After the resignation of Student Affairs Vice President Eric Sexton in late June, Tony Vizzini, senior provost, has created a committee to find a replacement for the position.

Vizzini is filling the position as the interim-vice president of student affairs.

The committee created to find this replacement includes a range of represenatives such as Student Body President Joseph Shepard, Lou Heldman, vice president of strategic communications, and Kimberly Engber, dean of the Cohen Honors College and associate professor of English. The committee consists of 15 people including Vizzini.

“We saw a number of candidates, and have identified several within that pool that we would consider to bring on campus,” Vizzini said. “We expect people on campus probably the last full week of October and the start of November.”

Vizzini and the committee plans to bring at least three candidates to campus for interviews.

“These are good people with good views that understand where we are at, and they have done their homework on us, which is always a good thing,” Vizzini said. “That’s what you want to see. You want to see people really invested in who we are and to be able to bring these views to us.”

Through the search, the committee is seeking someone who meets a certain set of criteria. Some of the criteria includes having a doctorate degree, a minimum of 10 years with increasing levels of responsibility for a student affairs unit, strong communication skills, experience working with federal grant programs and more.

The vice president of student affairs is also in charge of everything outside of the classroom that creates the college experience. From campus recreation to disability services and student activities council, he or she has to make sure the programs are represented equally and that their points of view are considered.

“Student Affairs is the one that helps bring all the different services and programs under them together so it is coordinated well,” said Eric Maki, Director of Campus Recreation. “There is coordination and a DNA to how all these programs come together in a purposeful and intentional way. We want to make sure we’re providing programs and activities for all of our different students and the diverse group that comes to WSU and we want to provide them throughout the entire school year, not all bunched in one area.”

Maki hopes the committee finds someone with a high level of integrity to help support and promote the services that WSU provides to students.

“What I’ll be interested in is when we get to talk with them, I’ll want to know what kind of experiences they have working with offices similar to [disability services],” said Grady Landrum, Director of Disability Services. “Like what kind of knowledge they have, laws concerning accessibility and students. I just want to make sure they got a well-rounded view of what disability services does and what their understanding of it is.”

Both directors agree that the campus is in dire need of a leader. Student Affairs Vice President Wade Robinson served from 2009-2015, Sexton served for less than one year and Vizzini is serving the position as a dual-role.

“It will be nice to have one person that I think that all of Student Affairs feels like is a leader for our division,” Landrum said. “I think right now with Dr. Vizzini being Academic Affairs and Student Affairs his time is divided. It’s two different jobs and two different focuses. I’m not faulting him or saying he’s doing a bad job, but it’s difficult to do two of those things at the same time, and to have someone that can come in and be a place where we can go that’s focused on us and what we need to do is going to be monumental.

“It will get us back to where we were four or five years ago.”

Landrum believes that when the search is complete, it will be beneficial for the university as someone can focus fulltime on Student Affairs and give it the attention it deserves.

“Realistically, if they’re coming in the last week of October and the first week of November, we hope we will be able to announce no later than Dec. 1 who the next VP will be,” Vizzini said. “My expectation is that the person will be here probably Feb. 1. Hopefully no later than March 1.”