacts well with students.
Brennan said he thinks the student's recommendation will be considered fairly seriously.
"I think it will carry a good amount of weight," he said. But he did note that students tend to look more at how candidates interact with students and administrators will look more at a candidate's teaching and leadership abilities.
Roxanne Waldner, the acting head of the Rockefeller Center, said center administrators sent comments to the search committee, but did not make a formal recommendation.
Associate Dean of the Faculty George Wolford, who chairs the committee, said it is "a little to early to describe" all of the recommendations the committee received.
He said the committee will narrow the list down to one or two candidates and bring those people up to campus again in the beginning of the Fall term, when they hope to make a final decision.
The final list of five candidates is: City College of New York Professor Cynthia Epstein, Dovidio, Syracuse University Professor Linda Fowler, University of Minnesota Professor Paul Light and Harvard University Professor Ted MacDonald.
