Report from the Council

Greetings. There will be two major focal points of this November's Alumni Council meeting. First, the nomination of a new Trustee. Second, the involvement of the Alumni Council in the College's major review of its institutional plans and priorities leading up to the year 2000.

As most of you know, Dartmouth has 16 Trustees, including two ex-officio members, the president of the College, and the governor of New Hampshire. Seven are charter trustees, who are elected. It is the Council's job to nominate a successor to George Munroe '43, who is completing his final year as a Trustee. The nominating committee of the Council, led by Peggy Epstein Tanner '79, has now reviewed the resumes of individuals proposed by various alumni. The end result of all of this work will be a recommendation for nomination to the entire Alumni Council in November.

However, the central theme of the November meeting of the Council will be the issue of alumni involvement in the review of Dartmouth's aforementioned institutional planning and priority process. Through the interaction of Council committees with committees represented by the faculty, administration, and students, we hope to launch a meaningful dialogue with all sectors of the Dartmouth community. The purposes of these joint committees will be as follows: 1) to candidly discuss and appraise the institution's strengths and weaknesses; 2) to reaffirm future aims and develop a sense of priorities; 3) to begin to identify areas of priorities as guidelines for allocation of future financial resources, talent, and programmatic efforts; 4) to develop a statement of planning reflecting the results of these community-wide deliberations that can be reviewed and approved or revised by the Trustees in consultation with faculty, alumni, students, administrators, and staff; 5) to establish an ongoing planning system that provides periodic institutional reviews of priorities by alumni, faculty, the administration, and students.

Obviously, this is an ambitious agenda. The work will not be concluded during the fall meeting, but we do have high hopes for a constructive beginning. By way of follow up, we will also be proposing meetings of the important joint committees during the winter term. Thereafter, we hope to continue to move the process forward during our spring meeting.

PRESIDENT, ALUMNI COUNCIL