News and Updates
To: The Reed College Community
From: Alex J. Martinez ’73, Chair, Presidential Search Committee
Date: March 29, 2019
Dear Members of the Reed College Community,
The student, staff, faculty and trustee members of the Presidential Search Committee have been extremely busy in February and March. We have reviewed candidate applications, contacted references, conducted background searches and interviewed candidates.
Throughout this entire process we have continued to use the inclusive search practices to which we agreed before we began making decisions about specific candidates. These practices, designed to mitigate implicit bias, began with specifying the qualities we are looking for in a president. We identified these qualifications by listening to the Reed community, and we published the qualifications in the position statement. We then engaged in a rigorous search for actual evidence to support the presence or absence of these qualifications in candidates.
We’d like to share more with you about the inclusive search practices we have adopted, what we have learned about the role of president at Reed, and what we have learned about the college along the way. To give you some flavor for our work, we have recorded two podcast interviews with panels of committee members. You can listen to the first one now. The second one will be available April 4.
After several stages of narrowing the field, we invited three candidates to campus to engage with representative groups of students, faculty, staff, and trustees. Some members of our Reed community met individually with candidates while others met the candidates in groups. The candidates explained their interest in Reed, discussed their preliminary vision for Reed, answered questions, and had the opportunity to ask questions. The candidates also met informally with Reed community members over breakfasts and dinners.
Our candidates have been engaged with us for many months in exploring the possibility of them serving as our next president. Throughout this process we have honored our commitment to them to keep their participation in our search process confidential. Thus, all members of the search committee and those who participated in campus interviews have signed a written agreement to keep the identities of all candidates confidential. In addition, we are also obliged to restrict any information that could lead to the identification of candidates. This obligation to maintain confidentiality continues after the search has been completed.
All of the people who had the opportunity to meet these candidates also agreed to submit written evaluations of their interactions with the candidates to the search committee. These evaluations will be considered by the search committee along with the other evidence we have gathered, as we continue the work that will result in the appointment of an outstanding next president for Reed at this time in our history.
While much work remains, we look forward to the time when we submit our recommendations to the Board of Trustees and the community can celebrate the announcement of the next President of Reed College.
Thank you for your continued support. As always, you may reach us by email at presidentialsearch@reed.edu or ReedPresident18@storbecksearch.com.
Sincerely,
Alex J. Martinez ’73
Chair, Presidential Search Committee