Top campus figures reacted with bittersweet surprise to President Nan Keohane's announcement Sunday that she would step down in June 2004.
All of them pointed to Keohane as a vital leader who will be remembered for several initiatives, many of which she will continue to oversee or wrap up in her final 16 months as president.
No one, however, was willing to discuss openly who might succeed Keohane, or even what specific attributes the search committee should look for.
Provost Peter Lange said he did not expect the new president to have much impact on the University's strategic plan, put into place two years ago. Lange said that by the time a new president takes office, most of the plan's initiatives will have been launched and the facilities for them completed.
"I expect the impact of the next president will be far more on how we plan and build off of the platform and principles put in place through [the plan] than on changing the priorities on which we have been [acting] and will continue to act," Lange wrote in an e-mail.
Lange praised Keohane for leading and supporting changes in undergraduate education--changes that include 1995's creation of an all-freshman East Campus and the implementation of Curriculum 2000. He also singled out her management of two strategic plans over the course of her 10-year presidency, management of the Duke University Health System's creation, and the successful completion--and the continued progress--of the $2 billion capital campaign.
Keohane, who came to Duke in 1993 from the presidency of Wellesley College, was the first female president at Duke and one of the first female presidents of an elite top-10 university. She announced Sunday that she would step down in June 2004 and take a one-year sabbatical with her husband and James B. Duke professor of political science, Robert Keohane. A search committee led by Board of Trustees Vice Chair Robert Steel will be assembled by May and plans to have a list of finalists for her successor by February 2004.
Kristina Johnson, dean of the Pratt School of Engineering, said she has not considered what qualities the next president should have.
"I haven't even thought about it," she said. "All of us were hopeful she would stay on, but that's a lot to ask for."
William Chafe, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said Keohane has invigorated the University's academic enterprise and created optimism and purpose among the faculty through her sense of intellectual mission. He hoped the next president will continue in that vein.
"The search process should focus on someone who can best carry forward President Keohane's legacy, building on the strong foundations she has put in place, particularly in the area of sustaining the intellectual life and vitality of the faculty," Chafe said.
Katharine Bartlett, dean of the School of Law, said the next president should, in general, have a strong academic reputation, excellent judgment, the ability to challenge and motivate others and emotional intelligence. She added that she did not think the particular field of academic distinction would be too significant.
Keohane, a political philosophy scholar, succeeded an expert in psychiatry, Keith Brodie, who served from 1985 to 1993. His predecessor, Terry Sanford, came from the political world, having served as governor of North Carolina.
Given the nature of Duke's push toward genomics, engineering and the sciences, the search committee could look to someone with a background in those issues. It may also look to someone with an international reputation--inside or outside academia--to bolster Duke's global reach, one of the University's stated goals.
Dr. Sandy Williams, dean of the School of Medicine, said the most important quality in the next president is the ability to rally the University around a vision.
"Conventional wisdom about the expectations of a search for a Duke president states that we should come as close as possible to finding 'God on a good day,'" he said.
Lange--who could be the most immediately apparent internal candidate to succeed Keohane, as the University's top academic officer since 1999 and an official respected by many faculty members--did not want to speculate about his future or who the search committee should look for.
"No comment beyond saying that I love my job and hope and anticipate remaining in it," he wrote.
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