Dartmouth's presidential search committee met for the second time on Aug. 28 and 29, the latest step in the quest to find a successor to College President James Wright, who will step down in June 2009 after 40 years at the College. The committee discussed its leadership statement, which will outline criteria for the College's next president. Members also explored ways to further involve the Dartmouth community in the search process without jeopardizing the confidentiality of potential candidates.
The leadership statement, which will likely be published within the next two weeks, explores the opportunities and challenges that Dartmouth's next president will face, according to trustee Al Mulley '70, chair of the search committee. The Board reviewed the statement at its most recent meeting this past weekend.
"It's taken a little bit longer than anticipated because we really did want to capture the input from the Dartmouth community," Mulley said of the statement, which committee members initially said would be released in late August. "We also wanted to respect not only the trustees' sense of how that could best be communicated, but every member of the search committee."
The committee, which includes six College trustees, six faculty members, an alumna and a current student, spent much of the meeting discussing what members had learned since their first meeting on July 22 and 23, Mulley said. Since the last meeting, each committee member has worked to build a "network of resources" to help identify potential candidates, he added.
Mulley said he could not disclose the names of any of the people discussed as possible candidates in the search because of confidentiality concerns.
"We are at the stage [in the search] where we are building the pool of prospective candidates and building a network that will help us learn about and identify additional prospective candidates," Mulley, who was nominated to be chair of the search committee in March 2008, said.
This stage, Mulley said, will probably last about two or three months, and the committee will likely not talk to specific candidates until after Jan. 1, 2009.
Committee members also discussed how to keep the search process as transparent as possible without compromising the privacy of the candidates under consideration, Mulley said. Revealing the names of candidates during the search process could potentially jeopardize their current positions, he said.
Committee members will continue to meet with groups of alumni across the country and will hold a campus forum in Collis Common Ground on Oct. 3 as part of an overall effort to make the process transparent. Mulley and Board of Trustees Chairman Ed Haldeman '70 held open forums with members of the Dartmouth community this past spring to collect input about the desired qualities of Dartmouth's next president, and the trustees also solicited input via a web site. These comments will be incorporated into the leadership statement, according to Mulley.
Mulley said the recent addition of five new Board-selected members to the Board did not affect the committee's meeting.
