Penn has tapped 19 members of the University community to help inform the search for its 11th president.
The consultative committee — which will be announced on Tuesday, according to a copy of the membership list obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian — is made up of senior University administrators, trustees, professors, and student government leaders. Of Penn’s 12 schools, five have no representation on the committee.
In a note prefacing the list, University Board of Trustees Chair Ramanan Raghavendran wrote that the group represents a “cross-section of the Penn community, including Trustees, Deans, undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and faculty.”
A request for comment was left with a University spokesperson.
The committee is tasked with identifying “the priorities, challenges, and qualifications most important to Penn” to help guide the selection process, which will be led by a separate search committee. Raghavendran will chair the committee, according to the document.
According to an analysis by the DP, the committee skews heavily toward individuals from the University’s larger schools, including the School of Arts and Sciences. Members of the committee were classified based on their alumni, faculty, or administrative affiliations with the University.
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Members who are affiliated with several of Penn’s schools were counted multiple times — for each individual school. Vice Provost and Dean of Admissions Whitney Soule was excluded from the analysis on account of not having graduated from the University and currently not being affiliated with a specific school as an administrator.
In addition to Soule, the committee includes SAS Dean Mark Trodden, Perelman School of Medicine Dean Jonathan Epstein, Vice Dean and Director of Wharton Undergraduate Division Cait Lamberton, Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Colleen O’Neill, and history professor and Faculty Senate tri-chair Kathleen Brown.
Communication professor Yphtach Lelkes, Medical School professor Judith Long, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor Eric Feldman, and professor Duncan Watts — appointed at the Annenberg School for Communication, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Wharton School — will also serve on the committee.
Trustees Ryan Limaye, Catherine O’Hern Lyons, Marc McMorris, Dhananjay Pai, and Theodore Schlein, as well as trustee emerita Julie Beren Platt are listed in the document — along with rising College senior Musab Chummun, the Undergraduate Assembly president, and Adam Ziada, the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly.
The committee “will begin its work later this month,” according to Raghavendran. Unlike the search committee, the consultative committee does not identify specific presidential candidates.
In his note, Raghavendran urged the Penn community to respond to a survey regarding their preferences for the University’s next president. The survey responses will be compiled by executive search firm Spencer Stuart, a leadership consulting company based out of Chicago. The firm has previously supported searches at Princeton University, Duke University, and the University of Michigan.
“Universities such as Penn have the opportunity and the responsibility to think in terms of decades and centuries,” he wrote. “Penn is at an inflection point with great promise, and the choice of the next President is highly consequential. I am grateful to all members of our community for your support and encouragement as we find our next leader.”
Penn President Larry Jameson announced his intention to leave his position as president by next year in a June message to the campus community. During his term, the former executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania Health System was seen as a stabilizing force by many in the campus community.
The consultative committee convened in 2021 — which contributed to the search committee that found former Penn President Liz Magill — had 17 members and listed Vice President and University Secretary Medha Narvekar and search coordinator Margaret Lizotte as two additional individuals supporting the committee’s work. McMorris and Beren Platt also served on the 2021 committee.
According to procedures outlined in the Faculty Handbook, the members of the search committee “will be selected primarily from among those of the Consultative Committee.”
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Senior reporter Arti Jain covers state and local politics and can be reached at jain@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies economics and political science. Follow her on X @arti_jain_.
