T. Kyle Vanderlick ’81 has been appointed dean of engineering and the Thomas E. Golden Professor of Engineering at Yale University. She leaves her position as professor and chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Princeton University, where she was an award-winning researcher and teacher.

“Professor Vanderlick is a respected scholar, dynamic teacher, and seasoned administrator known for her unflagging energy, breadth of vision, charisma, and ability to lead while building consensus,” Yale President Richard Levin said.

Vanderlick, who was the first female chair of any science or engineering department at Princeton, was awarded both the Princeton Engineering Council Teaching Award and the Princeton President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2002. At the University of Pennsylvania, where she taught for nine years, she received the 1993 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the university’s highest teaching honor.

A leading expert on interfacial forces — interactions that occur near or between surfaces — Vanderlick conducts research that aims to measure, control, and understand the properties of interfaces and thin films, especially those with relevance to materials science and biology.

Vanderlick has a B.S. and M.S. from Rensselaer and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. She launched her academic career after completing a NATO postdoctoral fellowship in Mainz, Germany. She received a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in 1991 and was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation in 1989.

Former NHL and Rensselaer hockey standout Joe Juneau ’91 was inspired to once again take up a hockey stick, this time as mentor and director of a hockey program aimed at keeping young Inuit children in school and out of trouble.

Juneau, who retired from the Montreal Canadiens in 2004 and spent three years with an engineering technology firm, missed hockey and wanted to make a difference. On a vacation to Quebec’s far north Nunavik region, he was both inspired by the beauty of the arctic area and its Inuit people, and struck by the high rates of school drop-out, substance abuse, and violence that plagued the community.

In cooperation with a Nunavik corporation and government agency, Juneau launched the youth hockey development program in September 2006. The objectives are to develop young players and improve facilities, but more importantly, to improve school attendance and performance and promote crime prevention.

“This program is not a hockey school,” Juneau told the Globe and Mail in August. “This program is a social program. We’re using hockey as a tool.”

After taking monthly flights from his home near Quebec to several of the 14 Inuit villages in Nunavik, where he works with the communities to improve facilities and train local trainers as well as players, Juneau decided the best way to make the program work would be to live there. So he packed up his family, including daughters ages 6 and 7, and moved to Kuuj-juaq, the largest of the villages, with a population of 2,000. While challenging, Juneau considers the move a great opportunity for his family. “We’re not just here to have fun, but to accomplish something,” he told CanWest News.

Juneau, who grew up in Pont-Rouge, Quebec, has been a role model and idol to Canadian youth. He was a two-time national All-American with the Engineers, a silver medalist for Canadian hockey at the 1992 Winter Olympics, and played 12 seasons with the NHL.

Featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams on Nov. 16, Juneau said of his new venture, “Every day is a day that you feel you’ve accomplished something good.”