Dr. Wheelock's Journal
Divers Notes & Observations
IN THE IMPOSSIBLE HOPE THAT no further major announcements make the gray old maples ring between now and the time you read this, we give you the ABCs of April. "A" is June's Commencement speaker, 1987 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Oscar Arias, who will also be one of seven honorary degree recipients. (It's most inhospitable of us to mention it, but the other six will not make the evening news-distinguished in their fields, we're sure, but not the sort of prestige headliners that one associates with the Litt. Ds and the D.D.s of one's golden years.)
For "B" we present career diplomat Stephen W. Bosworth '61, ambassador to the Philippines during the critical transition from the Marcos to the Aquino regime, whom you yourselves have just elected to succed Ron Schram '64 as Alumni Trustee. And "C" is the Drama Department's chairman Lewis Crickard, who will be the new director of the Hopkins Center.
Dr. Arias was a professor of political science before he became a practitioner of it, first as finance minister, then economic planner, and eventually president of Costa Rica. Steve Bosworth got his Dartmouth honorary degree, an .L.D., in 1986 and was a Dickey Fellow in 1987. At present he is the president of the New York-based U.S. Japan Foundation.
After 250 candidates were whittled down to four, and then to none, the search committee to fill the Hopkins Center job turned and pointed to their chairman Professor Crickard as the one to replace Lynn Britt. The Valley News headlined Crickard's appointment with"New Chief Thinks Hop Can Work" and perhaps it might reassure Professor Crickard to recall that at its dedication in 1962, the Hop's first director, Warner Bentley, did indeed delightedly exclaim, "It works!" The Scylla of Crickard's trials is the Hop's mission to function as an arts center for students and faculty the Charybdis, its similar task of serving at the same time the cultural needs of the community and the whole region.
Mention of Warner Bentley immediately conjures up Webster Hall, on and from the stage of which, for more than 40 years, he coached and inspired an endless procession of undergraduates, many of whom have made their marks in show business. Beginning some time in 1994, Webster's interior will be completely redone to house Baker Library's special collections.
A FEW MORE NOTABLES-OF- the-month. The late composer Aaron Copland, who was a frequent visitor to the College, has bequeathed to the Paddock Music Library a collection of printed editions of his scores. The renowned Soviet expert Marshall Shulman is here this month as a Montgomery Fellow. In Tokyo the Dartmouth Club of Japan recently honored the Boston Symphony's Seiji Ozawa as the first recipient of the Kan'ichi Asakawa Award, named for the first Japanese student to graduate (in 1899) from the College. And although our sports predictions tend to run to the wishfill side, you may hear more this summer about Bob Kempainen '88, who set all sorts of track and crosscountry records at Dartmouth. Kempainen, we imagine a descendant of countrymen of the legendary Paavo Nurmi, recently qualified to represent the U.S. in the marathon at the 1992 Olympics.
ONE OF KEMPAINEN'S Successors in Coach Vin Lananna's crowded stable of middle-distance and distance runners, Ray Pugsley '92, has qualified in the steeplechase for the NCAA championships, as did Kristin Cobb '95 in the women's 3,000 meters. At least two of the Green relay teams should score well against the best the nation has to offer in the forthcoming Penn Relays—more of our wishful predicting? The Dartmouth heavyweight crew outrowed Yale for the first time in 14 years; women's tennis, so far unbeaten; women's lacrosse came within one overtime goal of beating fourth- ranked Penn State, but now has the tough Ivy part of its schedule ahead; the stickinen were 4-0 successful in the pre-season, but similarly now face Ivy reality; men's rugby (sure, there's women's rugby, too) beat Harvard, Yale, and Duke in the Bahamas, then were second only to Penn in the Ivy championships. Our main concern is with baseball, which doesn't yet seem to be able to put it together, but we hope that after the punishing weekend double-headers late this month and early next, we'll be able to give you a more resultful report in our summer column.
IN CONTRAST TO THE HEAD long march of events elsewhere, the pace of College curriculum change is positively glacial. Dartmouth's recently announced revision is the first major such change in 70 years. It seems to our still partially tutored mind that a principal result of the change will be the redefinition of what it means to be an educated person in an increasingly complex world. The traditional three academic divisions, the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, will be replaced by eight intellectual fields: arts; literature; philosophical, religious, or historical analysis; international or comparative study; social analysis; quantitative or deductive science; natural science; technology or applied science. To fulfill the requirements for a Dartmouth degree, the student will be obliged to complete 35 courses distributed among these fields, including three courses on "world cultures" one on the United States, one on a European country, and one on a non-Western society; to participate in a senior "culminating or integrating experience" in the major; and to take at least one interdisciplinary course in order to experience a subject critically from varying or even opposing standpoints.
The approval of the revision by the faculty represents a triumph of sorts for President Freedman, whose enthusiasm for the overhaul put his reputation on the block with a faculty attitude that can vary between balky and unyielding. The Boston Globe reported him as saying, "We've done the academic equivalent of moving a graveyard."
AT ONE OF THE SENIOR SYM- posium sessions, "The Future of Dartmouth," Freedman again noted the slowness of internal change in this world of academe. He suggested two external factors that might cause considerable campus change in the next 25 years, however. One, the possibility of the nation adopting universal service, which would postpone by at least three years the start of freshman year; and two, the threat of increased government scrutiny of higher education. A third one has occurred to us. Loose analogy: the NFL and the NBA universally use colleges from which to recruit players. So in turn do the colleges use secondary schools, where they compete among themselves for the best scholars. But neither organized sport nor organized education contributes in any significant way to the support of their "farm teams."
Shouldn't they? Secretary of the College Mike McGean '49 is one of the spirits behind Alumni in the Schools, a volunteer program to involve the talents of us products of higher education to support and encourage the efforts of the schools in our communities. Read more about Alumni in the Schools in your next copy of Dartmouth Life.
WE IS SECOND PERSON PLU- ral? Hardly. Two of you unpaid proofreaders caught us redhanded in that one, in our last issue. For some reason, we always think that if "I" is first person, "we" has got to be second. Didn't hear anyone object to the misspelling of Professor Hart's first name, however or to William Makepeace Thackery. For shame. College-educated, too.
A Nobel winner,and a hostof other notables.
