---

BY MARY PRAGER

In print | Published February 18, 2010

On Tuesday morning, President Rebecca Chopp issued a campus-wide e-mail announcing her selection of Elizabeth Braun as the college’s new dean of students, bringing the search process for an administrator to replace former Dean of Students Jim Larimore to a close. Braun, the acting dean of students at Mount Holyoke College, will be assuming the position on July 1, 2010.

“Liz brings extraordinary experience with her to the College. She is highly regarded in her field as an emerging leader in the areas of academic support, diversity and community building. She also shares with us a deep appreciation and respect for intellectual rigor and the power of community and inclusivity.

“In addition, her interpersonal skills are exceptional —enthusiastic, articulate, collegial, and a strong leader — she is, in short, the perfect fit to become Swarthmore’s next dean of students,” Chopp said in her e-mail to the campus.

Braun plans to visit the campus from Feb. 28 to March 2. During that time, she hopes to meet with students, deepen her search for a preschool for her four-year-old son Dexter, and visit the house vacated by Larimore, where she may be living.

“Where I’m at right now, it’s very important to me that I finish well at Mount Holyoke and leave things in a really good place for everyone there, as you can imagine,” Braun said. “There’s lots to negotiate in terms of a move. One of my plans before I come is to get as much done on my dissertation as possible. I think what I’m most looking forward to is … getting to come back to campus and meet more of the students and all of the staff I’ll be working with and connecting with faculty.”

Chopp called Braun at her home on Friday night to give her the news. “I was ecstatic,” Braun said. “I kept joking that all I wanted to know is if Swarthmore wanted to be my valentine, and on Friday I found out that you did! It’s a school that has had its special place in my heart for a long time.”

As Braun transitions from Mount Holyoke to Swarthmore, she will be stepping into the position in a time of budget constraints and administrative turnover.

“I think [her job] will be pretty similar [to that of Jim Larimore], because all the same things need to be done,” said Provost Constance Hungerford, the chair of the dean search committee that was formed in the fall semester. “I wouldn’t expect there to be major changes.”

The effect of budget constraints on Braun’s work at Swarthmore is at this point, according to Hungerford, “completely undefined.”

“I think she’s going to work wonderfully with us. It’s going to be a delight to have her on the president’s staff. She’s knowledgeable about her own area, she’s smart, she cares about the same kind of values that animate the rest of us,” Hungerford said.

The process of filling the two remaining positions, vacated by former Assistant Director of Student Life and Academic Advisor Kelly Wilcox and Director of the BCC Tim Sams, is not yet underway.

Furthermore, the administration has not begun to conceive of Braun’s role in selecting replacements or in organizing alternative arrangements.

“There are a lot of decisions coming down the road that haven’t been discussed yet,” Hungerford said. “There’s a lull period now where we work out various details.”

The search process

Earlier on Friday, the search committee, which is comprised of administrators, faculty members, and students, had convened for the last time to discuss the candidates.

“The final decision was Rebecca’s. We met several times to talk about the material from everyone else, and all that informed her decision,” Hungerford said.

Daniel Chung ’10, a member of the search committee, added that while the final decision rested with Chopp, the committee members played crucial roles in making the final decision.

“It was ultimately Rebecca Chopp’s decision, but we were vital voices in voicing our opinions,” Chung said. “I feel that Rebecca was not only justified as decision-maker but also the pulse-taker of the committee, so she was the one who’d be using common sense to make her judgment.”

He added that all four of the candidates “were extremely competitive, but Braun was chosen because she’s a great fit for Swarthmore.”

“She’s extremely student-oriented at Mount Holyoke — students could walk in the door and chat with her if it was an emergency or talk with her personally,” Chung said. “She’s also implemented a lot of programs and overseen a fundamental shift in residential life at Mount Holyoke. And so she brings a wealth of administrative experience.”

In the final weeks of the search, the committee used feedback solicited from the community in order to gauge campus opinion and consider concerns raised both by individuals and by groups after two rounds of the Fireside Chats.

The first round took place in the fall semester, when student members of the search committee held a discussion for students to ask questions and voice concerns. The second round of the Fireside Chats, which began with the spring semester and ended with the last candidate’s open chat with students, elicited substantially more feedback from students and from the community than the first.
During the second round, each candidate held separate meetings with leaders of student groups, faculty, college staff and Chopp, in addition to the open chats.

Chung said that the committee received roughly the same amount of feedback for each candidate and about 80 instances of feedback total from a variety of constituencies.

“I think the comments that people sent us having participated in those meetings and our own reports having been at those meetings were very important. It was the last stage of input,” Hungerford said. “And I think Rebecca did a little more reference-checking, but those meetings are an important, different stage of a search process.”

“We were looking at the aggregate or the sense, in some of the committee members’ words, of the e-mails, or the vibe of the community,” Chung said.

The consulting agency hired by the college, Storbeck/Pimentel & Associates, LLC., ran general background checks earlier in the search process when the pool of applicants was in the hundreds. Later in the process, members of the search committee themselves spoke with individuals who could attest to the characters of the candidates in addition to the way they interact and communicate with students.

“All the reference checks were with people who worked closely with the candidate. And in every single reference check with these candidates, we stressed confidentiality,” Chung said.

He added that, as the process went on, it got more difficult.

“It got particularly intense as we narrowed it down to four, because we had sometimes different constituencies advocating or showing strong sentiment for a candidate, or just because they were so similar in some respects that we couldn’t tell — we needed to really dig down deep,” he said.

After the final chat with students, the committee “convened and talked about candidates, talked about the community’s response to candidates, and then we had another meeting a couple weeks later, and we came to a consensus on Liz Braun,” Chung said. “There was some dissension, some agreement, but we were all agreed on a fundamental level.”

Issues looking back

During the time period in which the fireside chats were held, students raised concerns about the role of student press in covering events. Although The Phoenix and the Daily Gazette covered Braun’s fireside chat, they were barred from covering the subsequent three by the search committee on the grounds of the confidential nature of the process.

“There could have been better explanation to students about why we couldn’t have student press here,” Student Council Financial Policy Representative Dan Symonds ’11 said.

Leah Rethy ’10, one of the three search committee members, expressed confusion regarding the decision to ban coverage.

“It would have been good to have figured out more creative ways if we were going to ban press, to have more student involvement. We had a lot but there could have been more,” Rethy said.

StuCo Vice President Deivid Rojas ’11 said that he thought a different approach could have been taken.

“I wasn’t in complete agreement with the decision the committee took. I think they acted upon extremes, which was, ‘let’s have it or not,’ and I think that a compromise could have been made,” he said.

Rojas added that StuCo will be hosting a conference soon to discuss ways in which the college community can learn from this experience and broaden student participation in search processes.

“We’re progressive and open-minded,” Rojas said. “I think we can find a compromise between keeping a candidate’s confidentiality in mind and making sure all students have access to participate. It’s definitely a decision that’s going to affect us all.”

Hungerford stressed the importance of confidentiality for candidates who would be content continuing to work at their home institutions if they were not selected. She also emphasized that the three students on the search committee, Rethy, Urooj Khan ’10 and Chung, served as student representatives.

“I think the three students who served on the committee were terrific. I know it’s sometimes exasperating that one can’t know more about what’s going on, but those three really were representing a student perspective in our examination of all the evidence and our eventual deliberations,” Hungerford said.

An additional issue was differing interpretations of the purpose of the open chats.

“It became clear that the purpose of the fireside chats was for the search committee to see how the candidate interacted with students, which came as a surprise to lots of people,” Symonds said. “I wish we had known more about the search process beforehand.”

Rethy said, however, that there was less of a misinterpretation than there might appear to be. “Students’ opinions and feedback that was given after seeing the candidates was considered seriously, more seriously than I had expected,” she said.

She added that she would hope in the future that there would be “more fireside chat type things,” emphasizing the importance of student participation in search processes.

“It’s important for students who have different ties to groups on campus, who can represent a variety of interests, because you are going to be the only representative in the room. Student opinions are taken seriously, but there are other interests you become aware of,” Rethy said.

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »