Just like everybody else on campus, Dartmouth faculty members have very divided and strong opinions on the Dartmouth-Plan, the College's unique enrollment system that allows it to operate year-round.
While many Dartmouth professors laud the Dartmouth Plan for the extended research opportunities and flexibility it offers to them, some faculty members say they feel the D-Plan is a threat to the College's intellectual community.
According to Deputy Provost Bruce Pipes, faculty members largely support the D-Plan because it allows them to teach in the summer and take a term or two off during the year to do research.
Taking terms off during the "regular" school year to do research is particularly attractive to faculty because they do not have to compete with professors from all around the country for library space, Pipes said.
On the other side of the issue, perhaps the biggest complaint faculty members have about the D-Plan is that it severely disrupts educational continuity. Professors also complain vociferously about the 10-week terms, which are not a necessary part of the D-Plan but are viewed as being inexorably linked to it.
Dean of the Faculty Karen Wetterhahn, who termed the pace of classes at the College "intense," said besides the frequent "comings and goings" of students necessitated by the short 10-week terms, professors are forced to cram tremendous amounts of material into a short period of time.
But Wetterhahn said the faculty is generally in favor of the D-Plan and predicted faculty members would oppose any attempt to eliminate it.
Time for research
Almost all faculty members say the primary strength of the D-Plan is the enormous research opportunities it gives them.
Under the D-Plan, each faculty member is expected to teach four classes per year. Professors can either teach one class two terms and two classes one term or they can teach two classes for two terms,according to History Professor Jere Daniell.
Daniell said the opportunity for professors to take six months off to do research is especially important for junior faculty members because it gives them a chance to establish an academic reputation.
Some professors say because they can take off such long periods of time to do research, they can concentrate exclusively on their students when they are teaching classes.
"I really like being able to concentrate on research for an extended period," Government Professor Mlada Bukovansky. "This also enhances my teaching when I'm back on."
Economics Professor Michael Knetter also said by not having to divide his focus, he is more productive.
"We probably do better at both teaching and research by concentrating on one activity or the other at a given time," Knetter said.
Giving professors the potential to take extended breaks has benefits outside the classroom. English Professor Ivy Schweitzer said the four-course load and quarter system allowed her to "put together a maternity leave, sabbatical, off term and 'R' term so that I could spend the first year of my daughter's life with her at home and not teaching."
Art History Professor Catherine Turrill said she finds her leave terms beneficial to her personal academic work. "Even though the 'R' term has a built-in residency requirement, and may include committee work, thesis advising and other academic responsibilities, being released from the classroom gives the teacher extra time for work," Turrill said.
Some professors say the D-Plan works to compensate for the fact that the College has a small population of graduate students. Government Professor David Becker said the opportunity for faculty to take time off keeps the College competitive with other upper-echelon universities.
The D-Plan "is important if the College is to continue competing with major universities in terms of faculty quality," Becker said. "The main reason is that the absence of graduate students in most departments means that faculty must do their own grading, which is very time consuming and results in much more work per courses than professors at major universities put in."
Part-time professors say they feel the D-Plan's flexibility gives them time to pursue other commitments. "I'm a part timer, so the 10-week term is ideal," Adjunct Biology Professor George Cahill said. "It permits shorter-term commitments for those of us who have other commitments than teaching at Dartmouth."
Are the terms too short?
Perhaps the biggest problem Dartmouth professors have with the College is the quarter system, which most people consider to be closely tied to the existence of the D-Plan.
Although 10-week terms were originally instituted with the D-Plan in 1972, the D-Plan does not require 10-week terms to function.
In 1980, the faculty voted down a proposal by the Committee on Curriculum and Year-Round Operation to change the 10-week terms. The CCYRO proposed to have three 14-week terms a year. But then-College President John Kemeny did not support the proposal and the faculty defeated it by a vote of 111-81.
Schweitzer said she believes the intense 10-week terms can be very negative. "An anti-intellectual atmosphere is fostered, not because students are not smart or capable, but because they are doing many things in the space of a very short term," she said.
"The process of rich, intellectual digestion and cognition, getting to know students and know how they work [and] what they can do is cut short," she said. "We cannot expect the level of work we should from our students."
Music Professor Sally Pinkas also said 10-week terms are too short because more than a quarter of each term is spent starting up and winding down.
Pinkas said having so many breaks between terms causes "students to switch off entirely," so when students return, they have "to warm back up."
Professors also said they think the quarter system can be problematic because most faculty members are trained to teach in a semester system.
Textbooks are even geared to teaching in a semester system, Economics Professor William Baldwin said. "The basic texts in such subjects are geared to roughly 40 class sessions of 50 minutes rather than the roughly 30 classes of 65 minutes," Baldwin said. But he said he covers the same amount of material in a 10-week term as in a semester term.
Faculty members also said the 10-week terms prevent them from getting to know students. "Thereis really no introductory part to the course, no slow, organic way of getting to know students," Schweitzer said.
The 10-week term certainly has its supporters, however. Some professors say it is more like real life and forces students to always be on their toes. Becker said he thinks the 10-week term is better, because a semester system "wastes time."
"My experience, and that of most other faculty with experience in both systems, is that semesters waste time," Becker said. "The same work is done in 10 weeks, and at least 2 weeks are wasted because students take longer to get into the spirit and work of their classes."
The D-Plan creates an environment that "forces students to get accustomed to disruption," Daniell said. "It forces you to learn how to pack lightly, which is the way your lives are."
Visiting Sociology Professor Steven Andrews said he thinks the 10-week terms force students to take more responsibility for their own learning.
"I expect students to take over more of the role of learning for themselves," Andrews said. "Therefore, the reading I assign is denser and heavier per week relatively than [the reading] I use in a semester format."
Philosophy Professor Ernest Sosa said although 10-week terms are undoubtedly intense, the "overall learning experience may be better in the end."
Some professors say the D-Plan and the quarter system can have a positive effect on students by pushing students toward taking advanced classes earlier in their college career.
"Taking a small number of courses over ... a larger number of terms makes it possible to get prerequisites out of the way earlier and thus proceed sooner to intermediate and advanced courses," Baldwin said.
"If a course has two prerequisites offered once a year in different terms, it might be possible to take one in the fall, the second in the winter and the advanced course in the spring term of the freshman year," Baldwin said.
Breadth vs. Depth?
Someprofessors say they believe the 10-week terms force faculty members to choose between offering students a wide scope of topics and allowing them to explore a few topics in depth.
"The religion department has great breadth and hence less opportunity to establish depth in the program as we each need to teach our own introductory courses yearly," Religion Professor Amy Hollywood said.
Italian and Comparative Literature Professor Nancy Canepa also said the 10-week terms force professors to make a tradeoff between offering a breadth and depth .
"Either you read entire works by several authors from a given period and eliminate other equally important ones, or anthologize, reading a greater selection of works, but not as much in depth," Canepa said.
According to some professors, the 10-week term fosters memorization rather than comprehension.
"The term structure, with its pacing, also seems to push students more toward rote memorization than toward developing analytic skills and deepening their comprehension," Andrews said. "And ultimately, this undermines the process of learning."
Native American Studies and Religion Professor Christopher Jocks said short terms prevent faculty and students from dwelling on reading material.
"In a quarter system, it's hard to do without cutting back on the number of sources a class reads," Jocks said.
"This is hard because I am sensitive to the stereotype that courses in ethnic studies, especially taught by so-called 'minority faculty,' are not academically rigorous or demanding relative to the norm," he said.
Other professors say the 10-week terms prevent students from doing extended, in-depth research papers. "There is simply not enough time for adequate research, reflection, writing and editing," Turrill said.
Baldwin also said students do not have the opportunity to write in-depth papers. He said "students have very little time to write a paper after absorbing enough of the course material to pick a good topic and then write an informed paper."
Even though Psychology Professor John Pfister said the short terms can hurt the depth of the classes, he said it forces faculty to make better use of class time.
"I like the short semester because it forces me to be a better teacher and make sure that every minute of class time is used widely," Pfister said. "The D-Plan allows you the opportunity to take less and do better."
"There is not much time for laziness," Pfister said. "Topics must be covered in a succinct fashion and every class is important."
Scheduling Chaos?
Like administrators and students, faculty members say the D-Plan's flexibility entails major trade-offs. While professors like the fact that they can pick and choose what terms they will be on campus, they say they dislike the chaotic scheduling required by theD-Plan.
For example, Mathematics Department Chair Kenneth Bogart said the D-Plan makes it difficult for the math department to schedule courses. He said junior mathematics majors "should be on all three terms taking courses that are too small to be offered twice a year."
Not only does this flexibility make it difficult for faculty members to schedule courses, many professors say it makes it hard for students to plan their academic career. "Students don't take courses they should have, because they happen to be off during a particular term," Earth Sciences Professor Leslie Sonder said.
Mathematics Professor Dennis Healy said sometimes students have difficulty fitting major classes into their D-Plan.
"I get to look at a lot of student's major cards, because I am the math department's adviser to majors," Healy said. "Occasionally, I meet with a student who has trouble fitting the requisite courses into his or her D-Plan."
Many professors say they believe the D-Plan makes it more difficult for departments to set prerequisites for upper-level classes.
English Department Chair Bill Cook said when departments do set prerequisites, they necessarily have to offer the courses multiple times. "It is difficult to predict when students will be on," Cook said. "It necessitates multiple offerings of courses."
Jocks said professors have to teach entry-level basics even in "supposedly advanced courses."
Hollywood said she believes the inability of departments to set prerequisites "is detrimental for teachers, who feel that they teach numerous introductory courses."
Hollywood said she thinks the College should have more two-quarter sequence courses "in which much of the course work is done in the first quarter and most of the second is spent in research, presentations and writing."
But she said the D-Plan prohibits the use of such an option for many sophomores and juniors."It is impossible to have sequenced courses, two-term classes and prerequisites," Hollywood said.
Travel and research
The flexibility of the D-Plan allows faculty to travel abroad to do research or lead Foreign Study Programs.
"I do my field work in southern Nevada, where the climate precludes working in the summer," Sonder said. "The D-Plan has allowed me the freedom to have a field season in the spring, fall or winter, when temperatures are more moderate."
Canepa said because many libraries in Italy close during the summer, it is vital for her research to be able to travel during other terms.
Professors and students alike take advantage of the unparalleled opportunities for language and foreign study programs afforded by the D-plan.
"The advantage of the D-Plan is its flexibility," Earth Sciences Professor Naomi Oreskes said. "It makes a lot of special things possible at Dartmouth, especially in terms of off campus study."
Turrill, who directs the art history FSP, said the D-Plan "makes FSP's more affordable to participants."
"The advantages of the shorter program are its intensity and focus," Turrill said. "I find that most students are ready for the FSP to end when it does, and very few stay on much longer in Europe."
