Our very own Liz Cahill Lempres has been elected chair of Dartmouth’s board of trustees and is excited to be taking on that role at such an important time for Dartmouth. She has served as an alumni trustee since 2018 and will succeed Laurel Richie ’81, current board chair, on June 14. Liz writes that during the last year the board has focused on three strategic priorities: ensuring Dartmouth’s continued preeminence in a rapidly changing higher ed landscape, building a more diverse and inclusive community, and deepening its dialogue with the graduate schools. She thinks those issues will continue to be front and center on the board’s agenda. While many of the issues were important before the pandemic, the pace of change has accelerated dramatically. Liz writes that, in the same way many of us wouldn’t have imagined working from home full-time a year ago, for example, we wouldn’t have predicted that selective colleges would embrace online education as quickly or as fully as they have. At the same time, there’s a critical role for in-person classes, especially at Dartmouth, where the teacher-scholar model is at the heart of what the College does. Liz believes that Dartmouth’s challenge—and opportunity—is to take a fresh look at everything it has learned during the last year to reimagine what Dartmouth can be not just next year or five years from now, but 20 and 30 years from now. That includes the academic experience as well as co- and extracurriculars and residential life, and it involves students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni. Liz thinks the board can be most effective by focusing on longer-term issues such as these. According to Liz, serving on the board—as with many things Dartmouth—is also a lot of fun! The issues the board is considering dovetail nicely with Liz’s professional background. A senior partner emeritus at McKinsey & Co., she spent almost 30 years working on strategy issues around the world and continues to think about them daily as a member of corporate boards. Liz feels fortunate to be able to bring that experience to the College. She writes that the board members reflect diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and at least once in every board meeting, someone has shared an opinion on an important topic that has made her stop and re-evaluate her own view. Liz is definitely looking forward to being together with the other board members again in Hanover—she hopes for their first meeting of the new academic year in September. Like many of us, Liz has had her fill of Zoom calls too!

—Shanta Sullivan, 1541 North Sierra Bonita Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046; shantaesullivan@gmail.com; Elliot Stultz, 421 West Melrose St., #8A, Chicago, IL 60657; elliotstultz@yahoo.com