A self-described people person, historian Jane Carroll is perhaps best known for her vibrant personality.
"Jane has a wonderful personality and she knows that the oral history project is not simply about putting a microphone in front of somebody," Dean of the Faculty James Wright said. "She's exceptionally skilled at leading a person along and she really wants to understand them and what shaped their experiences."
In addition to teaching an art history course on Northern Renaissance Art, Carroll has been hired by the College to put together an oral history which will focus on student life and administrative decisions made during the College presidencies of John Kemeny and David McLaughlin.
"This position as oral historian has provided me with the opportunity to meet more people with official positions here at the College, and it means that more people have directly contacted me," Carroll said.
"The doors have been flung open, and I'm having a lot of fun meeting all of these new people," she said.
Carroll said she is particularly excited about conducting the oral history project here at the College because it allows her to pursue both of her loves at the same time.
"There comes a time when everyone must decide what they're going to do with their life, and some of them have to put aside one of their interests," she said. "I'm lucky to be able to run from teaching my art history class in Carpenter over to Baker to work on the oral history project."
Carroll said the most difficult part of the oral history project here at the College has been reconstructing the various positions and titles.
"Simple terms like the Dean of Faculty and the Provost have changed through the years, and their responsibilities have changed as well," she said.
In preparation for her interviews, Carroll has spent hours looking through back issues of The Dartmouth.
"I was totally shocked when I was looking through one of them and I read a headline that said something about the Trustees voting to rescind coeducation," Carroll said.
She had taken copious notes about the advent of coeducation at Dartmouth and said she was indignant that no one had told her that specific historical event.
"It wasn't until I reached page four or so [of The Dartmouth,] that I realized that the entire issue was a spoof, and I had been taken in," she said.
Carroll is not new to the oral history process. While at Smith College, she volunteered in the archives. Later, while doing graduate work at the University of North Carolina, she became involved in an oral history project aimed at preserving the Appalachian culture.
"That's where I got the bug," Carroll said. "I became interested in listening to other people's stories. I learned to sit back and listen to the stories other people have to tell."
Carroll said she was also moved by the stories that she heard while living and traveling in Germany.
"I met people on the trains who had lived through World War II, and they were ready to tell me what it had been like. It was so much more real than reading about it out of a history book, and the texture was so much more vivid," she said.
When she moved to the Boston area, Carroll was able to participate in another oral history project under which she worked to compile oral histories of people connected to the Amoskeag Mills in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Carroll's personality can be felt even her small office in Carpenter Hall. The office is not hers; she is working out of it while one of her colleagues is on sabbatical.
While most of the original furnishings of the office remain intact, Carroll has made the office her own by adding just a few personal items. On her desk is a photograph of her daughter, Lexi, taken last Easter.
"Definitely have children," Carroll said. "They will make you laugh, and boy is that important."
In addition to her own child, Carroll and her husband officially sponsor two foreign students at the College, and they invited several students who were unable to go home for Easter to join them for their own Easter dinner.
"My husband and I have done a lot of traveling abroad, and we've always been on the receiving end of the hospitality," Carroll said. "Now we're having fun helping foreign students here at the College understand the American culture."
