The 14 members of the search committee to replace College President James Wright, who will leave the College in June 2009, were made public today. The committee, whose composition mirrors that of the group which selected Wright as the College's 16th president in 1998, is comprised of six members of the College's Board of Trustees, six faculty members, one alumni representative and one current Dartmouth student.
The search committee was selected by Board Chair Ed Haldeman '70, who said that the size and composition of the committee reflect an effort to rectify the "two conflicting goals" of creating both an efficient and a representative group.
"In some sense we wish we could have had a smaller committee, because to get the work done and to have great interchange among committee members, smaller is typically better," Haldeman said. "When you have an institution like Dartmouth that has so many important constituencies that need to be represented and need to have a feeling of ownership of the process, and you have a legitimate need of the candidate to interact with members of each of the various constituencies, that drives you to a larger committee."
Of the six trustees on the committee, four, including Chair Albert Mulley, Jr. '70 and members Bradford Evans '64, Pamela Joyner '79, Stephen Mandel Jr. '78 are Board-appointed charter trustees. The committee's other two trustee representatives are alumni-elected trustees Jose Fernandez '77 and Peter Robinson '79, who was elected as a petition candidate to the Board.
Haldeman said that he worked specifically to add a petition trustee to the committee.
"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 this requirement, however, Haldeman said he did not differentiate between Board- and alumni-elected trustees when making his selections, looking instead to create breadth of both age and experience on the Board within 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. "[Haldeman] has done a very good job of putting together complimentary perspectives."
The committee's faculty members include representatives from each of Dartmouth's three graduate schools, including 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 Committee on Policy, who were asked to gather suggestions from their various faculty constituencies, Haldeman said.
The presence of these search committee members will help to ensure that the College's new president has a strong relationship with the faculty, he said, regardless of whether the new president is an academic by trade.
"Irrespective of background we would want to make sure that we got someone who the faculty respected," Haldeman said. "Our hope is that with six faculty members we will select someone who will be well respected and well thought of by the faculty."
The alumni representative on the committee, Martha Beattie '76, currently serves as chair of the Alumni Council's Alumni Liaison Committee, and has formerly served as the president of the Council.
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, funding student phone drives and distributing mailings to alumni.
Candidates from the anti-lawsuit "unity slate" supported by the group won all 11 executive committee seats in the elections, which ended on June 5.
Haldeman highlighted Beattie's devotion and history of service to the College, complimenting her extensive connection to alumni as well as her "great Dartmouth family."
Beattie's role on the alumni liaison committee, which puts her in "close touch" with the Board, Mulley said, also likely made her a good addition to the search committee.
Mulley added that Beattie's selection may have been influenced by a feeling 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, positions which he said in the past have seen their members appointed to similar search committees. In 1998, for example, following the departure of former College President James Freedman, Amy Cammann Cholnoky '77, then the president of the Association of Alumni, served on the search committee that appointed Wright.
Haldeman, however, said that he chose Beattie for her ability to fully dedicate herself to the committee.
"They [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 play a role in her work with the committee.
"We have people on the search committee on both sides of that issue," he said, pointing to Robinson as a member of the committee who supports the lawsuit.
The student representative to the group, current Student Body President Molly Bode '09, was chosen for her position and involvement on campus, Haldeman said, adding that he hopes Bode will help potential candidates "get a picture of what the undergraduate culture is like at Dartmouth."
Mulley said that it will be the task of both Bode and the search committee's faculty members to maintain the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the College's faculty, in the search process.
"The Dartmouth community is very engaged in this search and we want that to continue," he said.
The now-formed committee will begin meeting as early as their schedules permit, likely in early July, to finalize the partially-completed "statement of leadership criteria," a document which outlines desired qualities and characteristics of the next College president. The statement will then be made public in an effort to gain feedback, Mulley said.
He added that the search committee must seek to balance this openness and transparency with an appropriate level of confidentiality for all of the process' participants, including that of the eventual candidates.
"We will do all that we can to keep you informed about the process," he said. "Confidentiality is essential to this search, but so is the trust of the Dartmouth community."
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 was hired by the Board in May to aid with the search. The Boston-based firm's work at the College is being led by its founder, John Isaacson '68.
"We will be working closely, but that doesn't mean that we won't be a very active committee ourselves," Mulley said. "We will be a very active search committee relying upon John Isaacson and his team for the wisdom that they bring to the process."
The search committee will likely meet again in August and September, Mulley said, and is still "on track" to announce a new president in spring 2009.
