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The cognitive scientist continues a Dartmouth tradition.
On a recent February morning, President Sian Leah Beilock poses a question to a class of approximately 75 students in the Loew Auditorium.
“So, what’s an expert?”
Students call out parts of a definition—“Someone who practices deliberately,” says one; another adds, “Has a wealth of knowledge in a specific topic.”
President Beilock, herself a world-renowned expert on the factors in the brain that influence performance, is in full professor mode, listening carefully, reiterating each response so the whole room can hear, then zeroing in on one concept: whether experts are born or made, and how researchers have debated and tested this question going back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle.
The course is COCO 40: The American University Athlete in the 21st Century—an interdisciplinary look at the history, identity, physiology, cognition, and economics of college sports, co-taught by Beilock; Paul Christesen ’88, the William R. Kenan Professor of Ancient Greek History; Interim Dean of Thayer School of Engineering Doug Van Citters ’99, Thayer ’03, ’06; and Mike Harrity, the Haldeman Family Director of Athletics and Recreation.
‘I always learn, too’
Beilock is teaching about cognition, focusing on the neural processes related to learning and performance. It’s the first undergraduate course she has taught at Dartmouth since her arrival in 2023, though as president she frequently lectures and gives grand rounds at Geisel School of Medicine on her research.
My science gets better when I hear from students with different perspectives, coming in thinking about things in a different way. It’s exciting.
A professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Beilock won the 2017 Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences for her research on performance under pressure and is also a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
“Dartmouth has a long history of presidents being in the classroom, and it’s an honor to follow in that tradition,” says Beilock. “It’s been especially fun to see the excitement that the students have in thinking about how they might use sports in their careers.”
Beilock says she’s been impressed with the level of rigor that students bring to the classroom, and by their questions.
“I always learn, too,” she says. “Some of the best papers in my career were sparked by questions that students asked me in class. My science gets better when I hear from students with different perspectives, coming in thinking about things in a different way. It’s exciting.”
And the course has also given Beilock a new perspective on Dartmouth’s educational model.
“We talk about our faculty as being teacher-scholars, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen at peer institutions,” she says. “The amount of time and effort the faculty put into the classroom is second to none. It gives me a new appreciation for what our faculty do in the classroom and how unique and important it is.”
An interdisciplinary course on college athletics
“Modern college athletics is complex and interdisciplinary by nature, and it requires cross-institutional collaboration to do our work well,” says Harrity, who is teaching the economics module. “It only makes sense to mirror that same cross-institutional collaboration in a course designed to engage and facilitate student understanding of the university athlete in the 21st century.”
The topic could not be more timely, Harrity says. In April, a judge in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals will consider a class action settlement that would establish a framework for NCAA institutions to share revenue with Division I athletes, a major departure from the NCAA’s long held rules on amateurism. While the Ivy League, including Dartmouth, opted out of the discretionary terms of the settlement and plans to continue to prioritize academics and the holistic student-athlete experience, the broader landscape of college sports is facing dramatic changes.
“We’re at the biggest inflection point in college athletics history,” Harrity says. “The financial realities are so unsettled right now that there are no definitive answers. So what an opportunity for students to bring their insights and questions. It makes for a fruitful, rich discussion.”
Christesen, an expert on sports in ancient Greece, is teaching the history and identity sections of the course and has served as its organizer, wrangling such details as hiring teaching assistants and finding honorariums for guest lecturers, who have included nationally recognized scholars, professional athletes, and officials from the NCAA, among others.
“The design of the class reflects the vision that President Beilock has for the institution, organizationally speaking,” Christesen says of the decision to have faculty from across the arts and sciences, engineering, and athletics teach collaboratively. “She wants to pull the various pieces of the institution together. I’ve never seen an athletics director teach in the classroom, but who better to have in the room teaching about how we pay for sports than the person at Dartmouth who thinks about this all day long?”
Van Citters, who specializes in the biomaterials and biomechanics of artificial joints and is teaching about physiology, was a varsity rower as an undergraduate and has served as faculty athletics representative. He says each section of the course is designed to dovetail with the others.
“My last lecture related to the nervous system and the controls that make your muscles go, and that was a straightforward handoff to Sian to start talking about the cognition that goes with that nervous system, so she could take us through sports psychology and performance,” Van Citters says. “And all of that plays into Paul’s focus on identity and into the socioeconomic environment of NCAA athletics. So it all fits together.”
Students and athletes
Emma Resnick ’26, a member of the women’s alpine ski team, is one of many student-athletes enrolled in the course. A politics, philosophy, and economics major, Resnick says the course has given her new insight into her own experience as an athlete, and she has appreciated the opportunity to hear from guest lecturers such as former Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto and Mario Morris, senior vice president and chief financial officer of the NCAA.
The course “has made me understand why athletics are valuable to a university, and the sense of community it brings—exemplified by the class roster itself bringing together so many athletes from various sports,” Resnick says.
Computer science major Miles Hudgins ’25, a member of the men’s heavyweight rowing team, says he has enjoyed the “variety of different topics and lecturing styles” the course has offered.
This is the second time Hudgins has had the opportunity to take a class taught by a Dartmouth president. “I actually had the privilege of taking a class with President Hanlon during his term, as well,” he says. During his tenure, President-Emeritus Philip J. Hanlon ’77 also made a point of teaching regularly.
“It’s amazing,” says Hudgins of the tradition of Dartmouth presidents continuing to teach in the classroom, which goes back at least as far as President John Kemeny, who co-invented the BASIC computer language with a Dartmouth colleague.
“One of the great things about Dartmouth is that it’s such a small and tight-knit community, and I think people here, including the administration and specifically President Beilock, just care so much about the lives of students.”
“President Beilock is a great professor,” Resnick says. “She is able to create an engaging dialogue in class and is very receptive to any questions that students bring up.”
Teaching how, not what, to think
Back in the classroom, Beilock describes a series of experiments—including some from her own research—and challenges the students to work together and to visualize a variety of hypotheses.
“If chess experts have a better memory for chess boards than novices, what would the graph look like?” she asks. “This is a real chess configuration. What would the graph look like if it was a random configuration?”
Her method is designed to give students tools for approaching scientific questions analytically.
“At Dartmouth we teach students how to think, not what to think, and I try and embody that in how I teach,” Beilock says. “I want the students not to just accept the conclusions of an author or an idea at face value. I want them to challenge the data, and I try to show examples of where researchers have challenged each other. I believe that when you create these kinds of brave spaces where you’re pushing at different ideas, you get better outcomes, and you get the new insight or discovery.”
The Office of Communications can be reached at office.of.communications@dartmouth.edu
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