The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science

Dartmouth College has received a $35 million commitment to establish The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, President Jim Yong Kim announced today. The anonymous gift will advance a new field of study, harnessing the knowledge and expertise of faculty across multiple disciplines from the arts and sciences as well as from the medical, business and engineering schools. 

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2010/05/17.html

It's truly amazing what President Kim has been able to accomplish in his year here so far. I am so, so, so impressed and so proud to be a part of the Dartmouth family. Can't wait to see what happens in the future.

Vimeo films

First off, I've uploaded my first video to Vimeo. Made it the other day for the AREA+Playcube screening, but now want to make more shorts like this and put them in a collection about Beacon Hill. Here it is:

Coach from Fair Isle on Vimeo.

Dartmouth on 30 Rock

yeeeea....scrub to 4:20...

Yes Giantess, Surfer Blood

I watched Yes Giantess play at Dartmouth a few weeks ago and they are great live performers -- so fun to watch/listen/dance to, and their music achieves that rare combination of being catchy, with some depth. After their show, I'm a fan. :)

Last night at another concert, my friend and I were chatting with JP and Jonas, the lead singers of Surfer Blood and Turbo Fruits, respectively, and we realized afterward how difficult it must be to make it as a band; both JP and Jonas said they never went to college (well, JP went to one year of Palm Beach Community College...) and have basically been touring/trying to make it big since high school. And Surfer Blood is good, too, so we were wondering: Why aren't these bands well known (yet)? We concluded that there must be an element of luck to it.

Anyway, I thought Surfer Blood was breezy yet energetic and easy to listen to, Turbo Fruits had some interesting ideas but mostly hurt my ears - they need a keyboardist or something to modulate the harshness of their sound.  They were largely unpleasant to listen to, but I did appreciate Jonas's flannel shirt. It was similar to one I bought my younger sister this Christmas.

Take a listen to Yes Giantess:

And Surfer Blood:

The interesting song we liked by Turbo Fruits:

(VOLCANO! VOLCANO! VOLCANO!)

(Dartmouth) Olympics

We are all over the Olympics, so sick. I love being part of Dartmouth, it's such a community -- I feel proud of Dartmouth alumni and their achievements.

"The U.S. Olympic Committee has hired Scott Blackmun '79 as its CEO. He previously served the committee as acting CEO and as general counsel." (New York Times, 1/10)

"Nine Dartmouth students and alumni named to Olympic teams [this year]... Dartmouth has sent representatives to every winter Olympics since the Games’ founding in 1924.

Outside the competition venues at Vancouver is another group of alumni supporting the Games, including Scott Blackmun '79, chief executive of the U.S. Olympic Committee; Gordon Campbell '70, premier of British Columbia; Max Cobb '87, executive director of US Biathlon; Dr. Edward Merrens '88, DMS '94, a USA team physician; Max Saenger '88, sport director for biathlon for the Vancouver Olympic Committee; and Stephen Wilson '55, an Olympic official for biathlon." (Dartmouth News Release 01/27)

Dartmouth '09 Wins Bronze In Olympics

Congrats to Andrew Weibrecht '09, who won Bronze in Men's Super-G. So sick!! 


Medalist Results: 

1 0191919	19	Norway	SVINDAL Aksel Lund	1:30.34	0.00	Expand
Int 1 Int 2 Int 3 Finish Time (Diff) 16.50 (0.00)  42.10 (0.00)  114.86 km/h  1:08.50 (0.00)  1:30.34 (0.00)
2 0291111	11	United States	MILLER Bode	1:30.62	+0.28	Expand
Int 1 Int 2 Int 3 Finish Time (Diff) 16.20 (-0.30)  42.12 (+0.02)  100.99 km/h  1:08.63 (+0.13)  1:30.62 (+0.28)
3 0390303	3	United States	WEIBRECHT Andrew	1:30.65	+0.31	Expand
Int 1 Int 2 Int 3 Finish Time (Diff) 16.44 (-0.06)  42.52 (+0.42)  105.76 km/h  1:08.83 (+0.33)  1:30.65 (+0.31)

Journal of e-Media Studies

I've been working for a Dartmouth Film & Media studies professor, helping with his ongoing project, the Journal of e-Media Studies, by copyediting and web-enhancing. There are some really interesting pieces about Kindles, machinima, CSI/Law&Order victims, reporting on Katrina, self-reflexive television and other film/media-related subjects. The new issue was just published today!

Check it out:

http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/xmlpage/4/issue

My favorite is the CSI/Law&Order article, "Two Versions of the Victim: Uncovering Contradictions in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Through Textual Analysis" by Elke Weissmann. Some fascinating use of theory and observation applied to popular media:


http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/2/xmlpage/4/article/341

Atlas Shrugged [E-mailed]

Here's an e-mail I received from a friend that I thought was interesting enough to post verbatim. I've never read Atlas Shrugged (I know, so sue me) but now my interest is piqued -- is the entire book very good?

___________________________________

From: [Dartmouth '10 retracted]

Date: 28 Dec 2009 19:23:31 -0500

Subject: interesting little tidbit
To: [Group of sender's friends including Georgina]
Reply-To: [Nickname retracted]

sooooo this break i've been reading ayn rand's atlas shrugged - really really interesting. buuut here's a passage i just HAD to share

about sex. you can interchange the him and her as you wish

"He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer - because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut."

a little harsh on the "brainless slut" part - but sort of interesting when we think about people we're attracted to

sorry if this bores you, i just had to share, and am sitting at home reading alone, so obvi blitz [e-mail] comes to the rescue.

anywaysssssss happppy new years!

___________________________________

But since I've never read Atlas Shrugged, I'm left wondering: who is "he" in this quote?

Mindy Kaling

I'm pretty sure I would love Mindy Kaling. She seems clever, quirky, imaginative, funny, self-aware, down-to-earth, relate-able, and sweet. Kind of like a lot of my current friends!

In this NYT article, she writes about her penchant for imagining her future fantasy families, and one can really hear her tone and sense of humor. Instant girlcrush.

"This time, the family that I assumed the parking attendant was referring to included a dark-haired agnostic architect husband named Alex who liked ethnic food and zombie movies. (For the record, Alex is a product of my imagination. I realize that no real people are actually architects, and that it is a profession that exists entirely in movies, like art gallery owner or children’s bookshop proprietor.) [a/n: hahaha this is my favorite line. Incidentally, I do know someone whose father is an architect (in Dubai, natch), but I think this is generally a truism.]

Anyway, back to Alex. He was ethereal and dressed terribly because he didn’t care about clothes, but I kind of liked that about him. He did little things that drove me crazy like leaving his suitcase in the middle of the room when he returned from a business trip, an idiosyncrasy I once heard Michelle Obama attribute to her husband.

Alex and I lived in Hancock Park — a hip Los Angeles neighborhood — and I loved him so much that I was in a perpetual state of grinning. The kids were, I don’t know, kids. Really cute, etc. I have less experience with cute kids than I do with cute guys, so I’m not able to describe them as well, but trust me — super cute."

Read the rest of the article here.

Do you ever picture your future life? Mindy Kaling is about 10 years older than me (us?), so she's in a different place in her life. Accordingly, I don't think I've spent as much time imagining an exact future, but I admitted to Fay the other day that after watching The Wedding Planner on TV, I wouldn't mind marrying a doctor (i.e. Matthew McConaughey as a pediatrician) and she confided in turn that she has been waiting to marry Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Hugh Grant is a different story though -- I think he's just manufactured for women to swoon over. That's why he's consistently cast in the same role, British accent intact, regardless of the setting or time period. Instant swoon.


P.S. Mindy Kaling is also a writer and actress on The Office and a Dartmouth grad... and drew comics for The Dartmouth, which both Fay and I have written for at one point/continue to write for.

Princeton University

I visited Princeton University this weekend, where several of my sorority sisters and I were invited as dates to Winter Formal at an eating club. Along with our formal dresses and heels, we also brought our pong paddles to show our Princeton counterparts a good clean time post-formal. At first some members of the eating club were seriously opposed to pong (with paddles), but we soon had a crowd of boys in tuxes and girls in dresses watching, with people lining up to get next on table. We daughters of Dartmouth are very altruistic -- spreading free fun and cheer wherever we go.

I always think it's extremely interesting to visit other schools, especially ones which I seriously considered attending or at one point was convinced was the perfect school for me. In this case, I fell in love with Princeton's Gothic peaks and sun-dappled stone facades when I visited the campus in 9th grade -- it was the first college I visited as a prospective student, not counting the requisite Harvard University visit at an unreasonably young age.

The age and experience differential in returning as a college senior (for the first time since visiting as a high school freshman), not to mention actually staying with and speaking with Princeton students, offers a vastly different perspective, and I can now confirm to myself that it was puppy love back in 9th grade. Although I couldn't imagine any forward-looking 9th grader not falling in love -- the campus is gorgeous, the word Princeton rolls off the tongue, and F. Scott Fitzgerald is an alumnus. Not to mention the small and bright student body, small capped classes, undergraduate University focus, and other reasons that translate directly from the list of why I love Dartmouth.

Comparing the social and academic atmospheres of Dartmouth and Princeton -- and even Cornell, which I visited earlier this year -- is an enlightening exercise. I've ascertained that there is a lot of eating club-derived social pressure at Princeton that requires a level of foresight, planning, and anxiety (in one's social life alone!) not as necessary at other schools. Also I can confirm that we generally enjoy life (party) MUCH more at Dartmouth.

I had a wonderful time this weekend, very much enjoyed the company of the people I met, and would love to visit Princeton again... but I am so, so, so happy I went to (go to) Dartmouth.

P.S. Also, I played 'beirut' for the first time in my 21 years of existence. Some things take time.
P.P.S. This weekend, I met three Princeton students who had visited Dartmouth before, and two of the three experienced being arrested by Hanover Police during their brief visits (for underage intoxication). What does this say about ... everything?

Cloister Inn, an eating club on The Street

Whitman College at Princeton University

 

Newly completed in 2007

Some excerpts from a 2007 NYT article:

F. Scott Fitzgerald, a Princeton alumnus, offered a primer on the distinct character and social standing of the clubs in his 1920 novel, “This Side of Paradise.” He pegged the exclusive Ivy Club as “detached and breathlessly aristocratic” and Tiger Inn as “broad-shouldered and athletic, vitalized by an honest elaboration of prep-school standards” — both descriptions that could apply today. Fitzgerald was a member of the University Cottage Club, “an impressive mélange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed philanderers.”

While not every eating club is easily defined, many have established identities that attract like-minded members. The Cap and Gown Club is said to attract athletes, though swimmers and rowers (“floaters and boaters”) favor Cloister Inn. 

And the best one:

"Tiger Inn — often called Princeton’s “Animal House”..."

I'm alive

but just incredibly busy with classwork lately.

Read the Mirror!

www.thedartmouth.com

Aerospace Engineering is Literally Rocket Science

Payscale, a site that collects data on salaries for different professions, conducted a study over the last year and here are the results. Note that the numbers are from 1.2 million users of PayScale's site who self-reported their salaries and educational credentials in a PayScale survey over the last year. From Yahoo Finance:


Some highlights from the data:

• Dartmouth College has the highest median mid-career salary (defined as salary at 10 years or greater after graduation).
• Loma Linda University has the highest median starting salary (defined as salaries within five years of graduation), a function of their strong programs in nursing, dental and allied health.
• In general, engineering schools produced the best starting salaries, and represented eight out of the top 10 schools in starting salary. On the other hand, Ivy League Schools are the best bet for mid-career pay, with five out of the top 10.
• Majors matter. Quantitative-oriented degrees -- like engineering, science, mathematics and economics -- filled most of the top 20 slots in both highest starting median salaries and highest mid-career median salaries.

• Economics majors have the fifth highest mid-career median salary, the 17th-highest starting salary, and the highest salary at the 90th percentile, mid-career mark.
• Some of the major/department numbers may fool you, though.

For example, who would have thought that philosophy majors in mid-career would earn more than information technology majors in mid-career? This is probably because students who major in philosophy are more likely to go to elite schools, whereas students who major in I.T. are likely to go to pre-professional-type schools that don't even offer philosophy as a major, Mr. Lee says. So it's not really the choice of major that's making the difference -- it's the school.

"A student's choice of major has a huge impact mid-career, enormous," says Mr. Lee. "But you generally don't see people majoring in philosophy" -- or other "soft" majors, he says -- "except in top schools."

That said, here are the bottom 10 majors by mid-career salary:

Read the article at Yahoo finance.
And glance at the full stats list here.

Preview a portion of the list:

School Name	School Type	Starting Median Salary	Mid-Career Median Salary
Loading...
Dartmouth College	Ivy League	$58,200	$129,000
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	Engineering	$71,100	$126,000
Harvard University	Ivy League	$60,000	$126,000
Harvey Mudd College	Engineering	$71,000	$125,000
Stanford University	Engineering	$67,500	$124,000
Princeton University	Ivy League	$65,000	$124,000
Colgate University	Liberal Arts	$51,900	$122,000
University of Notre Dame	Private	$55,300	$121,000
Yale University	Ivy League	$56,000	$120,000
University of Pennsylvania	Ivy League	$60,400	$118,000
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)	Engineering	$62,500	$116,000
Duke University	Private	$56,800	$116,000
Bucknell University	Engineering	$56,100	$116,000
Bucknell University	Liberal Arts	$56,100	$116,000
California Institute of Technology (CIT)	Engineering	$69,700	$115,000
Polytechnic University of New York, Brooklyn	Engineering	$62,700	$114,000
Lehigh University	Engineering	$57,400	$114,000
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)	Engineering	$65,300	$113,000
University of California, Berkeley	Engineering	$57,100	$112,000
University of California, Berkeley	State Schools	$57,100	$112,000
Santa Clara University	Private	$58,000	$111,000
Georgetown University	Private	$57,000	$111,000
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)	Engineering	$61,100	$110,000
Swarthmore College	Liberal Arts	$55,900	$110,000
Colorado School of Mines	Engineering	$60,000	$109,000
Colorado School of Mines	State Schools	$60,000	$109,000
Manhattan College	Private	$56,100	$109,000
Amherst College	Liberal Arts	$54,900	$109,000
Haverford College	Liberal Arts	$46,200	$109,000
Brown University	Ivy League	$52,300	$107,000
University Of Chicago	Private	$51,700	$107,000
Cornell University	Engineering	$58,000	$106,000
Cornell University	Ivy League	$58,000	$106,000
Lafayette College	Liberal Arts	$53,700	$106,000
Bowdoin College	Liberal Arts	$52,700	$106,000
Georgia Institute of Technology	Engineering	$58,900	$105,000
Georgia Institute of Technology	State Schools	$58,900	$105,000
Rice University	Private	$57,900	$105,000
Tufts University	Private	$48,200	$105,000
Dickinson College	Liberal Arts	$44,000	$105,000
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)	Engineering	$55,100	$104,000
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)	State Schools	$55,100	$104,000
Washington and Lee University	Liberal Arts	$51,800	$104,000
College of the Holy Cross	Liberal Arts	$46,600	$104,000
Carleton College	Liberal Arts	$45,400	$104,000
University of Southern California (USC)	Private	$54,600	$103,000
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)	State Schools	$50,700	$103,000
Williams College	Liberal Arts	$49,400	$103,000
Davidson College	Liberal Arts	$45,800	$103,000
Cooper Union	Engineering	$61,100	$102,000
Claremont McKenna College	Liberal Arts	$58,300	$102,000
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly)	Engineering	$57,000	$102,000
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly)	State Schools	$57,000	$102,000
Fairfield University	Private	$50,400	$102,000
Stevens Institute of Technology	Engineering	$59,400	$101,000
Boston College	Private	$51,500	$101,000
Bates College	Liberal Arts	$46,400	$101,000
Fordham University	Private	$46,100	$101,000
Columbia University	Ivy League	$57,300	$100,000
Vanderbilt University	Private	$51,800	$100,000
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)	Engineering	$53,900	$99,700
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)	Party Schools	$53,900	$99,700
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)	State Schools	$53,900	$99,700
Middlebury College	Liberal Arts	$45,000	$99,200
Villanova University	Engineering	$56,700	$99,000
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT)	Engineering	$61,100	$98,800
Tulane University	Party Schools	$47,800	$98,800
Clarkson University	Engineering	$55,400	$98,500
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)	Party Schools	$49,700	$98,400
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)	State Schools	$49,700	$98,400
Drexel University	Private	$54,100	$98,000
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)	Engineering	$57,400	$97,600
Case Western Reserve University	Engineering	$56,500	$97,500
Pomona College	Liberal Arts	$50,500	$97,500
Iona College	Private	$47,200	$97,500
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)	Engineering	$52,900	$97,400
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)	State Schools	$52,900	$97,400
George Washington University (GWU)	Private	$48,200	$97,300
Loyola College in Maryland	Liberal Arts	$45,000	$97,300
University of Virginia (UVA)	State Schools	$52,200	$97,200
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)	State Schools	$51,600	$97,000
Southern Methodist University (SMU)	Private	$48,600	$96,900
Connecticut College	Liberal Arts	$42,500	$96,800
San Jose State University (SJSU)	State Schools	$53,400	$96,300
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech)	Engineering	$51,700	$96,300
Miami University	State Schools	$47,100	$96,100
Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut)	Liberal Arts	$46,300	$95,700
Occidental College	Liberal Arts	$45,300	$95,700
University of California, Davis (UC Davis)	State Schools	$51,200	$95,400
St. John's University, New York	Private	$50,000	$95,400
Loyola Marymount University	Private	$43,500	$95,400
Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T)	Engineering	$57,300	$95,200
Texas A&M University	State Schools	$51,100	$95,000
Johns Hopkins University	Engineering	$57,800	$94,900
New York University (NYU)	Private	$49,600	$94,900
Kettering University	Engineering	$57,900	$94,500
Emory University	Private	$50,600	$94,300
University of Colorado - Boulder (UCB)	Party Schools	$47,100	$94,300