Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth (Dartmouth Engineering) is the engineering school of Dartmouth College, an Ivy League research university, located in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Located in a three-building complex along the Connecticut River on Dartmouth's campus, Dartmouth Engineering offers undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in engineering sciences, and has partnerships with other liberal arts colleges throughout the US to offer dual degrees. The school was established in 1867 with funds from Dartmouth alumnus Sylvanus Thayer, also known for his work in establishing the engineering curriculum at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
In 2016, Dartmouth Engineering became one of the first comprehensive, national research university in the US, where more than 50 percent of the graduating class to earn undergraduate engineering degrees were women.
History
Thayer School of Engineering is named for Colonel and Brevet Brigadier Sylvanus Thayer, a Dartmouth College alumnus from the Class of 1807, who had developed an extensive engineering curriculum West Point's United States Military Academy unlike any other in the United States at the time and was known as the "Father of West Point" for his 16-year superintendency and leadership at the academy. In 1867, after 30 years of professional service in the Army Corps of Engineers, Thayer endowed Dartmouth with $40,000 (and increased the gift to $70,000 by 1871) for the establishment of a civilian school of engineering. Initially called the Thayer School of Civil Engineering, the school opened in 1871 with three students and with young lieutenant named Robert Fletcher as its first dean and lone faculty. The curriculum borrowed heavily from the model that Thayer had developed at West Point—a two-year program that culminates in a degree in civil engineering (CE). Under Fletcher, the school's enrollment, endowment, faculty and student population, and facilities grew markedly throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Under the administration of Frank Warren Garran (dean of the School from 1933 to 1945), Thayer experienced extensive expansion and modernization. Thayer's curriculum expanded to incorporate mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, as well as a dual business/engineering administration degree from the Tuck School of Business. Garran also oversaw the establishment of Cummings Hall, the Thayer School's first dedicated physical plant, and the institution of the school's first major research program, which was in radiophysics. Dean William P. Kimball (1945–61) continued the school's growing emphasis on research and established the first master's degrees for students wishing to earn more than a Bachelor of Engineering.
In 1961, Myron Tribus became dean of the School, placing a heavy emphasis on the practical, problem-solving aspects of engineering as well as the traditional, theoretical base of the discipline. Tribus developed an integrated curriculum and introduced design courses to the school to provide Thayer students with real-life experience in creative applications of engineering. Under Tribus, the Thayer School offered its first doctorates in engineering.
From the 1970s to the first decade of the 21st century, the Thayer School saw expansion into new fields such as nanotechnology and biochemical engineering, as well as collaboration with such nearby institutions as Dartmouth Medical School, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. In the early first decade of the 21st century, the core curriculum for undergraduates was revamped under Dean Lewis Duncan (1998–2004), making the school's offerings more accessible to non-major Dartmouth students. The MacLean Engineering Sciences Center (ESC), completed in 2006, was a $21 million project to expand the school's classrooms and research centers.
Campus
The Thayer School is located on the campus of Dartmouth College, which is situated in the rural, Upper Valley New England town of Hanover, New Hampshire. The campus of the Thayer School sits in a complex on the west side Dartmouth's campus near the Connecticut River. When classes first began in 1871, Sylvanus Thayer's endowment had not provided for a physical plant. Consequently, the school was an itinerant institution for many years, occupying parts of various College buildings and, at one point, a former structure of the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts.