SCOPE: Off-Campus Options Made Easier
When the Trustees approved the Dartmouth Plan for year-round operation in late 1971, President Kemeny hailed it as "an innovation which will offer maximum freedom of choice for future students." He went on to predict that "It will challenge the undergraduate to define his educational goals and design an educational program to meet these goals."
Now, less than a year and a half later, almost half the student body is enrolled under the plan, which has received the sincerest form of flattery from several other major institutions that are studying it with a view toward emulation in one form or another. One-third of this year's juniors and half the sophomores, given their choice last spring, opted for the Dartmouth Plan. The Class of 1976 entered college automatically on it.
Restrictions of the Dartmouth Plan are few: the student must complete 33 courses, normally in 11 terms, to graduate; freshmen must be on campus for their first three terms; and all students must spend one summer in residence.
But, if flexibility or "maximum freedom of choice" is the plan's most notable advantage, therein also lies its formidable, if temporary, rub, particularly during the transitional phase. The undergraduate faces a mind-boggling range of potential patterns for terms on and off campus — a mathematically possible 495, some rather grotesque but literally hundreds within conventional limits. He also encounters a bewildering array of off-campus optiOns — Language Study Abroad, Foreign Study Programs, Field Work Programs in the Classics, Tucker Foundation Internships, all for Dartmouth credit; transfer programs, under the Twelve-College Exchange or to other institutions; and noncredit options such as paying jobs, volunteer work, public-service internships; or "leave," which alumni might recognize more readily as "vacation."
The student can complete his undergraduate education in three years by going straight through from freshman September to what would, by traditional schedule, be June of his junior year. He or she may spend a full year away from Hanover and still graduate with the class. He may combine a term of foreign study with another for travel or an overseas job; he may take one credit term in Jersey City with the Tucker Foundation, for instance, and stay on for another as a volunteer; he may take a job, lasting six or nine months, to test career directions or just to make money for his education.
But, unlike the fabled donkey who starved to death trying to decide which delicious morsel to sample first, the Dartmouth undergraduate has available resources a- plenty to help him make choices from the appealing smorgasbord of off-campus options and to advise him on application procedures.
The key man in the operation is Harland W. Hoisington Jr. '48, former Director of Off-Campus Programs and Job Placement, who was appointed last year as Coordinator of the Dartmouth Plan. Backing him up are Albert T. T. Cook Jr. '62, Associate in the office of the Secretary of the College, whose primary responsibility it is to develop job opportunities among alumni groups; Robin Robinson '24, Professor of Mathematics and Registrar Emeritus, who has re-emerged from retirement to assist in counseling students on their term patterns and supervise the complex computer programming and information retrieval system; Ann Smallwood, director of a newly minted organization called the Student Clearing-house for Offcampus Programs and Employment (which bears the perhaps unfortunate acronym SCOPE); and Martha Luehrmann, who helps Hoisington counsel students seeking jobs.
Hoisington's office in College Hall was a busy place last month, as freshmen filed their term patterns, definite for next year and tentative for the following two, and upperclassmen reaffirmed the schedules they submitted last spring. Meanwhile Hoisington and Mrs. Luehrmann were conducting interviews with each jobseeker, to determine his qualifications for specific types of work, to discover his geographical preferences, to advise him on how to make a resume and submit
applications. SCOPE'S role, according to Mrs. Smallwood, is to keep the students abreast of what programs and jobs are available, to remind them of deadlines, and to inform them of sources of full information about the individual options. She characterizes SCOPE as "fundamentally students talking to students." Working with her are four undergraduate assistants - three seniors and a junior, three men and a woman who came first to the College as a Vassar exchange student, all of whom have experience in off-campus programs.
SCOPE'S endeavor takes two main directions: an information table set up in the Thayer Lounge and manned by students during the dinner hour; and a breezy tabloid newspaper, prepared by the students and distributed free campus-wide, which includes up-to-the-minute information on specific jobs and their general locale and off-campus study programs sponsored by Dartmouth or other institutions.
The Thayer table, planned to reach undergraduates, particularly lower classmen who make up the bulk of students enrolled in the Dartmouth Plan, "where the action is," has been a gratifying success, Mrs. Smallwood reports. Inquiries have averaged 10 to 30 per night, about half of them job-related. The student assistants have available for inspection coded lists of job opportunities, classified by state and type of work.
Undergraduates interested in any of the listed openings are referred to the Dartmouth Plan Office for in-depth interviews on their qualifications and aptitudes for those jobs. Only after Hoisington or Mrs. Luehrmann has determined that a particular student would make a suitable candidate for a articular job is he or she given the name and address of the prospective employer and tips on making applications. While the student applies directly, he is asked to report back so that, if the job is filled, the listing can be removed from the file.
The major source of jobs so far has been alumni in all parts of the country, although Hoisington continues to develop possibilities through non-alumni, parents, campus visitors, and firms or individuals who have hired Dartmouth students and graduates in the past, insofar as time permits. Some unsolicited inquiries come to his office from employers who have learned about the availability of student help at odd times of year or who are familiar with special areas of strength at the College.
While the count of job opportunities stands "by the book" at somewhere over 500, the figure is illusory, Hoisington says, since many entries represent multiple openings or an interest in taking on one or more students each term.
Cook, who joined the Secretary's staff last June specifically to act as liaison with alumni groups for job placement, reports enthusiastic response from the clubs. In less than a year, he has logged uncounted miles - uncounted because he hasn't found time between trips to make an estimate - during visits to 80 different cities. To date, 88 of the 112 clubs already have Job Placement Chairmen, with the number expected to top 100 by June. Procedures vary from club to club, Cook says, depending on the size of the group and the community, whether the area is diverse or one-industry oriented. Some clubs have large active committees; others depend mainly on the efforts of the chairman. Alumni are beating the bushes for good jobs for undergraduates not only among themselves, but also among non- Dartmouth friends and business contacts.
"The program sells itself," Cook claims, "because it makes sense and offers advantages to both students and employers." Ideally, while enabling the undergraduate to make money, it also provides an opportunity to test his skills and aptitudes in a practical situation, thereby assisting him in making long-range career plans. Although a fair proportion of the jobs developed involve manual labor, many have career im- plications. Pre-medical students are working in hospitals, potential bankers are learning the ropes of financial institutions, the business-bent are working in retail out-lets, offices, and manufacturing plants.
The advantages to the employer are many, Cook points out: he gets able help at little expense or overhead; Dartmouth students are available at all times of year, unlike those on a conventional college schedule who flood the summer-job market annually; they can be employed for a longer span of time than the usual student help; although they may have minimum training, they can be counted on for intelligence and, usually, for motivation; many have special skills. Not the least is the chance to observe the student's performance with an eye toward hiring him or her full-time after graduation. All jobs, Cook emphasizes, are open to men and women alike.
Prospective employers are supplied by Cook or the Dartmouth Plan Office with job description forms, including dates available, duration, nature of the work, qualifications required, approximate wages, and the name of the person to whom application should be made. Back in Hanover, the descriptions are fed into the computer, which assigns each a code number and classifies it by state and type of work.
In addition to the full print-outs available for inspection at Thayer or the Dartmouth Plan Office, SCOPE'S tabloid publishes information on sample openings. The latest issue includes such, notices as "Museum — Hayden Planetarium in Boston: career oriented: at least six months"; "Factory Work — six-month job leading to trainee position and possible permanent executive position in New Jersey, Virginia, or Tennessee"; "Conservation — Northern New England jobs with the Massachusetts Audubon Society: many relevant to pre-law"; and "Construction — college students to build house in Northern New England this summer — women apply too." Other listings covered teaching, actuarial work, chemical engineering, psychological and social research, solar fabrication, real estate, and work for "jack-of-all-trades."
The computer plays a major role in the entire operation, for information on study options as well as job opportunities. Through the ingenious information-retrieval system devised by Professor Robinson, a student interested in spending a term in the Foreign Study Program in Sierra Leone, for example, can, with the proper technical phrasing, elicit from any computer terminal on campus a list of all students now in residence who have been there before. Or, if he is thinking of applying for, say, an exchange program at Mount Holyoke, he or she can request a print-out of all former Mount Holyoke students now at Dartmouth, who can supply direct personal information about campus life and courses in South Hadley.
Although the change from the traditional three-term, with a short summer session, calendar to a year-round, full-parity four-term operation is a drastic one, and the transition has not been entirely flawless, the apparatus for helping the students take full advantage of the flexibility inherent in the Dartmouth Plan is functioning remarkably well. Those immediately involved see areas which will be improved with experience and offer even better service to the students. Some would like to see even more emphasis on job counseling. More than one expressed the hope that a plan to request tentative job plans and career expectations of students at registration, started last fall, can be made more inclusive in the future, as a guide to job development. They all anticipate that, as the lower classmen now on the Dartmouth Plan become juniors and seniors, there will be increased emphasis on career-oriented jobs and less on the traditional summer-type work still con- siderably in demand, particularly at this time of year.
A decision made last month by the Trustees, on recommendation of the faculty, that students be permitted to take a full five years to complete their degree requirements, may complicate the responsibility of the men and women working in and with the Dartmouth Plan Office. But, if the performance of this first hectic year of transition is any indication, student needs will be served — with a little help from their friend, the computer.
Harland W. Hoisington Jr. '48 (center), Coordinator of the Dartmouth Plan, conferwith Albert T. T. Cook Jr. '62, Associate in the College Secretary's Office, and An"Smallwood, SCOPE director, on the biggest multiple-choice question in Hanover.
Undergraduates leaving Thayer Hall after dinner find a SCOPE student assistant onhand in the Lounge with information about available jobs and off-campus programs.
