DEPARTMENT OF BIOGRAPHY ADDED TO CURRICULUM
The constantly growing interest in biography and the conviction that the subject possesses vital educational value have led the Administration to establish an independent department for its study, in charge of the Rev. Ambrose W. Vernon, professor of Biography in Carleton College, Northfield, Minn.
The department is to begin instruction in the fall and it is proposed to offer two courses in the first semester for juniors and seniors. One of the courses is entitled "Representative Men of Antiquity before the Christian Era" and deals with the founders of civilization. The men to be considered will probably be Confucius, Buddha, David, Jeremiah, Aeschylus, Socrates, Plato, Alexander, and Caesar.
The other course is called "Representative Modern Europeans" and deals with such men as Frederick the Great, Voltaire, Rouseau, Goethe, Ibsen, Pasteur, Nietzsche, and Tolstoi. It is proposed in the second semester to follow the first course with one on "The Men of Antiquity since the Christian Era" and the second with a course on "Representative Modern Americans." The method of instruction is to be largely class discussion based on reading done simultaneously by the students. The discussion will be supplemented when necessary by lectures.
Such a department as this has only recently appeared in the academic world. Five years ago the first department of the kind was established in Carleton College by a former member of the Dartmouth faculty. The experiment has proven sufficiently attractive to call for its establishment here in Dartmouth. The interest awakened by the courses of Professors Lingley and Joyce and by the analogous courses of Professor Stewart has prepared the way for the establishment of an independent chair.
The two underlying purposes of the department are to give its students a familiar acquaintance with some of the noblest characters of the ages and to make clear to them the main factors of human greatness on the basis of actual historic evidence as distinguished from speculation and ethical theory.
