Dartblog

Powerline had a post the other day that just came to my attention last night: a note from Joseph Elsener, the manager/administrator of Dartmouth’s Computer Science department. It bears reading:

I read Power Line every day and I also read Dartblog every day. I read your entry today regarding Dartmouth class availability and the bloated administration. I am the manager/administrator of Computer Science at Dartmouth. I must tell you that I take offense when you and Joe Asch keep complaining about the bloated administration.

I run the second largest science department. I am responsible for our building (Sudikoff), a faculty of 18, a graduate population of about a hundred and almost 100 more major/minor undergrads and I manage a budget of millions of dollars.

I have one assistant.

I am very proud of what we do in Computer Science. I feel fortunate to work with a brilliant faculty and equally brilliant students. I am amazed how our faculty can produce cutting edge research while at the same time be completely devoted to our undergraduate program. We actively recruit undergrad students to become Computer Science majors and minors. This last week we opened up a lounge for undergrads that provides them with their own work area and lockers for keeping books and other items.

The real point of this email is that I would wish that you and Joe Asch would be more specific about what bureaucracy you are talking about. There is no bloat in Computer Science. Is there administrative bloat at Dartmouth? There sure is but not in our department.

I have been here two years and we have weathered two year of budget cuts without denigrating our mission. How? We work smarter. I instituted the first paperless department on campus for a couple of thousand of dollars and I estimate we save about 7-8 thousand every year because of it. I did this without consultants and all the “big” administrators I think you gentlemen are referring to. I invite you and Mr. Asch to come see us if you are ever on campus and I will show you what really great things are happening at Dartmouth. Things that you would be quite proud of and again I would simply ask that you distinguish between the bloated administration and the people that actually serve our faculty and students.

We’ve already seen something of this department in our excellent back and forth with Computer Science Professor Tom Cormen. But Elsener’s point is a valid one, and he reinforces a position that I took in yesterday’s post (though he beat me into print!): there are many areas of the College that have been well run over the past decade, and the people in these areas should neither be tarred with the brush that justly paints poorly managed parts of Dartmouth, nor should they be obliged to make cuts in their already lean operations.

The Kim administration should be guided at all times by a central principle: each and every one of its decisions should be animated by a desire to improve the student experience at the College. There are any number of ways that money can be saved without touching those areas of Dartmouth that make students’ four years in Hanover exceptional. Good managment is about making real choices; for example, it would be an abdication of responsibility to make everyone share the burden of staff cuts — irregardless of merit and past performance. (No more mindless egalitarianism!) But then, President Kim knows these things, as we have seen. Will he have the resolve to be follow them?

Note: I will respond to Mr. Elsener’s kind invitation shortly. I am on campus all the time and I look forward to meeting him. Perhaps I can visit his offices in Sudikoff, a building named after a colorful student who I knew somewhat back in the day, and who later achieved, ahem, a certain notoriety.