Amid large scale leadership changes at the top of the university, individual colleges have not escaped unscathed. Of MSU’s seven colleges, three – the McAda Graduate School, Fain College of Fine Arts and McCoy College of Science, Mathematics and Engineering – have interim deans. They join Keith Lamb, interim president, and Margaret Brown Marsden, interim provost, as temporary officials in high positions at the university. 

Tiffany Ziegler, interim dean of the graduate school, oversaw the moving of the school’s office from Hardin to Ferguson Hall as one of her first tasks. Since then, she said the pace hasn’t slowed down.

“It has been one of the most whirlwind experiences of my life,” Ziegler said, adding that the sense of being in the position temporarily “brings some serious challenges.”

“You know, I’m learning a new role, learning a new job, little training. It’s not the fault of the university, it’s just I stepped up to this position and my job’s hard. It comes with a lot to deal with, and on top of all that I have young children, I have a 4 year old and an eight month old, so balancing work and life is difficult,” Ziegler said.

Just down the street in Bolin, at the corner of a hallway lined with rocks and geology displays, former mathematics department chair and now-interim dean Sarah Cobb works in her new office. Cobb, like Ziegler, is in her first semester as interim dean.

“The pace is much faster than when you’re working in one department, and there’s just a lot more to know,” Cobb said.

In Fain, Leah Gose is in her second semester as interim dean and said she’s had to adjust to the new workflow of managing multiple departments and oversight of an entire college.

“You just hit the ground running and you don’t have a lot of time to think because you’re learning and you’re working with your faculty chairs and making sure that everything gets done. You know, supporting faculty and students and staff,” Gose said.

The presence of interim officials in the offices of both the president and provost means it may take longer to fill the interim dean positions, which increases the impact the deans can have on their respective colleges.

“Things need to get done, and it doesn’t really matter what the title is. My faculty and my chairs, we have goals that we know we want to work on, and we have a strategic plan that we know that we need to work on and so we’re working on that. I’m not waiting around for someone to say “Well, you’re permanent,” or “You’re going back to being the chair,” we don’t have time for that,” Gose said, adding “We’re doing what we’re doing because we have to get it done.”

One common refrain among the interim deans was that their ability to keep things on track was in large part due to the help of their staff and coworkers. 

“In the short term, the faculty are really what’s propelling a lot of the things that students experience. And that’s what should be,” Cobb said, adding later, “The faculty are what makes this college what it is, gives it its character to a large extent.”

Cobb also said that while the turnover at the top of the university could make things appear unstable at MSU, the continuing presence of dedicated individuals is helping to mitigate those concerns.

“Clearly with the number of interim people we have in administrative positions on this campus, there is at least that appearance of instability. But I also think the people we have in those positions are people that I trust a lot, people that I know have the best interests of the institution at heart,” Cobb said, later adding, “I think things are more stable than they look.”

Ziegler echoed Cobb’s optimism due to to the personnel currently picking up duties on campus.

“I think any time there’s change or instability or insecurity, that can be scary. But what we’re trying to do to mitigate that is the fact that my staff is here and has been in place. And so they’ve been wonderful in transition,” Ziegler said. “In all reality, everything is still the same. Everything is still moving forward.”