In the spring term, Dartmouth will be rolling out its third annual offering of “Inside Dartmouth’s Budget,” a six-session non-credit course available to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff. Each session is two hours long and will take place in the Life Sciences Center on Thursday evenings from March 31 to May 5.
The course was created in 2014 by the Office of the President. Chief financial officer Mike Wagner said that the purpose of the course is to help increase understanding of the College’s budget and how initiatives are funded and financed, both here and in higher education more broadly.
College President Phil Hanlon will be the lecturer in the first session. Other lecturers will include Provost Carolyn Dever, chief investment officer Pam Peedin, chief operating officer for advancement Ann Root Keith, vice president for campus planning and facilities Lisa Hogarty, financial aid director Dino Koff and director of admissions and interim dean of admissions and financial aid Paul Sunde.
College executive vice president Rick Mills said that while everybody likes to comment on how the College spends or does not spend its money, few people have the base of knowledge necessary to develop informed opinions.
“I think President Hanlon was trying to make it possible for people to have the background and the information that they need to draw conclusions,” Mills said.
Wagner said that topics covered in the course include the business model for higher education, the Dartmouth budgeting process, what Dartmouth spends its money on, tuition and financial aid and information about the College’s endowment.
Mills added that people will gain a new perspective regarding the College’s endowment after the course, because lecturers will be explaining how much of the endowment is actually accessible.
“I think there’s a belief that it’s just administration not willing to spend the money as opposed to maybe there really are constraints here,” Mills said.
The course is run in a lecture style, but students may ask questions whenever they want, Wagner said.
“We feel like the questions that people have are what they’re really interested in and that’s more important than the next slide that I might have to present on,” he said. “We really want to encourage those questions and go as deep as people want to go, on the topics that are interesting.”
This year, instructional designer Adrienne Gauthier will be helping to “take our materials and make them more of a learning experience, not just a presentation,” Wagner said. Mills added that sometimes clickers are used to answer questions in class.
Each year, the first few sessions tend to see greater participation, though not all participants attend all six sessions, Wagner said.
In the course’s first year, around 120 people signed up, while around 90 signed up last year, he added.
“The effort in putting together materials that are clear, concise, interesting, and then standing up in front of between 60 and 100 people and talking about it in a way that doesn’t put them to sleep is really hard,” Wagner said.
He said that feedback led them to bring in more outside reading materials. He identified providing some of the information before the session as a possible improvement, which he said would facilitate dialogue once attendees had the chance to “digest” the information.
Wagner said this year, he will pre-record short videos with background information for students to watch before class to allow for more material to be covered and for in-depth discussions during class time.
“The dialogue has been so fulfilling and I think that the participants felt that way as well,” he said. “The questions that folks would ask and then our responses and the dialogue that would evolve around those questions was so, so rich and I think got people thinking, got people asking other questions.”
However, Wagner said in previous years, this extended dialogue often prevented the course from covering all of the material.
“We learned that asking students to read materials that then are never discussed in the class really irritates students,” Mills said.
He said that they are considering putting together a bibliography of optional suggested readings.
Other than in class sessions, Mills said that there will also be breakfasts and lunches where people can sign up and come to ask further questions or delve in to topics in more depth.
Several students interviewed by The Dartmouth said they would consider enrolling in the course.
Zachary Panton ’19 said he appreciated the initiative to further inform students and faculty about the College’s budgeting process.
“Getting the faculty and students more involved is definitely a good thing,” Panton said.
Elizabeth Jenny ’19 expressed interest in the course, noting the importance of course material, but had not heard about the course before.
“It’s hard to get the word out and I feel like no one knows about it yet,” Jenny said.
Stephen Ofori ’17 said that he liked the transparency this program creates with respect to the College’s budget.
The course is currently filled, but students can still sign up to be on the waiting list.
Sonia is a junior from Ottawa, Canada. (That is the mysterious Canadian capital that no one seems to ever have heard of.) She is a double major in Economics and Government, with a minor in French. She decided to join The D’s news team in her freshman fall because of her love of writing, talking to people, getting the most up-to-date news on campus, and having a large community of fellow students to share these interests with.
