Trustees to Press the Flesh, Convene for First Time Saturday

Author: Nicole Maddox

The Middlebury College Board of Trustees will gather this weekend for the first time in the 2002-2003 academic year.
Beginning on Friday, the trustees will disperse into six to eight committees for extensive meetings with representatives from various groups on campus. For instance, the Honorary Degree Committee will be charged with selecting a commencement speaker and the recipients of four to five honorary degrees awarded annually. The committee is especially interested in suggestions from members of the senior class of specific faculty members that they would like nominated. Students may direct such suggestions to Robert Schine, dean of the faculty, or Betsy Etchells, executive assistant to the president.
After the day of meetings, the trustees will attend a dinner lecture by former United States Ambassador to France Felix Rohatyn. Rohatyn graduated from Middlebury in 1949, and, in addition to holding the office of ambassador from September 1997 to January 2001, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as a commander in the French Legion of Honor.
On Saturday, the trustees will assemble for a full board meeting. First, the chairperson of each committee will give an overview of the previous day's activities, which will be followed by a general discussion of plans for the upcoming year. The trustees will break for luncheon and the dedication of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs — a tribute to Rohatyn's generous contributions to both Middlebury's endowment and reputation.
This weekend's meeting will be the first for new trustees who were inducted on July 1. Karen Stolley '77 joined the board as an alumni trustee. Stolley graduated from the College summa cum laude with a degree in both Spanish and French and later went on to earn a doctorate in Spanish from Yale in 1985. In 1977, Stolley was granted a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship for a year of study in Bogota, Colombia. She currently is a professor of Spanish at Emory University. She lives there with her husband David Littlefield, Jr., son of a Middlebury Stewart Professor Emeritus of English David Littlefield, and their two daughters.
Joining the board as a term trustee is John Tormondsen '82, for whom the Great Hall in Bicentennial Hall is named. While at Middlebury, Tormondsen majored in economics and was renowned as a two-time Division I All-American Cross-Country Skiier. He later went on to earn his Master's in Business at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, after which he spent 17 years working for Goldman Sachs before his recent retirement. Tormondsen currently lives in Connecticut with his wife Barbara and their two children.
The Board of Trustees consists of term, alumni and charter trustees, all of whom have equal stature on the Board. The six alumni trustees are three male and three female graduates of the College nominated by the Alumni Association and later elected by the Board. Term Trustees do not necessarily have to be graduates of the College and are nominated by the Board. Each trustee serves a term of five years, and can be re-elected for a subsequent term. Trustees elected for more than two terms of service become charter trustees.