Dear colleagues,

As the fall term gets underway, I love seeing our campus transform with the seasons and continuing to see the entire School of Arts and Sciences come together around our mission: offering an outstanding Dartmouth education and experience, inside and outside the classroom. Thank you for all that you did to welcome our new students—undergraduate and graduate, in large and small ways—and helping them get off to a strong start. You are setting the tone for a lifetime of learning and their membership in the Dartmouth community.

Faculty colleagues: I look forward to working with you to support scholarship and teaching, including through faculty governance. For example, the Committee on Priorities has invited me to engage with them as an ex-officio member and already had a productive meeting to discuss opportunities to work with Advancement on securing new resources for your work. As interim dean, I continue to represent the faculty and your needs and opportunities at the highest levels of institutional decision-making. In fact, that is happening today as you receive this message.

The Undergraduate Student Affairs team did a wonderful job with student orientation this fall, laying an important foundation for students with programming that captured the joy and possibility of the moment. Orientation is an immense undertaking, and I hope you all take pride in how well it was executed. As we look ahead, we are in the process of interviewing finalists in our search for the inaugural Dean of Undergraduate Student Affairs, and I look forward to sharing the outcome later this term.

The Undergraduate Education team has been addressing a variety of co-curricular opportunities. I am particularly excited to see the work on enhancing undergraduate student advising, an area that faculty, students, and staff agree needs improvements and will benefit from the unified School structure. A working group convened last fall has developed three models for consideration and Interim Dean of Undergraduate Experience Scott Pauls has already met with the Committee on Undergraduate Enrollment and Student Affairs to create a plan for gathering feedback on ways the faculty and staff roles in student advising can be more fruitful for all involved.

Two other leadership updates: I hope you will join me in welcoming the inaugural Executive Director of Communications for Arts and Sciences, Bridget Campolettano, who joined us Oct. 1. Bridget comes to us from Amherst College, where she inaugurated the role of Director of Communications in the division of Admissions and Financial Aid. Before that, she served in a variety of communications roles at the College of the Holy Cross, building an impressive breadth of skills that will be important to her success here. Bridget’s arrival marks another milestone for the Arts and Sciences, providing dedicated communications expertise and leadership that will help our School fulfill its potential.

And as you read last week, President Beilock has officially launched the search for a Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. You are all invited to provide your input into this important search.

I look forward to seeing many of you throughout the term. This week, our HR colleagues launched Fitness Off the Green and we are planning workshops on A&S Advancement for later in the fall. I am hosting regular office hours (watch for them in Vox), and you can always say hello when I’m out walking my dog Coconut through campus. As always, let me know what’s on your mind and I would love to think with you about how we continue to support and elevate the Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth.

With best wishes,

Nina Pavcnik

Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences