Professional Schools
Perhaps because "college" is a word hallowed by tradition, we sometimes overlook the fact that Dartmouth is a small university. Yet Dartmouth has the fourth oldest medical school in the country, one of the first professional schools of civil (as opposed to military) engineering, and the oldest graduate school of business ad- ministration. In more recent years we have added small, selective Ph.D. programs. Coupled with these are facilities such as a million-volume research library that one normally finds only in a large university. Being a full university which has placed its overwhelming emphasis on undergraduate education is a major part of the uniqueness of Dartmouth College.
The Tuck and Thayer schools have profited enormously from the completion of the Murdough Center. This jointly shared structure for the first time provides them with modern teaching facilities as well as room in which to expand. The magnificent Feldberg Library stimulates research for both faculty and graduate students. A large computer room gives easy access to Kiewit Computation Center for the two faculties that now make heaviest use of the computer.
Free access to the Dartmouth Time Sharing System has had a significant impact on both schools. Thayer School can provide computing power essential for engineers, better than that available at most engineering schools in the country. Tuck School has become famous for the fact that it trains future executives with vastly more sophistication in the use of computers than its rival institutions.
Under the able leadership of Dean John Hennessey, Tuck School is steadily gaining in quality and in its national reputation. In a recent survey, conducted at another business school, Tuck's MBA program was rated as tied for third place in the nation, placing it ahead of many business schools of much larger size. Its students are of very high caliber and have had remarkable success in competing for some of the best job openings in the country. One measure of the growing popularity of the school is that applications have doubled in the past three years.
The faculty of Tuck School has participated in a variety of continuing education endeavors. The most recent entry has been the Tuck Executives Program. If the experience of the first year turns out to be typical, this will be one of our most successful programs and will win many new friends and important contacts for the Tuck faculty.
Tuck School must also be given credit for having pioneered an imaginative student loan program well before such a program was available for the rest of the College.
We are planning to open the 1975-76, academic year with a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of Tuck School. We will be going into this celebration with the very brightest hopes for the future of this small but extremely strong and important professional school.
Thayer School celebrated its centennial in 1971. Although this event was a memorable one, it occurred at a time when the school was facing a number of problems, the foremost of which was a national decline in interest in engineering. Thayer had been without a dean for an extended period, and the next dean would be tempted away from Dartmouth after a brief stay.
For the past two years Dean Carl Long has provided muchneeded stability for the school. He has formulated plans that will give additional impetus to Thayer by striking out into new fields, including the education of non-engineering undergraduate students. He is also working hard to strengthen the financial foundations of the school.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Sloan Foundation, the faculty and the educational program of Thayer have been significantly strengthened in the last few years. Now that a portion of the faculty and the library are housed in the Murdough Center, the school has an opportunity to use the remainder of the Sloan grant for modernization of its laboratory facilities.
Any school must be measured by the quality of its graduates. One trademark of Thayer School has been the five-year program that enables a student both to qualify as an engineer and to acquire a liberal arts education. An important new dimension has been added by the deans and faculty of the school: undergraduate students are required to carry out design projects taken from real-life problems to supplement their theoretical training. The most important characteristic of a Thayer graduate is breadth.
Realistically, a major upswing in enrollment at Thayer School will have to await a change in national attitudes toward engineering. While the prejudices of the late 1960s affecting all the physical sciences are disappearing, the job market for engineers must improve before many more students will elect engineering as a profession. I believe that such an upswing is certain to come as the nation pulls itself out of the present depression. Thayer School should be one of the primary beneficiaries of improved economic conditions.
The professional schools were less affected by the recent great changes at Dartmouth than the College of Arts and Sciences. While these schools went coed many years before the undergraduate dergraduateCollege, they have been significantly influenced by the current trend under which women in increasing numbers enter professions that have normally been considered "male professions." Today both Tuck School and the Medical School have a large number of women in their entering classes.
The changes in the Medical School have been so dramatic that 1 will discuss them in considerable detail in the next section. But I do want to comment on what I feel is an important change in the roles of all three professional schools.
The fact that we have thought of them as "associated schools" was a safeguard against watering down undergraduate education. Unfortunately, it has also meant that the schools have had only limited direct impact on our undergraduates. I am hopeful that in the next few years much closer ties can be established. I am convinced that the students of all four schools would benefit enormously from joint educational enterprises.
