Subject: Presidential Search
From: "Senior Fellow, Yale Corporation" <[email-masked]>
To: "Yale Alumni and Friends" <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Aug 2012 16:13:43 -0400

August 31, 2012

From:

Edward P. Bass, Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation

To:

Yale Alumni and Friends

Re:

Presidential Search

I write to share with you the plans developed by the Yale Corporation earlier
this week when the Fellows met to organize the Presidential Search. The
selection of the President is the most important responsibility of the Yale
Corporation, and we are committed to recruiting an individual who will be an
exceptional leader for Yale in the years ahead and who will continue the
extraordinary momentum achieved during Rick Levin’s two decades as President.

The authority for the appointment of the President of the University rests
with the Yale Corporation, and we will constitute a search committee to offer
nominees to us. When the last Presidential Search was conducted at Yale in
1992-93, the Corporation for the first time invited faculty to serve as full
voting members of the search committee, and we will do the same in this search.

We are committed to broad consultation with the Yale community to ensure that
we are very well informed about your sense of the attributes needed in Yale’s
next President and the issues that he or she needs to address in the years
ahead.  We are also committed to a robust program of communications with the
community throughout the search.

Membership of the Search Committee.  The 1992-93
Presidential Search  Committee consisted of eight trustees and four faculty
members, and we will continue with the same composition for the upcoming search.
The Search Committee will be charged with identifying and screening candidates
and with providing a “short list” of several nominees to the full
Corporation.

The trustees that I have appointed to the Search Committee are:

Francisco G. Cigarroa ’79, Chancellor, University of Texas System

Peter B. Dervan ’72 Ph.D., Bren Professor of Chemistry, California Institute
of
Technology

Donna L. Dubinsky ’77, Founder & Board Chair, Numenta, Inc.

Charles W. Goodyear ’80, President, Goodyear Capital Corporation

Paul L. Joskow ’70 M.Phil, ’72 Ph.D., President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
and former Chair of the Economics Department of MIT

Indra K. Nooyi ’80 M.P.P.M., Chairman of the Board & CEO, PepsiCo,
Inc.

E. John Rice, Jr. ’88, Founder & CEO, Management Leadership for
Tomorrow

Douglas A. Warner III ’68, Former Chairman of the Board, JP Morgan Chase and
Chairman of the Board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

To ensure wide community participation in the selection of the four Search
Committee members to be appointed from the faculty, I encourage you to write me
by noon on Tuesday, September 4, with suggestions and nominations of faculty
candidates. Please send your email to: [email-masked].

I will ask the Deans of the Professional Schools to review the names
submitted from their faculties and to offer suggestions of their own; and I will
ask the current and former Divisional Directors of the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences as well as Deans Miller and Pollard to review the names submitted from
the FAS and to offer their own suggestions.  I will then choose, from the list
of names forwarded by the Deans and Divisional Directors, the faculty members
for the Search Committee. In my view, the decision in the last search to appoint
tenured members of the faculty who have had some administrative experience was
wise, and I intend to follow that example.

Chairperson of the Search Committee.  I will designate a
Chair of the Search Committee from its membership once the Committee is fully
constituted.

Trustee Liaisons to Campus Constituencies. We are
introducing a new mechanism in the search process to broaden contact with and
counsel from faculty, students, staff, and alumni.  There will be a specific
trustee from the Committee designated as Liaison to Faculty who will work with
the faculty members appointed to the Search Committee to ensure broad
consultation with the faculty. There will also be trustees from the Committee
designated as Liaisons to Students, to Staff, and to Alumni.  Each will be
responsible for ensuring that there are opportunities for wide consultation with
each of the constituencies and for working with the Campus Counselors described
below.   I am pleased to report the following Corporation members will be
assuming these roles:

Trustee Liaison to the Faculty: Paul Joskow

Trustee Liaison to Students: Peter Dervan, who is a parent of a Yale College
graduate of the class of 2012

Trustee Liaison to Staff: John Rice

Trustee Liaison to Alumni:  Donna Dubinsky, who chairs the Corporation
Committee on Development and Alumni Affairs

Campus Counselors to the Search Committee.  We will continue
the practice introduced in the 1992 – 93 search of asking a member of the
faculty not on the Search Committee to serve as Faculty Counselor to the Search
Committee to be available to faculty members who wish to offer counsel about the
future of the University and share their recommendations of candidates.  Any
faculty member who so desires can be assured that his or her views will be
forwarded to the Search Committee without attribution.  I expect to select the
Faculty Counselor from among the names submitted by the Deans and Divisional
Directors.

In addition, I will also appoint Counselors to serve similar roles for
students, staff, and alumni. Brandon Levin, the immediate past President of the
Yale College Council, has accepted my invitation to serve as Student Counselor
to the Search Committee, and Janet Lindner, Associate Vice President for
Administration, will serve as Staff Counselor to the Search Committee. Brandon
and Janet will be available to meet with students and staff, respectively, who
wish to convey their thoughts about Yale’s future and the attributes desired for
the next President. The views of any student or staff member who so desires will
be forwarded to the Search Committee anonymously. Michael Madison, the immediate
Past Chair of the AYA Board of Governors, will be available to any alumni who
prefer to convey their thoughts to him rather than directly to the Search
Committee, and he will work with Donna Dubinsky to design ways for alumni ideas
and concerns to be conveyed to the Search Committee.

Open Forums on Campus and Consultation Plans. On Friday,
September 28, a series of Open Forums will be held on campus where members of
the Corporation will seek advice about the qualities needed in Yale’s next
President and the priorities he or she should address.  The Trustee Liaisons and
Campus Counselors for each constituency will be offering me advice about this
day of engagement, but at this juncture, I anticipate that the Corporation will
host separate, open sessions on September 28 for: FAS Faculty; Professional
School Faculty; Yale College students; Graduate & Professional School
students; and University staff.  In addition, members of the Corporation will
meet with the Deans of the Schools, the FAS Divisional Directors, the Masters of
the Residential Colleges, the University Librarian, and the directors of the
museums, among others.

A separate session will be held for alumni delegates to the Fall Assembly of
the Association of Yale Alumni when they gather in New Haven in November. Donna
Dubinsky, the Trustee Liaison to Alumni, and Michael Madison, Alumni Counselor
to the Search Committee, will be reaching out to the Board of Governors of the
AYA to design other methods for engaging alumni and communicating with
graduates.

Secure Email to the Search Committee. In the next week, we
will set up a confidential email accessible only to the Search Committee for
those who prefer to write with their suggestions about Yale or who have
candidates to recommend. In addition, we will be mounting a website dedicated to
the Presidential Search where we will regularly update the community about the
progress on the search.

Finally, I am pleased that Martha Highsmith, Associate Vice President of the
University, will serve as chief of staff to the Search Committee.  You may also
send confidential messages to her at [email-masked].

I assure you that the Yale Corporation is deeply committed to understanding
the views of the entire Yale community as we undertake the important work of
selecting a new President of Yale University in the months ahead.  We look
forward to hearing your views, and to keeping you informed about the progress of
the search.

Edward P. Bass, Senior Fellow
For the Yale
Corporation

Yale University Official Message
NOTE: This official Yale ITS message can also be viewed at:
https://messages.yale.edu/messages/ITS/itsmsgs/detail/81730

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