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Karen Smyers '83 (Elaine Debitetto)

Triathletes train for endurance, and longtime pro Karen Smyers '83 has endured more than most: a bout with thyroid cancer, a collision with an 18-wheel truck, and another accident that nearly severed her hamstring, not to mention the everyday hurdles of preparing to race the daunting Ironman distances – a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run.

Smyers, who swam competitively at Princeton, dominated the U.S. women's triathlon scene in the 1990s and won gold at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii in 1995. In fact, she won two major Ironman titles in a two-week span that year – "perhaps the single most remarkable achievement in the sport to date," according to USA Triathlon, which inducted Smyers into its Hall of Fame in 2008. 

This weekend, Smyers returns to Hawaii for what may be her last Ironman as a professional, and in addition to racing her competitors on the course, she is aiming to win the event's top charity prize by raising money for children and families affected by pediatric brain tumors. She chose her cause to honor Robert Duffy Jr., the late son of a friend and teammate. Through Oct. 5, Smyers had raised nearly $34,000.

Related links:

An appreciation from "Team Psycho" teammate Dede Griesbauer

More information about the Matthew Larson Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation

USA Triathlon's profile of Karen Smyers

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW's Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Shawn Du '14, left, and Jiho Lee '13 compete in the "Wii Wars" portion of Cane Spree, a nontraditional part of Princeton's traditional fall showdown between the freshman and sophomore classes. The Sept. 27 events, which included the Nintendo Wii games, proved to be a turning point for the Class of 2014. The freshmen took their first lead in the standings and held on for victory Sept. 29. (Photo by Habin Chung '12)
 

John Dabiri '01 (Courtesy the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Engineer John Dabiri ’01 draws design inspiration from unusual sources, including jellyfish, whose efficient propulsion mechanism has influenced designs for energy-efficient underwater vehicles and wind power turbines, as well as medical research on blood flow. His work in fluid dynamics, featured in PAW last October, earned him a spot on the Popular Science "Brilliant 10" in 2008. This week, Dabiri received another boost when he was selected for a $500,000 no-strings-attached MacArthur Fellowship – popularly known as a "genius grant."

At age 30, Dabiri is the youngest of this year's 23 MacArthur Fellows. The son of Nigerian immigrants who settled in Toledo, Ohio, he majored in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and first studied jellyfish as a summer researcher at Caltech after his junior year. Mory Gharib, the Caltech professor who led that project, later became his doctoral adviser. Dabiri received his Ph.D. from Caltech in 2005 and joined the faculty a month later.

Dabiri, who regularly travels around the world to study different jellyfish in their natural habitats, told The Los Angeles Times that he plans to use some of the MacArthur grant on swimming lessons: "Oddly enough, I never learned to swim," he said. "For once, it will be nice to study jellyfish from close up instead of from the other side of the glass."

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW's Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

The Sept. 22 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly features Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Ross Ohlendorf '05, one of three alumni currently in the major leagues. In all, there have been 25 Tigers to reach baseball's highest level. Some lasted only one game, while others played for a decade or more. Brief bios of each are included below.

Moe Berg '23 (The Daily Princetonian Larry Dupraz Digital Archives)

Charlie Caldwell '25 (The Daily Princetonian Larry Dupraz Digital Archives)

Charles "King" Lear 1914 (The Daily Princetonian Larry Dupraz Digital Archives)

Marvin Bressler (John T. Miller/Office of Communications)

 

Robert Tucker (Robert Matthews/Office of Communications)

Memorial services for emeritus professors Marvin Bressler and Robert Tucker will be held on campus in October.

The service for Tucker will take place Friday, Oct. 1, at 2 p.m. in the University Chapel.

The service for Bressler will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 10, at Dodds Auditorium in Robertson Hall. A reception will follow from 5 to 7 p.m. at Prospect House.

Tucker, a professor of politics and international affairs who wrote two widely read biographies of Joseph Stalin, died in Princeton July 29. He was 92.

Tucker gained his expertise on the Soviet Union first-hand, traveling to Moscow in 1944 for what would be a nine-year stay at the U.S. embassy. At Princeton, he served on the faculty from 1962 to 1984 and was the founder and first director of the Program in Russian Studies.

Bressler, a popular teacher and adviser in the sociology department who left a lasting mark on the University’s curricular and extracurricular offerings, died July 7 in Skillman, N.J. He was 87.

Bressler served on the Princeton faculty for 30 years, including 20 as the sociology department chairman, and headed the Commission on the Future of the College in the early 1970s. He was a longtime mentor for the men’s basketball team and inspired the Academic-Athletic Fellow Program, which connects faculty and staff with varsity sports teams. Three Princeton classes -- 1968, 1971, and 1982 -- inducted Bressler as an honorary member.

Details about contributing to the Bressler Fund for Studies in Education are included in the University's announcement of the Oct. 10 memorial.

Daniel Catán *77 (Courtesy Los Angeles Opera)

 

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Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW's Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Composer and librettist Daniel Catán *77 has created a handful of well-regarded operas, including Florencia en el Amazonas, which premiered in 1996 as the first Spanish-language opera commissioned by a major American company, and Salsipuedes, A Tale of Love, War, and Anchovies, which debuted at the Houston Grand Opera in 2004. But Catán’s newest work may be his most-anticipated: Il Postino, a Spanish-language operatic adaptation of the Academy Award-winning 1994 film (and the 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia, which inspired the movie), will debut Sept. 23, opening the 25th anniversary season of the Los Angeles Opera.

Superstar tenor Plácido Domingo will sing the lead role of Pablo Neruda in Il Postino, which was commissioned in 2005. Domingo, who also directs the Los Angeles Opera, said in a release that he’d been hoping to collaborate with Catán for several years. “When he told me that he was working on an operatic adaptation of Il Postino, I immediately felt that Pablo Neruda was a role that I very much wanted to bring to life,” Domingo said.

Catán, a native of Mexico, studied philosophy and music in Great Britain as an undergraduate and earned his Ph.D. in music from Princeton, studying under Milton Babbitt *92, Benjamin Boretz *70, and James K. Randall *58. “They were very inclusive in their outlook and they worked at helping their students find their own voices,” Catan told Opera Today in a July 2010 interview. “I knew from the beginning that I wanted to write opera. I always found that having a dramatic text was very inspirational for me. That really got my creative ideas flowing.” 

At the end of spring practice, new Princeton football coach Bob Surace ’90 set conditioning as a high priority, and the team took it seriously, he said, working out in the summer months and returning to campus in prime shape. Surace promised to test that fitness on the final day of preseason camp, laying out a series of tasks that would serve as a grueling final exam. 

9-14-10 UPDATE: Starting lineups for the season opener at Lehigh

 

Nancy Weiss Malkiel (Photo by Denise Applewhite/Office of Communications)

 

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If you have a favorite story or experience with Dean Malkiel to share, please add it to the comments section below.

Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel will step down from her position at the end of the 2010-11 academic year, the University announced Sept. 8. Malkiel is entering her 24th year as dean of the college, the longest period of service for anyone in that post. Only Andrew Fleming West, the graduate school dean from 1901 to 1928, served longer as a Princeton dean.

Malkiel, a historian who joined the Princeton faculty in 1969, has been a driving force in a range of initiatives at Princeton, including the four-year college system, freshman seminars, and the writing program. In recent years, she led the University's effort to curb grade inflation through a set of guidelines adopted by the faculty in April 2004.

President Tilghman said in a University release that Malkiel "has had an enormously positive impact on undergraduate students at Princeton, by her focus on the quality of the instruction they receive and their experience in the residential colleges." Provost Christopher Eisgruber '83 added that Malkiel's leadership in the residential college initiatives "enabled Princeton to achieve goals that date from Woodrow Wilson's day."

Eisgruber, who will head the search for Malkiel's successor, said that the University hopes to select a new dean by the end of January.

PAW will take a closer look at Malkiel's legacy at Princeton in the Oct. 13 print edition.

Princeton economist Burton Malkiel *64 shared strategies for getting the economy back on track. [Fox Business]

Steve Forbes '70 and former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker '49 sat down to discuss causes of the financial crisis. [Forbes.com]

W.S. Merwin '48, the new U.S. poet laureate, "brings a strong environmental viewpoint to his new post," according to a recent profile. [Los Angeles Times]

European basketball standout Judson Wallace '05 is taking his talents to the Canary Islands. [ACB.com]

A recent Q&A with Jodi Picoult '87 and Jennifer Weiner '91 covered the controversial topic of how women authors are perceived by book critics. [Huffington Post]

At the start of the school year, Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw '80 shared his "advice for students of all ages." [New York Times]

The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions has penalized Princeton University for a major violation involving impermissible payment for a women's tennis player's educational expenses. According to a Sept. 8 NCAA release, an alumnus provided approximately $33,000 for tuition and books for one varsity player over the course of three semesters in 2007-08. Neither the player nor the alumnus were named.

Two penalties were levied by the committee: public reprimand and censure; and vacation of the student-athlete's individual records for the three semesters in question -- fall 2007, spring 2008, and fall 2008. Because the violation was limited in scope and self-reported by the alumnus and the University, the committee "imposed only minimal penalties," the NCAA release said, and chose not to put the women's tennis team on probation. This was Princeton's first major infraction case, according to the Public Infractions Report.

President Tilghman responded to the ruling in a Princeton release. "We looked closely at the circumstances surrounding this isolated and inadvertent infraction and at the relationship between the alumnus and the student's family, and we are convinced that even though the alumnus is a long-time supporter of tennis at Princeton, he was acting only with the interest of helping a family friend pursue an educational opportunity for which her parents were not willing to provide financial support," Tilghman said. "We do not believe that this should have been characterized as a major violation, but we certainly regret the infraction and remain firmly committed to complying with all NCAA rules."