A $10 million gift from Barbara and Charles E. "Ed" Haldeman Jr. of Haverford, Pa., will name a new academic center at Dartmouth. A member of the class of 1970 and a Dartmouth trustee-elect, Ed Haldeman is president and chief executive officer of Putnam Investments, a Boston-based mutual fund company. The gift was made in honor of his parents, Charles E. and Betty Jane Haldeman.
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"Neither of my parents was able to go to college, for economic reasons," says Haldeman. "But they had hopes, as did so many Americans of that generation, that if they worked hard, their children would be able to attend. This gift recognizes what they did for me and what other parents are doing, even today." The Haldemans themselves are Dartmouth parents: a daughter graduated last year and another will enroll this fall.
The Haldeman Center will be located just north of Baker-Berry Library and adjacent to Kemeny Hall on the Dartmouth campus. It will house three of the College's premier academic coalitions known for their fostering of multidisciplinary activities on campus: the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, the Fannie and Alan Leslie Center for the Humanities, and the Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics.
"Education at Dartmouth is a collaborative enterprise," notes President James Wright. "In bringing these three academic programs together under one roof, the Haldemans' gift takes the concept of intellectual collaboration to a new level. The programs will be able to pool resources, share insights, and work jointly on common initiatives. The benefits to the College community and the undergraduate experience will be profound."
The new facility will be integrated with a new mathematics building, Kemeny Hall (see article page 8). In addition to advancing the interdisciplinary missions of the three academic institutes, the center will provide conference and classroom space. When classes are not in session, conference programs will have use of six "smart" classrooms on the lower and first levels of Kemeny Hall.
"One of Dartmouth's distinguishing characteristics is its intimate scale, which facilitates interactions among students and faculty," says Barry Scherr, provost. "To nurture those interactions and to promote greater collaboration among programs, we've been conscious of the need to create spaces that are efficient, flexible, and welcoming. The Haldeman Center embodies those qualities."
- By Jamie Hunt
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