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COLLEGE NEWS
WHAT IS DARTMOUTH?
John asked me for a short commentary on the subject. Having used those precise words as a title for talks to groups as varied as high school prospectives (mostly recruited athletes), reuning alumni, the staff in the development office, and campus tour guides, I agreed. The commentary has two parts - the first much shorter than the second. Here goes.
1. Dartmouth College is an extraordinary educational success story. Who could possibly have predicted that one of the nation's top dozen major universities - only one with the chutzpah to call itself a college - would develop here in the North Country? Success, in my opinion, was especially dramatic during the presidencies of William Jewett Tucker, Ernest Martin Hopkins, and John Sloan Dickey. Tucker inherited a troubled regional institution with declining enrollment and no clear identity. At the end of Dickey's presidency both students and faculty competed aggressively to become part of Dartmouth, alumni basked in the increasing national and international prominence of their alma mater, and the college represented an educational philosophy which gave it a unique place in the world of higher education. Dartmouth had become -the definition is mine - the premier undergraduate liberal arts university in the United States. It still is.
2. I'll explain each of these descriptive terms, not in order, but starting with the most controversial.
UNIVERSITY: I have several different dictionaries in the house. Each defines university in the same way. Webster's definition is typical - it reads "an educational institution offering bachelor's and advanced degrees." Dartmouth has been a university since the 1790s when the medical school was founded. By 1900, Thayer and Tuck existed and the college was awarding advanced degrees in several areas. US News and World Report includes us in the major university not college category. We continue to call ourselves a "college" in part because of the Dartmouth "College" case legacy, and because, although by dictionary definition a university, Dartmouth has chosen to place primary emphasis on undergraduate, not graduate, education.
UNDERGRADUATE: The ground rules preserving that emphasis were first formalized in mid1960s and later restated in a twenty-five year plan adopted in the 1990s. Graduate students in Arts and Sciences will never exceed 10% of undergraduates; no graduate student may be responsible for a course (i.e. no teaching assistants); teaching evaluations by undergraduates will play a fundamental role in determining faculty promotion, including the granting of tenure. At the same time the college acted to limit the graduate school growth which marked the rest of the Ivies, it liberated (i.e., granted freedom concerning graduate admissions and curricula, and ability to raise funds) what were known in our day as the "associated schools." Thayer, Tuck, and the Med School students don't teach like history grad students do. Much of our national status comes from the liberated professional schools, but their growth hasn't weakened commitment to undergraduates.
LIBERAL ARTS: No need for much explanation here. Unlike all state schools and, in the Ivy League Penn and Cornell, Dartmouth is pure liberal arts. There's a linkage of this to what I wrote about Tuck, Thayer, and the Med School. Among the many functions of what we call liberal arts is preparation for non-professorial professions. My grades in history correlate uncannily with how students fare in the LSATs (law boards) and science grades predict just as closely MCAT results. I have begun to say to prospectives that our premed students have advantages in career preparation shared by few others because of the close working relationship among hospital, med school, and several undergraduate departments.
PREMIER: Even alums grumpy about change at the college don't complain about high ratings in Barron 's and US News and World Report. Recently the Wall Street Journal ranked all colleges and universities in the country as feeder schools to top medical, business, and law schools. Dartmouth came in seventh, higher even than our major university standing. One consequence of our being among the very elite is the obvious fact we're expensive. Comes with the turf.
THE: Best and briefest for last. Dartmouth's not an "A". It's "The". The only institution I can think of attempting what Dartmouth College attempts is Wesleyan. Fine school, but...
What's Dartmouth College? It's "The Premier Undergraduate Liberal Arts University in the country." And an institution of which we all should be proud.
Jere Daniell
Class of 1955
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