If our College is a research university in all but name, then why did research superstar Michael Gazzaniga leave us for UCSB? If our economics program is so popular with students, and the department so excellent, why could we not retain top-rated professor Amitabh Chandra? If Dartmouth remains so indebted to the rhetorical talent of Daniel Webster, Class of 1801, then why did the College kill the speech department and send our sole rhetoric professor Jim Kuypers packing?
The list of professors who recently left Dartmouth runs long. It exceeds the usual departmental shuffle, indicating that something is amiss. And indeed it is.
We are experiencing an intellectual exodus at the College. Such a brain drain is simply unacceptable. We need to work harder to retain our top-notch faculty.
Why do they leave? None relocate their families and their talents without reason. Unfortunately, the reasons are many; there does not seem to be one single catalyst which we could address to solve the problem.
Upon his forced exodus, for example, Kuypers criticized the College for failing to maintain the trustees' commitment to the "importance of providing instruction in public speaking as a means of conveying ideas through oral communication" ("Statement of the Trustees," June 8, 1979). From the mid-twentieth century to today, the Dartmouth College speech department went from being one of the best in the world to dead. It is a shame. I would have liked to take a class in rhetoric, one of the original Trivium.
As another example, music professor Jon Appleton recently criticized the College for failing to "curb grade inflation, reduce class sizes and stay on the cutting edge" ("Long-time music prof leaves for Stanford," Sept. 30). Appleton is a pioneer in the electroacoustic music field who has won Guggenheim, Fulbright and National Endowment scholarships. He co-invented the first self-contained digital music synthesizer. He set up a graduate program in his field of expertise. Next year, Appleton will leave for Stanford.
Michael Gazzaniga, one of Dartmouth's few research giants and the director of our Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, has recently won a $21.8 million dollar National Science Foundation grant for Dartmouth. Next year, Gazzaniga will take his research to UCSB. "There's no replacing him," said psychology department chair Todd Heatherton.
This list, in fact, runs so long that it could span an entire column. But my argument comes with a justification. Although many of the excellent professors and administrators who leave Dartmouth detract from its intellectual atmosphere, not all leave full of criticism and disappointment. When Dean of Faculty Jamshed Bharucha became provost at Tufts University, he had nothing but praise for the College. "I've loved Dartmouth," he said, "I'll be very sad to leave" ("Barucha to leave for Tufts," April 8, 2002). Similarly, George Langford, former professor of natural sciences who was appointed Dean of the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at UMass, Amherst, left without any public criticism of the College. So some do view leaving Dartmouth as a step upwards, not an escape.
However, a brain drain is evident and I am greatly saddened by it. It degrades the quality of our education. Students still rank Chandra as the best econometrics (economics 20) teacher, according to the Student Assembly's Course Guide. This is one of the hardest economics courses and a requirement for the major; it is a pity that Amitabh Chandra left for Harvard.
What can we do? We can write letters to the Administration and the Board of Trustees. Dear trustees, please make it so good professors don't leave our College. We can share our SA Course Guide rankings with the Administration. Perhaps that will show them which professors we consider to be good teachers. Maybe we can even cave in to the college rankings a little. Perhaps that will allow the world to show us which professors it considers good researchers. The solutions are there. Only the impetus is lacking.
Upon announcing his intention to leave, Appleton stated that this intellectual exodus is just a bump in Dartmouth's long history. Perhaps that is so, and with time Dartmouth will shake itself free of this malady. But our generation is here now. We cannot wait for Dartmouth to improve in some distant future. We all love Dartmouth, which is why we need to fight against the tides of this intellectual exodus that threatens us. Or are we complacent to lose professors to UPenn, to UCSB and, worst of all, to Harvard?
We need to fight to improve Dartmouth. Attracting great professors facilitates better learning. If we want Dartmouth to continue being the best place in the world to learn, let us make our small college the best place in the world to teach as well!
