Hanover -- On his first day as Dartmouth College's new president, Jim Yong Kim explained his assignment: To teach the world about the smallest of the Ivy League's schools.

A South Korea-born global health reformer, physician and anthropologist, the 49-year-old Kim moves from working with the world's poorest, sickest populations to the corner office of a wealthy, elite school.

At one of several receptions for Kim yesterday on campus, a questioner asked him what challenge he faces as Dartmouth's 17th president.

“What I think most about Dartmouth is, the world just doesn't know what we do here,” Kim answered.

He told a crowd at the Thayer School of Engineering that his charge from the college's Board of Trustees is to “be creative and surge forward while everyone else is cutting back.”

And after visiting laboratories at Thayer -- where Kim held his own questioning scientists and engineers working in a number of disciplines -- the new president said he was impressed.

“I'm thrilled to see how great it all is up close,” he said in a brief interview.

Kim had little time to answer an onlooker's questions as aides kept him moving through a series of welcoming events yesterday. He began at a breakfast with college staffers, more than 250 of whom showed up at 7:30 a.m. at the Hopkins Center.

Ninety minutes later, Kim and an assistant from the President's Office were ferried in a college Safety and Security car to the Tuck School of Business, where Kim spoke to more than 100 employees and students.

Next was the Thayer tour where Kim met researchers, graduate students and undergrads and professors who talked with him about their work.

Then he addressed another 100-plus crowd at the engineering school.

Kim said he had started as an undergraduate majoring in biomedical engineering but changed his major. The 2003 MacArthur “genius grant” award winner told the crowd: “I wasn't smart enough to continue as an engineer.”

Thayer Dean Joseph Helble said he was impressed but not surprised by how well Kim was able to quickly grasp the engineering projects he saw yesterday.

“Here's someone who's generally intellectually curious about his work and wants to know more,” said Helble, who was on the search committee that recommended Kim for the president's job.

“His ability to make connections among fields will be a tremendous asset to Dartmouth. It's a bright future,” Helble said.

Kim takes over for James Wright, who served 11 years as president in a career at Dartmouth spanning 40 years. Now president emeritus, Wright will keep an office in the college-owned South Block complex.

Kim is currently staying in a college-owned apartment. His wife, pediatrician Younsook Lim, and two young sons will join him in Hanover next month, when the family moves into a home the college owns while renovations of the President's House are under way.

The new president comes to Dartmouth from Harvard University, where he was chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital and director of the Harvard School of Public Health's Francoise-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights.

Before that he was director of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS division, and previously joined global health pioneer Paul Farmer in founding Partners in Health, a nonprofit that created a new model for treatment and prevention of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis in impoverished locations including Haiti, Peru, Rwanda and Lesotho.

Tuck School Dean Paul Danos said Kim's work around the world will benefit Dartmouth.

“He definitely has played on a world stage and I think he's going to bring all of that knowledge and confidence into the Upper Valley,” Danos said.

In fact, Kim talked about bringing acquaintances such as the president of Rwanda into Dartmouth's classrooms.

Kim said his friend, eBay CEO John Donahoe, who is also a Dartmouth trustee, recently talked with him about putting the eBay-owned Internet phone system, Skype, all over campus.

“Skypifying Dartmouth,” Kim called it.

“I said absolutely … let's get the minister of health of Rwanda or Lesotho on Skype, talking to students,” Kim said. “I did that in my work. There's no reason we can’t do that at Dartmouth.”

Observers yesterday said Kim is poised to make Dartmouth an international player.

“It's a step into a different era,” said Judy Cross of Hanover at the largest welcoming reception yesterday for Kim -- an ice cream party on the college Green attended by about 2,000 people.

Cross was with Dartmouth alumnus John Hatheway, a Class of 1948 undergrad and '50 Tuck graduate. Hatheway said Kim will bring “a much needed change of pace” to his alma mater.

Margaret Lawrence, director of programming at the Hopkins Center, called Kim “charming and refreshing” and said it is good for the college to have a president “more like my generation than previous presidents.”

In addition, she said she was “very proud to have a person of color as president. I'm deeply excited about that.”

Dartmouth junior Zach Mason of Miami said students haven't yet formed an opinion of Kim.

“We're still taking it all in,” he said.

Many in the crowd were Dartmouth sophomores, who spend the summer after their second year on campus. It was to them that Kim said he wanted to speak, describing “the moment that I have been waiting for” to speak to students “as your president.”

He told them he had had other job offers, but chose to come to Dartmouth, believing he can make a difference by helping teach and inspire a legion of smart young people.

“It was a gamble for me but a gamble I took knowing we were going to work,” Kim said. “Every single one of you can change the world and indeed must change the world and make it a better place.”

And, as students played Frisbee on the lawn, listeners licked ice cream cones and passers-by bought strawberries at the Hanover Farmer's Market on the edge of the Green, Kim took it all in and told the crowd: “I can't believe I’m here in this unbelievable job.”

Susan J. Boutwell can be reached at sboutwell@vnews.com or at (603) 727-3248.