Dartmouth Launches $3 Billion Comprehensive Campaign: The Call to Lead

An evening of historic announcements

On Friday, President Hanlon announced a major gift from Frank Guarini ’46 to strengthen and expand the graduate school, created by Dartmouth trustees two years ago. The school—now officially the Frank J. Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies—currently serves more than 1,000 master’s students, PhD candidates, and postdoctoral scholars who are pursuing degrees and conducting research in 35 programs. With this gift, the school will broaden its academic and professional development support for all graduate students and heighten Dartmouth’s ability to respond nimbly to opportunities offered by emerging disciplines.

President Hanlon unveiled a series of philanthropic initiatives driven by women in the Dartmouth community. In 2014, a group of alumnae created the Centennial Circle, an organization devoted to expanding the availability of financial aid to female students through the Dartmouth College Fund. The Centennial Circle has been so successful—raising more than $30 million and redefining how women can be leaders in higher education philanthropy—that Dartmouth women have committed to three ambitious targets:

• A group of women philanthropists have set a goal of 100 Dartmouth women each making a gift of $1 million or more during the campaign. The College has already received commitments of this magnitude from 50 alumnae.
• This same group has pledged to raise $25 million, through gifts of all sizes from alumnae and widows of Dartmouth alumni, to help renovate Dartmouth Hall. While maintaining the character of this iconic home of Dartmouth’s liberal arts tradition, the College will transform the building into a modern hub for exploring other cultures.
• Leaders of the Centennial Circle reaffirmed their commitment to continue growing its membership—aiming for 250 members by Dartmouth’s 250th anniversary—and provide even greater levels of financial aid support.

President Hanlon also announced a $5 million gift from Karen and Jim Frank ’65—with an additional $1 million dollar-for-dollar match challenge—to support students who lack the resources to study abroad. More than 55 percent of all Dartmouth undergraduates study abroad, the highest rate in the Ivy League. Each year, however, scores of undergraduates who want to study in another country simply cannot afford the additional costs associated with living and travelling overseas.

The liberal arts and experiential learning

Campaign Co-Chair and Trustee Greg Maffei ’82 said Dartmouth’s renowned liberal arts experience will be fundamental to every element of this historic campaign.

“Regardless of their major or career aspirations, our students will leave Dartmouth as broadly educated people who can think creatively and analytically, communicate confidently, and work across disparate cultures effectively,” he said. “We often talk about Dartmouth as a place of ‘and’ —for example, both an intimate liberal arts college and a powerful research university. This is one more attribute that sets Dartmouth apart: our time-tested method of teaching, informed by cutting-edge scholarship, is the best launching pad for leaders who will tackle tomorrow’s greatest challenges.”

In the tradition of John Kemeny and John Sloan Dickey, two 20th-century presidents of Dartmouth who encouraged faculty and students to think and act boldly, The Call to Lead will support opportunities for students to engage in experiential learning. Unlike at most universities, Dartmouth encourages undergraduates to participate in groundbreaking faculty research, become entrepreneurs, and even author papers that appear in scholarly journals. Sixteen percent of undergraduate students participated in research in 2017 that led to them authoring or coauthoring an article published in an academic journal; the College is aiming to double that number. 

Recent examples of students conducting research and driving innovation include:

• At the urging of Robert L. Blackman Head Football Coach Buddy Teevens ’79, a group of Thayer School students invented Mobile Virtual Player, or MVP, a robotic tackling dummy that NFL teams, colleges, and high schools across the country are now using to reduce serious injuries.
• As published in the journal Science Advances and reported in multiple media outlets, Julia Dressel ’17, a computer science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program double-major, was the lead researcher in a study that revealed flaws in predictive computer software used by many courts in bail and sentencing decisions.
• Parameters, a leading peer-reviewed military journal read by senior officers in the U.S. Army and Department of Defense officials, published a paper written by Charlotte Blatt ’18 that analyzed the consequences of the U.S. military’s 2007 troop surge in Iraq. 
• Two engineering undergraduates, Hayden Chun and David Cook, approached Professor Doug Van Citters to ask if they could research better materials to cushion and extend the life of replacement joints. With Van Citters’s guidance, the students created a new compound, and the trio has filed a patent application for their discovery.
• Four members of the Class of 2018 worked full-time on an off-Broadway run of Orwell in America, a play written by Joe Sutton ’76, a senior lecturer in the theater department—managing multiple aspects of the production, including costumes, lighting, and marketing.

Gifts of all types drive transformation

Friday’s campaign launch was built on a foundation of four years of record-setting fundraising under President Hanlon—and giving of all varieties will be essential to the campaign’s success. The $3 billion fundraising target includes $250 million in bequests and $478 million in giving to all of Dartmouth’s annual funds (including the professional schools and graduate school). To date, the campaign has received gifts of $250 or less from more than 20,000 donors, totaling nearly $2.2 million.

“Annual giving is crucial in so many ways,” said Catherine Craighead Briggs ’88, chair of the Dartmouth College Fund Committee. “For our undergraduates, gifts to the Dartmouth College Fund provide nearly half of all the financial aid awarded every year. Gifts of all sizes have an incredible impact on the lives of our students. Hundreds of them simply could not attend Dartmouth without annual giving.”

President Hanlon said the campaign’s reach will be broad, deep, and transformational, both on the Dartmouth campus and far beyond Hanover.

“There is unprecedented demand for problem-solvers who can step up and serve humankind—broadly educated men and women who can create meaningful change,” said President Hanlon. “Through The Call to Lead, we will strengthen our ability to educate future leaders who possess an array of cross-disciplinary skills and an unrivaled ability to study complex problems from multiple perspectives.”