Wired Up in Parkhurst

The president-elect is no technophobe. Phil Hanlon ’77, who assumes Dartmouth’s presidency July 1, says he plans to challenge the campus to step up to the opportunities offered by technology. Hanlon described several aspects of what he calls “learning technologies” in a recent interview with DAM. “When you talk about massive online learning, it’s really about audience,” he says. “You are saying, ‘We’re going to take our knowledge and share it with a tremendously broad audience across the world.’ That’s a great thing for any elite university to do, and I would love Dartmouth to be involved in that.” Hanlon also welcomes the data sifting that technology affords. “We gather so much data about students now. Using the data so that we better understand how students are learning is another huge opportunity,” he says. Hanlon notes the “amazing new collaborative tools” technologies offer, and wonders how the online world might alter what’s accomplished in the classroom. He’s called listening to lectures “moments of passive engagement” and wonders, if they were delivered online, whether there might be “more meaningful engagement with students” in the classroom. “I think it’s a must,” notes the mathematician, “that a leader such as Dartmouth be involved in taking advantage of the opportunities that technologies provide.”

DID YOU KNOW?

$1.08 million Total 2010 compensation for former President Jim Yong Kim, ranking him 28th among the highest-paid college presidents in the nation and fourth among Ivies $1.08 million

4:31.46 New school record for the mile, run by Abbey D’Agostino ’14 in January at the Dartmouth Relays 4:31.46