Community Conversations with Provost Joseph Helble: Mar. 31

good afternoon everyone and welcome to our 25th community conversation addressing planning response and operations in the time of covet 19. i'm joe helbley the provost of dartmouth college joining you from the star instructional studio in berry library on a warm wednesday afternoon march 31st 2021 i'm joined as always by justin anderson our vice president for communications from another studio on campus and justin and i are joined today by the two senior leaders of our institution phil hanlon a member of the dartmouth class of 1977 a professor of mathematics and since june 2013 the 18th president of dartmouth college and also by laurel j richie a member of the dartmouth class of 1981 a leadership consultant with american company and since june 2017 the chair of dartmouth's board of trustees we'll follow a regular format today with a brief campus update live q a moderated by justin a conversation with president hanlon and chair richie about the past year and then building from that where we are heading in the upcoming year and then ending with an opportunity for them to answer your questions directly today i'll provide our regular update on testing and case counts provide a few vaccination updates and then end with some news and updates on spring term which got underway for most of the campus this week including some additional details related to plans for commencement two weeks ago when we last gathered we were about to head into a brief spring break for much of the campus i reported at that time that we had seen a decrease in positive tests over the prior week and at that time we had conducted nearly 149 000 tests with an overall positivity of 0.2 percent over the past two weeks as we approached and then began spring term for our undergraduate students and as testing returned to leverone field house we have conducted an additional 16 000 tests and had 43 positives in that period for a positivity of 0.27 percent leaving our overall positivity since the july 2020 beginning of testing at 0.22 percent i just want to pause and note the impressive magnitude of the testing operation that's been underway since july of last summer and thank all of those who've been involved in making this possible for those of you who may remember some of our earlier conversations in community conversations last summer we were in the early stages of putting in place a comprehensive surveillance testing plan at a time when much of the public health debate centered around the question of whether or not surveillance testing could be helpful in protecting and supporting community health i think from dartmouth's perspective it's clear that the comprehensive testing regime that's been in place since last summer has done a tremendous job in helping us support and protect the health and safety of our community and i'll say again i'm extraordinarily proud of how well it's been conducted by and large and in the remarkably low positivity rate we've remained at since that time now we have seen a slight increase over the past two weeks and this slight increase over this two-week period is reflective of the transition that we saw at the start of winter term earlier this year but based on trends the past two days we anticipate that we will see a similar return to very low positivity values over the next several days now we all know that past is not prologue that past performance is not a guarantee we saw late in winter term what happens if we are not careful even for a moment so again i will remind all members of our community that we need you to stay masked stay socially distant and avoid large gatherings none of that has changed with warmer weather and members of our community starting to be vaccinated i know there will be a strong temptation to let down our guard but for the protection of ourselves as individuals and for the community we cannot we've all read the news of the variants we know they're present in this country and they are spreading and we know that we don't know whether all vaccines are equally and fully protective against all variants or whether prior infection with one strain provides full protection against others simply put we do not know the risk to other members of the community for us to navigate spring term successfully for us to have a successful commencement celebration for our graduating students undergraduate and graduate alike and for us to transition quickly and smoothly to a summer where we hope to support even more in-person activity we need to continue to take these three simple steps masking hand washing and socially distancing gatherings including no large gatherings simple steps and small steps that public health officials have told us and shown us over and over again make a tremendous difference in the health of a community in terms of trends on other college campuses these past two weeks for our ivy peers reporting data for the year 2021 all lie between 0.17 and 0.80 positivity two weeks ago that range was 0.12 to 1.0 percent our overall level of 0.30 percent for 2021 is therefore well within the range of these iv peers our nesgap peers are currently reporting positivity ranges from 0.08 to 0.21 for calendar 2021 a slight increase from the range they were reporting two weeks ago and our local state university peers uvm and unh are at 0.32 and 0.70 for 2021 respectively slight increases from where they were two weeks ago again similar to many of our peers i cannot say enough these increases at so many of our peer institutions over the past two weeks as the weather has gotten warmer are reminders that once again and i will say this over and over again because it is so fundamental and so important we cannot let down our guard we do know that these past several days as undergraduate students return to campus and as classes got underway lines at the testing center got long at certain points in the day we're fixing this by working with our partner axiom to add staff to manage the ebbs and flows of student testing needs being tied much more closely to the class time schedule i ask that you please bear with us we know it can be frustrating to experience this after having come to rely on testing running so smoothly as it did fall and winter term quite simply we're on it please note that we'll begin pairing pcr with antigen testing beginning next week on thursday friday and saturday for students and for employees later in the term let me turn now from testing to vaccination first as our task force co-chairs josh keniston and dr lisa adams announced to the community on friday march 19th dartmouth partnered with the state of new hampshire to help facilitate scheduling vaccinations for some of our new hampshire resident employees at the former j.c penney in west lebanon this partnership didn't change any parameters around vaccine eligibility but it did provide convenient and simple scheduling for eligible employees in the state's 2a or 2b vaccination categories or in any earlier categories phase 2a was for staff in k-12 educational environments licensed child care facilities and licensed youth camps phase 2b is open to all individuals between 50 and 64 years of age this partnership has worked extraordinarily well by the end of tomorrow we will have vaccinated close to 550 employees eligible by new hampshire state criteria at the state-run jcpenney site through our pod and scheduling partnership with the state i've been asked by many whether this partnership will continue and at the present time the answer is simply we're exploring it but we do not know whether it will be continued beyond today other than providing for second doses for those individuals requiring them and already vaccinated through this partnership but we also do not know the continuation of this partnership will be required as many of you saw in last friday's cova task force email from our co-chairs new hampshire in vermont will open up covet 19 vaccination appointments to all state residents 16 years and older on april 2nd in new hampshire and april 19th in vermont over the past week most who have worked directly with the new hampshire and vermont scheduling systems have found that they've been able to get appointments within days that was my own experience as well we therefore encourage all members of our community particularly our employees and any eligible students who are residents of vermont and new hampshire to explore getting vaccinations through the states even as we continue to explore continuation of the partnership that's been in place for phase 2a and phase 2b eligible individuals in new hampshire these past two weeks we know that beyond what i've just mentioned some of you still have questions regarding when and where you may receive a vaccination and in particular we've gotten many questions from parents and students asking what steps are being taken to help students get vaccinated to all of you who are asking these questions please know that we at dartmouth continue to explore all avenues we can to help the dartmouth community including the dartmouth student community get vaccinated decisions on vaccine eligibility for out-of-state students are made on a state-by-state basis as is the case with most aspects of vaccine distribution and administration as more vaccine has become available and given the federal government's recently announced intention to further accelerate the deployment of vaccine with a goal of 200 million vaccinations administered by the end of april many states over just the past week have indicated that they will allow all students including out-of-state students to be vaccinated more than 20 states in fact have indicated that out-of-state students will be eligible either through announcements from the universities themselves or from public information from their equivalent of a department of health and human services in addition to these 20 another 24 states have made statements strongly suggestive of allowing out-of-state student vaccination recognizing it's in the interest of the public health of their communities so i anticipate that most if not all of these will also allow students to be vaccinated i was therefore surprised last week to see new hampshire become one of only two states in the country to announce that out-of-state students would not be eligible at this time and that they should risk travel to return home for vaccination particularly as i said as at least 20 other states and likely more than 40 are willing to vaccinate students hailing from new hampshire dartmouth along with other groups such as the new hampshire college and university council have reached out to the governor's office for discussions around a time frame for eligibility for out-of-state students particularly to ask whether the recent announcements of an expected increase in vaccine supply might make it possible for students studying in new hampshire to be eligible soon enabling them to receive both doses of a two-dose vaccine early enough to develop full immunity before needing to travel across new hampshire and then home at the end of the term in terms of spring term itself with undergraduate guarani and thayer classes underway this week and graduate research and tuck and geisel classes and rotations continuing and with the weather improving to our students i look forward to seeing more of you as always masked and socially distanced but out and about on campus there have been questions about opportunities for outdoor events this term including green key a college tradition and a hallmark of our new england spring the opportunity to be outdoors and spend time with one another around live music barbecues and socials is so important to so many in this community after a long winter but unfortunately and sadly it does not fit with our covid guidelines but our colleagues and student affairs will be working with students to identify social opportunities we can support this year we do hope to have many of the components in place but unfortunately green key as a date simply won't be possible under pandemic operating conditions this spring however as i have announced previously following on the high levels of participation in our outdoor winter term activities similar plans are in place for spring including tents for outdoor socially distance gatherings a nine-hole disc golf course electronic assist bicycles boat rentals at leadyard guided hiking and many more with some of these activities expected to begin opening as early as next week finally before i conclude let me turn to the celebration that traditionally marks the true end of spring term that is commencement for those of you who will not be heading home immediately as soon as spring term exams end and by that i mean our graduating seniors as well as those graduate and professional school students whose studies are coming to a close let me offer some additional information on our plans with the in-person student-only ceremony announced previously now confirmed to be taking place on sunday june 13th at 11 a.m this ceremony for all graduating undergraduates and graduate and professional students will be held on memorial field rather than on the green to help support the flow of those entering and exiting the football stadium and to help support doing so in a way that is consistent with policies supportive of community health that we anticipate being in force at that time graduates families and friends will be able to view the ceremonies online only the graduates and an as yet undetermined number of faculty and senior administrators will be allowed at the in-person ceremony due to health and cove health and safety precautions associated with covet 19 again that we anticipate remaining in place at that time information on how to live stream all of the events will be available in may on the dartmouth commencement website dartmouth.edu forward slash commence in addition i'm pleased to confirm that also scheduled are the tuck school of business investiture 11 am on friday june 11th at memorial field the dartmouth institute for health policy and clinical practice ceremony 2 pm june 11 memorial field thayer school of engineering investiture ceremony 12 noon saturday june 12th memorial field the guarini school of graduate advanced studies investiture 3 pm saturday june 12th live stream only and the geisel school of medicine class day sometime earlier in the spring with details to be finalized and to be announced by the geisel school in the coming weeks now most of the undergraduate members of the class of 2021 are expected to be in residence on campus for spring term and will be tested twice weekly for covet 19. this continued commitment to regular surveillance testing is essential to both dartmouth and to the local authorities in permitting these celebratory events to occur graduating students who are studying away from campus will be allowed to attend the ceremony virtually or if they choose in person provided that they meet testing and quarantine requirements prior to their participation if they choose the in-person option again more details will be posted on the dartmouth commencement website in the coming weeks so with that let me bring our remarks today to a close by saying the obvious it's been a year of pandemic operations it's been a year of restrictions on our movements it's been a year of missing friends and family and it hasn't gotten any easier in many ways the past month we have seen just how much harder it can become but i remain so encouraged by how far we have come and i truly would like to hear from you your suggestions through the spring term suggestions email address on steps we can take and things we can do that are coveted safe to help make navigation of these last few months as positive as possible as we all look ahead to our anticipated return to a fully residential fall term just down the road thank you everyone for your engagement for your hard work and for being such positive members of this community justin over to you uh thank you joe and as always uh nice to be with you uh today's see you as well uh today's most popular uh issue i would say is uh it definitely pertains to uh the governor of new hampshire and what he has said about uh vaccinating out-of-state students and you you said excuse me you said what we are doing to try to uh open up access for our out-of-state students to be vaccinated uh here in the meantime a couple of people have asked should students um who are here who might be able to get vaccinated in their home state should they do that or should students who are here um you know call the governor's office to try to persuade uh him to to to loosen up i think people are just looking for a little bit of guidance about given what we know then at the moment then what what should students do who are sort of unable to access vaccinations right thank you justin those are really good questions and so i'll offer my personal advice since it remains very early in the term and this has been such a quickly evolving situation over the course of the past week many of the states that i mentioned that made announcements either directly or through their university partners that they would begin vaccinating college students regardless of their state of residence have made those decisions and determinations in just the past several days to the past week and so we've seen a lot of movement in this regard and as i said we are in touch with the governor's office asking if we can get a better sense of when he feels supply will be adequate to bring out-of-state students into the fold and so for that reason for the next week or two i would actually strongly advise students incurring the risk associated with travel by seeking an exemption to our travel policy requesting to travel home to get the vaccine once you do that you're committed to returning home to get the second dose please give it a week or two to enable us to continue these conversations and see if we can reach a point where it will be possible within the state of new hampshire if it looks as if we're not making progress on that front then we need to think about the pros and cons of students traveling and the risk that incurs versus availability of vaccine in other states but having said that i'm i'm going to remain cautiously optimistic that given the broad range of states that have made the decision to vaccinate out of state students including students who hail from new hampshire i'm i'm going to be optimistic that we can soon reach a point where we'll be confident in the vaccine supply in new hampshire sufficiently such that we can allow our students to get vaccinated here so the bottom line and the short answer is sit tight for another week or two and let us continue to have these conversations uh joe another question i think sort of is is premised on on that that optimism that you just expressed um that i share um uh the questioner asks whether or not when everyone is vaccinated or i guess everyone who wants to be vaccinated and has access to vaccine gets the vaccine will that necessarily lead to a new set of protocols in other words once we're all vaccinated do the rules change right i expect so so by fall will rules change yes do i anticipate rules changing over the course of spring term likely not it's not a definite no justin but likely not just because of the rate of progression of vaccination the right the the real question is summer term and so i think they're with so many questions that we've had to address over the course the past year right rather than speculate i'd say let's be data driven let's see where we are two weeks four weeks six weeks from now and that will enable us to make a determination as to whether we can become more flexible in terms of uh policies and procedures over the course of the summer term certainly once we reach the point where the vast majority of the community is vaccinated we can anticipate relaxing several of the restrictions and that doesn't have to be tied necessarily to the start of fall term uh so i i think that you may have just answered this question but i'm just going to put a finer point on it because a lot of people are asking about will there be changes in the summer because of x you know basically you know can we say now uh you know what summer will look like given what we think the progression will be um will there be classes uh uh in person this summer will there be trips at the end of the summer for uh for the for the in incoming classes does what you just said pretty much apply that we're going to just have to we're going to have to wait until we get closer and have more data in order to make an informed decision so yes we need to wait until we have more data to make an informed decision but i think justin i can sketch out a continuum with a a fair amount of confidence in things evolving in this way spring term we are largely going to be operating a current according to current protocols things may change late in the term but that's what i anticipate based on rate of vaccination progression and also case counts locally and across the country fall term we anticipate being fully residential open and operational masking will likely still be required but i'm expecting full campus occupancy full density classes and labs being offered in person so what does that mean in terms of summer summer is what i've referred to as a period of transition and so we need to see where we are early in the summer to make a decision as to how quickly we can begin to relax certain of our our restrictions but with faculty and staff being in an age group where vaccination is preceding a pace and will continue through april and may i'm fairly confident that we'll be in a position to be able to offer more in-person experiences which means fully in person classes or classes with in-person elements over the course of the summer not the full curriculum but i am hopeful that it will be substantially more than we've been able to offer through winter and spring term in summer we are going to continue to give faculty choice in mode of delivery but several faculty members anecdotally have said over the past two weeks feeling a sense of optimism now that they have received their first dose of the vaccine and asking questions about what it would take to be able to teach in person this summer so those are all positive trends in terms of the events that take place in august in early september as we move towards the start of the fall term so the first year student enrichment program ficep orientation or trips we are working hard to put in place elements that would be in-person elements associated with these trips does that mean trips will happen exactly as they have in the past well maybe we need to think about the moose lock lodge elements of it a little bit differently depending upon where we are at that point in time but the teams who are working on this are engaged in planning that assumes that many elements of these traditions and of these important arrival events will in fact be in person in the fall so there too i'm optimistic uh joe let's we have time for one more question and let's let's stay uh let's stay with the fall um because this is a question that has come in a couple of times and it has come in in the past is um when will um i guess it's when will fall housing be uh be uh open for selection and will it be sort of back to normal given what you have said about the expectation of fall being really the the return we are anticipating that all students will be vaccinated other than those who are exempt for medical or religious reasons we therefore anticipate that fall housing will be back to normal when will we make a final decision on allocation of housing that's a question actually i i can't answer justin that's a question best put to the student affairs team and the dean of the college catherine lively but i also know that no final decisions have been made there that's something they're still discussing and are working through and will be working through over the course of the next i would say four to eight weeks as we prepare for fall term uh opening so more to follow around fall term and fall term planning but things are definitely moving in a direction towards expectations of vaccination across the board and therefore fully residential fully densified residential housing operation and i i'll just say as a side note i can't tell you how good it makes me feel to be able to utter those words after a year of managing our way through and discussing some of the challenging restrictions we've had to put in place that are hard for so many i am truly looking forward to welcoming everyone back this fall so with that let me turn to two other people who i know are very much looking forward to a return to normal operations and having students back in full force on campus this fall graduate and undergraduate alike chair of the board of trustees laurel richie and professor of mathematics and president of dartmouth college phil hanlon laurel phil great to see you and thanks so much for joining us today absolutely joe thank you thanks for having me wonderful always to to have the two of you so let me start by i'm going to ask each of you just a few questions and i'm going to make sure we allow pretty plenty of time to open it to our audience and give them a chance to ask you questions directly i actually want to change topics a little bit phil starting with you and touch on something we've discussed in prior community conversations but i didn't address at all today in my remarks saving them for you and and those are questions about budget and uh before i get into some of the more specific questions i'd just like to ask you about some of the changes that have been made in the way dartmouth manages its institutional budget that have in fact turned out to be very important in our weathering the financial impact of coved on our operations this past year i you may not remember but i certainly do our very first conversation sitting in my office when i was dean at the thayer school and you're stressing the importance from the beginning of dartmouth taking steps to broadly address the rapidly increasing cost of higher education and the result of that focus that you brought to this institution and the strong will to get it done is that the rate of tuition growth these past seven years has been the lowest since the 1950s as an example and so let me just ask you about that why did you focus on this as an important first step and how did you think about accomplishing tuition restraint given what we've seen all across higher ed for the past 50 years thanks joe um really important question and uh before i get to it however i do want to thank you especially for your your incredible stewardship of campus operations over the last really tumultuous year or so thank you we all owe you a debt thank you so um as as you point out the high cost of attendance uh it's a challenge for all of higher education um the sticker price uh for cost of attendance has grown it's something like two and a half percent above the rate of inflation for 40 years in a row and the result is that the cost of attendance now at private colleges like dartmouth and the cost for non-residents of public universities in many cases now exceeds the median household income in this country and so clearly this is an unsustainable model let me start by to answer your question talking about why has there been this two and a half percent differential and about one percent of that can be attributed to need-based financial aid and in my mind that's justified um we charge those who can pay a bit more to help out those who can't but that still means that net tuition tuition net of financial aid has risen about one and a half percent faster than inflation and you know what accounts for that in my mind the number one thing that accounts for this that we have changed here at dartmouth is the way we handle innovation and excellence so a great university like dartmouth we must always be at the cutting edge we've got to be pioneering new ways of teaching uh we've got to be doing research at the frontiers of knowledge we need new kinds of facilities to support these activities and we need to make investments to bring outstanding faculty and students to our campus to engage in this work and for these past 40 years higher ed at large has has mostly innovated through addition rather than substitution so what i mean by that is rather than stopping lower priority activities and reallocating those funds to these cool and important new initiatives universities have simply added the new initiative cost to their tuition and cost of attendance and so one upon arrival to get to your question i think one of the most important fundamental things i did was to ask every major unit a major meaning like tuck in the provost area campus services athletics to identify every year one and a half percent of their spend that they were going to stop doing and tell us how they were going to invest those funds in their most compelling new initiatives and i think the result has been what you just recorded robust investment in the academic enterprise and the smallest percent increase in tuition since the 1950s yeah it's you know and phil when you lay it out that way it sounds so logical right and not radical at all but i remember when that was announced and i remember as thayer school dean thinking okay we've been focusing our resources this is going to be a change however in how we approach this because it is formulaic it is one and a half percent every year we need to focus on that it was enough of a story that i remember new hampshire public radio coming to campus to talk to several of us about this how are you going to manage it what do you think it's going to do on your operations and at that time it was a bit of an unknown but i think that the outcome the benefits to families in reduced rates of tuition increase and our ability to focus our resources much more narrowly has been has been huge and so thank you thank you for bringing that fiscal discipline to us so laurel i'd like to turn to you now with a question and more from your perspective of one who has been in leadership positions for much of your career and seen a whole range of operations not just higher ed you advise leaders of major corporations in your current role you've been in those positions yourself you were a commissioner of a major professional sports league help me think about this past year of covin and put it in context so how does this compare to other external pressures you've seen organization was this a walk in the park how does this compare to what you've seen in other areas over the years of your career well definitely not a walk in the park and let me echo phil's appreciation joe for your leadership during this time it has been critical uh to us and and you've done it um with great um energy and focus so thank you for that you know this you know it sounds sort of cliche to say unprecedented but it truly is and when i think about it you know in addition to dartmouth's board i serve on the board of a toy and entertainment company that's run by a dartmouth grad a live entertainment company that's also run by dartmouth grad a child care business and a financial services business so really broad and different businesses and categories and industries and i think what differentiates this moment in time from any other that i've ever seen or three things one the immediacy of it it hit us quickly and we had to turn on a dime in order to respond sort of how pervasive it was you know there wasn't there literally was not a person or country or industry on the planet that wasn't affected by it and then the third thing is the uncertainty so we we hear about the pandemic pandemic it begins to roll out uh and we're we're addressing the immediate needs and challenges but we have no idea how long it's going to last uh and so and and information was coming and going so we were trying to operate under shifting stance and so to me the speed the the prevalence and the uncertainty um have just made this unlike any time i have i've ever seen and even the moments of good news you know hasbro for example you know the toy sales was through the roof right all of a sudden people were going back to monopoly um but to think about how to make sure they could produce enough games they produced them outside of the us to get them to the u.s and then to get them in consumers hands when consumers aren't going into the stores so i just think it's it it's it was and remains unlike anything any of us have ever seen yeah you know that's that's a really interesting point and it's actually relevant even to those of us in higher ed it's you can call them supply chain issues if you like it's really unfair in a higher ed context but when i think about how we suddenly and all of higher ed needed to pivot overnight to remote education and then begin to think about our international students who were in countries literally spanning the entire globe synchronous or asynchronous education how do you foster the discussion sessions that are so central to a dartmouth education what if there's internet censorship in their home country or bandwidth is really weak how do we make the full educational experience available never mind things like engineering and science science labs so was not just sending everyone home to work it was a complete and fundamental disruption of our our business model that uh that made it interesting certainly and and challenging in ways i think none of us could have anticipated a year and a half ago so phil i want to turn back to you now with another budget question and and i want to drill down a little bit more specifically and ask about the endowment when we've had some of these conversations earlier in the year including one or two community conversations that you joined us for or others where rick mills our executive vice president for finance and administration was here we're asked many questions about using the endowment to mitigate operating losses it's pointed out dartmouth has a six billion dollar endowment you're incurring operating losses why don't you just draw on that to address the short term how do you respond to those who ask why we couldn't simply do that to fill holes in the operating budget brought about by covid great well thanks for that uh question joe and uh laurel i am so glad you didn't say this last year has been a walk in the park um so so joe on the endowment question um annual predictable payout from the endowment plays a crucial role in maintaining dartmouth operations so let me let me lay that out in this way at this point dartmouth spends about 1.1 billion dollars each year revenue generated by its activities that is things like tuition room and board sponsored research funding and federal grants they generate about 750 million to cover these expenses and so the remaining 350 million each year comes from about 50 million dollars in the annual fund from generous donors and then 300 million in endowment payout so that that target endowment payout the 300 million that amounts to about five percent of the endowment value and that five percent has been calibrated so that our average investment returns cover that endowment draw plus inflation so put another way even though we're paying out five percent of the endowment value to cover campus operations each year the average investment return is able to cover that payout plus inflation so that the buying power of the endowment holds steady the problem is if we reach into the endowment to cover this year's shortfalls we reduce the payout in subsequent years and so we take away support from future generations and so just to give you a sort of a for instance suppose that we had said in this covet year we were going to pull 100 million out of our endowment to cover the shortfall every year going forward forever we would lose five million dollars a year in our operating budget in inflation-adjusted dollars right and so therefore to maintain the strength of dartmouth over the long term and to be equitable to future generations of dartmouth students faculty and staff we need to deal with current day financial shortfalls through adjustments to our operating budget rather than tapping the endowment right thanks so so phil in that context and if i may let me ask you a follow-up question that's uh i'm sure on the minds of many members of our community so this morning we announced uh through your office the establishment of an infrastructure renewal fund that was approved by the board at the meeting earlier uh this month earlier in march and that's structured a little bit differently in that it's designed to address long-term lack of investment in backbone infrastructure that's needed to make the campus operate and support the academic mission of the institution the teaching and learning and research of our students and faculty and staff community and so how how is that different what what can you tell us about how we think about the creation of this infrastructure renewal fund and why that is an area where it is appropriate to take a supplemental draw from the endowment to address these long-standing uh challenges that we faced budgetarily right thanks joe and um you know just to give uh to make this a little more concrete some of these uh an example of these major infrastructure projects that the infrastructure renewal fund will will cover are things like our power system so changing from our deteriorating seam tunnels to hot water delivery of power and a new power source from for our power plant so um according the argument i just gave this infrastructure renewal fund will in fact impose a cost in future generations through endowment payouts that are lower than they would have been without the irf the infrastructure renewal fund and in my mind this is justified because major infrastructure improvements will benefit the campus on into the future so think about it this way is the irf taps the endowment to help pay for renewal of the campus power system that will result in a marginally lower payout from the endowment to the campus budget 10 years from now and 25 years from now so in other words we are asking the campus 10 years and now in the campus 25 years from now to bear some of the cost of renovating the power system and to me that makes sense because the campus 10 years from now and 25 years from now will directly benefit from the investments we make in modernization of these large infrastructure projects right so so rather than so if i can paraphrase just to make sure i'm understanding what you're saying correctly rather than a draw to address an immediate operating deficit which is arguably taking funds today that do not benefit infrastructure that supported the past and certainly don't benefit students of the future right that is clearly something that doesn't adhere to this principle of intergenerational equity but if we think about problems that have challenges that developed over time over many generations of students are with us today and whose improvement is going to benefit many many generations of students in the future that's exactly the purpose the endowment is designed to support is that fair i think that's fair uh absolutely and that's a nice way to put it and in fact thinking about it a different way it would actually be inappropriate to ask the campus of today to bear the entire cost of renovating a major infrastructure which will benefit future generations to come right right thank you phil thank you so laurel let me turn you with a last question before we open it up uh to our outside audience and turn it over to justin you have been a member of the board for nine years you've been the chair for the past four you've been a chair through a covert year that's one of the most challenging i think clearly that we've ever had to navigate as an institution are there any particular lessons learned that you'd like to pass on either from your time as a board member or your time as chair to your successor as chair that might help us be better prepared short of cr should a crisis of this magnitude or maybe even a slightly smaller crisis find its way uh to us in in the next several years what advice do you have for the new chair well the first thing i would say is um liz lempress will be assumed the role of chair of the board uh in june and um we are as an institution going to be in great great hands so that's one piece i i feel like she's been on the board of um trustees she's been on the advisory board for thayer and she's just going to be wonderful um that said i would i i would offer a couple of thoughts of of things that i think helped us through this crisis um i think first is preparation you know the fact that we had anticipated not a pandemic but we had anticipated um a challenge to our financial model and and having done that work um led by phil and supported by the entire institution uh the hit to us in this year was a little bit less on a financial standpoint because we had anticipated and planned for for an unknown um the second thing that i would say is flexibility um that you know the best laid plans uh you have to be willing to abandon them when new information new data comes in and to be responsive to ever-changing set of circumstances communication is critical so the fact that we stood up these community conversations because we knew that as time rolled on um and we had to maintain that degree of flexibility that communication was going to be really important so um and maybe that's my marketing background i don't know but i think it is impossible to over communicate and to communicate with transparency and with empathy so i think that's important and then the last thing that i would say um is it was i was really both proud of and grateful for the diversity of our board as we head you know as we sort of went into this unprecedented time you know all the data tells us that um diverse teams uh lead to more effective organizations and institutions and i would say that you know the conversations that we had around the table or around the screen um we benefited from the diversity of the board so um preparation flexibility communication and diversity would be uh before things that i would would and have shared with liz great well well thank you laurel so wonderful to have that as guiding principles as we move forward into the era of the next chair and look forward of course to you staying connected and uh engaged in and helping us through in the years ahead so justin why don't i turn it over to you and let's see what questions we're hearing from the outside uh thanks joe and laurel and phil great to see you as always uh laurel i'm gonna i'm gonna stick with you uh because a question uh come it's come in that is sort of um a follow-up to what you just uh said to joe um uh as well as what you said um in an earlier answer you talked about how we um how everybody uh uh when the pandemic struck sort of had to turn on a dime because it was you know such an unprecedented set of circumstances and the world changed overnight so um this questioner asks how how did the board um turn on a dime and what was it like uh to be a member of uh the dartmouth board of trustees um and meet remotely for uh an entire an entire year yeah so i think one of the things that um i have really appreciated is the strength and the power of a strong culture because as we moved from our in-person meetings to remote meetings we know each other we've worked together we've worked with phil and joe and the team and so while we dearly missed the post-meeting gatherings at pine we were able to conduct business in a new format in a new channel because the relationships existed the sort of rules of the road and conduct and requirement for engagement um was there and i i would also say that i think we've learned a lot that there's been an upside to this too it hasn't all been downside right we we've probably met more often as a board um more impromptu meetings more single topic meetings so i think we have been more nimble during this period and i suspect that that's a skill that we've now added to our arsenal that we can carry forward um carry forward when we are able to be back together um phil um if if i could go to you uh for this is kind of a broad question but i think in some ways that that makes it makes it kind of an interesting question and allows you to expand on the subject i'm about to introduce uh somebody asks um what was the greatest uh uh budget-related challenge during covet so what what happened during covid that that tested our or strained our budget um uh in in you know more dramatically than than anything else as you think back on the last year yeah i think it was a good it's a great question um and uh you know there are two sort of stresses that um hit us quickly which you know i think i would i would pick both of them one was on the revenue side so lost revenue is students didn't return to campus didn't pay room and board um but we felt uh we kept on we kept our staffs on um you know during that period and then as even on through the rest of the years the campus was de-densified and there was again less room and board paid there were more students taking gap years so we had a we had our unexpected revenue drop in lines of revenue that we had always expected to be quite predictable you know that's um so that that was one thing um the other was um probably less of a surprise because it happens whenever there's a major recession but that was um increased need for financial aid and we uh we meet the full need of our students and we we're committed to that forever and we'll continue to do that what that means though is that as the broad-based economic collapse hit the country and our dartmouth families suffered a loss of jobs and income it was our obligation to come up with the financial aid to help those students continue to be dartmouth students and uh so those two things i think um both um both were challenges because um they were kind of uh unexpected and out of our control um laurel uh when phil was here last um he was asked uh whether or not he meets with the other uh ivy league presidents or has he been meeting with them during covid um likewise someone wants to know if you uh are in touch with other board chairs uh uh particularly throughout this period and whether or not you know that's been been helpful um as you tried to lead through this um extremely challenging uh last year or so yeah so there's a group of um iv plus chairs who get together and prior to covet i we had an annual meeting in person and we would visit different campuses and sort of sort of come together and and share experiences but also learn something new from each other and we have continued to meet during this time period and uh much like the dartmouth board we have met with much greater frequency as we were all trying to wrap our arms around what was happening how to respond how to convert to remote how to manage the needs of various stakeholders from students to staff to faculty to the broader communities in which we exist lots of discussions on the role of the board versus the role of the administration team in navigating this and making the tough choices so it was really really helpful to be able to to come together and just sort of share our experiences and test out our different different approaches with each other um uh phil if i could go if i could go back to you uh obviously joe confirmed earlier that commencement will happen on june 13th um that uh that begged the predictable question that many people have written in which is who is going to be the speaker um which i know that that that we're not we're not prepared to announce uh but relatedly how do you how do you uh reel in a commencement speaker during a pandemic like how did how do you think about it um uh what what you want uh the students to hear from a commencement speaker at a time like this and then just sort of the logistics of of of making it work so how how was that different uh this year um than than in in past years sort of thinking about that that question which is a big question every year but even more complicated this one yeah and uh let me uh answer it in a couple ways one is um we always want a commencement speaker who will inspire our students um not only with their words but with the example of their lives and uh with the with the commencement speaker and the honorary degree recipients what we seek to do there is actually show our students here are examples of what lives of leadership and impact can look like and so we of course want but very um people who have accomplished uh very significant things um and so it's always hard to get them to campus they're busy they're they're in demand um and so uh this year this year was no different um so i think the other thing to mention on this topic however is that um you know as we looked last year at a virtual commencement um we were able to get sal khan to speak virtually and and that was actually easier than asking him to travel to campus and in the same vein we as a campus have tapped um thought leaders and public intellectuals this year like never before and it's because we've been doing so much of our uh of our teaching and our engagement with the public online and so uh it's it's been one of those positives that came out of this really tumultuous difficult time um well uh we have time for for one more question uh and i'm gonna i'm gonna uh let laurel have that one and um laurel let me just uh say here that uh that i know that your term uh as chair is winding down and uh it's been a great pleasure to work with you so closely and i can't believe that uh there will soon come a time when you are not dartmouth's uh board chair it's gonna be quite a change we've all grown accustomed to your your leadership and your advice and your uh willingness always to uh to jump in and do whatever is asked um so i guess i guess sort of thinking about that i'll uh i'm curious what what you've learned as as board chair over the last four years um that you would like to then sort of convey to us for how we should think about um moving moving forward ah well it it goes without saying that this has been beyond a pleasure it has been an honor and my sister said to me the other night you've done lots of really interesting in your careers but it's very clear to me that nothing has brought you more joy than sharing darkness bored and she is absolutely right it has been just a great gift and an honor and a pleasure and um the highlight of my career and maybe even my life um so what have i learned i've learned that you gotta aim high you know i think of some of the early conversations phil that we had about the call to lead campaign and how ambitious could we be in our aspirations for dartmouth and we aimed high and we aimed high to the point where we were beyond nervous and now i believe that we are going to not only meet but exceed those aspirations so i've learned the power of aiming high i've learned about leaning into your strengths and justin you will have great empathy for this but you know when we were thinking about the branding work and helping people with messaging about dartmouth we set the goal of um wanting to get rid of the apologizing right like why are we describing dartmouth as two hours from boston and five hours from new york city now we are right in the middle of the mountains and the connecticut river and that's exactly where we should be and we're going to be really proud of that and if that's not what you're looking for uh in an experience a learning experience we'll give you the whole list of places to look but if if we are what you want and if you value the outdoors and you find hanover to be magical then we're the place for you um and i think i've learned to embrace change you know particularly in this last year you know i i i often think that if we were taking on the task of thinking about remote learning and what it would look like we probably not just dartmouth but every institution i'm involved with it would have been three different task forces and four different pilots and um a pilot and then an assessment and then a review and an adjustment and it would have been a six six-year process easily and we had to turn on a dime and while we are all looking forward to getting back together i think we've learned that we can respond we can adapt quickly and that maybe the new model that's lurking around the corner maybe there's a lot of merit to it so we will never lose what is so special to dartmouth in our dna but um i just hope that we continue to charge forward and um we'll bring all the good stuff with us but we should keep charging forward uh thank you uh for that laurel charge forward um that sounds good uh joe with with with that um uh i'm gonna say thank you to laurel and thank you for phil and and uh toss it back to you thank you justin and and laurel and phil let me add my thanks to the two of you for your insights remarks comments participation and in particular your leadership this this past year through but throughout your tenure as well now laurel you said and i wrote this down i was struck by it about never underestimating the strength and the power of a strong culture strong culture for me means strong community not perfect but always questioning always striving and always there for one another and that's how i think of this community the dartmouth community that's how i think we have been able to weather this incredibly challenging year so well and it is driven significantly by the example and leadership that the two of you set from the top so thank you for that laurel your term extends for many more months so we're not letting you go yet and we're counting on that phil as always for your leadership and steadfast guidance thank you thanks to everyone for joining us today stay well be healthy enjoy the slow arrival of spring stay masked and socially distanced and we look forward to seeing you again at our next community conversation in two weeks take care

Channel: Dartmouth

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Id: kzEAZJAu6zQ

Length: 61min 40sec (3700 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021