Ever since President Ronald D. Liebowitz announced he would step down at the end of the current school year, the Presidential Search Committee has been emailing the Middlebury Community updates as they search for his replacement. The most recent update, which was sent at the outset of the school year, stated that the Committee would begin evaluating candidates “whose background, experiences, and values align with our priorities.” But are “our priorities” the same as our priorities? That is to say, are we to think that the Presidential Search Committee, composed of nine trustees, six faculty members and two students share the priorities of the Middlebury community writ large? How can we know when the whole process is shrouded in confidentiality?
Given the secrecy of the process, we at the Campus have refrained from stepping in until now, unsure of how to best weigh in on the decision-making process. But now that it is more than likely that the Committee has narrowed down its field of candidates and may be close to choosing, here are our hopes for the next President.
As an Editorial Board, we would like to see more students involved in the search’s final stage. It is nearly impossible to represent the range of opinions and experiences that exist within the student body with only two students on the Committee. While confidentiality is undoubtedly a concern for those candidates who currently hold positions at other colleges or universities, there are ways in which more students could give input on the candidates who are finalists. Bring candidates on campus for an interview with a small group of 10-15 students under the condition that those students are sworn to confidentiality. There are routine lectures where candidates for faculty positions are evaluated by the College community. Let’s do the same with our candidates for president.
First and foremost, the president ought to have experience as an academic at a residential liberal arts college. Academics are the core of our years at Middlebury and we should hire a President who has previously served as a professor at a liberal arts college and who understands the environment and the importance of teaching. Additionally, an ideal candidate would be someone who has also served in an administrative role with a focus on student affairs, making them well-equipped to oversee a range of social life issues. Furthermore, the definition of liberal arts is evolving rapidly. With the inclusion of MiddCore and other experiential learning programs reshaping our perception of this academic tradition, we need a president who is willing to push the boundaries of what it means to get an education in the 21st century. From the Solar Decathalon to offering credit for summer internships, there are ways the next president should advocate for learning that happens outside of the classroom, too.
The President must also be an excellent fundraiser for the causes and programs that matter most. President Barry Mills of Bowdoin College wrote in a column addressing the role of a college president that a trustee once told him, “No matter how good a job you do, you won’t be a success unless you raise a lot of money.” The community would be well-served by recognizing that a large part of the President’s job is to raise funds for the College because those funds allow us to stay competitive, innovative and accessible as an institution. Our next president should have experience or at least interest in raising money for the areas that are traditionally more challenging: financial aid, new residential buildings and recruiting and retaining talented faculty.
That being said, we recognize that college presidents are frequently persons who have little to no fundraising experience. This is especially true of academics. President Liebowitz, for example, was a geography professor, Dean of the Faculty and Provost before becoming President. Yet over his tenure, Liebowitz has raised money for green initiatives, weathered the financial crisis while sustaining our commitment to need-blind financial aid and launched the largest fundraising campaign undertaken by a liberal arts college, among many other fiduciary achievements. Hiring a former faculty member and student affairs administrator as the next president can give weight to that president’s arguments about the importance of donating in order to hire diverse and talented faculty and to improve our ability to offer financial aid.
Outside of fundraising, the next President should make this campus and the people here their priority. Middlebury is a college in the liberal arts tradition, not a corporation, and what makes it so is its faculty and students. While we understand that the rebranding and restructuring of the Middlebury identity system may be good business, we are concerned that it may make for bad education. A president who gives undue attention to the auxiliary programs may detract from the attention required to keep the education offered by Middlebury College top-notch.
One way to convince us of their commitment to the College is to make a serious effort to be visible and available on campus. We commend President Liebowitz for his constant engagement with the student body. The forum on social life a few weeks back is a prime example of leadership that is willing to engage with an upset constituency head-on. Liebowitz’s successor should be willing and able to communicate with the student body in myriad constructive ways — sitting for interviews, holding open office hours and facilitating forums on relevant topics when the campus needs them most.
Another way to show commitment to this campus is by helping the College repair its relationship with the town. In light of the Town Hall conundrum and recent off-campus partying incidents, the relationship between the College and the town has been chilly lately. A President who is not sensitive to the relationship between a well-known college and a small rural town could do further harm to our already precarious predicament. Rather, we need somebody who will listen to what Middlebury residents need and commit to partnering them with students and faculty to help them achieve their goals.
Finally, we at the Campus believe that the next college president’s biggest priority should be to enroll students of diverse economic backgrounds. While we recognize that the student body has grown significantly more diverse under Liebowitz’s presidency, Middlebury, nevertheless, managed to place 51st in an economic diversity ranking conducted by The New York Times this September. We need to do more. Some colleges stopped including loans in financial aid packages, but Middlebury still “utilizes the student loans as part of need-based award.” Instead, we could turn to our peer institution Vassar College, which eliminated loans for low-income families seven years ago, for inspiration.
Our next president should ensure that every prospective Middlebury student — rich or poor — is met with an equal admissions opportunity, meaning that as a college in the rural state of Vermont, it is incumbent on us to do maximum outreach and make Middlebury accessible. We ask the Committee to select a president serious and ambitious enough to conceptualize a platform of strategies to enroll more low-income students as the University of Chicago has. Last month, UChicago eliminated all student loans for low and middle income students, ensured them paid summer internships, and will provide some students with tuition-free, pre-college orientation summer school.
We realize college presidents feel pressure to move the college up in rankings and raise money, but we also think that an elite college like Middlebury is an engine behind social mobility. Like it or not, the College is caught in the middle of a national dialogue about vast inequality and every move we make either bridges the wealth gap or widens it.
Middlebury has evolved considerably over the last few decades, and we think that a President who displays all the above characteristics would better represent the college Middlebury wants to be ten years from now, instead of what it was thirty years ago.
Artwork by SARAH LAKE
