The Faculty
PROFESSOR Theodore Karwoski of the Psychology Department will be in Europe next semester on sabbatical leave. He plans to travel extensively, visiting various universities and conferring with leading European psychologists working within the area of his special interest: perception, thinking and thought processes. Professor Karwoski intends to spend considerable time at the Sorbonne and the University of Louvain to study the experiments being made there and then travel to England where he plans to visit the Tavistock Institute at London, the center of unusual work in mental and group therapy. He hopes also to visit psychologists at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.
PROFESSOR Frederick W. Sternfeld of the Music Department has spoken to many academic groups this fall and winter on music and the other arts. Last fall he lectured on "The Dramatic Use of Music in Shakespeare" at Hunter College and before the New England Conference on Renaissance Studies at Smith College. In early January, he talked on "The Development of Shakespeare s Lyrics for the Male Adult Voice" at Washington University in St. Louis. While in St. Louis Professor Sternfeld also lectured on Shakespeare and Music" and "James Joyce and Music." Next spring he plans to lecture at Colby College, Maine, on "Music of the Movies."
PROFESSOR Hugh Morrison of the Art Department is the author of a full length article, "American Houses: Modern Style," published in a recent issue of Perspectives,U.S.A. This magazine, supported in part by the Ford Foundation, is designed for European publication with the intention of reporting on the American cultural scene; and Professor Morrison's article was selected from many to present to Europeans modern American architecture.
PROFESSOR Robert A. Kavesh, Assistant Professor of Economics, has been doing interesting research on changes in the economic climate of United States suburban communities. He finds that if we should have a recession many suburban communities might discover themselves in a bad way financially. The reason, according to Professor Kavesh, is that the suburban development no longer is occupied by the wealthier groups but is tenanted by families far less able to stand the stresses and strains of a changing economy. "Three factors: low savings, high fixed charges and less job security might operate to the distinct disadvantage of the suburbanites in moderately hard times," he says.
PROFESSOR A. O. Davidson of the Education Department was the director of four educational conferences held in early January by the Dartmouth regional center of the New England School Development Council. The conferences, held at Hanover, examined various aspects of secondary school work.
PROFESSOR Roy P. Forster of the Zoology Department read two papers before the section on Ceneral Physiology at the annual meetings of the American Society of Zoologists in Boston on December 29. The titles of the papers are: "Observations on Competition for Transport in Isolated Tubules and Thin Kidney Slices," and "Total Electrolyte Distribution in Blood and Urine of the Aglomerular Marine Teleost, Lophius Piscatorius."
DR. Jack L. Walters has resigned his position as Professor of Management and Industrial Relations at Tuck School to become chairman of the new department of engineering administration at Rutgers University. Formerly president of Alfred University in Jamestown, N. Y., Dr. Walters has been at Dartmouth since 1948.
THE faculty colleagues of Royal C. Nemiah '23h, Lawrence Professor of the Greek Language and Literature, were saddened by the sudden death of his wife, the former Elly Olesen of Copenhagen, Denmark, on December 19.
FACETS OF DARTMOUTH EDUCATION: The World We Live In. Among the interesting introductory courses at Dartmouth is a relatively new arrival, which cuts across a number of standard disciplines and fuses various areas of specialization. Geography 1 is designed for the liberal arts student interested in the relationship between the physical world in which man finds himself and the social place he makes it; between climate, soil, natural resources on the one hand, and history and culture on the other. Students explore the manner in which societies are shaped by their geographical location, and they study the means by which geographical limitations have been transcended or turned into assets. The course brings together the fruits of such studies as history, sociology, economics, geology and meteorology, in so far as they bear on the central issue.
Early in the course the distribution of the world's population is studied along with the possibilities for development of vacant or sparsely populated regions. Answers to such questions as where the world's peoples will live 100 years from now are suggested by showing present and past use by man and societies of many different types of environment such as mountains, plateaus, planes, river valleys, coasts, shorelines, islands, glaciated regions and arid areas.
Because climate sets limits and determines optima for plants and animals, and for human physical and mental health, it is used as a basis on which to discuss world regions. The aim is to acquaint students with the nature of each of the important geographical areas of the world and its impact on early civilizations and their modern counterparts. Students are shown the significance of soils and natural vegetation as resources for producing man's food, shelter and industrial materials and the dependence of nations on coal, iron, petroleum, uranium and a great variety of minerals for increased production in peace or war.
Although textbooks are required, a great deal of the instruction is carried on by use of maps, movies, slides, and pictorial and graph exhibits. The students have available to them the valuable map library in Baker in addition to the fine collection in the department. The classes are divided into small sections with ample opportunity for discussion.
This is a course in which a liberal arts student discovers something of how man and his institutions, ever changing and adapting to social, economic, governmental and technological influences, utilize the geographic base on which man lives and from which he gains his livelihood.
