Allegheny College has undergone staffing changes during summer break as many familiar names occupy different positions but only for a short time.

According to Patricia Ferrey, director of human resources, Allegheny has five interim administrators this year. The interim positions include the dean of students, the associate dean of students, the associate director of student involvement, the assistant director of student involvement and the Title IX coordinator. These positions are filled by Jacquie Kondrot, Gretchen Beck, Jayne Piskorik, Erin Briggeman and Gilly Ford, respectively.

Four of those five positions are related to the dean of students office after Joseph DiChristina pursued other opportunities at Trinity College, Ferrey said.

Three of the four changes in the dean of students office were internal position changes to ensure the experience needed for each position was present.

“It made more sense to move—internally—individuals who are familiar with Allegheny and know the processes than bringing in people from the outside,” Ferrey said.

As these personnel changes took place, each office had a vacancy which ultimately led to an opening in the office of the assistant director of student involvement. This forced the college to pursue an outside employee, which ended with the hiring of Erin Briggeman.

“She [Briggeman] is a temporary hire. She was hired for one year because we assume it will take us the better part of a year to go through the dean of students search,” Ferrey said.

The goal of the college is to name a new dean of students by Thanksgiving break with the understanding that the new hire will begin working full time in June or July, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Sue Stuebner said. The college would also like to bring the new hire to campus beforehand in order to get acquainted with the new office and job, she said.

In addition to the other vacancies, the position of Title IX coordinator was left open after the previous coordinator, Katie Pope, pursued other opportunities in the Pittsburgh area, Ferrey said.

Gilly Ford, chief of staff, now holds the office temporarily as the college begins a national search for a new hire. Stuebner said the pool for a position such as this is not vast as it is a rather new full time position for most colleges.

“We are really trying to take a couple weeksthe pool is not very deep [we’re] trying to sort out where the best places to advertise are and trying to do some informal work to try to understand where the talent is, so that when we do launch a search, we can be confident we get the strongest pool possible,”  Stuebner said.

Ferrey stated that the search for the next coordinator will begin in the next 30 days and will be complete by the next academic year.

Stuebner said Ford only had three weeks to shadow Pope and learn as much as she could before she had to move on to her next job.

Even with all of the changes and the transition, Chris Gaul, ’18, does not feel that there have been problems from any of the interim positions that are noticeable by the student body.

“The college feels the same…it seems picking up where they left off pretty well,” Gaul said.

Stuebner is confident that the transitions will be smooth and that the administration holding the interim positions is qualified.

“I want to assure folks that we have got really qualified people seeing us through these transition. We are fortunate to have some talented professionals guiding us,” said Stuebner.

More information can be found about the dean of students office and the Title IX coordinator at allegheny.edu.