Dartmouth College President Philip J. Hanlon, who has served as the leader of the College on the Hill for eight and a half years, will step down after ten years at the helm, he announced today in a message to the Dartmouth community. Hanlon, a graduate of Dartmouth and a former mathematics professor and University of Michigan provost, has served as the eighteenth president in Dartmouth’s long history. Who will be the nineteenth? Only time will tell but Ivy Coach, as our loyal readers know oh so well, has a crystal ball and we hereby forecast that the next leader of Dartmouth College will be a woman…the first non-interim female president of Dartmouth (Carol Folt, current USC’s leader, served on an interim basis as president).

As President Hanlon writes in his note, “When I arrived at Dartmouth in 2013, I laid out a 10-year vision for my presidency. Dartmouth would be a magnet for talent, home to a diverse and engaged set of students, faculty, and staff drawn to Hanover from around the world by the excellence of our teaching and research missions. Dartmouth would lean into its strengths and dare to take on some of the world’s most urgent challenges, pulling together the intellectual resources of the campus community and alumni body in an inclusive and collaborative effort to make an outsized impact wherever we choose to focus our energies. And we would celebrate the distinctive Dartmouth experience by elevating the tight connection between students and faculty, and the profound sense of place here in these North Woods which create a community unlike any other. Over the past eight and a half years, we have done just that, and I could not be prouder of the strides we have made towards this vision…As the vision I set forth almost 10 years ago becomes reality, the time is right to pass the torch. I have informed the Board of Trustees that I will step down as president in June 2023 after a decade at the helm. I want to ensure that the Board has ample time to find Dartmouth’s next president. I am committed to supporting that person through a smooth leadership transition while we continue the important work that lies ahead.”

We salute President Hanlon for his service to Dartmouth, in steering his alma mater for these last several years. Just who will be his successor? Will Ivy Coach’s famously accurate crystal ball, a crystal ball even cited on the pages of Dartmouth’s newspaper, strike again? Will a female lead one of America’s oldest universities? Do stay tuned!