HANOVER, N.H. —Dr. Jim Young Kim, a 1978 Muscatine High School graduate, was appointed Monday as president of  Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., becoming the first Asian-American to lead an Ivy League institution.

“We grew up in a sort of cocoon of wonderful friends and people,” he said this morning. “I only keep in touch sporadically with some of the people, but I still remember that my high school friendships were some of the most important in my life.”

Dartmouth representatives describe Kim, 49, as a dedicated educator and humanitarian who has provided visionary leadership in academia, public policy and global health.

“This is the greatest honor and the greatest challenge of my life,” Kim said. He praised the school and its mission, as well as its dedicated alumni.

Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated with his family to the United States at age 5. He attended Muscatine schools from fifth-12th grades. He was valedictorian at MHS, president of his class and played quarterback for the Muskies.

“In my heart, I am still a Muscatine Muskie,” Kim said. “I spent a lot of my time trying to live down the fact that we had a 56-game losing streak in football and I never had a winning game my senior year. I still check up on the Muskies once in awhile and I remember some of the great teachers I had in school.”

One of Kim’s top challenges will be steering Dartmouth through rough economic times. Last month, the college laid off 60 administrative workers and said it will cut its budget $72 million over two years in response to a sharp decline in its endowment.

He earned an undergraduate degree from Brown University, a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a doctorate in anthropology from Harvard University.

A former senior official at the World Health Organization and                  co-founder of Partners In Health, he is internationally acknowledged for his leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases. In 2004, in recognition of his many accomplishments, he was elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Kim received a MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2003 and was named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by

U.S. News & World Report in 2005.  

In 2006, he was selected as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

He is married to Dr. Younsook Lim, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The couple have two sons, an 8-year-old, and another born last week. The family will move to the President’s house on the Dartmouth campus.

Kim, chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, will be the 17th president of Dartmouth and take office on July 1. He will succeed James Wright, who previously announced that he is stepping down in June after 11 years as president of the College.

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In addition to Dartmouth College, the Ivy League consists of Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. For further biographical background and other information about Kim and about Dartmouth, see http://www.dartmouth.edu/presidentelect