Dartmouth should increase funding for the Education Department, continue its Teacher Preparation Program and add tenure-track professors in education, according to the recently completed external review report of the combated Education Department.
The report, in the aftermath of two previous internal reviews that had called for the department's elimination, has served to legitimized the popular education program within the administration.
Members of the administration will meet with Chair of the Education Department Andrew Garrod within several weeks to decide how to act on the external committee's recommendations.
The previous two reports -- one made in 1993, and the other in 1996 -- cited the pre-professional nature of the department and a lack of scholarship on the part of its faculty as reasons for its elimination.
Since then, however, the department has undergone something of a metamorphosis. Student enrollment is swelling, with some courses, such as Education 20, exceeding 200 students.
The department has also streamlined its curriculum, devised an off-campus teaching program in the Marshall Islands, forged partnerships with area school systems and reduced faculty tensions by hiring new members and replacing the department's previous Chair.
"I think external committees carry a great deal more weight," Garrod said. "Not only are the committee members distinguished scholars, but they are people who have devoted their professional lives to thinking about these things."
Indeed, respected education faculty from the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University and Brown University, as well as two Dartmouth professors, reviewed the department this winter.
One fault with the two internal committees, according to Garrod, was that its members were not familiar with the field, and thus, their findings were less persuasive.
The previous two times that the education department's dissolution was recommended, student protest kept the department alive.
This February, immediately before the review began, the Student Assembly unanimously endorsed a resolution supporting the continuation and expansion of the education department.
Among other reasons for the department's continuation, the report cited its contribution to -- and not detraction from -- a liberal arts education, as well as the societal importance of well-trained teachers and scholars in the field.
The report specifically called for three new tenure-track positions: a developmental psychologist, an expert in teacher education and a specialist in math or science education.
"I don't think there were any parts of the report we didn't agree with," Garrod said.
If the department had been eliminated, Dartmouth would have become the only member of the Ivy League not to host an education program.
The review committee was made up of five reviewers, two of whom -- physics professor Mary Hudson and Native American studies and history professor Collin Callaway -- are members of the Dartmouth faculty.
The other committee members were Susan Fuhrman, dean of Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania; Nel Noddings, former acting dean of the Stanford University Graduate School of Education; and Cynthia Garca-Coll, a developmental psychologist and professor of Education at Brown University.
