Senior administrators at the College are in charge of the major decisions and initiatives that are responsible for shaping students’ experiences at Dartmouth. Due to recent levels of administrative turnover, keeping track of the various administrators can be difficult. These six 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 second academic year as president. Hanlon filled this position after former College President Jim Yong Kim departed to lead the World Bank. While he came from the University of Michigan, Hanlon is no stranger to Dartmouth as a member of the Class of 1977.
His eventful first year was characterized by 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 and safe 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. As part of the initiative, hard alcohol was banned on campus. Hanlon can often be seen walking around campus, either to his office in Parkhurst Hall, Occom Pond or to sports analytics, a class he’ll teach this fall with government professor Michael Herron.
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.
Rebecca Biron
Dean of the College
Biron assumed her new role as Dean of the College this July. She will oversee new residential communities and the professors directing them. Biron will also work on issues of student inclusivity and diversity in addition to providing leadership in admissions and financial aid strategic planning, according to a College press release.
A faculty member since 2006, Biron previously served as associate master of Pearson Residential College at the University of Miami, living in a residence hall where she worked on programming, leadership and advising for the students. She will work with the six house professors selected in May to plan the new residential community program over the next year. You can find her teaching a class called “Read the World” in the comparative literature department this fall.
Inge-Lise Ameer
Vice Provost for Student Affairs
Ameer acted as interim dean while a search committee worked to find a replacement for Dean Charlotte Johnson. As a senior associate dean, Ameer has headed the student academic support services and campus life initiatives through the Deans Office. In her newly created position as vice provost of student affairs, Ameer, 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. 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.
He 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. An exchange program to Cuba was also approved this past year.
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 a member of the class of 1984. Laskaris 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 2019 to submit a short response on their extracurricular activities as Common Application eliminated a short essay on extracurricular activities.
