In his inaugural address in 2013, President Philip J. Hanlon ’77 first invoked his favorite adage, attributed to an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

On April 19, students, faculty, and staff are invited to come together to celebrate the decade of service President Hanlon and his wife, Gail Gentes, have devoted to Dartmouth.

Sponsored by the Dartmouth Senior Leadership Group, Going Far Together: A Celebration of President Hanlon and Gail Gentes begins at 4 p.m. in the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society atrium and will include performances by student music groups and tributes to Hanlon and Gentes from representatives of the Dartmouth community. Refreshments will be served.

Last year, Hanlon announced plans to step down from the presidency at the end of the current academic year, calling his tenure as president “the honor of a lifetime.” Among his many accomplishments, his administration has prioritized academic excellence, committed the institution to building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive campus, and expanded access to Dartmouth through historic levels of investment in financial aid. To support the institution’s ambitions, he also led the most successful fundraising campaign in Dartmouth history.

For her part, Gentes has been a champion of experiential learning and a caring mentor to Dartmouth students, while becoming deeply involved in Upper Valley causes, including as secretary of the board of WISE, the Lebanon, N.H.-based crisis support, advocacy, and prevention organization working to end gender-based violence.

At the conclusion of Hanlon’s presidency, the couple plans to travel while Hanlon takes a sabbatical, after which he hopes to return to the classroom. In the truest of Dartmouth traditions, Hanlon has taught a math course at Dartmouth each year of his presidency, including, most recently, Introduction to Combinatorics, the Dartmouth course that inspired him to pursue a career as a mathematician nearly 50 years ago.