Conversation with Al Mulley ’70, Search Chair (Q&A)
1 Oct 2008
“Dartmouth’s distinctive position gives it the capacity and the confidence to lead and to define academic excellence for the 21st century,” says Trustee Al Mulley ’70, chair of the Presidential Search Committee. (photo by Joseph Mehling '69)
Trustee Al Mulley ’70, chair of the Presidential Search Committee, calls issuance of the Leadership Statement “a milestone” in the search for Dartmouth’s next president.
Developed by the committee and approved by the Board of Trustees in September 2008, the statement describes the College’s unique proposition, the role of the 17th president, and desired qualifications.
Board Chair Ed Haldeman ’70 appointed Mulley to lead the search, after President James Wright announced in February 2008 that he would step down after 11 years as president following Commencement in June 2009.
The search began last spring when Haldeman and Mulley met with various constituencies to define Dartmouth’s challenges and opportunities. They spoke with leaders in higher education; selected a search consultant, John Isaacson ’68; conducted forums with students, faculty, staff, and alumni; and launched a website to solicit community input (go to www.dartmouth.edu/presidentsearch).
The 14-member committee, named in June 2008, met three times this summer for two-day intensive sessions in Vermont. Dartmouth is now actively recruiting candidates.
In this interview, conducted after the Board’s annual retreat Sept. 13 and 14 in Hanover, Mulley gives a search update.
Q: What is the importance of the Leadership Statement?
A: This is a milestone. Because it is the written word, it does look like a final document. But the search committee’s understanding of how to interpret this document, in looking for the individual whose qualifications for leadership represent the best match for Dartmouth’s future, will continue to evolve through conversations about the community’s reactions to this document.
Q: Does the Leadership Statement reflect community input?
A: Composing this statement of the opportunity for leadership at Dartmouth forced the Board and the search committee to first grapple with and then synthesize the input we received from the many different constituents in the Dartmouth community. As you know, we spent a good deal of time with faculty, with students, staff, and alumni as well as leaders in higher education. We heard their sense of what made Dartmouth different. Instead of writing a job description, we tried to articulate how Dartmouth is different, and how that distinctiveness provides an opportunity for Dartmouth and its next president to lead in defining excellence for higher education in the 21st century.
Q: What are some of the opportunities for the next president?
A: Dartmouth presents an opportunity in that it is an undergraduate and graduate college with three outstanding professional schools, of business, engineering and medicine. It has doctoral and graduate programs mostly in the sciences, roughly $180 million a year in research, and it is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a very high research intensive university that is consistently ranked among the world’s greatest academic institutions. Yet the College remains the College, and there are very few places that not only have those assets available, but that have an unabiding commitment to teaching and to the formation of leaders, especially at the undergraduate level. Undergraduates at Dartmouth are full partners in learning and discovery.
It’s important to recall Dartmouth’s commitment to solve problems for society and the world. In 1946, John Sloan Dickey said, “The world’s troubles are your troubles … and there is nothing about the world that better human beings cannot fix.” That’s a big part of Dartmouth’s purpose. It’s manifest in the 48 foreign study programs, that Dartmouth was the first college in the Ivy League to have such programs. It’s manifest in the Dickey Center for International Understanding, and the fact that the majority of students spend time abroad.
Q: What are some key challenges?
A: Specific challenges for the next president include articulating the vision and helping the Dartmouth community to come to consensus on how to use Dartmouth assets. The new president will also have to make some strategic choices, managing budgets with great care, moving resources from one place to another, to make the whole fundamentally stronger. Strategic choice is all the more important, as Dartmouth is smaller than the institutions with which we compete for both faculty and students.
Q: What are a few of the challenges for the next president in key areas? Faculty?
A: Recruiting the very finest faculty for Dartmouth is an exciting challenge because of the commitment that Dartmouth has to teaching as well as to scholarship. We’re looking for faculty who not only want to define their fields academically, but who want to form the leaders for those fields in the future, and who understand the gratification that comes from bringing students into full partnership in discovery.
Q: Students?
A: While we do extremely well in every measure in the kinds of students we attract to Dartmouth, a clearer articulation of the Dartmouth vision, of this potential to lead in defining fields, will lead to recruitment of students who will best be able to leverage that distinctive quality of Dartmouth.
Q: As a college with graduate programs?
A: One area where we have benefited from the current leadership is in the integration of the professional schools and graduate programs. The opportunities the medical school provides for undergraduates just aren’t available in many other institutions. With collaboration between the medical school and Thayer, between the medical school and Tuck, in global health and other areas, there are real examples of making the whole more than the sum of the parts. The president who can continue building on that momentum will be able to lead in higher education from the Dartmouth platform.
Q: Facilities?
A: The key with facilities planning is the recognition that there is still more to do. In recent years we have put a billion dollars into the ground, extending facilities that enhance scholarship opportunities for faculty and students working together, and also residential life on campus. Think about the investment in sports facilities and playing fields, and in new dormitories, with more clusters where students and faculty form smaller communities within the larger community of Dartmouth. With regard to social spaces, the need is probably especially great for women on campus. Continuing to attend to the student experience, including the experience outside the classroom, is something that the new president will also be asked to do.
Q: Fund raising?
A: There is not a college or university president in the country who doesn’t have the responsibility to lead a fund-raising effort for that institution. At Dartmouth we have a very strong culture of philanthropy whether it is measured in participation, or in large gifts that have contributed so much to the facilities enhancement of Dartmouth. This is an area of strength for Dartmouth. Finding a president who can leverage that strength, in service to Dartmouth and the world, is an important part of the search committee’s job.
Q: The statement lists more than a dozen qualifications …
A: No single candidate will have all the qualifications, but we seek candidates with these abilities. Of course, we are looking for someone who can walk across the Connecticut River from Norwich to Hanover without setting foot on the Ledyard Bridge … in July as well as January! No single candidate will be strong in all of these areas. We are looking for someone with the self-knowledge to understand his or her own strengths, and how to complement those strengths with those of colleagues.
Q: Students in last spring’s search forum asked that “green” be a priority. Is that part of the criteria for the next president?
A: We heard a lot from students and faculty about Dartmouth’s place in the world and the extent to which it leads in developing solutions to problems not only for American society but for the world. And clearly issues related to climate change and sustainability represent an opportunity for leadership for Dartmouth as an institution and Dartmouth’s next president.
Q: What stage is the search committee in?
A: It’s important to distinguish between the timing of the leadership transition and the timing of the search itself. The Board intentionally chose to take some time to engage the community to do the kind of institutional learning that would lead to a focused and strong search.
The committee met for the first time at the end of July, the second time at the end of August, and will meet for the third time at the end of September. The search process is at a relatively early stage but is building on institutional learning that extended from early February through the spring.
Q: Are there many candidates?
A: Because the search process is at a relatively early stage, we are now busy networking and developing the resources in higher education community who can help us identify prospective candidates. We are just having conversations about people’s willingness to enter into a dialogue on whether or not the Dartmouth opportunity for leadership is something that matches their interests or goals for advancing higher education.
Q: How does the search committee operate?
A: Through our community engagement and through our conversations with the higher education community, we are making it clear that this is a search that reflects three commitments made by the Board of Trustees.
The three commitments are to transparency, to engaging the community as fully as possible, and to maintaining the strict confidentiality necessary to appropriately protect the interests of those whose lives are touched by this search.
Every member of the search committee has been actively involved in soliciting recommendations and surfacing names, and we will continue to do that as we build the pool of candidates.
As much as possible, we will leverage the opportunity for institutional learning that comes with the transition as highly. That means taking the time to engage both the Dartmouth community and the wider community of higher education.
Q: What additional input are you seeking?
A: We believe that the Leadership Statement is an effective synthesis of what we’ve heard from the Dartmouth community about its place in higher education at this moment in time, as well as what we’ve heard about the challenges in general that higher education faces. With further engagement with the Dartmouth community, we will be getting reactions to this leadership statement to help refine our thinking as a Board and as a search committee about how Dartmouth’s distinctive position gives it the capacity and the confidence to lead and to define academic excellence for the 21st century.
Q: When it comes to making a decision, how will the committee and the Board interact?
A: The decision to appoint a new president is the Board’s decision; it’s always the Board’s decision. The search committee will have spent thousands of hours getting to know, in context, a small number of candidates extremely well. It’s incumbent on the entire search committee, but particularly the trustees on the search committee, to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the Board about where we are in the process, and what we are learning about the leadership qualifications most important for Dartmouth’s future as we engage in dialogue with candidates.
