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 [...]
Archive of entries posted on August 2009
Salamanders Signal a Global Warning
By Jenny Hall
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 Ambystomatigrinum, as part of her doctoral thesis at Stanford University. [...]
You Asked; She Answers—President Creighton Addresses Alums’ Questions
President Creighton during the laurel parade
Photo: Paul Schnaittacher
The Quarterly invited alumnae to submit questions for President Joanne V. Creighton to answer. You sent many, and she chose which to answer here. Others will feed into a farewell article planned for the end of Creighton’s presidency next spring.
Q. I was a student on the committee [...]
Deep (and Wide) Impact: The Weissman Center Marks 10 Years
By Eric Goldscheider
Ten-year celebrations included a talk by journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault (left), student presentations (center),
and (right) a meeting between student grant recipients and Center founder Harriet Levine Weissman ’58 (right).
Photos by Paul Schnaittacher (right); Fred LeBlanc
As the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts celebrates its tenth [...]
A Short History of Philosophical Ideas about Infinity
Illustration: Elwood Smith
Note: This article is part of “What Everyone Should Know About…”, a Quarterly series by MHC professors.
BySam Mitchell
Almost the earliest pieces of writing we possess speculateand argue about the infinite. Greek philosopher Zeno’s paradoxes are probably the earliest. One of them (written in the fifth century BC) concerns Achilles, fleetest of foot [...]
Humble Crusader – Tashi Zangmo FP’99 Promotes Female Education in Bhutan
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 primary school education— says her life’s work is to elevate the standard of female education in her country. And the parallels [...]
Eleanore Velez FP’07 – The Great Equalizer
Eleanore Velez FP’07 was exposed early in life to people from all over the world when business associates of her grandfather would visit their home in Mexico City, speaking different languages and sharing their food and cultures.
Sent to a YMCA camp in the Berkshires as a girl, she spent thirteen summers as a camper, then [...]
Tafadzwa Muzhandu ’05, Jennifer Kyker ’02, Memory Bandera ’04 Bringing Hope and Help to Zimbabwe’s Orphans
What started as a high-school fascination with traditional African music eventually led Jennifer Kyker ’02 to found an organization that aids Zimbabwean orphans.
Even before coming to MHC, Jennifer learned the Shona language, lived in Zimbabwe, and studied the indigenous mbira, a thumb piano. An MHC senior thesis and subsequent Fulbright project deepened her connection to [...]
Edna Berk Kuhn ’46 – Not Guilty
Once a week, and sometimes twice, Edna Berk Kuhn ’46 leaves her home in a leafy section of Riverdale in the Bronx, gets on a bus, and then on a subway, and then walks the final stretch to the Innocence Project at Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth Streets in lower Manhattan. It takes her an hour [...]
Carol Gomez ’93 – Modern Abolitionist
While few people realize that slavery—or human trafficking—is still going on, the good news is that anti-slavery activists are also still fighting it.
Carol Gomez ’93 started the Boston-based organization MataHari: Eye of the Day, part of the Trafficking Victims Outreach and Services (TVOS) Network, which works on immigrant rights, human rights, and “dignity for all,” [...]