The Thayer Board of Overseers has elected two new members, Andy Silvernail ’94 and Catherine Sellman ’93. The will each serve a three-and-a-half year term.
The Thayer Board of Overseers was established in 1987 and is chartered as an advisory board to the dean of the Thayer School of Engineering and ultimately to the board of trustees, chair of the board Terry McGuire Th’82 said. The overseers provide advice to both the dean and trustees.
Thayer assistant dean of administration Marcia Craig Jacobs described the function of the Board of Overseers as both advisory and philanthropic, with a diverse membership bringing in their professional experience to the current issues Thayer faces.
The board, which has 22 seats currently filled, largely seeks to carry out the mission of Thayer by overseeing the activities and direction of the engineering school and work on fundraising, Silvernail said.
Silvernail is chairman and chief executive officer of IDEX Corporation, a life sciences company with a strong engineering core. Silvernail received a bachelor’s degree in government from the College, but he took many classes at Thayer that were crucial to the work he does now, he said.
Silvernail will bring the skills he gained from running a successful large life sciences business to the board, McGuire said. His perspective will be valuable as one of the themes of Thayer school is engineering and medicine, he added.
“It’s one thing to come up with a good idea,” McGuire said. “It’s another thing to translate that into an important product that’s going to impact people, and I think that’s what [Silvernail] does day in, day out.”
Sellman is the founder and the portfolio manager of the Aperimus Funds as well as a managing member and founder of Aperimus Capital, LLC — an investment advisory company located in Marina Del Rey, California.
Her interest in academia was reawakened when she started guest lecturing at the Anderson School of Business at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her MBA. At Dartmouth, Sellman graduated with a degree in engineering sciences.
Sellman’s entrepreneurial success is one reason why the board is thrilled she was willing to join, McGuire said.
“She’s an entrepreneur, she’s taken her analytical skills that she developed and honed at Thayer school and combined them with her business degree to form an investment company,” McGuire said.
In addition, Sellman lives in Los Angeles. McGuire noted that one of the reasons she was elected as an overseer is because Thayer wants to connect with the strong alumni base living in that area of the country.
Both Silvernail and Sellman cite ENGS 21, “Introduction to Engineering,” as an especially life changing course.
The skills gained through the process of creating a business plan and set of financial statements for a product developed in the class helped Sellman as she subsequently went into business after college, she said.
“That was the real beginning and an eye-opening experience for understanding how you take a product and turn it into a business,” Sellman said.
She described professor John Collier, who still teaches the course, as a “vibrant” and “incredible” professor.
Silvernail said he was heavily influenced by the concept of experiential learning.
“When I go back in time, and think about when I excelled, I really do believe that that sense of hands on learning was important,” he said. “When I took ENGS 21, it was transformational for me, thinking about what I wanted to spend my career doing.”
Sellman also said Peter Robbie’s industrial design class taught her how to think creatively. While the class has been expanded since her time at the College, it then consisted of only four or five students going to the woodshop to build various products and solve design problems, she said.
After the board approaches prospective candidates about joining, the nomination governance committee discusses the nomination. The larger board then votes on the proposed candidate. Jacobs said the selection of new board members has a formal set of criteria, including a connection to Dartmouth or Thayer, an interest in improving engineering at Dartmouth and a giving expectation.
Silvernail said his appreciation for the strong community at the College even after graduation and his desire to be a part of that community influenced his decision to become an overseer. He said that one can easily lose that strong connection to the College after graduation as one begins to form one’s own life, noting that he believes that becoming a board member will provide him an opportunity to be a part of that community again.
“There is incredible camaraderie,” he said. “There is a sense of that you are part of something that’s important, something that really is changing the world.”
Silvernail said he believes in the mission of Thayer and the methods it employs, especially its focus on hands on learning.
Sellman echoed Silvernail, and credited the school with teaching her life-long problem solving skills.
“My interest in joining the board comes from the value of what Thayer does in terms of liberal engineering — its integration with a world class liberal arts program — but also its ability to provide a world class engineering degree,” she said. “That’s rare and special.”
Additionally, Sellman values Thayer’s commitment to women in engineering, exemplified by its effort and success in recruiting a sizable number of women to the school. Though nationally women earn less than 20 percent of engineering bachelor’s degrees, women make up 33 percent of Thayer’s student body. Sellman said she admired the fact that currently Thayer’s senior class is 50 percent women.
During McGuire’s tenure as chairman, 12 new members have joined the board. He takes pride in the people he has brought onto the board during his tenure. Thayer is about leadership in technology and real-world solutions, he said, adding that the current board undoubtedly represents that.
The chairman ensures that the overseers are well organized and the board meets their obligations, McGuire said. Additionally, he said he makes sure that the right people are on the board and are contributing in meaningful ways.
The board typically meets three times a year, twice in Hanover and once off-site every winter, Jacobs said. The meetings involve assessing the programs of Thayer in relation to the other academics at the College as well as reviewing the budgets and funds of the school. They also approve the faculty resources of the academic programs at the school.
Looking to the future, Thayer will become even more critical to the overall Dartmouth community, Silvernail said. He sees his involvement on the board as a way to work on the mission of Thayer and help shape its role, he said.
“To be part of that community and to help in any way that you can to really make Thayer and Dartmouth successful is just a wonderful opportunity,” Silvernail said.
As Dartmouth undergoes several notable changes, the academic cluster initiative will be the one change that most directly influences the Thayer students and the board, McGuire said.
