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Update on Presidential Search Update

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  3. Update on Presidential Search Update

October 12, 2020

Dear members of the AUC community,

We hope that this message finds you all well and thriving. We recognize that this academic year begins in trying and unexpected circumstances, but we continue to be inspired by the resilience and enthusiasm of our students, faculty, and staff.

We write now to provide you an update on the search for AUC’s next president, who will succeed Francis J. Ricciardone upon his retirement in June 2021. As co-chairs of the Presidential search committee, we are committed to conducting a search process that is rigorous, global, and inclusive. As we wrote in our initial message on August 5, finding an educator of the intellectual and moral calibre necessary to lead our University through its next 100 years will require the participation of all members of our community. Therefore, we are scheduling a series of virtual Campus Conversation meetings with students, faculty, staff, and alumni to solicit your views on the qualities that we should be seeking in AUC’s next president.

In the coming days, you will receive an invitation to two Campus Conversations open to all members of the AUC community, and we strongly encourage you to attend.  These will be held on Tuesday, October 20, and Monday, October 26 at 1 pm.  Your input will be vital in identifying the traits that the university’s next leader should possess and the issues the committee should prioritize in this search. We very much hope you will attend.

We will also arrange smaller sessions with students, faculty, and staff that will enable us to engage even more deeply with your views on the presidential search and your aspirations for the University’s next leader. As always, you may also share your views with us via e-mail at [email protected].

All members of the search committee are deeply conscious of the extraordinary responsibility that has been placed on our shoulders. We are confident, however, that with your help, we will be able to discharge this responsibility and identify the right leader for the University. In order to help us undertake our mission, we have retained a search firm, Perrett Laver, that works exclusively with universities and non-profit clients.  The role of a search firm is to help manage the logistics of the search process, scour the globe for suitable candidates, and advise the committee and the community in our decision-making.  Perret Laver were selected by the search committee through a two-step, competitive process that included proposals from some of the world’s leading search firms. Perret Laver have advised over half of the top 100 Universities in the world (such as the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, Oxford, Cambridge, Sydney and Hong Kong University) and they have supported committees on over 200 university President searches globally, so we are pleased to be able to take advantage of their knowledge and expertise. 

Information about the search committee members can be found here on the AUC website.

We are looking forward to engaging with you all in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, please accept our deepest thanks and best wishes.

Sincerely,

Kristin Lord and Tarek Masoud

Co-chairs, Presidential Search Committee