Have you ever been to your undergraduate dean?
I recently discussed the experience with peers, and we came to a universal conclusion: In the rare instances that we have consulted our undergraduate deans, our experience with them has been dissatisfying at best. On Dartmouth’s website, these deans are described as “generalists” who “support the mission of the office,” which, in turn, is to “support students in their engagement with the curriculum and in their overall educational experience at Dartmouth.”
However, most of the enumerated jobs of undergraduate deans overlap almost exactly with other centers and professionals at the College. Thus, I believe that the deans’ job description must be more clarified to address this overlap and empower the deans.
I’ve spoken with my undergraduate dean a few times to talk about scheduling and distributive requirements. In each case, he has redirected me to talk to another person with more specified expertise. Sometimes, I’ve been given light encouragement and not much else. Many of my peers have reported similar issues or expressed confusion about what the purpose of undergraduate deans even is.
Most of the functions of the undergraduate deans are seemingly also performed by other departments at the College. An enumerated function of the deans is serving as “resources for improving academic performance.” The problem is that Dartmouth has an Academic Skills Center whose sole purpose, according to its website, is to “work with students in becoming more efficient and effective learners.” Why do we have two separate places with identical functions? Another role of the undergraduate deans is to be “resources for academic, personal and social advising.” However, Dartmouth also has a counseling center, which is probably the place I’d go if I needed personal or social support because they have trained therapists.
The Undergraduate Deans Office website says that deans can also help with selecting classes, although in my experience, undergraduate deans don’t have hyper-specific, granular knowledge about each class in every department, so this job would probably be better done by a department-specific academic advisor or administrator. Undergraduate deans also don’t have the power to override the decision of a professor in academic contexts, so any academic support or encouragement they might be able to provide is ultimately subordinate to the requirements of any given faculty member.
Undergraduate advisors are also described as “sources of encouragement and information for students pursuing various kinds of opportunities” and “sources of support for students who have various kinds of concerns.” This is quite possibly the vaguest job description I’ve ever read, and their functions are fulfilled by countless other people on campus, including my peers and professors.
Seems like undergraduate deans are tasked with a lot, right? That’s another problem: There is a freakish range in their responsibilities. Their website says that they can help with everything from personal and social counseling to choosing a career to applying for grants. Unfortunately, I don’t think my undergraduate dean can be a personal counselor, expert in the policies of the College and an expert in grant applications all at the same time.
I am glad that Dartmouth supplies us with a lot of resources, and I’m sure there are a couple of people out there who have a close and very helpful relationship with their undergraduate dean. For undergraduate deans to be more effective though, their mission needs to be specified. Tighten their range, and give them a job that isn’t done better and more specifically by a different department at the College.
This might mean requiring students to meet with their undergraduate deans. It might mean a more aggressive integration of them into orientation, so people get used to using them early on. Otherwise, undergraduate deans risk becoming another cog in a vast machine of administrative bureaucracy at Dartmouth that is inaccessible to the very student body that they are tasked with helping.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He studies government and creative writing. He publishes various personal work under a pen name on Substack (https://substack.com/@wesmercer), and you can find his other work in various publications.
