The new administrative structure that College President Jim Yong Kim announced in a letter to the College community on Thursday represents a "leaner" and more "cohesive" administration, he said in an interview with The Dartmouth on Friday.
"We wanted first of all to streamline the administration," he said. "We have a relatively, now, smaller group of people who are in charge of large areas, to which they'll bring my hope is greater coherence."
The new administrative organization will allow the College to gain "efficiencies" by combining previously separate departments that "naturally go together" under the new structure, Kim said.
The new structure, which will be implemented by June 1, includes five positions the executive vice president and chief financial officer, the provost, the senior vice president for advancement, the general counsel and the chief of staff for the President's office who directly report only to the College president.
"The five people who only report to me, I'm interacting with everyday all the time on an intensive basis," Kim said. "I have great, great confidence in them. Those are the people who I am going to lean on most to run this entire College."
In addition to those five administrators, two the dean of faculty and the vice president for communications will have direct reports to the President, but each will also have direct reports to the provost and senior vice president for advancement, respectively.
"Before there were relatively more direct reports, but also it was a much more decentralized administrative structure," Kim said. "We brought much greater cohesion to the administrative structure."
Although fewer administrators will directly report to the College president, the roles of others will not be diminished, he said.
The current administrative organization does not make explicit the exact number of direct reports to the College president, as compared to "dotted line" reports, in which administrators report primarily to other administrators, Kim said. The new structure will make explicit that distinction, he said. In response to a question about how many direct reports to the College president there were under the current structure, Kim said that there "more than five" but did not provide an exact total.
The chief of staff in the President's Office a new position in the structure that will be filled by current Vice President of Alumni Relations David Spalding '76 will work with Kim on investments, managing business processes within the President's Office, the president's schedule and how the President's Office interacts with other administrative departments, Kim said.
"[Spalding] will be sitting in just about every meeting I'm in," Kim said. "He will have a really good sense of all of the things that I'm working on."
As chief of staff, Spalding will be "taking over" a number of responsibilities now handled by Senior Vice President and Senior Advisor Steven Kadish, who will oversee finance and administration in his new role as executive vice president and CFO.
Due to Spalding's professional background in investment and business, he will "be playing a much larger role" in managing those aspects of the College's framework, Kim said.
"[Spalding] is going to have less of a role in academics because that's the role of provost and that's the role that [Dean of the Faculty and acting Provost] Carol Folt is playing right now so effectively," he said.
Although the structural changes will be fully implemented by June 1, Kim said that administrators are "well into the transition process," adding that Spalding is already moving into his new role.
A major impetus for the creation of the new administrative reorganization was the ongoing searches for high-level administrators in the College, including provost and dean of Dartmouth Medical School. Kim said he hopes to fill both positions "by Commencement."
"If you're going to do major searches for positions, part of the responsibility is to tell [candidates] exactly what you're reporting their relationship is going to be," Kim said. "So it was critical for us to put [the administrative structure] together for those searches."
Five other positions listed in the new administration are currently unfilled or filled by acting administrators, including the vice president for finance, the dean of the College, the vice president for alumni relations, the vice president for development and the chief investment officer.
The College will be "well on the way" to filling several of these other positions, including vice president for finance and CIO by Commencement, Kim said.
Another driving factor behind the administrative restructuring was that administrators feel they have "finished to a great extent" the strategic budget reduction process, and will now move on to "strategic planning," Kim said.
"We should have clarity on how we're structured and how we function administratively and academically," Kim said, discussing how the restructuring fits into the College's future strategic planning process.
Although strategic planning processes normally take three to four years, Kim hopes to complete the process in two, he said.
"Now we are just going to begin the brainstorming part of [the strategic planning process]," Kim said, adding that he will invite students, faculty and staff to discuss planning with him.
Kim hopes the "big ideas" for the strategic planning will be put together in the next six to nine months, he said.
"What we are known for in the world is the outstanding quality of our liberal arts education," he said. "So I know that without question, one of our top, top ideas is going to be how we can think about improving on what we're already known as being best in the world as."
Kim is "anxious" to talk with members of the College community in the humanities and arts in order to enhance the College's reputation, he added.
"My own background is in the social sciences, the sciences and medicine," Kim said. "So I especially look forward to talking to people in the humanities and the arts to think about the most exciting ideas in those fields that might help us to enhance even further our reputation."
