Members of the Board of Trustees returned to the College to discuss various challenges confronting the Dartmouth community, especially the issue of student and faculty diversity, during the Board's termly meeting on Friday and Saturday, College President Jim Yong Kim said in an interview with The Dartmouth. The meeting also focused on Dartmouth's rankings in national publications and on budget prospects for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends in June, according to Kim.
In addition to the College's legally-mandated affirmative action plan, each College division will formulate its own plan to increase diversity. These plans will focus on improving outreach to potential applicants with the intent of recruting the best students, staff and faculty members possible, according to Kim.
"It's not about quotas, it's not about trying to artificially move in one direction or another," Kim said. "What we've found is that if you spend the time really diversifying your pool of applicants, you actually get better applicants and you get a more diverse workforce."
The discussion on diversity centered around recommendations from a panel of five students on the Inter-Community Council who spoke to the Board on Friday. Approximately 33 members of the ICC attended the meeting and had lunch with the trustees, Kim said.
The panel was invited to speak last Tuesday, according to Christian Brandt '12, a member of the ICC and a panel participant.
Brandt said the role of the Office of Pluralism and Leadership was one of the panel's primary concerns. ICC members recommended that more funds be allocated to OPAL in order for the office to be more "autonomous" from the administration, so that it does not have to "tread lightly," he said.
"If [OPAL] was allowed to do more of the things they wanted to do, it would do a more effective job of addressing all students," Brandt said.
Brandt said the panel also recommended that Dartmouth create an alumnae network, and that the administration make it easier for the Trustees to hear directly from current students.
Trustees were "receptive" to the recommendations, Brandt said.
Trustees also discussed the year's projected endowment performance, which could potentially experience a 5 percent decline based on overall market estimates, according to Kim. Regardless of any potential decline, the Trustees have decided to go on the "offense" in terms of investing in the College's future, Kim said.
"Even if we do have a -5 percent endowment return, we are actually in a good situation," he said. "We don't then have to go right back into a budget-cutting mode."
In light of recently released college rankings, Trustees also discussed how Dartmouth is viewed by other students and the broader academic community, Kim said. U.S. News & World Report ranked Dartmouth the 11th "best university" in the nation and The Economist named the Tuck School of Business the number-one full-time MBA program in the world.
While Kim said the ranking system is "deeply flawed," rankings nevertheless affect how the outside world perceives Dartmouth.
Many of Dartmouth's peer institutions have opened campuses abroad and increased their online course offerings, Kim said. While Dartmouth's masters program in health care delivery science already has online offerings, Kim said he anticipates an increase in Dartmouth's online presence in order to "keep up" with other institutions.
The meeting did not address changes to the Dartmouth Dining Services meal plans, and there are no plans for the Trustees to discuss the new SmartChoice options, according to Kim. After receiving student feedback and criticism, the College is studying the effects of the new meal plan and administrators are open to implementing any necessary changes, he said.
