Just a day after University President Richard Levin announced plans to step down at the end of this academic year, Yale Corporation Senior Fellow Edward Bass ’67 ARC ’72 rolled out the Corporation’s plans for picking a successor.

Eight corporation fellows will serve on the search committee, four of whom will act as liaisons to the Yale community. The committee members are:

Francisco G. Cigarroa ’79, Chancellor, University of Texas System

Peter B. Dervan ’72 Ph.D., Bren Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of

Technology

Donna L. Dubinsky ’77, Founder & Board Chair, Numenta, Inc.

Charles W. Goodyear ’80, President, Goodyear Capital Corporation

Paul L. Joskow ’70 M.Phil, ’72 Ph.D., President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and former Chair of the Economics Department of MIT

Indra K. Nooyi ’80 M.P.P.M., Chairman of the Board & CEO, PepsiCo, Inc.

E. John Rice, Jr. ’88, Founder & CEO, Management Leadership for Tomorrow

Douglas A. Warner III ’68, Former Chairman of the Board, JP Morgan Chase and Chairman of the Board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

The committee will also include four faculty members, whom Bass will select from a pool of candidates nominated by deans and directors across the University. Four counselors to the committee will be responsible for soliciting input from students, faculty, alumni and staff. Brandon Levin ’13, former Yale College Council president and the only current student named in the letter, will serve as the student counselor.

The search committee plans to solicit opinions by holding open forums on campus Friday, Sept. 28. Bass added that a secure email address is currently being created to allow members of the community to write in with any concerns.

Former Corporation Senior Fellow Roland Betts ’68 said Thursday he expects the search committee will find Levin’s successor in four to six months. It took the last presidential search committee 10 months to nominate Levin.

Read the full email below.

August 31, 2012

From: Edward P. Bass, Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation

To: The Yale Community

Re: Presidential Search

I write to share with you the plans developed by the Yale Corporation earlier this week when the Fellows met to organize the Presidential Search. The selection of the President is the most important responsibility of the Yale Corporation, and we are committed to recruiting an individual who will be an exceptional leader for Yale in the years ahead and who will continue the extraordinary momentum achieved during Rick Levin’s two decades as President.

The authority for the appointment of the President of the University rests with the Yale Corporation, and we will constitute a search committee to offer nominees to us. When the last Presidential Search was conducted at Yale in 1992-93, the Corporation for the first time invited faculty to serve as full voting members of the search committee, and we will do the same in this search.

We are committed to broad consultation with the Yale community to ensure that we are very well informed about your sense of the attributes needed in Yale’s next President and the issues that he or she needs to address in the years ahead. We are also committed to a robust program of communications with the community throughout the search.

Membership of the Search Committee. The 1992-93 Presidential Search Committee consisted of eight trustees and four faculty members, and we will continue with the same composition for the upcoming search. The Search Committee will be charged with identifying and screening candidates and with providing a “short list” of several nominees to the full Corporation.

The trustees that I have appointed to the Search Committee are:

Francisco G. Cigarroa ’79, Chancellor, University of Texas System

Peter B. Dervan ’72 Ph.D., Bren Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of

Technology

Donna L. Dubinsky ’77, Founder & Board Chair, Numenta, Inc.

Charles W. Goodyear ’80, President, Goodyear Capital Corporation

Paul L. Joskow ’70 M.Phil, ’72 Ph.D., President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and former Chair of the Economics Department of MIT

Indra K. Nooyi ’80 M.P.P.M., Chairman of the Board & CEO, PepsiCo, Inc.

E. John Rice, Jr. ’88, Founder & CEO, Management Leadership for Tomorrow

Douglas A. Warner III ’68, Former Chairman of the Board, JP Morgan Chase and Chairman of the Board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

To ensure wide community participation in the selection of the four Search Committee members to be appointed from the faculty, I encourage you to write me by noon on Tuesday, September 4, with suggestions and nominations of faculty candidates. Please send your email to: senior.fellow@yale.edu.

I will ask the Deans of the Professional Schools to review the names submitted from their faculties and to offer suggestions of their own; and I will ask the current and former Divisional Directors of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as well as Deans Miller and Pollard to review the names submitted from the FAS and to offer their own suggestions. I will then choose, from the list of names forwarded by the Deans and Divisional Directors, the faculty members for the Search Committee. In my view, the decision in the last search to appoint tenured members of the faculty who have had some administrative experience was wise, and I intend to follow that example.

Chairperson of the Search Committee. I will designate a Chair of the Search Committee from its membership once the Committee is fully constituted.

Trustee Liaisons to Campus Constituencies. We are introducing a new mechanism in the search process to broaden contact with and counsel from faculty, students, staff, and alumni. There will be a specific trustee from the Committee designated as Liaison to Faculty who will work with the faculty members appointed to the Search Committee to ensure broad consultation with the faculty. There will also be trustees from the Committee designated as Liaisons to Students, to Staff, and to Alumni. Each will be responsible for ensuring that there are opportunities for wide consultation with each of the constituencies and for working with the Campus Counselors described below. I am pleased to report the following Corporation members will be assuming these roles:

Trustee Liaison to the Faculty: Paul Joskow

Trustee Liaison to Students: Peter Dervan, who is a parent of a Yale College graduate of the class of 2012

Trustee Liaison to Staff: John Rice

Trustee Liaison to Alumni: Donna Dubinsky, who chairs the Corporation Committee on Development and Alumni Affairs

Campus Counselors to the Search Committee. We will continue the practice introduced in the 1992 – 93 search of asking a member of the faculty not on the Search Committee to serve as Faculty Counselor to the Search Committee to be available to faculty members who wish to offer counsel about the future of the University and share their recommendations of candidates. Any faculty member who so desires can be assured that his or her views will be forwarded to the Search Committee without attribution. I expect to select the Faculty Counselor from among the names submitted by the Deans and Divisional Directors.

In addition, I will also appoint Counselors to serve similar roles for students, staff, and alumni. Brandon Levin, the immediate past President of the Yale College Council, has accepted my invitation to serve as Student Counselor to the Search Committee, and Janet Lindner, Associate Vice President for Administration, will serve as Staff Counselor to the Search Committee. Brandon and Janet will be available to meet with students and staff, respectively, who wish to convey their thoughts about Yale’s future and the attributes desired for the next President. The views of any student or staff member who so desires will be forwarded to the Search Committee anonymously. Michael Madison, the immediate Past Chair of the AYA Board of Governors, will be available to any alumni who prefer to convey their thoughts to him rather than directly to the Search Committee, and he will work with Donna Dubinsky to design ways for alumni ideas and concerns to be conveyed to the Search Committee.

Open Forums on Campus and Consultation Plans. On Friday, September 28, a series of Open Forums will be held on campus where members of the Corporation will seek advice about the qualities needed in Yale’s next President and the priorities he or she should address. The Trustee Liaisons and Campus Counselors for each constituency will be offering me advice about this day of engagement, but at this juncture, I anticipate that the Corporation will host separate, open sessions on September 28 for: FAS Faculty; Professional School Faculty; Yale College students; Graduate & Professional School students; and University staff. In addition, members of the Corporation will meet with the Deans of the Schools, the FAS Divisional Directors, the Masters of the Residential Colleges, the University Librarian, and the directors of the museums, among others.

A separate session will be held for alumni delegates to the Fall Assembly of the Association of Yale Alumni when they gather in New Haven in November. Donna Dubinsky, the Trustee Liaison to Alumni, and Michael Madison, Alumni Counselor to the Search Committee, will be reaching out to the Board of Governors of the AYA to design other methods for engaging alumni and communicating with graduates.

Secure Email to the Search Committee. In the next week, we will set up a confidential email accessible only to the Search Committee for those who prefer to write with their suggestions about Yale or who have candidates to recommend. In addition, we will be mounting a website dedicated to the Presidential Search where we will regularly update the community about the progress on the search.

Finally, I am pleased that Martha Highsmith, Associate Vice President of the University, will serve as chief of staff to the Search Committee. You may also send confidential messages to her at martha.highsmith@yale.edu.

I assure you that the Yale Corporation is deeply committed to understanding the views of the entire Yale community as we undertake the important work of selecting a new President of Yale University in the months ahead. We look forward to hearing your views, and to keeping you informed about the progress of the search.

Edward P. Bass, Senior Fellow

For the Yale Corporation

Correction Aug. 31, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred to Roland Betts ’68 as the senior fellow of the Yale Corporation. He is in fact a former senior fellow.