The Faculty
DR. JOHN PELENYI, Professor of Government, and former Hungarian Minister to this country, has been elected President and Trustee of the Free Europe University in Exile. On leave from Dartmouth for the year, Professor Pelenyi has left for Europe to take over his new duties. The University, one of the principal activities of the National Committee for a Free Europe, is starting its third semester this fall and will have about 200 students in residence at Robertsau, near Strasbourg.
Dr. Pelenyi has been a professor at Dartmouth since 1941. He resigned his ministerial post in November 1940 when Hungary joined the Axis Nations in World War II. From 1922 to 1930 he was counselor of the Hungarian Legation in Washington, and in 1930 was named permanent delegate to the League of Nations and the League's Disarmament Conference. He was accredited as Minister to the United States, Cuba and Mexico in 1933.
At Dartmouth, Dr. Pelenyi was chairman of the faculty committee which developed an interdepartmental program in international relations. This was later recognized as one of the best offered to American undergraduates. A graduate of the Consular Academie in Vienna, Dr. Pelenyi served for ten years in the Austro-Hungarian Consular Service in this country and in his Foreign Office in Vienna.
THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invited Professor Hugh Morrison '26 of the Art Department to be the visiting lecturer in its course in the history of architecture. This course is offered to fifth-year professional students in architecture and each year is staffed by a distinguished visiting scholar. Professor Morrison plans to survey European architecture in the first semester and locus on American architecture during the second term.
DARTMOUTH'S Geography Department was host to the 25th annual New England Geographical Conference which met in Hanover, October 3 and 4. At this meeting, attended by more than 100 geographers, Professor Trevor Lloyd of Dartmouth was elected president of the organization. David C. Nutt '41. Arctic Specialist of the College, spoke on the various expeditions of his schooner, the Blue Dolphin.
FACETS OF DARTMOUTH EDUCATION: In addition to reporting the professional activities of the faculty outside the classroom, we should like in this column to call attention to some of the interesting things the faculty is doing with Dartmouth students. This month we report on two courses heavily elected by men in their sophomore year, Speech 11, Informative Speaking, and Art 1, Introduction to Architecture.
Speech 11, under the direction of Professors Carl D. England, Almon B. Ives, and John V. Neale, has gone a long way toward satisfying the wish expressed in those lines by Burns:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!
Not only do the 175 students taking the course have recordings made of their speeches, but also they are photographed by an 8-mm. motion-picture camera while delivering their talks. The purpose of the course is to train men in the principles of speech preparation and to help them acquire a simple, direct manner of speaking.
The faculty attempts to set up conditions favorable to learning so that the student may discover for himself what his faults are. After he has watched the movies of his performance and after he has made an accurate transcript of the recording of his speech, including all the "ers" and "uhs" and "ahs," he usually has no difficulty in becoming objective about his weaknesses and can go to work to correct them. The course, which is required of all men planning to go Tuck School, is elected after their freshman year. They then have a common body of experience with their classmates, a fact which helps them uncover subject matter which will interest their immediate audience. Every student delivers three major speeches during the semester, and has a conference with his instructor on each of them. In conference, further analysis of the pictures and recordings is made. Working within one of the oldest disciplines of the liberating arts, the students find the experience one of self-discovery. May your after-dinner speakers be graduates of such a course!
A common sight on a warm October afternoon is a group of students comparing Palladian windows on Sanborn and Baker, or hiking out toward Balch Hill to take a look at a recently constructed modern house. These men are some of the 370 students in Professor Hugh Morrison's Art 1 class, and they are on one of two required field trips. The course aims to develop a student's enjoyment and understanding of architecture, and Professor Morrison starts them right out in Hanover with an examination of Dartmouth's buildings and the houses of some of its faculty. After exploring architectural problems and principles in present day architecture, the students turn to the masterpieces of the chief historical periods, returning at the end of the course to a survey of modern design in architecture and industrial arts.
Several years ago, when the course was smaller, Professor Morrison instituted a series of optional meetings for discussion of new buildings or examination of old houses, and he even formed a design group in which students planned an ideal house for a specified site. Field trips were voluntarily taken to some of the architectural monuments in nearby localities, and by arrangement with the art departments at Harvard and Yale, students examined noteworthy buildings on those distant campuses on football weekends. The enrollment in the course is so large now that these optional projects, while not altogether discarded, take the form of required field trips around Hanover. The design of Professor X's house may be the burning issue now, but sometime in the future an American home may be more livable, perhaps a public building will be better designed, as a result of understanding gained through such an introduction to architecture.
SEVERAL new appointments to the teaching staff have not been reported previously. Twefik A. Toussour has been named Instructor in Botany. A graduate of Cornell University in 1948, he has performed graduate study at the University of California. He received his earlier education in Cairo, Egypt. Robert E. Huke'48 has joined the Geography Department as instructor. He received his M.A. in 1950 and his Ph.D. in 1953 from Syracuse University. William F. John has been named an Instructor in Psychology. A graduate of Antioch College, he has done graduate work at Indiana and Harvard Universities. He is now completing his thesis for his doctorate on "Effects of Secondary Drives on Experimental Extinction."
David B. Davis '48 has been appointed Instructor in History. He performed graduate work at Columbia and Harvard, and received his A.M. degree from the latter. Davis was a Choate and Reynolds Scholar at Dartmouth and received his degree summa cum laude. While at Harvard he was a John Harvard Fellow. Davis is a student of American civilization and is the author of articles on history and literature.
The Government Department has named two new instructors. Andrew M.Scott '45 attended the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration, where he received the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. He was a foreign affairs officer of the Mutual Security Agency before coming to Dartmouth, and is the author of a book, The Anatomy of Communism (1951). MacAlister Brown of the same department graduated from Wesleyan in 1947. Receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1953. he has also worked for the World Student Relief and the United States Displaced Persons Commission in Munich, Germany.
DR. HANNAH T. CROASDALE, Associate in Zoology, has been awarded a grant of $3,500 by the National Science Foundation to support her research in fresh-water algae. A nationally known expert on the identification of micro-organisms, Dr. Croasdale has been a member of the Dartmouth Faculty since 1935. During an expedition to Alaska in 1951, she collected a large number of specimens of arctic and subarctic fresh-water algae, which she is at present engaged in identifying and classifying. One of her principal purposes is to determine whether any changes have been produced in this minute plant life by the two great periods of glaciation, separated by thousands of years.
Special Reynolds Scholarship Provides for Study in Iceland
QUALIFIED Dartmouth seniors and recent graduates may apply before Christmas for the Special Reynolds Scholarship for study in Iceland offered for the second time in connection with the Dartmouth-Iceland studentexchange plan which was established last year and is related to the Northern Studies Program. The successful Reynolds Scholar will be the Dartmouth exchange-student for 1954-1955 at the University of Iceland, and will receive benefits totaling about $2,000. A program of studies which may be profitably pursued at the University of Iceland should be presented. Applicants without training in Icelandic or other Scandinavian languages should offer evidence of marked linguistic aptitude. Alumni are asked to communicate with the Chairman of the Faculty Committee on Graduate Fellowships, Professor George E. Diller, to whom completed applications must be submitted by December 24, 1953.
This year's Reynolds Scholar in Iceland is Edward S. Klima '53, who is specializing in the study of Old Norse language and literature. The exchange student from Iceland is Petur Eggerz, who is a special student taking advanced courses in economics and government in Hanover this year.
Applications for the regular Reynolds Foreign Scholarships will not be wanted before February and will not close until April 1.
DR. JOHN PELENYI, Professor of Government, who left for Europe early last month to assume his new post as President and Trustee of Free Europe University En Exile, located near Strasbourg.
