Hunter
07/31/20
The University of Iowa announced Thursday that Steve Goddard, appointed dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences a year ago, will return to teaching and named an interim dean while they conduct another search.
Sara Sanders has been named interim dean and starts immediately.
In a letter to faculty and staff, UI Provost Keven Kregel said Goddard’s salary will drop about $130 thousand as he takes a professor position in the Department of Computer Science. He’ll now make $251,370 a year.
Sanders was recently associate dean for strategic initiatives and director of diversity, equity and inclusion after being appointed this January. She will make $305,000 as interim dean until a permanent dean is appointed.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports they got no answer when asking UI officials why Goddard was replaced. However, when he hosted a virtual town hall in June announcing coming layoffs, he suggested that faculty and staff who refused to teach in person for fear of their health and safety might lose their job, and seemed to dismissed a woman of color with an autoimmune condition. He urged her to start with mental health counseling to deal with her anxiety, and said as a woman of color she could have a “tremendous impact” if she could overcome her fears. His introduction of three tiers of cuts at that meeting also drew backlash that resulted in Goddard issuing an apology later.
Goddard worked for years in the computer industry before spending over two decades at the University of Nebraska before his hire at the U of I.