Off-Campus Study

Dartmouth's off-campus study programs, already extensive with 33 opportunities available for 1982—83, will be enlarged next fall with two new programs approved by the executive committee of the faculty of arts and sciences. One will be sponsored by the history department in London, England, and the other by the physics and astronomy department in Tucson, Arizona.

Two other off-campus programs are already based in London under the sponsorship of the English and government departments. The newly approved one in history will begin next fall, with David Roberts, Charles Collis professor of history, as resident director. Students will take three courses at Bedford College of the University of London. The physics and astronomy program at Tucson will be offered every other fall, beginning this year, and will consist of two courses taught by Dartmouth faculty and one other to be taken at the University of Arizona. Observatory work with the university's telescope will be a major part of the program.

Last year Dartmouth became the only college in the United States to have its own, exclusive foreign study program in the People's Republic of China. The program will continue this summer when a second group of approximately 15 Dartmouth undergraduates studies for ten weeks at Beijing Normal University, with Prof. Robert Henricks of the religion department as resident director. In addition to Chinese language instruction with BNU professors, students will take a course in the religion of ancient China taught by Professor Henricks. The Asian Studies Program at Dartmouth, which sponsors the Beijing Normal University venture, was granted permanent status at Dartmouth by vote of the general faculty at its May 1982 meeting.

Foreign study, the largest segment of Dartmouth's off-campus academic program, is now offered by 15 different departments in Central America, China, Costa Rica and Panama, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Kenya-Nairobi, Mexico, Russia, Scotland, and Spain.

The next largest segment, language study abroad, is offered in Canada (Quebec), France (Aries, Blois, and Lyon), Germany (Mainz), Italy (Siena), Mexico (San Luis Potosi and Puebla), and Spain (Granada).

Besides the new Tucson program, domestic off-campus study is offered in urban studies in Boston and government in Washington, D.C. Exchange plans, the fourth segment .of the overall off-campus program, now exist with McGill University in Montreal, Talladega College in Alabama, University of California at San Diego, the twelve-college exchange in New England, Keio University in Japan, and the German Universities Exchange.

In the College's current study of possible change in the Dartmouth Plan calendar, student opinion has been strongly on the side of maintaining the flexibility that permits the uncommon range of off-campus study opportunities available to Dartmouth undergraduates at present.