Dartmouth College

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Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university, comprising a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences. It is located in Hanover, New Hampshire. Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College," it is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. With an undergraduate enrollment of 4,196 and a total student enrollment of 5,987, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League.

Dartmouth College was established in 1769 by Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock. After a long period of financial and political struggles, Dartmouth emerged from relative obscurity in the early 20th century. Dartmouth alumni, from Daniel Webster to the many donors in the 19th and 20th centuries, have been famously involved in their college.

Dartmouth is located on a rural 269-acre (1.1 kmÂ²) campus in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire. Given the College's isolated location, participation in athletics and the school's Greek system is high. Dartmouth's 34 varsity sports teams compete in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. Students are well-known for preserving a variety of strong campus traditions.

History
Dartmouth was founded by Eleazar Wheelock, a Puritan minister from Connecticut, who had previously sought to establish a school to train Native Americans as missionaries. Wheelock's ostensible inspiration for such an establishment largely resulted from his relationship with Mohegan Indian Samson Occom. Occom became an ordained minister after studying under Wheelock's tutelage from 1743 to 1747 and later moved to Long Island to preach to the Montauks.

Wheelock instituted Moor's Indian Charity School in 1755. The Charity School proved somewhat successful, but additional funding was necessary to continue school's operations. To this end, Wheelock sought the help of friends to raise money. Occom, accompanied by Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker, traveled to England in 1766 to raise money in the churches of that nation. With the funds, they established a trust to help Wheelock. The head of the trust was William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth.

Although the fund provided Wheelock ample financial support for the Charity School, Wheelock had trouble recruiting Indians to the institution;primarily because its location was far from tribal territories. In seeking to expand his school into a college, Wheelock relocated his educational enterprise to Hanover, in the Province of New Hampshire. The move from Connecticut followed a lengthy and sometimes frustrating effort to find resources and secure a charter. The Royal Governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth, provided the land upon which Dartmouth would be built and on December 13, 1769, conveyed the charter from King George III establishing the College. That charter created a college "for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land ... and also of English Youth and any others." The reference to educating Native American youth was included to connect Dartmouth to the Charity School and enable use of the Charity School's unspent trust funds. Named for William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth -” an important supporter of Eleazar Wheelock's earlier efforts but who, in fact, opposed creation of the College and never donated to it - Dartmouth is the nation's ninth oldest college and the last institution of higher learning established under Colonial rule. The College granted its first degrees in 1771.

Given the limited success of the Charity School, however, Wheelock intended his new College as one primarily for whites. Occom, disappointed with Wheelock's departure from the school's original goal of Indian Christianization, went on to form his own community of New England Indians called Brothertown Indians in New York. In 1819, Dartmouth College was the subject of the historic Dartmouth College case, in which the State of New Hampshire's 1816 attempt to amend the College's royal charter to make the school a public university was challenged. An institution called Dartmouth University occupied the College buildings and began operating in Hanover in 1817, though the College continued teaching classes in rented rooms nearby. Daniel Webster, an alumnus of the class of 1801, presented the College's case to the Supreme Court of the United States, which found the amendment of Dartmouth's charter to be an illegal impairment of a contract by the state and reversed New Hampshire's takeover of the College. Webster concluded his peroration with the famous and frequently quoted words: "It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it."

Dartmouth emerged onto the national academic stage at the turn of the 20th century. Prior to this period, the College had clung to traditional methods of instruction and was relatively poorly funded. Under the presidency of William Jewett Tucker (1893-1909), Dartmouth underwent a major revitalization of facilities, faculty, and the student body, following large endowments such as the $10,000 given by Dartmouth alumnus and law professor John Ordronaux. Twenty new structures replaced antiquated buildings, while the student body and faculty both expanded threefold. Tucker is often credited for having "refounded Dartmouth" and bringing it into national prestige. Presidents Ernest Fox Nichols (1909-1916) and Ernest Martin Hopkins (1916-1945) continued Tucker's trend of modernization, further improving campus facilities and introducing selective admissions in the 1920s. John Sloan Dickey, serving as president from 1945 until 1970, strongly emphasized the liberal arts, particularly public policy and international relations.

In 1970, longtime professor of mathematics and computer science John George Kemeny became president of Dartmouth. Kemeny presided over several major changes at the College. Dartmouth, previously serving as a men's institution, began admitting women as full-time students and undergraduate degree candidates in 1972 amid much controversy. At about the same time, the College adopted its "Dartmouth Plan" of academic scheduling, permitting the student body to increase in size within the existing facilities.

During the 1990s, the College saw a major academic overhaul under President James O. Freedman and a controversial (and ultimately unsuccessful) 1999 initiative to encourage the school's single-sex Greek houses to go coed. The first decade of the 21st century saw the commencement of the $1.3 billion Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience, the largest capital fundraising campaign in the College's history, which as of January 2008 has surpassed $1 billion and is on schedule to be completed before 2010. The mid- and late first decade of the 21st century have also seen extensive campus construction, with the erection of two new housing complexes, full renovation of two dormitories, and a forthcoming dining hall, life sciences center, and visual arts center. In 2004, Booz Allen Hamilton selected Dartmouth College as a model of institutional endurance "whose record of endurance has had implications and benefits for all American organizations, both academic and commercial," citing Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward and Dartmouth's successful self-reinvention in the late 19th century.

Since the election of a number of petition-nominated trustees to the Board of Trustees starting in 2004, the role of alumni in Dartmouth governance has been the subject of ongoing ideological conflict. President James Wright announced his retirement in February 2008 and was replaced by Harvard University professor and physician Jim Yong Kim on July 1, 2009.

In May 2010 Dartmouth joined the Matariki Network of Universities (MNU) together with Durham University (UK), Queen's University (Canada), University of Otago (New Zealand), University of TÃ¼bingen (Germany), University of Western Australia (Australia) and Uppsala University (Sweden).

Academics and administration
Dartmouth, a liberal arts institution, offers only a four-year Bachelor of Arts degree to undergraduate students. There are 39 academic departments offering 56 major programs, although students are free to design special majors or engage in dual majors. In 2008, the most popular majors were economics, government, history, psychological and brain sciences, English, biology, and engineering sciences.

In order to graduate, a student must complete 35 total courses, eight to ten of which are typically part of a chosen major program. Other requirements for graduation include the completion of ten "distributive requirements" in a variety of academic fields, proficiency in a foreign language, and completion of a writing class and first-year seminar in writing. Many departments offer honors programs requiring students seeking that distinction to engage in "independent, sustained work," culminating in the production of a thesis. In addition to the courses offered in Hanover, Dartmouth offers 57 different off-campus programs, including Foreign Study Programs, Language Study Abroad programs, and Exchange Programs.

Through the Graduate Studies program, Dartmouth grants doctorate and master's degrees in nineteen Arts & Sciences graduate programs. Although the first graduate degree, a PhD in classics, was awarded in 1885, many of the current PhD programs trace their origins to the 1960s. Furthermore, Dartmouth is home to three professional schools: Dartmouth Medical School (established 1797), Thayer School of Engineering (1867) - which also serves as the undergraduate department of engineering sciences - and Tuck School of Business (1900). With these professional schools and graduate programs, conventional American usage would accord Dartmouth the label of "Dartmouth University"; however, because of historical and nostalgic reasons (such as Dartmouth College v. Woodward), the school uses the name "Dartmouth College" to refer to the entire institution.

Dartmouth employs a total of 597 tenured or tenure-track faculty members, including the highest proportion of female tenured professors among the Ivy League universities. Faculty members have been at the forefront of such major academic developments as the Dartmouth Conferences, the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, Dartmouth BASIC, and Dartmouth ALGOL 30. As of 2005, sponsored project awards to Dartmouth faculty research amounted to $169 million.

Dartmouth serves as the host institution of the University Press of New England, a university press founded in 1970 that is supported by a consortium of schools that also includes Brandeis University, the University of New Hampshire, Northeastern University, Tufts University and the University of Vermont.

The Dartmouth Plan
Dartmouth functions on a quarter system, operating year-round on four ten-week academic terms. The Dartmouth Plan (or simply "D-Plan") is an academic scheduling system that permits the customization of each student's academic year. All undergraduates are required to be in residence for the fall, winter, and spring terms of their freshman and senior years, as well as the summer term of their sophomore year. During all other terms, students are permitted to choose between studying on-campus, studying at an off-campus program, or taking a term off for vacation, outside internships, or research projects. The typical course load is three classes per term, and students will generally enroll in classes for twelve total terms over the course of their academic career.

The D-Plan was instituted in the early 1970s at the same time that Dartmouth began accepting female undergraduates. It was initially devised as a plan to increase the enrollment without enlarging campus accommodations, and has been described as "a way to put 4,000 students into 3,000 beds." Although new dormitories have been built since, the number of students has also increased and the D-Plan remains in effect. It was modified in the 1980s in an attempt to reduce the problems of lack of social and academic continuity.

Admissions
Dartmouth describes itself as "highly selective," ranked as the fifteenth "toughest to get into" school by The Princeton Review in 2007, and classified as "most selective" by U.S. News & World Report. For the class of 2014, a record 18,778 students applied for approximately 1,100 places, and 11.5% of applicants were admitted. 95.3% of admitted students were ranked in the top 10% of their high school graduating class. 39.9% of admitted students were valedictorians and 11.9% were salutatorians. The mean SAT scores of admitted students by section were 733 for verbal, 741 for math, and 740 for writing. In 2010, Dartmouth was ranked ninth among undergraduate programs at national universities by U.S. News & World Report. However, since Dartmouth is ranked in a category for national research universities, some Dartmouth students and administrators have questioned the fairness of the ranking given the College's emphasis on undergraduate education. Dartmouth's strength in undergraduate education is highlighted by U.S. News & World Report when in 2009 and 2010 it ranked Dartmouth first in undergraduate teaching at national universities, ahead of Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Brown, Duke, and Harvard. Dartmouth ranks number seven in the Wall Street Journal's ranking of top feeder schools. The 2006 Carnegie Foundation classification listed Dartmouth as the only "majority-undergraduate", "arts-and-sciences focus[ed]", "research university" in the country that also had "some graduate coexistence" and "very high research activity."

Dartmouth meets 100% of students' demonstrated financial need in order to attend the College, and currently admits all students, including internationals, on a need-blind basis. Beginning in the 2008-2009 academic year, Dartmouth instituted a new financial aid policy extending need-blind admission to international students and replaced all student loans with scholarships and grants. Students from families with a combined annual income of less than $75,000 are not charged any tuition. However, in early 2010, the College announced that it would re-introduce loans to its financial aid packages beginning in the 2011-2012 school year due to its changed financial situation.

Board of Trustees
Dartmouth is governed by a Board of Trustees comprising the College president (ex officio), the state governor (ex officio), thirteen trustees nominated and elected by the board (called "charter trustees"), and eight trustees nominated by alumni and elected by the board ("alumni trustees"). The nominees for alumni trustee are determined by a poll of the members of the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College, selecting from among names put forward by the Alumni Council or by alumni petition.

Although the Board elected its members from the two sources of nominees in equal proportions between 1891 and 2007, the Board decided in 2007 to add several new members, all charter trustees. In the controversy that followed the decision, the Association of Alumni filed a lawsuit, although it later withdrew the action. In 2008, the Board added five new charter trustees.

Campus
Dartmouth College is situated in the rural town of Hanover, New Hampshire, located in the Upper Valley along the Connecticut River in New England. Its 269 acre (1.1 kmÂ²) campus is centered on a five-acre (two-hectare) "Green", a former field of pine trees cleared by the College in 1771. Dartmouth is the largest private landowner of the town of Hanover, and its total landholdings and facilities are worth an estimated $434 million. In addition to its campus in Hanover, Dartmouth owns 4,500 acres (18.2 kmÂ²) of Mount Moosilauke in the White Mountains Region and a 27,000 acre (109 kmÂ²) tract of land in northern New Hampshire known as the Second College Grant.

Dartmouth's campus buildings vary in age from Wentworth and Thornton Halls of the 1820s (the oldest surviving buildings constructed by the College) to new dormitories and mathematics facilities completed in 2006. Most of Dartmouth's buildings are designed in the Georgian American colonial style,  a theme which has been preserved in recent architectural additions. The College has actively sought to reduce carbon emissions and energy usage on campus, earning it the grade of A- from the Sustainable Endowments Institute on its College Sustainability Report Card 2008.

Academic facilities
The College's creative and performing arts facility is the Hopkins Center for the Arts ("the Hop"). Opened in 1962, the Hop houses the College's drama, music, film, and studio arts departments, as well as a woodshop, pottery studio, and jewelry studio which are open for use by students and faculty. The building was designed by the famed architect Wallace Harrison, who would later design the similar-looking faÃ§ade of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center. Its facilities include two theaters and one 900-seat auditorium. The Hop is also the location of all student mailboxes ("Hinman boxes") and the Courtyard CafÃ© dining facility. The Hop is connected to the Hood Museum of Art, arguably North America's oldest museum in continuous operation, and the Loew Auditorium, where films are screened. In addition to its nineteen graduate programs in the arts and sciences, Dartmouth is home to three separate graduate schools. Dartmouth Medical School is located in a complex on the north side of campus and includes laboratories, classrooms, offices, and a biomedical library. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, located several miles to the south in Lebanon, New Hampshire, contains a 396-bed teaching hospital for the Medical School. The Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business are both located at the end of Tuck Mall, west of the center of campus and near the Connecticut River. The Thayer School presently comprises two buildings; Tuck has seven academic and administrative buildings, as well as several common areas. The two graduate schools share a library, the Feldberg Business & Engineering Library.

Dartmouth's nine libraries are all part of the collective Dartmouth College Library, which comprises 2.48 million volumes and 6 million total resources, including videos, maps, sound recordings, and photographs. Its specialized libraries include the Biomedical Libraries, Evans Map Room, Feldberg Business & Engineering Library, Jones Media Center, Kresge Physical Sciences Library, Paddock Music Library, Rauner Special Collections Library, and Sherman Art Library. Baker-Berry Library is the main library at Dartmouth, comprising Baker Memorial Library (opened 1928) and Berry Library (opened 2000 ). Located on the northern side of the Green, Baker's 200 ft tower is an iconic symbol of the College.

Continued at Dartmouth College, part 2