Hanover (ap)
The donation is the largest in the engineering school’s history and comes from Barry MacLean, a 1961 graduate. Fifteen million dollars will go toward the design and construction of a 180,000-square-foot engineering building, with $10 million being used as a challenge grant to create endowed professorships at Thayer.
The proposed $200 million expansion is contingent on private gifts to cover the cost. It follows a large increase in the number of students majoring in engineering in the last decade and a half, the college said in a news release. This year’s senior class has 110 engineering majors, the largest in the school’s history.
Officials hope to add faculty with a focus on the fields of energy, engineering in medicine and entrepreneurship. Other goals include creating diverse teams with research expertise and making innovative learning opportunities available to both engineering students and non-engineering students.
MacLean is CEO of MacLean-Fogg, a manufacturer of products for automotive, truck, electric power and telecommunications businesses based in Illinois.
“I believe deeply in the school’s mission and how the skills gained at Thayer can help prepare all students for their lives,” he said. “I firmly believe every Dartmouth undergraduate should experience Thayer.”
Concord (ap)
Marilla Marks Ricker’s portrait was unveiled at the Statehouse on Monday after a 20-year campaign to raise funds and nearly a century after her death.
She was the first woman to practice law in the Granite State and the ninth to be admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. She paid her taxes under protest for 50 years because of her inability to vote in elections. The Dover resident died three months after the 19th Amendment guaranteeing a woman’s right to vote was ratified in 1920.
Ricker said she filed to run for governor at age 70 because she wanted “to get people in the habit of thinking of women as governors.”
When she applied, then-Secretary of State Edward Pearson returned her $100 fee and said because she couldn’t vote, he couldn’t put her name on the ballot.
She demanded the right to vote in Dover in 1870 and did vote locally in 1871.
Jeanne Shaheen, the first woman elected governor of New Hampshire, signed the bill in 1997 to have her portrait hang in the Statehouse. But there was no money to commission it and the campaign — and Ricker — slipped back into oblivion.
Rep. Renny Cushing, a Hampton Democrat and catalyst behind the original campaign, resurrected the effort in 2013, after an epiphany of sorts on the opening day of the session.
He said he watched as the House Speaker opened the session and called up the chief justice of the Supreme Court to swear in the new governor — all three positions were held by women at the time. Cushing’s bill that year directed the Joint Legislative Historic Committee to obtain and display Ricker’s portrait. That guaranteed $10,000 to help underwrite the portrait.
The League of Women Voters of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Women’s Bar Association spearheaded the fundraising efforts and the portrait came to fruition.
Montpelier (ap
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says 61-year-old Sally Kirby pleaded guilty Monday to a federal forgery charge.
Kirby was accused of forging checks from Hunger-Free Vermont to herself between 2009 and 2015.
Prosecutors say the embezzlement was discovered in October.
Hunger Free Vermont says the group has raised about $125,000 to replace some of the reserve funding that was stolen and has had to make some cost savings.
The public defender says Kirby is remorseful and intends to do everything she can to make amends and make Hunger Free Vermont “whole.”
Kirby faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.