But today, when White House budget directors are gushed over on blogs and economists are repeatedly recruited to explain a variety of domestic crises, the profession appears to be enjoying newfound appreciation.

What economists find interesting seems to be changing too. Far from abstract “widgets,” they’re focused on issues that have relevance to real-life situations, though they can involve subjects that seem surprisingly un-academic. Indeed, the pages of Freakonomics, the 2005 sensation that continues to spawn imitators, weigh in on the Ku Klux Klan, drug dealers who shack up with their moms and sumo wrestlers.

In step with the global trend, Dartmouth’s economics department, which is made up of 34 full- and part-time faculty members, embraces this specialized, applied approach to problem-solving without seeming to sacrifice any of the cost-curve-type fundamentals that have historically anchored an economics education.

And the system has fans—econ has been the College’s most popular major for more than a decade. Of the 1,054 members of the class of 2009, 172 (16 percent) made that choice. Government followed with 132 (13 percent). Next in line was psychology and brain sciences with 111 majors and biology with 86, according to the office of institutional research.

“Officially economics is the study of how scarce resources get allocated. But it’s really the study of how people behave, and that explains why it has such broad appeal,” says professor Bruce Sacerdote ’90, the department’s vice chair.

And the questions posed by his own discipline-blending research intrigue people who aren’t quantitatively inclined. One study examined whether a first-year student was likely to rush a fraternity if his roommate did (answer: yes). Another looked at the effect that taking in Hurricane Katrina student refugees had on schools’ math scores (mostly negative).

In Freakonomics Sacerdote chimed in on the nature/nurture debate with a study showing how children adopted by smart parents usually wind up more successful than they would have been had they stayed with their birth families.

“You study economics,” says Sacerdote, a former DAM board member, “to get to the root of the issue.”

Spending a lot of time on research at a small institution such as Dartmouth, where professor-student interactions are prized, can generate controversy of course. But, at least in the economics department, little seems to have been lost because of outside work, says recent major Soon Ho Lee ’02.

Due for specific praise in that respect, Lee says, is Jonathan Skinner, a healthcare-focused economist whose recent eye-opening paper about how better-educated people suffer less back pain seems to embody the profession’s pragmatic spirit.

Lee, a math and economics major, currently lives in Hong Kong, where in 2008 he launched the Asian office of Royal Capital Management, a hedge fund. He invests in undervalued securities, particularly in Japan.

“What I studied may not lend itself to what I do on a daily basis,” Lee says, “but it provides a good framework to understand markets.”

Similarly, professor Annamaria Lusardi, who has become a national expert on personal savings rates, defends outside research as a way of holding students’ attention. “If I were just a teacher I would be so incredibly boring,” jokes Lusardi, adding that there are also more tangible side effects.

In 2008, for example, she analyzed the savings habits of Dartmouth employees to find out why it might be tough to sock something away for the future. A lesson learned: “Employees are less likely to procrastinate,” her report says, “if they are given a plan,” such as having money automatically deducted and deposited into an investment account, Lusardi explains.

In October, on the strength of that research, Lusardi helped launch the national Financial Literacy Center, a partnership between Dartmouth, Penn’s Wharton school and the Rand Corp. The center’s goal is to encourage citizens, especially women, to understand how, say, compound interest works, so they can better manage their credit cards and avoid financial setbacks. “The world is changing. We are shifting the responsibility from the government to the people,” Lusardi says. “But we are giving people more tools that don’t have to do with home equity lines of credit, credit cards and stock buying.”

Lusardi, who has advised the Social Security Administration, is among a crop of economics professors being called upon by government leaders for their expertise. Perhaps the best-known example in Dartmouth’s econ department is David “Danny” Blanchflower, a wage expert whose three-year turn on the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England ended last summer. During his appointment, which largely predated the Great Recession, Blanchflower pushed for governments to offer subsidies to employers to entice them to hire younger workers, who are disproportionately hurt by downturns, he says. He brought a similar up-to-the minute relevancy to Econ 76: “The Financial Crisis of the Noughties,” which he created last spring to help make sense of the continuing economic downturn.

Washington has come knocking in Hanover as well. Assistant professor Jay Shambaugh, who has written extensively about exchange rates, is currently a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, a position he will hold at least through the summer, he says. Fellow department member Andrew Samwick, also director of the College’s Rockefeller Center, served as the council’s chief economist under president George W. Bush.

Just as professors seem to be increasingly playing policy-maker, so do former economics majors, according to Sacerdote, who estimates that about 15 percent of graduates now opt to work at places such as the World Bank or MIT’s Poverty Action Lab. That share is up notably from when Sacerdote began teaching in 1998, he explains.

John Bellows ’04, for one, completed a Ph.D. in economics at Berkeley before landing at the Treasury Department, where he does “a lot of thinking about jobs programs and what the government can do to stimulate job growth,” he says. For Bellows, who early on mulled a Chinese language major, a senior project on development economics in India followed by a five-month stint in Delhi—working for the World Health Organization—cemented his interest in the public sector.

Similarly Celia Kujala ’07, who works at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, cites the pull of current events as a reason for becoming a government worker since completing a Fulbright fellowship to study the health outcomes of education in Helsinki. It flowed logically from work she did in Econ 80: “Advanced Topics in Econometrix,” taught by professor Doug Staiger, whose core interests are health and education. Though Kujala can see towers that are home to investment banks from her office in lower Manhattan, the arduous lifestyle associated with that kind of business held little attraction. “The Excel spreadsheets, the long hours…and there’s not a lot of input you can provide, considering all those hours worked,” she says.

But it’s not like getting through the major is a cakewalk—as was evident during a visit last fall to a packed microeconomics class (Econ 21) in Silsby.

“It’s okay if you get lost today,” began Maura Doyle, a senior lecturer, as she began a whir of chalkboard scribbling and a discussion of Marshallian and Hicksian demand functions that relied on a dizzying alphabet soup of variables. But Doyle’s 32 students seemed to take the caveat in stride, abstaining from raising their hands when Doyle asked for questions. They may not have been bluffing. Students seem smarter or at least better prepared by high school economics classes than they used to be, according to many economics professors. That’s largely why the College feels it can require calculus for Econ 21—a change that was implemented in the mid-1990s.

This may put Dartmouth ahead of its competitors. In comparison, for a course similar to Econ 21 that Doyle taught at Tufts, algebra skills alone sufficed, she says, adding, “I hate teaching without calculus because you lose the intuition.”

Still, figuring out exactly where Dartmouth stands—or any other school for that matter—is notoriously difficult. There have been few official attempts to rank undergraduate economics departments through the years, and some of the criteria employed, such as papers published by faculty members, can put teaching-focused Dartmouth at a disadvantage.

To wit: Dartmouth has the 29th best department in the country, out of about 75 schools evaluated by Christian Zimmerman, an economist from the University of Connecticut. Zimmerman’s rating system, which he says is not an absolute authority, is based on how much research a department generates, the quality of the journals that research appears in and the frequency with which that work is cited by others.

In contrast, Harvard took the top spot and Princeton was No. 4. Cornell came in at 37. But, Zimmerman cautions, the rankings depend on how many professors are actually registered with the RePec Author Service, from which his data is derived. At Dartmouth that means only 14 members (40 percent) of the faculty.

Besides, rankings can be relative. “We would be very happy to be at Dartmouth’s spot,” Zimmerman says about UConn’s No. 59 ranking.

Similarly it can be tough to do an apples-to-apples comparison by faculty. Dartmouth’s year-round calendar means more teachers are off in the fall, winter and spring than at other semester-based schools.

In terms of student-faculty ratios, the department seems to measure up. Dartmouth’s economics department has a 5-to-1 ratio, compared with Harvard at 6-to-1. (For what it’s worth, the economics major is even more popular in Cambridge, attracting about 19 percent of this year’s senior class.) But Princeton, which is home to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, has roughly a 2-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio, according to statistics supplied by administrators. There, economics majors make up about 11 percent of the senior class.

Though Dartmouth may be holding its own against Ivy League rivals, it took some effort to get there, and if there’s one person still teaching who moved the department in that direction, it’s probably Al Gustman, who arrived at Dartmouth in 1969 when he was 25. Although the College had about 1,000 fewer students then, or three-quarters of what it has today, the economics department was comparatively tiny, with just 13 faculty members, or about a third of its current size, Gustman recalls.

After pressing the administration for years to stem the brain drain that was sending young star professors to Michigan, UCLA and Harvard, Gustman finally got a sympathetic ear in the 1980s in the McLaughlin administration, which upped its salary offers to make the school’s hiring more competitive.

Another powerful recruiting tool, Gustman says, came in the form of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Cambridge-based not-for-profit that determines when the country is in a recession. The group is also a sort of launching pad for economics research, where papers are published on their way to top-tier journals.

In the late 1970s Martin Feldstein, a Harvard professor, became NBER’s president. He then invited many Dartmouth professors whom he had known when they were students at Harvard to submit papers. In turn, these papers, which are pored over by government leaders of all stripes, helped elevate the College’s national profile while at the same time putting faculty members in touch with a large crop of talent.

Years later some of that talent, swayed by promises of a burgeoning department, Gustman says, ended up relocating to Hanover. In fact, just six full-time professors published research with NBER in 1989, but that number had jumped to 20 in 2009. In comparison, Cornell had 17 professors with the distinction in 2009, though Harvard, with 108, led the pack. “Dartmouth grew up and decided to get serious about being an Ivy League institution,” Gustman says. “It had been behaving like an Amherst or Williams.”

The timing of the department’s makeover coincided with changes in the way finance was being taught, from institutional models, trendy in the 1970s, to more individual cost-and-benefit analyses, which in many ways presaged the current splintering. Simultaneously, computers got a lot more powerful and accessible, which allowed economists to crunch huge sets of data with relative ease.

Plus the faculty’s efforts to expand the department were helped by the fact that Wall Street was booming. This boosted student interest in the curriculum, says Gustman, who points out that the number of Dartmouth economic majors has grown steadily since.

Yet popularity, which has also been spurred by the department’s wide-net approach to social issues, might have a price. Despite the fact that the 2,724 Dartmouth students who enrolled in economics classes last year had 108 courses to choose among, there weren’t always enough seats to go around—a problem in classes such as Econ 28: “Public Economics,” which many majors need to take.

Steven Venti, the department’s chair, acknowledges the problem, saying he’s working to hire more faculty and, more importantly, retain current teachers; two professors have defected to Harvard and one to UCLA in the last five years, he adds.

With Dartmouth’s current fiscal crisis it has been “hard to hire and harder to retain,” says Venti, who has taught in Hanover since 1982.

If a boom on Wall Street once fueled interest in economics, one might think the inverse could be true—that a collapse of major banks there and a plunge in the stock markets would turn people away. So far that doesn’t seem to be the case, with the number of majors graduating this year expected to be around the same as last year, according to the department. And even those such as Mary Mei ’04, who just graduated into a tough job market from Harvard Business School with hopes of working in finance, don’t seem to regret what they studied.

“Economics teaches you how to think in a certain way about a problem and how you might solve it logically,” she says. “And it’s relevant to the overall world, about what drives it day to day, in a way that exceeds other subjects.

“You can build a career around it,” Mei adds, “but it’s also good for those who don’t know what they want do.”

C.J. Hughes, a journalist based in New York City, is a regular contributor to DAM. He majored in English.

“I picked up my first bit of Japanese and Chinese martial arts as part of a Dartmouth club,” Harrington says. “I studied judo and karate there. My love of things Asian probably started in Chicago with some exposure I had at De La Salle Institute, but my love of Japanese martial arts really started in Hanover.” He “really blossomed,” he says, while studying with professor Hans Penner, who taught Sanskrit and Indian Buddhist studies.

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Harrington grew up dreaming of being a police officer like his father, a Cook County deputy sheriff. “My best friend’s dad was a Chicago cop,” Harrington explains. “Before my dad became a cop he had run a bar. On those good days when I got to hang out at my dad’s tavern you’d see the Chicago cops walk in who were literally, physically, giants. I’m a skinny 14-year-old kid and these 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4 block-out-the-sun guys would walk in with two guns on and big leather coats and sit down on the back porch and talk to my dad.

“These were the old days when it was okay to be seen but not heard. I’d kind of hang out around where the grownups were and I was smart enough to be very, very quiet. I’d just sit there listening to them talk about kicking in doors and chasing people across the L tracks. I was hooked. This was better than TV.”

Harrington graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in East Asian studies and religion, and a minor in Chinese, and began looking for cop jobs in the big cities. No one was hiring. He briefly considered using his Asian studies to do overseas law enforcement work, perhaps with the CIA, but decided his spoken Chinese was not strong enough.

“New York went bankrupt,” Harrington recalls. “They laid off 2,000 cops in 1975 and 1976, and everywhere I applied my senior year was flooded with New York detectives. I’ve got this wonderful Ivy League degree and they’ve got 100 collars they made last year. Guess who got the job?”

Finally Harrington found a job in St. Paul, at least in part because a Minnesota judge had ordered the department to hire more black officers. There were just six black cops on the force at the time.

After making it through the department’s 21-week academy there was just one impediment keeping Harrington from becoming a cop: his diploma. His high school diploma.

“I told them, ‘I sent you my college diploma.’ They said, ‘No, what we require is a high school diploma.’ ” Harrington had to call his mother and ask her to mail him a copy of his diploma from De La Salle.

Assistant chief Matt Bostrom, who joined the force a few years later and now holds a doctorate in public administration, understands the skepticism an educated cop like Harrington had to face.

“I had conversations with some of the older officers, who’d say, ‘What do you need the degree for? You need street smarts, not book smarts,’ ” Bostrom says. “When [Harrington] arrived he had a degree at a higher level than what’s required now. Today, even though it’s not a requirement that you have a four-year degree, it’s the rarest occasion that someone shows up at our door who doesn’t have a four-year degree, and several have completed a master’s or are working on one.”

Harrington, who in 1985 earned a master’s in curriculum and instruction from the University of St. Thomas, demonstrated repeatedly on his rise through the ranks the value of his book smarts.

When St. Paul became one of the major U.S. resettlement locations for Hmong immigrants in the 1980s Harrington played a major role in helping them adjust. “Pieces of their culture and language are very definitely tied to the Chinese, and other parts more tied to the Vietnamese,” he says. “It was easy to make that kind of cultural contact, to be a good bridge for them here.”

Harrington was also instrumental in training new officers and designing new programs. In the late 1990s he initiated and facilitated joint training sessions between the St. Paul police and fire departments, a then-unheard-of idea.

“In public safety prior to 9/11 police did their thing, fire did their thing, emergency medical services did their thing,” says Al Bataglia, who retired from the St. Paul fire department in 2003 as interim chief. “Everybody had specialized areas and you didn’t cross borders into another person’s territory. What we found out was no one department could do anything alone. John was one of those guys who’d find out what the fire department’s job was and make sure that they found out what law enforcement’s job was. He was very innovative.”

Harrington served as the department’s personnel and training director when, in 2000, he was put in charge of St. Paul’s western district, an operational command he’d been hoping for. There he implemented an innovative and effective antidrug project that helped reduce juvenile crime by 65 percent and narcotics offenses by 70 percent in its first year.

The assignment also gave him a big boost toward becoming the city’s next chief, a position he hadn’t expected to get. He’d applied unsuccessfully for the vacant Minneapolis police chief’s job in 2003. But a year later, when then-St. Paul Chief Bill Finney announced he wouldn’t seek another term, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly named Harrington as Finney’s replacement.

How did he feel? “Proud and overwhelmed,” Harrington says. “I thought, ‘Now I’ve got to pick people. How do I run this place? I don’t want to screw it up.’ ”

He didn’t. Every category of crime except commercial burglary has declined on his watch, and a new antigang project has resulted in the lowest number of gang assaults in years. His campaign against domestic violence has produced dramatic results: an average of 5,000 fewer cases each year. Technology upgrades under Harrington put cameras on the streets and updated radios and closed-circuit monitors in cars.

“In my mind there are 30 people out there who would be dead if we’d just continued business as usual,” Harrington says. “I think my worst year as chief we had 27 or 28 homicides. We ended up last year with 14.”

Perhaps best of all, thanks in part to federal stimulus money, St. Paul added 24 officers to the force in January. Another 20 are expected to join in the fall. “I said when I took the job I would probably do one [six-year] term,” Harrington says. “I made the commitment that if the place was a mess, if we were in crisis, I wasn’t going to abandon ship.”

Despite the positives the department’s inability to increase the number of black cops on the force beyond the current total of 60—out of a force of 600—frustrates Harrington. When he took over as chief the department goal was to have blacks make up 10 percent of the force, equal to the percentage of blacks in St. Paul. While the percentage of blacks in the city has risen, the percentage of black cops remains stuck. “It’s been a very difficult nut to crack to try to find young black men and women who want to be in this line of work, who want to go through all of the hoops that the state requires,” Harrington says.

He also wants to see the department further develop “intel-based” policing, to the point where officers can use in-car computers to access an array of databases. “They will have the technology at their laptop command so they can actually dial up pictures of the bad guys as they’re running away from the scene,” says Harrington.

But that’s for the next chief. Harrington is ready to move on. He was one of three finalists for the New Orleans police chief job this spring, then in late May acknowledged he was considering a run for the Minnesota State Senate. Regardless of his decision he will not be idle. He serves on the boards of several local institutions and he’s thought about teaching or pursuing policy studies. He’d like to work on homelessness issues. He’ll spend more time with his family, which includes going to his granddaughter’s hockey games. (Harrington played as a kid in Chicago and briefly tried out for the Dartmouth freshman team until, he says, “I found out what real hockey looked like. I was out of my depth.”)

Yet the chief suspects part of him will always be that kid who listened raptly to his father talking shop with fellow cops.

“I’m not quite sure I’ve got the cops and robbers out of my system yet,” Harrington says. “There’s a piece of me that hasn’t ever totally got rid of the idea that the best job in the world is working the midnight shift with a really good squad car and a good partner and going as fast as you possibly can to the next hot call.”

Rick Shefchik’s third novel, Frozen Tundra, was published in June by North Star Press.

When Wheelock founded Dartmouth it never occurred to him that he or his school had anything to learn from Indian people. In his view, their ways of knowing and learning were simply primitive superstitions that must be eradicated if Indian students were to make any progress. In Wheelock’s vision for Dartmouth the few Indian students who attended were to be educated in English ways and Christianity so they could serve as missionaries who would convert other Indians to English ways and Christianity.

Not much changed as English colonial education for Indians gave way to American education for Indians. In 1819 Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act, providing for an annual appropriation of $10,000 to introduce “the habits and arts of civilization” among the Indians by employing “capable persons of good moral character, to instruct them in the mode of agriculture suited to their situation, and to teach their children in reading, writing and arithmetic.”

The act represented a commitment by the U.S. government to permanent involvement in Indian education, but it was an education to change Indians, the prevailing belief being that Indians could survive only if they ceased being Indians. With the establishment of government-sponsored boarding schools later in the century, the campaign to transform Indian children by eradicating their culture became a crusade. In 1891 Congress made school attendance mandatory for Indian children. Two years later it authorized the Bureau of Indian Affairs to withhold rations and annuities from parents who refused to send their children to school.

By 1900 congressional funding for Indian education reached almost $3 million, and 21,568 Indian students were enrolled in school. After the military subjugation of the continent, the United States waged a new war on Indian pupils to remake them into individual citizens, not tribal members. The schools tried to strip students of their Native languages, Native clothing, Native heritage and Native identity and provide them instead with minimal education and training to function at the lower levels of American society. Like British educational efforts in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, such campaigns, according to U.S. government policies of the time, “were designed to absorb supposedly deficient peoples into larger, dominant nations, leading not to cross-cultural fertilization but to the erasure of minority cultures and identities.” Indian education was “education for extinction,” cultural genocide waged with good intentions by people who sought to save Indians from themselves.

Yet, amid the hardship and heartbreak of the boarding schools, Indian students resisted the educational assault and refused to succumb to the assimilation philosophies and practices of their teachers. The students engaged in numerous small acts of subversion and rebellion, built bonds of friendship and loyalty with other Indian students and found humor and humanity in the midst of alienation and regimentation. Within the confines of the white man’s schools they created a subculture of survival and sustained their own Indian communities. Some used their education to pursue Indian agendas; many combined their Indian and Western educations in ways their teachers would never have sanctioned or even imagined.

Luther Standing Bear, the first Lakota student to attend Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania when it opened in 1879, looked back on the education he received and regretted the missed opportunities for creating a truly American school based on the fusion of Indian and Western systems of knowledge. Instead, he wrote, “we went to school to copy, to imitate; not to exchange languages and ideas, and not to develop the best traits that had come out of uncountable experiences of hundreds of thousands of years living upon this continent.” White people certainly had much to teach Indians, but Indians had much to teach them, too, wrote Standing Bear: “What a school could have been established upon that idea!”

Dartmouth could very easily have continued in the tradition of Wheelock and the boarding schools, less blatantly and less brutally but just as effectively de-educating Indian students as it prepared them for success in the non-Indian world. The late Lakota scholar and activist Vine Deloria Jr., author of books including Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969) and Indian Education in America (1991), delivered some scathing indictments of Western education.

He criticized mainstream colleges for training professionals but not producing people. Certainly, Native students can, if they wish, attend Dartmouth, graduate with the credentials and skills they need to succeed in mainstream America and have little to do with the Native community on campus, their Native community at home or their Native heritage. Although for some students Dartmouth is a path to a high-paying career rather than an opportunity to broaden the mind and feed the soul, the College does do more than make its graduates marketable. “Education is more than the process of imparting and receiving information,” wrote Deloria. “It is the very purpose of human society and…human societies cannot really flower until they understand the parameters of possibilities that the human personality contains.” Similar words and identical sentiments can be found in the speeches of past Dartmouth presidents James Freedman and James Wright, who steered the College into the 21st century with the firm belief that it should prepare students to live well, not just to make a good living.

Dartmouth is not—at least not yet—the kind of truly American school Luther Standing Bear longed for, but it is a far cry from the place Wheelock imagined. It is now an institution that recognizes value in diversity and a place where far more students embrace their Native identity than set it aside.

Living in a Native-American community, albeit a rather transient and academic one, sharing experiences with Native students from all over North America and having the opportunity to take classes that concentrate on Native issues can enhance Native students’ appreciation of their culture and identity, as well as increase consciousness of Native rights and sovereignty. Dartmouth can provide an environment where “Indianness” thrives—in the very place where Wheelock intended it should wither. The achievements of Native Americans educated at Dartmouth in recent decades speak to how well the College is fulfilling this contemporary objective.

At Dartmouth, as elsewhere, Native-American studies is still emerging as an academic discipline, and it is breaking new ground. Native and non-Native scholars explore issues of space, gender, artistic expression, representation, colonialism, indigenous sovereignty and nationhood as essential lines of inquiry in attempting to better understand the Native-American—and, therefore, the American—past and present. Students learn about Native-American ways of living, organizing societies and understanding the world. They also learn about relationships with colonial power and the unique rights and political aspirations of Indian peoples in the United States and Canada. Students explore the intersection of Indian and European histories and systems of knowledge as Native faculty at Dartmouth assign Locke, Rousseau and Foucault alongside tribal origin stories, the epic of the founding of the Iroquois League and the writings of Deloria.

Dartmouth’s acquisition of the Mark Lansburgh ’49 collection of Plains Indian ledger drawings in 2007 illustrates how Indian education has changed since the College was founded. During 30 years Lansburgh assembled one of the largest and most diverse collections of 19th-century Native-American drawings in private hands. Historically Plains Indian warrior-artists depicted visual narratives of war and hunting on buffalo robes and teepees to publicly memorialize their heroic deeds.

From the 1850s through the 1870s, however, American expansion transformed life on the Great Plains. Smallpox, cholera and other alien diseases decimated Native populations, treaties lopped off huge chunks of Native American homelands and commercial hunting, aided and abetted by a government campaign of systematic slaughter, virtually exterminated the buffalo herds that had constituted the foundation of Plains Indian economy and culture. Relocated to reservations, Native people were subjected to government programs of “civilization” that replaced hunting with farming, outlawed their dances and rituals and took their children away to boarding schools.

As a result of exposure to American settlers, soldiers and government agents, Plains warrior-artists adopted new perspectives, themes, materials and styles to portray their personal experiences, and developed a unique genre using bound ledger books and lined paper. The drawings provide Native alternatives to the many romanticized and inaccurate representations of Plains cultures. The Hood Museum of Art now holds more than 130 ledger drawings, making Dartmouth a resource for the study of Plains Indian art. Ledger drawings generate intellectual and cultural discussions that range far beyond the Great Plains in their implications and relevance. Dartmouth is no longer an institution that thinks it has nothing to learn from Indians or its Native students.

In the first 200 years of Dartmouth College about 60 Native students attended. Since the College recommitted itself to honoring its founding pledge, more than 700 Native students from more than 160 tribes, Abenaki to Zuni, have attended. In the first years of the 21st century Dartmouth matriculated between 30 and 40 Native students every year. In the fall of 2009 the number passed 50. For the first time in Dartmouth’s history Native-American students composed 5 percent of the entering class, roughly five times the national rate of Native enrollment in degree-granting institutions. But Native-American students are not just statistics to show that Dartmouth is finally living up to its historic mission. They connect Dartmouth to Native worlds and worldviews that are lost to most of modern America, to tribal communities and concerns that seem far removed from a privileged Ivy League college, and to a constantly changing Indian Country that exists in eastern cities and Alaska as well as on western reservations. Indian students are an essential resource in creating the kind of educational environment that Luther Standing Bear hoped for, and they have been a major influence in the evolution and growth of Native-American studies at Dartmouth.

Nevertheless, despite a more congenial and relevant curriculum, a generally improved social and political climate and more educational and career opportunities than ever before, Dartmouth can still be a hard place to be Indian. What sustains Dartmouth’s Native students through difficult times is their fellow Native students. Year after year, following Dartmouth’s commencement ceremonies, Native graduates give personal testimonies acknowledging the support of friends and peers and declare that they would not have made it without their affinity group, Native Americans at Dartmouth. Like their grandparents and great-grandparents who grouped together and built their own communities to combat the homesickness, austerity and racism they confronted in boarding schools, so Native-American students have built a community at Dartmouth. The people Wheelock intended to change at Dartmouth have helped to change Dartmouth and ensured that, at least in some respects, Dartmouth is, after all, an Indian school. In the young Native-American men and women it attracts, educates and graduates perhaps Dartmouth finally does have a role and a place in the heart of Indian Country, albeit one Eleazar Wheelock would neither recognize nor understand.

Colin Calloway is a professor of history and Native-American studies. He began teaching at Dartmouth in 1990. Excerpt from The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth by Colin G. Calloway (Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England, 2010).

Jewel of India
Hanover’s oldest Indian Restaurant. Featuring Northern Indian Cuisine from curries, tandoor dishes, vegetarian selections, beverages and desserts. Seasonings range from mild to fiery hot. Try our wonderful breads and refreshing yogurt drinks. Open lunch and dinner, 27 Lebanon Street, Hanover. (603) 643-2217.

Stone Soup
Located in the historic district of Strafford, Vermont, this 1815 building houses the small restaurant known for its comfortable charm, exceptional food and spectacular gardens. 25 minutes from Dartmouth. Open year-round serving dinner Thursday through Sunday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Reservations requested. (802) 765-4301.

Carpenter & Main
Chef/Owner Bruce MacLeod ’84 has cooked in San Francisco, South Carolina and Virginia, but his loyalties lie here in Vermont. Carpenter & Main features carefully prepared local ingredients in the French tradition. From pâtés, soups and ice creams to hand-cut French fries, grass-fed Vermont beef and soufflés, all offerings are made in house. Two intimate dining rooms provide elegant dining, and a lively tavern features casual offerings and a fully appointed bar. Dinner is served Thursday through Monday evenings: Tavern 5:30-10 p.m.; Dining Rooms, 6-9 p.m.; closed Tuesday and Wednesday. 326 Main Street, Norwich, VT 05055; (802) 649-2922.
www.carpenterandmain.com.

The Canoe Club
An inventive menu featuring local produce, farmstead cheeses and organic meats. A rustic yet stylish dining room with unusual Dartmouth ephemera. 24 draft beers on tap, plus an excellent selection of wines and single malts. Open for Lunch, Dinner, Late Night Menu and Live Entertainment–363 days/year. 27 S. Main St. between the Dartmouth Co-op & Bookstore. (603) 643-9660.www.canoeclub.us.

The Woodstock Inn and Resort
The culinary tradition of American cuisine combined with the crisp freshness of locally grown ingredients makes dining at the Woodstock Inn & Resort a truly American epicurean experience. Visitwww.woodstockinn.com or call (800) 448-7900.

The Quechee Inn at Marshand Farm
Each night, just 12 minutes from Hanover, our chefs awaken palates to some of the finest cuisine in New England. Menus available online at
www.quecheeinn.com. Reservations preferred, (802) 295-3133. Tented Wedding, Reunion and Meeting Specialists.

The Dowds’ Country Inn
The Dowds’ Country Inn caters to wedding receptions, class reunions, conferences, family gatherings and more.The Inn’s two dining rooms can accommodate groups from three to 250, indoors or out. Innkeeper Tami Dowd personally works on each event to ensure a perfect outcome.(603) 795-4712; (800) 482-4712; www.dowdscountryinn.com.

Home Hill Inn
Home Hill’s dining room features dramatic floor-to-ceiling French doors, elegant country furnishings and an inviting atmosphere for unforgettable dining. Our cuisine represents the best local ingredients, presented in traditional bistro style. Dinner served Wednesday through Sunday from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. Sunday Brunch from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. A short drive from Hanover. Plainfield, NH. (603) 675-6165.www.homehillinn.com.

Ramunto’s Brick & Brew
Hanover’s only real New York pizza, featuring traditional, Sicilian and brick oven specialty pizzas, salads, subs, calzones, the biggest beer in town and much more. Casual atmosphere, deliveries. Open ’til midnight 7 days. 9 East South Street, Hanover. (603) 643-9500.

To advertise in Dartmouth Alumni Magazine contact Tita Reiche (603) 646-1208 or emailAdvertising@Dartmouth.EDU

Real Estate

LANG McCLAUGHRY SPERA REAL ESTATE. New Hampshire-Vermont. 32 Main Street, Hanover, NH 03755. (603) 643-6400. Robert McLaughry ’44.

PrivateCommunities.com. Take a tour of the top retirement, vacation and golf communities at PrivateCommunities.com and GolfCommunities.com.

NORWICH, VERMONT. Twenty acres, mostly wooded, fully permitted, year-round stream, farm road access $195,000. gakap@myfairpoint.net

DEER VALLEY/ PARK CITY, UTAH. Providing unparalleled service to buyers and sellers of distinguished properties since 1980. Bill Ligety P’09. Prudential Utah Real estate, (435) 647-8012, bill@ligety.com

MOOSEHEAD LAKE, MAINE. Waterfront vacation home. Quality constructed. Two bedroom and master with bath. Open floor plan for kitchen, dining area & living room. Fireplace. Oversized two-car garage. Terrific views. Alumni owned. Spalding, Mellon & Munster Real Estate (207) 534-7200,munster@gwi.net.

NEAR DARTMOUTH. Warehouse, office, 19,400 square feet, fully leased, 8% return, excellent tenants. $2 million. dyroffsarakem@aol.com. (603) 643-5185.

For Rent

PROVENCE. Delightful five-bedroom stone farmhouse, facing Roman theater. Pool, vineyard. (860) 672-6607, www.frenchfarmhouse.com.

PARIS—MARAIS. Exquisite, sunny, quiet, one-bedroom apartment behind Place des Vosges. King-size bed, living/dining room, six chairs, full kitchen, washer, dryer. weekly maid service  $1,350 weekly. (301) 654-7145;louvet@jhu.edu.

PARIS. Heart of city on Ile St. Louis. Elegant top-floor apartment, elevator, updated well-appointed, gorgeous view. Sleeps 4, maid 3x week. WiFi. Inquiries: triff@mindspring.com or (678) 232-8444.

IRELAND. Bantry Bay scenic West Cork waterfront. Three bedroom cottage. Tennis. www.tigcharlie.com.

HANOVER. Walk to campus. Completely remodeled condo. 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. Fully furnished—beautiful, upscale. WBF. Garage. Weekend, seasonal, longer. www.gatheringplacehanover.com. (917) 273-8044.

NORWICH, VT. Lovingly restored 1792 farmhouse, four miles from Hanover Green. 4 BR, 3 baths, plus guest qtrs. and rec. area in barn. By week, month or season. (847) 869-1122, Ext. 21.

NOTTINGHILL GATE, CENTRAL LONDON. 4 Bedroom/4 Bath Mews Home. Rare quiet family escape minutes from Hyde Park and Portobello Road. Pictures available. brookspreston@yahoo.com. D’90.

HANOVER AREA/ORFORD, NH. Classic Lake Cottage Summer Vacation Rentals for Adults/Families. Amenities, Private, Recreation. Photos:www.sunsetranchcamp.com. Contact: manager@sunsetranchcamp.com.

HANOVER. Beautiful furnished 2-bedroom 2-bath condo; walking distance to campus. 2 parking spaces. Available for graduation, reunion and summer by week, month or season. (603) 277-9171.

HANOVER. Walk to Campus. Beautiful 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo; den, office, washer/dryer, 2 parking spaces. Fully furnished. Weekends, seasonal, longer. (973) 672-0589.

PARIS, SW FRANCE, PROVENCE. Comfortable apartments, homes, chateaux. www.FrenchHomeRentals.com, FHR@earthlink.net, (503) 219-9190.

WOODSTOCK VILLAGE. Restored Cape with barn. Two full baths, 2 bedrooms, covered porch and lovely perennial gardens. Located in back of Inn and a short walk to town. Long- or short-term year round rental. Pictures available upon request. Lanie@finbury.com, (978) 317-5646.

QUIET LAKEFRONT COTTAGE on beautiful GOOSE POND in Hanover.  Spectacular fall foliage. Sleeps 4. Contact: (603) 643-3996 orjudith.reeve@gmail.com.

ST. THOMAS, USVI: Ritz Carlton Condo. Luxury beachfront two-bedroom condo, 2,000 sq. ft. with two terraces available for weekly rentals.ronald.scheman@yahoo.com or (202) 251-8291. D’53.

Travel & Resorts

EXPLORE NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR. Whales, icebergs, lighthouses, puffins, Gros Morne, the Viking’s New World home. Award-winning local hosts. Gentle 7-day adventures. Wild days. Comfortable hotels. Wildland Tours. (888) 615-8279. www.wildlands.com.

Education

HarvardMassEd.com helps to finesse college application essays. D’70.

Dartmouth Memorabilia

A HARMONIZING SET of discontinued Wedgwood china decorated in an appealing soft shade of green. 12 dinner plates each with different Dartmouth scenes, 12 butter plates, 13 cups, 19 saucers. $2,500 plus shipping. FIRM. Barbara Leonards. (610) 644-1336

SET OF 12 DARTMOUTH DINNER PLATES,, each with a different scene or building. Green and white, circa 1949, by Cauldon, England. $850 + shipping. Ann Marie O’Neill, (781) 934 5757 or info@annmarieoneill.com.

Transportation

AVANTE LIMOUSINE & TRANSPORTATION Always properly licensed and insured and a Dartmouth College Approved Vendor.  Providing service with the professionalism and class you and your guests deserve.  Weddings, Corporate Functions, Special Events, Airports:   BOS, BDL, BTV, MHT, LEB, Signal Aviation, even JFK and LGA.  603-252-7989 or online reservations atwww.avante1.com.

To place a classified ad in Dartmouth Alumni Magazine contact Margo.Nutt@Dartmouth.edu or call (603) 646-2256.

The Norwich Studio
Private. Convenient.  Complete 3 miles from Dartmouth. 400 sq ft. with kitchen. Hosts: Jenny and Bill Lamb ’67.
(802) 649-1968. www.norwichstudio.net.

Woodstock Inn and Resort
A stay at the Woodstock Inn & Resort is the definitive Vermont experience. Set in historic Woodstock village, this Four Diamond-rated grand inn harkens back to a time when the slow but hard-working pace of life defined American values. Now, the living is still slow, and the hard work is expressed on the ski slopes, golf courses, trout streams and white water rapids that surround the quiet beauty of this heartland of Vermont. Call (800) 448-7900 or visit www.woodstockinn.com.

Comfort Inn
Active Parents: Bike, hike, walk, run? Hanover is a beautiful town, that’s why I’ve lived here for 35 years. But don’t miss your chance to be active in the Big Green’s stunning back yard–the Upper Valley–while your child is at Dartmouth. From May through October there’s no better selection of open roads, woodsy rail trails and hiking paths than right here. WRJ, VT; (800) 628-7727. www.comfortinn.com/hotel/vt023.

Baymont Inn
Luxury rooms, free  continental breakfast, outdoor pool, wireless Internet. High overlooking the hills of New Hampshire and Vermont. 45 Airport Road, West Lebanon, NH 03784. (603) 298-8888 or (800) 433-3466. www.baymontinns.com.

Home Hill Inn
Graciously restored accommodations in an idyllic county retreat built in 1818. Each of the Inn’s beautifully appointed guest rooms feature private baths and most offer the warming glow of a fireplace. A short drive from Hanover.  Plainfield, NH. (603) 675-6165. www.homehill.com.

Shaker Hill Bed and Breakfast
Renovated 1790s home, beautiful rooms, private baths, great breakfasts. Non-smoking. Short drive to campus. Reservations: (877) 516-1370; (603) 632-4519. www.shakerhill.com.

Breakfast on the Connecticut
Sits on 23 acres in Lyme, just 12 miles from Dartmouth and overlooking the tranquil Connecticut River. Completed in 1997, we have 15 spacious bedrooms replete with amenities, each with private bath, TV/VCR and thoughtfully appointed. Some bedrooms have gas fireplaces, skylights, romantic Jacuzzi tubs and a stunning view of the river. Bicycles, canoes and kayaks are complimentary, as is the 8-person Jacuzzi spa. Open year-round. For a virtual tour, see our web site. Our gracious B&B is the perfect place to escape for a weekend, a vacation, a retreat or reunion. A hearty New England breakfast with house specialties and real maple syrup makes getting up each morning a treat. 651 River Road,Lyme, NH 03768. (603) 353-4444; (888) 353-4440. www.breakfastonthect.com.

Hotel Coolidge
White River Junction Historic District. Four miles from the Green; vintage railroad hotel provides country inn ambiance. Excellent value. Full service for reunions, luncheons and parties. (800) 622-1124. www.hotelcoolidge.com.

The Quechee Inn at Marshland Farm
A 12 minute drive from Hanover will provide this original 1793 home of Vermont’s first lieutenant governor; careful restoration maintains the 19th-century character and charm while adding modern conveniences to 25 beautiful guest rooms. Biking, canoeing, kayaking and fly fishing on site. Tented wedding, reunion and meeting specialists. Reservations: (800) 235-3133. info@quecheeinn.com, www.quecheeinn.com.

The Quality Inn at Quechee Gorge
Minutes from the Junction of I-89 and I-91, and 12 minutes from Dartmouth. Spacious guest rooms and suites. Full service Restaurant on premises. Hot Breakfast, indoor pool, fitness room. Pet Friendly. Wireless Internet. Exit 1 off I-89 in VT three miles on Route 4 West. www.qualityinnquechee.com. (800) 732-4376.

The Chieftain Motel
Alumni gather at a hidden haven…2 miles from Dartmouth. Beautiful grounds situated on the Connecticut River. Canoes free to our guests. Equipped with scull racks and rowing dock. River boat cruises available. Deluxe continental breakfast served. Pet friendly. (603) 643-2550. www.chieftaininn.com.

The Sunset Motor Inn
Serene. Most rooms have river view. Cable, Wi-Fi, a/c, free local calls,continental breakfast. AAA. Two miles south on Main Street (Route 10); (603) 298-8721.

The Dowds’ Country Inn
Just 8 miles north of campus, this historic Inn dates back to 1780. We have 20 spacious guestrooms all with private bath, telephone and wi-fi. Each room is beautifully furnished with handmade quilts, and country décor. Room rates include a full country breakfast, including Belgian waffles and N.H. maple syrup. 9 Main Street, Lyme, NH.  (603) 795-4712. www.dowdscountryinn.com.

Apple Hill inn Bed & Breakfast
Country elegance, healthy gourmet breakfast, spectacular views. In Woodstock, VT. Call (802) 457-9135. www.applehillinn.com.

Loch Lyme Lodge
Rustic cabins with fireplaces, 1-3 bedrooms on Post Pond. 10 miles north of Dartmouth on Route 10. Seasonal restaurant using fresh local ingredients. Perfect for family vacations, reunions, weddings. (603) 795-2141. www.lochlymelodge.com.

Holiday Inn Express & Suites
The best accommodations & service the Upper Valley has to offer! Please enjoy our spacious guest rooms & suites, high-speed wireless internet, deluxe continental breakfast and covered parking garage, as well as advantages offered through our Priority Club membership program! 121 Ballardvale Drive, White River Junction, VT 05001; (802) 299-2700. www.hiexpress.com/whiteriverjct.

Juniper Hill Inn
Historic  Vermont Bed and Breakfast and restaurant. The perfect New England  escape! Only 10 miles on I-91 to Hanover NH. 153 Pembroke Road, Windsor VT.  (800) 359-2541. www.juniperhillinn.com.

Butternut Lane Bed and Breakfast
1821 brick farmhouse overlooking the Connecticut River just 3 miles from Dartmouth Green. 3 charming guest rooms and 3 spacious common rooms for rest & relaxation. Reservations: (802) 649-1549.

To advertise in Dartmouth Alumni Magazine contact Tita Reiche at 603.646.1208 or e-mail Advertising@Dartmouth.EDU

Chocolate Now
Offering a wide selection of exceptional chocolate brands and artisan chocolates. Let us create and ship your gift basket. Hanover Park, 3 Lebanon St., Hanover, NH; (603) 643-9031. www.chocolatenow.com.

Dartmouth CampuScapes
A unique gift for yourself, grad or alumni. This online gallery features the art of Hanover artist Doug Henry. Original paintings and prints of the campus are offered. www.henryfineart.com.

Hood Museum Art Shop
Just outside the main entrance of the museum, the Hood Museum Art Shop offers a lively and diverse assortment of books, gifts and jewelry. Catalogs from present and past Hood exhibitions. All proceeds support the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College. Please call (603) 646-2808 to order or visit our website at: http://www.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/about/visit/do/shop/

Khawachen
Featuring handcrafted Tibetan carpets in eclectic designs, fine textiles and decorative arts from Tibet and the Himalayan region created by Dartmouth alum Kesang Tashi ’70 . Also offering custom design services to clients throughout the United States. 15 South Main Street, Hanover, NH; info@innerasiarugs.com; (603) 643-7847; www.innerasiarugs.com.

Left Bank Books
Dartmouth authors, histories, yearbooks and 9,000 used and out-of-print books. Browse in a friendly spot, upstairs over the Dirt Cowboy,  9 South Main Street, Hanover, NH; (603) 643-4479.

helium–a shoe store
Exceptional women’s shoes and accessories carefully chosen for quality and style. Arche, Coclico, Cydwoq and more. Next to the Nugget  Theater. (603) 643-1313; www.heliumshoes.com.

Morgan-Ballou
Discover unique women’s clothing and accessories for city and country living. Our designers create limited quantities of exceptional artisan clothing. 23 Elm Street, Woodstock, VT. www.morganballou.com. (802) 457-1321.

To advertise in Dartmouth Alumni Magazine contact Tita Reiche (603) 646-1208 or email Advertising@Dartmouth.edu

How does a Scotsman like you become an expert on Native-American history?
“I’m actually half Scottish and half English, so that makes me British. As someone interested in the history of this continent, I have always felt that the most compelling and distinctive aspect of American history was the presence of Indian peoples, whereas that presence was often slighted or ignored in U.S. history books. Much of America’s history makes no sense if you exclude Indians. In addition, British people were in contact with Native Americans for centuries and over most of the continent. In their dealings with the English, Highland Scots and Irish had similar colonial experiences to Indians.”

Why write this book now?
“President Jim Wright felt that the spate of incidents on campus targeting Native students in the fall of 2006 showed that Dartmouth needed to know its Indian history better. I never particularly wanted to write a book like this, but I saw it as a kind of service.”

In writing the book, what surprised you?
“I’m not sure it was a surprise, but what I most enjoyed was tracking the lives and experiences of the individual Native students who came here.”

What’s the future of Native Americans at Dartmouth?
“The trajectory since 1970 has, with various bumps and stumbles, been steadily upward. If the current administration sustains Dartmouth’s commitment to Indian education—and the indications are that it will—the future for Native Americans at Dartmouth should be bright, and that will be good for Dartmouth’s future as well.”

Vanguard is in a small minority of financial services firms that truly operate for the good of their clients. The combination of Vanguard’s long-term focus, no-nonsense approach and low fees has created more value for American investors than any other firm.

Career services offices should direct more seniors toward firms such as Vanguard instead of to Wall Street.

Yevgeny Neginsky ’00, Tu’05
New Haven, Connecticut

Living History
I was quite pleased and surprised to find the name of my father, Francis Blake, class of 1908, at the top of page 52 in the story on old scrapbooks in the May/June issue of DAM.

As noted on one item shown, he was indeed wise but not always “solemn as an owl.” He was a loving father and grandfather and stayed with us for several months while mother prepared their home in Washington, D.C. We lost him soon thereafter.

As the sole surviving member of the family I am most grateful for this unexpected memory, as is my wife.

William D. Blake ’40
Bath, Maine

Mr. Baseball
The article by Stu Deane ’65 about Tony Lupien [“Clutch Performance,” May/June] brought back a lot of memories. Lupien was Dartmouth baseball for many years, but he was much more than that.

I was his manager for five seasons (baseball and basketball), and he taught me as much about life as he did about sports—or is that the same thing?

With Lupien either you were one of the good guys or you weren’t. Somehow I made it into the former group, and I wanted to thank Stu for long overdue words about the most remarkable human being I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

John Lallis ’69
Gladstone, New Jersey

Happy Memories
It is with pride that I laud Dartmouth for having produced Pilobolus [“Campus,” May/June] in the first place and then to discover that it has commissioned the tribute to Happy Hooligan!

I must cavil with your description, however. Great he indeed was, but forgotten never. Ask any of us who worked on Jacko in those days—not dead nor yet beyond recall. There are even those of us who are still trying to translate “Nov Shmoz Ka Pop” (from a different strip). Let us abide with what Hamlet pére called Hamlet fils as he faded away.

Gregory Rabassa ’44
New York City

Air Ball
I noticed in your May/June “Seen & Heard” section that you said Courtney Banghart ’00 coached the Princeton women’s basketball team to its first outright Ivy League title since 1999. Actually Princeton and Dartmouth tied for the Ivy title, with the Big Green defeating the Tigers in a one-game playoff to determine the league’s automatic bid into the NCAA tourney.In an unusual set of circumstances, that playoff win was Dartmouth’s third over Princeton that season, Banghart’s junior year.

Working with that 1998-99 Dartmouth women’s basketball team as sports information director remains one of my most enjoyable experiences in a media relations career that has now spanned three great schools and literally hundreds of teams. I still have my piece of the net from when we cut it down after that playoff game!

Mike Mahoney ’92
Philadelphia

On Architecture
Though I am in general agreement with William Morgan ’66 concerning many of the recent additions, pro and con, to the Dartmouth campus [“Return of the Critic,” May/June], he failed to mention the Corey Ford Rugby Clubhouse by Lyme, New Hampshire, architect Randy Mudge. This wonderful building just north of campus is a fitting tribute both to the generosity of its primary benefactor and the legacy of a 60-year rugby tradition at Dartmouth. The finest rugby facility in the country, it’s architecturally one of the true gems on the Dartmouth campus, nestled as it is into the hillside overlooking the rugby pitch with its dark, shingled exterior and soaring spaces within.

Ted Bracken ’65
Washington, D.C.

DAM could have extended its fine focus on Dartmouth Olympic skiers [Jan/Feb] one more issue by including a profile of Edgar Hayes “Ted” Hunter Jr. ’38, a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic ski team, in “Architectural Digest” [May/June].

Hunter and his wife practiced in Hanover, designing buildings including the Bradley-Gerry towers, while he taught at the College and earned a graduate degree in education. Their Modernist residential designs continue to shape the Hanover landscape.

In the late 1960s the Hunters moved to North Carolina, where they continued to design residences.

Hunter was a perfect early example of the combination of geography and institution that have influenced Dartmouth alumni to pursue careers in architecture, even in the absence of formal curriculum at Dartmouth.

Doug Leitch ’65
Orr’s Island, Maine

Power Point
I am shaking my head that Scott Brown ’78 [“Going Nuclear,” Mar/Apr] ignored mentioning hydropower, which is another ’round-the-clock power option. My electricity comes from Hoover Dam, and much of New England’s comes from Hydro-Quebec.

Maybe he lumped it into renewable energy, but he did specifically mention solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

I am a great supporter of nuclear power and embarrassed that my state has fought the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository so vehemently. We repeatedly hear, “Do you want dangerous nuclear waste trucks on the freeways by your house?” Well, what is high-level nuclear waste if not spent fuel rods from power plants? How does anyone suppose the new, higher energy rods got to the plants? They went down the freeway in trucks!

While Yucca Mountain is not a perfect repository, it is better than storing waste above ground at plants around the country. The State of Nevada could turn its budget deficit into a surplus with the fees from other states (plus the profits from reprocessing rods) and could alleviate our high unemployment. Instead it has recently built another coal-fired plant and is planning more. At least the wind will carry that pollution to points east.

William D. Ramos ’66
Las Vegas, Nevada

Literature Matters
To this day, as my Emerson students will attest, I remember learning experientially about what teaching is from James Cox [“The Novelist’s Muse,” Nov/Dec 2009]. I relate to students every term how Cox limped across the stage, threw down alphabetical piles of students’ papers, limped back to the podium and said, it seemed to me joyously, “It’s all risk now. I like a man who takes a risk!” This referred to guidelines he’d laid down at the outset of the course about late-paper submitters whose papers might never get read.

I have never forgotten his talking on and on—in the context, if I remember correctly, of a discussion on Lolita—about his difficulties in building a bridge at the foot of his property. His ruminating made electrifying sense to me, in terms of bridge-building, yes, but in terms of Lolita, too.

I credit Cox with much of my subsequent success as a professor. He instilled in me the confidence to believe that thinking enough about the topics I present allows me to “just” ramble about how they connect to me.

Steve Shipps ’66
West Newbury, Massachusetts

Cox convinced us that literature mattered as much as, and maybe more than, politics, psychology, sociology and economics in that it subsumed them all. The more widely you read in other fields, the more literature justified itself. Cox’s analysis of a passage was an opening to drill to the core of a work and to appreciate how the part represented the whole, how the style and substance fused so that a great work had integrity. His lectures had penetration.

In his essay on the history of the teaching of American literature at Dartmouth [published in the Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, 1966], William C. Spengemann wrote that Cox’s appointment in 1955 was to make “all the difference.” Cox’s essays on American writers “would set a new standard of literariness for literary scholarship, American or other. Along with Cox’s 1967 book, Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor (revised ed. 2002), and the articles on American autobiography later collected in Recovering Literature’s Lost Ground (1989), these essays put Dartmouth back on the map of American literary studies as ‘the place where Jim Cox teaches.’ ”

He was a generous mentor and he was generous in accepting invitations to teach at other institutions. Students left a Cox lecture with a charged mind. Some became writers, some teachers, and others went into a variety of professions, but all became more alert readers for a lifetime.

Thornton F. Jordan ’66
Columbus, Georgia

Cabin Fever
Your splendid DOC issue [“100 Years of the DOC,” Sept/Oct 2009] elicited memories of my own DOC experiences. I had occasionally camped with classmates Taylor, Hollingsworth, Fenton and Papst, but at the 1950 Carnival break I had finished exams early and set out alone in street clothes with canned goods for Clough Cabin.

Above Lyme, New Hampshire, I encountered the first snow and crashed through 12 to 18 inches of crust until arriving at the cabin at dusk, wet and tired.

I awoke to a blinding sun in blue sky and decided to abandon the known trail and take a shortcut back to Hanover. Within an hour came a darkening cement sky and a whiteout blizzard. Without landmarks I sighted from tree to tree for hours, looking for a familiar lake. Whose woods these were didn’t then matter. After dark I found a lake—I know not which lake—and considered crossing it looking for the trail but imagined soft ice and trudged around it, soon finding a logging road, not less traveled but clearly untraveled as the blizzard had erased any tracks. I elected to go right and eventually saw a bleak light and heard a dog bark. I passed through a dormant Lyme and a farm truck dropped me on campus. I staggered up the four flights of Hitchcock and roomies Megargel and Kinnier barely looked up from their books as I stripped off soggy outer garments and crashed for 12 hours. No safety net in those days, just an entry in the DOC ledger that I was at Clough.

What saved me? Endurance. I had just come off the cross-country season with teammates Smiley, Rosenberg, Waterman, Daniell, McSorley and others.

Don Richardson ’52
Brevard, North Carolina

Dog Days
The touching story of his Lab, Duke, by Richard Hansen ’07 [“Royal Treatment,” July/Aug 2009] brought back memories of my own Duke, a miniature schnauzer. Originally my wife’s idea while I was pursuing my doctorate at the University of Alabama, Duke came to occupy more of my time than hers. He accompanied me on most outings—classes, jogs and writing sessions—but the most interesting were visits to the library, where he would bark once on entry then settle down for the duration.

May Hansen retain the memories he obviously holds of his Duke and find another of like temperament to continue his canine memories.

F.J. Eicke ’61
Ocean Springs, Mississippi

At the time I didn’t have the stomach to even wonder whether she was telling the truth. Either way, it was the final straw. I’d struggled for three and a half years to find my footing on Hanover’s rocky social landscape. Apparently all my efforts had been in vain. It was time to try my luck elsewhere—a realization that was sweeping across many aspects of my life.

What was particularly disappointing about this chain of events was that for the first time in my life I’d selected a date based not on how she’d look on my arm or my chances of getting lucky. I was under no illusions that this would lead to any kind of long-term relationship—in a few short weeks we’d all throw our mortarboards up in the air and scatter like dandelion seeds. I chose to ask her simply because she was someone with whom I thought I’d enjoy spending an evening.

A few weeks before I invited her to the formal we had found ourselves attending a concert in Boston with a few other friends. We’d been very casual acquaintances to that point in our Dartmouth careers, but at the concert I felt a spark. Not the sort of spark that would lead to a romance—not that I would’ve been opposed to that—but rather two people realizing they had more in common than they thought.

With that fire extinguished before it could catch, I contemplated boycotting the formal. If my best intentions were getting spit back in my face, then what was the point? When a fellow ’93, George Roumanis, decided to skip it as well, it sealed my decision. Flying solo at the frat house on the evening of my final college formal reeked of desperation. Doing so in tandem was something akin to a protest, even if we were lacking a coherent platform.

So while the rest of the fraternity put on blazers and ties, gathered dates and boarded rented school buses bound for a nearby banquet hall, we loaded an erstwhile bread rack with cups of tepid tap beer, carried it to the third floor, settled into couches and turned on the TV.

The movie of the evening on HBO was The Commitments, based on Roddy Doyle’s fictional account of the rise and fall of a youthful Irish soul band. Roumanis had never seen it. As it was one of my favorites, we tuned in.

The movie proved the perfect distraction. We both especially appreciated the soundtrack, a great collection of classic rhythm and blues and soul.

Roumanis and I spent the next six years on opposite coasts. But during our occasional AXA ’93 reunions we fondly remembered that movie and how it rescued us from a bleak evening of self-pity.

Not long after I returned to the East Coast in the summer of 1999 Roumanis called with an offer, tickets for the acoustic blues of Hot Tuna at the gilded Beacon Theater in New York City the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Sure, I said. Sounds great—and it did.

In the years since, live music, specifically blues-influenced classic rock and roll, has been the impetus for many mini-reunions: The Allman Brothers at the Beacon, the Dead at the Tweeter Center, the Radiators at Irving Plaza, Warren Haynes’ Christmas Jam in Asheville, North Carolina. Last December I fulfilled a 22-year-old promise to myself when we took in AC/DC’s latest tour in Atlanta. I’d passed on my previous chance to see the Australian quintet because the concert was the night before I was to take the SATs. The fond memories of that aural blitzkrieg have long outlasted the temporary tinnitus.

We both have families now, and Roumanis has moved to the Southeast. It has become tougher to find concerts we can both attend. But I know that as long as the timing works—and the aging rockers we enjoy keep heading out on tour—we’ll see live music together for a long while to come.

At my 10- and 15-year reunions I ran into the woman who was to have been my date for that formal. Both times I considered asking her whether she was telling the truth when she begged off. Both times, curious as I was, I decided against it. At best, I’d look like someone unable to let go of the past—at worst, a potential stalker.

Should the subject come up at a future reunion I plan to simply smile. Maybe I’ll even thank her.

I realize now that I got exactly what I wanted.

Stuart Streuli lives in Newport, Rhode Island. He is senior editor of Sailing World in Middletown, Rhode Island.

Not long afterward 40 people and their dogs showed up in Norwich for the first Dog Run Dog 5K. Since that inspired event in the summer of 2005 Dog Run Dog has evolved into an annual race circuit with more than a dozen races planned this year in major venues such as Atlanta, Brooklyn, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, Tempe, Arizona, and St. Petersburg, Florida—plus the not-so-major village of Norwich. Although plans have been shelved for this year, Gardner hopes to expand his program into Europe.

Gardner, whose day job is painting houses, is something of an impresario. In 2004 he staged the International Open Mic Music Festival at the Bema and Marko the Magician’s magic show at the nearby Lebanon Opera House. Now he’s added an international interspecies racing series to his resume.

Gardner didn’t invent dog running. The sport of canicross, in which people run cross-country harnessed to dogs, began in Europe more than a century ago. Canicross can be technical and intense, explains Gardner. Dog Run Dog’s aim, by comparison, is the creation of a casual, family-friendly event. “We’ve opened it up to everybody,” he says. “Anybody can run with their dog. You can walk. You can jog.”

In fact, if you are like Gardner, who doesn’t own a dog, you can still enter: Unleashed humans are allowed.

Gardner may be on to something. In five years he’s transformed Dog Run Dog from yet another Vermont oddity into something much larger. To date more than 1,000 teams and 200 different dog breeds have run in 15 Dog Run Dog races held in seven states. He says the runners typically hear about Dog Run Dog via word of mouth and his website, dogrundog.com.

Dartmouth women’s cross country coach Maribel (Sanchez) Souther ’96 raced with her weimaraner, Colby, in the 5K women-and-dog division last year. Souther made the race a goal for getting back in shape after the birth of her son. Part of the preparation involved coaching Colby. “He’s not a great leash runner,” she says. “The truth is, Colby is my training partner. He is the per—uh, the one—who goes out with me every day to run, to do workouts. He never bails. He’s always there.”

Souther and Colby ran the race in 17:49—giving them a dog-running world record. “It was a team effort,” she says. “Colby was literally pulling me.” Souther acknowledges she didn’t have much choice. “He can’t not pull,” she explains. “I had to spend the summer training him so he wouldn’t kill me.”

Dogs tend to run faster than their humans, and a strong runner benefits by as much as 30 seconds per mile, according to Ed Clifford of Raymond, New Hampshire, who last year bested his previous record in Norwich by three seconds with a time of 16:14. His Norwegian pointer, Maggie, is one of 15 dogs he trains to accompany him sledding, skiing, biking and running. “The dogs really want to do something. They’re bred for their intensity, and whatever they do they throw themselves into it 100 percent,” says Clifford.

Bob Norton Jr. of the Haddam (Connecticut) Volunteer Fire Co. and his dog Shadow, a Dalmatian, are another enthusiastic team. Shadow keeps fit by using the firehouse treadmill. But the duo nearly missed the 2009 Norwich race because of an emergency call. They arrived at the starting line just in time. “We run in local charity runs and I must say I’ve never experienced such a great group of runners—and Shadow couldn’t believe his eyes with all the dogs,” says Norton. “He got to rub noses with all types. We had great chats along the 10K route with a number of very dedicated animal lovers. Shadow had a great time. And when he has a great time, I have a great time.”

Dog Run Dog’s pre-race prep is more complicated than a typical road race. For example, water stops have buckets, and red pails are placed along the course for doggy-bag disposal. To avoid pit stops Gardner advises that people warm up their running mates before the race. “During these warm-up sessions the dog will most likely go,” he says.

Gardner’s main race-day worry is a massive dog fight. But to date that hasn’t happened. “The dogs seem to understand what’s going on,” he says. The biggest problem at Dog Run Dog races: Overly friendly dogs and owners who tangle leashes. “If you think of putting more than 100 dogs on a start line at one time, the interaction of the dogs is not something that is easily managed,” says Tom Kendall ’72 of Bart Race Services, a company that times the races.

Gardner and his team of volunteers hope to bring the sport into the mainstream by starting a national association to sanction events, create guidelines for the health and safety of dogs and dog runners, and develop ethics and training programs. Plans are afoot to launch an invitational dog-running world championship in 2012, but Gardner has an even loftier vision—the Olympics. “Dogs have been around us forever,” he says. “I think they deserve to get on the podiums at some point and win some gold medals.”

Elizabeth Kelsey is a contributing editor to Dartmouth Engineer magazine. In 2009 she placed second in the women’s solo division of the Norwich Dog Run Dog 10K.

In the antiques business, where Snellenburg has made his name as one of the foremost international experts on timepieces and scientific instruments, the top antiquarians are often those who have seen the most antiques. Like geologists, antiquarians use their experience and observational skills to deduce the basic details of an item’s creation story: How, where and when was it made? “It’s a business where you learn by seeing and doing,” says Snellenburg. And where the ability to maintain one’s reserve is an asset. Antiquarians recognize beauty and rarity, but they don’t let emotion overwhelm their judgment.

Snellenburg, married with three children, is based in Manhattan. There he heads the clocks and watches department at the stateside branch of Bonhams, the world’s third-largest auction house. After a recent hiatus he returns this summer to his gig as an appraiser for Antiques Roadshow, the popular PBS series.

Snellenburg pursued a geochemistry Ph.D. at Stony Brook University hoping to land a professorship (he also holds a master’s in geology from Dartmouth). But academic jobs were scarce, and he ended up taking a postdoctoral assignment in the American Museum of Natural History’s gems and minerals department. He went on to grade diamonds for the Gemological Institute of America, and in 1979 Christie’s hired him to head the silver and jewelry department for its new offshoot salesroom, Christie’s East. “When they hired me they said, ‘We realize you don’t know anything about jewelry, but at least when they bring you the fake sapphire you’ll be able to tell us it’s a fake sapphire,’ ” Snellenburg recalls. Soon watches began appearing on his desk—his colleagues figured his doctorate in science must indicate some technical proficiency. After that came clocks, then scientific and nautical instruments, followed by scientific books. Snellenburg established a dedicated clocks and watches department at Christie’s before leaving in 1993 to work independently as a dealer, consultant and appraiser of antiques. He took his position with the British-owned Bonhams in New York last year.

Having worked for two of the world’s most prestigious auction houses, Snellenburg is well aware that astronomical sales at auctions capture headlines and people’s attention. But he derives satisfaction from more than an item’s dollar value. “It’s about finding those wonderful things from the past, or the near past, and bringing them to light,” Snellenburg says. “You have to like what you’re looking at. You really do.”

In particular he has developed a deep appreciation for the creations of the 18th century, a great period of clock building that in many ways marks the dawn of the modern era. “I am constantly amazed at the science, technology, art and literature of the 18th century and how it still colors what we do today,” Snellenburg says, though he notes he’s “not one of those people who wishes I could be part of a Masterpiece Theater costume drama.” He is, he says, more than happy to take advantage of his BlackBerry, iPod and various other accoutrements of modern life.

Because of eBay, Bonhams—which has been around since 1793—must convince potential buyers of the value of “experience and expertise.” The essence of the pitch, as Snellenburg puts it, is “I know what it is that you’re bringing me. I know what it is, I know whether it’s genuine and I know approximately what it’s worth.”

To know all that requires a good deal of old-fashioned legwork. Snellenburg is discreet about exactly how he sources his goods but says he has built long-term, trusting relationships with dealers, collectors and estates around the country. He spends a third of his time on the road. A top-quality digital photo can indicate whether an item has potential for a Bonhams auction, but it’s not sufficient. To assess value and salability a dealer such as Snellenburg needs to examine a watch or clock up-close from all angles to see the tiny, often-hidden details that are marks of superior craftsmanship, such as the metalwork on clocks from the German Renaissance, in which the decoration on the interior mechanism is as intricate and exquisite as that on the outside.

Snellenburg likes to stress that antiques, for all their beauty, are not just pretty things that happen to be old. “They are the useful objects of daily life in the past,” he says. Those beautifully decorated German Renaissance clocks are also “superior calculating devices.” An 18th-century Georgian teapot is shaped to pour in a steady stream and insulated to prevent burning your hand. The best-designed chairs are those on which one can sit comfortably. The pieces Snellenburg most admires are those “that blend utility and design so seamlessly that you’re unaware a great work of art is also functional.”

No matter how beautiful the form and how practical the function, though, an antique has no intrinsic value unless there’s a market for it. Vintage watches present an interesting case study. American watch companies Waltham and Elgin mass-produced more than 100 million watches during the first half of the 20th century and, as a result, Snellenburg estimates that 90 to 95 percent of watches from this period have no secondary value. “A watch is an heirloom. No one ever threw one away. They all survived.” The average person at Antiques Roadshow or at appraisal events such as those Bonhams holds monthly in San Francisco and Los Angeles tends not to realize this. “It was my grandmother’s watch,” they’ll say, and produce a picture of the grandmother in question wearing the watch. Unfortunately, as Snellenburg points out, the grandmother was probably one of tens of thousands of women who wore the same, mass-produced watch. Collectors have more than enough to go around.

In his stints on Antiques Roadshow Snellenburg has to deliver such pronouncements frequently—and as gently as possible. On the upside, “Every object has a story, and what you find after you do the show for a while is very often people just want to know what it is, where it was made, whether there are others like it,” he says. “And if you can give them that knowledge they’ll go away feeling they’ve had a rewarding experience, even if the item is worth very little.”

Still, it’s the hope of a rare, undiscovered find that keeps collectors, dealers and auctioneers antique-hunting. During the first season of Roadshow a woman brought in an extraordinarily rare English astronomical watch from the 17th century, when the British Empire was rapidly expanding its reach around the globe. For the next eight seasons of the show Snellenburg kept up hope he’d find another—not because of its approximately $15,000 value but just for the thrill of discovery. A dozen years later he finally came across a strikingly similar watch, one of perhaps a dozen such pieces in existence. He appraised it similarly; it sold at auction at Bonhams last year for $30,500.

He’s had plenty of other surprises. Twenty-five years ago a client walked into Christie’s with a French Renaissance-era clock wrapped in a paper grocery bag. “One of the greatest clocks ever made,” according to Snellenburg, the piece had previously been valued at a paltry $50. The educational institution that owned the clock was cleaning house and wondered if the piece still had value. It subsequently sold in the high five figures. Other people have brought him fantastically valuable items wrapped up in baby diapers or, conversely, “the most elegantly boxed rubbish,” Snellenburg says.

Through the years he has amassed a research library, but no clock or watch collection of his own. With his own timepiece hidden by his sleeve, Snellenburg refrains from flashing it when asked what kind he wears. “A practical one,” he says, then coughs. “It’s my profession…and if I had a very valuable watch I’d be afraid to wear it, because I’m very hard on them. I would break it.”

Kaitlin Bell is a freelance writer who lives in New York City. She profiled Josh Marcuse ’04 in the September/October 2009 issue.

Phil Hanlon ’77, the former vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs at the University of Michigan, has been named provost of the school. Martha Pollack ’79 has moved from dean of the school of information at the university to vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs, and Jeff MacKie Mason ’80 has advanced from associate dean to dean of the school of information.

Samuel W. Seymour ’79 has been installed as president of the New York City Bar Association. Seymour is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, where he concentrates on white-collar criminal defense, regulatory enforcement matters and internal investigations.

Yuki Kondo-Shah ’07 has been named a 2010 Charles B. Rangel Fellow through a program that encourages individuals seeking careers in the U.S. Foreign Service. The $85,000 fellowship, funded by the U.S. Department of State, will help Kondo-Shah pursue a master’s in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Daniel J. Berry ’80, M.D., has been elected first vice president of the board of directors of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Berry is currently an orthopedics professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and chair of the orthopedic surgery department at the Rochester, Minnesota, clinic.

Daniyal Mueenuddin ’86 of the southern Punjab region in Pakistan, has earned the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rosenthal Family Foundation Award—given to a “young writer of considerable literary talent for a work published in 2009”—for his short story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

Ernest J. Babcock ’70 has been named vice president of General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Virginia. Babcock was formerly vice president and general counsel at General Dynamics Land Systems in Michigan since July 2002.

Donald Bergman ’67, M.D., a clinical endocrinologist in private practice in New York City, was presented the Master of the American College of Endocrinology by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and its educational and scientific arm, the American College of Endocrinology.

David M. Kreps ’72, Adams Distinguished Professor of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. Kreps, who in 1989 won the association’s John Bates Clark Medal, stepped down last September after nine years as senior associate dean of the Stanford GSB.

David B. Fein ’82 of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, has been sworn in as U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut. Fein had been a partner at the law firm of Wiggin and Dana since 1997, and before that served as an associate White House counsel to President Clinton.

George A. Beller ’62, M.D., earned a Distinguished Scientist Award from the American College of Cardiology for his pioneering research in the field of cardiac imaging. Beller is a professor of cardiology in the cardiovascular medicine division at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville.

Jake Tapper ’91 of ABC News has won the Merriman Smith Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure. Tapper won the broadcast category for his story that revealed former Sen. Tom Daschle’s tax problems that derailed his nomination to be health and human services secretary.

Alice Mathias ’07, a graduate student at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, won the 2010 Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker’s Award for her short film, Message in a Bottle, about a romance born from a recycling project.

Avid amateur golfer James “Kip” Hale ’72 shares his collection of 18 humorous Shakespearean style poems, each with its own illustration, in Golf Sonnets (Thom Ward Publishing).

In his second novel Night Work (Under Mountain Books), Andrew L. Pincus ’51 evokes both Mahler symphonies and the Reagan era in the story of a man caught between a comfortable marriage and an impossible love.

William F. Roth ’62, a professor in business administration at Kutztown University, redesigns the U.S. healthcare system in Comprehensive Healthcare for the U.S.: An Idealized Model (CRC Press).

Novelist Deborah Schupack ’84, who has taught writing and literature at Vermont College and Yale, offers a story of the impact of money on contemporary suburban life in Sylvan Street (Penguin).

Alison Mountz ’95, associate professor of geography at Syracuse University, investigates how nations interpret the relationship between geography and law as they negotiate border crossings in Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border (University of Minnesota Press).

Richard Harvell ’01 weaves together the tale of an 18th-century choir boy with the voice of an angel and a dark secret in his debut novel The Bells (Shaye Areheart Books).

Civil rights leader Andrew Young, a top aide to Martin Luther King Jr., shares his wisdom and experience with his godson Kabir Sehgal ’05 in Walk in My Shoes: Conversations between a Civil Rights Legend and his Godson on the Journey Ahead (Palgrave Macmillan).

Folt Named Provost
President Jim Kim named Carol Folt to the provost position in May, ending her role as acting provost, which she held for seven months. As the College’s chief academic officer, Folt will “play a crucial role in the institution-wide strategic planning process we are now launching,” said Kim. Folt, a professor of biological sciences, has served as dean of the faculty since 2004; she’ll relinquish that job once a replacement is appointed.

Cool Commons
Thayer Dining Hall closes down this summer as workers prepare to turn it into the Class of 1953 Commons, and members of the class gathered in late May to kick off the transformation. The 14-month project to update the building and bring it up to code begins in June, thanks to a $12 million donation from the class of 1953. Featured among the renovations is the addition of a new 250-ton air conditioning unit.

Spring Sports Roundup
The Big Green baseball team won its second consecutive Ivy League title in May with a 2-1 series victory over Columbia. Dartmouth won the rubber game, 11-5, in New York to secure a berth in the NCAAs. “It has been one of the most resilient and tough-minded teams I’ve ever had at Dartmouth,” proclaimed coach Bob Whalen. His squad came back following a 13-2 loss in Game One and gave Dartmouth (26-17) its first back-to-back titles since 1969-70. Six players were named to the all-Ivy team, and catcher Chris O’Dowd ’13 earned Ivy co-Rookie of the Year honors. In other spring sports news, the women’s lacrosse team, at one point ranked nationally in the top 10, finished 11-5, second to Penn in the Ivy League, but failed to win a bid to the NCAA Division I tournament. Also, the sailing team (which was ranked as high as eighth nationally this year) sent five women to compete at the Women’s Nationals in Madison, Wisconsin, May 25-28.

Good Sense for Good Samaritans
After delaying the Hanover police’s proposed sting operations in February, the College has recently seen another positive change in local alcohol policy. Prior to April, intoxicated students in need of medical attention were automatically arrested, per state law. Police will still assist emergency personnel in responding to alcohol-related ambulance calls, but now they will also inform students of the educational alcohol diversions program in which offenders must enroll within seven days—and pay $400—to avoid a citation. If a friend needs medical assistance, students are still encouraged to use the Good Samaritan policy to call for help. Student body president Eric Tanner ’11 likes the change. “It will make students feel more comfortable calling in a Good Sam since they know that there won’t be the arrests that go against everything the Good Sam rule stands for,” he says. So far, so good: During Green Key Weekend Good Sam calls were up, and police arrested no students.

New Game in Town
No horse? No problem. Students have taken to playing bike polo on the Green. “It’s one of those things that just kind of happen,” says Max McClorey ’11, who adds that the game is played by people who “like goofing off on bikes.” He calls the action perfect because, “We crash into each other, fall over, break our bikes, run over the ball, pop tires and run people over.” It helps, he adds, to have a “really beat-up bike” dedicated to the sport.

Profs and Paychecks
Dartmouth professors make, on average, less than all of their Ivy peers except those at Brown University. Harvard profs top the list with an average salary of $191,200; in Hanover profs bring in an average of $154,000. The data comes from research conducted by the American Association of University Professors.

TEDx Makes a Splash
Branko Cerny ’13 and a team of 20 volunteers put together an innovative conference on campus in late April. Called TEDx and based on the 25-year-old national TED conferences that draw together leaders in technology, entertainment and design, the one-day event featured 18-minute talks by Dartmouth professors and four shorter talks by students. “We were looking for a diverse spectrum of speakers who all have done some innovative research and are able to present their wisdom in a very digestible, engaging manner,” says Cerny. Nearly 700 attendees came for a lineup that ranged from philosophy professor Larry Crocker’s “Let’s Turn Prisons into Colleges” to language professor John Rassias’ “Teaching Heart to Heart.” “What’s great about American schools like Dartmouth is that you can pursue large projects on your own and they’ll support you,” says Cerny, who is from the Czech Republic.

Sweet Tweets
Twitter.com, which features posts clocking in at 140 characters or less, may be the best way to keep up with the fast pace of campus life. These College tweeters might help keep you in the loop:

CollisCafe: Describes Collis’ imaginative, homemade baked goods for each day.
DartmouthDom: The so-called Dartmouth Dominatrix publishes web comics and videos on sex and life at Dartmouth.
DartmouthSports: Real-time news from the athletics department.
DDSFoco: Features Food Court’s daily specials.
DMouthPainTrain: Updates on the ultimate Frisbee team.
ThayerThrowup: Irreverent commentary on Dartmouth life.

Career: Since 2007, partner, Silicon Valley Product Group; vice president of user experience (UE), Reardon Commerce Inc., 2006-07; director of product marketing, Shutterfly, 2003-06; director of technical services, Zinnio Systems, 2002-03; director of UE, TiVo, 1998-02; usability researcher and manager of beta programs and project management, SGI, 1995-98

Education: A.B., psychology; Ph.D., psychology, Stanford, 1994

Family: Single; twin sons Jack and Andy, 7

“The first person I related to as an adult other than my parents was a Dartmouth alum, Tom Baer ’70, my high school English teacher and National Honor Society advisor, who died way too young. He had a lot to do with my applying, and his letter of recommendation probably had a lot to do with my getting in. I still think of him at least every week.”

“The stories I most often tell about Dartmouth have to do with how long it took me to figure out my major. I felt anxious all the time because I didn’t know what I wanted to be. There was nothing at Dartmouth that would have suggested there was such a career as interaction design.”

“I still approach technology as a user, much as I did when I got my first Mac freshman year. I just loved it, trying to push its limits and see what the applications could do.”

“I fell into my career by accident. I wound up working for another Stanford alum who understood the relationship between cognitive psychology and user experience. He became a mentor. That was total luck.”

“The very best companies have an appreciation of user design in their DNA. They get feedback in response to prototypes before a lot of time and money has been spent on engineering.”

“Everyone in Silicon Valley is obsessed with Apple. I remember working late one night at TiVo, and my boss told me, ‘We need to build a world-class organization that’s just like Apple.’ I nearly started crying. I didn’t understand that was remotely possible.”

“Product managers and even some designers fall into the trap of thinking, ‘It makes perfect sense to me, so I don’t need to test it.’ Every time I’ve done testing I’ve discovered major things in need of improvement.”

“Companies often don’t understand the emotional reasons people are using their products. When I started the PhotoBook project at Shutterfly, we had it all wrong. We thought customers were scrapbookers who wanted to customize borders. We learned they were moms with very young kids who had no time to spend on ‘picture stuff’ but felt an enormous burden as family historians. That told us we needed to make our process even faster.”

“Changing products users are happy with and making them more complicated is a constant problem. As my partner always tells product managers, it’s important to find the fewest features that will make customers happy, not the most.”

“When someone says, ‘I don’t understand how to use this, but that’s just because I’m not technical—or because I’m stupid’—that’s a complete failure of design.”

“Companies should not have to ship a user manual with a product. Primary tasks should be discoverable and understandable without reading anything.”

When I moved into consulting I switched back to a Mac after working on PCs since grad school. I also switched from a BlackBerry to an iPhone for my 40th birthday. You can pry it out of my cold, dead hands.”

“Now when I check my kids in the morning they’re playing games on my iPhone instead of playing with Legos. I worry it’s not as creative and how much I should limit their access. Then we play a game like Ragdoll Blaster that teaches physics in a fun, silly way.”

“Silicon Valley can be a difficult place to achieve work/life balance. It’s engineering driven, and engineers like working 10 to 7.”

“Getting a good idea off the ground in the Valley can be easier than other places. If you’ve been successful here once, you can get a free pass from the VCs on your next idea. I know 24-year-olds who are quitting their jobs to develop an app, and I think it’s neat they’ve got the funding to try.”

“Some people who hire me think I’m a tech gadget person. Other clients understand something more important: that I know how to design for people who are not technical—people like me.”

—Interview by Lisa Furlong

2. X-Delta (1970)
Mark di Suvero’s sculpture, found behind the Hood Museum, features beams in the shape of an X and an upside down triangle and includes a swing—allowing viewers to climb or rest upon it. The sculpture was located in front of Sanborn until July 1984, when students and faculty complained it was ugly.

3. Two Plate Prop (1976)
Richard Serra’s aptly named work in the Darling Courtyard of the Hopkins Center includes two 4-by-4-feet steel plates resting on each other perpendicularly. As the time of day and season changes, new geometrical relationships can be viewed in the shadows created by the plates.

4. Fountain Figure (1963)
At the center of a fountain in the Hopkins Center’s Zahm Courtyard stands Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones’ tribute to Dartmouth students who fought and died in World War II. Huxley-Jones is also the sculptor of the Hop’s Warner Bentley bust, whose nose continues to be rubbed by many for good luck.

5. Inukshuk (2007)
Peter Irniq’s composition, perched in front of McNutt Hall, is built from New Hampshire slate and granite rocks and is meant to mirror the human form. In Inuit culture, Inukshuks are used as navigational aids, marking the best routes for travelers to follow.

6. Peaceful Serenity (1992)
Outside Sherman House, home to the College’s Native American studies program, stand three steel figures representing a mother, daughter and newborn infant. The abstract forms constructed by Allan Houser from bronze-plated steel stand on a bronze island surrounded by gravel.

7. Thel (1977)
Stretching across 135 feet of Wheeler lawn, Beverly Pepper’s work consists of five white, steel pyramidal forms of varying height. Former director of galleries Jan van der Marck compared Thel to a whale rising from the ocean’s depths. Joan Mondale, wife of the U.S. vice president, dedicated the sculpture in 1978.

8. D2D (1975)
Charles O. Perry’s 10-foot bronze version of a Möbius strip—a figure on which one can trace a path touching every side without crossing over an edge—adorns the entrance to Fairchild Physical Sciences Center. Rowdy Brown alumni visiting campus inflicted nearly $20,000 in damages to the sculpture after a Dartmouth-Brown football game in November 1981.

9. Robert Frost (1996)
Nestled in the woods on the eastern edge of campus, a pensive depiction of the writer by George Lundeen sits on a boulder near the Lone Pine stump, pondering the beauty of the natural world.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Karen Iorio is a DAM intern. The student researchers are Zinnia Amaya ’09, Worthy Dye ’11, Stephenie Lee ’11, Nadine Moezinia ’11, Cynthia Morales Bejarano ’11, Kyle Nicholas ’11, Otega Ogban ’11, Tosin Ogunbamise ’11 and Henry I. Stewart ’12.

Selling in Tough Times
Conventional wisdom predicts top consumer brands suffer during a recession because penny-pinching consumers scale back from Coke to generic cola. Conventional wisdom is wrong, reports Tuck marketing professor Peter Golder. Golder led a team that spent about 900 hours studying the top brands of the past 90 years and found that “brand leaders did extra well when the economy was doing worse.” Although Golder’s study doesn’t explain why top brands do well in a bad economy, he’s got a theory: During economic turmoil retailers cut mid-level brands, and consumers turn to brand leaders because they are comfortable and familiar. LINK

Call of the Cricket
Last year Laurel Symes, a Ph.D. candidate in biology, discovered a new species of cricket at the Resaca de la Palma State Park and World Birding Center in Texas. That discovery was a bonus to her primary work of recording and analyzing cricket calls of different species. “What I am doing in my research is trying to understand what drives the evolution of these different calls,” says Symes. “Given that these cricket species all shared a common ancestor, what forces have caused the calls to diverge and the females to respond only to the calls of males of the same species? If we can understand the answer to this question in crickets, it tells us a lot about this process in other species.” LINK

Happy Returns
Here’s some simple advice for the average Joe looking to bolster his 401(k): Switch from an actively managed fund to a low-cost, plain vanilla index fund. Tuck professor Kenneth French and Eugene Fama from the University of Chicago ran 10,000 simulations and concluded that actively managed funds rarely outperform index funds when management fees are considered. In their paper, “Luck Versus Skill,” French and Fama acknowledge that a top performing managed fund will consistently outperform index funds, but there’s a catch. The pair argues it is almost impossible to distinguish a well-managed mutual fund run by a top manager from a top-performing mutual fund run by a manager having a run of good luck. LINK

Eggcellent Effort
Geography professor Susanne Freidberg, author of Fresh: A Perishable History, a 2009 book that recounts the history of fresh food since the late 19th century, won a prize from the Berkshire Conference of Woman Historians last year for her paper, “The Triumph of the Egg.” The paper explains how until the 1920s “hen fruit,” as eggs were sometimes called, were seasonal. Savvy egg scalpers typically bought eggs in the spring and stored them until December, when they sold for upwards of $5.30 (in current dollars) each. Storing eggs was a big business. One warehouse located in Boston’s Quincy Market stored 150 million eggs. Advances in chicken nutrition and the advent of electric lighting, which tricks the hens into laying year-round, transformed the industry. LINK

Retirees and Recession
“Although women’s pensions have not achieved parity with those of men, gains in coverage and plan value are closing the gap.” That’s just one conclusion found in the Pensions in the Health and Retirement Study published in May by Dartmouth economics professor Alan Gustman, Dartmouth research associate Nahid Tabatabai and Texas Tech economist Thomas Steinmeier. By analyzing the pension and retirement data of people over 50, the trio offers good news for current and soon-to-be retirees. They found that “most of the retirement-age population will be able to weather the recent financial downturn without suffering a very large change in their standard of living.” And for those still working, “the decline in the stock market will have less of a direct effect on the wealth of those on the cusp of retiring than is often suggested.” LINK

Time to Move On
Dartmouth physicist Marcelo Gleiser based his Ph.D. and subsequent years of research on his belief in the so-called Theory of Everything. More recently Gleiser experienced an intellectual transformation based on a different premise: Life exists on earth because nature is imperfect and Western science should give up on finding the Theory of Everything. “After five millennia of intense searching and hoping for some kind of ultimate explanation for everything, religious or scientific,” he explains in his new book, A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe, “we must move on.” LINK

Snow Job
“Wintertime for Deceptive Advertising,” a research paper by econ profs Jonathan Zinman and Eric Zitzewitz, grew out of a deep personal disappointment. “On a good powder day we decided to goof off and hit the slopes,” says Zitzewitz. “The ski area reported 6 inches of fresh powder, but when we got there it was more like 2.” The pair decided to compare snow reports issued by ski resorts to government weather bureau tallies. They discovered that ski areas tend to inflate snowfall tallies on weekends by an average of 23 percent. Skiers take note: The most accurate snow reports come from resorts with good iPhone coverage. They have no choice but to report honestly. Last January Skireport.com released an iPhone app that encourages skiers to post their own ski reports in real time from the slopes. LINK

—Lee Michaelides

Brenda Withers ’00 played Matt Damon in the hit 2003 play Matt and Ben, which she co-wrote with The Office star Mindy Kaling ’01. So taking on Katherine Hepburn’s iconic role in the Ivoryton (Connecticut) Playhouse production of The Philadelphia Story last March couldn’t have been too daunting. The Long Island native, who spent the past year in France on a playwrighting fellowship, told TheDay.com that she enjoys balancing acting with writing. “It’s nice to have both as an outlet because acting is what I grew up doing,” she said. “As an actor, you are pretty much—much to our chagrin—the lowest rung on the ladder in the business sense in that there’s a lot of you out there. Supply and demand is not in our favor. But, as a writer, good scripts are kind of few and far between. If you can get one out there, you have a lot of leverage.”

To paint a more accurate picture of native civilization in eastern North America, producer Peter Frechette ’82 has been collaborating on a series of videos, “Hidden Landscapes” (www.hiddenlandscape.com), with director Ted Timreck, a visual anthropology researcher at the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center. The latest, The Great Falls: Discovery, Destruction, and Preservation in a Massachusetts Town, chronicles the struggle to preserve a ritual site in Turners Falls that was in the path of an airport expansion. “Part of the real excitement for me is helping people discover what the real history is,” Frechette told the Boston Globe last March.

Victoria Glazer ’06 has taken the concept of ice cream mix-ins and successfully applied it to cream cheese and bagels, The New York Times reported last March. At Vic’s Bagel Bar in New York City, customers can add such things as edamame, almonds, smoked salmon and blueberries to cream cheese or to other spreads such as hummus and Nutella. “I don’t make the bagels myself, but I think I’ve hired good people,” Glazer told the Times.

The Commercial Observer says Frank Doyle ’87 is known as “one of the industry’s most aggressive salesmen.” During the past 20 years Doyle has leased more than 12 million feet of commercial real estate in Manhattan and completed 1,000 deals for Jones Lang LaSalle. Where did the Boston native hone his sales skills? The Wiz. Soon after graduating from Dartmouth Doyle worked nights and weekends at the electronics retailer as a VCR salesman to earn money for business school. “I was the top salesperson at the Wiz and was rewarded for having the highest percentage of sales contracts,” said Doyle. “To me, I was making money for school, but I was also working on my sales skills.”

While growing up in Richmond, California, Erik Moore ’89 was mentored by a neighbor who encouraged him to go to Dartmouth. Now the bond trader mentors at-risk youths in the San Francisco area through the East Bay College Fund, a nonprofit that provides college funds for underserved students as well as guidance and counseling to help them complete their degrees. Moore told The New York Times last March that he takes students to his job at Banc of America Securities to expose them to the trading floor, and also to fundraisers at wealthy Bay Area homes. “A lot of the kids want to be Michael Jordan,” he said. “I show them that suits can make more money than athletes.”

Her hats have been worn by Madonna, J.Lo and Paris Hilton and she’s been honored with a Perry Ellis award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Now “milliner to the stars” Eugenia Kim ’96 has a limited edition line of inexpensive hats at Target. When asked what inspired this collection, Kim told the New York Daily News, “Old-school Cuba in the ’40s and ’50s. Think Cuban ladies smoking cigars pre-Castro.”

When the Dallas district attorney’s office, area law enforcement agencies or defense attorneys need help proving a case through video or audio evidence, James Appleton ’70 is the man they call. When Appleton started Showcase Productions 23 years ago, he worked mainly with corporate clients producing commercials. But after helping a police officer friend with a case, he branched out into crime-fighting work. Since then he has used video enhancement to prove a customer pretended to slip after throwing guacamole on the floor of a Wendy’s, and he helped demonstrate that Stacey Brown, a man who looked remarkably like his accomplice, was the one who shot a convenience store owner. “Jim was able to take out all the fuzz and focus in on Brown’s features,” prosecutor Brandon McCarthy told the Dallas Morning News last December. “He was able to zoom in on a very distinctive tattoo on his right arm, as well as the shape of his ear and an earring in the left one.” Overwhelmed by Appleton’s evidence, the defendant ultimately confessed his guilt during cross-examination.

Dr. Flagg Miller ’91 is working on a book about Osama Bin Laden that focuses on the content of audiotape recordings acquired by CNN in 2001 from Bin Laden’s former neighbors in Qandahar. Miller, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of California at Davis, has been annotating the 1,500 recordings from digital copies (the originals are housed at Yale). The majority of recordings feature speeches by more than 200 Islamist preachers, as well as everyday conversations between jihadis about such mundane things as cooking eggs. Twenty-three recordings feature Bin Laden, who can be heard speaking at a wedding and reading his original poetry. Miller told The Chronicle of Higher Education that one cassette, titled Listen, Plan and Carry Out Al Qaeda, reveals that, “They see it as an ethical calling. That may be difficult to swallow, but it’s important to deal with.”

Two years ago, when demand began to dwindle for traditional interior design services, Betsy Burnham ’84 created Instant/Space, a customized room design plan. Burnham and her assistants work with clients online and over the phone for a flat fee per room and then mail a detailed design plan that the customer then executes. “We try to make the implementation of the plan as simple as possible by selecting specific pieces and showing exactly where they’ll lay them out in the room,” Burnham told Lonny Magazine in February.

Zack Berke ’02 is technology director of a San Francisco-based nonprofit, Eureka Fund, which launched online in December and enables the general public to donate money for scientific research. Donations will help fund two Stanford researchers who are studying how car batteries are used to supply electricity to residents in Third World countries. This is currently Eureka Fund’s sole project, as Berke and founder Jason Blue-Smith measure the effectiveness of applying crowd-financing to funding scientific research. As of mid-May the fund had raised $2,300 toward its $23,000 goal, and future projects are already on deck for wind, transportation, and energy storage research. As Blue-Smith told The New York Times in April, this crowd-sourced funding is crucial, especially for early-stage scientific ideas. Even when “the scientists have a relationship with an angel investor for a for-profit,” he said, “they still can’t get money to fund the really interesting, high-quality academic research that they believe in passionately.”

A Boston Globe reporter and videographer accompanied Stormy Mayo ’65 on a research outing off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, last April. Mayo, one of the founders of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, and his colleagues were studying a group of endangered North Atlantic right whales that were feeding on zooplankton. The whales now number fewer than 450 and, as Mayo pointed out, it is often while feeding that they get entangled in fishing gear or sustain injuries from colliding with boats. “When they are feeding, they seem to be oblivious,” said Mayo.