Standing at the podium in a Kendade classroom, Grace June Kim ’07 was not visibly nervous. But her presentation in the college’s second annual Senior Symposium was the culmination of ten months of research and fieldwork, and naturally, she wanted it to go well.
The symposium illuminates the academic passions that seniors have cultivated in the company of their professors and peers. Ninety seniors from twenty-seven departments were showcased this year, including Kim, whose topic was, “Adolescents’ Pursuit of Career Possible Selves: Examining the Relationship Between Social Capital and Procedural Knowledge.”
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Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist and professor of geology at MhC, spent three weeks this summer studying rocks in the Boston Basin near hingham, Massachusetts. But they weren’t just any rocks. these rocks were fossils of some of the oldest complex life forms on the planet. McMenamin and a group of geology students from across the country, together with a colleague from the university of Pittsburgh, determined not only that these 575 million-year-old fossils of the soft-bodied organisms called the ediacara biota were exactly that (which had been in question) but also that they had lived in beach environments, and not just in deep water, as is the general consensus among paleontologists. An abstract with the group’s findings will be presented to the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in November and “will shake things up quite a bit,” says McMenamin. —M.H.B.
Photo by Paul Schnaittacher
Program Bridges Classroom to World
Interdisciplinary inquiry at MHC received a significant shot in the arm this spring thanks to a $2.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supporting the creation of a new certificate program.
Designed to draw students further into the confluence of learning and engagement with the world, the new Nexus Program certificates will be affiliated with each of MHC’s four interdisciplinary centers: the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts, the Center for the Environment, the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives, and the Science Center.
All students will have the opportunity to elect a Nexus concentration in their sophomore year. Students who do so will complete a traditional major and pursue a Nexus certificate minor that will include either an internship or a sustained research experience as well as a capstone senior project or thesis.
Winning Poet
Sarah Twombly FP’08 and Emma Gorenberg of Amherst College shared first place honors in this year’s Kathryn Irene Glascock ’22 Intercollegiate Poetry Competition. First held in 1923 as a memorial to Glascock, a promising young poet who died shortly after her graduation, the competition brings top student poets from around the country to compete before a three judge panel of distinguished poets. Sylvia Plath and James Merrill are past winners.
Sport Shorts
Groth ’07 Named AA Scholar-Athlete Volleyball player Emily Groth ’07 was honored with this year’s Alumnae Association Scholar-Athlete Award. A studio art major and sport studies minor, Groth was a four-time Academic All-Conference honoree and COSIDA/ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District second team member in 2006. As a two-time captain, Groth earned the all-conference honors twice. She leaves MHC with the most career kills (1,139), and the second-highest hitting percentage (.201) in college history.
Correction: In the last issue, Grace Zeigler ’08 was inadvertently listed as Grace Bauer in indoor track and field. We regret the error.
What first strikes you about Getrude Chimhungwe ’08 and Mufaro Kanyangarara ’07 is their gracious manner and utter lack of self-aggrandizement. Celebrated by the college, the Alumnae Association, and their peers for winning a $10,000 grant in spring to improve the health care of Zimbabwean girls orphaned by HIV/AIDS, Getrude and Mufaro are nevertheless visibly unmoved by all the attention, except for a little squirming in their chairs.
“I don’t like being in the limelight,” admits Mufaro, a statistics major, brushing a hand across her face. Being accepted into Harvard’s School of Public Health this fall hasn’t exactly helped to deflect the attention. Getrude is enrolled in the dual-degree engineering program with the University of Massachusetts. While these two friends are quick to point out that MHC has given them previously unimaginable opportunities and opened their eyes to their own potential, the style they share is quiet, steady, and absolutely focused on accumulating knowledge and skills to help alleviate Zimbabwe’s stunning social and economic problems.
On hearing of the Davis Foundation’s generous offer to fund motivated young people with ideas for peace, Getrude and Mufaro got together and brainstormed ideas. Rather than offering food or school materials to some of their country’s many orphans—the adult HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is 25 percent and sadly took both of Mufaro’s parents—they settled instead on an income-generating business plan to provide long-term, sustainable help.
They first thought about a mushroom farm and a water-hole-boring business before landing on a chicken and egg farm. “We realized that [it] was a manageable thing to do,” says Getrude, whose uncle is currently in the business. Given their relative affordability in a nation facing a 1,500 percent inflation rate, eggs are in high demand. By aligning the business with a nonprofit organization—Tsungirirai, which cares for orphans’ basic needs and runs a health clinic—they figure both the children and the customers will realize some measure of physical, mental, and spiritual health.
In June, Getrude and Mufaro began overseeing construction of the chicken runs, the purchasing of the first 250 baby chicks, and the hiring of project managers and security guards. They anticipate the project’s estimated annual income of $18,000 will give 700 orphans the care they need to begin to thrive.
Despite the chaotic economy and political instability of their country—many young Zimbabwe professionals would love to emigrate, they admit—Getrude and Mufaro say their exposure to America’s plenty has made them even more committed to bringing even a percentage of that lifestyle to the orphans.
“For me it’s a desire to make the world a better place,” says Getrude. “Some people helped me to be where I am … so I want to make someone else’s life better.”—M.H.B.
Photo by Paul Schnaittacher
Calculus isn’t for everyone, the mathematics department readily admits, but as the primary language of science and the social sciences it is required for a good number of majors. Harriet Pollatsek, Julia and Sarah Ann Adams Professor of Mathematics, has tried various strategies to advance her students’ grasp of data, functions, and their graphs, and finds that short writing exercises are particularly helpful.
“Mathematics uses its own special language, and translating it into ordinary English deepens a student’s understanding,” says Pollatsek, a member of the faculty since 1970 and one of two winners of the 2007 Mount Holyoke College Faculty Prize for Teaching. She was happy to report that by spring term those enrolled in her yearlong Enriched Calculus class were boldly moving on to “embrace the unfamiliar.”
Professor of Politics Christopher Pyle, the other recipient of the prize for teaching, was honored not just for his provocative teaching in classes on constitutional law and American political thought but also for teaching that “transcends the confines of the college and whose very purposeful engagement with the world serves as a model for our students and all of us,” according to the award citation. Pyle has taught classes in Northern Ireland, at Plimoth Plantation, and on the high seas aboard the HMS Bounty.
For Stephen Jones, professor of Russian studies and chair of European studies, the Republic of Georgia provides a focus and all manner of research possibilities. Widely published and fluent in Georgian, he is at work on a book about contemporary Georgia that he says is much like “the biography of a political adventurer confronting adversity, trauma, and finally, liberation.”
A winner of the 2007 Meribeth E. Cameron Faculty Prize for Scholarship, Jones, who trained as a political scientist, often is consulted by the U.S. government for his expert understanding of the post-communist societies of the Caucasus.
Bettina Bergmann, whose research has focused on ancient Roman art and archaeology, is fascinated by many elements of excavated sites around the Bay of Naples, which were buried in 79 AD by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Currently at work on an essay about the area’s ancient gardens, she shares the spectacular fact that because of cavities left by tree roots in the lava, archaeologists have been able to reconstruct what the ancient gardens looked like, which plants and trees grew where, and how vines were tended and perfumes made.
Bergmann is Helene Phillips Herzig ’49 Professor of Art History and the second winner of this year’s Faculty Prize for Scholarship.
This is the eighth year that professors have been honored with teaching and scholarship awards. Nominated by their peers and alumnae and selected by committee, the winners receive cash awards of $3,000.—M.H.B.
Photo by Paul Schnaittacher
Found Art: Museum a Hidden Treasure
Manicures, facials, and a lecture on the history of costume and extreme fashion—coupled with an assortment of eclectic period clothing to try on—were the highlights of the third annual Spa Night at the MHC Museum of Art, organized by the esoterically named Society of Art Goddesses and enjoyed by more than 160 students.
It may seem an unlikely event at an art museum rich with an exceptional collection, including Albert Bierstadt’s Hetch Hetchy Canyon and the significant Classical Greek sculpture Statuette of a Youth. But embracing visitors in unusual ways is part of the museum’s long-term plan to interest students studying in a variety of academic fields, not just art history. The museum also aims to entice patrons from Boston and New York—and even neighboring Granby—who are unaware of the extraordinary art offerings in the shadow of the Connecticut River.
The effort is beginning to pay off. Since Marianne Doezema became director of the museum twelve years ago, student participation has quadrupled and museum membership blossomed. Students interested in museum work may now apply for internships, and a paid fellowship is awarded annually to a young alumna ready for curatorial and management training. “It’s all about getting our name out,” says Doezema, who has also helped organize several nationally celebrated touring exhibitions, including a retrospective of the photographer Diane Arbus.
Perhaps her most ambitious collaborative effort to date has been Museums10, a partnership of ten museums in the region that is about to embark on its second mutual programming effort to promote cultural tourism in the Pioneer Valley. The group’s first effort—GoDutch!— increased museum attendance collectively by fifteen percent last year. Its latest offering, BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book, is slated to run from September 2007 though January 2008 and has received a $75,000 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to support national advertising.
“We are a well-kept secret,” Doezema explains, noting that the kickoff event for BookMarks will feature the words and pictures of English professor Brad Leithauser and his brother Mark. “Lots of New Yorkers go to [the Berkshires] for Jacob’s Pillow, and that’s the nut we’re trying to crack.”
Nora Lambert ’07, chair of the Art Goddesses, sums it up this way: “Art is for everyone, not just curators and artists. It’s funny, because it’s not as if there is this … perception that you have to be a musician in order to go to a concert, or buy a CD, or that you have to be an actor to go to a play.” Indeed, the art museum’s doors are wide open and everybody is welcome.
—M.H.B.
It’s hard to have meaningful engagement with another culture if you can’t speak the language at least moderately well. Global communication took another step forward this academic year, as intermediate French-language students at MHC conversed over video links with intermediate English-language students at the Université de Haute Alsace in France.
Donning headsets at computer terminals displaying live images of both students, the participants spoke ten minutes in one person’s native tongue, and then switched languages. Every twenty minutes, new teams of French and English students took their seats in each of the four “chat rooms,” language learning center workstations topped by spherical video cameras.
The conversation topics during the getting-to-know-you phase may not have been profound (“The campus is awesome.” … “I love U2, you know, with Bono?” … “Help me with my grammar here …”), but the experimental practice has become a valuable addition to campus language-teaching techniques. “The students are ‘swimming’ in French now,” said Catherine Bloom, visiting instructor in French, with each student speaking for far longer at a stretch than is common in group discussions.
MHC language students usually gather in small groups once a week and take turns conversing with a language assistant who’s a native speaker. These video discussions, says professor of French Nicole Vaget, are “a better alternative because it’s a one-on-one conversation of several minutes, so the pressure is on.” Sarah Reusché ’10 didn’t seem to feel pressured, though. In fact, she said speaking with another student “reduced the embarrassment factor that’s there when you’re speaking with someone who’s fluent in French when you’re not.”
Each duo spoke online three times during spring semester, supplemented by e-mails between video sessions. By April, Sarah and video-conversation partner Ludovic Jost had moved from simple questions to discussing subjects as complex as the political platforms of the French presidential candidates. “Conversing in French with a native really helps make concrete what verb tenses to use where,” Sarah said. “Ludovic assured me that even the French get the complicated verb tenses confused!”
Nana-Yaa Appenteng ’08 said she liked the video conversations because “we learn things that you won’t find in textbooks.” She spoke with her video partner about differences between the French and
U.S. educational systems, and where each had traveled. This twenty-first-century version of writing to a foreign pen pal, she says, also “helps build my confidence.”
—E.H.W.
For Wendy Kopp, founder and president of Teach for America and this year's commencement speaker, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is a fellow pragmatist. In accepting the Nobel this year for his work in spreading the idea of micro-credit across the developing world, Yunes emphasized not that he was making a dent in an intracable problem, but that poverty is an intractavle problem, but that poverty is an artificial creation and that the world can be poverty free-if we want it to be.
"Wow," responded Kopp to that sentiment in her address to this year's class of 521 graduating seniors, including thirty-nine Frances Perkins Scholars. "The reason this message struck me so powerfully is that it's so consistent with what I've seen firsthand about educational inequity. We can solve it."
Kopp, whose organization is the nation's largest provider of teachers for low-income communities, was initially driven to improve the public school system by idealism and the notion that things should be better than they are. But seventeen years later, what sustains her and her colleagues is the understanding that educational inequity “is within our control to solve.”
The power of inexperience and the importance of time—in other words, the courage of idealists to ask naïve questions, and the rewards of hard-won insights that come from sticking with sizeable challenges—are essential to making change in the world, Kopp noted.
In addition to Kopp, honorary degrees were awarded to Air Force Senior Scientist Emeritus Eleanor Reed Adair ’48, Hollywood producer and lawyer Debra Martin Chase ’77 (See photos, p. 34.), and Lieutenant Commander Charles D. Swift, an attorney who successfully challenged the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.
Honoring the realities of each day’s efforts as “the very life of life” was the message of an ancient Sanskrit poem, “Look to This Day,” read at baccalaureate by Vidya Sampath ’07. Teachers and idealists of all stripes are encouraged by the poet to look to the future, but not without first honoring the “bliss of growth and the glory of action” that lie within the brief course of a day.
The evening before commencement, President Joanne Creighton pointed to the “energy … good spirits and … hard work” of the class of 2007 and hoped these young women had connected their education to their passions.
In addition to baccalaureate degrees, one master’s degree, one post•baccalaureate certificate, and twenty-six certificates to international students were awarded at commencement.— M.H.B.
What Seniors Say They'll Miss Most About MHC
Midnight talks in the hallways … Sitting in
swimsuits on Skinner Green … Buffalo tofu
… Chef Jeff cookies … All-you-can-eat
salad bars … Having all their best friends
within a one-mile radius … Sunday brunch
and sharing stories about Saturday night’s
debauchery … M&Cs, specifically the
chocolate and raspberry brownies …
The free bin … Never having to deal with
annoying/sketchy men
Photo by Paul Schnaittacher
Standing at the podium in a Kendade classroom, Grace June Kim ’07 was not visibly nervous. But her presentation in the college’s second annual Senior Symposium was the culmination of ten months of research and fieldwork, and naturally, she wanted it to go well.
