More than 500 faculty and staff celebrated The Call to Lead, Dartmouth’s $3 billion fundraising campaign, at a campus ceremony on April 30. The event followed a celebration on April 27 in New York City. A third campaign event was held on May 2 in San Francisco.
“Today is about us taking a huge leap forward to advance Dartmouth’s distinctive educational model to its fullest potential,” President Phil Hanlon ’77 told the standing-room-only crowd in Alumni Hall. Another 150 faculty and staff members watched by video in Dartmouth Hall.
“We’ll see historic levels of investment in support of all of you—our faculty and staff—as you seek to be outstanding educators and committed scholars,” he said.
More than half of the $3 billion campaign goal was raised during the run-up to the April 27 public launch of the campaign. On April 30, President Hanlon announced some key gifts to The Call to Lead, including:
- A commitment from Frank Guarini ’46, which Hanlon says is “one of the largest in Dartmouth’s history,” to support and name the graduate school, now known as the Frank J. Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies;
- A gift of $5 million, along with an additional $2.5 million challenge, from Karen and James Frank, ’65, and their sons, Daniel Frank ’92 and Jordan Frank ’94, to support every student’s ability to participate in foreign study programs;
- A goal for 100 Dartmouth women to give $1 million each during the campaign, with the effort already having raised $50 million;
- A second goal spearheaded by alumnae to raise $25 million to help fund renovation of Dartmouth Hall;
- And $80 million raised over next four years to eliminate loans from financial aid awards, with $20 million raised in the previous three days from five Dartmouth families.
“The ambitious initiatives supported by this campaign will pull together the full intellectual assets of our community, across disciplines, across cultures, across generations, across residential and academic life, and will make Dartmouth unstoppable,” said Hanlon. “Every dollar raised through The Call to Lead is a tremendous vote of confidence, both in our vision for the future and in the work you do every day to make this institution great.”
Hanlon, members of the campaign committee, and school deans met with student government representatives from each of Dartmouth’s schools on Monday morning to brief them on the campaign.
Opening remarks by Hanlon and Laurel Richie ’81, chair of the board of trustees and a campaign co-chair, were followed by comments from Dartmouth’s six deans, who spoke about what the campaign means for their schools and divisions. Here’s a bit of what Richie and the deans said:
Laurel Richie ’81, Chair of the Board of Trustees
“The most important takeaway above all is that this campaign is all about you. It’s about the faculty and staff who are the very core of this institution, and we want you to know that we recognize the work that you do every day and the fact that every day you answer the call to lead. You advance new knowledge and share our excitement about your discoveries with your students. You nurture their personal and intellectual development, helping them become curious, creative, compassionate citizens of the world, ready to go out and take it by storm. You invite them into the incredible environments of your research and in so doing you change their lives.”
Elizabeth Smith, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
“We want to see Dartmouth thrive. Our mission is unwavering. We are committed to delivering a Dartmouth education that’s founded on the teacher-scholar model. … What The Campaign to Lead will do is provide us with resources that will support these teachers and scholars so that they remain at the top of their game. I am astounded at the progress that we’ve made so far, given the determination of the friends and families of Dartmouth who have moved on this commitment in such an ambitious way.”
Rebecca Biron, Dean of the College
“All the biggest priorities we have for the capital campaign touch on every area in which we foster health and growth of the whole student as they live, learn, and lead in Dartmouth’s diverse community. We’re continuously trying to improve living at Dartmouth. That involves the new house communities, whose purpose is to deepen intellectual engagement beyond the classroom and for all groups at Dartmouth, to strengthen community, and to provide more residential continuity for undergraduates. … Endowing them will ensure that they continue as faculty-led communities to be intellectual and social anchors on campus as we move into the future.”
Duane Compton, Dean of the Geisel School of Medicine
“I feel incredibly privileged to be at this stage at this time in Dartmouth College history as part of this institution, being able to help work with all of the faculty, all of the staff, and all of the students to realize the successes that are articulated in this campaign. And I believe that with your help—with your help, this is about you—we can actually reach these goals and push Dartmouth to an entirely new level.”
Joseph Helble, Dean of Thayer School of Engineering
“Our plans for The Call to Lead, our plans for the next generation in our history, are to double down on what has made Thayer so successful, to build collaborative partnerships, to enhance collaborative partnerships with the rest of the campus, to invest in opportunity that will make an undergraduate engineering education in partnership with the liberal arts available to every Dartmouth student, every Dartmouth undergraduate on this campus, whether they chose to major in engineering or incorporate courses in engineering, design or entrepreneurial thinking as part of their undergraduate education.”
Matthew Slaughter, Dean of the Tuck School of Business
“We’re looking to make step changes and investments in our people, in our programs, and in our places. There are all sorts of ‘One-Dartmouth’ connections in that that I’m really excited about. By people I mean supporting building our faculty for the future. … By investments in programs, we mean programs that are both curricular and co-curricular. … And by places, there’s all sorts of ways where we want to create even more, invigorating ideal-holding places like the best companies and organizations in the world.”
F. Jon Kull ’88, Dean of the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies
“(Guarini’s) gift is really a gift to all of Dartmouth. … What this really did is affirm Dartmouth’s commitment, not only to be the premier liberal arts college in the world, but also to be a place that does cutting-edge research at the level of all those universities with which we’re compared. … That symbolism is really strong, and it says to our students and to our faculty and to the world that Dartmouth is a world competitor in these areas. Having this transformational gift by Frank Guarini is just amazing.”
Kull got a laugh from the crowd when he pointed out the fleece vest he was wearing, which was monogrammed with the school’s new name: “They gave me this vest on Friday and I haven’t taken it off.”
Susan Boutwell can be reached at susan.j.boutwell@dartmouth.edu.
