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<p>Last fall, ����̽̽ senior Elli Terwiel was in professor Eric Hernandez’s course, Advanced Structural Analysis, learning about how beams bend under a load—“and I started to think about my skis,” she says. She wasn’t daydreaming.</p>

<p>"Any rock climbers out there?" The question hung in the air like a climber about to summit a challenging rock face. Then a few hands at the back of the class crept up, bashfully. The query, posed by Chris Mattrick of the Green Mountain National Forest, was aimed at the 64 seniors in NR 206, "Environmental Problem-Solving and Impact Assessment," and had a serious purpose behind the offhand delivery.</p>