April
18 , 2003 Lytle
New Chief Aide to President and Trustees
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Photo:
Fred LeBlanc
Jesse
Lytle |
I
t’s every graduate student’s dream—defending
a dissertation without a hitch and getting the perfect job the
next day. Jesse Lytle’s last few months pretty much mirror
this fantasy. First came the defense at the University of Pennsylvania,
where Lytle has spent the last three years working toward a doctorate
in education in higher education, studying, among other things,
“executive governance.” The defense couldn’t
have gone better, and he passed with distinction. The next day
he found himself at Mount Holyoke, interviewing for the position
of assistant to the president and secretary of the College with
someone well-practiced in executive governance, President Joanne
Creighton. Guess what? He got the job.
And although he has
secured what he calls “the dream job for someone just out
of my [graduate] program,” tangible skills, experience,
and drive—and the desire to support liberal arts colleges—are
what earned Lytle the position of chief aide to the president
and the board of trustees. Creighton is “delighted to have
Jesse Lytle as a colleague,” she says. “He brings
to this job energy, freshness, intelligence, and a deep fascination
with the liberal arts college, a subject he explored in his graduate
work at Penn. A 1995 graduate of Amherst College and a former
employee there, now married to a Smith graduate, he knows the
Five Colleges context well and is eager to learn all about Mount
Holyoke. I’m sure he’ll be a quick study.” For
his part, Lytle noted that during the interview process, Creighton
was welcoming and forthright. “I was impressed with Joanne
from the start. She is a straight shooter whose record of accomplishment
at the College speaks for itself. I know I will enjoy working
with her,” he says.
Before even receiving his doctoral hood, Lytle is already in “sponge
mode” for the next phase of his career, learning all he
can about “the work” from current Assistant to the
President and Secretary of the College Stephanie Hull, before
she leaves the College to become head of New York’s Brearley
School in May. That work will encompass myriad duties. As an officer
of the College and a member of the president’s senior staff,
Lytle will advise the president on College policies and procedures,
undertake projects of strategic importance, and represent Creighton
and the College to a broad range of internal and external constituencies.
Specific responsibilities include management of the administrative,
operational, and financial affairs of the president’s office;
coordination of the work of the senior staff through preparation
of agendas and supporting materials, design of meetings, and appropriate
support; drafting of presidential speeches, reports, memoranda,
and correspondence; serving as liaison and staff to the board
of trustees; managing the preparation of trustee materials and
serving as secretary of the board; oversight of major institutional
ceremonies, lectures, and special events; and community and government
relations.
Lytle feels his skills
will serve him well in his broad-ranging position. He views his
greatest strengths as the ability to “balance competing
priorities and get things done efficiently” and to research,
study, and solve problems. As a double major in psychology and
Spanish who also earned a Five College Certificate of Latin American
Studies, Lytle first honed these skills at Amherst. His scholarly
interests lie in Spanish-to-English literary translation, which
he has done in the past and plans to continue while at Mount Holyoke.
He first became interested in higher education administration
the year after he graduated from Amherst, during which he served
as an assistant and adviser to Amherst’s president Tom Gerety.
Lytle has also served as an education counselor at Amherst’s
career center and worked in its dean of students office developing
and implementing residential life policy. “Jesse is a terrific
person, bright, well-organized, and thorough, and we think the
world of him. We would hire him in a minute,” says Ben Lieber,
Amherst’s dean of students.
His time at Amherst as a student and administrator imbued Lytle
with a deep respect for the liberal arts, he says. The most valuable
part of his own liberal arts experience was the relationships
he established. “For me, learning was embedded in dialogues
with classmates, faculty members, coaches, teammates, and administrators.
I learned a lot from books, but I learned more from the people
around me and the connections I made with them. I felt supported
at all levels,” he says. Lytle also found balance in sport,
first as a squash player and later as Amherst’s assistant
coach in the sport.
“Whether it’s sport, the arts, or community service,
I feel it’s important to do something beyond academics in
college to balance your lifestyle and maximize your potential,”
he says. Lytle combined his interests in liberal arts colleges
and sport in his dissertation, exploring what he calls “a
brewing issue in higher education,” the intersection of
“ideals and realities in the debate over intercollegiate
athletics at selective liberal arts colleges.”
Lytle’s interest in liberal arts colleges extends to the
subcategory of women’s colleges. “I have been around
powerful, educated women all my life,” he says. “My
wife, mother, aunt, and grandmother are all alumnae of women’s
colleges, and I see the appeal of the women’s college experience.
I think I will feel very much at home at Mount Holyoke.”
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