With dust storms swirling above, explosives dropping
in the evenings, and the Army rolling in, Air Force Major Kimberly Calcutt
McQueen ’99 sat atop Saddam Hussein’s former private terminal at the Baghdad
airport in the summer of 2007, maintaining the communications network for Air
Force personnel deployed there and preparing to set up communications services
for a newly arrived Army battalion. In the next four months she would connect
the Iraqi police force with U.S. forces and expand General Petraeus’s communications
network.
Despite the danger and pressure of the
assignment, McQueen relished the opportunity to use her skills. “The military
places a high value on knowledge and advanced education,” says McQueen, “but we
spend so much time training that sometimes it’s nice to actually get out there
and do the job.”
Despite the training, McQueen admits
that she never expected to find herself dodging mortars at the Baghdad Airport,
or taking shelter from falling bombs in a bunker before continuing her communications
networking tasks.
A young
alumna’s discovery in Yellowstone National Park is
causing a stir far beyond its gates and has sobering implications for the
future of the planet.
For nearly five years, Sarah McMenamin
’04 has been conducting research on a subspecies of tiger salamander, called Ambystoma
tigrinum, as part of her doctoral thesis at Stanford University. The
salamanders are robust little creatures that have flourished for thousands of
years in vernal pools and kettle ponds formed by glaciers.
Sarah McMenamin ’04 surveying a pond in Yellowstone National Park for frogs and salamanders. Photo: Yu-Jun Lee
Alumnae Break New Ground Preventing Disease and Promoting Health By Hannah Wallace ’95
The public health challenges of the twenty-first century are vast—antibiotic resistance is on the rise, childhood obesity is rampant, and nearly fifty million Americans are still without health care. Add the effects of global warming, cholera outbreaks in Africa, and the continuing HIV/ AIDS pandemic and these combined hurdles seem overwhelming, possibly insurmountable. Fortunately, Mount Holyoke alumnae are making significant strides in public health by founding innovative community-health organizations, launching national wellness initiatives, and collaborating with communities in Zimbabwe to stanch the cholera epidemic, to name just a few.
Deborah Klein Walker ’65, EdD
Title: Vice president and principal associate at Abt Associates, a public health consulting firm; former president of the American Public Health Association
Major at MHC: Psychology
Thirty years ago—when she was working at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—Deborah Klein Walker didn’t even know what public health was. Today, she’s a nationally respected
public health expert known for her leadership on maternal- and child-health issues as well as substance abuse programs. She discovered public health while teaching community child-health studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and “never looked back.”
(More)
Girls never went to school when Tashi Zangmo FP’99 was growing up in a remote corner of Bhutan. She’s working to change that. (Photo by Ben Barnhart)
Many an alumna has been described as “following in Mary Lyon’s footsteps,” but the comparison fits Tashi Zangmo FP’99 better than most. Zangmo, a citizen of Bhutan— where many girls still lack even a primaryschool education— says her life’s work is to elevate the standard of female education in her country. And the parallels don’t end there. Both Lyon and Zangmo were raised in small villages, yet became highly educated women when this was rare in their society. Both aimed to create something large and lasting to benefit girls and women; and spirituality is central to the visions of both educational reformers. (More)
Calligrapher Sally Mangum has a way with words—she makes them beautiful, and surrounds the letter forms with richly colored designs. And she does this for some of the most prestigious customers in the world, including the British Lord Chamberlain’s office.
As holder of a “royal warrant” for calligraphy, Sally displays the royal coat of arms on her business cards and letterhead. But she doesn’t advertise, as referrals bring her business.
“My work consists of a wide range of commissions including invitations, letterhead, diplomas, menus, and monograms for stationers and corporate and private clients,” she says. “I also take on illustration and heraldic commissions.” Those range from drawing pen-and-ink family crests to an illuminated scroll listing all the chaplains at the Tower of London since the fourteenth century.
(More)
It was a warm Sunday in August 1953, and Katherine Butler Jones ’57 (above) had one more person to visit before leaving her childhood home in Harlem for college. A family friend, Aunt Ida, was expecting her. Aunt Ida cooked her meals on a hot plate and worked in service, spending her small savings on gifts for others. Five-dollar bills were slipped quietly into Jones’s hand during every visit. But this time, when Jones arrived at the familiar brownstone, Aunt Ida had another surprise. It was a carefully folded hundred-dollar bill, enough for transportation to and spending money at Mount Holyoke.
It was the biggest bill she had ever seen. Jones’s first-year tuition, room, and board were covered by her mother’s cashed-in life insurance policy. These sacrifices represented, she knew, years of hard work and the belief of a community in the power of education to change lives.
That belief is the frame around everything Jones has achieved since, as professor, activist, historian, and writer. After Mount Holyoke, Jones earned a master’s in education from Simmons College and a doctorate in educational administration from Harvard. She settled in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband, Hubert Eugene “Hubey” Jones. together they raised eight children, an achievement Jones calls “a political act” for its “power to shape the future.”
Julie Holley ’87 looks pretty serious. But behind that near-scowl of concentration are a ready laugh and spirited confidence when she tells how she wound up at Mount Holyoke, and how she joined the crew team despite using a steel hook instead of a right hand.
Rewind to spring 1983, awards night at a high school in Queens, New York. Holley, on the brink of graduation, is getting several. Jean Sudrann ’39, an MHC English professor, is also being honored. She and department colleague Marjorie Kaufman are impressed with Holley and ask where she’s going to college. To SUNY Purchase, she replies, to study music. The professors tell her, “You need to come to Mount Holyoke.” After a year at Purchase, she transferred.
In browsing MHC’s course catalogue, Holley was taken with a photo of rowers on the water. Although a star swimmer and competitor in track-and-field events (she was on the winning U.S. team at the 1984 International Games for the Disabled), she had never rowed before. But she looked at that picture hard. “I said to myself: That’s what I want to do when I get to Mount Holyoke.”
My Struggle With Panic Disorder By Kara C. Baskin ’00 Photo by Scott Suchman
I’m twenty eight years old, recently married, happily employed and, for two months last fall, I was terrified to leave my house. Things should’ve been peachy, really. I had a book deal in the works. Brian and I had just gotten married. My life was hectic, Type A, and organized just the way I liked it. But suddenly my fancy “happy hours” gave way to TV Land reruns; my posh dinners with media clients were replaced with yogurt and bananas; and my “for better or for worse” marriage vows were being put to the test before my wedding gown even came back from the dry cleaner’s.
I have panic disorder. An acute, debilitating form of anxiety, it affects six million Americans. Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from it, and the attacks usually begin in one’s twenties. Sufferers tend to be overachieving, highly creative, and dare I say it?—a little neurotic. Trembling, sweating, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, choking, chest tightness, and intense nausea are a few of the lovely symptoms that come on like an impromptu acid bath.
Welcome to the “blogazine” (blog+magazine = blogazine) version of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly. You’ll find the same articles as in the printed magazine; however, here we also post extras, and you may also comment on any article. Click the “comments” link to the right of the article title to read comments from others or to post your own. If you can’t find something, use the search tool, browse the categories below, or browse the archives.
With dust storms swirling above, explosives dropping
in the evenings, and the Army rolling in, Air Force Major Kimberly Calcutt
McQueen ’99 sat atop Saddam Hussein’s former private terminal at the Baghdad
airport in the summer of 2007, maintaining the communications network for Air
Force personnel deployed there and preparing to set up communications services
for a newly arrived Army battalion. In the next four months she would connect
the Iraqi police force with U.S. forces and expand General Petraeus’s communications
network.
Deborah Klein Walker ’65, EdD
