Toward Equity: Aligning Action and Accountability

To the Dartmouth community, 

As most of you know, a significant goal for Dartmouth during my presidency has been building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community. We undertook that work together through three key initiatives: Moving Dartmouth Forward (MDF), Inclusive Excellence (IE), and the Campus Climate and Culture Initiative (C3I). Each resulted in significant positive shifts across campus of which we can be proud. 

With the majority of the actions initiated through MDF, IE and C3I now firmly embedded in policy and practice, we are transitioning to a single institutional strategy for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) going forward that builds on their success. That plan, Toward Equity: Aligning Action and Accountability, is now available at towardequity.dartmouth.edu.

The three-year strategic plan, thoughtfully developed by SVP and Senior Diversity Officer Shontay Delalue and her team in the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity (IDE) based on input from our community, focuses on four priority areas: (1) coordination, (2) structure, (3) accountability, and (4) assessment. In addition, it provides for common institutional DEI definitions, an institutional climate survey, an assessment and alignment of resources, and a repositioning of IDE to ensure success. You can read more about it in today's article in Dartmouth News.

I strongly encourage you to familiarize yourself with the plan so that you can continue to play an active part in helping Dartmouth become a welcoming, diverse and supportive community in which every member can thrive. IDE will be hosting a number of engagement sessions to review and discuss the plan and answer any questions you may have beginning in January.

On behalf of everyone in senior leadership, I want to express my strong support of this plan and my sincerest gratitude to IDE for moving us forward and to all of you for your engagement and encouragement every step of the way. I look forward to commencing this new phase of our critical ongoing DEI work and to more great strides ahead.

Sincerely,

Philip J. Hanlon '77
President