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BY APOLLINE BERTY

Online | May 29, 2008

President Al Bloom recently announced that he will be ending his 17-year tenure next summer, effective August 31, 2009. Bloom, who is the 13th president of the college, began his career at Swarthmore in 1974 as an assistant professor in psychology and linguistics before succeeding David Fraser as president in 1991. A search committee for Bloom’s successor is currently being formed and will include Board members, faculty members and two students who will be appointed by Student Council.

"Over the 17 years that [Bloom] has been here he has helped Swarthmore become a better version of its best self,” Vice President Maurice Eldridge ’61 said. “I think this in part means fostering a community that’s more inclusive, more generous, from that point of view.”

Bloom’s legacy includes the renovation of old buildings such as Parrish and Trotter, and the construction of new ones: Kohlberg, the Mullan Tennis and Fitness Center, the Science Center, Alice Paul, and most recently David Kemp. He also revitalized the Honors Program, which was established by the college’s seventh president, Frank Aydelotte.

"I think that his tenure will go down as one of the great presidencies in the history of the college,” said Political Science professor Richard Valelly. “I think it will be seen as comparable to the presidency of Frank Aydelotte.”

Board member Samuel Hays III ’57 also compared Bloom to Aydelotte. “His positive influence on the college has been the most important since Frank Aydelotte, and he will be sorely missed,” Hays said.

Bloom sees his greatest accomplishments as “affirming Swarthmore’s position of leadership in higher education based on a mission distinctive in its commitment to academic excellence, analytic rigor, ethical intelligence and concern for the broader conditions of humanity and distinctive in its power to deliver on that mission,” he said in an e-mail. Bloom is also proud of “forging on campus a richly diverse community of mutual trust, inclusion, and care, which is ever more effective in fostering the skills required to extend its values and practices to the world beyond Swarthmore.”

Professor of Political Science Professor Ray Hopkins, a member of the faculty since 1967, shared insight into Bloom’s personality. “I think Al had a different set of qualities then his two predecessors,” Hopkins said, contrasting Bloom with Fraser who, while successful in his fundraising efforts, “was not as warm as Al," he said. Hopkins saw more of a similarity between Bloom and Theodore Friend (president, 1973-1982), “he and Al share one characteristic. There’s a kind of shyness, or anxiety, about their public persona,” he said.

Eldridge described Bloom as an affable colleague. “What we all enjoyed about Al is that he’s warm and welcoming, a social being,” he said.

Bloom was also very successful in fundraising for the college, increasing the endowment from $400 million to $1.4 billion, “despite some rocky years because of the football debacle,” Hopkins said. The debacle in question took place in 2001, when the chairman of the Board of Managers was also the president of the National Football League and wanted Swarthmore to make a significant commitment to the sport. Fielding a competitive football squad was a daunting task, considering the small size of the student body. Such a roster could not be compiled without reserving a significant number of admissions slots for recruited athletes.

Ultimately, Bloom decided to end football at Swarthmore, alienating some alumni and donors. Minimizing the fallout from the decision “was his biggest challenge," Hopkins said.

Bloom sees his most significant challenge as being more generally related to fundraising. “The greatest challenge has been to raise the consciousness of alumni and friends of the college to its need for very substantial financial support and to inspire them to offer that support and invest in this institution at the level essential to sustain its remarkable qualities,” he said.

Bloom said he decided to conclude his tenure next year so that the college can search for his successor and have a new president in place as the college moves into its next major capital campaign, “to translate the results of the current planning effort into the specific priorities for the next campaign and then plan and undertake that campaign,” Bloom said, adding that he plans to embark on the next stage of his own career.

A committee is in the process of being formed to look for Bloom’s successor. “I think we all need to have some input on [selecting a new president] but I think that we want to be in a position to build on things that have been achieved during Al’s tenure,” Eldridge said. “Obviously we’re not going to clone him but we’ll try to find somebody with an equal capacity for intellectual creativity.”

Bloom has not yet announced what he will be doing after vacating his position at Swarthmore, though he is looking at different possibilities both here and abroad. “He’s not going to be president of another college, I don’t think, because I think that he honestly believes that this is the best one there is,” Eldridge said. "Some of us will keep up our friendships for sure.”

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