In an attempt to answer students' questions about the ongoing trustee elections, Palaeopitus Senior Society sponsored an event Tuesday night in Morrison Commons featuring College President James Wright, Alumni Relations Vice President David Spalding '76 and Assistant Director of Young Alumni and Student Programs Rex Morey '99. Wright and his colleagues addressed a range of issues including the role of money in the campaigning process, the nature of the nominating process and even why Baker Tower is lit in green for alumni events (it's a welcome home beacon). Open campaigning, Wright said, has drastically changed the level of debate present in the elections.
Associate professor of physics and astronomy Barrett Rogers has been awarded a $1.7 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a joint team from the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth. The team will use the grant to create a new center dedicated to developing theoretical and computer simulation models for applications to controlled thermonuclear fusion and to the problems of turbulence and heating in the Sun's environment, according to a College press release. The center will be called the Cluster for Integrated Computation and Analysis of Reconnection and Turbulence and will be located at the University of New Hampshire. The proposal for the center was ranked top in the nation by the Department of Energy Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.
After studying the fossil record and evolutionary relationships among species, Dartmouth professor Mark McPeek and Jonathon Brown of Grinnell College have answered one of history's great biological mysteries. Their study, which appears in the April issue of The American Naturalist, proves that older insect groups such as beetles and butterflies contain large volumes of species simply because they have existed for a longer period of time.
"A Resolution in Support of Climate Neutrality at all Ivy League Institutions," a document produced by the Ivy Council, received the support of Student Assembly at Tuesday night's meeting. The resolution, which calls for Ivy League institutions to aim for climate neutrality through efforts including increased energy efficiency and reduced total emissions, was drafted by students from environmental groups at each institution -- including members of the group Sustainable Dartmouth. If the resolution gains the support of all seven student governments, the document will be passed at the Ivy Council's 2007 Spring conference, to be held at Brown University.
