Springtime on the Dartmouth campus marks the annual celebration of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creativity. Undergraduates work closely with faculty on projects relevant to the students’ chosen fields, challenge their abilities, and contribute to the scholarly enterprise. The projects are designed to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, self-confidence, and intellectual independence.

Dartmouth Now highlights the work of six undergraduate researchers in a weeklong series.

Elena Zinski ’15 chose Dartmouth because of its small class sizes and the chance to work closely with professors. “Dartmouth’s commitment to undergraduate teaching has certainly been a big part of my college experience,” says the Wheaton, Ill. native.

Zinski also places a premium on faculty research. “This research propels their fields forward by challenging the boundaries of knowledge and what we assume to be true,” she says. “These advancements influence students in the classroom but also affect a range of arenas—from public policy to medicine to international affairs.”

Studying in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures (DAMELL), Zinski is specifically interested in contemporary Arabic literature and the construction of national identity, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. She is completing a senior honors thesis on Arabic literature.

A series of events highlight undergraduate research, scholarship, and creativity this week:

President's Undergraduate Research Symposium

• Wednesday, May 27, 4-5:30 p.m. in Baker-Berry Library, Main Corridor
• Presentations and posters highlighting honors theses from across the College

Karen E. Wetterhahn Science Symposium

• Keynote address at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 28, at Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center: “From Drought to Flood: Engineering for Climate Change” by Kathleen White of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• Undergraduate Poster Session, 5:30–7 p.m.

Arts at Dartmouth Awards Ceremony

• Tuesday, June 2, 4:30 p.m., Moore Theater at the Hopkins Center for the Arts
• A celebration of student achievement in the arts with live performances and short film screenings. With guest of honor Michael Rafter ‘82, Emmy award-winning television director and Broadway music director.

“For my thesis, I compared two Arabic Moroccan novels: Abd al-Karim Ghallab’s Dafanna al-Madi and Layla Abu Zayd’s Am al-Fil,” she says. “Morocco gained independence from France in 1956, and I studied how these novels use narratives of the independence movement to critique the social and political environment that emerged in the post-independence period. Dafanna al-Madi has not been translated into English, and so it was rewarding for me to apply four years of language study to understanding this complex text.

“My senior thesis has felt like a culmination of my academic experiences. Within my Arabic language project, I relied on the range of my past coursework, from engineering to photography to government, to enrich my analysis of the texts. This process of pulling on a variety of academic experiences embodies, to me, the value of my liberal arts education.”

Zinski pursued her fascination with Morocco in spending terms abroad in Tangier and Rabat. “I took a Moroccan dialect class my sophomore summer and completed a smaller research paper on the Amazigh (Berber) community in Morocco,” she says. “I wanted these academic experiences, along with my study of Arabic, to culminate in my thesis.”

Her adviser has been Jonathan Smolin, an associate professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures. “His expertise on Morocco has proven invaluable as I searched for sources and tried to understand the political and historical contexts of the text,” Zinski says. “I appreciate the encouragement he has given me to take ownership of my project. He has improved not only the quality of my thesis but also my skills as a researcher and writer.”

Read more:

• Emmanuel Blankson ’15 Studies the Black Immigrant Experience
• Benjamin Bauer ’15 Digs Into Mineralogy and Geochemistry
• Olivia Holmes ’15 Investigates Virtual vs. Real Observations

Zinski is looking forward to working this summer as the director’s assistant on Dartmouth’s new Arabic Advanced Language Study Abroad program in Rabat. “After teaching many of the students as a ‘drill instructor,’ I am thrilled to share in their abroad experience.”

Virginia Beahan, a senior lecturer in studio art, has been taking photos in Cuba since 2001. In 2009, she published Cuba: singing with bright tears.

“Cuba's history is visible everywhere, written on the land in words and images: on billboards and signs, on public buildings and homes, painted onto rocks and spelled out in whitewashed pebbles in the red earth. One is steeped in the events of the past, and the land and its people testify to their bearing on the present and the future,” says Beahan.

Below are a few photos from her book. Read more about Beahan and her fascination with Cuba in a story on Dartmouth Now.

Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs), 2004
Site of the failed CIA-sponsored invasion by Cuban exiles on April 17, 1961.

La Terraza, Cojímar, 2005
Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar in the fishing village that inspired The Old Man and the Sea.

View from the ruins of Club Nautica, Santiago de Cuba, 2004
La Socapa was a wealthy seaside community during the 1950s. After the Revolution, property was redistributed, and multiple families now occupy former mansions.

Panaderia (Bakery) René Ávila Reyes, Martir de la Revolución, Holguín, 2004
The portraits on this façade are of Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara. At last visit in 2007, they had completely faded away.

Vestiges of American businesses, Cespedes Street, Gibara, 2007
Cuban exiles in the United States send more than a billion dollars a year to aid their families in Cuba.

Cuban flag. Caibarién, 2006.

Fishing boats. Playa Girón. 2004.
Manned lookout station guarding the aqua frontera.

"Education is freedom."—José Martí, Revolutionary Philosopher and Father of Cuban Independence.
Cuban citizens Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, were convicted of espionage by a Miami jury in 2002. Known as The Cuban Five, the remaining three prisoners were recently released and returned to Havana as part of a rapprochement between the two governments. The slogan Volverán means “They will return.”

By Kathryn Stearns

This Focus on Faculty Q&A is one in an ongoing series of interviews exploring what keeps Dartmouth professors busy inside—and outside—the classroom.

Assistant Professor of Music William Cheng is particularly interested in sound, media, technology, identity, and politics. His first book, Sound Play, Video Games and the Musical Imagination, was published in 2014 by Oxford University Press. Cheng, who joined the Dartmouth faculty this year, talks to Dartmouth Now about musicology, the cultural value of video games, the nature of sound, and the sound of nature.  

“The term musicologist,” you wrote, “often elicits courteous yet uncertain nods from new acquaintances.” Does musicology suffer from an inferiority complex?
Musicology—the study of music history, musical pieces, artifacts and cultures—has historically shown some envy of the sciences, in part because it wanted to be taken seriously. And so it looked for rigorous methods and for provable outcomes and arguments.

Well, our world is smitten with evidence and data.
Yes, “evidence” is that Holy Grail that sends you on the path to truth, right? One of the curious things about music is that it’s often deemed nonrepresentational. You can listen to a piece of music, but it doesn’t shout a specific word at you. So scholars have long struggled to find words to capture music, realizing that it escapes our semantic and even our physical grasp.

So you’re caught in a paradox, trying to interpret aspects of music that elude verbal expression.
Yes, absolutely. On the one hand, music is difficult to describe. On the other hand, music is popularly perceived as so leisurely, so pleasurable, that its beauty and its messages are a given. It’s so obvious that it defies interpretation. But that doesn’t stop people from trying.

Is teaching sometimes a struggle if interpretation is a struggle?
I’ve come across challenges in teaching students how to write about music with a mix of technical precision and personal flair.

What’s the difference between sound and music?
I’ve asked myself that a lot. You could say something as simple as: Music is a type of sound. But of course music has a valuative charge, usually in the positive sense. Music is pleasant sound, or sound that has meaning and cultural value ascribed to it.

Speaking of cultural value, you admire a lot of video games and their music. I confess that when my son played video games, I heard only sound, not music.
There’s a stigma attached to video games as merely recreational, warping our children’s brains, encouraging violent tendencies in members of society. But video games have immense social and cultural force—they gross more than movies.

Yet­—correct me if I’m wrong—one rarely hears of a video game soundtrack becoming a hit.
Actually, video game music is booming. There are video game orchestras. There are touring ensembles that use local orchestras and musicians to put on big multimedia productions—lasers and lights and everything—of video game music. I suppose, though, that if you walked up to someone and asked, “Can you name a famous video game composer?” they might not be able to give you a name.

Can you give me a name?
I can. He’s very popular in Japan: Nobuo Uematsu, who is well known for having composed many of the Final Fantasy soundtracks.

It’s worth noting that games and game music vary greatly across cultures, and in Japan there might be much greater recognition of certain composers. In South Korea, there is a huge e-sports market—electronic sports and competitive gaming—and tournaments fill up stadiums like a football game here would. The pro-gamers there are as much celebrities as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are here.

Why do you think gaming is more respected in Asian cultures?
Maybe the American stigma arises in part from the excessive gun violence in this country. A lot of the action games are what we call “first-person shooters,” where you usually see the gun your character’s holding. When tragedies happen here, it’s easy to look at the visual as well as mechanical analogs to video games. Games are so pervasive that it’s very easy to blame them. I think the association between violence and video games seeps into many aspects of our social conversation.

Let’s talk about something more pleasant. There’s a famous BBC radio show called Desert Island Discs. Imagine you’re a castaway. What three recordings would you take to your desert island?
I’ll cheat a little. I’d like the complete works of Chopin; the complete recordings of Eva Cassidy; and the complete works of Nobuo Uematsu, the Japanese video game composer.

You’re also allowed one video game.
Smash Bros.

What’s the premise?
The genre is called a brawler. You and up to seven friends try to toss each other off the stage. It’s very entertaining and friendly.

I’ve known you for only 30 minutes, but you don’t seem like a brawler.
The aesthetics are very cartoony.

Is there something about gaming that brings out an alter ego?
That’s a great question. My friends will tell you that I might shout and laugh a lot while I play, but once the game ends, we’re back to having a civil conversation.

So, you’re writing a book about meritocracy. Connect the dots between musicology and meritocracy.
My book is a critique of the moral, social, and political sustainability of meritocracy, through the lens of art and music and beauty. I think there’s a myth in the broad assumption that people can be reduced to their merits. How often do we hear, “They succeeded on their own merits”?

Yet here you are at an institution that pretty much operates according to that myth.
Absolutely. One of my chapters has to do with blind auditions, blind reviews, need-blind college admissions. The metaphor of blindness, I think, is not coincidental. We adopt these blind processes because to some extent we don’t trust ourselves to be impartial, but that doesn’t mean we get to congratulate ourselves and say that social justice is done. That is: “We can’t see you, so the problem doesn’t exist.”

I actually thought you were making the case for partiality.
Yes, insofar as we need to acknowledge the whole human being rather than parts.

What have you found most surprising about Dartmouth?
How frequently I bump into familiar faces—always a pleasant surprise. It’s my first time living in a small town where, it seems, everyone knows your name.

Do you think we’re moving in a good direction acoustically?
There’s a new branch of musicology called ecomusicology. It’s wonderful. It engages in questions of sound and music and ecosystems and the progression of soundscapes through time. Certainly things are getting more crowded soundscape-wise, and if we don’t keep an ear out, various sounds of nature will soon be—not just metaphorically but literally—inaudible.

The night after I moved to Hanover, in January, as I lay in bed—it was the most intense silence I had experienced in over, I guess, eight years. It was just so eerie. I asked my partner, “Do you hear that? What is that sound?” Then there was this moment of recognition. That answer was: nothing.

Senior Lecturer in Studio Art Virginia Beahan says when President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro sat down together at the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April, it represented both an abrupt and an incredibly slow diplomatic and cultural shift for the two nations.

Beahan, whose large-format photographs are in the collections of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., began photographing Cuba in 2001, the same year she began teaching in the studio art department at Dartmouth.

"As soon as I arrived in Cuba, we were greeted by billboards that, instead of advertising Marlboro cigarettes, were advertising revolution," Beahan says. "I just loved the way history and culture were visible everywhere in the land, and so I wanted to photograph that."

See more photos:

Virginia Beahan: Photos From Cuba

When Obama announced in December the move to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than 50 years of isolation, Beahan saw it as a culmination of many complicated, incremental changes in the attitudes and politics of both countries. She had seen the stirrings when she began her work in 2001.

"I had a growing sense that the story was always changing, it was evolving, there was pressure for things to change, and I was very interested in that possibility," she says.

Beahan published Cuba: singing with bright tears in 2009, and has returned to the island nation twice in the years since. She says she has watched the gradual development of free enterprise as the Castro government relaxed restrictions on small businesses.

See more photos from Beahan’s book.

"I returned with the idea of following this emerging culture of capitalism. So I started to photograph small businesses, street vendors, people who were licensed now to offer goods and services," she says.

As a senior lecturer in photography, Beahan is interested in helping Dartmouth students learn how to depict political and social change through their art. In the winter term 2015, she taught a class called "The Photographer as Activist."

"It was an opportunity for students to work on issues they care about, and to explore them visually," Beahan says. "And I encouraged them to discover what kind of voice they might have, in terms of those issues, as artists."

The class drew a lot of interest and Beahan hopes to offer it again. "The thing that a lot of students say is they are not necessarily inclined to march around with placards or other more traditional ways of expressing views and opinions, but they would like to figure out how to do that through their artwork."

Beahan's latest project, "Elegy for an Ancient Sea," is a series of photographs of the landscape around California's Salton Sea, where the relics of resort communities stand abandoned on the desert shores of a receding, and increasingly more toxic, body of water. Beahan says that as the West struggles with a historic drought, the political and social forces at play around water rights and ecological degradation inform the work. The images will be on display this summer at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla, Calif.

And Beahan will be watching the new political and social influences that come into play in Cuba as the U.S. lifts restrictions on trade and tourism. She says the opening will most likely improve the lives of many Cubans, but she hopes change doesn't come too quickly.

“Cuba is such a fragile place,” Beahan says, “and a tsunami of tourism coupled with U.S. desire to open markets there will not necessarily solve the myriad problems of this beautiful island. Cuban people need time to adapt, to understand the meaning and the cost of these changes, and then to formulate their own ideas about what kind of society they wish to become."

Some of Beahan's Cuba work is part of a group show, "¡Viva Cuba!" at the BigTown Gallery in Rochester, Vt., through July 12.

Springtime on the Dartmouth campus marks the annual celebration of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creativity. Undergraduates work closely with faculty on projects relevant to the students’ chosen fields, challenge their abilities, and contribute to the scholarly enterprise. The projects are designed to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, self-confidence, and intellectual independence.

Dartmouth Now highlights the work of six undergraduate researchers in a weeklong series.

For Benjamin Bauer ’15, who grew up in South Strafford, Vt., the strong focus on the undergraduate experience at Dartmouth was a big incentive for him to attend. In addition, he says, “The connection between the College and the natural world around us that the Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) has forged was a huge draw for me.”

Bauer is a student trip leader for the DOC sub-clubs Cabin and Trail (hiking), the Winter Sports Club (backcountry skiing), and the Mountaineering Club (rock climbing). “I served as vice president of the DOC my sophomore summer, and am currently the president of the Winter Sports Club.  I also am an active member in the Mountain Biking Club.” 

Beyond the lure of the outdoors, Bauer is committed to geological pursuits. “Research, to me, is important because it pushes the boundaries of human knowledge. It forces us to be innovative, creative, and careful about how we approach complex problems and questions,” he says.

Read more:

• Emmanuel Blankson ’15 Studies the Black Immigrant Experience
• Olivia Holmes ’15 Investigates Virtual vs. Real Observations
• Celebrating Undergraduate Research and Creativity: Elena Zinski ’15
• Office of Undergraduate Research & Advising

“Undergraduate research allows students to be exposed to the meticulous and very much in-depth approaches that are taken in graduate school, which ultimately makes us much more prepared to continue our education. My research has focused on the mineralogy and geochemistry of the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, which was marked by the famous and widely known mass extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.”

With his adviser, Professor of Earth Sciences Mukul Sharma, Bauer worked toward quantifying the concentration and isotopic composition of osmium in rock samples from the boundary strata. “We have found that the rocks all carry isotope signatures consistent with that of extraterrestrial material,” Bauer says. This gives credence to the theory that the demise of the dinosaurs may be traced to an impact of either a comet or an asteroid, thought to have occurred in the area of the Yucatan.

“Ben was looking to do work in a lab over the last summer when I wanted to have a procedure developed to quantitatively separate less than a milligram of magnetic grains locked up in rocks from the K-Pg boundary,” says Sharma. “I also wanted to find a mineral precipitated from melted ejecta resulting from the K-Pg impact. Ben figured out the best procedure to separate grains by applying strong magnetic field to gravitationally fed slurry of K-Pg rock powder.”

“Professor Sharma helped me to become proficient in both the laboratory and scientific writing,” he says. “He also helped me understand geochemical techniques that are complex and involved, but very powerful in terms of what they reveal about Earth's past.”

Bauer will be working as a geochemistry lab technician with a gold mining company in Denver after graduation. “I plan on doing this for at least a year or so. After that, I plan to attend graduate school in preparation for a career in the mineral resources sector.”

Springtime on the Dartmouth campus marks the annual celebration of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creativity. Undergraduates work closely with faculty on projects relevant to the students’ chosen fields, challenge their abilities, and contribute to the scholarly enterprise. The projects are designed to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, self-confidence, and intellectual independence.

Dartmouth Now highlights the work of six undergraduate researchers in a weeklong series.

Olivia Holmes ’15, from Weston, Conn., was drawn to Dartmouth because it is a close-knit community that brings together students, faculty, and the town.

She sees research as a door to discovering new knowledge. “Many times, the things that you discover through the research process are not at all what you had anticipated or hypothesized,” she says. “It is these unexpected things that can be your most interesting findings and demonstrate the utility of research most eloquently.”

With a major in computer science, modified with neuroscience, she considers herself fortunate to have been able to focus her research and her thesis on a subject that bridges both fields. 

Her adviser, Hany Farid, had published a paper examining how reliable observers are at discriminating image type when presented with both computer generated (CG) and photographic faces. “As CG images quickly become more realistic, it becomes increasingly difficult for an average observer to make this distinction between the virtual and the real,” says Holmes.

Read more:

• Emmanuel Blankson ’15 Studies the Black Immigrant Experience
• Benjamin Bauer ’15 Digs Into Mineralogy and Geochemistry
• Celebrating Undergraduate Research and Creativity: Elena Zinski ’15
• Office of Undergraduate Research & Advising

“My research looked into not only how reliable observers are at making this distinction, but also how their performance can be improved either by isolating features of the face or training them before the task. My original motivation was to update that study with more recent CG images and then take it one step further.”

“Olivia’s research required a broad set of skills and techniques from computer science, mathematics, neuroscience, and statistics,” says Farid, a professor of computer science. “She undertook an ambitious research project with important technological and legal implications. The results from her research will contribute to an important and growing body of research in the field of digital forensics.”

Farid says that because it is very difficult for untrained human observers to distinguish CG images from real photographic images, this can be problematic when a photograph is introduced into a court of law and the jury has to assess its authenticity. “We have found, however, that with some training, we can significantly improve observer performance on this task. We plan to see if we can further improve observer performance with the hopes of at least prolonging the day until computer generated images will be indistinguishable from real photographs,” he says.

“Without Professor Farid's guidance, this research would not have reached the interesting and thoughtful conclusions that it did,” says Holmes.

In the fall, she will be moving to San Francisco to work at Apple.

Springtime on the Dartmouth campus marks the annual celebration of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creativity. Undergraduates work closely with faculty on projects relevant to the students’ chosen fields, challenge their abilities, and contribute to the scholarly enterprise. The projects are designed to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, self-confidence, and intellectual independence.

Dartmouth Now highlights the work of six undergraduate researchers in a weeklong series.

Research is the highest priority for Emmanuel BIankson ’15, who came to Dartmouth because of the opportunities to pursue scholarly investigation.

“I think research is important because it allows us to ask questions that matter to us,” he says. “The best part about it is being able to learn from the process and sometimes answer the questions we propose.”

Blankson was born in Ghana and moved to the Bronx when he was 10, “so I claim both as my home,” he says. His background has informed his research.

“I am really interested in race and ethnicity, black immigrant experiences, and education,” he says. “My research project is about the identity construction of second-generation black immigrants in college, namely Dartmouth. I read a few articles that described the pathways of assimilation and was fascinated and amazed that sociologists were studying something so personal to me.”

Read more:

• Benjamin Bauer ’15 Digs Into Mineralogy and Geochemistry
• Olivia Holmes ’15 Investigates Virtual vs. Real Observations
• Celebrating Undergraduate Research and Creativity: Elena Zinski ’15

Blankson says the children of black immigrants present an interesting population for sociologists to study. “They are born into an American system that sees them as black, yet they live in the homes of immigrant parents who stress their national origins.

“Do they identify with their ethnic origins, become more ‘American,’ or do they identify with both?” he asks. “My research is to try to understand how college, specifically Dartmouth, plays into this idea of identity construction.

“Professor Janice McCabe, my adviser, has been a huge source of support for the entirety of my research. She has challenged me to think critically about the topic and consider new avenues,” says Blankson.

“It was neat to see Emmanuel take this from the idea for a research topic last spring to the ambitious project that he completed this year. His interviews of 40 Dartmouth students—second-generation black immigrant youths—provide important insights into the identity construction of both racial and ethnic identities during the college years,” says McCabe, an assistant professor of sociology.

Blankson says research exemplifies experiential learning. “It allows individuals to be more hands-on with the topic of interest than in the classroom,” he says. “I have personally grown a lot from doing my research.”

After graduation, he intends to take a gap year and volunteer tutor in New York and then apply to graduate school, where he plans to study sociology and continue doing research on children of black immigrants. “My hope is to eventually earn my PhD and become a professor,” he says.

Read the full story, published by the Geisel School of Medicine.

On May 28, during the Geisel School of Medicine’s annual State of the Medical School address, several faculty and students were cited for their contributions to medical education and community service. Interim Dean Duane Compton welcomed nine faculty members to the Geisel Academy of Master Educators (GAME) and recognized three faculty members who received the new GAME Lifetime Educators Award.

A distinguished group of faculty nominated by their fellow Geisel colleagues, the awardees possess a demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching and medical education. GAME members are leaders in medical education and innovation at Geisel and raise the overall quality of education by furthering the passion for excellence in teaching and learning and in mentoring faculty and residents on their journey to becoming great teachers.

“I’m extremely proud of this group of outstanding medical educators,” Compton said. “They have earned the respect of their students and fellow faculty members to be nominated and elected into our Academy of Master Educators.  It is an exceptional honor.”

The 2015 Academy of Master Educators inductees:

• Cantwell Clark, assistant professor of anesthesiology
• John Dick, assistant professor of medicine
• Harley P. Friedman, assistant professor of medicine
• E. Ann Gormley, professor of surgery
• Hugh F. Huizenga, associate professor of medicine
• Sarah G. Johansen, assistant professor of medicine
• Kelly A. Kieffer, assistant professor of medicine
• Alan T. Kono, associate professor of medicine
• Sharona Sachs, assistant professor of medicine

Newly established by GAME, the Lifetime Educators Award recognizes Geisel master educators whose instructional methods had an impact and were memorable across many years.

The inaugural Lifetime Educators Award honorees:

• Peter A. Mason, assistant professor of community and family medicine
• Harold M. Swartz, professor of radiology
• Oglesby H. Young, clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology

Geisel Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry Joseph O’Donnell, who leads the NH-VT Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Program, recognized two second-year medical students for outstanding achievement—Schweitzer Fellows Kimberly Betts, Geisel ’17, and Nicole Moraco, Geisel ’17.

For nearly 10 years, the Dartmouth College Library has honored its graduating student employees with the Student Library Service Bookplate Program. Students who have worked for the library are invited to choose books, DVDs, CDs, or other items for the library’s collections. Each item receives a bookplate that acknowledges the student’s selection and honors his or her service to the library. Students are eligible for the honor if they have worked at least two terms in any library department (including RWIT, the Student Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology, which the library helps run).

“The Dartmouth College Library is fully able to offer its service programs because of the nearly 200 Dartmouth students working in our libraries throughout the year. We are fortunate to have their talents, energy, and insight as part of our work. We are indeed proud to acknowledge their wide-ranging contributions to the library and to Dartmouth in this enduring manner,” says Jeffrey Horrell, Dean of Libraries and Librarian of the College. 

For Hannah Jung ’15, who was an RWIT tutor, the Bookplate Program offered an opportunity to connect her experience at Dartmouth to her future interests.

“It is my happy honor to share through the Bookplate Program a book by my favorite leader, Gary Haugen, entitled The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence,” Jung says.” I met Haugen at the Wheelock Conference last year at Dartmouth and his work resonates with my newfound passion for international human rights law. I am grateful for the opportunity to add an item to the library that contains a seminal argument for international justice, as RWIT has been such a home to me for deepening and discussing ideas.”

Alison Falzetta ’15, who worked at Baker-Berry Library’s information Desks, selected a DVD of the television comedy The Mindy Project (created by Mindy Kaling ’01), which she wrote about for her English honors thesis.

“I’ve had the opportunity to get to know our amazing librarians, as well as meet and help students from many different classes,” says Falzetta. “It’s been especially fun to be the face of the library for prospective students and their families on their first visit to the College. I was really excited to participate in the Bookplate Program when I learned about it from a fellow library worker. If Mindy Kaling returns to campus and visits the library, she’ll find my name on the DVD of her show! That makes it all worth it.”

The library will honor more than 50 students from the Class of 2015 with selections ranging from biographies, travel guides, and children’s fiction to world literature, inspirational works, and DVDs of favorite films. Commencement week displays will celebrate honorees at all of Dartmouth’s campus libraries.

When Florida native Bennie Niles IV ’15, a star cornerback and National Honor Society student at Clearwater High School, visited campus as a football recruit, he knew instantly he wanted to come to Dartmouth.

He arrived thinking he might become a cardiologist. But at the College he explored new possibilities, and with support from the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program, he left the football program, switched his major to African and African American studies, and discovered a passion for filmmaking. A graduating senior, Niles completed a film about his personal journey for his Senior Fellow project and this fall will begin work on a PhD in African American studies at Northwestern University.

Niles is one of this year’s record eight Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows who will graduate with the Class of 2015. The graduates join the nearly 120 students who have participated since the program—designed for students committed to diversity issues who intend to pursue careers as college professors—came to Dartmouth 25 years ago.

“Mellon Mays brings undergraduates from diverse backgrounds into an understanding of what professors of the humanities and social sciences do at a place like Dartmouth,” says Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives Denise Anthony, a professor of sociology.

“It is key to developing the pipeline that we need to diversify and strengthen the faculty at Dartmouth and at every institution in the U.S.,” she says.

Dartmouth and Mellon Mays Fellowship alumnae, from left, Aimée Lê ’12, a PhD student in practice-based poetics at Royal Holloway, University of London; Blythe George '12, a PhD student in sociology and social policy at Harvard; and  Shermaine Jones '08, who begins work as an assistant professor of African American literature at Virginia Commonwealth University in the fall, visited campus last month to meet with current Mellon Mays fellows. (Photo by Michelle Warren)

This year’s graduating Mellon Mays Fellows are Leandra Barrett ’15, a Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean studies major; Taylor Enoch-Stevens ’15, a sociology major; Bennie Niles IV ’15, an African & African American studies major and a Senior Fellow; Allison Puglisi ’15, a history major modified with women’s and gender studies; Shweta Raghu ’15, an art history and mathematics double major; Suado Sheikh-Hassan ’13, an African & African American studies major; Noah Smith ’15, an English and studio art double major; and Jordan Terry ’15, a history major.

In the 25 years of the program at Dartmouth, one third of the 120 Mellon Mays alumni have enrolled in PhD programs, says Michelle Warren, a professor of comparative literature and Dartmouth coordinator of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation established the program in 1988 with eight founding institutions to increase faculty diversity. Dartmouth and fellow Ivies Harvard, Yale, and Princeton joined the following academic year, as did the UNCF consortium of historically black colleges and universities. The program has since grown to dozens of institutions across the country, and includes three universities in South Africa.

“Underrepresentation in higher education remains a significant issue,” says Warren.

Mellon Mays not only enhances opportunities for underrepresented and first-generation students, Warren says, “It enhances the quality of education for all students by broadening intellectual diversity and identity diversity across all fields.”

The fellowship is named for scholar and educator Benjamin Elijah Mays, who overcame poverty and racism to earn a PhD from University of Chicago in 1935. Mays was a highly regarded scholar and a committed social activist who, as president of historically black Morehouse College, spoke widely about racial equality and non-violent action. He was a mentor to many, including Morehouse student Martin Luther King Jr.

Dartmouth expanded its commitment to the Mellon Mays program in 2005 by sponsoring an associate fellows program for three additional undergraduate scholars each year, funded by the Dean of the Faculty’s office.

It is in honor of Mays’ legacy that the program encourages fellows to enter PhD programs that prepare them not only for academic careers, but also for lives devoted to social justice, Warren says.

Mellon Mays Fellows who will begin PhDs in fall 2015:

Racquel Bernard ’13 (American Studies, University of Southern California). Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Bernard is interested in the circuits of black consciousness between the United States and the Caribbean from the 1960s to the present as it relates to social movements and memory. She majored in African and African American Studies at Dartmouth and is currently completing an MA in cultural studies at the University of the West Indies with support from a Dartmouth Reynolds Scholarship.

 “The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship exposed me to the paths toward graduate school and connected me with an encouraging intellectual community,” Bernard says.

Bennie Niles IV ’15 (African American Studies, Northwestern University). Brought up in Clearwater, Fla., Niles is a Senior Fellow and an African and African American studies major. His research interests are 20th-century African American literature and culture, black masculinities, and documentary film studies. His senior project is a documentary about his journey from a recruit on the Dartmouth football team to becoming a scholar of African American studies, “I, Too, Am Man: A Personal Journey Through Black Masculinities.” In fall 2015, he will begin work on his PhD in in African American studies at Northwestern University. For summer 2015, he has received a Dartmouth General Fellowship to complete another documentary film.

“Throughout my time at Dartmouth, Mellon Mays has nurtured my intellectual pursuits, allowing me to grow and mature as a scholar,” he says

Amanda Hall ’11 (History, Yale University). Amanda’s research interests include education, human rights, and communications. She is currently completing an MA/MSc in international history at Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Her thesis, “Resistance Before the Retweet: The Global Student Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1985-88,” draws on archival material from three continents to explore the emergence of a transnational social movement. For the summer of 2015, she has received a Dartmouth General Fellowship for further archival research and language study in the Netherlands. She begins a PhD program in history at Yale University in the fall.

 “The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship has been essential to advancing my academic trajectory. I wouldn’t be where I am without it,” says Hall

Allison Puglisi ’15 (American Studies, Harvard University). Puglisi is majoring in history, modified with women’s and gender studies. She is interested in 20th-century U.S. social movements and how activist women of color use aspects of their identity—race, gender, class, and sexuality—as political tools. Her senior thesis analyzed these issues in two related cases: “Bread and Justice: Black- and Chinese-American Women Organizing for Welfare and Workers’ Rights, 1963-1983.” 

“As I explored my research topic at Dartmouth, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows program provided a supportive intellectual community, and it opened my mind to the activist possibilities of scholarship,” she says. 

Edgar Sandoval ’14 (Geography, University of Washington). Sandoval grew up in Waukegan, Ill., in a family of first-generation Mexican immigrants. He is interested in urban social movements and the intersections between citizenship, queerness, and Latinidad. At Dartmouth, Sandoval majored in geography and carried out a research project in Miami about the performance of masculinity for gay Latinos.

“MMUF provided me a space to make mistakes and learn from them in a way that taught me about the importance of inclusive and critical pedagogy for teaching and mentorship,” Sandoval says.

The thunderstorm that knocked out electricity on campus May 27 did nothing to deter a crowd from assembling in Collis Center’s One Wheelock, where backup power kept the lights on for an unusual performance of original and found spoken word poetry.

Bringing the chatty if somewhat damp group of students, friends, faculty, and community members to order was Wendy Tucker, an English teacher at Ledyard Charter School, an alternative high school in Lebanon, N.H., for students who have struggled with mainstream public education.

Tucker got right to business. “I’m super proud of all my students who came out today—so let’s get started.”

Students as Ambassadors for the Humanities

For most of the term, Ledyard Charter students have collaborated with 13 Dartmouth undergraduate members of Ivy Schweitzer’s“English 27: American Poetry” course to learn about—and create—expressive verse.

“English 27” is an experiment in community-based learning, says Schweitzer, a professor of English and of women’s and gender studies. It’s a model she was introduced to by colleague Pati Hernandez, a lecturer in women’s and gender studies with whom Schweitzer has collaborated for several years on a project that brings Dartmouth students—as part of a for-credit course—into prisons, drug-rehabilitation centers, and homeless shelters for art and storytelling workshops.

Thanks to funding from the William Jewett Tucker Foundation and the English department, the “English 27” students have made a weekly Advance Transit bus trip to the Lebanon-based school to write poetry with the Ledyard Charter students.

The high school students have, in turn, traveled to Hanover to participate in class discussions of Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman, among other major American poets.

“I’ve tried to take the Dartmouth students out of their comfort zone,” says Schweitzer. “They have to sit in the classroom with the high school students and enter into that world. And when the high school students come to us, they get the experience of sitting in a college classroom at Dartmouth, which most of them never thought they would ever do.”

Tucker says, “It’s a great opportunity for my kids to experience college. A lot of them are now considering going to college, which was not the case before.”

“I really enjoy coming to Dartmouth,” says Charter student Jenna Lambert. “It’s cool getting to meet college students and see what college is all about.”

In addition to joining regular class sessions, the Charter students and their Dartmouth counterparts visited Rauner Special Collections Library to examine first editions of Dickinson and Whitman.

“I like being able to hold a real piece of history in your hand,” says Gage Desilets, a Charter senior who is planning a career in the Marine Corps.

Timothy Swensen ’16, an environmental studies major and economics minor, says having the high school students participate in the class has shifted how he thinks about community service. “I’ve always been into community service as an extracurricular, but it’s amazing to see how meaningful this is as part of a class,” he says. “These high school students have the ability to be on par with us Dartmouth kids. That’s something you couldn’t know by just going and working outside of Dartmouth.”

“The students in my class are all poetry geeks—they just want to sit around and talk about poetry,” says Schweitzer. “So they’re good ambassadors for public humanities. Poetry is not elitist, it’s not heady and intellectual—it’s down-to-earth. It’s about authentic issues, passions, who we are, identity, problems, love, existence, death, eternity, all those great questions. Can we open up poetry so that it becomes a medium that everybody can use to express their essential human condition?”

Of the community-based learning model, she says, “It’s more work, but especially for humanities courses, it’s a way of showing how the humanities are relevant and can absolutely transform and enrich the lives of younger students. That’s my passion these days.”

United by Poetry

The performances at One Wheelock included original poems and songs as well as recitations of the work of well-known poets, from Poe to Mary Oliver. Themes ranged from baseball to gender identity to coming to terms with the challenges of growing up.

Some of the Charter students brought prerecorded videos of their entries, which were warmly received by the audience, despite some technical difficulties. Others explored the perhaps unlikely common ground they had discovered with their Dartmouth student partners. In “New Beginnings,” for example, Desilets and Kendall Calcano ’18 traded verses comparing the experience of Marine Corps training with first-year orientation at Dartmouth.

“Poetry really unites people,” Swensen says. “I’m happy that I found this kind of class, because it adds an emotional aspect to education that sometimes can be lacking.”

Swensen (who served as a self-effacing emcee for the event) and John Gilmore ’17 collaborated with Ben Seamans and Nick Acker from Charter to perform “Call of the Wild,” a sound-poem in the style of avant-garde poetry group The Four Horsemen—no words, but a few chest thumps and plenty of dynamic drama.

“You might not be able to tell when it ends,” Swensen warned the audience, “but you can applaud when you hear ‘meow.’” The crowd cheerfully obliged.

Read the full story, published by the Geisel School of Medicine.

The Geisel School of Medicine celebrated the accomplishments of 88 new graduates of its MD program during Class Day ceremonies on June 6 at Leede Arena.

In addition to receiving hoods denoting their degree, graduating students received sage advice from Dartmouth faculty, alumni, peers, and special guest speakers.

The Class Day address was delivered by Lorna B. Stuart, a family physician for more than 30 years and medical director of The Clinic, a nonprofit medical clinic in Phoenixville, Penn., designed to “provide quality health care to the uninsured in an atmosphere that fosters dignity and respect.”

Stuart encouraged the graduates to keep compassion at the center of the care they provide.

She said that as physicians, “whether in a university hospital or a community clinic, we must remember this—compassion must be the cornerstone. We cannot always cure, indeed we frequently cannot cure a patient, but we can always heal.

“Heal with a warm handshake, heal by looking at the patient and listening to the patient, heal by helping the impoverished patient with some inexpensive choices, heal with a smile. Compassion is healing, and no matter how rushed, how tired, how busy you are, you can smile, you can shake a hand, you can sit by a patient’s bed to talk, you can hold a hand. None of this is beneath you. This makes the difference between a doctor and a beloved physician.”

Over the past decade, Dartmouth graduates have heard from a wide range of Commencement speakers, including writers, policymakers, social entrepreneurs, and a comedian. Long after the tents are taken down and the chairs removed from the Green, the words of wisdom from these speakers live on. Below are some of the most memorable passages from the past 10 years of Commencement speeches.

Commencement 2014

“I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.”

—Shonda Rhimes ’91

Commencement 2013

“I knew right out of college what many people still don’t understand: Countries don’t become great by themselves—it takes heroic sacrifice. Our country was created, molded, and improved by men and women whose moral compass was not moved by the influence of wealth, prestige, or notoriety.”

—Geoffrey Canada

Commencement 2012

“It’s easier to tear something down than to build something up. It’s easier to poke holes in an idea than it is to think of ways to fill them. And it’s easier to focus on the 100 reasons you shouldn’t do something rather than the one reason you should.”

—Wendy Kopp

Commencement 2011

“There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized.”

—Conan O’Brien

Commencement 2010

“Whatever the discipline, whatever the profession you embrace, it’s possible, over the years, to better this often fetid world. You don’t have to devote your life to it—no one is asking for some saintly transformation—I am only asking for a sense of being a global citizen, of caring about the injustice in this world, and doing something, however modest, to bring an end to it.”

—Stephen Lewis

Commencement 2009

“If there’s one thing we all have in common, it is absurd humiliation, which can actually become the basis of wisdom.”

—Louise Erdrich ’76

Commencement 2008

“Go forth, proud of your achievement. Reach for your greatest potential. Seize the moment and the opportunity of professional life. Stand strong in your faith and in your conviction. Aim to be counted in your actions as those who will inspire great movements to change the world.”

—Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

Commencement 2007

“This is a young person’s world. A world where technology empowers and rewards talent, creativity and initiative, one in which knowing how things used to be done is less relevant than knowing how to continually learn and to adapt.”

—Henry Paulson ’68

Commencement 2006

“Commencement exercises are more than a ceremony, they transcend even the rite of passage inherent in their symbolism. They represent a watershed in your life. From now on there will be a before and an after.”

—Elie Wiesel

Commencement  2005

“At my alma mater, the chair of the political science department, who’s now a man of 95 years of age and has the emeritus position, still talks to the incoming political science freshman with one message: If Tom Brokaw can make it, anyone can.”

—Tom Brokaw

By Joni B. Cole

This Focus on Faculty Q&A is part of an ongoing series of interviews exploring what keeps Dartmouth professors busy inside—and outside—the classroom.

Scholarship, as well as a chance meeting, brought Reena Goldthree, an assistant professor of African and African American Studies, to Dartmouth in 2010. As a PhD student at Duke, Goldthree was on a Fulbright scholarship in Trinidad when she encountered a group of Dartmouth undergraduates studying abroad. Around the same time, she learned about the College’s Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellowship. Goldthree, whose work focuses on the history of modern Latin America and the Caribbean, was planning to move back to the United States to finish writing her dissertation. “I thought this would be a great place to do it,” she says. “I could talk about my work and people would understand and be interested in the history of Trinidad and Tobago.”

What was your first experience in the Caribbean?
It was a family vacation to Jamaica in middle school. I thought it was one of the most fascinating and visually stunning places I’d ever visited. From a young age I have been interested in the way other people live, particularly people my age. I ended up becoming pen pals with a girl who lived in rural Jamaica. I also had a pen pal in South Africa and in Japan, which now seems so quaint in a world of digital communication.

You entered graduate school intending to study African American history and U.S. southern history. What changed your focus?
My first year I took a seminar, somewhat by chance, on Afro-Brazilian history. I also enrolled in an incredible course that explored the historical ties between African Americans and people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean. I realized that the Caribbean, as a region, is literally at the center of every major foundational issue in the history of the Americas, after the Columbian Encounter in 1492. It’s the first place of contact between Europeans and native communities. It's the first site of colonization in the Americas. It’s the first place in the western hemisphere where enslaved Africans are introduced. There were so many questions in the field of Caribbean history that had not been fully explored. I thought I could make a real impact in the field.   

You’re working on a book about the Caribbean and World War I. Most people don’t associate the two.
Around 65,000 men from the Caribbean served; approximately 16,000 volunteering to fight for Britain in what was an imperialist war. So my book asks: What did World War I mean to those people at the geographic margins of the conflict? What did it mean for the 2000 British West Indian men who volunteered after they finished building the Panama Canal and were laid off work? What did it mean for the Trinidadian mother who watched her son march off to war, and wondered if he would come home? What did a war supposedly for democracy—as Woodrow Wilson famously claimed—mean for colonial subjects who were denied democracy, and what did they hope to gain by participating in it?

One of the courses you teach is specifically on slavery in that region. What’s something that surprises students?
At least 90 percent of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were sent to Latin America and the Caribbean, not to the United States. For students to realize that more enslaved Africans were taken to the island of Hispaniola than to all of the U.S. makes them see questions about slavery on a very different scale.

You grew up in St. Louis. What was your family life?
My mother was a Spanish teacher, and my father taught physical education and health, and coached middle and high school sports for 35 years. So I grew up, quite often, at my parents’ desks. I also spent a lot of time heading off to sporting events with my father, or begging my mom to let me help her grade papers, or at least put the smiley faces on the 100s. To this day I love Post-It notes and binder clips.

Ferguson is a suburb of your hometown. Describe the protest you organized last December in response to the Michael Brown shooting.
I was flying into Lambert Airport when the decision was announced that Darren Wilson would not be indicted. You could see police cars all over north St. Louis County. I went to Ferguson and was overwhelmed by the devastation, and what it would it mean to rebuild in a way that actually empowers local residents. I came back to Hanover with this urgent sense that I needed to do something in solidarity with activists in Ferguson and across the United States. So one night I sent out an email to a group of mostly colleagues, but also a few students still on campus during the break, and in less than 24 hours there were notices posted on all the Upper Valley listservs. About 60 of us held a “die-in” in the middle of Hanover. I was struck by the diversity of people who participated.

Your fiancé is a sociologist from Trinidad and you're getting married in August. Have you started planning the wedding?
Not really, which is starting to freak me out, but I've been so consumed with my book and several articles. I imagine most of the planning will be done by my mother, which will probably work out for the best for both of us. [Laughing.]

What’s a typical weekend like?
There’s certainly a lot of reading and writing. And I have a small collection of Caribbean cookbooks that I’m working through. Then there's usually a Saturday night, very competitive, game of Monopoly. For two scholars invested in social justice, we're oddly competitive with Monopoly.

Where would you live if you could live anywhere?
Somewhere in the Caribbean, at least for part of the year. Every time I’m in the region, I draw so much intellectual energy from walking down the often very noisy streets, searching for rare documents in the archives, and seeing the ruins of old colonial buildings or World War I monuments, which I’m photographing for my book. One of the things that fascinated me so many years ago—long before I knew there was anything called “a professor of Caribbean history”—was that, outside of St. Louis, I’ve never felt so at home.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

“Walt Whitman has that famous quote about the Civil War: ‘The real war will never get in the books,’” says Colleen Boggs, a professor of English and of women’s and gender studies.

That’s why students in her “Civil War Literatures” senior seminar this spring have opened their study of literature to include not only the poetry and prose of authors of the era, but also what Boggs characterizes as “a vast array of cultural materials,” published and unpublished, from letters and speeches to sheet music, illustrations, and more.

Much of this study has required students to make extensive use of the archives in Rauner Special Collections Library—itself housed in Webster Hall, where two plaques honor Dartmouth students and alumni, Union and Confederate, who fought in the war. “Our first class session in Rauner we spent time reading the inscriptions commemorating Dartmouth’s Civil War fallen,” says Boggs.

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First session, but not last. “Roaming Rauner” assignments required students to use the collections to propose exhibitions that will be on view Rauner’s display cases beginning June 13. Each member of the course presented a proposal and then voted to select the three projects that would be realized.

The chosen projects include visual depictions of women during the war, curated by Elissa Watters ’15; a soundscape of a Confederate prison, curated by Amanda Geduld ’15; and a showcase of speeches and letters showing the depth of the war’s impact on New Hampshire, curated by Colleen Scannell ’15.

“They are imagining the Civil War away from the battlefield,” says Boggs, who also serves as director of the Leslie Center for the Humanities. “Each one is emphasizing how the battlefield and other spaces become interconnected, even at geographical distances. They’re thinking through the cultural impact of the Civil War beyond the military action itself.”

Learning by Doing

Scannell, an English major and psychology and French minor, says she wants her exhibit to “show off Rauner’s collections.” Her display case includes a letter from Abraham Lincoln to Amos Tuck, Class of 1835. “We’re so lucky to be in a place where in five minutes we can be holding documents that Abraham Lincoln wrote,” she says.

Watters, an English major minoring in art history, became fascinated with the library’s collection of patriotic envelopes, whose iconography is not as simple to interpret today as perhaps it was intended to be in the 1860s.

“They’re really bizarre,” Watters says. For example: “A woman wearing red, white, and blue lighting a cannon that says ‘secession’—but she’s standing where the cannonball would hit her. I’ve tried to open a dialogue about how women functioned in visual images of the war, and leave it to viewers to try to figure out what they mean.” 

Geduld is creating a sound recording, which visitors can access on their phones, to accompany a display of prison letters. The recording will feature Dartmouth students reading the letters, as well as sounds—such as church bells—that were significant to their authors.

“One thing I loved about this class was how much we were immersed in the material,” says Geduld, who has modified her English major with women’s and gender studies. “I want to convey that same experience. I’m hoping that people put headphones on and become completely enveloped by the letters of the Civil War.”

“We love to tie our exhibit spaces to student projects,” says Special Collections Librarian Jay Satterfield. “It offers students a whole new way to present their research. Student-curated exhibits offer a real-world challenge by demanding that students communicate their ideas to the general public in a meaningful way. This is something that many people in the academic world find very difficult but is so essential to what we do.”

Teaching-Informed Scholarship

The study of literature from the Civil War era, Boggs says, fills a kind of gap in the traditional American literature curriculum.

“When we think about teaching American literature, we tend to think in terms of ‘beginnings’ to 1865, and then 1865 to World War I or the contemporary moment. So the Civil War becomes this dividing line, but the war years themselves often get left out of the narrative.”

After teaching the seminar for the first time in 2009, Boggs says she was “inspired to think about the different contexts in which people teach this literature and the methods they use.” So she proposed an edited volume on the subject for the Modern Language Association. The resulting book, Options for Teaching the Literature of the American Civil War, will be published in 2016.

 “The book will showcase Dartmouth’s teacher-scholar model—but in communication with models from other institutions around this shared topic,” says Boggs.

“American literary studies used to be a field that had a pretty set canon, but we’re in a moment where, for one thing, prose doesn’t necessarily hold the dominance that it once did. And in part because of the digital age, we just have access to so much more material. Part of the innovation comes from the fact that this literature has become accessible to us in a different way.”

Here is Dartmouth’s 2015 Commencement by the numbers: from the awarding of more than 1,800 degrees to the expected attendance of 12,000.

Degrees Awarded:

• Arts and Sciences, Undergraduate: 1,093 Bachelor of Arts
• Arts and Sciences, Graduate: 97 Master of Science, 13 Master of Arts, 42 Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, 85 Doctor of Philosophy (includes 8 Master of Science and 12 Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Thayer)
• Geisel School of Medicine: 88 Doctor of Medicine, 40 Master of Public Health
• Thayer School of Engineering: 83 Bachelor of Engineering, 51 Master of Engineering Management, 8 Master of Science, 12 Doctor of Philosophy
• Tuck School of Business: 276 Master of Business Administration
• Total degrees awarded: 1,868
• Estimated size of audience: 12,000

Where seniors come from:

Undergraduate members of the Class of 2015 hail from 47 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and military installations. The most-represented states are New York, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey. International students come from 32 countries. The most represented are Canada, the Republic of Korea, and the People's Republic of China.

Most popular majors for the Class of 2015:

The most popular majors are economics, government, history, psychology, biology, neuroscience, and engineering sciences.

Valedictorians and Salutatorians:

The valedictorians are: Catherine Baker of Farmington, Conn.; David Bessel of Staten Island, N.Y.; Abhishek Parajuli of Kathmandu, Nepal; and Talia Shoshany of New York, N.Y. Baker was selected by the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences to deliver the valedictory to the College at the ceremony.

The salutatorians are: William Athol of Edgeworth, Pa.; Hayley Bacon of Greenland, N.H.; Meili Eubank of San Diego, Calif.; Sarah Hammer of Villanova, Penn.; Julia Salinaro of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.; Marina Shkuratov of Westwood, Mass.; Danielle Smith of Bowdoin, Maine; and Frank Zhang of Cherry Hill, N.J.

Phi Beta Kappa:

The Alpha of New Hampshire Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Dartmouth College inducted 102 undergraduates as new members on June 6. The chapter inducted as an honorary member John Carey, the John Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences. Kenneth Lieberthal ’65, a senior fellow in foreign policy and global economy and development at the Brookings Institution, was inducted as an alumni member. 

Dartmouth will recognize 12 top honor students this year—four valedictorians and eight salutatorians—at Commencement 2015.

Named valedictorians for the 2015 graduating class are Catherine M. Baker ’15, David Bessel ’15, Abhishek R. Parajuli ’15, and Talia N. Shoshany ’15. The faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences selected Baker to deliver the valedictory to the College at the Commencement ceremony (see paragraph at the end of this story).

Dartmouth’s valedictorians—and salutatorians William H. Athol ’15, Hayley L. Bacon ’15, Meili Vera Eubank ’15, Sarah K. Hammer ’15, Julia Salinaro ’15, Marina Shkuratov ’15, Danielle E. Smith ’15, and Frank Zhang ’15—have all been named Rufus Choate Scholars, a Dartmouth honor for students in the top 5 percent of their class.

Baker, Bessel, Eubank, Hammer, Salinaro, Smith, and Zhang each conducted research alongside Dartmouth faculty members as James O. Freedman Presidential Scholars.

Four Valedictorians in Class of 2015

Catherine Baker

The Class of 2015 valedictory Commencement speaker, Catherine Baker is a neuroscience major whose academic interests include visual attention research and classical studies. She took part in Dartmouth’s classical studies foreign studies program (FSP) in London, Greece, and Istanbul, and has worked in neuroscience and oncology research labs at Dartmouth, the Hartford Hospital, and the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She also worked as an assistant science teacher for at-risk boys in a Hartford, Conn., middle school.

“Thanks to the first-rate faculty and impressive student body at Dartmouth, I’ve received a great liberal arts education in an atmosphere that reminds me daily of the importance of mixing fun and work,” Baker says.

A Dickey Center for International Understanding intern, and a Sophomore Science Scholar, Baker was a Phi Beta Kappa early inductee and received the Phi Beta Kappa Sophomore Prize. She was co-captain of Dartmouth women’s club hockey, a peer tutor and study group leader, and a volunteer with the William Jewett Tucker Foundation’s Aspire program and at Pathways, an assisted-living center in Orford, NH.

Baker, who is from Farmington, Conn., will attend Dartmout's Geisel School of Medicine in the fall.

David Bessel

David Bessel graduates from Dartmouth with a major in economics and a minor in pure mathematics. A participant in Dartmouth’s exchange program with Keble College, Bessel studied economics at the University of Oxford. His academic interests include behavioral and post-Keynesian economics, number theory and algebraic systems, and political philosophy and structures of governmental bodies.

“I am most grateful for and humbled by the moral education Dartmouth has provided me over the course of these very formative past four years,” says Bessel. “With the guidance of wonderful instructors and the routinely inspiring members of my graduating class, I have grown immeasurably as a person and am excited to carry on the legacy of the College on the Hill into adulthood.”

Bessel was a Rockefeller Center First-Year Fellow and Great Issues scholar, and took part in the Dartmouth Parliamentary Debate group. As co-president of the Dartmouth Investment and Philanthropy Program, he co-managed the group’s six-figure portfolio and presided over the group’s philanthropic distributions to local nonprofits. His internship experience included time at the nonpartisan think-tank The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and at Morgan Stanley.

Bessel is from Staten Island, N.Y. He will be joining TPG Capital as a Private Equity Analyst in San Francisco in July 2015.

Abhishek Parajuli

Abhishek Parajuli is a government major from Kathmandu, Nepal. While at Dartmouth, he served as a voting member of the college’s Advisory Committee on Investor Relations and was a regular columnist for The Dartmouth, the student newspaper. Parajuli has served as Nepal’s Youth Ambassador to the United Nations, and as a research associate at the Constituent Assembly of Nepal.

“Dartmouth has incredible resources for undergraduate research,” says Parajuli. “I am deeply grateful for mentors like Professors Amy Semet, Dean Lacy, and Jeremy Horowitz for their help and guidance during my time here.”

The recipient of an Oxford-Weidenfeld Hoffman Scholarship, Parajuli will begin study for a master’s of philosophy at Oxford University after working for a year. He envisions returning to the United States for a doctorate, with the goal of joining the teaching faculty of a research university. His research interests include comparative politics and terrorism.

Talia Shoshany

Talia Shoshany graduates from Dartmouth with a major in biology. Her academic interests include medicine and human biology. Her work, internship, and research experiences include time at the Dartmouth Sleep Disorders Center, the Columbia Center for Eating Disorders, Informulary, and as a volunteer as on a MEDLIFE trip to Ecuador.

A Phi Beta Kappa early inductee and recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa Sophomore Prize, Shoshany studied in Barcelona on Dartmouth’s Spanish Language Study Abroad program (LSA). She was a Dartmouth Outing Club first-year trips leader, and volunteered at the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vt., and as a member of TALES, The Alzheimer’s Learning Experience for Students. She served as president and board member of Chabad at Dartmouth, and served as a Hebrew teacher for the Upper Valley Jewish Community. She was also social chair for Alpha Xi Delta sorority.

“I am deeply thankful for my professors, mentors, and friends who have inspired me to challenge myself academically and socially and to always seek out new experiences,” says Shoshany. “Dartmouth is an incredibly welcoming community, and I have been privileged to be able to spend the last four years on such a beautiful campus.”

Shoshany, who is from New York, N.Y., will be working as a clinical research assistant in the otolaryngology department at Boston Children’s Hospital after graduation. She hopes to attend medical school the following year.

College Names Eight Salutatorians

The eight students named co-salutatorian for 2015 are William H. Athol ’15, Hayley L. Bacon ’15, Meili Vera Eubank ’15, Sarah K. Hammer ’15, Julia Salinaro ’15, Marina Shkuratov ’15, Danielle E. Smith ’15, and Frank Zhang ’15.

William Athol

A physics major, William Athol’s academic interests extend to earth sciences and economics. He studied economics at the University of Oxford as a participant in Dartmouth’s exchange program with Keble College, and completed internships in investment with Bridgewater Associates, LP, and in marketing strategy with Forever.com. An early inductee to Phi Beta Kappa, Athol wrote a senior physics thesis on “Zero-Field Electrically Detected Magnetic Resonance.” He served as vice president and treasurer of the Dartmouth Physics Society and as house manager for Zeta Psi fraternity.

Following graduation, Athol, who is from Edgeworth, Pa., will be an investment associate at Bridgewater Associates, LP, in Westport, Conn.

Hayley Bacon

Hayley Bacon graduates with a major in economics and a minor in psychology. Her academic interests include behavioral economics, public economics, social psychology, and business strategy. While at Dartmouth, Bacon tutored in economics, co-directed Dartmouth on Purpose, a group that works for holistic health for the Dartmouth student population, and co-chaired the William Jewett Tucker Foundation’s farm-to-school program, Growing Change.

A Phi Beta Kappa early inductee, Bacon has conducted research in economics, psychology, and marketing, and completed internships at Technology Business Research and Altman Vilandrie & Company. She is currently a research assistant at the Tuck School of Business.

Bacon is from Greenland, N.H. After graduation, she will work as an analyst at Altman Vilandrie & Company in Boston.

Meili Eubank

Meili Eubank is graduating with an economics and cognitive science double major and a minor in Chinese. She studied at Beijing Normal University through Dartmouth’s China FSP. Her academic interests include behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, financial markets, private equity, and cognition.

Eubank served as project leader and co-founder, as well as vice president of finance, for the SafaPani Project, a Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering project directed at designing a  filter to remove arsenic from water. That project took her to Nepal for field work;  SafaPani also won The Pitch, an entrepreneurial competition sponsored by the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network (DEN) and the DALI Lab. She was involved with Delta Delta Delta sorority and the Model United Nations. Her work and internship experience included time with Goldman Sachs and with the Guangzhou office of a Chinese-Australian law firm.

Eubank is from San Diego, Calif. After Dartmouth, she will work as an analyst at Goldman Sachs’ Private Equity Group in New York.

Sarah Hammer

Sarah Hammer is graduating with an AB in engineering modified with chemistry and a minor in environmental studies and a BE in chemical engineering from Thayer School of Engineering. Her academic interests include chemical and biological approaches to sustainable energy and alternative fuels, engineering for sustainability, and Spanish.

A Barry M. Goldwater Scholar and a Phi Beta Kappa early inductee, Hammer has served as president of the Dartmouth chapter of the Society of Women Engineers since 2013. She is a peer mentor for the Women in Science Project (WISP), and a volunteer at the Dartmouth Organic Farm. She has conducted research in chemical and biomolecular engineering in labs at the Universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as at Thayer School, with support from a Kaminsky Family Fund research award. Hammer is from Villanova, Penn.

Beginning in September, Hammer will be pursuing a PhD in chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Julia Salinaro

Julia Salinaro, whose academic interests include human biology, medicine, and heath policy, is graduating with a biology major. She has conducted research at labs associated with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) and Columbia University Medical Center.

The captain of Dartmouth’s women’s club soccer team and a youth soccer coach, she has volunteered at David’s House, a residence for families whose children are being treated at DHMC; as a health worker for Mayan Medical Aid in Guatemala; and at a Muscular Dystrophy Association summer camp. She has been involved with Delta Delta Delta sorority, GlobeMed, and as a tutor and group study leader for the Academic Skills Center at Dartmouth. She was a Phi Beta Kappa early inductee.

Salinaro is from Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. She begins study at Duke University School of Medicine in August, and will be pursuing a dual MD/MPH degree.

Marina Shkuratov

Marina Shkuratov graduates with a double major in government and psychology. She was a participant in the government FSP at the London School of Economics, and her academic interests include political theory, constitutional law, and international relations. She was a Phi Beta Kappa early inductee.

Shkuratov is from Westwood, Mass. A member of the Mock Trial Society and Alpha Xi Delta sorority, she has been a reporter and editor at The Dartmouth, as well as the editor of The Mirror, a weekly supplement to the student newspaper. She completed legal internships with the United States Attorney’s Office in Boston, the legal department of Time Warner Cable, and a Boston law firm.

A recipient of Dartmouth’s Charles H. Woodbury Memorial Law Prize, Shkuratov will be a member of the Harvard Law School Class of 2018.

Danielle Smith

Danielle Smith graduates with a double major in German and Russian. Her academic interests include languages and linguistics (particularly Germanic and Slavic languages), translation and interpreting, comparative literature, and international relations. Smith’s senior honors thesis is “The Song of the Nightingale: Autobiographical Honesty in Erwin Strittmatter’s Grüner Juni.” She participated in the Russian LSA in St. Petersburg.

Smith was president of the Dartmouth Cycling Club, and was active in the Upper Valley Women’s Cycling Initiative. She completed an internship at Alpha Translation Service in Cottbus, Germany, and worked as a research assistant and drill instructor in Dartmouth’s German department. She a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a recipient of Phi Beta Kappa’s Sophomore Prize.

Following graduation, Smith, who is from Bowdoin, Maine, will attend the Davis School of Russian at Middlebury College’s Summer Language Schools. She will begin a one-year master’s program in comparative literature at Dartmouth in the fall.

Frank Zhang

Frank Zhang graduates with a double major in chemistry and economics, and a minor in biology. A member of the bioenergy division of Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering, he traveled to Tanzania with the group to assess the impact of its charcoal-briquetting projects in Arusha.

Zhang has conducted research at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and at Drexel University’s Bio-Nano-Micro Design and Manufacturing lab. A Phi Beta Kappa early inductee and a recipient of Phi Beta Kappa’s Sophomore Prize, Zhang was recognized as a Sophomore Science Scholar and was awarded the Phillip R. Jackson Engineering Sciences Prize.

Zhang is from Cherry Hill, N.J. Following graduation, he will be interning at FreshAir Sensor Corp., a technology firm co-founded by Dartmouth chemist Joseph BelBruno, and also applying to medical school.

Commencement 2015 Features One Valedictory Speaker

All four valedictorians will march at the head of the Class of 2015, will be recognized from the podium, and will be afforded all the honors and privileges of their achievement. A selection committee representing the dean of the faculty and the dean of the college selected Catherine Baker as the 2015 Valedictory speaker from among the names submitted by the registrar, with the choice of speaker confirmed by President Phil Hanlon ’77. 

(Photos by Rob Strong ’04)

Shoshana Silverstein ’15 asked David Brooks what single bit of advice he would give a group of graduating seniors who met with Dartmouth's Commencement speaker over lunch Saturday.

“Find your moral philosophy,” said Brooks, a New York Times columnist and author of several books, including, most recently, The Road to Character, which grew out of a class he teaches at Yale titled “Humility.”

Students got a chance to talk to New York Times columnist David Brooks when he met with them over lunch the day before Commencement. (Photo by Eli Burakian ’00)

Brooks met with about 25 students from the Class of 2015 who have been involved with student publications—The Dartmouth, The Dartmouth Review, and the online student publication Mouth—and members of the Palaeopitus senior society a day before he delivers the Commencement address at the annual ceremony.

The columnist said he senses a deep desire for meaning in his Yale students and in his young Times colleagues. As a group, they are motivated to succeed and enthusiastic about their work, but they have grown up in a society that celebrates their personal success without offering a moral foundation.

Chase Mertz ’15, senior class president and, like Silverstein, a member of the Palaeopitus Senior society, asked Brooks what he thought about the College’s effort to establish a code of conduct pledge as part of the Moving Dartmouth Forward initiative.

There was a time when schools viewed character building as their core mission, said Brooks. When Frances Perkins, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s labor secretary and the first woman to hold a cabinet-level position, went to Mount Holyoke College, the guiding mission was to “go where no one wants to go; do what no one wants to do.”

Since then, “institutions have opted out,” Brooks told the students. But he said he senses a renewal of the need to find a moral grounding. And colleges and other institutions seem to be searching for a way to do this.

“I believe that conversation is waiting to happen,” Brooks said, not just at Dartmouth, but across the country.

The group of students from this year’s graduating class who met with author David Brooks over lunch included a number of aspiring journalists. (Photo by Eli Burakian ’00)

Life after college can be a shock to many, he said. “After 22 years of structure—you are the most supervised generation in history—suddenly you will be released into the wild.

“Nurture friendships, don’t judge yourself against your friends’ Facebook highlight reels,” and pick a moral hero to emulate, Brooks says.

“And I don’t endorse marrying early,” Brooks said, advising the students that marriage is not to be taken lightly. Think about what it means and consider the question carefully and seriously, he said.

“If you have a great career and a lousy marriage, you’re apt to be unhappy; if you have a great marriage and a lousy career, you’re apt to be happy,” Brooks added.

Take the opportunity disappointment presents, he said, and “widen your horizon of risk.” The columnist told the aspiring journalists to “develop something singularly distinct, and as the diplomat Richard Holbrook put it, ‘know something about something.’ ”

“If you’re going to write, make it interesting,” Brooks said. “For the last four years, men and women were paid to read your writing. That will never happen again.”

By Joni Cole

Class marshals are selected each year by their fellow students on the basis of good citizenship, enthusiasm, integrity, and positive impact on others. The marshals carry batons engraved with their names as they lead their classmates to the Green during the Commencement procession.

College photographer Eli Burakian ’00 shot portraits of most of this year’s undergraduate and advanced-degree marshals. The marshals were asked to choose their favorite places on campus, and that’s where they were photographed.

View the slideshow below by clicking on the arrows to advance the images, or click on any of the images to view the slideshow on Dartmouth’s Flickr site.

Student Marshals for Commencement 2015:

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Kamran Ali ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Meegan Daigler ’14, Thayer ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Rachel Funk ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Annie Gardner ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Ruth Kabeche, Geisel ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Andree Koop, Geisel ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Drew Matter, Thayer ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Chase Mertz ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Danielle Moore ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Max Samuels ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Noah Joel Smith ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Skylar Smith, MALS ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Colin Walmsley ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal John Wheelock, Tuck ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Felicia Wilkins ’15

Dartmouth 2015 Student Marshal Tilman Witte, TDI ’15

One of the great Commencement photo ops takes place the day before, when the soon-to-be graduates gather on the lawn in front of Dartmouth Hall for a class photograph.

A bagpiper plays as members of the Class of 2015 leave class day exercises at the Bema outdoor amphitheater and head for the Dartmouth Hall. As soon as the students get there, College Photographer Eli Burakian ’00 corrals them inside a very large rectangle (outlined by a yellow rope on the ground). Perched atop a 12-foot ladder and armed with a megaphone, Burakian makes sure everyone else stays outside the rope.

“If you’re a senior, get inside the rope. If you are a parent, I know who you are,” he jokes Friends and family crowd the sidewalk to capture the same view Burakian has, almost.

The entire process takes about 15 minutes. Then the students head off to their next events, and the following day gather together, all of them, one last time.