Gun Hill Road, the first feature film by Rashaad Ernesto Green ’00, was selected for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Green’s film was one of 16 chosen from more than 1,100 submissions for the U.S. dramatic competition. A 2003 graduate of New York University’s M.F.A. acting program, in May he will also earn an M.F.A. in film (Robert Nickson ’64 is one of his profs). The Bronx native told indieWIRE.com a couple of weeks before the festival opened in January that The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which urges readers to view life from the perspective of their funeral, influenced his decision to pursue filmmaking. “When I imagined myself in the casket, listening to what others would say about me, I heard them speaking about someone who did not wait for other people to write the stories, but rather took the bull by the horns and created the stories I wished to see,” Green said.

Selected from a pool of more than 2,000 librarians nationwide, Melissa McCollum ’96 was one of 10 honorees to receive the I Love My Librarian Award from the Carnegie Corp. of New York and The New York Times last December. The librarian for the Los Angeles County Public Library in Lawndale since 2007, McCollum has secured grants and funding for such projects as a digital photography workshop and an organic garden, which she complemented with free gardening classes and courses on nutrition for teens and adults. “Our core business is giving access to books and information,” McCollum told the Contra Costa Times, “but we can do so much more."

The NHL’s Tanner Glass ’07 “has developed into the poster boy for the Canucks’ fourth line—a guy who has good hockey smarts, finishes checks, is willing to drop his gloves and shows the odd flash of offense,” the Vancouver website Straight.com wrote last December. That same month, when Glass squared off against the Colorado Avalanche and former Big Green teammate David Jones ’08, a fan on Glass’ blog inquired whether “you guys knocked heads on the ice?” Glass’ reply: “David is one of my good buddies and every time we play I ask him to fight, but he always laughs me off. I don’t know what’s up with that. But honestly, Jonesy is having a great year and I always enjoy playing against him.”

At the December dedication of the Kobe Bryant Gymnasium at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, former Big Green soccer player Myra Sack ’10 was honored along with the L.A. Lakers legend as Lower Merion’s greatest athletic alumni. Sack played both basketball and soccer at the high school and was a two-time all-state selection in soccer and the southwestern suburban Philadelphia athlete of the year for soccer and basketball. “It was a special evening,” Sack, who now works for Soccer Without Borders, told the Mainline Media News.

A Valley News columnist rode along with Dick Jaeger ’59 last December as he delivered food to shut-ins and elderly Upper Valley residents. Dartmouth’s former admissions head and athletic director, who retired from the College in 2002, delivers free meals twice a week for the Grafton County Senior Citizens Council. “You like to think you’re making a difference in people’s lives,” Jaeger said. “I get a lot out of this, too. You meet some genuine characters.”

Entertainment Weekly featured the The Walking Dead on its December 3 cover, calling it “the best new show on TV.” One of the AMC show’s stars is Sarah Wayne Callies ’99, who plays Lori Grimes, the wife of police officer Rick. Callies, who previously starred on the Fox TV series Prison Break, told DigitalSpy.com last October that the show is making it hard for her to sleep. “Three nights ago I had a nightmare that I was swimming in a river of zombies,” said Callies. “I don’t watch horror movies because they scare me!”

Michael Mothner ’03 started Wpromote in his dorm room sophomore year, and despite reaching the final round of interviews with Goldman Sachs for an analyst’s position, elected to stick with the fledgling company after graduation. It proved to be a good move, as the marketing company, which helps clients with search engine optimizations and pay-per-click management, earned more than $8 million in 2009 and was expected to cross the $10 million revenue mark for 2010. Mothner, whose hires include Mike Block ’04 as vice president of client service and Matt Burr ’03 as director of new business, was featured in the September issue of Entrepreneur magazine along with four “ultra-successful twentysomethings [who] leveraged their brilliant ideas into major businesses online.”

Vice president of Red Sox Nation “Regular Rob” (aka Rob Crawford ’90) and his a cappella group the September Call Ups were invited to sing the national anthem prior to a Red Sox game last September. Among the Dartmouth members of the group—many of them former Aires—were Brad Drazen ’90, Scott Sylvester ’91, Peter Fearey ’91, John Ohe ’92, Rob’s father Jim Crawford ’58 and his younger brother Benjamin Crawford ’92 and Rob’s brother-in-law Bill Ragan ’82. NESN aired a video on The Red Sox Report about their big day, which you can view at http://bit.ly/hVgaIU.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that PharmaSecure, a New Delhi-based company founded by Nathan Sigworth ’07 to help stem the tide against counterfeit medicines, signed a deal with a major Indian drug producer in December. PharmaSecure produces codes that are printed on pill packets, enabling customers to text these codes to drug manufacturers and confirm that the drugs are not fakes or expired. Although Sigworth thinks his business will help save lives, he told the Monitor that PharmaSecure is also “building a very, very valuable network and communications platform with consumers.”

After injuries sidelined him for his freshman and senior lacrosse seasons, Jon Livadas ’09 got a second chance. He used his remaining eligibility to play for Duke while enrolled in the university’s one-year master’s business program—and went on to help the Blue Devils win the 2010 NCAA lacrosse title. Off the field he donated bone marrow to a man dying of leukemia, beginning the process just as the NCAA tournament was starting. “I’m not a hero—it’s something that I had to do—and something that anyone should think of doing,” Livadas told Inside Lacrosse last December. “How could you not want to help?”

Shelley Arakawa ’96, senior director of higher education for the College Board’s western regional office, and her father, Myron, who has been a college counselor for 30 years at two private schools in Hawaii, were featured in a Diverse Education article last November about how college counseling often runs in families. Arakawa, who worked part-time in Dartmouth’s admissions office as an undergraduate, remembers being impressed by the impact her father had on students. “We lived on campus, and college kids returning for visits would pull me aside to say they wouldn’t have gone to college if it weren’t for my dad,” she said.

Dinesh D’Souza ’83 was inaugurated on December 2 as president of the King’s College, a Christian liberal arts college of nearly 400 students in New York City. The best-selling author, one-time policy analyst in the Reagan White House and former fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Stanford’s Hoover Institution, D’Souza was initially surprised when he was approached to lead King’s because the job differed so greatly from his previous positions, according to the Empire State Tribune. “It hit me that King’s was the biggest, best idea in American higher education,” he said in his inaugural address, because it “gives and equips students with the tools and language necessary to defend beliefs in an understandable way.”

In January Janet Coit ’85was named one of the “11 People to Watch in 2011” by the Providence Journal after being nominated to head Rhode Island’s department of environmental management by Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee in November. Coit, a Stanford Law School graduate, is the director of the Rhode Island chapter of the Nature Conservancy, where she has worked since 2001.