Robert Fletcher wasn’t just the founding director of Thayer School. For 65 years, he was Thayer School.
By Lee Michaelides
Photographs courtesy of Dartmouth College archives
“We all love our Bobby — many of us received our life’s inspiration from him,” wrote a Thayer School alumnus on the occasion of Dean Robert Fletcher’s retirement in 1918. It was difficult to imagine Thayer School without Robert Fletcher, for from the beginning, Fletcher was Thayer School.
Fletcher’s service to Thayer began in 1871, when he came to Hanover as Thayer School’s founding director and sole faculty member. He retired only because he reached Dartmouth’s mandatory retirement age of 70. He didn’t actually leave, however. He stayed on as a lecturer and overseer until his death in 1936 at the age of 88. Clearly, Dartmouth loved Fletcher, and Fletcher loved the College.
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A peek inside Thayer School after hours.
By Jennifer Seaton
Photographs by Jennifer Seaton, unless otherwise stated
Photograph by John Sherman.
Walk into Thayer School at night and you’re greeted by stillness. But wander upstairs and through the empty halls and you’ll discover pockets of activity — spurts of laughter coming from labs, pairs of students huddled over problem sets. Head down to the basement, follow the clanking and blaring music, and you’ll find yourself in the Dartmouth Formula Racing team’s workshop, where someone is invariably firing up a blowtorch.
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Thayer School drives a new competition.
By Randy Stebbins ’01
Photographs by Douglas Fraser
Pull over conventional racecars. Thayer School is driving hybrid technology to the fast lane by holding the nation’s first collegiate Formula Hybrid competition.
PACE SETTER: Overseer Charles Nearburg ’72, Th’73, ’74, longtime Formula racing enthusiast, takes Thayer School’s first hybrid racecar for a spin.
The May 4 event at the New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon is so revolutionary that only Thayer School and McGill University have hybrids ready for racing. So Thayer School devised a way around that roadblock: this year’s race will be a demonstration. Teams from schools around the country will participate in a Formula Hybrid conference at Thayer School May 3 and enter the race next year.
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