The Board will announce the rest of the search committee members in June and expects to go public with outgoing College President James Wright's successor in Spring 2009. Mulley, who joined the Board in 2004 as a charter trustee and is currently chief of general medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a statement that he hopes "to engage the larger Dartmouth community as we discern together the qualities of leadership that will best serve the College at this moment in its history."
The Board has not decided whether to use an outside firm to support the search process, Board Chairman Ed Haldeman '70 said in an interview with The Dartmouth. The search will be "open and inclusive," he added.
The Board's authorization of a 4.9 percent increase in tuition is one-tenth of a percent less than the increase seen in 2007-2008, which was the highest increase since 1996. This increase applies to undergraduates, Thayer School of Engineering students and graduate students in the arts and sciences. Tuition will rise by six percent for Dartmouth Medical School students and 6.1 percent for students in the Tuck School of Business.
"I think that Dartmouth continues to be about the middle of our competition group in terms of our tuition changes," Wright told The Dartmouth. "We are more dependent on tuition than some of the other schools."
Haldeman explained that, as with most service industries, the cost of higher education continues to grow at a rate greater than inflation.
"What we have been able to do on financial aid is a function of current giving by alumni and past giving," Haldeman said. "Those two things combined allow us to be need-blind and to make the recent favorable adjustment to our financial aid policy."
The College announced on Jan. 22 that it would waive tuition for students whose families have annual incomes less than $75,000, replace loans with scholarships and provide need-blind admissions for international students, among other initiatives.
These changes, which will cost an additional $10 million per year, will be supported by funds from the College's endowment.
This weekend marked the second meeting of the Board since its September decision to add eight new trustees. Though the new trustees were to be selected this February, the Association of Alumni's suit against the College has postponed this decision indefinitely.
Haldeman said he "absolutely" expects to appoint the new trustees at some point in the future.
"What seems unfortunate to me as the Board chair is the fact that I know we have a long list, a great list, of exceptional alumni who would be great trustees and are anxious to serve, but we cannot name them and get the benefit of the long list that we have right now," Haldeman said.
The upcoming elections for the Association executive committee this spring may be the College's final chance to see the suit end before it goes to trial. If a majority of the newly elected executive committee is against the suit, the committee may vote to withdraw it.
Wright acknowledged the legal significance of the election but added that a decision by the Association to withdraw the suit might not mean the end of legal action.
"I think if the Association leadership were to change and decide to withdraw the lawsuit that doesn't mean someone else won't pick it up," he said.
While the College may have an interest in the outcome of the executive committee elections, Wright said that Dartmouth's only involvement is through securing a company to run the voting process. Wright affirmed, however, that "it is my task as president to try to correct the record" if candidates make false statements about the College.
