Thanks to a $4.5 million donation, Baker-Berry Library will soon host a technology resource facility for faculty -- The Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning.
The center will be up and running on the internet before it is physically in place opposite the 1902 Room in Baker.
Provost Barry Scherr selected associate English professor Thomas Luxon to head DCAL. Luxon will hold the newly-endowed Cheheyl professorship.
Luxon said the center will create a clearinghouse of information and resources that will allow professors to share what methods and technology will work in their classes.
"The focal point for all efforts is on the faculty and improving teaching and learning," Luxon said. "There are a number of academic resources for students, but not a center where teachers and graduate assistants can go, especially to find out how to apply technology in support of the Dartmouth curriculum."
Luxon also stressed the importance of addressing different teaching and learning styles. "We hope to expand professors' teaching repertoire and methods of presentation, and explore what kind of learning takes place in labs versus discussions and lectures and how to improve it. Different methods work best for different disciplines as well as for different students. We need to address different learning styles."
The center plans to hire a post-doctoral employee with a background in the hard sciences and mathematics and to provide for teleconference lectures.
The $4.5 million given to DCAL will amount to an annual budget of about $225,000, according to the provost's assistant, Mary Gorman. The funds will be allocated by Luxon.
Gordon Russell '55 contributed $3 million toward the center, establishing the Gordon Russell Endowment for the Advancement of Learning, while R. Stephen Cheheyl '67 bestowed $1.5 million in support of the Cheheyl professorship.
Russell, a former partner of Sequoia Capital, is a current member of the President's Leadership Council at Dartmouth and a former chair of the Board of Overseers of Dartmouth Medical School and the C. Everett Koop Institute.
Cheheyl, the former executive vice president of business operations at Bay Networks, is a member of Dartmouth's Computing Advisory Group, which works to advise the College on issues in information technology. Cheheyl, who provided substantial funding for the College's wireless data network, also established the Robert Cheheyl '38 and R. Stephen Cheheyl '67 Endowment to bring new technology into the classroom.
A committee was formed two years ago in the hopes of forming a teaching center at Dartmouth, and finding donors to fund it. The funds for the Cheheyl professorship were donated several years ago, but the DCAL did not become a reality until Russell was on board.
