The Dartmouth 9/19/18

MIR ROR 9.19.2018

EVOLUTION THROUGH LLCS | 3

HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON AT DARTMOUTH | 4-5

EVOLUTION OF ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS | 7 MIA ZHANG NACKE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

2 //MIRR OR

Editors’ Note

Q&A With Professor Ryan Calsbeek STORY

By Zachary Gorman

Ryan Calsbeek is a professor in the department of biological sciences.

He specializes in natural selection and studies evolution in reptiles and amphibians. Professor Calsbeek is teaching Biology 27, “Animal Behavior,” this fall.

In brief, what topics do you research?

RC: My work primarily focuses on how natural and sexual selection operate in the wild. So I study reptiles and amphibians, and I use those animal systems as models to ask questions like, “Why do some individuals live while others die?” and “What are the traits that influence the probability of survival or the probability that an individual reproduces or not?”

MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Evolution. It’s the reason why we’re here. It’s why we stand on two legs, why most of us get our wisdom teeth taken out, why we have five fingers to clasp our morning coffee. Evolution, in both the scientific and the lay sense, permeates every aspect of our lives, from modern medicine to forensics (DNA testing) to computer science (algorithms that compete against each other).

Evolution is an ongoing process, and humans, despite our progress and technology and hot cups of coffee, are not evolved, but are still evolving and have not stopped evolving. But students don’t just evolve in the biological sense. During these four years, students “evolve” as they undertake a unique journey through sort-of-adulthood. We are ever-changing, never just following a straight and direct line, coming out (hopefully) as better versions of our high school selves.

This week, the Mirror explores evolutionary patterns at Dartmouth — the trajectory of our time as students; how academic disciplines are born, die out and evolve; what steps we can take in becoming the best version of ourselves; and the experiences of students who have lived in Dartmouth’s Living Learning Communities.

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9.19.18 VOL. CLXXV NO. 64 MIRROR EDITORS MARIE-CAPUCINE PINEAUVALENCIENNE CAROLYN ZHOU EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ZACHARY BENJAMIN PUBLISHER HANTING GUO EXECUTIVE EDITORS IOANA SOLOMON AMANDA ZHOU

What got you interested in those topics?

RC: My undergraduate study began as an English major, then I transitioned to philosophy. Then, listening to the echoes of my parents in the back of my head saying, “We’d love to have a doctor in the family,” I began to study biology with the idea of going to medical school. Toward the end of my junior year in college, I met a professor out on a bike ride, of all places. We started talking, and he invited me to go and do research in his lab, thinking that it might help me make it into medical school. That research project involved doing hormone manipulations with lizards. This eventually led to a research position with him in the field. I went to California and did field work, and after one season doing field biology I was totally hooked. That sent me on the path that I ended up on, which was to become an evolutionary biologist doing field work.

How does one study evolution within a species?

RC: Usually, measuring variation and survival requires being able to track the survival of individuals over the course of their entire life. For the system that I work in, those animals mature and die in a single year. In the early part of the breeding season, my work involves marking and measuring large numbers of individuals in a population and then following them over the course of their one-year lifespan. At the end of the year, we census populations to see who’s still alive. Those individuals who are missing from the population are assumed to be dead. Then, because we’ve measured traits of the animals, like their leg length or running speed, we can build correlations between who lived and who died and the traits that may have influenced their probability of survival.

What places and environments have you studied for your field work?

RC: I started my Ph.D. work in the Central Valley in California, I worked in the Diablo Range and also I’ve been to Sierra Nevada. Then I worked on islands in the Bahamas for about the last decade or so. And more recently, I’ve started studying wood frog populations that live in ponds locally around here in Hanover and Norwich.

What drew you to studying animals like lizards and frogs?

RC: Initially, the draw was my early experience with them. It was all that I really knew. As time went by, I realized that [studying] a small animal that is extremely common, can be captured relatively easily and matures and dies in a short period of time makes studying natural selection a lot easier than, for example, an animal like a bird. A bird is very hard to recapture because they fly away and they live multiple years, so a study takes five to ten years instead of one or two years. The things that make a good study system for measuring selection are [animals] that live a relatively short amount of time, are relatively abundant, are easy to catch and are easy to measure.

What are some of the big questions in evolutionary science?

RC: “Evolutionary science” is a broad term. Essentially, everybody who does real biological science is studying evolution in some way. A cellular biologist is studying evolutionary processes, and the questions that they want to answer are different from the types of evolutionary processes that an organismal biologist would be studying. We’re all trying to understand the processes that shape and maintain biological diversity. At its core, evolution is interested in the study of diversity, both in its underlying mechanisms — the genetic and selective mechanisms that generate that diversity — and the cellular processes like mutation that provide the raw material for building diversity ... The question that we’re trying to answer now is how natural selection gets around the conundrum where you have to use a single genome to build two dramatically different things, like a male and a female. Or in the case of the wood frogs that I study, things that are even more dramatically different, like a tadpole and an adult frog, which have to be built from the very same genome as one individual. We call these “genomic conflicts.”

What do you like about the department of biological sciences and Dartmouth as a whole?

RC: One of the best things about the department at Dartmouth is that it’s a relatively small program, much like the entire campus. The small size allows us

all to integrate undergraduates into our research program along with graduate students and postdoctoral students. It gives me the freedom to include my own work and my own research in the topics that I teach, and it allows me to take the material that I teach with undergraduates and use that to build on my research program. The number of times that my own research has been influenced by questions that have been raised by undergraduates or by early graduate students in my lab, just due to the quality of the academic community here, surprises me again and again. Another great aspect of Dartmouth is that its small size facilitates relationships between different departments. I have collaborations that span the campus.

One of my main collaborations outside of the biology department is with a professor at the Tuck School of Business, if you can believe that.

These are the types of opportunities that don’t arise on a huge campus.

My undergraduate education was at Indiana University. There were 60,000 students on that campus, and most of those people were completely anonymous to me my entire time there.

But here, relationships build almost spontaneously. I drop my kids off at school and I meet another Dartmouth professor in some other department and we start talking and find we have common interests. That’s a huge benefit to being here.

What can students get out of a biology course, especially one that teaches about evolution?

RC: I think most students initially view the natural sciences, including biology, with a long view of eventually going to medical school or to graduate school. But there is so much about today’s world that the safety of our future depends on people having some perspective from ecology and evolutionary biology. We think about the problems of climate change and of sustainability on a planet that’s reaching its carrying capacity in terms of the number of people on it. And our future leaders, whether they’re scientists or politicians or teachers or anything else, will serve their communities to a much greater extent if they have at least some understanding of the ecology or the evolution that’s going on around them.

It will help them inform decisions politically or the things that they teach their own students down the road. So there’s more to the natural sciences and biology in particular than just a future career in the sciences. I think that we all need to have some ecological perspective in order to live in the world that we live in now.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

MIRROR //3

Evolution Through Living Learning Commuties STORY

By Cristopher Cano

Before new students arrive on campus each fall, they are emailed a link to fill out the housing preference survey. This survey, which often comes as a relief to students whose friends at other schools got their housing information weeks prior, allows students to describe their housing and roommate preferences.

Students can rank different styles of rooms, opt into living on a substancefree floor and even describe their potential roommates’ ideal levels of cleanliness, but there is another important choice they can make: they can choose to apply to a Living Learning Community.

LLCs are specific floors or buildings in which students can enhance their residential experience with a shared interest or background, often attending regular events and meals to connect with other students and faculty members. In order to live in an LLC, students must complete a short application process and commit to being active members of the community if accepted.

While some LLCs are only open to upperclassmen, many are open to freshmen, and there are even LLCs exclusive to freshmen.

Among the many different kinds of LLCs are those based around a common identity, such as race and ethnicity or gender and sexuality.

This week, the Mirror interviewed three students to learn about their experiences in these kinds of LLCs. Gustavo de Almeida ’20 lived in Triangle House, a residence hall dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community, during his freshman year, and the Italian language program in the Global Village during his sophomore year. He said that, identifying as both a gay person of color and an international student from Brazil, he was anxious about fitting in and meeting new friends in college. Triangle House seemed like an opportunity to meet people with some similar identities.

“The idea that I was going to live in a space that would provide me with a community right off the bat was very exciting to me,” de Almeida said.

De Almeida described his feelings of nervousness during the beginning of his freshman fall — some of which was due to the typical anxiety around starting college, some to the fact that many students at Dartmouth are from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Thankfully, he got along well with his freshman year roommate, and with time he was able to make friends both within Triangle House and with other members of his class elsewhere.

When asked about the differences he perceived between Triangle House and the rest of campus as a

whole, de Almeida said that while he hasn’t personally felt discrimination at Dartmouth because of his identity, he has friends who have, and overall Dartmouth feels very heteronormative to him. At Triangle House, he has felt more at ease expressing himself freely without feeling pressure to act in a masculine way.

“At Triangle House, I would feel more comfortable just being me and polishing my nails if I wanted to,” de Almeida said. “Or I’d find people who would dress similarly to the way I like dressing, or talk about things that I did, or got the same references.”

After his freshman year, de Almeida studied abroad in Rome on the Italian Language Study Abroad during his sophomore fall, and after coming back, he chose to live in the Italian language program instead of Triangle House to continue practicing his Italian and try something new. He missed certain aspects of Triangle House, which he partially blamed on the different housing structures: Triangle House is a standalone house, while during his sophomore year, the Italian Language Program occupied two of the River Apartments in Maxwell.

Because of this, the Italian Language Program felt less like a shared living space.

This term, de Almeida is not living in an LLC at all. He attributed this to his busy schedule and inability to dedicate as much time as he would like to such a community.

“I know that there are some people that go [live in an LLC] just because it’s a nice place to live, but I like devoting time,” de Almeida said.

“I know it’s a time commitment to live in an LLC.” Kenya Pescascio ’20, like de Almeida, has also lived in multiple LLCs: during her freshman year she lived on the Thriving Through Transitions floor in McLaughlin Cluster, which is geared toward first-year students interested in taking advantage of different campus resources during their transition to college. Her sophomore year, she lived in the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean House, and she recently began to live on the Gender Equity Program Floor this term.

Pescascio didn’t know about the LLCs until she opened the housing application, and as a firstgeneration, low-income college student, she thought Thriving Through Transitions floor would be an important community as she ventured into, in her own words, “uncharted territory.” Fortunately, her prediction was correct, and she describes many of her freshman floormates as some of her best friends even today.

“A lot of people in [Thriving Through Transitions] looked like me,” Pescascio said. “They came from similar backgrounds, so I felt like they would most understand where I was coming from. If I had any problems my freshman year, it would be very easy to talk to them.”

Thriving Through Transitions is a freshman-only LLC. In fact, Pescascio and some of her floormates tried to create a sophomore-year version of the LLC through the Design Your Own LLC program, but when the proposal was denied, she had to find another housing option.

During her freshman year, Pescascio became involved with the Coalition for Immigration Reform, Equality and DREAMers, commonly shorted to CoFIRED, and made many friends in the LALAC house. For her, that made the LALAC house a clear choice for sophomore year housing.

One difference that Pescascio noted between Thriving Through Transitions and the LALAC house is that, because the LALAC house is a standalone building, it has live-in faculty advisors in addition to an undergraduate advisor. She appreciated this fact, saying that seeing adults doing “adult-y things” helped contribute to a sense of feeling at home.

Unfortunately, Pescascio’s application to live in the LALAC house this term wasn’t accepted — she thinks the Class of 2021 might have been given priority in the application process — though she is optimistic about living on the Gender Equity Program Floor this term. She attended her first floor meeting and left with a good first impression, so she hopes to take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about different gender equity issues. At the same time, she remains closely involved with CoFIRED and her friends in the LALAC house, briefly mentioning that the group is currently working toward getting a dean for undocumented students.

All in all, Pescascio is very grateful

for her experience living in LLCs. These spaces are where she has been able to find community and discuss issues at Dartmouth, such as elitism, with her friends in a genuine way that isn’t always possible elsewhere on campus. She emphasized one advantage of LLCs being the natural, seemingly effortless way in which they can create strong bonds between residents.

“Dartmouth is a very fast-paced place, and you don’t always have time to actively build a community,” Pescascio said. “I think living in an LLC is a good way to have that community there that happens organically, without having to put in too much work.”

Darshina Yazzie ’19, unlike de Almeida and Pescascio, has only experienced one LLC, the Native American House, where she has lived since her sophomore year. She said that, because she’s been living at the Native American House for such a long time, she’s been able to see the progress that the community has made over the years toward being a more inclusive, welcoming space.

Yazzie, who is a part of the Navajo tribe, lived on a substancefree floor in the McLaughlin Cluster during her freshman year. At the time, freshmen were unable to live in the NAH — although, as of this past year, this policy has changed.

Even though Yazzie did not live in the Native American House her freshman year, she still spent a great deal of time there with her friends.

“I came here, and I knew a lot of people in the NAD House because I went to school with them already, either in summer programs or in high school,” Yazzie said. “For my whole freshman year I studied here, pretty much slept here sometimes, cooked here.”

Because of her friends already in the house and the fact that the house is also substance-free, Yazzie felt very safe there, and her choice to live there starting her sophomore year was obvious. She described the

many aspects of the house that she greatly appreciates, such as the nice rooms — hers this term has its own full bathroom — and the weekly Sunday dinners, which remind her of eating with her family back in Arizona.

Yazzie admitted that the house has had and still has some issues, which its residents are actively working to address. For example, during her freshman year, she found the house dominated by certain groups. The number of upperclassmen could sometimes make the house feel unwelcoming to freshmen, and members of certain tribes would sometimes make members of other tribes uncomfortable.

Through the recent change to allow freshmen to live in the NAH, Yazzie feels that the house now features a much better balance between the class years. While certain issues, like the over-prevalence of women and lack of men in the house, haven’t changed too much since her freshman year, overall she feels that the house is a much more welcoming place for all.

Yazzie said she would love for more people to come to the NAH. She admitted that some students on campus don’t even know that the NAH exists, and she reiterated that the house strives to be inclusive for everyone, even students who don’t identify as Native American.

De Almeida, Pescascio and Yazzie all expressed the value and positive impact that these identity-based LLCs have had on their Dartmouth experiences, and all three also encouraged other students, especially incoming students, to consider the LLCs when looking at housing. While it’s clear that these communities and friendships are not strictly tied to the LLC, nor do they end once someone moves out, the residential experience is undoubtedly important. “[The LLCs] are the places where we get to find each other,” de Almeida said. “The physical space is very important.”

How To Be A Better Person

4// MIRROR

STORY So you come into freshman year, and you think, “New Dartmouth, new me.” You stroll down the intersecting paths of the Green that are disorganized and rocky, unlike the future you have planned for yourself over the next four years. This plan happens to include a full-time commitment to the triathlon team, auditioning for the Sing Dynasty, weekly Dartmouth Outing Club trips and, of course, a four-course term.

Yeah, so that could fall apart really soon. And no, this wasn’t me.

Most plans that we make fall apart, especially the futures we plan for ourselves at Dartmouth. And that’s just part of the process of becoming something entirely new.

Our plans can be about anything: habits we want to attain, careers we want to hold, professors we want to befriend, meals we want to make, Netflix abstinences we want to preserve. However, it’s worth

noting that it’s not a problem if things fall apart. It’s similar to a phoenix, where out of the ashes, a new set of hopes arise.

If we think about change in terms of biology, evolution comes from generations of changes.

Something that wouldn’t have been conceived of at one point develops due to the conditions that the environment sets before the species.

In our personal development, we have the ability to choose what direction we want to change in.

Change happens slowly. We don’t see change in ourselves over the course of a night, because if that were the case, it would be easy.

But anyone can start with making small changes, little tweaks that over time can contribute to development. And if you take a second to look at it, you might find that these seeds of habit can address some of this culture’s biggest flaws. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Get a meal. No, but really. The whole point of getting meals with people is to escape the confines of your mindset and refresh yourself. Think about it this way: Dartmouth is like an enormous apartment complex, and the only way to get down is to take the stairs. You can either take flight after flight, miserable in the boring blandness of the fire escape stairway, or you can take a few detours on the floors. Knock on a few doors, see how other people are living. What did they hate about class? What did they like about the evening? How did their last game of pong go? Sometimes the best way to grow is to know what other directions there are to grow in, and you can only find out by chatting with someone. (Trick: When you ask people for a meal, stick in a firm date.)

By Me

At Dartmouth, they make you read ev still expecting you to pick out every sig corner of virtually hating the English la of letters by the time you hit week 10. B You just might need to get a bit creative book with lots of diologue a shot. If you or even an autobiography that gets you another way of communicating with peo means just being aware that other peo Maybe this means a few pages before b a chapter of an audiobook when you w in your bag so when you’re waiting the of checking Taylor Swift’s Instagram. T and maintaining a habit of reading du (Trick: How to select a book—Go to a on a random floor in the stacks. Turn a more for good luck, pick a direction, w

Routines in college are fantastic. They allow your body to adjust to a way of handling itself.

And familiarity can be great, especially if you’re a freshman and just want to become more accustomed to campus. But eating at Collis every meal limits the full appreciation of the Dartmouth Dining Services.

Maybe try the Courtyard Café today, or walk down memory lane and visit your second freshman home; Novack Café (was that just me?). An occasional DDS shakeup just might give you reason to re-evaluate how you eat in a certain place. (Trick: Make a personal menu for yourself at every DDS location of the best go to foods. It makes each location special to you and gives you something to show off if you take someone there).

... and Dartmouth Student

MIRROR //5

elanie Prakash

verything under the sun as fast as you can while gnificant little detail. You are pushed into the anguage and every single possible combination But it’s still possible to try and enjoy reading. e with what you’re reading. For example, give a u read deep and heavy classics, try nonfiction, ur inside the life of someone real. Books are ople, and becoming a better person sometimes ople view the world differently than you do. bed even when all you want to do is crash, or work out. Maybe this means slipping a novel e KAF line, you have another option instead The habit of choosing books you like to read uring a term can help you set it as a practice. a random section of the bookstore or land up around the number of years you are and one walk three steps forward and touch a book).

Did I eat today? Did I actually sleep enough or do I need to stop homework to get an extra hour of sleep? Was I actually comfortable when my friend talked over my idea during class? Do I recognize that I’m doing my best and am only pushing myself because I want to? Did I recognize that I got a good grade because I worked hard? Am I feeling good about myself ? I the answer isn’t what you think it should be, that’s okay. The first step is just figuring out what’s wrong. (Tip: Tell yourself three things you like about yourself every night before you go to bed. And not flimsy things like, “I had a good day.” Think honestly and earnestly. Chances are something is there.)

So I’m not necessarily advocating a mirror pep talk, although if that works for you, more power your way. But everyone understands themselves in a certain way; therefore, there are some issues only you know how to address for yourself. Mental health thankfully starting to rise to prominence as an important part of our health. It just so happens that Dartmouth has the potential to be a toxic wasteland of stress, insecurity, sleep deprivation and even breakdowns. It comes from the quarter system, it comes from getting kicked out of adolescence and into adulthood, it comes from facing life with a version of who we are that we simply don’t know yet. Don’t wait for your car to crash when you can just glance at your speedometer and slow down. There’s this strange value at Dartmouth of enjoying the process of self torment, of dragging yourself along the term until you’re smashed, scraped and sometimes unrecognizable. The hope is to achieve results that are extraordinary. To this, I would respond that even though there are only 12 terms, there’s a whole lot of life, and good habits aren’t a gift you get the day after graduation.

No, I’m not saying to skip your organic chemistry lab report because The Dartmouth told you that to become a better person, you should say no to something you don’t want to do. The point is that as Dartmouth students, the question of motivation is always a muddled one. Are you volunteering because you believe in the cause or because you want a bonus point on your resume?

Are you grinding through your homework because you want to love this class through the pain or because you think if you drop it now, you’ll be a failure?

Are you going on a date with someone because you’re actually interested in them or because you want a night of attention? Are you in a club because you love spending tons of time in it or because if you quit to make more time to do what you love, you won’t feel as busy as everyone else? I’m not saying to say no to everything you don’t want to do. Start with some things. Always saying yes erodes your right to choose what you want in your life. Take a chance and say no. (Trick: Instead of thinking of saying no, sometimes you need to think of it as saying yes to a better possible future.)

TL,DR: One part of the concept of evolution is that as new species learn to thrive, entire populations will often die out via natural selection. It sometimes could just take trying something new, seeing if it works or even just where it takes you. It doesn’t have to be radical, like going on a shopping spree or buying a dog. The thing about evolution is that there is never an end product; it comes about with miniscule changes over large stretches of time that are intended to adjust a species to the conditions of a changing environment. Maybe the key is to remember that becoming a better Dartmouth student doesn’t mean trying to reach some vague definition of doing everything possible — maybe it isn’t to shoot the moon every time. The only thing any of us really want is to be a little bit better than we were yesterday.

AMANDA ZHOU/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

6 //MIR ROR

The Evolution of a Dartmouth Student STORY

By Michaela Artavia-High

Dartmouth is home to a thriving and the overwhelming schedule of ecosystem with a variety of flora Dartmouth’s environment. and fauna that fill its environment, To combat these vulnerabilities, ranging from friendly canines freshmen display several social to historic pines. Among this behaviors unique to this stage of biodiversity, there is one animal their life cycle. Most notably, they will of chief interest to the modern travel in groups of other freshmen, zoologist: the Dartmouth student. sticking close together. Biologists The Dartmouth student is a peculiar have many theories to explain species with a distinct four-part this behavior, the most popular of metamorphosis. While the full life which is that they group together cycle of the Dartmouth student can for warmth. Other hypotheses take a variable amount of time, each include that this group movement stage comes with its own specialized prevents freshmen from getting lost skills and behaviors, marking the or that it provides them with some slow transition necessary social of a Dartmouth “The final months of interaction. student into an scientists the sophomore stage Some adult alumnus. even believe The first stage are almost always that it serves as of this life cycle spent in intense heat, a p re e m p t i ve is the freshman defense against stage. Much like as they remain on the large a t a d p o l e o r Dartmouth’s campus predators of larva, this stage surrounding throughtout summer the i s c o n s i d e re d environment — the infancy of to prepare for their such as cars and the Dartmouth advancement into the squirrels — which student. The they perceive as freshman begins next part of their life a threat in this t h e i r s t r a n g e cycle.” fragile state. new existence Freshmen live in a state of primarily on incubation scientists refer to as campus, although as they enter “orientation.” During this period, their second and third term, more they learn the basics of survival, such and more will venture outside as finding food, navigating campus their natural habitat, exploring and, most critically, connecting to beyond the boundaries of their the WiFi. This is the most delicate campus home. Freshmen also display part of the Dartmouth student’s peculiar eating habits in comparison life cycle, when they are most to other students, with a marked vulnerable to the harsh climate preference for eating food at the

SUNNY TANG/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Class of 1953 Commons. As they student with what scientists term thinking senior. Often this is indicated mature, their patterns start to take “job marketability.” Once the by research into taxes or sudden after their older counterparts, and student has fully matured, they worries about utility bills. They they begin to eat more at Collis Café will rely on these skills to provide may take up more responsibility and and the Courtyard Café. Following themselves food and shelter outside leadership roles as they continue to three successive terms as freshmen, the Dartmouth campus. through the last part of this third the Dartmouth student will spend T he final months of the year. As the junior portion comes a summer engaged in little to no sophomore stage are almost always to a close, the students prepare for activity, storing energy for their spent in intense heat, as they the fourth and final stage. transformation into the sophomore. remain on Dartmouth’s campus This last part of the student life The sophomore is the second throughout summer to prepare for cycle is the senior, the culmination of stage of the Dartmouth student’s life their advancement into the next years of growth. During this stage, cycle. By this stage, they usually have part of their life cycle. During these there is an almost single-minded formed overlapping social networks, hot summer months, their focus focus on two specific behaviors. The which will prove vital to their survival will shift from major specialization first is a “job,” an object of desire for as the challenges of their life cycle to internship and job searches, most seniors. To procure one, they wear on. They spend a great deal indicating their arrival into the third will spend a great deal of their time of time deepening these social stage of the Dartmouth student life writing applications and sending bonds through elaborate rituals cycle. emails. This is the hunt for which where they share This next stage, they have prepared all this time. food and drink. the junior, marks They will utilize not only the skills Many of these “The junior the first stage of the they have developed, but also the s o p h o m o r e s shows increasing “upperclassmen” social networks that they have built in choose to enter portion of student pursuit of their elusive prey. For some independence into closely life. Here, students students, this job is actually further bonded social through these will focus on honing education. Many will apply to “grad n e t w o r k s endeavors, and skills that they have school” in hopes of gaining further referred to laid the foundation skills and honing their abilities. a s “ G r e e k often becomes more for in previous The second fixation is colloquially H o u s e s , ” solidarity in this stages. The junior called “graduation,” which serves wherein the is often preoccupied as a catch all term referring to the stage of life.” p a r t i c i p at i n g with finding new intense academic responsibilities members display opportunities for of this cohort of students. They a sibling-like them to grow, often are obligated to finish a number of relationship within the microcosm termed “gaining experience.” In this required courses before the end of of their network. year, many students will leave the their time as seniors, the completion S o p h o m o re s a l s o d i s p l ay Dartmouth campus for extended of which serves as a signal of their heightened levels of nocturnal periods of time, joining other peak maturation. In a number activity. Where the Dartmouth communities through “jobs” and of cases, these requirements are freshmen may hesitate to venture “internships.” supplemented further by projects out after dark, or go out only T h e of their own in groups, the sophomore has junior shows undertaking. Due “Due to the rigor reached a certain level of security i n c r e a s i n g to the rigor of with the nightlife of Dartmouth’s independence of their classes and their classes and campus. They can often be seen in through these the intensity of their the intensity of designated socializing areas called endeavors, and their pursuits, “basements,” where they engage in often becomes pursuits, seniors are seniors are often erratic movements timed to music, more solitary often some of the some of the most or demonstrate their skill in a species in this stage active students, most active students, specific game called “pong.” While of life. While with an almost this nocturnal behavior is present their social with an almost equal equal amount throughout all four stages of the networks are amount of diurnal and of diurnal Dartmouth student’s life cycle, still strong, and noctur nal sophomore year seems to be where they no longer nocturnal activity.” a c t i v i t y. T h ey it emerges as a key tenet of their r e l y u p o n a re p re p a r i n g behavioral patterns. others for basic for their final W h i l e s o p h o m o r e s , t h e survival as an early freshman might, metamorphosis, and using every Dartmouth student will begin to but rather to enhance and support moment to do so. specialize, with each individual themselves through the difficulties At the end of this stage, the choosing to expand upon specific of a rigorous environment. Juniors student, having completed their life skills. This specialization will usually also show an increased interest in cycle, participates in one last, notably occur in either winter or spring, mentorship: while many students large social event, akin to a mass following a great deal of deliberation begin to form caring relationships metamorphosis. Several hundred on the part of the student. Many with younger students as early as seniors will gather together, and, sophomores will seek the advice the late freshmen stage, the behavior through a ceremony, become adult of older members of the species, becomes most prominent in students alumni. They will bid each other called upperclassmen, in addition to as they reach the upperclassmen farewell, and indulge in several receiving guidance from designated stage of life. celebratory behaviors seen in all caretakers, or “faculty advisors.”

The junior will begin to show species of students, such as throwing While there are certainly popular increased interest in concepts caps. Following this final act, they choices, each individual’s skill set likes “the future” and “stability,” will disperse from the Dartmouth is likely to be deeply personal and and will demonstrate a growing campus and begin the rest of their unique. These developments serve maturity, indicating their impending lives as fully matured Dartmouth to arm the maturing Dartmouth transformation into the forward- students.

MIRROR //7

Evolution of Academic Departments STORY

By Eliza Jane Schaeffer

From the outside, academic the time — succeeded in convincing de partments may seem like Dartmouth’s athletic council to ban established, unshakable institutions. the decades-old tradition of having a It is easy to take them for granted, male cheerleader-mascot dressed as a to view them as givens. But behind Native American at football games, the clear-cut acronyms, they are arguing that it was both insulting constantly evolving. and ironic given the College’s In creating a department, a original mission of educating Native college or university effectively Americans. endorses a field of study. Academia In 1974, the Board of Trustees decides what knowledge is worthy officially declared the Native of exploration and what skills the American mascot to be “inconsistent next wave of workers will possess, all with present institutional and in the context of an ever-changing academic objectives of the College world and a half-formed future. in advancing Native American Every body of higher education education,” a likely reference to the has a different collection of course newly-minted NAS program. offerings, and those differences reflect Initially, students pursuing Native behind-the-scenes — and oftentimes American Studies could only modify political — conversations held by the majors in other departments or faculty and the administration. pursue coursework “certificates,” Take, for example, the recent and the department itself was only elimination of the Asian and Middle made permanent after eight years.

Eastern studies department and the The example of NAS illustrates department of Asian and Middle the paradox inherent to creating or Eastern language and literatures, changing academic departments. and the subsequent creation of the Institutions of higher education, Middle Eastern studies program though they are inherently and the Asian societies, cultures and bureaucratic and slow-moving, must languages program. This change be responsive to changing technology could be construed as a move away and changing cultural norms. from a more reductionist approach The creation and continued to studying Eastern cultures, or as a evolution of the computer science response to current political realities department further exemplifies in the international arena. this phenomenon. According to It would not be the first time that computer science professor Thomas changing political norms influenced Cormen, though computer science academic became a welldepartments “If you look historically defined academic at Dartmouth. at computer science, field in the late The College’s 1950s, Dartmouth 4 0 - ye a r - o l d you’ll see that in some did not employ a p r o g r a m places it comes out of computer scientist in Native until 1972 and did A m e r i c a n math departments. not graduate a s t u d i e s i s In other places, it computer science renowned until 1979. came out of electronic major amongst its This lag in I v y - L e a g u e engineering.” institutionalized peer s. NA S p r o g r a m m i n g, was formed in h o w e v e r, d i d 1972 under the -THOMAS CORMEN, not prevent the leadership of COMPUTER SCIENCE College from then-College involving students PROFESSOR president in the burgeoning John Kemeny. field of computer Its creation science on a more was part of a ad-hoc basis. “In broader effort to diversify the College the early 1960s, [Dartmouth] actually and to renew its commitment to its had a lot of undergraduates doing original mission of “educat[ing] and serious programming,” Cormen instruct[ing] ... Youth of the Indian said. “We didn’t really offer that Tribes in the Land … and also of many classes, but what we did do English Youth and any others.” was get people involved in the real The move came in the midst of stuff. We had students writing the intense pressure from Dartmouth systems software.” students and other advocates to end In fact, BASIC — a streamlined the College’s use of a caricaturized coding language — and the Native American as its mascot, Dartmouth Time Sharing System and it served as a public, almost — which allows computers to symbolic, signal of the College’s run multiple jobs at a time—were values and priorities. In 1968, a both developed at Dartmouth in group of four Native American the early 1960s. Students were students — the only four enrolled at heavily involved with both projects,

according to Cormen.

Around this time, Dartmouth began offering two computing courses, both of which were housed in the mathematics department. In 1984, the math department was rebranded as the “department of mathematics and computer science,” and computer science courses were officially noted as such in the Office of the Registrar catalog, Cormen said. He added that these changes served as a formal recognition that computer science was a worthy academic pursuit in its own right.

New academic departments spawn from existing departments more often than they emerge from nothingness, as did the Native American studies department. This is particularly true of the field of computer science.

“If you look historically at computer science, you’ll see that in some places it comes out of math departments. In other places, it came out of electronic engineering,” Cormen explained.

In some places—such as Cormen’s alma-mater the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—computer science still exists as a subunit of a larger department. At Dartmouth, however, a 1993 programmatic external review recommended that the math and computer science department split. In 1994, it did.

It has since grown tremendously, though this growth has not been seamless. The inaugural year of the department, its chair Donald Johnson died unexpectedly of a heart attack, leaving a leadership vacuum that forced “a lot of responsibility on untenured faculty,” Cormen said, describing the department’s early years as “a pretty rough go.” He also recognized the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, and subsequent dot-com crash in 2000, as challenges for the young department.

Now, however, computer science is thriving at Dartmouth. According to Cormen, last year the department graduated 100 majors. Forty-one computer science courses are being offered this fall. And, once a subdiscipline itself, the computer science department has expanded to the point that it now houses its own specialty branch: digital arts.

The digital arts minor program was founded in 2007 by computer science research associate professor Lorie Loeb, who now co-directs the program. The minor explores the intersection between technology and the arts, with a “firm foundation in aesthetics,” Loeb said.

At the time, Loeb was teaching computer animation classes. She noted strong student demand for “3D-modeling and animation courses,” and when another professor

ELIZA JANE SCHAEFFER/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Native American Studies pamphlets from the program’s first decade.

interested in graphics joined the computer science department in 2006, she felt she had enough student and faculty interest to defend her pitch for a new program of study.

She faced resistance from faculty members worried about “how this might impact their enrollments or their program,” she said. There was also some concern that a digital arts minor would be too pre-professional and at-odds with Dartmouth’s liberal arts tradition. According to Cormen, computer science faculty addressed this concern by stressing the wouldbe department’s commitment to the intellectual basis of computer science, beyond its practical applications in the workforce.

Since its inception, the digital arts program has thrived, attracting more students and more faculty. It now offers a masters degree, and Loeb hopes that in the future it will work with other departments to form a major program. She feels that the establishment of the minor was integral to the program’s development because it created a cohort of students pursuing a common academic interest, effectively building comradery and collaboration.

“We want there to be a community amongst students who have gone through the program, that they have a certain set of skills and a culminating experience to pull it all together,” she said.

The minor also “allows [students] to take the courses and get credit for it” on their resumes, she added. She believes this incentive directly resulted in increased student interest.

Programs can further benefit from having their own departments, said Cormen, who joined Dartmouth’s computer science faculty shortly

before the program moved to a separate department.

“Since we’ve become a separate department, we’ve never had a tenure case fail,” he said, referring to the process through which faculty members in a given department petition for tenure. “Before we became a separate department from math, we hardly ever had a tenure case succeed … There were only two.”

He attributes this discrepancy to the fact that faculty members’ tenure cases are now reviewed by fellow computer scientists who truly understand the field. For similar reasons, he has found curricular reviews and adjustments to be simpler and more effective postswitch.

The department’s impending move to the soon-to-be expanded facilities of the Thayer School of Engineering is another example of the perks which come with being an independent department: control over the physical space in which faculty members reside.

“We’re really excited about having a more collaborative physical layout,” Cormen said.

The new space’s proximity to Thayer and the Tuck School of Business will also facilitate interdepartment collaboration, according to Cormen. There is already significant overlap between the fields of computer science, business and engineering, and Cor men hopes the move will facilitate further conversations.

And who knows, perhaps a new digital arts department — nestled in the intersection of arts, computer science and entrepreneurship — will be the next unfamiliar academic acronym to show up in our newsfeeds.

8// MIRROR

Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest PHOTO

By: Natalie Damero