Morehouse School of Medicine Dean Elected to Harvard Board of Overseers

Atlanta - Dean and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Morehouse School of Medicine, Dr. Eve J. Higginbotham, has been elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers.

The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) announced the results of the annual election at the yearly meeting of the association following the University's 357th Commencement.

Higginbotham is a 1979 graduate of Harvard Medical School, with S.B. and S.M. degrees in chemical engineering from MIT. A member of the Institute of Medicine, she is an ophthalmologist with expertise in the treatment of glaucoma.

The five new Overseers were elected to six-year terms. In 2008, there were nine candidates, eight nominated by a committee of the HAA, as prescribed by the election rules, and one nominated by certificates from Harvard degree-holders. Alumni and alumnae cast 29,350 ballots in the election.

The primary function of the board of overseers is to encourage the University to maintain the highest attainable standards as a place of learning. Overseers carry out this mission by visiting faculties, departments, and other important programs throughout the University so that they can inform themselves about the quality of teaching, research, and administration and then identify problems and offer advice to faculties and University officials.

The five newly elected Overseers also include:

Lynn Wan-Hsin Chang (Newton, Mass.): An internationally acclaimed concert violinist, recording artist, and violin professor, Chang received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1975. He is a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and teaches violin at several conservatories and universities in the Boston area.

Anne Fadiman (Whately, Mass.): An author, editor, and Francis Writer in Residence at Yale, Fadiman received her A.B. from Radcliffe College in 1975. Her writings include two books of essays, as well as the prize-winning "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down." She is the former editor of The American Scholar.

Paul J. Finnegan (Chicago): The co-founder and co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity firm in Chicago, Finnegan is a 1975 graduate of Harvard College. He received an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and served as president of the Harvard Alumni Association in 2006-07.

David Oxtoby (Claremont, Calif.): Oxtoby is president and professor of chemistry at Pomona College in California. A 1972 Harvard College graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, Oxtoby was a distinguished service professor and dean of physical sciences at the University of Chicago before going to Pomona.