I.
Students of the Future
Working Group Report
June 2012
Dartmouth
STRATEGIC PLANNING
IMAGINE THE NEXT 250
Students of the Future Working Group Final Report
June 2012
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
STRATEGIC PLANNING INITIATIVE
Students of the Future Working Group
Final Report
Executive Summary
Dartmouth's 2002 Strategic Plan contains an institutional statement of identity
that resonates closely with the values that current and future students find distinctive
and important for their college: "Dartmouth has the intellectual reach and competitive
strength of a great university, while possessing the soul of a closely-knit college
community." In embracing the best features of a world-class research institution with
the community of scale associated with a traditional liberal arts college, Dartmouth
remains a treasure for students seeking a liberal education whose goal, in the words of
former President James O. Freedman, "is the achievement of those intellectual and
moral capacities that will enable students to lead lives that are thoughtful, reflective,
inquisitive, and satisfying."
As we envision the Dartmouth of the next decade, this Working Group has
focused considerable attention on the Dartmouth students of tomorrow who will be
both seekers and co-creators of knowledge. Who are they? How do we educate and
prepare them for success in a world that features a ubiquity of information but precious
little time to absorb its full measure and instant connectivity without the benefit of
enduring relationships? What competencies should students possess when they enter
Dartmouth and what competencies should they take with them when they graduate
from the college? Where can the college be innovative in its approach to liberal
education?
In our consideration of these questions, we paid attention to the changes in the
demographic profile of tomorrow's students; our institutional commitment to diversity
and inclusion, including the commitment of financial support for students with
demonstrated need; the nature of students' engagement with the academic mission and
core requirements of our curriculum; the benefits and responsibilities of a residential
life learning experience; the opportunity to practice civic engagement and the building
of community; and the cultivation of a personal ethical and moral compass.
We reviewed national research on demographic trends, as well as data on
student enrollments at Dartmouth and our peer COFHE universities. We also reviewed
data on prospective students’ perceptions of Dartmouth, best practices in learning
outcomes, student engagement, civic learning, and residential life. Additionally,
working group members were full participants in conversations with many of the
speakers invited to campus as part of the Leading Voices of Higher Education speaker
series, as well as speakers recruited specifically to meet with our group, including Dr.
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Students of the Future Working Group Final Report
June 2012
Shaun Harper, Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at
the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Phil Geier, Executive Director of the Davis United
World College Program, and Professor Wes Jordan from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
We consulted with nearly 260 Dartmouth faculty, staff, students and volunteers
on a "student competencies" survey to solicit the community's views on the skill sets
students should possess upon entering and leaving Dartmouth and the areas where
Dartmouth could be innovative in enhancing these competencies.
Our extensive engagement with community members and outside experts, our
considered reflection of the various documentary reports and studies, and our internal
deliberations led us to the following conclusions:
 We urge the development and implementation of a competencies-based
approach to liberal education at Dartmouth that would complement (not
replace) the content-based curricular model of education. The combined
approaches would provide a more holistic educational experience that would
more effectively engage students' intellectual, moral and personal development
and better prepare them for active and meaningful participation in the
community and the broader society;
 We should work more intentionally to maximize individual student potential in
terms of their intellectual and personal development. This should include efforts
to encourage intellectual risk-taking, expand opportunities for and integration of
service learning and internships, and a renewed commitment to exploiting the
benefits of a residential college to its fullest potential;
 We should cultivate among students a sense of responsibility to build
community. One of our consultants noted, "Community is an activity to be
created, not consumed." The college, for its part, must be prepared to
articulate, communicate and defend its core values and its expectations that all
students abide by them;
 Recognizing the value of a more holistic educational experience, we urge the
institution to strengthen its commitment to intellectual curiosity and the life of
the mind as a core value of the college. We urge the creation of a true
partnership between the Dean of the Faculty and the Dean of the College that
underscores intellectual life as an institutional priority and facilitates the
integration of students' curricular and co-curricular experiences.
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Students of the Future Working Group Final Report
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RECRUITING, ADMITTING AND SUPPORTING THE STUDENTS OF THE FUTURE
In considering our practices in selecting and supporting Dartmouth's students of the
future, we were mindful of the following broad themes that emerged through our
research:
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Major demographic shifts resulting in increasingly diverse cohorts of students
graduating from secondary schools;
Growing numbers of applicants to US institutions from countries with a strong
and growing middle-class, a high level of academic aspiration, and a lack of
educational infrastructure to meet their citizens’ increasing demands for higher
education;
The lack of equity in the distribution of educational resources resulting in larger
numbers of bright and high-achieving students from traditionally underresourced schools and communities;
Increasing competition for the best students;
Escalating costs of higher education and stagnation in family incomes;
Increased skepticism of a liberal arts education, particularly in light of escalating
costs and challenging national employment environment;
Greater expectations around the use of technology to facilitate learning as a
result of increased use of technology in K-12 environments and the high-profile
online educational resources by peer institutions;
Increasing globalization of all facets of our educational experience – the
curriculum, international programs (curricular and co-curricular), and further
internationalization of the students, faculty, and staff; and
Desire for more intentional integration of experiential learning experiences into
the curriculum and greater connection between curricular and co-curricular
experiences.
AN EMERGING FOCUS ON STUDENT COMPETENCIES
Working group members conducted extensive community engagement through
focus groups and online surveys. Current students (undergraduate and graduate),
faculty, staff, and alumni participated in conversations with working group members
and/or responded to our online survey. In addition, members of the working group
participated in conversations with staff and leaders at the Dickey Center, Tucker
Foundation, Rockefeller Center, the Athletic Department, the Office of Institutional
Diversity and Equity, and the Student Life Committee of the Board of Trustees. Data
collected through the community engagement process ultimately focused on the
questions of student competencies for a changing world and ways in which Dartmouth
could innovate and lead in the development of these competencies.
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Students of the Future Working Group Final Report
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The major themes that emerged from our community engagement around
student competences included the following:
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Willingness to take risks (also stated as intellectual curiosity, resiliency,
willingness to act outside of one's comfort zone);
Capacity for reflection;
Citizenship/interconnectedness with the world (also stated as trans-lingual,
ability to function effectively & responsibly across cultures and differences);
Critical thinking/analysis;
Competency to act/work in collaborative settings;
Communication skills; rhetorical flexibility;
Technological literacy/numeracy;
Moral/ethical/values development/leadership
INSTITUTIONAL NEEDS AND CHALLENGES; STRENGTHS AND OPPORTUNITIES
As a general proposition, our engagement with community members revealed
the sense that Dartmouth's strategic planning efforts are proceeding from a position of
relative strength and are not driven by a sense of crisis. This affords us the luxury of
conceiving our strategic planning efforts and recommendations as enhancing what are
already considerable strengths of a first-rate academic institution.
Nonetheless, our research revealed areas where considerable improvements
could be made in preparing our future students for success beyond Dartmouth. First,
we heard repeated calls for increased intentionality regarding our work in cultivating the
desired competencies among our students. In other words, we were urged to work
toward a more mindful educational experience for our students that includes, among
other things, better coordination between the academic and student affairs elements of
the institution that would contribute to a more holistic learning experience. Secondly,
we noted concerns that we were not maximizing individual student potential in terms of
their intellectual and personal growth and development. This included observations
that we were not exploiting or leveraging the benefits of a residential college
environment to their fullest potential. And finally, we were encouraged to focus
increased attention on how best to cultivate responsible citizenship amongst our
students.
In order to drill further into these broader areas of concern, our Working Group
divided into four smaller subgroups organized around the following themes: (a)
Anchoring Students in the Intellectual Life of the Community; (b) Building Engaged and
Responsible Communities; (c) Leveraging Diversity and Inclusivity; and (d) Facilitating
Personal Development. Several noteworthy observations were reported out from these
subgroups that bear on the aspirational statements and recommendations that follow.
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Students of the Future Working Group Final Report
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Anchoring Students in the Intellectual Life of the Community
In the area of anchoring students in the intellectual life of the community, we
observed the critical importance of identifying the factors that influence successful
participation by faculty and students in any programmatic initiative or endeavor. In
other words, what are the motivations for each constituency to become involved in such
endeavors? Students, we observed, are highly responsive to grades, recognition and
competition. Our community outreach efforts suggest that this reduces students'
inclination to take intellectual risks for fear that they may jeopardize their grade point
averages by venturing into new and challenging academic terrain. Options to take a
course on a "pass/fail" basis appear to be frowned upon and the option of taking a
course using the "Non-Recording Option" seem to be poorly understood or not widely
utilized. Students also tend to do more and/or better research on subjects that they
care about and on which they are required to present to their peers.
Faculty members, as a general matter, are typically drawn to work more closely
with students who represent the top ranks of their class and who may often be
perceived as younger versions of the faculty members in terms of their motivations,
aspirations and commitment to intellectual life. The challenge is in identifying and
incentivizing faculty to devote comparable time, resources and energy for the 80% or
more of the student body whose intellectual appetites may be less ambitious than those
of the top achievers.
Expanding research opportunities for students and providing increased
opportunities for them to partner with faculty members on shared research projects
must be pursued with these factors in mind.
Building Engaged and Responsible Community
Our working group framed this discussion from the perspective of the individual:
(a) who am I? (b) who ought I be? This is an area in which institutional messaging about
community values and individual expectations are vitally important, the content of
which must be communicated consistently and regularly from the highest levels of the
administration. Philip Geier, the Executive Director of United World College, explained
that their relative success in building community was attributable to their practice of
inculcating within their students a sense of personal responsibility for making the school
and the world a better place. In a similar vein, Dartmouth's residential education staff
stressed the importance of developing student responsibility for building community.
Community is an activity to be created, not consumed. It also serves as a place to
practice how to build better relationships.
Renewed focus on Dartmouth's residential life centers is strongly recommended,
particularly the promising model afforded by the East Wheelock cluster. The data
amongst residential life experts shows clearly that bringing faculty and staff into the
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Students of the Future Working Group Final Report
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residential units - as occurs in the East Wheelock model - contributes to increased
academic success among students and to decreased instances of dysfunctional
behavior. These findings suggest that living/learning residential communities like East
Wheelock not only improve the intellectual climate on campus, but also help to reduce,
if not eliminate, the pathological aspects of the undergraduate social scene. Our
Working Group was disappointed to learn that the college had earlier committed to, but
never followed through, on a plan to establish two other East Wheelock-type living
clusters. It would appear that residential centers like the McLaughlin Cluster and the
new centers along Tuck Drive could serve as opportunities, at least in some important
respects, to replicate the East Wheelock model.
Enhancing Dartmouth’s Diversity and Inclusivity
How might we work more intentionally and proactively to impact the "pipeline"
of students applying to and matriculating at Dartmouth? How can we better leverage
the extant diversity within the Dartmouth community? The Working Group’s
recommendations are aimed at enhancing Dartmouth's role in positively impacting the
distribution of educational resources and affording wider accessibility to high quality
education for an increasingly diversified student body.
Central to our recommendations is a desire to increase the economic, social and
ethnic diversity of Dartmouth by actively increasing the pool of qualified and prepared
applicants from underserved/underrepresented communities. While it is accurate that,
within traditionally underserved communities, progress is being made with respect to
the distribution of educational resources, we are mindful of the persistent gaps in our
secondary education system. As society continues to work toward parity in the K-12
system, Dartmouth must continue its deep commitment to structures and programs
that support the success of all its students.
Facilitating Personal Development
Finally, our focus on facilitating individual engagement and personal
development highlighted the centrality of providing spaces and opportunities for serious
reflection about one's purpose in life and in learning to chart a productive and
meaningful life at and beyond Dartmouth. Here, we considered ways that we might
leverage our existing residential life centers and our commitment to community service
learning in ways that reflect the aspirations of mindfulness and intentionality as they
relate to cultivating the desired student competencies.
We have highlighted the benefits of expanding upon the East Wheelock model
for residential life/learning at Dartmouth by replicating that experience in other
residential clusters on campus. We would also draw attention to the promising
proposal generated by the Tucker Foundation to develop a "bold student service and
engagement initiative" tentatively called, "Dartmouth CONNECTS." The program
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features an expansion of and greater coherence among the various community
immersion opportunities that would situate students in different communities
throughout the local area and around the world. Such experiences, according to the
Foundation's proposal, "foster global and intercultural learning, healthy choices,
collaborative problem-solving, transferable skills, ethical reflection, and real-world
applications." In short, these immersion experiences contribute directly to the student
competency-building approach suggested earlier.
Dartmouth graduates assume successful leadership positions throughout the world
as a result of opportunities provided across Dartmouth. As the Working Group learned
more about the work of our colleagues at the Tucker Foundation, Rockefeller Center,
and other Dartmouth programs, the lack of a unifying narrative relative to leadership
development became apparent. A unifying narrative, the creation of a collaborative
network of leadership programs, and more attentiveness to the many instances these
various programs converge will be critical to building student competencies tailored to
the unique challenges of the new millennium.
INSTITUTIONAL ASPIRATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Current trends and the need to further leverage Dartmouth’s unique identity in
the higher education landscape, lend themselves to a set of aspirations and
recommendations that will better position Dartmouth to enhance its reputation as a
world-class teaching and research institution. Progress in these areas will require true
partnerships and collaboration across the college with a particular emphasis on
meaningful partnerships between faculty and administrators.
Aspirations
We seek to maximize our collective potential and strategically shift the
institutional culture in ways consistent with the desired outcomes of a Dartmouth
education and our core values. We reaffirm our commitment to liberal education and
teaching in the tradition of liberal arts colleges while embracing the challenges and
opportunities afforded by our status as a premier research institution. In short, our
aspiration is to remain preeminent in that liminal space we articulated so well in the
Strategic Plan of 2002: "Dartmouth has the intellectual reach and competitive strength
of a great university, while possessing the soul of a closely-knit college community."
Recommendations
These recommendations follow from our analyses of relevant data, trends,
challenges and opportunities. These recommendations also incorporate aspirational
goals and aspects of the student experience that are uniquely Dartmouth.
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1. Create new integrated living/learning communities – As demonstrated by the
success of the East Wheelock dormitory cluster, living learning communities not only
provide for an alternate social environment at Dartmouth, but they also create a
community that fosters reflection and intellectualism. Expansion of such residential
options, which could include, for example, affinity housing around shared academic
interest, will achieve a number of goals, including: increasing the continuity of the
residential experience across all four years; linking the expanded classroom, study,
and social spaces; and ensuring meaningful connections with faculty, staff, and
graduate and professional students.
2. Redesign the first year experience – With the ever-increasing diversity of incoming
undergraduates, it is critically important that the first year be supportive of all
students. We recommend the elimination of letter grades during the first year,
replacing traditional grades with assessment via written summaries and portfolios.
This will allow first year students to focus on finding their intellectual equilibrium in
a college atmosphere, as well focusing on learning rather than grades. The first year
should also include more opportunities for student reflection and should facilitate
intentional community building and enhanced awareness of diversity of community
through first year seminar and shared experiences.
3. Increase opportunities for and integration of service learning and internships – We
recognize that a great deal of learning during college occurs outside of the classroom
and that many Dartmouth students already take advantage of internships and
service learning opportunities. We propose that the college consolidate and build
upon existing opportunities to develop a culture of intensive civic engagement.
Choosing one or more major global challenges and setting aspirational goals for the
entire institution and then developing opportunities around the common goals
could achieve this. Embracing and implementing the objectives of the Tucker
Foundation's "Dartmouth CONNECTS" would be an ideal step in this direction.
4. Positively and proactively impact the "pipeline" of entering college students Given that (a) the present inequities in the distribution of educational opportunities
act as a barrier to admission for many otherwise talented and curious students; and
(b) Dartmouth best understands the brand of intellectualism it values and wishes to
cultivate, we propose that Dartmouth inject itself into the "pipeline" at an earlier
stage in order to achieve greater economic, social and ethnic diversity. That is, we
propose that the college make it a top priority to create an infrastructure through
which Dartmouth faculty and staff help train a critical mass of high school students
from underserved and non-traditional communities for success at Dartmouth. The
talented and promising students participating in this program should be identified in
the ninth grade and worked with over the course of four years. And, we believe this
should be done with the express intent of recruiting the best of these students to
attend Dartmouth. By assuming a leadership role in addressing a long-standing
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national problem, we will set an example for our students and, through our actions,
inspire them to lead and affect change in the world.
5. Maximize individual student potential – As the students enrolling at Dartmouth
continue to become more diverse, so, too, does their background and preparation. It
is essential that Dartmouth support ALL of the students it admits. In addition to the
changes proposed above, this could be achieved by: (a) creating and supporting
online learning tools to help address gaps in background preparation; (b) blending
the best of in-person student/faculty interaction with online and distance learning;
(c) increasing the linkage between first year advisors and first year seminars; (d)
expanding research opportunities for all students, including those in the first year;
and (e) highlighting and celebrating the innovation, creativity, and research of
Dartmouth undergraduates. On the latter point, the college could award a one-year
post-graduate "Genius Award" to outstanding Dartmouth graduates allowing them
to conduct research on a topic of their choice, with the expectation that they would
return to campus the following year to present their work to undergraduates as part
of a class or seminar.
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WORKING GROUP MEMBERSHIP
1. Elizabeth Agosto (D’01)
Special Assistant to the Dean of the College (ex-officio)
2. Inge-Lise Ameer
Associate Dean of Student Support Services, Office of the Dean of the College
3. Laura Barrett
Director of Education and Outreach, Dartmouth Library
4. Leslie Butler
Associate Professor of History, and of Women’s and Gender Studies
5. Jay Davis (D'90)
Program Officer of School Outreach, Tucker Foundation; Co-Director of the First Year
Student Enrichment Program, Office of the Dean of the College
6. N. Bruce Duthu (D'80)
Chair, Department of Native American Studies; Samson Occom Professor of Native
American Studies (CO-CHAIR)
7. James Feyrer
Associate Professor of Economics
8. Charlotte Johnson
Dean of the College (CO-CHAIR)
9. F. Jon Kull (D'88)
Dean, Graduate Studies; Rogers Professor of Chemistry
10. Maria Laskaris (D'84)
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid (CO-CHAIR)
11. Israel Reyes
Associate Professor of Spanish
12. Enrico Riley (D'95)
Assistant Professor of Studio Art
13. Harry Sheehy
Director of Athletics and Recreation
14. Craig Sutton
Associate Professor of Mathematics
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