The Student Assembly unanimously endorsed a resolution supporting the Education department's continuation and expansion last night, as the department braces for review by an external committee this week.
Citing the Education Department's role in "fostering critical thinking among [Dartmouth's] students and endowing them with the tools to question and analyze society," the resolution calls for the allocation of more tenure-track faculty positions, courses offerings each year, and resources dedicated to that field.
"Students really value the Ed. department, and it's not given the support it needs from the College," said Molly Stutzman '02, one of the sponsors of the Assembly resolution. "We want the administration to know how much it means to us."
The review process, which will begin today and last two days, was commissioned three years ago. At that time, an internal review committee recommended the removal of the Education department, specifying internal disputes, the pre-professional nature of the Teacher Certification Program and a lack of scholarship on the part of the faculty as bases for its termination.
Despite student support, obstacles to the department loom. Paramount among these are College President James Wright's push to make Dartmouth more of a research institution with an emphasis on a liberal arts education.
Although teaching remains a relatively unpopular career choice for Dartmouth graduates, Education department Chair Andrew Garrod told The Dartmouth last month that eliminating the department would be "a really retrograde step" for the College.
If Dartmouth were to remove the program, it would be the only Ivy League institution without an Education department.
Currently, the department remains popular with students, even if teaching will not be their career choice. Courses usually have long waiting lists and some, such as Education 20, have enrollments exceeding 200.
The call for the removal of the Education Department, which has occurred twice since 1993, was overturned both times following student resistance; the one in 1996 attracted over 300 students at a public meeting.
Garrod told The Dartmouth that the department has made several other important improvements since the 1996 report.
"The program has been streamlined, and the courses offered are more coherent to teacher preparation," he said.
The curriculum now holds classes jointly with other departments, manages Dartmouth Schools Partnership with Upper Valley public schools and co-sponsors a teaching internship program in the Marshall Islands with the Tucker Foundation.
However, the department has fallen short of meeting the expectations of a research agenda -- largely, it could be argued, because it has only one tenured professor.
The review committee will be made up of five reviewers, two of whom -- Physics Professor Mary Hudson and Native American Studies and History Professor Collin Callaway -- are members of the Dartmouth faculty.
The other three committee members are Susan Fuhrman, dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania; Nel Noddings, former acting dean of the Stanford University Graduate School of Education; and Cynthia Garca-Coll, a developmental psychologist and professor of Education at Brown University.
