Joshua Keniston, who has served as vice president and chief of staff to Executive Vice President Rick Mills since 2018, has been named vice president for institutional projects, Mills announced today.
In his new position, Keniston will expand his role in leading large-scale administrative projects that involve multiple departments across campus, Mills says.
For example, Keniston will continue to oversee the Dartmouth Green Energy Project, a $200-million initiative to build a biomass heating facility and hot water transmission system that would replace the existing central heating system and mark a major step toward achieving the institution’s sustainability goals. Other projects include plans for new graduate student housing.
“Josh brings a clear administrative talent and a gift for bringing people together around a common purpose,” Mills says. “In his short time at Dartmouth, he has proven to be an incredible asset as we’ve developed plans that will have a tremendous impact on the College’s future—from making energy systems more sustainable to ensuring our campus infrastructure will support the work of our faculty and students for years to come.”
“I’m looking forward to providing continued leadership and greater focus on the portfolio of institutional projects that I oversee,” Keniston says. “I’ll continue to work on many of the same large-scale projects that I started working on as chief of staff, but my new role will allow me to focus more completely on those projects as they enter new more demanding phases that require more time and commitment to move forward.”
Keniston joined the Dartmouth community in January 2018 after having consulted on several projects for the College as a manager of higher education strategy and operations practice with the Huron Consulting Group.
“I had grown to know and love Dartmouth after working on several projects as an external consultant. When the chance to work full-time as part of the Dartmouth team came up, I jumped at the opportunity,” he says. “Dartmouth’s unique position in terms of competitiveness, size, and location makes the type of administrative projects that I work on both challenging and incredibly rewarding.”
Keniston, who holds a master’s in higher education from Harvard, began his career in higher education administration as a student at Ithaca College, where he represented the student body as a voting member of the school’s board of trustees. He worked as a research and policy fellow at the New England Board of Education and as a fundraiser for Emerson College’s annual fund before turning to higher education consulting, serving as a consultant and product director for the firm Eduventures before joining Huron Consulting Group.
He and his fiancé, Christopher Heller, are enjoying life in the Upper Valley, Keniston says. “We love downhill and cross-country skiing in the winter and hiking and biking in the summer. Moving here has given us a great home base right in the middle of some of the most amazing outdoor opportunities New England has to offer.”
Hannah Silverstein can be reached at hannah.silverstein@dartmouth.edu.
