As a trial for its Rivercrest development project, the College is selling two factory-built homes, one on Route 10 in West Lebanon and another on Grasse Road in Hanover, the Valley News reported on Tuesday. The Hanover house is for sale only to College employees and is part of Dartmouth's program to keep affordable housing available in Hanover, while the other home is for sale to the public. The Rivercrest development project will likely begin in late 2010 if approved by the Hanover Planning Board, and will provide 300 housing units for College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center employees, the Valley News reported. Dartmouth is trying to build modular homes for the project because they cost less than fully constructed houses and can be completed more quickly. The College maintains an option to repurchase the home at a capped price in the future.
Several colleges and universities are encouraging their tour guides to walk forward and share anecdotes rather than recite facts and history with campus visitors, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. The changes come as colleges seek to provide a more natural, personal experience to visitors. Some universities were encouraged to change their admissions tours by TargetX, a private consulting firm that charges thousands of dollars to "audit" colleges' tours and other aspects of their admissions outreach, according to The Times. Institutions that have made such a change include Hendrix College, a liberal arts institution outside Little Rock, Ark., and large state schools like the University of Texas at Austin. Tour guides at other schools have criticized these changes because guides no longer make eye contact with their tour groups and are able to show visitors less of the campus, according to The Times.
FlightCaster Inc., a program and web site that aims to be a honest indicator of current flight status co-founded by Jason Freedman Tu'08 was launched this week. The program, available as an application on iPhones and Blackberrys for $5, is capable of alerting users of a delay as many as six hours before the airline announces it, according to the company web site. The program tracks FAA alerts, weather, network congestion, historical trends, and other factors to provide its estimates.
