Search Updates

November 13

JM Search will be visiting our campus next week to meet and engage with our campus community. The following open sessions are available for all faculty, staff, and retirees to join on November 20, 2024:

November 12

The College retained the executive recruiting services of JM Search to assist us in finding a new Provost and Dean of the College. Lionel Anderson (Principal) and Becket McNulty (Senior Market Analyst) are the two search consultants that we will partner with over the next several weeks. As part of their work, Lionel and Becket will travel to Knox College on November 20-21 to meet with several members of our community. 

Read more about JM Search and our consultants, Lionel and Becket.

October 7

Dear Knox Community,

Provost and Dean of the College Michael Schneider announced at today’s faculty meeting that this year will be his last in his current role. Mike will complete his second three-year contract as provost at the end of this academic year on June 30, 2025, and plans to return to his lifelong focus on international education. I have included a copy of his announcement to the faculty below, but I’d also like to take a moment to share a few thoughts on Mike’s service as provost.

Mike originally started at Knox in 1992 as a specialist in East Asian history, creating the East Asian civilization sequence. During his time as a faculty member, he designed Historian’s Workshop, a methodology course that remains the only required course in the history major; founded one of Knox’s signature immersion programs, Japan Term; served as visiting scholar at the Asian-Pacific Graduate School at Waseda University in Tokyo; and has published numerous articles on topics as diverse as Japanese development policies in Korea, Japanese liberalism, Pan-Asianist ideologues, the fictional 1930s detective Mr. Moto, and women foreign policy leaders in the Asian-Pacific region. I look forward to seeing where his renewed focus on research and teaching will take him.

For the last six years plus an additional year as interim, Mike has served as provost and dean of the College. During this time, he led the institutional accreditation in 2020 and assurance review in 2024, and co-authored and helped manage the largest faculty development and student resource grants in Knox’s history, including the $1.2 million Mellon Foundation grant that supports the “Abolition for All Time” Humanities Lab. He also prioritized making faculty development resources and opportunities available to faculty from all disciplines. Most recently, Mike continues to play a critical role in the College’s extensive Digital Transformation project, which includes the most comprehensive review and redevelopment of the College’s student information system and technology resources in decades. 

Mike helped navigate the pandemic, a presidential and student development leadership transition, enrollment challenges, faculty retirements, the untimely deaths of several colleagues, all the while helping to bring innovation to our academic programs and hiring a talented new generation of Knox faculty. He has served the College with grace, dedication, humility, and humor, and I could not have asked for a better provost and partner than Mike during my first four years at Knox. 

A national search for our next provost and dean of the College will begin shortly, and I will share more information on our next steps very soon. Thanks to Mike’s dedication to the College and its mission, the process and foundation to recruit and hire a new provost is well positioned for success. 

Please join me in thanking Mike for his many accomplishments and support of our great institution. 

With warmest regards and best wishes.

Sincerely, 
President C. Andrew McGadney