Familiar Faces

The June 2009 issue of Dartmouth Life was on its way to the recycling bin when a photograph featuring a familiar face – two actually – caught my eye. The shot is of former placekicker Andrew Kempler '08 and a classmate posing with Brian Conroy '86.

An undersized nose guard who showed his love for the game playing with the junior varsity, Conroy has demonstrated his love for the college by helping scores of Dartmouth students get their careers started, including a good number of football players. From the Dartmouth Life story accompanying the photograph:

Brian Conroy '86, senior vice president at Fidelity Investments, says that networking is not just good for students; it's good for organizations. "The payback is terrific," says Conroy, who has spoken with hundreds of Dartmouth students over the past 20 years. "It's my way of connecting to the College that I love, and you get close to high performers with a liberal arts background who often have international experience. These are high-caliber applicants."

(The same issue of Dartmouth Life has a story I freelanced on baseball catcher Jack Monahan '09.)

Last week's New York Times had a revealing story about college athletes and their insurance coverage in case of injury. The story begins this way:

After years of concerns about inadequate health coverage for college athletes, the National Collegiate Athletic Association started requiring universities to make sure their athletes had insurance before competing.

But the association never established clear standards for that coverage when it introduced the rule four years ago, leaving colleges to decide for themselves.

The story does not mention Dartmouth, but does include this about a neighboring school:

Some colleges provide for their athletes. At Middlebury College in Vermont, a Division III institution, all varsity athletes and students in club sports have accident insurance paid for by the college, said Tom Corbin, Middlebury’s business manager.

The Daily Dartmouth did a little digging in response to the story and has this brief note:

Parents of Dartmouth athletes will not have to pay for the treatment of many athletic injuries, according to a letter Dartmouth Athletics sent to the families of incoming student-athletes, although they do have a fund which can pay for 80 percent of athletics-related medical care after a $250 deductible, The letter also recommends that students enroll in the Dartmouth-sponsored insurance plan, saying that it provides “excellent coverage for sports medicine care.”

With that soon-to-be Hanover High School senior student-athlete looking at a number of highly selective colleges, another New York Times story suggested by a regular reader was at once enlightening and frightening. Under the headline, Before College, Costly Advice Just on Getting In, the Times writes a sometimes scathing piece about independent college counselors. It begins with look at a "free fashion show at a Greenwich, Conn., boutique in June (that) was billed as a crash course in dressing for a college admissions interview."

The story includes this quote from Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania: "I guess there are snake oil salesman in every field, and they are preying on vulnerable and anxious people."

A NYT blog offers a little background on the story along with reader comment after reader comment.

Michele Hernandez, the former Dartmouth admissions officer who has her own consulting firm, is quoted in the story.

Another link shared by a reader who knows I'm a blue-blood (Penn State blue, not Mayflower blue) points to a story in Pennsylvania's Harrisburg Patriot-News about a job fair to get game-day help for Penn State football games. The story notes that it takes about 3,000 people to put on a Penn State game – not counting the players ;-). Think about that. T-h-r-e-e t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d people just to help.