Ian Baucom, the provost of the University of Virginia (UVA), will serve as the 18th President of Middlebury College. The college announced his selection for the presidency at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 22, after a unanimous recommendation by the Presidential Search Committee was affirmed by the Board of Trustees on Tuesday afternoon. He will assume the office on July 1, 2025.
Baucom has held his current position at UVA since 2022, prior to which he worked for eight years as Dean of its College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. During his tenure at the state’s flagship university, the incoming president has worked as the Robert C. Taylor Professor of English; he previously taught at Yale University and served as chair of the English Department at Duke University.
“I love the mission of Middlebury, I love residential liberal arts education,” Baucom said in an exclusive interview with The Campus on Tuesday. “I'm looking forward to learning how to ski, but really the student experience and getting to know the faculty and being in this place is what’s drawn me to Middlebury.”
Middlebury’s 18th President
Baucom — who grew up in South Africa — expressed his excitement at the idea of joining a small liberal arts community at Middlebury after spending his undergraduate years in a similar environment at Wake Forest University. He lived in a first year dormitory on UVA’s campus with his family for three years, followed by five years living with students on the famous UVA lawn, so he is no stranger to tight-knit residential life.
“A lot of it is learning from the richness of that, the relationships that we were able to build with students. I love the idea of having a class of 600 students, ideally all of whose names I would like to get to know,” Baucom said.
This July, he will assume responsibility for an institution that has grown in scope and resources during the past decade. However, Middlebury continues to face serious challenges that he will be tasked with leading the college through — over-enrollment, employee compensation and understaffing, A.I. and the Honor Code, threats to higher education, and town-gown relations are just a few he may confront.
“Part of what drew me to Middlebury was how deeply, as I understand it, that the college is committed to the town of Middlebury,” he explained, when asked about his desire to work with the town of Middlebury. Baucom added how he recently toured the new childcare center in town as well as the site for the future affordable housing center. “That is going to be an important part of trying to build and strengthen that relationship.”
Baucom has experience with leading an institution through difficult periods. He helped lead UVA’s response and grieving process as Provost when an active shooter killed three football players and wounded two other students in November 2022. While in his previous role of Dean of Arts & Sciences in 2017, he helped the university respond when a group of white supremacists marched through UVA’s campus, and then guided students through the Covid-19 pandemic. More recently last spring, the UVA administration received pushback for their decision to use state police force to clear the pro-Palestinian encampment on UVA’s campus.
Last December, before her tenure ended, President Emerita Laurie Patton shared her concerns surrounding Trump’s re-election in November, adding that the new president must be focused on preventing Trump’s policies from hampering international students’ access to a Middlebury education.
“The main thing we need to do is think about protecting our students now in anticipation of what might happen, which is the art of administration,” Patton said at the time.
Baucom largely shares that emphasis on the students, adding that the values of Middlebury College must not depend on political pressure or successive presidential administrations.
“Political moments change, and different parties are in power at different moments. But what is really, really crucial is to understand what the values of the institution are and to understand the value of the dignity of all human persons,” he said.
Having helped lead UVA through one such political moment — the recent Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action — Baucom reflected on the moral imperative to maintain a diverse student body at Middlebury, noting how the challenge will be different when he leads a smaller private institution in Vermont.
“We will follow the law, and we will do everything within our power to recruit and support the most diverse student body we possibly can,” Baucom said. He cited UVA’s progress recruiting from lower-income high schools in the state as a potential lens to consider the relationship between the college and its applicant pool.
As an administrator at UVA, he believes in recognizing the ubiquity of A.I. and asking students and faculty to reflect on best practices for its uses across disciplines, which he will continue to explore at Middlebury.
“A.I. as an instrument of teaching and research is part of the world that we live in now,” he explained. “I think the heart of taking the best and most creative advantage of the affordances of artificial intelligence really comes from asking the right kinds of questions.”
Although his background is primarily in English literature, with a focus on colonial and post-colonial texts, the 57-year-old Provost has also worked on projects expanding UVA’s offerings for neuroscience and biotechnology, global black studies, climate change, and artificial intelligence.
Baucom, who will be a tenured Professor of English at Middlebury when he begins as president, has climate change consistently on his mind — a fitting mindset for the president of a university with the first-ever environmental studies department. When he eventually teaches classes at Middlebury, he hopes to cover the intersection of literature and climate studies.
“The Climate of History in a Planetary Age” by Dipesh Chakrabarty is one book Baucom said he has been reading recently that has been particularly influential on his thinking about our planet. He connected his studies of the environment on the importance of climate change within the “Big M” — Middlebury Language Schools, the Institute for International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), and the Vermont campus.
Baucom will be a tenured professor of English at the college upon his inauguration in July. "I think I can firmly say that that I absolutely plan to teach," he said.
The Presidential Search Process
The process that led the Presidential Search Committee to Baucom was launched in June 2024 with Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Kirtley Cameron ’95 at its helm. The Board chose the executive search firm Isaacon, Miller and an 18-member committee composed of trustees, faculty, staff, alumni and one student to conduct an expeditious, closed search.
Beginning to evaluate 27 candidates brought in by the search firm in October, the committee quickly and carefully narrowed down its candidates to 11 semi-finalists to be interviewed over Zoom in December. Of these candidates, four were people of color and five were women.
They then invited three finalists and their spouses to campus in the first week of January for continued interviews with the committee, more intimate social meals with only Cameron and Ted Truscott ’83, chair of the Board of Trustees, and tours of campus and the town of Middlebury.
Cameron and Truscott said that the standout quality of Baucom’s cover letter enticed the committee from the outset and enthused them to meet him in person.
“I think his true, genuine curiosity about Middlebury came out from the beginning. He is a professional, but an engaging and warm and empathetic person,” Kirtley said.
According to Cameron and Truscott, the committee was able to create a harmony between trusting, respecting and challenging one another in conversations about choosing from a strong pool of candidates — conversations that led them to the unanimous decision of Baucom.
“I think when it got to the final deliberation after we'd seen each candidate, it wasn't difficult,” Cameron said.
Truscott spoke about why he thinks the committee ultimately landed on Baucom to serve as Middlebury’s next president.
“Part of his desire to get back to the liberal arts and a smaller institution is the students and the faculty and being more engaged on a day-to-day basis with both undergraduate students and graduate students and faculty. I mean, just more interaction on a day-to-day basis,” Truscott said. “I think that bode very well for all of us and in who we were looking for as our next leader.”
“Thinking of the new museum as an arts agora, where art and democracy and the possibility of life come together is great,” Baucom said in an interview with The Campus on Tuesday, describing the building intended to replace Battell Hall. “I can't wait for that space to be open.”
Past, Present and Future of the Presidency
Middlebury has been searching for its next leader for the last six months since President Emerita Laurie Patton retired last spring, capping a nearly 10-year career leading the college. She departed the college to serve as the next President of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, an institution that she and Baucom share — he was elected to the Academy in 2021, three years after her own induction. The 17th and 18th presidents also overlapped during their time at Duke, when Baucom said Patton served as the dean for his college at the time.
Interim President Steve Snyder will depart his current role on June 30, 2025 after leading the institution for a few short months, allowing Baucom to step into his new position and begin to forge his legacy as Middlebury’s 18th President for years to come.
When asked if he had a message to students, staff and faculty at the college, Baucom expressed his gratitude for being welcomed into a community as dedicated and curious as what he has found at Middlebury.
“Thank you for who you are,” Baucom said. “Thank you for inviting Wendy and our family to join you. We are really grateful, and I am really, really eager to begin."
Ryan McElroy '25 (he/him) is the Editor in Chief.
Ryan has previously served as a Managing Editor, News Editor and Staff Writer. He is majoring in history with a minor in art history. Outside of The Campus, he is co-captain of Middlebury Mock Trial and previously worked as Head Advising Fellow for Matriculate and a research assistant in the History department. Last summer Ryan interned as a global risk analyst at a bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Madeleine Kaptein '25.5 (she/her) is a managing editor.
Madeleine previously served as a staff writer, copy editor and local editor. She is a Comparative Literature major with minors in German and Art History. In Spring 2024, she studied abroad in Mainz, Germany, from where she wrote for the Addison Independent about her host country. In her free time, she enjoys journaling, long walks and runs, and uncomplicated visual arts projects.
