October 22 updates on the Presidential Search
The Presidential Search Committee updates the community on the summer’s listening sessions and the upcoming interview process.
Dear members of the Mount Holyoke community,
Now that the academic year is well under way, we wanted to share a few updates related to the search for the twentieth president of the College.
Thank you to all of you who joined the listening sessions between May and early September. Between Reunion I and early September, members of the Presidential Search Committee (PSC) and the Isaacson, Miller (IM) search team held over 32 listening sessions, with over 200 faculty, staff, alums, students and trustees participating. Additionally, the IM team had one-on-one meetings with senior leadership, including outgoing President Stephens and Interim President Tatum and we had 75 responses to the online survey.
Your perspectives have been essential to shaping the work of the PSC, and we welcome further input at pressearch@mtholyoke.edu. In addition to providing valuable input in developing the presidential position profile, you also identified a number of prospective candidates. We encourage you to review the position profile, which will be used to help prospective candidates understand what is special and distinctive about Mount Holyoke as well as the key priorities for the College in the coming years. The PSC also will use the profile as a critical reference point in our assessment of prospective candidates and in interviews with semi-finalists and finalists.
Over the next few weeks, we will begin the process of interviewing candidates. Given the need for confidentiality, we do not expect candidates will be willing or able to engage with the campus community outside of the formal PSC interview process. Maintaining candidate confidentiality is critically important to ensuring a successful search and the PSC is committed to this principle. If you have candidate recommendations, please plan to submit these to our search team at IM by the end of October. Of course, we are always open to great candidates who may emerge later in the process, but we want to make sure any recommendations from our community get full consideration.
The PSC is committed to sharing pertinent information with the community as the search process unfolds. We thank you for your engagement as we seek to attract a stellar leader for Mount Holyoke College.
Sincerely,
Mona Sutphen ’89
Chair, PSC
Anne McKenny ’79
Vice-Chair, PSC