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From left, NRDC Forces of Nature honorees Shelly Malkin ’86, Anthony Malkin, and Sheryl Crow. (Photo by Anthony Clark/NRDC).

April has been a rewarding month for artist and conservationist Shelly Malkin ’86. A new exhibit of her African wildlife paintings, inspired by a 2007 trip to Kenya, opened at Kiernan Hall and Nature Art Gallery in her hometown of Greenwich, Conn., earning positive reviews. The New York Times said that Malkin’s paintings “speak to the simplicity of animal life,” and The Danbury News Times said her “use of soft, bright colors, along with her intimate perspective, instill a sense of unrestrained majesty.”

Malkin also was honored with the prestigious Forces of Nature award from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an organization she serves as a trustee.

When Alycia Zimmerman ’04’s third-grade class at P.S. 33, Chelsea Prep, in New York City began researching Princeton for a school project, she saw that her students had quite an appetite for all things orange and black, from videos and photos to facts and figures about the University. For their final presentation, titled “Princeton’s Secrets Revealed,” each student provided answers to one “mystery” that they encountered. (For example, “How do 70 miles of bookshelves fit in Firestone Library?”).

Zimmerman, in her fourth year as a New York City Teaching Fellow, said that her class is “pretty extraordinary,” and it showed in their presentation at Chelsea Prep’s College Fair in March. A field trip to Princeton, she thought, would be a great way to cap the project. Funding through her school was not available, so she tried using the Web site DonorsChoose.org to raise about $400 for group-rate train tickets on New Jersey Transit.

For a few weeks, the project drew no interest. But when Zimmerman explained the trip in a message to an alumni listserv in early April, the response was immediate. She posted her note (“Send 3rd Graders to Princeton Please”) on a Tuesday night, and when she woke up Wednesday morning, the entire project had been funded by alumni donors.

By Brittany Urick ’10

In front of a standing-room only audience in the Friend Center April 13, former Democratic National Committee chairman and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean delivered a lecture titled “Obama, The President of a New Generation of Americans” and urged students to continue the political involvement seen during the 2008 presidential election.

Dean highlighted the election of the first multiracial president as a quintessential example of American exceptionalism, breaking with the cynicism that increasingly crept into American politics during George W. Bush’s presidency. People around the world, especially Europeans, were inspired by the outcome, he said.

“Why did they love it? Because we are back,” Dean said. “We did something that nobody else in the world would do. … When the mold is broken it always raises extraordinary hope among human beings.”

By Katherine Federici Greenwood

In February and March, three alumni playwrights — Lia Romeo ’03, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins ’06, and Najla Said ’96 — premiered new works that touched on subjects ranging from love to minstrel performers and personal identity. Below are snapshots of the plays and their creators.

Lia Romeo ’03’s latest play, “Green Whales,” premiered in March at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. She has called it a “romantic comedy about pedophilia and alcoholism and death” in which she explores the idea that “whatever issues each of us has, there’s someone out there who will still want to love us … but … this love will not necessarily be enough to redeem us.” Romeo, who earned an MFA in playwriting from Rutgers University, was the playwright-in-residence at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey for the 2008-09 season. She’s currently working on her first novel, titled Dating the Devil.

Green Whales: In the opening scene of the play, two sisters, Karen and Joanna, are returning from their mother’s funeral. A love story centers on Karen, a brilliant but dateless 38-year-old philosophy professor who suffers from Turner syndrome — a genetic disorder that makes her look like a teenager. Her wacky alcoholic sister, Joanna, comes up with a plan to find Karen’s “perfect” match — a man with pedophiliac tendencies — while navigating her own tenuous relationship.

Anthony Lake *69 *74’s career has included service at the State Department, a four-year stretch as President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, and more than a decade of teaching at Georgetown University. In March, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Lake’s next post: executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Lake brings substantial experience to the job. He has served for nine years on the board of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and he has been chairman of the Marshall Legacy Institute, an organization that alleviates suffering and nurtures stability in war-torn countries by establishing affordable and sustainable programs to remove landmines and assist survivors.

Lake’s appointment has drawn support from the diplomatic community. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said Lake “will bring extraordinary experience, strategic vision, passion and energy to UNICEF’s essential work,” and UNICEF’s current executive director, Ann Veneman, said that Lake’s “abilities and extensive experience, including on the Board of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, well-equip him to lead the global agenda for children.” Lake’s term begins May 1.

(Photo courtesy of Georgetown University)

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.

Student demonstrators erected a narrow wall near the northern entrance of Frist Campus Center April 8 to protest the barriers and checkpoints that Israel has constructed in the West Bank. Protesters collected signatures on two petitions: one urging the Israeli government to release Palestinian prisoners, and another demanding that the U.S. government cut off military aid to Israel.

The demonstration was supported by two campus organizations, the Princeton chapter of Amnesty International and the Princeton Committee on Palestine, and one non-University group, the Princeton Middle East Society. By Giri Nathan ’13

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Seniors in the Woodrow Wilson School celebrated the completion of their theses April 7 by jumping into — and in some cases, paddling around — the Fountain of Freedom in front of Robertson Hall.

(Photo by Habin Chung ’12)

By Giri Nathan ’13

It took an earthquake for the world to realize Haiti’s plight, but the nation is ready to re-create itself, said Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, in a speech on campus April 6.

“This earthquake has shaken up everything, and everyone,” Joseph told a full audience at Dodds Auditorium. “You’ll never be able to put Humpty Dumpty together the same way.”

Joseph recounted much of Haiti’s troubled history, but stressed the current opportunity to rebuild anew with international attention. “I see a silver lining in it already, because for the first time, people are just focusing on Haiti,” he said.

Decentralization will be crucial to the rise of a “new Haiti,” according to Joseph. In the past, everything was concentrated in Port-au-Prince, he said, including the airport, the seaport, the University of Haiti, and cultural resources.

March 30 marked a homecoming for Sally Blount ’83, the next dean of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Blount, an engineering systems and Woodrow Wilson School major at Princeton, received her Ph.D. from Kellogg, and in her introductory meeting with students, she shared her excitement for the new job, which she will begin in July. Finance professor Janice Eberly, chairwoman of the dean search committee, also was upbeat, saying that Blount “is ready to take Kellogg to the next level.”

Blount, a former consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, has taught at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and New York University’s Stern School of Business. Most recently, she served as the vice dean at Stern, overseeing innovations in the undergraduate business curriculum and setting records as a fund-raiser.

Kellogg ranked third in Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s latest list of top business schools — behind the University of Chicago and Harvard — and the magazine gave the new dean high marks in an April 1 feature story:

“Blount is a bold choice for Kellogg — a master fund-raiser at a time when Kellogg’s endowment sustained annual losses of 26 percent in 2009 and a curriculum innovator with a global bent and extensive international experience at a time when Kellogg is seeking to continue extending its global reach.”

(Photo courtesy of New York University, Stern School of Business)

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.

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April 7 marks the 110th anniversary of PAW’s first issue, pictured at right, and to celebrate, The Weekly Blog flipped through the 14 pages that launched our magazine.

By linking alumni with the University, The Princeton Alumni Weekly aimed to serve both constituencies, as the first editors wrote:

“The only way for colleges to test their work is to raise their heads occasionally from academic introspection, and look about in the world of men. Perhaps they have been doing well by their sons; if so, it is good to know it. Peradventure wrongly; it is better to know that.”

The content that interested alumni then is not altogether different from what interests PAW’s readers today. One of the magazine’s top priorities was to report on endowments and finances, including rates of return for the last 20 years — details that previously had not been made public. The first issue highlighted campus events, including a pair of lectures by former U.S. President Grover Cleveland, then a Princeton resident.

Class news and obituaries held a prominent place in the second half of the magazine. One example, from the Class of 1896 column: “Gordon Johnston, formerly of the Rough Riders, is now a lieutenant of the 43rd Regiment, serving in the Philippines. … Lieut. Johnston distinguished himself for bravery by putting to rout with a small band over a thousand armed Filipinos after a hard day’s work in saving a town from a fire started by the enemy.”

Second baseman Noel Gonzales-Luna ’10’s 12th-inning single drove in two runs and gave BASEBALL a 4-3 win over Harvard April 3 in the Ivy League opener for both teams. The Tigers split their doubleheader with the Crimson and also split two games against Dartmouth the following day.

SOFTBALL senior Jamie Lettire hit her 36th and 37th career home runs in a doubleheader against Dartmouth April 3, tying the Princeton home-run record held by Melissa Finley ’05. But the Tigers dropped both games and opened Ivy play with four consecutive losses.

Tyler Fiorito ’12 made a career-high 17 saves as MEN’S LACROSSE beat Brown, 9-7, in Foxborough, Mass., April 3. The Tigers improved to 7-1 entering their much-anticipated matchup with Syracuse, the two-time defending national champion, at the new Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., April 10.

Distinguished mathematician John Tate *50, who has been selected to receive the 2010 Abel Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, has left a lasting mark on the theory of numbers. In fact, more than a dozen important mathematical concepts bear his name, including the Tate conjecture, the Tate module, Tate cohomology, the Tate duality theorem, Barsotti-Tate groups, the Tate motive, and Tate’s algorithm.

As University of Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy wrote, “[M]athematicians have coined a new concept: the Tate index, defined as the time it takes to give a talk on number theory before you mention the name Tate. In general this is a very small number.”

Tate’s revolutionary thinking began with his Ph.D. work at Princeton. His dissertation, or “Tate’s thesis,” continues to be a lecture topic in college-level courses.