New president has Dartmouth eager for change

[graywarrior]

HANOVER, N.H. - In an annual rite, incoming Dartmouth College students dutifully lined up to shake the president’s hand, one of many perfunctory events that kick off each school year.

But this fall, the tradition was marked by an extra jolt of excitement: More than 1,000 freshmen clamored to meet Dartmouth’s newly appointed leader. The crowd wound around one end of the indoor track, out the door, and along the glass walls of the field house. Many waited longer than an hour.

At the head of the receiving line last week, Dr. Jim Yong Kim delighted the teenagers by greeting them not with a handshake, but with a fist bump. Some reached out for hugs as classmates snapped photos and sought autographs; other giddy students likened Kim’s appointment to the election of President Obama.

“Thank you for coming to us,’’ said one student, finding it hard to fathom why the Harvard Medical School professor would leave behind his groundbreaking humanitarian work in public health to lead the Ivy League’s smallest school, tucked amid the hills of western New Hampshire.

A new college presidency is met by fanfare on every campus, but the change is particularly striking at Dartmouth. Faculty, students, and alumni have high hopes that Kim, who will be inaugurated as the college’s 17th president tomorrow, can usher in a new era for the 240-year-old university - an institution often viewed from the outside as a conservative bastion of white privilege dominated by raucous fraternities.

Kim’s appointment, these supporters say, signifies the college’s determination to look outward and adopt a broader, more global perspective to undergraduate education. It could also bolster Dartmouth’s public profile: Kim, born in South Korea, is the first Asian-American to lead an Ivy League school.

Kim, a medical anthropologist, replaces historian James Wright, who retired in June after 40 years at the college, 11 of them as president. While Dartmouth made great strides in diversifying its student body, both racially and socioeconomically, during Wright’s tenure, Kim acknowledges that outside misconceptions about Dartmouth prevent the school from recruiting and retaining an even wider range of professors and students.

“I had my own misperceptions that Dartmouth was roiled by pitched political battles and Neanderthal frat life,’’ Kim said during an interview in his office last week. “But that’s not the kind of family I discovered here.’’

Since the 49-year-old father of two arrived on campus in July, his down-to-earth demeanor and accessibility have endeared him to a wide cross-section of students.

The former Iowa high school quarterback, who also played on Brown University’s volleyball team, has practiced with Dartmouth’s volleyball and football teams. He’s teed off with the golf team at 5:30 a.m. And to better understand why nearly half of Dartmouth students belong to the Greek system, he’s dined in fraternity houses, including Alpha Delta, the fraternity that helped inspire the movie “Animal House.’’


More--and it's a great piece of info.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/09/21/dartmouth_charged_for_change_in_new_president_kim/

Be sure to watch the video. This guy is awesome!

[Buzz Clik]

1. Don't know much about Dartmouth, but a President can do big things with faculty/student support.

If Dartmouth is merely the silver-spoon set's version of Knuckledragger Univeristy, Dr. Jim Yong Kim's presence will simply be an annoyance. However, if Dartmouth has been getting a bad rap and need a new public image, we may see some good things.