CW: As chair of the Finance Committee, describe the financial challenges of managing an enterprise as complex as Dartmouth.
RC: You're constantly dealing with conflicting priorities. Somebody needs to decide what the most important objectives are—which to spend money on, and which may be less important. That's a significant responsibility. The College, like other organizations, has finite resources. How those resources are deployed is something we talk about constantly.
CW: Is there an issue that's looming, not just for Dartmouth but for all of higher education?
RC: The single biggest issue that higher education folks face is what's happening in the sciences. The physical sciences are going to be increasingly important, particularly the biosciences, and bioscience is extraordinarily expensive. It requires very expensive laboratory space, very sophisticated faculty, and graduate students to assist in the laboratories. The challenge is how to stay competitive in the sciences while expending necessary resources elsewhere in the College.
CW: Has Dartmouth made steps in that direction?
RC: Yes, we clearly have. One of the Board's significant strategic decisions was to proceed with the construction of a life sciences building without a donor identified whose gift would cover most of its cost.
CW: On my Dartmouth application, the last question was "Ask and then answer your own question." How would you respond to that?
RC: My question is: What's wrong with Dartmouth? And my answer is: Nothing. It's a world-class institution. It's extraordinary that little Dartmouth College—with three small graduate schools and a relatively small undergraduate body—is continually ranked as one of the top ten colleges and universities in the country. Could we improve? Of course, and we will. But it is truly a wonderful place, and we should all feel very good about the present position of the institution.
[CW: You've been on the Board since 1999. In that time, what would you describe as its most significant accomplishment?
RC: I think it was the implementation of the Student Life Initiative. That was an initiative that was in progress when I joined the Board and, over the course of about 18 months, the Board reached consensus on what we should be doing to try to improve the quality of student life on campus. I thought it was certainly a very relevant issue for the administration to have teed up and for the Trustees to be focused on.
At the end of the day, I think we came up with a very sound set of principles in terms of what could be done to try to make the campus a more inclusive place that had a broader range of social options and that was somewhat less dependent on the fraternity and sorority organizations.]
[CW: I've heard the expression "creating a marketplace of social options" with respect to the Student Life Initiative. What's the rationale behind that particular phrase?
RC: The basic objective was to create social options so that students would have a number of alternatives from which to choose. Obviously, if they wanted to spend time in fraternities or sororities, that was fine, but if they were looking for another outlet for their time and their energy, we wanted to be able to expose them to other opportunities. The critics of the Student Life Initiative refer to it as social engineering, but I don't think it was that at all. I think it was really opening up an array of alternatives to students that may not have been available to them before.]
[CW: What's the most enjoyable thing about going back to Dartmouth as a Trustee?
RC: It's being able to give back something to the College. The College obviously did a great deal for me when I was a student, in terms of developing my character and my interests. Part of what I enjoy is coming back and being able to participate in the College, and hopefully in a very productive way help Dartmouth maintain the things that made it a very special place for me.]
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