Professor Kim Selected as President of Dartmouth College

On March 2nd, 2009 history was made as the first ever Asian American was appointed president of an Ivy League institution. Jim Young Kim, a Korean American, has become the newly elected 17th President of Dartmouth College. According to Ed Haldeman, Chair of Dartmouth's Board of Trustees, Dr. Kim, "embodies the idea of learning, innovation, and service that lies at the heart of Dartmouth's mission." Dr. Kim, who is also the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, will replace James Wright on July 1st, 2009.

Born in Seoul and migrating to America with his parents when he was five years old Dr. Kim has accumulated an impressive resume leading up to his presidential appointment. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University and has been trained both as an Anthropologist and Physician at Harvard University. In 2003 he received a Macarthur "Genius" award and was subsequently named one of America's "25 Best Leaders" by U.S. News and World Report in 2005.

A former senior official in the World Health Organization and member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the - National Academy of Sciences Dr. Kim has devote enormous amounts of time to fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, and other disease as well as working to improve health standards overall for underdeveloped nations. He is a founding trustee and former executive director of Partners in Health a nonprofit organization that supports health care initiatives in Latin America, Russia, Rwanda, and the United States. In 2004 the World Health Organization placed Dr. Kim in charge of their HIV/AIDS department where he worked to make HIV/AIDS treatment more accessible to low and middle income countries.

Dr. Kim's approach differs from that of his colleagues in the fight against AIDS due to his anthropological background. He is not only interested in the immediate effects of the disease but also in how these diseases affect the world on a social, moral, and political level. With this perspective Dr. Kim has worked with developing countries to help them scale up their treatment, prevention, and care programs. Through his work nearly 3 million people have gained access to HIV treatment in some regions in the world where any kind of assistance was not available. Additionally Dr. Kim has also worked extensively on a number of committees dealing with international Tuberculosis policy. He has extensive research into effective and affordable strategies for treating drug resistant strains of TB.

The appointment of Dr. Kim to the position of president to one of America's top universities is a testament to his passion for global improvement and the dynamic nature of his professional lifestyle. The selection committee, made up of alumni, faculty, and current students spent nearly a year gathering input from the Dartmouth community and reviewing some of the most talented candidates in America. At the end of the process current Dartmouth President Mr. Wright stated that, "Dartmouth is fortunate indeed to have attracted an innovator of his caliber with both the enthusiasm and the global perspective it will take to lead to college into a new era of distinction and achievement."

By Garrett Harkins