May 14–16, 2015
Committee chair Brendan Connell ‘87 reminded committee members that this meeting would be a hybrid reflecting both the original charter for the committee as well as the new focus to assist with Dartmouth’s Lifelong Learning programs.
Brendan reminded attendees that there are six Dartmouth faculty members on the Committee roster. The Committee heard from two of those individuals at the fall meeting and this meeting would feature updates from professors Jon Kull, Nancy Marion and Denise Anthony.
Dean of the Faculty representative Nancy Marion shared that her role and the role of the Dean of the Faculty is to hire, promote and retain the best faculty for Dartmouth. The Dean of Faculty is also working to promote more co-curricular events - more non-academic interactions between professors and students.
Jon Kull ’88, Dean of the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences, offered his update as Dean of Graduate Studies. There is a great deal of activity around the faculty cluster initiatives. Jon also talked about the Society of Fellows. Five fellows have been chosen for the 2015-16 year out of 1700 applications. The Faculty Fellows selected these individuals and will shepherd them. The fellows will be strongly mentored and bring cutting edge work to the campus.
Denise Anthony spoke in her new role as vice Provost. She is there to support the Dean of the Faculty and the deans in all the schools to be a magnet for talent. Hiring a diverse faculty group is one of her primary tasks. She is working to recruit diverse pools of talented faculty and make sure that they are set up for success once they arrive on campus.
Robin Albing, Director of Lifelong Learning in the Alumni Relations office, explained how her office works to offer educational opportunities for alumni. These include travel opportunities with faculty; faculty lectures at reunions and at mini reunions;, Dartmouth on Location events around the country with faculty putting major museum exhibitions and performances into context for alumni; as well as other opportunities. Robin’s office is now working with EdX to determine how the upcoming American Renaissance course with Don Pease and Jed Dobson may be shared in new and exciting ways.
This course will start on campus in winter 2016 and will then be shared via EdX with the entire world. The course will feature 8 books in eight weeks with works including Walden, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Emerson’s Essays, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter and others.
Robin asked the group to think about how we might engage alumni in this course. The Committee members suggested:
1. A possible three day workshop on campus with Don Pease and Jed Dobson
2. Possible summer camp option around these topics – a whole camp on Moby Dick and whale preservation etc…
3. Women of Dartmouth book group
4. Club book groups
5. One session webinars where faculty speak to each other about these topics
6. Reunion book clubs
7. The idea of receiving a certificate proving that you had read all of the books and listened to webinars/online course was discussed.
8. The idea of inviting the entire Dartmouth community to read one book was shared.
9. The thought of MOOC meeting TEDx was mentioned – with short presentations that could be watched.
10. “One Day College” format was explored with filming mentioned….
Committee vice-chair David Van Wie ’79 will become the committee chair in 2015-2016. Later that day it was announced that Mary Dengler ’96 would be the new vice-chair of the Academic Affairs.