HANOVER — The Geisel School of Medicine’s first female dean starts her tenure Saturday and she’s excited to turn a spotlight onto Dartmouth’s medical school.
Jennifer Hunt, 55, comes to Geisel from the University of Florida College of Medicine where she has served as interim dean since 2024.
When Hunt has told people she is headed to Dartmouth, she said they know it’s “a great place” but can’t say exactly why. She hopes to change that.
“When I think about what I have loved so far in getting to know the organization, it’s a really unusual combination of this very rich culture of liberal arts education, combined with, like, state of the art (…) Ivy League, research, and innovation,” Hunt said. “I don’t know any other place like that and it’s an incredible combination.”
Hunt is a pathologist who earned her undergraduate degree at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and her medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also completed her residency. She will live in Lebanon.
In her first weeks and months as dean, Hunt anticipates spending much of her time “really boots on the ground learning the culture” at Geisel, getting to know people and “figuring out the entire place as much as I can.”
“That’s a foundation for excellence in leadership, is knowing the place that you join and really understanding it,” Hunt said. “I am not a person that believes in coming in to change culture.”
But a recently launched federal investigation into admissions practices at Geisel for alleged discrimination has added an unexpected layer to that plan.
While she is sure the investigation will alter her first weeks on the job, Hunt downplayed the significance of the probe. It is “part of the Dean’s job to work through those requests for information,” she said.
Hunt said it is a “regular occurrence” for the government and organizations like the National Institutes of Health to request documents from medical schools and something she is prepared to handle.
“They usually aren’t even noted, they just happen in the background,” Hunt said. “We do what we do, we cooperate, we give information, we provide exactly what’s asked for.”
The investigation into alleged racial discrimination in admissions at Geisel and four other medical schools around the country is part of President Trump’s effort to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on the grounds that they are discriminatory.
When asked about diversity in medicine, Hunt redirected the question from diversity to “multi-dimensionality,” which she said is a “crucial element” of medicine and strengthens care and decision-making because a provider can bring a unique perspective.
“We have physicians who come from various backgrounds, and maybe some of them are first-generation physicians, and they have a perspective on what it means to be learning healthcare and medicine from a first-gen perspective,” Hunt said. “Maybe some of them are international, and they’ve experienced healthcare in different countries.”
Having those different experiences helps to build physicians who can serve a wider range of patients and provide better care, she said. “That multidimensionality of learning and teaching and growing and communities and thinking is really what shapes us,” Hunt said. “It’s what makes us excellent.”
Proud to be first
Hunt brings her own element of diversity to the job at Dartmouth, as the first female dean in Geisel’s more than 225-year history.
She is taking over from Interim Dean Dr. Steven Leach, former director of the Dartmouth Cancer Center. Leach replaced Dr. Duane Compton who served as dean of Geisel from 2017 until last summer.
Hunt said she is proud to be the first female dean of Geisel as an alumna of the all women’s Bryn Mawr College.
“Women’s colleges promote women in leadership and really push for the education of women at the highest level,” she said.
She said she is in good company at Geisel, which was the first school at Dartmouth to admit women and one of the first schools to have an equal gender ratio in the medical school class. Hunt is also starting her tenure under Dartmouth President Sian Beilock, the college’s first female president who took on the job in 2023.
While a change for Dartmouth, Hunt said people are used to seeing female deans and women in leadership roles and she doubts the accolade is top of mind for most.
In general, healthcare is constantly changing and medical schools and physicians are perpetually finding ways to adapt. “Our leaders today have to be nimble and thoughtful and strategic and really deep thinkers,” Hunt said. “And maybe that was always true, but there is a lot of change at the national level and worldwide.”
AI and medicine
One change making a splash in medicine is the artificial intelligence boom.
At the beginning of July, Geisel launched a project called the Geisel AI Network Executive Steering Committee, or GAIN, to explore the best ways to use AI tools in the medical school and spread education and awareness among the community, including holding introductory summer courses in AI and office hours with AI experts.
Hunt makes no qualms about whether AI will continue to be play a role in healthcare. “The world of medicine will be a world where AI is used,” Hunt said. “There’s no question. It already is.”
With that in mind, she said formally training students in AI is important because the technology is “a lot more nuanced than most innovations have been in science and medicine.”
AI, Hunt said, can be a vital tool for physicians and for patients “but the end always is going to be the physician’s brilliance that solves the question, or treats the patient, or on an everyday basis gives the compassion that humans need.”
Also at the forefront of medical education is a decline in national trust in doctors, science and medical institutions that has been ongoing since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Civic Health and Institutions Project is an initiative by a coalition of researchers from universities including Northeastern University, Harvard University, Rutgers University and the University of Rochester. The group has been polling public trust in institutions since 2020. The number of survey respondents who said they have “a lot” of trust in hospitals and doctors has dropped from 71% in April 2020 to 40% in April 2025.
The trend has certainly prompted medical schools to “prepare our students differently for their patients,” Hunt said.
Some aspects of the national trend of “questioning of science and medicine” is healthy, Hunt said and indicates an increase in “healthcare literacy” for patients who may come prepared with more knowledge or questions about their condition. But, some of the mistrust that has emerged in the last year or two like questioning standards of care is “outsized.”
For medical schools, Hunt said the change has made it crucial to prepare students to face patients with a wide variety of knowledge about their condition and trust in their provider.
“Our students today are able to work with such a diverse population of people because they have that experience,” Hunt said.
