For the first time in more than a quarter century, Amherst College seeks a new Dean of Students. This will be a significant transition for the College, one that requires an open, far-reaching and deliberative search. Rather than prescribing an ideal candidate profile at the outset, the College wishes to consider candidates from a broad spectrum of relevant professional experience.

Reporting directly to the President, the Dean is the College’s chief student-affairs officer, leading an office that encompasses academic, personal and social advising, oversight of extra-curricular and residential life, student advocacy and disciplinary responsibilities. The Dean supervises both the Class Deans (who provide general counseling) and the associate deans and directors who oversee residential life, the campus center, the career center, health education, counseling center, religious life and student activities. The Dean also serves, by custom, as a Class Dean.

Founded in 1821, Amherst today is an independent liberal arts college enrolling approximately 1,650 men and women. Amherst offers the Bachelor of Arts degree in 33 fields of study, with a student-faculty ratio of 8 to 1. Teaching at Amherst occurs in classrooms and other deliberative settings that emphasize close engagement. Amidst such rigor, Amherst’s open curriculum allows each student—with the help of a faculty adviser—to construct a meaningful education from the more than 800 courses offered at the College; there are no distribution requirements. Honors work is encouraged and is typically undertaken by nearly half of the graduating class.

Amherst has taken a leadership role among highly selective liberal arts institutions in successfully diversifying the racial, socio-economic and geographic profile of its student body. Students are admitted without regard to their financial circumstances, and each admitted student is guaranteed financial aid equal to her or his financial need. Amherst was a pioneer in eliminating loans from financial aid packages. Among its peer universities and colleges, Amherst has uncommon economic diversity in its enrollment; it also includes students from every state and from more than 40 countries. For the past several years, more than 35 percent of Amherst’s students have been students of color.

Amherst gains from its membership in the Five Colleges, a consortium with nearby Smith, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. Students may take courses at any of these institutions, and faculty members and administrators at Amherst find a larger professional community of interest within the Pioneer Valley.

Amherst undergraduates typically have significant extra-curricular commitments. The College sponsors more than 100 student-led organizations. Thirty-two percent of students participate in intercollegiate competition in Division III, and 80% participate in intramurals and club sports. In recent years, the nearby cities of Springfield and Holyoke, Massachusetts have been a focus of the College’s community outreach, facilitated by the new Center for Community Engagement.

While campus life can be fast-paced, its residential character affords abundant opportunities for reflection, recreation and the formation of life-long friendships. First-year students live together in new or newly renovated dormitories on the Main Quad. Ninety-seven percent of second and upper-year students live on campus. Virtually all students take their meals in the central Valentine Dining Commons.

The Amherst community invites its members to receive each other as peers. The successful candidate will have the capacity to cultivate the potential of a diverse student body possessed of rare intellectual promise and creative imagination. He or she will also be ready to collaborate with faculty that are unusually dedicated to, and involved with, student welfare.

The successful candidate will appreciate the distinctive approach that a private, residential liberal arts college, as such, brings to American undergraduate education. An empathy with undergraduates, and the inclination to discern and be an advocate for student concerns, is essential. Senior student-affairs management experience in a relevant academic setting is required. The successful candidate will have a demonstrated awareness of the range of student-affairs structures in use in higher education today and the ability to assess Amherst’s practices against the emerging needs of the College. Graduate training in an arts-and-sciences discipline, and/or a professional degree, are the preferred credentials, but the search committee will consider other backgrounds.

The ability to advance the College’s relationship with all of its constituencies, including faculty, alumni, parents and other community members, is essential. Candidates should manifest strong communication, analytical, interpersonal and motivational skills; the ability to manage multiple projects concurrently; a command of budgeting and personnel prioritization; and a record of success in supervising a large professional staff charged with several lines of responsibility. The successful candidate will have the initiative and imagination necessary to keep Amherst in a leadership role in student-affairs practices.