Three candidates are currently under consideration by Dartmouth alumni to fill a position on the Board of Trustees being vacated by Stephen Bosworth '61 as of June.
The candidates, Mark Harty '73, Chansoo Joung '82 Tuck '87 and Jorge Fernandez '77, have undergone a long and rigorous selection process and are all exceptionally qualified, according to the Alumni Council.
However, each has a distinctly different career, style and personal and professional history.
The Raging Moderate
All the candidates say they have a great dedication and love for Dartmouth, but Mark Harty '73 has held more positions as a Dartmouth alum then perhaps anyone alive.
To name a few, he has served as an admissions officer, an alumni interviewer, class agent, class secretary, president of the Alumni Council from 1986"1987, chairman of the Young Alumni Awards Committee and overseer at Aquinas House.
He has also been president of the Friends of Dartmouth Tennis for ten years, was instrumental in founding the College Relations Group, which interfaces the Alumni Council and the Board of Trustees, and received the Dartmouth Alumni Award, the highest award that the Alumni Council can give.
In the words of Associate Director of Alumni Relations Patricia Fisher-Harris, "He's done pretty much everything you can do as a Dartmouth volunteer."
Harty majored in history and graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth before graduating from Georgetown Law School in 1978.
In Boston, where Harty still lives with his wife and two sons, he joined a small firm of 16 lawyers which is now has 500 lawyers in eight cities. Harty became a managing partner four years ago.
Harty also supports and serves on several boards of local and national non-profit groups.
When asked about his personal style, Harty answered, "My Dartmouth roommate once described me as a 'raging moderate' -- I'm a moderate person by temperate and by persuasion. I'm known for my patience and my ability to listen to both sides of an issue. I try to take things step by step and not jump in too quickly."
Harty sited housing especially as a very important priority for the College, also noting the importance of creating new alliances between two groups he saw as having frequent misunderstandings, Dartmouth alumni and faculty.
The Dartmouth Native
Chansoo Joung '82 Tuck '87 had his first interview at Dartmouth at age eight.
Joung's mother, a schoolteacher, lived in Etna, NH, and his grandparents lived in Hanover where his grandfather was minister of the First Baptist Church. During summer vacations, Joung would come to Hanover.
A relative in the admissions office interviewed Joung in the Hanover Inn.
The way Joung tells the story, his mother asked how to improve Joung's chances of going to Dartmouth. The man replied that she should make him read a book a week " which she did, for quite some years.
Dartmouth became Joung's ideal of higher education. "When it came time to apply for Colleges, I didn't think too hard," he said.
Joung was accepted early admission to Dartmouth, where he majored in physics. When he graduated he spent three years in New York City before returning to the Tuck Business School.
He then went to New York and joined Goldman and Sachs, spending time in their London office before returning to the U.S.
He now lives in Riverside, Conn. with his wife and three children.
Joung frequently returns to Tuck to lecture. He has also been involved in the National Committee for Minorities in Engineering, which he says has been very successful in bringing talented minority students to top engineering schools.
"I think the first thing I would bring to a trusteeship is a very keen interest in education as a topic of importance to society, and Dartmouth as an institution," said Harty.
"The other thing that I've had experience with professionally being in a business where what we sell are ideas," said Harty, pointing out the parallels with running a College.
The Internationalist
Jose Fernandez '77 is likely to have on his desk at any moment papers from a phone company looking for a loan in Venezuala, an American company building a power plant to straddle Brazil and Bolivia and an Argentine bank in the process of reconstruction.
Cuban"born Fernandez is the chair of international practice at 800-lawyer firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP, with 13 offices in the US and abroad, where he describes his work as "legal tourism."
He also believes his particular expertise will be very relevant to the College. "Issues of foreign affairs will continue to be something Dartmouth students will be more and more aware of," he said.
Fernandez majored in history at Dartmouth before earning a law degree at Columbia. In the 1980s he did non-profit work in Guatemala.
"We did a lot of things that were idealistic in retrospect, like talking to the army about human rights," Fernandez said. He also worked to empower Guatemalan indigenous communities.
He now lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
Like the other candidates, Fernandez now serves on many diverse non-profits, including the City Bar Fund of New York, the board of the Ballet Hispanico, and WBGO, a public radio station in Newark, N.J. Fernandez calls "the best jazz station in the nation."
Also like the other candidates, Fernandez is very dedicated to Dartmouth.
"I think over the years it has become more and more evident to me how privileged I was to attend Dartmouth," he said, noting the "dedication and professionalism of the faculty and staff" and "the opportunity Dartmouth provides."
"It's a combination of being challenged and nurtured, and that's unbeatable."
Asked about the time commitment of serving as a trustee, Fernandez said "Dartmouth is my number one interest outside of my family and my work. If I were lucky enough to win I would feel privileged to devote as much time as it takes."
