$250,000 Math Grant
A GRANT of $250,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York has been received by Dartmouth to help finance the new, experimental program of graduate study in mathematics, leading to the Ph.D. degree. The program's primary aim is to prepare liberally educated graduate students to teach mathematics at the college or university level.
The Carnegie Corporation's grant is for five years. It will finance six graduate fellowships each year, will support two research instructors and one senior professor, and will cover related non-instructional costs. In addition, it provides for eight summer fellowships that will enable students to concentrate for two summers exclusively on their doctoral dissertations.
The program will begin next fall with twelve graduate students, some of whom are already working for their masters' degrees at Dartmouth. About 25 will be enrolled when the four-year program is fully under way.
The Dartmouth Ph.D. in mathematics will differ from the traditional doctoral work in several ways. It will put into practice recent recommendations of the Mathematical Association of America and the American Mathematical Society that the concept of doctoral work be broadened, with opportunity for a critical or expository thesis in contrast to the traditional, rigid requirement that the thesis create new mathematical knowledge, however narrow or specialized. It will require greater breadth of study in mathematics itself. It will assure continuing close contact between students and faculty. And every effort will be made to keep students to a four-year time limit for the completion of the doctoral degree. The availability of fellowships for the summer, when graduate students normally must seek other jobs, is expected to aid in this four-year objective.
Prof. John G. Kemeny, chairman of Dartmouth's Mathematics Department, says that the six Carnegie Corporation fellowships virtually assure that all graduate students will have fellowships available. Four others have been granted under the terms of the National Defense Education Act and Dartmouth has funds available for some additional fellowships.
The math Ph.D. will be the second doctoral program to be introduced at the College next fall. The other, in molecular biology, will be offered jointly by the Dartmouth Medical School and the Science Division of the College.
