HANOVER — Dartmouth College faculty voted in favor of a proposal to create a new school of Arts & Sciences in a meeting Wednesday.

“I’m very happy,” said Provost David Kotz, co-leader of the Future of Arts and Sciences project, after the proposal passed, 243-63, “so many people have worked so hard on this.”

If approved by President Sian Leah Beilock, who declined to comment on the vote’s results, and the Board of Trustees next week, the Arts & Sciences undergraduate program would become Dartmouth’s fifth official school.

Dartmouth currently has the Geisel School of Medicine, Thayer School of Engineering, Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, and Tuck School of Business. The Arts & Sciences undergraduate departments are not technically a separate school.

The meeting lasted about two hours and was held in the Hanover Inn on Wednesday afternoon. After a little over an hour of public comment, roughly 55% of arts and science faculty lined up single file to cast their paper ballots and then exited the meeting room for a reception in the lobby.

The results were tallied by hand and announced approximately 30 minutes after the vote.

The project launched in 2022 under former President Phil Hanlon in an effort to reorganize the budget and leadership structure of Dartmouth undergraduate Arts and Sciences, or A&S, and strengthen Dartmouth’s commitment to the liberal arts.

Unlike most peer institutions, Dartmouth’s A&S, is currently led by a dean of faculty who reports to the president. Staffing, admissions and fundraising decisions for A&S go through Dartmouth’s central administration, an “antiquated framework that limits its development,” according to the project’s website.

Under the current system, A&S “just has to hope that the provost will increase our budget,” said Nina Pavcnik, a faculty member in the economics department who serves as co-leader of the Future of the Arts and Sciences project.

 The departments do not directly benefit from undergraduate tuition, gifts and endowments for financial aid, and they must return funds that are unused  at the end of the year.

As proposed, the new A&S school would be split into three divisions, Faculty, Undergraduate Student Affairs, and Undergraduate Education each headed by a dean who would report to a new dean of Arts and Sciences. The dean of Arts and Sciences would report directly to the president.

The new budget structure addresses these issues and ensures that as the college’s overall budget grows, the A&S budget grows with it.

“With all due respect and love, I am tired of subsidizing the other schools,” Lisa Baldez, a professor of government, said during a comment period before the vote.

Despite wide support, some faculty members expressed their lingering apprehensions with the proposal.

On Sunday, the Dartmouth chapter of the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP, which has about 150 members, released a letter outlining their concerns.

“The current proposal falls short of its goals for two reasons: it does not provide adequate resources for A&S, undermining the College’s commitment to the liberal arts; and it fails to provide for democratic faculty governance while increasing administrative autonomy and power,” states the letter.

According to the letter, the proposal only grants 52% of the reserves funding and 5% of the annual funding deemed necessary for A&S to “thrive” by the Committee on Organization and Policy (COP) and the Committee on Priorities (CPR), which represent the faculty during the proposal process.

In a previous proposal submitted in March, “it appeared that A&S was underfunded,” said Devin Balkcom, a computer science professor who chairs CPR. “That might still be true,” Balkcom said, but it was not a deal breaker for him or the rest of CPR which unanimously voted to support the proposal.

Several faculty members spoke about their uneasiness over the lack of democratic faculty representation, such as a faculty senate, in the proposed new school.

“This is a growing problem and to defer again to the future and lose this moment where we actually have a chance to change, would be disappointing,” Bethany Moreton, a history professor who is a member of Dartmouth AAUP executive committee, said during public comment. Moreton asserted her support for the new school, but urged her colleagues to vote “no” on the current proposal because of its shortcomings.

Supporters of the proposal argued that once adopted, the faculty can leverage their power to decide on a more robust governance structure.

“We don’t want a world where a (college) president can come in and tell us to change our governance structure,” said  Mary Coffey, a professor of art history. “Having our own school will give us a voice. We will have our own dean at the discussion table.”

In a conversation with the Valley News after the balloting, Moreton said although disappointed with the results, she was “incredibly energized that democratic faculty governance is now clearly on the agenda of the entire campus.” She and her peers in the AAUP plan to “double down” on efforts to create systems of representative decision making in the new school.

Wenhan Sun, a recent graduate who followed the project while he was a member of the student government, said the administration did not make an effort to consult with students during the proposal process.

“There were open houses, but it wasn’t really clear if students were able to attend them,” Sun said. 

If approved by the president and Board of Trustees at their meeting next weekend, the project steering committee will map out an implementation process for the transition, beginning with the appointment of interim leadership in the next few months, according to Kotz, who will be stepping down from the provost position at the end of this academic year to focus on his research.

In 2025, the college would do a national search for a Dean of the Arts and Sciences, who would presumably take office in the summer of 2026 and the new organizational and budget models would be adopted that Fall.

Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.

CORRECTIONS: The Dartmouth College Arts and Sciences department s ar   e currently led by a dean of faculty who reports to the president. On Wednesday, 55% of voting-eligible faculty participated in an advisory vote on a proposal to create a new school for the departments of Arts and Sciences. A previous version of this story incorrectly described who the dean of faculty reports to and contained an incorrect rate of voter turnout.