President Joanne V. Creighton will step down at the end of the 2009–2010 academic year after nearly fifteen years of service. The seventeenth president of MHC, Creighton informed the college’s faculty of her decision at a special meeting in February.
“An extraordinary and palpable esprit de corps emanates out of the college’s inspiring history and mission; that spirit has been the engine of our collective success during the past dozen plus years,” Creighton wrote in a message to the broader community.
Creighton’s tenure has been marked by significant achievements. Since she assumed the presidency in 1996, applications for admission have risen by 50 percent; ninety new tenuretrack faculty were hired, and 81 percent of alumnae have participated in two fundraising campaigns.
“Joanne has a remarkable ability to bring out people’s best selves in service of the greater good,” said Mary Graham Davis ’65, president of the Alumnae Association. “The constructive agenda she has set for the extended Mount Holyoke community has kept alumnae informed and engaged. We have seen we really can make a positive difference in the life of our alma mater. The strong partnership we enjoy between the association and the college is no doubt one of Joanne’s most important legacies.”
The last sixteen months of Creighton’s tenure will be busy and will include the completion of the college’s current strategic plan and its $300 million fundraising campaign (in progress,) as well as responding to the ongoing financial crisis. College Board of Trustees Chair Leslie Anne Miller ’73 notes that the search process for a successor will start immediately and will include participation by all segments of the college community.
In July 2010, Creighton plans to take a sabbatical and continue her leadership role in Women’s Education Worldwide.
For more information about President’s Creighton’s tenure, click here. The Quarterly plans to commemorate Creighton’s years at the college in the spring 2010 issue.
Hummingbirds A Hit
Christopher Benfey’s A Summer of Hummingbirds was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2008 by the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Benfey is MHC’s Mellon Professor of English.
Senior Moments
MHC seniors are putting the final touches on their undergraduate years and anticipating with hope and some caution their escape to “the outside world.” They understand the good fortune their degrees represent—no matter the debt they’ve racked up, in some cases—and are wickedly hopeful of their futures. The seniors featured in this issue have all participated in the college’s Learning From Application (LEAP) program, which involves doing significant independent research in the laboratory and around the world. They are interesting people. Take a look.—Mieke H. Bomann
Caitlin Lupton
Major: Environmental studies with a concentration in culture and the environment
Studied/worked abroad in Cairns, Australia, where she created a guide for Aboriginal Australians to record their oral history and cultural heritage. Also interned in a Mayan village in Mexico.
Greatest lesson learned in past four years: “Learning is not done just in the classroom; it comes through experience internationally, nationally, annually, and daily.”
Favorite Web site: www.culturalsurvival.org, a nonprofit in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that advocates on behalf of indigenous peoples around the world
Guilty pleasure: Vogue magazine and others like it
Hobbies: Anything outdoors. She loves hiking, biking, and most important, skiing.
What’s next: Possibly Fulbright research in Colombia in conjunction with a national park or working with a nonprofit that promotes the rights and voices of indigenous peoples.
Molly Buermann
Major: Biology
Greatest lesson learned in past four years: How to effectively balance academics and extracurriculars, and manage her time
Favorite Web site: www.pandora.com, home of the Music Genome Project
Guilty pleasure: Watching reruns of “The West Wing”
Hobbies: Environmental Action Coalition, dressage team
What’s next: Either graduate school for plant molecular biology, or working for an environmental conservation company in Vermont
Something else that matters: Her thesis research examines the movement of nutrients from leaves to grains in aging crop plants. The research goal is more nutritious crop cultivars and reduction of world hunger.
Marcia Catherine Schenck
Hometown: Wuppertal, Germany
Major: International relations and Five College African studies certificate
Studied/worked abroad: Lots. Last summer she took research trips to southern Africa for her history honors thesis, “Land, Water, Truth, and Love; Visions of Identity and Land Access: From Bain’s Bushmen to Khomani San.”
Greatest lesson learned in past four years: “Believe in yourself, act on your ideas, and live your passion!”
Guilty pleasure: Jewelry from all over the world and books on absolutely everything
Hobbies: African drumming, dancing, piano, reading, photography, letter writing, hiking, poetry
What’s next: First, returning to South Africa to present her thesis findings to the San people she worked with. In the fall, she will begin a master’s degree program in African studies at Oxford.
Anything else that matters to you: “Behind every great woman there are other great women.”
Taylor Nelson
Hometown: Newburyport, Massachusetts
Major: Studio art
Studied/worked abroad: Spent an “amazing” semester in Florence, Italy, and interned for Mercado Global in Panajachel, Guatemala, as a jewelry designer and instructor for its Artisan Capacity Building Program
Greatest lesson learned in past four years: “Not to limit myself. Keeping an open mind has allowed me to discover endless possibilities for my future.”
Favorite Web site: “Due to my current job search frenzy, www.idealist.org”
Guilty pleasure: Watching the television show Bones while indulging in Reese’s peanut butter cups
Hobbies: Rowing on the crew team, traveling, and jewelry making
What’s next: A job in the nonprofit sector, possibly with a fair trade organization working to promote artisan handicrafts internationally.
Applications to MHC Hold Steady in Unsteady Times
Despite the depressed economy and a race to the doors of public universities by many prospective college students, applications to MHC by mid-February were holding almost steady with last year and had surpassed its 3,000-application benchmark.
“The numbers look good,” said Jane Brown, vice president for enrollment and college relations. While the class won’t be fully established until June, she notes that with financial hardship mounting for families everywhere, being just two percentage points under last year’s second highest applicant pool ever “is a moral victory.”
Applications for early admission were a different story—down by about 18 percent. Brown said families simply needed to be able to compare financial aid packages from different schools, which MHC’s binding admittance does not allow. (Students who take early admission must agree to withdraw their applications from all other schools.) The decline in numbers reflects that reality, she added.
The college’s greatest challenge will continue to be meeting the financial needs of accepted students, Brown said. The number of students asking for aid, and more of it, has grown 5 percent this year, to 80 percent of all applicants. And while the college remains committed to meeting every accepted student’s financial need, it has its own budgetary challenges to address.
Getting accepted students in the door come August is a key focus in the spring months, when prospective students weigh their options. Brown says the college likely will admit a few more students this year to ultimately hit its target, for several reasons: fewer may decide on MHC, thanks to the poor economy; fewer college-age students are coming out of the Northeast; and many students are attracted to large, urban institutions that link education to professional development.
While the challenges are substantial, Brown notes that the college is still attracting “talented young women who want to make a difference in the world,” and is hopeful that additional federal aid will be available to students.
“Mary Lyon’s purpose was to create a school to educate women of modest means,” she noted. The school’s commitment to them remains strong.—M.H.B.
Rare Books Open in Common Spot
This 1601 atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the World), by Abraham Ortelius, is part of MHC’s rare book collection.
Following a three month renovation, the college’s rare book collection was moved from the seventh floor of Miles-Smith into an expanded and improved Archives and Special Collections suite on the ground floor of Dwight Hall last November.
The renovation includes a new rare book room with compact shelving, a refurbished reading room, and a state-of-the-art security system.
College Dems Top Campaigners
MHC Democrats were the winners of a statewide voter registration competition among all Massachusetts college Democrats chapters, and also won the Battleground State Competition in New Hampshire for sending more students there to campaign (and organizing more phone banks on campus) than any other school in Massachusetts. They were presented with a check for $100 and honored at a private dinner with U.S. Sen. John Kerry and campaign leaders at the Massachusetts Democratic Party headquarters in Boston.
Trays Un-Chic
They’re impossible to miss: green plastic trays stacked in every dining hall and the Blanchard Café. However, it’s not often that they’re seen in use by students. The majority of hungry MHC women prefer to balance their plates piled high with food, cutlery, and glasses of soda sans tray. Maybe they’re thinking of the water they’ll save by not dirtying a tray. More likely, they know the truth about trays—they’re just not très chic.
Illustration by Katherine Sandoz ’91
Powerful Ideas
Small-scale hydropower turbines on campus dams was the focus of senior Erinn Hasselgren’s project in the Environmental Studies Senior Seminar on view at Blanchard Campus Center first semester. The college has investigated the idea, which could reduce the campus’s carbon footprint by about 270 tons of carbon annually. But installation costs of dams on Upper and Lower Lakes would be about $1.2 million, and the project would not break even for at least two decades. If public funding for small renewable-energy projects becomes available, or electricity costs spike, the college may reconsider, says John Bryant, director of facilities management. Seminar students also researched local food options in dining halls, a solar photovoltaic energy system on top of the athletic center, and a campus bikeshare program.
Right: Erinn Hasselgren ’09 in front of her dams display
Faculty Awards
This year’s recipients of annual faculty awards were Jane Crosthwaite in religion and Paul Staiti in art, for teaching; and Lilian Hsu in biochemistry, and Fred Moseley in economics, for scholarship.
Tops in Peace
MHC remains on the Peace Corps’ top twenty-five list of small schools producing volunteers. With fifteen alumnae currently serving as Corps volunteers, the college is twentieth in the rankings. Since the Corps’ inception, 152 alumnae have joined the Peace Corps. They are currently serving in Cameroon, Jamaica, Jordan, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Paraguay, Romania, Senegal, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine on projects related to education, the environment, and health and HIV/AIDS.
Noble Notions From the “Dismal Science”
Professor of Economics Fred Moseley and a group of progressive economists were invited by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts to develop policies for economic revival. Read their wonderfully clear statement of principles here.
Not Just Fiddlin’ Around
With a sweetness that mimics the Celtic musical traditions she embraces, Zoe Darrow ’11 is describing a summer she spent playing her fiddle on the street in Northampton, Massachusetts. She was about eight years old.
“The first couple of times were nerve-wracking,” she recalls. “I was nervous [about] performing and also my dad was nervous— he knew that on the streets you are exposed to all sorts of characters.
“But it was so wonderful. You’re not performing quite yet. You don’t have a standing crowd. You can play one song as many times as you want. It was a really awesome step and it helped.”
Helped Darrow establish her fiddling career, that is, which included the release of a CD at age twelve, comparison to Celtic fiddling star Natalie MacMaster soon after, sold-out performances around the Northeast, and the desire to study ethnomusicology at MHC.
Darrow was homeschooled by her mom in rural western Massachusetts and started taking classical violin lessons when she was four. But after hearing the performance of a Prince Edward Island fiddler, she was drawn to the lively dance music that moved her in a way the classical tradition did not. She began taking lessons in the different Celtic fiddle styles and over the years has taken classes and attended workshops given by masters of the Cape Breton Island and Prince Edward Island musical forms that are most to her liking.
Her energetic performance style on stage, with her band—Zoe Darrow and the Fiddleheads, which includes her dad, a substitute teacher, on guitar, and friend Tom Colburn on piano—has been likened to a “caffeinated gyroscope.” Darrow says she simply allows herself to enjoy the music—which is, after all, “a social music, a dance music, a party music”— and show it. (She’s a stepdancer, too.)
Looking ahead, Darrow says she’s unsure of a career as a performer but knows she’ll never stop playing her fiddle. “It’s really satisfying to have something that I know I’m good at and understand,” says Darrow.— M.H.B.
To learn more about Darrow and listen to her band play, click here.
Global Images contest
Students who studied, interned, or conducted research abroad in the last year were invited to enter the 2008 Global Images Contest. Each chose one photo they had taken abroad that captured a powerful insight they had experienced, and submitted it along with a title and an explanation. To the right is a winning photo. Other winners and honorable mentions are displayed here.
Where do we fly kites? New Delhi. The Kidwai-Nalla canal meanders through much of Delhi’s waste, among which one can spot the sporadic movements of cows, stray pigs, and occasional curious monkeys. What’s more noticeable is an array of shacks that are home to some of the 85,000 waste pickers who collect and resell recyclables from the capital’s waste. Despite their important role, the sector is often marginalized in Indian society, their living conditions dire, their children rejected by public schools. Lacking a common space, the polluted canal has, unfortunately, become the children’s playground. These three boys were preparing to show me how to fly the kite they had made from discarded newspaper.—Duong Tran ’09
Remembering a Forgotten Humanist
Many people dream of retirement as a poolside or back-nine vacation, free of any of the tasks or issues that consumed them in their professional lives.
That isn’t the case with many academics, and certainly not for Angelo Mazzocco, who since retiring from MHC five years ago has kept a scholarly schedule that would leave most of us breathless, if not downright tense.
Emeritus professor of Spanish and Italian and a scholar of medieval and Renaissance culture, Mazzocco published Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism in 2006, was then a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome, has delivered lectures at various universities and international conferences, and was appointed visiting professor in Italian at Yale in fall 2007.
But his most challenging project is just beginning. For the next two years, Mazzocco will work on a book about one of the leading—but not thoroughly studied— Renaissance humanists, Biondo Flavio (also known as Flavio Biondo and generally referred to simply as Biondo), thanks to a Mellon Emeritus Fellowship. The highly competitive $55,000 grant—the first of its kind awarded to an MHC emeritus professor—will enable Mazzocco to travel to European and US research libraries, as well as purchase resources related to his project for the MHC library.
“In a way,” says Mazzocco, “Biondo is the forgotten one among the major humanists.” Although understood by scholars to have been enormously influential in his day and arguably the first modern historian of western Europe, Biondo’s books on medieval history, antiquarianism, and historical geography are enormous, “difficult to handle,” and densely typed folios that generally elicit the response, laughs Mazzocco, of “I’m not gonna read that damn thing!”
But Mazzocco forged ahead and, since writing his dissertation on Biondo more than forty years ago as a doctoral candidate at UC–Berkeley, has read most of the humanist’s works. While he has written “on and off ” about Biondo, “people for years have been lamenting the fact that no one has written [the definitive book on him]. …So I decided to do it.”
In the book, to be titled Biondo Flavio and Renaissance Thought, Mazzocco examines the humanist’s writings in the context of the cultural trends of the time, and relates how Biondo’s ideas were later appropriated throughout the rest of Europe, most notably by prominent English historian Edward Gibbon.
Mazzocco looks ahead. In the midst of his emerging book project, the emeritus professor keeps his hand in yet another, a study of Renaissance humanism throughout Italy and the rest of Europe. And he insists there is still time to ski and take walks. A round of golf is not, however, on the docket.—M.H.B.
The People’s Perspective
Up until the tenth grade, everything that Samba Gadjigo read in school was either in French, about France, or related to the European culture of the French colonists who occupied his country, Senegal, in West Africa until independence in 1960.
It wasn’t until he came across fellow Senegalese Ousmane Sembène’s Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu (God’s Bits of Wood), a novel set in locations that were familiar to him, and with characters whose names matched his own, that Gadjigo understood the power of narrative to both imprison a country and set a people free.
“He made me lose my political innocence,” Gadjigo notes of the late writer and filmmaker, who was deeply committed to African identity and self-esteem. Every spare moment he has, Gadjigo vows, will be spent helping to keep Sembène’s work alive in the public’s memory. “He was one of the first writers [I read] who speaks not from the perspective of the winner but from the perspective of the people.”
A professor of French at MHC since 1986, Samba Gadjigo has worked to connect younger generations of Africans and African-American youth with Sembène’s work through a biography, Ousmane Sembène: Une Conscience Africaine, to be published in English in late 2009; a documentary of the making of Sembène’s last film, Moolaade, in which African village women bravely rebel against genital mutilation; and now with another documentary that revisits Sembène’s life. To complete it, Gadjigo has received a grant from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund.
“If you go to Africa today, our entire landscape is littered with monuments to people who have dominated us,” notes Gadjigo. “Senegal still celebrates De Gaulle’s call to resistance against German occupation in 1918. But go to the University of Dakar today, take five students and ask them ‘Who is Sembène?’ and maybe one knows.”
By distributing his film to as many schools and universities as possible, Gadjigo hopes to do justice to Sembène’s understanding that “in the twenty-first century, any people that is not in control of its own images is bound to disappear.”
It won’t be easy. Sembène’s films are largely ignored by African theaters more interested in the latest Holly/Bollywood fare. Young Africans, like their peers abroad, prefer the contemporary offerings on YouTube. But like Sembène, Gadjigo thinks shaping identity and national selfhood through serious words and evocative pictures will ultimately have the greatest impact.
“[Sembène] realized that the best way to participate in activism was not in the streets but through cultural production. To act politically is to act on the present,” Gadjigo notes. “To act culturally is to act on history.”—M.H.B.
Kendall Dance Wing Renovation Done
The dance and performance studios renovation at Kendall Sports and Dance Complex were completed in early spring and classes are now being held there.
Part of a three-phase upgrade to the facility, the new dance performance wing includes a pair of dance practice studios and a performance studio with seating, curtains, lighting, and a skylight. Beginning in March, the current dance studios were being converted to a state-of-the-art fitness center with air-conditioning and skylights. New cardiovascular and strength equipment will be added. The hallway outside the fitness center will be renovated with glass walls and new lighting.
The current weight room in the basement also will be renovated. The project will result in over 8,000 square feet of space for fitness. The entire renovation is slated to be completed by the end of 2009.—Mike Raposo, sports information director
Student Campaign Seeks End to HIV Stigma
More than 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/AIDS, according to the World Health Organization. In 2006 alone, an estimated 56,000 people were newly infected in the United States. Still, many people have an outdated understanding of the disease, and Aleefia Somji ’09 is part of a student organization working to address the misperceptions.
A biology major first drawn to the virus because of its unusual makeup, Somji became more interested in the social aspects of the disease after working in India last summer. Coordinator of a program called Wake Up Pune, named for the city in which she worked, Somji saw how Indian students’ erroneous perceptions about transmission of the virus and living with the disease changed thanks to accurate information and talking about HIV/AIDS with their peers.
“Lack of education leads to fear and stigma,” she noted. “It’s more the stigma that is killing people than the infection.”
At MHC, she is co-chair of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, a national group with chapters on hundreds of campuses. Its first project this year was a roster of events for World AIDS Day in December, including HIV testing (so popular that students had to be turned away); a debate on the issues surrounding HIV; and a talk about the epidemic in South Africa.
This semester she helped launch the HIV Positive Campaign with a series of workshops in the dorms addressing the virus and its stigma, condom awareness, and discrimination. “The point is to normalize discussion around HIV,” explains Somji, whose approach mimics the “HIV boot camps” she helped stage in Pune. “We will do pre- and postworkshop surveys of students’ knowledge.” The college health center is training students to deliver the education portion of the workshop.
T-shirts that say “HIV Positive” will also be distributed. A play on words, the shirts are intended to stimulate conversations and shift attitudes about the disease that has killed more than 25 million people worldwide. “Anyone can get infected,” Somji points out. “The virus doesn’t discriminate.”—M.H.B
Aleefia Somji ’09 and “Wake Up Pune” colleague Esther Grimes model Positive T-shirts.
2009-10 Student Fees Set
At their winter meeting, the MHC Board of Trustees set tuition, room, and board for the academic year 2009–10 at $50,390, a 3.9 percent increase from last year’s fee while reiterating the college’s commitment to a robust financial aid program. This is the lowest increase in thirty-five years.
Crew Coach Friedman Headed for Hall of Fame
Longtime MHC crew coach Jeanne Friedman has been selected for induction into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
One of the most well-respected coaches in the region, Friedman’s teams have captured five Seven Sisters titles, one NEWMAC championship, and numerous medals at the Eastern College Athletic Conference and New England regional championships since she joined the Mount Holyoke staff in 1991. Under her tutelage, four MHC Lyons have earned All-America accolades.
“She is a true pioneer, who fought for equal rights for female athletes as a college student in the 1970s and has committed her entire professional life to providing opportunities for women to grow and develop through sport,” said MHC Director of Athletics Laurie Priest.
As a student-athlete at Boston University, Friedman captured a pair of gold medals at the National Women’s Rowing Association National Championships. She went on to earn seven medals at the United States Rowing Association Masters National Regatta and numerous gold medals in division championships in subsequent years.
In addition to her duties at the college, she serves as the executive director of Rowing Strong, Rowing Together, a joint program with the Mount Holyoke crew team and the Care Center of Holyoke that uses rowing to help inner-city parenting teens learn teamwork, gain self confidence, and improve self-esteem.
She is also a coach at the Row as One camp, run by Holly Metcalf ’81, an Olympic gold medal oarswoman. The camp helps women (average camp age is forty-five) learn to row or get coaching they usually do not have access to.—Mike Raposo
