End of Week Update from Dean Slaughter
March 27, 2020
Dear Students,
I write to you at the end of a week of firsts for our learning community. Some of these firsts were profound, such as the launch of the first remote-only term at Tuck. Others, like our first-ever virtual cold call, were more prosaic. Collectively, they show a school moving forward—together—in the face of unprecedented change for our community and for our world.
To put into perspective how far we have come, below are some highlights from this historic week at Tuck.
- From Monday’s successful launch of the First-Year Project to Associate Professor Eesha Sharma’s Consumer Insights elective that closed the week today, we delivered 100 Tuck classes online via Zoom.
- Between Tuesday and Thursday, the Career Services team conducted 80 virtual advising sessions with students.
- Three hundred students attended yesterday’s virtual town hall—another Tuck first—with deans Joe Hall and Sally Jaeger, Stephen Pidgeon, and myself.
- Since Monday, faculty and staff have collectively logged thousands of virtual meeting hours in their continued embrace of remote work.
These numbers only tell one part of the story, of course. Your flexibility and commitment to co-creating a new and different learning experience this term have been essential to our progress thus far. So too is the incredible mobilization effort our faculty and staff have undertaken in recent weeks to ready our shift to remote learning for the remainder of the school year.
This work continues apace. As we shared in yesterday’s town hall, in the days ahead, Associate Dean Sally Jaeger and the MBAPO will begin implementing a plan to continue virtually the extensive and rich co-curricular programming organized by centers and clubs on campus. We look forward as well to hearing more about the exciting virtual community-building activities that you have in the works for the spring.
Even as the term comes more into focus, there still remain many unknowns. What I do know after this week of firsts is that the pieces are falling into place that will allow us to successfully address them and deliver on our mission in a distinctly Tuck way.
Thanks and take good care this weekend.
Matthew J. Slaughter
Dean of the Tuck School of Business
Dartmouth has formed a high-level task force to plan for and manage possible disruptions related to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, monitor federal and state recommendations, implement guidance, and communicate with our community.