Curious to the Core: A conversation between the outgoing and incoming deans

Dean Abramson, who has led Dartmouth Engineering since 2019, began a new role in January as dean of the Climate School at Columbia University. During the transition, she sat down with Interim Dean and Professor of Engineering Van Citters, until recently the associate dean for undergraduate education at Thayer, to reflect on her tenure and discuss his journey to Dartmouth, what makes a great leader, and the value of human-centered engineering.

ABRAMSON: Doug, you've been at Dartmouth for a while—you were an undergrad, earned your PhD here, been a longtime faculty member and researcher in artificial joints, an associate dean, the engineer of the Homecoming bonfire, and a faculty athletics representative. Tell me about that journey.

(Photo by Rob Strong '03)

VAN CITTERS: I grew up in Annapolis sailing and rowing and loving the sciences. My brother, sister, and I loved to work in science fairs. Both parents are scientists. When I was looking for colleges, I wanted to go somewhere I could row but also be an engineer. As part of my visit to Dartmouth in 1994, I sat down with [Professor] Stu Trembly. Stu and I talked about rowing and engineering and how it fit into the liberal arts at Dartmouth. It was an easy decision. I immediately discovered that I also loved geology and my art, architecture, and English courses. I found myself resonating with environmental earth sciences, so when I left Dartmouth, I was a practicing hydrogeologist for the company that sourced water for Poland Spring.

I came back to Thayer after a phone call with [Professor] John Collier, who explained I could earn my BE and find my way through a promotion at my company and also try biomedical engineering because that was his field. I fell in love with it. I enjoyed helping people and working with students directly, so I shifted from a BE/MS to a PhD. Fast forward, I have been able to engage deeply in all kinds of sciences at Thayer—medicine, materials science, mechanical engineering—it's all human-centered. You can't do it without the wrapper that is regulation, economics, surgeons, and the human who is attached to an artificial joint—and all of that speaks to Dartmouth's strengths.

ABRAMSON: You talk about making sure you had a liberal arts education. Did you see the impact of that education in the workplace?

VAN CITTERS: I did. In my first job as a geologist, I was on drill rigs and interacting with the client, my bosses, the professional engineers on the project, and the drillers. I was able to communicate with everybody and make sure the goals were clear—and also understand the impact of effectively bringing resources out of the ground in central Maine, understanding that the neighbors of this project had a stake in the game and were concerned or at least interested in what we were doing. It was rewarding to be able to think about things at that level.

Just yesterday, I was at lunch with another dean who’s reasonably new to his position, and he said, "Remind me, what is the special thing about Thayer?" So, how would you have answered that question?

ABRAMSON: I answer that question often with prospective students. I say, "This is the weirdest school you will visit in all your visits across the country, and I mean that in a good way. Many schools teach you skills—we teach you foundational knowledge that exercises all parts of your brain to prepare you for a lifetime of problem solving." It's a very different approach to learning engineering, and you have to want that to come here.

VAN CITTERS: The key is that our students are curious to the core, and from day one, they're unafraid to teach themselves to do something. Whether it's make, build, experiment—they're unafraid to engage in that uncertainty. That's an unusual trait in the sciences and it's what characterizes a Thayer engineer.

ABRAMSON: I'll capture it all in saying it's about being a human-centered engineer. You have to be broadly knowledgeable about the world, not just about the math, and to be a good engineer you have to be human centered. It's quite a different approach.

VAN CITTERS: Speaking of teaching, I remember you were late to dinner once …

ABRAMSON: Great. Thanks, Doug!

VAN CITTERS: Totally excusable because you came rushing and said, "I'm really sorry, I was teaching and we had Bill Gates with us." So, as you weave these things together, what have you seen in the classroom and in our students?

ABRAMSON: The class was an undergraduate writing seminar that could focus on a variety of different topics; in my case, energy and climate change. We were lucky to have guest speaker Bill Gates zoom in and talk to the students. It was wonderful to see these first-year students—some of them had STEM backgrounds and some of them had no intention in majoring in anything STEM—have a discussion you really couldn't have if you had only engineers in the room. The discussion took on a life of its own and went in a variety of different directions, down an economic path or how policy matters or even globally with some of the students from China or England or Brazil. Their global backgrounds just made that a richer educational experience for everybody. I'm sure you see elements of that in your roles, Doug. Tell me a little about your experience in the classroom and lab.

VAN CITTERS: I love teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level. The thing that makes Dartmouth special is our classes are small and our students can engage with us as instructors and as colleagues. For the most part, they feel empowered to challenge us—and that is really fun. They ask questions, and I might only know the answer 75 percent of the time, but the students are so patient in waiting for me to generate an answer overnight. At the graduate level, that starts to verge into answers of, "Nobody knows the answer to that question, let’s find it out together." And that's why our ability to do research with undergraduates and graduates working together is so important. Half of what we do is transfer knowledge and the other half is create knowledge.

I also enjoy going back to my lab. I've had an economist and a neuroscientist working in my laboratory. We're interdisciplinary by design, and the problems we work on are very challenging, so we need to bring in other fields to answer questions. I've found students are happy to engage, regardless of which side of campus they're from. They're happy to learn from us as much as we're happy to learn from them.

ABRAMSON: Well, that's an awesome perspective to have as an interim dean. You come with great experience and as somebody who truly gets the uniqueness of Thayer. As you build on that with this new role, I’m curious what aspects you are most looking forward to.

VAN CITTERS: From a personal side, I'm learning at a rate that I have not learned at since I was in graduate school. It is exciting for me to understand how all this works at the institutional level. 

On the professional side, Thayer has been through explosive growth over this last decade. It's a good time for us to take stock, look at our new facilities, where the world is headed, and where our new faculty want to take their careers. I want to be an enabler to make sure faculty are growing in ways that continue the Thayer tradition, making an impact on society and solving problems that matter not only to them but also to the rest of the world. I'm excited to be a matchmaker and help them communicate with each other and the rest of campus to move forward on the strategic plan we developed five years ago. It is a good north star for me, so I'm excited to follow through on what was an intellectual commitment by everybody involved in the construction of that plan. 

And then, of course, as the arts and sciences evolve, I want to be a partner in that. I think it's a way for us to grow Dartmouth intellectually in very positive directions.

ABRAMSON: Absolutely. And I'm curious, along those lines, what characteristics have you admired in successful leaders?

VAN CITTERS:That's a good question. Thinking about the most successful leader I've met, she is sitting across the table. 

First, the most successful leader puts a highly functional group of people around them and then trusts that group to do their job and, to a degree, gets out of the way. They break down the barriers but otherwise trust that a job is going to get done—and well. Also, I've seen successful leaders always listen first. Even in our own interactions, you’ll ask me a question and I’ll tell you my opinion. If you don't agree with me and go in a different direction, you'll still value my opinion and say, "I hear you, but this is what I'm going to do and here's why."

I think a successful leader can bring that level of understanding first to a discussion, but then can also inform the folks who work with them about the context about what's happening in the bigger world and why decisions that might make sense on the local level don't make sense on the global level and that's why this has to happen. It means the leader has to make difficult decisions sometimes, but it's when the leader makes those decisions compassionately and explains why, that's when I think you see success. I also fully recognize that the most successful leader leads by example, and you see them working hard and inspiring people around them to work hard.

ABRAMSON: Yeah, I always say there are three types of leaders. There are ones who listen well but can't make a decision to save their lives. There are ones who don't listen and make decisions too quickly, and usually nobody likes them. And then there are ones who find that balance. It does take time to listen and then decide, and I strive to be that third type. 

VAN CITTERS: What do you feel is your legacy? 

ABRAMSON: I think we generated the strategic plan with a tie to our core values, which is probably the most important piece. I hope as things evolve and change, we continue to make sure that connection is there. While the strategic plan has goals and quantitative elements and all of that, I don't want people to think of this as a cold plan that's just numbers driven. Underlying those numbers are actions, activities that continuously ask the question, "Does this align with our core values, our mission, our ethos?"

When I started, there were faculty who expressed concern about growing and that we were going to lose our essence. I feel we've been able to move forward while maintaining a close-knit community, a sense of place, and the human-centeredness of what we do.

VAN CITTERS: The way I see the strategic plan, it's a guide to how we make decisions in the face of imperfect information or constrained resources. It draws us together with a common objective. Everybody agrees a decision can be made because we have a plan.

Speaking of decisions, what's an example of one you've made as Thayer dean that you feel was a great one?

ABRAMSON: I think I'll point to how we've grown the faculty. By the time I leave, we will have hired 30 or so faculty in the last five and a half years. It's always a challenge to decide what flavor of faculty we should be hiring. For example, we have a critical mass in areas such as medical imaging, and we have obvious opportunity in other areas such as artificial intelligence. With a limited budget, how do you make decisions regarding who to hire?

I've been excited about how we've included the faculty, and specifically the program area leads, in that process, giving them an opportunity to talk to their faculty constituents about hiring, about where there's real opportunity and where we could have the most impact. Sometimes, we went all in on very specific areas of opportunity. Other times, we did an open search and looked for superstars. It was a good balance of both to get us to a pretty awesome faculty today.

VAN CITTERS: As a participant in that process, I can say it's the model of how to engage faculty further despite the apparent addition of a layer of administration.

What it did was open communication channels for our faculty to identify what kinds of colleagues we need to make this place whole, and then empower people to go out and find them. And we've done a great job—hiring 35 is a significant number.

ABRAMSON: In the foreseeable 18 months, what's the imprint that you hope to leave and how do you hope to see Thayer grow with you as interim dean? 

VAN CITTERS: I have a very concrete objective to have Thayer, in practice as well as in appearance, be a shining star on Dartmouth's campus so that the next dean can say, "This is a place that I want to take to the next level." I want to capitalize on the good things that we’re doing, make sure that everybody's moving in the same direction, and excite our faculty and staff for the next chapter in Thayer's life. It’s not going to be done by making massive changes but by really listening to how we want to grow together, and then making sure that's consolidated in a story that we can tell the next dean so they can pick it up and run with it. 

ABRAMSON: When I think about the future, we should be able to point to a world that is better off because of Thayer. One could argue that we could do that today, but in the future, we'll have more ambassadors out there in the world who can say, "Without Thayer, without Dartmouth, I would not have been able to have this kind of impact." The faculty and their research will also let us continue to punch above our weight in terms of impact. There'll be new cures for diseases, new energy resources, new unintended consequences we will identify before they wreak havoc on our world because of the approach we use here at Thayer.

VAN CITTERS: Thank you. Great, I get the last question. I imagine you're starting to invest in new outfits, mostly light blue and blue in color. Can I convince you to carry something green, at least one Saturday in the fall, every year?

ABRAMSON: Absolutely.

VAN CITTERS: At the Dartmouth-Columbia football game.

ABRAMSON: I do love football and look forward to the game. And yes, I accept that challenge. 

VAN CITTERS: It's on the record.