Photo Tour of Dartmouth College

01
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Baker Library and Tower

Baker Library and Tower at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Dartmouth College is one of the top universities in the United States. Dartmouth is one of the eight members of the elite Ivy League along with Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. With only about 4,000 undergraduates, Dartmouth College is the smallest of the Ivy League schools. The atmosphere is more like a liberal arts college than many of the larger urban universities. In the 2011 U.S. News & World Report, Dartmouth ranked #9 among all doctoral degree granting institutions in the country.

To learn about Dartmouth's acceptance rate, standardized test scores, costs, and financial aid, be sure to read the Dartmouth College admissions profile with information about Dartmouth GPA, SAT score and ACT score data.

The first stop on my Dartmouth College photo tour is the Baker Library and Tower. Sitting on the north edge of the campus's central Green, the Baker Library Bell Tower is one of the college's iconic buildings. The tower opens for tours during special occasions, and the 16 bells ring out the hour and play songs three times a day. The bells are computer controlled.

The Baker Memorial Library first opened in 1928, and early in the 21st century, the structure underwent a major expansion and renovation thanks to a large gift from John Berry, a Dartmouth graduate. The new Baker-Berry Library complex features a media center, extensive computing facilities, classrooms, and a café. The library has a capacity of two million volumes. Baker-Berry is the largest of Dartmouth's seven main libraries.

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Dartmouth Hall

Dartmouth Hall at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Dartmouth Hall is perhaps the most recognizable and distinctive of all of Dartmouth's buildings. The white colonial structure was first built in 1784 but burned at the beginning of the 20th century. The rebuilt hall is now home to several of Dartmouth's language programs. The building has a prominent location on the east side of the Green.

Dartmouth College, like all top colleges and universities, requires all students to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language before they can graduate. Every student must complete at least three language courses, participate in a language study abroad program, or place out of the courses through an entrance examination.

Dartmouth offers a wide range of language courses, and in the 2008–09 academic year, 65 students earned bachelor's degrees in foreign languages and literature.

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Tuck Hall the Tuck School of Business

Tuck Hall at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Tuck Hall is the central administrative building for Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business. The Tuck School occupies a building complex on the west side of campus adjacent to the Thayer School of Engineering.

The Tuck School of Business is focused primarily on graduate study, and in 2008-9 about 250 students earned their MBAs from the school. The Tuck School does offer a few business courses for undergraduates, and in related areas of study, Economics is Dartmouth's most popular undergraduate major.

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The Steele Building

The Steele Building at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

The name of the "Steele Chemistry Building" is misleading, for Dartmouth's Department of Chemistry is now located in the Burke Laboratory building.

Built in the early 1920s, the Steele Building today houses Dartmouth College's Department of Earth Science and the Environmental Studies Program. The Steele Building is part of the complex of buildings that make up the Sherman Fairchild Physical Sciences Center. To graduate, all Dartmouth students must complete at least two courses in the Natural Sciences including one field or laboratory course.

In 2008-9, sixteen students graduated from Dartmouth with degrees in Earth Science, a similar number in Geography and twenty-four students earned bachelor's degrees in Environmental Studies. None of the other Ivy League schools offers a Geography major. Environmental Studies is an interdisciplinary major in which students take courses in economics and politics as well as several of the natural sciences.

05
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Wilder Hall

Wilder Hall at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Wilder Hall is another of the buildings in the Sherman Fairchild Physical Sciences Center. The Shattock Observatory is conveniently situated behind the building.

Physics and Astronomy is one of the smaller majors at Dartmouth, so undergraduate students can expect small classes and lots of personal attention at the upper level. In 2008-9, about a dozen students earned bachelor's degrees in Physics and Astronomy.

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Webster Hall

Webster Hall at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Built early in the 20th century, Webster Hall is another of the attractive and historic buildings lining the central Green. The hall's use has changed greatly over the years. Webster was originally an auditorium and concert hall, and later the building became home to Hanover's Nugget Theater.

In the 1990s the building underwent a major transformation and now is home to the Rauner Special Collections Library. This doesn't mean that you need to be researching rare and antiquated manuscripts to use the library. Rauner Library is one of the favorite study locations on campus thanks to its impressive reading room and large windows.

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Burke Laboratory

Burke Laboratory at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Built in the early 1990s, Burke Laboratory is part of the Sherman Fairchild Physical Sciences Center. Burke is home to the Department of Chemistry's labs and offices.

Dartmouth College has bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. programs in chemistry. While chemistry is one of the most popular majors in the natural sciences, the program is still small. Undergraduate chemistry majors will be able to have small classes and work closely with the faculty and graduate students. Many undergraduate research opportunities are available.

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Shattuck Observatory

Shattuck Observatory at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

This building is so darn cute. Built in 1854, the Shattock Observatory is the oldest science building on the Dartmouth campus. The observatory sits on the hill behind Wilder Hall, home to the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

The observatory is home to a ​134-year-old, 9.5-inch refractor telescope, and on occasion, the observatory is opened to the public for observations. A nearby building is open regularly for public astronomical observing.

Serious researchers at Dartmouth have access to the 11-meter Southern African Large Telescope and the MDM Observatory in Arizona.

To learn more, check out the Dartmouth website where you'll find a history of the Shaddock Observatory.

09
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Raether Hall

Raether Hall at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

When I took these photos in the summer of 2010, I was surprised to come across this impressive building. I had just picked up a campus map from the Dartmouth admissions office, and Raether had clearly not yet been completed when the maps were printed. The building was unveiled at the very end of 2008.

Raether Hall is one of three new halls built for the Tuck School of Business. Even if you never take a business course, be sure to visit the McLaughlin Atrium in Raether. The huge space has floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the Connecticut ​River and a massive granite hearth.

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Wilson Hall

Wilson Hall at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

This distinctive building is Wilson Hall, a late Victorian structure that functioned as the college's first library building. The library soon outgrew Wilson, and the hall became the home to the Department of Anthropology and Dartmouth's museum.

Today, Wilson Hall is home to the Department of Film and Media Studies. Students majoring in Film and Media Studies take a wide range of courses in theory, history, criticism, and production. All students in the major are required to complete a "Culminating Experience," a major project that the student develops in consultation with his or her academic advisor.

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Raven House at the Department of Education

Raven House at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Raven House was built around the end of World War II as a place for patients from a nearby hospital to recover. Dartmouth purchased the property in the 1980s, and today Raven House is home to the Department of Education.

Dartmouth College has no education major, but students can minor in education and earn teacher certification. The department has an MBE (Mind, Brain, and Education) approach to education. Students can earn certification to become elementary school teachers, or to teach middle and high school biology, chemistry, earth science, English, French, general science, math, physics, social studies or Spanish.

12
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Kemeny Hall and Haldeman Center

Kemeny Hall and Haldeman Center at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Kemeny Hall and the Haldeman Center are both products of Dartmouth's recent building and expansion. The buildings were completed in 2006 at a cost of $27 million.

Kemeny Hall is home to Dartmouth's Department of Mathematics. The building features faculty and staff offices, graduate student offices, smart classrooms, and math laboratories. The college has bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs in mathematics. In the 2008-9 academic year, 28 students earned their bachelor's degrees in mathematics, and a minor in mathematics is also an option. For the nerds out there (like me), be sure to look for the Fibonacci progression in the brick exterior of the building.

The Haldeman Center is home to three units: the Dickey Center for International Understanding, the Ethics Institute, and the Leslie Center for the Humanities.

The combined buildings were constructed with sustainable design and earned U.S. Green Building Council LEED Silver certification.

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Silsby Hall

Silsby Hall at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

Silsby Hall houses a range of departments at Dartmouth, most in the social sciences: Anthropology, Government, Mathematics and Social Sciences, Sociology, and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies.

Government is one of Dartmouth's most popular majors. In the 2008-9 academic year, 111 students earned bachelor's degrees in Government. Sociology and Anthropology both had a couple dozen graduates.

In general, Dartmouth's programs in the social sciences are the most popular, and about one-third of all students major in a field in the social sciences.

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The Thayer School

The Thayer School at Dartmouth College

Allen Grove

The Thayer School, Dartmouth's school of engineering, graduates about 50 bachelor's degree students a year. The master's program is about twice that size.

Dartmouth College is not known for engineering, and places like Stanford and Cornell clearly have much more robust and specialized programs. That said, Dartmouth takes pride in the features that distinguish its school of engineering from other universities. Dartmouth engineering is housed within the liberal arts, so Dartmouth engineers graduate with a broad education and strong communication skills. Students can choose from a Bachelor of Arts program or a more professional Bachelor of Engineering program. Whichever path students take, they are assured an engineering curriculum defined by close interaction with the faculty.

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Grove, Allen. "Photo Tour of Dartmouth College." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/dartmouth-college-photo-tour-788543. Grove, Allen. (2023, April 5). Photo Tour of Dartmouth College. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/dartmouth-college-photo-tour-788543 Grove, Allen. "Photo Tour of Dartmouth College." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/dartmouth-college-photo-tour-788543 (accessed March 28, 2024).