Mastanduno said President-elect Phil Hanlon will face a variety of institutional challenges when he takes office on June 10.
"We have saddled our new president with 2008 Obama-like expectations," he said to the crowd.
Faculty members and administrators said boosting the College's endowment, recruiting and retaining top faculty and fixing a fractured social environment should rank at the top of Hanlon's agenda, and remain hopeful that Hanlon will be able to juggle multiple campus issues at once.
SOCIAL LIFE Over the past few years, the College's Greek system has garnered considerable negative national media attention. While the administration has made attempts to reform Greek life by implementing more stringent hazing and alcohol polices last fall, Hanlon, a former member of Alpha Delta fraternity, will have to address these lingering issues once inaugurated. He will assume office following a contentious spring term, when the administration canceled classes after the Dimensions show protest, a student was charged with rape and a group of students filed a Clery Act complaint against the College.
As provost of the University of Michigan, Hanlon did not directly oversee the school's prominent Greek life. The university houses 69 fraternities and sororities on campus and around 18 percent of its 28,000 undergraduates students are involved in the Greek system.
Hanlon must focus on reforming the College's "social life," which deters some potential students from attending Dartmouth, women's and gender studies professor Michael Bronski said. Andrew Lohse's hazing allegations and the Rolling Stone's article describing the College's Greek life have perpetuated negative perceptions of Dartmouth's social environment.
Bronski said that Hanlon will have to make serious decisions about the Greek system in order to demonstrate proper leadership.
"People are arguing that Hanlon's in the unenviable position of having to alienate someone in what's essentially a very divided campus climate," Bronski said. "I'd actually argue that's an enviable position, a position you want to be in. It allows you to take a leadership position, where you simply cannot care about whom you are going to offend."
Hanlon's experiences as a student may alter his approach to reforming the College's social options.
"I think that you hear on campus that Hanlon was an Alpha Delta, so he's not going to touch the Greek system,'" Bronski said. "Meanwhile you hear Hanlon's in the perfect position to change the Greek system because he's not an outsider, and as an insider, he has the background to make changes.' I think both are theoretically true."
John Engelman '68, longtime advisor to AD, said the president-elect's firsthand experience with Dartmouth's unique fraternity system gives him the credibility to deal with its issues prudently. Engelman said he doubts Hanlon will shy away from addressing issues like high-risk drinking, sexual assault and hazing.
"He will not be antagonistic toward fraternities but will expect them to address the underlying issues, and if they don't, my guess is that he will take whatever actions are necessary," Engelman said. "He is a serious man, and these are serious issues."
Hanlon should ensure the College fosters a climate of "complete inclusion" for all students, regardless of gender, race or socioeconomic status, Bronski said. By working toward this goal, however, he may paradoxically offend some groups.
FACULTY AND RESEARCH
One of the biggest questions facing the College is whether to expand the faculty. Doing so would bring in increased external funding, including research grants, and give current faculty members more time to pursue scholarly activities and research.
As a result, the administration could be forced to increase tuition fees and fundraise for the College's endowment. For the 2013-2014 academic year, Dartmouth's tuition will be $45,445, making it the second most expensive Ivy League institution.
The College does not have space to accommodate an influx of new faculty members, Mastanduno said. At the same time, Dartmouth will have to compete with larger research universities for top scholars in order to maintain its standing.
"We don't compete for faculty members with liberal arts colleges," Mastanduno said. "We compete with big research universities."
Hanlon will lead the recruitment of top faculty in an extremely competitive market. To lure professors, dean of graduate studies and chemistry professor F. Jon Kull said the College must prioritize faculty research. The administration must then balance this with the College's commitment to undergraduate teaching.
English professor Tom Luxon said the College needs to make "bold counteroffers" to professors considering positions at other colleges, reduce teaching load obligations from four courses a year to three and be prepared to offer additional teaching jobs to spouses of esteemed faculty recruits.
Since Hanlon comes from a large public research university, Kull said he understands the importance of research and graduate programs.
Improving Dartmouth's standing among other peer research institutions is imperative as the government continues to cut funding to universities, Kull said. Dartmouth will have to find ways to remain competitive in order to receive this reduced slice of funding, he said.
Other elite universities like Harvard University, Yale University and Stanford University can fund their expansive faculties by drawing from their large endowments. However, Dartmouth's endowment, currently at $3.49 billion, is the second smallest in the Ivy League. Harvard's endowment, the largest of any university, currently stands at $30.4 billion.
Hanlon will likely make fundraising and growing the endowment a main priority of his administration, Kull said.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Hanlon's past experiences may help shape his agenda as college president. Upon taking office as University of Michigan's provost in 2010, Hanlon received a 28 percent raise over his predecessor, earning a salary of $470,000, The Michigan Daily reported.
Hanlon signed a five-year contract, detailing his salary package with the College, but has not disclosed his annual salary, The Valley News reported.
During his tenure as provost, multiple administrators, including deans, saw pay raises, with two deans seeing six-figure salary increases. In an interview with AnnArbor.com, Hanlon said the raises helped retain key administrators who may have considered positions at other colleges.
In 2010, University of Michigan doctoral candidate Patrick O'Mahen wrote in a letter to the editor of The Daily Michigan that upper-level administrators' raises came at the expense of university staff and lower-level faculty members.
"A university example is newly minted provost Philip Hanlon, who wrangled a 28-percent raise despite state aid cuts and a massive recession," he wrote. "As a [graduate student instructor], I don't have that sort of power, nor do lecturers, custodians, bus drivers, restaurant servers or wait staff."
While Hanlon worked in the provost's office, the university eliminated $235 million in recurring costs and is projected to save another $120 million by 2017 after changes were made to energy consumption, central information technology services and retiree health benefits.
These reforms let the university remain competitive by [reappropriating]((http://thedartmouth.com/2013/01/09/news/michigan) funds to hire faculty and expand academic offerings.
Provost-elect Martha Pollack said in a previous interview that Hanlon managed to keep tuition costs low despite state budget cuts. The 2012-2013 academic year saw the second-smallest increase in tuition for undergraduates in over 25 years, with in-state tuition rising by 2.8 percent and out-of-state tuition rising by 3.5 percent.
Tuition equality protesters held a demonstration last September to demand the establishment of in-state tuition rates for undocumented students living in Michigan, The Daily Michigan reported. In a reference to Clint Eastwood's speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention, protesters addressed empty chairs reserved for Hanlon and University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman. Neither attended the event.
During 2011, Hanlon proposed changes to the university's tenure process, drawing the ire of some faculty members, The Michigan Daily reported. Despite faculty objections, Michigan's Board of Regents accepted the changes, which extended the number of years required to be considered for tenure from eight to 10.
Last October, a racist and homophobic incident was reported in Haven Hall, which houses multiple academic departments and university classrooms. Early in the morning, a group entered the building and defiled posters and displays pertaining to ethnic and gender studies.
Michigan alumnus Yonah Lieberman, who attended the university during the incident, said Hanlon's response to the incident was lackluster. Most students learned about it through campus newspaper articles, he said.
Hanlon sent a "vague" campus-wide email describing the incident three days after it occurred, Lieberman said.
"It was cryptic," Lieberman said. "If you weren't in the know, then you wouldn't know what he was talking about. He never used the words hate crime' or bias incident' or talked about what the posters were. Anyone could have read it and thought, Oh, we don't tear down posters at this university.'"
In an email to Michigan students, Hanlon said "academic excellence is rooted in our diversity" and "posters, flyers and decorations were removed from the walls and tossed to the ground, and some had push-pins placed on them."
Frustrated with the administration's response to the incident, Lieberman wrote a letter to the editor of The Daily Michigan detailing his grievances.
"The words hate' or bias' are not mentioned once in the email. He attempts to tie the entire response back to the idea that Michigan is a diverse community," Lieberman said in the letter. "By doing so, Hanlon and the administration are shoving this hate crime under the rug by asserting that the perpetrators don't occupy the mainstream Michigan community."
Though Lieberman believes Hanlon mishandled the Haven Hall incident, he said he was pleased that Hanlon expanded funding for the university's sexual assault prevention programs.
He added, however, that Hanlon's approach to sexual assault and bias incidents reflected his "reactive" approach to divisive issues, which he said should be more "proactive" and bold.
"I hope that Hanlon learned from his time at Michigan that a reactionary approach is not the best way to solve these problems," Lieberman said. "When he gets to Dartmouth, I can only hope that he has learned from the mistakeshe did here at Michigan."
Bronski said Hanlon's experience in higher education will have prepared him for the position.
"I think Hanlon will bring a vision as provost of Michigan and a lot of experience as opposed to Jim Kim who had no experience running an institution of higher learning," he said.
LEADERSHIP TRANSITION
In less than two weeks, Interim President Carol Folt's year-long term will come to an end and President-elect Hanlon will be sworn in as the College's 18th president. Folt will assume office as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's on July 1.
Over this period, Folt has remained in a highly unusual position because presidential transitions have traditionally taken place directly without an interim president, former College President James Wright said.
"I think [Folt] understood that she was here for only a year, but I think she's continued to demonstrate real leadership and tried to move ahead with strategic planning," Wright said.
In over four decades at Dartmouth, Wright has witnessed seven presidential transitions. It was critical that Hanlon acquainted himself with the senior officers before taking office, Wright said. The six-month span between Hanlon's selection and his inauguration is longer than previous transitional periods.
Wright said the Dartmouth community must give Hanlon time "to get his arms around everything."
In the past few months, Hanlon has not articulated specific plans or regarding campus issues. When contacted for comment, Hanlon said he was on vacation and declined to be interviewed.
"Every president has to articulate and share his vision," Wright said. "In his inauguration, he will set out his agenda and I have every confidence it will be aggressive and one that people will buy into."
Faculty and administrators remain optimistic about the direction Hanlon will take.
"It's not like no one is steering the ship, but we want to know where the new president is going to direct us," Kull said. "We are all excited about what he is going to prioritize and what his ambitions are. I know his ambitions are to make Dartmouth the strongest, but a lot of us are excited to see what that specifically that will be."
Multiple administrators from the University of Michigan could not be reached for comment.
