Eric Janus ’68 has been named the vice dean for academic affairs at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. Janus has been teaching at William Mitchell since 1984, after 11 years as staff and managing attorney for Minneapolis Legal Aid. He is a national expert on public policy approaches to sexual violence and helped to establish William Mitchell’s Law and Psychiatry Clinic. Janus majored in mathematics at Carleton.

Anne Patrick, the William H. Laird Professor of Religion and the Liberal Arts, gave a lecture titled “Conscience in Process: Becoming a More Confident Decision-Maker” at St. Bernard’s School of Theology in Rochester, N.Y.

Qiguang Zhao, the Burton and Lily Levin Professor of Chinese, published an article titled “Appearances of Chinese and Western Dragons” in the February 2004 issue of China Information.

Wally Weitz, a 1970 Carleton graduate and a member of the Board of Trustees, has been named to USA Today’s All-Star Mutual Fund Team. Weitz manages the Weitz Partners Value fund in Omaha. In its February 23 issue, USA Today says: “Wally Weitz sees his fund as a sort of bridge between short-term traders and long-term investors: When traders panic, he gets good stocks cheap.”

Carleton seniors Maria Coryell-Martin of Seattle, Lesanna Dobrahner of Northfield and Nathan Senner of Anchorage all have been named Watson Fellows for 2004-2005. A Watson Fellowship is a one-year grant for independent study and travel outside of the United States.

Robert Packer, associate professor of political science, was quoted in a March 14 Star Tribune article titled “War in Iraq: One year later.” Packer’s study of wars suggests that the issue of the missing weapons of mass destruction may threaten the long-term prospects of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

Steven Schier, the Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, was quoted in a March 14 Seattle Times article titled “Kerry in race to become familiar” about the developing presidential campaign. “This is a good test of whether or not people are set in stone,” said Schier. “If it’s really all about Bush, you’re not going to see a lot of movement.”

Carleton’s plans for a wind turbine were featured in a March 13 Star Tribune article titled “Reaping the wind: Carleton planning energy turbine.” Carleton will sell the clean energy produced by the turbine, which should pay for itself within 10 years.

Fourteen Carleton student volunteers participating in the Habitat for Humanity International Collegiate Challenge were featured in a March 12 Meriweather (Miss.) Vindicator article titled “Students plan spring break: Habitat work in Greenville” and a March 24 series of articles in the Manchester (Miss.) Star Mercury titled ” ‘House this’ for vacation?” Carleton students interviewed included Helena Costa ’05, Kathryn Grover ’05 and Robyn Hendrix ’05. In addition to helping build a Habitat house, the volunteers also ate lunch at a local middle school and spent an hour each day in classrooms with the students. The local Habitat affiliate said this was the best group of students with whom they had worked.

Jack Goldfeather, professor of mathematics and computer science, recently published two articles. The first, titled “Tracking in Virtual Reality,” appeared in the February 2003 issue of Math Horizons published by the Mathematical Association of America. The second, co-authored with V. Interrante and titled “A Novel Cubic-Order Algorithm for Approximating Principal Direction Vectors,” appeared in the January 2004 issue of ACM Transactions on Graphics.