The College appointed Dr. Jeffrey Hersh as the director of counseling and human development, after conducting a nationwide search.
Hersh is the former head of the mental health division at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Director of College Health Services John Turco announced the appointment yesterday after a search committee, created at the end of spring, presented a list of candidates.
As director of counseling and human development, Hersh will oversee a counseling staff that advises Dartmouth students and also acts as an intermediary between the staff and the department of psychiatry at the Dartmouth Medical School, Turco said.
Turco said Hersh, who started yesterday part-time and will start full-time Sept. 1, brings a lot of experience and caring to the job.
Hersh will replace temporary director Bruce Baker, who took over in January after the resignation of Peter Silverfarb.
Turco said Baker has done an "outstanding job."
Turco said he was impressed with Hersh's work with diversity issues at UMass, which has recently been embroiled in conflict.
"He was involved in cases of diversity issues that were thrust upon itself," Turco said. "He was very up front in dealing with diversity issues."
Turco said Hersh's ability to appeal to different ethnic groups on campus is important because "we have had some groups who are less comfortable coming into the counseling office."
Turco said because of budgetary constraints, the office has not been able to hire counselors who specialize in problems with different groups, such as homosexuals and Hispanics.
Turco said Hersh would have to pull together the "very established staff" and that "he needs to be looked upon, quite frankly, as [its] leader."
Hersh was not available for comment yesterday.
According to a press release, Hersh, a Brooklyn, N.Y. native, graduated from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 1964.
He received his Ph.D. at Indiana University five years later.
From 1984 to 1993, Hersh directed the Mental Health Division of the University Health Services at UMass.