An external review committee, commissioned by the College, recommended government professors focus on a specific academic area in their research and made several other suggestions to improve the department.
The external review is part of an on-going, four-year-old review process to evaluate each College department.
The results of the Spring review were released to the College earlier this term and the recommendations may be made public once all departments have been reviewed, former Dean of the Faculty Karen Wetterhahn previously told The Dartmouth.
Government department chair Nelson Kasfir said the review committee gave the department compliments as well as criticism and recommendations.
"Basically teaching was good, but they thought we should focus independent work on trying to build a group within the department," Kasfir said.
Kasfir said the department must write a response to the committee's recommendations but because many department members are vacationing during the summer the department will not respond until October.
Government Professor Richard Winters said he did not feel the committee's suggestion that the department build a group within itself was well thought out.
Winters added it is hard for the department to "devote scarce resources to build one specific, fairly fuzzy area of study."
Assistant Dean of Faculty in the Humanities Mary Jean Green told The Dartmouth previously that occasionally the reviewers do not realize some of Dartmouth's constraints.
Winters said he does not know if the suggestion will be implemented and added that if it does happen it will happen over many years.
But government majors should not worry about their ability to study the topic effectively.
"I don't think it is a student hostile or student friendly recommendation, it would not have a whole lot of impact on students," Winters said.
Wetterhahn said external reviews are useful because they make departments take stock of where they are.
"In terms of the future, it is a chance for the department to validate their ideas by an external review committee," she said.
The committees that review the departments are comprised of outside scholars suggested by the individual departments and two faculty members from related fields.
