President James Freedman reflected on the changes that have taken place during his 10 years at Dartmouth in an interview on WTSL and WGXL radio stations this weekend.
The "Perspectives" interview was conducted by Grant Bosse '94, news director of WTSL and was broadcast on WTSL Radio (1400 AM) and WGXL Radio (92.3 FM) on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Freedman said although the last decade has passed very quickly, "it has been a satisfying period of years."
When Bosse asked Freedman how he hoped people will remember his presidency, Freedman answered, "I would hope they would remember that Dartmouth during my years as president became an intellectually stronger and academically more serious place than it was when I took over, and I hope that the next president will set that as his or her mandate as well."
"Institutions that don't move ahead tend to fall behind because others are moving ahead," he said. "For Dartmouth to continue to be as highly ranked and regarded as it is, we have to have an intellectual environment which is stimulating, challenging, all-embracing of what students do during their four years in Hanover."
Freedman said he has changed two important ways in the last 10 years. He said his own "commitment and appreciation of liberal education has greatly deepened."
The other change in Freedman's perspective came as a result of his bout with cancer. He said the experience has made him a better person because an illness "changes the view of how much time you may have left."
While Freedman has experienced many personal changes, the College itself has also changed in the past decade. After 25 years of coeducation, gender parity has finally been established. In 1987, the first-year class was 38 percent women, now it is 50 percent female. Freedman said coeducation was "essential for the College ... as the leaders of our society are no longer going to only be men."
Freedman also indicated he has seen a trend towards "democratization" of the student body as Dartmouth has become more racially and ethnically diverse and more students are coming from public rather than parochial schools.
"The priorities that I have emphasized have been the quality of the student body and the quality of the faculty," Freedman said. "There has been a 40 percent increase in the last four to five years in the number of applications."
More than half of the current faculty appointments were made in the last 10 years, Freedman said. "And they're a very impressive group of young people," he said.
He said another change under his presidency has been the implementation of a new course curriculum with more specific requirements.
Dartmouth has also made efforts over the years to counteract the grade inflation prevalent at other Ivy League colleges by printing median grades on students' transcripts and report cards, Freedman said.
Freedman told Bosse, "You might be interested to know the University of California at Berkeley Law School has a system of weighting every college in the country on the basis of how difficult it is to get an A, and of the eight Ivy League schools, Dartmouth ranks first."
In addition to academic changes, Dartmouth has experienced some physical changes. Freedman dubbed the last 10 years a "decade of construction." Burke Laboratory and Sudikoff Computer Laboratory were built and construction of the Moore Psychology Building and the new Berry Library are underway.
If all goes according to schedule, Freedman said he anticipates ground-breaking for the new Berry Library to take place in the spring of 1998. The project should be completed within two years.
"We decided early on that to duplicate Baker Library did it disservice," Freedman said, so the new building will have a character of its own, and the grass in front of it may be called the "quad" to differentiate it from the Green.
Although some things have changed at Dartmouth since Freedman's arrival, many others have remained the same. Dartmouth continues to remain strong in the area of computing on college campuses. Freedman said he credits this strength to former College President John Kemeny who was "one of the national leaders in this area."
"There is not a morning that I get in the office that I do not have four or five e-mails from students, mostly dated at 3:15 in the morning, wanting to communicate about something or other," Freedman said.
