Dartmouth's Most Influential Women Influential Women

As The college Approached and then cautiously embraced coeducation, there came opportunities for women to become agents of change. Certainly there were the firsts first woman faculty member (Russian instructor Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, in 1918), first woman editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth (Anne Bagamery 78), first woman Trustee(Priscilla Frechette Maynard '41W). And then there were the barrier breakers and policy makers who have helped make

Of course, we could not fail to include one male: Jean Kemenys husband, the fellow who ushered in coeducation.

Jean Kemeny '53 ad

Karen Wetterhahn

Some troubling stats led this chemistry professor to coax women into the sciences. In 1990 she and Carol Muller '77, then assistant dean of die Thayer School of Engineering, noticed that although nearly half the freshmen unmet) indicated an interest in the sciences, fewer than. 15 percent were choosing to major in science. Wetterhahn and Muller co-founded the Women in Science Project to turn the numbers around. Seven years later, the numbers speak for themselves: 24 percent of women in the class of 1996 graduated with science majors, 60 percent of first-year women have oppressed an interest in science, and the program has become a national model.

Wetterhahn is accustomed to paving the way for women in sciences. A lending researcher on carcinogens. Wetterhahn as the first woman to serve as acting clean " of Dartmouth's faculty. the first woman associate dean of the sciences, and the first woman professor in the chemistry department.

Margaret Otto

Mary kenlley

Lucretia Martin' 5 Iad

When the Will to Excel Campaign drew to a spectacular close last October, much of tin. credit went to Director of Development

Lu Martin. Her personal connection with hundreds of Dartmouth sons and daughters helped the campaign exceed its $500 million goal by more than $68 million. In four decades with the College, Martin has created the major gifts program, established a capital-giving office, and served as special assistant to three presidents. Not bad for someone who admitted to knowing nothing about fundraising when, in 1970, she joined John Kemeny's staff as Parkhurst's first woman administrator. "If philanthropy were an academic discipline at Dartmouth,"say's an admiring colleague, "Lu would deserve an endowed chair."

Merelyn Reeve

In the late 1970s, when a trickle of women came to teach at Dartmouth, Dean of Faculty Leonard Rieser turned to speech lecturer Merelyn Reeve with a request. Students were not giving women sterling ratings for their lectures, he observed. Could Reeve give them a few tips? Could she ever. She invited women faculty to participate in a speech workshop to bring out the teaching strengths of each individual. The class was immediately overbooked, and before long, male pressorsclamoring for admittance. In all, Reeve coached 250 faculty, many now tenured. Meanwhile, Reeve served as founding advisor of Cobra, Dartmouth's first senior society for women.

Marysa Navarro

Sometimes it's the irritant that can effect the change, old Dartmouth hands like to say. That is when professor of history Marysa Navarro comes up in die conversation. Vocal and feisty and a self-professed radical feminist, Navarro has regularly challenged the College to improve itself, particularly where women are concerned. Among the first women to join the faculty in 1968, Navarro once Said about the early years of coeducation that "there was not enough sensibility to the fact women were different from men and that the environment... would be hostile at times."Right from the start she advocated a 1:1 ratio between male and female students, arguing that this was the only way to create a more realist environment for both Sexes. She supplemented her arguments with action, co-founding the Women's Studies Program in 1978 and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program in 1993..

Brenda Silver

Since she started teaching at Dartmouth in 1972, English professor and Women's Studies Program co-founder Brenda Silver has put women's studies on the curricular map, both in her own field a nd as a discipline in itself. A 1975 student course-guide description of her English 96 class reads like a women's studies manifesto: "To neglect the feminist concerns manifested in...novels and essays would be to overlook essential themes, and fail to appreciate them in their entirety. "Many were the women students who left Silver's classes with something more than respect for women novelistsa greater sense of belonging as well.

Agnes Bixler Kurtz

Founder of Dartmouth women's sports, Kurtz was the assistant director of athletics (and the first woman appointed to the athletic staff) during the early coed years. She had two..functions: to ensure compliance with the sports equality requirements of federal law Tide IX. and to prove to skeptics that female students could maintain Dartmouth's athletic tradition. Since 1972-73 women have garnered 27 Ivy League championships, a mere five fewer than the worldclass squash and lacrosse player in her own right, Kurtz coached field hockey, squash, and lacrosse. By the time she stepped down from her administrative duties in 1979, the College boasted 12 varsity sports and several club sports involving 1,000 female students a majority of the women on campus. So much for the skeptics.

Hannah Croasdale

Biologist Hannah Croasdale began working as a researcher in 1935, Inn it took 28 years for Dartmouth to recognize her teaching talerirs and make her the College's first tenured woman professor in 1963. Croasdale specialized in Arctic plant life, her research won citations from colleagues around the world, she translated numerous works of scientific Latin into English, and her illustrations filled two biology textbooks. She retired in 1971 not just as a precedent-breaker among women but as a pioneer in environmental education. At 91 she remains a beloved model of quiet determination and scientific accomplishment.

Lyn Hutton 76 ad

John G. Kemeny '22 ad

It was classic Kemeny, a bold move backed by a mathematical formula. Soon after the former Einstein protege became president in 1970, he faced his biggest problem: how to admit women without taking slots away from male applicants and without expanding the size of the student body. The answer: the Dartmouth Plan of year round operation, implemented with some cool math to ensure the proper student numbers. The formula worked the proper student numbers. immigrant to begin his 1972 Convocation address, "Men and vimmen of Darsmuth...."

Influential Women