The 14 members of the search committee to replace College President James Wright, announced on Wednesday, include six members of the College's Board of Trustees, six faculty members, one alumni representative and one current Dartmouth student. The committee is marked by the inclusion of one strong partisan from both sides of the Association of Alumni's soon-to-be-withdrawn lawsuit against the College.
The committee's trustee representatives include four Board-appointed charter trustees -- committee chair Albert Mulley, Jr. '70 and members Bradford Evans '64, Pamela Joyner '79 and Stephen Mandel Jr. '78 -- and two alumni-elected trustees, Jose Fernandez '77 and Peter Robinson '79, amember elected by petition.
Board Chairman Ed Haldeman '70, who selected the members of the search committee, said he had worked specifically to add a petition trustee..
"I decided that it was important to have a petition trustee on the search committee so that the alumni body that voted for and feel strongly about petition candidates had a representative on the search committee, and so that the potential candidate would have an ability to interact directly with a representative of that constituency," he said.
Aside from a conscious effort to include a petition trustee, Haldeman said he did not differentiate between Board- and alumni-elected trustees when he made his selections. Instead, Haldeman said he sought to choose committee members of varying age and Board experience.
John MacGovern '80, the founder of The Hanover Institute, a non-profit organization that has criticized many of the College's policies and supported petition candidates to the Board, called the selection of Robinson "an improvement."
MacGovern added that he was discouraged, though unsurprised, by the committee's overall composition.
"I don't see anything that's too encouraging on there except the fact that there is one person, Peter Robinson, who we know to be a person of independence and points of view that are not in lock step with the current administration and the current Board," he said. "I hope it's not just a window dressing."
The Dartmouth was unable to reach Robinson for comment on Thursday.
Joe Asch '79, historically an outspoken critic of current College policy, expressed general satisfaction with the selections. Asch noted, however, that he would have preferred to see trustees who he believes have more career experience in evaluating candidates for employment than the current committee members, identifying Board members such as Russell Carson '65, John Donahoe '82 and T.J. Rodgers '70, all corporate executives.
Mulley commended Haldeman's work in selecting a varied group of trustees for the search committee.
"I think that it does represent a diverse set of perspectives from the Board," Mulley said of the committee's trustee contingent.
The committee's faculty members include representatives from each of Dartmouth's three graduate schools: Dartmouth Medical School professor Joyce DeLeo, Tuck School of Business professor Sydney Finkelstein and Joseph Helble, dean of the Thayer School of Engineering.
The other three faculty representatives on the committee -- economics professor Jonathan Skinner, English department chair Gretchen Gerzina and chemistry professor Jane Lipson -- represent the three major divisions of the faculty of arts and sciences. The professors were chosen from a group of individuals nominated by members of the faculty Committee on Policy, which gathered suggestions from various faculty constituencies, Haldeman said.
The inclusion of the faculty search committee members will help ensure the College's new president has a strong relationship with the faculty, he said, regardless of whether the new president is an academic.
The search committee's alumni representative, Martha Beattie '76, currently serves as chair of the Alumni Council's Alumni Liaison Committee, and formerly served as Council president.
Beattie is also a member of Dartmouth Undying, a group which fostered support for candidates opposed to the Association of Alumni's lawsuit against the College in this spring's Association executive committee elections. The group funded student phone drives and distributed mailings to alumni in support of candidates from the anti-lawsuit "Unity" slate, which won all 11 executive committee seats in the elections.
Haldeman highlighted Beattie's devotion and history of service to the College in explaining his choice, complimenting her extensive connections to alumni as well as her "great Dartmouth family." Beattie's husband, Jim, graduated in 1976, her son, Sam, graduated in 2007 and her daughter, Nell, is a member of the class of 2009. Mulley pointed to Beattie's close work with the Board through the alumni liaison committee as an asset.
Mulley added that Beattie's selection may have been influenced by perceptions that the chair of the alumni liaison committee is currently a less "politicized" position than that of either the president of the Alumni Council or the president of the Association of Alumni. Alumni in these positions have been appointed to similar search committees in the past, including the committee formed before Wright's appointment in 1998.
Haldeman, however, downplayed the potential politicization of the other two roles, stating that he chose Beattie for her ability to fully dedicate herself to the committee.
"[The Association president and the Alumni Council president] both have big jobs to do right now, and it seemed like a reasonable thing to do to get someone in the job who could give themselves as a full volunteer to the committee," he said.
Haldeman added that he does not believe Beattie's involvement with Dartmouth Undying will affect her work with the committee.
"We have people on the search committee on both sides of that issue," he said, noting that Robinson supports the lawsuit.
Newly-elected Association President John Mathias '69 called Beattie a "perfect choice" for the committee, noting that it might have been her record of commitment to the College that had attracted the interest of Dartmouth Undying.
Beattie was unavailable to comment to The Dartmouth on Thursday.
Haldeman said he chose the student representative to the group, Student Body President Molly Bode '09, for her leadership position, adding that he hopes Bode will help potential candidates "get a picture of what the undergraduate culture is like at Dartmouth."
Both Bode and the search committee's faculty members will work to maintain the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the College's faculty, in the search process, Mulley said.
The committee will likely begin meeting in early July to finalize the partially completed "statement of leadership criteria," a document which outlines desired characteristics of the next College president. The statement will then be presented to the public to solicit feedback, Mulley said.
The search committee must seek to balance this openness and transparency with an appropriate level of confidentiality for all of the participants in the process, including that of the eventual candidates, he explained.
"Confidentiality is essential to this search, but so is the trust of the Dartmouth community," he said.
After the release of the leadership criteria, Mulley said, the search committee will begin requests for nominations. Throughout this process, the search committee will work with the executive search firm Isaacson, Miller, which the Board hired in May to support the search. The Boston-based firm's work at the College is being led by its founder, John Isaacson '68.
The search committee plans to meet again in August and September, Mulley said, and is still "on track" to announce a new president in spring 2009.
