[4][5] Thayer School of Engineering is named for Colonel and Brevet Brigadier Sylvanus Thayer, a Dartmouth College alumnus from the Class of 1807, who had developed an extensive engineering curriculum West Point's United States Military Academy unlike any other in the United States at the time and was known as the "Father of West Point" for his 16-year superintendency and leadership at the academy.

[9] The curriculum borrowed heavily from the model that Thayer had developed at West Point—a two-year program that culminates in a degree in civil engineering (CE).

Under Fletcher, the school's enrollment, endowment, faculty and student population, and facilities grew markedly throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Dean William P. Kimball (1945–61) continued the school's growing emphasis on research and established the first master's degrees for students wishing to earn more than a Bachelor of Engineering.

[7] In 1961, Myron Tribus became dean of the School, placing a heavy emphasis on the practical, problem-solving aspects of engineering as well as the traditional, theoretical base of the discipline.

Tribus developed an integrated curriculum and introduced design courses to the school to provide Thayer students with real-life experience in creative applications of engineering.

In the early first decade of the 21st century, the core curriculum for undergraduates was revamped under Dean Lewis Duncan (1998–2004), making the school's offerings more accessible to non-major Dartmouth students.

[10] The Thayer School is located on the campus of Dartmouth College, which is situated in the rural, Upper Valley New England town of Hanover, New Hampshire.

[7][11] In 1938, Dartmouth president Ernest Martin Hopkins successfully lobbied the Board of Trustees to construct an independent facility for the school.

[12] $200,000 were spent to build Horace Cummings Memorial Hall, which with several major additions (built in 1945-46 and 1989) served as Thayer's only facility for nearly 70 years.

[16] Thayer also offers a dual-degree program for undergraduates at other colleges who wish to earn their bachelor's degree at their home institution and their B.E.

[1] Research at Thayer is divided into three general "focus areas": engineering in medicine, energy technologies, and complex systems.

The Cook Engineering Design Center, founded in 1978, acts to solicit industry-sponsored projects for degree candidates to work on.

[31] Notable former faculty include Arthur Kantrowitz, emeritus professor of engineering, and Myron Tribus, the dean of the Thayer School for most of the 1960s.