About the Project
Our Mission: Dartmouth educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Through Dartmouth’s teacher-scholar model, the Arts and Sciences faculty have crafted an undergraduate curriculum across the full breadth of the liberal arts, while leading their fields in the creation of new knowledge—often in partnership with graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, and with colleagues in the professional schools. And yet, it has become clear that the Arts and Sciences, long the core of Dartmouth’s identity, is operating on an antiquated framework that limits its development. Currently, Dartmouth has no unit that delivers the whole of the Arts and Sciences mission and thus no point of leadership to manage resources or to collaborate, coordinate, prioritize, and innovate in support of that mission.
The Future of Arts and Sciences Project, launched more than two years ago, has sought to understand the challenges of the current model and to propose a path forward for the Arts and Sciences. The project’s goal is to propose a new organizational and budgetary structure that:
- Gives Arts and Sciences leadership strategic control over the holistic scholarly and educational mission of the Arts and Sciences,
- Increases budgetary and operational agency, and
- Expands ability to pursue Arts and Sciences aspirations.
The resulting proposal will draw from more than two years of work and 170+ large and small engagements with leadership, faculty committees, staff groups, and student leaders. These groups included faculty, staff, and administrators drawn from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Division of Student Affairs, Thayer School of Engineering, central Finance and Administration, Admissions, Advancement, Athletics and Recreation, and the graduate and professional schools.
In short, the project seeks to design a rational structure tailored to support all that the Arts and Science can be in 2024 and for generations to come. This approach will result in a stronger, more innovative, more agile Arts and Sciences—one that integrates the curricular, cocurricular, and extracurricular undergraduate experience, better supports the research and creative endeavors of Arts and Sciences faculty, and continues to be the pre-eminent institution for undergraduate education. A stronger Arts and Sciences is a stronger Dartmouth.