Grad News Forum

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on April 12, 2013, elected Dartmouth’s Interim President Carol L. Folt to be its next chancellor. Folt will assume her new role on July 1, succeeding Holden Thorp, who is leaving to become provost of Washington University in St. Louis. Folt will be the first woman to lead UNC-Chapel Hill.

The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth has named Elliott S. Fisher as the director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. An internationally recognized leader in health services research and health policy, Fisher is currently the director for Population Health and Policy at The Dartmouth Institute, as well as the James W. Squire Professor of Medicine and Community and Family Medicine at the Geisel School. He is also co-director of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care.

Read the full story at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice news.

See the Dartmouth Now coverage.

The Graduate Studies Office and I are seeking nominations for a Graduate Alumni Representative to sit on the Dartmouth Alumni Council. Nominees are expected to represent the interests of graduates of Dartmouth’s Graduate Programs, drawing on their own experience as grad students at Dartmouth to guide them in promoting the interests of the programs.

Nominees should be exemplary members of the graduate alumni community who have a real interest in developing and strengthening relationships between students past and present. Founded at the beginning of the 20^th century, the Alumni Council has long served as the major connector between the alumni community and Dartmouth. The council acts as an intermediary between the two institutions, keeping the alumni informed on the developments in Hanover and making sure that Dartmouth is aware of alumni sentiment. The council also nominates alumni candidates to the Board of Trustees and facilitates alumni service.

The newly appointed representative will replace councilmember Allan Weatherwax, ’95 A&S, joining councilmember Melody Brown Burkins in the graduate program delegation. Weatherwax earned a Ph.D. in physics from the College. Brown Burkins studied earth sciences, earning a masters and a Ph.D. Now, she’s the Senior Director of Research & Strategic Initiatives at the University of Vermont. In an interview with the Graduate Forum back in September, Burkins Brown said she was “impressed that the Dartmouth Alumni Council works so diligently to both connect alums back to campus and to truly represent the diversity, range, and breadth of Dartmouth’s alumni community.”

Nominations can be sent to Jane Seibel, Assistant Dean for Graduate Recruiting and Diversity. Please feel free to nominate any graduate alumnus – including yourself – who’s voice would be a positive addition to the conversation happening here at Dartmouth.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Sincerely,

F. Jon Kull

Dean of Graduate Studies

Zach Williams with F. Jon Kull

This week, Michael Mastanduno, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth, announced that Professor of Chemistry F. Jon Kull ’88 has been chosen as the new of dean of Graduate Studies.

I sat down with Dean Kull in his new office this week, to talk about his new position and the graduate programs at Dartmouth:

The Grad Forum (TGF): You run a lab here on campus, in the Chemistry Department, that has exposed you to some graduate students already. What’s the role of graduate students across the Arts and Sciences?

Dean Kull (DK): First and foremost, our students are here getting a great education. But graduate students are also critical to every professor they work with – they help drive faculty research and they keep us moving forward while we manage our other responsibilities. And graduate students across the disciplines help to mentor our undergraduate students. They TA for a wide variety of undergraduate courses and they run review sessions for our students. For undergraduates who might be thinking about an advanced degree, graduate students offer a valuable perspective, which is something that we can build on going forward.

TGF: Graduate students across this campus are getting more and more involved, and are trying to help people understand the importance of the work we do. What are your thoughts on the state of Graduate Studies at Dartmouth?

DK: As Dartmouth grows, the existing graduate programs will grow along with it, and the visibility of our programs will increase too.  Of course, if our faculty are interested in establishing new programs, we can consider those too. But we’ll keep the intimate nature of graduate studies here at Dartmouth – we’re going to find the perfect medium. Having strong graduate programs benefits the entire Dartmouth community – undergrads and graduate students alike. Strengthening our graduate programs is in everyone’s best interest.

I want to make sure graduate students are getting the support they need. I want to continue Dean Pogue’s initiatives, and I want to increase interactivity between our different graduate programs, because they have so much to gain from working with each other. 

TGF: What would you say to undergraduate students out there who are thinking about applying to one of our graduate programs?

DK: Well, the fact that you’ve got world-class research going on inside this fairly small footprint – it’s rare and it’s impressive. There’s a closeness here, both inside individual programs and between programs, and that doesn’t happen everywhere. We have outstanding faculty at Dartmouth and they’re providing our graduate students with great opportunities.

TGF: I know a lot of students are excited to have you as our Dean. Anything you’d like to say to our readers?

DK: I’m really looking forward to getting to know the Dartmouth graduate community better. I’m excited to talk and listen and see what ideas come up. I think it’s a great time to be a graduate student at Dartmouth.

—

We do too. The Graduate Forum extends a warm welcome to Dean Kull. We’re looking forward to his leadership over the next few years! For more information about our new dean, check out Dartmouth Now’s biography that accompanied the official announcement.

by Zach Williams
photo by Kerry Landers

The Graduate Forum would like to extend a warm welcome to the new Dean of the Arts and Sciences Graduate Programs, Professor of Chemistry, Jon Kull, ’88. We’re excited to have Dean Kull working in the Graduate Studies office – stay tuned for our interview with him, which we’ll publish later this week.

For the official announcement, please visit the Dartmouth Now page. Congratulations Dean Kull and welcome!

Brian Pogue (left) and Wesley Whitaker (right)

On Wednesday August 15, 2012, a new faculty member will begin serving as Dartmouth’s Dean of Graduate Studies. The editors of The Graduate Forum would like to take a moment to welcome the new Dean, and also to thank outgoing Dean Brian Pogue  for his four years of service.

“The Deanship at Dartmouth has been an incredibly high honor,” says Brian Pogue. “Now, looking back on the past four years, I know that we have made the right decisions on a number of key issues and have achieved a few important initiatives for the campus. I’ve taken an opportunistic approach to affecting change at Dartmouth in areas that would be receptive to it, and in the end I am happy with that.”

Originally from Ontario, Brian Pogue received his Honors Bachelors and Masters degrees in Physics from York University in Toronto, and was then accepted as a PhD candidate in Medical/Nuclear Physics at McMaster University in Hamilton. While at McMaster, Brian researched the use of optical spectroscopy—a method for examining the properties of a physical object by measuring how it emits and interacts with light—to image breast cancer under the guidance of his doctoral advisor, Michael Patterson, Head of Medical Physics at the regional Cancer Center. To test the optical machines developed in the Patterson lab, Brian examined both the tissue of mice and the properties of “tissue phantoms”— mimicking the physical properties of living tissue and cancerous tumors. In his doctoral dissertation, Frequency-Domain Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging of Tissue and Tissue-Simulating Media, Brian developed a system for imaging living tissue using high-speed optical measurements, to quantify the molecular features of tissues and cancer tumors.

“In a lot of ways, I still feel like a graduate student. I don’t think that I ever really grew up,” says Brian. “As a Director of Dartmouth’s Optics in Medicine Lab, I work with graduate students on a daily basis, and am conducting research on medical optics with professionals at Dartmouth and a number of other research institutions. I agreed to serve as Dean of Graduate Education because I genuinely care about graduate students and believe that graduate research is an integral part of our academic community. I think that the research being conducted by Dartmouth’s graduate students allows the school to advance the creation of new knowledge and leads to innovations in techniques and technologies.  This is the key part of what makes Dartmouth a world-class educational institution.”

Inspired to teach by his parents—Brian’s father was a professor and his mother a teacher—Brian Pogue led an active lifestyle and focused on his research throughout his doctoral career. In fact, it was during his graduate studies that Brian first played team sports.

“At McMaster, I was captain of the department baseball team for a year. I played outfield as a graduate student and had a great time serving as the team’s captain. I think in a lot of ways the exercise and socialization that playing baseball provided helped keep me sane while I did my laboratory studies,” says Brian. “Our team wasn’t particularly good—as long as you could catch a ball, you were in—but it was a great group of people, and we all had a lot of fun. I was responsible for things like collecting equipment and organizing social events.  As a graduate student, you need to have a plan to keep yourself socially involved, and for me, baseball was one of the ways that I stayed active and met new people.”

During his tenure as Dean, he led a number of projects which strengthened the cohesion of Dartmouth’s graduate student body, improved graduate student life, and increased the academic profile of Dartmouth Arts & Science Graduate Programs. A chair of the Graduate Education for the Future Working Group, Dean Pogue compared Dartmouth against a number of its peer institutions—like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Princeton—reviewed each of Dartmouth’s doctoral and masters programs, and authored a vision statement for Graduate Education at Dartmouth with the 27 members of the working group. As part of the review effort, Dean Pogue invited a consortium of Dean’s and former Dean’s from peer institutions to review the school’s graduate programs. The work done by the Working Group was compiled into a document, and submitted as part of the Dartmouth-wide Strategic Planning process, led by interim president Carol Folt, and the Provosts Office, for review. To ensure that the voices of students from all of Dartmouth’s graduate programs were included in the final version of this document, Dean Pogue hosted 2011’s Strategic Planning Open Forum with the Graduate Student Council (GSC).

“For me, Dartmouth Strategic Planning has been an exciting challenge. It’s has been a long time since Dartmouth has compared itself to its peer institutions, I think that Carol Folt has done an outstanding job managing the institution-wide project,” said Dean Pogue. “The nature of academia makes strategic planning difficult for virtually every educational institution, and I really admire the manner in which the Provost’s Office has choreographed the effort. From the feedback solicited through the campus-wide committee work that Carol has orchestrated, Dartmouth’s administration has decided to place a greater emphasis on academics at the school. In the coming years, this will manifest itself in new faculty hires and a modest growth in graduate research.”

In addition to his commitment to Dartmouth Strategic Planning, Dean Pogue has improved the graduate student experience at Dartmouth through increasing stipends, advocating for a permanent graduate student social space, creating the PhD/MBA program with Tuck, and by leading a campaign to improve the web visibility of the school’s graduate programs. With the Graduate Student Council (GSC) and the members of the Graduate Studies Office, Brian has strengthened the connections between current graduate students and alumni from each of its Arts & Sciences Graduate Programs.

“Graduate student life has always been an important issue for me. I think this is because I place so much value on the role of personnel commitment and education in people,” says Brian. “At McMaster, I remember really growing as an individual even outside of my research. One year, I read Kurt Vonnegut’s entire catalogue—from his first book, Player Piano, and ending with his final work, Hocus Pocus. Later, I also read the catalogs of my favorite Canadian authors, Robertson Davies and Margaret Laurence. This had nothing to do with my research, but I was enamored with understanding people who are driven in long term creative work, and to see how their work evolves over time.”

Over the past four years, Brian has also “re branded” Dartmouth’s research-based Graduate Programs. Two years ago, Dean Pogue approved a new Dartmouth Graduate Studies shield, which was created through an online design contest, coordinated by members of the GSC’s Executive Board. Since the launch of the new shield, Brian commissioned the design of a mobile application for Dartmouth’s graduate programs available for use on iPhone or Google Android phones.  He oversaw the creation of The Graduate Forum, and increased the use of social media streams including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest by the Graduate Studies Office. The use of these media channels has not only improved communication between current graduate students, but has also facilitated electronic conversations between the school’s graduate community and other pan-Dartmouth entities. “I think these changes will have the most important long-term impact of anything that I have been involved with, on our Graduate Studies programs at Dartmouth,” said Pogue.

“While a number of important changes are currently happening here at Dartmouth, the elements that define the school’s identity will never change. These elements are Dartmouth’s rural Upper Valley location, and its relatively small size in the world of research institutions. These factors dictate the types of people that are drawn to the school, and always will.  I believe that it is the research conducted by these people that make Dartmouth a world-class educational institution,” explains Pogue. “Though I think Dartmouth will be substantially similar in 20 years, a higher metric for academic success will be in place.  Moderate increases in the size and strength of the school’s graduate programs will likely mirror the ongoing growth in research-active faculty on this campus.  This is the pathway needed to reinforce the world class status of this institution. I hope that I will live to see the day that the institution is named a University, which would simply recognize the institution for what it already is.  This is easily done, and can be done while retaining all its lovable characteristics which make it unique in the world of higher education.”

by Wesley Whitaker

The Graduate Forum is please to announce the new Media Production Intern: Zach Williams.

Zach is a first year MALS student in the General Studies tract. He was brought up in Massachusetts, leaving the state to go to college in Ithaca, upstate New York. There he majored in History and minored in Anthropology, graduating in 2010. In the years between finishing college and enrolling at Dartmouth he split his time between Oregon and Hawaii working in forestry preservation. In Oregon he was a wild land fire fighter, and in Hawaii he was in reforesting to reverse the damage done by ranching. Outside of his classes he is currently planning to raise ducks and cultivate a vegetable and fruit garden.

As the Media Production Zach has a wide-ranging portfolio of responsibilities. These include taking pictures and writing articles for the Dartmouth Grad News Forum. As the position implies, he is responsible for many of the media aspects of the Graduate Office, for instance maintaining the website and the social media, including Facebook and twitter.

Zach is looking to use his position to communicate the achievements of Graduate students at Dartmouth both in and outside the scope of academia. This includes the many awards, publications and conference attendances that Dartmouth students make each year, alongside community involvement in the Upper Valley and the wider community in New Hampshire and Vermont. For Zach, the Graduate News Forum is the perfect place to showcase the many achievements of Dartmouth students.

If you have any ideas for articles or want to see a student highlighted, please feel free to contact Zach at: Zachary.Williams.GR@dartmouth.edu.

Article and photo: Dan Durcan

On Tuesday, May 8^th, members of both the outgoing and incoming Executive Board of the Graduate Student Council (GSC) met with Bill Helman, chair of the Presidential Search Committee, to discuss the upcoming search process for the 18^th president of Dartmouth College. At the meeting, attendees explained that they felt a presidential candidate should be approachable, knowledgeable and supportive of the pan-Dartmouth community, and have a strong leadership background, preferably in either academia or research work.

The meeting was one of several student engagement events that the Presidential Search Committee is hosting to solicit community feedback on the selection process. On Thursday, May 17^th, the Presidential Search Committee is hosting an open forum in Dartmouth Hall 105. Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend and discuss the qualities the committee should seek in the next president.

The schedule for the May 17^th forum is as follows:

-10:00 – 11:00 AM, staff forum
-4:30 – 5:30 PM, faculty forum (all faculty in the Arts and Sciences and professional schools)
-8:30 – 9:30 PM, student forum (all students in undergraduate, graduate, and professional school programs)

In addition, all Dartmouth community members are invited to submit feedback to the committee using the input form on the Presidential Search Website.

The Dartmouth Board of Trustees appointed Provost Carol L. Folt, PhD, as the interim president of Dartmouth, effective July 1, following the election of President Jim Yong Kim to lead the World Bank. President Kim will remain Dartmouth’s president until June 30 and continue to lead Dartmouth through the conclusion of the academic year and Commencement.

Before serving as Provost, Carol Folt was as Dartmouth’s Dean of Graduate Studies and The Dartmouth Faculty Member of Biological Sciences. To read more about Carol Folt’s appointent, visit  the Dartmouth Now.

The Graduate Office, in conjunction with the Office of Institutional Research, recently conducted a survey of Dartmouth graduate alumni in order to gauge their satisfaction with their Dartmouth experience.

The survey was sent out electronically to 738 Dartmouth PhD alumni, all of whom were at least five years removed from graduation. Data collection lasted three weeks, and 251 alums responded for a 34% overall response rate.

Overall, the results of the survey were highly encouraging. Eighty-seven percent of the graduate alumni surveyed feel that completing their Dartmouth graduate degree was ‘definitely worth the effort.’ Eighty-three percent of respondents use the skills from their specialty or general field on a daily basis, and 93% percent of alumni respondents believe that Dartmouth provided effective training in designing and executing research. Additionally, 92% of alums feel that their Dartmouth education has been instrumental in helping them think critically and identify problems/format solutions.

“Maintaining strong alumni connections within the Dartmouth graduate community is of the utmost importance to the Graduate Studies Office,” says Kerry Landers, Assistant Dean of Graduate Student Affairs at Dartmouth. “We’re thrilled that so many graduate alumni, several years after graduating, are still pleased with the overall quality of their Dartmouth experience.”

In terms of career placement, Dartmouth graduate alums fare extremely well in comparison to the general population. Eighty-two percent of respondents are currently employed full-time, with 57% currently working in the education sector. Graduate alums are also productive scholars: of the respondents working in four-year educational institutions, more than 64% of graduate alums are on a tenure-track faculty appointment, with 52% of respondents having published seven or more refereed journal articles since graduating from Dartmouth.

Some of the recent awards and accolades that Dartmouth graduate alumni have received include the National Medal of Science (Marye Anne Fox, PhD, Chemistry), as well as numerous teaching and research grants and awards from such prestigious institutions as the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the Fulbright Program. In June of 2011, Marye Anne Fox was also the first graduate alumnus in Dartmouth’s history to be elected to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees.

While the majority of graduate alums (80%) report that their academic experience at Dartmouth was ‘very good or excellent’, approximately half of the respondents felt that there is room for improvement in the development of career-focused skills such as managing people, budgets, and writing funding proposals.

“Many of the areas in which respondents expressed less enthusiastic support for—such as non-academic student life and non-academic career training—are areas that we have been aggressively targeting over the last few years by offering multiple workshops on professional development skills,” says Landers.

Brian Pogue, Dean of Graduate Studies, also commends the efforts currently being made to increase the satisfaction of graduate students at Dartmouth, both academically and non-academically. “Surveys such as this one allow us to recognize the areas in which we are already succeeding, while also helping us to identify opportunities for growth and improvement,” says Pogue.

 by Erin E. O’Flaherty