Dean of the faculty setting a new course

Posted 12/20/02

Michael Gazzaniga '61 was supposed to be on sabbatical this year. It was to be his first sabbatical since he began teaching in 1966. Instead, in September he began a four-year commitment as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences —this, in addition to his responsibilities as director of the College's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and his role as the David T. McLaughlin Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

"I've never understood the need to get away," says Gazzaniga. "This is the greatest job in the world. I never get tired. A long weekend, and I'm itching to go back to work."

His new job, he says, is to "energize the faculty and lead them to be better." The Dartmouth alumnus hit the ground running this fall. By October, his office already had solicited and reviewed ideas from the arts and sciences faculty, and had talked with potential donors about funding new programs. In today's tight economy, underwriting ideas—no matter how excellent—would appear to be a challenge. But Gazzaniga says raising money is not his most difficult task; he surmounted a similar challenge 10 years ago when he built the neuroscience center at the University of California, Davis.

"Money's money. The parameters are drawn with the money," he says. "You've just got to be clever about putting together deals and arrangements that work for everybody in a tighter budget time. In some senses, getting the money is the easiest part of this job. What's really difficult is choosing the right people and getting the right facilitation between existing faculty and new people —all that programmatic development we're trying to facilitate here.

Unlike many of his predecessors, Gazzaniga did not move up the administrative ladder to become dean. He was asked as a faculty member and was hired, he believes, because he wants the same thing other faculty do: a focus on academic excellence and better pedagogic and research resources.

Gazzaniga's strategy to achieve those objectives essentially hinges on a concept he has borrowed from NYU president John Sexton: he sees the school as an "enterprise." And Gazzaniga admits he has little patience with requests that do not benefit the good of the enterprise or contribute to its mission of education, research, and scholarship.

"What I want from people is to know what they're going to do for the enterprise," he says. "Are they going to make Dartmouth better? Is their program? Are they applying for grants? Are they integrating students with their research?

"The people who are doing the educating here are the best in their fields. They have an edge and they are constantly challenging their own assumptions and they pass that attitude—that fever—on to the students in the classroom, so the students too will be constantly challenging and testing as they go through life. You only get that result by having a vibrant, involved faculty. So our duty here is to do everything humanly possible to give that culture to our faculty."

-Anita Warren