Presidential Search Begins

In an email sent to students, faculty and staff at the College and the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) on April 16, Chair of the Presidential Search Committee Al Dragone ’78 announced the roster of the Presidential Search Committee. The announcement is the first step in finding a successor for President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, who will step down at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year.

The Search Committee will include representatives from groups of stakeholders spanning the Middlebury community, including members of the Board of Trustees, the Middlebury Alumni Association, College faculty, College staff, College students and a single representative from both the faculty and staff of MIIS. In his email, Dragone noted that the Search Committee and the Board of Trustees will also rely on assistance from the international executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of American Studies Tim Spears, as well as other members of the Search Committee, declined to provide extensive details about the search process, due in part to the fact that the committee has yet to hold an official meeting.

Spears noted that it is common practice for any college to hire a search firm to assist in the process of finding a new leader. According to Spears, a search firm like Spencer Stuart can use its access to potential candidates to broaden the pool of candidates for the position.

The process will begin with several outreach sessions taking place at MIIS and at the College in early May. In an email notifying the College and MIIS communities of the sessions, Dragone wrote that Spencer Stuart representatives will use these sessions to identify qualities desired in the new president, as well as challenges and opportunities that the new president will encounter. Spencer Stuart will conduct similar sessions this summer at the College’s Breadloaf School of English, as well as at the Summer Language Schools.

Spears said that the sessions will contribute to Spencer Stuart’s generation of a prospectus describing the College and the characteristics sought in a new president to be distributed to candidates interested in the position. He likened the prospectus to the literature on colleges analyzed by high school students during the college admissions process. Spencer Stuart will likely deliver the prospectus by early summer.

Prospective candidates for the presidency may be nominated by members of the Middlebury community or by people who know the College or approached by Spencer Stuart starting over the summer, Spears said.

“If you’re a candidate, you’ve had several conversations with the people from Spencer Stuart — probably done your own due diligence on Middlebury — and then you’ll likely write a statement of interest to submit along with a curriculum vitae, and Spencer Stuart will collect that information and narrow the list,” he said.

The narrowed list of candidates will receive consideration by the Search Committee. The Search Committee will interview candidates and ultimately recommend a candidate to the Board of Trustees, which will make the final decision. The Search Committee has not yet decided how much interaction candidates will have with the broader Middlebury community or student body — this will likely be a topic of discussion at Search Committee meetings in May and June.

Spears said that candidates for leadership position of academic institutions like Middlebury are typically deans, provosts or chief academic officers at an institution like Middlebury or a larger university, but he noted that candidates can also come from outside academia, citing Raynard Kington, President of Grinnell College and former Deputy Director at the National Institutes of Health.

“For us, getting input from the community is really key,” Spears said. “You want the community to feel invested, to feel like they had an opportunity to be part of the search process.”

The two student representatives on the Search Committee, Bao Lin Xu ’16 and Nick Mallchok ’14.5 will provide student perspectives on the Search Committee.

Xu ’16 said that during her participation as a member of the committee she “will be looking for a community builder who has a similar vision for the future of Middlebury as I,” citing issues of race, identity and marginalization as her primary concerns.

“We need to be prepared as an institution, as a community of fine educators to be inclusive and to welcome all color, backgrounds and identities to feel like a part of this community,” Xu wrote in an email.