The release this past week of the Administrative Working Group's reports on administrative policies shows a marked increase in the transparency of Parkhurst. Shattering the perception that the administration insulates itself from outside criticism, the group admitted areas for improvement in the administrative structure. In implementing the necessary reforms, Parkhurst will clarify the College's hiring procedure and pull together the disorganized administrative organs of Dartmouth into a more effective body.
The College should have already been carrying out a variety of the recommendations of the group, including vetting job candidates more thoroughly by calling references listed in their job applications and using Google to search the background of applicants, but much better late than never.
The administration should be applauded for quickly acting on the recommendations and hiring an ombudsman this week to provide College employees with a means to present their concerns directly to Parkhurst. Staff morale and retention will hopefully improve with the trial run of the new post. The administration has demonstrated that it is not married to its own policies and is willing to make necessary adjustments to the status quo at Parkhurst.
The reports focused mainly on employee hiring and retention, but discussion about the most central employees of the College, the professors, was conspicuously absent from the assessment. Financial allocation for the hiring of professors has been a point of major debate over the past several years. Parkhurst must be willing to address this issue publicly, whether or not a problem exists. A working group should be established to examine both the number of professorial candidates given offers and the allocation of those offers across departments. Such questions are complicated ones. Class waiting lists and a handful of big classes do not necessarily demonstrate a problem. Other considerations are involved: The College has limited resources and hiring more professors also means sacrificing professor quality on the margin to some degree. Regardless, it is certainly clear that some departments would benefit from more professors if they could get more of the quality Dartmouth demands. The administration should either address these concerns or publicly explain why change is not the best option. Now that Parkhurst has proven that it is not wary of internal assessment, College President James Wright must continue the spirit of the group and press on with further self-reflection at Parkhurst.
