Senior administrators are in charge of the decisions and initiatives that are responsible for creating students’ Dartmouth experiences. Due to recent high levels of administrative turnover — six senior positions in the administration have seen new leadership in the past year — keeping track of the various administrators can be difficult. These five administrators will directly impact on your time at the College.
Phil Hanlon, College President
Hanlon was inaugurated in September 2013 and has just completed his first academic year as president. Hanlon filled this position after former College President Jim Yong Kim departed to lead the World Bank. Despite coming from the University of Michigan, Hanlon is no stranger to Dartmouth, as he was a member of the Class of 1977.
His eventful first year was characterized with new initiatives, student activism and administrative turnover. Hanlon proposed expanding of Thayer School of Engineering in November 2013 and launched the Innovation and New Venture Incubator Center in spring 2014 as a part of his academic vision, which highlights the importance of experiential learning.
To create an inclusive, diverse learning atmosphere, Hanlon created the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” initiative and created a presidential steering committee to address issues such as sexual assault, excessive drinking and exclusivity of social scenes. Hanlon can often be seen walking around campus, either to his office in Parkhurst Hall, Occom Pond or first-year multivariable calculus, which he’ll teach this fall.
Carolyn Dever, College Provost
Dever is a new addition to the College, having just arrived this July. While serving as dean of the college of arts and sciences at Vanderbilt University, Dever participated in creating living-learning communities and fostered interaction with historically black colleges and collaboration with humanities postdoctoral positions. She has served in various administrative capacities for more than a decade.
As Provost, Dever collaborates with academic deans to support the advancement of scholarship across the College and its graduate schools, as well as working with academic budgeting. Head of the Provost search advisory committee Bruce Duthu said in a January interview with The Dartmouth that the committee appreciated Dever’s background in humanities as it will represent liberal arts in the upper level administration. She said she plans to work on fostering diversity at the College by developing ways to attract talented students and faculty members from various backgrounds. If you’re looking to find her outside of her office, you might have the opportunity to take a class with her in the English department, where she hopes to teach.
Inge-Lise Ameer, Interim Dean of the College
Previously acting as the senior associate Dean of the College, Ameer is acting as interim dean as a search committee begins the process of filling the position. As a senior associate dean, Ameer has headed the student academic support services and campus life initiatives through the Deans Office. She said she plans on continuing existing initiatives like supporting Hanlon’s ”Moving Dartmouth Forward,” facilitating collaboration among campus centers dedicated to combatting high-risk behaviors and further enhancing student advising programs such as the Academic Skills Center. Once the presidential steering committee of “Moving Dartmouth Forward” issues recommendations, Ameer will collaborate with the committee to conceive best ways to execute its recommendations. Ameer helped centralize the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, pre-health advising and the undergraduate deans office.
Michael Mastanduno, Dean of the Faculty
Mastanduno was appointed Dean of the Faculty by Kim during the summer of 2010. He served as Associate Dean of the Faculty from 2003 to 2010 and as the director of the Dickey Center for International Understanding from 1997 to 2003. He oversees academic departments, more than 800 faculty members, faculty hiring and retention and student course evaluations.
This spring, he proposed that the College increases resources for faculty management in order to offer wide range of high-quality courses. He also proposed renovating and constructing facilities and creating a social atmosphere encouraging intellectual engagement in conjunction with the College’s academic vision. Under the leadership of Mastanduno, the faculty of arts and sciences has discussed initiatives such as publishing course reviews to students. During the 2013-14 academic year, the committee of chairs of the arts and sciences faculty approved addition of three studies abroad programs in the physics and astronomy department, the Native American studies program and the African and African-American studies program.
Maria Laskaris, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
Laskaris came to her position in 2007 after being appointed director of admissions in 1996. She is in charge of recruiting, and her office runs programming to entice accepted students to enroll. Under Laskaris, the Admissions Office required applicants for the Class of 2018 to submit a short response on their extracurricular activities as Common Application eliminated a short essay on extracurricular activities. For this year, the Admissions Office will give five prompts from which applicants can pick to write a response, and Laskaris said in an interview with The Dartmouth in July that she hopes this additional supplement requirement will allow the officers to hear more from students. The Admissions Office saw one of the lowest overall admittance rates of 9.8 percent with the Class of 2016.
