Making the List

THE MAN BEHIND DARTMOUTH'S appearance alongside Oxford on the recent Booz Allen list of the world's most enduring institutions of the last centuryis not a College administrator or an alum. He is a professor from the University of Kentucky.

"For much of America, Dartmouth has the image of a very masculine, liberal arts college—that of Winter Carnival," explains UK professor John Thelin, who nominated Dartmouth for the distinction. "What is not understood are the quiet and very strong innovations Dartmouth has made over the years."

Thelin, an expert on higher education and author of A History of AmericanEducation (Johns Hopkins Press, 2004), cites the development of computers and computer sciences that began with President John Kemeny as part of the untold Dartmouth story. Those are things "we would expect from Caltech or MIT," he says.

Dartmouth's creation of a core curriculum in the 1930s and its embrace of coeducation and diversity later in the century are additional examples of the Colleges innovations. "Everything Dartmouth does, it does well," explains Thelin.