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Dartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire. Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College,"
it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. In addition to its undergraduate liberal arts program, Dartmouth has medical, engineering, and business schools, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences. With a total enrollment of 5,848, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League.
Established in 1769 by Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock with funds largely raised by the efforts of Native American preacher Samson Occom, the College's initial mission was to acculturate and Christianize the Native Americans.
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Quotations
When better women are made, Dartmouth men will make them.
Slogan attributed to those students opposed to coeducation, early 1970s.
It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it.
They have the still North in their soul, The hill-winds in their breath, And the granite of New Hampshire is made part of them till death.
Dartmouth College Alma Mater, Written in 1894 by Richard Hovey, class of 1885.
The world's troubles are your troubles…and there is nothing wrong with the world that better human beings cannot fix.
John Sloan Dickey, 12th President of Dartmouth College
Yes, when I was here the first word of the alma mater was 'Men…Men of Dartmouth, give a rouse…' Well, now the first word is 'Dear.' Some things change for the better.
Fred Rogers, Commencement Address at Dartmouth College June 9th, 2002
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Encyclopedia
Dartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire. Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College,"
it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. In addition to its undergraduate liberal arts program, Dartmouth has medical, engineering, and business schools, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences. With a total enrollment of 5,848, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League.
Established in 1769 by Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock with funds largely raised by the efforts of Native American preacher Samson Occom, the College's initial mission was to acculturate and Christianize the Native Americans. After a long period of financial and political struggles, Dartmouth emerged from relative obscurity in the early twentieth century. In 2004, Booz Allen Hamilton selected Dartmouth College as a model of institutional endurance "whose record of endurance has had implications and benefits for all American organizations, both academic and commercial," citing Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward and Dartmouth's successful self-reinvention in the late 1800s. Dartmouth alumni, from Daniel Webster to the many donors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have been famously involved in their college.
Dartmouth is located on a rural 269-acre (1.1 km²) campus in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire. Given the College's isolated location, participation in athletics and the school's Greek system is high. Dartmouth's 34 varsity sports teams compete in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. Students are also well-known for preserving a variety of strong campus traditions.
History
Dartmouth was founded by Eleazar Wheelock, a Puritan minister from Connecticut, who sought to establish a school to train Native Americans as ministers to spread Anglo-American cultural precepts, particularly Protestant Christianity. Wheelock's ostensible inspiration for such an establishment largely resulted from his relationship with Mohegan Indian Samson Occom. Occom became an ordained minister after studying under Wheelock's tutelage from 1743 to 1747 and later moved to Long Island to preach to the Montauks.
Wheelock instituted Moor's Indian Charity School in 1755. The Charity School proved somewhat successful, but additional funding was necessary to continue school’s operations. To this end, Wheelock sought the help of friends to raise money. Occom, accompanied by Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker, traveled to England in 1766 to raise money in the dissenting churches of that nation. With the funds, they established a trust to help Wheelock.
Although the fund provided Wheelock ample financial support for the Charity School, Wheelock had trouble recruiting Indians to the institution—primarily because its location was far from tribal territories. Receiving the best land offer from New Hampshire, Wheelock approached the Royal Governor of the Province of New Hampshire John Wentworth for a charter. Wentworth, acting in the name King George III of the United Kingdom, granted Dartmouth a royal charter on December 13, 1769, establishing the final colonial college and naming the institution after his English friend, William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. Dartmouth's purpose, according to the original charter, was to provide for the Christianization, instruction, and education of "youth of the Indian Tribes in this land [...] and also of English youth and any others." Given the failure of the Charity School, however, Wheelock intended his new College as one primarily for whites.
Wheelock had established a collegiate department within Moor's Charity School in 1768. He moved the school to Hanover in 1770 where the College granted its first degrees in 1771. Occom, disappointed with Wheelock's departure from the school's original goal of Indian Christianization, went on to form his own community of New England Indians called Brothertown Indians in New York.
In 1819, Dartmouth College was the subject of the historic Dartmouth College case, in which the State of New Hampshire's 1816 attempt to amend the College's royal charter to make the school a public university was challenged. An institution called Dartmouth University occupied the College buildings and began operating in Hanover in 1817, though the College continued teaching classes in rented rooms nearby. Daniel Webster, an alumnus of the class of 1801, presented the College's case to the Supreme Court of the United States, which found the amendment of Dartmouth's charter to be an illegal impairment of a contract by the state and reversed New Hampshire's takeover of the College. Webster concluded his peroration with the famous and frequently quoted words: "It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it."
Dartmouth emerged onto the national academic stage at the turn of the twentieth century. Prior to this period, the College had been relatively unknown and poorly funded. Under the presidency of William Jewett Tucker (1893–1909), Dartmouth underwent a major revitalization of facilities, faculty, and the student body, following large endowments such as the $10,000 given by Dartmouth alumnus and law professor John Ordronaux. Twenty new structures replaced antiquated buildings, while the student body and faculty both expanded threefold. Tucker is often credited for having "refounded Dartmouth" and bringing it into national prestige. Presidents Ernest Fox Nichols (1909–16) and Ernest Martin Hopkins (1916–45) continued Tucker's trend of modernization, further improving campus facilities and introducing selective admissions in the 1920s. John Sloan Dickey, serving as president from 1945 until 1970, strongly emphasized the liberal arts, particularly public policy and international relations.
In 1970, longtime professor of mathematics and computer science John George Kemeny became president of Dartmouth. Kemeny presided over several major changes at the College. Dartmouth, previously serving as a men's institution, began admitting women as full-time students and undergraduate degree candidates in 1972 amid much controversy. At about the same time, the College adopted its "Dartmouth Plan" of academic scheduling, permitting the student body to increase in size within the existing facilities.
During the 1990s, the College saw a major academic overhaul under President James O. Freedman and a controversial (and ultimately unsuccessful) 1999 initiative to encourage the school's single-sex Greek houses to go coed. The 2000s saw the commencement of the $1.3 billion Campaign for the Dartmouth Experience, the largest capital fundraising campaign in the College's history, which as of January 2008 has surpassed $1 billion and is on schedule to be completed before 2010. The mid- and late 2000s have also seen extensive campus construction, with the erection of two new housing complexes, full renovation of two dormitories, and a forthcoming dining hall, life sciences center, and visual arts center.
Since the election of a number of petition elections to the Board of Trustees starting in 2004, the role of alumni in Dartmouth governance has been the subject of ongoing ideological conflict. Current president James Wright announced his retirement in February 2008, to be replaced by Harvard University professor and physician Jim Yong Kim on July 1, 2009.
Academics and administration
Dartmouth, a liberal arts institution, offers only a four-year Bachelor of Arts degree to undergraduate students. There are 39 academic departments offering 56 major programs, although students are free to design special majors or engage in dual majors. In 2008, the most popular majors were economics, government, history, psychology and brain sciences, English, biology, and engineering sciences.
In order to graduate, a student must complete 35 total courses, eight to ten of which are typically part of a chosen major program. Other requirements for graduation include the completion of ten "distributive requirements" in a variety of academic fields, proficiency in a foreign language, and completion of a writing class or first-year seminar in writing. Many departments offer honors programs requiring students seeking that distinction to engage in "independent, sustained work," culminating in the production of a thesis. In addition to the courses offered in Hanover, Dartmouth offers 57 different off-campus programs, including Foreign Study Programs, Language Study Abroad programs, and Exchange Programs.
Dartmouth also grants degrees in nineteen Arts & Sciences graduate programs. Furthermore, Dartmouth is home to three graduate schools: Dartmouth Medical School (established 1797), Thayer School of Engineering (1867)—which also serves as the undergraduate department of engineering sciences—and Tuck School of Business (1900). With these graduate programs, conventional American usage would accord Dartmouth the label of "Dartmouth University"; however, because of historical and nostalgic reasons (such as Dartmouth College v. Woodward), the school uses the name "Dartmouth College" for the entire institution.
Dartmouth employs a total of 597 tenured or tenure-track faculty members, including the highest proportion of female tenured professors among the Ivy League universities. Faculty members have been at the forefront of such major academic developments as the Dartmouth Conferences, the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, Dartmouth BASIC, and Dartmouth ALGOL 30. As of 2005, sponsored project awards to Dartmouth faculty research amounted to $169 million.
Dartmouth serves as the host institution of the University Press of New England, a university press founded in 1970 that is supported by a consortium of schools that also includes Brandeis University, the University of New Hampshire, Northeastern University, Tufts University and the University of Vermont.
The Dartmouth Plan
Dartmouth functions on a quarter system, operating year-round on four ten-week academic terms. The Dartmouth Plan (or simply "D-Plan") is an academic scheduling system that permits the customization of each student's academic year. All undergraduates are required to be in residence for the fall, winter, and spring terms of their freshman and senior years, as well as the summer term of their sophomore year. During all other terms, students are permitted to choose between studying on-campus, studying at an off-campus program, or taking a term off for vacation, outside internships, or research projects. The typical course load is three classes per term, and students will generally enroll in classes for twelve total terms over the course of their academic career.
The D-Plan was instituted in the early 1970s at the same time that Dartmouth began accepting female undergraduates. It was initially devised as a plan to increase the enrollment without enlarging campus accommodations, and has been described as "a way to put 4,000 students into 3,000 beds." Although new dormitories have been built since, the number of students has also increased and the D-Plan remains in effect and mainly unchanged.
Admissions
Dartmouth describes itself as "highly selective," ranked as the fifteenth "toughest to get into" school by The Princeton Review in 2007, and classified as "most selective" by U.S. News & World Report. For the class of 2012, 16,536 students applied for approximately 1,100 places, and only 13.2% of applicants were admitted. 93.4% of admitted students were ranked in the top 10% of their high school graduating class. 38.5% of admitted students were valedictorians and 11.3% were salutatorians. The mean SAT scores of admitted students by section were 726 for verbal, 731 for math, and 726 for writing.
In 2007, Dartmouth was ranked eleventh among undergraduate programs at national universities by U.S. News & World Report. However, since Dartmouth is ranked in a category for national research universities, some have questioned the fairness of the ranking given the College's emphasis on undergraduate education. The 2006 Carnegie Foundation classification listed Dartmouth as the only majority-undergraduate, arts-and-sciences focused institution in the country that also had some graduate coexistence and very high research activity.
Dartmouth meets 100% of students' demonstrated financial need in order to attend the College, and currently admits all students, including internationals, on a need-blind basis. Beginning in the 2008–2009 academic year, Dartmouth instituted a new financial aid policy extending need-blind admission to international students and replaced all student loans with scholarships and grants. Students from families with a combined annual income of less than $75,000 are not charged any tuition.
Board of Trustees
Dartmouth is governed by a Board of Trustees comprising the College president (ex officio), the state governor (ex officio), thirteen trustees nominated and elected by the board (called "charter trustees"), and eight trustees nominated by alumni and elected by the board ("alumni trustees"). The nominees for alumni trustee are determined by a poll of the members of the Association of Alumni of Dartmouth College, selecting from among names put forward by the Alumni Council or by alumni petition.
Although the Board elected its members from the two sources of nominees in equal proportions between 1891 and 2007, the Board decided in 2007 to add several new members, all charter trustees. In the controversy that followed the decision, the Association of Alumni filed a lawsuit, although it later withdrew the action. In 2008, the Board added five new charter trustees.
Campus
Dartmouth College is situated in the rural town of Hanover, New Hampshire, located in the Upper Valley along the Connecticut River in New England. Its 269 acre (1.1 km²) campus is centered around a five-acre (two-hectare) "Green", a former field of pine trees cleared by the College in 1771. Dartmouth is the largest private landowner of the town of Hanover, and its total landholdings and facilities are worth an estimated $434 million. In addition to its campus in Hanover, Dartmouth owns 4,500 acres (18.2 km²) of Mount Moosilauke in the White Mountains Region and a 27,000 acre (109 km²) tract of land in northern New Hampshire known as the Second College Grant.
Dartmouth's campus buildings vary in age from Wentworth and Thornton Halls of the 1820s (the oldest surviving buildings constructed by the College) to new dormitories and mathematics facilities completed in 2006. Most of Dartmouth's buildings are designed in the Georgian American colonial style, a theme which has been preserved in recent architectural additions. The College has actively sought to reduce carbon emissions and energy usage on campus, earning it the grade of A- from the Sustainable Endowments Institute on its College Sustainability Report Card 2008.
Academic facilities
The College's creative and performing arts facility is the Hopkins Center for the Arts ("the Hop"). Opened in 1962, the Hop houses the College's drama, music, film, and studio arts departments, as well as a woodshop, pottery studio, and jewelry studio which are open for use by students and faculty. The building was designed by the famed architect Wallace Harrison, who would later design the similar-looking façade of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center. Its facilities include two theaters and one 900-seat auditorium. The Hop is also the location of all student mailboxes ("Hinman boxes") and the Courtyard Café dining facility. The Hop is connected to the Hood Museum of Art, arguably North America's oldest museum in continuous operation, and the Loew Auditorium, where films are screened.
In addition to its nineteen graduate programs in the arts and sciences, Dartmouth is home to three separate graduate schools. Dartmouth Medical School is located in a complex on the north side of campus and includes laboratories, classrooms, offices, and a biomedical library. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, located several miles to the south in Lebanon, New Hampshire, contains a 396-bed teaching hospital for the Medical School. The Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business are both located at the end of Tuck Mall, west of the center of campus and near the Connecticut River. The Thayer School presently comprises two buildings; Tuck has six academic and administrative buildings, as well as several common areas. The two graduate schools share a library, the Feldberg Business & Engineering Library.
Dartmouth's nine libraries are all part of the collective Dartmouth College Library, which comprises 2.48 million volumes and 6 million total resources, including videos, maps, sound recordings, and photographs. Its specialized libraries include the Biomedical Libraries, Evans Map Room, Feldberg Business & Engineering Library, Jones Media Center, Kresge Physical Sciences Library, Paddock Music Library, Rauner Special Collections Library, and Sherman Art Library. Baker-Berry Library is the main library at Dartmouth, composed of Baker Memorial Library (opened 1928) and Berry Library (opened 2000). Located on the northern side of the Green, Baker's tower is an iconic symbol of the College.
Athletic facilities
Dartmouth's original sports field was the Green, where students played cricket and old division football during the 1800s. Today, Dartmouth maintains more than a dozen athletic facilities and fields and has spent more than $70 million in facility improvements since 2000.
Most of Dartmouth's athletic facilities are located in the southeast corner of campus. The center of athletic life is the Alumni Gymnasium, which includes the Karl Michael Competition Pool and the Spaulding Pool, a fitness center, a weight room, and a 1/13th-mile (123 m) indoor track. Attached to Alumni Gymnasium is the Berry Sports Center, which contains basketball and volleyball courts (Leede Arena), as well as the Kresge Fitness Center. Behind the Alumni Gymnasium is Memorial Field, a 15,000-seat stadium overlooking Dartmouth's football field and track. The nearby Thompson Arena, designed by Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi and constructed in 1975, houses Dartmouth's ice rink.
Dartmouth's other athletic facilities in Hanover include the Friends of Dartmouth Rowing Boathouse, located along the Connecticut River, the Hanover Country Club, Dartmouth's oldest remaining athletic facility (established in 1899), and the Corey Ford Rugby Clubhouse. The College also maintains the Dartmouth Skiway, a 100 acre (0.4 km²) skiing facility located over two mountains near the Hanover campus in Lyme Center, New Hampshire.
Housing and student life facilities
As opposed to ungrouped dormitories or residential colleges as employed at such institutions as Yale University, Dartmouth has nine residential communities located throughout campus. The dormitories vary in design from modern to traditional Georgian styles, and room arrangements range from singles to quads and apartment suites. Since 2006, the College has guaranteed housing for students during their freshman and sophomore years. More than 3,000 students elect to live in housing provided by College.
Campus meals are served by Dartmouth Dining Services, which operates eleven dining establishments around campus. Four of them are located at the center of campus in Thayer Dining Hall.
The Collis Center is the center of student life and programming, serving as what would be generically termed the "student union" or "campus center." It contains a café, study space, common areas, and a number of administrative departments. Robinson Hall, next door to both Collis and Thayer, contains the offices of a number of student organizations including the Dartmouth Outing Club and The Dartmouth daily newspaper.
Student life
In 2006, The Princeton Review ranked Dartmouth third in its "Quality of Life" category, and sixth for having the "Happiest Students." Athletics and participation in the Greek system are the most popular campus activities; in all, Dartmouth offers more than 350 organizations, teams, and sports. The school is also home to a variety of longstanding traditions and celebrations.
Student groups
Dartmouth's more than 200 student organizations and clubs cover a wide range of interests. As of 2007, the College hosts eight academic groups, 17 cultural groups, two honor societies, 30 "issue-oriented" groups, 25 performing groups, 12 pre-professional groups, 20 publications, and 11 recreational groups. Notable student groups include the nation's largest and oldest collegiate outdoors club, the Dartmouth Outing Club, the controversial newspaper The Dartmouth Review, and The Dartmouth, arguably the nation's oldest university newspaper. The Dartmouth describes itself as "America's Oldest College Newspaper, Founded 1799." However, according to the 1928 Aegis yearbook, the daily newspaper is unrelated to a literary publication established under a different name in 1799. The Dartmouth as it currently exists was founded in 1839, and it calculates its present volume number from that year.
Partially due to Dartmouth's rural, isolated location, the Greek system dating from the 1840s is one of the most popular social outlets for students. Dartmouth is home to 27 recognized Greek houses: 15 fraternities, nine sororities, and three coeducational organizations. As of 2007, over 60% of eligible students belong to a Greek organization; since 1987, students have not been permitted to join Greek organizations until their sophomore year. Dartmouth College was among the first institutions of higher education to desegregate fraternity houses in the 1950s, and was involved in the movement to create coeducational Greek houses in the 1970s. In the early 2000s, campus-wide debate focused on a Board of Trustees recommendation that Greek organizations become "substantially coeducational"; this attempt to the change the Greek system eventually failed. The College has an additional classification of social/residential organizations known as undergraduate societies.
Athletics
Athletics are highly popular at Dartmouth: approximately 20% of students participate in a varsity sport, and nearly 80% participate in some form of club, varsity, intramural, or other athletics. As of 2007, Dartmouth College fields 34 intercollegiate varsity teams: 16 for men, 16 for women, and coeducational sailing and equestrian programs. Dartmouth's athletic teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I eight-member Ivy League conference; some teams also participate in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC). As is mandatory for the members of the Ivy League, Dartmouth College does not offer athletic scholarships. In addition to the traditional American team sports (football, basketball, baseball, and ice hockey), Dartmouth competes in many other sports including track and field, sailing, tennis, rowing, soccer, skiing, and lacrosse.
The College also offers 26 club and intramural sports such as rugby, water polo, figure skating, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, and cricket, leading to a 75% participation rate in athletics among the undergraduate student body. The figure skating team has performed particularly well in recent years, winning the national championship in each of the past five consecutive seasons. In addition to the academic requirements for graduation, Dartmouth requires every undergraduate to complete a swim and three terms of physical education.
Technology
Technology plays an important role in student life, as Dartmouth has been ranked as one of the most technologically-advanced colleges in the world (as in Newsweeks 2004 ranking of "Hottest for the Tech-Savvy" and Yahoo!'s 1998 "Wired Colleges" list). BlitzMail, the campus e-mail network, plays a tremendous role in social life, as students tend to use it for communication in lieu of cellular phones or instant messaging programs. Student reliance on BlitzMail (known colloquially as "Blitz," which functions as both noun and verb) is reflected by the presence of about 100 public computer terminals intended specifically for BlitzMail use. Since 1991, Dartmouth students have been required to own a personal computer.
In 2001, Dartmouth became the first Ivy League institution to offer entirely ubiquitous wireless internet access. With over 1,400 access points, the network is available throughout all College buildings as well as in most public outdoor spaces. Other technologies being pioneered include College-wide Video-on-Demand and VoIP rollouts.
Native Americans at Dartmouth
The charter of Dartmouth College, granted to Eleazar Wheelock in 1769, proclaims that the institution was created "for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land in reading, writing and all parts of Learning ... as well as in all liberal Arts and Sciences; and also of English Youth and any others." The funds for Dartmouth College were raised primarily by the efforts of a Native American named Samson Occom.
Despite this initial mission, the College graduated only nineteen Native Americans during its first two hundred years. In 1970, the College established Native American academic and social programs as part of a "new dedication to increasing Native American enrollment." Since then, Dartmouth has graduated over 500 Native American students from over 120 different tribes, more than the other seven Ivy League universities combined.
Traditions
Dartmouth is well-known for its fierce school spirit and many traditions. The College functions on a quarter system, and one weekend each term is set aside as a traditional celebratory event, known on campus as "big weekends" or "party weekends". In the fall term, Homecoming (officially called Dartmouth Night) is marked by a bonfire on the Green constructed by the freshman class. Winter term is celebrated by Winter Carnival, a tradition started in 1911 by the Dartmouth Outing Club to promote winter sports. In the spring, Green Key is a weekend mostly devoted to campus parties and celebration.
The summer term was formerly marked by Tubestock, an unofficial tradition in which the students used wooden rafts and inner tubes to float on the Connecticut River. Begun in 1986, Tubestock met its demise in 2006 when Hanover town ordinances and a lack of coherent student protest conspired to defeat the popular tradition. The class of 2008, during their summer term on campus in 2006, replaced the defunct Tubestock with Fieldstock. This new celebration includes a barbecue, live music, and the revival of the 1970s and 1980s tradition of racing homemade chariots around the Green. Unlike Tubestock, Fieldstock is funded and supported by the College.
Another longstanding tradition is four-day, student-run Dartmouth Outing Club trips for incoming freshmen, begun in 1935. Each trip concludes at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. In 2006, 85% of freshman elected to participate.
Insignia and other representations
Seal
Dartmouth's 1769 royal charter required the creation of a seal for use on official documents and diplomas. The College's founder Eleazar Wheelock designed a seal for his college bearing a striking resemblance to the seal of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, a missionary society founded in London in 1701, in order to maintain the illusion that his college was more for mission work than for higher education. Engraved by a Boston silversmith, the seal was ready by Commencement of 1773. The trustees officially accepted the seal on August 25, 1773, describing it as:
On October 28, 1926, the trustees affirmed the charter's reservation of the seal for official corporate documents alone. The College Publications Committee commissioned typographer W. A. Dwiggins to create a line drawing version of the seal in 1940 that saw widespread use. Dwiggins' design was modified during 1957 to change the date from "1770" to "1769," to accord with the date of the College Charter. The trustees commissioned a new set of dies with a date of "1769" to replace the old dies, now badly worn after almost two hundred years of use. The 1957 design continues to be used under trademark number 2305032.
Shield
On October 28, 1926, the Trustees approved a "Dartmouth College Shield" for general use. Artist and engraver W. Parke Johnson designed this emblem on the basis of the shield that is depicted at the center of the original seal. This design does not survive. On June 9, 1944 the trustees approved another coat of arms based on the shield part of the seal, this one by Canadian artist and designer Thoreau MacDonald. That design was used widely and, like Dwiggins' seal, had its date changed from "1770" to "1769" around 1958. That version continues to be used under trademark registration number 3112676 and others.
College designer John Scotford made a stylized version of the shield during the 1960s, but it did not see the success of MacDonald's design. The shield appears to have been used as the basis of the shield of Dartmouth Medical School, and it has been reproduced in sizes as small as a few nanometers across. The design has appeared on Rudolph Ruzicka's Bicentennial Medal (Philadelphia Mint, 1969) and elsewhere.
Nickname, symbol, and mascot
Dartmouth has never had an official mascot. The nickname "The Big Green," originating in the 1860s, is based on students' adoption of a shade of forest green ("Dartmouth Green") as the school's official color in 1866. Beginning in the 1920s, the Dartmouth College athletic teams were known by their unofficial nickname "the Indians," a moniker that probably originated among sports journalists. This unofficial mascot and team name was used until the early 1970s, when its use came under criticism. In 1974, the Trustees declared the "use of the [Indian] symbol in any form to be inconsistent with present institutional and academic objectives of the College in advancing Native American education." Some alumni and students, as well as the conservative student newspaper, The Dartmouth Review, have sought to return the Indian symbol to prominence, but no team has worn the symbol on its uniform in decades.
Various student initiatives have been undertaken to adopt a new mascot, but none has become "official." One proposal devised by the College humor magazine the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern was Keggy the Keg, an anthropomorphic beer keg who makes occasional appearances at College sporting events. Despite student enthusiasm for Keggy, the mascot has only received approval from the student government. In November 2006, student government attempted to revive the "Dartmoose" as a potential replacement amid renewed controversy surrounding the former Indian mascot.
Alumni
Dartmouth's alumni are known for their devotion to the College. In 2007, Dartmouth was ranked second only to Princeton University in the U.S. for alumni donation rates by U.S. News & World Report. According to a 2008 article in The Wall Street Journal, Dartmouth graduates also earn higher median salaries at least 10 years after graduation than alumni of any other American university surveyed.
As of 2008, Dartmouth has graduated 238 classes of students and has over 60,000 living alumni in a variety of fields.
Over 164 Dartmouth graduates have served in the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, such as Massachusetts statesman Daniel Webster. Cabinet members of American presidents include Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, and the current Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner. C. Everett Koop was the Surgeon General of the United States under President Ronald Reagan. Two Dartmouth alumni have served as justices on the Supreme Court of the United States: Salmon P. Chase and Levi Woodbury.
In literature and journalism, Dartmouth has produced eight Pulitzer Prize winners: Thomas M. Burton, Richard Eberhart, Robert Frost, Paul Gigot, Jake Hooker, Nigel Jaquiss, Martin J. Sherwin, and David K. Shipler. Other authors and media personalities include novelist/screenwriter Budd Schulberg, political analyst Dinesh D'Souza, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, commentator Mort Kondracke, and journalist James Panero. Theodor Geisel, better known as children's author Dr. Seuss, was a member of the class of 1925.
Dartmouth alumni in academia include Stuart Kauffman and Jeffrey Weeks, both recipients of MacArthur Fellowships (commonly called "genius grants"). Dartmouth has also graduated three Nobel Prize winners: Owen Chamberlain (Physics, 1959), K. Barry Sharpless (Chemistry, 2001), and George Davis Snell (Physiology or Medicine, 1980). Educators include the founding president of Vassar College Milo Parker Jewett, founder and first president of Bates College Oren B. Cheney, founder and first president of Kenyon College Philander Chase, first professor of Wabash College Caleb Mills, and former president of Union College Charles Augustus Aiken. Nine of Dartmouth's sixteen presidents were alumni of the College.
, class of 1983, served as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is the current United States Secretary of the Treasury.]]
Dartmouth alumni serving as CEOs or company presidents include Sandy Alderson (San Diego Padres), John Donahoe (eBay), Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. (IBM), Charles E. Haldeman (Putnam Investments), Donald J. Hall, Sr. (Hallmark Cards), Jeffrey R. Immelt (General Electric), Henry Paulson (Goldman Sachs), Grant Tinker (NBC), and Brian Goldner (Hasbro).
In entertainment and television, Dartmouth is represented by Rachel Dratch, a cast member of Saturday Night Live, creator of Grey's Anatomy Shonda Rhimes, and the titular character of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Fred Rogers. Other notable actors include Sarah Wayne Callies (Prison Break), Mindy Kaling (The Office), Emmy Award winner Michael Moriarty,, Andrew Shue of Melrose Place, Aisha Tyler of Friends and 24, and Connie Britton of Spin City, The West Wing, and Friday Night Lights.
A number of Dartmouth alumni have found success in professional sports. In baseball, Dartmouth alumni include All-Star and Gold Glove winner Brad Ausmus and All-Star Mike Remlinger. Professional football players include former Miami Dolphins quarterback Jay Fiedler, linebacker Reggie Williams, three-time Pro Bowler Nick Lowery, quarterback Jeff Kemp, and Tennessee Titans tight end Casey Cramer. Dartmouth has also produced a number of Olympic competitors. Adam Nelson has won silver medals in the shotput in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the 2004 Athens Olympics to go along with his gold medal in the 2005 World Championship in Helsinki. Kristin King and Sarah Parsons were members of the United States' 2006 bronze medal-winning ice hockey team. Cherie Piper, Gillian Apps, and Katie Weatherston were among Canada's ice hockey gold medalists in 2006. Dick Durrance and Tim Caldwell competed for the United States in skiing in the 1936 and 1976 Winter Olympics, respectively. Arthur Shaw, Earl Thomson, Edwin Myers, Marc Wright, Adam Nelson, Gerald Ashworth, and Vilhjálmur Einarsson have all won medals in track and field events.
In popular culture
Dartmouth College has appeared in or been referenced by a number of popular media. The 1978 comedy film National Lampoon's Animal House was cowritten by Chris Miller '63, and is based loosely on a series of fictional stories he wrote about his fraternity days at Dartmouth. In a CNN interview, John Landis said the movie was "based on Chris Miller's real fraternity at Dartmouth," Alpha Delta Phi. Dartmouth's Winter Carnival tradition was the subject of the 1939 film Winter Carnival starring Ann Sheridan.
In addition, Dartmouth has served as the alma mater for a number of fictional characters, including Stephen Colbert's fictional persona, Michael Corleone of The Godfather, Meredith Grey of Grey's Anatomy, Thomas Crown of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and Howie Archibald of Gossip Girl. The characters Evan and Fogell of the 2007 film Superbad were also slated to attend Dartmouth. In the vampire romance series Twilight, main characters Bella Swan and Edward Cullen plan to go to Dartmouth as a ruse.
Further reading
External links
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