Presidential Search Update: 6/6/24

The following message was sent to the Middlebury community by Board of Trustees chair Ted Truscott ’83.

Dear Middlebury Community,

I’m writing on behalf of the Board of Trustees to give you the latest developments in our presidential search. Since I last wrote to you, we’ve been putting in place the foundational pieces of the search process that will support all the essential work ahead. We’re pleased with our progress to date and look forward to the upcoming stages where we’ll have wide representation from across all of Middlebury and engage the broadest range of perspectives.

Here’s where we are:

Search Committee Chair: Kirtley Cameron ’95 will chair the Presidential Search Committee. Kirtley is a vice chair of the Board of Trustees and chairs its Trusteeship and Governance Committee. We’re grateful to Kirtley for taking on this key assignment. 

Search Firms: Kirtley, trustee vice chairs Leilani Brown ’93 and Karen Stolley ’77, and I have been interviewing executive search firms, each of them highly respected with expertise in higher education, including institutions that are centered in the liberal arts and sciences. We’ll complete our interviews over the next few days, and soon after that we’ll select one to partner with us. That firm will make a presentation to the Board of Trustees at its July 10 meeting. We’ll have more news to share with you soon.

Search Committee: We expect to appoint 12 to 15 representatives from across the institution to serve on the search committee. We’ll rely on Middlebury’s existing governance structure to guide us in this process, which means we’ll have representation from trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumni who will best represent our broader community. Please stay tuned for more information here, too.

Listening Sessions: We’ll hold these sessions throughout the summer and into early fall to engage numerous and varied stakeholders. This is such an important part of the presidential search effort, enabling both reflection and aspiration: Where are we today as an institution, what has brought us to this point in our history, and where and how we hope to move into the future.

Interim Leadership: In parallel with these developments, trustees are discussing a potential interim leadership structure that would be in place on January 1, 2025, if a president is not hired and in position by that time.

Website: We’ll also be developing a website dedicated to the search, which will include a record of our correspondence with you, search committee membership, the “leadership profile” for the Middlebury presidency, information on the search firm, and a timeline. We’ll provide you with the link when the site is live.

My colleagues and I are pleased to be able to present you with this update, and we thank you for your attention. To underscore what I said in my earlier letter, our presidential search will be an inclusive one, involving members from across our entire learning community. We’ll be as transparent as we can be about the search process and timeline, recognizing there are obvious issues of confidentiality in an effort of this kind. And we’ll communicate with you regularly and throughout.

With kindest regards,

William F. (Ted) Truscott ’83
Board Chair