College Provost Berry Scherr will chair the 11-person search committee charged with finding a replacement for James Larimore, College President James Wright announced Wednesday.
The committee will include Student Body President Tim Andreadis '07 as well as two additional students that have yet to be appointed.
The committee will begin its search later this month and plans to make its recommendation to the president by late fall or early winter, Scherr said.
"We don't want to rush, so if it takes a bit long to put everything together, we'll take that time," he said, adding that the new dean would probably not start his tenure at Dartmouth until next summer.
Acting Dean of the College Dan Nelson will continue to hold the office in the meantime. The last dean of the College, Larimore, left on June 30 to become the dean of students at Swarthmore College. As for his own candidacy, Nelson said "that is something I have not decided yet."
The other members of the search committee are professors Catherine Cramer, Mary Lou Guerinot and Andrew Samwick, administrators Nelson Armstrong, Holly Sateia and Sandy Spiegel, and alumnus John Engelman '68.
Scherr said he hoped that the different backgrounds of committee members would allow them to keep in mind the many offices under the dean of the College, such as athletics, class deans, Safety and Security and Dartmouth Dining Services.
"Obviously we're going to want [to hire] someone who can work well with the whole breadth of the student body and who has good managerial skills," Scherr said.
The students on the committee will serve as full members and will also be called to interview the semi-finalists and finalists for the position.
Two additional students will be appointed as soon as next week, Scherr said, and will be chosen by the Provost from a small group recommended by the Student Assembly.
"We are looking for a couple of students who represent the campus well and who seem like thoughtful people on this kind of matter," Scherr said.
The student body president, whom Scherr called an ex-oficio member of the committee, said he hoped to help select a dean that can address the diverse needs of students at Dartmouth.
"It is important [for the Dean] to be knowledgeable about the issues faced by an African-American student or a LGBT student, for example," Andreadis said.
Economics professor Samwick said that he would also look for a candidate who understood the unique aspects of Dartmouth like the D-Plan and the relationship between teaching and research.
"I would be interested in someone with the ability to understand what has happened so far at Dartmouth and who has new and creative ideas for how to use Dartmouth's virtues," he said.
Scherr explained that the committee will hold one or two meetings in the next month to discuss the qualities that are important in a future dean, as well as the advertising and selection processes that the committee will follow. Sometime around the start of Fall term the committee will hold several open meetings to solicit campus input into the search.
The committee will then advertise the position and collect applications before selecting a smaller group to call back for interviews. Finally, it will select three to five candidates to bring to campus in the winter and make a recommendation to Wright, who will make the ultimate decision.
