The Teaching College

1835

Chemistry professor Benjamin Hale, a newly ordained Episcopal priest, holds services in his home. Outraged Trustees respond by abolishing his department. Hale ascends to the presidency of Hobart College.

1870

Two decades after Harvard radically revamps its curriculum, Dartmouth dabbles with dropping rote and recitation.

1872

Believing that the average student's lecture notes are worthless, Robert Fletcher, the Thayer School's founding professor of civil engineering, never strays from the textbook.

1899

An English professor reveals why everyone passes his class: "Long years of experience have taught me that by teaching in this way a few men acquire a genuine taste for English literature. The rest of you don't count and nobody cares about flunking you."

1947

The Carnegie Foundation awards John Sloan Dickey's Great Issues course a $75,000 grant.

1968

John Rassias's language instruction gains a foothold. Over the next seven years the number of Dartmouth students taking French doubles. Nationally the number of students taking French drops by a third.

1978

Dartmouth becomes the first of the former allmale Ivies to offer women's studies. A faculty committee estimates that 300 colleges already offer the program.

1992

The faculty changes the College's curriculum for the first time in 70 years,

Although JohnKemeny andFrank Ryan,and quarterbackKevin Case '77 played computerfootball onthe DartmouthCollege TimeSharing System, pedagogicalinnovationis not along-standingtradition.