Wellesley Magazine Fall 2011

THE ART OF RECOVERYTHE ART OF RECOVERY

fall 2011 | UNPLANNED LESSONS | JOURNALIST IN TRAINING | CELEBRATING DAVIS SCHOLARS

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After the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Stephanie Hornbeck ’90 led a team to preserve and repair someof the nation’s most precious art treasures. Front cover

and above: an untitled oil on canvas by B. Byron, before and after treatment by Hornbeck’s team. Collection of the Centre d’Art, Haiti

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From the Editor

Letters to the Editor

From the President

Window on Wellesley by Alice Hummer, Lisa Scanlon ’99, Jennifer Flint, Jennifer Garrett ’98, April Austin, and Abigail Murdy ’12

Shelf Life

First Person—Journalist in the Making by Terra L. Stanley ’12

WCAA—Your Alumnae Association

Class Notes

Endnote—Walking Tributaries by Sejal Shah ’94

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Features 20 THE ART OF RECOVERY

When an earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, roughly 50,000 works of art were damaged. Conservator Stephanie Hornbeck ’90 led an international

e, ort to save the country’s precious cultural heritage.

30 UNPLANNED LESSONSBy Anna K. Johns ’09

A young alumna re- ects on what she has learned about teaching—and herself—as a . rst-year teacher with Teach For America in San Antonio.

34 THE CLASS OF ALL COLORS By Ruth Walker

/ is year, the Davis Scholar Program celebrated its 40th anniversary. We pro. le nine alumnae from this diverse and vibrant class.

Cover and inside front cover photographs courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Haiti Cultural Recovery Project

FALL 2011 | WELLESLEY 1

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wellesley | fall 2011

EditorAlice M. Hummer

Associate Editors Lisa Scanlon ’99Jennifer McFarland Flint

DesignFriskey Design, Sherborn, Mass.

Principle PhotographerRichard Howard

Student AssistantAbigail Murdy ’12

Wellesley (USPS 673-900). Published fall, winter, spring, and summer by the Wellesley College Alumnae Association. Editorial and Business Offi ce: Alumnae Association, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481-8203. Phone 781-283-2344. Fax 781-283-3638.Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Mass., and other mailing offi ces. Post-master: Send Form 3579 to Wellesleymagazine, Wellesley College, 106 Central St.,Wellesley, MA 02481-8203.

Wellesley Policy:One of the objectives of Wellesley, in the best College tradition, is to present interesting, thought-provoking material, even though it may be controversial. Publication of material does not necessarily indicate endorsement of the author’s viewpoint by the magazine, the Alumnae Association, or Wellesley College.

Wellesley magazine reserves the right to edit and, when necessary, revise all material that it accepts for publication. Unsolicited photographs will be publishedat the discretion of the editor.

KEEP WELLESLEY UP-TO-DATE!

The Alumnae Offi ce has a voice mailbox to be used by alumnae for updating their computer records. The number is 1-800-339-5233.

You can also update your information on-line when you visit the Alumnae Associa-tion website at www.wellesley.edu/Alum/.

DIRECT LINE PHONE NUMBERS

College Switchboard 781-283-1000Alumnae Offi ce 781-283-2331Magazine Offi ce 781-283-2344 Admission Offi ce 781-283-2270Center for Work and Service 781-283-2352Resources Offi ce 781-283-2217

INTERNET ADDRESS www.wellesley.edu/Alum/

TFrom the Editor

HERE’S SOMETHING BITTERSWEET about closing up a parent’s home, which I’ve been doing over the last few months. There’s an obvious presence no longer there, but at the same time there are plenty of opportunities for smiles, laughs, and a little shaking of heads. You open a tattered box secured with string as old as you are, and there’s that hideous glass Christmas tree ornament with tarnished tinsel strung inside—which everyone has laughed at for years, but refuses to throw away. Yup, ugly as ever. Or amid the voluminous piles of papers being sorted, you fi nd a carefully preserved third-grade report card—from the 1930s. Then you

uncover a black-and-white photo of your toddler sisters and yourself in matching velvet jumpers, gritting your teeth for the annual holiday photo shoot. “Alice, sit still,” your mother’s voice echoes across the decades.

My favorite fi nd thus far occurred back at my own house as I was unwrapping an antique family soup tureen. A fi lm of dust had arrived with it from Pennsylvania, so I removed the vessel’s lid to wash it out. Taped inside was a yellowed card from a library card catalog. On the back, in my grandmother’s distinctive penmanship, was written, “Name tureen as applied to the container for soup is said to be derived from the fact that Marshall Turenne of France, on one occasion, used his helmet to hold soup.”

I laughed out loud. Where had my grandmother, who read voraciously, uncovered this (probably apoc-ryphal) factoid? Mostly, I loved the fact that it had tickled her funny bone suffi ciently that she had preserved it for her descendents in a way that we couldn’t miss. And in a way that wouldn’t fail to make us smile. Who knows how long the note had been there—probably several decades, given the not-so-recent demise of card catalogs. Still smiling, I taped it carefully back inside for future generations to discover.

Every generation, of course, leaves behind artifacts and writings that tell us about who they were and how they lived. Here at the magazine, we are creating part of the record of this generation of Wellesley College. I was recently in a meeting to discuss the preservation of our enormous photographic collection. Slides, negatives, prints, disks: We take thousands of photographs that will some day make up a large part of the College Archive collections. We need to make sure that they make it there intact, along with the metadata (What are those students protesting? When?) required for digital cataloging.

The magazines themselves are a record—even beyond the written content they contain. We love perusing the magazine’s bound volumes in our offi ce, taking in the way typography, writing style, headlines, and design all speak to a particular era. And the photographs! Truth be told, sometimes we crow over them. Seriously, ladies from the ’60s, how did you make your hair so big?

What does this current issue tell you about present-day Wellesley? Students of today have a great sense of creativity that blends wonderfully with whimsy (“All Dressed Up,” p. 10). Alumnae are infused with as much of a sense of “Ministrare” as earlier generations of Wellesley graduates (for example, Stephanie Hornbeck ’90 preserving the cultural heritage of Haiti—“The Art of Recovery,” p. 20). Davis Scholars are an integral part of the fabric of the College (“The Class of All Colors,” p. 34). It’s probably the same Wellesley you knew, but different, too. You read and judge.

In the meantime, anybody want eight sets of china that we dug out of the family homestead? That’s a few more than I need. . . .

Alice M. Hummer, Editor

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Richard Howard, the magazine’s intrepid and talented photo-grapher, will climb anything to catch the action (inside back cover).

LETTERS TO

THE EDITOR

Ruth Walker (“The Class of All Colors, p. 34), a Wellesley

magazine regular, is a Boston-based freelancer who writes a weekly column for the Christian Science Monitor called Verbal Energy.

CONTRIBUTORS

Anna K. Johns ’09 (“Unplanned Lessons,” p. 30) was the magazine’s Girl Friday before she graduated, went to work in Alabama as a paralegal, and then took a teaching

job with Teach For America.

Wellesley welcomes short letters (a max-imum length of 300 words) relating to articles or items that have appeared in recent issues of the magazine. Send your remarks to the Editor, Wellesleymagazine, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481-8203, or email comments to [email protected].

ADVICE FOR PHYSICIANS

I rarely write letters to the editor, but after reading the last edition of the Wellesley magazine, I felt com-pelled to respond to a letter writ-ten by Anonymous ’07 (“Letters to the Editor,” summer ’11). My goal in doing this is to offer her a ray of hope.

After earning my B.A. from Wellesley, I graduated from medi-cal school. While in medical school, I found that I enjoyed my surgi-cal rotation more than any other. When applying for a residency, I was told by my medical-school advisors that I should not apply for a surgical residency because it was not a traditional role for a female physician. Still, I persisted in my desire to become a surgeon. Again, I encountered more roadblocks. A chief of surgery at a major hospital was not supportive of my applying to his service; however, I found another chief at the same hospital who welcomed my application and accepted me into his surgical service.

When I started my residency, I did not intend to date any doctor at the hospital. However, I met some-one who shared the emergency-ward service with me. We worked well together, and he invited me to play golf. Three weeks later, we

were engaged, and since he was about to join the Navy, we decided to get married fi ve months later. Now, after juggling schedules, raising fi ve wonderful and success-ful children, and enjoying our 14 grandchildren, we still love being partners in medicine and life.

My advice to the writer is: There will be times in medicine that are diffi cult. There are times when it will be diffi cult to fi nd a compatible partner. There are times when it will be diffi cult to just unwind from work and enjoy oneself. Don’t expect to have every-thing happen at once. Take things one day at a time and enjoy what is present before you. Keep focused on your career until someone or something comes along that you will want to fi t into your amazing life. It can happen when you least expect it, as it did for me.

You have already achieved a major goal in your young life by graduating from one of the fi nest colleges in the world and becoming an M.D. You have also been placed in a residency, which, even though it was not your fi rst choice, not every graduating physician is able to do. Try to rise above the obstacles by fi nding enjoyment in caring for your patients. Hearing their stories and healing their pain will bring you a great deal of satisfaction.

Barbara Payne Rockett ’53Brookline, Mass.

THE PLAY’S THE THING

Belatedly I read the spring ’11 issue and was stunned and

(Continued on page 81)

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Wellesley magazineis available online

at www.wellesley.edu/magazine.

Follow Wellesley on Twitter:

@Wellesleymag.

When she is not working with the Smithsonian in Haiti, Stephanie Hornbeck ’90 (“TheArt of Recovery,” p. 20)is the principal at Caryatid Conservation Services, a private practice in object conservation in Miami.

A LETTER FROM THE CHAIR OF THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Dear Wellesley College Alumnae,

Sometimes lightning does strike twice. In 2006, I was thrilled to serve you as president of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association. As you may recall, I became very fond of saying “Wellesley is for life.” I may have failed to appreciate fully the magnitude of that statement, but I am about to fi nd out! After a quick but very eventful fi ve years in the life of our College, I have begun serving as chair of the Wellesley College Board of Trustees. Once again, I am thrilled and grateful for this opportunity to serve our alma mater and to be more closely connected to all of you.

I look forward to renewing my partnership with our president, Kim Bottomly. I know that she shares my belief that the Wellesley alumnae network is one of our greatest strengths, a unique and pow-erful characteristic. From my personal experience I know, and Kim has learned, that the Wellesley experience is more than four years. It is a lifelong journey. We are supported by those who came before us, and we support those coming along. Through Wellesley, each of us is connected to generations of remarkable, accomplished women.

I spent the summer speaking with each of my fellow trustees. We are so fortunate to have such talented and dedicated board members who care deeply about Wellesley, are thoughtful stewards of its resources, and are generous with their time and talents on our behalf. In our conversations, we spoke of the work of various board committees and task forces and the “big picture” topics the board has been working on since a retreat we held in October 2010. Our work is focused on the issues of college affordability and accessibil-ity, student engagement, supporting our faculty, and infrastructure requirements—everything from buildings to technology to staff. Wellesley is in a strong position with many opportunities for exciting new initiatives. But as you can imagine, the current economic climate presents challenges, as well. I am grateful for the good hearts and minds working on these challenges for Wellesley.

All our deliberations are informed by our core commitment to the liberal arts as an effective foundation for new global citizens who must exhibit fl exibility of thought and habit to adapt to a rapidly changing world. We will bring that same fl exibility of thought to our work of securing Wellesley’s future.

Laura Daignault Gates ’72

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From the President

Dreamers, Designers, and Doers

WHAT KIND OF EDUCATION results in graduates who are successful at what they choose to do? What kind of education results in graduates who, many years later, still credit their college with helping them to live a fulfi lling and appreciated life?

It is a Wellesley kind of education.Women emerge from their four

years at Wellesley having developed three distinct crucial attributes: They are dreamers, they are designers, and they are doers. Dreaming is creative vision, seeing new and different approaches to old problems. For dreams to become reality, there must be good planning—that is where the designer skills come in. And the best plans are of little use without doers to enact them. A Wellesley education is designed to allow students to be all three.

In our classrooms and in our residen-tial environment, we provide students with a broad context for their diverse interests, an organizing framework that helps them make sense of the world. Our liberal-arts curriculum, emphasizing humanities, social science, and science, is deliberately designed to provide that necessary broad context and to help transform students’ interests into specifi c skills. This is the true value of a Wellesley education, and more generally of a liberal-arts education.

The Wellesley story—a story that spans more than 125 years—is about doing what is necessary to produce the dreamers, designers, and doers that the world so badly needs.

But there are other stories out there—new stories.

The national dialogue currently portrays higher education merely as preparation for specifi c careers—the producer of certifi ed persons, rather than the producer of educated persons. I recently read a report by the National Governors Association (NGA) that exemplifi es what is wrong with this new story. The report, Degrees for What Jobs? Raising Expectations for Universities and Colleges in a Global Economy, criticizes higher education for being insensitive to the immediate needs of industry and, therefore, failing to support American competitiveness. Curricula, the report suggests, should be determined by market trends, so schools should increase the number of degrees in program areas that currently have high employer

demand. (In doing so, the “nonrelevant” majors would be eliminated, the report implies.) But, if you listen to the employers cited in the NGA report, they want employees who are self-directed and who take initia-tive, who are adaptable and willing to learn, who have high ethical standards and integrity, and who are able to communicate effectively. Ironically, the competencies employers want are exactly the skills that a broad liberal-arts education provides—the same skills that would be diminished if we followed the recommendations in this report.

This way of thinking has signifi cant negative consequences. For one, it diminishes the role of the humanities. If the goal of getting a

college degree is primarily the pragmatic acquisition of specifi c job skills, then there is little justifi cation for the human-ities. Yet, some of the more progressive undergraduate business and engineering schools have come to appreciate the role of the humanities in producing the best innovators and the best creative dream-ers. This approach also undermines the role of the faculty in setting curricu-lum. Faculty, not market trends, are the experts at creating educated persons. One of the faculty’s most important contributions—one that we take very seriously at Wellesley—is upholding the standards of the academic enterprise.

These are standards that have served this country very well over the past century and more.

I am not worried about Wellesley. We know how to educate undergraduates, and we have the successful history to prove it. We will keep doing what we have always done so well. I do worry, however, about the many fi ne educational institu-tions that will not be able to ignore the “new story” implicit in the NGA report. Those institutions educate the vast majority of our nation’s college graduates. If they are forced to follow the prescrip-tions and proscriptions of this politically popular

report, our nation could fi nd itself with a less competent leadership core, a less literate and humane population. The shrinking infl uence of the humanities will hurt us all—even those of us from Wellesley, where the humanities will always be cherished.

We all need to join the national debate so these “new stories” about the role of undergraduate education are not the dominant ones. Wellesley’s own dreamers, designers, and doers prove that a liberal-arts education remains relevant, valuable, and necessary today.

H. Kim Bottomly

‘In our classrooms and in our residential environment,

we provide students with a broad context for

their diverse interests, an organizing framework

that helps them make sense of the world.’

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MONOPRINTING. Poster design. Ceramic mosaics.

Stop-motion animation. Matting and framing. These

are just a few of the workshops offered through

Wellesley’s Applied Arts Program. The workshops

are noncredit, free, and open to all members of the

Wellesley community—including alumnae. “I think

about it as a community builder,” says Clara Lieu,

program coordinator of the Applied Arts Program

and director of the Jewett Art Gallery. “You can

have a fi rst-year student,

a faculty member, and a

staff member, and you’re

all getting to know each

other in a relaxed environ-

ment. . . . I’ve had people

from all over the place

participate.”

The program also

gives participants the

chance to learn valuable

skills that simply aren’t

covered in classes, like

how to photograph 2-D

and 3-D art. “The students

will bring a painting or a photograph, and we’ll teach

them how to photograph it. That’s really important for

grad-school applications, for portfolio preparation,”

Lieu says. The courses also introduce people to

tools and resources at the College that they might

otherwise not encounter, like the laser cutter in the

engineering studio in the Science Center. Before

the class was offered, “I didn’t even know we had a

laser cutter,” Lieu says.

—LS

A NOTEBOOK OF NEWS AND

INFORMATION ABOUT THE CAMPUS BY

ALICE HUMMER, LISA SCANLON ’99,

JENNIFER FLINT, JENNIFER GARRETT ’98,

APRIL AUSTIN, AND ABIGAIL MURDY ’12

Caitlin Jo “C.J.” Greenhill ’14 inspects a monoprint plate during a September workshop given by the Applied Arts Program.

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For more information on the AppliedArts Program, visit jewettgallery.wordpress.com/applied-arts/.



JIM WICE, director of disability service

Equal Access for All

inPerson

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I’ve tended to be a big proponent

of work experience, especially for students

with disabilities—internships, [for

example].’—Jim Wice

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It’s his job to know codes and best practices, and he can reel off information about the campus terrain and buildings. (Just ask Ria Mendoza-Bennett ’91, who returned for her 20th reunion last June—“He [provided] information I had not considered like the 1:8 rise in the ramp I would have to negotiate in Pomeroy.”)

When working with students, in particular, Wice also calls on his own experience. A spinal-cord injury after his freshman year in college led him to use a wheelchair. He completed his B.S. in engineering, but could not fi nd work in the fi eld after graduation. “I took summer school. I took wintersessions. When I got out of school, I didn’t have any engineering experience, so I couldn’t talk engi-neering,” he says. “Plus, having a disability, the employers even more wanted to know what can you do, what can’t you do.” He took a temporary job instead at the University of Massachusetts Disability Services Offi ce—which has happily led to his career. But the experience still colors his advice to students: “Over the years, I’ve tended to be a big proponent of work experience, especially for students with disabilities—internships, [for example].”

All the advice and services Wice offers are provided by the College free of charge. Mona Minkara ’09, likely the fi rst legally blind student to graduate from Wellesley with a major in the sciences, expresses gratitude for all the support she received: student and staff readers, students to record books (“that’s probably the most expensive

and most useful thing they gave me”), notetakers for class and assistants for labs, assistive soft-

ware. “It was a slew of things. It was a big investment,” she says, but it provided

the critical equal access for her. “For sure, I would not have been able to

graduate or even not get much out of my education if I didn’t have

all these readers. I’m glad that there was a disabili-

ties offi ce—somebody there who supported what I needed.” She has since moved on to the University of Florida to pursue a doctorate in

chemistry.—AH

JIM WICE CAN SUM UP his job at the College in three words: providing equal access.

As Wellesley’s director of disability services, he fi nds accommodations to allow members of the community with disabilities, needs, or health issues to do their aca-demic work, fulfi ll their job responsibilities, or take part in events. If you need sign-language services for your classes or a parking spot near your offi ce in Green Hall because you’re temporarily on crutches, Wice is the person to call.

As an advocate and facilitator, Wice is the center of a network of offi ces on campus that provide services to students, faculty, staff, alumnae, and guests to the College. One day, he might be working with a class dean and the Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center to secure test-ing accommodations—for example, extended time—for a student with a learning disability. The next, he might be collaborating with the Housing Offi ce and Campus Police to make sure a student has a wheel-in shower in her resi-dence hall and transportation around campus. Although

many people are involved, Wice is the fi rst and often the only stop for disability services.

He also works to raise awareness about disability issues on campus. He runs a monthly disabilities discussion group and sponsors events, such as a fi lm on deafness and cochlear implants that was shown on campus in September. He’s involved in long-term planning for the College, evaluating facilities and promoting “universal design,” a standard of accessibility that goes beyond codes mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act. And he has even been known to advise alumnae-magazine editors on the preferred language around disability issues. (Use “person fi rst” language, he says, such as “student with a disability” rather than “disabled student.”)

Wice holds a master’s degree in rehabilita-tion counseling and has been active in the fi eld for more than 20 years, working in higher education as well as at residential and non-residential institutions.

To learn more about disabilityprograms, visit web.wellesley. edu/web/StudentLife/HealthandWellness/disability.



AS A BIRACIAL CHILD, Assistant Professor Brenna Greer grew up in a predominantly white environ-ment, where books featuring children of color were rare. “I glommed onto those books I felt refl ected me, or my experience, or my family, in terms of our race,” says Greer, who is a new addition to the history department, where she teaches a course on black Americans’ relationship to visual culture. As an adult—and a budding collector of children’s books—Greer searches out those books that helped her make sense of her world as a child. “The primary nar-ratives running through the books that I enjoyed as a child (and which I continue to keep close) are those that reinforced the value of fi nding and knowing one’s self and being true to that self. And often, they were about being alone, but not lonely, on that journey,” she says. Visually, these texts tend to be “vivid or spectacular in some way,” she says, which appeals to both the child and adult collector alike. Here, Greer shares her short list of favorites.

The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats

In my home, this book came out during the winter holidays. It is the fi rst children’s book I can remem-ber having or seeing with a child of color in it. I love the watercolor-y torn paper look of the illustrations. And it struck me even as a very young child that the child just happens to be a black boy, but that fact has nothing to do with the story of his day. He just is.

The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, by Paul Goble

This book tells the story of a Plains Indian girl whose family recognizes she is restless and lonely. Out of love, they give her their blessing to go run with a band of wild horses. She fi nds happiness with the horses and ultimately becomes a wild horse herself. As much as I enjoyed the story, I also found Goble’s illustrations stunning. I still do.

The Real Story of the Bonobos Who Wore Spectacles, by Adela Turin and Nella Bosnia

This book, I am certain, was a none-too-subtle attempt on my mother’s part to arm her daughter against a world with sexism in it. The males in a group of bonobos fi nd a suitcase of spectacles. They wear them to distinguish themselves as the learned members of their society. They spend all their time pontifi cating (and doing no work), and they make fun of the female bonobos when they, too, try to wear the spectacles and share knowledge. Eventually the females and the chil-dren leave the men to their “thinking” and move on to another grove, in which they start their own utopian society fi lled with music, art, and learn-ing. The illustrations are colorful and humorous; the message is one of self-love and collective harmony.

I Been There, written by Carol Hall, illustrated by Sammis McLean

A lonely black boy takes a fanciful journey, dur-ing which he befriends a gorilla-bat “monster,” who plays basketball with him. As a little brown girl, this book was my version of Where the Wild Things Are. The images are fantastic and fantasti-cal, and I can think of no book that encouraged my dreaming (and daydreaming) more.

The Velveteen Rabbit, written by Margery Williams, illustrated by William Nicholson

A classic. The velveteen rabbit toy, who is ostra-cized by other “better” toys in his boy-owner’s playroom, longs to be “real,” a wish he is granted only after experiencing love and aban-donment. In the end, he runs off into the woods to play with the other “real” rabbits. My mother gave me this book as a child, and she recently re-gave it to me to recognize the end of my most recent journey, which has brought me here, to Wellesley College.

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AS PART OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, Wellesley is launching a number of interfaith and community- service programs on and around campus. Among the projects in the works are creating an edible forest garden at a public school in Framingham; sending students out to local middle schools to engage them in issues of religious literacy; and focusing on mak-ing the Multifaith Center a gathering place for local schools and chaplain-cies during interfaith programs through the year.

President Obama announced the initia-tive this spring, asking institutions of higher education to commit to a year of interfaith and community-service pro-gramming on campus. “As a Christian who became committed to the church while serving my community, I know that an act of service can unite people of all faiths, or even no faith, around a common purpose of helping those in need,” Obama said when announcing the initiative.

Wellesley, which has been committed to interfaith understanding and cooperation for many years, had a conference this spring to make a plan for the College. “We decided, as is our way, to push ourselves a little bit, and also to make this a three- to fi ve-year project for ourselves,” says Victor Kazanjian (above), dean of intercultural education and religious and spiritual life. “We really wanted this to guide our future.”

—LS

SERVICE AND FAITH

INTERFAITH UNDERSTANDING BEYOND WELLESLEY

Wellesley’s Multifaith Center

THE SHORT

LIST Children’s Books



This past August, as the College geared up for the academic year, the magazine staff used Facebook to capture the arrival of the fi rst-year class: the welcome banner going up, the plants being potted in the greenhouses to give away to new students. We also asked alumnae what advice they’d offer the new recruits—what alumnae wish they’d known when they started Wellesley.

College is a place of discovery. Don’t be so attached to the goals you had before arriv-ing that you can’t see all the options you’ve never consid-ered. Take a risk. Follow your passions. Branch out. Try something new.

Peggy Foerch Fitzgerald ’87

D is for Diploma! Excellent advice I received from my class dean during a fi rst-year, fi rst-semester freak-out about grades.

Catherine Lee ’08

Knock your gym requirement out your fi rst year. Skinnydip in

Lake Waban at least once. Call your mother. Among other things, it stops her from calling Campus Po in a hot panic.

Alison Buchbinder ’05

If you’re lonely or scared or really overwhelmed, let some-one know. You’re not alone. The people around you care more than you know.

Amy Delamaide ’02

I was most miserable. I was no longer the smartest kid in the room, woe was me. I didn’t feel I fi t in. Transfer, anyone? Meanwhile, a few seats away in History 101, Hillary Rodham was also thinking in terms of

To see demographic statistics about the class, please visit web.wellesley.edu/web/Admission/GetToKnowUs/statistics.psml.

THIS YEAR’S FIRST-YEARS are of a new generation, no doubt: Most of them were born in 1993, the year Mosaic was introduced, making it possible for PC and Mac users to browse the web for the fi rst time. It was the year of President Bill Clinton’s inauguration; since that time, the Supreme Court has always had at least two women on its bench. And, as Beloit College’s “The Mindset List” points out, Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson are old enough to be the parents of this class of 2015.

To offer some context of the cultural and political landmarks of the incoming class, we compare them at right to the incoming classes of

25 and 50 years ago and the years they entered Wellesley (1986 and 1961). Prepare to feel dated. Or well aged, rather.

To watch Wellesley’s fl ash mob orientation event, visit YouTube.com and search for “Wellesley College offi cial fl ashmob.”

“get me out of here.” So I’m just sayin’. You, if normal, will occasionally feel weird. However, you are where you belong. You got in. You’re in for life. Wellesley’s the best thing I ever did for myself.

Christine Osborne ’69

Don’t be afraid of the distribu-tion requirements. I learned a lot of really interesting things in all of my distribution require-ment classes that I never would have known if I didn’t have to take science classes.

Sarah Oddie ’11

Hoop nachos will get you through many 3 a.m. nights.

Ashley Lee ’11

Find a “happy place” on campus to run away to and regroup. (Mine was/is the botanic gardens.)

Beth Finch McCarthy ’84

Your Wellesley friends will be ones you’ll have for a lifetime. Choose well.

Michelle Davis Petelinz ’78

Incoming!CLASS OF 2015

ADVICE FROM THE SISTERHOOD

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19612011

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9

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$7.25 $3.35 $1.00

BILLBOARD CHART TOPPERS

EMMY-AWARD WINNING TV

ON THE BIG SCREEN

FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE

WELLESLEY FEES & EXPENSES

THE SPACE RACE

FASHION ICON

WELLESLEY NEWS HEADLINE

MOST COMMON FIRST NAMES IN

INCOMING CLASS

PRESIDENT OF WELLESLEY

ONE GRADUATION REQUIREMENT

NEW BUILDING ON CAMPUS

Ethernet AccessNo Longer Offered in

Dorm Rooms“”

College Links Computer Network“

”Freshman

Class Enters With Fungus“ ”

Elizabeth (14) Katherine (13)

Emily (11)

Jennifer (15) Amy (12)Susan (12)

Susan (27) Elizabeth (23)

Nancy (13)

QUANTITATIVE-REASONING OVERLAY COURSE

WRITING 125 BIBLICAL HISTORY 104

NOW AND THEN

AND THEDEATHLY

HOLLOWS—Part 2

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“FIREWORK,” BY KATY PERRY

“SAY YOU, SAY ME,” BY LIONEL RICHIE

“ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT,” BY ELVIS PRESLEY

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LADY GAGA MADONNA JACQUELINE KENNEDY

H. KIM BOTTOMLY NANNERL OVERHOLSER KEOHANE ’61

MARGARET CLAPP

LULU CHOW WANG CAMPUS CENTER

SPORTS CENTER McAFEE HALL

ATLANTIS: THE LAST SHUTTLE MISSION

CHALLENGER DISASTER

ALAN SHEPARD, THE FIRST AMERICAN GOES INTO SPACE

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CULTURAL LANDMARKS

FOR ENTERING FIRST-YEARS



LAST SEMESTER, when the shimmering sculptural wall hangings of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui were on display at the Davis, the museum sponsored a design contest for students. The challenge: to follow in the footsteps of the artist.

Anatsui often uses wire and bottle tops to construct his pieces, drawing inspiration from the traditional kente cloth of the Akan peoples of West Africa. Students were charged with designing clothing from materials in their immediate surroundings, fi nd-ing inspiration in their everyday lives. The result was a whimsical collection of garments, many still on display in Jewett.

Wendy Chen’s bridal gown had its roots in a computer-science course called The Socio-Technological Web. Chen says the course made her realize that the web—now critical to society—can organize individuals in completely new ways to do great good or great violence. “My dress, titled I Do, presents a hopeful vision of the future in which technology is interwoven harmoniously into the fabric of our lives,” she says.

While doing publicity for a student dance group, Claire McRee became aware of the huge number of posters around campus and an idea was born: to construct a 1930s-style evening gown with paper posters. “I was inspired by El Anatsui’s use of color, and particularly in the interplay between color and texture in the large tapestries he made from recycled aluminum cans,” McRee adds. “With the paper ‘lace,’ I designed for the top of the bodice, I wanted to evoke a similar aesthetic.” McRee dreams of pursuing a career in costume history, perhaps becoming a curator for a costume collection like the one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

—AH

ART OF WELLESLEY

All Dressed UpUntitled (far right)

Claire McRee ’12

Posters, Scotch tape, white glue

2011

I Do (second from right)

Wendy Chen ’14

Vintage wedding dress, old computer parts

2011

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REALITY REIMAGINED Myles Dunigan, a printmaker who works in the studio-art department, created this otherworldly lithograph, “The Storm,” which was part of the show The Standing Reserve in Jewett Art Gallery this fall. “In my work, I strive to create a dialogue between myth and reality, a world of sublime mysteries and fragmented memories,” Dunigan says.



We need a fundamental shift in the way we think about international development. We

need to think of poor people not as vulnerable but capable. We need to think of it not as a billion mouths to feed but two

billion hands to engage. ! ere needs to be a shift in the way we

practice international development, where we’re empowering people to be

the creators of their future not the recipients of our thoughts of what we think

their future should be.

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national parks all over the island, and in November we are researching a subject of our choice.

WHAT’S THE BEST PART OF YOUR DAILY ROUTINE IN MADAGASCAR? Daily routine? Ha! The fi rst thing you learn about Madagascar is that noth-ing is predictable but the presence of rice at every meal. But going to class, taking the bus through the colorful market and then walking along an ocean cliff are defi nitely my favorite parts of the day.

WHAT ARE SOME SURVIVAL TACTICS YOU HAVE LEARNED THE HARD WAY? Witnessing abject poverty and mal-nourished children everyday is diffi cult. Remembering that a smile can make someone’s day and that I can touch many lives with what I’m learning helps me deal with troubling feelings about my American privilege. On the lighter side: Life without toilet paper is possible!

—AM

STUDENT: Carly Gayle ’13MAJOR: Environmental studiesHOMETOWN: Gaithersburg, Md.STUDYING IN: Madagascar

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION?Bouncing along dusty roads through forest and rice fi elds, passing bicycles weighed down with sacks of rice; bush taxis loaded with people and chickens on the roof; roadside markets over-fl owing with fruit and cheap plastic goods. It’s peaceful chaos.

DESCRIBE YOUR PROGRAM.The School for International Training’s biodiversity and natural-resource-management semester is based in Ft. Dauphin, a small southern city. For the fi rst six weeks, we stayed with host families and attend classes at the Libanona Ecology Center. We talked to village elders, toured mine sites, met with several NGOs, learned Malagasy songs, and crashed through spiny forest while tracking lemurs. We spent October traveling to communities and

WELLESLEYAWAY

ANYTHING BUT ROUTINE

OBJECT OF OUR ATTENTION

PLASTER POETIN ONE OF HIS MOST FAMOUS POEMS, John Keats wrote about his fears “that I may cease to be.” The English Romantic poet has long since ceased to be—he died in 1821—but his like-ness is permanently on display in Wellesley’s Special Collections.

The Keats life mask is a replica of one made in 1816 by Robert Haydon, a British artist and close friend of Keats. The origi-nal is part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection in London.

Wellesley’s copy of the mask is a gift from Margaret Sherwood, an English literature professor at Wellesley in the early 1900s who studied the English poets of the 19th century and developed a sem-inar on English romanticism. According to the College’s bibliographic files on fac-ulty, Sherwood’s courses on Romantic prose and poetry were “famous, partly because she brought to them ‘her humor . . . her informal directness in discussion . . . her “pitiless logic” . . . and her constructive criticism.’” And, if her gift to the College is any indication, a real affection for the Romantic writers themselves.

—LS

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Amy B. Smith, founder of MIT’s D-Lab, speakingon campus for the Wilson Lecture

QUOTABLES

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To watch the entire lecture, visit www.youtube.com and search for “Amy B. Smith” and “Wellesley.”

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WHITNEY REID ’12 HAS A WIDE VARIETY OF INTERESTS, from bio-medical research to theater to sports. In fact, while Reid has been a mainstay on the College’s fi eld-hockey team since she was a fi rst-year, she also tried out for—and excelled on—the tennis team in the spring of her sophomore year.

Those wide-ranging interests mean a lot of work in a lot of different areas: managing a theater production, doing research in the summer, keeping up skills in two different sports, all while maintaining a full course load as a biology major.

Not much can slow Reid down—not even blowing out her knee. After playing singles and doubles for the Blue as a soph-omore and making the All-Seven Sisters team, she played in a spring fi eld-hockey tournament with two weeks left in the tennis season. During the last game of the tournament, Reid tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee. “I actually waited a month before I got my surgery just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it during school,” she says.

After she had the knee repaired, Reid worked on her rehab all summer, while also working at an internship for the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. When she came back to school for the start of her junior year, she was still working to get back to playing form. That didn’t keep her from being a part of the fi eld-hockey team, however. “I was still just as involved as if I was playing,” Reid says. “But it was hard going from a starter on the

team to not being able to do anything.”

Reid actually managed to play in the fi nal four games of the season, and after that, she decided to pursue another interest: study abroad. She spent the spring semester of her junior year at Trinity College in Dublin, where she squeezed in some fi eld hockey with the col-lege’s No. 1 club team. “I’ve been committed to athletics my entire life,” Reid says. “It seems I’ve always been playing some kind of sport.”

And that commitment has proven to be benefi cial in a number of ways. “I feel like playing athletics makes my academics better,” Reid says. “I actually get better grades during the season because it makes us manage our time better.” In addition, having the support of her teammates made the transition to Wellesley—where academic focus can take priority over everything—a little easier. “Coming in as a freshman, you can see how it would be hard to make friends,” she says. “But I came in already having 16 best friends who would do anything for me.”

This is her last season with those friends, and many of them have changed over the years. Reid—who is cocaptain this year—is the lone senior on the squad and one of only six returning players. She recently decided she wants to go to medical school after graduation, so she has some catching up to do on premed coursework. With all the demands on her time, her repaired knee, and a variety of interests, did she consider quitting sports?

“I never really thought of hanging up my cleats,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine being at Wellesley and not being on the fi eld-hockey team.”

—JG

WELLESLEY ATHLETICS

Team Player

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For updates on the varsity fi eld-hockey season, visit www.wellesleyblue.com/sports/fh/index.

ENVIRONMENT

PEDAL POWERSPIN CLASS: It’s an excellent way to tone muscles, stay fi t—and generate renewable en-ergy? At the Keohane Sports Center, it’s now possible. Thanks to the Class of 1957 Green Fund, the stationary bikes have been equipped with Green Revolution Technology, which captures the energy cre-ated by students pedaling their hearts out and sends it back into the power grid. The bikes

won’t generate enough power to make a direct impact on the College’s carbon footprint—

but they are certainly making a difference: The average person might generate 40 to 70 watts in an hour of

spinning, which is about what it takes a 60-watt bulb to burn for an hour. Seeing that connection—or sweating it—helps students appreciate their own carbon footprint.

—JF

‘I feel like playing athletics makes my academics better. I actually get better grades during the season because it makes us manage our time better.’

—Whitney Reid ’12

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PROMOTING DIVERSITY

IN SEPTEMBER, ROBBIN CHAPMAN assumed the post of associate provost and academic director of diversity and inclusion for the College. Chapman came from MIT, where she earned her Ph.D. in computer science and has held the posts of assistant associate provost for faculty equity and manager of diversity recruitment in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning for the past four years. At Wellesley, she will defi ne and implement the College’s diversity and inclusion priorities in the academic area.

REPORTS FROM AROUND CAMPUS

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FACULTY IS NO. 1

THE PRINCETON REVIEW’S annual college guidebook for 2012 ranked Wellesley’s faculty as No. 1 in the country. The College

was mentioned on the TODAY show when the Princeton Review’s survey results of 122,000 students from across the nation were

announced. Elsewhere, Wellesley this year tied for sixth in the U.S. News and World Report rankings of liberal-arts colleges.

WELLESLEY ON

Missing the college experience? Go to www.youtube.com and join the fun. You can look in on:

Opening convocation (search for 2011 Wellesley College Convocation)

Professor Nancy Harrison Kolodny ’64 talking about her fi rst-year seminar (search for The Nuclear Challenge)

1# To watch the TODAY show segment, visit tinyurl.com/3vrvt2x.

RABBIT-PROOF FENCE

A KITCHEN GARDEN, created last year for an art-history class on art and food in Renaissance Italy, is now a permanent fi xture of the botanic gardens. And thanks to a new trellis fence around its perimeter, the exotic watermelons, heirloom squash, and other crops that students grow for classes using the kitchen garden won’t go to the dogs—or to the deer and rabbits, the more likely culprits. Local artisan Frank Hamm built the 20 by 20 fence with Eastern red cedar, which was scavenged locally—as locally as a few yards away, in fact, at the site of the new Edible Ecosystem garden down the hill from the observatory.

OVERHEARD

‘How awesome were the grilled cheeses today

in my dining hall?’@TowerCourtTweet

(Even the venerable Tower Court is getting in on the Twitter action.)

To learn more about the botanic gardens, visitwww.wellesley.edu/WCBG/Welcome/welcome.html.

BY THE NUMBERS:THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE LIBRARIES

1,683,644TOTAL VOLUMES IN THE LIBRARIES

(PHYSICAL AND E-BOOKS, E-JOURNALS,

E-GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS)

105,083 NUMBER OF ITEMS CHECKED OUT

OF THE LIBRARIES LAST YEAR

20,115SEARCHES IN THE ELECTRONIC LIBRARY

CATALOGUE IN ONE WEEK

2,918 NUMBER OF VOLUMES FROM THE LIBRARY

THAT HAVE BEEN SCANNED AND ARE

AVAILABLE IN THE INTERNET ARCHIVE

www.archive.org

223NUMBER OF CIRCULATIONS OF THE LIBRARY’S

ALL-TIME, TOP-CIRCULATING DVD, EYES WIDE SHUT

4 NUMBER OF RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE MUSICAL

COMEDIES ON VIDEO OWNED BY THE LIBRARY

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HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE TO MOVE Mt. Fuji from one place to another? If this question stymies you, you’re not alone—at fi rst, Wellesley students struggle with this kind of question. “[Students] want to have an exact answer. They’re trying to fi nd the exact formula or something they can plug into a calculator,” Corrine Taylor says. As director of Wellesley’s Quantitative Reasoning Program, Taylor is trying to combat this formula-and-calculator mindset. “They’re used to textbook kind of problems, and I want to get them think-ing about more challenging puzzles and about the real world. That’s a very different place,” she says. Rather than teaching algebra, geometry, and sta-tistics as separate, disjointed courses, Taylor thinks its far more effective instead to “try to fi gure out ways to get people to solve real-world problems using all the different strands of mathematics and logic and statistics.”

Wellesley’s Quantitative Reasoning Program began in 1997 with the goal of making sure that every student is able to think clearly and critically about quantitative issues. “In today’s society, it’s as important to have good numeracy skills as it is to be literate,” says Taylor, who has a Ph.D. in economics and started her career at Wellesley in the economic department. For example, a small-business owner or a school administrator might use quantitative reasoning to tackle budget or inventory. Even the visual arts are becoming increasingly quantitative with the use of software in fi lm, photography, and sculpture.

Satisfying Wellesley’s QR requirement is a two-part process. First, students must either pass the quantitative-reasoning assessment, given dur-ing orientation, or take Quantitative Reasoning

140, the basic QR-skills course. Then, students must take

a quantitative-reasoning overlay course. These courses, which are offered in departments from astronomy to philosophy to political science, em-phasize statistical analysis and interpretation of data. For the most part, these courses stressed these skills even before the requirement, but Taylor will some-times collaborate with professors to incorporate QR into their curricula. For example, in a geology

class, she might work with a lab instructor on how to include a quantitative analysis of a sand sample.

Taylor has also collaborated with professors on entirely new courses. For example, a few years ago, she helped establish EDUC 314 Learning and Teaching Mathematics: Content, Cognition, and Pedagogy. This course, which aims to make Wellesley students better elementary-school math teachers, is team-taught by Wellesley College faculty with backgrounds in mathematics, quantitative rea-soning, and education, and a school mathematics specialist and teacher. Wellesley students simulta-neously study their own cognition as they learn mathematical concepts and principles, children’s cognition as they learn mathematics, and how math can be taught to children in the classroom.

The Quantitative Reasoning Program has also brought QR to the wider Wellesley commu-nity through the Celebrating QR Connections series, which brings speakers to campus around a theme. For example, one series on QR and women’s health included a panel on the new national guide-lines on mammography. Another on QR and

QUANTITATIVE REASONING

Real-World Math

‘In today’s society, it’s as important to have good numeracy skills as it is to be literate.’

—Corrine Taylor

FocusonFaculty

forensic evidence included a lecture by a California Institute of Technology math professor who con-sulted on the TV show NUMB3RS. “The [lecture] series has been so popular, bringing people from different departments that you would normally never see in one place together,” Taylor says.

Taylor has also been busy promoting quan-titative reasoning off campus. For the past two years, she has received grants from the Massa-chusetts Department of Higher Education to run professional-development programs for teachers in Fall River and New Bedford, Mass., on infusing QR into lesson plans. “I think if we’re really going to create a well-informed public, we need to get QR down at the lower levels faster,” Taylor says. “It can’t be that math is taught in [the] traditional way. . . . We need that combination of math, logic, and statistics and real-world problems to happen earlier in the curriculum so that students who might not go on to college are really ready for the work force.” It’s a lofty goal. . . but perhaps not as diffi cult as moving Mt. Fuji.

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For a hint on how to solve the Mt. Fuji problem, turn to page 81.



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(She learned design soft-ware such as AutoSketch, InDesign, and SketchUp.)

Coyne’s plan hews closely to the original educa-tional intent of the gardens, but she also tackles issues such as stormwater runoff from nearby Route 135 and recycling the potable water that feeds Paramecium Pond.

Coyne has the ear of Kristina Jones, director of the botanic gardens. “If there’s a pipe break, or storm dam-age, the fi rst place I go is Mary’s plan,” says Jones. “To have all these detailed maps of the infrastructure in one place is fabulous.”

One of Coyne’s successes is the Harriet Creighton Educational Garden, which opened in 2007 across from the Margaret Ferguson Greenhouses. It consists of alpine and prairie meadow plants, as well as dwarf conifers, sur-rounded by a curving wall of fi eld-stones. The American Conifer Society has accepted it as a reference garden.

OVER HER 32-YEAR TEACHING CAREER, Mary Downey Coyne M.A. ’61, profes-sor emerita of biology, was always in search of a pleasant spot to eat her lunch outdoors. So she came to know the land-scape around the Science Center in-timately, including the Alexandra Botanic Garden and Hunnewell Arboretum.

The gardens were designed by two biology professors in the 1920s and had long been used for fi eldwork. Over time, however, the landscape had become “a lush, if slightly overgrown, picturesque landscape,” as Coyne describes it. Many students using the paths as a cut-through into the Vil didn’t even know they were walking through a botanic garden.

In 2005, the retired Coyne em-barked on a new project: She entered a certificate program in landscape design at the Landscape Institute at Boston Architectural College and made the botanic gardens her fi nal project. This involved researching, mapping, and designing a master plan for the 22-acre gardens. The effort drew upon her enthusiasm for computers.

WHEN CONSUELO VALDES ’11 arrived at Wellesley, she thought she’d be an English and mathematics double major, and pre-med, too. But after she took a computer-science course to fulfill a requirement for the math major, she started to change her mind. And when she began working in Wellesley’s Human

Computer-Interaction Laboratory with Orit Shaer, Luce Assistant Pro-fessor of Computer Science, she knew that she had found her major.

Valdes’ favorite project in the media-arts-and-sciences major was the G-nome Surfer, a tabletop computer interface that allows users to explore genetic information visually. “From this project, I learned a new language, understood and experienced the iterative design cycle, and learned about software development,” Vades says. But really, it was the team that made the experience so special. “The HCI Lab has a great atmosphere and welcomes the nerdiest of people, like myself. The long nights to meet a deadline gave us the opportunity to bond. It was pretty great.”

The main goal of the major, says Shaer, is to give the students the artistic tools and computational thinking that they need to both pro-duce and understand digital media.

BOTANY

MAPPING A RETIREMENT

Coyne is using GIS (Graphic Informa-tion System) technology to map the garden and help organize Wellesley’s plant database under the guidelines set by the American Public Gardens Asso-ciation. She hopes to encourage expan-sion of the mapping program to the rest of the botanic gardens.

Jones says several projects are in the works that were sparked by Coyne’s efforts, including a new bog garden

and more pathways, seating, and way-fi nding aids to improve the visitor expe-rience in the botanic gardens.

Coyne’s ongoing connection to Wellesley’s unique outdoor spaces remains a source of pleasure and renewal. “Retirement has been won-derful. I get to come back, talk to people, eat my lunch. It’s the best of all possible worlds.”

—AA

PROFILE OF A MAJOR MEDIA ARTS AND SCIENCES“We expect them to be able to create new digital media that is on one hand aesthetically compelling and artistically sen-sible, but on the other hand is also functionally rich and solves and addresses the needs of the user,” she says. Students learn how to do this by taking both computer science and studio arts courses, and getting the theoretical foundation that they need through art history and cinema-and-media-studies courses.

Unlike the cinema-and-media-studies major, however, the media-arts-and-sciences major is focused on production. For example, in this fall’s CS 320 Tangible User Interfaces, students are using multitouch mouses de-signed by Microsoft in entirely new ways. One team is turning the mouse into an air-guitar player; the other is using it to create an interactive toy sheep. “We really encourage them to think in new ways about technology,” says Shaer.

And when media-arts-and-sciences majors leave Wellesley, they bring this creativity to their work. Alumnae go on to be programmers, web designers, academics, advertising executives, and, Shaer points out, there are many alums who work at Google. “There’s the ‘Wellesley mafi a’ there,” she says with a smile.

—LS

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For a demonstration of the G-nome Surfer, visit www.youtube.com and search for “G-nome Surfer Pro–Long.”



REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY WELLESLEY AUTHORS

HILLARY JORDAN ’84

When She Woke Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.341 pages, $24.95

IN THE DYSTOPIAN AMERICA imagined in Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke, criminals no longer live out their sentences behind the privacy of prison walls. Instead, their transgressions are made startlingly public: Via a virus, crimes are now color-coded onto skin. Though free from life behind bars, Chromes quickly realize that punishment comes in the painful form of social alienation; dehumanized by their technicolor masks, their daily lives quickly become enmeshed in spectacles of shame and abuse. With her body dyed a scarlet red as punishment for an illegal abortion, Hannah Payne fi nds herself stunningly

alone: Largely cast out from her religious fam-ily, unmarried, and lacking street smarts after a highly sheltered upbringing, she must enter a brave new world where the potential for violence, humiliation, and harassment lies around every corner. In unfolding a riveting tale

that is simultaneously a love story, a futuristic thriller, and a chronicle of female solidarity, Jordan traces Hannah’s courageous inner voyage from dependence to self-reliance while taking us on a geographic journey from Texas to Canada.

As she does in her previous award-winning novel Mudbound (2006), Jordan tackles complex

questions of social justice and moral responsibil-ity, exploring controversial social issues through fi ctional forms. In engaging with hot-button issues of privacy, abortion, and feminist politics, When She Woke imaginatively tests the possible consequences of current neoconservative reli-gious and political trends in the United States. The nightmarish America Jordan renders is a parody of democracy as we know it: We enter a world where the Senate successfully passes the Free-dom From Information Act, where daily life is circumscribed by a lack of separation between church and state, and where biotechnology functions to limit rather than enhance personal freedom.

Though When She Woke is a narrative con-sciously indebted to classics such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” its futuristic storyline also bears resemblance to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Kazuo Ishiguro’s

Seeing Red

Never Let Me Go. Yet in mingling issues of bioethics and contemporary politics with medi-tations on the ideals of individualism, freedom, and self-expression, Jordan shapes an inventive story of her own, swiftly and imaginatively deal-ing with complex moral and ethical questions without ever being didactic. She aptly renders the multifaceted emotional and spiritual con-texts in which sexuality is inherently embedded while revealing the need for social legislation to carve out space for women’s own moral agency. With its repeated catchphrase of “it’s personal,” When She Woke urges us, through the unfolding of its brilliantly imagined nightmarish world, to conceive of how our very sense of personhood is rooted in deeply contentious questions of morality, politics, and law.

Lisa Hinrichsen ’99

Hinrichsen is an assistant professor of English at the University of Arkansas.

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fall 2011 | wellesley 17

tragedy. “It just worked out to be a teen story—because teens have more independence and mobility and that [facilitated two characters from different social classes] fall-ing in love. And now that’s what I do. I’ve never looked back,” she says. The book is unlike many Y.A. novels, however, in that it was written in verse. “The verse thing intimidates a lot of people,” she ad-mits. “But if I’ve done my job, you’ll forget you’re even reading verse.”

Mary Jane Close Beaufrand ’88 also never strove to write Y.A. fi ction, although that’s where her books have found their home. Her fi rst novel, Primavera, is about Flora Pazzi, a young girl who feuded with the Medici, and served (fi ctionally) as the inspira-tion for Botticelli’s Primavera. “When I fi rst started,” Beaufrand relates, “I was with a writing group and writing magic realism, and some of my fellow writers wondered if I wasn’t a children’s writer in disguise.” Beaufrand’s

Finding a Way To Y.A.

Defi ned as literature for those between the ages of 12 and 18, young-adult novels are capturing the imaginations of readers who are well past their teen years. The game-changer was, of course, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. “It was earth-shattering,” says Jana Riess ’91, a former book-review edi-tor at Publishers Weekly. “The New York Times even had to change its bestseller list. The fantastic thing was that suddenly all of these other Y.A. authors had some attention.”

In this golden age of young-adult fi ction, Wellesley has more than its share of successful novel-ists, several with new books out. Many of them, like Malinda Lo ’96, never set out to write a teen novel. Lo burst onto the Y.A. scene in 2009 with Ash, a lesbian retelling of the Cinderella story. “I didn’t think of the market for my book until I was thinking about what agents to send it to. I kind of thought it might be Y.A. because I was so infl uenced by Robin McKinley. And that’s where it sold.”

Lo also didn’t set out to write a “lesbian novel.” According to Lo: “Ash was only a heterosexual love story in the very fi rst draft. After I fi nished that version, I sent it to a

Bibli

o! les

good friend of mine to read (a classmate from Wellesley, actually, Lesly Blanton ’96!), and she very kindly sent back a letter with comments. One of those was, essentially: ‘Ash doesn’t really have much chemistry with the prince. But she seems to really like [the huntress]. . .’ ” Her most recent novel, Huntress, is an action-fi lled prequel to Ash, but more of a quest novel, with Chinese infl uences and a lesbian romance. It is set in the same world as Ash, but takes place many centuries earlier.

Jame Richards ’90 is also an accidental Y.A. novelist. Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Jonestown Flood, is a class-crossing romance set in the Gilded Age against the great Pennsylvania

latest novel is The River, a present-day thriller set in the Pacifi c Northwest.

Holly Goldberg Sloan ’80 was already a successful Hollywood screenplay writer before making the transition to Y.A. fi ction with her novel, I’ll Be There. The book revolves around a suburban high-school girl who falls in love with a homeless boy with an unstable father and autistic brother. Sloan began it while staying at a yoga resort for a friend’s 50th birthday. “My husband got sick, and there was no phone, and no TV, and no internet—but I had my com-puter!” She relates, “The writing experience was unplanned and uncalculated—which is what my book is about.”

Susan Elia MacNeal ’91

MacNeal is a writer and editor living in

Brooklyn with her husband and their

son. Her fi rst novel, Mr. Churchill’s

Secretary, will be published by

Bantam Dell/Random House in 2012.

Lisa V. Adams ’86 and Laurel A. Spielberg, editors—Africa: A Practical Guide for Global Health Workers,Dartmouth College Press, Lebanon, N.H.

Jerold S. Auerbach (faculty emeritus)—Brothers at War: Israel and the Tragedy of the Altalena, Quid Pro Books, New Orleans

Kate Banks ’82—This Baby, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York

Lorna Blumen ’76—Bullying Epidemic: Not Just Child’s Play, Camberly Press, Toronto

Nazli Kibria ’81—Muslims in Motion: Islam and National Identity, Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, N.J.

Brinda S. Narayan (Brinda Sankaranarayanan ’90)—Bangalore Calling, Hachette India, Gurgaon, India

Jennifer Phillips ’73, editor—Ambassadors for God: Envisioning Reconciliation Rites for the 21st Century, Church Publishing, New York

Jana Riess ’91—Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor, Paraclete Press, Orleans, Mass.

FreshInk Laura Venecia Rodriguez ’77—Yoga at Home, Awaken the Wisdom Within, Silver Spring, Md.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers ’57—Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation across Two Centuries, David R. Godine, Boston

Harriet Feinberg Segal ’53—The Expatriate, Topland House LLC

Elisabeth Stevens (Elisabeth Stevens Schleussner ’51)—Sirens’ Songs, BrickHouse Books, Baltimore

Madeline Tiger ’56—From the Viewing Stand, Poets Wear Prada, Hoboken, N.J.—The Atheist’s Prayer, Dos Madres Press, Loveland, Ohio

Selected books by other Wellesley Y.A. authors: Constance Leeds (Connie Leeds ’72), The Silver CupJessie Haas ’81, Chase Susan Meyers, faculty, Black Radishes



THE BIG DAY HAD ARRIVED. Hundreds of Peruvians fi lled Lima’s Plaza de Armas to either sulk or rejoice in the presidential inauguration of Ollanta Humala Tasso. July 28 also marked Peru’s Independence Day, and national fl ags decorated the square’s colonial-style build-ings. As I shuffl ed through a mass of traditionally dressed Andean and Amazonian people preparing to march toward the Palacio del Gobierno, I sought to hear for myself their expectations of Humala. They waved rainbow colored fl ags, looked into my hand-held Flip video camera, and emphasized that they, too, were Peruvian and had fi nally acquired a voice in national politics thanks to President Humala.

This day signifi ed something momentous for me, as well. I had spent the previous two months striving to describe what it means to

FIRST

PERSON

Journalist in the Making By Terra L. Stanley ’12

be Peruvian and write about this changing identity with Humala’s arrival. As I sat on nearby cathedral steps and watched these groups constrained by riot police on a day only representing freedom for some, I realized how much the experience was teaching me.

After designing a plan to work as a freelance reporter in Peru, I received the Emily Cohen MacFarquhar ’59 Internship for International Journalism from Wellesley to conduct this 10-week adventure. Having completed Wellesley coursework in journalism and Latin American history and politics, as well as a semester in Mexico and an editorial internship at Forbes, I arrived in late May feeling prepared to enter South America for the fi rst time.

I arrived at my apartment in Lima with a new pair of walking boots, a pair of $5 sunglasses that, in my mind, had a “journalist” look about them—and no connections to the journalism industry, or to anyone, for that matter. I became baffl ed by certain classes’ and regions’ voting rationale, noticed the daily newspapers I read were extremely biased, and observed that a chef was more admired and well-known than any politician. This summer would be tougher than I thought.

I often hit dead ends with article ideas. A local Lima editor believed his readers would not want to read about politics from a gringa, but he agreed to work with the stories about street food and youth activism, two of my interests. But by the time I fi nished these articles, the editor no longer worked at the site. Likewise, many US publications didn’t seem interested in Peru’s election.

After a few weeks of coming to know Peruvians, watching their news broadcasts, and interviewing any willing person I’d encounter, article ideas hit me. I spent much time in Lima inves-tigating university political culture and activism after an era of internal terrorism, themes that absolutely captivated me. I published an in-depth piece in Spanish for a Peruvian political website. Topics relating to a rebirth of civil society took most of my attention, but other topics—more relevant to my interests than I expected—came to mind.

One afternoon, I called the “godfather of ceviche,” Pedro Solari, to write about the upcoming National Ceviche Day. He invited me and my friend to his home and restaurant for an interview, and he showed us how he fi xed his famous ceviche. “Try my lime juice,” he said as he handed me a spoonful. He cautioned against squeezing the

Terra L. Stanley ’12 (above) is a senior applying to graduate school in Latin American studies. She looks forward to many more adventures discovering the spirit of others’ identities and her own.

18



lime too hard: “Just squeeze it two short times so that only the best juice falls,” he told me. The next day, I shared a cab with him and his posse to a national gastronomic fair north of the city. Many journalists arrived to document an exclusive press conference—where I elatedly entered and casually said, “I’m with Mr. Solari.” I pub-lished a piece on Peru’s principal English news site about the event and Peruvians’ special connection to ceviche.

I initially viewed this gastronomic piece as a side project, but I soon realized that ceviche pride comes close to characterizing a Peruvian identity.

The more I traveled and interviewed people, the wider a window I had on Peru. Humala’s presiden-tial campaign revolved around a promise of social inclusion as a remedy for Peru’s extreme geographic, cultural, ethnic, class, language, and racial differences. My trip to Peru’s desert in Ica and the sierra in Cuzco helped me understand why forging a national iden-tity is so complex. Traveling further taught me that article topics couldn’t be planned. I arrived in Ica seeking knowledge about the pisco (a grape brandy) industry and left writing about asparagus farm-ers’ daily lives. In Cuzco, I researched the town’s strong support for Humala, but I left reading about young girls who customarily move to the cities for

domestic work. Overall, I observed Peru’s dilemma: formulating a national identity while balancing free-trade agreements along with a large chunk of society that speaks another language and uses donkeys to farm the land. The entire experience was priceless.

On Inauguration Day, the rainbow fl ags reminded me of a quotation I discussed in a Spanish term paper last spring. Túpac Amaru II, leader of an indigenous rebellion in 18th-century Peru, said, “Campesino, el patrón no comerá más de tu pobreza,”

meaning “Peasant, the master will no longer feed off your poverty.” I heard echoes of this phrase as nationalists

chanted upbeat tunes and eagerly informed me of their new position at the political round table.

I ecstatically stood face-to-face to some-thing I had spent so much time studying at

Wellesley; I literally was living my dream.Willingness to enter parts of Lima

that few tourists see and listen to people’s complaints and hopes without

partiality and with patience helped me achieve my goal of accurately documenting the mean-

ing of Peru’s presidential transition for its citizens.Neither the Peruvians I met nor I can precisely defi ne Peru’s national identity, but I feel overjoyed and thankful that we attempted it together.

19

PHO

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2



Art conservator Stephanie Hornbeck ’90led an international effort to save

Haiti’s precious cultural heritage—one painting and cut iron sculpture at a time.

THE ART OF Fall 11 features rev.indd 2 10/27/11 3:34 PM


RECOVERY PHOTOS COURTESY OFSTEPHANIE HORNBECK ’90,

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION HAITI CULTURAL RECOVERY PROJECT

After the earthquake: The remains of Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, where the Cultural Recovery Project team stabilized and removed world-famous wall paintings of the New Testament. Photograph by Allison Wright.

Fall 11 features rev.indd 3 10/27/11 3:34 PM


Hornbeck was acutely aware of the scale of the disaster that had unfolded—the estimated 100,000 people dead, the desperate need for medical supplies and food, the hundreds of thousands still living in tents—and considered thehumanitarian need of primary impor-tance. But as a conservator and art historian, she also understood the pain that the destruction of a cultural heri-tage can cause to a national psyche.

Some of that destruction in Haiti had been dramatic—the collapse of the Presidential Palace (above), the Centre d’Art, and Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, which had all become impor-tant symbols of the earthquake. Around the epicenter, churches, university buildings, museums, and monuments had also collapsed, and thousands of cherished national works of art were shattered, torn, or buried.

That day in June 2010, Hornbeck had come to Haiti to help recover, stabilize, and conserve this precious cultural patrimony. Since then, she has served as chief conservator for the Smith-sonian Institution Haiti Cultural Recovery Project, a Haitian, American, and inter-national effort funded by federal monies and grants from the US, in addition to private donations. Her role has been to oversee the conservation staffi ng and recovery activities for the project, as well as the important effort to train Haitian art professionals in conservation principles.

An art-history major at Wellesley who studied French and spent her junior year in Paris, Hornbeck was uniquely qualifi ed to lead the Smithsonian’s efforts

FIVE MONTHS after the brief but endless 35 seconds that brought the end of normal existence in Haiti, Stephanie Hornbeck ’90 fl ew into Port-au-Prince. It was June 2010, and the fi rst frantic efforts to dig for the living in a landscape of collapsed buildings were over. But as she rode from the airport that day, mountains of concrete rubble and twisted rebar extended as far as the eye could see—remnants of the 7.1-magnitude earthquake on the previous Jan. 12.

Haitian artist Dominique Domercant carries a wood sculpture recovered from the Centre d’Art site in September 2010. Above, the collapsed Presidential Palace.



in Haiti. She earned a diploma in fi ne-art conservation (objects) and an M.A. in art history from the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1999. Her qualifying paper for her master’s was on 20th-century Haitian art. Prior to accepting the post in Haiti, she served as conservator for 11 years at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art. She now has a private conservation practice in Miami.

As the 18-month Cultural Recovery Project drew to a close this month, Hornbeck spoke with Wellesley magazine about the progress of the work in Haiti thus far.

Set the scene for us as you drove through Port-au-Princeon that June day. Had the earthquake shut down Haiti’s vibrant art culture?

Amid the concrete rubble and dust, the streets teemed with people getting on with daily life—walking to work and to school and selling fruit and phone cards on many street corners. We drove past roadside artisans fabricating wood fur-niture, painted metal sculptures, ceramic vessels, and acrylics on canvas. Vibrant wall paintings and painted tap-taps (vans) enlivened many public spaces. The impetus to make art has always been strong in Haiti, and the earthquake didn’t change that. I also knew that professional artists with international reputations were con-tinuing to create art to be sold in galleries in Port-au-Prince, Miami, and Paris.

Can you describe the work that was ahead of you that day?

An estimate by the National Institute for Protection of Cultural Patrimony (Institute de Sauvetage Patrimoine Nationale) placed the damage at roughly 50,000 works of cultural patrimony, and we knew a decades-long effort would surely be needed.

Early in the project, we made an important decision that the conserva-tion work would happen in Haiti,incorporating Haitian professionals into conservation activities at every possible opportunity. Despite the venerable artistic tradition, a systematic professional commitment to historic preservation and conservation of cultural patrimony did not exist.

So our overarching challenge involved mounting a recovery effort in a region where no infrastructure of preservation professionals exists. Thus, we had to build a foundation at the same time as we responded to a disaster that created advanced structural conservation problems. These included: paintings that are torn, punctured, or broken; works on paper that are badly torn and crumpled; sculpture that is broken, badly deformed, or corroded. In addition, mold growth and infestation have been present in many instances, due to Haiti’s tropical climate.

Q ‘Assisting in disaster recovery of cultural heritage goesto the heart of what it means to be a conservator—

one who strives to save, protect, and prolong the life span of damaged artistic and historic works for present

and future generations.’ —Stephanie Hornbeck ’90

An esti

QTop: Stephanie Hornbeck ’90 and a colleague surface clean a fer découpé (cut-iron) sculpture, recovered from the Centre d’Art site. Above: A conservation team examines a sculpture in the Haiti Cultural Recovery Project’s object-conservation studio.

Fall 11 features rev.indd 5 11/3/11 11:49 AM


How did you and your team interface with Haitian institutions?

We support preservation initiatives at nine partnering organizations, including public and private museums, cultural institutions, libraries, and archives. These include the Centre d’Art, the Musée du Panthéon National, the Lehmann Vodou Collection, the Musée Nader, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the Archives Nationales d’Haïti.

It was really rewarding to work with Carol again, this time in a public-service capacity.

With so many damaged works of art, how did you establish priorities?

Because of the volume of affected art works and the magnitude of their dam-age, our primary objective has been to stabilize the greatest volume of works possible. Condition assessments are performed fi rst. Then interventions are undertaken based on identifi ed priorities: Works that are wet or have mold are always treated fi rst. Improving housing conditions is the fi rst step. This is critical because under good conditions, many works can remain stable until further treatment is possible in the future. This stage of the process involves teamwork and assembly-line measures such as cata-loging, surface-cleaning, and treatment for mold.

Only a small percentage of the total number of damaged works can receive more extensive treatments, which are very time-consuming, so priorities have to be established. The goal is to treat the most

24

Hi

W

Q American and foreign conserva-tion expertise supports preservation priorities established by Haitian cul-tural institutions. The role of determin-ing what patrimony should be saved by the Smithsonian project rests with indi-vidual Haitian institutions; all decisions regarding prioritization by cultural value rest with Haitian professionals.

Our project has the good fortune to have a staff of fi ve professional Haitian colleagues who interface with knowl-edgeable colleagues working at public and private institutions in Haiti. We also hired a dozen young Haitian artists and chemists as assistants who would be trained in conservation practice.

The conservation staff included a chief conservator (my role) and staff conservators, who were contractors, participating for periods ranging from six weeks to six months, and short-term professional volunteers, many from the Smithsonian and the American Institute of Conserva-tion for Historic and Artistic Works participating for two weeks. Carol Grissom ’70, Smithsonian object con-servator and my graduate internship advisor, volunteered in March 2011.

Wh

B

QHornbeck, left, with colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution, the US Committee of the Blue Shield, the President’s Committee for Arts and Humanities, and American Institute for Conservation at the site of the collapsed Centre d’Art in June 2011.

A painting conservatorand her assistants assess and stabilize the wall paintings at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral before they were removed to the Cultural Recovery Center to await the rebuilding of the church.



‘Our overarching challenge involved mounting a recovery effort in a region where no infrastructure of preservation professionals

exists. Thus, we had to build a foundation at the same time as we responded to a disaster.’ —Stephanie Hornbeck ’90

25

valuable examples of cultural patrimony fi rst. We rely on directors, curators, and collection managers at the respective Haitian institutions to determine priori-ties by cultural importance. By the end of the 18-month project, nearly 29,000 works of art, books, documents, and examples of built heritage (such as the world-renowned wall paintings at Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral) will have been recovered and stabilized at the nine partnering institutions.

What kind of facilities were you working in?

An important objective of the Cultural Recovery Project was to establish studios that have materials and equip-ment. Our Cultural Recovery Center operates in a former United Nations Development Program offi ce building in Bourdon Port-au-Prince. It is situated in a compound with a large courtyard, where eight metal storage contain-ers house damaged metal, stone, and ceramic art objects, and plaster wall-painting fragments. The offi ces have been retrofi tted to serve as studio and storage spaces. Microscopes, easels, digital cameras, computers, printers, vacuums, fabrics, papers, adhesives, artist supplies, fi ne hand tools and heavy tools, and personal protective equipment have been hand-carried into Haiti by conservators and other col-leagues in more than 65 trips. Access to stable archival and conservation-grade materials is very limited, and all of these supplies must be imported.

Can you give an example of one of your major projects?

The work undertaken to recover, stabi-lize, and treat the Centre d’Art collection of nearly 5,000 paintings, sculpture, and works on paper represents the largest conservation effort undertaken at the Cultural Recovery Center.

An imp

Q

The wo

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Top: Workers catalogue and properly store recovered paintings from the Centre d’Artcollection. Below: Bizhango fi gures in the Lehmann Vodou Collection, the most important collection of Haitian vodou objects in the world.



Founded in the early 1940s as a traditional art academy, the Centre d’Art would soon transform into a collective of self-taught artists of striking originality. Artists from all over the country were invited to work in studios at the Centre d’Art, known as the birthplace of the so-called Haitian Renaissance.

During the earthquake, the Centre d’Art’s gingerbread building suffered severe damage when the second fl oor collapsed onto the fi rst. Out of a desire to recover the cherished collection and out of a fear of theft and vandalism, the Centre staff worked rapidly over the next month to recover as many works of art as possible buried in the rubble. These were placed in two large metal containers, where they remained for eight months.

I developed a basic methodology to process the collection. The goals of the project included: recovering as many works as possible, stabilizing them via dry-cleaning and treatment for mold, cataloguing them to create written and photographic records that can eventually be incorporated into the Centre d’Art’s collection records, and storing the works in a stable environment. Haitian proj-ect manager Marie-Lucie Vendryes

guided a team of assistants to process the paintings and works on paper in the collection. I would later oversee the processing of the iron sculpture collection. A selection of the most damaged art works among the most culturally important received further conservation treatment.

Are there pieces of art that you worked on that particularly stand out? How were they preserved and treated?

Treating the beautiful fer decoupé (cut iron) sculpture was especially gratifying, as I had studied this art form in depth in graduate school. We rescued about 25 from the rubble at the Centre d’Art site, including a masterful early work by Serge Jolimeau. It elegantly represents the technique of fer decoupé. Figural designs are cut from recycled oil drums and embellished with repeating openwork patterns and hammered repoussé (embossed) details.

When a work is recovered, the fi rst step is to dry brush and vacuum up surface dirt, which can trap moisture and accelerate destructive corrosion. The most culturally important works

would then receive a gentle abrasive cleaning to remove active corrosion, followed by a chemical treatment to yield a stable surface patina.

Another piece I worked on was from the Musée du Panthéon National. A painted plaster bust of early 19th-century president Alexandre Pétion toppled from its pedestal and broke into multiple fragments (above). One impor-tant fragment was missing, the forehead and eyes. Amazingly, nine months after the earthquake, the fragment was found in a pile of rubble outside the museum. Another conservator removed surface dirt and assembled the fragments, and I undertook restoration. Gaps were fi lled with plaster and then toned with acrylic paints. The painted fi lls have a slightly more fl at appearance, to indicate that they are restorations. The damage suffered by the piece is now part of its history, and I did not want to conceal that completely.

How did you train your Haitian colleagues during all of this work?

Many of our Haitian colleagues described previously limited access to information and variable, often random, professional opportunities for exposure to current preservation methods. So it has been important to introduce conservation concepts like assessment, intervention, stabilization, repair, restoration, and the importance of documentation and ethical practices. Our training objective was not to

‘Microscopes, easels, digital cameras, computers, printers, vacuums, fabrics, papers, adhesives, artist supplies, fi ne hand tools

and heavy tools, and personal protective equipment have been hand-carried into Haiti by conservators and other colleagues

in more than 65 trips.’ —Stephanie Hornbeck ’90

Q

Q



create conservators, a process requir-ing years of formal study; our goals were to introduce concepts, ethics, and practical techniques to enable us to rapidly stabilize the highest volume possible of damaged works of art. Training has been offered via various models, including courses, workshops, and on-the-job practical experience. All of this has been offered without cost to the participants, and more than 100 colleagues have participated in training initiatives. Course topics included: overall basic stabilization of damaged collections, introductions to painting, object, and paper conservation, and preservation of audiovisual collections.

A corps of 12 studio assistants benefi ted from more involved study and aided in multiple projects. We hope that some of them may be inspired to pursue formal graduate training in conservation at an accredited graduate program abroad. Ideally, such formally trained professionals would then con-tinue the essential work to preserve Haitian cultural patrimony.

What was the most rewarding aspect of your work with the Haitian Cultural Recovery Project?

Assisting in disaster recovery of cultural heritage goes to the heart of what it means to be a conservator—one who strives to save, protect, and prolong the life span of damaged artistic and historic works for present and

Q

Left: Hornbeck restores a painted plaster bust of Alexandre Pétion, fabricated by Normil Charles in 1903, from the Musée du Panthéon National. Below: Volunteer conservators (including Carol Grissom ’70, bottom right) repair objects and demonstrate techniques.

(continued on page 29)



HAITI’S ARTISTIC TRADITIONMORE THAN ANY OTHER island in the

Caribbean, Haiti is distinguished by an

internationally recognized long history

of creativity in the visual arts, literature,

and music. A profuse fl owering grew

out of the Indigénisme period in the

late 1920s, when writers and philoso-

phers embraced the African roots of

Haiti and rejected colonial infl uences.

Vodou culture and rural existence were

celebrated as having a pre-colonial

origin.

In the 1940s, Haitian art gained

international recognition when

Americans DeWitt Peters and Seldon

Rodman founded the Centre d’Art and

invited self-taught artists from all over

the island to work in studios in Port-au-

Prince. These artists, most importantly

painter Hector Hyppolite and sculptor

Georges Liautaud, achieved renown

when French surrealist André Breton

and Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam visited

Haiti in 1946 and wrote admiringly of

the art. Eventually, Haitian artists would

break out of the restrictions of the naive

tradition and evolve into several artistic

collectives and movements. Today,

Haitian contemporary art retains its

vitality, and a number of artists, such as

Mario Benjamin, Eduard Duval Carrié,

and Pascale Monnin have international

reputations. This year marks the fi rst

time that Haitian artists have been

included in the important art exposition,

the Venice Biennale.

—Stephanie Hornbeck ’90

AN EXPERT SUGGESTSTo learn more about the recovery project in Haiti, as well as about Haitian art, check out these resources suggested by Hornbeck:

www.haiti.si.edu

Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, edited by Donald J. Cosentino. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995 (an exhibit catalog, as well as a compilation of scholarly essays).

Peintres Haïtiens, by Gérald Alexis. Editions Cercle d’Art, 2000 (an overview of 20th-century Haitian painting, in French or in English).

The treatment of an untitled acrylic on board painted by Stivenson Magloire in 1988. Fromthe collection of Galerie Flamboyant, the painting broke into 22 pieces during the earthquake.

28

Saving Haiti’s Heritage: Cultural Recovery After the Earthquake, by Richard Kurin. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (in press).

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future generations. The Smithsonian’s Cultural Recovery Project demonstrates that advanced conservation work is certainly possible in Haiti, and that has been a really rewarding realization.

I came to most enjoy working with the 12 assistants—the mostly young artists and chemists—we were train-ing to assist us on the project. I found them open, engaging, and enthusiastic to learn about contemporary conserva-tion practice. The artists also showed me their paintings, sculptures, and fashion designs. I enjoyed talking to them about their ideas and goals. Some would come to talk in person, call, or email me when I was away. The four murals assistants, who met each other on the project, decided to form an art collective, and they asked me to facilitate their launch. These fresh, direct interactions with the future gen-eration of Haitian culture professionals were the highlight of my experience.

The assistants ranged in age from 22 to 62. The youngest, Franck Fontaine, is a prolifi c painter of real promise and a tal-ented musician, who has performed with Wyclef Jean. In a country where people live with extended family, Franck lives alone and supports himself. I think our recovery team came to be like family for him.

Jean Menard Derenoncourt, a 55-year-old professional artist and art professor at the Ecole Nationale des Arts who was invited to work on our project as an advanced assistant, had some previous restoration experience.

He had suffered great personal loss in the earthquake; he was the only adult of fi ve to emerge living from his collapsed house. Understandably, he had a deep sadness about him when we fi rst met. He eventually thrived as a member of the team stabilizing the Centre d’Art collection and then as a studio assistant in the painting studio. With colleague Franck Louissaint, Menard accomplished our most challenging treatment, a large painting on canvas torn in two with 58 additional tears.

The Haiti Cultural Recovery Center is due to close in November 2011. What’s next for the recovery efforts?

To transition the project from a Smith-sonian-Haitian governance to a solely

Haitian governance. Additional funding is also needed to continue treatment, training, and to retain a cultural-recov-ery center. We are working to establish partnerships with national museums in Haiti, to provide oversight of a center to serve cultural institutions there. Ideally, some of the promising assistants will travel abroad to train formally with the objective of returning to care for cultural patrimony in Haiti. We have built great momentum, yet a dire need for funding makes the conservation efforts in Haiti uncertain.

Hornbeck is principal at Caryatid Conservation Services in Miami. In September, she learned that theSmithsonian would recognize her efforts in Haiti with the Secretary’s Gold Medal for Exemplary Service, a rare honor.

TCNf

Q

Top: Hornbeck, a colleague, and a UN offi cer with a fer découpé angel by Serge Jolimeau recovered from the rubble at Centre d’Art. Right: An untitled oil on canvas by Mario Benjamin from the collection of the Palais National during treatment.

29

(continued from page 27)

Hornbeck is principal at Caryatid



UNPLANNED LESSONSA fi rst-year teacher with Teach For America in San Antonio fi ghts for success for her kids—and for herself

I NEVER WANTED TO BE A TEACHER. After my Wellesley graduation, I moved back to my hometown of Birmingham, Ala., and started working as a paralegal in a big, corporate law fi rm. My primary focus was an educational-funding case set against the backdrop of Alabama’s Black Belt, a hot, sultry place with an economy that could fi t in paren-theses and an education system to match its job prospects. It was clear that our education system had gone terribly wrong—no one argued against that—but I always believed that the problem with education was lack of funds. Less than a year into working as a paralegal, what I saw changed my mind in some disturbing ways. The issues I saw through the educational-funding case were more complex than I thought—more and more money was being poured into Alabama schools with a declining rate of success. I felt that it was time to stop debating education issues and to actually do something to help.

Every piece of sense I had told me not to apply for Teach For America. I was on my way to law school in a year or two with some great recommendations from the attorneys with whom I worked. There was no need to change course midstream.

I made a compromise with myself. I would apply to Teach For America, just to see what would happen and assuage my conscience, but no matter what, I would not teach in Alabama. The thought of working in the Black Belt was just too personal, too close to the case I had been working on. I was unsure whether I would be able to become a teacher in the same system that had inspired so much anger in me.

n Aug. 23, 2010, I intro-duced myself as “Ms. Johns” to a classroom of San Antonio fourth graders. All of my students were Hispanic, and

all lived in a state of economic uncertainty from week to week. I had been given my ac-tual teaching assignment only a week before, and I was frighteningly unprepared. I had not seen a fourth grader, to my knowledge, since being in the fourth grade, and I certainly knew nothing about elementary literacy or Marzano strategies. (My principal kept talking about these mysterious Marzano strategies, but it

By Anna K. Johns ’09

Oall lived in a sta



was clear from pretty early on that you never asked a question that might make you sound weak in front of this particular woman.)

I had been trained by Teach For America—in that blindingly fast, trial-by-fi re training that I received during the summer at the Teach For America Houston Institute— to teach middle-school science. The middle-school science position that the school district insisted was high-need never materialized, so a week before school I retested to prove I was fi t to teach any subject between fourth and eighth grades and accepted one of the last positions available in the district.

It did not seem to matter that I had no idea what I was doing. I drank the Teach For America Kool-Aid with gusto, and I was there to change the world, one lucky child at a time. Somewhere along the line—prob-ably as much from Waiting for “Superman” as from high-school TV dramas—I had gotten the idea that many teachers were incompetent. When you watch a movie like Waiting for “Superman,” you see a pretty stark contrast—the losers in an offi ce pulling a paycheck from the state because the state cannot fi re them under tenure laws but fears to have them near children, and then the rock stars in the charter schools teaching as

if they are on fi re. I assumed that I would fall neatly into the rock-star category in a week or two, after I got my sea legs.

I have never been so naturally bad at anything in my life. With a classroom of rowdy fourth graders whose lives—literally—are in your hands, there is no time to regain your composure, think something through, or even catch your breath. I think the only activities that have the physical, emotional, and cogni-tive demands of teaching might be professional ballet and freestyle rock climbing. Of course, it gets easier as you practice, and you get better

at it as you go. The problem is, you only have 180 days, and your kids deserve the absolute best that you or anyone else can offer them. My whole classroom hinged on whether I was having a good day. With this terrifying fact, I started my fi rst year as a teacher.

I think every teacher thinks he or she has the cutest, funniest group of kids, sort of like how every parent thinks his or her baby is the smartest and most handsome baby that ever lived. Still, my kids had some serious credentials as being both the greatest and the most heartbreaking group of kids in history.

esús was a cute kid. He wore his hair in a little faux-hawk style that made him seem a lot tougher than he was. He was fastidious about keeping his hair looking good, and he

was one of those rare boys who never cause trouble in a class. He could hate your guts and still sit there and work with you without complaining. He also had a serious learning disability, and I felt totally unprepared to work around it.

Despite the tough time he had in school, he had one of the greatest personalities of any of my students. We went on a class fi eld trip to SeaWorld, supposedly to learn about career options, but really because some foundation had given the whole district a lot of money to go. The park was packed nearly

I have never been so naturally bad at anything in my life. With a classroom of rowdy fourth graders whose lives—literally—are in your hands, there is no time to regain your composure, think something through, or even catch your breath. J

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In fourth grade in Texas, students take three state tests. Frank had never passed one of these tests. My principal told me that Frank was just not a “passer,” and that I should really focus on the borderline kids who could pass with less effort.

32

to capacity with students from kindergarten all the way to high school, and some of the older kids were pretty rough around the edges. At one point, a group of high-school boys came up to Jesús and started teasing him about his hair. I saw the older boys talking to my students so I muscled my way through the crowd and moved them along. I asked Jesús what had happened, and he replied simply, “They said I was a little gang-ster, Miss, because of my hair.” He carefully patted his hair to make sure it was just right then added, “But I’m not a gangster. I’m going to college.”

His comment was like a shot to the heart. He is one of the greatest kids I will ever know, but I’m scared that he won’t make it to college. The attitude is all there, but despite the extra services he gets and the support of his mom and dad who love him and work with him as much as they can, the fact is that he reads far below grade level. It terrifi es me to think that even one bad teacher along the way could totally derail him from his dream. I told his mom about his comment at SeaWorld, and we both cried. She knew how much stood between him and that dream, too. I cried a lot that year.

esús also starred in an-other classroom event that is burned into my memory forever. One morning in October, I unlocked my door

to fi nd fi ne silver dust all over the desks and fl oor on one side of the room. After some closer inspection, I found that the silver dust was actually the shredded remains of the aluminum foil used to wrap the greasy breakfast tacos served to students through the free-lunch program. One delightful child had decided to surreptitiously save

his wrappers in a big ball in the back of his desk, and the smell of delicious government-issue ground beef had invited a rodent into my classroom. The custodial staff jumped into action and cleaned up the mess before students walked in at 8 a.m., and I gave the whole class a stern lecture about how we now had a mouse in our classroom. Jesús raised his hand and said, “Ms. Johns, I’m going to fi nd that mouse for you.” Sure you will, I thought, but I smiled and thanked him. He really is such a sweet kid.

Every day in a Texas classroom starts off with the Pledge of Allegiance, then the Texas Pledge, followed by a moment of silence. During the moment of silence, Jesús called my name. I shushed him, but I was surprised. Jesús knew not to talk during the moment of silence. He whispered, “Ms. Johns! There is a big rat in the trash can!” I stopped breathing for about three minutes, and during that time I managed to tie the entire trash can inside of a large plastic trash bag from our breakfast crate, set the whole thing outside of our class-room door, and call down to the offi ce from the intercom to insist that a custodian come right now to room 204.

Crisis averted, right? After lunch that same day, we were sitting on the fl oor in our classroom working with little centime-ter cubes in cooperative groups to model multiplication problems. (For the record, cooperative learning is one of the mysterious Marzano strategies that I eventually picked up.) Things were surprisingly calm until kids started screaming. Another mouse had decided to wreak havoc on my classroom. Most kids froze with panic, but one student, Frank, was a good kid to have in a crisis and had the presence of mind to stand up and press the intercom button for his grateful teacher so that I could call for backup from the front offi ce.

Five more rats later, I went to reclaim my terrifi ed students from across the hall, and one little girl was sobbing and refused to come back inside. I mustered the most dramatic voice that I could and assured her, “The amazing people in this classroom have already saved you once today, and we would do it again if necessary.” The beautiful thing about teaching elementary school is that kids totally believe you, even when you are terrifi ed yourself. I can’t say that we learned much that afternoon with all of the excite-ment and tears, but at least we survived.

rank ended up having the most signifi cant growth that year. With that, though, he be-came my greatest concern. For the fi rst two months of school,

he just sat there. He would not speak to me, and if I pushed him, I might get a one-word answer. He was held back by his dyslexia and the crippling fear that accompanied having it, especially when the task he was given involved reading aloud or writing. One of the fi rst times that Frank spoke in class was when one of our vocabulary words from a district-mandated textbook was “burglar.” Frank informed the class, “My dad’s a burglar. He’s in jail.”

In fourth grade in Texas, students take three state tests—TAKS Reading, TAKS Writing, and TAKS Math. The state of California uses fail-rates from similar tests to predict the number of prison beds that will be needed in the future. Frank had never passed one of these state tests. My principal told me that Frank was just not a “passer,” and that I should really focus on the borderline kids who could pass with less effort. This utterly broke my heart. In a way, I am grateful to my

Anna K. Johns ’09 works every day in San Antonio, Texas, to convince four classes of 10-year-old scholars that math is not scary.

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principal for saying this, because from that moment on, Frank became my mission. I never had illusions that I was a great fourth-grade teacher—every lesson felt like climbing a mountain, and some days felt like freefall-ing—but I knew that I had heart and that I was very different from even the really good teachers at my school. At a certain point in teaching, I think you have seen so many kids that you lose your sense of shock and horror. You still care deeply about your students, but it becomes harder to pluck that little string of injustice inside your heart. Maybe it’s because you stop being crazy and thinking that you can change the world.

I dragged Frank upstairs morning after morning to get ready for the fi rst of these intimidating state tests, the dreaded TAKS Writing test. Students had to write a personal narrative to respond to a prompt, and Frank was writing single, ungrammatical sentences. I updated his dyslexia accommodations so that he would use the computer for his composi-tions, and I had to teach him how to double-click on Microsoft Word on our one function-ing classroom computer and how to make capital letters with the shift key. Sometimes he would just sit there and stare at me, but most of the time you could see the little gears in his brain churning away, despite how quiet he was. He wrote a few compositions that he was really proud of, and I think he was a little amazed at the positive feedback that he got from other teachers and his mom. His mom called me one day after Frank wrote a really touching tale about his grandfather, who had passed away a week before, and how Frank had helped him build a doghouse. She thanked me for working with him, and all I could think of to say was to thank her back for Frank.

y principal and I clashed from the beginning, and as the year went by, she was more and more and more critical

of my teaching—and less and less able to give me the support I needed as a fi rst-year teacher. Near the end of school, she pulled Jesús and a few other students out of my class because she worried that they would not pass the TAKS tests. She tried to pull Frank out too, but I begged her to let him stay. I think that because she believed that he was not a “passer” anyway, she let me keep him. As the TAKS tests approached, Frank’s attitude took a dive. He just looked scared, as though all of the stuff I had been feeding him about how he could pass if he worked hard and about how everyone believed in him were lies. He became a behavior prob-lem in my class.

In late May, our TAKS scores came back. Frank had passed the writing and math tests but not the reading test. My emo-tions were out of control. I was so excited that he passed two of three tests, but the reading test worried me. I also had the real-ity check: Passing these state tests did not mean that a student was on grade level. In fact, students could pass the math test with a score of less than 70 percent, which put them at about the level of being a month or two into fourth grade, when in reality, they had been in fourth grade for a whole year. Still, Frank was excited at the news. I think he had believed, deep down, that he was not a “passer,” just as the principal said. His attitude toward school changed again, and suddenly he was confi dent.

I am not and never will be one of those

Teach For America teachers who end up in their promotional materials. My principal essentially let me and another Teach For America teacher go at the end of the year, partially because of budget concerns and partially because she may have sensed we weren’t committed to teaching forever.

With help from Teach For America, I found an opening at a well-known charter school in San Antonio, KIPP Aspire Academy, and applied. I was hired as a fi fth-grade math teacher. At KIPP, the principal would never tell you that a kid is not a “passer.” In fact, I believe that anyone who said that out loud would be fi red on the spot—especially since we are all at-will employees. I am overjoyed at my new placement, and I have yet to cry this year. My colleagues are amazing, and I feel so proud to be a part of this team and family.

Still, I worried about Frank. Would his next teacher care enough to work with him one-on-one? Would he or she know deep down that he is more than a “passer,” but an extraordinary kid with a heartbreaking story and a heart of gold? I overheard my new principal discussing enrollment in the fi fth grade. Spots at KIPP are determined by a lottery system, and it is really tough to get a place in any grade, especially after fi fth grade. To my shock, there was one avail-able spot. I met with my principal and told him about Frank—about how amazing he is, about how much he struggles, and most of all how worried I was that his quiet-ness would mean that his potential would be ignored. My principal agreed to let him have the spot if I could convince his mom to transfer him to KIPP within 48 hours.

Frank is now one of my fi fth graders at KIPP. I am still not an award-winning teacher, but I get up every morning because I know that kids count on me and that I have something to give them. In a way, Frank is my North Star. He proved to me that change is possible, but he also showed me how hard even the smallest successes are to achieve. It astounds me how a little success, even tempered with failure, can change your outlook. This is true for Frank, but it is even truer for me.

I think every teacher thinks he or she has the cutest, funniest group of kids, sort of like how every parent thinks his or her baby is the smartest and most handsome baby that ever lived. Still, my kids had some serious credentials as being both the greatest and the most heartbreaking group of kids in history.

Mm

of my teaching—and



Forty years ago, Wellesley began accepting nontraditional-age students. Today, the Davis Scholar Program draws women from all walks of life who have found their way to college by unconventional paths. The CE/DS alumnae class is Wellesley’s largest—diverse and vibrant.

By Ruth Walker

Photographs by Richard Howard

The Class of All Colors

34 wellesley | fall 2011



The Davis Degree Program, as it’s known today, began as the Continuing Education Program for women whose college study had been interrupted, often for reasons of marriage and family. Endowed by Elisabeth Kaiser Davis ’32 in 1990–91 and this year celebrating its 40th anniversary, the program has evolved, like the College as a whole, to include a population as diverse and committed to their dreams as any class at Wellesley.

Maud Hazeltine Chaplin ’56, professor emerita of philosophy and a former academic dean, has been one of the program’s strongest advocates; her “Tea with Maud” gatherings for these older students became an institution. “The Davis Scholars,” she says, “more than any other group of students, want an education.” All Wellesley students, she says, take their education, and its expense, seriously. But for the Davis Scholars, the commitment is of another order of magnitude.

“They come at great expense—in dollar costs and opportunity costs. They give up jobs. They have to cope with family jealousy. . . . But they’ve made a very conscious decision that this is what they

ORE THAN 800 OF THEM have walked

across the commencement stage

to receive Wellesley degrees in the last 40 years: women

who have taken nonconventional paths to Wellesley.

Before college, they may have run businesses, served

in the military, overcome health problems, or danced

professionally. Many have juggled parenting duties with

writing lab reports and learning German verbs. They

may be in their 60s—or in their mid-20s—but all are older

than traditional-aged students.

M

Davis Scholar students and alumnae from a variety of years



RITA CORSI WRIGHT HAS A CLASSIC

story of a lifework growing out of studies at Wellesley. But she also has a classic Davis Scholar’s story of how family concerns weigh on even the most gifted women when they pursue their education past the traditional college age.

Her fi rst college experience was taking courses free of charge at Columbia University because she was working there. But within a couple of years, she had married and moved away from the New York area and started a family. “But I felt I was missing something. I was limited in my plans for the future,” she says.

Wright returned to school when her youngest daughter started fi rst grade. She signed up for classes at Wellesley that let her meet her chil-dren when they arrived home from school. She studied in the evenings or when the children were at school.

When she had started to pursue a degree at Columbia, she had thought she’d go into teaching. At Wellesley, though, she realized that anthropology was what she wanted to do.

But then she realized she didn’t want to study contemporary peoples and “expose” them by publishing her research. Archaeology began to seem like a better fi t. There wasn’t an archaeologist on the faculty at Wellesley at the time. But before she graduated, the College had hired Philip Kohl, so Wright was able to get some archaeology coursework done before heading off to graduate school, at Harvard.

The work that led to her MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1988 involved a scientifi c technique called “neutron activation analysis.” This technique can be used to get a distinctive “fi nger-print” of the clay a piece of pottery

is made of, for instance. These fi nger-prints can be compared to help scientists determine whether two shards from different sites share a common origin.

Wright used the technique on a distinctive type of gray ceramics found in Iran and Pakistan. She found the same clay showing up in ceramics from sites far apart from one another. “It was an indication of a wide trading network across a considerable distance, which was unexpected in the absence of a major nation-state in the area,” she explains.

This combination of high-technology research techniques brought to bear on social questions has been a hallmark of her work. Her research today continues to be focused on the interconnected na-ture of the ancient world. She’s also done research on human responses to climate change in the ancient Indus civilization. This work refl ects her interest in “bringing our knowledge of the past full circle to the present.”

Now a professor of anthropol-ogy at New York University, Wright says, “Wellesley as a place was my biggest mentor—the whole experi-ence. Nobody ever said, ‘Don’t go to graduate school, because you won’t fi t.’” In particular, she cites Anne-Marie Shimony, chair of the anthropology department, as “an inspiration,” not only as a scholar but as a scholar with a family.

“I’m sure that people on a tra-ditional path have a lot of issues,” Wright says of young women who start college at age 18. But the special challenges for students with families persist, she says. “There’s always the thought: How could you do this if you’re a woman with children?”

want,” says Chaplin. And that ensures a high level of motivation on the part of the students.

Wellesley’s venture in continuing education began during the hey-day of the late 20th-century women’s movement, when many schools were experimenting with ways to bring older students back to campus.

Bonnie Downes Leonard ’59, dean of continuing education at the College from the fall of 1983 through August 2002, likens this effort to “a GI Bill for women.”

The fi rst Continuing Education students at Wellesley were typically commuters from nearby suburbs, women whose husbands could afford their tuition. After a time, though, the College started recruiting more broadly. And a key feature of Wellesley’s approach was the deci-sion early on to include returning students with the main student body, rather than to conduct separate classes for them (as, for example, Sarah Lawrence College did). Leonard’s own academic background was in special education, where the concept of “mainstreaming” was familiar. She worked hard to mainstream nontraditional students—getting them housing, getting them parking, getting them access to health and coun-seling services like other students, and even access to the golf course.

Today about half the Davis students live on campus, and a higher proportion of them get fi nancial aid than do traditional-age students. There’s even a student-founded organization called “Lifeline” that offers food, emergency funds, and services to fellow Davis Scholars.

A turning point came in the mid-1980s. Academic requirements for the program were tightened: Continuing Education students, like traditional-age transfer students, would need 16 units on campus to earn their Wellesley degrees, instead of only eight as before. In exchange, though, they got access to 12-month housing and to fi nan-cial aid on the same basis as traditional-age students. And their aid applications no longer required the signature of a parent or husband. “It was a perfect storm for change,” Leonard says.

Today’s Davis Scholars range in age from early 20s to well into their 50s; their numbers are down compared with previous decades, in part because of ris-ing college costs and the availability of alterna-tives, including online study, elsewhere. Many transfer from other col-leges with credits under

their belts and often are not on campus as long completing their degrees as CE/DS students were in the past.

But the Davis Degree Program “does its best to replicate the experience of not just a liberal-arts college but a residential liberal-arts college,” says Susan Cohen, class dean and director of the program.

The Davis Scholars, who fi rst paraded as a group at reunion in 1976 as “the class of all colors” behind a banner of red, green, purple, and yellow, now make up the largest alumnae class of the College. “And,” Cohen adds, “it’s the only one that keeps growing.”

On the following pages, we profi le nine of the 800 CE/DS alumnae, whose paths to Wellesley are as unique and inspiring as the lives they lead now.

RITA CORSI WRIGHT CE/DS ’74NEW YORK

‘They come at great expense—in dollar costs and opportunity costs. They give up jobs. They have to cope with family jealousy. . . . But they’ve made a very conscious decision that this is what they want.’—Maud Hazeltine Chaplin ’56

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‘Wellesley as a place was my biggest mentor—the whole experience. Nobody ever said, “Don’t go to graduate school, because you won’t fi t.”’

—Rita Corsi Wright CE/DS ’74

fall 2011



‘I saw a need to take better care of myself and to be a better role model for my daughter.’

—Cathryn Griffi th CE/DS ’88

38

CATHRYN GRIFFITH’S CAREER in com-mercial real estate began the night of her husband’s funeral. Her brother-in-law, who had been her husband’s business partner, called her to ask, “Are you in?”

A new building was in the works, and it was time to order the steel and concrete—or not. Griffi th had no time to consider options, and so she said yes, she was in.

She worked successfully with her brother-in-law for seven years before they divided the partnership into two separate businesses. By then, she had learned a fundamental truth about the real-estate business: “It’s like a volcano. Sometimes it rumbles, and sometimes it erupts—and when it erupts, you can’t ignore it.” But, she says, “I realized my income would be secure if I paid attention to the business.”

A successful business, though, isn’t the same as a happy, balanced life. “I saw a need to take better care of myself,” she says, “and to be a bet-ter role model for my daughter.”

Griffi th’s own widowed mother had been unable to give her more than a couple years of college. “And then it was my brothers’ turn,” so Griffi th never fi nished her degree. But after her husband died, she learned about the Davis Scholars Program at a Junior League luncheon.

Griffi th picked French studies as her Wellesley major. It was a subject with happy associations: She and her family had visited France before her husband died, and it was an interest she could share with her daughter. But after years of being defi ned largely in terms of relationships with others, she began to cast about for a project that

CATHRYN GRIFFITH CE/DS ’88BOSTON



MELODY TOSSBERG CUNNINGHAM CE/DS ’88MEMPHIS, TENN.

When Melody Tossberg Cunningham CE/DS ’88 enrolled at Wellesley, determined to pursue her dream of a career in medicine, she was more than a little nervous. “I was not sure that I would remember enough math to pass my courses or have the stamina to study and work,” remem-bers Cunningham, who had previously left a nursing program at the University of Connecticut her junior year to live and work in Colorado. Instead, Cunningham found a warm and welcoming

community where she thrived. She remembers an organic-chemistry

class taught by David Haines, associate professor of chemistry. “He taught it in such a way that when I did ‘road map’ chemical reaction problems, I almost felt that I was within the molecules, knowing how they would react,” Cunningham says.

And now, she does have a career in medicine, as medical director of the Pediatric Palliative Care Program at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee. People often ask her how she can work with babies and children at the end of their lives. “I believe that preventing patient suffering and helping families to have a chance to ‘say good-bye’ is a gift to them and a profound privilege for me,” she says.

—Lisa Scanlon ’99

SUSAN MILLER-HAVENS CE/DS ’78CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

Artist Susan Miller-Havens went from being a surgical and psychiatric nurse to having two of her paintings in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian. Feeling burned out from Vietnam, Miller-Havens enrolled at Wellesley to change the direction of her career. She didn’t leave the medical world behind entirely, however, as she had to work part-time in a clinic to support herself through college. Despite that, she says, “I wouldn’t be where I am now [without the Davis Scholar Program]. The program allowed me to work and study away from the ‘madding crowd.’” After majoring in studio art and art history, she went on to work as a psychotherapist and to earn an Ed.D. at Harvard, where she serves on the Arts in Education Council. Her portrait of former Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martínez (right) was installed earlier this year at the Smithsonian.

—Jennifer Garrett ’99

would be truly hers—a forum in which to excel in her own right.

Dean Bonnie Downes Leonard ’59 suggested a topic for a senior thesis: the new Musée d’Orsay in Paris, which opened in an old railroad station in 1986. The project plunged Griffi th into the world of museums and adaptive reuse of architecture.

After graduating at age 50, she took up photography, one course at a time—an approach that made sense for one who never knew when her “volcano” would erupt. She gravitated to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, hungry for community.

Then one of her professor friends asked her to join a trip he was organizing to Havana. “It sounded so appealing,” she remembers. So in April 2003 she went to Cuba for the fi rst time. She had done no research at all. What she did bring was some old postcards of Havana she had stumbled upon in a fl ea market in Paris. “I didn’t know it, but I was hooked on photographing Havana.”

One thing led to another, and Havana Revisited: Architectural Heritage was published by Norton last year. It showcases her photography of iconic buildings in the Cuban capital, along-side postcard images like the ones she had found in Paris, for a then-and-now perspective. And the project drew on a knowledge base she’d been building since her project at the Musée d’Orsay.

The book was a turning point. “I had a different sense of myself,” she says. Before, she was an eager student looking up to her professors. “Now I feel more like a colleague among other practicing artists.”

Today Cathryn Griffi th is still involved in real estate, but it’s her artistic ventures that provide fulfi llment. It’s not a bad life in the shadow of a volcano.

Cunningham, with patient Hayden Williams, who later passed away as a result of a genetic disorder

Fall 11 features revised folio39 rev.indd 21Fall 11 features revised folio39 rev.indd 21 11/3/11 11:46 AM11/3/11 11:46 AM


Ackroyd says that part of what she learned at Wellesley was how, in any given fi eld, ‘to fi nd a niche, to join the conversation and add to it, to see what’s lacking and supply it.’

fall 2011

Ackroyd (left) and Woolf:Ackroyd has on a suit made of wool produced by their company.


fall 2011 | wellesley !"

PATRICIA ACKROYD CE/DS ’96 and ALLYSON WOOLF CE/DS ’96GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND, and SHERBORN, MASS.

MANY WOMEN COME HOME from unsuccessful clothes shopping trips boiling over with frustration. After Patricia Ackroyd CE/DS ’96 came home one day in 2009 from an unsuccessful attempt to fi nd the kind of suit she wanted, she became determined to do nothing less than revitalize the British wool industry.

What Ackroyd, who lives in Glastonbury, England, was looking for would seem not that hard to fi nd: a suit made in Britain of pure new British wool. She found garments sporting the familiar Woolmark logo, indicating a garment of 100 percent new wool. She could buy garments tagged “Made in Britain.” But the whole package—made in Britain of 100 percent pure new British wool—was not to be found.

She remembers asking, “Where can I go to get a length of wool that’s been scoured, combed, spun, dyed, and woven on this island?

“And I was told, ‘You can’t.’ I went stiff with rage.”At this point it must be noted that Ackroyd isn’t just any random

British shopper. She is descended from generations of families in the wool industry, going back to the early years of the 19th century and before. As she has written, “Over the span of my life, I have watched the industry diminish to a shadow of its former self and be overtaken by inferior products in the guise of luxury without durability or value for money.”

The “epiphany” she had after that unsuccessful shopping trip prompted her to found Ackroyd & Dawson Limited. This new company is to supply bespoke tailors, fashion houses, and other clothing makers with fi ne woolen fabrics that have made the whole journey “from clip to cloth” in Britain, with no outsourcing of steps in the process just to cut costs. She feels she is being led back into the family business “by an obliga-tion to everyone in our families to rebuild this industry,” she says.

The goals include creating jobs, and in a sustainable, all-natural industry (“we’ve got 2.5 million unemployed,” she says); providing better markets, and ultimately better prices, for sheep farmers and artisans; and providing the garment industry with better fabrics.

Her partners in this venture are her sister, Susan Kidder, and her friend Allyson Woolf CE/DS ’96, who lives in Sherborn, Mass.

Woolf says that for her, “It all began with a logo.” Ackroyd and Woolf met in one of Maud Chaplin’s philosophy

classes at Wellesley and have been fast friends ever since. They learned early on that they could work well together, too. While still students, they collaborated to organize a conference on women’s health that brought big-name speakers to campus.

Woolf’s contributions to the A&D venture have been in the realm of design and communications. And at this stage of a new business, there’s plenty to design and communicate. The partners spend many hours on the phone together, thanks to discount calling plans.

After graduating from Brookline High in Massachusetts, Woolf studied at the Rhode Island School of Design but did not complete her degree. She worked as an artist, though, and ran an antiques business, and she also helped start and run a family-owned trucking business. At Wellesley, she designed an individual major in ethics. It was very “gracious,” she says, choosing the word carefully, of the College to allow her to do such a thing. “That is what I wanted. It could have happened only at Wellesley.” Today her portfolio of activities includes consulting in ethics.

The logo Ackroyd asked Woolf to design incorporates two sheep to represent the 60 different breeds raised in Britain, plus an old-fashioned “drop spindle”—more common and lower-tech than the spinning wheel. The outline of the logo suggests a crown, still an important symbol in Britain.

The wool venture speaks to Woolf’s concerns as an ethicist. “As an artist and an ethicist, I fi nd the loss of traditional skills tragic,” she says.

Ackroyd says that part of what she learned at Wellesley was how, in any given fi eld, “to fi nd a niche, to join the conversation and add to it, to see what’s lacking and supply it.”

In her case, what was lacking was a whole industrial tradition that had disappeared. And when she decided to do something about it, it was natural to recruit her friend from Wellesley. In the case of both women, it’s easy to see how their time as Davis Scholars helped them not just to follow a chosen path but to create one. And the conversation between the two friends continues, virtually every day, across the Atlantic.

DESIREE URQUHART CE/DS ’99COLONIAL BEACH, VA.

Twenty years after leaving Drexel University to marry and have a family, Desiree Urquhart decided she needed to earn a degree. Despite excellent performance reviews throughout her career, she was laid off and repeatedly denied promotions because of lack of credentials. A boss who had dated an alumna suggested the Davis Scholar program and sent her to Boston to visit the College. Urquhart majored in theatre studies, landing at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., after graduation. She

is currently director of government and community relations, responsible for the theater’s lobbying efforts to raise public funds from Congress and the District of Columbia. “Having a degree from Wellesley totally changed my world and how people accept and respect me,” Urquhart says. “I can’t tell you the pride I feel when a new business acquaintance says, ‘Oh, you went to Wellesley . . . well.’ It always fi lls me up as the greatest affi rmation of achievement.”

—Alice M. Hummer



SUZANNE SALVO CE/DS ’08FRANKLIN, TENN.

SUZANNE SALVO KNOWS exactly what Wellesley did for her: “Wellesley made me make sense of what I went through.”

What she went through was 30 years of an abusive marriage. Then one day she “escaped.” That’s her word. Her husband had dropped her off for her train to work as usual. But once inside the station, she real-ized she could wait for him to head off to his own workplace and then return to her home to gather some things and get away.

Salvo had not been without options growing up. A native of the Philippines, she was the daughter of a well-known general in Ferdinand Marcos’s government. She had been accepted at Stanford. But at age 171/2, she decided to marry the young man who had been her fi rst serious boyfriend. “I thought I had it all together. I was in love.”

In hindsight, she realizes that she failed to notice some warning signs. And then children started arriving—fi ve in all, eventually. Each made it harder to contemplate leaving her husband, despite his temper and controlling behavior.

When Salvo was in her early thirties, she and her husband and children moved to the United States, settling fi rst in Indiana and later in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When she fi rst struck out on her own, she landed in Southern California, where she started courses at a community college. This led to study abroad at Oxford University and a decision to enter Wellesley as a Davis Scholar. “You have a Wellesley aura already,” an alumna interviewer told her.

Salvo had found Wellesley on a Wikipedia list of colleges in New England, and the idea of an all-women environment appealed to her. Wellesley turned out to be a good place for her to follow the counsel of her priest, who told her, “Find out who you are—by yourself.”

Salvo is Roman Catholic, and her religion is a major force in her life—but one she didn’t understand very well before she came to Wellesley. Edward Hobbs’s course, Women, Sexuality, and Patriarchalism in the New Testament, was an eye-opener. “I’m Catholic but didn’t know squat what it means to be a Catholic woman.” This led to a major in religion, along with many psychology courses. Her interest was less in learning to counsel others than in making sense of her own experience.

Nowadays she’s living in Tennessee, to be near one of her daughters and her newest grandchild, born the day before she got her master’s of divinity from Harvard. She’s writing a book about her life story, which she plans to wrap up this fall.

After the book is fi nished, she plans to start a shelter for women escaping abusive relationships. She has a name picked out already: Reclaiming Authentic Womanhood. Authentic womanhood, she says, includes strength. She points out that the Bible often uses the image of a woman in labor to symbolize strength. And, she adds, “God didn’t rest until He’d made woman.”

MELINDA RIOS CE/DS ’10STOUGHTON, MASS.

Melinda Rios decided to go back to school because of her daughter. Prior to Wellesley, Rios was a stay-at-home mom to a child with special needs. “I knew that she would have to face challenges in life that I never would have to,” she says. “I wanted to be a good role model for her.” When her daughter entered preschool, Rios began to consider returning to the workforce. To do that, she knew she needed to fi nish her degree. “I never thought I would actually be accepted to Wellesley,” she says. Rios was admitted and earned a degree in architecture, but it wasn’t easy. “I was pulled in many different directions,” she says. “It was challenging trying to juggle my family obligations with my academic life.” But ultimately, the Davis Scholar community helped her succeed. “I knew that other women were struggling like myself,” Rios says. “We looked to each other to provide emotional support and understanding.” Since graduation, Rios has been working as an administrative assistant in the College’s Offi ce for Resources.

—Jennifer Garrett ’99

Ruth Walker, a former foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, is a regular contributor to Wellesley magazine.



‘Wellesley made me make sense of what I went through.’

—Suzanne Salvo CE/DS ’08

fall 2011



The Wellesley Club of Switzerland hosted 14 people from all over the country, as well as France, at a luncheon in early summer in Geneva. Those in attendance ranged from the classes of ’58 to ’06, plus two current students and one who was entering Wellesley as a fi rst-year this fall.

CLUBNEWS FROM

AROUND THE WORLD

44

NEWS AND INFORMATION FROM

THE WORLDWIDE NETWORK OF

THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

YOUR ALUMNAE

ASSOCIATION

A New Face in CWSDOES ERIN SULLIVAN ’01 LOOK FAMILIAR? She graced the cover of the summer 2001 issue (below) as a graduating senior, light-heartedly blowing bubbles during commencement. Sullivan has come a long way since graduation—a doctorate in Ireland, research in Africa and South America—and she plans on using her experiences to provide career counselingto alumnae and students in her new role as associate director at Wellesley’s Center for Work and Service.

After graduating, Sullivan spent two years as a research assistant at Harvard Business School, focusing on information-technology companies. Then, Sullivan jumped across the pond to get her Ph.D. in business administration from Trinity College in Dublin, focusing on pharmaceutical supply-chain manage-ment. Afterward, she returned to Harvard, working on the Global Health Delivery Project.

Sullivan saw that job as a temporary, transi-tional position, but she wound up staying for four years. “Eventually . . . I ran my own research team, and I traveled all over Africa and South America doing research on how countries spent their money for HIV, TB, and malaria that came from inter-national donors,” she says. However, the extensive travel started wearing on her, and she found herself in CWS, asking a staff member for advice on next steps. As it happened, a position was open in CWS, and the rest is history.

Given that today’s students are very interested in nonprofi t work, public health, and social-science research, Sullivan thinks that she could be a good resource for them. She’s also interested in working with the CWS on using technology to connect with alumnae. And, of course, Sullivan is thrilled to be back at her alma mater. “I’m just really excited to get to talk to Wellesley alums and Wellesley students every day,” she says.

—Lisa Scanlon ’99

ngasor

o

in business

WCAA



This magazine is published quarterly by the Wellesley College Alumnae Associa-tion, an autonomous corporate body, independent of the College. The Association is dedicated to connecting alumnae to the College and to each other.

WCAA BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

PresidentKaren Gentleman ’77

Treasurer/SecretaryDebra Drew DeVaughn ’74

Martha Goldberg Aronson ’89Katherine Collins ’90Aniella Gonzalez ’93Karen Capriles Hodges ’62Georgia Murphy Johnson ’75Suzanne Lebold ’85Willajeanne McLean ’77Inyeai Ororokuma ’79Yong Qiu ’08Patience Singleton Roach ’92, chair of Alumnae Admissions RepresentativesShelley Sweet ’67Mei-Mei Tuan ’88Karen Williamson ’69, president electSandra Yeager ’86, chair of annual giving

Ex offi ciis: Susan Challenger ’76Alice M. HummerKatherine Stone Kaufmann ’67

Alumnae Trustees: Linda Cozby Wertheimer ’65Nami Park ’85Ruth Chang ’81Sandra Polk Guthman ’65Shelly Anand ’08

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION SENIOR STAFF:

Executive DirectorSusan Challenger ’76

Director of Alumnae EventsHeather MacLean

Director of Alumnae GroupsSusan Lohin

Alumnae Offi ce Financial AdministratorGreg Jong

husbands or children write back to say they appreciate it. “To me it’s like a ministry,” she says.

Beyond that, there’s just some-thing special about the class notes. “I think it makes us feel more of a cama-raderie, fi nding out what others are doing,” Nancy says. “And people are doing wonderful things. I haven’t done anything in these majestic terms myself, but we’re all talented in some way.”

—Jennifer Flint

How to Be Kind to Your SecretaryAdd her to your holiday-card mailing list.

Report on your classmates’ doings.

Keep Wellesley updated (recordupdates @wellesley.edu) if you move or change your email address. Many secretaries are sending email blasts to solicit news.Without your current address, they won’t reach you.

Mini-reunion, mini-reunion, mini-reunion: Did you have one? Drop a line to your secretary.

Think small: You need not cure cancer or win an award to be “newsworthy.” Everyone can relate to the simple details of life.

45

To read Wellesley magazine online, visit www.wellesley.edu/magazine.

The Wellesley Club of France had a rendezvous in July in Paris, where they were joined by Joanne Murray ’81, Salwa Muhammad ’06, and Kate Miller of the Center for Work and Service.

To learn more about the activities of the WCAA, visit web.wellesley.edu/web/Alumnae.

ALUMNAE CALENDAR

THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION announces the following events for 2011 and 2012. Unless otherwise noted, events take place at the College. For more information, call the Alumnae Offi ce at 781-283-2331.

2011

NOVEMBER

20 President H. Kim Bottomly speaking to the Tokyo Wellesley Club, 11:30 A.M., Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. For more information, contact Rachel Wang ’88 at [email protected].

DECEMBER

2–3 “London Calling,” a two-day event in London, featuring President Bottomly, former Secretary of State Madeleine Korbel Albright ’59, and the faculty, staff, and students of the Albright Institute. At the London School of Economics and the Landmark Hotel. For more information and to register, visit sites.google.com/a/wellesley.edu/london-calling/.

2012

FEBRUARY

16 Alumnae Achievement Awards16–17 WCAA board of directors meeting

MAY

4 Stepsinging hosted by the WCAA23 Senior lunch and induction

NANCY LIBERMAN RATLIFF ’52 is a class-notes veteran: She has penned 37 columns, with three more to go before (fi ngers crossed) she passes the baton. She is a bit of a legend in the magazine offi ce for respecting dead-lines—even going to valiant lengths when Hurricane Katrina struck three days before a Sept. 1 deadline. It was seven weeks before Nancy’s Hattiesburg, Miss., home and com-

puter were back up and running, but that didn’t stop her from fi ling a col-umn. What keeps her motivated, and how can you make her job—and that

of all class secretaries—a tad easier? A few things, it turns out.

“Living down here, I am so geo-graphically isolated from everyone, but as secretary I get the news fi rst,” she says. “And I love being in the loop.” And it’s not just the news you read in her column: People share pri-vate information with her—news not fi t for print, perhaps, like new octo-genarian boyfriends. When there’s a death in the class, Nancy writes to the family to let them know the class is making a donation in the individual’s memory. Sometimes the

VOLUNTEER PROFILE

MADAME SECRETARY

•

•

•

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LETTERS (Continued from page 3)

81

A GIFT THATCAN BE OPENED

AGAIN AND AGAIN~ Honor a Graduate~ Celebrate a Birthday or Anniversary~ Recognize a Special Occasion~ Remember a Classmate

For each $100 gift to Honor with Books, the Library will place a bookplate bearing

the name of the person you are honoring, as well as your name, in a newly published book.

To request information regarding Friends of Wellesley College Library

Call 781-283-2872 or visitwww.wellesley.edu/Library/Friends

Honorwith

Books

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intellectually jarred by Nora Hussey’s listing of “Plays You Shouldn’t Miss,” beginning at No. 1 with August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and followed by Hamlet. Yes, Joe Turner is a very good play, but considerably less “great” than Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Oedipus, and A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which did make the list. Ms. Hussey’s obvious “politically correct” listing is not intellectually worthy of Wellesley.

Jane Randall ’50New York

A response from Melinda Lopez of Theatre Studies:I helped create the play list with my boss, Nora Hussey. Given a free evening, a babysitter, and new dress, I would rather go see Joe Turner than Hamlet. I’ll stand by that. But I’d rather see Hamlet than Rent. I prefer Bernini to Michelangelo, and Frank Gehry to Frank Lloyd Wright—just barely. I prefer Chicago to New York and Buenos Aires to Paris; Dr. King to Spartacus, and Mac to PC. That’s my opinion. I teach both Othello and Blasted (Sarah Kane) at Wellesley, because both plays challenge everything we thought we knew about political correctness and our understanding of the human condition. That’s my job. Ms. Randall is free to see whatever plays she likes, and I’ll join her in a spirited uptown/downtown discussion of theater. But don’t impugn my dedication to this College, nor this College’s dedication to me and my esteemed colleague.

A PASSION FOR THE STARS

I very much enjoyed the article about the recent renovations to the Whitin Observatory (“A Star is Reborn,” spring ’11). As a fi rst-year student housed in Bates Hall, I clearly had to take a class at the observatory since it was so close to my won-derful new college dorm room! As a true Wellesley woman, I certainly took to the Wellesley idea of grabbing every opportunity presented to me as soon as I set foot on campus. To me, this meant the crew team. So there I was, waking up at 4 a.m. to be on the Charles River by 5 a.m., rowing for a hard two hours, only to return to the Whitin Ob-servatory for Astronomy 101. The only thing that kept me awake during those early morning hours was Professor Wendy Hagen Bauer. With two braids, a bright smile, and an incredible passion for astronomy, she made astronomy come alive! It never mattered how cold that Charles River was, or how tough the workout was, Wendy engaged my brain with nebulae and galaxies. I enjoyed my classes so much that I became a night lab assis-tant, helping 101 students after my fi rst semester. Every part of my experience was made brighter by Wendy. It never mattered if the observatory was falling down around us. We were all looking up at the beautiful stars made even better by Wendy’s expertise. So while it is fantastic that the observa-tory got the facelift it needed, let’s agree to never overlook the people inside the buildings who make Wellesley the incredible school that it is! If you haven’t heard an original song by Wendy Bauer, you are truly missing out!

Ellen McConnell ’95New Orleans

PIPING UP

Hooray for the Fisk organ anniversary and spe-cial concert (“A Great Set of Pipes,” spring ’11). Admittedly space was quite limited, but it’s unfortunate the the dream and dedication of Prof. Owen Jander to have the organ built could not be told. I have two special memories of the organ as an alum—the silhouette of Owen against the rose window as he enthusiastically climbed back-ward to pump the organ and the Gustav Leon-hardt recital on it. When Harvard celebrated its 300th anniversary, their music department chose to celebrate the occasion with a Leonhardt con-cert. He asked if he could also play the Wellesley organ, and that was the concert I attended.

Dorothy Stock Freeman ’50Stone Mountain, Ga.

LIE, LAY, LAIN

It is lovely to see the word “lay” used correctly on page 36 of the spring ’11 issue, but what happened in the last sentence on page 80? Please do not abandon the use of the intransitive verb “lie.”

Louisa Turner ’62New York

WRESTLING WITH HOW TO SOLVE the Mt. Fuji problem? Taylor offers her students the same basic assumption that an MIT professor supposedly used to screen pro-spective teaching assistants. Assume that every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a big dump truck gets fi lled instantaneously and is driven away, off to the other site without getting in the way of any other trucks. How long would it take to move the mountain? “From there, it’s up to the students to spell out their assumptions out loud, describe their plan for addressing this problem, and do it, step-by-step,” says Taylor. “I love that this problem involves geom-etry (volume of mountain, volume of truck bed), unit conversions (from truckfulls to time), large numbers (so scientifi c notation is helpful), and estimation (how high is that mountain, about what is its radius, how big is one of those big trucks?). Such a great problem!” And as for how long it would take, Taylor estimates more than 10,000 years.

MT. FUJI: A HINT(Continued from page 14)

Fall 11 back of book rev.indd 37 10/27/11 3:05 PM


Karen and Howard Wilcox, of South Natick, Mass., are now both retired from Wellesley College: Howard, after 37 years as a mathematics professor, and Karen, after 13 years as associate director of ! nancial aid. " e couple met while singing with the Boston Symphony’s Tanglewood Festival Chorus. " ey now enjoy travel, tennis, and singing with various choral groups.

For a ! nancial proposal tailored to your circumstances, please contact Patricia Galindo, Director, O" ce of Planned Giving, 800.253.8916.

n addition to having been a math professor at Wellesley, I occasionally worked with the Planned Giving O" ce. Having learned of many ways over the years to make a gift to the College while providing income to a donor or bene! ciary, it occurred to me that I could make Wellesley a bene! ciary of a portion of my retirement funds, with the understanding that these funds would be used to provide a Charitable Gift Annuity for my wife, should she survive me. # is turned out to be a simple plan to put in place and will guarantee Karen a life income, with Wellesley receiving the remainder value at her death. # ough this was an unusual plan, help from the Planned Giving O" ce made this seem easy. All I had to do was adjust the bene! ciary form for my retirement account, and they handled the rest.

Howard Wilcox

I



There is strength in numbers: last year, more than 14,000 alumnae made a gift ranging from $10 to $250,000. This annual investment allows Wellesley to offer the very finest liberal arts education. The number of alumnae who give is also a key factor in determining

a school’s ranking in publications such as U.S. News & World Report because it is seen as a measure of alum-nae satisfaction. So let’s go for 50 percent participation this year—that would be 15,647 gifts… and that would make a big difference indeed.

HHHAAAAAVVVVVVVEEEEEEE YYYYYYOOOOOOOUUUUUUU MMMMMAAADDDDEEE YYYYOOOOUUUURRR GGGGIIIFFFTTT TTTTTHHHHHHIIIISSSSS YYYYYYEEEEEAAAAAARRRR?Give today at www.wellesley.edu/give

INTRODUCING THE WELLESLEY FUND

83



OWA RETURNS TO ME. I remember the view from the top of the hill where I lived. This was the Christiansons’ home, the butter-cream colored house at 110 Pleasant Hill Road—a house with a Norwegian name—Soli Høgda or “Sunny Heights.” I can feel the sun heating up the small, square living room, warming my face and legs. Most days, I sat gazing from

this perch at the First Lutheran Church steeple, the dark red brick of the old middle school, and the miniature downtown. I drank my coffee or $8 red wine and looked toward the center of town, which once held views of water before the Upper Iowa River was rerouted to control fl ooding. The sky gathered streaks of pink and purple, deepened, and streetlights emerged on the downtown main street, Water Street. I stayed for nine months: enough time to gestate a living being or spend an academic year as Writer-in-Residence, renting the house of another college professor.

Three years later, I return to this same small town, Decorah, for three weeks in the summer. I am without a car this time and rent a bike in order to get from campus to town to the house where I’m staying. Ben at Decorah Bicycles, next to The Whippy Dip, the local soft-serve ice- cream place, takes a brown Trek bike down from the racks. He’s hand-some in a blond, Midwestern, athletic way; were I 10 years younger, I’d allow myself a 10-minute crush. Outside, he shows me the gears. “Remember, to change the gears, you have to be pedaling,” Ben says. When have I ever felt this old? He leaves me to push up onto the bike, circle the parking lot like a 7-year-old, fi nd my balance. I concentrate on making circles and loops in the parking lot, remembering the freedom I felt when I fi rst learned, late at 10 years old, to ride a bike.

In Iowa, I felt free, felt the fl at edges of the world curl up against my fi ngers, pressed myself into the earth and felt, for a moment, held. Far from the ballast of family and familiar places, far from everywhere I had lived previously, I felt weightless, unanchored by the past. First it

was startling, disconcerting. I found my footing as I found the familiar in the unfamiliar.

My last time in Decorah, I worked with a community-based col-laborative dance company. Leigh, fi erce, athletic, and entirely unsenti-mental, took the time to memorize one of my poems. She read it with such feeling and intensity we were both brought to tears. She walked across the stage, moved through the words and the story they told about driving along the Mississippi. The words became current—a current—connecting me to someone I barely knew. She inhabited my words and I believed them again; I believed in words and movement and how they can, briefl y, elevate a moment from the past and deliver it to us again.

Water is what I will remember about New York City, too—the East River—its sometimes pungent brackish ocean smell, the swirls and eddies, looking across to the lighthouse on the northern tip of Roosevelt Island—a few blocks away from where I live. When I am away from any place I have ever loved, it is the view of water that brings me back. I feel the desire to return to Iowa every summer. What I know how to do, what I love to do is to rubberband back, is to walk through a land-scape with the layers of every other time I’ve been there underneath and around me shifting as I walk. I am fi ve years ago and now with every step. I am 10, balancing on two wheels, pedaling forward and then pedaling back to brake and then gliding before I realize I can ride—that I have been riding for two minutes when two minutes before I did not know how.

It has been more than 20 years since I fi rst saw Lake Waban. Still, I remember running around the lake with the rest of the Bates Hall resi-dence staff, jumping in, our shrieks at the cold water, our walk uphill in the late summer air to one of the dining halls. These simple pleasures of water and of view, whether in Iowa or Massachusetts; the cerulean sky, pinpricked with stars; walking back from Clapp and trudging up another hill; riding my red mountain bike to dance class at the sports center. It was night, I was heading home in the inky darkness, know-ing I was blessed to be there, eyes bleary from hours spent in the Mac Lab and muscles sore from moving in dance class. I am here, through these words, seeing that sky and the water; seeing that walk or glide homeward, once more.

Sejal Shah ’94 writes short fi ction and creative nonfi ction essays. You can fi nd her recent work online at The Kenyon Review; email her at fi [email protected].

By Sejal Shah ’94

IWalking Tributaries

END

NOTE

84

F.C

O

“We are walking tributaries. The smell we sense in rain, in an ocean, or on the banks of a midwestern river attracts us because its familiarity runs deep.”

—David Faldet, in Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People


AMONG THE MANY SKILLS

Wellesley’s rock climbers have to cultivate, speed may have been the most critical in the past—because last time the course was offered, all 28 spots in the class, which was formerly held at Dana Hall School, were claimed within 14 seconds after registration opened. No longer. The fi eld house is now home to Wellesley’s own climbing wall, 26 feet high and 24 feet across, with six different routes and 20 to 40 holds per route. The wall was custom designed by High Five Adventures in Brattleboro, Vt., and inspired by Trango Towers in Pakistan. It features elements intended to appeal to both the novice climber and those aiming for Everest.

Britt Salapek, an assis-tant professor and director of recreation, intramurals, and club sports, says that in addition to the climbing class, the wall will open for recreational use by the spring semester. Students will undergo a certifi cation process and ultimately oversee its use.

Photo by Richard Howard

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Wellesley Magazine Fall 2011