Elsa Garmire, the new dean of the Thayer School of Engineering, admitted that before she interviewed at Dartmouth, she had never heard of the Thayer School.
"There are a lot of distinguished people here that do a lot of distinguished work, but somehow the school as a whole doesn't stand out," Garmire said. "Certainly one of my goals is to increase the visibility of the school."
As the director of the University of Southern California's Center for Laser Studies from 1984 to 1995, Garmire said she was not particularly looking for another job.
But when she was approached by the Thayer School, she reconsidered.
Garmire said she was only willing to leave USC if "the students were better than they are at USC, if I could walk to work and if the weather was nice."
Alluding to the cold Hanover weather, Garmire said, "Well, two out of three ain't bad."
Now almost three months into her tenure as dean of the Thayer School, Garmire said she is working hard to improve the school's name recognition.
Garmire said the Thayer School, which was ranked 38th among graduate schools of engineering in this year's U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings, does not get the respect it deserves because of its small size.
The Thayer School has a total of about 500 students, Garmire said, only half of whom are graduate students.
Larger engineering schools, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have substantially more students, faculties and resources than the Thayer School, Garmire said.
"When you put us up against MIT, it's like putting a small dog up against a 1,000-pound gorilla," she said.
Garmire jokingly said the Thayer School "jumps all the way to number 11" in the survey if it didn't include all the institutes of technology and large state universities that are not really comparable to the Thayer School because they are vastly larger.
"I haven't figured out a way to get us up to number three yet, but I'm working on it," Garmire joked.
Strengths of Thayer
But Garmire said she thinks Thayer can hold its own against the 1,000-pound gorillas.
"I think it's in very good shape -- I wouldn't have come if it weren't," she said. "I didn't want to come where there was something I had to dig out of the graveyard ... I like to come where things are going very well, where I can add a little to the top of what's already good."
Garmire, who specializes in lasers and optics research, praised the College for its commitment to research, and said she is in the process of moving her personal laboratory to the Thayer School.
The faculty of the Thayer School are "extraordinarily good" in both their research and their commitment to teaching, Garmire said, noting that maintaining the two is a "delicate balance."
Another strength of the Thayer School, according to Garmire, is its interdisciplinary method of education. The fact the Thayer School is interdisciplinary and has no departments makes it "unique," she said.
Garmire said the interdisciplinary method is superior because the departmental method "puts people in boxes ... and the world doesn't work that way."
Goals for the school
It is challenging to try to create a successful, driving engineering enterprise that is consistent with the small-school atmosphere of the College, Garmire said.
Garmire has several long-term goals for Thayer, including increasing the school's size.
The Thayer School is actively recruiting new professors and wants to increase its personnel to include 35 full-time faculty members, Garmire said.
"I think it makes sense to increase the size of the school, but in order to do that we have to develop a plan ... to do this at a time of decreased government funding," she said.
Garmire also said she thinks the school should increase its communications capabilities.
"We're all interconnected through BlitzMail but we're not connected very much with the outside world," she said.
College Provost Lee Bollinger praised Garmire's work, saying, "she has brought tremendous energy and academic insight to the job."
Garmire received a bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University in 1961 and a doctorate in physics from M.I.T. in 1965.
After eight years at the California Institute of Technology, Garmire joined the faculty of USC in 1974. She was appointed an electrical engineering professor in 1981 and became the Center for Laser Studies director in 1984.
