Dean of the Thayer School of Engineering Elsa Garmire was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the College announced last week, in a group that included New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen and U. S. Senator Bill Bradley among others.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a group of academics and others prominent in their field that "runs all sorts of studies that have to do with national and international affairs," said Dartmouth Chemistry Professor Emeritus Walter Stockmayer, who was elected to the Academy in 1946.
To become a member of the Academy, one must be nominated by a current member and approved by a majority of the membership, according to Anna Andrews-Smith, assistant membership coordinator for the Academy.
Garmire joins Provost Lee Bollinger and Stockmayer as Dartmouth's active representatives.
"I think it's a wonderful tribute to Dean Garmire," College President James Freedman said. "I know that it's an honor of very high prestige."
Garmire said she is honored to be chosen for membership.
"It's nice to be in the illustrious footsteps of" the Academy's membership, Garmire said.
Garmire, who will be officially inducted in the fall, said she is still not sure what membership entails.
"Most of these academies are involved in offering advice to the government and society as a whole," Garmire said.
Garmire said she was notified of her induction through the mail. "It's supposed to be a surprise," she said, but in her case, "it wasn't a hundred percent. I heard a rumor that I had been nominated."
Andrews-Smith said that nominations depends upon prospective members' "entire career's work."
She said the nomination process is layered -- first the Academy receives nominations and then the possibilities are narrowed down.
"The nominations are reviewed by different sets of committees and they're voted on by the entire fellowship," which currently includes approximately 4,000 members, according to Smith.
"We get about 1,000 nominations per year and we elect about 150," Smith said, "because there's such a small number elected each year, they're really the cream of the crop."
Garmire said that as a younger professor she never imagined being elected to the Academy.
"When I began the 'march to success,' the first thing that I saw on the horizon ahead of me was to become a fellow" in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Garmire said.
"The biggest honor that I thought I could have was to become a fellow and I became a fellow in 1981 and then I discovered that there were more awards after that," Garmire said.
She became a member of the National Academy of Engineers in 1989, but her career did not peak then.
"I discovered that there was this other academy on top of it," Garmire said regarding the National Academy of Arts and Sciences.
"I discovered that this was an even more prestigious academy," she said.
"It was very much a great honor," Garmire said of her election to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to its prestige, the National Academy of Arts and Sciences is geographically suited to Garmire.
"The Academy is located in Cambridge, [Mass.], so it's a convenient place to get to," she said.
Garmire said she is looking forward to improving the dialogue between various interests.
"In society today, it seems like there's a lot of separation between the technological arts and the liberal arts," Garmire said.
Stockmayer said he was elected to the Academy in 1946, "when I was pretty young and an associate professor at MIT."
"In those days," Stockmayer said, "anyone who got tenure at either MIT or Harvard was almost automatically elected to membership."
The Academy has broadened its national membership since that time, according to Stockmayer.
