After months of meetings and discussion with faculty, students and staff, College President James Wright introduced a new mission statement for the College, one which he said is clearer and more ambitious than its predecessor.
Wright will present the recently drafted statement to the Board of Trustees in March, after the Dartmouth community has had a chance to give suggestions via a feedback mechanism on the College's website.
He said that the idea for a new statement began to circulate last year among faculty and staff, who were searching for a clearer sense of the College's overall values and mission.
"Last year, after doing some of the assessments of staff and hearing from them, there was a sense that they wanted to have a crisper sense of a mission statement -- one that they could all buy into," Wright said.
He added that although originally reluctant to tackle what promised to be a lengthy task, he found the process to be a valuable and rewarding experience.
Wright said that throughout the past summer and fall he met with many groups of people to gather their input on the statement, including students, faculty, staff, senior administrators, alumni, union members and the Board of Trustees.
While noting that the former mission statement did reflect the positive aspects of Dartmouth, he said the revamped version offers a shorter, clearer representation of the College's values.
"The current mission statement that is up on the web page is a fine and wonderful statement," he said. "There is nothing in there that doesn't mark what I think is the very best of Dartmouth, but it tends to be long and descriptive. We were hoping to come up with something that was far more succinct and aspirational."
He said that the new statement includes two very important aspects of the College: the spirit of collaboration among students and faculty in concert with a strong individual desire to excel and take personal risks.
Wright emphasized the core values detailed in the new statement as the heart of both the Dartmouth Community and the impetus behind the College's mission.
"In the second section there are things that I do believe describe Dartmouth's core values: excellence, collaboration," he said. "The idea of teamwork also came up. The whole concept of diversity also is really fundamental to who we are. This is what makes Dartmouth the strong place it is, what contributes to the quality of the education here."
