The Faculty
FACETS of Dartmouth Education: One of the important changes on the Hanover educational scene in recent months is the new curriculum for Psychology majors, just announced by Prof. Albert H. Hastorf, chairman of the Department. The new major, which will go into effect next fall, is designed principally to prepare the undergraduate for advanced work in his senior year. It is designed not necessarily to prepare students for graduate school but seeks rather to stimulate student initiative and satisfy individual interests.
The most significant change in the major is the introduction of seminars and opportunity for students to engage in research projects. Seminars in Learning, Social Psychology, and Personality are among those offered. In the junior year the student is required to take four courses: Measurement and Statistical Methods, two experimental courses dealing with cognitive and responsive processes, and an elective. As seniors the majors will all have Psychology 101, a coordinating course, and three electives. The Department strongly urges that a seminar and the research project form part of these courses, and that students planning graduate study in psychology secure adequate preparation in related areas such as mathematics, physiology, and sociology.
As Professor Hastorf puts the matter, "We are trying to present psychology, an experimental science, as it is looked at by psychologists. With our confidence in the capabilities of the Dartmouth undergraduates, the Department has made the courses as advanced as possible, basing changes mainly on the findings of the American Psychological Association report on the teaching of the subject at college level."
As a prerequisite for the major and for most of the advanced courses, Psychology I, the introductory course, is now being reassessed and reorganized with the idea of making it an effective preparation for the more advanced work of the new major.
AN innovation of educational interest is the recent appointment of faculty advisers to sophomores of high academic standing, with the purpose of helping these men to get the most out of college. Faculty members have been assigned to 68 men, or roughly ten per cent of the sophomcore class; the appointments were made according to the intended major or possible vocational choice of the individual students. A wide sampling of academic disciplines was represented among the advisers: chemistry, English, history, languages and the social sciences.
Present faculty members who were Ford Teaching Interns last year and worked closely with students in academic difficulty form the nucleus of the consultants, but now they are working with the other end of the scale. Each teacher is assigned to three or four high honor students. The group is designed to operate with very informal relationships, almost as a "pre-tutorial," but entirely at the option of the students. According to Prof. Arthur E. Jensen, Dean of the Faculty, "A student seeking special information or guidance outside and beyond his regular course work is free to consult with this specially assigned faculty member. The faculty member may on occasion send the student on to other members of the faculty who may be in a better position to be of assistance to the gifted student."
PROF. Herbert W. Hill of the History Department left recently to make a first-hand investigation of why industries are leaving New England to locate in the South and how well they are doing once they get there. While in the South, Professor Hill represented the State of New Hampshire at the North American Wildlife Conference in New Orleans in early March. He met with prominent conservationists from all parts of the country, particularly those men concerned with conservation education. Professor Hill has for eight years been a member of the New Hampshire Game Commission and is presently secretary.
On the matter of industry, Professor Hill plans to talk with representatives of management and the unions in Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Louisiana. He seeks to compare the economic inducements that caused industries to leave with their actual experience once they are established, and to compare present industrial conditions in the South with conditions as they were in New England at the time the industry left.
PROF. Robert K. Carr '29 has been appointed Director of the Great Issues Course for a one-year period. Professor Carr, Joel Parker Professor of Law and Political Science, has recently returned from a half-year study in England under a Guggenheim Fellowship, comparing civil liberties in the United States and Great Britain. Professor Carr was executive secretary of President Truman's Commitee on Civil Rights, and is now a member of the national committee of the American Civil Liberties Union. He also has been a member of the executive council of the American Political Science Association.
FIVE new faculty members teaching at Dartmouth this semester are headed by Dr. Helmut Kuhn of the University of Munich, Germany, who is Visiting Professor of Philosophy. Professor Kuhn, on leave from Munich, earlier visited this country to teach at the University of North Carolina and Emory University in Georgia.
Major William C. McMullin, USA, is now Assistant Professor of Military Science at Dartmouth, following three years of active duty in Japan. He is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
Three new Instructors are Harvey Levin, Speech; James R. O'Connor, Economics; and Theodore Strongin, Music. Mr. Levin was graduated from Western Reserve University in 1954 and received his M.A. there last semester, after serving as teaching fellow and summer lecturer in speech. Mr. O'Connor received his B.S. at Columbia with honors in January 1955 and has been with the New Jersey State Employment Service.. Mr. Strongin, a graduate of Bard College, was a music critic for the NewYork Herald-Tribune for eight years and has been teaching at Bennington College. His compositions for the flute have been published by New Music Editions.
PROF. Robert Gutman of the Sociology Department is engaged in making a detailed study of a group of Dartmouth graduates, one-fourth of the Class of 1940, to see if he can find trends accounting for the astounding rise in fertility during the past 15 years among the middle class of American society.
"The postwar rise in fertility among the middle classes, especially college graduates," says Professor Gutman, "has been the subject of widespread comment by demographers, but very little in the way of empirical study of the phenomenon has been published by the social scientists."
Professor Gutman's study will examine such factors as how old the men and women were when they first married, in what order they had their children, how long they had been married before their first child arrived, and how long a time elapsed between births. It will compare these with various social and psychological variables. Among these variables are such factors as the father's occupation, parents' education, family life, religion, field of study when in college, even the number of jobs held since graduating from college. Personality variables measured fifteen years ago, when the men were students at Dartmouth, also will be considered. Among these are such traits as creativeness, power and habit of analysis, seriousness of purpose, value-energy and work habits. The study will be facilitated by work done fifteen years ago by Prof. Irving E. Bender of the Psychology Department, who made a thorough psychological study of the men in 1940.
PAUL SAMPLE '20, Artist in Residence at the College, exhibited recently at the 131st Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York. He also served on the Academy's selection committee. The exhibition, which was held at the Academy's galleries on Fifth Avenue, included paintings and sculpture by artists from 21 states.
IT is with a deep sense of loss that we record the death of Professor Emeritus John Moffatt Mecklin and say farewell to a courageous and beloved colleague. A memorial article will appear in next month's issue.
