TCNJ

7 Mountain mystery solved Since We Saw You Last… A FIRST FOR TCNJ > The college's inaugural Lavender Graduation honored graduating seniors who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered; studied LGBT-related issues in their course- work; or were involved with LGBT-related advocacy initia- tives or organizations. Provost Jacqueline Taylor commended the 23 graduating students and 30 faculty and staff allies in attendance for their "willingness to stand up, stand out, and be counted as vocal advocates for a more just world." SHE'S GOT SPIRIT, HOW 'BOUT YOU? > Talk about leaving your mark on your alma mater: Hayley Graves '15 won first place in TCNJ's Spirit Mark Competition, which challenged art students to draw a cartoon version of Roscoe, the college's mascot. Her design, which will be used in casual settings, joins the school seal and the college and athletics logos as part of TCNJ's official visual identity. A HULL LOT OF FUN > The Cardboard Boat Regatta, for which students construct cardboard boats and then race them on Lake Ceva, is an end-of-the-year campus tradition that dates back to at least the 1980s. The hilarious regatta is a foolproof indicator as to which participants are engineer- ing majors and which ones aren't. For the second year in a row, electrical engineering majors Alin Bojkovic '17, Thomas Approvato '17, Eric Brokaw '17, and Tim Laux '17 won the competition. Their 2015 time was 45 seconds faster than the runner-up. We smell a dynasty. FACING PAGE: PHOTO COURTESY OF TCNJ'S ALTERNATIVE BREAK CLUB. THIS PAGE: HAYLEY GRAVES AND REGATTA PHOTOS BY BILL CARDONI; ILLUSTRATIONS BY GWENDA KACZOR Your bewilderment over why the relatively straight Appalachian mountain chain takes an odd turn at Pennsylvania and New York can come to a blessed end. Associate Professor of Physics Maggie Benoit and colleagues cracked the secret—with a little assistance from the National Science Foundation. Using data from the NSF's EarthScope USArray seismic network, the researcher dis- covered a dense block of volcanic rock beneath the bend that forced the Appalachians to curve during formation hun- dreds of millions of years ago. Now Benoit, a 1999 TCNJ graduate who's been on loan to the NSF in Arlington, Virginia, for the last two years, wants to tackle the mystery of why the Appalachians still exist at all when she returns to campus this fall. "They are very, very old mountains that should have eroded flat a long time ago, but they haven't," says Benoit. "We're trying to look at why they're there and what's holding them up." —Meeri N. Kim CAMPUS GETS ITS OM ON > February's Breathe In-Breathe Out Mindfulness Challenge, which was named the top collegiate wellness challenge in the U.S. by the National Consortium for Building Healthy Academic Communities, invited TCNJ students, staff, and faculty to engage in a friendly competition of mindfulness- related activities—think yoga and meditation—to help everyone de-stress. Which begs the question: isn't a destressing competition a bit of an oxymoron? —Tamara Fuentes contributed to this report.

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