Hell yeah. That's what all my people at Dartmouth College must have said today when the school announced that Dr. Jim Yong Kim, a Harvard Medical School official, has been named the next university president by the College's Board of Trustees: Dartmouth Selects Its New President From Harvard.

That's what I'm talking about. Dr. Kim, trained as both a physician and an anthropologist, is known for his groundbreaking work as co-founder of Partners is Health, and then at the World Health Organization, bringing effective medical treatment for H.I.V. and AIDS and for drug-resistant tuberculosis to the poor.

The appointment, of course, makes Dr. Kim the first Asian American to head an Ivy League institution. It's about frickin' time! He'll take up the post in July, succeeding James Wright, who has been president of Dartmouth for eleven years. According to Dr. Kim:

"At some point, you have to decide whether you're going to keep throwing your body at a problem, which is what I've always done. You realize that one person can't do that much. So what I want to do is train an army of leaders to engage with the problems of the world, who will believe the possibilities are limitless, that there's nothing they can't do. Being the president of an Ivy League university is an amazing opportunity."

Agreed. He has an impressive resume that speaks to the kind of work and purpose that future leaders must carry on, for the sake of everyone. More on Dr. Kim's appointment here: Dartmouth taps world health pioneer as next president. And here: Leader in AIDS fight to be Dartmouth president. And download Dartmouth's press kit (PDF) here. I'll say it again: hell yeah.