Grads

Deborah Scranton (MALS’10) has won a Peabody Award for her most recent film, Earth Made of Glass. She made her feature film directorial debut with the awardwinning documentary The War Tapes, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and won Best Documentary Feature. Hailed by The New York Times as “raw, honest and moving…one of the formally most radical films of 2006” and described as “the first indispensible Iraq documentary,” The War Tapes went on to win Best International Documentary at the 2006 BritDoc Festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2007.

Earth Made of Glass, her second feature film, is a political thriller set in post genocide Rwanda and France. It features unprecedented access and interviews with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. It premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in the documentary competition and was broadcast on HBO in April 2011. After winning the Peabody Award in April, Deborah wrote, “The award comes at a poignant time for us, since the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide is April 7, 1994. We are grateful that the prestigious award of a Peabody will help raise awareness of the truth of what happened. We’re so thankful for our incredible launch at the Tribeca Film Festival, which President Paul Kagame was able to attend.”

She started her career in television covering a variety of world-renowned events including the Tour de France, the Winter Olympics and U.S. Open Tennis for ABC Sports, MTV Networks and ESPN. In 2007 she was a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, working with the global media project in the global security program. A former member of the U.S. ski team, Deborah graduated from Brown University with a degree in semiotics. At Dartmouth her MALS concentration was global studies. She resides on a farm in New Hampshire, where her family has lived for the past nine generations.

I have received notice of the death of Walter W. Schmiegel (chemistry’65) on April 11 in Wilmington, Delaware. Walter was born in Chemnitz, Germany, in 1941, after the death of his father. His mother guided Walter and his older brother through the war and difficult Russian occupation. She plotted her family’s escape to Berlin and managed the move to the United States, where they settled in Michigan when Walter was 10. (Both of her sons became research scientists.) After graduating from the University of Michigan Walter received his M.A. from Dartmouth and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University. He then joined E.I. duPont de Nemours et Cie. He worked for nearly 41 years as a research chemist at the experimental station in Wilmington. He published numerous articles and was inventor on 34 U.S. patents, primarily in fluoro-elastomers.

His colleagues admired his ability to find out how the molecules worked and to make them behave as needed to create or improve a product. Walter was noted for his encouragement and mentoring of younger chemists who would also make important contributions to their profession. He was a long-time member of the American Chemical Society. His interests included classical music, history, photography and bicycling, and he believed that the garden he made with his wife, Karol, was one of his most enjoyable creations.

His wife of 41 years, Karol, his brother Klaus and his brother’s family survive him. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory may be made to the University of Michigan Scholarship Fund or the Biggs Museum of Art, P.O. Box 711, Dover, DE 19901.

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