Dean of the College Update
Dear Students,
Last week, in the wake of the College's announcement about Academic Year 20-21, I committed to sending you a weekly update, to address your questions and concerns collectively so that everyone is able to have the same information at the same time.
Although we have been working on new FAQs, Student Assembly helpfully sent us many pages of your questions over the weekend and asked the College to respond later this week. We are compiling information for them and for you and will post their questions and answers before the end of the week. Until that time, I just want to reiterate that I --and the entire Dean of the College division—remain absolutely committed to hearing your concerns, advocating for you and your experience, and providing as much information as we can as the rest of the summer unfolds.
Most of the questions I've received personally this week begin with "why"? Why, as you probably well know, is the hardest question to answer, and it is the one often met with an answer that is most likely to disappoint. The reality is that there is no one solution that would solve everyone's problems. I can assure you that the College considered every possible option before making what was, in the end, a very difficult decision. A very difficult decision that requires compromise, and not a small degree of sacrifice, from all of its members -- students, staff, faculty, and alumni alike.
Although I promised myself that I would never again use the word "unprecedented," we are truly in uncharted waters. And I just want to assure you that College leadership, staff, and faculty continue to work around the clock, consulting with student leaders, local and state agencies, experts in health and epidemiology and colleagues at other institutions in order to create a path forward for Dartmouth. We are learning more about this pandemic every day, and we are doing our best for our campus and the Upper Valley community - and that includes each and every one of you.
Here are a couple of timely reminders for this week:
*The next community conversation with Provost Helble will be tomorrow at 3:30pm.
*The Ivy League will announce the status of fall athletics sometime tomorrow.
*We have been consulting with student leadership over the past few months to get input on the student experience while remote. Later this week, we will be launching our new Student Advisory Group to the Dean of the College, that will help us think about how to best to approach supporting the community fall term, and how we will implement new public health practices for the campus.
I realize that the amount of information that you are receiving from the College, and the decisions that you are facing, may seem overwhelming, and not a little unfair. Indeed, the questions and the decisions you face are unique for your generation. How you choose to rise up to meet those challenges, how resilient, how ingenious, how flexible, how creative you decide to become, how open you are to change, and how compassionate you remain is perhaps the most difficult, yet important, curriculum you will ever face. You are - without a doubt - facing the kind of circumstances that will not only encourage, but also require the development of new capacities and leadership skills in and across \all contexts and domains of your life. Because of who you are - by virtue of having gotten this far - I remain truly optimistic that we will all come out of this on the other side, in a better place.
Although I may not always have the answers that you seek or be able to provide you with the answer you want, I close with a promise. We will do everything we can to keep you informed, and to do our absolute best to support you through this.
All my best,
Dean Lively