Dartmouth education professor Andrew Garrod, who will retire this year, was awarded Student Assembly's Fall 2008 Profiles in Excellence Award at a dinner in his honor Monday night. The Assembly gives the award each term to a professor who has been nominated by his or her students for exceptional teaching. Students who nominated Garrod praised his "life-changing" courses and his ability to make personal connections, according to an Assembly e-mail. Garrod, who has written several books, was previously recognized by the Tucker Foundation for his work with Bosnian high school students, his development of Dartmouth's Marshall Islands Teaching Fellowship and his work with the Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth program.
Ross Virginia, environmental studies professor and director of the Institute of Arctic Studies, was recently named the inaugural chair of the Myers Family Professorship. The endowed professorship, funded by F. Gibson "Gibs" Myers '64 and his wife, Susan, is given to a Dartmouth faculty member who is dedicated to the research and teaching of environmental science, according a press release. Virginia chaired Dartmouth's Environmental Studies Program from 1992, when he first came to Dartmouth, to 2000. His research focuses on desertification, Antarctic climate change and environmental law, policy and culture in polar regions. In 2004, the U.S. Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names named "Virginia Valley" in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica in honor of Virginia's soil biology research, according to the release.
The National Science Foundation awarded the Institute of Arctic Studies a five-year grant of nearly $3 million in August. Virginia is the principal investigator on the grant, which will fund the creation of an interdisciplinary doctoral program in polar sciences and engineering.
Dartmouth's Xi Lambda chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority held an informational forum for students interested in learning about the organization in Occom Commons on Sunday. After becoming inactive in 2003 due to "management issues," the historically black sorority was re-established at Dartmouth in Fall 2008, according to previous articles in The Dartmouth. The sorority emphasizes service and sisterhood, according to president Britni Stinson '09. Although Dartmouth's AKA chapter is currently active, it has not begun a formal recruitment process. The chapter will notify students two weeks before its rush period begins, Stinson said. AKA will also hold an AKA Week event from Feb. 1 to Feb. 7 to increase awareness about the organization, she said.
