ABSTRACT
In the late 1960s, before invention of the environmental impact assessment mechanism, a faculty member at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering was contacted by a lawyer employed by the State of Vermont to help evaluate the likely impact of a proposed nuclear power plant in Vermont. Students working together in groups will formulate and justify policy measures that they think would be appropriate to deal with a local environmental problem. Perhaps the most important and most difficult organizational problem is helping the students organize themselves into appropriate teams and helping them to understand the nature of a cooperative team effort. It is clear from the nearly-30-year history of the course that it, has established a valuable place in the curriculum. It is interesting that the Dartmouth faculty recently voted a change in the graduation requirements to stipulate that each major field of concentration must provide a senior-level “culminating experience”.
