Joel Leavitt '50, a former president of a consumer products company, recently took over as president of the College's Alumni Council after being elected by the 105-member group.
On July 1, Leavitt replaced Curtis Welling '68 at the helm of the governing body of the College's alumni.
The council elected Otho Kerr '79, a vice president at Deutche Bank Securities in New York City, president-elect. As president-elect, he will work alongside Leavitt for one year and take over as president next July 1, Associate Director of Alumni Affairs Patricia Fisher-Harris said.
Welling, senior managing director at the New York-based Bear Stearns investment banking firm, took over as head of the council's College Relations Group, which interacts with the College's Board of Trustees, Fisher-Harris said.
Leavitt was unavailable for comment yesterday and Welling is on vacation, according to his secretary. Leavitt recently retired as president of Sweet Life Foods.
Kerr said he was pleased to assume the president-elect job and said he knows a lot about the current status of the College.
"My activities early on were limited to class executive committees," he said in a telephone interview from New York City. "But I have been actively involved since I was elected to the Alumni Council as an at-large representative three years ago."
Kerr said he would work closely with Leavitt and Welling on a review of the structural organization of the Alumni Council and any other organizations that "pertain to Dartmouth alumni."
He said a council committee, chaired by Emily Bakemeier '82, that will look at the council and that alumni clubs would be a "significant issue."
Within the next two years, Kerr said the committee, which was initiated by Welling, would make "sound, comprehensive recommendations" if it found problems.
Kerr said he would try and help increase communication between the alumni and the College. He said there "are views out there that may not be complete."
"There are some who think that Dartmouth is turning into a Harvard College," he said in a telephone interview. "There's a view that Dartmouth students are becoming pencil-necked geeks."
He said he wants to tell alumni "what we deem to be happening on campus."
Kerr said the council will discuss multiculturalism and other "critical and appropriate issues" at a meeting at the College in August.
"Many view that Dartmouth has become Balkanized and is not the homogenous, idyllic place and that that is not a good thing," he said.
He said communication in "touchy areas" like multiculturalism is particularly important. He added that he wants to convey to alumni that multiculturalism is good.
