Engineering with Purpose: An interview with new Dean Douglas Van Citters '99 Th'03 Th'06

What makes this place special?

Everything we do at Thayer is hands-on. We're interacting with each other in a team environment in the machine shop or in the biotechnology laboratories or out in the field talking with potential users of our devices. Our teamwork compels us to work together, solving problems together. This is important because we want our engineers to then work for humanity. If we understand our impact deeply across multiple levels and multiple fields, we discover engineering has so much more personal meaning for us and for society.

One of the important things that's kept me at Thayer is the ability to do fundamental materials science research, applied materials science research, medical device research, and then medical device analysis. I've been part of the materials science program area, the mechanical engineering program area, the biomedical engineering program area—and then my love of teaching puts me in the education program area. Thayer School is unique because our organization is more scrum-like, where we find a community of problem-solvers. I'm not necessarily an expert in any one of my program areas, yet if I go to those program area meetings, I’ll find a colleague who is an expert. I also know my students are going to find community in each one of those areas when they run into problems.

It allows our faculty to move between fields very efficiently and find problem-solvers who are going to help them out. The biggest challenges in the world today don't relate to a single field; they transcend different fields. So, I want our faculty to see themselves as being able to fluidly move between program areas, between Thayer School and Tuck, Thayer School and Geisel, Thayer School and the School of Arts and Sciences. We can put together big teams that come from very diverse backgrounds—both academically and from an experience perspective—and those are the teams that are going to solve the wicked problems that are facing us.

You've served as a consultant for numerous startups. How does entrepreneurship play out here?

Oftentimes, universities and colleges talk about entrepreneurship, and society will think about that as simply commercial activity. I’d like to recast that as impact. It's our job as a higher education institution to demonstrate that what we do—both the knowledge creation and knowledge transfer—has impact. There's purpose to what we do. The best way to do that is through entrepreneurial thinking. That means we need to think about who is going to use our invention, who is going to use our device or our ideas, and make sure we engage them in the process all the way through.

If it happens to turn into a commercial venture, that's terrific. But I think it's important that our students, our faculty, our staff all have the opportunity to move their ideas out of the classroom, out of the laboratory, and into society—and entrepreneurship is one way to do that. I've been encouraging my students to do this. And as a result, I've been involved in a number of startups that have taken biomaterials, biomedical devices, and other concepts out into the real world because it's a fun process. There's a lot of learning involved. At the same time, it demonstrates that what we're doing has true impact.

How does your undergraduate perspective shape your view of an ideal education?

At Dartmouth, each professor plans their course to be about 15 hours per week of work. If you're taking three courses, that's about 40 to 45 hours dedicated to your studies. But a student is awake for 100 hours a week—so roughly 60 hours a week belong to the student for discretionary time. For me, I used that time for rowing. I think the way you build a team, with the opportunity to compete and push myself, made me a much better engineer, because I was able to dig in without the promise of results right away.

It's not just me: Every student at Dartmouth—in the performing arts or studio art or those who are pursuing a double major or debate club—gets this chance to be outstanding in their major and pursue their hobbies or first loves because that makes them a more well-rounded student. For us engineers, it also gives us a better appreciation for society and our classmates who may be humanities majors, arts majors, or in the social sciences.

What is unique about the way we teach engineering?

Undergraduate engineering at Dartmouth is special because we compel students to earn the AB. They get to look at each of the distributive requirements and choose a course of study that matters to them and—according to the faculty—really matters to the world. This turns out the most well-rounded students possible. We believe that's more important than ever as we think about the job of engineers. Engineers are responsible for exercising judgment, and that judgment can only be exercised in the best way possible if these scientists understand the impact of their work on society as well as its potential harms. So, the more we can embed the liberal arts into our engineering education, the better engineers we're going to create.

Our academic infrastructure is such that we celebrate crossing boundaries, not just between disciplines at Thayer but also between schools—between engineering and the arts and sciences, medicine, business, and even with the hospital. Because my research is in orthopedics and musculoskeletal science, I need to interact with each one of those corners of Dartmouth. Whether I'm thinking about the legal aspects, the economic aspects, the application, or the upstream basic science, every one of those elements requires a collaborator who isn't necessarily an engineer. There are very few schools in the country where I could get every single one of those collaborators in the same room in a couple of minutes because they're no more than two miles away from me.

Any items first on your to-do list as dean?

The first thing I want to do is listen very carefully to what the faculty, students, and staff want to see unchanged at Thayer. I also want to listen to where they believe the next big problems are. It's not my responsibility to choose the problems; it's my responsibility to ensure the resources are present for the teams to form around the problems and then get to work solving them with as few barriers as possible.

What do you see as the biggest challenge ahead?

The biggest challenge today is the relationship between higher education and the public. We have to renew the trust relationship between the two, to demonstrate that what we do here has true impact. There's no better place to do that than at an engineering school, where our very objective is to use science and math to solve a societal need. It's what we do day in and day out. We also have to demonstrate a return on investment, that this education is high value for our students, for the taxpayers, for the companies that invest in us, and for the faculty who choose to spend their careers here. We have the right community here to renew that trust, because everyone here is already pre-programmed to solve problems and have impact.

As dean I have to protect the integration of engineering and the liberal arts and the ability to teach engineering by doing engineering. That means keeping our classes on the smaller side, ensuring they're hands-on and that our students have access to the most advanced tools possible. At the same time, our graduate students need access to cutting-edge laboratories. They need space to spread out and see their results play out. Our faculty need as few distractions as possible so that they can really focus on their science. I look to protect each one of these things because they've made Thayer so special in these last 160 years.

What might be different 10 years from now?

There are a couple aspects of Thayer School that simply haven't changed in 50 years: the team-based, hands-on aspect of what we do, the integration of engineering into the Upper Valley, and the integration of engineering into the liberal arts and vice versa. That will not change in the next 10 years. At the same time, technology is rapidly accelerating. Things that we see today simply weren't around even six years ago. Ten years from now, I can't imagine what advents in AI, advanced computing, biotechnology, tissue engineering are going to do for Thayer and our students, faculty, and staff. In order to meet those needs, I do think we'll find that Thayer is going to have to organize more and more around big teams to solve hard problems.

What I see then is not the rapid expansion we've seen in the last two decades but a gentle expansion that fills in the gaps where we need faculty, students, and staff; where we don't have those problem-solvers in our teams yet. For that reason, I do see Thayer School expanding a little bit. I do see the student base expanding, because there's a lot of student demand for the kinds of engineering we provide. And I think that will accelerate because Dartmouth engineers are the kinds of engineers who can exercise the right kind of judgment in the age of AI and an accelerated problem-solving process.

There's a saying that people don't always remember what you say or do, but they remember how you made them feel. Does anything come to mind?

The feeling that I left Dartmouth with and the feeling that brought me back was complete freedom. It was freedom to explore my options, make some mistakes, correct those mistakes, and keep trying new areas, new inventions, maybe even a new venture with some of my students. I want our faculty, staff, and students to have that same feeling always, to feel completely unencumbered in their ability to try something new, to fail forward, and work with each other to solve the biggest problems they can find.

That feeling leads to success, and I want them to feel they finished something. It's a difficult thing to explain because in the continuation of life and big projects, we're never truly done, but we can always hit milestones. I want teams at Dartmouth and Thayer to feel they've always been able to achieve their definition of "finished" and feel excited to move forward.

Being dean is a great opportunity to stay engaged in those things that I love and that make Thayer School so special. I'll still be able to mentor students in my laboratory and I still intend to teach, because that's what brought me to this position in the first place. I will still have students in my office to guide them through their classes, their careers, and, I hope, a little bit of athletics along the way.

Since he was a grad student, Van Citters (above from left) has worked with DBEC cofounders Collier and the late Mayor. Learn more about the center's mission. (Photo by John Sherman)

Sidebar: An Athlete's Perspective

As principal investigator of the Dartmouth Biomedical Engineering Center for Orthopaedics (DBEC), Van Citters leads a team of researchers and students in assessing new technologies and designs. His work focuses on biomaterials, biomechanics, and design of artificial joints—an interest rooted in his undergraduate years rowing men's heavyweight crew.

"To bring true value to our field, you have to understand the biomechanics of the person who is using artificial joints. What I've learned about biomechanics also translates to the biomechanics of being an athlete," says Van Citters, who continues to row and serve as faculty advisor to the team. "It's been interesting as a practitioner to look at athletics and have a richer understanding of the biomechanics and some of the injuries that might come with the sport."

When he returned to Dartmouth for a BE and MS, Van Citters studied knee bearings with Professor John Collier '72 Th'75 Th'77 at DBEC. The center—cofounded by Collier and the late orthopaedic surgeon and Adjunct Professor Michael Mayor—is home to one of the largest collections of retrieved artificial joints in the world, with tens of thousands of implants submitted by 900-plus surgeons in the past 30 years. 

There, Van Citters pursued his PhD studies, examining the mechanical properties and performance of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene used in total joint replacement. He joined the Thayer faculty in 2007.

Throughout subsequent roles—as department chair and associate dean for undergraduate education, where he coordinated an increase of the size and offerings of the undergraduate engineering programs by 50 percent—Van Citters has remained committed to his lab, the classroom, and athletics. He recently combined those threads to co-teach "The American University Athlete in the 21st Century" with Dartmouth President Sian Beilock, History Professor Paul Christesen, and Athletics Director Mike Harrity.