Something New: Alumni Seminars

Dartmouth Alumni College added two September road sessions to its usual summer schedule — sessions some 3000 miles from Hanover. Profs. Harold L. Bond '42 and Larry K. Smith brought a sampling of Alumni College classes to Alumni Seminars in the Pacific Northwest and in Denver.

Nearly 50 graduates, including 21 wives, participated in the lectures and discussions at Alderbrook Inn on the Hood Canal near Seattle and Tacoma. Judge Thomas B. Russell '6l, who originally suggested the College might travel to those unable to attend campus classes, was seminar chairman. Participants' response was so enthusiastic that plans are already under way for another seminar in 1968.

The Dartmouth Association of the Great Divide organized a one-day seminar at the Hiwan Country Club, with D. Monte Pascoe '57 as seminar chairman. Forty-four participants, including 12 wives, registered for that session.

The study theme centered on personal values in contemporary America, and four books were assigned as advance reading. Professor Smith of the Department of History used The Great Gatsby and Manchild in the Promised Land to discuss "American Ideas of Success" and "Failure in America." Professor Bond of the Department of English lectured on Brave New World as a satire of contemporary values and Camus' The Stranger as an effort to find meaning and purpose in a world of violence, materialism, and despair. Seminar students were unanimous in praise of the two lecturers and in hoping that the Alumni College will add to such traveling seminars. One suggestion passed on to J. Michael McGean, Alumni College director, was that high school students be included in the seminars as a means of bridging the generation gap.