Over the winter break, the college hired W. Houston Dougharty, the current Dean of Students at Lewis and Clark College, as its new Vice President of Student Affairs. Dougharty replaces Tom Crady who resigned the position to become the Dean of the College at Dartmouth College.
Dougharty will assume his position in April as he will finish out the remainder of Lewis and Clark's academic year. Over the coming months he will visit the Grinnell campus to meet with students, faculty and administrators.
Until he officially begins, Elena Bernal '94, currently special assistant to President Russell K. Osgood for diversity and achievement, will serve as interim head of Student Affairs.
SGA President Megan Goering '08, who was the student representative on the search committee, said that Dougharty impressed the search committee by "describing his number one job as being an advocate for students."
The search committee interviewed applicants from around the country and invited three finalists to come to the college for more interviews and meetings with students, faculty and staff. The search committee then submitted recommendations to Osgood.
"While there was support for all three of them, people felt like Houston [Dougharty] had the best array of experience and was the most impressive and the most likely to do well," Osgood said. "I will say I completely agree."
Dougharty said he hopes to begin by listening to student concerns and says that he has no "agenda" for change. "I've never really found that coming in with both guns blazing makes any sense," Dougharty said.
In a past position as associate dean of students at Iowa State University, Dougharty was outspoken in his advocacy on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.
"When I first got to Ames, there wasn't much conversation around heterosexism or homophobia or doing what we can to celebrate and support LGBT and queer students," Dougharty said. "I was one of the first administrators to stand up and say, 'this is an important thing for ISU to embrace.'"
Dougharty's efforts were so impressive that Iowa State's Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Student Services now gives out an annual "W. Houston Dougharty Ally Award."
At Lewis and Clark, Dougharty oversaw a restructuring of the Student Life office that college Provost Jane Monnig Atkinson said "leant coherence to the whole structure and made it ... more responsive to the campus."
"We are heartsick that he's leaving," Atkinson said. "He's a community-builder who students, faculty and staff alike really admire."
