In an effort to strengthen Dartmouth's neuroscience program, Nov. 21 will mark the official inauguration of the new Neuroscience Center at Dartmouth.
The center will coalesce the areas of cognitive neuroscience, clinical neuroscience and molecular/cellular/systems neuroscience. Eighty-one members of Dartmouth faculty, spanning 15 different departments, will bring the College, the medical school and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center together under the NCD.
"Neuroscience is a vast area of study," and the center will serve as an "overreaching structure, the home focus for all people in the field," said NCD advisory board member Bill Hickey, also the senior associate dean of academic affairs at Dartmouth Medical School.
Within the upcoming years, the NCD faculty hopes to develop new graduate and undergraduate courses, including "Plasticity of the Aging/Diseased Brain" and "Clinical Correlation of Brain Imaging," as well as both graduate and undergraduate degrees in neurobiology.
Although research and scholarship in the field has a strong presence at Dartmouth, neuroscience is currently not offered as an undergraduate major, nor are there very many courses on the subject, according to Joyce DeLeo, the center's interim director. DeLeo is also a professor of anesthesiology and pharmacology at DMS.
"The new Neuroscience Center is going to be incredibly important to undergraduates at Dartmouth that want to concentrate on brain research," said Michael Gazzaniga, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and also a member of the NCD advisory board.
Initial funding for the center was provided by the College and the medical school, according to Hickey, although in the future the center hopes to attract outside funds.
The NCD advisory board consists of seven College and medical school faculty who volunteered for the positions and were officially brought together by the provost's office.
Members of the NCD hope that the new program will attract students and faculty from around the country, as well as Dartmouth students interested in the field.
"The field is booming and Dartmouth will be a major player," Gazzaniga said.
"The research and scholarship that will emerge from the program" will help publicize the center, he added.
"There is potential for a lot of exciting things to happen," said Robert Maue, a professor of physiology and biochemistry at DMS and an NCD advisory board member.
The center's kickoff will include an inaugural lecture on Nov. 21 and will feature keynote speaker Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
DeLeo is "extremely excited" and feels the NCD will be a success.
"I always wanted to see a Neuroscience Center at Dartmouth; suddenly things worked out," she said.
