Teaching requires a great time commitment -- often too much of a commitment when combined with the duties of being a College administrator.
But for some administrators the desire to teach overrides the time management difficulties.
Four of the College's top administrators -- College President James Freedman, Provost Lee Bollinger, Dean of Faculty James Wright and Dean of the College Lee Pelton -- hold faculty appointments, but only Bollinger and Pelton have taught classes while serving in their current positions.
While Bollinger and Pelton said their love of teaching prompted them to create time to return to the classroom, Wright said he and Freedman travel too much to be effective teachers.
Bollinger is currently teaching a class in the government department about freedom of speech and the press and Pelton will teach an English course on the rise of English Gothic novels this spring.
Wright distinguished between two kinds of faculty appointments -- those retained by faculty members after they are promoted to administrative positions and those given to administrators who are also academics.
Wright said faculty appointments are done through the Dean of Faculty Office but are initiated by either the department or the administrator.
Keeping in touch
Bollinger, a specialist on the First Amendment, said he teaches to stay connected with the College.
"I think it's valuable to be a regular member of the institution and to continue to do what faculty do -- to teach and to write," he said. "It helps you to understand what's going on in the institution."
Pelton said he continues to teach because of the intellectual benefits the opportunity affords him.
"It's something I know I do well," he said. "It keeps me in touch with ideas and history and culture and things that are important to me."
He said the main difficulty administrators encounter when trying to teach is being overcommitted.
Pelton said teaching is an additional contribution to the College that administrators must work into their schedules. "It assumes that we will be able to administrate at 100 percent," he said.
"The assumption is that if you're going to teach you will perform all your administrative tasks," Pelton continued.
Pelton said he gave up teaching full time in 1986, when he left Harvard University to become Dean of Students at Colgate University.
He taught for four of his five years at Colgate and also taught a course at Dartmouth in the spring of 1993 about popular fiction in 18th and 19th century England.
Pelton was supposed to teach this spring's course last year but postponed it because he and his wife had a baby, he said. "That would have been too much to take on," he said.
A time crunch
Pelton said he encountered large time trade-offs the last time he taught.
"It is difficult because given my schedule and work hours and travel schedule, teaching essentially took up any additional time I had," he said. "It was a significant sacrifice not only for me to make, but for my family to make."
"I think one course a year is enough," Pelton said.
But Bollinger is used to teaching more than one course per year.
"I'm used to teaching. I've taught every semester since I've been an administrator," he said. "What's new is teaching undergraduates."
Balancing both jobs
Before coming to the College, Bollinger was Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, where he also taught. He said he has taught throughout his administrative career.
"He taught all the time when he was dean at Michigan," Government Department Chair Nelson Kasfir said when asked about the department's decision to grant Bollinger an appointment.
"We looked at it carefully. He does many things that we normally do in our department," Kasfir said.
Bollinger said balancing both jobs has made him more efficient.
"I find enough time in the day to think about both things," he said. "When working in a field for about two decades you continue to mull over things all the time."
He said thinking about his work is basically a form of recreation.
"While some people like to watch TV, I like to think about freedom of speech," he said.
In order to combine teaching with the traveling responsibilities of the Provost position, Bollinger uses at least one x-hour every week. He said most of his classes are scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to make room for trips at the end of the week. Though the course's official x-hour is scheduled for Thursday, Bollinger created a Tuesday meeting period for the course.
"He and I discussed the schedule in advance," Kasfir said. "He had many out of town trips that would make it difficult to teach. His schedule is a little peculiar in that respect, but he's teaching more classes than would normally occur."
Bollinger said the format has been successful -- and students don't seem to mind it either.
"The schedule is not a problem, and to be able to take a class from a renowned authority on the First Amendment is a real treat that only a place like Dartmouth could offer," Jason Cole '95 said.
The schedule allows for more reading time, Jim Brennan '96 said.
"I think that the schedule is great ... it gives us a good amount of time to concentrate on the course readings, which are primarily court cases, and therefore packed with information and nuance," he said.
Students also commended Bollinger on his outside-of-class availability, which includes office hours once or twice a week, Steve Fagell '95 said.
Tight schedules
But unlike Bollinger and Pelton, Wright said his traveling has prevented him from teaching since his promotion from the history department to the dean's position in 1989.
"I had intended to keep teaching. But because of apparent conflicts -- I travel too much -- I can't be here for a term," he said.
He said he did not think his schedule would allow for the most educational class experience.
"My fear was I would end up having my class scheduled as my 10 o'clock appointment," he said. "That's no way to teach."
Wright said he thinks Freedman is in the same position. Freedman holds a faculty appointment in the Government department, but has not taught in the seven years he has been at the College.
"I think it's the same problem because he has a travel schedule that won't let him teach a class for a term," Wright said.
Wright said he and Freedman discussed teaching a course together before Wright became dean of the faculty.
Kasfir said he thinks Freedman is just too busy to teach a class.
"He might be a tad busy," he said. "So far he hasn't had the time. The choice is his."
But Kasfir said the department would love to have Freedman teach a course.
"If he wanted to offer a course, we have a procedure he would go through in the department," Kasfir said.
He said his department gave Freedman a faculty appointment more for symbolic rather than practical reasons.
"It was a gesture that we were eager to accept him as president and welcome him into our department," Kasfir said.
Other administrators who hold faculty positions include: Freshman Dean Peter Goldsmith in the anthropology department, Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco in the women's studies department and Assistant Dean of Residential Life Bud Beatty in the education department.
