Susan Dentzer '77 was first elected to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees in 1993 and became the first female Chair of the Board in 2001. She is a noted journalist who worked on the PBS "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" as a health commentator.
The magna cum laude Dartmouth graduate known outside Hanover for her frequent speech circuits and commentaries on television news programs delivered the keynote convocation speech on Tuesday and met with The Dartmouth afterward.
The Dartmouth: How do you view the role of the Board and what is the philosophy behind how the Board should operate and implement its decisions?
Susan Dentzer: The job of the Board of Trustees is to carry out the long-term governance and support of the overall institution. The Board does a very important thing, which is that it appoints the President. The Board's job is to, number one, appoint the President, and number two, support the President's vision. We are also entrusted with the actual stewardship of the assets of the institution. We in effect own the assets of the institution. They're not ours to use at our will, but we hold them in trust for all of Dartmouth and future generations of Dartmouth students.
The D: With the new capital campaign quickly approaching, where is the money planned on going and why?
Dentzer: President Wright and Barry Scherr [announced Tuesday] that we have more than $90 million in gifts that have come in, even before we have announced officially the kickoff of the capital campaign. And these are gifts we are going to devote to some of our top priorities, first of all the building of new residence halls, the building of some new academic building, especially the proposed new Kemeny building for math.
And there are others: an engineering sciences center at the Thayer school, and addition to the Sudikoff laboratory, and an academic centers building. That is the first wave of the unfolding of some of the priorities of the campaign.
The D: With the Student Life Initiative fading into memory, what kind of social initiatives, if any, are being considered by the Board?
Dentzer: First of all, the Student Life Initiative has not faded into our memory on the Board. In fact, we are actively engaged at this moment in carrying out very important pieces of the Student Life Initiative, not the least of which is our plan to build new residence halls accommodating 500 student beds -- that was one of the very important needs identified through the Student Life Initiative.
In addition to that, we all along wanted to create a series of more cluster oriented housing entities at Dartmouth, and the North Maynard Street complex that we hope to build will be very much that.
It will have several new dormitories, a brand new social and dining space for the campus that will be the preeminent dining space on campus, and really will help to fulfill our vision of cluster oriented housing and social space that can be used as a combination of academic and social space and create a much more fruitful environment for the kinds of things that go on already at the cluster arrangements we have, East Wheelock, for example.
In addition, other things are happening. We have noted, with great pleasure, the changes that are taking place in the fraternity and sorority systems on campus. One of things we talked about in the Student Life Initiative is having those institutions receive loans from the College to undertake some of the physical upgrades that they need to undertake in order to improve their physical facilities, and the Board of Trustees just approved extensions of loans to organizations that needed to do that.
We think that all around much is continuing to roll forward on the SLI and we are just enormously pleased with the progress and very enthusiastic about what we have ahead of us.
The D: Has there been an effort to increase the number of Trustees on the Board, requiring and amendment to the school's charter and consequent approval from the New Hampshire legislature?
Dentzer: The charter of Dartmouth College, because of its historical origins, requires approval from the state legislature in order to do some very simple things. That left the College in a situation very different from other non-profit institutions that don't have to go to the legislature to have a change in the charter.
We had been talking for some years about going to the legislature and asking for this request in the form of what's called Home Rule legislation, which means if we want to do things like increase or decrease the size of the Board or make other changes in our charter we wouldn't have to go to the legislature every time we wanted to do it. And that Home Rule legislation was passed just this past summer.
On the question of the size of the Board, the Board has been considering for at least as long as I have been affiliated with the Board, whether we were at the appropriate size.
We have 16 members of the Board, including the President and the Governor, who sits on the Dartmouth Board as an ex-officio capacity, and that does make us the smallest of all the Boards in the Ivy League. Now that the Home Rule legislation is passed, if we do decide to go forward on expanding the Board we have the ability to do that.
The D: How does the Board view recent attempts by the student body to establish a new mascot, and would the Board support the student if they rallied behind a mascot that was supported by the majority of the students?
Dentzer: I think so. I mean to tell you truthfully, on all the years I have been on the Board the issue of the mascot has never come up at a Board meeting.
I do know that, as an alumna of Dartmouth, once the Indian symbol was done away with, appropriately in my view, it probably would have been a good idea to have come up with a replacement at that time, and the fact that we haven't has probably aggravated some problems we've had over the years with some people wanting to bring back the Indian symbol for lack of a mascot.
But frankly over the years I've sent his come and go. I remember a drive to create the mascot as the Dartmouth Timberwolves that lasted for several brief years through the 80s or 90s.
I think if we could demonstrate that there was substantial student support and solidarity behind a new mascot, and assuming the mascot was deemed appropriate to the institution, I think the trustees would certainly be in favor of that, and I think probably gelling on a final alternative for a mascot is a good idea.
The D: The Student Assembly continues to push for a "young alum trustee" on the Board. The issue has been brought up in years past and has not made any substantial progress. Is that something the Board would eventually consider?
Dentzer: We do recognize that there is a great value on the Board to having a membership from different generations of Dartmouth experience.
We do indeed have younger trustees on the Board today -- Karen Francis for example is from the class of '84. Over time we will be bringing people on the Board who are from younger classes without specifically trying to fill a young trustee quota. We are always looking to refresh the Board by bringing people from different generations of Dartmouth experience.
