Old and new – Exec Board ’12-’13 and ’13-’14

On Tuesday May 8^th, the GSC held it’s annual elections for the Executive Board. Eight positions were open for election. They were: President, Vice President, Finance Chair, Student Life Chair, Academic Chair, Secretary and two Social Chairs. The Executive Board is responsible for the leadership of the GSC. Each member has their own portfolio and collectively they run action teams and organize social events. They also represent the GSC and Dartmouth, meeting the president of the College, the trustees, and grad leaders at other Ivy Schools.

While all graduate students are welcome to run in Executive Board elections, votes are cast by Departmental Representatives who have fulfilled both the attendance and volunteer requirements outlined in the GSC constitution: to vote, Departmental Representatives must attend all council meetings (two absences allowed) and volunteer at two GSC events.

The GSC’s role is to nurture and enhance a sense of graduate student community across Dartmouth’s graduate departments, schools, and programs. The GSC consists of elected Departmental Representatives from all Graduate Arts and Sciences programs, including TDI and Thayer, and non-voting representatives from the Tuck School of Business and the Geisel School of Medicine.

The winners of this year’s elections are:

President: Lisa Jackson

Vice President: Anne Xu
Finance Chair: Adrienne Perkins
Student Life Chair: Meg Menon
Academic Chair: Laurie Laker
Secretary: Drew Wong
Social Chairs: Haofeng Li and Erin O’Malley

For more information about the GSC, please visit the home page and don’t be afraid to reach out to your new Exec Board.

Elections for Departmental Representatives are held in the fall term.

The Exec Board in their own words:

Lisa Jackson, TDI, President: I feel so honored to have been elected President of the GSC for the upcoming school year! Building off the work initiated by this year’s GSC executive board and council as a whole, I hope that next year’s GSC will continue to foster communication and collaboration between the other grad student governments, between grad students and undergraduate students, and between grads and the college administration and broader Upper Valley community. By working together, we can continue to enhance the Dartmouth experience for everyone! Congratulations to my fellow executive board members elected on Tuesday as well; I can’t wait to work with you all.

Ani Xu, MALS, Vice President: For a long while, I’ve struggled with the concept of community at Dartmouth, or the lack thereof. Lately and thankfully, I’ve been proven dead wrong. I am absolutely overwhelmed by the strength of character of the students here. This community has given me so much and I sincerely hope that by serving as Vice President of the Graduate Student Council, I will have the opportunity to contribute back to the absolute best of my abilities. I am beyond excited to work with this excellent group of people in the coming year.

Adrienne Perkins, Biology, Finance Chair: I’m happy to have the opportunity to continue serving and working with the GSC as Finance Chair.

Drew Wong, Thayer, Secretary: I am excited to build on the framework established by the former GSC committees and to pave the way for the future councils.

Meg Menon, MALS: I look forward to working with the Graduate Student Council, as we support your interests and strive toward fostering our deep sense of community through tangible and sincere efforts. I promise to do my best in this position and  I encourage you to think of me as an advocate for your well-being and an agent for change that you would like to affect. Thank you.

Laurie Laker, MALS, Academic Chair: I’m honored and excited to have been elected to the GSC Executive Board. We’re all here at Dartmouth to better ourselves academically, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to serve our graduate student community towards that betterment. As a current MALS rep on the GSC, I’m excited to take the reigns of Academic Chair from Rich Lopez – who has done a tremendous job this past year. I can’t wait to get started.

Haofeng Li, Social Chair: Excited about this great opportunity! Hopefully our efforts will make this coming year awesome:)

Erin O’Malley, Social Chair: I am very excited to have been elected as the GSC Social Chair for 2013.  I look forward to being able to bring many diverse groups together and provide the very important social interactions that can all too often get missed in our hectic lives as graduate students.  Also, I look at this as an opportunity to use leadership skills to plan events that everyone can enjoy and to make this another successful year.

“The AGLSP Prize is intended to recognize extraordinary commitment to mentoring and advising,” says MALS Chair Donald E. Pease, Jr. “From the time I recruited him to teach in the MALS Program in 1999, Klaus Milich has proven himself an exemplary scholar and teacher.” Dr. Milich teaches multiple courses for the MALS program— “Research Methods”, a course designed to help students understand and execute theoretical social science; “Diasporas and Migrations,” which focused on concept and theories related to mass-migration and diasporas across the globe; “Religion and Politics,” and “Theories of Postmodernism.” Dr. Milich also teaches courses in the Jewish Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs.

During his acceptance address at the AGLSP Conference, Dr. Milich spoke to the place of theory in graduate liberal studies. “It is of great importance to focus on the theorization of our topics,” said Dr. Milich, who’s own research is focused on analyzing and approaching the classic divide between the humanities and the sciences. “Our students come back from jobs to spend time reflecting. They’ve decided to take time to merge theory and their experiences. This is what graduate liberal studies can offer them.”

The AGLSP’s Faculty Award, however, recognizes more than in-class teaching ability. Indeed, it is Dr. Milich’s approach to advising his graduate students that has set him apart.

“In their annual evaluations, Klaus’s MALS students have praised Klaus for the patience he displays in guiding them through every stage of their thesis projects—from initial formulation to culminating revision,” Pease says. “His students have attested in particular to Professor Milich’s willingness to work late into the evening and over long week-ends to help them to meet deadlines and get over writing blocs. No one is more deserving of this national recognition for exemplary dedication to teaching and advising than Klaus Milich.”

“In graduate studies especially,” Dr. Milich tells us, “the student-instructor relationship ceases to be a hierarchical one. Instead, there must be a mutual interdependence between teacher and researcher. I consider my students to be young research scholars, who embark with me on new projects. They chart their course – I help them as I can.”

“Last year, Klaus was the first reader of my masters thesis,” says MALS grad and former Graduate Student Council President Wes Whitaker. “During the fall and winter terms, I met with Klaus and the other two students in colloquium—Ellen Anderson and Thomas Frohlich—on a weekly basis. At these meetings, portions of Ellen, Thomas and my theses were workshopped by Professor Milich. The feedback provided by Klaus and the other members of my colloquium not only strengthened the final draft of my thesis, but also greatly improved my academic writing.”

During his early years as a student, Dr. Milich studied economics, American Literary and Cultural Studies, German and English Literature. In the first stages of his career, Dr. Milich worked as a management consultant, and then went on to work for German public radio, and various international newspapers, for which he wrote and broadcasted essays, documentaries, interviews, and book reviews on literary, cultural, and social issues. Before coming to Dartmouth, Dr. Milich taught at the University of Frankfurt and Humboldt University Berlin. He has held visiting professorships and visiting scholar positions at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Keele University in Great Britain, and at the David Bruce Center for American Studies at University of California Irvine.

Up in Portland, MALS Director Wole Ojurongbe, himself a MALS graduate, read letter after letter from MALS students, who echoed these sentiments. “Before I met and worked with Dr. Milich, I would have described my life as largely content, settled, and unperturbed,” said 2011 graduate Mary Fratini, “but in my good fortune to meet someone who is equally passionate about his own consistently evolving research and committed to mentoring a new generation of thinkers and scholars, my life has become largely unsettled, consistently perturbed and, ultimately, infinitely more satisfying.”

Indeed, it was Dr. Milich’s commitment to his students, and his very real appreciation for academic research that showed through in Ojurongbe’s remarks and in our interview with him. “Our research,” he told us, “always means an exploration of what we have yet to know. It’s a work in progress. An instructor works with a student, so that both can learn the dual process of learning facts on the one hand, and learning how to continue learning on the other.”

Article and photo by Zach Williams 

From left to right: TDI’s Greg Kotzbauer, Project Manager, Health Policy & ACO; Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP; TDI’s Jessica Johnson, M.Ed; and Holly Russo, TDI MS’96

For the past few months, faculty and staff from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice (TDI) have been kindling a relationship with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, and the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine. The collaboration reflects an effort to pursue mutual learning experiences. Capitalizing on a special TDI alumni connection, Alumni Relations Manager Jessica Johnson facilitated a learning exchange that may benefit both organizations, and should have positive ramifications on the larger communities of associated with each program.

In early October, and again in early November, TDI faculty and staff traveled to El Paso, Texas, the site of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and the Paul S. Foster School of Medicine. Participating in conferences, panel discussions, and small meetings with faculty and staff from the medical school there, the group brought the collective knowledge of TDI to bear on the particular difficulties confronting the border region.

“We used a unique alumni connection to get involved down there,” Johnson said. “That connection created a new channel to a place that could use TDI’s help. The area around El Paso is confronting some major issues, but a lot of these are population health and access problems – that’s something TDI excels at.”   Noting that the region shows high rates of diabetes and obesity, Johnson pointed to a large population of uninsured Americans and the growth of Fort Bliss, a major U.S. Army base, as key hurdles that both sets of faculty have been focusing on.

Back in October, TDI participated in the first annual Mano y Corazón (Hand & Heart) Binational Conference of Multicultural Health Care Solutions.  The highlight of the conference was a Special Roundtable Session held by State Senator José R. Rodriguez, that focused on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on border health. The keynote speaker at the conference was Dr. Donald Berwick, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. TDI has a special relationship with the Affordable Care Act – the Institute introduced the idea of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) – which placed TDI faculty in a unique position to offer insight to their colleagues in Texas.

ACOs have become a major issue in modern medical practice. Forbes Magazine recently published an article, detailing the results of an Oliver Wyman report, which claims that the ACO model is now a reality for up to ten percent of the U.S. population. This means that between 25 and 31 million patients each year are receiving care from health care providers who have been rewarded for their efforts to improve care quality and reign in costs.

“TDI’s contribution of ACOs to the Affordable Care Act legislation yet another way TDI has put itself on the map as a leader.” Johnson said. “By way of sharing knowledge with more educational and medical organizations in various regions, we can market TDI and Dartmouth, while simultaneously creating an exchange with these regions that will help them prepare for policies that will be affecting them. This allows them to be leaders themselves.”

A month later, during the first week of November, TDI faculty returned to El Paso for the Border Healthcare Dialogue, a conference that allowed for multiple collaborative learning sessions with faculty from the Foster School of Medicine.

“The two schools deal with equally diverse, if very different populations,” Johnson noted. “This collaboration afforded us an opportunity to expand our thinking here at Dartmouth, and allowed us to pass on some of the conclusions we’ve drawn from the work we’re doing with ACO implementation.

TDI staff and faculty were afforded an opportunity to meet with faculty and students from the Foster School, to discuss the benefits of a new curriculum model that pairs classroom learning with clinical work. “The Foster School is a new medical school,” Johnson continued, “but they’re experimenting with a truly integrated curriculum that’s showing some really positive results.” The Foster School is also teaching all of its students medical Spanish, in an effort to provide better care for the border region’s bilingual population, in addition to a summer regional public health immersion class prior to beginning the program.

The Dartmouth Institute’s systemic approaches to public health, and its close relationship with the Affordable Care Act, continue to be valuable assets as the school’s influence and prestige grows. For alumni affairs professionals like Johnson, these are valuable tools in the pursuit of diverse opportunities for TDI’s faculty, students, and alumni, and for marketing the TDI value chain.

Six Dartmouth faculty members have been selected as 2012 fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science. Professors Christopher Amos, Michael Dietrich, Carolyn Gordon, Todd Heatherton, Mark Israel, and Ronald Taylor are among the 702 new fellows recognized by AAAS this year for their distinguished efforts to advance science.

“Dartmouth professors conduct outstanding research in the sciences, and it is wonderful to see their accomplishments honored by their selection as AAAS fellows,” says President Carol L. Folt, who was named an AAAS fellow in 2010.  “Our faculty’s discoveries are helping to define their fields and Dartmouth’s growing impact is evidenced by the increase in AAAS fellows for the fourth consecutive year.”

“Dartmouth is honored to have six professors chosen as fellows by the AAAS, one of the most renowned and influential science organizations,” says Interim Provost Martin Wybourne.

Dartmouth now has a total of 33 professors who are current AAAS fellows (see a complete list below). This year, three of the new fellows are from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

“The AAAS recognition of these outstanding faculty members and their important scientific achievements is indicative of the significant research activity taking place at the medical school,” says Wiley “Chip” Souba, dean of the Geisel School of Medicine. “They embody the Dartmouth ideals of improving lives through leadership, intellectual curiosity, and collaboration.”

Continue reading here…

As the term winds to a close, and winter begins to set in, I wanted to take a minute to address the graduate community. I’ve been settling in to my new position here at Graduate Studies, and I’m enjoying all of the opportunities to interact with and on behalf of our students and programs. To see the work that our students are doing, across the wide spectrum that is Graduate Arts and Sciences, is nothing but inspiring.

Here in the Graduate Office, we are working hard to develop new ways to support and strengthen our community. As the Dartmouth faculty expands, and the Geisel School follows suit, we know that there will be more opportunities for graduate students on campus. More faculty will create opportunities for new graduate research, and we will find ways to leverage those opportunities to improve our support networks for research and funding. We are also working to create a graduate student space on campus, to help attach the wonderful sense of community we have built to a physical location we can call our own. I am excited about the future of Graduate Studies, and our students should be as well.

On a personal note, I encourage everyone to get outside and enjoy the winter here in Hanover. As an undergraduate, I was a member of the Dartmouth Outing Club. We used to snowshoe up Gile Mountain, downhill and cross-country ski at the college facilities, and ice skate out on Occom Pond. Dartmouth provides lots of opportunities to take advantage of the endless recreational activities in the Hanover area. And though it might be cold, Hanover tends to be pretty sunny all winter long. So grab a good jacket and enjoy the sun and the snow!

We hope you can join us next week for Cupcake Wars – I’m looking forward to judging the event. For more information, and to stay up to date on all the goings-on at Graduate Studies, please visit the Graduate Studies website and connect with us through our Facebook page.

I hope you all enjoy the remainder of fall term, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Sincerely,

F. Jon Kull, Dean of Graduate Studies

For the full article go to Dartmouth Now.

The Second College Grant was presented to Dartmouth by the State of New Hampshire in 1807 and is used for research, recreation, and sustainable logging. (photo by Eli Burakian ’00)

President Folt speaks with Graduate Student Council Vice President Justin Richardson and President Julia Bradley-Cook

On Tuesday, September 18^th, President Carol Folt held a reception for the incoming class of graduate students, welcoming them to Dartmouth in the beautifully renovated Hanover Inn. President Folt chatted with new students from all disciplines, emphasizing her excitement about the growing strength of graduate studies.

The reception was held in the beautiful Hayward Ballroom at the Hanover Inn – the first student event in the space. New Dean of Graduate Studies F. Jon Kull introduced President Folt, reminiscing about their first meeting, when then-Professor Folt was teaching ecology to undergraduates. Then President Folt assumed the podium with a smile, reflecting on her own experiences with graduate students at her undergraduate alma mater, the University of California at Santa Barbara. It was her experience with graduate students, she explained, that opened her eyes to the power of scientific research and experimentation early in her college career. The president encouraged the new graduate students to look for those opportunities to inspire others around them.

After their official greetings, President Folt, Dean Kull, and other members of the Graduate Studies staff mingled with the new students, sharing laughs about their own experiences pursuing advanced degrees and highlighting how much the administration understands the pressures and rewards of graduate studies. The president posed for pictures with students from many of the graduate programs, smiling alongside students who are just exploring Hanover for the first time (and overwhelming this photographer with requests for his email address!).

As Dartmouth’s newest graduate students filtered out of the reception hall, it was clear that the warm welcome was greatly appreciated.

Please visit the Graduate Studies Flickr page for more photos of the Presidential Reception, and stay tuned for an article highlighting the incoming members of the new graduate class.

Article and Photos by Zach Williams

For the official announcement, please visit the Dartmouth Now page. Congratulations Dean Kull and welcome!

Brian Pogue (left) and Wesley Whitaker (right)

On Wednesday August 15, 2012, a new faculty member will begin serving as Dartmouth’s Dean of Graduate Studies. The editors of The Graduate Forum would like to take a moment to welcome the new Dean, and also to thank outgoing Dean Brian Pogue  for his four years of service.

“The Deanship at Dartmouth has been an incredibly high honor,” says Brian Pogue. “Now, looking back on the past four years, I know that we have made the right decisions on a number of key issues and have achieved a few important initiatives for the campus. I’ve taken an opportunistic approach to affecting change at Dartmouth in areas that would be receptive to it, and in the end I am happy with that.”

Originally from Ontario, Brian Pogue received his Honors Bachelors and Masters degrees in Physics from York University in Toronto, and was then accepted as a PhD candidate in Medical/Nuclear Physics at McMaster University in Hamilton. While at McMaster, Brian researched the use of optical spectroscopy—a method for examining the properties of a physical object by measuring how it emits and interacts with light—to image breast cancer under the guidance of his doctoral advisor, Michael Patterson, Head of Medical Physics at the regional Cancer Center. To test the optical machines developed in the Patterson lab, Brian examined both the tissue of mice and the properties of “tissue phantoms”— mimicking the physical properties of living tissue and cancerous tumors. In his doctoral dissertation, Frequency-Domain Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging of Tissue and Tissue-Simulating Media, Brian developed a system for imaging living tissue using high-speed optical measurements, to quantify the molecular features of tissues and cancer tumors.

“In a lot of ways, I still feel like a graduate student. I don’t think that I ever really grew up,” says Brian. “As a Director of Dartmouth’s Optics in Medicine Lab, I work with graduate students on a daily basis, and am conducting research on medical optics with professionals at Dartmouth and a number of other research institutions. I agreed to serve as Dean of Graduate Education because I genuinely care about graduate students and believe that graduate research is an integral part of our academic community. I think that the research being conducted by Dartmouth’s graduate students allows the school to advance the creation of new knowledge and leads to innovations in techniques and technologies.  This is the key part of what makes Dartmouth a world-class educational institution.”

Inspired to teach by his parents—Brian’s father was a professor and his mother a teacher—Brian Pogue led an active lifestyle and focused on his research throughout his doctoral career. In fact, it was during his graduate studies that Brian first played team sports.

“At McMaster, I was captain of the department baseball team for a year. I played outfield as a graduate student and had a great time serving as the team’s captain. I think in a lot of ways the exercise and socialization that playing baseball provided helped keep me sane while I did my laboratory studies,” says Brian. “Our team wasn’t particularly good—as long as you could catch a ball, you were in—but it was a great group of people, and we all had a lot of fun. I was responsible for things like collecting equipment and organizing social events.  As a graduate student, you need to have a plan to keep yourself socially involved, and for me, baseball was one of the ways that I stayed active and met new people.”

During his tenure as Dean, he led a number of projects which strengthened the cohesion of Dartmouth’s graduate student body, improved graduate student life, and increased the academic profile of Dartmouth Arts & Science Graduate Programs. A chair of the Graduate Education for the Future Working Group, Dean Pogue compared Dartmouth against a number of its peer institutions—like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Princeton—reviewed each of Dartmouth’s doctoral and masters programs, and authored a vision statement for Graduate Education at Dartmouth with the 27 members of the working group. As part of the review effort, Dean Pogue invited a consortium of Dean’s and former Dean’s from peer institutions to review the school’s graduate programs. The work done by the Working Group was compiled into a document, and submitted as part of the Dartmouth-wide Strategic Planning process, led by interim president Carol Folt, and the Provosts Office, for review. To ensure that the voices of students from all of Dartmouth’s graduate programs were included in the final version of this document, Dean Pogue hosted 2011’s Strategic Planning Open Forum with the Graduate Student Council (GSC).

“For me, Dartmouth Strategic Planning has been an exciting challenge. It’s has been a long time since Dartmouth has compared itself to its peer institutions, I think that Carol Folt has done an outstanding job managing the institution-wide project,” said Dean Pogue. “The nature of academia makes strategic planning difficult for virtually every educational institution, and I really admire the manner in which the Provost’s Office has choreographed the effort. From the feedback solicited through the campus-wide committee work that Carol has orchestrated, Dartmouth’s administration has decided to place a greater emphasis on academics at the school. In the coming years, this will manifest itself in new faculty hires and a modest growth in graduate research.”

In addition to his commitment to Dartmouth Strategic Planning, Dean Pogue has improved the graduate student experience at Dartmouth through increasing stipends, advocating for a permanent graduate student social space, creating the PhD/MBA program with Tuck, and by leading a campaign to improve the web visibility of the school’s graduate programs. With the Graduate Student Council (GSC) and the members of the Graduate Studies Office, Brian has strengthened the connections between current graduate students and alumni from each of its Arts & Sciences Graduate Programs.

“Graduate student life has always been an important issue for me. I think this is because I place so much value on the role of personnel commitment and education in people,” says Brian. “At McMaster, I remember really growing as an individual even outside of my research. One year, I read Kurt Vonnegut’s entire catalogue—from his first book, Player Piano, and ending with his final work, Hocus Pocus. Later, I also read the catalogs of my favorite Canadian authors, Robertson Davies and Margaret Laurence. This had nothing to do with my research, but I was enamored with understanding people who are driven in long term creative work, and to see how their work evolves over time.”

Over the past four years, Brian has also “re branded” Dartmouth’s research-based Graduate Programs. Two years ago, Dean Pogue approved a new Dartmouth Graduate Studies shield, which was created through an online design contest, coordinated by members of the GSC’s Executive Board. Since the launch of the new shield, Brian commissioned the design of a mobile application for Dartmouth’s graduate programs available for use on iPhone or Google Android phones.  He oversaw the creation of The Graduate Forum, and increased the use of social media streams including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest by the Graduate Studies Office. The use of these media channels has not only improved communication between current graduate students, but has also facilitated electronic conversations between the school’s graduate community and other pan-Dartmouth entities. “I think these changes will have the most important long-term impact of anything that I have been involved with, on our Graduate Studies programs at Dartmouth,” said Pogue.

“While a number of important changes are currently happening here at Dartmouth, the elements that define the school’s identity will never change. These elements are Dartmouth’s rural Upper Valley location, and its relatively small size in the world of research institutions. These factors dictate the types of people that are drawn to the school, and always will.  I believe that it is the research conducted by these people that make Dartmouth a world-class educational institution,” explains Pogue. “Though I think Dartmouth will be substantially similar in 20 years, a higher metric for academic success will be in place.  Moderate increases in the size and strength of the school’s graduate programs will likely mirror the ongoing growth in research-active faculty on this campus.  This is the pathway needed to reinforce the world class status of this institution. I hope that I will live to see the day that the institution is named a University, which would simply recognize the institution for what it already is.  This is easily done, and can be done while retaining all its lovable characteristics which make it unique in the world of higher education.”

by Wesley Whitaker

Video by Zach Williams and Dan Durcan