The Tucker Foundation has created a fellowship named after the Reverend Fred Berthold Jr. '44, a former professor who founded Dartmouth's religion department and was also the Foundation's first dean.
The Berthold Fellowship allocates an annual stipend of $1,000 for a graduate student of the College to work for the Tucker Foundation for a year on projects that reflect the intersection of faith and service.
"The most important contribution religion makes is in the area of social work," said Berthold, who also discussed the relationship between faith and social work in his address at the College's annual Baccalaureate Service on June 9.
"I was completely surprised and also very happy to be remembered in that way," Berthold said, upon being notified of the new fellowship.
The evolving mission of the Tucker foundation reflects the changing visions of the college itself, according to Berthold.
"When John Sloan Dickey in 1951 announced there would be a Tucker Foundation, he said that a liberal education that is any good must have equal emphasis on competence and conscience," Berthold said in a press release. "We need conscience in order to see how things ought to be and how we ought to be. Religion, at its best, gives us that vision and inspires us to revere and seek it."
The Tucker Foundation honored Berthold with this fellowship for his role in founding the religion department at Dartmouth, "which is quite notable, given that now the religion department has a quite different view of its mission," College Chaplain and Acting Dean of the Tucker Foundation Richard Crocker said. "He has always been an advocate of expressing one's faith through service and reflecting on the relationship between faith and service is the essence of the fellowship."
Berthold was also integral in helping President John Sloan Dickey to establish the Tucker Foundation in 1951 and saw this fellowship as an attempt to commemorate Tucker's origins, in light of the Tucker Foundation's evolution over the past 56 years, including increased funding.
"It's one thing to name something after someone once they're dead, it's another thing to honor them while they're alive and can enjoy their legacy," Crocker said of Berthold.
Another purpose of the fellowship, according to Crocker, is to attract graduate students to Tucker activities, as involvement is primarily drawn from undergraduates.
The Tucker Foundation awarded the first Berthold Fellowship to David Nyweide, a Ph.D. candidate in the College's Evaluative Clinical Science's program and an alumnus of Northwestern University. According to Crocker, the Foundation chose him for his initiative as the only graduate student to participate in an undergraduate Tucker-sponsored Katrina relief service trip to New Orleans.
"He was almost perfect for what we were looking for. He just sort of appeared; we really didn't have a competition this year," Crocker said. There will be an application process in the future.
Crocker and Nyweide first met during a trip debriefing session in which Crocker was the facilitator of the group Nyweide was in.
"I like to describe it as serendipity," Nyweide said of his reception of the fellowship. "This is the kind of opportunity that seemed to gel very well with me," Nyweide said, mentioning his involvement with St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hanover, helping with the church's search for a new pastor and assisting with parishioners' Sunday transportation needs.
Nyweide is still unsure as to the specifics of his activities as a Berthold fellow, but envisions hosting intimate group dialogues for undergraduates about faith and service-related topics and plans on being an active figure on campus, he said.
The fellowship is mainly funded through a gift from Berthold's Class of 1944. The foundation is cooperating with the Office of Development and Alumni Services to seek more funds, but will not actively campaign for money.
"We really hope and expect that since Dean Berthold has taught over 50 years of Dartmouth students and has made such an impression on their lives, some of the students will want to support us," Crocker said.
