Medical Dean Resigns

Dr. Carleton B. Chapman, Dean of Dartmouth Medical School since 1966 and principal architect of its new three-year pilot program for the M.D. degree under whose leadership the school's facilities have been more than doubled, last month submitted his resignation, to be effective no later than June 30, 1973.

In a memorandum to his faculty, Dean Chapman said his reasons were simple and straightforward: "I feel I have done all I can do for Dartmouth Medical School. It's time now for someone else, with fresh viewpoints and new vigor, to take over."

Dean Chapman, who was appointed a vice president of Dartmouth early this year, is leaving to become vice president of The Commonwealth Fund, a philanthropic foundation in New York City which has concentrated in recent years in medical education. He said, however, he would maintain his home in Thet-ford, Vt., and that he and his wife looked "forward to remaining a part of the Dartmouth-Hanover community for the rest of our lives."

After four years of study, planning, organization and fund-raising efforts headed by Dean Chapman, the Dartmouth Medical School inaugurated the new revamped and shortened M.D. degree program as a model by which American medical education could break out of what Dr. Chapman has called the "rigidly structured, wasteful and expensive" traditional four-year route to the M.D. degree.

The first M.D. degree candidates under the new Dartmouth program were enrolled in August 1970 and will be graduated next June in time for Dr. Chapman to present them their degrees as one of his last official acts as dean. The program also marks the restoration of the M.D. degree at Dartmouth Medical School. The school, the nation's fourth oldest, was founded in 1797 and conferred the M.D. degree until 1914, when it changed to a two-year program.

The Commonwealth Fund was established in 1918 by the late Mrs. Stephen V. Harkness with the broad mandate "to do something about the welfare of mankind." Effective July 1, 1973, Dr. Chapman will succeed Dr. Robert J. Glaser, vice president since September 1, 1970 and former vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine at Stanford University.