The Boom in Off-Campus Study
The "in absentia" student is increasingly the thing as participation grows in five basic programs of study and work away from Hanover
Whatever it was that seized John Ledyard before he had spent a year at Dartmouth and impelled him down the Connecticut River and across the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, it must have been a strong infection indeed. The suspicion is that it was a virus, which went to ground for nearly 200 years, only to surface in Hanover's environs about ten years ago.
Virologists tell us that viruses can remain dormant for indefinite periods of time. Perhaps the Ledyard strain did. For in the past ten years or so it has reemerged, in a somewhat mutated form. Dartmouth students as a regular, interm thing are once again roaming the girdled earth. But not in solitary, Ledyardesque fashion—they are faring forth in unprecedented numbers.
A small statistic embedded in the College Directory for 1969-70 might serve as an indicator of this trend toward wanderlust. Under the heading, "Dartmouth College Enrollment," following a breakdown of the student body by class, there is a total figure with yet another sub-total: "In residence" and "In absentia." The latter figure for the fall term in 1969 was 68.
"In absentia" to a Dartmouth undergraduate of 15, 20 or 25 years ago would have meant little or nothing. If it meant anything at all then, it may have meant the handful of undergraduates who were absent because of prolonged illness, injury or convalescence.
But today it is a numerical expression of the educational philosophy which says that a given college campus is not the only place an education can be obtained. Indeed, it says, by extension, that other backgrounds and latitudes may be an important and, in some cases, an essential component to that end.
Today "in absentia" is a category for those students who are pursuing a term of study and/ or work off-campus in one discipline or another. Altogether there are five basic programs of study that take students away from Hanover, and this fall the figure is double that of 1969 or about 120 students.
In the spring term when, for one reason or another, the "in absentia" figure rises, the number will hit more than 200 students ruminating in other groves of academe.
The programs and the student totals involved are these:
Tucker Foundation: about 50 students per term for all three terms; total 150.
Foreign languages: about 20 students a term for all three terms for a total of 65.
Urban studies: about 10 to 20, spring term only.
Foreign study: 50, fall; 23, winter; 100 or more, spring; 25, summer; total 200 plus.
Black studies: about 20, spring term only.
In foreign study and urban studies, additional students have summer projects.
Thus, spread out over the current academic year, 455 students out of a student body of roughly 3200 will be getting some of their education beyond Hanover.
An examination of each of the programs, in a nonstatistical way, gives the following brief profiles:
Tucker Foundation—Tucker interns, working under the program director, Prof. Leroy Keith, are engaged in four types of off-campus activity involving disadvantaged persons. One is the ABC (A Better Chance) public schools program. Here interns live in ABC residences in seven New England communities—Claremont, Hanover, Lebanon and Concord in New Hampshire; Hartford and Woodstock in Vermont; and North Andover in Massachusetts—and serve as resident tutors to ten students in each group who are from disadvantaged backgrounds and who are studying to qualify for college.
A second Tucker program is that in Jersey City, N. J. There, the interns serve as assistant teachers in public and private schools during the day and as tutors or participants in community educational activities during the evenings.
Third, there is the urban and rural parishes program. In this, Tucker interns serve at either an Episcopal Mission in Compton, Calif., or at the Immaculate Conception School in Clarksdale, Miss. Here, as with the other two programs, the interns teach in a public or a parochial school and work in the community.
The fourth Tucker program is called '52-12. This numerical pot-pourri signifies that members of the Class of 1952 cooperate with members of the Class of 1972 in the latter's off-campus projects. The interns teach in urban schools and aid in various facets of community life in Boston, Chicago, and Richmond, Calif.
The foreign language program which began in 1967 was aided by an Esso grant in 1968 and 1969. It is, as the very name suggests, aimed at giving students the sort of speaking fluency in a language one does not normally acquire in the traditional American campus courses.
Dartmouth presently has three foreign language centers set up—one at Bourges, France, one at San Jose, Costa Rica, and the third at Florence, Italy. Students live in the homes of resident nationals of the country in which they are studying and have their study supervised by a Dartmouth faculty member at the College's center there.
Urban studies, directed by Prof. Frank Smallwood '51, began on an informal basis in 1960 with a cooperative program operated in Boston's South End by Dartmouth and M.I.T. Students there work on such projects as trying to aid better relations between the police and the community, setting up consumer cooperatives, running storefront learning centers, and assisting in schools.
In addition, the urban studies program runs summer internships in which students get an understanding of local state and federal governments through a wide variety of jobs. Some work for mayors, city planning commissions and city managers; some work in senatorial offices and on election campaign staffs; and some work for federal governmental agencies.
The summer internship program is a natural outgrowth of the Class of 1926 Fellowships, which started Dartmouth students working at governmental concerns in the mid-'30s. The summer program began in a modest way in 1961 and has been growing ever since. Last summer 18 students participated.
The foreign study program is the largest of the lot and began in 1958. Now students enrolled in it may study at universities scattered over three continents. The catalogue of these reads like a travel agent's pitch: Caen, Toulouse and Strasbourg in France; San Jose, Costa Rica; Freiburg and Mainz in Germany; Florence, Italy; Sierra Leone; the University of Leningrad, USSR; University of Salamanca, Spain; Athens, Greece; and Mexico City.
The newest of the off-campus programs, black studies, began in 1969-70. About one-half of the total enrolled in this program spend a spring term in Roxbury, Mass., where they work with community organizations on such projects as storefront learning centers, tenants' associations, black construction workers, and free community schools. The rest go to Sierra Leone and either sit in on courses at the university there or go up-country to an agricultural college. Black studies will expand to the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta, Ga., this spring where approximately five Dartmouth students will attend. There they primarily will be working on research in the field of black studies.
It should be noted here that all these programs are by no means simply "do-good" efforts or merely opportunities for undergraduates to take a light- hearted Cook's tour of Europe, Africa, and Central America, shaking the dust (or snow) of Hanover from their feet. The ameliorative and Marco Polo aspects are there all right, but in addition each program is solidly tied to academic departments at Dartmouth by courses in education, government, sociology, language, and literature.
Further than that, the faculty as a whole keeps a sharp eye on the development and status of the programs. Off-campus work, for instance, is limited to one term, does not affect existing distributive requirements for the degree, and credit and grading procedures are strictly spelled out.
The reaction to all this from students, faculty, and non-Dartmouth people with whom the students work is warm and encouraging:
"Those who go abroad call it the richest experience of their college careers."—Prof. Edward M. Bradley, director of the foreign study program.
"My warm appreciation to Dartmouth for taking this progressive step of bringing together bright young people and the challenge of urban life."—Deputy Mayor Timothy W. Costello in a letter to then-President John S. Dickey commenting on the work of two urban studies interns in the Mayor's Office, New York City.
"The off-campus experience is crucial and central to the black studies program." —Prof. Robert G. McGuire III '58 coordinator of the black studies program.
The question naturally arises:
What does the future hold in this field? On the particular, as contrasted to the general, level all those involved in the programs from the staff side foresee growth. Some indeed, while stoutly denying any designs of academic empire-building, foresee quite spectacular growth, predicting off-campus future student statistics in the range of 700 to 800 per term.
When one moves to the more general aspects of future off-campus study, the picture becomes more complex. It is involved with twin possibilities—the addition of a meaningful and co-equal fourth summer term to the academic year, and the siren-like but reef-studded question of coeducation.
The connection of off-campus study with a fourth term is perhaps a little more direct and understandable than the link with coeducation. President Kemeny referred to it specifically in his Convocation Address this fall. In it he proposed that, instead of the present 12-term graduation requirement, Dartmouth should move to an 11-term oncampus requirement plus "the completion of a significant project performed away from the Dartmouth campus."
The ramifications of such a proposal are too complicated to go into here in any detail. Suffice it to say that the raison d'etre behind such a plan would be to utilize the physical and intellectual facilities of Dartmouth College on a truly year-round basis.
The link to possible coeducational status at Dartmouth is one step further, albeit to some a giant one. If coeducation were to come to Dartmouth, its most palatable form, surveys show, would be in such a manner as not to cut down on the number of male students. But a corollary of this, and of any other position accepting coeducation, says a sizable number of females must be admitted to make any such change workable and reasonable.
Therefore, if the fourth (summer) term were made a viable part of the academic structure and if a significant number of undergraduates were engaged in off-campus study every term, presto! a sizable number (700 to 800) females could be admitted without reducing the male undergraduate enrollment. It could be done, this argument runs, without extensive (and expensive) additions to the physical plant or the faculty.
Pouring wax in our ears and lashing ourselves to the mast in the manner of Odysseus when confronted with the sirens, we shall editorially sail past this problem. Before dealing with one last, small matter, we think it can be fairly stated that the off-campus study idea is here to stay; it is working; it is successful and popular; and it will undoubtedly grow, whatever the sideeffects might be.
One last, small detail is this: research has indicated that the undergraduate body has not yet come up with a portmanteau term to encompass these various off-campus students. We herewith offer one. Since these students do leave and return, how about "offen-bach?"
Bob Calhoun '71, a Tucker Foundation intern, teaching at the Immaculate ConceptionSchool, Clarksdale, Miss., in the urban and rural parishes program.
South End Settlement House, Boston,is the residential center for some of theDartmouth students participating in theDartmouth-M.I.T. Urban Studies Program.
Dartmouth students who studied at the University of Strasbourg, France, lastspring: Gregory Yadley '72, Enrique Gross '71, Bruce Smith '71, Robert Paul '72,Anders Rhodin '71, and Douglas Perkins '72. (Photo by Earle Staples '72.)
Fritz, Thomas '71, Tucker Foundation intern, served as assistant teacher in aJersey City school and as tutor and community helper in the evenings.
Garret Rasmussen '71 (second from left), a government intern in Washington, hasthe extracurricular pleasure of a tennis match with Senator Jacob Javits, SenatorCharles Percy, and a fellow intern from Harvard.
