The Dartmouth Now team has been busy this year sharing news with our readers. Dartmouth’s news has also caught the attention of reporters and media outlets around the globe. As the year drew to a close, the Dartmouth Now team took a look at the more than 1,000 stories we published in 2014 and selected 12 of our favorites.
We hope you will enjoy this retrospective, presented below in chronological order. To keep up with the news in 2015, subscribe to email updates.
1. Dartmouth Partners With edX to Enhance Teaching and Learning
In January, the College joined edX, the nonprofit online learning platform founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The partnership underscores Dartmouth’s commitment to leadership in the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. The first DartmouthX open online course, “Introduction to Environmental Science,” begins in February. Register here!
2. Dartmouth’s Olympic Tradition Continues in Sochi
Twelve athletes with ties to Dartmouth—representing four different countries and competing in five different sports—participated in the XXII Olympic Games in Sochi, and three came home with medals: Gillian Apps ’06 (gold, women’s ice hockey); Andrew Weibrecht ’09 (silver, men’s alpine super-G); and Hannah Kearney ’15 (bronze, freestyle mogul skiing).
3. $100 Million Gift Boosts Hanlon’s Vision for Scholarship
On April 9, President Phil Hanlon ’77 accepted an anonymous gift of $100 million, the largest single outright donation in the College’s 244-year history. The gift, which also includes a 2-to-1 challenge to double the investment’s size to $200 million, was offered as an unqualified endorsement of Hanlon’s sweeping vision for Dartmouth.
4. Dartmouth Celebrates BASIC in Past, Present, and Future
There was a huge turnout at Dartmouth’s party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the BASIC programming language and the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, which were launched during an all-nighter that spilled into the early morning of May 1, 1964. Timed to coincide with the Basic at 50 celebrations, President Phil Hanlon ’77 announced that William H. Neukom ’64 has committed $10 million to fund the William H. Neukom Academic Cluster in Computational Science.
5. Focus on Faculty: What’s on Their Minds?
How did Dartmouth’s professors get interested in their fields? What is something most people don’t know about them? What is the best thing about their work? What keeps them busy outside the classroom? These questions and many others are answered in Focus on Faculty, a new series of Q&A interviews with faculty members.
6. TV Producer Shonda Rhimes ’91 Delivers Commencement Address
“Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer,” the television writer and producer told the Class of 2014 during her Commencement address on June 8. During her time on campus, Rhimes shared with students many stories about her work, her life, and her Dartmouth experience. This fall, Rhimes had three television shows airing Thursday nights on ABC.
7. For Abbey D’Agostino ’14, the Final Collegiate Race
A seven-time national champion in track and cross-country, Abbey D’Agostino ’14 finished third in the 5,000 meter at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field championships in Eugene, Ore. D’Agostino was the first Ivy League runner (male or female) to win a cross country national title, and she won more national titles than any other female Ivy League athlete in history.
8. College Hosts National Summit on Sexual Assault
The weeklong national conference included more than 270 participants from more than 60 colleges and universities, national experts in the field, and officials from the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education. Featured speakers included David Lisak, a nationally recognized forensic expert on sexual assault.
9. Centennial Circle of Dartmouth Alumnae Raises $14.8 Million
More than 100 Dartmouth alumnae committed gifts of at least $100,000 each to Dartmouth’s annual fund—raising $14.8 million toward scholarships for undergraduate women through the Dartmouth College Fund. The College raised a record $287.2 million in philanthropic commitments in the 2014 fiscal year, which ended June 30, including $255.6 million in cash gifts. The total includes the largest gift in the College’s history.
10. Fall Term Brings New Living and Learning Options
The College introduced three new Living Learning Communities and 10 design-your-own communities this fall. The new Living Learning Communities—the DEN in Residence, the Global Village, and Triangle House—build on the success of existing communities that offer students a chance to pursue their intellectual interests by living with others who share those interests.
11. Dartmouth, U Alaska Fairbanks Lead Fulbright Arctic Program
Ross Virginia, the Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science, was selected by the U.S. State Department as one of two distinguished scholar leaders of the newly established Fulbright Arctic Initiative. Virginia and Professor Michael Sfraga, from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, will take lead roles in the new Fulbright Arctic research program, which will fund interdisciplinary work for some 16 scholars from the eight countries that sit on the Arctic Council.
12. Oxford Bound: 2015 Rhodes Scholars Announced
Miriam Jerotich Kilimo ’14, Ridwan Hassen ’15, and Colin Walmsley ’15 were named Rhodes Scholars for 2015—the 76th, 77th, and 78th Rhodes Scholars in Dartmouth’s history. The last time Dartmouth produced three Rhodes Scholars in a single year was in 2003.
