Dartmouth College

Eleazar Wheelock was a Congregational minister from Connecticut and a prominent figure in the First Great Awakening. In 1754, with support from Joshua More, he founded Moor’s Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut, to educate young Native American men and prepare them for missionary work.⁠[4][4][5][4]

When the school’s funds ran low in late 1765, Wheelock sent ministers Samson Occom and Nathaniel Whitaker to Britain to raise money. Occom, a Mohegan and one of Wheelock’s earliest students, secured funds and support from English and Scottish missionary organizations, with contributors including William Legge, the second Earl of Dartmouth. Unable to obtain a Connecticut charter for a college, Wheelock negotiated a new location with New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth.⁠[5][4][5][4][5]

On December 13, 1769, New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth signed a charter issued in the name of King George III, establishing Dartmouth College as the ninth colonial college and the last chartered by the British Crown. Drafted by provincial secretary Theodore Atkinson, it envisaged a location along the Connecticut River in western New Hampshire, named 12 founding trustees and designated Wheelock as founder and first president. Its educational purpose included Native American youth, English youth and others. Funding came from donors including the second Earl of Dartmouth, with land granted by Wentworth.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][6][4]

The new plans fractured Wheelock’s longstanding relationship with Occom, who objected when he learned that funds would primarily educate white rather than Indigenous communities. Wheelock served as president from 1769 to 1779, also acting as trustee, professor of divinity and college church minister. His fundraising and political alliances helped sustain the institution during the Revolutionary War. Dartmouth has graduated a class every year since 1771.⁠[5][5][4][4][4][4]

Dartmouth’s Medical Department began when founder Nathan Smith delivered its first lecture on November 22, 1797. In 2012, Dartmouth renamed the medical school the Geisel School of Medicine in honor of Audrey Geisel and Theodor Geisel, Class of 1925.⁠[7][7][7]

After the trustees removed John Wheelock, president since 1779, in 1815, he persuaded New Hampshire’s governor to seek changes converting Dartmouth into a public institution under legislative control. On June 27, 1816, the legislature passed an act amending the charter, renaming the corporation Trustees of Dartmouth University and increasing its trustees to 21. The original college board resisted the changes but lost its state-court proceedings.⁠[8][9][6][6][6][9]

The college trustees sued William H. Woodward in New Hampshire over corporate property, including record books and the seal. Following judgment by the state’s highest court, the Superior Court of New Hampshire, the case reached the US Supreme Court by writ of error and was argued on March 10–11, 1818. Daniel Webster, Class of 1801, was one of the trustees’ lawyers. He famously declared: “It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it!”⁠[6][6][6][6][9][9]

Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the Court’s opinion on February 2, 1819. It held that Dartmouth’s charter constituted a contract whose obligations were protected against impairment by state law. The relevant New Hampshire statutes were unconstitutional, and the state judgment was reversed. Dartmouth consequently remained private rather than becoming a state university.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][9]

Formally titled Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the decision became a landmark in American constitutional and corporate law. It established the place of private charitable organizations in constitutional law and has been cited regarding constitutional protection for corporations, including in Burwell v. Hobby LobbyHobby LobbyHobby Lobby is a privately held American retailer of arts, crafts and home furnishings headquartered in Oklahoma City. It grew from David Green and his family’s picture-frame business, with its first retail store opening in 1972. The company operates more than 1,000 stores, closes on Sundays and incorporates Christian beliefs into its stated business values.Open the full entry and Citizens United v. FEC.⁠[9][9][9][9]

Sylvanus Thayer, Class of 1807, provided $70,000 to establish engineering education at Dartmouth in 1867. He also designed a curriculum combining technical study with a strong liberal arts foundation. The institution became today’s Thayer School of Engineering.⁠[10][10][10]

The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration and Finance opened in 1900 as the first institution to offer a master’s degree in business administration. Edward Tuck, Class of 1862, supplied an initial $300,000 gift in 1899 and named the school for his father, Amos Tuck, Class of 1835.⁠[7][7]

A small group of scientists gathered in Hanover in 1956 for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, organized by John McCarthy and widely regarded as the beginning of the field. McCarthy’s proposal hypothesized that learning and other features of intelligence could, in principle, be described precisely enough for a machine to simulate them.⁠[3][3][3][3]

Mathematics professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz worked with undergraduates to develop BASIC and a time-sharing system, giving students and faculty across disciplines access to computing. Dartmouth’s 2014 fiftieth-anniversary retrospective described this work as an important step in extending computer use beyond specialists.⁠[2]

In his March 1, 1970 inaugural address, President John G. Kemeny identified coeducation as an urgent issue. In April 1971, faculty voted 111–18 for its introduction by September 1972. On November 21, 1971, Kemeny announced trustee approval of the year-round Dartmouth Plan and the admission of women beginning September 1, 1972, with target undergraduate enrollments of 3,000 men and 1,000 women. In September 1972, 177 women entered as first-year students and 74 as transfers.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11]

For decades, Dartmouth’s graduate programs operated within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Following an extended review and campus consultation, trustees established a freestanding graduate school in early 2016, Dartmouth’s first new school in more than a century. On April 27, 2018, during the launch of the $3 billion Call to Lead campaign, Dartmouth announced the name Frank J. Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies in recognition of a major gift from the former congressman and 1946 alumnus. It then supported more than 1,000 graduate students, doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars across 35 programs, encompassing graduate study apart from Tuck’s MBA and Geisel’s MD programs.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][12][12][12]

On July 21, 2022, trustees unanimously elected cognitive scientist and Barnard College President Sian Leah Beilock as Dartmouth’s 19th president, succeeding Philip J. Hanlon after his decade in office. The first woman elected to lead Dartmouth, she took office on June 12, 2023. A specialist in performance under pressure, she received the National Academy of Sciences’ 2017 Troland Award and belongs to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. Before becoming Barnard’s eighth president, she spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, serving as executive vice provost and Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology. She holds a cognitive science bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego, and doctorates in psychology and kinesiology from Michigan State University.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][14][14][14][14][14]

Beilock introduced the community-wide Commitment to Care mental health plan and Dartmouth Dialogues, which develops students’ and employees’ skills for engagement across differences. In 2024, she led adoption of an institutional restraint policy under which Dartmouth leadership and academic departments refrain from taking political positions.⁠[15][15][15][15]

In 2025, Dartmouth partnered with Anthropic and AWS to introduce AI at institutional scale. A faculty leadership group was established to ensure that its use supports Dartmouth’s educational mission.⁠[3][3]

Dartmouth announced an October 29–31 conference, AI at 70: What Must Remain Human?, focusing on human judgment, responsibility and universities’ role in the AI era. Researchers planned to present preliminary findings from a multiyear study of student AI use. The Rockefeller FoundationThe Rockefeller FoundationThe Rockefeller Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation headquartered in New York City. It was chartered by New York State legislation in 1913 with funding from Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, with the mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” In its early years it funded global public health, medical education, and yellow fever vaccine research; in the mid-20th century it supported agricultural programs that came to be known as the “Green Revolution”; and in recent years it has focused its work on energy, health, food, and climate.Open the full entry provided partial support. As of October 12, 2026, the conference remained forthcoming.⁠[16]

At the Class of 2030 welcome ceremony, admissions dean Kathryn Bezella identified 1,219 first-year students from 971 high schools, plus 32 transfer students. Thirteen percent of the entering class were first-generation college students. These arrival-stage figures differ in timing and scope from the projected 1,175-student class announced in March.⁠[17]

At the Entrepreneurs Forum in San Francisco, President Beilock announced a $60 million expansion of the Magnuson Center, intended to integrate entrepreneurship programs with technology-transfer commercialization. Dartmouth would provide $40 million, while a campaign would seek $20 million. The September 16 announcement reported $10.3 million in commitments from advisory board members. Total planned funding, institutional support and pledged gifts therefore represent distinct amounts.⁠[18]

Dartmouth College is a private nonprofit institution in Hanover, New Hampshire, and an Ivy League member, with a 269-acre main campus. Undergraduates can explore more than 40 academic departments and programs before selecting or designing a major. The undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 7:1, most classes contain 20 or fewer students, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences includes more than 700 faculty members.⁠[19][1][20][1][1][1][1]

Beyond undergraduate liberal arts education, Dartmouth includes the Geisel School of Medicine, Thayer School of Engineering, Tuck School of Business and Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies. On July 1, 2026, economics professor Nina Pavcnik became the inaugural dean of the School of Arts and Sciences after 18 months as interim dean. She co-led the Future of Arts and Sciences project, which proposed bringing the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Division of Student Affairs into a unified administrative and budget structure.⁠[20][1][14][14]

On the official fall 2025 reporting date, Dartmouth enrolled 7,273 students: 4,715 undergraduates and 2,558 graduate students.⁠[19][19][19][19]

In March 2026, Dartmouth offered admission to 1,687 applicants for the Class of 2030. Its 28,863 applications represented a 2.2% annual increase and the second-largest pool in its history, with a 5.8% acceptance rate. The college offered the admitted class a record $53.2 million in need-based scholarships and projected a September entering undergraduate class of 1,175.⁠[21][21][21][21][21][21]

At June 30, 2025, the end of fiscal 2025, Dartmouth’s endowment had a then-record market value of $9 billion. It returned 10.8% for the year, with annualized five- and ten-year returns of 11.6% and 9.7%. The endowment distributed $453 million in fiscal 2025, nearly one-third of operating revenue and the operating budget’s largest single funding source. New endowment gifts reached a record $333 million. More than 6,700 individual endowed funds supported Dartmouth, with teaching and research accounting for roughly 40% of endowment value and financial aid for more than one-quarter.⁠[22][22][22][22][22][22][22]

Dartmouth’s 19 presidents form the Wheelock Succession: Eleazar Wheelock (1769–1779); John Wheelock (1779–1815); Francis Brown (1815–1820); Daniel Dana (1820–1821); Bennet Tyler (1822–1828); Nathan Lord (1828–1863); Asa Dodge Smith (1863–1877); Samuel Colcord Bartlett (1877–1892); William Jewett Tucker (1893–1909); Ernest Fox Nichols (1909–1916); Ernest Martin Hopkins (1916–1945); John Sloan Dickey (1945–1970); John G. Kemeny (1970–1981); David T. McLaughlin (1981–1987); James O. Freedman (1987–1998); James Wright (1998–2009); Jim Yong Kim (2009–2012); Philip J. Hanlon (2013–2023); and Sian Leah Beilock (since 2023).⁠[8][8][8][8][8][15]

Dartmouth College: Official website: https://home.dartmouth.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1][1]

Dartmouth X: Official website: https://x.com/dartmouth (opens in a new window).⁠[23][23]

Dartmouth YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Official website: https://www.youtube.com/@dartmouth (opens in a new window).⁠[20][23]

Dartmouth LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Official website: https://www.linkedin.com/school/dartmouth-college/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23][23]