Industry Galls On the Liberal Arts

Dartmouth, in cooperation with the Bell Telephone System, offered this summer a unique refresher course for executives

ON July i. when the presence of "students" on the campus was unseasonal enough to draw Hanover's interested attention, a group of 44 executives of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company and other Bell System companies met for dinner at the Inn Ski Hut — and for the beginning of a most unusual educational project.

These men, from all over the country and ranging in age from 32 to 58, had come to Dartmouth for an eight-week conference that was, in reality, a return to the classroom for all of them. They were all part of the middle management group of their respective Bell companies, sent to Hanover for courses of study and discussions with professors and among themselves. The purpose of this eight-week switch from the business world to the more contemplative realm of the college campus was summed up by a Company official as follows:

"1. To broaden the understanding of basic values, issues, and circumstances influencing the long-range development of the climate in which the business operates. "2. To extend the range of personal interests in reading and other activities.

"3. To increase self-awareness and the appreciation of different positions on controversial issues involved in personal action as a manager, as a citizen, and as an individual."

Most of these men had spent years with the Company. Some had worked for no other corporation. After such long service, the Company thought it both possible and desirable to enlarge their viewpoints, and concluded that a refresher course in the liberal arts was indicated. Two colleges, Dartmouth and Williams, were asked if they would devise an eight-week summer program of study for a selected group of executives. The Company stated the objectives; the actual program was left up to the colleges, to be worked out independently.

For its program Williams devised and gave six courses in the social, cultural, and political history of the United States. At Dartmouth a planning committee headed by Prof. Arthur E. Jensen, Dean of the Faculty, discussed at length various possible programs of study. They wanted one that would be based on reading, reflection, and discussion, and that would be centered on values as well as facts. Out of their deliberations came a plan of three courses which would take up some of the key issues of our time and which would also fortify each other. They titled these courses: Traditional and Modern Values, The Individualand the State, and Science andMan.

The first was taught by Professors James D. McCallum of the English Department and Charles Siepmann from N.Y.U., the only non-Dartmouth teacher on the staff. The second was taught by Professors James F. Cusick of the Economics Department and Robert K. Carr '29 of the Government Department; while Professors Francis W. Gramlich of the Philosophy Department and Fred Berthold Jr. '45 of the Religion Department taught the course Science andMan. Dean Jensen was the Director of the whole conference.

These three courses were really three ways of looking at the present in relationship to the past. The first part of the course Traditional and Modern Values focused attention on the values that men have cherished in the past and indicated to what extent they have endured or been modified in our modern age. The second part of the course brought out those qualities of our own time which make it unique and pointed out some of the forces and the pressures that are molding our present generation.

The Individual and the State took up the eternal question of the relationship of the individual man or group to the political entity of the state. Discussion centered on such topics as authority and liberty in a democratic state, the meaning of civil liberty and the necessity of balancing individual freedom and national security, all of which led to an examination of our present attempts to guard national security and at the same time preserve individual liberty and freedom for dissent.

Science and Man concerned itself with two main topics. The first was philosophic. As modern man confronts the world that science has revealed, from the exploding universe and receding galaxies to the world of the atom and electron, where mass and energy are identical, he has had to readjust his thinking on religious and philosophic issues. The lectures and reading in the course pointed up the adjustments man has had to make in his thinking because of this new orientation of himself in the cosmos. The second topic was the revolutionary change that technology and applied science have made in our lives. Through these three courses the men worked toward an understanding of some of the great issues that face modern man.

To gain a different perspective of these issues, each man was asked to subscribe to his hometown paper, and during the course of the summer compare the news coverage and news treatment found in that paper with that of The New York Times and several other quite different newspapers. This part of the program aimed to improve the ability of the men in the use of the mass media. This trainings moreover, might well have a most immediate follow-through after the men returned to their regular duties.

In each course there were two lectures a week which attempted to give clarifying background to the reading the men were asked to do. On the day following each lecture, after the men had had a chance to digest the material presented and square it with their reading, there were hour-and-a-half discussion sections of eleven men each. In these sessions no holds were barred, and some of the most stimulating and. interesting classes ever held in Hanover took place. The readings ranged from Plato, Sophocles, Whitehead, Freud, Bertrand Russell and Walter Lippmann to current magazine articles and Supreme Court opinions. The reading load was heavy, much greater than that expected of undergraduates.

Some evenings each week and Saturday mornings were taken up by supplementary work. There were lectures by such men as Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Robert Frost, and President Dickey. There were musical concerts, and lectures on modern art by Professors Hugh Morrison '26 and Richard Wagner, and on the Dead Sea Scrolls by James Ross of the Department of Religion, and on other topics by other members of the faculty.

Although there were no examinations and no reports, the men did their work carefully and faithfully. For the faculty members who worked with them the eight weeks proved to be an especially stimulating experience. One of them remarked, "This summer has almost spoiled me for regular teaching." Faculty members usually joined the telephone executives for lunch and often had dinner with them. Table talk was likely to be a lively continuation of the topics discussed in class that day.

The men were housed in Middle Fayer-weather, each man in a private room or suite, and were fed at the Hanover Inn in one section of the dining room. For recreation there was golf, tennis, swimming, and trips to the surrounding countryside.

"The conference can never have its final evaluation," Dean Jensen says. "A tentative evaluation will come after the men have been interviewed and the returns on a long questionnaire tabulated. We know now, however, both from the evidence from the men and the faculty, that it was an outstanding success. The testimony of the men as to the value of this conference to themselves as individuals and as officials of the Company seemed to be unanimous. The faculty found it the most stimulating teaching in which they had ever engaged. Here was a group of able men who did not need the normal goads applied to undergraduates, who could grasp material with the understanding that came from experience, and discuss it with point and resourcefulness. The morale of both the faculty and the executives was high at the beginning of the summer. It rose steadily to the end of the conference. There are few educational experiments that hold more promise for the future. The American college and American industry can join their strengths to the great advantage of each."

Professor Gramlich of the Philosophy Department lecturing to the telephone executives in the course on "Science and Man."

One of the discussion sections, held twice weekly in each course to supplement lectures. ProfessorCusick (right foreground) directs this one in "The Individual and the State."

A group from the South imitated the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima by planting the Confederate flag on the campus barricade.