After former athletic director Moriah Van Norman decided to step down in May, the process to bring a new AD began.
Five months after the job was open, they have been unable to fill the position.
Pierce College President Alexis Montevirgen said he plans to appoint an acting athletic director for the remainder of the school term.
“I’ve heard that there are three faculty members in kinesiology that have expressed interest to serve in that interim capacity, at least just for the rest of the academic year. And then that way what we can do is I can name an acting athletic director that can start as early as the spring semester. And we can spend the spring semester to do another search to try and identify a permanent person that would come in July 1,” Montevirgen said.
The faculty hiring committee met last week to start the process of reviewing applications according to acting AD and Dean of Athletics Genice Sarcedo-Magruder.
“They decided that we would postpone because it didn’t match with what we posted, it said it was for a full-time faculty member and we were trying to bring someone who wasn’t,” Sarcedo-Magruder said.
She said to avoid doing that they are going to push back and essentially go back to the drawing board.
Barbara Anderson, member of the hiring committee said that having an athletic director is crucial as it is a key element to the college.
“I hope that when we open the position again there is more interest and we have more applicants going for the job,” Anderson said.
Sarcedo-Magruder said that there is a technical problem in the system where people can apply for jobs within the district.
“It doesn’t take out people who are not qualified. So if it is posted and the position itself says full-time faculty or current faculty only. Even if you were external to the district you can still apply. So if someone saw and it said ‘this is a great opportunity. I may not be qualified, but let me throw my name in there’ and so that is how we ended up with the candidate pool,” Sarcedo-Magruder said.
