Selection of Department Chairs on the Medical Campus

All appointments of a Medical Campus Department Chair, acting or otherwise, are subject to the approval of the Medical Campus Provost. When a chair in the School of Medicine will also serve as chief of a clinical department at Boston Medical Center, the dean and the president of Boston Medical Center will jointly appoint a search committee and will jointly approve the candidate who is to be recommended to the Medical Campus Provost.

Whenever a chair on the Medical Campus is vacated, the dean of the School may appoint an acting or ad interim chair from among the current faculty. The appropriate title is acting chair, to cover the temporary absence of the current chair, or ad interim chair if a new chair is to be selected.

After consultation with the Medical Campus Provost and with full time faculty members of the department, the dean shall decide whether to appoint a chair from among the members of the department or to open a search to individuals from outside the department.

If the decision is made to conduct an external search, a search committee shall be formed to advise the dean. The committee shall normally comprise at least six members, of whom no fewer than two, elected by the faculty of the department, are from the department. The remainder of the search committee will be appointed by the dean. The dean will also appoint the chair of the search committee.

For clinical department chairs in the medical school, the Dean and Hospital President will appoint the chair and at least six members of a search committee, predominantly comprised of the other department chairs and center directors that would ordinarily interact most closely with the department in clinical management. No member of the committee may be a candidate for the position.

The search committee shall solicit nominations and applications from within the University and externally through appropriate professional channels, observing appropriate affirmative action procedures. Upon completion of the search process, the committee shall report its recommendations to the dean along with the names of the other candidates that were considered.

Negotiations then proceed between the dean and the candidate(s). If negotiations are unsuccessful, the dean may ask the search committee for further recommendations.

If negotiations are concluded favorably, the candidate is forwarded by the dean to the Medical Campus Provost for approval. (At the School of Medicine, the dean presents the candidate to the Executive Committee for approval before forwarding the candidate to the Provost.)

On the Medical Campus, chairs serve at the pleasure of the dean. The dean periodically will evaluate the performance of the chair and consult with the faculty of the department to discuss the operations of the department.

Adopted April 18, 2007, by the University Council.