Home » About » History

Thayer School History

1867

• Sylvanus Thayer, Dartmouth class of 1807, "the father of West Point" and of engineering education in the United States, donates $40,000 to the Trustees of Dartmouth College to establish "a School or Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering"
• Academic program: 2 years of engineering after 3 or 4 years of college-level prep in mathematics, physics, physical geography, geography, English grammar, and history

Sylvanus Thayer

1871

• Thayer School of Civil Engineering opens
• Number of professors: 1 (Robert Fletcher, who is also the School's director and dean)
• Number of students: 3
• Facilities: a drawing room and a recitation room

1875

• Thayer School adds a "Physical laboratory" and a "room for rough work where the young men may do little jobs of repairing, etc.... and thus save the School items of expense while acquiring for themselves useful manual dexterity and mechanical skill"

1879

• A new curriculum consists of: surveying; mechanics; resistance of materials; properties and construction materials; materials and structural elements; bridges and roofs; hydraulic works; heat and heat-engines; sanitary engineering; rivers and harbors; rockwork, tunneling, and mining; and masonry and foundations

1892

• Thayer School purchases its own building on Park Street

1893

• Dartmouth allows seniors to take first-year Thayer courses

1902

• Dartmouth Society of Engineers, Thayer's alumni association, founded

1910

• Thayer School moves into larger quarters in Bissell Hall

1918

• Robert Fletcher retires after 65 years of teaching and 47 years as dean of Thayer School

1936

• Thayer School's B.E. program is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET (111 Market Place, Suite 1050, Baltimore, MD 21202-4012; ph: 1-410-347-7700).

1938

• Thayer School builds its own facility, Cummings Hall

1941

• First large-scale research program: Professor Millett Morgan's radiophysics lab

1942

• Thayer School and Tuck School of Business offer a two-year joint program of engineering and business courses for a master's degree in industrial administration
• School is renamed Thayer School of Engineering

1943

• Thayer escalates training of engineers as part of Navy V-12 program

1957

• Professors James Browning and Merle Thorpe found Thermal Dynamics to market plasma cutting technologies they developed at Thayer School. The company is the first of many faculty startups.

1958

• Undergraduate Department of Engineering Sciences added to Dartmouth's College of Arts and Sciences
• Two-degree undergraduate program: engineering majors complete 4 years at Dartmouth for a bachelor of arts (A.B.) degree and then 1 year at Thayer for the bachelor of engineering (B.E.) degree
• ENGS 21: Introduction to Engineering first taught, with an emphasis on theory

1961

• Thayer School establishes an integrated, systems-based engineering curriculum within a single department of engineering sciences.
• "Breadth, then depth" approach: Students study the principles underlying all areas of engineering before pursuing particular fields.
• ENGS 21: Introduction to Engineering transforms into an engineering design course. The new approach, says Dean Myron Tribus, lets students "experience the hands-on fun of actually doing something creative and useful before undertaking the abstract theoretical courses required for advanced practice." The first project: building an electric bicycle.

1964

• First Ph.D. degree awarded

1966

• Women are allowed to take Thayer School graduate courses, although Dartmouth not yet coeducational

1969

• Dean Spatz '66 Th'67 '68 founds Osmonics Inc., a startup company based on reverse osmosis work he first did with Chris Miller '66 Th'67 '68 in ENGS 21

1973

• Visnja Gembicki and Susan Liu Yang become first women to earn M.S. degrees at Thayer School

1975

• Robert Fletcher Award established to recognize graduates or friends of Thayer School for distinguished achievement and service

1976

• Dean's Fund, precursor to Thayer School Annual Fund, founded

1978

• Cook Engineering Design Center established to facilitate partnerships between industry and students

1979

• M.D./Ph.D. in biomedical engineering offered

1981

• Diane Knappert Clark becomes first woman to earn Doctor of Engineering (D.E.) degree at Thayer

1987

• Peter Fitzgerald becomes first M.D./Ph.D. graduate

1988

• Master of Engineering Management (M.E.M.) program established

1989

• Cummings Hall expanded
• Students build solar racecar, SunVox, and compete in Tour De Sol

1990

• Thayer assistant dean Carol Muller co-founds Dartmouth's Women in Science Project to encourage women students to pursue science, math, and engineering and place first-year students into research internships
• Joyce Mechling Nagle becomes first woman to earn a Ph.D. at Thayer

1991

• Doctor of Engineering (D.E.) degree incorporated into Ph.D degree
• Master of Engineering (M.E.) degree incorporated into M.S. degree

1995

• Thayer School appoints its first woman dean, Elsa Garmire
• Students found Dartmouth Formula Racing (DFR) to compete in Formula SAE races.

2001

• Germany foreign exchange program started with Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg for B.E. and M.S. students

2003

• Students establish Dartmouth Engineers Without Borders and work on clean-water projects in Nicaragua
• Students build hybrid racecar and exhibit it at annual Formula SAE competition

2005

• The Big Green Bus: Engineering students modify a school bus to run on waste vegetable oil and drive cross-country to engage people in discussions about alternative fuels and sustainability.
• Cook Engineering Design Center offers Six Sigma workshops for corporate professionals and engineering students.
• Dartmouth Engineers Without Borders install a solar-powered water pump in Nyamilu, Kenya

2006

• Formula Hybrid International Competition launched by Thayer School
• MacLean Engineering Sciences Center opens, featuring integrated student project labs
• Professors Tillman Gerngross and Charles Hutchinson sell their startup GlycoFi to pharmaceutical company Merck for a record $400 million. GlycoFi achievement, the fully humanized glycosylation of yeast, provides a new platform for developing therapeutic proteins.
• Student invention, the Gyrobike, wins a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award. The stabilizing Gyrobike, which Deborah Sperling '06 Th'07, Hannah Murnen '06 Th'07, Nathan Sigworth '07, and Augusta Niles '07 created as their ENGS 21 project in 2005, makes it easy for kids to learn how to ride a bike.
• Dartmouth Engineers Without Borders becomes Dartmouth Humanitarian Leadership Projects (HELP), dedicated to reducing global poverty through local and sustainable solutions

2007

• Research focuses on challenges in three areas of societal need: Engineering in Medicine, Energy Technologies, and Complex Systems
• Professor Lee Lynd wins inaugural Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability for his work on converting biomass feedstocks into motor vehicle fuels
• HELP students complete clean-water system in Kenya and design and build a biogas digestor for fertilizer and fuel in Rwanda.

2008

• Thayer establishes nation's first Ph.D. Innovation Program to help doctoral candidates bring advanced research to the marketplace.
• Dartmouth's Entrepreneurial Engineering Program now spans across the A.B., B.E., M.E.M., and Ph.D. levels
• HELP students design and install a pico-hydropower system to produce electricity in Rwanda
• Thailand foreign exchange program established with Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok for engineering undergraduates

2009

• Lindsay Holiday '07 Th'09, Dana Leland '09, and Philip Wagner '09 invent an arsenic removal system for use in rural Nepal, where naturally occurring arsenic is a major groundwater contaminant. The project, created for Thayer's capstone design sequence, wins the National Inventors Hall of Fame's Collegiate Inventors Competition.
• Dartmouth Humanitarian Leadership Projects (HELP) renamed Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering (DHE). Students work on clean-water, pico-hydropower, sanitation, and cookstove projects in Rwanda and Tanzania

2010

• Scientific American features field notes about DHE's Tanzania cookstove project in their Expeditions blog

2011

• China foreign exchange program started with the Chinese University of Hong Kong for engineering undergraduates
• Formula Hybrid International Competition reaches 5-year anniversary, with 34 teams participating
• Formula Hybrid headlines Indianapolis 500 Centennial celebration's "Emerging Tech Day"
• Design for America studio established at Thayer School
• Largest ever Thayer class (B.E. through Ph.D.) graduates

• apply
• give
• contact
• Dartmouth Home

© 2013 Trustees of Dartmouth College.
All rights reserved.