Sunday July 05, 2009  

 

 

Outdoor Action Frosh Trip 2009

We are busy getty ready for our largest Frosh Trip Program ever. We have over 300 OA Leaders and staff coming back to lead this fall. That's more leaders than most college outdoor orientation programs have participantsmaking OA the largest outdoor orientation program in the U.S. We expect over 700 members of the Class of 2013 for over 1,000 people involved in this year's program. Applications will be mailed to members of the Class of 2013 around May 27. The Online Application form and downloadable PDF forms will be available starting Thursday, June 4.

We are now accepting Wait List Applications

You will need your University NetID and Password to submit your application online. The NetIDs have been mailed to all members of the Class of 2013

• Online Application
• Frosh Trip Brochure 2009  or PDF
• Frosh Trip Information Letter 2009 or PDF
• Printable Application (PDF) & Health History Form (PDF) (you must submit your application online or complete and mail both of these forms)

Summer Climbing Wall Schedule

Tuesdays, 5:30 - 7:30 PM beginning June 9

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Fiona Miller '09 receives the Harold Willis Dodds Prize

June 1, 2009 - The Harold Willis Dodds Award is an annual award, established in 1957, to be given to the senior who best embodies the high example set by Harold Willis Dodds during his tenure a fifteenth President of Princeton University; particularly in the qualities of clear thinking, moral courage, a patient and judicious regard for the opinion of others, and a thoroughgoing devotion to the welfare of the University and to the life of the mind.

Fiona Miller, one of this year's recipients, is a Comparative Literature major from Northampton, Massachusetts is an outstanding student and serves as the Head Undergraduate Fellow at the Princeton Writing Program. During Fiona’s years at Princeton she has been a strong and visible leader in the LGBT community and her commitment to activism has been unwavering.  She has served as an officer in the Pride Alliance and has been a stalwart figure in that organization’s success.  She has helped organize many of the activities that support LGBT students, such as Pride Week, the Film Festival and National Coming Out Day to name a few, and has been particularly attuned to the needs of LGBT students of color.  She has been a central figure in the Peer Educator Program and has demonstrated outstanding leadership both in training new students for the program and in her presentations to freshmen. Perhaps her most significant contribution has been her informal leadership of the LGBT women’s community.  She hosted a weekly gathering for students which  served to build a strong sense of community for those who participated and provided a confidential space to discuss issues of identity. Fiona has also been active and committed participant in Princeton’s Outdoor Action program as both a trip leader and as a leader-trainer.

Senior Awards

The annual Outdoor Action Leader Awards for graduating seniors have been posted.

Elizabeth Dilday '09 selected for the Board of Trustees

June 10, 2009 - Princeton University has named six new members of its Board of Trustees. Elizabeth Dilday '09 of Long Beach, Calif., who graduated this year with an A.B. in history. She has devoted herself to the well-being of her peers through the Alcohol Coalition Committee, which she co-chaired last year, and Outdoor Action, which she served as a leader for three years. She played women's water polo for four years, guiding the team as captain for the last two. She also has been an officer of Cap and Gown Club, a class captain for Annual Giving, an Orange Key tour guide, a member of the Butler College Council and a peer health educator for the Eating Concerns Advisers. Next year Dilday will begin the Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program at Bryn Mawr College to complete her science prerequisites for medical school admissions.

Chris Simpson '09 wins the Dale Fellowship

Chris Simpson, one of the key staff at the Outdoor Action Climbing Wall over the past four years, has been selected as this year's recipient of the Dale Fellowship.

by Jennifer Greenstein Altmann

May 14, 2009 - The summer after his freshman year at Princeton, Christopher Simpson returned home to South Kingstown, R.I., where he had lined up a part-time job at a hotel. But when he learned that a local art center was going to sit vacant all summer, he gathered some high school friends and, in a moment of impetuosity, said to them, "Let's do a play!"

The production of Neil Simon's "Rumors," which Simpson directed, was so successful that he established the nonprofit Courthouse Theater Company at the center and, serving as its artistic director and CEO, spent subsequent summers directing plays there. Now, as he nears the end of his senior year, Simpson is poised to direct again — the first time the theater will put on a full season — as the 2009 winner of the Martin Dale Fellowship. 

The $30,000 fellowship is awarded annually to a graduating senior to allow him or her "to devote the year following graduation to an independent project of extraordinary merit that will widen the recipient's experience of the world and significantly enhance his or her personal growth and intellectual development."

"This is an opportunity most theater artists don't get," Simpson said. "Thanks to the Dale, we have the chance to do these shows without worrying, 'What if a play is a failure?' It's a great safety net."

Simpson always has loved performing in and directing plays, but it wasn't until he took a directing workshop with Tim Vasen, a lecturer in theater and dance and the Lewis Center for the Arts, that his approach to theater began to crystallize for him.

"The class confirmed for me that the way I think of directing — as a collaboration — is a valid approach that actually works," Simpson said.

To Simpson, a director's job is "is to take the good things that are happening among the writers, the actors and the designers and expand on them, pushing the group to greater heights," he said.

Robert Sandberg, a lecturer in theater and dance and the Lewis Center, said, "All over the country, theaters are laying off staff, downsizing their seasons and even going out of business. But here's Chris, with his Dale Fellowship, transforming a small summer theater into a full-fledged, year-round operation. ... It shows how gutsy, determined and forward-thinking he is. He's turning the Dale's generosity to him into a gift for his entire town."

In addition to directing 10 plays at the theater in Rhode Island, Simpson has directed several projects at Princeton, including a 2008 production of "Hamlet," the annual Student Playwrights Festival and the University's 24-Hour Play Festival, a theatrical event for which new work is written, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours. He also worked on productions with the Program in Theater and Dance, the Princeton Shakespeare Company, Theater Intime and the Black Arts Company: Drama.

"The toughest thing to do in the American theater is to set oneself up as a director," said Michael Cadden, director of the Program in Theater and Dance. "Now Chris will be able to do what it is a young director needs to do most — direct. And he'll be in the happy position of directing plays he has chosen for an audience he already knows, many of whom are already familiar with his work from the summer seasons he has staged."

Simpson is majoring in comparative literature and earning certificates in African studies and theater and dance. He has combined those interests in original ways, such as when he directed a Princeton production of the East African play "Amezidi," which originally was written in Swahili by Tanzanian author Said Ahmed Mohamed. The play explores the lives of two characters who embrace fantasy to help them in their struggle with poverty.

Simpson began studying Swahili as a freshman. While taking time off from the University during the 2007-08 academic year, he traveled for three months in Kenya, where he worked with development organizations and with a theater company that allowed him to direct a production of "Amezidi" in Swahili. After his return, he translated the play into English and directed a production on campus last October for his senior thesis.

In the coming year, Simpson plans to expand the mission of the newly renamed Contemporary Theater Company so that it eventually will operate as a community arts center, offering musical and visual arts programming, a summer camp and night classes for adults.

"I want to fill a need in the community and to help people find a means for self-expression in their everyday lives," said Simpson, who may pursue a master's degree in directing after the Dale Fellowship. He also hopes the theater company will demonstrate "that high-quality art is attainable on a local level, and can be available for everyone to enjoy, not just the wealthy and the elite." To that end, the top price for tickets to performances will be $10.

The seven plays Simpson will direct over the next year will be in a diverse range of styles and historical periods, all of them examining the theme of what happens when one's identity is tied up in material possessions that are lost. That subject will resonate with audience members during the current economic downturn, Simpson said. Among the plays he will direct are "Arsenic and Old Lace," "Little Shop of Horrors," "Melancholy Play" and "The Metamorphoses."

"I want to present real-world issues through these texts, but at the same time make it entertaining," he said.

Outdoor Action Receives High Meadows Sustainability Funding for a Second Year

Outdoor Action also has received a second year of funding toward its goal of becoming more sustainable, both on and off the trail. The experiential learning program for entering freshmen held each fall before the start of classes will continue to disseminate sustainability information to more than 900 students annually. Last year, the funding provided the support to research and develop a sustainability curriculum for Outdoor Action leaders.

Support the OA Climbing Program through the Joe Palmer ’84 Memorial Fund For the first twenty-five years of the OA Climbing Wall, students paid to use the facility in order to offset the costs of equipment and to cover the wages of the student Climbing Wall Staff. During the spring of 2008 we received a one-time grant through Janet Dickerson, Vice President for Campus Life, to allow the Wall to be free for all students. Thanks to that support the number of students using the Wall doubled in one semester and we continue to operate the Wall free for undergraduates and graduate students. Joe Palmer ’84 was one of the keystones of OA’s climbing program in the eighties and helped to build the first climbing wall in 1983. He died in a climbing accident in Yosemite in 1985. A number Joe’s friends in the Class of ’84 and Joe’s family have instituted a special fund in memory of Joe to support the climbing program at Princeton. Our long term goal is to build an endowed fund in Joe’s name to generate $25,000 in annual funds to ensure that this wonderful resource remains free to all students and to support new initiatives like Peak Potential Princeton. Please visit the new Wall on your next trip to campus and watch for our special Wall events at Alumni Day and Reunions. For more information and photos of the new Wall go to www.princeton.edu/~oa/climb and for information on how to make a donation to the Joe Palmer ’84 Fund contact OA Director, Rick Curtis (rcurtis at princeton or Laurie Russen in the Development Office (lrussen at princeton)