A New Course
In the October issue of the Alumni Magazine brief mention was made of a new course in Human Relations. Just before Thanksgiving recess more details were made known concerning this "new and different" course which will be added to the Dartmouth curriculum next semester as a joint offering of the Departments of Psychology and Sociology.
Having as its primary purpose the study of small groups and interpersonal relations within them, the course in Human Relations represents a pioneer educational effort at the undergraduate level, and a novel course offering for Dartmouth in that it will be taught cooperatively by a group of five professors from the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. It will be novel also in the laboratory methods it will use. By means of a Group Behavior Laboratory, students in the course will have opportunities to observe groups in action, participate in their activities, and study experimentally the effects upon groups of individual personalities. The facilities of this laboratory, believed to be the first designed and used primarily for undergraduate class instruction, will be equal to any in the country.
A committee of the faculty has worked for more than two years planning the course. The undertaking was given impetus by a gift of $50,000 from Mr. L. J. Montgomery of Las Vegas, Nevada, an uncle of Kenneth F. Montgomery '25, for the purpose of strengthening Dartmouth's instructional program in the field of human relations. The gift, which makes possible the course's instructional team and its Group Behavior Laboratory, was operative also in the summer of 1951 when a subcommittee was enabled to work throughout that period developing the course plan. Since that time the plan then agreed upon lias been reviewed and many of the laboratory exercises and demonstrations have been given classroom trials in other courses. Instructors in other institutions who have pioneered the teaching of interpersonal relations have been consulted and their suggestions incorporated in the Dartmouth course.
Prof. Cecil A. Gibb, Visiting Lecturer in Psychology, will serve as chairman of the five-man teaching staff. In its initial offering the instructors in the Human Relations course will be Professor Gibb; Francis W. Gramlich, Professor of Philosophy; Albert H. Hastorf, Assistant Professor of Psychology; George F. Theriault '33, Professor of Sociology; and Robert A. McKennan '25, Professor of Sociology.
