Newsmakers

With $60,000 in savings from a two-year consulting stint, David Spindler '89 in 2002 devoted himself to researching the history of the Great Wall of China; specifically the portion built in the Beijing region during the Ming Dynasty. As chronicled in The NewYorker's May 21 issue, Spindler's independent research (he has no university affiliation) combines an enormous amount of scholarship and field work: His goal is to read every word written about the wall during the Ming Dynasty and to hike every section of it. Since he first hiked along the wall in 1994 as a Peking University masters student, this former member of the Big Green crew and Nordic ski teams has hiked it more than 350 times. Chinese satellite photos in 1985 indicated 390 miles of wall-Spindler says it's longer—and last February estimated he needed another 86 hiking days to complete the span. ...Last spring The New York Times tapped Alice Mathias '07 to contribute to the month-long series, "The Graduates: 8 College Seniors Face the Future." A former columnist for The Dartmouth, the Chicago native wrote three articles for TheTimes in April, including one about how the Columbine and Virginia Tech tragedies impacted her generation. "We will carry both these incidents with us, and they will shape our actions when we become politicians, school administrators, journalists and, most notably, parents." Mathias, the daughter of John Mathias Jr. '69, starts graduate film school at the University of Southern California in January...As The Wall Street Journal noted in an article last June, advertising agencies are increasingly seeking the input of scientists such as Lisa Haverty '92 to help sell products. Haverty, who has a Ph.D. in cognitive science and works for Havas' Arnold ad agency in Boston, advised client Ocean Spray to feature in its new diet cranberry juice ad a group of women exercising in a bog—a more health-based approach than the partying scene from an earlier ad. With Haverty's suggestions, the revised ad scored in the top 10 percent of 8,500 ads tested for how well people remembered them....May was film festival award sweeps month for director Nicolas Brown '90. His latest project, Building the Future: Energy, won the Manfrotto Environmental Award at the Mountainfilm in Telluride Festival in Colorado, and his two-part series, ClimateChaos Season, won Best of Festival as well as six other categories at the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. Narrated by Sir David Attenborugh, the latter aired on BBC One and the Discovery Channel in 2006....In the April 20 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education Mike O'Connell '65 lamented the shift from the classroom lecturer (dubbed "sage on the stage") to a style of teaching that stresses interactive learning and breakout sessions ("guide on the side"). "If Will Rogers or Robert Frost or Margaret Atwood came to your campus as a guest speaker, how would you and your students feel if, after five minutes of introductory remarks, one of them said, 'Nowlets all divide up into small groups for further discussion?'" wrote O'Connell, an associate lecturer in the English department at the University of Wiscon-sin-Baraboo/Sauk County and the University ofWisconsin-Richland—.TAeiVew York Times is chronicling the first year in office of U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand '88, a freshman Democrat who represents New York's overwhelmingly Republican 20th Congressional District (stretching from the mid-Hudson Valley to Lake Placid). The Times' series began in late February and has focused partly on how several Republican opponents are already mobilizing to unseat Gillibrand in the 2008 election. In May The Times quoted an editorial in the Glens Falls, New York, Post-Star: "Shouldn't someone be allowed to do their job for at least a year before they have to worry about keeping it?"..."Each year upwards of 10,000 people enjoy the wather here [in Hanover] through swimming, rowing, kayaking, canoeing and power boating," wrote Lauren "Duff" Cummings '72 in the 2006 holiday issue of The Clipboard, the magazine of the Northeast Colleges and Universities Security Association. Cummings, the sergeant in charge of investigations and marine safety for the Colleges Department of Safety and Security, detailed Dartmouth's new modular docking system and the 18-foot pontoon rescue boat that launched in 2004 with the support of his '72 class- mates....As the Albuquerque Journal noted in an April profile of Hilary Tompkins '90, her position as chief legal counsel to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has helped bring her full circle. She was born at Zuni Pueblo outside Albuquerque, adopted by Quaker parents and raised in a multicultural environment in New Jersey (although she never met another Native American until age 15). A graduate of Stanford Law School, Tompkins worked with the Navajo Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Justice before joining Gov. Richardson's office in late 2002. "I'm just a Jersey girl with Navajo pride and Quaker sensibilities," she said....Dan Reicher '78 was named director of climate change and energy initia- tives for Google.org last April. Reicher, who served in the Clinton administration as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the U.S. Department of Energy also co-founded New Energy Capital in Hanover. "This is an exciting opportunity that will combine most everything I've done in government, the financial world and the nonprofit sector," Reicher told the Hanover area's ValleyNews....Putnam W. Blodgett '53, a forester who manages a 675-acre tree farm in Bradford, Vermont, and 275 acres of forest in Lyme, New Hampshire, traveled last April to Siberia as part of a delegation of the American-Russian Forestry Association. Blodgett said he was surprised by the limited diversity of species in Siberia, but "we did see a forest of Norway spruce established by Peter the Great in the early 1700s," he told the Valley News. years you'd expect they'd be huge trees, but because of the short growing season, they're n0t."... Last February Neel Shah '05 passed himself off as a millionaire in a CNN report about a dating event exclusively for wealthy men and beautiful women (search for "millionaire," "dating" and "CNN" on You Tube.com to watch the clip). In May the Radar magazine assistant editor was featured twice on CBS's The Early Show for a more legitimate reason—he was one of three single men competing to be the next "Jake," Glamour magazines relationship columnist (he didn't make it, as announced in July). Shah admitted on the magazine's Web site that he doesn't have a relationshipphilosophy. "Guys with relationshipphilosophies also use Axe Body Sprayand say things like, 'Love em and leaveem.'" Shah, formerly a scribe for TheDartmouth, also garnered considerable publicity in June for a book he co-wrote with two collegehumor.com collaborators, Faking It-How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself... In December late Dr. Merlin "Monte" DuVal '44 was lauded on The Arizona Republic editorial page for his contributions to state health care and education. DuVal helped create the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and served as its first dean in 1964. A former assistant secretary of health for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in President Nixon's administration, he helped bring Medicaid money to the state and later lobbied for a new medical school campus in Phoenix, which was dedicated last fall. "The death of one man hardly causes a ripple in a state with a short memory. But this man's accomplishments are worth remembering because his vision, style and ambition helped shape Arizona," according to the editorial.

Neel Shah '05

Quote/Unquote "I already devote the overwhelming majority of my brainpower to lady-related matters, I figure I might as well have something tangible to show for it." NEEL SHAH '05 ON WHY HE SHOULD BE THE NEXT "JAKE," GLAMOUR MAGAZINE'S SINGLE-GUY RELATIONSHIP COLUMNIST, AT WWW.GLAMOUR.COM

Quote/Unquote "That was the so-called Summer of Love, and the Beatles provided a soundtrack to that romance." ROCK CRITIC ROBERT CHRISTGAU '62 ON THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF SERGEANT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, ON ABC WORLD NEWS