Hiring and Firing Bytes

• T. Alan Hurwitz, president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, will become the next chief of Gallaudet University, starting in January 2010, The Ticker reports. He succeeds Robert Davila, who is leaving in December. See an article in The Washington Post for details.

• Ex-Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, announced last week that he is stepping down as president of Des Moines University in order to explore the possibility of running for governor again, The Iowa Independent reports.

• Two ex-administrators at Chicago State University are suing the university for wrongful termination, The Ticker reports. One of the two — Stephen “Seth” Hosick, the former human resources director — claims he was sacked in July in retaliation for asking state officials to investigate the trustees’ role in governance. See an article in The Chicago Tribune for details.

• According to an article in The Ashevile Citizen-Times, some campuses in the University of North Carolina system frequently waived searches when hiring candidates. As the newspaper tells it:

“Since 2007, UNC Chapel Hill has made at least 386 permanent hires without searches and N.C. State University has made 337, according to the schools.” (N.C. State came under fire recently for hiring Mary Easley, the wife of ex-Gov. Michael Easley, readers will recall.)

Administrative defenders of the practice told the newspaper that skipping the search is sometimes a must when there’s a key job that must be filled quickly. A number of the waivers were for spousal hires.