Volume CXXXIII, Number 8 November 2, 2001 f

Chabotar says goodbye
NICHOLAS J. LOVECCHIO
ORIENT STAFF

Treasurer Kent Chabotar announced last Friday that he will leave the College in June 2002, marking an end to his eleven-year tenure at Bowdoin.

"When I first arrived," Chabotar said, "I agreed to stay three years. And I'll be here eleven years in June."

"It was time," he said.

College Treasurer Kent Chabotar announced last Friday that he would be leaving Bowdoin after 11 years. (Liesl Finn, Bowdoin Orient)

President Barry Mills said that the process to recruit a successor will begin soon.

Chabotar said he is glad to be a part of the presidential transition and has offered to help out in the recruitment process to find a successor. He also acknowledged that there is a lot of work left to be done.

In an email announcement he sent to the faculty-staff digest last Friday, he wrote: "Between now and next June, I will be fully engaged in the life of the College. We have goals to accomplish, a budget to prepare, an endowment to manage, administrative services to deliver, and a successor to recruit. Bowdoin's response to the turbulence in the economy and financial markets is a paramount concern."

Chabotar, who also teaches Public Policy and Administration every spring for the government department, said he will miss teaching the most.

He said he feels "mixed," however, about missing the financial challenges. "This college is managed very close in terms of surpluses-we don't have many. Every year we do it-balance the budget-but after a while you say, 'How many more years will it be that way?'"

Chabotar said the biggest financial change he's seen in the past ten years is one of culture, especially when it comes to cutting budgets. "People much more realize a sense of limits and making tradeoffs."

The other significant change, he said, is the transparency of the system. "My view of financial decision making is to make it transparent, so that other people can see the exact same data you looked at when you made a decision. Given the same data, hopefully they'd come to a similar conclusion. You've got to have an open book, and explain it in English."

Chabotar said he has not yet made plans for what he'll do after he leaves, but said those plans will definitely include teaching. He said he expects to work in the Boston area, but hopes to keep his house in Maine and eventually retire here.

"But no matter where the fates take me," his email said, "I will always follow the fortunes of Bowdoin College with profound interest and enormous appreciation to everyone who helped make this decade possible."