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The Rice Thresher
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by Brian Stoler Thresher editorial staff
Chief Bill Taylor announced Tuesday the promotions of Dianna Marshall and Phil Hassell, both of whom were previously supervisory sergeants. Marshall will manage the patrol operations side of the department. The four shift sergeants and the security officers will report to her. Various support services provided by the University Police will fall under Hassell. He will manage investigations as well as communications, crime prevention, training and the coordination of special events, such as visits by dignitaries. Taylor said the two lieutenants will swap assignments every two years to give them broader experience and to provide opportunities for career advancement. Hassell came to Rice in 1990 as an officer on the midnight shift after spending eight years as a full-time minister. He has a doctorate in ministry and a master's degree in divinity, and he still serves as a part-time pastor at Northwest Crossing Baptist Church in Houston. Hassell began working in law enforcement at the Harris County Sheriff's Office in 1980. "I started out working at the sheriff's department because I was working my way through college," Hassell said. Marshall began work for the University Police department as a dispatcher in 1991. A year and a half later, she went to the police academy and returned to Rice as a police officer after her graduation. Two years later she was promoted to corporal, and two years after that she became a sergeant. Both new lieutenants have spouses who work at Rice. Leslie Hassell is coordinator of the Keck Center for Computational Biology. Randy Marshall is the police department's communications supervisor. He and Dianna met while working in the department, and they married three years after she began at Rice. The promotions come after last weekend's police assessment center, where the four candidates were evaluated by officers and members of the Rice community. Taylor received the report from the consultant who worked on the assessment center and made the decisions Tuesday. Both Marshall and Hassell said the assessment center was a difficult process. "It kind of taxes everything you know, all the experience you have," Hassell said. "It was a very, very stressful process." Because of these promotions, there are two vacancies for supervisory sergeants. Taylor said he hopes to fill these soon, again using an assessment center to select among internal candidates. "We've got a group of folks that are quite competitive for the position," Taylor said. "It would not be to our advantage to bring someone in, in a supervisory position, who does not understand the culture." This would then result in two new officer slots, bringing the total number of vacant officer positions to three, because there was a previous open officer position. These positions will again be filled in assessment centers. The police department has hired four new officers since last spring. Until just over a year ago, the department had a chief, an assistant chief and a lieutenant. Then, just before Taylor came to Rice in August 1999, the assistant chief left Rice. A year later, Lt. Terry Ryals left, so Taylor decided to reassign the two positions as lieutenants. Taylor said this arrangement gives him more flexibility since there are three people who can be in charge of the department when needed. "When I need to go away some place, I can delegate to one of them," he said.
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