Press Release
For Immediate Release
August 26, 2006
THE FROST PLACE and DARTMOUTH COLLEGE Announce New Partnership
The Trustees of the Frost Place, a museum and poetry education center based at Robert Frost’s homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire, are pleased to announce a new partnership with the Department of English at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
The Frost Place was founded in 1976 when Franconia’s town meeting approved purchase of the farmhouse where Robert Frost and his family lived full-time from 1915 to 1920 and then spent nineteen summers. A board of trustees was given responsibility for management of the house and museum, and from 1978 through 2005, scholar and Dartmouth faculty member Donald Sheehan served as executive director. In February of 2006 the trustees chose Jim Schley, Dartmouth Class of 1979, to be Don Sheehan’s successor and the organization’s first full-time administrator, with the express goal of moving the Frost Place’s educational programs into year-round operations. At Dartmouth, Schley earned a modified English major in Literature and Creative Writing and a minor in Native American Studies, and he has worked for twenty-five years as a teacher, book and magazine and editor and author, and theater artist.
The summer of 2006 marks a reaffirmation and expansion of the cooperation between the Frost Place and Dartmouth that has been sustained informally for many years.
In addition to the historic association of Dartmouth with Robert Frost, who attended the college as an undergraduate in 1892 and later served on the faculty (as Ticknor Fellow, 1948–48), there have been many connections between the institutions over the years. Past and present members of the English and Creative Writing faculty have been trustees, advisors, and visiting faculty at the Frost Place, including Cleopatra Mathis, William W. Cook, Cynthia Huntington, Jay Parini, Alan Gaylord, Donald Pease, and Sydney Lea. Moreover, the Frost Place’s collection of archival papers and books, including letters and inscribed first editions, are stored during the winter season when they are not on display in Dartmouth’s Rauner Library, which has special facilities for rare books and documents.
Under the aegis of the new partnership agreement, Dartmouth College and the Frost Place have made the following commitments:
1. The Department of English and Creative Writing Program will host an annual reading by the Frost Place’s Resident Poet, which in 2006 has been Robert Farnsworth of Lewiston, Maine, who gave a reading in Sanborn Library in July.
2. Each summer, the Frost Place will sponsor a William W. Cook Dartmouth–Frost Place Fellowship for which Dartmouth undergraduates will be eligible, named in honor of a renowned Dartmouth professor of English and African & African-American Studies, who retired in June, 2006. The Department of English will nominate the Fellow, to be confirmed by the director of the Frost Place, and Dartmouth will provide a stipend for the Fellow’s living expenses. The Frost Place will pay the Fellow for administrative, museum, and conference work, and the Frost Place director will oversee the Fellow’s completion of a personalized project in the field of creative writing, poetry education, museum presentation, or nonprofit administration. The 2006 Cook–Frost Place Fellow is Travis Helms, Dartmouth Class of 2006, who will be living and working at the Frost Place in Franconia through Columbus Day in early October, 2006.
3. The Department of English will award a scholarship covering tuition for one student to attend the Frost Place’s annual Festival and Conference of Poetry or the Conference on Poetry and Teaching. In August 2006, Dartmouth undergraduate Todd Wooster of Hanover, N.H., has been the first beneficiary of the scholarship, attending the Festival and Conference on Poetry.
4. The Department of English at Dartmouth College at Dartmouth College will provide space for up to two meetings per year of the Frost Place Board of Trustees, who have in recent years held autumn and spring meetings in Hanover.
5. And each autumn for one weekend, the Frost Place will be made available to the Dartmouth College Creative Writing faculty who will have full use of the kitchen and living quarters and who will be joined by senior majors for a program retreat.
For more information please contact Frost Place Director Jim Schley at (603) 823–5510 or email. Frost Place programs can be viewed here.
Programs About the Frost Place The MuseumContact Us
P.O. Box 74 , Ridge Road, Franconia, NH 03580
Telephone: (603) 823–5510
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