Ralph Fjelstad, emeritus professor of government at Carleton College, died on Tuesday, March 2, 1999. He was 83.

Bill Hillsman, the man behind the creative award-winning campaign ads for U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone and Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, will speak at Carleton College’s Friday Convocation on Feb. 26, 1999, at 10:50 a.m. in Skinner Memorial Chapel. He will discuss the influence of money and the media on the political process, and how the growing partisanship of the major parties is driving voters away from participating in the election process.

Carleton College President Stephen R. Lewis, Jr., has announced he will take a sabbatical from January to March 1999 as approved by the College’s Board of Trustees. Dean of the College Elizabeth McKinsey will serve as acting president during his absence. McKinsey will continue to serve in her current position as well.

Carleton College has been awarded two grants totaling $695,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York. $445,000 will be used to support four two-year postdoctoral fellowships and $250,000 will strengthen the College’s faculty development program.

Gary Grant, the founding president of the National Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association and director of the National Land Loss
Fund, will speak at Carleton College on Thursday, Feb. 11, at 8 p.m., in Skinner Memorial Chapel, which is located near the main entrance to Carleton on the corner of College and First streets.

The explosive thrills of American vaudeville theater will be featured this Friday at Carleton College, as Greg Palmer, the award-winning producer of the PBS documentary “Vaudeville,” and father of Carleton sophomore Ira Palmer, presents the College’s weekly convocation at 10:50 a.m. in the Concert Hall.

For Carleton College senior Melissa Salzman, participation in a recent off-campus studies program turned into the experience of a lifetime. She spent 12 weeks last winter in Nicaragua, where she was awakened each morning at six by the shouts of a street vendor. While her classmates slept in, Salzman left her host family’s apartment in Managua to volunteer at the only public children’s hospital in the nation’s capital.

Four times in the last eight years, a team of talented students from Carleton College has traveled to the Costa Rican rainforest for an intense two weeks of “kamikaze science.”

Associate Dean of Admissions Jennifer Hantho has been appointed executive assistant to the president at Carleton College. She will begin the new position Nov. 23. Her responsibilities will include managing the day-to-day operations of the president’s office, and representing President Stephen R. Lewis, Jr., both on- and off-campus. Hantho replaces Joe Hargis, who has been appointed director of College Relations.

By studying the reproductive habits of a mast-seeding high alpine grass, a Carleton College biologist has found that an increase in temperature causes the grass to flower more often, providing more food for its insect predators and threatening its potential for survival. His research may have implications for more common mast-seeding species, such as pine, spruce, birch and beech trees.