CW: If an alumnus could be a fly on the wall at a Trustees meeting, what would that person see?
JD: A group of very engaged alumni working to support the president and the administration to ensure that the College is strong, both in the short and the long term. [At any given Board meeting, we'll get a variety of updates, but also more importantly a variety of topics that Jim and the administration bring forward and we'll have a robust discussion, whether it's a budget, long term capital plan, or other long term strategy of the College.]
CW: What's the most significant issue you've dealt with during your tenure on the Board?
JD: In my first year we restructured the Board's governance. We reduced the number of standing committees so we could spend more time on issues facing the College and less time on administration. We now have finance, facilities, and governance committees.
We also agreed to take on one or two important topics each year and create a working team of Trustees and College leaders to really focus on them. For instance, one of the more important examples of this was the working team focused on assessing the health of Dartmouth's undergraduate education. Leon Black '73 was the Trustee who led this, working closely with Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Carol Folt. Dean Folt was fabulous—she provided a rigorous, fact-based assessment of the various elements of our undergraduate program. It was clear that the undergraduate education at Dartmouth is quite strong, and the working team laid out a number of steps to ensure that Dartmouth continues to provide the best undergraduate program in the world, well into the future.
Other working teams have focused on alumni relations and communications, and Dartmouth's professional schools and graduate programs. This year, we're focused on Dartmouth's core mission and mission statement. President Wright is leading this effort, and it will result in an updated mission statement for the College.
CW: Would your classmates have described you as a future Trustee?
JD: [Laughter] I'm a big believer in servant leadership. I was president of Aquinas House my senior year, and that was a servant leadership role. In my professional career, I've had a variety of what I would describe as servant leadership roles, so when the opportunity arose to serve Dartmouth by being a Trustee, I viewed it as a huge honor and privilege. It doesn't take long to realize that the students today are having the same kind of special Dartmouth experience that my classmates and I had when we were there. And seeing the passion and commitment of the faculty is inspiring. Every time I'm back in Hanover I long to be a student again!
[CW: What is the appropriate way to represent something as diffuse as the Dartmouth community and how does the Board do that?
JD: If you look where we're spending our time, we're spending more and more of it on what I'd call those very core and fundamental issues in the College, about which all stakeholders across the College should and do care deeply about.
How we represent Dartmouth comes from how we handle the input and feedback and perspectives of a diverse set of stakeholders ranging from student, faculty, alumni, the community in which Dartmouth operates—both the geographic community and then the broader community of higher education. In the alumni body, we meet regularly with alumni groups around the country. There are certainly survey vehicles that the Alumni Council brings forward as does David Spalding '76 (vice president for Alumni Relations). Every time we're on campus, we meet with faculty and students formally and informally. So it's a continuous flow of information and perspective that helps inform us.
The final thing I'll say is that I think an important charge to the Trustees is to both pay attention to the very contemporary issues of the day, but even more importantly, our focus is on the medium to longer term. What is the medium to longer term health of Dartmouth College and how do we ensure that it's strong, not just in the next year, but in the next three to five to ten years—strong in terms of our strategy, strong in terms of our financial underpinnings, strong in terms of the facilities and structures that exist?]
[CW: Can you name an issue on the horizon, for Dartmouth or for all prestigious higher education institutions, that you know you're going to have to grapple with but haven't taken up yet?
JD: One of the most important things is our commitment to provide the absolute best undergraduate education in the world, bar none. I think Dartmouth does that today, and we're committed to ensuring that Dartmouth stays at the very forefront of undergraduate education. The cost of doing that is going up and up and up. Let me give you an example: If you wanted a good undergraduate education when I went to Dartmouth, or when my wife who is an '81 went to Dartmouth, some exposure to computer science was going to be important because computer science in one form or another was going to have a profound impact in our society in the following 10, 20, 30, 40 years. We were blessed at the time with President Kemeny and the Kiewit computer facilities. It allowed all students to have some access, some exposure to computer science. Those who wanted to take more could, but all students had some exposure to computer science.
I think one of the fields that's at a similar place today is life sciences—the intersection of biology, chemistry, and other fields of science that will impact our society—whether it's genetics, biotechnology, or another form. I think we have a responsibility to ensure that liberal arts undergraduates, whether English majors, history majors, or biology majors, have good exposure and good grounding in the life sciences.
The cost of doing that is significant because life sciences require laboratories, often wet laboratories that cost over $2 million each. We've got great faculty, but we have to ensure that we have adequate facilities to meet their needs.
Some of our sister institutions are investing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars doing that with a greater focus towards research and a greater focus towards graduate students. We're not going to try to match that. What we are going to try to do is make sure we have a strong life sciences set of facilities and programs. We have a strong program today, but a strong set of facilities to match that program, so that all undergraduates have these opportunities, requires significant capital. So that's one of the top issues on the docket at the moment.]
[CW: Can you compare and contrast the governance challenges of running a place like Dartmouth, where the stakeholders are diverse, to the challenges of running a modern public company?
JD: A fascinating question. There are similarities and differences. The most fundamental difference is that there is no bottom line in an institution of higher education. So you can't say, "Here are our earnings this year. Here's how we're doing relative to our competition in the bottom line metrics." That's one of the core differences that makes it all the more important that we have the kind of rigorous assessments we have around undergraduate education, the health of our student experience, the health of our alumni body.
Where there are similarities, I think that what we're trying to do is to look out both for the short, medium, and longer term, and that requires a series of tradeoffs along the way.
Whether it's looking at our underlying capital structure, the financial health of the College, the strategy of the institution, those dimensions are quite similar if you were to look at how the Dartmouth Board spends its time compared to the eBay Board.]
[CW: Do you actually buy and sell things on eBay? If so, what was the last thing you bought or sold?
JD: Of course I do! I've sold a car, and just before Christmas I sold all of my old golf clubs and had the proceeds donated to Katrina Relief through eBay's Giving Works program. It's amazing how much someone will pay for a putter that's missed a lot of three foot putts! I also buy lots of things. My most recent purchase was a set of customized winter car mats for my sister's new car.]
[CW: The most interesting question on the Dartmouth application when I applied was the last: "Please ask and answer your own question." Given our conversation, what didn't I ask that you think ought to be asked and answered?
JD: The question would be: What do you enjoy most about being a Trustee? The answer would be: getting to interact with students and with faculty.]
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