A Portrait of the Person Behind Dartmouth's $3.7 Billion Endowment

Few jobs at Dartmouth require a person to travel regularly around the world to Singapore, India and England, but when you manage Dartmouth $3 billion endowment, well, you have to do what you have to do.

As Dartmouth’s Chief Investment Officer since Feb. 1, 2011, Pamela Peedin ’89, T ’98 feels the burden of managing Dartmouth’s large endowment but wouldn’t trade her position for anything in the world. In fact, Peedin considers her role as CIO to be her dream job.

“It’s weighty but energizing,” Peedin said. “However, I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing.

Peedin credits her colleagues’ skills, passion and professionalism as why she enjoys work much more and finds it less stressful than she otherwise might.

“I am incredibly lucky to have a very talented group of colleagues in the Investment Office and advisors on the investment committee who are literally the world’s foremost investment experts,” Peedin said. “I couldn’t be in better company to help guide the endowment.

She loves pursuing an investment career with the mission of generating returns the place she has been a part of for 30 years.

“Being here is an extraordinary responsibility and privilege,” Peedin explained. “I think about it every day. Dartmouth does such an extraordinary job of educating leaders and life-long learners and I love that everything we do in the investment office has that mindset. It’s a wonderful place to be.

Peedin travels a considerable amount throughout the globe, although most of it occurs within the United States.

As a result, Peedin explains that she doesn’t have a typical workweek. Instead, she has four kinds of typical weeks, which can include traveling, seeing investors across the globe, preparing for Investment meetings, attending all the meetings of the Board of Trustees.

Most weeks are a combination of those activities. Her most typical weeks are prominently spent in the office, managing the office, having weekly internal staff meetings to discuss investments and seeing managers in and outside of the office.

According to Peedin, the Investment Office tries to consider as many what-if scenarios as possible when making investment decisions, stress-testing Dartmouth’s investment portfolio for those scenarios.

Understandably, many people, including numerous students at Dartmouth, facing such long, stressful hours would resort to coffee and caffeine to keep them awake and alert. By her own admission, Peedin does the same thing, explaining she is a triple grande dry cappuccino drinker at Starbucks.

Recently though, Peedin is trying to cut back on her caffeine intake, which she claims to be the hardest thing she’s every done. At the moment, including at our interview, Peedin drinks tea as an alternative to coffee to ensure she doesn’t have addictions in her life and can stay healthy.

Peedin and her husband Paul Rebuck, have two sons, Matt, 13, and Charlie, 11, and Peedin loves spending as much time as possible with her family.

“I love to spend time with my family, whether it’s long walks with my husband, helping my kids with homework or cheering them on in their sports games, or having a great conversation with the family around the dinner table, which we try to do at least a few nights a week – these are my biggest stress-relievers,” Peedin said.

Peedin’s family lives on the school campus where her husband works, and is able to participate in numerous campus activities including attending plays, concerts and sports events.

Peedin’s family loves to spend time outdoors, especially at the beach. Summer weekends are often spent kayaking, paddle-boarding and surfing, and the family is occasionally able to go on a vacation to a foreign country.

Peedin arrived at Dartmouth from Boston University, where she was BU’s first-ever CIO, BU’s Executive Director of Media Relations Colin Riley said.

Starting from scratch, Peedin completely revolutionized BU’s way of doing business, building BU’s Investment Office from the ground up. BU’s Board of Trustees investment committee used to meet monthly to manage BU’s holdings. Nowadays, thanks to Peedin’s efforts, the committee approves investments while day-to-day business is managed by the Investment Office.

“Transition to a college administration was interesting, especially since BU hadn’t had an investment office when I arrived,” Peedin said.

Working together with BU’s President, Peedin determined how best to initiate an internal effort at making investments and how to put that process into the governance structure that must work with the committee, senior administrators and BU’s Board of Trustees.

Peedin would need to learn the job under fire, however, as shortly following her appointment in May 2007, the financial market collapsed in what would be known as the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, Peedin’s main concern was making investors in BU understand that BU was capable of weathering the financial storm and understanding the different levers that needed to be employed.

While the stress was much higher then compared to now, Peedin still works at the same frenetic pace because of all the different initiatives Dartmouth is implementing.

BU averaged 5.8 percent on annual returns during Peedin’s five years running the Investment Office, which placed the university in the top quarter of college and universities. In 2010, the year Peedin left BU, the returns were 12.7 percent, outdoing Dartmouth’s 10 percent the same year.

Prior to BU, Peedin had been a consultant and managing director at Cambridge Associates for 10 years. Cambridge Associates is a Boston firm that advises nonprofits on their investments, and helped transition Peedin from education to finance. Peedin oversaw $2.5 billion of aggregate assets for numerous organizations, including universities, independent schools and foundations.

It was at Cambridge Associates where she saw the intersection of theory and practice in endowments.

Peedin studied psychology while an undergraduate at Dartmouth before working for Oldfields School in Maryland as a teacher and administrator and Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts as a financial aid director.

While working for different schools, Peedin found herself increasingly involved in the business side of education and, knowing she loved finance and the intersection of finance and education, she pursued an MBA at Tuck. At first, she had the intention of running a school but found herself fascinated by the challenges of investing and mastering the stock market roller coaster, which ultimately helped her discover a love of investments she didn’t know about previously.

“Investing is one of the most fascinating intellectual challenges,” Peedin said. “I think it’s an extraordinary field. Coupled with the passion I’ve always had for education, it’s a great combination."

Dartmouth Astronomy Professor Ryan Hickox Wins Sloan Foundation Grant

In the constellation Virgo, 2.5 billion light years away from Earth, a galaxy with little-understood properties generates massive amounts of energy and light. Such deep space objects intrigue astronomy professor Ryan Hickox, who recently received a $50,000 Sloan Research Fellowship to search for quasars. With the grant, Hickox will aim to better understand the supermassive black holes that lie at the center of galaxies and the evolution of the universe.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selected Hickox as one of 126 U.S. and Canadian researchers with potential to contribute significant scholarship.

Typically young academics, Sloan fellows are nominated by their colleagues and selected based on research, creativity and potential for scientific leadership.

Hickox, an observational astrophysicist, has researched black holes since joining Dartmouth’s department of physics and astronomy in December 2011.

Quasars are among the brightest, oldest, most distant and most powerful objects in the universe.
At their center, quasars, like other galaxies, host supermassive black holes that attract gas and other material and release intense radiation.

Observing quasars gives researchers an idea of how galaxies assemble themselves over time, as it takes time for light to travel, astronomy professor John Thorstensen said.

Hickox is interested in quasars that are obstructed from view. In many cases, gas and dust block the typical ultraviolet and optical light signatures that are normally used to identify quasars.

Until recently, the observational tools to find such hidden quasars did not exist, Hickox said.

Hickox’s proposal focused on using two new telescopes, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, an infrared telescope that launched in 2009, and the Nuclear Stereoscopic Telescope Array, or NuStar, which observes high-energy X-rays.

Quasars, which possess unique signatures in the infrared spectrum, can be observed using WISE because dust does not block infrared light.

NuStar measures high energy X-rays, which are typically emitted next to black holes and can be observed through gas and dust.

Hickox collaborates with NuStar’s science team, giving him priority use of data. Unlike WISE, NuStar must be pointed at specific regions of the sky and is best used to observe areas a few times larger than the moon, Hickox said.

“If you’re interested in how things came to be and what happened to the world to make it the way it is,” Thorstensen said, “this is the kind of thing you want to know.”

Since the Sloan fellowship program’s inception in 1955, 42 fellows have earned a Nobel Prize, 16 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 13 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics and 63 have received the National Medal of Science.

Hickox is the 20th Dartmouth professor to receive a Sloan grant.

“I was excited, very honored and, frankly, a little surprised because the level of competition is really high,” Hickox said.

At Dartmouth, Hickox has taught courses on galaxies, cosmology, stars and the Milky Way, in addition to introductory astronomy classes. In summer 2012, Hickox organized a five-day international workshop about black holes.

Thorstensen said although the award is smaller than some other scientific research grants, Sloan grants provide great prestige and improved financial flexibility.

“He’s really become known among his peers as a go-to guy,” Thorstensen said.

Tyler Stoff ’15 said that Hickox was especially enthusiastic about black holes during a course last spring.

“Whenever the class focused on black holes, he was probably the most excited person in the room and had the most to say, which is great in a teacher,” Stoff said.

Hickox’s research team includes two undergraduates, four graduate students and one post-doctoral student. All seven students will be involved in the project in varying degrees, depending on their experience.

One of these students, Alexandros Zervos ’16, said in an email that he has found Hickox to be both a great teacher and colleague.

“You’ve got these amazingly interesting exotic objects with extreme gravity that have all these cool energy phenomena,” Hickox said. “To understand where they come from, you have to understand the quasars.”

This article was originally written by me and published on The Dartmouth website.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Announces Latest Affiliation with Cheshire Medical Center

Compelled by fiscal challenges in today’s health care system, some hospitals choose to partner with each other to share medical responsibilities and financial strategies, with the goal of improving the overall value of the services they provide. On Feb. 10, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Cheshire Medical Center announced that they would pursue a partnership, DHMC’s latest in a series of regional affiliations that aim to reduce costs and improve quality of care.

The partnership aims to combat challenges such as reduced government reimbursement, increased taxes on hospital earnings, declining inpatient volumes and the emergence of new payment models.

The affiliation between DHMC and Cheshire must be approved by the New Hampshire Attorney General and the director of the New Hampshire Charitable Trusts for regulatory review before it goes into effect this fall.

DHMC and Cheshire have maintained a joint operating agreement since 1998, in which Cheshire employs most of its staff through the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene group of multi-specialty practitioners.

Cheshire CEO Arthur Nichols said he considers the agreement a natural next step in improving the hospitals’ relationship.

In 2011 and 2012, Cheshire experienced its first operation deficits in over 30 years, prompting a desire for a closer affiliation with DHMC, which can allocate resources more effectively, said DHMC director of external relations Rick Adams. DHMC and Cheshire began discussing the agreement last September.

The proposed affiliation will allow Cheshire to remain a separate legal organization while building tighter bonds with DHMC leadership and management, coordinating their clinical and fiscal activities.

DHMC will have oversight over some of Cheshire’s financial decisions, including proposed budget strategies.

Nichols said that although it was hard for Cheshire to cede any autonomy, the decision was worth the legal and financial ability to make mutual investments, which can improve clinical strengths and intensive care services.

The hospitals will consider consolidating services and sharing some costs to reduce expenses, Nichols said.

“We have top-notch intensive care services and the Dartmouth system will have the incentive and wherewithal to do bolster them,” he said.

The agreement will enable both medical centers to pursue their shared vision of creating a sustainable system for health care, focusing on population health, delivering value-based care and adjusting to new models of payment, Adams said.

Nichols emphasized the short-term clinical advantages of the agreement for patients, adding that Cheshire would be able to alleviate DHMC’s responsibilities in caring for certain types of patients. Equipped with a Level 3 trauma center, Cheshire will handle patients with medical issues such as pneumonia or appendicitis, allowing Lebanon’s DHMC — New Hampshire’s only Level 1 trauma center — to take more high-risk patients.

According to Stanford University Medical Center, a critical patient’s chances of survival increase by 20 to 25 percent when treated at a Level 1 trauma center.

As a Level 1 trauma center, DHMC has surgeons, emergency physicians, anesthesiologists and nurses on staff 24 hours a day, along with an education program and preventive and outreach programs. As a Level 3 center, Cheshire can provide emergency resuscitation, surgery and intensive care for most patients, but lacks the full availability of specialists that DHMC has.

“[DHMC has] critical care beds but we only have so many of them,” Adams said. “And a lot of them filled with patients who really do need to come here because they’re critically injured or seriously ill.”

This new partnership is the latest in a string of affiliation that DHMC has made in the last several years. The relationships are part of a concerted effort to create a interconnected medical care system, Adams said.

In 2011, Children’s Hospital at DHMC and Children’s Hospital Boston began collaborating on pediatric care. Last fall, DHMC finalized a partnership with New London Hospital. Other recent affiliations include links with Mt. Ascutney Hospital in Windsor, Vt. and Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon.

“Health care in this country is moving toward integrated networks that are able to treat large populations of people,” Alice Peck Day Health Systems president and CEO Susan Mooney said in a press release. “For APD to remain a vital health care provider in that type of system, we realized that we cannot do it alone, and we owe it to our patients to find a way to participate.”

APD realized it could not maintain long-term financial viability without assistance, prompting affiliation discussions with DHMC to start last month, APD’s director of communications Dean Mudgett said. An affiliation between the two hospitals would formalize a relationship already in place.

“Northern New England is well ahead of the rest of the country in reforms,” Nichols said. “There are a lot of people still clinging to the old health care system, we create a charge, we get paid and that’s our job.”

This article was originally written by me and published on The Dartmouth website.

Dartmouth Considering Zero-Tolerance Sexual Assault Policy

Replacing Dartmouth’s current sexual misconduct policy with a zero-tolerance policy for students found responsible for sexual assault has recently gathered momentum on the Improve Dartmouth online forum. Since a Feb. 10 gathering on the Green, when students met in support after a male student threatened a female member of the Class of 2017 on Bored at Baker, discussion surrounding the policy has grown. 

Under the zero-tolerance policy students found guilty of rape would be separated from the College. The suggestion, proposed on Jan. 23 by Cally Womick ’13, is Improve Dartmouth’s highest voted submission.

Dartmouth’s current policy states that students are prohibited from engaging in any kind of sexual misconduct, which refers to any form of sex-based discrimination, harassment or nonconsensual sexual contact. Sanctions can be as severe as permanent separation from the College, though Dartmouth is not currently required to separate students who are found responsible for rape, according to the student handbook.

Expelling offenders will decrease the cases of sexual assault and increase community safety, Student Assembly president Adrian Ferrari ’14 said.

Chair of the Student Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault Will Scheiman ’14 clarified that any zero-tolerance policy would apply only to cases of rape and not for other cases of sexual misconduct.

“Once an outcome is decided and the [Committee on Standards] process finds someone responsible of rape, that person no longer has a place in the Dartmouth community, now or ever,” Scheiman said in an email.

As of Sunday night, the post had received 1,401 unique page views on Improve Dartmouth, said Alison Polton-Simon ’14, who analyzes the website’s traffic. The majority of activity related to the post occurred on Feb. 11 and Feb. 12, the days immediately following the student gathering.

As of press time, the post had 921 up-votes and 24 down-votes, for an overall feedback score of 897 on Improve Dartmouth, which is a crowd-sourcing website for ideas launched by student group Dartmouth Roots last month.

The website team provides biweekly reports to College President Phil Hanlon on site activity, including visitor demographics, popular ideas and actions resulting from the ideas, co-moderator Esteban Castano ’14 said. The group submitted its most recent biweekly report, which included the zero-tolerance policy proposal, to Hanlon last Tuesday, said co-moderator Gillian O’Connell ’15.

In July 2013, SPCSA recommended specifying in the student handbook that students found responsible for non-consensual sexual penetration be expelled.

The current COS policy states that students found responsible for engaging in actual or attempted penetration without consent or for repeated sexual misconduct could face permanent separation. Not all students found guilty of rape, however, are expelled, Scheiman said in an email.

The proposed policy would mandate expulsion in cases of rape.

The current policy’s breadth makes it unlikely that Dartmouth would feel confident enough in its legal standing to expel a student who violated the policy in any way, former head of the Center for Gender and Student Engagement professor Giavanna Munafo said.

“When somebody’s found responsible for being a predatory rapist, I think that’s the kind of incident that the person wouldn’t be allowed to return to campus,” she added.

Munafo said discussion of a zero-tolerance policy has become more prominent due to the Title IX investigation and alumni activism.

Discussion on Improve Dartmouth included a suggestion for a negotiable expulsion policy that would protect a survivor from unwanted legal proceedings that could arise if expelled students decided to pursue defamation charges.

Matthew McFarland ’16 noted that implementing a zero-tolerance policy requires there to be no doubt that the individual committed the offense.

This addresses Dartmouth’s use of a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which states that a person is responsible for an offense if the Committee on Standards finds that it is more likely for the violation to have occurred than not.

Concerns regarding the preponderance of the evidence are important, Munafo said. Alternative decision-making standards and motivations of the current policy should be discussed, she said.

One problem with a zero-tolerance policy is the lack of control it grants the survivor, Scheiman said in an email, adding that he believes all survivors should have control with regard to reporting and the COS process. Yet because some survivors choose not to go through the COS process out of fear that their perpetrator will not be removed from campus, the policy may have a positive impact, he said.

Students have raised similar questions at peer institutions.

Over the past decade, Yale University has faced several investigations into its handling of sexual assault cases. In the first half of 2013, six Yale students were found guilty of non-consensual sex. None were expelled and just one was suspended, sparking national outrage.

Harvard University’s policy has also been strongly criticized, The Huffington Post and The Crimson reported in partnership. At Harvard, penalties for sexual harassment depend on the nature of the offense and range from reprimand to dismissal.

Unlike many American universities, including Dartmouth, Harvard does not have an affirmative consent policy. Affirmative consent defines sexual assault as occurring in the absence of enthusiastic verbal or physical consent. It must not be given as a result of physical coercion or threat of bodily harm.

Dartmouth’s sexual misconduct policy, in contrast, states that “one should presume that there is no consent in the absence of a clear positive indication of consent. Likewise, non-consent or lack of consent may also be communicated in a variety of ways both verbal and nonverbal.”

Harvard and Princeton are currently the only Ivy League schools without the preponderance standard.

In April, students at Swarthmore College filed a Clery Act complaint against their school, alleging that administrators did not support those who reported sexual harassment.

Swarthmore is reviewing its sexual misconduct policy and currently has an interim sexual assault and harassment policy, which places all responsibility for investigating and taking appropriate action on Swarthmore, not the complainant.

This article was originally written by me and published on The Dartmouth website.

Astronauts Combat Depression with Electronic Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Program

At 249 million miles away, astronauts living on Mars may face loneliness, depression and other forms of mental illness. To help those in remote areas, like outer space, find relief from depression, Geisel School of Medicine professors Mark Hegel and Jay Buckey and psychology professor Jay Hull developed a computer-based therapy program called the electronic problem-solving treatment, or ePST.

The program was designed for a hypothetical NASA mission to Mars, during which astronauts in need of psychological help would be handicapped by the five to 20 minute time delay on communication between Earth and Mars. Astronauts on long-duration missions with a limited group of people and minimal opportunity to interact with others outside the group are at high risk for stress, personal conflict and depression.

Hull co-authored a paper with Hegel in 2008 about how non-electronic problem-solving therapy helps depression and benefits people who generally avoid their problems. This finding applies to astronauts, who desire to be autonomous and self-directed.

Hegel and Buckey said the research led them to decide that computer-based programs would be a good approach to helping astronauts, as they allow users to complete the regimens on their own and from a distance.

The program is driven by the concepts of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which challenges people to reflect on and change their negative thoughts, resulting in increased positivity, Buckey said. It does not rely on dispensing medication, he added.

The program faces a significant challenge with user engagement, since in order for it to be successful, astronauts using it must find computers a credible form of treatment and build trust with their therapist.

In ePST, astronauts seeking treatment first complete a test to diagnose their level of depression. Based on these results, users will then interact with pre-recorded videos of Hegel answering questions and providing a treatment schedule, Hull said.

After the user completes the treatment schedule, the program will prompt the user to reflect on his or her experience.

Hegel and Buckey, with assistance from Hull, conducted a trial to evaluate the program’s feasibility, credibility and therapeutic alliance in treating depression.

Buckey presented the results of the trial at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center last Friday in a lecture called “Even Astronauts Get the Blues.”

Twenty-seven people participated in the original trial, 23 of whom completed at least four of six ePST sessions over nine weeks. Most participants completed all six, Buckey said.

Once the trial concluded, participants were asked to evaluate the program. It scored 5.27 out of seven for acceptability of self-guided treatment, 72 percent on treatment credibility and 79 percent on system usability.

The trial results, compared with Hull and Hegel’s 2008 paper, showed that ePST patients improved more rapidly than those who received traditional therapy.

The model was influenced by Dartmouth’s Interactive Media Lab, directed by Geisel professor emeritus Joe Henderson, Buckey said. Henderson believed experiential learning must be provided whenever possible, and that psychological interventions should be grounded in cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Max Fagin Th ’11, a finalist in the application process for a MarsOne program that plans to establish a human colony on Mars by 2025, said he thinks the psychological problems of space travel are exaggerated.

Boredom and lethargy represent a significant portion of astronauts’ psychological issues due to months of isolation and regimented schedules, Fagin said.

The program would be most effective during the nine-month voyage, Fagin said. Once on Mars, new discoveries and challenges will make everyday life interesting, and a lack of constant supervision due to the time delay will reduce stress.

The program will be a valuable resource in assisting astronauts with unforeseen mental issues, Fagin said.

Elaine Brown, who researches post-traumatic stress disorders, said she believes that ePST is helpful in providing astronauts with the option of therapy. Whether or not the program is effective, the mere presence of a therapeutic option can provide relief.

Brown said she does not believe that ePST will completely replace therapists because it lacks the dynamic interaction and personalized treatments that physicians can offer.

“Flexibility is important, as therapy is extremely interactive, and is tailored to the needs or pacing for each client,” Brown said.

Seeking help that is insufficient can increase stress and, in isolation, astronauts will not have access to social interaction and recreational activities available on Earth, she said.

Yet it is extremely difficult to predict all possible complications and how each may affect the mission’s members, Brown said.

“Most applicants for any mission to space are going to be demonstrably resistant or resilient to psychological impairments, including depression,” Brown said.
Brown added, however, that astronauts must have resources for their physical well-being and psychological health, Brown said.

Hegel said he believes the program can also help alleviate similar problems for people living in isolated areas on Earth, like northern New Hampshire. The program was inspired by Hegel’s desire to provide mental health services to those who lack insurance, suitable finances or mental health professionals, he said.

“It’s a lot easier to put a laptop in a primary care clinic,” Hegel explained, “than a professional in a remote area.”

This article was originally written by me and published on The Dartmouth website.