Loan Base Strengthened

A grant of $l00,000 from the Samuel P. Hunt Foundation has been made to Dartmouth for use as capital for the College's new student loan corporation, known as the Dartmouth Educational Loan Corporation. It will be received over a four-year period in annual payments of $25,000.

The Hunt Foundation was established in New Hampshire in 1951 by the late Samuel P. Hunt '93, a consulting engineer.. Its gift was announced jointly by President McLaughlin and Ralph A. Mclninch, chairman of the Merchants National Bank of Manchester, who with the bank is co-trustee of the fund.

Hailing the importance of the Hunt gift, President McLaughlin stressed that the effective value of the fund would over time be multiplied by leveraging to support more than 300 undergraduate loans averaging $2,000. Preference will be given to undergraduates from New Hampshire in awarding the loans made possible by the grant.

The Dartmouth Educational Loan Corporation was incorporated last summer. Taking advantage of enabling legislation enacted in New Hampshire, Dartmouth became the nation's first private college or university to use the sale of tax-exempt bonds to raise funds to meet the loan needs of undergraduate and graduate students at a favorable rate of interest. The Hunt Foundation grant will strengthen the equity base of the fund for undergraduate loans, reinforcing earlier capitalization gifts which were restricted to use by graduate students at the Medical School and Tuck School. It has been estimated that over the next three years, undergraduate and graduate students at Dartmouth will need to borrow through DELC approximately $l0 million.

The late Mr. Hunt, who established the foundation bearing his name, was a native of Manchester, N.H. After Dartmouth, he took an engineering degree at M.I.T. and later was a member of one of the early classes at Harvard Business School. He helped to develop electric public utilities in several cities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York.