President Wright’s Community Letter

Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 14:40:12 -0500 (EST)
From: [James Wright]Subject: Community Letter

Please find enclosed my semi-annual letter to Dartmouth alumni and parents. I hope you enjoy it.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from snowy Hanover. We had a great Winter Carnival, but now the term is going by quickly, and as we approach the end of winter the days are longer and the sun is higher in the sky. I want to share my update on the College on the Hill. This is an exciting time at Dartmouth — and I always hope by this means to provide you with a little glimpse into the life of the College.

Earlier this year, Booz Allen Hamilton, the global management and technology consulting firm, released a list of the 10 most enduring institutions. They identified two institutions in each of five areas: academic, arts and entertainment, business and commerce, government, and non-profits. In the area of education they named Dartmouth College and Oxford University in England. Other institutions on the top 10 list included the Salvation Army, General Electric, the American Constitution, Sony — and the Rolling Stones! Ralph Shrader, the CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton, described an enduring institution as “one that has changed and grown in unswerving pursuit of success and relevance — yet remained true through time to its founding principles.” This surely fits us.

Endurance though is more than simply hanging around. It is also about remaining at the forefront of what you do. A key element in Dartmouth’s ability to endure is a willingness to change and adapt while remaining clearly committed to our core mission. Just a week ago, one of the panelists who selected Dartmouth for this recognition, a person whom I have never met and whose own ties were to another Ivy institution, wrote to me that he nominated Dartmouth because “key episodes in its own history have tended to have significance far beyond Hanover — they have been observed and heeded nation-wide.” He went on to describe Dartmouth as “the unexpected home of continual innovation and thoughtful self-analysis.”

Our two and a third centuries of endurance are marked by generations of graduates who have made a difference, as well as ongoing leadership by the College in higher education: one of the earliest medical schools; the earliest engineering school; the first business school; the first Ivy League school to admit an African American student; the first school to develop a system of selective admissions; a leader in insisting that the privilege of an education needs to be followed by a commitment to confront the world’s problems; one of the first schools to develop a computing network, and, more recently, to become fully wireless. These examples but touch the surface of what this College has contributed to the world and why it ought to have endured. Our graduates assume positions of leadership and live lives of responsibility. And, of course, as president, my challenge is not to reflect upon the “have endured” but to move to the “must endure” and the future this College promises. Dartmouth is a dynamic and vibrant institution, and I would highlight just a few indicators of this strength.

Faculty ~ Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Carol Folt recently announced a series of significant gifts to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to advance the academic program and to help with the expansion of the faculty. These include:
* $10 million from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to endow two distinguished professorships in emerging fields;
* The establishment of the Charles Hansen Professorship at Dartmouth — the generous gift of Mark Hansen ’78 in honor of his father — to recognize and reward faculty whose teaching is true to the highest standards of Dartmouth’s educational mission;
* The A. David Mangelsdorff ’67 Fund to recognize faculty whose scholarship has contributed to the advancement of interdisciplinary knowledge;
* The creation of two $2 million funds to encourage faculty innovation — one from Ronald Harris ’71 and the other from an anonymous donor.

This extraordinary portfolio of generous gifts will enable the faculty to realize their deepest aspirations for blending scholarly innovation and excellence in teaching, as well as for building interdisciplinary bridges. They also mirror the faculty’s strength in garnering extramural funding from the government and foundations and numerous prestigious awards such as Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, National Science Foundation Career Awards, and Presidential Early Career Awards.

While most Dartmouth classes remain small, we do have some large classes, especially in the sciences and social sciences. The number of students involved in the presidential scholars program and senior fellows program and who write theses continues to rise. Students continue to participate in off campus programs at a very high level — much higher than at our peer institutions. Faculty are also interacting more with students outside of the classroom through the residence halls, the Coed, Fraternity, and Sorority system, and the Take a Professor to Lunch program among other programs.

All of this points to the need for additional faculty — a key priority of the current Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience. Dean Folt moved quickly to address rising demand for economics courses and is looking at demand across the Arts and Sciences. Five years ago we committed to a 10 percent increase in the number of Faculty in the Arts and Sciences, and we are closing in on this goal. This expansion will allow us to respond to the demand for more courses in some areas and to introduce new fields of knowledge. The Dartmouth curriculum must remain vital, relevant, and flexible.

Admissions ~ The number of applications for admission to Dartmouth has reached a record level of more than 12,700 applicants. We assess every student individually, and we look for a range of qualities: academic accomplishment, athletic or artistic ability, contribution to diversity, leadership and contributions to the community, evidence of service and other extracurricular activities. Legacy status certainly has a positive impact on an application. Currently legacies have an admission rate of 36 percent — twice the rate of non-legacies — and make up approximately 9 percent of an entering class. I am always pleased to hear that legacies want to come to Dartmouth, and, while admission to the College is extremely competitive, we are strengthened by the generational continuity provided by legacies.

We also continue to be one of only a handful of institutions that have a need-blind financial aid policy, one that provides 100 percent of an admitted student’s demonstrated need. Over the last six years we have dramatically reduced loan expectations for students and added scholarship resources. Our position in this regard is very strong relative to our competitors. We must remain accessible to a wide range of students. For this reason, financial aid is one of the central features of the Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience.

Students ~ Every few years, we ask seniors to take a comprehensive survey about their Dartmouth experience. This past year the survey results demonstrated the
highest level of student satisfaction since the survey began in 1994. Over 90 percent of our students stated that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their educational experience.

Dartmouth students enjoy the access that they have to the faculty and appreciate the opportunity for one-on-one and small-group learning experiences — 96 percent were satisfied or very satisfied with their access to faculty. Dartmouth, unlike many of our peer institutions, generally hires faculty at the junior professor ranks and then places a heavy emphasis on their ability to both be at the forefront of their discipline and be passionate about their teaching. Before faculty members receive tenure, they undergo a thorough review that includes asking former students to comment on their teach
ing and mentoring.

Facilities ~ I am delighted to have finally moved forward with several of our most pressing facilities needs. Construction is well under way on the MacLean Engineering Sciences Center and Kemeny Hall and the Haldeman Center. We have also begun the McLaughlin Cluster and Tuck Mall residence halls, which together will add over 500 new spaces for undergraduates. As we have no plans to increase the size of the undergraduate student body, these halls will improve the quality and availability of housing and will increase residential continuity for our students. We also begin work shortly on the Alumni Gym project to renovate the existing facility and to add a new fitness center. This is part of the extensive renovations of athletic facilities undertaken over the past five years.

Planning is underway for an expansion of the arts facilities, including construction of new space for studio art and film and television studies. The Medical School is expanding its facilities on its Lebanon campus, and many Dartmouth undergraduates work in labs there. But we also need to improve our facilities for the life sciences on the Dartmouth campus, and we are looking at a variety of ways to do this. Finally, the Tuck School is planning for a residence hall that will allow the school to house all its first-year students in its world-renowned MBA program.

The Budget ~ We emerged from the tightened economic circumstances of the past few years in excellent shape — academic areas including the libraries and computing have recently seen significant increases in their budget, while we continued to hold the line on non-academic administrative costs. This past year, the return on the endowment reached 18.6 percent, which put Dartmouth in the upper quartile among similar institutions, and grew the endowment to a total of $2.6 billion, a new record high. Standard and Poor’s recently renewed Dartmouth’s AAA bond rating and noted that it reflected “impressive undergraduate and graduate demand profiles, excellent student quality, historically strong financial results, a large endowment … and a manageable debt burden.” S&P also said: “An impressive management team with conservative budgeting practices has led to historically positive results at Dartmouth.” These results are due in large part to the dedication and hard work of employees across the institution. We remain vigilant and prudent in our budget preparation and will remain focused on our priorities.

Dartmouth is a vibrant and energetic place. Let me share a glimpse of my activities over the last few days — they convey both the energy of the place and also why I enjoy my job so much. Over the weekend, Susan and I hosted a reception for parents where we heard much about their enthusiasm for their student’s Dartmouth experience. We saw the men’s hockey team defeat Harvard in overtime and the men’s basketball team defeat Yale at the buzzer. We saw the student production Dear Brutus, and I joined the men’s hockey team for Sunday brunch. This week, I have had two lunches with students in the office, where I heard about their experiences and concerns. Susan and I invited the CFS presidents for dinner with some faculty and staff colleagues on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday night, we joined students for dinner at Thayer. We both attended a student art opening at AREA and a panel discussion on the Dartmouth experience of black students. At the Monday faculty meeting, Dean Folt described her initiatives. It is an energizing life at an energetic institution.

In a few weeks, Susan and I will visit alumni in Vero Beach, Naples, and Sarasota. This follows winter club meetings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Denver. While in Florida we hope to see the Red Sox — the World Champion Red Sox! — in Fort Myers. And then we will be eager for a Hanover spring.

In closing, I would like to thank you for your support. Dartmouth would not be able to do all that it does without you. Through your volunteer work on the Alumni Council or Association, through clubs, classes, and affiliated groups, through your efforts to identify and recruit students, and through your support of the Dartmouth College Fund, Dartmouth alumni continue to ensure that Dartmouth endures. Susan and I look forward to seeing you on our travels or in Hanover.

Sincerely,
James Wright