Medical School Plans

PLANS for expanding the Dartmouth Medical School and for developing a new pattern of medical education have been announced by the Trustees of the College. The appointment of Dr. S. Marsh Tenney '44 to the newly created position of Director of Medical Sciences at Dartmouth College, to direct the program and lead an intensive effort to secure the necessary capital funds, has also been announced.

The new pattern of medical education will have its base in the science departments of the College and in Dartmouth's present two-year Medical School, and will involve cooperative relationships with leading four-year medical schools. A major aim is the development of a prototype for other two-year medical schools that would produce more doctors without the immense cost of more four-year schools.

"The Trustees have been examining the College's responsibility and resources to help meet this country's need for more doctors," President Dickey said in making the announcement. "Outside authorities in medical education who assisted in these studies unanimously concluded that Dartmouth's two-year Medical School, in cooperation with leading four-year schools, offers a distinctive contribution for meeting this need. They recommend that the program be expanded and the School's enrollment increased. Under Dr. Tenney's leadership the Medical School will be developing this program and seeking funds for a new medical science building, an enlarged faculty, and a substantially increased student body. We are particularly fortunate in this far-reaching effort to have the cooperation of the distinguished medical educators who are serving on the Policy Committee."

The Policy Committee to which President Dickey referred is headed by Dr. John P. Bowler '15 of Hanover, chairman of the staff board of governors of the Hitchcock Hospital, and includes Dr. George Packer Berry, dean of the Harvard Medical School; Dr. Robert F. Loeb, Samuel Bard Professor of Medicine at Columbia University; Dr. W. Barry Wood, Vice President of Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Waltman Walters '17, Professor of Surgery at the Mayo Foundation.

The new program calls for an expansion of research in the basic medical sciences, unifying the medical research presently carried on by both the Dartmouth Medical School and the Hitchcock Foundation. Dr. Henry L. Heyl, who will continue as executive director of the Hitchcock Foundation, has been named Assistant Director of Medical Sciences for Research and Planning. He will assist Dr. Tenney in planning and development matters and will administer sponsored research within the Medical School.

Dr. Rolf C. Syvertsen '18 continues as Dean of the Dartmouth Medical School under the general supervision o£ Dr. Tenney, who as Director of Medical Sciences will have overall charge of all medical research and education at Dartmouth.

Dr. Tenney received his M.D. degree at the Cornell College of Medicine in 1946, after graduating from Dartmouth in 1944. Prior to coming to Dartmouth last fall as Chairman of the Physiology Department he was Associate Professor of Physiology and Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. In 1953 he was named a Markle Scholar in the Medical Sciences. His investigations in cardiopulmonary physiology have been supported by research grants from the National Heart Institute and the U. S. Air Force.

In his Medical School column in this issue (Page 88) Dean Syvertsen discusses the new program in more detail and also reports on the new Medical School faculty members who have been added this fall.