December 11, 2025
Fellow Members of the Class of 1985 –
I was excited to attend the Alumni Council meeting in Hanover on November 13-15 and wanted to share my experience with you.
The New Hop
We started with a tour of the renovated Hopkins Center. The updated facility has been thoughtfully conceived, enhancing existing spaces and incorporating exciting new ones. I encourage you to visit the new Hop during our reunion this coming June 18-21.
Dartmouth Dialogues
The first Council session covered Dartmouth Dialogues (“Dialogues”), a flagship program that President Beilock began in January, 2024. Dialogues encourages students, faculty and staff to engage in conversations on difficult topics including Middle East conflicts, the polarization in American politics, socialism vs. capitalism, among other topics. The administration conceded that the May 1, 2024 protests on the Green, resulting in New Hampshire state police arresting protestors, caused significant harm to campus relationships. Dialogues have played an important role in repairing trust and conversation. Dialogues encourage students not to shy away from tough conversations with others that have different points of view to build a stronger Dartmouth community and necessary life skills. The director of Dialogues shared that a recent protest this May was less confrontational, evidence that the program has been effective in improving campus communication and sentiment. Dialogues has also been responsible for bringing a range of speakers to campus including John Fetterman, Anita Hill, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Rand Paul.
President Beilock’s Address to the Alumni Council
I was very interested to hear from President Beilock. Many on the Council were loaded to challenge her on many topics (see pictures of our own Todd Cranford ’85 and Krista Thomas ’86). Top of mind topics for Council representatives included Dartmouth’s posture with the federal government (i.e. when will we forcibly speak out versus Dartmouth’s position on “institutional restraint”) and what has been the impact to federal funding for Dartmouth (only $3.5M in grant research funding has been lost to date and they actively working to recover that funding). She defines “institutional restraint” as not remaining silent, but a position that compels Dartmouth to speak when our core education mission is threatened.
President Beilock began by reiterating that Dartmouth will be fiercely independent as an institution in terms of its governance, teaching and research, and that government overreach will not be allowed. She contrasted Dartmouth with other peer institutions that were in constant battle with the federal government but said that signing onto the government’s compact was not the right way to achieve academic excellence and develop “good humans to impact the world.”
She then launched into five areas that have been her focus for her first two and half years. First, her administration has worked on improving the mental health of students with a multi-pronged approach. You can read more about this in “Dartmouth’s Commitment to Care”. By training faculty and staff, providing telehealth sessions to supplement in person therapy and focusing on the mental health challenges specific to students of color, she believes they have seen a significant decrease in anxiety and depression across the student body. Second, she has launched large scale housing improvement projects to provide 1,000 new beds on campus. The current projects are at Zimmerman/Brace on East Wheelock, upgrades to the Fayerweathers and multiple buildings at the entrance to campus on West Wheelock. Third, she has focused on affordability where she pointed out that the combination of need blind admissions, free tuition for one third of the current students and an average yearly grant of $71,000 to students has significantly lowered the cost of a Dartmouth education for those coming from lower income brackets. She feels affordability is key to bringing a diverse community of students together on campus to “feel comfortable pushing at each other” in Dartmouth Dialogues and throughout campus life. Fourth, she highlighted the work by Joe Catrino with the Dartmouth Career Design Center (see my recap below). Fifth, she pointed out her achievements in moving Dartmouth to carbon neutral by 2050. One can see all the pipes being torn up in front of New Hamp and Topliff to convert the campus power plant from steam to hot water and move to geothermal and off oil dependency. Sixth, she highlighted how Dartmouth has been focusing on innovation and impact with the following initiatives: 1. the launch of the Davidson Institute for Global Security which will unite the departments of history, government and economics with Tuck to leverage relationships in Washington, 2. “Thera Bot”, the ai chatbot focused in improving anxiety and depression in rural areas and 3. “Evergreen” which is the student curated language model to help students improve with sleep, stress, exercise and 4. additions to the arts curriculum and infusing the arts across campus.
Dr. Beilock then outlined her going-forward focus areas. First, rethinking how Dartmouth accesses federal funding to allow faculty ideas to make an impact in the areas of rural health, economic democracy and security, mental health, biomedical design, cold regions research and the arts. Second, she pointed out that the term “AI” was coined at Dartmouth 70 years ago and they will be working on how to integrate artificial intelligence into curriculum while still fostering critical thinking, and teaching students how to leverage AI in their life’s work.
President Beilock asked for alumni to continue to weigh in on what her focus areas should be. Email me with your ideas and I will pass them on!
Dartmouth Career Design Center
The highlight of the weekend for me was meeting Joe Catrino, the newly hired head of the Dartmouth Career Design Center (“DCDC”). Joe shared his vision for revamping the old “CES which had become ineffective. Students are transactional about finding a job post-Dartmouth, defaulting to career choices in finance or consulting. Joe wants DCDC to engage with students early and often to help them plan a career strategy that best matches their interests and aspirations. Rather than leaf through directories of alumni contacts (i.e. Dartmouth Connect), Joe expects to harness AI to enable a “dating type” approach that better matches students with mentors. I’m on the subcommittee for career design and demo’ed their AI tool, which was impressive. Joe is also developing “career communities” with a DCDC leader specialized in specific career tracks to better coach and make connections. DCDC is also raising money to supplement students’ financial ability to try lower paying or non-paying internships in government, social services or the arts. DCDC also plans to offer life skills coaching including how to pay back a loan, invest for retirement, find roommates, etc. Career coaching will also be available to alums now too!
Other Alumni Committees
Other Alumni Council committees included: lifelong learning, alumni service, new alumni engagement, enrollment and admissions and honorary degrees. If you would like information on the specific work of these subcommittees, let me know.
Full Meeting Minutes
You can review the full meeting minutes on the Alumni Council Website – https://alumni.dartmouth.edu/alumni-council-resources-570?accordion=231st%20Session%20November%2013-15,%202025
What is Important For You?
Is this the content you expected to be covered for alumni? What else would you have liked to hear about? Do you have feedback for the administration or questions?
Let me know by emailing me at jgabler4@gmail.com.
Yours in Big Green Spirit,
Jenny Gabler ‘85
