Hamline’s campus will welcome a new face to the president’s office on Jan. 1, 2024 as Dr. Kathleen Murray steps in to be the acting/interim president ahead of President Miller’s retirement in June.
After a five-month search for applicants, the Ad Hoc Acting/Interim President Search Committee presented the Board of Trustees with two recommended candidates on Oct. 3, and the Board selected Murray for the position at their Friday, Oct. 13, meeting. Following a few weeks used to finalize the hiring process, Murray’s upcoming presidency was publicly announced on Nov. 1, 2023.
Murray will not be available for media interviews until she arrives on campus in January.
Murray retired from a long career in academic leadership in 2022, ending her seven-year tenure as the 14th president — and first female president — of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. Prior to her time in Washington, Murray also served as provost and dean of faculty at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
One of the final applicants interviewed for the position, Murray came into consideration after another candidate encouraged the search committee to reach out despite her recent retirement. Cindy Gregorson, chair of the search committee and a member of the Board of Trustees, said that Murray’s experience leading a university through COVID-19 and her familiarity with St. Paul made her a great fit to be Hamline’s interim president.
“She saw that Hamline is the kind of place that she feels called to,” Gregorson said. “[Murray understands] the kind of uniqueness of what Hamline offers, and that this is exactly the kind of university that we want to see thrive in the world. She has a real heart and passion for the future of higher education.”
Multiple members of the search committee shared their considerations surrounding the classroom incident last year in which a Hamline professor displayed a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class.
“There’s a key question we asked each person given the year we’d been through,” Gregorson said. “‘How do [applicants for interim president] understand the intersection of academic freedom and creating a campus that has a climate that is welcoming and inclusive of all students?’”
Professor of philosophy and search committee member Samuel Imbo believes that Murray is well-prepared to address these difficult topics.
“That has resulted in a lot of frayed relationships around Hamline, and we need somebody who can talk with us and begin the process of healing after that,” Imbo said. “We saw in Kathleen Murray somebody who could talk credibly about identity issues, about academic issues and about financial issues: here was a person who can do it and has done it in other places.”
Hamline University Student Congress Internal President Abi Grace Mart was the single student representative serving on the committee, and she acknowledged the challenges of being the sole representative for the campus’ largest group.
“As much as it’s easy to say I’m hoping to represent everybody, I don’t think that’s accurate or doable,” Mart said. “I really wanted to focus on those who would be most affected by a presidential change, the most vulnerable groups on campus, so LGBTQ+ groups, students of color and [groups] like that … I cannot represent those people perfectly, or their wants perfectly, but I think it’s important because oftentimes they don’t get a voice at the table, and I wanted to amplify what they might want.”
Although the length of Murray’s contract has not been shared publicly, the search committee had been tasked with finding an interim president to hold office for long enough to lead the university through another, longer search for a permanent president. When and how that search will take place has yet to be determined.
Gregorson said that the Board of Trustees is taking it one step at a time, and focusing on the transition from Miller to Murray is most important right now.
When the presidential search process does begin, Mart thinks more student representatives would be beneficial.
“I’m hoping for the permanent president committee there will be more student representatives on it,” Mart said. “That’s a lot longer process, and I think it’s gonna be much more of an intense process, and I also think students deserve to have more voices on that committee.”
Search committee members noted how the process revealed the need for further conversations between the different subsects of the Hamline community.
“One thing that became clear is, we probably need to talk to each other a lot more on an ongoing basis. So, much more formal structures for interactions between the Board of Trustees, the faculty and the students,” Imbo said.
Mart also saw the benefits that the committee meetings resulted in after the disconnect between the representatives on the committee led to bigger conversations.
“Everybody [on the search committee] was very passionate. I don’t think it ever led to, like, any disagreements or anything, but it led to fantastic conversations … I think everybody learned a lot about the school and about the different groups on campus,” Mart said.