a proposal for the dartmouth summer research project

• DOI: 10.1609/aimag.v27i4.1904
• Corpus ID: 19439915

A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, August 31, 1955

• John McCarthy , M. Minsky , +1 author C. Shannon
• Published in The AI Magazine 15 December 2006
• Computer Science

1,563 Citations

Ai turns fifty: revisiting its origins, elements for a history of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, automata studies, and the dartmouth conference on artificial intelligence, dili, hili, rucam algorithm, and ai, the artificial intelligence: provocative issues, progress, and proposals, what the near future of artificial intelligence could be, the performance of comedy by artificial intelligence agents, quo vadis artificial intelligence, from artificial neural networks to emotion machines with marvin minsky, journey of artificial intelligence, some elements for a prehistory of artificial intelligence in the last four centuries, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

A proposal for the Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence: August 31, 1955

Citation metadata, document controls, main content.

* The 1956 Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence was initiated by this August 31, 1955 proposal, authored by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon. The original typescript consisted of 17 pages plus a title page. Copies of the typescript are housed in the archives at Dartmouth College and Stanford University. The first 5 papers state the proposal, and the remaining pages give qualifications and interests of the four who proposed the study. In the interest of brevity, this article reproduces only the proposal itself, along with the short autobiographical statements of the proposers.

We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.

The following are some aspects of the artificial intelligence problem:

1. Automatic Computers

If a machine can do a job, then an automatic calculator can be programmed to simulate the machine. The speeds and memory capacities of present computers may be insufficient to simulate many of the higher functions of the human brain, but the major obstacle is not lack of machine capacity, but our inability to write programs taking full advantage of what we have.

2. How Can a Computer be

Programmed to Use a Language

It may be speculated that a large part of human thought consists of manipulating words according to rules of reasoning and rules of conjecture. From this point of view, forming a generalization consists of admitting a new word and some rules whereby sentences containing it imply and are implied by others. This idea has never been very precisely formulated nor have examples been worked out.

3. Neuron Nets

How can a set of (hypothetical) neurons be arranged so as to form concepts. Considerable theoretical and experimental work has been done on this problem by Uttley, Rashevsky and his group, Farley and Clark, Pitts and McCulloch, Minsky, Rochester and Holland, and others. Partial results have been obtained but the problem needs more theoretical work.

4. Theory of the Size of a Calculation

If we are given a well-defined problem (one for which it is possible to test mechanically whether or not a proposed answer is a valid answer) one way of solving it is to try all possible answers in order. This method is inefficient, and to exclude it one must have some criterion for efficiency of calculation. Some consideration will show that to get a measure of the efficiency of a calculation it is necessary to have on hand a method of measuring the complexity of calculating devices which in turn can be done if one has a theory of the complexity of functions. Some partial results on this problem have been obtained by Shannon, and also by McCarthy.

5. Self-Improvement

Probably a truly intelligent machine will carry out activities which may best be described as self-improvement. Some schemes for doing this have been proposed and are worth further study. It seems likely that this question can be studied abstractly as well.

6. Abstractions

A number of types of "abstraction" can be distinctly defined and several others less distinctly. A direct attempt to classify these and to describe machine methods of forming abstractions from sensory and other data would seem worthwhile.

7. Randomness and Creativity

A fairly attractive and yet clearly incomplete conjecture is that the difference between creative thinking and unimaginative competent thinking lies in the injection of a some randomness. The randomness must be guided by intuition to be efficient. In other words, the educated guess or the hunch include controlled randomness in otherwise orderly thinking.

The Proposers

Claude E. Shannon

Claude E. Shannon, Mathematician, Bell Telephone Laboratories. Shannon developed the statistical theory of information, the application of propositional calculus to switching circuits, and has results on the efficient synthesis of switching circuits, the design of machines that learn, cryptography, and the theory of Turing machines. He and J. McCarthy are coediting an Annals of Mathematics study on "The Theory of Automata".

Marvin L. Minsky

Marvin L. Minsky, Harvard Junior Fellow in Mathematics and Neurology. Minsky has built a machine for simulating learning by nerve nets and has written a Princeton Ph.D thesis in mathematics entitled, "Neural Nets and the Brain Model Problem" which includes results in learning theory and the theory of random neural nets.

Nathaniel Rochester

Nathaniel Rochester, Manager of Information Research, IBM Corporation, Poughkeepsie, New York. Rochester was concerned with the development of radar for seven years and computing machinery for seven years. He and another engineer were jointly responsible for the design of the IBM Type 701 which is a large scale automatic computer in wide use today. He worked out some of the automatic programming techniques which are in wide use today and has been concerned with problems of how to get machines to do tasks which previously could be done only by people. He has also worked on simulation of nerve nets with particular emphasis on using computers to test theories in neurophysiology.

John McCarthy

John McCarthy, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Dartmouth College. McCarthy has worked on a number of questions connected with the mathematical nature of the thought process including the theory of Turing machines, the speed of computers, the relation of a brain model to its environment, and the use of languages by machines. Some results of this work are included in the forthcoming "Annals Study" edited by Shannon and McCarthy. McCarthy's other work has been in the field of differential equations.

McCarthy, John^Minsky, Marvin L.^Rochester, Nathaniel^Shannon, Claude E.

Source Citation

Gale Document Number: GALE|A157035547

Related Subjects

• Artificial intelligence
• Dartmouth College
•   Google Drive™
•  OneDrive™

Email Document

Required fields marked with *

Separate each e-mail address with a semicolon

• Subject Line:

Report an Issue

Submitted diagnostic report.

Timestamp: September 22, 2024 at 8:52:16 AM EDT

Ticket Number:

Reporter's Email:

Reporter's Name:

A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, August 31, 1955

Chat with paper, multiwoz - a large-scale multi-domain wizard-of-oz dataset for task-oriented dialogue modelling, machine learning \& artificial intelligence in the quantum domain, semantic similarity from natural language and ontology analysis, probabilistic graphical models in artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence applied to battery research: hype or reality, related papers (5), computing machinery and intelligence, artificial intelligence: a modern approach, deep learning, some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers, the perceptron: a probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain., trending questions (1).

The proposal discusses simulating learning, language use, problem-solving, and self-improvement in AI. It aims to precisely describe intelligence aspects for machine simulation, emphasizing collaborative scientific efforts for progress.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

• Applications
• Computer Science
• Data Science Icons
• Machine Learning
• Mathematics

Dartmouth Summer Research Project: The Birth of Artificial Intelligence

Held in the summer of 1956, the dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence brought together some of the brightest minds in computing and cognitive science — and is considered to have founded artificial intelligence (ai) as a field..

In the early 1950s, the field of “thinking machines” was given an array of names, from cybernetics to automata theory to complex information processing. Prior to the conference, John McCarthy — a young Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College — had been disappointed by submissions to the Annals of Mathematics Studies journal. He regretted that contributors didn’t focus on the potential for computers to possess intelligence beyond simple behaviors. So, he decided to organize a group to clarify and develop ideas about thinking machines.

“At the time I believed if only we could get everyone who was interested in the subject together to devote time to it and avoid distractions, we could make real progress”. John McCarthy

John approached the Rockefeller Foundation to request funding for a summer seminar at Dartmouth for 10 participants. In 1955, he formally proposed the project, along with friends and colleagues Marvin Minsky (Harvard University), Nathaniel Rochester (IBM Corporation), and Claude Shannon (Bell Telephone Laboratories).

Laying the Foundations of AI

The workshop was based on the conjecture that, “Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.”

Although they came from very different backgrounds, all the attendees believed that the act of thinking is not unique either to humans or even biological beings. Participants came and went, and discussions were wide reaching. The term AI itself was first coined and directions such as symbolic methods were initiated. Many of the participants would later make key contributions to AI, ushering in a new era.

IBM First Computer

Nathaniel Rochester designs the IBM 701, the first computer marketed by IBM.

“Machine Learning” is coined

Attendee Arthur Samuel coins the term “machine learning” and creates the Samuel Checkers-Playing program, one of the world’s first successful self-learning programs.

Marvin Minsky Wins the Turing Award

Marvin Minsky wins the Turing Award for his “central role in creating, shaping, promoting and advancing the field of artificial intelligence.”

Discover more articles

K-nearest neighbors algorithm: classification and regression star, katherine johnson: trailblazing nasa mathematician, mary lucy cartwright: the inspired mathematician behind chaos theory, your inbox will love data science.

• Journal Club

Join the discussion! Ask questions and share your comments.

• [email protected] 1160 Mission Street San Francisco California

A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, August 31, 1955.

• January 2006
• AI Magazine 27:12-14
• This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

No full-text available

To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

• Maram Mohammed Fawaz Alanazi
• Sarah Fahad Mohammed Almutairi
• Norah Owaydhah Alarjani
• Abdulrahman Abdullah S Alkhulaifi

• Christoph Gollob
• Karl Stampfer
• NEURAL NETWORKS
• Chuyun Shen

• Haoqing Chen
• TECHNOL FORECAST SOC
• Lea Mareen Meyer

• Prachi Malhotra

• Michelle C. Williams

• Eloy Wilfredo Barahona-Silva
• Wenbo Zheng

• Hüseyin Kambur

• J DRUG DELIV SCI TEC

• Almo Farina

• Joon Woo Yoo
• Junsung Park
• Heejun Park
• COMPUT HUM BEHAV

• Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang
• Lucy E. Napper
• Jessecae K. Marsh
• BRIT J EDUC TECHNOL

• Mohammed Ahmed Sadeq

• SCI TOTAL ENVIRON

• Think Skills Creativ

• Jesse L. Maine
• INTERDISCIPL SCI REV
• Pascal Fischer

• Amjad Imam Ansari
• ADV CHILD DEV BEHAV
• Karinna A. Rodriguez

• TECHNOVATION

• Elien Vissers-Similon

• Johan De Walsche
• Haiyang Zhang

• Dietram A. Scheufele
• Emma Terwilliger

• Hend Bcharah
• Patrick Scheffler

• Katarina Simić

• Aleksandra Petković‑Ćurčin

• SPACE SCI REV
• Ryan M. McGranaghan

• Yuanyuan Zhang
• Ana Valenzuela
• Shunjie Dong
• Laihong Zhang
• Kuangyu Shi
• Educ Inform Tech

• Sonal Saran

• Efthymia Petridou
• S. N. Jyothy

• NEUROL CLIN

• Amirmohammad Farrokhi
• Ashkan Mowla
• David S Liebeskind
• Naveen Chawla
• Sourabh Bhutani
• Kaushik Roy
• INT J HUM-COMPUT ST

• Inge Meijerink
• Ioanna Lykourentzou

• Xiangqun Cui
• Eli Borges Junior
• Nguyen Van Toai
• Đỗ Thị Thu Hiền

• TELECOMMUN POLICY

• Junghwan Kim
• Kenneth James Williams. Craik
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

Send comments to [email protected]. I sometimes make changes suggested in them. - John McCarthy

• Visual Essays
• Print Subscription

Advisors in Action: Professors Helping Thesis Students

One writer explores how some professors guide seniors through the process of composing their undergraduate theses..

As the fall term dawns on us, seniors are entering their final year on campus as members of the Class of 2025. During their time at Dartmouth, they’ve taken seminars, labs and lectures, exploring Dartmouth through a multitude of departments. Beyond the classroom, they’ve completed sophomore summer, enjoyed off-terms and traveled abroad. So what does their last year look like? In many cases, seniors choose to showcase their academic growth by devoting their last year to completing a thesis — a culminating experience tailored to their major.

According to government professor and thesis advisor Jeffrey Friedman, a senior thesis marks a student’s evolution from a pupil in the classroom to a contributor of original academic thought.

To get a better understanding of thesis-writing, I sat down with the individuals responsible for shepherding generations of students through the process: thesis advisors themselves.

Thesis advisors can be any professor within the student’s chosen department. Once a department approves a senior’s proposal, students begin writing during the summer before their senior year, and many enroll in an honors thesis class for the fall term, which serves as a block for research and writing. While thesis advisors help their advisees stay on track outside of class, it is ultimately the student who makes novel contributions to their culminating project.

Seniors selecting their thesis topic — as well as their advisor — tend to pull from past classroom experiences. For many students, thesis topics originate from a class they took with their professor-turned-advisor.

According to Friedman, some of his advisees’ topics have come from his own government seminar classes, which he sees as “most conducive to building close relationships with students.” 

“You get to know students’ views and attitudes more than in a lecture-based class, and seminars typically require students to produce more in-depth research in their papers,” Friedman said. “[This often leads] directly to thesis topics, but in general [provides] a clearer sense of the fit between students’ interests and professors’ research approaches.”

After finalizing a topic, the thesis research and writing process carries its own responsibilities. According to English and creative writing professor Carolyn Dever, students are often excited — and intimidated — to get started. 

“What [senior thesis classes] tend to do … is help students come together and understand the [scope] of the thesis project,” she said. “The job of the thesis advisor … is to help the student figure out those first steps and all the steps that follow.”

Dever explained that students are largely responsible for setting their own deadlines. The advisor’s job is to hold them accountable and guide seniors to their best work.

“You have to write so much, and somehow it has to fit together and make an original contribution,” Dever said. “My strategy as an advisor is always to help students understand that they already have the skills that they need to accomplish a thesis, they just need to rethink them.”

While Dever advises students working on English theses that aim to answer complex literary questions, Friedman’s government advisees “start by identifying a puzzle.” Often, this means understanding why political behavior varies under different contexts, which becomes the starting point for a thesis investigation.

“Students will then evaluate that theory,” Friedman continued. “Some use historical evidence and case studies. Others use different forms of quantitative data, statistics and experiments.”

Though theses in the humanities tend to incorporate qualitative evidence and theory, theses in the math department use entirely different metrics, even as the end result — an exhaustive research paper — remains the same. 

Math professor Rosa Orellana advises honors theses that “have done something new or look at something in a new way.” She recently counseled on a thesis that “arose from map coloring,” the process by which colors are assigned differently depending on borders.

“The results are relatively strong, so we decided to write them up in an article, and we submitted it to a journal,” Orellana said. “It’s in the [publishing] process right now.”

Dever added that students’ academic passions — which may eventually form the basis of their thesis — often crystallize during their sophomore year, “when students’ interests and specific research questions begin to come into focus.” 

“Sometimes I’ll work with students who do a Presidential Fellowship with me and use that as a transition point into a thesis,” she said. “Other times, it will be an extension of a paper or project that a student’s done in class, or some sort of really interesting question that students come to that they want to keep drilling down on.”

Orellana added that the analysis methods taught in some math classes guide students to their research topic. 

“Most of them have started in MATH 28 [“Introduction to Combinatorics”] … which is the Combinatorics course,” she said. “The way that I have been teaching it is through guided discovery, so it teaches you the research process.”

In addition, Orellana has been approached by a number of students, who she has never taught before and instead read about her area of study — algebraic combinatorics — on the math department web page before asking her to advise them.

Regardless of whether the professor has a past relationship with the student, thesis advisors are able to supervise their advisees’ development over the course of the program, according to Dever.

“For a professor, it’s a chance to really get to know a student … what are the habits of their mind?” Dever said “What is their writing process? How do you help one student as opposed to another?”

Dever added that the most rewarding and thrilling part of the process is “the pride of accomplishment when it all works out.” 

For Orellana, the best moment as an advisor is when students discover things that contradict their prior beliefs. 

“When you get to be that critical is when you have grown as a mathematician, and you know you’re not blinded by wanting to get a [specific] result,” Orellana said.

Similarly, Friedman enjoys watching students “chart their own path in some novel domain of research.”

“Students often feel quite disappointed when they refute their ideas,” Friedman said. “One lesson that I make sure to tell all my thesis advisees is to make sure [that] when they start their project, that they [should] be just as comfortable with the data not supporting their hypothesis as they would be if the data did.”

According to Dever, the true driver of a thesis project is pure curiosity and wanting to add a novel contribution to the academic world.

“The most successful theses are the ones that authentically represent a student’s serious interests and not what might seem impressive, flashy or exciting to the outside world,” Dever said. “In your nerdiest of nerdy selves, what is the thing that you really want to spend a year thinking about?”

Small fire causes water and smoke damage in Class of 1953 Commons

Petition opposes potential privatization of Dartmouth College Child Care Center

Tang Williams and Goodlander win primaries for open New Hampshire House seat

College decision to deny hiring of uic professor stirs controversy, former office manager of the dartmouth sentenced to 15 months in prison for embezzling from student newspaper, won jang’s death ruled accidental by police, college sustains overall racial and ethnic diversity for class of 2028, following spring protests, senior leaders address freedom of expression policies and initiatives.

The Dartmouth

• Engineering & Technology
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence

A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence

Related documents.

Add this document to collection(s)

You can add this document to your study collection(s)

Add this document to saved

You can add this document to your saved list

Suggest us how to improve StudyLib

(For complaints, use another form )

Input it if you want to receive answer

•  Sign into My Research
•  Create My Research Account
• Company Website
• Our Products
• About Dissertations
• Español (España)
• Support Center

Select language

• Bahasa Indonesia
• Português (Brasil)
• Português (Portugal)

Welcome to My Research!

You may have access to the free features available through My Research. You can save searches, save documents, create alerts and more. Please log in through your library or institution to check if you have access.

Translate this article into 20 different languages!

If you log in through your library or institution you might have access to this article in multiple languages.

Get access to 20+ different citations styles

Styles include MLA, APA, Chicago and many more. This feature may be available for free if you log in through your library or institution.

Looking for a PDF of this document?

You may have access to it for free by logging in through your library or institution.

Want to save this document?

You may have access to different export options including Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive and citation management tools like RefWorks and EasyBib. Try logging in through your library or institution to get access to these tools.

• More like this
• Preview Available
• Scholarly Journal

A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence: August 31, 1955

No items selected.

Please select one or more items.

Select results items first to use the cite, email, save, and export options

You might have access to the full article...

Try and log in through your institution to see if they have access to the full text.

Content area

The 1956 Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence was initiated by this August 31, 1955 proposal, authored by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon. The original typescript consisted of 17 pages plus a title page. Copies of the typescript are housed in the archives at Dartmouth College and Stanford University. The first 5 papers state the proposal, and the remaining pages give qualifications and interests of the four who proposed the study. In the interest of brevity, this article reproduces only the proposal itself, along with the short autobiographical statements of the proposers.

We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.

The following are some aspects of the artificial intelligence problem:

1. Automatic Computers

If a machine can do a job, then an automatic calculator can be programmed to simulate the machine....

You have requested "on-the-fly" machine translation of selected content from our databases. This functionality is provided solely for your convenience and is in no way intended to replace human translation. Show full disclaimer

Neither ProQuest nor its licensors make any representations or warranties with respect to the translations. The translations are automatically generated "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" and are not retained in our systems. PROQUEST AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES FOR AVAILABILITY, ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, NON-INFRINGMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Your use of the translations is subject to all use restrictions contained in your Electronic Products License Agreement and by using the translation functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against ProQuest or its licensors for your use of the translation functionality and any output derived there from. Hide full disclaimer

Suggested sources

• About ProQuest
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy

Dartmouth Details Expansive Vision for Undergrad Housing

Gina and Tom Russo donate $30 million to spur campaign for new student residences. 

Dartmouth Buys Four Properties on West Wheelock Street

At the fall meeting of the Board of Trustees, President Sian Leah Beilock and her team advanced a comprehensive housing strategy—a once-in-a-generation, $500 million investment in new and renewed undergraduate housing that is modernizing existing residence halls and helping to fulfill her pledge to add a combined 1,000 beds for students, faculty, and staff over the next 10 years. 

“We have a historic opportunity to sustainably expand and reimagine the infrastructure for residential student housing that supports our academic mission and preserves the walkability of campus and the small-town character of Hanover,” President Beilock says.

In support of this effort, Beilock announced that Dartmouth has received the largest gift for undergraduate housing in its history—$30 million from Thomas A. Russo ’77 and Gina T. Russo ’77. The apartment-style residence hall for juniors and seniors being built at 25 West Wheelock Street will be named Russo Hall in their honor. 

The announcement of the Russos’ generosity launches a $165 million fundraising campaign that will raise private gifts to help fund the construction of Dartmouth’s first new undergraduate residences in more than 20 years. This campaign is part of Dartmouth’s overall $500 million investment in undergraduate housing.  

“It is crucial that we create more high quality, energy efficient housing on and around campus in order to attract the best talent to Dartmouth at every level—student, faculty, and staff—and to help alleviate the shortage in our region,” Beilock says. “At a time when our society is facing both a climate crisis and what the surgeon general calls an epidemic of loneliness, we are designing housing that will help foster wellness, social connection, and belonging while reducing our carbon footprint.”

The new opportunities in the West Wheelock corridor, as they are developed, will free up housing for graduate and professional school students. And, as part of Beilock’s call for additional housing for all Dartmouth populations, details will be announced later this year on investment in faculty and staff housing.

Housing: A Top Priority  

Investment in housing is one of the major priorities Beilock outlined a year ago in her inaugural address . The strategy announced this week includes the continued renewal of existing undergraduate housing in the next decade and the development of West Wheelock Street into a new residential corridor—complete with green space and pedestrian and bike paths connecting to the West End and central campus—that will serve as a gateway to the campus and town.

A goal of the housing program is to offer on-campus beds to more than 90% of undergraduates. Currently 85% of undergraduates live on campus. 

All of the housing is being designed to help Dartmouth achieve the decarbonization goals established by the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative , a separate $500 million initiative to reduce carbon emissions on campus by 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. 

As part of the comprehensive effort and to help create more workforce housing in the greater Hanover area, Dartmouth has also doubled its commitment, to $3 million, to the Upper Valley Loan Fund.

“Tom and Gina’s gift is visionary in opening a path to advance one of our highest priorities: the creation of new undergraduate housing that supports a vibrant residential learning community close to the heart of campus,” says Elizabeth Cahill Lempres ’83, Thayer ’84 , chair of the Board of Trustees. “This investment is core to Dartmouth’s educational mission, and we believe it will inspire others to help underwrite the construction of additional residential halls along West Wheelock Street.” 

Breaking Ground on West Wheelock Street  

Russo Hall is the first of several planned apartment-style residence halls on West Wheelock Street, in close proximity to the central campus and the West End campus district, which is home to the Tuck School of Business , Thayer School of Engineering , Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society , and Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship . As of June, Dartmouth now owns all the land on the north side of the street between the Connecticut River and Thayer Drive as well as several other properties on the north and south side of the street. 

When it opens in fall 2026, Russo Hall will be able to house up to 285 juniors and seniors, giving them more choices on where to live. An update to Dartmouth’s house system will include more housing options for juniors and seniors who may want to live outside their assigned house community. Each unit at Russo will feature single bedrooms, kitchens, single-user bathrooms, and common spaces, as well as large social and study space throughout the building.   

At an Aug. 27 groundbreaking ceremony at the site, Beilock thanked the Russos for their visionary support for the Dartmouth residential experience, calling them “among Dartmouth’s most generous families.”

Beilock expressed special gratitude for the Russos’ consistent willingness to help Dartmouth through two decades of philanthropy and in the early stages of new initiatives. “What is so moving about Tom and Gina’s partnership is the knowledge that they are inspired to transform the lives of future students through the Dartmouth residential community experience just as it transformed theirs.” 

“Where you live, how you live, and with whom you live are always critical factors for student health and well-being, and we feel that this project puts that priority of President Beilock’s front and center,” Gina Russo told attendees, who included planners, administrators, students, town officials, and other community members. “It will provide a wonderful, supportive residential environment for students, so that they can really focus on their academic and extracurricular pursuits.” 

“When we saw the opportunity to help reset residential living at Dartmouth for generations to come, we were immediately interested in participating. It’s among Sian’s highest priorities, and we wanted to get behind that at the earliest possible moment and invite others to come along,” said Tom Russo. “We are deeply grateful for the Board of Trustees’ leadership in creating the conditions that now promise continuous renewal and care of Dartmouth residence halls.”

The West Wheelock Street corridor is part of Dartmouth’s ongoing collaboration with the town of Hanover to alleviate housing pressure in the community. At the 2022 Town Meeting, voters, spurred on by the advocacy of two undergraduate leaders, changed Hanover zoning rules to allow more density on West Wheelock Street, which is making construction of Dartmouth’s new residences possible. Students have also been participating in discussions about residence hall designs. 

Describing this student advocacy, former Student Government leader and current admissions officer Anthony Fosu ’24 said, “When I speak to prospective students this fall, I’ll proudly highlight Dartmouth’s commitment to residential housing—one that strengthens our vibrant, supportive community. (The) groundbreaking not only celebrates constructing new buildings, but honors the efforts of generations of students, staff, and community members that led us to this moment.” 

Interim Town Manager Rob Houseman, who has served as Hanover’s director of planning, zoning, and code since 2016, praised Dartmouth for being a collaborative partner in planning the future of the town. 

“I’m grateful to see a re-imagined corridor. I hope it’s a catalyst for future development that expands modern, energy-efficient housing,” Houseman said. “It’s my hope that this investment will create an inviting gateway for all users, especially walkers, bicyclists, and transit users.” 

About the Russos  

Tom Russo and Gina Tugwell Russo met during the fall of their first term at Dartmouth, despite living on opposite sides of campus—Gina in North Fayerweather and Tom in the River Cluster—because their friend groups “overlapped in a Venn diagram-like middle,” says Tom, who graduated magna cum laude with a major in history and went on to earn a JD and an MBA from Stanford University. He is now portfolio manager and partner at the investment firm Gardner Russo & Quinn. 

“Somehow we found our way, all the way across campus, to each other,” says Gina, who graduated with high distinction in her Russian major and worked as an assistant vice president in international banking at Wells Fargo before raising their family, including son Christopher and daughter Meredith ’08. 

Both Russos have long been active volunteers on behalf of the Class of 1977 and the Dartmouth College Fund, and Gina formerly served on the board of visitors for the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and on the board of advisors of the Hood Museum of Art , which she chaired from 2020 to 2023. The Russos have served as informal advisers to four Dartmouth presidents through their membership on the President’s Leadership Council.   

Their philanthropy has focused on academic excellence. In addition, they have championed the Office of Fellowship Advising and created an endowed fellowship fund to expand its program and support undergraduate participation in postgraduate programs.

Their support has extended across campus, including support for the renovation of the Hopkins Center for the Arts and the Hood Museum of Art , where the Russo Atrium is named in their honor, as well as the Dickey Center’s Great Issues Scholars Program, the Young African Leadership Initiative, the Dartmouth-Africa Co-Learning Lab, and the Global Health Initiative. The Russo Gallery in the Haldeman Center is named in recognition of their generosity. They are inspired by Dartmouth’s commitment to Native Americans and provided early support for the pilot Tribal Service and Solutions Program and the Tribal Leadership Academy . 

Housing Renewal  

In addition to new construction on West Wheelock Street, Dartmouth is in the midst of a staged renewal of approximately 60% of existing undergraduate residences over the next 15 years to add beds, studying rooms, gathering spaces, and amenities that support modern student life. The renovations will also improve accessibility and prepare Dartmouth’s residential infrastructure for the transition away from fossil fuels. 

“We are designing all of our new residences and our housing renewal projects to last more than 100 years, because the ultimate sustainable act is to renovate, not to tear down,” says Josh Keniston , senior vice president of capital planning and campus operations.

Most recently, this fall Zimmerman Hall and Brace Commons are reopening to students after a complete upgrade , following the reopening of Andres Hall in fall 2023. All three facilities are part of the East Wheelock House community. 

Andres and Zimmerman now feature suites of singles and doubles with gender-neutral, single-user bathrooms, adding a net of 24 new beds. The renovations also added elevators, air conditioning, study rooms, lounges, and other social spaces. Brace Commons, the East Wheelock House’s social center, now features improved accessibility, lighting, and landscaping, as well as spaces for studying, meeting, and house-wide events.

All three buildings meet the standards for LEED Gold certification for sustainability, health, and safety and are designed to be compatible with Dartmouth’s shift from oil-fueled steam to geo-exchange hot-water heating and cooling.

As the Zimmerman and Brace Commons project neared completion over summer, work began on Fayerweather Hall, a 120-year-old three-building neo-Georgian residence that is part of South House. The project—which will put the three buildings under a single new roof and add 35 beds, elevators, and a new house social center—will thoroughly modernize the residence while preserving Fayerweather’s historic character. As with Zimmerman and Andres, Fayerweather’s systems will be updated from steam to hot-water heating to be compatible with Dartmouth’s shift to sustainable energy. The project is on track for LEED Platinum certification. 

While the Fayerweather project gets underway, Dartmouth is in the schematic design phase for the renovation of Mass Row, the next residence slated for renewal.

The Office of Communications can be reached at [email protected] .

• Campus Services
• Office of Residential Life
• Sian Leah Beilock
• Advancement

Dartmouth Gears Up for Family Weekend 2024

Trustees Hail Progress on Housing and Sustainability