Young Alumni Award: Susan Grace Dent '77

We both congratulate and honor newly elected Alumni Trustee Susan Dentzer in the same breath. But it takes a lot of breaths to really do her justice. She was a magna cum laude graduate with highest distinction in English, a writer for The Dartmouth, a soprano for the Glee Club, a tumbler for the cheerleaders, and a teaching assistant in the Rassias drill classes. Among the women pioneers in those early days of coeducation, Susan helped spin the first threads and set the patterns as the College moved to weave women into the fabric of the institution.

Out in the wide, wide world she moved up quickly through the journalistic ranks: newspapers, Newsweek, and, from 1987 to die present, a senior writer and chief economic correspondent for U.S. News and World Report. Along the way she was a Harvard Nieman Fellow and a U.S.-Japan Leadership Program Fellow.

But Dartmouth has never been far from her mind. She has been an alumni interviewer, a member of the Alumni Council, a member and chair of the Alumni Magazine Editorial Board, and last fall she received the President's Medal for Achievement.

Susan and her journalist husband, Chuck Alston, round out their busy lives volunteering with the Presbyterian church and a foundation for American Indian journalists. They also enjoy reading, gardening, and nights at the opera.

Susan's significant love and concern for this place has been a river running deep, and it has never shallowed. We are therefore pleased beyond any saying to present her with this mark of our high esteem, the Young Alumni Distinguished Service Award.