This year's graduating seniors will now have the chance to honor a kindergarten through 12th-grade teacher during their final year at the College as part of the Dartmouth Prize for Exceptional Teaching.
College President James Wright recently announced the program, which is the first of its kind in the Ivy League, in a letter to the Class of 2007.
The four selected honorees will receive $3,000 and be flown to Hanover to receive an award at commencement. Their schools will each receive a $2,500 award.
The nomination process for the award is web-based and asks each senior participating to write an essay about the teacher of his or her choice. Nominations are due by Nov. 17.
"It is exciting to know that we are giving the students the opportunity to recognize their teachers and ... to see that the administration at this college is really backing a program that will recognize a group of people who are definitely an under-recognized segment of the population," Hannah Burzynski '07 said.
A committee compiled of both Dartmouth faculty and students from the Class of 2008 will read through the essays and pick several to advance to the next round. The committee will then request additional information from the nominated teachers and ask their schools' principals to write a letter of recommendation.
All nominated teachers will receive a certificate of recognition.
"This program is exceptionally important. Teaching is not a particularly celebrated profession in our country," education department instructor Jay Davis said. "When you have an institution with Dartmouth's prestige that is very publicly saying that we believe that what teachers do is crucial and that we want to celebrate what K-12 teachers are doing ... it sends a wonderful message to people who are teaching and to Dartmouth seniors who are graduating."
Such a program was first seen at Dartmouth when the Class of 1990, with a senior symposium topic on the future of education, honored a selected number of teachers who impacted the lives of graduating seniors before they arrived at Dartmouth.
"It was great. We brought the teachers to campus, gave out certificates, but the idea just wasn't picked up by any other class. After 1990 the symposium topic changed and it was not repeated," Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia said.
Williams College currently has a program similar to Dartmouth's that gives awards to high school teachers at its commencement ceremony. In 2005, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an editorial applauding Williams and encouraging all colleges to develop comparable programs.
"The [Williams'] Olmsted Prize is a fine program," Davis said. "People were enamored with the idea after reading the article. [Provost Barry Scherr] contacted Holly Sateia, who got a group of us together to start developing a program like this for Dartmouth."
Education instructor Janet Zullo then got in touch with Williams to learn more about its program. Dartmouth used the outline of the project from Williams, but made a few adjustments of its own.
"I think Dartmouth might be leading on this one," Zullo said.
