After five years of working full-time for computer services, 29-year-old Stephen Cochran will finally be parting ways with the College -- but he will be taking a Dartmouth degree with him. Under Dartmouth's Special Community Student Program, Cochran has been able to take one class every term he has worked here on the College's bill.
While the program is open to most full-time employees, only five to 10 College employees have taken classes over the past year, according to Student Program Coordinator Julie Bell. The grades received by the employees are equivalent to those of regular students, but only a handful have applied to matriculate under the program and successfully completed their degree requirements, she said.
Cochran, who enrolled in Middlebury College in 1994 and dropped out after two years, seized the opportunity to transfer his previous credits and earn a College degree as an employee. For Cochran, however, balancing his career as manager of special projects in Kiewit Computing Services with his experiences as a Dartmouth student has posed challenges.
"It's always been a strange mix of being a student, and being an adult with a house and a job," Cochran said.
Even though Cochran is a matriculated student, he has had difficulty feeling truly integrated in the student body because he takes only one class per term and does not live in the dorms, Cochran said.
"On a more personal level, a lot of ways you're removed from the student population," he said. "You don't interact with the same people all the time."
Cochran did his best to incorporate himself as a student by participating in many vaunted Dartmouth traditions, from playing pong to jumping off Ledyard Bridge. In the fall, he hiked through the wilderness as part of a DOC trip for transfer students, and last year he swam naked across the Connecticut River and ran back over Ledyard Bridge in the buff to complete the infamous Ledyard Challenge.
"I've done just about everything at some point," Cochran said, laughing.
Cochran said he's young enough that most people initially assume he's a student, and that he has made many close friends in the undergraduate community. Cochran played Club Men's Volleyball and helped pioneer the revival of the German Club after 20 years of dormancy.
Although Cochran successfully took advantage of the program's opportunities, not all College employees are eligible to receive degrees. An employee must work at the College full-time for a year in order to receive full funding for classes, and at that point their spouses are also eligible to enroll at half-cost.
Employees must also apply for permission to matriculate and potentially graduate, a process that took Cochran one-and-a-half years.
Cochran initially paid to take classes while working at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in 1998, but received full College funding after a year of full-time employment in computer services. Last summer he officially matriculated as a student, and after a total of seven years at the College, Cochran will finally receive his degree in creative writing and physics modified with computer science at the end of this term.
Cochran said that although he is uncertain of his future plans, he will probably move away from Hanover within the year.
"I'm going to miss -- even though it was in such a small way -- being part of the student body," Cochran said. "All those intangible parts that aren't part of classes. The little glimpses I've had of them are going to be missed."
