In a final report to be released to the College community today, Dean of the College Lee Pelton drastically scaled down the initial recommendations of the Committee on the First-Year Experience, discarding the proposal of three primarily freshman residence hall clusters.
The final report, which Pelton said he will present to the College's Board of Trustees at its June meeting, has four main recommendations, the first calling for the creation of a single "mixed-class cluster."
The mixed-class cluster will have more resources than other clusters, including a dean and senior faculty adviser, and additional programming space. In addition, Pelton said the cluster would have a programming budget of between $20,000 and $30,000, "significantly more" than any other cluster.
The other recommendations of the "Final Report of the Committee on the First-Year Report" call for a faculty committee to investigate how to better link residential life and intellectual life, for the Office of Residential Life to review student housing needs to see if the College needs to build more beds and for the Dean of Freshmen to implement the recommendations of the orientation subcommittee.
The Dartmouth received a copy of the final report on Friday.
Pelton said the report is a modified version of the original recommendations of the Committee on the First-Year experience, which were released last May. The original report was written by the committee, but Pelton wrote the final recommendations himself.
The new recommendations
The final recommendations will be adopted on a "trial-basis with the understanding that a decision to go forward with an expanded program will be made based on [what] we learn during this trial period," the report states.
Pelton said a number of considerations shaped the changes he made in the report.
"Clearly there are some budget issues that this proposal addresses," he said in an interview Friday. "In the end, I felt that because I feel so strongly about the goals and objectives that a limited and modified plan on a trial basis would be successful and then after that we can make some decisions about what our next steps will be."
In the report, Pelton wrote that "incremental and gradual change has the advantage of permitting the effectiveness of an idea to be tested by experience."
Pelton admitted implementing the first-year recommendations at Dartmouth on a trial basis is a "risk."
"That's a risk that still troubles me, but it is a risk that I feel that I have to take," he said. "I am convinced this kind of living arrangement is one that is desired by some set of students on campus now, and I am convinced that its significance [lies in] maintaining a place of excellence."
Pelton said the report's recommendations could be fully operational by the fall of 1997.
Pelton said the report addresses most of the goals the committee originally set out with, except that "it does not sufficiently address the desire of upperclass students for increased stability and permanence in their housing."
The original recommendations called for freshmen to live in three primarily freshman residence clusters with Senior Faculty Fellows living nearby. It also suggested freshmen be housed according to their English and freshman seminar courses. The Senior Faculty Fellow would help coordinate the programming of the cluster in attempt to bring more of the intellectual life of the College into the residential life.
As a result of the primarily freshman residence halls, upperclass students would be able to affiliate with one cluster and live in that cluster for the rest of their College careers.
The new proposals have scrapped both the primarily freshman residence halls and the upperclass cluster affiliations.
Pelton said in his discussions with students, they seemed willing to forgo housing stability and continuity in order to maintain mixed-class housing.
Dean of Freshmen Peter Goldsmith, who was a member of the original committee, said he thinks the new recommendations "have the potential for achieving much of what we had intended to achieve in the initial report."
Acting President James Wright said Pelton has done an exceptional job developing the recommendations. Wright said the faculty liked the original recommendations.
"They may well be disappointed that we decided to try the interim step of having a more integrated single experiment in residential life," he said. "But I think that the faculty would applaud that we hope it can grow into something more comprehensive."
Wright said Pelton has spoken to the Trustees on two or three occasions, in addition to speaking to individual members of the Board.
"I would not anticipate any major problem there," he said.
Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco said she found some of the final recommendations disappointing, but that they "make sense" based on what the committee heard from the Dartmouth community.
"The group has tried to be thoughtful and respectful to the concerns we heard in the community about the original proposals," she said. "We tried to consider all the different opinions, both pro and con."
Mixed-Class Cluster
According to the recommendations, the class mix of this cluster "would not be substantially different [from] what is present in most of the clusters in our current housing arrangements."
Pelton said he does not know which cluster will be used for the program, but it will be one that "is attractive ... to upperclass students."
Pelton said upperclass students may choose to live in this cluster following standard ORL procedures.
The final report recommends the cluster be overseen by a dean "with combined academic and residential life duties to assist students' course work, academic planning and personal counseling issues."
In addition, the report recommends that a Senior Faculty Associate, who would live in an attached or adjacent private residence, have the "responsibility and resources for enabling a broad array of student-initiated activities within the cluster."
Pelton said he is unsure whether the College would create a new administrative position for the dean or if it might reassign "some existing person to take on these responsibilities."
The report also recommends creating a cluster programming budget and student cluster programming board to assist the Senior Faculty Associate in planning cluster activity.
Faculty Committee
Pelton said he hopes the faculty committee, which will consider ways that intellectual and residential experiences could be integrated, could be formed by next fall.
Pelton said the committee, which he said he hopes will include student opinion, would address the issues of faculty advising and curriculum issues. "What I'm asking them to look at is how faculty use their resources," he said.
Pelton said he thought that any first-year advising program the faculty committee recommended for the cluster would only involve residents of the cluster.
Pelton said he does not know how large the committee would be or who would lead it. He said he hopes to discuss the idea with the Dean of Faculty, the Committee on Organization and Policy and the Committee of Chairs.
ORL Review
Pelton said he hopes ORL would be able to begin its comprehensive review in the summer and present its findings sometime next year.
In the report, Pelton wrote that in addition to determining whether the College will need to construct new beds, "the findings and recommendations of this study would inform the size, location and program of the student residence described above."
Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco said she will meet with Pelton today to discuss the review.
Orientation
The report also recommends that the Dean of Freshmen implement the original recommendations of the orientation sub-committee.
Among other proposals, the sub-committee recommended that the name of the Freshman Office be changed to the Office of First-Year Students and the title of the current dean be changed to Dean of First-Year Students.
Goldsmith, who said he is not sure what recommendations he will chose to implement, said the name change "may yet happen in the coming months."
