Grads

On Wednesday, July 14, the MALS Alumni Association will hold its annual luncheon and open meeting at noon in the Hanover Inn. All MALS alumni are invited and encouraged to attend. Our featured speaker this year will be Richard Stamelman, who teaches in the MALS cultural studies concentration. He is the author of Perfume: Joy, Obsessions, Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present. We are expecting an entertaining and informative presentation from him. The MALS Alumni Association board meeting will be held immediately after the luncheon. All MALS alumni are welcome to attend and learn more about the purpose and activities of the association, as well as offer comments and suggestions. The board is currently trying to obtain an accurate alumni e-mail list. Please contact me to update your information.

Cornelia Purcell (MALS’96) was recently featured in Kelly Sunberg Seaman’s “Staff Snapshot” column in Vox of Dartmouth. Cornelia is the associate director of the Dartmouth College Fund. She has worked in development for nearly 20 years and thinks of her work with the College’s annual fund as “celebrating and assisting volunteers. I encourage the alumni classes I work with to stay engaged with Dartmouth.” She is now bringing innovative technology to that work, arranging a new town meeting-style videoconference with President Jim Yong Kim and the class of 1980. Cornelia says she thinks of herself “as a citizen of the entire Upper Valley. We’re all one place, together.” She and her husband have volunteered as ski coaches with the Ford K. Sayre ski program for as long as they have lived in the Upper Valley. She also serves on the board of the Carter Community Building Association in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and coordinates the capital campaign for the Kilton Library under construction in nearby West Lebanon.

At a January press conference in Tokyo Dr. Peter Vitousek (biology ’75) was named a winner of the 2010 Japan Prize, the international science award administered by the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan. The foundation, established in 1982, promotes the advancement of science and technology for the peace and prosperity of mankind. The foundation awards the Japan Prize annually to scientists and researchers in two categories who, regardless of nationality, made substantial contributions to that end. Peter is a professor of biology at Stanford University and has contributed to solving global environmental issues through his analysis of nitrogen and other substances cycles. The need to address these environmental challenges is now urgent, due to human activities and the rapid global population increase. He began his studies on the impacts of human activities on the ecosystem in the 1970s. Based on these studies, he focused his research on nitrogen. With his colleagues he made clear that an enormous increase in the amount of nitrogen supplied to ecosystems by human activity, including fertilization and fossil fuel consumption, greatly affected the cycles of carbon, phosphorus and other nutrients. Through these studies he contributed to establishing the methodology and concepts of a new research field called biogeochemistry. Using data from this field he reported and has been warning of the magnitude of the impact of human activities on the global ecosystem, while offering suggestions for political decisions related to environmental issues. At the award ceremony on April 21 in Tokyo Peter will receive a certificate of recognition, a commemorative gold medal and a cash award of 50 million Japanese yen (approximately $550,000).

175 Greensboro Road, Hanover, NH 03755; (603) 643-3789; m.jane.welsh.adv98@alum. dartmouth.org