Aaron Dotter
Email: aaron.l.dotter@dartmouth.edu
Address: P. O. Box 836, Hanover, NH 03755-0836

In the past year I've been wondering if I will ever know what I'm talking about. I'm in my fourth year of graduate school in astronomy at Dartmouth College. In April I passed the oral exam portion of our program and now there is just a mountain of work to be done and I will be finished... Ha! I'm studying the theory of stellar evolution with a focus on creating model isochrones and luminosity functions that will eventually be used to construct 'integrated light' models that can be used to study photometry and spectra of extragalactic systems where individual stars cannot be resolved. That was a mouthful! Though I say 'theory' it is mostly 'programming' but that is all right with me. When I'm not sitting in front of a computer I do a lot of public observing, this is not nearly as much fun as the Carleton public evenings.

Outside of school, I'm still (happily) married and still (also happily) have three dogs. They keep me busy. I'm looking forward to the upcoming reunion. Speaking of reunions, I had a marvelous, albeit brief, one with Mr. Covey and Cindy back in June. It was my first time drinking wine, etc. with a professor. Fun fun. Anyway, I hope the idea for a gathering of all the former physics majors at the upcoming reunion is still in the mix. Take care!

Bridget Johnson
Email: b.h.m@comcast.net
Address: 18858 E. Powers Dr., Aurora, CO 80015
Phone (303) 489-4476

I just bought a house in Aurora CO. The move put us much closer to our workplaces. I am working as a mining/environmental engineering consultant at a small firm. The job has slowed my efforts at a Ph.D., but I am slowly working at it and expect to be wrapped up in a year or so.

Ben Miller
Email: bmiller@mines.edu

I have been in or near Golden Colorado studying at the Colorado School of Mines. I have completed a Mac. in Systems Engineering (A combination of Electrical and Mechanical Eng.). My thesis topic was "SmartBit: An In-situ Bit/Rock Interface Monitoring Device.” Essentially, it was the development of a tactile sense for a type of underground mining machine. I am continuing my graduate studies in the Mining Dept. I hope to finish my Ph.D. in Mining Engineering before the end of next year. Currently, my education is being "slowed down" by my partnership in an engineering consultant firm in the Denver area. This increased responsibility has also begun cutting into my snowboarding time, though Bridget and I were able to put petex to snow 20+ times last year!

Andrew Noble
Email: aenoble@mail.com

"Hey everybody! It's been one heck of a cold and cloudy summer/fall season here in Ithaca, but that's not stopping me from getting out to enjoy life in the gorges and around the lake. Life is pretty good here. After a couple years of course work, I finally started the kind of research I had always wanted to do. I'm working with our newest professor in particle theory, Maxim Perelstein. He specializes in "phenomenology"—all the particle physics beyond the standard model that's not strings. It's exciting stuff. With the new accelerator going up at CERN in 2008, we'll hopefully put these theories to the test and see if any of them fit the data. My first paper topic will cover a theory called the "Little Higgs." Cute. It's one of a handful of theories out there to deal with the fundamental question "Why do things have mass?"

Rich Noer moved into my building here at Cornell for the semester. That's been nice. We've had a couple of lunches, and when Emily Riddle came through town, we all had a delicious Thai dinner together.

Well, if any of you happen through up-state New York, give me a ring. Look forward to seeing lots of you folks at reunion!

Amanda Kirhcner
Email: astroproduction@hotmail.com
Address: 1500 LaSalle Ave, #518, Minneapolis, MN 55403

Over the past couple of years, I've moved from Carleton to Montana and then back to Minneapolis pursuing an education in film production. I'm happy to say that I to graduate in March with a second bachelor's degree in Visual Effects and Motion Graphics from the Art Institutes International of Minnesota. Now comes the tough part, looking for a job in feature films doing visual effects or possibly 3D modeling.

Pascal Mickelson
Email: mickelsp@warpmail.net
Address: Address: 1710 Albans Rd., Houston, TX 77005

Hi all. I'm in my third year of physics graduate school at Rice University. This is my second year working for Tom Killian, an AMO physicist who studies ultracold atoms and plasmas via laser trapping and cooling of Strontium. I now know a lot more about Strontium than I ever imagined I would. Fortunately, the work is interesting and (so far) I have remained semi-useful around the lab. I also still possess the vision in both of my eyes despite the abundance of lasers in our lab.

I am slightly more acclimated to Houston's heat and humidity than when I first moved here. That's a good thing since I have at least a few more years before I earn my way out. I'm playing ultimate with a Houston-based club team called Black Angus, as well as captaining the Rice college team during this, my last year of eligibility.

I still manage to see some Carleton folks from time to time. Most recently, Ben Luey and Mekayla Beaver paid me a visit "deep in the heart of Texas". I also saw Matt Hahn, Hite Geffert, Andrew Eppig, and others at a July ultimate tournament we were all at. Should anyone find himself or herself in Houston, feel free to look me up.

Phil Spindler
Email: Philip.Spindler@usap.gov

I've decided to take the plunge. Not that one, though. After I left Antarctica last February, I traveled around the south island of New Zealand for a month and a half. For half of that time, my friend Jon (whom I met on the ice) and I drove around in a car he bought for cheap. The one rule of the car was to ALWAYS pick up hitchhikers. We met some interesting people that way, and it gave me good hitchhiking Karma when I was hitching with another friend on the north island. Our nights were spent in whatever camping spot we could find off the main roads. We found some awesome places in valleys, next to mountain streams, and on beaches. And we had a fire pretty much every night.

I went back to the states to stay with a friend in Duluth and spend the time doing not much for a while. I was able to get some good trips to the Boundary Waters in before I went to Alaska to stay with my brother and his family for a while. I tried to get a job in a bakery, but they knew I was leaving in August, so I didn't get hired even for part time work. Oh well. I had a great time substituting at the school I taught at for two years. I still knew most students, and the teacher who replaced me mentally checked out in November. So, for the last two months of the school year, I was the substitute for him 2, 3, sometimes 4 days a week; he was transitioning to his new job in the hospital. So that was good money for doing what I loved to do mostæteach in the classroom. I had no grading or prep work to do (plus, the teacher was just using all my old lesson plans and hand-outs, so I knew the routine pretty well).

I was offered, and I accepted, another couple jobs in Antarctica. I left in August to be the Supply Guy in the Science Support Center, which deals mainly with small engine machines that go out to field campsæsnowmobiles, generators, herman-nelsons, ice drills, hole melters, chainsaws, etc. I'm hoping this job will give me the chances to really get out of town and experience Antarctica more first-hand in the wild. Also, it will give me a lot of contacts to potentially get hired by a science group in the future (I have met a number of people who have gone on this track, and it is something I'm considering). In February, I will start my new job as the Senior Materials person in Crary Lab for the winter, counting and getting equipment ready for the scientists when they show up the following summer. So when all is said and done, I will have spent 14 months in the same little frozen town, working six days a week, eating food from a giant freezer, wearing long underwear day after day, but never having to wash my own dishes. Then I plan to travel more before doing whatever, and I'll have all winter to decide where. No, not really decide... dream. But it will be worth it.

So I've been down here for about two months now, and things are awesome, even though I've had to patch my pants eight times already. I'm the library coordinator, I have a radio show every Monday evening, I'm on a bowling league every-other Tuesday (the most warped lanes you've ever seen—they've been here since 1966; the faster you throw the ball, the better), and new this year, Dodge ball, every Friday—my team has a good chance with that. Before all the main people showed up for the summer, we did a test tournament one Sunday afternoon, and I wore goggles with the clear inserts to protect my glasses. I was standing in the spectating crowd after my game with my goggles on my forehead, and a wild ball smacked me in the face and broke my glasses. So stupid and ironic. I wasn't able to get a new pair until the first plane flew in for the summer, which was a month later. I wore my old spare ones until then. In the summer league, I'm standing behind a net when spectating.

Other than that, I'm continuing to brew down here as well. I inherited a bunch of random equipment that was left here, along with some old ingredients. I tried making something from the old stuff, before my on-line order was mailed down. The stuff was a little out-dated, I guess. As I was boiling the brew, it smelled like a dog food factory; and wouldn't you know it, when it was all done, it tasted like dog biscuits. Yeah, disgusting, but at least I got a test run with my equipment. And a friend of mine who was here last year found a job working at Full Sail in Hood River, OR. It's good to have contacts like that when I leave here. See you at the party,

Carl Tape
Email: tapecarl@hotmail.com
URL: http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~carltape/personal/index.html

Well, if the 2004 newsletter is anything like 2003, then this will have been preceded by a much more interesting entry by Phil Spindler. That being said, I'm enjoying grad school in seismology at Caltech, rolling into my second year. Play wise, plenty of soccer and a few outdoor adventures (see webpage). Work wise, I'm basically working on elastic wave propagation through 3D, heterogeneous sphere—you could say that's seismology in a nutshell. Shake, rattle, and roll.

Henry Brock
Email: brock@wisc.edu
Address: 1962 Heath Ave., Madison, WI 53704

I'm in the materials science program at the UW - Madison and pursuing a Ph.D. My research involved pressing on nickel nanowires with a diamond-tipped nanoindenter to find out the mechanical properties of nickel on the micro and nano-scale. I'm also investigating shape-memory alloys, but mostly this semester I've been focusing on courses.

Andrew Eppig
Email: Andrew.Eppig@alumni.carleton.edu or aeppig@umich.edu
Address: 544 N State, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone: (734) 834-4773

I'm still at the University of Michigan. I just filled out the paperwork for my Masters and now need to get cracking on becoming a candidate. I'm still trying for particle theory, but am keeping my options open as the department here is packed with particle theorists.

Ann Arbor continues to amuse, but I've had a wonderful time visiting physics alumni in Seattle and the Twin Cities. I love visitors, so if you're ever in southern Michigan, drop by for a cup of tea and a scone. Cheers,

Sara Karbeling
Email: karbelis@yahoo.com

Hello, from Evanston Illinois! After two years of teaching physics, general science, and math at a small boarding school in Iowa, I've returned to the role of student. I am currently in the Masters of Science in Education program here at Northwestern University. In a year, I will earn my degree as well as certification to teach physics at the high school level. I am so excited! The past year has been fun, though quite busy.

As I mentioned, last school year I was at Scattergood (in West Branch, IA). The whole experience was a very valuable one for me. With small classes and a tight community, I feel that I've had a great introduction into the world of teaching. During this past spring, I brought a group of my students to Carleton as "prospies." We all had a great time, and it was so nice to be on campus and see so many friendly and familiar faces!

Last summer, I spent a third season working at a summer camp in southwestern Wisconsin. Involved again as the program director and volunteer coordinator, it was a stressful but very wonderful summer.
Right after camp, I moved into my apartment in Evanston and patiently waited for school to start! (They're on a quarter system, and actually start later than Carleton!) I am really enjoying the program so far, class work keeps me busy, and I really like my classmates. The program already seems to be going by so fast!

This quarter I am observing physics teachers at Evanston Township High School, and I will begin my student teaching in January. While I've been there, I have had some great conversations about physics education, and am working with wonderful mentor teachers. Now I'm just ready to get started!

I hope that this year has brought everyone happiness, and I look forward to reading about and hopefully even hearing from some of you! Have a wonderful 2005!

Liz McDowell
Email: semcdowe@umich.edu
Address: 1035 North Main Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone: (734) 657-3379

I seem to have missed contributing to the alumni newsletter so far, but I'm determined to get this in this year! I seem to be already in my third year working on a Biophysics Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and I'm now even an official Ph.D. candidate! This is also my second year on the NSF graduate research fellowship. (Thank you for the recommendations!) My thesis project is generally about using fluorescence techniques and some computer simulations to answer questions about the structure, dynamics, and function of catalytic RNA.

Not surprisingly, grad school takes up most of my time, but I also have some fun teaching an Aikido class to home schooled kids, reading 3rd grade math assignments, and entertaining my cats. Last week I interviewed a prospective Carleton student, and realized that I still miss many things about Carleton, especially the professors who really care about teaching!

John Parejko
Email: parejkoj@drexel.edu
URL: http://www.physics.drexel.edu/~parejkoj/

The years seem to roll by faster and faster. Or maybe that is just because I haven't been sleeping much... I'm out of practice!

In September I started graduate study at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, PA, right across the street from the University of Pennsylvania: I go to most of their colloquia as well! I don't have a research topic yet, but I've been looking into active galactic nuclei a little bit. The department is small, but the people are great. Not quite as great as the Carleton physics department, but that is a hard crowd to beat!

My time with Cassini ended in August. I got a chance to go to the Saturn Orbital Insertion shindig at Jet Propulsion Labs, which was great fun. Our instrument's cover blew off, as it was supposed to, and we got our first real data! Of course, we still haven't quite figured out what we saw, but that's the fun of science. I'm still in touch with the folks at the University of Michigan; so if anyone wants to hear more about Saturn and Cassini/Huygens or is interested in the Space Physics REU there, please let me know!

Otherwise, I'm eating plenty of ice cream, not biking or sleeping enough, and trying to get into the observatory here (16" Meade LX200; modern, but not as classy as the refractors in Goodsell) whenever I get a chance.

If you are ever in Philadelphia, look me up! I'm still learning my way around, but there is definitely plenty to do in this town.

Ghidewon Arefe
Email: mailto:ghidewonarefe@yahoo.com

Since graduation, I’ve been working as a development engineer for Rosemount Inc. in Chanhassen, MN. Recently, I’ve started to make the transition back to school as I’m taking classes part-time at the University of Minnesota in Mechanical Engineering. I’m hoping to specialize in nano-technology, which should allow me to use my physics background. Carl Ebeling (aka Don Carlo) and I went on an overseas adventure this past summer and hope to do so again this coming year.

Bryan Donald
Email: bryan.Donald@alumni.carleton.edu
Address: 1582 Jones Drive, Ann Arbor, MI, 48105

I am in Biomedical Engineering graduate school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. I’m starting my first year in the fall of 2004 with a focus in medical imaging. I worked at the University of Wisconsin at Madison for the past year in their Medical Physics Department doing MRI research

Brian Joyce
Email: brianjoyce7@hotmail.com
Address: 459 provident, Winnetka, IL 60093
Phone: (847) 446-2197

As for how I'm doing, I have no major complaints. I am, regrettably, living with my parents near Chicago now, but I plan on moving into the city in a couple of months. Job wise, I'm the research associate for a small medical practice out here in the suburbs. The work is more or less interesting, and those of you paying close attention to medical literature might very well see my name attached to a few more papers in coming months.

Well that's all I've got. Things are pretty dull, and I've very envious of those of you up at Carleton, but I'm looking forward to exploring all Chicago has to offer soon enough.

Tim O’Connell
Email: oconnelt2003@yahoo.com
Address: 3103 Yorktown Drive, Columbia, MO 65203

I am in my second year of electrical engineering grad school at the University of Illinois in Urbana. I should have a Master’s degree by May and if I pass qualifying Exam, stay for a Ph.D. I’m playing on a men’s league soccer team and a summer softball team. I came back to Northfield for an alumni game in September. I went to a Cardinals-Dodgers playoff game two weeks ago (Oct 12). That’s about it. Hope all is well at Carleton; I can’t wait for the 5-year reunion.

Nate Pogue
Email: poguen@tamu.edu

Still in grad school at Texas A & M University at College Station Texas and I am continually searching for my field of interest. I spent a term at the Cyclotron Institute here in nuclear physics, then a term in a STM lab looking at designer superlattices. Next term I’ll take a look at theoretical cosmology. They are building a large astrophysics department here, so I’ll see if that peaks my interest.

It’s about halfway through November and it is still 70 something, which is nice, but I miss the snow and the cold oddly enough. Anyway, if any of you pilgrims mosey on down to the Lone Star State and need a place to water your horse and get some grub then give me a holler.

Matthew Strait
Address: 1004 1/2 Lowry Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN 55418
Phone: (612) 788-0168

After a year taken off to waffle about what I'm doing with my life, I have entered the University of Minnesota's physics graduate program. As you might expect, I'm busy with classes and being a TA. It seems likely that once I'm eligible, I will join a neutrino-related research group here. Over this last summer, I worked for Marvin Marshak. Most of the time I spent analyzing data from Soudan 2, but I spent two weeks underneath Soudan 2 itself helping to disassemble it. Even that rather menial job was pretty cool, so I think I'm stuck.

In case I haven't mentioned it before somehow, I got married to Kelly Tolle '02 the summer after I graduated. She's working on a Ph.D. at UMN too, in Biomedical Engineering. So we're both pretty busy all the time.

In the few hours each week when I'm not doing class work or grading, I've managed to squeeze in some volunteer work for the local Green Party.

Joey Durham
Email: joey.durham@gmail.com

I returned to California and am pursuing both a job and, at some point, graduate school. Currently, I am working with the Stanford U team going after the DARPA Grand Challenge, racing a fully automated car 150 miles through the desert. I'm also trying to start a company or get Google interested in using new group choice algorithms (de-politized voting) in an online context. Hope all is well at Carleton and for all my fellow new alums!

Daniel Krawisz
Email: 'danielatthingobjectentitydotnet'

I haven't had any adventures, but you might want to check out the black hole stuff on my website at www.thingobjectentity.net/BlackHoleDescent.html

Clark Ritz
Address: 2801 Century Harbor RD #4, Middleton, WI 53562
Phone: (608) 827-9716

It seems a little soon to be an alum. I just graduated a few months ago! Then again, a lot has happened in that short time. I moved to Tennessee and lived with my fiancée family while I worked at Oak Ridge National Lab for a few months. After leaving that job at the end of July, Megan (Econ '03) and I got married and moved to Madison to be grad students. We bought a condo out in Middleton and have enough debt now to be considered grown-ups, I think.

We had a bit of a rough start here, but things have settled down a bit. Our moving van broke down in Illinois on the trip up, we witnessed a violent armed robbery at a pizza place our first week in town, and someone broke into the garage in our development two days after that. Everyone in Madison has been shocked to hear the story, and it has been smooth sailing since then. Well, as smooth as graduate school can be. And, several painting projects later, I really like the way our place is turning out. I always thought that décor somehow grew organically and somehow propagated itself around homes. I guess I still have a few things to learn.

That's pretty much it. We got married, bought a place, and moved to Madison.
By the way, I'd be interested in that tenure track, experimental position if you'd be willing to hold it for, say ... six years or so for me.

Ashley Ross
Email: aross2@astro.uiuc.edu

Things are going all right here. My main "adventure" is trying to deal with grading over 250 student reports and tests. (The tests are on bubble sheets, but dealing with all of the data is still a pain.) Classes are going well, I don't really feel like I'm doing much more work per class than I was at Carleton, so I guess I was prepared well. Being my first year, I’m still try to figure out exactly what I want to do, but soon I’m going to begin working with the quasar group. The focus is trying to use the quasars as cosmological probes through use of Sloan data.
I'll be back at Carleton for a quick visit at the end of your trimester. I'll be sure to come by the department.

Jorge Silva
Email: hambry@hotmail.com

I am currently doing what they like to call the Postgraduate Bridging Year (PBY) in Theoretical Particle Physics at the University of Manchester. In other words, this year I will be taking certain advanced courses that will help me get better prepared for next year, which is the MSc year. This year I will be taking courses such as: Advanced Quantum Mechanics, Math, Methods for Physicists, Electrodynamics, Chaotic Dynamics (I hope Arjendu reads this), and Particle Physics (among others). The physics department here is really nice. It's kind of like the Carleton Physics Department, except that this one is huge, and all the lectures have lots of students. The physics building (called Schuster Laboratory) is a big 8-story building with 4 big lecture theaters.

I am really enjoying Manchester. There are lots of students here (like 40,000), so the people here are generally pretty young. It doesn't get as cold here as it does in Minnesota, but it rains A LOT (it rains every other day). The good thing is that everything is so green. Here are a few of the things I like about Manchester:
There are pubs all over the place, they don't check for ID in the pubs. There are a lot of Indian (and Nepali) restaurants, and I like the fish and chips and their accents.

David Steussy
Email: steussyd@gmail.com
Address: 800 N. Smith Rd. Apt 26Y, Bloomington, IN 47408

As for “current adventures”, I'm a technical hourly at the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility and am working with Mark Leuschner doing mostly computer programming work. A lot of the work is computer modeling trying to optimize an instrument for the Low Energy Neutron Source they are working on out here at the cyclotron.

Kelen Tuttle
Email: kelen_tuttle@yahoo.com

I'm currently a grad student at the Knight Center for Science and Medical Journalism, where I'm learning the art of explaining hard science to the general public. They keep telling us to think of the general public as a group of smart 14-year olds—boy do I miss Carleton at those moments! But at least the program is in Boston. Finally a city where there's always something going on and the Taco Bell doesn't close at 9! Alas, winter is beginning to set in, but I'm hoping that after four years in Minnesota it will feel like spring. Hope all is well with you guys—drop me a line at mailto:kelen_tuttle@yahoo.comif you're ever in Boston.