Carmen Twillie Ambar, currently the dean of Rutgers University's all-women Douglass College, is one of four finalists being considered by the Dean of the College search committee to fill the position vacated last May by James Larimore. Tom Crady of Grinnell College, Michelle Garfield of the University of Georgia and Jean Kim of the University of Puget Sound round out the field.
Ambar, the youngest dean in Douglass' history, said she places an emphasis on remaining accessible to the student body. At Douglass, Rutgers' all-female college, she holds office hours for students to voice grievances.
"People would say here at Douglass that I am a very accessible and open dean, out and about a lot," Ambar said. "I try to eat in the dining halls here regularly."
Getting to know the lay of the land at Dartmouth, she said, would be her first step if selected as the Dean of the College by the search committee.
"I would not be so presumptuous as to presume that I know the intricacies of Dartmouth College," Ambar said.
Currently on maternity leave from Douglass, Ambar has not yet visited the Dartmouth campus. She said that she hopes to come to campus soon to ask students about what they feel are important issues.
Pinpointing one of her chief interests, Ambar discussed the widespread study abroad programs as a major innovation of Dartmouth, when intertwined as part of the academic experience.
"You don't come to a place like Dartmouth to make it great," she said. "It's already great. You come to add your perspective so that students can look back on their experiences and identify one or two things that you brought to the table."
At Douglass, Ambar said she has focused on integrating alumni into the institution. This connection, she said, fosters a sense of tradition and adds more voices to the decision-making process.
Douglass includes nearly 2,500 undergraduate women. Since Rutgers has more than 50,000 students overall, however, Ambar said she has gathered experience in garnering broad administrative and student support.
"I want to give students the opportunity to choose the things that they feel are important by providing academics that expose students to a broad array of ideas," she said.
Search processes often rely on referrals from peers in academia, and Ambar said she suspects that a colleague from Princeton University referred her to the Dartmouth search committee. Ambar worked at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as director of graduate programs from 1998 to 2000 and as assistant dean for graduate education from 2000 to 2002.
Dartmouth spokeswoman Genevieve Haas said no administrators can comment on the ongoing Dean of the College search. All attempts to contact administrators were unsuccessful by press time.
When confronting the issue of Committee on Standards reform, Ambar said that she does not know the full scope of the debate, but feels that one should examine COS policies as well as its structure.
"You want to make sure that all students are treated equally in that process," she added.
In a 2003 opinion article she wrote for The Times of Trenton, N.J., titled "Race is Still an Issue," Ambar discusses affirmative action issues soon after Princeton University decided to end its program, in place for nearly two decades, that encouraged minority students to enter the field of public policy.
"The recent clamor for race neutral policies and an emphasis on economic disadvantage belies the fact that race, in and of itself, is impacting," Ambar wrote. "The idea that affirmative action is negatively impacting our meritocracy fails to recognize that we never truly had one."
Ambar graduated from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service in 1990, before receiving a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton and a law degree from Columbia University -- both in 1994.
The Dean of the College search committee, chaired by College Provost Barry Scherr, began its search last July and plans to appoint a new dean by summer.
