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, notetaking "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. 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 academic support. 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 Academic Support Services, and 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.
Concurrently, the College began to question the value of the Summer Bridge Program, which helped prepare academically disadvantaged students (primarily minorities) for Dartmouth's academic demands. 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. Professors Kenneth Bogart and William Cook of the Bridge Program wanted to create continued academic and support after the 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 work on their papers. 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.
