Alumni Council

Alumni Council

CLASS NOTES

Alumni Council-Deaths

Greetings from the Dartmouth Alumni Council! We are the 125 councilors who represent your classes, clubs, and affiliated groups. We gather in Hanover twice a year to serve as your eyes, ears, and, most importantly, your voices to senior leadership of the College. We solicit your questions and sentiment before every meeting and let you know what we have learned. Our mission is to keep all 83,000 alumni connected with our alma mater.

For the first half of our Alumni Council year, we continued the worldwide celebration of Dartmouth’s 250th anniversary. I hope you were able to celebrate this huge milestone in some Big Green way, whether by attending a Dartmouth250! event, contributing to the more than 250,000 hours of alumni volunteer service, connecting through symposia, open online courses or TEDx series, or by contributing to the Call to Lead campaign. Personally, my highlights were our first global summit in London (that drew more than 500 people from 36 different countries) and gathering with so many of you at Yankee Stadium to watch the football team beat Princeton.

At our fall council meeting, we fulfilled one of our most important responsibilities by nominating three outstanding alumni to serve on the board of trustees. I’m pleased to announce they are Susan M. Finegan ’85, parent of a ’22 and pro bono partner at Mintz; Odette A. Harris ’91, professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University School of Medicine; and Gregg R. Lemkau ’91, co-head of the investment banking division at Goldman Sachs. Our candidates for these positions come from your recommendations, so please keep suggesting fellow alumni.

The meeting featured a robust agenda, including a conversation about admissions with Lee Coffin, vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid; a glimpse into the future of Dartmouth’s libraries with dean of libraries Sue Mehrer; and a joyous studentfaculty panel titled On theRoadwith the Stretch: Learning How the Earth Works. We honored James Wooster III ’59, Th’60, Tu’60; Russell Wolff ’89, Tu’94; and Veree Hawkins Brown ’93 with the Alumni Award; and Kyle Polite ’05 and Nathan Bruschi ’10 with the Young Alumni Distinguished Service Award.

We also spent time with President Phil Hanlon ’77 and board chair Laurel Richie ’81. We asked some tough questions about what the College is doing and where it is going. Like any institution, Dartmouth continues to evolve, and both reiterated Dartmouth’s commitment to academic excellence, a safe, inclusive campus, and, above all, being the best liberal arts college possible.

In a similar vein, we strive to keep the council and its committees impactful, engaging, and helpful to Dartmouth. As part of this effort, the Alumni Council executive committee convened two task forces to examine the composition and committee structure of the council.

As council president, I have been leading the representation task force. We have focused on whether the current composition ofthe council is optimal and if there are changes that should be made to make alumni representation more effective while maintaining the current size of the council. Council president-elect Rachel Bogardus Drew ’98 has been leading the committees task force. It is examining whether the current committees are maximizing councilor engagement while providing benefit to Dartmouth and whether updates are needed to the committees and their missions. The recommendations of these task forces will be presented for approval at the 220th meeting in May.

As the end of my term approaches in June, I am honored to pass the president’s gavel (yes, it’s a real thing!) to Rachel. It has been a privilege to serve you. In the meantime, share your thoughts at alumni.council@dartmouth.edu.

—C. Alec Casey ’66, president, 6068 Blunt Alumni Center, Hanover, NH 03755; alumni.council. president@dartmouth.edu