The Beginning
The origins of the Academic Skills Center are unclear. During the 1960's,
Professor Andrew Baer of the Psychology Department took an interest in
providing resources for academic and learning-related counseling. He had a
small study skills operation in North Fairbanks Hall, where there were reading
machines, note taking "inspirational quips," and books about reading
for meaning.
In the early 1970s Dartmouth College hired Dr. Bruce Baker to work in the
Counseling Center. The Center had sought to meet students' needs in
several areas including academic, career, graduate school, and psychological
counseling. Soon after Baker began, he met with President Kemeny and told him
that the Counseling Center in North Fairbanks was out of the student traffic
pattern. In 1972, the College moved the Center to the third floor of College
Hall, which is now Collis Center.
The late 60s and early 70s proved to be a time of great transition for
Dartmouth College. Not only did the College switch from a semester to a quarter
system, but it also admitted women in the fall of 1972. In 1969, John R.
McLane, Jr. '38, chaired a committee on equal opportunity which resulted in the
introduction of significant racial diversity at Dartmouth. The McLane report
identified the need to increase academic support programs for minorities due to
the differences in academic preparation between minority and white
students.
Dr. Bruce Baker worked in conjunction with undergraduate minority students
such as Nelson Armstrong '71 to develop an academic support system. When
students were referred to the office, Baker used reading tests to evaluate the
students' performance. He taught students the SQ3R method to improve reading
comprehension and rate, showed them how to use the SRA reading machines, and
provided them with handouts. Armstrong helped create a vocabulary list that
familiarized black students with words that they encountered in introductory
courses like macro- and micro-economics, first year English, seminars, and
calculus.
Baker recognized the need to expand academic support services and to form a
new office. Although funds were not available to form a separate office, Baker
hired Lillian Bailey as an academic counselor in February, 1973. Bailey, a
Hanover High School teacher on sabbatical, was specifically interested in
colleges' academic expectations of incoming freshmen.
Between February and mid-May, 1973, 42 students used the Counseling Center,
23 students attended class sessions taught by Bailey to learn reading and study
skills. The Deans' Office "strongly encouraged" 16 out of those 23
students to attend the sessions. There were students at each session, meeting
twice a week for 45 minutes.
After Lillian Bailey left, the academic support services within the
Counseling Center encountered a difficult period. Two minority counselors were
hired in an effort to serve the minority student population at Dartmouth,
however, neither counselor remained with the Center for long.
Concurrently, the College began to question the value of the Summer Bridge
Program, which prepared academically disadvantaged students (primarily
minorities) for Dartmouth's rigorous academic requirements. During the summer
of 1974, the Counseling Center hired Sandra Epps, a reading specialist from the
State University of New York, to teach a Bridge Program course emphasizing
methods to strengthen comprehension, retention, and organizational skills. She
worked for five weeks and used a self-instructional approach in the course.
Professors Kenneth Bogart and William Cook of the Bridge Program expressed
their concern over its impact and the lack of continuity and support once
students completed the program.
Shortly thereafter, the College considered the Bridge Program and the
Counseling Center insufficient in terms of academic support. Dr. Bruce Baker,
Dean Ralph Manuel and Professor Don Krieder of the Math Department proposed
forming an autonomous academic support organization entitled the Reading and
Study Skills Center (RSSC) using the money originally allocated to the Bridge
Program. At the same time, the English Department received approval to
establish the Resource Center for Composition, where students could improve
their grammar and have their papers proofread. Note: In the late
80's, the Resource Center was named the Composition Center, and has recently
(2004) been incorporated into the Student Center for Research, Writing, and
Information Technology (RWIT), located in Berry Library, which provides
undergraduate tutors to help students with papers as well as research and
multimedia projects.
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