Foreign Policy survey cites Dartmouth's international relations
program
A new ranking of the United States' strongest colleges and universities for
international relations studies, published in the March/April
issue of the magazine Foreign Policy,
places Dartmouth ninth among those offering such studies at the undergraduate
level—making it the highest-ranked institution offering such studies only at
the undergraduate level.
The ranking is based on a survey conducted by researchers at the College of
William and Mary. The survey asked more than 1,000 faculty members in the
United States who work in the field of international relations to rank the
nation's 20 best international relations programs.
Michael
Mastanduno, associate dean of the faculty for the social sciences and the
Nelson Rockefeller Professor of Government, says the ranking reflects
Dartmouth's approach to faculty recruiting. "We consciously recruit
faculty who care a lot about teaching," says Mastanduno. "Most of the
Dartmouth international relations faculty can be anywhere they want to be.
Those who come here came because they felt that teaching undergraduates,
especially smart ones, and being in an environment where people care about
teaching as well as high-quality research, is more important than being in a
graduate program."
Government department Chair William
Wohlforth adds that what stands out about Dartmouth's international
relations program is that, "The Dartmouth faculty is as strong and as
committed to research as places with graduate programs-no other liberal arts
college has a stronger faculty." He notes that the institutions ranked
above Dartmouth in the William and Mary survey are all research universities
that devote a substantial portion of their resources to graduate students.
"We have a more distinguished faculty than many research universities, and
a lot of the professors bring their own research, and their excitement about
their research, to their classrooms. Our undergraduates really get this
experience of having classes with top-ranked professors. They get a good
student to teacher ratio, and they have faculty available for advising senior
theses."
Assistant Professor of Government Benjamin
Valentino, who studies international security, genocide, and insurgency and
counterinsurgency, notes that of Dartmouth's nearly 30 government faculty
members, 10 work in the international relations subfield, and of those, a
majority work on international security. International security, says
Valentino, is a specialty that has attracted a great deal of student interest
in the years since September 11. "We have a critical mass of scholars
working in this area," says Valentino, who taught previously at Stanford
University. "I've been thrilled to be here because of the strengths of my
colleagues and the breadth of the department."
In fact, Valentino, Wohlforth, and Mastanduno agree that if the William and
Mary survey had delved more deeply into the undergraduate experience rather
than focusing primarily on faculty reputation, Dartmouth would have been ranked
even higher. "We spend 100 percent of our time on undergraduates,"
says Valentino. Add to that the presence of the John Sloan Dickey Center for
International Understanding, a robust foreign study program, and a proposed
International Studies Certificate as a major modification, and Dartmouth's
international relations field, says Mastanduno, "rivals programs just
about anywhere in the country."
By GENEVIEVE HAAS
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