Where Do We Go From Here?

Undergraduates at the College got a lot of expert advice relevant to their futures from people who have been there at a twin bill of conferences in late January.

The first, an expanded replay of last year's career conference "Is There Life After Dartmouth?" assembled 15 alumni, including six members of the Class of 1941, co-sponsor of the program, and the Tuck School's first woman graduate (in 1970), to talk about their occupations. The second, sponsored by the Women's Program Committee, had as its theme "The Family: Image and Reality."

The career conference opened with a general discussion of career options in the Hopkins Center theater. It continued that evening with nine informal seminars scheduled simultaneously in Dartmouth Row classrooms, with members of the student committee presiding and one or more alumni participants from the field of law, social service/religion, public service, medicine, education, government/communications, business, banking/finance, and advertising/publishing discussing their vocations. Students, encouraged to browse among the seminars as time permitted and their interests dictated, had the pportunity for individual career counseling from the experts the following morning in Alumni Hall.

The family conference opened a few days later with an evening panel discussion on "The Care and Feeding of Parents," moderated by Vice President Ruth Adams , chairman of the Women's Program Committee. Topics for two additional panels were "Who's in Charge Here?" an examination of family resources, and "Matters of Choice: Marriage and Divorce." Six workshops on the overall subject "Alternate Family Styles" constituted still another session. Resource persons for the panel discussions and workshops included administrators and faculty members from the College, the Dartmouth Medical School, and the Tuck School; area residents; students from Dartmouth and Hanover High School; and distinguished visitors.

At the summation, the speakers were Craig Gilbert, producer of the television series "An American Family," and Professor Robert Sokol, chairman of the Department of Sociology. As background for the conference, the full 12 segments of the TV series were shown during the preceding week.