Linda Fowler, the new director of the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences, knew she wanted to eventually come to Dartmouth when she was a teenager.
When Fowler was 17, she made her first visit to the College as a date for Winter Carnival. Fowler, who started her job in July, said she knew then that she wanted to return to Dartmouth.
"I have had a long attachment to and connection with this college," Fowler said. Fowler's husband was a member of the Class of 1965 and her son is a member of the Class of 1997.
"I always imagined that when my personal circumstances allowed me to make a move, I would" come to Dartmouth, she said. "I always wanted to teach in a liberal arts school eventually."
Geography Professor George Demko, the former head of the Rockefeller Center, said Fowler's congressional expertise, her firsthand experience in Washington, D.C., and her deep love of politics make her an ideal director.
"She is absolutely going to be a wonderful director," Demko said. "I am very high on her abilities. She is what the Center needs."
Jim Brennan '96, the political programs intern at the Rockefeller Center, said, "She has brought a lot of energy and knowledge of American politics to the center."
Fowler had previously taught at the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University since 1975.
Working on Capital Hill
Fowler, who majored in government at Smith College, said she has always harbored a love of and deep interest in politics.
After graduating from Smith, she worked in Washington -- first in the House of Representatives and then in the Environmental Protection Agency.
In the House, Fowler's work involved casework, legislative research and writing press releases.
Fowler also worked as a technical writer for the EPA.
"I took the work of chemists and biologists and made it intelligible to the public," she said.
Fowler wrote Congressional testimony and coordinated various enforcement and negotiation activities for the EPA.
Her experience at the EPA was unique because there was a great demand for employees in the agency due to rapidly increasing public awareness of environmental issues.
"I got there right when the first Earth Day had taken place and there was just a huge, dramatic rise in public interest and congressional interest in environmental affairs," she said. "These were relatively small agencies that weren't used to being in the public eye and there was just an enormous opportunity and an enormous demand for public information."
"It was just one of those rare times in government where you could make your own job," she said.
Fowler said her work in Washington prepared her for graduate school.
"It helped me clarify the subjects I wanted to examine in graduate school," she said. "I subsequently became a specialist in congressional politics."
Fowler attended graduate school at the University of Rochester.
Busy Time at the College
New Hampshire's importance in the 1996 presidential primary races have made this fall a very hectic time for Fowler. New Hampshire has the nation's first presidential primary in February.
Last week, Fowler made her national television debut with two appearances on the Cable News Network.
As a guest on Inside Politics on Monday, she spoke briefly about the results of a poll of Republican primary candidates for the 1996 presidential election. The poll was one of six sponsored by the Rockefeller Center and television station WMUR-TV in Manchester.
"The results were quite predictable given that we are in the early stages of the primary," she said. Early Republican frontrunner Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole had a huge lead in the poll.
On Wednesday, CNN asked Fowler to do some commentary on a nationally televised forum of 10 Republican presidential candidates.
Fowler said Wednesday's experience with CNN was "disappointing."
"The main story was really with Bill Sneider who is CNN's political analyst," she said. "Then the news director at WNER, the station from where CNN conducted the calls, and I were on briefly with Judy Woodruff."
"They just asked the conventional who was helped and who was hurt questions and we gave the predicable reply," she said. "I wasn't really asked to draw upon my expertise as a political scientist or to utilize the information I had gleaned from the polls, and in truth I was disappointed."
Although Monday and Wednesday were the first times Fowler has appeared on national television, she said she is used to being in the public eye.
"I am used to public speaking," she said. "I had done a lot of that at Syracuse with the local television stations so I was not nervous or uncomfortable."
Fowler said the Rockefeller Center is working hard to bring presidential candidates to the College.
"We have written all the candidates and asked them to give us dates for when they would like to come to the College," she said.
The center is also trying to put together a more large-scale event such as a debate at Dartmouth. But Fowler said so far the effort has been unsuccessful.
"Dartmouth has done these in the past and in the past we have been able to do them because the state party organizations have been extremely helpful in helping us do that," she said.
"This year the governor has so far stayed neutral in the race and the state party organizations, because there are so many candidates, have not wanted to be involved in brokering all the many demands that exist in the state for debate," she said.
She said the center is exploring other potential co-sponsors for a debate who would be sufficiently attractive to candidates.
"The problem for us is that the logistics of having a major national debate are considerable," she said. "They are expensive, they are time-consuming for the staff and we don't want to go ahead with planning for the debate unless we can be very sure that the front-runners are going to come and naturally they want to keep their options open and their schedules as flexible as possible," she said.
Plans for the Center.
Fowler said while she hopes to implement some changes at the Rockefeller Center, she plans to leave other practices undisturbed.
"I hope to continue my predecessor's emphasis on student activity," she said. "When Professor Demko was director, he did a wonderful job of involving students in the center and supporting their interests in internships, research, public affairs and world affairs."
Brennan said both Demko and Fowler interact well with students.
"Student interaction is both of their greatest assets," he said.
Fowler said she hopes to provide increased "support" for more advanced teaching and research in the field of public policy at the center.
One of the ways in which Fowler hopes to accomplish this is by implementing a public policy minor.
The minor was tentatively approved last year by the Committee on Instruction, Fowler said. The COI is a faculty committee that handles issues relating to the curriculum.
"We are just fine-tuning it before we can implement it," she said. The requirements of the public policy minor focus on the methods and processes of policy making.
"It allows students to explore a substantive policy area in greater depth or, as an alternative, chose to take courses around the College in economics, government, history or geography that have to do with issues of implementation of policies and evaluation policy," she said.
