Dear Dartmouth community,
A new academic year always brings fresh energy to Hanover. For me, it’s a time to take stock of so many things: our shared success, where we have struggled, the important work ahead, and the incredible privilege of teaching and learning together here in the woods. We have a lot to celebrate in this community, as we invest in you and more of what makes Dartmouth special.
For the first time in two decades, returning undergraduates have moved into a new residence hall: Russo Hall. Where our students live is essential to their well-being, belonging, and social life at Dartmouth, as a Residential Communities Working Group reported along with its thoughtful recommendations in June. We also opened new housing for Dartmouth employees at Sugarwood Circle in West Lebanon last winter, and planning is underway for an additional 18-unit housing development in Hanover.
We won’t stop there. Every completed project brings us closer to our commitment to bring 1,000 new beds to the Upper Valley over the next decade, and we are on track to meet that goal. For faculty and staff, we also recently expanded our mental health and well-being care, which includes resources that extend to your families. This work builds on Dartmouth’s Commitment to Care for our students, which we believe is essential to their success.
As excited as we are for this year, my leadership team and our Board of Trustees spent the last year looking ahead to 2035 and charting a bold vision for the future. We aspire to offer the best undergraduate education within a world-class university, amplifying our historic strength in the liberal arts and fully embracing the excellence at Geisel, Guarini, Thayer, and Tuck. That ambition is achieved by attracting the most promising students, deepening our commitment to research, and increasing support for current faculty and staff.
We cannot do that work without you. Scoping what’s possible and how we get there will be a frequent topic at faculty governance meetings this fall and with our student support staff.
From Dartmouth Dialogues’ search for its next executive director to the announcement of a new Tribal Sovereignty Institute this summer, we remain focused on producing, learning from, and supporting the next generation of leaders. This happens best when we hear other people’s perspectives, study the full breadth of a discipline, and are able to ask questions and voice an opinion—even when it is different from the norm.
One topic in which a range of perspectives strengthens our community is AI. We must all grapple with its impact on our academic mission and on society writ large. In the classroom, faculty enjoy the academic freedom to decide how they teach. In some courses, students may study AI itself; in others, they may use AI to analyze information or strengthen their work; and in still others, students may be asked to work without it—especially as they develop foundational skills. We ask faculty to make those expectations clear and help students learn when AI enhances students’ thinking, and when it can undermine it.
Students also have the opportunity to move from using AI to building with it, while considering its effect on people. Through interdisciplinary initiatives such as DALI Lab and the Design Initiative at Dartmouth, faculty are working alongside students outside the classroom to test innovative AI-enabled solutions and move from ideas to impact.
At Dartmouth, our goal is to create opportunities to discuss, debate, learn, and work with those who hold varied perspectives on the technology. To that end, scholars and industry leaders will gather on campus Oct. 29-31 to mark 70 years since the field of artificial intelligence was launched here in Hanover. They’ll discuss the advances in scholarship and innovation made possible by thinking with AI—not letting it think for us—across health, language preservation, student learning, and more. But they will also address the extreme challenges we face if we aren’t clear-eyed about what must remain human. I hope you’ll join us.
To the Class of 2030, new faculty and staff, and all of our returning community members: Welcome and welcome back! I look forward to seeing you at the Community Lunch and Launch on the Green from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. today, at my office hours for students, and at events all year long. Dartmouth needs you. And the world needs more of what we do at Dartmouth.
Best,
Sian Leah Beilock
President