The Curriculum

Courses - one spring term, one summer - we wish we had taken:

Environmental Studies 50 (Environmental Policy Formulation), Professors Dana Meadows and Gordon Mac Donald.

Problem: Parsons & Whittemore, a New York-based firm, announces plans to build a $200-million pulp mill on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River. Later, a site is selected in the town of Walpole, some 40 miles south of Hanover. By company estimate, the mill will employ 500 people, use 20 million gallons of water a day, consume 400,000 cords of hardwood a year, produce 20 carloads of bleached pulp daily. Some citizens say the mill is a good thing, some not.

Method: divide the 35 students in the class into five study teams to examine the potential socio-economic impact of the mill; plant operations; forestry; transportation; the company itself. Students plunge into a wilderness of data, gather expert testimony, report findings - some encouraging, some not - to audience of 250 concerned citizens in Claremont, New Hampshire, and prepare 320-page document available at $5 the copy. (Proceeds to support future publications.)

Grade (only slightly patronizing, from Pulp & Paper, an industry journal): "An encouraging development ... a creditable job. They raised some controversial issues ..., but the study does not support any conclusions that an antibusiness syndrome is particularly virulent on the Hanover campus."

The summer course, Drama 10 (A Filmmaker on Filmmaking), Visiting Lecturer Joseph Losey.

Losey, Class of 1929, director of Accident, The Go-Between, The Servant and lots of others, including, first, The Boywith Green Hair. "Knows more . . . about film than possibly any other director today" - Canby, N.Y. Times.

Students meet twice a week for three hours. Sparks fly. Examine Go-Between reel by reel, first without sound, then with. Antonioni gets a nod. Explore the actor "the genius, the natural, the 'star.'" Private 11 p.m. screenings. Study film budgets, read Losey-Pinter script of upcoming La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Much else.

Grade (from a student): "A protean figure - fundamentally Joseph Losey. Like a conductor, his ego shines through and that's the way it should be."