Announcing the MIT Presidential Search Committee

To the members of the MIT community,

I write today with news regarding our search for the next president of MIT.

Responsibility for this search is the most critical job of the MIT Corporation. We undertake it with humility and excitement, and with a search committee that represents the excellence of MIT’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni.

I’m pleased to share that Corporation member John Jarve ’78, SM ’79 has been named the chair of the presidential search committee. John plans to conduct a broad-based search and looks forward to input from across the MIT community.

John is a past president of the MIT Alumni Association, and he has served on eight Visiting Committees that advise the Corporation and the MIT administration. John is a recipient of the Bronze Beaver Award, the highest honor the Alumni Association bestows upon its members. He is also a successful venture capitalist who has worked with many CEOs and has helped launch 50 companies.

MIT is a pathbreaker in the world of higher education, and this stature gives rise to a unique set of opportunities, challenges, and strategic considerations. Over the past weeks, John, Faculty Chair Lily Tsai, and I worked to identify candidates for the presidential search committee who have a keen appreciation of these issues. The Corporation’s five recent graduates selected potential committee members from the student body. We collaborated with MIT’s Vice President for Human Resources, Ramona Allen, to choose a candidate from the staff. The Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation then examined all of the candidates and made the final determination of search committee membership.

The committee includes nine members of the Corporation, eight faculty representing each of the schools and the college, an undergraduate and graduate student (who will serve as liaisons to a student advisory committee), and a staff member. You can read more about the committee’s membership on MIT News.

This presidential search committee is the first in MIT’s history that includes this degree of representation from across the Institute. I encourage you to visit the presidential search website, share your views in this survey, or send comments via email to pres-search@mit.edu.

We will have an extraordinary group of individuals to choose from as we search for MIT’s next president. I am honored to work with John, the presidential search committee, and all of you, as we begin this important process.

With my best regards,

Diane Greene
Chair, MIT Corporation