Community Conversations with Provost Joseph Helble: July 22 Show

good afternoon everyone and welcome to our ninth community conversation addressing planning response and operations in the time of kovat 19 I'm Joe held Liam the Provost of Dartmouth College and I'm joining you as always from the star instructional studio in Barrie library I'm joined today once again by Justin Anderson our vice president for communications who's joining me from another studio here on campus and today we're joined by two of our frequent guests for these conversations josh Kenaston the current interim vice president of Campus Services the VP for institutional projects in the co-chair of Dartmouth's campus-wide Kovan 19 task force and by dr. Lisa Adams a faculty member in the Geisel School of Medicine the associate dean for global health a professor of medicine a specialist in the care and treatment of infectious disease particularly tuberculosis and the co-chair of Dartmouth campus-wide kovat 19 task force finally today we're joined by a third guest someone who's new to our campus conversations and that's Mike Wagner Dartmouth chief financial officer and our vice president for finance following our normal format we'll begin today with a campus update will turn to live question and answer moderated by Justin and then we will turn to a conversation with our campus leaders so today as you might guess given the composition of our panel of guests I'd like to briefly discuss three things the budget focusing on the close of fiscal year 20 and the start of FY 21 I'd like to provide an update on campus operations focusing on the libraries in particular and also on research with an emphasis on the reopening that's taken place successfully for the libraries over the course of the past two weeks and then speak a bit about academic and operational planning as we look ahead to fall term but first before going down these paths I'd like to return to a question that I addressed two weeks ago at the outset of our conversation the question related to the international student community related to the guidance that the Department of Homeland Security's student and exchange visitor program or s EVP issued for international students on Monday July 6th as you all likely know by now last week on Tuesday July 14th the federal government withdrew the new guidance and announced that it would return to its existing March 20 20 guidelines which does allow international students to participate in remotely delivered classes while living in the United States this guidance applies to all continuing students and it is something that was welcomed by Dartmouth and other institutions of higher education as president Hanlon and I and so many of us on this campus have said often we are absolutely committed to welcoming the best and brightest students from around the world to engage in learning scholarship and the creation of new knowledge in our communities and it is essential that we have the opportunity to allow all Dartmouth students to continue their education so for this we were grateful for entering undergraduate students those in the class of 2024 as undergraduates we and our peers are continuing to seek clarification on the relevant guidance from se VP first-year students those members of the class of 2024 are welcome to continue pursuing their visa applications at this time understanding of course that Dartmouth has no insight unfortunately into the outcome of that application process but our plan at Dartmouth remains to operate in hybrid mode with some in-person classes or elements that would be available to those students for entering graduate students we encourage you to continue pursuing your visa applications and to contact your program administration with any questions for entering MS and PhD students Dean John cool the Dean of the Guarani School of Graduate and Advanced Studies and his office have been in touch with many students and they will also be sending out periodic updates as more information becomes available so we intends to keep the community and particularly our international student community updated and informed as all this moves forward in the coming weeks and month as best we can so now let me turn as promised to the question of budget and in several prior conversations we've pointed out the budgetary challenges that Cove at 19 has imposed on the operations of all colleges in universe including Dartmouth and in fact in an early broadcast in the series I noted that Dartmouth could potentially incur a fourth quarter fifty million dollar or more operating loss against an overall University annual budget of approximately 1.1 billion as you might imagine that potential deficit was the subject of many meetings and conversations amongst the leadership team among faculty committees among many cross campus constituencies over the course of the past three months and over the course of the nearly three months that we've been having these community conversations we have been continually updating not just our conversations but our projections for the close of fiscal year 20 now I'll be asking Mike Wagner our chief financial officer for some of the details later in our conversation but the outcome is that for the fiscal year which ended on June 30th we closed with an operating loss of 36 million dollars which is still substantial but it's one-third less than we had projected when we first made met and at a high level this reduced operating loss this reduced deficit came about for several reasons first because the investment markets improved and remained strong through the end of June which significant significantly reduced the size of the projected losses to our working capital pool thanks to the generous support of our alumni and Friends and the incredibly hard work of our colleagues in the advancement decision division the Dartmouth College Fund and other cross-campus annual funds provided more support than had been projected three months ago at the low point in the financial and investment markets and finally because of aggressive steps that this community the Dartmouth community took immediately beginning in March to reduce expenses particularly non-compensation expenses we were able to bring fiscal year 20 to a successful close some of the steps we took is a community address the immediacy of the fourth quarter but some of them and others also help address projected significant shortfalls in the FY 21 budget as some of you know through conversations with me with Rickman our EVP for finance and administration with Mike Wagner and others that we had estimated potential losses for fiscal year 21 the fiscal year that started just three weeks ago on July 1st of approximately 100 million dollars again against a projected overall annual operating budget of roughly 1.1 billion dollars these losses in FY 21 stem from increased expenses associated with both online and on-campus delivery of content expenses associated with testing of our student community and increased cleaning of our facilities expenses associated with anticipated significant increases in the need to make financial aid available to our student population and revenue projections as best as we can make them given our anticipated hybrid operating mode of both online and reduced density in-person education this coming year and uncertainty in the financial markets for these reasons we instituted a Dartmouth wide salary freeze for both faculty and staff for FY 21 instituted a freeze on staff hiring for the first half of FY 21 through the end of December and recently offered a retirement incentive program for long-serving staff meeting several criteria including at least 10 consecutive years of service and a combination of age plus years of consecutive service greater than or equal to 75 these steps plus the use of a revenue stabilization reserve created at the request of President Hanlon early in his tenure at Dartmouth plus an outlining for division leaders of savings achievable through non compensation spending reduction in this upcoming fiscal year helped considerably and bringing Dartmouth closer to stemming the projected losses associated with kovat 19 and achieving balanced budget operations in FY 21 they get us much closer but they don't quite get us all the way there so to take the final step to reaching balanced budget operations over the past week individual division leaders have received guidance on the revised budgetary targets for FY 21 these targets vary by division and will require division leaders to take additional saving steps looking at non-compensation spending opportunities spending a non-conversation savings opportunities and also other steps appropriate to their division we'll have more to say on this and the weeks ahead as individual division leaders continue to work on review and implement plans for their FY 21 budgets and as we begin to turn the conversation forward and think about planning for FY 22 and beyond and in that exercise let me say there will be an effort to engage individuals from all divisions across campus in some creative cross-institutional thinking to seek more efficient ways to accomplish our work more on that particular opportunity and those cross-institutional conversations will be forthcoming within the next two weeks so let me now return to the operational questions on updates I promised at the outset and I'd like to first start with the library particularly the reopening of the library that happened two weeks ago today as of 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday July 8th at that point in time Baker berry and the Sherman stacks were reopened to Dartmouth faculty staff and two Dartmouth students who possess current IDs and from what Dean of the library Sumaira reports that reopening has gone smoothly and in my view extraordinarily successfully in our first two weeks Baker berry library welcomed 210 members of the Dartmouth community and loaned 430 items primarily to faculty rauner Special Collections had four researchers on site three faculty and one staff and has a further three reservations pending this week remember rauner is open by appointment only a staff were on-site every day staff were also able to meet research needs of 31 additional researchers remotely one example the type of activity that's now resuming one faculty member came in to consult a 16th century codex manuscript to facilitate a large digital project she's working on to adequately complete the project she needed and was granted access to the physical object itself Special Collections continues to serve the worldwide scholarly community as well as Dartmouth for example demerit tells me that with access to our Special Collections open again her colleagues were able to supply the Robert Frost correspondence project with scans of original letters from the Robert Frost collection letters that these colleagues had hopes to consult in person to meet an August 1st deadline for vol 3 of the collected correspondence of this noteworthy figure from Dartmouth past they were also able to provide in-depth research assistance out of the Mario Puzo papers for a scholar completing a monograph on The Godfather and on the student side selected materials and created scans to support the fysop courses being offered for incoming first-generation students in August in August they anticipate restarting interlibrary loan activities in providing accession to new materials received to add to the research collections as quickly as possible and so as I hope you can see over the past two weeks the libraries have gone from a very quiet period to a very active period both in Baker berry in Sherman and in the rauner Special Collections library we anticipate additional updates from sue and her colleagues around operations including a look ahead at fall term as plans are finalized over the coming month in the area of research toward a brief update I think because research in particularly laboratory based research activity continues to increase phase 2 the phase of operation we are currently under continues to proceed smoothly for example on Monday of this week vice provost for research Dean Madden reported that 348 lab researchers were on campus and that is a 33 percent increase in the daily number from the end of phase 1 B and double the numbers we had at the end of phase 1a in addition to on-campus activity grant activity also remains strong for example the July ro1 submissions to the National Institute of Health from Dartmouth increased from 17 million last year to nearly 25 million this year that is nearly a 50% year-over-year increase in a single month submission and that bodes very well for the research Enterprise at Dartmouth in the year ahead Dean and his working group will be continuing to work on the next stages of reopening and as with the library more details are expected to be provided over the coming month let me turn now to academic year planning as the community knows president Hanlon and I have stressed and I have said this often throughout our planning that it was has been and remains our goal to support the maximum number of students we could return to campus guided first and foremost by the application of appropriate public health standards as we announced two weeks ago our plan for undergraduate students permits all to be here residentially for part of their education but not all at the same time we're using our turn-based system in the D plan to our advantage offering all students the opportunity for to residential terms during the 2020 2021 academic year now since that announcement not surprisingly we've gotten many questions from students and their families about the year ahead before I provide a few updates I thought it might be worth commenting briefly once again on our reasons for taking the approach that we have first in developing our plan we wanted to maximize the chances for it to be a successful plan in bringing students back to campus we wanted to do all that we can to be able to keep students on campus for the full term that's not a guarantee of course neither we nor anyone can guarantee that plans will not change but we intentionally built buffering capacity quarantine in isolation capacity for not for on-campus residents into our residential housing plan so to those who have asked why we cannot bring more students back in any given term that is the answer and that was an intentional step that Dartmouth has taken second in developing our plan as I said two weeks ago but I think it's worth reiterating it was important to us that we give students some choice it would have been far easier for us to look at the academic year and simply assign different classes to different terms but we are committed to supporting the individual student as much as we can that's embodied in the Dartmouth D plan which gives students choice it's embodied in our liberal arts curriculum and our liberal arts education for me this is who we are as an institution I've said often that we'll be informed by decisions made on other campuses but not bound by them we will take advantage of things that are unique to Dartmouth and make the decisions that are right for us I firmly believe that this is one of those decisions for that reason we asked all students to identify their preferences for residential terms in Hanover the Dean of the college office working with Alisha Bettinger and her team at the Office of Institutional research ask students to rank choices reminding them of our announced priorities the class of 24 was offered priority for fall in spring residential terms with a remote winter term and no rankings were requested from this group of incoming students class of 23 had summer term as the priority sophomore summer class of 22 would be prioritized for fall term class of 21 prioritized for spring term in addition we informed new transfer students who are new members of the Dartmouth community that they would be offered priority for on-campus accommodations for fall term if they wished students were then asked to confirm that their choices aligned with their preferences for the 24s they were asked simply do you want to be here in the fall and or the spring and if that's the case no ratings were requested continuing students and transfers were asked do you want to be here for your designated priority term answer yes no and then rank the rest those preferences were due Monday evening July 20th less than 48 hours ago and Dean of the college Catherine Lively and her colleagues are now looking at the sorted data with the intention of informing students on July 31st we know and I can tell you this today that we will be able to accommodate all the members of the class of 2024 and the class of 2022 and all new transfer students who requested an on-campus fall residence term we also know that we can accommodate those students in those classes who have as I said designated this as their first priority beyond this we ask you to be patient as we work through the data and determine who else will be offered residential opportunities for the fall term for the winter term in the spring term we will be completing the process by July 31st students will be informed on July 31st about their fall term assignments and more information will be provided subsequent to that date so let me close this part by saying I thank you for your patience as we work through your responses and your preferences once the residential assignments for fall term are made I anticipate there will immediately be many questions about arrival time drop-off in the meaning of quarantine Dean lively address many of these points in her note to students two days ago and as she stressed many of the answers to those questions will not be available until the middle of August specifically the week beginning Sunday August 16th to help address some of these questions and particularly those related to the student residential experience over the course of this year Dean lively has formed a student advisory committee of 12 students drawing from members of the classes of 21 22 and 23 to provide input on student concerns related to campus life particularly in the era of Cova 19 to those students who've agreed to serve I'd like to thank you for your willingness to help us address complicated questions that often have no single right answer now finally let me close with just a few additional comments on the months ahead I had promised that we would have more information on winter term undergraduate off campus programs when we next met and I wanted to be sure that we got to that today before we turns to questions based on the input of the relevant working groups on our kovat 19 task force in the arts and sciences leadership who oversee off-campus programs we have decided that we will not offer undergraduate off-campus programs winter term 2021 this cancellation which I had said was likely two weeks ago is a result of continuing travel restrictions related to kovat 19 continuing travel uncertainties related to code of 19 and the six-month planning horizon needed for many of these undergraduate programs we are hopeful that we may be able to offer a limited number of undergraduate programs through the Guarani Institute in spring 2021 and we will have more to say on that front including at these community conversations in the coming month to month and a half now let me close by saying that clearly many decisions still lie ahead details for undergraduate students of arrival housing testing monitoring and quarantine remain to be finalized course listings need to occur course selection needs to occur and we will also be working to provide more information on what campus life will look like in the fall the next steps of research and library reopening also need to be finalized with each decision that we make or announced as we all recognize by now many more equally complex and complicated ones lie ahead so let me end by thanking all of those who are so committed to our students education and to the return of research scholarship and learning to this campus as I say each time we gather this is certainly not how I or any of us envisioned our lives this year 2020 is absolutely going to be a year to remember but I continue to draw inspiration and hope from our students and their deeply held desire to be present in Hanover and from our staff and faculty who were working so tirelessly and incredibly hard in the face of frequently changing conditions to make that possible thank you to everyone for your dedication to the Dartmouth community I'm happy to take a few questions and then we'll turn to Lisa Josh and Mike for further discussion Justin over to you Thank You Jo it's good to see you this afternoon we have a number of questions coming in that I think really reflect the anxiety that many community members are feeling which is quite understandable under the circumstances particularly around the rising rate of infection across the country and one questioner asks whether or not as the infection rates are increasing with the possibility of another you know million or so cases over the course of the next week at what point will Dartmouth decide whether or not it is safe to have students back onto campus at all this fall given the rising rate of transmission yeah it's a really good question and I would also suggest we put that question to Lisa again when we have her on the screen shortly but I'll offer my my perspective in my answer certainly we are aware and I'm aware of the increasing rates of infection two weeks ago I spoke about this and expressed concern that we had now reached the 60,000 new infection per day thresholds and if you look at trends over the past two weeks I believe it's 10 out of the past 12 days we've gone beyond 60,000 new cases confirmed in a day we've had two days with more than 70,000 cases so to put it to put it euphemistically the numbers are not our friend right now we are very attentive to this we are looking at the modeling that predicts the continuing spread of the disease nationally we are looking hopefully it signs that leaders in different states and communities are taking to be much more serious about masking and social distancing restrictions to impose what had been in place earlier and we are remaining I will say vigilant in watching these trends and seeing if they will help turn the corner on the disease Lisa can speak to this further but this is one of the reasons why we are intending to test students as soon as they arrive why quarantine is an important part of our planning we have heard from family members who are not excited by the quarantine protocol but in fact testing and quarantine are two of the most important steps we can take to ensure that we begin the fall term with as healthy a population as is absolutely possible so the listener asks a question about when we might decide to shift in another direction I'm not going to answer that because there are many many inputs that go into a decision like that we are continuing to go down the path of planning extensive testing monitoring tracing and quarantine that we believe given current trends will enable us to operate as safely as possible in the fall but that can't be a guarantee that things won't change in the next six weeks so the best short answer is we are aware we are moving forward confidently but we are being very attentive to what's happening nationally and prepared to adjust our plans if needed Joe you mentioned the questions around quarantine and I just want to acknowledge there are a lot of questions about quarantine and I know that we'll get to that later but for those of you who are sending in questions about that I just want you to rest assured that when when Lisa joins us that will be the opportunity at which we can talk more about about the specifics of the quarantine at least that we know of as of right now right I think that would be appropriate Justin and also I'll just say as a caveat and this is one of the places where the student advisory group that's working with Dean ly lively we are counting on them to be helpful they won't be designing the protocol but they can certainly help us with input on feasibility work ability and the best way is to make this a manageable experience for our students someone writes in acknowledging that students have been told that they're going to have the option of taking any term as a remote term that that that will be an option for them that they need not at we physically come to campus that they could remain at home or someplace else to take classes and similarly faculty are being given that option to a great extent this person asks what about staff particularly staff who have to be on campus in order to do their jobs and then among that group of staff those who might have those who might be at risk themselves or have family members at home who are either themselves sick or who are also at risk so the question is really about the the flexibility of staff to to be off campus in the interest of their own health concerns so Justin that's a good question in here not to continue deferring but I think Josh can answer that question in more detail particularly as he oversees a large employee group as the interim head of campus services I can tell you from where I sit it was very important to us that we give students choice in the terms in which they want to be in residence this is darkness attention to and commitment to the individual it was very important to deans alexis Abramson and Elizabeth Smith and the graduate school deans and me that we give faculty consideration for individual circumstances and their desire to teach in person or remotely similarly and Josh has said this before but it's worth asking the question again to the extent that we possibly can we are committed to working with individual staff members to help accommodate their particular situation obviously we have a challenge there are some functions which are absolutely essential that they be accomplished in person because of the student facing nature of what they do but we want to take those questions on an individual staff member basis we want to see if there are steps we can take that can make that staff member comfortable working in an on-campus environment and if not is there a way within the organization to help accommodate that individuals needs if someone else might be willing to take on part of the responsibilities and so it's a commitment to work with people individually as best we can recognizing that for staff as well as faculty and students there will be circumstances in situations where working physically present on campus may not be the best step for them so I when I came on that a lot of the questions reflect the deep anxiety that our community members are feeling and the first couple questions were related really to concerns about health there's also a lot of concerns about people's jobs you have said in the past that we were committed to the employment of our employees or our staff through July 31st looking at the calendar this July 22nd and so people are clearly wondering about what happens after July 31st so can can you address that can you address will happen excuse me not just I'm not sure that I can since you need to leave the building right exactly yeah so what what yeah can you can you address what will happen not when the library closes but after July 30 right I can and I can do much more on that point Justin in two weeks and so you are absolutely right and the questioner is right to note that we have made a commitment to keep everyone employed as they were through July 31st that commitment has not been extended beyond July 31st I said earlier in reviewing FY 20 and the projections for FY 21 that we have taken all of the cross institutional steps that we can including using reserve funds that President Hanlon set aside at the start of his tenure for a moment like this having pan institutional sacrifice by freezing salaries and wages and by putting in place a hiring freeze these steps significantly reduce the magnitude of the deficit that needs to be addressed in FY 20 but they don't completely eliminate we have given managers and division leaders guidance on the opportunity for substantial savings in FY 21 through non compensation spending reduction the kind of adjustments that people made around travel around events around materials and supplies around consulting and other contracts and external labor that we ask them to reduce in fourth quarter of fiscal year 20 but for some divisions either the balance of what's needed to achieve programmatic goals or their ability to meet the targets simply through non compensation savings is not going to be sufficient and so individual division leaders are now in the process of formulating plans that will be discussed with me and with Rick mills and with the other senior officers that will detail how they do it in some cases that will mean simply leaving vacancies unfilled or permanently eliminating vacancies in others there may be personnel adjustments that need to be made it will not be widespread it will not be panned institutional and I can't project a number because the early retirement incentive offer is on the table right now and that may in fact provide the reduction in employment that is necessary for us to be able to balance our budget for FY 21 and so I understand that these next steps create some anxiety but our intention in putting this range of possibilities in front of managers in trying to provide targets that are achievable significantly through means other than compensation not exclusively but significantly will reduce the impact and reduce the number certainly of any employment adjustments that need to be made I can't be more specific than that because it's too early to answer that question but in two weeks or in four weeks certainly we'll know a lot more Joe we have time for for one more question before we get to our guests and I think it's a quick one will the library be physically open and available to all students who are paying tuition when the academic year begins and then a questioner asks specifically about what you said when you said students with a current ID so I guess just explaining a little bit more about who will be able to access the physical space the physical library so the anticipation is the details have not been finalized but the anticipation is that students are here for residential learning in the fall their ID will provide them access to the library facilities there will likely be limits on occupancy at any particular point in time so there are elements of an operating plan that need to be developed because d densification is an operating term as we think about all of our facilities this is why we have reduced capacity and the residence halls this is why we're approaching dining in the way we are this is why classrooms will have significantly reduced capacity and this is why the library cannot be fully open to all-comers without any screening as it had been in the past we do anticipate all students who will be here on campus with their four current IDs that that identify them as residential term students can utilize the library facility they will not all be able to be in the library at the same time so thank you Justin and thank you all for the questions as always I'd now like to turn to the second half of our conversation and bring back our guests who are joining us today dr. Lisa Adams from the Geisel School of Medicine in task force co-chair Josh Kenaston our VP for Campus Services and task force co-chair and Mike Wagner our chief financial officer and VP for Finance good to see you all on the screen in front of me and thanks so much for joining us thank you so I'd like to jump right into us and Mike since you are new to these conversations I'm going to give you the opportunity of going first particularly given the interest in questions that are financial questions and so if you don't mind I'm going to ask you a few back to back before I turn to Josh and Lisa and ask operational and public health questions and I'd like to focus briefly both on FY 20 the clothes and then FY 21 and the projections and so if you don't mind let's start with FY 2008 over the course of the fourth quarter the fiscal year that just ended we had projected operating losses of approximately 50 million dollars for the quarter the final result as I mentioned was 36 million it could you just comment on what contributed to those losses sure sure thanks Joe the the 36 million as you said was a bit of a moving target over the course of the fourth quarter the largest components of the 36 million where we expect to end the year the biggest piece was loss of estimated room and board revenue for the fourth quarter because we didn't have undergraduate students obviously living in the dorms for the fourth quarter so that was about 15 million almost half of the 36 million the rest of the revenue losses were from a variety of different places the second largest was the combination of the professional schools where we estimate a shortfall of about 7 million dollars and that's a combination of room and board revenue at at the Tuck school some research revenue losses and some philanthropy shortfalls at the professional schools the rest of it is really a variety of things including investment income including some other research revenue including athletics the Hanover in as you know the spring term here is very busy and there are a lot of activities that that didn't generate the kinds of revenue that they normally would the change over the the reason it was a moving target the two biggest contributors to the change were the Dartmouth College Fund as you mentioned the volunteers and and the advancement staff really really worked miracles in terms of bringing in that in close to expectation for the full year and then the investment markets cooperated we were looking at negative returns as we were estimating that 50 million dollar-plus loss and then we've come with slightly positive returns for the year so so that's those are the largest components of that 36 so so thank you Mike that details really helpful for me and for the community and we asked as I mentioned the community to take steps to mitigate those losses significantly by reducing non-compensation spending but could you just take a minute to comment on the positive actions in q4 of FY 20 that the community came together to support and how those enabled us to close the year with balanced budgets sure it's it's another great opportunity to pass along kudos to so many people for controlling expenses as well in every division Joe you know it's interesting to know you mentioned that the 36 million dollars as it relates to our full billion dollar budget what's even more dramatic is to think of it as 36 million dollars that we were trying to cover in one quarter so when you look at it as one quarter it's actually more than 10 percent of that quarter so it's even more significant but every every division contributed to saving non-compensation expenses so what does that include it includes the widest variety of things that you could imagine it's everything from travel to events to professional services to consulting to equipment purchases that might happen at your end everything that goes into running this really busy place during the spring term the other things that were put in place were the hiring freeze which didn't contribute a lot in fiscal 2010 but that we hope will help in fiscal 21 and then those central reserves that's filling the gap of the rest of it we think that the non-compensation spent savings will cover more than half of that 36 million and that the central reserves that you pointed to that we established under President Hanlon since he arrived will cover the rest of it so that will be a really important factor in closing the gap for fiscal 20 Mike's so since I've got you and we're on financial questions let me just ask you to take a quick look ahead in FY 21 and so what are the the current projections what are the major can - co vid related protected operating losses and how does the budget look right now I touched on the measures that we're asking the community to take including divisional reductions in spending but perhaps you can provide us just a little bit more detail of how that will play out sure sure so our our estimates are in the range of a hundred million dollars a little bit less than a hundred million dollars but and we are estimating shortfalls in all of those revenue sources that I described earlier the biggest one again is room and board which were estimating to have a shortfall of about thirty two million dollars so it's not as easy as taking the 15 million from the spring term and multiplying it by four because you know we are expecting over the course of fiscal 21 that we will have half of the students in residence so that's why it ends up being 32 million of losses during fiscal 21 lost revenue during fiscal 21 the other revenue shortfalls as I as I mentioned are comparable to the spring term around research some of the auxiliaries like Diane over in Annual Giving and investment income we're being cautious about what we're assuming for investment income for the year ahead it's just the markets have been so volatile it's hard to predict that we will remain on budget the other things that are a little different because the the summer term that we're in right now is part of fiscal 21 not fiscal 20 so we also have revenue shortfalls from the summer camps and from executive education programs the other thing that we're estimating for fiscal 21 is about 15 million dollars of costs related to to testing health management personal protective equipment and also some a couple million dollars for technology in the classroom so about 11 million dollars for all kinds of testing and other health management kinds of costs that we don't have exactly pinned down yet but that's our estimate for right now when we think about how that will be reconciled Joe it is a combination again of compensation savings and the rebuilding efforts that are happening across campus that you alluded to earlier and again using those central reserves to to cover what's not going to be able to be covered from the divisions and from the salary freeze let's not forget that that's about fifteen million dollars of expense that will be avoided in in the budget for fiscal 21 so thanks Mike so let me just ask you one related question and then I want to turn it Josh in and Lisa we know that all universities are struggling with financial challenges some particularly those who own their health care system their hospital system are facing vastly greater financial operating losses for projected for FY 21 what do you what are you from your peers with what are other institutions doing to address this and what do we learn from them yeah the stresses are very comparable which isn't surprising you know our revenue mix is pretty balanced some of our peers are much more reliant on endowment income so the investment markets coming back are really really important for all of us but especially those that are even more endowment dependent than we are there are some that have even more significant operations around room and board so them having students on campus or not on campus is really important the other area that I've heard is a big stressor are those schools that have really significant net revenue contributions from athletics and those schools in addition to the clinical revenues that you mentioned those schools are seeing really large decreases in revenues expected in terms of the tactics that they're taking I would say it's very comparable to what we're talking about trying to slow down on compensation spending rebooting in the divisions hiring freezes salary freezes those are those are sort of the toolkit but the one other item that we have seen that we are not doing is a pause or an actual cancellation in retirement contribution for the for fiscal 21 some schools have gone to that and we're not doing that so that's one that's a little bit different thanks Mike and and on that point as you know I was actually quite pleased the way different groups on the community came together to weigh when we'd surfaced the possibility of thinking about this and we had really thoughtful conversations from faculty leaders from staff leaders from the Budget Committee and others that helped shape ultimately the decision to not go down that path it was an extraordinary demonstration of the Dartmouth community coming together around a shared challenge and leading to a very productive outcome and to say the great thank you Mike so at least I'd like to turn to you next in and talk a bit about the progression of the disease before we turn to some Dartmouth specific questions you're as I said at the outset and infectious disease specialist and and I wanted to start by asking you a question about national trends so as I mentioned briefly we've actually seen an inflection point in the daily Cove at 19 new case count happened about a month ago we had been running at about 20,000 new cases per day and suddenly on June 16th or 17th depending upon where you put the inflection point through eyes began fairly steeply we passed into month over the 70,000 new case per day threshold and in fact the slope of the curve the increase in the rate of new cases per day over the course of mid-june to mid to low looks almost identical to what it was in March at the beginning of the pandemic so what's driving this and how does it inform your planning about steps that we need to be taking at Dartmouth is in some ways related to the question that Justin relates to me earlier how are we thinking about the progression of the disease as we planned sure well let me say like you and and clearly our viewers today I am following this data very closely and have concern and sadness over what many communities and my health care colleagues in those communities are experiencing as we watch the rampant spread and kovat in these new hotspots across the country unfortunately that some are low in cases that many of us were hoping to see it just didn't happen now this is a multifactorial situation there are many drivers to these change of events but I think it's probably what we're seeing is most likely related to the lifting of lockdown restrictions too early including in states that did not meet federal guidelines for reopening but did so anyway some isolated outbreaks in those communities that could not be contained swiftly limited adherence to the individual public health measures and the fact that all communities where there had been previously little spread these are largely susceptible populations so there's probably no need to remind us but it really I think should be restated that this is what exponential growth of an epidemic looks like and it is always harder to play catch-up once one controlled spread starts so in terms of how the national situation is affecting our planning at Dartmouth well as you've said and and as you know from our conversations we are looking at this and on a weekly basis trying to figure out where what we need to do with our planning process and as you said it's you know six weeks away we are but we will continue we on an incremental level be looking at what our plans are and seeing if they remain realistic and feasible and we'll do the best to promote health and safety for our communities both our students employees and the local community but one concrete example I can give of how this national data has really affected our planning is that we now we are now carefully considering and actively exploring options for pre arrival screening and testing of our undergraduate students let me emphasize that any pre arrival testing that would be done would be arranged in an equitable manner to ensure access to all of our students and the results could be guaranteed and a useful turnaround time any testing sites now are experiencing significant delays and releasing results and so that's an important consideration for us and this would all be in addition to our post arrival testing and quarantine practices which I'm also happy to talk about but if I can end on a positive note I will say that happy to report that Hanover Grafton County and the states of New Hampshire Vermont continue to have very few cases with currently only seven active cases in all of Grafton County and currently none in Hanover that's great Lisa say so thank you so maybe I let me ask you one quick follow-up question and then I'll turn to Josh for an operational question or two before we open it up to the the audience and you've touched on this and I did as well my remarks but our current plans call for a 14 day quarantine on arrival for most students we're talking about and you've just mentioned potentially pre-arrival testing certainly testing at least twice within the first first seven days so putting that all together why is that important yeah okay there's a lot to unpack in there but let me see if I can take us all through it so that initial 14 day quarantine period combined with the rigorous testing protocol is important because we know that the virus's incubation period period from the time of exposure to development of symptoms ranges from 2 to 14 days so currently both CDC and state guidance recommend a 14 day quarantine period after possible exposure or travel to make sure that no one develops those symptoms on the outer on that outer time limit and we know that people will be traveling to campus from all over the country and some internationally to start fall terms so we have to be especially vigilant in those first 14 days let me add to just a word about the the quarantine period for that initial 14 days as dean Catherine Lively shared with the undergraduate students recently at the moment quarantine means that you remain in your room meals will be delivered and you engage with faculty and classmates virtually and we know I know this sounds extremely stringent and we will continue to reassess and if we can create circumstances to responsibly allow people be out of their room in our beautiful outdoors we will do so but everyone has to be prepared for the possibility of a strict 14 day interim quarantine if that is deemed necessary so I know more information is going to be coming up about student arrival details so I'll leave it that piece there but let me just now move quickly to testing testing is another important and powerful tool so what testing allows us to do is to detect individuals at a single point in time with pre symptomatic or asymptomatic disease and those who could be contagious without knowing it and it's really this pre symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission that is the viruses competitive advantage and it's our curse for this if only those with Frank overt symptoms were the ones who could transmit it much easier to control this pandemic and frankly we would be in a very different place than where we are today but the latest data indicate that as many as 40% of cases may be asymptomatic and that the viral load may be highest in the earliest earliest days of infection when people may be in that pre-symptomatic period so testing upon arrival and at day seven will help us detect pre and asymptomatic disease that was either contracted in the immediate timeframe right before during or after travel to campus so again really important that we have that rigorous testing protocol initially in place it's really helpful clarification and let me just say perhaps to summarize at a high level including for our community to me as a scientist you very nicely outlined the incredible challenge of trying to figure out how to manage the disease and it stresses the importance of our being very careful at the outset and doing all that we can when students first arrive as we work through that 14-day period to open up the campus as much as possible for the balance of the term and so what we're effectively asking the campus to partner with us in doing is understand the importance of taking careful measures at the very beginning to maximize the possibility that we have a successful 10 weeks beyond those first two and that's the challenge that we're trying to to weigh that's the balance we're trying to strike and this is why partnering with the student advisory group in part is going to be extraordinarily important so thank you Lisa Josh I I wanted to ask you about Dining Services about staff returning to work and of course the question that's on every student's mind the progress of the return of belongings but given that we're short on time I'm simply gonna ask you an easy question what questions what are the immediate near-term issues that the task force needs to address what challenging topics are top of mind I mean it's a lot of the things connected to at least I was just talking about so we're trying to figure out how do we set tents up so that we can perform testing how do we change the way that our buildings are laid out whether it's a library but Jim call us dining halls other spaces so that they have the kind of physical changes or policies or tracking devices whatever we may need in those spaces so that we can welcome students back so the task force is it's really taking all of the health guidance we're getting from Lisa and figuring out how do we deploy it on our on our campus and you know it's you think about Dartmouth who've been around hundreds of years and the systems and processes we have in place have been developed over decades and there are a lot of things that just kind of happened because they've always happened and now we're having to reinvent them in the matter of weeks so lots of work to figure out how do we do things in this compare today yeah well I appreciate the work that you your colleagues and the Task Force are doing because certainly the understatement of the year is that none of this is simple or straightforward so we have about six or seven minutes left and I want to make sure we have a chance to take questions from the outside so we'll turn it to Justin who will put questions your way Justin thanks a lot Joe and I'm gonna start with Lisa if you don't mind Lisa as I mentioned earlier a lot of questions about about quarantine and I'm actually just gonna read one because I think this sort of touches on a lot of what I'm seeing this person writes in as a parent I'd like to submit the question about concern for quarantine on the mental health of new freshmen if they already test negative why do they need to sell quarantine when the risk with a negative test is negligible so that that's the question I want to put to you but then just I want to just add one more component which is about quarantine indoors um several people have written in isn't it much much safer to be out of doors and what's the point of having to stay inside for 14 days when the chances are it's probably safer to simply be outside so all great questions and I appreciate your passing those on so if I can talk about the testing one first so a test only tells us about that moment in time if someone is still incubating the virus and they could take up to two days before after someone's been infected for a test to turn positive that's what we could be missing okay so that's why we have this very strict protocol of repeated testing to make sure that we are not missing someone who tested negative because they were still incubating but we're going to catch them with that that follow-on test the the test that happens when they are if we do pre-arrival testing that would happen when they're at home would really capture where they are starting from at that point and make sure that nobody who is test positive travels and arrives on campus but the testing efforts it really does take - does take testing over a period of time for us to be able to say with confidence that nobody has disease and it really just has to do with the limitations of our testing ability and the way and the incubation of the period of the of the virus so that's why we are being extremely careful with our testing period and I in terms of being indoors outdoors yes I agree that there is we know that outdoor exposure if you're going to be in contact with others is better than being having an indoor exposure with others but of course being in a room with the door closed is means you're not in contact with others limited contact if you're going out to to use bathroom facilities that's what we are weighing right now and if we are going to allow people to go outdoors just how do we do it safely so there's just a lot of thinking and planning has to that has to go into that but I absolutely appreciate and understand the concerns and and share some of them so that's why we are going to work really hard to see what we can do safely to get people outdoors Mike if I if I could turn to you a question about the budgets for the current year and I know I know as you do your work regarding the budget there's a lot of assumptions that are sort of baked in to your to your planning and a questioner asks what will happen if the pandemic prevents students from returning at all you know should that happen should we expect additional budget cuts and and challenges and sacrifice from the community thanks Justin you know you're right the the models that we've done so far are based on the hybrid method for the whole year so if there were no students on campus for the whole year for one term there would be additional losses for the year and we would have to look at you know what expense savings could be reasonably saved I think we would go back to some of the same tools where could we save on expenses and we know that there are back stops with our central reserves so I think we would have to continue to look at the range of tools that we have and see where expense savings make sense and where reserves need to be the backstop because that's what they're there for Josh I'm gonna I'm gonna go over to you and Joe let you off the hook a little bit I however am NOT going to do that I want to hear about the belongings this is the one issue that comes up week after week after week so it would be great if you could provide an update for our viewers on the status of the belongings and and getting them returned to students thanks Justin yeah and this is one that I get a lot of emails about as well so as of today we have packed 98 percent of the the student belongings so we are at the very end of the packing phase reminder that there are a couple of phases to this so after it's packed we then have to either ship or have students come pick it up or put it into storage and so we've really started focusing our attention on the the shipping component of it we've added two additional teams some of those teams that were packing are now focused on shipping students at this point that opted for the option to come to campus to pick up their belongings everyone should have been contacted by now about options so that's gonna run through August 14th and then those students that put that opt in to have their students put into controlled storage will be able to use the controlled storage process to access their belongings if they're returning in in the fall so we're picking away at it and making good progress and really driving towards having this wrapped up by the middle of August thank you for that Josh Dyne I know that that response will will hopefully satisfy folks who have been asking although I'm sure you'll continue to get emails and will continue to be asked this question so when you come back perhaps perhaps in a future episode you can give us a final update as much as everyone those people who haven't had their stuff back just like you I am really hoping to get to that point where we say we are done with this we are spending a lot of time and again this is one of those things that we we don't normally do and so we're moving as quickly as we can for sure um thank you for that Josh thank you very much for for all of your your hard work and thank you Lisa and Mike for for joining us unfortunately that's really all that we have time for today this could go on and on but there will be there will be another episode of community conversations in in two weeks Joe and I will be back but for now I'm gonna I'm gonna toss it back to Joe Joe Thank You Justin and let me add my thanks to Lisa and Josh for being frequent guests and contributing today providing your insight and leadership of the taskforce and Mike for joining us with what I hope was extraordinarily helpful budget detail for the community to have a sense of the challenge we faced and the challenge we successfully addressed in FY 2008 how we're working through FY 21 in the similar fashion we will be back in two weeks as Justin indicated on August 5th for the next edition of community conversations and there will be a lot for us to discuss and pride update provide updates on at that point in time student term assignments course selection testing and quarantine we hope to be able to say something more specific certainly on the testing front if not the quarantine front questions about campus access and continuing discussion in the budget as well as a range of other issues that we are all working through so thank you all once again for your engagement in your interest thank you to every member of the Dartmouth community who has been as I've said so many times such an important contributor doing inspiring work to help enable the return of students to campus and to help support the teaching learning and research activity of our students it's a privilege for me and for all of us to be working with you be well and be safe everyone and we look forward to seeing you on August 5th take care

Channel: Dartmouth

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Id: 1QOeFAIP2Xc

Length: 64min 17sec (3857 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020