Six members of the College faculty, as well as associate provost Stuart Lord, will join the Class of 2009 and College President James Wright in leaving Dartmouth at the end of this year.
Stuart Lord, associate provost and former dean of the Tucker Foundation, will leave the College to serve as the fifth president of Naropa University in Boulder, Colo. Naropa is a liberal arts institution dedicated to "contemplative education" rooted in Buddhist practices, according to the university's web site.
Lord started at the College in 2000 as the Virginia Rice Kelsey dean of Tucker, which is an endowed position. He also worked as associate provost. In 2008, Lord left his position at Tucker to assume expanded responsibilities in the Provost's Office. Under Lord, Tucker launched several new initiatives, including the Cross-Cultural Education and Service Program, which helps student volunteers work in Nicaragua, as well as Project Bangladesh, which assisted a Bangladeshi orphanage that had been damaged by a flood, according to a College press release. Lord's tenure as dean also saw the expansion of Tucker's endowment from $8 million to more than $21 million. Six faculty members are retiring at the end of this year, according to Megan Steven, assistant dean of faculty. Classics professor Jim Tatum, government professor Nelson Kasfir, anthropology professor Ken Korey, history professor Bruce Nelson, philosophy professor Bernard Gert and music professor Jon Appleton will all be retiring. Russian professor Lev Loseff had planned to retire, but passed away earlier this year, according to Steven.
Loseff, who was a world-renowned poet and scholar of Russian literature, has chaired the department during the last nine years. According to Provost Barry Scherr, Loseff's work at the College helped Dartmouth be better known internationally. Loseff's death was the result of multiple illnesses, The Dartmouth previously reported.
When philosophy professor Bernard Gert first started teaching at Dartmouth, Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States and John Sloan Dickey was president of the College.
"All the people who were here when I came are all dead now," Gert said.
Gert is retiring as the Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral History at the College, and has taught since 1959. As a philosopher of ethics, Gert has written extensively on medical ethics, psychology and the nature of morality, according to the College's web site.
Tatum, who has taught and written on classical literature at the College for 40 years, has never had a job outside of the College, he said.
The one thing that has remained constant throughout his time, he said, is the high quality of Dartmouth students.
Nelson, who was active in the major social movements of the 1960s and in the trade union movement, centers his academic interest around class and race in the United States, specifically investigating why these are still barriers today, The Dartmouth previously reported.
Nelson said one of his strongest memories at the College was his support of students who constructed shanties on the Green in the 1980s to oppose Dartmouth's financial investment in companies that did business with apartheid-era South Africa.
History professor Margaret Darrow, a long-time friend and colleague of Nelson, agreed with his self-assessment as a "troublemaker." "[Nelson] is not someone who holds back on telling you his opinions," she said.
Government professor Anne Saadah said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth that the void left by Kasfir is "enormous."
Kasfir has specialized in the study of East Africa and Sudan, democratization in Africa and the interaction between guerillas and government, according to the College's web site.
"Professor Kasfir gives us depth with regard to Africa," Saadah said. "Even more significantly, he is always alert to the possibilities present in someone else's research, and has helped both colleagues and students clarify their questions and arguments."
Darrow similarly said that Nelson, as a professor with such a wide-area of knowledge, will be difficult if not impossible to replace. Korey also has a similar broad range in academia, according to anthropology department chair Deborah Nichols.
"In an era of specialization, Ken thinks broadly about human evolution and anthropology. He can read a paper by an archaeologist or ethnographer, as well as a biological anthropologist, and keenly assess its methodology and logic or lack thereof," she said.
Appleton, who is also leaving the college after 41 years, said that the quality of students has improved over time. Appleton has composed numerous works and also helped to invent the Synclavier, an early electronic music synthesizer released in 1975
After leaving Dartmouth, most professors interviewed said that they would maintain active in academia.
"I can't see myself stopping doing research and writing I love both," Nelson said.
