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.
Overview
Following a decision by the Board of Trustees in November 2024, Dartmouth College will embark on an exciting journey to organize the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and student affairs under a new unified structure. With this step, Dartmouth is again charting its own path in higher education, strengthening our undying commitment to the fusion of liberal arts education with the benefits and breakthroughs that emerge from a world-class research institution.
This milestone comes after two years of dedicated engagement with the Dartmouth community and will allow us to enhance how we provide an exceptional, vibrant, and quintessential Dartmouth experience.
- It will integrate curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular student experiences.
- It will better support the research and creative endeavors of Arts and Sciences faculty.
- It will establish a dedicated leader, a Dean of Arts and Sciences, solely responsible for coordinating and advocating for the Arts and Sciences faculty and the student experience.
- It will establish dedicated support from Advancement, Admissions and Communications.
- It will enable greater collaboration with the graduate and professional schools and other units.
- It will increase transparency and agency around budgeting.
The establishment of a new Arts and Sciences organizational and budgetary structure is the culmination of extensive exploration and analysis by faculty and staff steering committees and working groups, initially launched by President Phil Hanlon ’77, and subsequently led by Provost David Kotz ’86, Niehaus Family Professor in International Studies and Professor of Economics Nina Pavcnik, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Faculty Elizabeth F. Smith. The proposal for a new Arts and Sciences organization embodies the collective aspirations of the Dartmouth community with input from more than 270 engagements, 500 faculty, 17 working groups and tasks groups, and endorsement from faculty governance groups. Engaged groups included faculty, staff, and administrators drawn from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Division of Student Affairs, Thayer School of Engineering, Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, central Finance and Administration, Admissions, Advancement, Athletics and Recreation, and the professional schools. Ultimately, the proposal reflected the aspirations of those who know Dartmouth best through their day-to-day engagement in its mission, and those who have worked tirelessly to bring to life a rational structure that will ensure a strong Arts and Sciences today, and for generations to come.
How We Got Here
Through Dartmouth’s teacher-scholar model, the Arts and Sciences faculty have crafted a rich 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, has been operating on an antiquated framework that limits its development and the holistic student experience. Without the establishment of a newly approved Arts and Sciences unit, Dartmouth would have no single structure 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 and its students.