Dartmouth College Athletics

Martha J. Beattie (H)

Induction:
2022
Class:
1976

A true pioneer of women’s athletics at Dartmouth, Martha was a member of the first four-year class to matriculate while competing in three sports — rowing, skiing and tennis.

Martha became involved in serving the college through class fundraising and reunion committee work, joining the Alumni Council in 2001 before being elected president of the council in 2006. She received a Dartmouth College citation as co-chair of a fundraising effort that achieved the highest percentage of donors for a 30th reunion in 2006.

In 2010, Martha was chosen for the Dartmouth College Alumni Award, the college’s highest honor for alumni service. The following year, she was appointed the Vice President for Alumni Relations after a 30-year career as a math teacher, rowing coach, volunteer leader and board member for schools and nonprofit organizations. Dartmouth reunions consistently set attendance and giving records under her leadership, and she was instrumental in bringing this Wearers of the Green ceremony to Hanover in 2014 after it took place in Boston for a quarter century.

Martha still volunteers her time with the women’s rowing team and has done so for the past dozen years, imparting her expertise from many years of coaching, including the U.S. Women’s Junior National Crew Team in 1983 that achieved the best international finish of any U.S. Junior Girls Eight to date. She was also the founding coach for one of the first master's women sweep teams in the country in Seattle in 1984, plus founded the Hanover High boys rowing team when only girls had been on the water in 2001.

The Dartmouth tradition runs strong in her family with husband Jim from the Class of 1976, son Sam from the Class of 2007 and daughter Nell the Class of 2009 and a Tuck ’15.