Dartblog
Special Feature: Give a Rouse
Whither the College on the Hill? Dartblog brings you news and commentary from Hanover and the world at large, including deep coverage of the maturing tenure of Dr. Kim.
Archived post
This is an archived post. Please click here to see the latest entries.
« A Win for Samwick | Home | Why Businessmen Believe in Limited Government »
Breaking: More Meetings From Dean Folt
The budget process continues to resemble a group hug, with everyone invited to join in and, I guess, buy in. Provost/Dean of the Faculty Carol Folt and Kim Majordomo Steven Kadish seem to believe that everyone will pull together to make major sacrifices for the good of the institution… This process will be an interesting study in human nature, or as President Kim puts it, in the ethnography of Dartmouth.
Let’s wait and see if the faculty and deans actually advocate making cuts in their own backyard, or whether these folks turn out to be nimby bambis. As a first observation, it looks like nothing will be done until the April Board of Trustees meeting. Personally, if I were running an institution losing a million dollars every week, I’d be in a little more of a hurry.
Today’s Kumbaya mailing:
November 18, 2009
Dear Members of the Dartmouth Community,
We are writing to follow-up on President Jim Yong Kim’s message http://www.dartmouth.edu/~president/announcements/2009-1107.html about Dartmouth’s financial situation and the process we will follow to identify $100 million in expense reductions or new revenues for fiscal years 2011 and 2012.
These numbers entail serious downsizing. With FY 2011 just seven months away, our planning efforts will be intensive and fast-paced, and will include all of Dartmouth - each division, department and school.
We invite you to join us as President Kim presents “Dartmouth’s Financials,” from 12-1:30 p.m., on Tuesday, December 1 at Alumni Hall. This presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer period. The event will be simulcast in Collis Common Ground; carried live on DarTV; webcast live on the Dartmouth home page http://www.dartmouth.edu; and posted afterwards to the budget website http://budget.dartmouth.edu/.
We will not do across-the-board cuts. Our goal is to make sure that Dartmouth continues to excel at accomplishing its mission and invest to achieve our vision for global leadership in higher education for decades to come.
President Kim has outlined a number of principles to guide our strategic-planning process:
- Be aspirational in planning for the next five years, and beyond;
- Place “everything on the table” while we explore all alternatives;
- Make strategic, rather than across-the-board cuts;
- Restructure now to enable rapid recovery of Dartmouth’s financial stability, and to minimize risk and reduce volatility;
- Adopt twin goals of cost savings and improved quality;
- Continue to invest in areas that position Dartmouth for the future;
- Solicit creative ideas and foster a spirit of innovation;
- Treat everyone with respect, and,
- Commit to open and constructive debate.
Our basic framework will be to use the Board meetings as key focal points for decision-making. We are thinking about the process through November 2010 in four phases:
Phase 1 — November 2009 to the February Board Meeting: Getting Started and Developing Preliminary Proposals.
Phase 2 - February to the April Board Meeting: Finalizing Proposals and Beginning Implementation.
Phase 3 — April to the September Board Meeting: Implement Major Savings Initiatives; Begin New Revenue Measures and Key Investments.
Phase 4 — September to the November 2010 Board Meeting: Assessment, Evaluation and Adjustment.
We know that this is a time of great uncertainty, given the need to restructure our operations. We will make every effort to communicate often in a variety of ways and to solicit your input and ideas. All input will be considered. We will continue to provide more specific information in the coming weeks and months.
We encourage you to submit questions and suggestions via Dartmouth’s budget website, at http://budget.dartmouth.edu/ask/index.html. We have already received more than 70 very useful suggestions in the past 10 days, since President Kim issued his letter to the campus community.
In accepting responsibility to oversee a rigorous planning process, we both pledge to consider the needs of all constituencies. We look forward to working with you on this challenging task.
Sincerely,
Carol Folt, Acting Provost/Dean of Faculty
Steven Kadish, Senior Vice President and Strategic Advisor
Featured posts
-
October 18, 2009
When Love Beckoned in 52nd Street
We were at San Francisco’s BIX last evening, enjoying prosecco, cheese, and a bit of music. A full year of inhabitation in Northern California has unraveled to me no decent venue for proper lounging, but… -
October 9, 2009
D Afraid of a Little Competish
So our colleague and Dartblog writer Joe Asch informed me that the D has rejected our cunning advertising campaign. Uh-oh. The Dartmouth is widely known as a breeding ground for instant New York Times successes,… -
September 4, 2009
How Regents Should Reign
As Dartmouth alumni proceed through the legal hoops necessary to defuse a Board-packing plan—which put in unhappy desuetude an historic 1891 Agreement between alumni and the College guaranteeing a half-democratically-elected Board of Trustees—it strikes one… -
August 29, 2009
Election Reform Study Committee
If you are an alum of the College on the Hill, you may have received a number of e-mails of late beseeching your input for a new arm of the College’s Alumni Control Apparatus called… -
August 23, 2009
Fare Thee Well, Tom Crady
And now Dean Tom Crady has precipitously announced his departure from the College after only 20 months on the job. How to read this? By way of background, prior to coming to Dartmouth, Crady had… -
May 31, 2009
Kangaroo Court, Indeed
In an interview with The Dartmouth, alumni-elected trustee T.J. Rodgers ‘70 explained his reasons for declining to participate in future evaluations of trustees up for “re-election,” namely the “kangaroo court” nature of such discussion in…