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The Dartmouth College Board of Trustees,
meeting on campus Nov. 2 through 4, dedicated two new academic buildings,
discussed a review of the College's mission statement, and considered plans for
several new facilities, including a life sciences building, dining hall
projects in two locations, and an intercollegiate soccer field.
The Trustees officially dedicated Kemeny Hall,
the new home of the mathematics
department, named for the late John G. Kemeny, a former Dartmouth
president and mathematics professor. Ceremonies also were held to dedicate the
Haldeman Center, which houses 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, enhancing opportunities among the three
centers for interdisciplinary initiatives. The Haldeman Center was named
through a gift from Barbara and Charles E. "Ed" Haldeman, a 1970
Dartmouth graduate and current Trustee, in honor of Mr. Haldeman's parents.
The dedications of Kemeny Hall and the Haldeman Center culminate a current
series of construction projects totaling about $154 million, part of a historic
building program that will total in excess of $1 billion in construction and
renovation between 1998 and 2010.
The Board held meetings in another new academic building dedicated earlier
this fall, the MacLean Engineering Sciences Center. The MacLean building,
dedicated in September, increased Thayer School of Engineering facilities by
more than 60 percent.
The Trustees also toured new residential buildings that opened this fall,
meeting with student residents of the McLaughlin
Residential Cluster and Tuck Mall Residences.
More than 500 undergraduate students moved into the new buildings at the
beginning of the fall term.
The Board's discussion of the mission statement follows an initiative by President James Wright,
who last summer began discussions with faculty, students, and staff to revisit
the statement.
"Dartmouth's mission is to provide our students the best education
possible and to create an academic environment that enables our faculty and
students to reach their full scholarly potential," Wright says. "Our
mission has not changed substantially since our founding, and our current
mission statement is a strong description of our values. But it is useful and
necessary to revisit periodically the way that mission is articulated." He
says he plans to share with the community a new draft statement this winter,
"one that will be more concise and will express more clearly our
aspirations."
The life sciences facility, which will be located near Dartmouth Medical School at the north end
of the Hanover campus, will provide teaching, laboratory, and office space for
the biological sciences and the medical school. Plans are also under way to
replace Thayer Dining Hall with a new building that will improve space use on
the same site, and to construct the Class of 1953 Commons, a 250-seat dining
hall adjacent to the McLaughlin Residential Cluster. The Board also reviewed
briefly the planning process for the visual arts center on Lebanon Street that
will provide space for the film and television studies and studio art
departments. The soccer facility, named in honor of Alden "Whitey"
Burnham, a coach and administrator at the College from 1960 to 1989, will be
located near Scully-Fahey Field on the eastern edge of campus.
In other business, the Board's finance committee received an update on the
current year budget, and the Trustees received a report from Carolyn Pelzel,
vice president for development, on the progress of the $1.3 billion Campaign for the Dartmouth
Experience, which recently passed its midpoint and, as of Oct. 31, had
raised $765 million. The Board also met for lunch with the faculty of Thayer School.
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