Half-Million Mellon Grant

To provide financial support for Dartmouth's conversion to year-round operation, beginning with this academic year, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has made a grant of $500,000 to transitional operating costs, which are the College. The grant will be applied to related mainly to an increase in faculty and administration personnel and modifications in existing physical facilities, such as this past summer's conversion of 125 dormitory double rooms into 250 singles.

For the current year the budget projected a deficit of $291,000 after transition costs of $537,000 for year-round operation and coeducation, but the Mellon Foundation grant will eliminate this red-ink figure and provide substantial help for the following year.

Year-round operation, called The Dartmouth Plan, requires all students to attend one summer term during their four years at the College. Total term requirements are reduced from 12 to 11 for the A.B. degree, with courses reduced from 36 to 33. Freshmen are required to begin with the normal fall-winter-spring sequence, but thereafter will have 12 possible combinations of work-study, study-travel, or work-study travel. YRO will permit the College to increase undergraduate enrollment by 25% without major capital expenditures, will reduce the four-year cost of a college education for the student, and will reduce the College's per-student cost of education.

The problem of housing students moving on and off the campus each term will be lessened by the increase in single rooms. With the 250 produced this summer by converting double rooms, the dorms now provide 730 singles out of a total of 2550 undergraduate spaces.