The College's education department will be reviewed by an external committee this coming fall, both as part of a routine departmental check-up and also as prescribed by a last-minute plan that rescued the department from near-abolition in 1996.
The committee's recommendation will have a large influence on the College's decision whether to keep or to eliminate the education department, according to Dean of the Faculty Ed Berger.
"We are confident the committee here will recognize our strengths and will want to affirm those strengths," Education Department Chair Andrew Garrod said.
The department has faced two internal reviews in the past, in 1993 and 1996. Both committees recommended the removal of the department.
According to Garrod, prior "internal mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibilities" were the main problems which plagued the department. Berger said many of the "dysfunctional faculty" who had caused problems are no longer working at the College.
Another, deeper issue was whether it is appropriate for a liberal arts institution such as Dartmouth to offer a pre-professional teaching program.
Both Berger and Garrod dismissed the argument.
"We have engineering students and pre-med students. In many ways this is no different than preparing students as engineers," Berger said.
"We have survived all of [the attacks] and we have come through strong and we deserve the full support of the College," Garrod said.
In the past few years, the education department has made efforts to improve its standing.
"We've had a very good period for the last three years," Garrod said. "The department has been stable."
Among the improvements in the department, Garrod listed increased enrollment numbers, a more coherent curriculum, strengthened relations between the math and science departments, partnership projects with local area public schools, and new courses.
He also mentioned a newly created internship program in the Marshall Islands, a new Dartmouth based education-focused organization called "Friends of Education," numerous conferences Dartmouth hosts on issues in education and the addition of talented new staff as signs of the department's newly acquired strength.
"It's hard to believe that when education is so much in the forefront of national issues, we would retreat from our obligations," Garrod said.
The committee, which will be comprised of two Dartmouth faculty members and three invited members from other institutions, will evaluate the department's self-assessment. The self-assessment is a report written by the education department, describing all its activities, personnel, hopes, strengths and weaknesses.
The review will last two to three days.
According to Berger, the committee will make its decision on the basis of the "quality of the curriculum, how well it prepares students for certification, the quality of faculty, how well they perform in the classroom and how well their scholarship in the field of education as a social science discipline ranks compared to other national institutions."
The day before the elimination of the department was announced two years ago, students rallied in support of the department. The administration responded with a plan that allowed its continuation for three more years, with a review called this year.
Former College President James Freedman began the policy of reviewing all departments every ten years in 1991. The education department is the last department to be looked at in this first round.
