Hanover
The sweeping goals for the fundraising initiative — for which the college already has secured $1.5 billion — range from a four-year leadership program for undergraduates to building projects at the Hopkins Center for the Arts, the Hood Museum of Art and the Thayer School for Engineering.
In research, the campaign aims to raise money for faculty studies in the Arctic and the development of the new Irving Institute for Energy and Society, which was announced in fall 2016 with $113 million of its $160 million goal. Beyond that, Dartmouth plans a $100 million investment in the Norris Cotton Cancer Center “to spur advances in both the discovery and delivery of cancer care and prevention,” spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said.
“With this campaign we dedicate ourselves to building on the best of Dartmouth on behalf of humankind,” President Phil Hanlon said in a statement on Friday.
Hanlon said the campaign would help faculty “push the frontiers of human knowledge,” provide opportunities for hands-on learning among undergraduates, enrich Dartmouth’s “teacher-scholar model” for faculty and make residential life “even more cohesive and generative.”
Dartmouth also announced it would rename its 1,000-student graduate school after Frank Guarini, a 1946 alumnus and former Democratic congressman who made a large gift to the school. College officials said Guarini asked them not to disclose how much he donated.
Formed two years ago, the school now known as the Frank J. Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies serves graduate and postgraduate students in 35 programs. Guarini, a Jersey City, N.J., native and decorated Navy veteran, already is a major donor, having lent his name to Dartmouth’s Frank J. Guarini Institute for International Education.
The campaign saw a long buildup to its public launch. For years after Hanlon’s arrival in 2013, campus newspapers and the news website Dartblog speculated about the timing of a push, poring over details of fundraising job postings and hints, in faculty meeting minutes, of burgeoning campaign priorities.
At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last spring, then-Dean of the Faculty Mike Mastanduno noted that high-level administrators were discussing funding targets with faculty committees, with a public launch planned in about a year.
In fall 2017, Hanlon gathered some of Dartmouth’s brightest lights under a big tent outside Baker Library for a private presidential summit called “The Call to Lead” — the tagline of the now-public campaign. Prominent alumni speakers included Jeff Immelt, who was then chairman of General Electric; and Dr. Joanne Conroy, CEO and president of Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
Friday’s news release says it took about four years to raise the $1.5 billion needed to take the campaign public — longer than usual for the “silent” phase of a campaign, according to Robert Oden, a former Kenyon College and Carleton College president who lives in Hanover.
“It’s a little longer than usual, though not much,” Oden said in an interview on Friday, going on to speculate that it had taken some time for the college community to understand Hanlon’s priorities after the transition from Jim Yong Kim, the prior Dartmouth president.
Kim helped complete Dartmouth’s last capital campaign, which began in 2002 under Jim Wright and raised about $1.3 billion when it ended, in 2010.
Although Oden serves as vice chairman of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock board, he said he was not involved in the capital campaign through that position.
Announcing the public phase with $1.5 billion in hand was “absolutely predictable and according to script,” he said, although the “silent” phase of a campaign usually takes two or three years, compared to Dartmouth’s four.
Having led campaigns at both Kenyon and Carleton, Oden said college presidents spend the vast majority of their time fundraising and owed much of their success to alumni goodwill toward faculty members.
“My utter conviction is capital campaigns owe their success to faculty of the past — and to some extent of the present — who brought along and nurtured today’s donors,” said Oden, who was for many years a professor of religion at Dartmouth.
School officials on Friday signaled that their fundraising strategy would build on Dartmouth’s growing diversity, as well, with a goal of raising $1 million each from 100 female donors.
Fifty alumnae and alumni widows each have given at least $1 million already, compared to only four in the last campaign, the release said.
The college also is counting on $25 million in gifts from women to pay for renovations to Dartmouth Hall, the home of many humanities departments and one of the campus’ most iconic buildings.
Another capital goal announced on Friday was a return to “need-blind” admissions for international students — a policy of selecting applicants based on their merit, and then funding them according to their financial need. Administrators in 2015 said they would end the policy starting with the Class of 2020, although they kept need-blind admissions for domestic students.
Dartmouth’s renewed commitment to need-blind admissions is a “wonderfully noble goal,” Oden said, and likely will set it apart from non-Ivy competitors.
The college also plans to eliminate the need for loans in students’ financial aid packages, administrators said, a move intended to “reduce the financial burden on low- and middle-income families.”
And in another boon to students, Dartmouth plans to bolster the fledgling house communities by building new residence halls with about 350 beds, Hanlon said in an email to campus on Friday.
Despite the size of Dartmouth’s endowment — $4.96 billion last year — Oden said the college could use the money to compete with the top Ivies.
“I don’t think Dartmouth is anything like overendowed,” he said. “I think they need this campaign and they need it to succeed.”
Campaign kickoff events were scheduled to begin this weekend in New York and continue on campus on Monday afternoon, where Hanlon is scheduled to appear at the Hopkins Center with the campaign co-chairs — several trustees and their spouses — before heading to San Francisco later in the week.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.