When Laurie Patton leaves Duke this summer to become president of Middlebury College, her departure will be bittersweet.
When she was first approached about taking the presidency, Patton said she initially felt her time at Duke could not yet be over.
"The biggest challenge of the [selection] committee was how difficult it was to get me to even think about Middlebury," said Patton, dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. "I said two or three times, I had more work to do here and I just love my job."
Following a vote by its Board of Trustees Tuesday, Middlebury announced that Patton would become the 17th president of the Vermont liberal arts school. She will assume the role July 1, 2015, after four years at the helm of Trinity—leaving behind a school that is just beginning the process of revamping its curriculum and that has once again climbed into the green after years of budget cuts and deficits.
"It was an excruciating decision. I'm going to miss Duke very much," Patton said. It has everything going for it. I could have very easily continued my work here and it's very hard to leave. It's a genuine choice, where something is lost."
Though Patton says she will miss the environment she has found at Duke, her new role at Middlebury will allow her to focus on several of the educational themes about which she is most passionate. The first female to serve as president of the institution, she was selected after a six-month search that yielded 250 candidates.
"Middlebury is one of the top liberal arts institutions in the country, and the opportunity to lead a place that is so consonant with my own values in education was too great to pass up," she said—noting that the school's focus on languages, global education and the liberal arts were particular draws.
Though her time at Duke has been relatively brief, she has overseen a number of new initiatives, including work to increase diversity in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, several interdisciplinary measures and a push to hire more faculty who focus on Asia and Asia-related fields.
"I'm really confident that Provost [Sally] Kornbluth will honor what the faculty and I have worked on together, and that's what's exciting to me—they're not just my initiatives, they're really faculty initiatives," Patton said of the work she has overseen as dean.
But one of Trinity's current initiatives is perhaps its most notable under Patton's tenure as dean—the redesign of the undergraduate curriculum. Starting this semester, faculty and administrators have begun the three-year process of "tweaking" the curriculum requirements for the digital and interdisciplinary age, and the project will constitute some of the more important work Patton's successor will take on.
"I feel faculty are really engaged and ready to move on to the big tweak," Patton said. "The next dean needs to be able to let the faculty do their thing and continue to inspire the great work of the really top-notch committee we've already put in place, but not interfere with it."
A national search will be held to find Patton's replacement, with a committee chaired by sociology professor Angela O'Rand, former dean of social sciences. Other committee members have yet to be named.
Patton was hired from Emory University, where she specialized in religious studies. Her predecessor, chemistry professor Alvin Crumbliss, served a one-year term in an interim capacity after George McClendon—also a chemist—left the position to become the provost of Rice University after seven years as Trinity dean.
"I'm going to miss everyone deeply here," Patton said. "I can only say that Duke is probably the most transformative job I've ever had."
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