I suspect the honeymoon articles for EMU President Susan Martin will continue for a while, as well they should. Pam Young sent around an email about a reception tomorrow (there’s a light lunch, so maybe I’ll stop by and try to sneak a sandwich before I go and meet my students who want to talk about making web pages), and Geoff Larcom has a piece in today’s AANews, “New EMU president inspires optimism.” It’s an exciting and anxious and even happy time with something like this. And it’s an important time; as the Detroit News put it in an editorial, “Wayne State, EMU leaders confront difficult problems” (who knew Wayne State was looking for a president?).
These two articles (not to mention some of the comments and articles in the last couple weeks) will go into the EMUTalk.org archives as we move on to other topics. And it seems to me that the real first test of Martin’s presidency will come in about a year or so. As I recall saying in the comments of a discussion at some point about all this recently, any search committee is a crap-shoot. I can think of many faculty or department head searches in my own department that turned out as a surprise in both good and bad ways. You just don’t know how these things don’t turn out until after the person is hired.
So let the honeymoon go on for a while, and let’s see how this turns out in about a year. Good luck, President Martin!
