“We are pleased to announce that the search for the next President of Bennington College is now underway. This is an exciting and significant moment for Bennington, as our next President will lead the College to the successful culmination of its first 100 years and shape its legacy for decades to come.”
This is the introduction to the Presidential Search section of the Bennington College website.
In August 2025, Nick Stephens, Chair of Bennington’s Board of Trustees, sent an email to the Bennington College community stating that Laura Walker opted to “continue as a strategic advisor concentrating on new revenue projects and fundraising” rather than renew a full contract, but that she would stay on as President through the end of the semester. :
By the end of the Fall 2025 term, Walker had stepped down as president of the college, initiating a search for an interim president for the spring. “The Board will shortly name an interim president who will assume the presidency in 2026 and begin a national search for a permanent president immediately after that,” Stephens’ email stated.
Elissa Tenny, former President of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as Provost and Dean at Bennington College from 2002 to 2010, was selected as Bennington’s interim president. The announcement of her hiring, also in the form of an email from Nick Stephens, was made in October of 2025: “I am pleased to share that the Board of Trustees has selected Elissa Tenny to serve as Interim President of Bennington College. Elissa will assume the role at the end of January 2026 and serve through August 2026, by which time we expect to conclude the national search for Bennington’s next president.”
Before Tenny took over as interim president, throughout the fall semester, the chatter around campus was about the shift that would occur under a new president. Many were worried that nothing in administration would change, yet many had hoped that this new presidential search would lead the campus toward positive change. Yet, the campus as a whole does not have much say in the process; most students don’t get to see who the applicants are or have any say in the process itself. Most on campus who will be affected by this decision are ignorant of the process, and even if they are not, they are helpless to do anything about it. Except for the two students who are chosen to be on the Presidential selection committee.
The process of the presidential selection has begun; in the background of this term, the direction of this college has been decided upon, but how does the process even work?
The “presidential search” section of the Bennington College website is a great guide and outline to this process. This section of the website has an area for presidential applicants, where you can peruse the hiring packet for the president, and an area of Bennington College statistics and interviews with faculty and staff. The packet itself immerses the reader into the lore, statistics, and student testimonials of Bennington College. My favorite is a section of the timeline of the notable events and people that have happened in our history. This prospectus, near the end, outlines the qualities the college is looking for from the applicants. These qualities are organized under “Leadership”, “Operational Effectiveness, Financial Acumen, and Fundraising”, “Culture building.”, “Faculty and Staff Affairs”, and “Student Affairs and Student Success”. The most helpful section is the community update section, which has all the formal announcements and emails related to the process—although all the emails listed there are not accessible through the website—and a section with the stages of the search process. Currently, the college is at the stage of “Selecting the 12th President,” which means they’ve already chosen the committees and their members who will be interviewing and deciding on applicants. According to the website, the search committee: “…brings together representatives from our trustees, faculty-practitioners, staff, students, and alumni whose years of experience span multiple Bennington generations.” A full list of the committee members is on the presidential search section of the Bennington College website.
I spoke to student council member, Ruby Metcalf, and asked her to explain the process of assembling the committee and how the committee actually decides who the next president will be. Metcalf said that when starting the presidential search process, the Board of Trustees chooses “…a member of the Board who is selected as the head of the presidential selection board. And that person heads a group of, I think, it’s like nine different board members. That includes the current president and a faculty liaison, and usually, a couple of students talk about this.”
After this, Metcalf said, “The board makes the search public and announces that we’re hiring a president. And then people apply. Those applications, the people who apply, and the people who are selected [the committee] basically choose a group [of applicants]. I think they originally chose a group of nine [applicants]. And those nine applicants had an interview back in, maybe early April, with the Board. Not the entire Board, but just the presidential selection board. They had those interviews over Zoom, and then they picked two people who they were really interested in. And they brought them to Bennington, and they interviewed them in person.”
The search committee is officially made up of seven Trustee members, one of whom is the Board Chair, four staff and faculty members, one Alumni and Committee chair, and only two students. The members of the committee have to sign an NDA, so not much can be said about the actual deliberation or who the two final applicants are. Once the two presidential applicants were on campus, Metcalf said: “From there, they selected who it was going to be.”
Now we are in the process of limbo, waiting for Tenny’s term to be over, so we can see who will become the 12th president of Bennington College.
Update: On June 15th, Dr. R. Danielle Egan was announced as the 12th president of Bennington College. Egan was previously employed at Connecticut College, where she served as Dean of the Faculty and Chief Academic Officer, and Fuller-Maathai Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies.
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