BY MARY PRAGER

In print | Published September 4, 2008

The College’s search for a new President continues to advance as the committee reaches out to a broader academic and administrative community. After two meetings, hours of communication and hundreds of e-mails, the presidential search committee developed an advertisement seeking candidates for the presidency which will be published in the Chronicle of Higher Education on September 5. The advertisement will also run in a diverse array of other publications, including Women in Higher Education, Hispanic Outlook, Diverse Issues in Higher Educations, and The Economist in an effort to reach out to a spectrum of potential candidates.

“We’ve placed an advertisement in a bunch of different publications that will help publicize the position, and we’re working on the exact position specifications that we’ll be sending out,” chair of the presidential search committee Tom Spock ’78 said.

“So typically what will happen is it will take a couple of months for people to figure out that the job is open, to think about it a little bit. Certainly we will be contacting certain people who have been nominated and encouraging them to apply. During the fourth quarter of the year, we will be in the business of narrowing down the list and interviewing semifinalists,” Spock said.

Although the committee does not yet have specific qualifications for a candidate, it is seeking individuals of diverse backgrounds to apply. “Most people will read the Chronicle of Higher Education but we want to bring in a diverse crew,” history professor Pieter Judson said. Judson is one of three faculty members serving on the presidential search committee.

Last year, President Al Bloom announced his intent to resign from his position after an 18-year tenure. Chair of the Board of Managers Barbara Mather ’65, who will be working with the presidential search committee, sent an e-mail in June calling for members of the Swarthmore community to both nominate candidates and contribute their opinions regarding the search.

The presidential search committee, formed at the end of the past academic year, is the group charged with recommending a single candidate for the presidency. Headed by Chair of the Finance Committee and Board of Managers member Thomas E. Spock ’78, the committee is comprised of representatives of the major constituents of the college community: alumni, students, faculty, and staff. Four alumni including Spock, three faculty members, one staff member, and two students serve as the official liaisons between the committee and the broader college community.

Initially, the committee focused on compiling as much information as possible from the college community in order to produce an overview of the kinds of qualifications and values they look for in an appropriate future president, explained Lauren Stokes ’09 and Aaron Schwartz ’09, the two student representatives on the committee.

So far, the primary medium for doing so has been through e-mail. The committee will also be hosting a fireside chat also on Friday, September 5th in Kohlberg coffee bar at 7:30 p.m. to gauge student concerns regarding the next president.

Spock reported that the presidential search committee is making progress. “It’s been great meeting everybody on the committee, and it’s honestly been fun. I’ve certainly really enjoyed it, and we’ve been educating ourselves about how these searches usually go, what the process is, what the general expectations are out in the marketplace for people interested in these jobs. And we’ve been working with Shelly Storbeck, a well-known search consultant.” Storbeck/Pimental & Associates, according to the new Swarthmore Presidential Search website developed by Director of Communications Nancy Nicely and the News and Information Office, is a “minority-and female-owned retained executive search firm.”

Vice President Maurice Eldridge ’71 is not directly involved in the presidential search, but he is optimistic about the progress made so far. “It’s a good beginning,” he said. “What I’d really like to see is what [the committee] publishe[s] as the kind of fuller description of the college and what they’re looking for, what we are in effect looking for, and because that’s going to come from input from various constituencies … I haven’t seen that yet. That’s what I’d really like to see,” he said.

The wider college community as well as potential candidates for the presidency will be able to track the progress of the search through the new website. The site provides a general timeline for the search process and relevant documents, and will be continually updated. It also provides a background of Swarthmore’s past presidents and a history of the college. A feature of the site allows visitors to nominate individuals they believe would be good candidates as well as make suggestions. Most significantly for Eldridge, the website ensures transparency in the process of selecting the next president. “I’m glad to see the website,” Eldridge said. “That promises there will be more information and there will be transparency to this process.”

One area of the search process will necessarily remain confidential. “A lot of the people we hope will apply for this position … will need absolute … confidentiality,” Spock said. “When it comes down to the exact identity of semifinalists and finalists, we are going to have to be extremely confidential or else we are going to lose candidates.”

After a certain point, it will be difficult for the committee to predict the course of the search. “It gets hard to predict because you don’t know how strong the pool will be, although early indications from the consultant are that it’s very strong and doing very well for this early in the process,” Spock said, “but we’ll only know as we get into December or November how many semi-finalists we’ll actually identify and how many individuals will actually make the short-list for campus visits and additional interviews and so on. Certainly it is everybody’s hope and expectation that in the first quarter of next year this decision will be made.”

According to Eldridge, the committee has invited members of the Al Bloom’s senior staff to meet with the search consultant, the chair of the committee and the chair of the board to get their individual takes on what they’re looking for. “People who are in the senior staff don’t really get a hand in choosing their own boss,” Eldridge said.

As far as the senior staff knows at this point, there is unlikely to be a major change in administration when the new president takes over. Nor does Eldridge anticipate major changes to the college in the next few years. “We’ve been going through a planning process which is really an attempt to try to anticipate to some degree what the future will bring and what we need to do to meet that future. I think that the core of who we are is pretty clear,” Eldridge said.

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