Laurie Patton, dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, is leaving her position at Duke to become president of Middlebury College.
Middlebury made the announcement Tuesday afternoon, following a unanimous decision by their Board of Trustees. Patton will assume her new role July 1, 2015—four years after she came to Duke from Emory University.
"We’re really going to miss Laurie,” said Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education. “The opportunity available at Middlebury is an outstanding opportunity, and I think she is a very good choice for the presidency of that institution in particular.”
Nowicki, who worked closely with Patton, added that Patton called him Sunday night as a courtesy to let him know about her decision.
Patton publicly announced her departure on Tuesday in a message to her colleagues that was included in a Duke News release.
“It will be, in a word, very painful indeed to separate from an institution I have come to love as much as I have come to love Duke,” Patton wrote. “We are greatly fortunate in that Provost [Sally] Kornbluth and President [Richard] Brodhead are deeply committed to continuing the many [arts and sciences] initiatives that we have established, and will be working with me closely until July to make sure those initiatives continue to thrive.”
A Middlebury press release revealed that Patton was selected after an extensive, six-month search from an initial pool of more than 250 candidates.
A national search will be held to find Patton's replacement as dean of Trinity College, according to the Duke News release. Sociology professor Angela O'Rand, former dean of social sciences, will chair the search committee.
“It is a pretty big job. Duke, being what it is, will probably attract a lot of interesting and able people, and the committee will be charged with taking all these applications seriously, narrowing them down, and probably spending the early part of this spring pretty intensively interviewing them,” O'Rand said.
Trinity is the largest of Duke's schools aside from the Duke School of Medicine, she noted. The next dean must be prepared to consider all of the interdisciplinary initiatives moving forward.
“We’re sorry to see her go,” Nowicki said. “But Duke’s loss is Middlebury’s gain.”
This story was updated Nov. 19 at 2:02 a.m. to reflect comments from Steve Nowicki and Angela O'Rand.
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