The speech program will not become its own department, Folt said, noting that few if any colleges have a department devoted wholly to the instruction of speech. Instead the speech program will be folded into an existing department or departments within the College.
"I already know where we are going to put it but I can't announce it yet," Folt said.
Folt also said that an Asian studies department may be on the horizon, though the exact form the department would take is still unclear. The College still needs to decide whether the department will focus on Asian studies, Asian American studies or ethnic studies in general.
"We are working on a complicated issue but we are looking forward to finding a solution that will allow us to move forward very soon," Folt said.
At one point during the discussion, an audience member asked if Dartmouth ever tried to "poach" professors from other institutions. "Every good institution does that," Folt answered, drawing laughter from the audience.
Many Dartmouth professors are particularly appealing to other colleges, she said, especially with Harvard University, Yale University and Brown University embarking on major hiring campaigns. She added that over the past three years Dartmouth hired 30 new professors and that the number was even higher if the engineering and medical schools were included.
"[Our faculty members] are sometimes more appealing than other places' because ours are known to care about teaching," Folt said.
The search for new faculty members begins with individual departments, she said. Departments must submit a request detailing what the new professor will teach and to whom. The College reviews the requests and then begins advertising for new professors, a process that can sometimes cost $3,000. Of foremost interest to the College when making hiring decisions are candidates' "scholarly ability, their ability to be a good teacher and how well they will pull the department together."
Folt also said that the College has no specific target number of female and minority professors it hopes to have, but added that Dartmouth still has the highest level of female faculty members in the Ivy League and the fourth highest level of minority professors.
Regarding the problem of faculty retention, which has recently received increased publicity, Folt said that professors tend to leave for one of three reasons: they choose to retire, they are denied tenure or a promotion or they opt to take a job elsewhere. The majority of faculty losses fall into the first category, she said.
While the prospect of living in rural New Hampshire was unappealing for many professors, it was one of the College's positive selling points for many other candidates, Folt said.
She also praised the College's interdisciplinary programs, which she said were especially important for a school of Dartmouth's size.
"We are not the place with the most economists or the biggest biology department but we can be very innovative with the courses we teach and the way we teach them," Folt said.
