A "Useful" Education

Charter's 225th anniversary offers many opportunities for reflection

September 9, 2008

Caroline Radesky '09 with the legislative act approving the charter at the state archives of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission.

When Caroline Radesky '09 took a position as an intern at the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission's state archives this past summer, she had no idea that she would be handling the original legislative act approving the charter for Dickinson College. "It's amazing how well the documents are preserved, basically because the paper was of a better quality than today. It looked new," says Radesky.

The charter establishing Dickinson as the first college in what was then the American West, as one scholar wrote, is in fact 225 years old today. On Sept. 9, 1783, the Pennsylvania state legislature passed "An act for the establishment of a college at the borough of Carlisle, in the county of Cumberland, in the state of Pennsylvania," and Benjamin Rush's dream became a reality.

Radesky was assigned to find the act "since it was my school," she says, and besides, "it really wasn't that hard to find. I just went through the box and finally saw a tag that said 'College in Carlisle,' so I took a look and it was the one on top. The seal was still on it."

18th-century values, 21st-century definitions

It is no secret that Dr. Rush's vision for the college was a practical one: the word "useful" appears four times in the first five sections of the charter. But according to Neil Weissman, provost and dean of the college, the term "useful" has multiple meanings. "I define 'useful' very broadly," he says. "It doesn't mean narrow utility; it means useful for the purposes of citizenship and building a meaningful, consequential life."

In his essay to the class of 2012, "Inquiry and Engagement: Reflections on the Dickinson Curriculum in its 225th Year," Weissman exhorts first-year students to consider how Rush's vision remains relevant to them today, focusing specifically on the interrelated concepts of "engaging the world" and creating "communities of inquiry." He says that "Enlightenment thinkers didn't see any obvious separation between the life of the mind and the wider world around them."

Rush's vision in action

For Weissman, "learning is not just passively receiving insights and information from the past. It also includes raising questions and creating new knowledge." That Radesky was asked to find the charter may have been especially serendipitous, literally exemplifying Rush's notion of usefulness. Not only is she a history major, but she's been focused on Dickinson for some time. "I'm using Dickinson as a case study for my thesis, so getting to see the charter really solidified what I had been studying," she says.

And while Radesky was excited to be the person to locate the act, she's even more enthusiastic about her pet project at the state archives during her internship there. "I had some ideas when I got there of what I wanted to do," she says. One of them was a Women's History Resource Guide, which amounted to "158 pages and thousands of sources that people could use" when she completed it at the end of the summer.

According to Radesky, there had been no such guide at the archives until she proposed the idea: "Basically it goes through all the record and manuscript groups highlighting pieces in the collection that genealogists, gender historians and women's historians would find very useful. It was a wonderful experience. Maybe that's what made it so easy to find the act because I had been working in the collections so much."

Reflections and celebrations

The newest Dickinsonians also spent some time with Rush this summer. In addition to the charter and Weissman's essay, their common reading packet included Rush's 1785 Plan of Education and his essay "Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic," as well as President William G. Durden '71's article in the spring 2007 issue of Liberal Education, "Reclaiming the Distinctiveness of American Higher Education."

Weissman thinks that Rush would like the programs in place at Dickinson today. "Rush was generally a progressive, radical thinker, so I think the idea of a curriculum that's dynamic, that's responsive to the wider world would certainly fit his vision," he says. And on Sept. 12 Dickinson faculty will mark the 225th anniversary of the charter with an informal conversation on the curriculum—where it's been and where it's going. A panel of two senior and two junior faculty members will lead the discussion.

A reception on Nov. 1 during Homecoming & Family Weekend also will celebrate the charter's 225th anniversary. Tours of the new Stuart and James halls of the Rector Science Complex will follow.