The new Dartmouth provost Barry Scherr identifies his three main goals as better integrating various parts of campus, increasing diversity, and supporting academic student life initiatives.
Scherr said that he hopes to encourage more interaction and prudent sharing of resources between Dartmouth's undergraduate college, the graduate programs in arts and sciences, and the medical and business schools.
He also believes that increasing the diversity of the student body and faculty will make Dartmouth a stronger institution.
The recent Committee on Institutional Diversity and Equity report was "excellent," he said.
Scherr added that he was pleased to see that College President James Wright had already begun work on implementing some administrative aspects of the report.
He would like to see more funding channeled towards the Admissions Office for recruiting diverse students, he said.
While it is expensive to send admissions officers on the road for recruiting efforts and to bring prospective students to the Dartmouth campus, Scherr believes that the benefits associated with diversity justify the expenses.
Similarly, he would like to see an increase in the scholarship money granted to international students.
Scherr also plans to work extensively on academic planning as provost.
He recognized that the report drafted by his predecessor, Susan Prager, shortly before her resignation, had been highly controversial. However, he said that the report "had good ideas" worth examining and perhaps implementing over the long term.
Specifically, he believes that Prager understood what direction Dartmouth should take over the long term and how it should focus its resources.
He emphasized that academic planning should be a continuous, long-term process, rather than "a reaction to outside events", as he fears it often is.
For example, he would like to see Dartmouth hire additional faculty members, professors who will be both strong teachers and accomplished scholars.
As Dartmouth's student-to-faculty ratio is higher than it is at many comparable institutions, it has suffered unfairly in the annual U.S. News and World Report college rankings, Scherr said.
"Dartmouth has always attracted people who are strong in both areas," he said. "I don't believe that professors who are strong in one area must necessarily be weak in the other."
According to the U.S. News rankings, Dartmouth also offers fewer courses under 20 than many similar schools do. Thus, Scherr would also examine ways to facilitate the creation of small, advanced courses, he said.
Encouraging the construction of new dorms and social spaces will also be a focus of Scherr's tenure as provost.
Like many colleges, Dartmouth struggles with financial issues, and much of Scherr's work will involve monitoring pressures on the budget and the endowment fund.
Generally, Scherr is optimistic about the work that lies ahead of him.
"Overall, it's a strong institution, which attracts a high caliber of students and faculty. It's lucky enough to have relatively few problems," he said.
