Members of the Committee on the First-Year Experience met with College Trustees over the weekend to discuss ideas to transform the first-year experience, such as creating freshmen residence halls.
Although the First-Year Committee gave a report to the Committee on Student Affairs, members say they have not made any final decisions yet. The final recommendations are due at the end of this term.
COSA is composed of administrators, students and 10 Trustees, including College President James Freedman.
The First-Year Committee, created and chaired by Dean of the College Lee Pelton, consists of three sub-committees: intellectual life, orientation and residential life.
"The first-year committee is getting close to making some recommendations," Pelton said last week. He said the committee was meeting with the Trustees to "discuss with them where we are in the process. We don't have an actual set of recommendations yet."
Pelton was out of town yesterday and not available for further comment.
The major recommendation the residential life sub-committee is working on would require freshmen, or freshmen and sophomores, to live in "the least desirable" dorms on campus, sub-committee member Anna Ochoa '97 said.
The committee will also consider recommending that upperclassmen stay in the same cluster for three years, instead of the current random assignment method, she said.
Ochoa said the Trustees were receptive to their ideas, but the committee still has to run the proposals by students.
"As Dean Pelton likes to say, it's evolutionary rather than revolutionary," she said. "Other schools do it, and it works for them."
Residential life sub-committee member John Strayer '96 said the Trustees were concerned about the costs associated with the proposals.
"They're concerned a lot with the bottom line and the cost," he said. "We came to them with some interim ideas. They were receptive in general; they agreed with some of the general ideas of building on Dartmouth's strengths."
Strayer said he thinks some of the "less radical shifts" could be incorporated into next year's freshman class, but the more extensive and expensive changes will take more time.
Another proposal from the residential life sub-committee is to build faculty units onto existing dorms so that professors could help "foster intellectual life" in the dorms, Ochoa said.
She said that proposal has not been examined in full detail to evaluate feasibility and costs.
Freshman Dean Peter Goldsmith, chair of the orientation sub-committee, said the First-Year Committee is also trying to increase intellectualism during freshman year and to provide an atmosphere that facilitates faculty-student interaction.
He said changes are necessary to keep in place the best parts of Dartmouth, because without change "what is precious to this place is in danger of slowly disappearing."
Many of the intellectual life sub-committee's proposals are meant to extend learning to out of the classroom, sub-committee member Ryan Carey '96 said.
One proposal is to incorporate the seminar program with residence halls, Carey said.
He said the details of the program - like how freshmen could pick a seminar during the summer - have yet to be worked out.
Another proposal would have professors of freshman seminars act as advisors to the freshmen, to increase interaction between the two, Carey said. Currently, a freshman is randomly assigned to an advisor in his or her area of interest.
The orientation sub-committee has not discussed any actual recommendations yet, sub-committee member Martha Douple '94 said. But some ideas have been explored.
One suggestion is to provide incoming students with summer reading that would be discussed when they come to Dartmouth, she said.
The sub-committee has also discussed ways to increase the faculty's role in orientation week by having lectures and more academic events, she said.
She said the sub-committee also examined the controversial Social Issues Night, and ways of making it a more positive experience that seems less didactic.
Another area they are looking into is the role of Undergraduate Advisers and the Dartmouth Outing Club trips during orientation week, Douple said.
Goldsmith said changes to orientation could be in place by next year.
