While students were away on summer vacation, the Head of School Search Committee worked to identify around 300 potential candidates to succeed Head of School Barbara Chase as the 15th head of Phillips Academy.
The search committee consists of trustees Daniel Cunningham ’67, Susan Donahue ’70, Louis Elson ’80, Amy Falls ’82, William Lewis ’74 and John Steiner ’83 and faculty members Clyfe Beckwith, Instructor in Physics, Catherine Carter, Instructor in Classics, Steve Carter, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, Linda Griffith, Dean of CAMD and Instructor in English, and Diane Moore, Instructor in Religion and Philosophy.
Spencer Stuart, an executive search firm, identified approximately 250 potential candidates after working closely with search committee. Phillips Academy faculty members, alumni, trustees and parents of current students nominated the names of 50 other candidates.
The goal of the search committee was to work systematically to find a wide and varied range of candidates.
According to Peter Currie ’74, Chair of the Head of School Search Committee and incoming President of the Board of Trustees, the search focused on individuals with backgrounds in independent schooling, higher education, public education and even “nonprofit foundations that have an educational mission,” which Currie considers a “nontraditional background.”
“We [tried] to match our search to the types of backgrounds that we thought would have a bearing on the Head of School role at Andover,” he said.
Sourcing candidates from each field typically took several rounds, with the committee directing Spencer Stuart’s focus and providing feedback as necessary.
Currie said, “For example, we told [the firm] to look at people involved in higher education, at colleges and graduate schools. That’s still a very large universe, so we would specify, ‘Look at this kind of dean or that kind of dean’ [or] ‘We want more like this person and fewer like that.’”
Though the search committee is open to considering more candidates, Currie said, “We feel as though we’ve done a pretty good canvassing of the relevant universe… [and] we’ve identified some really, really interesting people from all the different categories in which we’ve been looking.”
The search committee is now focused narrowing down the candidate pool. They will be meeting with candidates in the coming months.
According to Currie, although the committee believes all candidates are “extremely capable,” the challenge will lay in finding “the best fit for the academy for the intermediate term.”
Currie noted that there is not a set timeline for the remainder of the search process.
“[The committee] is going to just work at the process until the right conclusion is reached,” he said. “We’ve been pretty clear since the beginning [of the search] that we’re going to take as long as we need to take. This whole process takes a lot of time and it should – it needs to be carefully done.”
One of the committee’s preliminary tasks was writing a position specification, describing Phillips Academy, outlining the responsibilities of Head of School and listing a variety of ideal attributes for a candidate.
Every member of the search committee contributed to the document, which was completed in June and took three or four drafts to finalize. “It was very thoughtfully done,” said Currie.
According to Currie, the specification was based off of input from trustees, faculty and staff. The specification details the Head of School’s expected responsibilities—engaging in campus life, leading the business and administration of the Academy, supporting academics, supporting the school’s learning environment, and working with alumni. It also outlines the “ideal candidate attributes and experiences” which include, “strategic and organizational leadership”, “commitment to an academic environment”, “educational vision”, “communication and relationship building” and “commitment to multiculturalism and diversity.”
He said the committee drafted the position specification after conducting one-on-one interviews with close to 100 members of the faculty and staff on campus last spring.
These interviews occurred even before the search committee was formed, informing the trustees’ dialogue last spring when they deliberated what kind of candidate they were looking for, what they wanted this person to do and how to shape the search.
Currie noted, “On one hand, [the specification] describes a candidate with a huge range of wonderful attributes, which is maybe in some ways too aspirational for any one human being.”
“On the other hand, I think it’s really important for us to stick out all our objectives because a candidate can have many but perhaps not each and every [attribute] that we lay out. [However,] at least we’ve been clear about what we want and what they should aspire to in the role as head of school,” he concluded.
The position specification, along with updates on the search process and information about the members of the search committee, is accessible at http://www.andover.edu/HOS_Search/Pages/default.aspx.
