The Faculty
FACETS OF DARTMOUTH EDUCATION: In keeping with our scheme, announced last month, to discuss briefly some of the courses in the Dartmouth program, we shall describe two more courses in the humanities before turning to the social sciences and sciences. Religion 11, An Introduction to Religion, and English 19, a course in writing, give students opportunities to experience that kind of self-discovery which has always made a liberal arts education a prerequisite to individual freedom.
In Religion 11, a comparative study is made of the three great occidental religions, Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism; but beyond this, the course seeks to raise those questions which have always confronted man, such as the nature of re- ligion, the relation of faith and knowledge, and the relevance of religion today. The approach to this material is twofold. The reading is designed to give an historical survey of the three great faiths, and the lectures concentrate on the central religious ideas of these groups. There are frequent discussion periods during which the 240 men in the course meet with Professors Fred Berthold '45 and Philip A. Anderson Jr. in small sections to air their own views on the material presented in the lectures and readings, and to probe further into the problems raised in the larger class. It is in these groups that the student can "gird up his loins like a man" and find out what he does think and why he thinks it. According to Professor Berthold, the discussion periods have been very lively and the interest of the students extraordinary, a fact which suggests that many Dartmouth men in 1953 are vitally concerned with central questions which every generation sooner or later has had to ask itself.
English 19, at present under the general direction of Professor Edmund H. Booth '18, is a course with a long Dartmouth his Tory, and it can boast some fine writers among its graduates. Elected each semester by about 120 men, the course is organized not for the would-be professional, but for the maturing, thinking college man who wants to try his hand at self-expression. Students are offered practice and instruction in any kind of writing they may wish to attempt. The course is controlled by two broad aims: to aid men in becoming more articulate in their written expression and to aid them in the task of discovering what it is they have to say. Instruction in literary techniques is carried on concurrently with discussions of students' ideas and experiences. To learn from the masters, the men usually read rather widely in the genre within which they are working; they learn from their classmates and their instructor when their papers are read and discussed in class. The sections are limited in size so that every man has a good opportunity to present his views and to hear criticism of his writing. Individual or small group conferences with the instructor are held on the average of once a week in which completed stories or articles are examined and plans for new projects are developed.
LINCOLN WASHBURN '35 has been named J Professor of Northern Geology at Dartmouth, where he joins the growing list of arctic experts associated with the college. An internationally known specialist in northern glacial geology and geomorphology, Professor Washburn was director of the U.S. Army's Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment in Wilmette, I11. He will come to Dartmouth in January in time to teach a new advanced seminar in Pleistocene geology, the study of the glacial ages, next semester. Since 1934 Professor Washburn has been on a dozen expeditions to the Arctic, and during World War II he served as an officer with the First Special Service Force; the Army Air Force Arctic, Desert and Tropic Information Center; and War Department G-2. As a reserve officer he also served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force in 1950-52, and with the Army Engineers in 1952-53- He was executive director of the Arctic Institute of North America from 1945 to 1951.
Professor Washburn's expeditions have taken him into the Arctic all along the area controlled by the Western powers, from Spitzbergen north of Norway to Arctic Canada and Alaska. In 1947 he took part in the flights of B-29 aircraft across the North Polar regions.
ANOTHER appointment to the Geology Department is that of Assistant Professor Gerald V. Carroll. He will replace Professor Carl A. Moritz, who has resigned to become a partner in the firm of Alex McCoy & Associates, petroleum geologists with headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Casper, Wyoming. Professor Carroll graduated from Lehigh in 1943 and received his Ph.D. at Yale in 1952. He comes to Dartmouth from Trinity College where he had been teaching mineralogy, petrology, structural, economic and historical geology, and introductory physical geology. During the summers of 1946 and 1947 he was associated with the U .S. Geological Survey doing exploratory work on radioactive minerals in North Carolina, Utah and Colorado.
AN earlier appointment not mentioned in this column is that of Philip A. Anderson jr., Visiting Lecturer in Religion. Professor Anderson received his A.B. at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn., in 1943 and his B.D. in 1946 from the Federated Theological Faculty at Chicago. He was ordained as a Congregational minister in 1946. He taught and studied at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, on an exchange fellowship, and in 195 a he received his Ph.D. from that university. For several years Professor Anderson has been one of the ministers of a large Congregational church in Glenview, Illinois.
DR. FREDERICK J. DOCKSTADER, Curator of Anthropology at the Dartmouth College Museum, has been elected a Fellow of Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in recognition of his studies of Hopi Indian ceremonialism and his services to the Institute. Dr. Dockstader's first book, The Kachina and theWhite Man, will soon be published by Cranbrook. A graduate of Arizona State College, Dr. Dockstader received his doctorate in social anthropology at Western Reserve University. From 1944 to i952, prior to joining the staff of the College Museum, he was on the staff of the Cranbrook School and Cranbrook Institute of Science.
DARTMOUTH was represented this fall at meetings of learned societies and at various academic functions by a number of its faculty members. Professor Roy P. Forster of the Zoology Department participated in the Fifth Conference on Renal Function held in Princeton on October 15 and 16. Professor Willis M. Rayton of the Physics Department attended the meetings of the International Radio Scientific Union in Ottawa on October 5-8. Professor Robin Robinson '24 of the Mathematics Department attended a special meeting of the American Mathematical Society, under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, in New York on October 23. Professor Bancroft H. Brown of the same department attended the meeting of the Connecticut Valley section of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England, held at the American International College in Springfield, Mass. Professor Leonard M. Rieser Jr. of the Department of Physics gave a seminar talk at McGill University on October 30, and Professor Albert S. Carlson of the Geography Department participated in the Annual New England Council Research Tour in October. Professor Churchill P. Lathrop of the Art Department represented Dartmouth College at the dedication of the new Yale University Art Gallery and Design Center in New Haven on November 6.
THE faculty was deeply saddened by the recent death of Professor Leon Verriest of the Romance Languages Department. Although this news will be treated elsewhere in the MAGAZINE, we wish simply to say ave atque vale to a beloved and highly respected colleague.
A. LINCOLN WASHBURN '35, newly appointed Professor of Northern Geology, begins his teaching duties in the second semester. A well-known pecialist, he was formerly director of the U. S. Army's Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment in Wilmette, iii.
