Newly-elected trustee T.J. Rodgers '70 stressed the need for more classes taught by permanent Dartmouth faculty members and for increased transparency at a recent press conference with reporters.
After meeting with professors from six departments at the College, Rodgers said he was dismayed to learn that in some departments the proportion of courses taught by visiting faculty ranged from 33 to 40 percent.
"When you have a good faculty like Dartmouth has, that faculty does sabbaticals. When they're replaced, they're replaced with lecturers of lower academic quality with a much lower pay scale," Rodgers said.
The professors told Rodgers how hiring visiting professors is a budgetary mechanism that can save the College about $15,000 per course while lowering the quality of undergraduate education.
Visiting professors are approximately three times less expensive than full professors, as visiting professors cost about $8,000 per course and full professors can cost as much as $25,000 per course, according to the faculty members with whom Rodgers spoke.
The group of professors also expressed concerns about the lack of transparency at the College.
"We don't feel we know what's going on. We don't feel that the professors in the department looking for tenure know what's going on. We don't feel we know what's going on in the budgeting process," the professors reportedly told Rodgers.
One professor complained that "although the administration of Dartmouth has a contract with our faculty that the faculty will get involved in budget decisions, the faculty has never been considered in advance of a decision. They only hear about it after the fact."
Rodgers assembled the group after a department chair wrote him a letter that said: "I am happy -- ecstatic -- that you have been elected." The chair reportedly encouraged Rodgers to meet with him the next time he was in Hanover.
Rodgers believed the group represented a broad political spectrum and that the common sentiment was a need for greater openness in the decision-making process at the College so that faculty and students can debate policies before they are implemented.
"They would enjoy getting to the place where we could argue about the issues," Rodgers said about the group.
Asked about the recent secret faculty vote that expressed a lack of confidence in Dean of the Faculty Michael Gazzaniga, who subsequently resigned, Rodgers said that faculty members articulated concerns about the structure of the voting process and spoke favorably of Gazzaniga.
"The group there felt the vote is not distributed according to the demographics of the College," said Rodgers. The departments of government, psychology and economics represent 40 percent of the students at Dartmouth and "yet only had three votes."
"They don't like this vote in secret that caused the dean to go away. They thought the dean was a good person," Rodgers told reporters.
