According to Chairman of the Board of Trustees Amos B. Hostetter, Jr. '58, and pending Board approval, the committee will consist of three faculty members, three Trustees, two students, two alumni, one administrator and one staff member.
"The president is chosen and elected by the Trustees," said Hostetter. "While a search committee will do the heavy lifting of the search, it ultimately is a decision for the Trustees to make. The committee will make a recommendation to the Trustees, and I have every reason to believe that the Trustees will support the recommendation."
The committee should function similarly to the search committee that found Gerety in 1993, according to Hostetter. It will meet for the first time over graduation weekend and begin its initial tasks of determining what the College's needs are and what type of candidate the search will attempt to find to fill those needs.
"We had a couple of meetings trying to figure out what the needs of the College are, and therefore the type of leader we need in a president," said Professor of Physics Kannan Jagannathan of the 1993 committee. "We were looking for ... someone to run the capital campaign that was about to be launched, as well as someone who would interact well with all of the different constituencies of the campus, who would serve as a person who brings together all of those groups."
Once it has determined what it is looking for in a candidate, the committee will begin its task of first soliciting and then evaluating applications for the position.
The committee is likely to advertise in journals such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, send letters to respected persons in higher education for suggestions and make phone calls to foundation heads and presidents of other colleges and universities.
"It's important that there's good diversity in the pool," said Hostetter. "We want as broad a pool as we can possibly generate, and we will affirmatively go out and make sure that the pool is representative of the diversity we're looking for."
While many candidates for the position will submit their own applications, the committee may actively approach and ask some desirable individuals if they would be interested in being a candidate for the position. In 1993 the initial nationwide pool included several hundred names.
The committee will have a rolling application deadline, continually seeking quality candidates as it whittles down the initial pool by evaluating applicants resumés and discussing them in weekend meetings held in New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., or on campus. Once the field is narrowed to 50 candidates, groups of two to four committee members will visit the candidates, conduct interviews and report back to the full committee. Taking these interviews into account, the committee will narrow the field down to 10 finalists, who will be interviewed by the entire group.
In 1993, the committee recommended only one candidate-Gerety-to the Board; however, it is possible that the committee could recommend several candidates, and the Board would then choose from among them.
According to Jagannathan, other colleges that have employed a similar method often bring the finalists to the campus to participate in a public forum; however, issues of confidentiality complicate this possibility. Some candidates currently serving in sensitive positions could be deterred from applying if their applications were made public without their being guaranteed the job, such as Gerety, who was serving as the president of Trinity College before he took over as president of the Amherst.
"Whenever this begins, and until it finishes, we will try and keep this as much as possible to ourselves," said Hostetter. "There won't be any periodic reports. We have to be able to assure potential candidates that their identity and our process will be totally confidential."
In total, the 1993 committee met over a dozen times before it offered its recommendation of Gerety to the Board.
The present committee has more than a year to offer its own recommendation, but according to Hostetter, there is no certain date by which the search must be completed.
"There is no way of anticipating [when the search will be completed]," said Hostetter. "Tom is with us through next June, so it would be nice to be able to conclude by then, but we're not done until we have the 18th president of Amherst College."
Before the committee can begin its search, the respective constituencies must choose their representatives to serve on it.
While there do not appear to be any explicit guidelines as to how the student representatives are to be selected, according to former Student Government Organization President Steve Ruckman '01, the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) should announce the two vacant committee positions and solicit and evaluate nominations to fill them.
"Search committees for positions at the College are usually chosen through a process of nomination and appointment," said Ruckman. " I don't think that a post like this calls for a direct election from the students, but clearly the students chosen need to be good representatives of the student body as a whole."
The faculty will choose its three representatives by faculty ballot. The three Trustees to serve on the committee will be appointed by Hostetter. The remaining two positions-reserved for an administrator and a staff member-will be chosen through a process as yet to be determined.
In addition to the input provided by the committee members themselves, in its early stages the committee will solicit community opinions in regard to their task.
"In the last search-and I would intend in this one-we provided opportunity for the community to provide input," said Hostetter. "Anyone who wants to be heard about what specific personal characteristics we should be looking for in a president, or how we should define the job, will be heard."
Gerety will not be asked to sit on the committee; however, as he finishes his time in the office, the committee will likely seek his advice in selecting his successor.
"I think we certainly will solicit [Gerety's] views on what the most important criteria are for the job," said Hostetter. "We will certainly welcome any suggestions he has in terms of potential candidates."