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Posted 10/02/00
Among Dartmouth speakers at a "Farewell to Kiewit" ceremony Sept. 22 were Director of Computing Larry Levine, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Computing Science Thomas E. Kurtz, President James Wright and Provost Susan Prager.
Kurtz - who with the late John G. Kemeny, the 13th President of Dartmouth, coinvented the computer language BASIC, created the Dartmouth time-sharing system and helped lead Dartmouth to pre-eminence in academic computing - holds a plaque given to him in 1976 in recognition of the 10th anniversary of the Kiewit Computing Center building, which is in the background. The farewell ceremony, which drew a crowd of participants, marked a milestone transition: from the first era of widespread use of computing at Dartmouth, which spanned nearly four decades, to the next era, opened by the recent move of the Kiewit functions to the new Berry Library and the pending demolition of the old Kiewit building later this fall to help make room for Carson Hall.
While the College is saying farewell to the old Kiewit building, a new academic computing center on the first level of Berry will continue to carry the name Kiewit, recognizing the support of the Kiewit Foundation of Omaha, Neb. And, said Levine, "The idea embodied by the original Kiewit Center - an idea championed by John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, which is to make information technology highly accessible throughout all aspects of the academy - will now be embodied in all of the new Baker-Berry Library complex, which will mix computing resources with traditional library resources. The concept that produced Kiewit is one of the things that will make Baker-Berry distinctive."
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