A Lot of Years

Robin Robinson '24 has retired. Almost entirely.

If that sounds familiar, small wonder. It's an old story, often told. In 1968, the ALUMNI MAGAZINE in effect announced Robinson's retirement twice almost simultaneously as professor of mathematics, after 40 years of teaching, and as registrar, after ten years of seeing that Dartmouth students were duly signed up and delivered to the right course at the right time. In the latter capacity, he had presided over the initiation of the threeterm, three-course plan.

Alumni, whether they realize it or not, return for reunions more or less under Robinson's direction. It was he who, in 1948, worked out the complex formula whereby shifting groups of adjacent classes is now used by many other institutions.

In his first return engagement, Robinson came back to the College in 1971 to compile a data bank on student development. Three years later, he was recruited as a consultant for the Dartmouth Plan, in which capacity he has until early this year been keeping track of the hundreds of potential schedules that allow students an awesome variety of terms in residence or studying, working, or vacationing just about anywhere in the world.

While Robinson was packing up his desk in McNutt Hall, Marjorie Wood was getting ready to break in a successor a couple of doors down the street in College Hall. Administrative assistant in the Office of Career and Employment Services, she has been working in student counseling for 23 years. She won't even speculate on how many Dartmouth undergraduates she has dealt with since 1958, but she estimates the numbers run to 25 or 30 a day when the corporate recruiting season is at peak.

One thing Wood is sure of is that, much as she'll miss the good people she has worked with, idleness will not be her lot after retirement. She'll be making doll furniture, sewing, and hitting the squaredance circuit weekends in the family camper. Wood and her husband are experts, having taken all sorts of advanced courses in both square and round dancing.

While the Woods are allemande-lefting all over the lot, we'll still be hearing quite regularly from Robin Robinson. Since it just wouldn't do to have him serving the College in no capacity at all, he will go on being the classiest disc jockey in town. A triple-threat musician tympanist for 20 years with the Handel Society, composer of several string quartets and a piano sonata, and critic Robinson will continue as host of two classical-music programs weekly on WFRD, the studentrun FM station.

For Robinson, shown here broadcasting forWFRD, and Wood the College has been alot of years and a lot of undergraduates.

return to the College together. Originally unique to Dartmouth, the copyrighted plan