Wellesley Spring 2011

spring 2011 | 2011 ALUMNAE ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS | A LAST GOOD-BYE | A PASSION FOR DANCE

WHITIN OBSERVATORY

RECONCEIVED

FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Students at Whitin Observatory have always peered at the heavens, but now, thanks to a renovation, they can also study the Earth.

Geoscience and environmental science have joined astronomy in the beloved building.

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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 E. Garrett ’98, Amy Mayer ’94, Susan Elia MacNeal ’91, Ruth Walker, Jennie Gottschalk, and Sidrah Baloch ’14

Shelf Life

WCAA—Your Alumnae Association

Class Notes

Endnote—A Last Good-Bye by Lynn Sternberger ’07

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Departments

spring 2011

Features

20 A STAR IS REBORN By Lisa Scanlon ’99

A recent renovation and expansion of the 111-year-old Whitin Observatory seamlessly melds the historic and the cutting edge, bringing together the study

of astronomy, geosciences, and environmental science.

29 2011 Alumnae Achievement Awards30 SARAH MILLEDGE NELSON ’53

Bringing Gender to Archaeology By Susan Elia MacNeal ’91

32 SUSAN WUNSCH RICE ’67 Banking on Social Responsibility

By Emily Laurence Baker ’84

34 MARILYN CRANDALL JONES ’70 Putting Patients First

By Amy Mayer ’94

36 REENA RAGGI ’73 Laying Down the Law

By Jennifer McFarland Flint

Cover photo by Peter Vanderwarker

Painting of Whitin Observatory, opposite, by Richmond K. Fletcher (1885–1965)

spring 2011 | wellesley 1

EditorAlice M. Hummer

Associate Editor Lisa Scanlon ’99

Student AssistantSidrah Baloch ’14

DesignFriskey Design, Sherborn, Mass.

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 781-283-2342. 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 mailboxto be used by alumnae for updating their computer records. The number is 1-800-339-5233.

You can also update your information online when you visit the Alumnae Association 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/

SFrom the Editor

EVERAL YEARS AGO, in a celebration of institutional pride and the power of a Wellesley education, banners went up on lampposts all over campus. Th eir bright colors invited attention, and you caught Ththeir message by walking past three in succession: “Women who will” . . . “make a difference” . ffff . .“inthe world.” At the bottom of each banner was printed the name and profession of an Alumnae Achievement Award winner: the civil-rights pioneer, the groundbreaking geneticist, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist.

Th e life stories attached to the names on the banners were inspiring to many students, but I also heard more Ththan one say that she found the pantheon of Wellesley luminaries a little intimidating. Would she do as well andmake as much of a difference as the women who went before her?ffff

Plenty of alumnae also worry how their achievements stack up—something that was very clear from the response to the article written by Karen Grigsby Bates ’73 in the last magazine, “When Life Doesn’t MeasureUp.” In fact, that issue generated more letters to the editor than any other in the last 15 years. We heard fromour senior alums, our youngest graduates, and everyone in between. Even husbands weighed in. Almost to a person, you welcomed the discussion about success and failure and urged us to continue it.

Many of the letters brought to mind that old adage, “Comparisons are odious” (or odorous, if you’re Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing). A number of alumnae, with a good dose of courage, shared their feelings ggof inadequacy. One wrote, “Th e magazine is a quarterly reminder that I haven’t cured cancer, climbed to the top Thof any corporate ladder, or started a fabulous fill-in-the-blank. . . . Most days, I’m too busy to remember thatfithis makes me, relatively speaking, a failure.” But in the colloquy that these letters carry on, another alumna responds, “Too many of us (myself included) underestimate the accomplishments inherent in our own lifestories.” And the wisdom of a Wellesley woman from the 1950s adds to the conversation: “I always ask . . . , ‘Afteryou die, will the world be a better place for your having lived in it?’ . . . [I]f you’re doing something—anything—as well as you can do it, the chances are that the world will benefit.” fi

You can read a selection of the letters starting on the opposite page; there will also be numerous others in the summer issue. Elsewhere in this magazine are profiles of the four Alumnae Achievement Award winners for fi2011. Th ey are, by any measure, stars in the Wellesley universe (and the wider universe, for that matter). But Ththey are also women of great humanity, and it was clear from their campus visits in February that they have faced struggles, tragedy, and unexpected life decisions along the way—just like everybody else. They present oneThmodel of success, but far from the only one.

Th ere are Wellesley women around the globe who are making an impact—whether by serving on community Thboards, nurturing the next generation in the classroom or at home, or just setting an example for others by the way they face illness and adversity. We can’t put you all on banners, but we can get more of you into the magazine ife you let us orffyour class secretaries know what’s happening in your lives. Your stories do deserve to be told. Please continue to write.

Alice M. Hummer, Editor

spring 2011 | volume 93 | issue 3

wellesley y | spring 20112

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spring 2011 | wellesley

LETTERS TO

THE EDITOR

Susan Elia MacNeal ’91 (“Bringing Gender to Archaeology,” p. 30) is still awed, amazed, and inspired by Sarah Milledge Nelson ’53 and the other Alumnae Achievement Award winners. Her fi rst novel, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, will be published by Bantam Dell/Random House in the fall.

Emily Laurence Baker ’84 (“Banking on Social Responsi-bility,” p. 32) has lived in London

since 1991. Meeting the incredibly energetic Susan Wunsch Rice ’67 has prompted her to get going on that long unwritten book.

CONTRIBUTORS

Amy Mayer ’94 (“Putting Patients First,” p. 34) enjoys writing about Wellesley women;

her current project is a radio documentary about the Peace Corps.

Jennifer McFarland Flint (“Laying Down the Law,” p. 36), a former associate editor of the magazine, writes freelance from Somerville, Mass.

Achievement Award we start to con-sider broader criteria—women whohave overcome problems with sub-stance or other kinds of abuse, or have quietly filled needs in their commu-finities, within their families, or other less public triumphs. Non Ministrari sed Ministrare doesn’t mean anything without the individual who is acting it out on any stage, large or small.

Katherine Page ’69Lincoln, Mass.

WHY THE COMPARISONS?

Th ank you for the thought-provoking Tharticle, “When Life Doesn’t MeasureUp.” As I read the various thoughts and feelings conveyed, a commontheme emerged to me. As Wellesley alumnae, don’t we need to redefine fisuccess? It reminds me of the ever-changing prize for Hooprolling.

When the practicefirst started, it wassaid that the winner would be the first to fibe married. During my time, the winnerwas supposed to be thefi rst CEO of a For-fitune 500 company.Shouldn’t each of usdetermine our own

successes? Why are we relentlessly comparing ourselves to the achieve-ments of others? Others’ successes should in no way diminish our own. Icelebrate each alumna’s achievement because each of us, in her own way, is making a difference in this world. ffffFor some, it’s within our own fami-lies. For others, it might be making a diff erence in education, government, ffff

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

EDITOR’S NOTE: This quarter was

a record-setter for mail—more letters

to the editor than any time in the last

15 years. Our winter ’11 cover story,

“When Life Doesn’t Measure Up,”

brought many thoughtful responses.

Because we received far more letters

than we have space for, the discussion

will continue in the summer issue.

COVER TO COVER

I read the winter ’11 issue from cover to cover. While I always enjoy Wellesleymagazine (particularly the photo-graphy and updates on the school andclass notes), the topical personal essay by Beth Coye ’59 (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: A Personal Journey to Activ-ism”), the feature on lessons learned from perceived failure (“When LifeDoesn’t Measure Up”), and the look at multigenerational Wellesley experi-ences (“The More ThTh ings Change”) all Thevoked the spirit of the school for me.Th anks so much.Th

Lydia Chan ’01San Francisco

GOOD FOR THE BUSY READER

I’m writing to congratulate you on the layout of the magazine. I like theshort, one-page articles in the frontof the magazine. We are all busy and value our time. With this layout of brief articles often accompanied by

pictures, we are offered a variety.ffffTh en when we have more time, we Thcan read the longer articles and class notes. Th ank you for your effTh orts!ffff

Peggy Bowers Allison ’50Hamden, Conn.

HOW WE JUDGE OURSELVES

Th e alumnae magazine and theTh New Yorker arrived in the same mail. Irread Wellesley fi rst (of course) before fiturning to the New Yorker, where almost immediately I came across a cartoon picturing a woman reading her Alumni News. In the backgroundher husband says to her, “If you didn’t want to feel inferior to your classmates, you shouldn’t have gone to such a good school.” Putting aside the notionthat in a following frame, the cartoon-ist might picture her throwing some-thing at him, there’s a great deal of truth in his words. Not that most of us would havethought about it this way, but we all did want dto go to a good school, a very good school.

This said, the thoughtful article by Karen Grigsby Bates ’73(“When Life Doesn’tMeasure Up”) raises a number of questions about judging ourselves. We need to continue the conversation. I do think that one of the reasons you won’t find statementsfiof failure in the class notes is that we keep these diffi culties private, sharing ffithem only with our closest friends, inmy case, my Wellesley friends.

I’d like to suggest that whenwe nominate for the Alumnae

and/or business. My time at Wellesley made me a better woman because itmade me realize we all give inour own way. Non Ministrari sed iiMinistrare . . . isn’t that true success? e

Stacy Sutton Hutcheson ’92West Chester, Pa.

TEACHABLE MOMENTS

I would like to say failure can pro-duce positive results, in that you learn from past mistakes. Forbes published an article that many successful mil-lionaires had been broke—and morethan once. Th ey came up a second or Ththird time smarter. I personally have known such people.

Larisa Vanov ’82Houston

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(Continued on page 76)

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CLARIFICATION

In the winter ’11 President’s Letter, Iincluded a comparison of the distri-bution of majors in 1968 and 2009. To clarify, I reported the percentage of total majors. Had I used thenumber of total students majoring sin any particular discipline, the sum would be much greater than 100 percent, due to double majors. For example, I noted that sciencerepresented 16 percent of the total majors in 2009. Ths e percentage of Thstudents majoring in science was 21.5 spercent (many of those students alsomajor in something else). Regardless of the method used, the data support my main point about the enduring valueof Wellesley’s liberal-arts education.

H. Kim BottomlyWellesley College President

Lisa Scanlon ’99 (“A Star Is Reborn,” p. 20) is an associate editor at Wellesley magazine. She can’t wait to intro-duce her daughter to the cosmos at an observatory community night.

Wellesley magazine is available online at www.wellesley.edu/magazine.

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winter 2011 | A DARK STUDY COMES TO LIGHT | “DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL” | THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

When Life Doesn’t Measure Up

Winter 11 Covers pg1 bcg.indd 3 2/3/11 12:09 PM


Th e Science TraditionTh

IN 2007, after it was announced that I was to be the next president of Wellesley College, the very fi rst wave of congratulatory notes fiand e-mails I received came from science colleagues across the country and around the globe. I was surprised to learn how many of these contacts had connections to Wellesley; I was even more surprised at the additional number that had connections to other small liberal-arts colleges.

What I quickly came to realize, of course, is that liberal-arts colleges like Wellesley are the quiet foundationalunderpinnings of our society’s successful science enterprise.

In the last 20 years, more than one in five American Nobel laureates in chemistry, physics, and medicine attended liberal-arts colleges. Such statistics lead us to believe that liberal-arts graduates are disproportionately represented inthe leadership of the nation’s scientific ficommunity.

Having spent my own under-graduate and graduate years, as well asmy entire pre-Wellesley academic career,at large research universities, I remain intrigued by the fact that liberal-arts col-leges yield a disproportionate number of students who pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering. In fact, theNational Science Foundation places Wellesley on its listof the top 50 schools in the United States producing the highest proportion of students who go on to earn doctoraldegrees in these fields. From 1997 to 2006, 381 Wellesley fialumnae—or 6 percent of our graduates—earned doctoraldegrees in science and engineering.

Over the last 10 years, more than 470 Wellesley stu-dents or young alumnae pursued medicine, dentistry, or veterinary medicine, and there has also been an increasing interest in public-health careers. Among our alumnae, 16percent work in science-related fi elds, including medicine.fi

Indeed, Wellesley has a long tradition of serving as a kind of secret foundation for budding scientists. From the beginning, College founder Henry Durant insisted that a Wellesley education include chem-

istry and physics requirements—this at a time when science was not a majorpart of most undergraduate colleges. Today, Wellesley College is home to thesecond oldest physics lab in the country.

Producing doctors and scientists may be one of Wellesley’s quieter traditions, but it is a long-standing one, and it is one we must maintain.It is undoubtedly good for our students, who have the benefit of an excel-filent science education in tandem with a rigorous and inspiring liberal-arts curriculum. It is undoubtedly good for society, which needs these liberal-arts-educated minds, and needs more women in these fields.fi

It is also undoubtedly more complicated these days.Th e number of U.S.-trained scientists and engineers is in decline, andTh

so we must feed the pipeline. While we can’t control the early pipeline that encourages middle-school girls towardSTEM fi elds (science, technology, engi-fineering, and mathematics), we must ensure that our science-inclined under-graduates (especially first-year students)firemain excited about the discipline. To do this, our country’s science pedagogy needs to change. I would argue that the larger research universities could learn a great deal from us. Small liberal-artscolleges thoughtfully engage students in the research enterprise. Certainly, this is true for Wellesley, where faculty provide myriad opportunities, early on, for stu-dents to do important research alongsidethem. Oberlin College conducted an eight-year study of 50 liberal-arts colleges

and found that of the 7,000 articles published by faculty, 30 percent were co-authored by undergraduate students. At research universities, that number is less than 1 percent.

Yes, we need practicing scientists, but we also need science majors populating all careers; science needs to be a more integral part of the liberal-arts experience. Afterall, many of the greatest challenges we face in this century will require science expertise and the ability to link thatexpertise to expertise in other fi elds. Imagine a world infiwhich science majors from liberal-arts colleges become attorneys and accountants, businessmen and bankers, politicians and poets, journalists and judges. I guarantee it would be a smoother-running world.

Actually, that world may be closer than we think. At the Alumnae Achievement Awards dinner in February, I had the pleasure of talking to a Wellesley student, a neuroscience major, who was seated at my table. Overdinner, she told me about her plans for a future career in marketing.

A neuroscience major who wants to work in marketing? This time, I Thwasn’t the least bit surprised.

H. Kim Bottomly

‘We need practicing scientists, but we alsoneed science majors

populating all careers; science needs to be

a more integral part of the liberal-arts

experience.’—President H. Kim Bottomly

From the President

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President Bottomly has launched a new blog—

“The HKBlog”—which can be found at blogs.wellesley.edu/president/.


A NOTEBOOK OF NEWS AND

INFORMATION ABOUT THE CAMPUS.

BY ALICE HUMMER, LISA SCANLON ’99,

JENNIFER FLINT, JENNIFER E. GARRETT ’99,

AMY MAYER ’94, SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL ’91,

RUTH WALKER, JENNIE GOTTSCHALK,

AND SIDRAH BALOCH ’14.

Tiffany Chan ’12, copresident of the Wellesley College Asian Student Union, and Connie Shen ’14 at a crane-folding fund-raiser for Japan at the Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center.

WINDOW ON

WELLESLEY

WoWSupport And CranesFor Japan

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THE WELLESLEY COMMUNITY’S response to

the crises in Japan was immediate, strong,

and heartfelt. The day after the March 11

earthquake, members of the Wellesley College

Japan Club created the Wellesley for Japan

Coalition, a cross-Wellesley alliance united to

help Japan in the aftermath of the disasters.

“Everyone can play a part in this. You do not

need to be Japanese. You do not need to be a

member of Japan Club. All you need to have is

a heart that cares,” the students wrote on the

coalition’s website.

Since then, students have raised money

for relief efforts in creative ways, from holding

crane-making gatherings ($1 per crane) to

hosting “Hot & Spicy,” a party sponsored by

the Wellesley College Asian Student Union.

The administration has also worked to

raise awareness and show its support for

Japan. On March 16, the College held a vigil

for Japan in Houghton Chapel, with refl ections

from faculty, students, staff, and members of the

religious and spiritual

life team. (See page 8

for a quote from

Professor T. James

Kodera.) During a “teach-in” on March 27, Jim

Besancon, associate professor of geosciences,

and Katharine Moon, the Edith Stix Wasserman

Professor of Asian Studies, spoke about the

causes, effects, and potential outcomes of the

recent events in Japan.

—LS

For more on how students are supporting Japan, visit wellesleycollegeforjapan.blogspot.com.


they know about dorm life, for example, so rather than boring them with the number of residence halls, she picks out things that distinguish Wellesley’s. “I tell them thatwe have weekly teas, and that’s something that is more unique,” she says, “or the fact that we have grand pianosin every res hall.”

Th e student tour guides enjoy sharing the volumes Thof Wellesley minutia they’ve committed to memory, Haley says. Th at makes it disappointing if they can’t Thanswer a question.

“Someone once asked me who the architects werefor our campus center, and I knew they were a husband and a wife, and I knew they were from a warmer place than New England. I gave it my best guess,” she says, andwhen she returned with them to the Admission Offi ce, ffishe looked it up. “We try to answer all their questions[before they leave]—that’s important.”

Unfortunately, in that case, she was wrong. “So thatwas kind of a bummer.” (Correct answer: Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam.)

Haley also gets questions about herself. What’s hermajor? Art history and psychology. What are her plansfor after graduation? Nothing firm yet, so when some-fi

one on a tour asks her about that, she rotates through a few answers. “It’s never the students whoask me,” she says, only the parents. “And what they’re really asking is, ‘Is the school going to help my daughter get a job if shegoes here?’”

Being a tour guide isn’t on Haley’s short list of dream jobs for after gradu-ation, but she knows a tour guide canhave a great impact. She credits her own tour of the campus with con-

vincing her to attend Wellesley.And she learned this spring that some prospective students last fall told an alumnae interviewer that they had arrived for a tourambivalent about the College. Th eir guide’s enthusiasm and Thpassion totally overtook them

and convinced them to apply.“Th at actually really warmsTh

my heart,” Haley says. “Th at’s really cool.”Th—AM

MELISSA HALEY ’11, Campus Tour Guide for the Offi ce of Admission

‘One of the best things about being a tour guide is that I’m just much

more comfortable speaking publicly, and I can project my voice much farther than

most people.’—Melissa Haley ’11

MELISSA HALEY ’11 WILL GRADUATE from Wellesley with a skill that most of her classmates have not perfected: the fi ne art of walking backward. fi

A campus tour guide for the Office of Admission ffisince her fi rst semester, Haley has logged hundreds of fimiles striding backward, with a group of tour-goers tohelp her navigate. (Th ey grimace when she’s about to Thback into something.)

Haley can also rattle off College facts and trivia that ffmost students wouldn’t have a clue about, and she says working as a tour guide has only deepened her apprecia-tion of the College.

Giving tours as a first-year, she remembers, “I wasfiexcited every time, never failed.” Introducing Wellesley to newcomers reinforced all the reasons she’d chosen toattend and provided “a really great way to get acclimated.” In particular, she says, as a fi rst-generation college studentfishe might not have realized certain campus resourcesexisted, such as the multimedia equipment in the Knapp Media and Technology Center and the wide variety of services off ered at the Center for Work and Service.ffff

Haley has done tours every year she has beenat Wellesley, including three Wintersessions. Now a senior, she admits to occasionally being less than

enthusiastic at the pros-pect of giving a tour. “But then I go out, and I always have a great time,” shesays. And her

tours are diff erent now—better, she fiffff gures—fibecause her Wellesley story has deepened.

In addition to learning to walk backward, Haley says the job has given her useful life skills. “One of the bestthings about being a tour guide is that I’m just much more comfortable speaking publicly, and I can project my voicemuch farther than most people.”

She’s also fi gured out how to engage fiher audience by tailoring content to the visitors’ particular interests. Sometimes students appear distracted or uninter-ested, which, she says, “becomes very apparent when you’re giving somebody a tour who’s had like 20 tours.” She’ll fi gure fi

Tour de Force

inPerson

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To read the thoughts of students blogging for the Offi ce of Admission, visit web.wellesley.edu/web/Admission/GetToKnowUs/studentblogs.psml.


NORA HUSSEY, the director of theatre and theatre

studies, and Melinda Lopez, who teaches theatre

and performance, offer nine plays they think are

worth putting on your “bucket list.”

1. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, by August Wilson

Wilson examines the African-American search for

cultural identity after slavery and the migration of

African Americans to Pittsburgh in the 1910s.

2. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

The melancholy Dane and his travails.

3. Topdog/Underdog, by Suzan-Lori Parks

Two brothers struggle against each other and

the chaotic world in which they live. After being

abandoned as children, the brothers attempt

to start anew as adults, one as a petty criminal

and the other as an impersonator.

4. Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,

by Rajiv Joseph

Set during the American invasion of Iraq, the play

is a set of metaphorical musings on life’s pur-

pose in a godless universe. It is narrated by the

tiger, who is shot in the play’s opening scene.

5. Our Town, by Thorton Wilder

Set in a 1930s theater, the show follows the

inhabitants of Grover’s Corner, as narrated by

the stage manager.

6. A Long Day’s Journey Into Night,

by Eugene O’Neill

O’Neill’s repetitive plot, which takes place

exclusively in the family living room, examines

one day in the life of the Tyrone family. The

repetition makes the day seem like any other

for the family, fi lled with frustration, argument,

and an underlying love.

7. Blood Wedding,

by Federico García Lorca

A tragedy of missed love, this play examines

the confl ict between individuals’

wishes and the laws of the

societies in which they exist.

8. The Clearing,

by Helen Edmundson

While dealing with Ireland’s

ethnic cleansing during

Cromwell’s 17th-century reign,

this play examines the crisis

of English landowner Robert

Preston, who is forced to

choose between his Irish wife

and the estate he has worked

so hard to build.

9. Medea, by Euripides,

Robinson Jeffers’ version

A powerful story of emotion, confl ict, strength,

and dignity, Euripides’ Medea tells the story

of the title character’s revenge after her

husband’s betrayal.

And a bonus selection, from Professor

Hussey:

Sonia Flew, by Melinda Lopez

Set in 1960s Cuba and post-9/11 America, the

play examines how historical moments impact

the intimate lives of individuals. The characters

grapple with questions like: What do we owe

our parents or children? Can we forgive the

past? And if we can, at what cost? “It is an

amazing and very important piece of dramatic

literature,” says Hussey.

7

9 PLAYS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS ACCORDING TO WELLESLEY THEATRE PROFESSORS

WINDOW ON

WELLESLEY

IN MARCH, Secretary of State Hillary RodhamClinton ’69 announced the Women and Public Service Initiative, a partnership between the U.S.Department of State and fi ve women’s colleges: fiBarnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith,and “of course, my alma mater, Wellesley.” The Thcollaboration is designed to increase the par-ticipation of women around the globe in publicservice and political leadership, and to work to expand civil rights, improve governance, andcombat corruption.

As a fi rst step, the State Department and fithe fi ve colleges will host a colloquium in the fallfiof 2011 at Bryn Mawr College that will bring together policymakers, public officials, aca-demic experts, and others. The intent is also toThdevelop an annual summer institute on publicservice and political leadership for young women from around the world. Clinton said, “Together we will seek to promote the next generation of women leaders who will invest in their countries and communities, provide leadership for theirgovernments and societies, and help change theway global solutions are developed.”

‘SISTERS’ TO PARTNER WITHU.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

‘Together we will seek to promote the next generation of women leaders who will invest in their

countries and communities, provide leadership for their governments and societies, and help change the way

global solutions are developed.’—Hillary Rodham Clinton ’69

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A scene from Sonia Flew, presented at Wellesley in fall 2010


The following are posts and snippets from discussions on the College’s electronic bulletin boards. Truly, you never quite know what is going to show up.

DEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION ON

MY MATH P-SET,

Please stop yielding a solution with a limit

of 0 as t approaches infi nity. Also, please

start yielding more logical solutions.

Love, Allison

Dear Allison,

Please improve your math skills.

Love, Your Differential Equation

FOR SALE, YOUR CHOICE

My 13-year-old son’s clothes have fi nally

gotten too big for the dresser we got him

when he was 3. At least that’s what he

claims is the reason his clothes are strewn

all over the fl oor. So we got him a bigger

dresser, and we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, we have his old

dresser for sale. It is 51 inches wide, 18.5

inches deep, and 29.25 inches high. Six

drawers. Some fi nish damage on the top.

For sale for $75 or best offer.

We thought about just selling the

13-year-old son, but we think we’ll get

a better price for the dresser. It doesn’t

grunt at you or smell like a gym locker or

lie on the sofa watching Myth Busters.

Ann Velenchik, writing program

BOSTON-SPECIFIC SNACKS?

I need to provide Boston-specific snacks forfi

an event—and won’t have access to a refrig-

erator, so they can’t be things that need to

be kept cold. Any and all suggestions about

what is specific to Boston that would be do-fi

able without refrigeration appreciated!

Beth DeSombre, environmental studies

Necco Wafers, salt cod, and hardtack

biscuits.

Flick Coleman, chemistry

Perhaps I should have specifi ed Boston-

specifi c snacks that would actually entice

people to come to an event, rather than

cause them to back away quickly. . . .

Beth

OVERHEARDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNE

8

OBJECT OF OUR ATTENTION

ART, ILLUMINATED

GENERATIONS OF WELLESLEY WOMEN have shared

the experience: sitting in a darkened Art 101

classroom as image after image fl ashes by. The

Birth of Venus. Click. French palaces. Click.

Guernica. Today’s art-history lectures mostly

draw from a digital-image database maintained

by the art department’s Visual

Resource Collection (formerly

the slide library). To study the

images after class, students

can use digital flashcards on computers or fl iPads.

But before there were databases, before there

To view images from the lantern-slide collection, visit tinyurl.com/4nue8dg.

were 35 mm color slides, there were

lantern slides—3¼ by 4 inch glass slides, most

with black-and-white images, shown through

a projector. Wellesley faculty began teaching

from lantern slides sometime prior to 1903 and

continued using them well into the mid-20th

century. (The last lantern slide was accessioned

in 1978.) Architectural images predominate

among the VRC’s 16,000 lantern slides,

capturing buildings—and scenes of everyday

life—from eras long past.

—AH

Lantern slide and iPad image of the Crystal

Palace in London’s Hyde Park, built in

1850-51, and torn down in 1936; far left,

the Daniel Parker House in Boston.

Natural disasters bring out the best and the worst in human nature. What is particularly moving is that the people of Korea and China, who have legitimate gripes against Japan for its war-time atrocities, were among the fi rst to arrive to help. Endless television coverage has also shown the orderly behavior of the

«

Professor T. James Kodera, at a vigil for Japan held in Houghton Chapel

QUOTABLES

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Japanese, even after their loved ones have been washed to the sea or buried in the mud under the rubble, and their houses gone. So far, there has been no instance of looting or fi ghting. «

Candles lit by students, faculty, and staff at the vigil


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9

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS don’t usually get birthday celebrations. But the Fisk organ in Houghton Chapel is 30 years old this spring, and College Organist James David Christie’s May 7 recital there defi nitely ficounted as a celebration.

The music of the great Dutch composer Jan ThPieterszoon Sweelinck soared through the chapelearlier this month as Christie put Opus 72, built by the late Charles Brenton Fisk, through its paces. Played at weddings and memorials, recitals, vespers, Christmas carol sings, and worship services, the organ has a secure place in the life of a 21st-century college but is particu-larly well suited to performing the rich repertoire of north German music from the 1500s to about 1690. It’s used for teaching as well, Christie says, and even beginners are able to adapt to its distinctive features.

Opus 72 is an organ of not just national but worldwide significance. It was the fifi rst 20th-century fiAmerican organ with what is known as meantone tuning, which was often used in earlier centuries.Th is tuning, Christie explains, gives each key “its ownThpersonality”—and some keys, such as C major and E minor, sound much better than others. Contem-porary organs and pianos usually are tuned in more standardized ways.

Tuning is not the only aspect of the organ forwhich Fisk made old things new. Opus 72 features

tracker action. Thismeans that the organist’s pressure on the keys is translated into sound by

mechanical action rather than electricity. And although Opus 72 has an electric-powered “wind” supply, it also can get its air the old-fashioned way: from bel-lows operated by pedals. (On occasion, a student withstrength and heft has operated the bellows for Christie.)

Opus 72 was the last organ Fisk built, and hewas seriously ill as he was working on it. Christie re-members sitting in the chapel one day just watching Fisk at work, “voicing” pipes—performing the minor adjustments to produce the desired tone. “He took two hours to voice three pipes. I’ve played a lot of Fisk instruments around the world, and none of them hadmore of him in them than that organ. Fisk put his heart and soul into that organ.”

—RW

Th is spring also marks the 50th anniversary of C.B. Fisk, Inc., of Gloucester, Mass.; Virginia Lee Crist Stone ’55 serves as chairman of the company her late husband, Charles, founded. Linda Cook ’74 works as an organ builder there.

MUSIC

A GREAT SET OF PIPES

To learn how a C.B. Fisk organ is built, watch a video at www.cbfi sk.com/do/DisplayProcess.

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‘I’ve played a lot of Fisk instruments around the world, and none of them had more of him in them than that organ. Fisk put his heart and soul into that organ.’ —James David Christie


Elaine Wong ’11 and Anna Zhang ’11 of the Wellesley College Dancers

10

“THERE IS A BIT OF INSANITY in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good,” wrote dance critic Edwin Denby. For those looking for that “bit of insanity” on campus, Wellesley College has varied opportunities. While theremay not be an academic dance program in place (dance classes are taughtthrough the Department of Physical Education, Recreation, and Athletics), theCollege boasts a multitude of student-run extracurricular dance groups. Studentsorganize and run the groups, as well as choreograph, rehearse, and perform.

Wellesley’s formally organized dance groups are ascenDance (ballet), the Belly Dancing Society, Dance Collective (modern), FreeStyle (hip-hop),Gumboot (South African dance), the Wellesley College Ballroom DanceTeam, the Wellesley College Dancers (jazz, lyrical, and ballet), and Yanvalou(Afro-Haitian dance). And some students travel to Cambridge to dance with the MIT Ballroom Club.

Others aren’t organized into formal groups. “There are Indian ethnic Thdancers who are not that involved in campus performances,” says Elaine Wong ’11, an architecture major who dances with the Wellesley College Dancers.“[And] we had a group perform a form of Irish dance.” Wong herself startedwith Chinese ethnic dance at age 4 and continued for years. “Dance has basically

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

A Passion for Dancebeen my stress reliever ever since I can remember. You step on the dance floor,flcompetition fl oor, performance space, and for that moment of time, you can fljust dance your heart out.” In addition to exploring lyrical, ballet, and modernon campus, she danced for two years with the MIT Ballroom Club.

However, in her senior year, Wong decided to concentrate solely on the Wellesley College Dancers. “We’ve [had great] student choreographers. AndI feel like the stress that Wellesley induces makes for really good dances [and]choreographers [who] get really into it”—resulting in expressive pieces.

Rebecca Graber ’11, a double major in math and computer science, isthe copresident of the Wellesley College Ballroom Dance Team and is alsowriting a computer-science honors thesis on computer-aided choreography.She’s a dedicated ballroom dancer who doesn’t mind taking the bus to Cambridge multiple times each week for the MIT Ballroom Dance Club.Before Wellesley, she’d dabbled in diff erent styles of dance, but when sheffffarrived on campus, “ballroom sort of came in and took over my life.”

During orientation week, she says, “I ended up in the ballroom dance team camp introduction [at MIT]—and the rest is history!” Graber has learned to deal with the bus commute by doing problem sets on the bus. Still, she

wellesley | spring 201110

PHOTOS BY RICHARD HOWARD


appreciates her time away. “Getting off campus is valuable,” she says. “And I ffalways have something non-academic to work for. There’s always another ball-Throom competition. Even if it’s months away, it’s something to look forward to,and it’s something to work for besides . . . projects and papers. And it’s made me some of my best friends, both at Wellesley and at MIT.”

Graber merges her passions for dance and computer science in her senior thesis, a choreography computer program. “I started thinking about doing something related to dance, because the time when I’m not thinking about my computer programming, I’m thinking about dance. I might as wellcombine them. So the idea for my thesis was to create a program that speaksthe language of choreography.”

Yet another dancer, Claire McRee ’12, is a history major. A musician (she plays the flute with the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra), she’s taken ballet lessons flsince she was 4 and now dances with ascenDance, Wellesley’s ballet-fusiongroup. In addition to dancing with the group, she’s also the publicity chair and a choreographer. “It gives me a creative outlet, because I’ve been a choreogra-pher the whole time I’ve been here. And it’s also just a really good stress relief. When I dance, I can forget about everything else that’s going on in my life.”

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For the spring semester, McRee choreographed a piece for ascenDance to Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Th ing If It Ain’t Got ThTh at Swing.” SheThdraws on her musical background when she choreographs. “Being a musician, I really want to know the piece of music and choose steps that articulate what I hear in the music. So, I’ll listen to the music carefully and do some improv. And then I go through, phrase by phrase, and edit it.”

Even though dancing in a group counts toward Wellesley’s physical-education requirements, most of the students also take classes at the sports center. “Rehearsals are diff erent from class,” McRee says. “I took Ballet II, the ffffupper-level ballet class, my first year. And then I took the intermediate modern ficlass last year. I really liked the teacher, so this year I took that class again, and now I’m taking jazz this semester.”

Will Wellesley’s various groups ever come together for a performance en masse? McRee thinks so. “With our [ascenDance] shows recently, we’ve been trying to incorporate more diverse groups from on campus. The past two Thsemesters, we’ve had Wellesley College Dancers and Dance Collective guest perform in our shows, and we’ll guest perform in their shows. And then we’ve had Blue Jazz, the jazz group [play for us]. We’re trying to bring it all together.”

—SM

‘I’ve been a choreographer the whole time I’ve been here. And it’s also just a really good stress relief. When I dance, I can forget about everything else that’s going on in my life.’ —Claire McRee ’12

Top photos: students from ascenDance, including Claire McRee ’12 in green

‘I started thinking about doing something [for my thesis] related to dance, because the time when I’m not thinking about my computer programming, I’m thinking about dance.I might as well combine them.’ —Rebecca Graber ’11

Rebecca Graber ’11Wellesley College Ballroom Dance Team

FreeStyle

11spring 2011 | wellesley

“Venus de Milo was noted for her charms/Strictly between us, you’re cuter than Venus/And what’s more you have arms.”

THE ART DEPARTMENT’S PLASTER of the Venus de Milo closely resembles the original ancient Greek statue of the graceful goddess of love, famous for representing the ideal of classical beauty. Th e original resides inThthe collection of the Louvre—and she is, indeed, also lacking arms.

However, the Venus de Milo plaster was, and is, an important pedagogical tool for art-history students. “Many schools like Wellesley used plaster casts as a way to teach art and art history. Before photo-graphs and originals were affordable and widespread, [casts were] how ffffpeople learned about art,” explains Associate Professor of Art Jacki Musacchio ’89.

According to Musacchio, Wellesley’s cast of the Venus de Milo was most likely made sometime during the early 20th century and acquired by Wellesley after College Hall burned in 1914. “Caproni was the premierecastmaker in the U.S. during the early 1890s to late 1920s,” Musacchio says. “If you look on the base of our cast, you’ll see a little metal plaque, identifying it as a Caproni.”

For Wellesley students and art afi cionados, studying the plaster castfiof the draped Venus de Milo, located in the stairwell of Jewett, is thenext best thing to viewing the original in Paris—and much, much easierto reach.

—SM

ARTART OF WELLESLEY

Behold the BeautyPlaster of Aphrodite de Milos/Venus de Milo

Original attributed to Alexandros of Antioch/Plaster castby the Caproni Gallery, Boston

Plaster

Collection of the Department of Art, Wellesley College

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FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE

IN MARCH, JEWETT AUDITORIUM was packed with

students, faculty, and off-campus guests, celebrating

the Russian holiday Maslenitsa. The Barynya folk

ensemble performed Russian, Cossack, Ukrainian,

Jewish, and Gypsy dances and Russian folksongs.

Margarita Rabinovich ’13, who has a Russian background,

refl ected that the event reminded her of the songs and

dances from her childhood. Lena Mironciuc ’13 said, “As

a dancer myself, I appreciated their skill. I think the whole

audience was not breathing when the women danced

with burning candles placed on their heads during the

Jewish dance. Barynya did a wonderful job at representing

all the ethnicities of former USSR.” —JG WW

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wellesley | spring 201112


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13

MULTICULTURALISM

DIVERSITY MATTERS

THINK OF IT as “beyond the Freedom Trail”—way

beyond. A new website, “Mapping Revolutionary

Boston,” is meant to give visitors a much fuller

picture of Boston “on the eve of rebellion”

than they can get following that red line on the

sidewalk.

A joint venture of Wellesley’s New England

Arts and Architecture Program and the Boston-

ian Society (which oversees Boston’s Old State

House), Mapping Revolutionary Boston is

based on a 1769 map by cartographer William

Price.

Visitors see a digitized version of Price’s

map, marked with virtual “push pins.” Each pin,

when clicked on, brings up a different vignette

of life in this period—many researched and writ-

ten by Wellesley students. The main story line is

clearly the coming revolution. But the pins also

celebrate ordinary folk, such as Lydia Gregory,

a poor girl released from an almshouse on June 3,

1767, to be “bound

out” as a domestic

servant.

MEDIA ARTS/HISTORY

MAPPING REVOLUTIONARY BOSTON

Mapping Revolutionary Boston began in

2008 as the fruit of an independent-study team

consisting of Rebecca Spitzer ’10 and Kelley

Tialiou ’10, media-arts students, and history stu-

dents Caroline Royer ’09 and Kaylan Stevenson ’09.

Martha McNamara, director of the art depart-

ment’s New England Arts and Architecture

Program, has been part of the project, along

with David Teng Olsen of the art department and

Nathaniel Sheidley, formerly of history. Other

Wellesley students majoring in architecture, history,

and art contributed to the site, as did students

from other Boston-area universities.

McNamara observes that in the modern

city of skyscrapers, it’s all too easy to lose sight

of the water. Yet so much revolutionary history

happened on the waterfront, she says, or

involved people in the shipping and maritime

industries. She hopes that the website will

provide a better sense of that: “I hope that peo-

ple take away what an intensely maritime city

Boston was.”

—RW

Visit 17th-century Boston: www.bostonhistory.org/sub/mappingrevolutionaryboston/.

THIS SPRING, President H. Kim Bottomly announced three changes within the structure of the College designed to promote diversity and inclusiveness, which she called “core insti-tutional commitments and important compo-nents of the educational mission, intellectual community, and workplace environment atWellesley.”

Th e OffiTh ce of the Provost and Dean of theffiCollege is being restructured to create the position of associate provost and academicdirector of diversity and inclusion. A sig-nifi cant component of the associate provost’s fiportfolio will be responsibility for defi ning fithe College’s diversity goals in the academicarea, working with academic departmentsand programs to ensure that Wellesley recruits and retains a diverse faculty, and better enablingfaculty members from under-represented groups to thrive and succeed. A search has been launched to fi ll this position.fi

In the Division of Student Life, the College created the Offi ce of Intercultural Educa-ffition to focus eff orts on “student success,ffffleadership development, affirmation andfficollaboration, and diversity and inclusion.”Th e offiTh ce will be led by Victor Kazanjian,ffilongtime dean of religious and spiritual life, who is also assuming the role of dean of inter-cultural education. Th e College’s cultural Thadvisors will continue to support particular student social-identity groups; they will alsohave key leadership roles as members of the new offi ce in coordinating and implement-ffiing campus efforts to educate students to beffffmore multiculturally competent and in facili-tating a more inclusive campus.

Th e president has also named a director of Themployment, diversity, and inclusion, a posi-tion that will be held by Carolyn Slaboden in the College’s Human Resources Office. Thffi isThis an enhancement of Slaboden’s current roleas associate director of human resources and equal opportunity, which has focused on administrative and faculty recruitment and affi rmative action.ffi

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relay team. “I’ve defi nitely been growing individually as a runner,” Boots says. fi“I have a lot of support from the athletic department, from the College in general, and particularly from my teammates and coaches. Th at’s really brought me a long way.” Th

Th e discipline required to be an elite run-Thner carries over into the rest of her life, as well. “Knowing that you’re going through so much physical pain during the race but you can men-tally push through it—it’s a unique kind of strength,” Boots says. Th e mental toughness required for racing, she says, Thhas parallels to the rigors of academics at Wellesley. “You have to work ridiculously hard, but it pays off.”ffff

—JEG

ACCORDING TO RANDELLE BOOTS ’13, the track team was determined to “show up with a bang” this year, its first as a varsity sport at Wellesley.fi

And show up with a bang they did—especially Boots, who won theNCAA Division III Indoor Championship in the mile this March with a time of 4:57:46, a second faster than her nearest competitor. Teammate Leah Clement ’12 also attended the event, fi nishing sixth in the 800-meter race andfiearning All-American honors. The team itself fiTh nished the indoor season rankedfi11th in the nation, missing a top-10 ranking by just a few points. Competitionin outdoor track began in April, and the team was hoping to continue to buildon their strong start.

Not bad for the new kids on the varsity block. And defi nitely not bad forfiBoots, who didn’t even start running track until she came to Wellesley.

In high school, she competed in cross country, basketball, and lacrosse. When she started at the College, she focused on the cross-country team, and her coach, John Babington, suggested she run track to improve her speed.

“He thought I could be a really good mile runner, and it turns out that he was right,” she laughs.Boots ran track in 2010when the team was a club sport. She finishedfithird in the mile at thenational indoor cham-pionships and earned All-American honors,becoming Wellesley’sfi rst track All-American.fi

This year, Boots is improving her times,

and the track team added sprinters and relay teams. “I’m thrilled,” Boots says. “There’s always a ton of energy at practice, and everyone’s really excited.” Plus,Ththe team is reaping the benefi ts of varsity status: preferred times on the College’sfitrack, time with the trainers, and an additional coach to work with the sprinters. “The other sports are starting to recognize us as the track team now,” Boots says. Th

While she is still a cross-country runner, Boots is defi nitely relishing herfitime on the track. She runs both indoor and outdoor events, primarily the mile and the 1500-meter race. She’s also participated on the Blue’s 4x400 e a d t e 500 ete ace. S e s a so p

WELLESLEY ATHLETICS

Boots Made for Running

14

SWIMMING & DIVING ended the season with a stellar performance at the NEWMAC Championships, fi nish-ing fi fth and setting nine school records. Leading the way for the Blue, Keelin Nave ’14 earned All-NEWMAC honors in the 500-free, while Allison Yee ’12, Kathryn Goffi n ’13, Ashley Knight ’13, and Virginia Hung ’13 were all named to the Academic All-Conference squad. Wellesley also won its 14th-straight Seven Sisters Championship, taking fi rst place at the Betty Spears Relays. They fi nished their dual-meet season 5-4.

Closing out their season with a fourth-place fi nish in the Epps Cup (“D” Division) at the NEWMAC Championships, the SQUASH team opened the

Blue BASKETBALL fi nished the season with a 12–13 record, bowing out in the NEWMAC Tournament quarter-fi nals. Earlier in the year, Wellesley was the only team to go undefeated at the Seven Sisters Championships. Closing out the season, Malia Maier ’13 earned All-NEWMAC and Academic All-NEWMAC honors.

The FENCING team ended its year with one of the best seasons in program history, with a 22–5 overall record. Ten individuals qualifi ed for the NCAA Regional tournament, the most in team history. Earlier in the season, the Blue took fourth overall at the New England Championships, where they also won the foil title.

SPORTS SCOREBOARD tournament with an 8–1 win over Colgate. Other sea-son highlights included a four-match win streak and a 5–4 win over Boston College to close out the regular season.

In their inaugural season as a varsity program, Wellesley’s TRACK team fi nished 11th out of 57 at the NCAA National Indoor Championships. Randelle Boots ’13 took home the championship in the mile run, while teammate Leah Clement ’12 earned All-America honors in the 800-meter run (see profi le above). Also, at the NE Intercollegiate Championships, Margaret Wehner ’14, Cristina Lucas ’13, Adiba Manning ’13, and Leah Clement ’12 broke a new 4x400-meter record.

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SPORTS TRIVIA

Karyn Cooper ’92, who won the 1991 NCAA Division III Tennis Singles Championship, is Wellesley’s only other national title winner. So far.

To track the track team (above), visit www.wellesleyblue.com/sports/wtrack/index.


FROM WELLESLEY TO MILLS

ALECIA DECOUDREAUX ’76, chair of the

Wellesley College Board of Trustees and a

senior executive at Eli

Lilly and Company,

has been named the

13th president of Mills

College in California.

She will complete her

term as board chair in

June but will remain on

the board of trustees.

TENURE RECIPIENTS

AT ITS JANUARY MEETING, the Wellesley College

Board of Trustees granted tenure to: (top

row) Rebecca Bedell ’80, art; Donald Elmore,

chemistry; Bryan Burns, classical studies; (bot-

tom row) Robin McKnight, economics; Sealing

Cheng, women’s and gender studies; and

Ismar Volic, mathematics.

REPORTS FROM AROUND CAMPUS

CollegeRoad

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15

BY THE NUMBERS:

WELLESLEY’S TIES TO THE MIDDLE EAST

11NUMBER OF STUDENTS STUDYING IN THE

MIDDLE EAST OR NORTH AFRICA THIS YEAR

2 NUMBER OF STUDENTS WHO CAME HOME OR

CHANGED LOCATIONS DUE TO POLITICAL UNREST

9 COURSES TAUGHT THIS YEAR WITHIN THE

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES PROGRAM,

INCLUDING ARABIC AND ARABIC LITERATURE

35COURSES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM ASSOCIATED

WITH MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, FROM RELIGION

TO ANTHROPOLOGY

29 NUMBER OF CURRENT STUDENTS FROM

COUNTRIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND

NORTH AFRICA

GREEN—AND GOLD

THE RENOVATION of the Diana Chapman Walsh

Alumnae Hall was granted gold LEED certifi cation

from the U.S. Green Building Council. This rating

refl ected the reuse of the building’s existing materials,

which diverted about 92 percent of construction

debris from landfi lls (for example, repurposing marble

from restrooms for a new staircase); a green roof

that minimizes heating and cooling needs; and the

purchase of renewable-energy credits to offset the

building’s electricity usage for the fi rst two years.

(For more on the Alumnae Hall renovation, see the

summer ’10 issue.)

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BY THE NUMBERS:

OVERHEARD

‘We always read about revolutions in history . . . but I was right there,living a 10-minute walking distance from the center of it all. It was

y y gy y g

extraordinary, frightening, moving, and historical all at once.’g g f fg f f

—Sana Saiyed ’12, who was evacuated from her junior year abroad at the University of Cairo during the Egyptian uprising—

NABOKOV BUTTERFLY THEORIES VINDICATED

WHILE VLADIMIR NABOKOV, an amateur

lepidopterist, was teaching Russian at Wellesley

College in 1945, he developed theories about

the evolution of the butterfl ies that he studied,

hypothesizing that a group called the

Polyommatus blues

arrived in the New

World from Asia in

a series of waves.

The New York Times

reported in January

that a group of scientists have now proven

Nabokov’s hypothesis using gene-sequencing

technology and presented their fi ndings in the

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

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To view a video Saiyed made during the protests, visit tinyurl.com/5t7mc3s.


ASSISTANT PROFESSOR KOICHI HAGIMOTO hasplenty of empathy with the students in hisSpanish classes. A new language, he says, presentsa completely unknown terrain to the learner—one that can be frustrating and confusing.

“I always tell my students, the most important thing in language learning is confi dence and patience,” he says.

He ought to know. Hagimoto trekked across the challenging landscapes of two differentfffflanguages on his way to Wellesley. A native of Japan, he worked hard to bring his English skills to a level that would allow him to study in the United States as an undergraduate. Once he arrived, heapplied his language-learning skills to Spanish. He discovered, to his delight, that his native language off ered him an advantage. Japanese, like Spanish, ffffis phonetic, and each letter (or character) reliably makes the same sound. Quickly, Hagimoto couldread Spanish aloud.

“In terms of pronunciation, right from the beginning I was speaking just like a native, without really understanding what I was staying,” he says. Th e language captured his fancy. “Spanish, from Ththe beginning, was really, really interesting to me. I got really into the whole culture aspect.”

During his undergraduate years at Soka Uni-versity of America in Southern California, he spent one semester in Mendoza, Argentina. His next step, graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, posed some challenges, he says. Many of the stu-dents in his program were native Spanish speakers;none were Asian. He remembers thinking, “I have to work really, really hard because I have to read everything in Spanish—especially at the graduate level [with] the intensity and the level of critical thinking and knowledge that the professors requiredof the students. . . . I was really overwhelmed.”

But, he says, being Japanese provided both the discipline he needed and, ultimately, a unique fi eld for scholarly research. Hagimoto says he real-fiized that “because I had that whole Japanese work ethic,” he was able to apply himself diligently to his studies. And, coming from Asia, he says he

was “always interested in the Asian aspect of Latin America.” Th e links weren’t often discussed, so he Thbegan to explore them. “Eventually what I thought was my weakness became my strength.”

His dissertation work looked at writers in Spanish colonies on the brink of independence: José Martí in Cuba and José Rizal in the Philippines. His work has taken him to both of those countries, and he’s also spent time in Mexico and Puerto Rico.He now refers to his subfi eld of Latin America fistudies as “trans-Pacifi c studies,” and he plans toficontinue pursuing it. Specifically, he’s developed fitwo lines of interest: 19th- and 20th-century writers,such as José Juan Tablada of Mexico and Guate-mala’s Enrique Gómez Carrillo, whose perceptionof “the Orient” as exotic led them to “incorporate some Asian elements (culture, tradition, religion, etc.) into their own vision of modernity,” and the contemporary writings of Asians in Latin America. Th e latter includes fiTh rst- or second-generationfi

LANGUAGES

Not Lost in Translation

‘I always tell my students, the most important thing in language learning is confi dence and patience.’

—Koichi Hagimoto

FocusonFaculty

Latin Americans, such as José Watanabe of Peru.“Th is is my fiTh rst year [at Wellesley] so I’mfi

just trying to establish myself, but eventually I’d like to get more involved in faculty research col-laborations, perhaps with [the] East Asian studiesprogram here,” Hagimoto says.

Th is year, he taught an intermediate Span-Thish language class and two higher-level language and literature courses, one of them focused on the Caribbean. Next semester, he’s excited to offer a ffffseminar called Asia in Latin America: Literary and Cultural Connections.

As a native Japanese speaker and such a sea-soned language learner, he’s also lent his voice occasionally to Japanese language students oncampus. At a Japanese conversation table last fall, he says, “I actually met a Puerto Rican girl study-ing Japanese.” Th ey laughed when he observed, Th“Whoa, we just switched our roles.”

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her dissertation, focusing on these wom-

en’s roles in redefi ning what India means

for the rest of the world. She broad-

ened her research, then turned it into a

book after arriving at Wellesley in 2007.

“If you look at India as a country,”

Radhakrishnan says, “people have lots

of different identifications, linguistic

affi liations, caste affi liations, religious

affi liations.” This complicated culture

makes it diffi cult to boil down what it

means to be Indian. The new trans-

national class of Indian IT workers,

however, have created a homogeneous

identity, what Radhakrishnan calls an

“appropriate” difference: “Not too com-

plicated, different enough

to be distinctive in a multi-

cultural global landscape,

but not so different as to be

off-putting to Westerners.”

This generic Indianness,

Radhakrishnan asserts, is

not thrust on them by the

Western world. “These work-

ers are actively asserting it,

because it’s very empowering,” she

says. “[It’s] a powerful type of identity

that can travel easily and that doesn’t

FOR ASSISTANT PROFESSOR of

Sociology Smitha Radhakrishnan,

hanging out is, well, work.

Field work, that is. “That’s the

cool thing about being a sociologist,”

she says. “Hanging out, getting to

know a context, understanding how

they see the world—[that] is all fi eld

work. It’s all part of understanding the

thing you’re studying.” Hanging out

with Indian information-technology (IT)

professionals in India, South Africa,

and the Silicon Valley was part of the

research behind Radhakrishnan’s new

book, Appropriately Indian: Gender and

Culture in a New Transnational Class.

Radhakrishnan’s father

worked in the IT industry for

many years, and he shared

some of his workplace sto-

ries with his daughter. The

stories, particularly of U.S.-

trained Indian women adapt-

ing to work back in India,

intrigued her. “They kind of

went against expectations,”

Radhakrishnan says. “I felt that this was

a story that needed to be told.”

She began researching the topic for

IKHLAS SALEEM ’11 came to Wellesley expecting to become a lawyer.

Having come up through Muslim private schools, she decided to take

Hebrew Bible and New Testament classes her fi rst year. Those led

her to Issues in Comparative Religion, a course taught by T. James

Kodera, chair of the religion department. After that, she changed her

major from political science to religion.

“There was just so much that I could do within the department,” she

says, to pursue her interests in social justice, political structures, women’s

studies, and the roots of violence.

“It’s a fi eld that encompasses multiple disciplines,” says Kodera, about

the academic study of religion.

Last year, Saleem took a seminar with Stephen Marini called Religion

and Violence, which drew students from many different majors. “Every time

we met there was some time of, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe you said that.’ It

really got under a lot of people’s skin,” says Saleem. “It also gave the students

a greater perspective on the complexity of the issues—such as, What is a ter-

rorist? Does the Bible justify violence? Does the Koran?” Saleem says everyone

SOCIOLOGY

A NEW INDIAN IDENTITY

seem threatened if you, for example,

go and live in the United States.”

In fact, she argues, it is this new

generic identity that the country itself

wants to take on. “In India, it’s now not

about being Western, but about being

global,” Radhakrishnan says. “There’s

enormous pressure to let go of things

that are seen as regressive . . . but what

[all that] conceals is how exclusive

it is.” IT workers make up only

0.2 percent of the Indian workforce,

according to Radhakrishnan. “This is

not just a minority. It’s an elite,” she says.

Her next research project is going

to the other end of the fi scal spectrum:

microfi nance. Radhakrishnan teaches

a course on gender and international

development that includes a weeklong

look at microfi nance and whether or

not it empowers women or helps them

out of poverty. “I’ve been very hard-

pressed to fi nd good readings for my

class,” she says. “It made me think . . .

maybe I should do something.”

—JEG

PROFILE OF A MAJOR RELIGION

felt uncomfortable at times, but by the end the students

realized, “this cannot be answered in a one-semester

course.” She adds, “But now I know the issues that are

being raised, and I know how to talk about these issues.”

Alumnae of a certain age will remember the sopho-

more Bible requirement, which was dropped in 1966. Before that, from

the founding of the College until the 1930s, four years of religion were

required. Kodera says other changes include the separation of the aca-

demic department from the chaplaincy, which was later reorganized again

into the Offi ce of Religious and Spiritual Life. And faculty areas of expertise fi

have diversifi ed—today including Buddhism and East Asian religions,

Catholicism, Hebrew Bible, Islam, Judaism, and New Testament.

To study religion in an academic context, Kodera says, is “to study

the best and the worst of human potential.” Although many scourges of

society—racism, sexism, war—have deep religious roots, he says, religion

also can exemplify the “best of what human nature can do.”

—AM

17

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because itthis was

T. James Kodera

RIC

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GAIL MARCUS MONAGHAN ’69

The Entrées: Remembered FavoritesFrom the Past Rizzoli International Publications, New York

191 pages, $45

THE ENTRÉES: Remembered Favorites From the Past takes the reader to a more glamorous, elegant time, when one donned formalwear and enjoyed beautifully presented meals at restaurants like the Brown Derby in Los Angeles or Le GrandVéfour in Paris. In her latest cookbook, GailMarcus Monaghan ’69 adapts classic recipes from these restaurants, and many others, for the

home cook. “Makethem to indulge and pamper family andspecial friends. Whatcould be more wel-come in winter than piping hot chicken à la king or a seafood potpie?” Monaghan asks in the introduction.

What indeed?Monaghan’s vivid

language and Eric Boman’s gorgeous photography make all of the meals seem as though they’d be wel-come during any season. Monaghan’s recipes, culledfrom newspaper and magazine archives and oldcookbooks, have been modifi ed so that they’re man-fiageable for today’s home cook. For a mini-reunion with several classmates that happened to take placeon Oscar night, I made the Brown Derby’s CobbSalad, which just smacks of Hollywood. The saladTh

included four diff erent types of greens, poached ffffchicken, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, blue cheese, and tomatoes, all in a tangy dressing. Itwas a hit with my friends—rich, satisfying, and justplain special.

Monaghan’s meticulously researched intro-ductions are a crucial part of book. She tells thequirky histories of the chefs who conceived the recipes, the restaurants where they were served, and the famous patrons who ate them. However,my favorite stories are about Monaghan’s personal history with food—about the restaurant meals she shared with her grandparents as a little girl inLos Angeles, for example, or the beef stroganoffffshe and her young family ate on an ill-advised train trip in Eastern Europe. You get the feeling that you’resitting with Monaghan in her dining room, laughing and lingering over a delicious meal made just for you.

—Lisa Scanlon ’99Scanlon is associate editor of Wellesley magazine.

Dishing onLegendary Dishes

REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY WELLESLEY AUTHORS

Leaders and FollowersNANNERL OVERHOLSER KEOHANE ’61

Thinking About LeadershipPrinceton University Press, Princeton, N.J.

312 pages, $27.95

AS BOTH A POLITICAL THEORIST and a former college and university president, NannerlOverholser Keohane ’61 has not only studied leadership and power but also exercised them.Th is puts her, she suggests in her new book,ThTh inking About Leadership,Th in a relatively small group—one that includes Marcus Tullius Cicero, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Max Weber.

Leadership, Keohane says, means “providing solutions to common problems or off ering ideasffffabout how to accomplish collective purposes,

ER

ICB

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AN/T

HE

//E

NTR

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S

18

ShelfLife


Michelle Au ’99—This Won’t Hurt a Bit (and Other

White Lies), Grand Central Publishing, New York

Alice Bradley ’91 and Eden M. Kennedy—Let’s

Panic About Babies!, St. Martin’s Griffi n, New York

Mary Carpenter ’72 and Katie Carpenter—Lost

and Found in the Mississippi Sound, Tenley Circle

Press, Washington, D.C.

Nancy Gardner Cassels ’57—Social Legislation

of the East India Company: Public Justice Versus

Public Instruction, Sage Publications, Thousand

Oaks, Calif.

Ann Sloan Devlin ’71—What Americans Build and

Why: Psychological Perspectives, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, England

Carolyn Evans ’56—Faith: A Disciple’s Journey,

The Peppertree Press, Sarasota, Fla.

Darien Hsu Gee ’91—Friendship Bread, Ballentine

Books, New York

Mary Gottschalk Godwyn ’83 and Donna

Stoddard—Minority Women Entrepreneurs: How

Outsider Status Can Lead to Better Business Practices,

Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, Calif.

Helen Runyeon Hills ’50—Still Riding at 80, Haleys

Publishing, Athol, Mass.

Michael P. Jeffries, faculty—Thug Life: Race,

Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop, The University

of Chicago Press, Chicago

FreshInk

(Continued on page 45)

19

and mobilizing the energies of others tofollow. . . .” Followersmatter, too, she insists. She off ers a very nuancedffffdiscussion of gender and leadership, explains how leadership is essen-tial in a democracy, and she considers how

wielding power affects character over time.ffffKeohane off ers this book “as a contributionffff

to the centuries-long conversation about human life in social groups that began before Plato and Aristotle and continues vigorously into the present day.”

—Ruth WalkerWalker is a freelance journalist.

I knew not only Abraham

Lincoln but James Garfi eld and

William McKinley had been “as-

sassinated.” It had never crossed

my mind that this would happen to

any president I knew.

One of my avocations at

age 11 was letter writing. I wrote

to friends, to favorite authors, and

sometimes to prominent people.

That was why I had personalized

stationery. Due to a physical dis-

ability, I typed my letters, as well

as my homework, on my IBM

electric typewriter.

My letter to Mrs. Kennedy is

undated, but I think I wrote it shortly

after I watched her brief speech on

Jan. 14, 1964, in which she thanked

people for the letters of sympathy

she was receiving. I also think

that she gave me the idea for the

content of my letter since she said

THROUGH A CHILD’S EYES

Last year, historian Ellen Fitzpatrick

published Letters to Jackie, a

collection of 250 condolence

letters sent to the White House

after the assassination of President

John F. Kennedy. Included was

a typewritten letter from Lisa

Blumberg ’74, then a sixth grader

in Montclair, N.J. Here Blumberg

describes the circumstances that

led her to write to the fi rst lady.

The Kennedy administration

formed the backdrop for much

of my elementary-school years.

Always in the newspaper and often

on television, the president had

such fl air and conveyed such aspi-fl

ration. Most schoolchildren knew

several presidential quotes. One of

my favorites was, “We choose to

go to the moon in this decade and

do the other things not because

they are easy but because they are

hard.” He made us believe any-

thing was possible.

On Nov. 22, 1963, my sixth-

grade class from Montclair, N.J.,

was on a fi eld trip to the statefi

capitol in Trenton. It was after

lunch, and we were in the capitol

museum, just about to get back

Bibl

iofi l

es

on the bus. I began to notice an

increasing fl urry of activity. Adults fl

were running in and out. Someone

cried, “The governor was shot,

too.” I was momentarily scared. I

thought the governor of New Jer-

sey had been shot, and we were all

in danger. A man said something

to my teacher, and she threw up

her hands. Then, suddenly every-

one knew. President Kennedy,

along with Governor Connally of

Texas, had been shot in Dallas.

The ride to Montclair took

over an hour. The bus driver had

the radio on. We learned President

Kennedy was dead. Governor

Connally was expected to survive.

Everyone was quiet.

President Kennedy was

dead, “all his bright light gone from

the world,” as Jacqueline Kennedy

later said.

wielding power affects ch

that the letters would show future

generations how much we thought

of him. I don’t believe I told anyone

about my letter.

Unlike many children who

wrote to Mrs. Kennedy, I didn’t tell

her my age or grade. Perhaps I

felt more comfortable writing in the

abstract because of my unusual

circumstances. I was a girl with

ordinary interests, trying to lead

an ordinary life, while sidestepping

other people’s preoccupation with

my neuromuscular disability. How-

ever, since I didn’t give my age,

archivists classifi ed it as a letter fromfi

an adult. It was Ellen Fitzpatrick who

determined that I had been one of

the many, many kids who wrote of

their own volition and on their own

time because they wanted to.

I do wish I had retyped the

letter, especially since I crossed

out a whole word. I was too frugal

with my stationery, but then again,

I didn’t know that almost 50 years

later, my note would be in a book,

in the New York Times, on NBC

Nightly News, on something called

the internet, and in my college’s

alumnae magazine.

—Lisa Blumberg ’74

leywelles y | spring 201120


A campus showcase when it was built in 1900, WHITIN OBSERVATORY

had become overcrowded and in need of repair. A recent renovation and expansion seamlessly

melds the historic and the cutting edge, bringing together the study of astronomy, geosciences, and environmental science.

By Lisa Scanlon ’99

ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER VANDERWARKER PORTRAITS BY RICHARD HOWARD


he dedication of the Whitin Observatory on Oct. 8, 1900, was one for the history books.

Th e Boston Symphony Orchestra played. Wellesley’s President Caroline Hazard used a torch she made from various symbolic fl owers and herbs—rosemary for remembrance, pine and hemlock for the life of the mind and eternity of thought—to light a fi re on the observatory’s hearth. Th e College Choir performed a hymn that Hazard wrote for the occasion. Th en, hundreds of eager faculty, students, alumnae, and guests toured the building.

Th e observatory included a library with beau-Thtiful mahogany furniture and a luxurious “India rug” (which donor Sarah Elizabeth Whitin insisted upon); a “transit room” where students could ob-serve the heavens on the exact North-South line; and the pièce de résistance, a 12-inch telescope, housed in the “dome room.” Here, students would learn by doing, not by listening. “So ended a day the like of which will not be seen again at Wellesley until her next scientifi c building ceases to be a castle in the airfiand is brought down to earth,” Professor of Math-ematics Ellen Hayes wrote in Wellesley Magazine.

Another such day has arrived.In January, after a year of renovation and new

construction, a revamped and rethought Whitin Observatory opened. Th e expanded building welcomesThgeoscience and environmental-studies students in

addition to astronomy students, encouraging the cross-pollination of ideas and making the building “alive with diff erent kinds of science,” says Richard ffffFrench, the Louise Sherwood McDowell and Sarah Frances Whiting Professor of Astrophysics, professorof astronomy, and dean of academic affairs.ffff

A modern, light-filled addition now houses a fiforward-looking “specialty classroom,” which haseasy access to the outdoors, where students can take observations of the sky at night or collect samples from Paramecium Pond during the day. The airy Th1,800-square-foot addition also includes new fac-ulty offices, accessible bathrooms, and a kitchen. ffiTh e library was restored to its original, elegant glory Th(complete with a beautiful rug), and a “researchproject room” lined with new computers was cre-ated out of a formerly awkward thoroughfare. TheTh

T

‘What we want is for people 50 years from now to say, “They really got it right, and they thought of us then.”’

—Professor Richard French, Louise Sherwood McDowell and Sarah Frances Whiting Professor of Astrophysics

renovation “preserves and restores the 19th-century character of the building, the historical core of the building, while turning this into a real 21st-century place to do science,” French says.

THE RENOVATION ODYSSEY

In 2001, as the observatory celebrated its 100th anniversary, French began his quest to have the obser-vatory renovated. While the telescopes and equip-vvment were—and continue to be—unusually fine, thefibuilding itself was no longer meeting the needs of thefaculty and students. “We didn’t have offi ce space forffiour faculty. We didn’t have research space. We didn’thave teaching space for labs. We didn’t have simplethings like bathrooms on the first flfi oor. We werefl

really bulging at the seams,” French says. The roof Thleaked and needed to be replaced. Th e originally Thgracious library had essentially become a hallway and was crowded with green metal shelves that jutted intothe middle of the room. “Th is is a building that’s hadThadditions upon additions, and not every addition hasfi t very gracefully into the other one,” French explains.fi

As the years went by, various architectural studies were done, and French and the College beganto look for ways to fund the renovation. It was “an odyssey,” French says. A budget was proposed andthen cut, and French began to fear that his dreamsfor the space wouldn’t be realized. One dispiriting proposal for the observatory “was effectively oneffffslightly enlarged room,” French says. Finally, in 2009,after the College issued bonds to fund major con-struction and modernization projects across campus,proposals for the renovation were solicited. The one Th

b l b

spring 2011 | welllesley

Professor Richard French (top); the addition to the observatory designed by Boston-based designLAB.

from Boston-based designLAB architects stood out. “Th ey put together a prospectus which paid attention Thto what really mattered to us,” says French. “TheTharchitects saw what we saw, that there were wonderfulopportunities for making this a beautiful space again.”

French and Daniel Brabander, associate professorof geosciences, began collaborating with the archi-tects to fi gure out how geosciences and environmen-fital studies could share the space with astronomy. Itcould have been an awkward relationship—after all,the observatory has been the cherished home of the astronomy department for more than 100 years.However, Brabander and French found that their interests and approaches aligned very well. “It was reallyvery easy for us to say, let’s fi nd a way to make thisfiwork for not only astronomy lab at night but for geo-science and environmental-sciences labs during theday,” French says. “We want this to be a busy, hopyy ping place, not just for astronomy but for other sciences.”

And beyond that, the faculty hopes that theshared space will encourage collaborations acrossdisciplines. In fact, the astronomy department’snewest hire is Wesley Andrés Watters, a researcher from Cornell who specializes in the geology of planets in our solar system and is currently a mem-ber of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project.“We think that Wes is the perfect person to helpus build connections between the geologists and environmental scientists who will share teaching spaces in the renovated observatory, and we antici-pate that he will work with faculty from those pro-grams to design curricular off erings that cut acrossffffour disciplines,” says Kim McLeod, professor of astronomy and chair of the department.

Now that the renovation has been completed, the observatory has become everything Frenchdreamed about for 10 years. “I couldn’t be happier with how things worked out,” he says.

24 eywellesle y | spring 2011

Below, left to right: the Whitin Observatory as seen from Paramecium Pond; students working in groups in the specialty classroom; a new hallway showcases a stained-glass window by British astronomer Lady Margaret Huggins.


MODERN AND AIRY

One of the most striking new spaces in the obser-vatory is the specialty classroom. Part of the airy,modern addition, the room was designed with pedagogy in mind. “Many spaces in the Science Center . . . have an obvious front of the room and fi xed seating,” says Brabander. “Thfifi e mode of learnTh ing is the formal lecture. We didn’t want to repro-duce that space in the new observatory.” Instead, the specialty classroom is designed for studentsto interact with each other and with the professor.Students sit in small groups at tables scattered around the room. Th ere are whiteboards and spaces forThimages to be projected on multiple walls in the room. Th ere is no clear front of the classroom where the pro-Thfessor would stand behind a lectern; instead, the space encourages professors to walk among the students. “I think it makes for more engaged learning,” says

iki

‘[The observatory is] a poster child for how you can redesign space in a cost-effective, historically relevant, and sustainable way.’ —Associate Professor of Geosciences Daniel Brabander

Brabander. “You can’t really turn yourself off whenffyou’re in that setting.”

Th e classroom’s direct access to the outdoors Thcomes through a mud room. It’s perfect for geo-science, environmental studies, and astronomy classes. “Th ere’s this launching pad where you can . . . Thgo out and make some observations,” Brabander says. Th ere are aesthetic advantages to being so close to the Thoutdoors, too. A wall of windows faces the arboretum,and the pine trees are so close, they feel as though they are part of the classroom. “One of the things that the architects really played with is bringing the experience of the surroundings inside the building,” Brabander says. “Almost anywhere you stand in the building, there’s a line of sight to the outside.”

PRESERVING HISTORY

Th e addition also celebrates the historic aspects of Ththe observatory. It is wrapped around the facade of the original building, leaving old architectural de-tails intact. For example, the original entrance to the observatory, which faces the arboretum, is used as a doorway to the specialty classroom. Made of

intricately carved marble, it was “one of the pretti-est doors on campus,” says French, but it was hid-den from view in recent decades. It was “a quirky artifact” that the architects incorporated into the addition, says French. “Students can see the his-tory of the building every day. . . . We want you to notice what this place used to look like.”

Th e room that harkens back most to the obser-Thvatory’s past is the library. The architects looked atThold photos of the room and aimed to recreate thewarm and welcoming feeling of the space from theearly 1900s. Th e metal shelves and old computers Th that had previously crowded the room were removed. Th e original claw-footed table now anchors theThroom, and it sits on a rug reminiscent of the one originally donated by Whitin. Low, wooden book-shelves were installed around the perimeter of theroom, and many of the antique astronomical devices that had been in storage were put on display. Pocket doors similar to the original doors serve double-duty as chalkboards. (See pictures on page 28.)

Among the most beautiful additions to the observatory are the stained-glass windows designedby Lady Margaret Huggins, a British astronomer and ardent supporter of the observatory in the

l b h hi

eywellesle y | spring 201126

Below, left to right: A drop-ceiling was removed to expose the rafters in the research project room; the original entrance to the observatory, now part of the specialty classroom; Associate Professor Daniel Brabander teaches in the specialty classroom.


early 1900s. For years, the windows languished in storage, slowly falling apart. As part of the renova-tion, Serpentino Stained Glass in Needham, Mass., restored the stained glass to its original glory. Two are displayed in the library: One depicts the ap-pearance of Halley’s Comet in 1066; the other in-cludes the sun, a galaxy, a comet, and a spectrum, representing Huggins’ scientific work with herfihusband, the astronomer Sir William Huggins. A third window, depicting a scene from Th e Pilgrim’s ThProgress, is on display in the research project room.

Like the library, the research project room hadits original charm restored. Over the years, the room had been partitioned, its original fireplace sealed up,fiand a drop-ceiling installed. Th e architects broughtThthe room back to its original footprint, exposed the rafters and the fi replace, and installed bookshelves fireminiscent of the original style. The room is lined Thwith new computers, where students can collaborate on projects with each other or with faculty. “It’s anexample of a thought that didn’t occur to any of the rest of us, to turn this space into a beautiful place to work, but also a place where we can really do our 21st-century science,” French says.

Th e fact that much of the original building Th

was kept in place and repaired is one reason that the College is optimistic that the building will be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certifi ed. “It’s so much more sustainable to renovate fithan tear down,” says Brabander. “[Th e observatory This] a poster child for how you can redesign space in a cost-eff ective, historically relevant, and sustainableffffway.” Energy-saving changes to the building’s utili-ties were made, and materials were reused during construction. For example, marble that would have been covered up in one part of the building was instead removed and used in windows in the library. “It’s like a skin graft, taking marble from one part of the building and putting it somewhere else where people can see the beauty of it,” says Laura Tenny, a project manager at Wellesley who helped the architects through the renovation.

AN OBSERVATORY FOR EVERYONE

For the past 110 years, one of the observatory’s most important roles has been to serve as a gateway to thesciences for those who otherwise might have stayed

f h b

WHITIN, WHITING, WHITE, AND WHATNOT

Anyone delving into the Whitin Observatory’s history might be confused at fi rst by the abundance of whitish names. To clarify: Sarah Frances Whiting was a beloved professor of physics and astronomy at Wellesley, and the driving force behind the construction of the observatory. Sarah Elizabeth Whitin was a trustee of the College who donated the funds for the observa-tory and was very involved in the design of the building. Stephen Van Cullen White was a Brooklyn, N.Y., lawyer from whom Whitin purchased the 12-inch telescope that precipitated the construction of the observatory. In an article about Whiting that appeared in Popular Science in 1927, the astronomer Annie Jump Cannon 1884 recalled this about the construction of the observa-tory: “It must be of white marble, said the donor, for White is symbolic of this project: White, Whitin, Whiting, owner, donor, professor. And it may be added that the fi rst assistant happened to be named Whiteside.” —LS

away. “We often have students who come in thinking that they’re not scientists and they don’t like science, or they’re not good at it, or they’re not good at math,” says astronomy department chair Kim McLeod. “And they get into our classes, and they fi nd out they’re actually not that bad at it. About a fimonth into the course, they realize the truth of an old adage I stole from a Cornell professor, that astronomy’s just physics in disguise, and they’ve been actually doing physics and liking it.” Some-times these formerly science-phobic students get hooked and wind up being astronomy majors.

French hopes to share the introductory powers of the observatory with the wider community.“I was looking over some of the old books and journals from 100 years ago, and [the observatory]used to have 40 open houses a year,” French says.Forty open houses may not be realistic any more, but French hopes that the observatory will be more open to the community. “I’d be disappointed if in the next few years we didn’t have a really wonder-ful program for educating either kids or senior citizens or townspeople or just curious teenagers, feeling that this is a place that has something to off er them,” he says. “I think we need to be broader ffffstewards for the College community and share thebeauty of this place.”

In 1900, Professor of Mathematics EllenHayes wrote of the observatory, “One’s imagina-tion is taxed in trying to picture the long procession of young women whose lives are going to be made richer and nobler by this far-reaching benefaction. . . . We shall one by one close our eyes on the stars; but the beautiful observatory will remain. Those who Thcome after us will take up the work, watch the skies, and go on with the records in our stead; for ‘theastronomer never dies.’” French says that he thinks of the founders of the observatory every day that he is in the building, and of the responsibility he and his colleagues have in teaching women science for our century. And like Hayes, he contemplates the long line of scholars and students who will follow in his stead. “What we want is for people 50 yearsfrom now to say, ‘Th ey really got it right, and they Ththought of us then,’” French says.

Lisa Scanlon ’99 is an associate editor of Wellesley magazine.Lisa Scanlon ’99 is an associate editor of Wellesley

28 eywellesley | spring 2011

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29

2011ALUMNAE ACHIEVEMENT

AWARDSTh ese awards, Wellesley’s highest honor,

are presented annually by the Alumnae Association to graduates of distinction who,

through their achievements, have brought honor to themselves and to the College.

Th e 2011 recipients are:

S A R A H M I L L E D G E N E L S O N ’53

S U S A N W U N S C H R I C E ’67

M A R I LY N C R A N D A L L J O N E S ’70

R E E N A R AG G I ’73


Th e oak leaf pin presented to all Achievement Award winners.

PORTRAITS BY RICHARD HOWARD


BRINGING GENDER TO ARCHAEOLOGY

S A R A H M I L L E D G E N E L S O N ’ 5 3

By Susan Elia MacNeal ’91

30 wellesley | spring 2011


women and ideology, including a fascinating review of the interpretations of so-called ‘mother goddess’ fi gures from the Upper Paleolithic.” fiTh e book led the way for the creation of the Thfi rst texts on gender theory as it is applied tofiarchaeology. It is currently used by Wellesley’santhropology department.

But for Nelson, marriage and family camefi rst chronologically. After graduating fromfiWellesley with a degree in biblical history in 1953, she returned to her hometown of Miami andmarried her college sweetheart, Harold Stanley Nelson. She taught second grade to help him through medical school. When Harold Nelson was shipped overseas with the U.S. Army Medical Corps, Nelson accompanied him; they adopted two sons and had a third together. While in Germany, she wrote a book on castles.

She thought she was doing well—untilanother Wellesley alumna told her otherwise. “I wrote to a Wellesley graduate, who had taught me 10th-grade biology,” she recounts. “I told her all the fun things we were doing, how cute the little boys looked in their leder-hosen. And she wrote back and said, ‘Why are you wasting your talents?’”

She can smile at the memory now. “ThatThwas the push that got me to grad school—some, well, elderly Wellesley woman saying, ‘Well, you think you’re having quite a life, but let me tellyou, you should be doing something else!’”

Still, transitioning to working wifeand mother wasn’t easy. “When I was at the

31


AWARDS

University of Michigan,” she recollects, “a neighbor told me that if I continued going to graduate school, my children would end upeither in mental hospitals or in jail. And I’mvery happy to say they didn’t!”

When pressed about the experience of getting her Ph.D., Nelson recounts, “Oh, grad school was horrible. It was the days of the VietnamWar, and there were a lot of protests. And I think that was part of what pushed the womengraduate students to say, ‘Hey, you know, you’realso treating us badly.’ The male faculTh ty would do things like, if somebody famous would come to town, they would have a party and invitethe male students only.”

When Nelson got her Ph.D. and began

teaching at the University of Denver, her battles were just beginning. Not only were most of the women professors on staff working ffwithout tenure, but they were working for lowersalaries and vulnerable to sexual harassment. In fact, just as Nelson herself came up for tenure,

‘‘YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL,” Sarah Milledge Nelson ’53 told a rapt audience at the 2011 Alumnae Awards, “especially you students. You don’t have to choose between family and career, no matter how the press loves to tell you that.”

And she would know. Nelson is a professor emerita and John Evans

tinguished Professor at the University of Distnver, where she taught for 30 years. She was Denir of the department of anthropology there,chai

well as vice provost for research, interim vice as wvost for graduate studies and research, and provctor of women’s studies. She is an esteemeddire

olar who has written seven academic books, schoed 13 others, and written three novels. Sheedittributed chapters for numerous other aca-cont

mic books, as well as a multitude of scholarly demcles, adding up to more than 130 publica-artic

ns in total. She headed archaeological digs tionChina and Korea, as well as in the Unitedin Ces. She was president of the Society of East Stat

an Archaeology. In addition, she received Asiar $1 million in grants and contracts. over

Nelson’s work marries archaeology andinism, perhaps most importantly infemi Gender Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige,in Ach was selected as the Outstanding Aca-whic

mic Book by dem Choice Magazine and is in second printing. According to a review its s

in Library Journal,L the text “presents a lucid,olarly demonstration of the importance of schoarchaeological approach to the past that an auses on the evidence for the roles of womenfocu

men, freed from the androcentric assump-and ns that have shaped our thinking. . . . [Neltion son] ws on case studies from diverse cultures in drawprehistoric past as she explores issues and the

ics such as division of labor, women withintopial systems and in the public sphere, andsoci

Th e Archaeology of Korea ‘is the major work on the prehistory/history of a region that is inclusive of a mind-boggling array of cultures from early times. . . . [S]he brings forth a vision in which all social ranks are brought into the picture, drawing us away from the great men of the past to the wider society.’

—Associate Professor Rita Wright CE/DS ’74, New York University


BANKING ON SOCIAL RESPONSBILITY

S U S A N W U N S C H R I C E ’ 6 7

By Emily Laurence Baker ’84



As we talk, she defi es every stereotype I’ve had fiabout iron-armed female bankers. She is not thehyper, type-A person I expected, but instead some-one who exudes complete calm. Within minutes, Iam wowed by her brain power.

“You only get tired when you stop,” Ricetells me when I ask how she has managed to raisethree children, hold senior banking jobs, serve onnumerous boards, promote the arts, and still find fitime to read widely. “Continually learning new things gives me energy.”

After our conversation, one of her colleaguestells me a story that illustrates how she never wastesa moment. Malcolm Hayday, whom Rice helpedto establish Charity Bank, a not-for-profi t agency fithat funds charities and community organizations,recalls when Rice was chairing a meeting in whichmembers of a committee were preparing a criti-cal document. “She couldn’t be present, so she led from her BlackBerry,” Hayday explains. “Halfway through the conversation Susan said, ‘Hang on a moment. I’ve just got to clear security.’ So she’dbeen chairing the entire meeting while negotiating an airport. Not many people could do that.”

Yet Rice is so modest and unassuming thatshe speaks of her accomplishments as random hap-penings, as if she collected them like shells during a beach walk. While she admits that she works hard,she attributes her success mostly to taking advan-tage of every chance that comes her way and being open-minded about “less obvious” opportunities.“I’ve taken some opportunities that weren’t so ob-vious and thought, ‘Where can I take this?’ ratherthan having a clear career path in mind,” she says.

“I don’t ever want to look back and wonder why Ididn’t try something.”

Which might explain why this biology ma-jor at Wellesley took a circuitous route to banking.Her career began in academia, first as a research fiassistant in a Yale Medical School laboratory and then moving into administration with posts asdean of Saybrook College at Yale and dean of students at Colgate University. Although she was on a promising career trajectory, when her Scottishhusband, Duncan (whom she met in her junioryear at Wellesley), took a job as dean of the faculty of arts and science at New York University, they jointly decided it might be easier if she worked in a different fiffff eld.fi

She explored both publishing and banking, thinking that publishing might be a more natural course with her good communication skills and

deep love of literature. But when she was offered a ffffjob at the now defunct National Westminster Ban-corp, her love of a new challenge proved irresistible.“At the time I felt as if I were jumping off a bungee ffcord. Th e experience of going from a job I knew Thwell to one where I didn’t speak the language was hugely humbling.”

Rice thrived on the challenge and made a name for herself working to provide banking to disadvantaged communities and establishing fi nancial vehicles to support economic develop-fiment, which is known as financial inclusion. Her fisubsequent work in this area has become a corner-stone of her career in the UK, which she began atBank of Scotland in 1997, shortly after Duncanbecame principal and vice chancellor at Aberdeen

SUSAN WUNSCH RICE’S CV weighs heavily in my bag—if not literally, then by its overfl owing array of accomplishments. Not only is she one of the highest ranked banking executives in the United Kingdom as managing director of Lloyds Banking Group Scotland, she also is a director of the Bank of England and Scottish and Southern Energy, a major UK energy company. She has served as the Prince of Wales’ ambassador for corporate responsibility; is

ember of the Scottish 2020 Climate Changea medership Group; holds seven honorary Leadvuniversity degrees; and is widely published in rnals and British newspapers. She even has jourived a C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of thereceiish EBrit mpire) award from Queen Elizabeth II,

king her offimak cially “Lady Rice”—a particularlyffipressive distinction for an American.imp

As I walk to meet her in the heart of ndon’s fiLon nancial district, I can only assume fiwill be cool and abrupt and that I will be dis-she wtly aware that she wants to be somewhere else. tinctI am a bit surprised when Rice comes down So Ihe lobby of the Lloyds Banking Group head-to thrters to escort me upstairs. I remain awed by quarwarm, gracious person who sits across the this

e from me in a stark conference room. Hertablespeech and undivided attention make me feelsoft

could be sitting in overstuffwe c ed armchairs by a ffffring firoar re as we sip mugs of tea.fi

Rice travels to London regularly, but her homeAberdeen in north Scotland. During the week,is in

lives in Edinburgh, where she is currently over-she lng the merger of Lloyds and Bank of Scotland, seeinlargest integration in banking history. Rice is the icated to restoring public confidedi dence in the Bank ficotland name, which, like most UK banks, has of Sc

suffered in the wake of the fi effff nancial crisis. She pro-fis personal service to major corporate customersvideshelps to steer Scottish businesses away from dif-and

fi lties. At the same time, she oversees the internal culfistaffing issues involved with a major integration. It isffiffi

b she performs with pride for her adopted home-a jobd, as well as for the banking industry. land

‘Unlike many people in such a prestigious position, Susan has never forgotten that we are all human beings. She engages all people and has time for everyone.’

—Helen Bogan, Rice’s external-aff airs manager

Continued on page 39


AWARDS

33


By Amy Mayer ’94

PUTTING PATIENTS FIRSTM A R I L Y N C R A N D A L L J O N E S ’ 7 0



Columbia, she says, genetics existed only in the lab. But another recent arrival in San Diego, Kenneth Jones, had come from Seattle, where he’d workedunder the founder of dysmorphology (the study of birth defects). He introduced Jones to the study of why birth defects happen from the perspective of what goes wrong in development. The researchThgoal was to help doctors develop tools for treating or, eventually, preventing birth defects. “And it was just about the coolest thing that I could conceive of,” Jones recalls.

Witnessing the challenges that her disabledyounger brother faced helped motivate her pursuit of medical genetics. She fell in love with dysmor-phology—and Kenneth Jones. They married, andThboth have dedicated their careers to the fi eld.fi

Jones wears many professional hats. She isprofessor of clinical pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), medical directorof the Helen Bernardy Center for Medically Fragile Children at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, and director of the Cleft and Cranio-facial Treatment Programs, also at Rady. In this last role, she oversees the multidisciplinary team that provides care for babies and children with birth defects, such as cleft lip or palate. She also runs one of the prenatal diagnostic teams that makesreferrals to the Rady program. As director, shebrings together the necessary experts in order to create a coordinated treatment plan for each patient.

“Pediatricians are very effective in that role,”ffffshe says, “because they tend to look at the whole child. Th at’s what they’re trained to do.” Th

Jones’ publication list includes over 200

research articles, and she has served her field in a finumber of leadership roles, including the presidency of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Associa-tion. She has also been president of the American College of Medical Genetics and the Western Soci-ety for Pediatric Research. Judith Goslin Hall ’61, a retired pediatrician and medical geneticist whonominated Jones for the Achievement Award, says Jones is unique among doctors for having led allthree of these groups: “She is clearly considered a leader among her peers and has made huge contri-butions within the academic community.”

Professional leadership in medicine began for Jones when she served as chief resident in pediatrics at UCSD and went on to direct the university’s fellowship in medical genetics. Her impact as an instructor and role model has beenlong-lasting.

“Marilyn was one of my mentors, and overthe past 30 years she has continued to guide and inspire me and all of us whom she so ably trained,” wrote Eugene Hoyme, in a supporting letter forJones’ nomination. Now a professor and chair of the department of pediatrics at Sanford School of Medicine at the University of South Dakota, Hoyme described Jones as a “superb” pediatrician. “She exemplifies those characteristics thatfi

pediatricians most admire in one another (gentle-ness, kindness, respect for children and families, decisiveness in emergencies, high intelligence, and an outstanding sense of humor). I can think of noother physician so talented and caring in dealing with families after the birth of a child withcongenital anomalies.”

TAKE TWO PARTS DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER (BOTH

parents), add two parts Wellesley legacy (mother, Elizabeth Jones Crandall ’45, and aunt, Rosemary Crandall Warter ’45). Couple a fun-loving spirit with a cerebral disposition. Raise this child with three brothers, one with severe developmental disabilities. Educate (Wellesley, art history; Columbia, M.D.). Mix thoroughly. Send to California. Watch as smiles develop on the faces of children in her care.

Even fresh out of medical school, Marilyn ndall Jones ’70 was obviously much more than Cransum of these parts. But one of the endearing the

ngs about her—which is not on her long list of thinomplishments as a medical geneticist and clini-acco—is the way she’s embraced her family his-cian—

y. She grew up in her mother’s childhood home tory.attended all the same schools as her mother.and doesn’t remember specifiShe c pressure to choose filesley; it’s just where she wanted to go. And sheWellw she’d become a doctor.knew

“I really didn’t know that there was anything that you could do,” Jones says, and she was ad-else

ant that she wanted to support herself. “I knew amacould do that with medicine. You could always you a job as a doctor somewhere.” get a

Despite this commitment to following her ther’s lead, she developed an interest in art his-moty and realized that in her science classes “I wasn’ttory ing nearly as much fun as I was in art history,”havies says. She switched majors to art history, a Joneve that prompted a dean to call Jones’ mother, movich I don’t remember at all, but it left a mark on“wh” Still, upon graduation, Jones chose Colum-her.”University College of Physicians and Surgeons, bia Uere both of her parents had studied. whe

But—you knew this was coming—“then Ito get out of Dodge, big time.”had Jones left the East Coast for a pediatrics

dency in San Diego, and there she found her residn place.own

“Th e fiTh eld of genetics really was an embryonal fifi d,” she recalls. “I really didn’t know anything eldfi

ut it as it could be put into practice.” Atabou

‘[Jones] is clearly considered a leader among her peers and has made huge contributions within the academic community.’

—Judith Goslin Hall ’61, retired pediatrician and medical geneticist



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35


LAYING DOWN THE LAW R E E N A R A G G I ’ 7 3

By Jennifer McFarland Flint



to serve on that court. After 15 years, she wasnominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President George W. Bush. She breezed through the confirmation hear-fiings, receiving praise from Democrats and Republicans alike, and in 2002 was sworn in.For a federal judge, the Court of Appeals repre-sents just about the pinnacle of a career, the only summit higher being the U.S. Supreme Court.

She has earned a reputation as a justice whois tough on criminals, exacting of counsel, and one of the sharpest thinkers and writers on thebench. On the District Court, Raggi doled out justice to murderers and the mafi a, drug cartels,fiand human traffi ckers; she presided over New ffiYork’s fi rst federal death-penalty case in 20 years;fishe sent a would-be terrorist who plotted to bomb a Brooklyn subway train to prison; and she presided over the retrial of one of the formerpolice offi cers accused of beating and sexually as-ffisaulting the Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in a precinct bathroom in 1997.

For her work on the Court of Appeals,Raggi is “extremely well respected among col-leagues,” says Amon. Her written opinions have covered criminal and immigration issues, holiday displays at schools, habeas corpus, personal injury,and commercial disputes, among other areas.

“When she writes an opinion, everyonepays special attention to it,” says Amon. “I always tell my clerks if they’re looking for a statement of the law in a given area to see if she’s written an opinion on the subject, because she lays outthe law so clearly.” In recognition of her many contributions, Raggi received the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence in

2007, the Federal Bar Council’s highest honor.About all of this success, Raggi says that

there’s some truth in the old phrase, “The harderThyou work, the luckier you get.” Perhaps. But former law clerks report clocking the same long hours she does: 8 to 8. When her son, David Denton, Jr., was a child, she was disciplined about leaving her chambers by 6:30 to cook dinner for the family and be available for home-work. “I used to joke that was so he could get his full share of nagging,” says Raggi. “I didn’t wanthim to be deprived of that.”

Denton, who is fi nishing his last year atfiHarvard Law, says with utmost respect that his mother “is not some particular genius. She is incredibly smart. But mostly she just worksincredibly hard. When she writes opinions for the court, she’ll have our kitchen table covered in drafts; she has them completely marked up in pencil. I know how much she frets over them. Everything she does involves a lot of thought and a lot of effort.” ffff

Th e pace of work for a federal Court of Th

Appeals judge on the Second Circuit, which covers New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, is unrelenting: Every month, Raggi has three weeks to prepare for one week in court, when she typi-cally hears about 30 cases. She studies each one atlength in advance and is prepared to ask a few key

FEDERAL APPEALS COURT JUDGE Reena Raggi ’73 is one of those people. She is brilliant. Meticulous. Loyal. Th oughtful. Generous. And yes, modest. Beyond the many accomplishments of her legal career, she’s a two-time Jeopardy! champion who could top-chef Martha Stewart.

“Everything she does, she does well,”ple invariably say, including Judge Carolpeopon, who fiAmo rst met Raggi when interview-fiher for an assistant U.S. attorney position ing

1979 and later was a colleague on the U.S. in 1trict Court for the Eastern District of New Distk. Amon remembers their early days as as-Yorkant U.S. attorneys, when they would go to sistaties, and someone would pull out a game of partvial Pursuit. When Raggi’s turn came around,Trivople would get up from the table, wander “peoy, and come back a half-hour later to see if away

re was any chance she may have gotten one therng,” says Amon. “I was personally annoyed wron

en she even got the sports questions correct.”wheRaggi’s legal career has unfolded like one of

se Trivial Pursuit games: While the rest of usthose milling about, munching on chips and dips, weregi has been politely but assiduously fiRagg lling herfiwith colorful wedges. She was the fipie w rst womanfier family to attend college; she followed it up in h

h a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard in 1976. Aswithassistant U.S. attorney in New York’s Eastern an atrict from 1979 to 1986, she served terms asDistef of the narcotics unit and the division that chiedled offihand cial corruption investigations. In ffi6, at the tender age of 34, she was appointed1986unanimous vote by the district’s judges toby urim inter U.S. attorney for the Eastern Districtich includes Brooklyn, Q(whi ueens, Staten Island,QQNassau and Suffand olk counties). Raggi calls ffff

t vote of confithat dence “a tremendous honor,”fisays it played a part in her appointmentand

the U.S. District Court bench the follow-to tyear, by ing President Ronald RRR eagan. She was RR

h the youngest appoinboth tee and the first womanfi

‘When [Raggi] writes an opinion, everyone pays special attention to it. I always tell my clerks if they’re looking for a statement of the law in a given area to see if she’s written an opinion on the subject, because she lays out the law so clearly.’

—Judge Carol Amon



AWARDS

37


she championed a sexual-harassment case that23 female students brought against members of the faculty—a move that “didn’t endear me to the dean,” Nelson recounts. “He kind of laughedit off . So we went over his head.”ffff

The women won their case, but NelsonThwas denied tenure. She recounts how she got through it: “Always smile at all your enemies. Be polite at all times. Never let them know if they’ve gotten to you. Don’t show it.” And she never gave up. “You’re supposed to be so embarrassed that somebody has thought you’renot worth tenuring that you’ll slink away. And I knew I was worth tenuring, and Iw wasn’t go-ting to slink away. So, ‘shout it from the roof-tops’ was my strategy. I said to everybody I saw, ‘Can you believe that they’re not awarding me tenure?’ Everybody was appalled. So when the protest went through, the people on the com-mittee were on my side, and in the long run, Iwas awarded tenure.”

But her battles still weren’t over. She gar-nered a prestigious contract for the university to do an archaeological survey for the U.S.Army, but she was still “treated very badly.” National Park Service personnel who were involved in the survey “did everything they could do to undermine me, nasty, sneaky things,”Nelson says. “It sounds very silly, but they would have meetings in the men’s room so I couldn’tbe there. . . . [Th ey] put every possible barrierThin the way. And in spite of that, we were doing well, and it made them madder and madderand madder, because they couldn’t get rid of

me, and I wouldn’t stomp off mad, because Iffhad already learned . . . that’s not a good way to behave.” She received no support from thechair of her department and says he told other faculty and students not to speak to her. “It waspsychological torture,” Nelson adds.

In the end, Nelson won an apology, which was published in the local Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists newsletter. And,

not surprisingly, gender then became a focalpoint in her work. She began reading the feminist literature of the time, and she andher group of female archaeologists “began tothink archaeology was not ungendered. It wasgendered male in terms of who was an archae-ologist, say, Indiana Jones—but also in termsof how we understand the past, it is all seenthrough a very masculinist perspective. And so, we began to question, what were some otherways to think about the past? It started with people wanting to just make women visible. And this is still needed. But it cut deeper thanthat. Th e historical archaeologist Suzanne ThSpencer-Wood calls it ‘peeling the androcentriconion.’”

Nelson’s career continued to examine issues of gender, including the different rolesffffof women in ancient times in Asia in positions of power, as queens and shamans. And she wasoften able to travel with her husband, work-ing on various digs in places he was stationed,such as China and Korea, bringing her sonswith them, often for extended periods of time.Time in these countries led to significant time fi

on digs and books and articles. According to Professor Katheryn Lindhuff from the University of ffPittsburgh, Nelson’s “work in Korea is legendary, and she is still one of a very few non-Koreans, and the very fi rst, to really tackle this region fiand publish about it in English. She literally put Korea on the map for the others of us whoare still now trying to learn and incorporate Korea into the picture of East Asian prehistory

and early history.” Rita Corsi Wright

CE/DS ’74, an associate pro-fessor of anthropology at New York University, asserts that Nelson’s Th e Archaeology of ThKorea “is the major work on the prehistory/history of a region that is inclusive of a mind-boggling array of cultures from early times. . . .[S]he brings forth a vision in which all social ranks are brought into the picture,

drawing us away from the great men of the past to the wider society.”

Nelson is proud to be called a “feministarchaeologist” by the Alumnae Achievement Awards Committee. “My friends at the univer-sity were thrilled that I was called a ‘feminist’ in the citation that came out,” she relates. “‘We didn’t know you could say that out loud!’ And so I said, well, Wellesley is that kind of a place. And indeed, it is. So I’m very happy of the feminist things I have done, and proud to callthem that.”

And she adds, “I’m also incredibly proudof how well my children turned out. I think though, maybe they are indeed very success-ful because of an academic mother, and not in espite of me.”

Susan Elia MacNeal ’91 is a writer and editor based in New York City. Her fi rst novel,

Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, whose heroine is a Wellesley class of ’38 graduate, will be published by Bantam Dell/Random House

in the fall of 2011.

‘[Nelson’s] work in Korea is legendary, and she is still one of a very few non-Koreans, and the very fi rst, to really tackle this region and publish about it in English. She literally put Korea on the map for the others of us who are still now trying to learn and incorporate Korea into the picture of East Asian prehistory and early history.’

—Professor Katheryn Lindhuff , University of Pittsburgh

S A R A H M I L L E D G E N E L S O N ’ 5 3

Continued from page 31

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S l l ’ d d

ONOREES ONLINE

When the Alumnae Achievement Awards were bestowed upon these four women at the College in February, they gave eloquent, moving, and often funny speeches about their lives and careers. But don’t take our word for it: to listen for yourself, visit http://bitly.com/gIZvcc.


University. (His position was akin to a university president’s in the United States.)

When she was appointed chief executive of Lloyds TSB Scotland three years later, she became the fi rst woman to head a UK clearing bank, a com-fimercial bank that has broader check-clearing pow-ers than other banks. Under her watch, the bank doubled in size, and Rice successfully built the brandof Lloyds TSB Scotland. In January 2009, Lloyds TSB Group acquired HBOS, creating Lloyds Banking Group, the largest bank in the UK. Rice was appointed managing director of Lloyds Bank-ing Group Scotland, which saw her increase her role. She is the senior executive in Scotland for thishuge institution, but she’s more likely to be proudof her extensive contribution to creating investment in businesses that bring jobs to deprived areas and helping to wean charities from grant dependency.

“There is a sense of social justice that drives Ththrough everything Susan does,” says Hayday, the chief executive of Charity Bank. “To be the firstfiwoman to head a UK clearing bank is a formidable enough achievement, but what’s really significant is fithat she used that position to speak out and takeaction on behalf of the excluded. She has been a leaderin using the tools of banking to benefit society.”fi

Th ose benefiTh ts extend well beyond banking fito the arts, sports, and community development. “Susan works very hard on the public agenda,” says Helen Bogan, Rice’s external-aff airs manager. ffffRice sponsors art exhibitions, budding artists, and emerging sports teams and talents, as well asdesigning initiatives to encourage the public to visit art galleries, by guiding the sponsorship pro-gram at Lloyds Banking Group Scotland. “Bothmy upbringing and Wellesley instilled values to think beyond myself, and I’m privileged to be ina position where I can make a difference,” she says.ffff

One of her greatest joys is chairing the Edin-burgh International Book Festival. Overseeing theworld’s largest book festival feeds her passion for liter-ature, which has been a grounding force throughout her life. “Literature helps us understand civilization and humanity and also enables us to imagine both backward and looking into the future. Th at gives us a Thcontext for what we are doing today,” she says.

Her husband shares her love for books, and sheconfesses that their Aberdeen home is packed with

thousands of them. Th at her taste is wide and eclec-Thtic but doesn’t include supermarket fiction is nofisurprise. She cites Salmon Rushdie, David Malouf,Haruki Murakami, Orhan Pamuk, and the Albanianwriter Ismail Kadare as favorites. “I tend to discoveran author and then read a lot of his or her work,” she says. “Th at reading then undoubtedly leads to Thanother new discovery which I then explore.”

Th at voracious intellectual curiosity and Thdesire to push herself to her limits is something herWellesley classmates remember well. “She often seta high bar for herself in selecting topics for papersand then worked late into the night to achieve her goals,” recalls Rhoda Morss Trooboff ’67, who ffroomed with Rice all four years at Wellesley.

Trooboff also recollects that Rice had a “compli-ffcated approach to thinking,” one that very likely hascontributed to her success today. “Rather than solving problems straightforwardly, she’d try to see how many diff erent ways she could think about a problem.”ffff

Colleagues cite that ability to see things from all angles as one of her greatest strengths, along with her loyalty and willingness to listen. “I can honestly say that anyone who has worked for her adores her,” says Bogan. “She’s not just the leader of our team—she’s part of it. When people visit the offi ce, Susan makes the tea. Unlike many ffipeople in such a prestigious position, Susan has never forgotten that we are all human beings. She engages all people and has time for everyone.”

Rice has a high profile in Scotland, thanksfito her willingness to go beyond what she casually terms her “day job.” She regularly hosts events and delivers speeches. Such a friendly face of banking is especially welcome now, after pub-lic confi dence infi the industry has taken a hit.

“It’s been an interesting few years,” she says with a slight smile, particularly in Scotland, where what Rice terms the “banks with headline-inducing problems” are located. While many bankers have opted for a low profile, Rice thinks it’s anfiideal time to be more visible and present the positive face of the industry. Recently, she has used her many speaking platforms to

explain the origins of the financial crisis and how fithe world can collectively move forward. “There’s Thbeen a lot of misunderstanding and individual blame, which is not helpful,” she says. “It’s far better to fi nd how we can change things to make fithe future better.”

To that end, Rice is serving as chair of theChartered Banker Professional Standards Board, which is working to develop, for the first time,fia professional body of standards for bankers that encompasses both behavior and ethics. “It’s about creating value against a set of values that honor banks’ relationships with customers and commu-nities,” she explains earnestly.

It’s hard to imagine that someone with thismany balls in the air could ever find time to relax, fibut Rice escapes the daily juggling act for vaca-tions at her hideaway on the island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. “It’s where I go to shed all my woes and concerns,” she says.

Although she describes the landscape as one“you have to know to love,” it’s clear that this re-mote island is Rice’s sanctuary, where she recuper-ates and regenerates. She and Duncan relax by walking in the hills comprised of Lewisian gneiss, the oldest rock in Britain and possibly the world. “Looking at these hills and knowing they’ve been here for about as long as the universe and will bethere for as much time going forward, puts me inmy place as a tiny speck in the great scheme of things,” she says, somewhat wistfully. “I love that feeling of just understanding this rather than being focused on the issue of the day.”

Emily Laurence Baker ’84 is a freelance writer based in London.

‘Th ere is a sense of social justice that drives through everything Susan does. To be the fi rst woman to head a UK clearing bank is a formidable enough achievement, but what’s really signifi cant is that she used that position to speak out and take action on behalf of the excluded. She has been a leader in using the tools of banking to benefi t society.’

—Malcom Hayday, chief executive of Charity Bank

Emily Laurence Baker ’84 is a freelance



AWARDS

39


Indeed, even with her myriad administra-tive, academic, and service responsibilities, Jones reserves 50 percent of her professional time for seeing patients. Once a month, she does that inMexico. She travels to Tijuana with a team of four or fi ve other doctors and genetic counselors. Thfi ey Thspend the afternoon seeing patients with any sortof genetic disorder and attempting to connect those children and their families with appropriatetreatment and services in Mexico.

Jones says she practices differently thereffffbecause she tries to off er realistic options tofffffamilies who lack resources in a country where there’s little, if any, safety net. “I’d rather have a family spend $400 on therapy than on a test that isn’t going to make a difference for them,”ffffshe says. Th e same test might be routine in the ThUnited States, but here insurance would likely pay for it.

Treating patients south of the border has also brought her valuable cross-cultural knowl-edge, Jones says. When she arrived in San Diegoall those years ago, “I was a clueless resident.” Th e patient population, which included recentlyTharrived refugees, indigent locals, and affluent fflfamilies fl ying in from far-offfl places, educatedffher about diff erent cultural perspectives. She fffflearned, for example, that when one motherwas refusing treatment for her child, it wasn’tbecause that woman needed her husband’s con-sent. In that family’s community, it was thetribal leader who had to be consulted.

Mexico only deepened her sensibility to cultural diff erences.“Youffff approach things from your own perspective, thinking that your perspec-tive is the right way to view the world,” she says,but when you “recognize that to help somebody you have to meet them where they are, it makesyou a better doctor. And I think I learned that in Mexico. . . . I have gotten far more out of it than I have given in terms of my growth as a person and my growth as a physician—in terms of un-derstanding cross-cultural issues.”

Humility and dedication to serving othersare both traits Jones’ Wellesley friends say have long been a part of her personality. Jones credits Wellesley with introducing her to leadership and giving her space to hone those skills.

“It was very liberating to get to Wellesley where it was very, very clear that we were sup-posed to be leaders,” she says. As a girl, she hadn’t gotten that from her large public high school. “Igained a tremendous amount of confidence fromfimy experience at Wellesley.”

“She took Wellesley’s motto very seriously and lived that,” says Linda Kilburn ’70, who’sbeen friends with Jones since ninth grade.

Another longtime friend, Ann Reaney Hoff man ffff ’70, remembers meeting Jones upon transferring to Wellesley her junior year. “I admiredher energy. I admired her determination. I admired her intelligence. I admired, really, everything about her. She just always wowed me in so many ways,” she says. Years later, Hoffmanffffmoved to California and worked as the executive director of California Children’s Hospital Associ-ation, trying to help hospitals secure the funding they needed. During this time, Hoffman says she ffff

gained a greater appreciation for the challenges Jones encountered professionally. “She really had to fi ght many battles to get the resources that she fineeded.”

And yet, Hoff man says, Jones never sought ffffpersonal recognition, instead focusing on her clinical work. “For Crandall, it’s always about doing the right thing for the patient and the family,” she says. (Hoff man and Kilburn remain part of a fffftight-knit group of a dozen Wellesley friends whocall Jones by her maiden name.)

In addition to teaching her leadership,Wellesley also helped Jones learn the delicate act of juggling myriad responsibilities and interests.

On campus she danced and sang, was housepresident of Davis, and served as vice president of the art club. She choreographed much of her class’s Junior Show. For two years, she also cheeredfor the then-Boston Patriots as part of the Wellesley cheerleading squad. (The team didn’t Thhave professional cheerleaders, the New Jersey native explains, so it recruited volunteer squadsfrom various Boston-area colleges for home gamesand off ered the students free tickets. “Very ffffdisappointed that we didn’t get the Jets game, because I so wanted to see Joe Namath play,”Jones wrote in an e-mail recently. “The whole Thscene was ridiculous.”)

“Crandall has been an enthusiastic partici-pant in anything she has ever done the entire timeI’ve known her,” Kilburn says. “I think she’s just a natural leader.” Her outside interests nurtureher and renew her energy for professional tasks,Kilburn adds. Her colleagues and friends say

Jones off ers a good example ffffof how to balance personaland professional demands.

“I just try to be moreeff ective so that I can squeezeffffmore things in,” Jones says.“Maybe it looks better from the outside,” she adds, jok-ing that her husband might disagree.

Nearly four decades into her career, this doctor is unquestionably a profes-sional success. She remains

a dedicated daughter, sister, and friend. Add tothat list wife, mother, and stepmother. The Thfamily commitment at her core has never waned. Instead, she’s woven it into her professional life.Although her disabled younger brother has passedaway, “He goes to work with me every day.”

And every day she enjoys the most funda-mental part of her job: “I still love getting in theroom with a patient. I absolutely love it.”

Amy Mayer ’94 is a freelance writer and radio producer based in Greenfi eld, Mass. Her work can

be found at www.amymayerwrites.com.

‘[Jones] exemplifi es those characteristics that pediatricians most admire in one another (gentleness, kindness, respect for children and families, decisiveness in emergencies, high intelligence, and an outstanding sense of humor). I can think of no other physician so talented and caring in dealing with families after the birth of a child with congenital anomalies.’

—Eugene Hoyme, chair, department of pediatrics,Sanford School of Medicine, University of South Dakota

A Ma ’94 i a f la it a d adi


40


questions of the attorneys in court before making a decision. It’s quite a load. It’s a sense of respon-sibility that drives her: to her colleagues on the bench, the legal community at large, to the public in general, but first and foremost to the partiesfihaving their day in court.

In a federal appellate court, which reviews how laws were applied in a lower court, theactual parties themselves may not even be present. Unlike a trial court, there are no witnesses, notestimony given—no “fl esh and blood,” Raggi flsays. Instead, the proceedings are more removed from the public, formal and brief in nature. TheThjudge “runs a very tight courtroom,” according to Amon, and former law clerks agree that Raggi expects counsel to know their facts and present themfairly and in a straightforward, professional manner.

Th e exception to this buttoned-up formality Thoccurs when pro-se litigants, who can’t affe ord to ffffhire an attorney, represent themselves. “These indi-Thviduals are often not well prepared, and they’re cer-tainly not trained, and sometimes they’re just not very good at representing themselves,” says JohnCoyle, a former clerk who now teaches law at theUniversity of North Carolina. Nevertheless, Raggi is “unfailingly courteous, kind, and respectful of every pro-se litigant who goes up to argue their case. She is especially solicitous of these people, saying they have a right to be heard.” Beyond just being heard, Raggi wants these individuals to believe in the system, even if it doesn’t ultimately find in fitheir favor.

When Raggi speaks about her tenure on the bench, it is clear that she believes her work shouldencourage the public’s faith in the U.S. system. During her 15 years as a trial judge, she says she “spent many a Monday morning staring out at a courtroom of people not very happy to have received jury notices. But it was my job, and thatof every other person working in the courthouse, to make sure jurors understood how essential they were to the administration of justice,” she says. “Because the only source of our authority, really, is public confidence.” fi

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bonnie Jonas says she draws on lessons learned as a clerk at Raggi’s elbow every time she tries a case before a jury. “Judge Raggi was incredibly respectful of the

function that jurors serve, and she was absolutely loathe to make them wait even an extra minute. She would always speak to them afterward, show-ing her respect for their function as jurors—and as human beings. That doesn’t happen in every Thcourtroom,” she says, “and it has definitely stuck fiwith me.”

During her tenure on the bench, Raggi hasworked with more than 50 such law clerks, who are all “frighteningly smart” when they enter her chambers, “but they haven’t practiced law yet,” she says. Mentoring them gives her the chance “to share with these very bright young lawyers your view of what the profession ought to be aspiring to.” She likes to tell a story about a former colleague, the late Frank Altimari, “who seemed to always have this stream of young people going in and out of his chambers,” she says. “I once talked to him about it, and he said, ‘When you’re young, people help you. And when you’re older, you help others.’ I al-ways thought that was fairly apt,” Raggi says. She considers herself the benefi ciary of much supportfialong the way: from Wellesley’s American-history scholar Kathryn Preyer, who taught her to aim for excellence, and Judge Edward Korman, who “be-lieved in me before I believed in myself,” she says. “And now it’s my turn.”

Raggi shares lunch with her clerks in her chambers every day: It’s a chance for them to discuss anything, from the minutiae of case law to career advice. “She always made time for us, and it was intimate,” recalls Jonas. “You got to see how her mind worked and get to know her on an interpersonal level, too. She’s been an in-credibly generous mentor, but she’s also a friend. Now she’s a part of the fabric of my life and my family.”

For Raggi, a career public servant, no

professional accomplishment trumps the importance of family: “It’s with our familiesthat we often attain our most important achievements andrender our greatest service,”she says. Her husband, DavidDenton, also a federal pros-ecutor and attorney, died in 2007, at the much-too-young

age of 57. Th roughout her husband’s short battle Thwith cancer and her mother’s final illness earlier fithis year, Raggi “was the person who was there foreveryone else, regardless of the cost to her own life. She is rarely someone to put her own needsfi rst,” says son David Denton. “Her faith is also fia pretty important thing to her,” he says, “and there’s a whole parcel of things that go along-side that. Once I started working and making a little money, she was very quick to remind me to make charitable donations to places that are important to me. She is a big believer in giving back in all respects.”

As a high-school student, her son com-peted on his school’s debate team, and Raggi launched a tradition of shuttling the team toits annual tournament at Princeton University. “So my mother, who’s obviously a real judge, will spend hours chauff euring kids back and ffffforth from the hotel to the tournament, andjudging high-school debate rounds in between. I think it comes from this strong sense of want-ing to give back,” Denton says. He graduatedfrom high school eight years ago, but Raggi still chauff eurs kids to the Princeton Classic ffffevery December. It’s likely not how you imag-ine a federal judge spending her leisure time, but on the other hand, maybe it’s exactly whatyou’d expect of Judge Raggi: While the rest of us are milling about on the weekends, she’s still tirelessly fi lling her metaphorical pie withfiwedges from every category, including sports and leisure.

Jennifer McFarland Flint, a former associate editor of Wellesley magazine, is a freelance writer

based in Somerville, Mass.

‘Judge Raggi was incredibly respectful of the function that jurors serve, and she was absolutely loathe to make them wait even an extra minute. She would always speak to them afterward, showing her respect for their function as jurors—and as human beings.’

—Assistant U.S. Attorney Bonnie Jonas

J if M F l d Fli f i

R E E N A R A G G I ’ 7 3



AWARDS

41


HOBBY CAREGIVING VOLUNTEERISM EDUCATION EMPLOYMENT

CURRENT ACTIVITIES OF ALUMNAEBY DECADE OF GRADUATION

THE MISSION of the Wellesley College Alum-nae Association is to connect our 37,000 alumnae to each other and to the College.The WCAA board decided in 2010 that in Thorder to fulfi ll this mission, we needed tofilearn more about what alumnae are doing now in their lives, and the ways in which they have already or might like to connect to each other and to the College. An e-mail was sent in August of 2010 to the 22,500 alumnae for whom the WCAA has an e-mail address, and an impressive 25 percent of those completed the survey (5,664). Alumnae from classesfrom the 1940s up through our youngestgraduates from the class of ’10 participated in this survey.

What Alumnae Do Now: We’re Busy!It’s not a big surprise that Wellesley alumnae are busy women. A majority are currently employed (62 percent), as well as involved in some type of volunteerism (63 percent), and actively pursuing one or more hobbies(70 percent). Almost half are caring for someone, either a child or adult (47 percent).

What we are doing varies greatly by age,however. As the chart at right shows, gradu-ate school occupies a large part of the lives of younger alumnae. (The fiTh ve main activities fiincluded in the survey are “stacked” to add up to 100 percent for each decade of alumnae.)Answering a separate question, an impressive

NEWS AND INFORMATION FROM

THE WORLDWIDE NETWORK OF

THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

YOUR ALUMNAE

ASSOCIATION

42

ALUMNAE DATA

Survey Says. . . .

y

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100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYMENTEMPLOYMENTUC O EDUCATION EDUCATIONO U S VOLUNTEERISM VOLUNTEERISMC G G CAREGIVING CAREGIVINGOHOBBY HOBBY

CURRENT ACTIVITIES OF ALUMNAECURRENT ACTIVITIES OF ALUMNAECURRENT ACTIVITIES OF ALUMNAEBY DECADE OF GRADUATIONBY DECADE OF GRADUATIONBY DECADE OF GRADUATION


REUNION

100%

50%

0%

CLASSE-NOTES

CLUB SOCIALGATHERING

ONLINE ALUMNAEDIRECTORY

CLUB FACULTY LECTURE

This magazine is published quarterly by the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, an autonomous corporate body, inde-pendent 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 ’89Anne Crary Berger ’91, chair of alumnae admissions representativesKatherine Collins ’90Aniella Gonzalez ’93Karen Capriles Hodges ’62Georgia Murphy Johnson ’75Suzanne Lebold ’85Willajeanne McLean ’77Inyeai Ororokuma ’79Paulina Ponce de Leon Barido ’05Shelley Sweet ’67Mei-Mei Tuan ’88Sandra 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 Tromblee

Director of Alumnae GroupsSusan Lohin

Director of Alumnae Technology and CommunicationsMichelle Gillett ’95

Alumnae Offi ce Financial AdministratorGreg Jong

To read Wellesley magazine online, visit http://wellesley.edu/magazine.

43

82 percent of all alumnae said they had atsome time in their lives received further edu-cation beyond their Wellesley degree.

How We’d Like to Connect With WellesleyIn the survey, alumnae were given 28 possible ways they might connect with other alumnae or with the College, broken down into threedifferent types of activities: those offffff ered on-ffffcampus, those offered in local clubs, and those ffffoff ered online. Survey participants were askedffffthree questions about each of these 28 possibleconnections: Were they aware of it, had they participated in it, and how likely were they to participate in it in the future?

Th e good news is that a majority of alum-Thnae are aware of 23 of these activities, and a majority also say that they are likely to partici-pate in more than half of them in the future.

Th eir greatest awareness and usageThhas been of reunion and club socialgatherings, as shown in the chartbelow. Th ere is also strong awareness and usage Thof the online directory to look up information about other alumnae, and strong future interestin looking at class notes electronically.

The even better news is that alumnae Thexpress strong interest in online connections with which they may be less familiar now butwould like to use in the future. Th ese includeThlistening online to lectures such as those from theAlbright Institute (68 percent future interest),having a Wellesley e-mail address (65 percent), listening online to faculty lectures (63 percent),or participating in a special-interest group suchas the Wellesley Lawyers Network (60 percent).Th e Alumnae Association board is actively Thpursuing how we can make such online options more known and more used by alumnae.

Karen Gentleman ’77, WCAA president

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

ALUMNAE CONNECTIONS THAT ARE MOST KNOWN AND USED

AWARE HAVE DONE MIGHT DO

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PINNED FOR EXCELLENCE

EVERY YEAR since the WCAA established the Alumnae Achievement Award in 1970, the recipients have received a distinctive gold oak-leaf pin at the

awards ceremony. Currently made by A.M. DePrisco in Wellesley, Mass., the pins are inscribed with the alumna’s name, her class year, and the

year she received the award. “Th e oak tree was selected as the symbol Thof the Achievement Awards because it represents the strength,

quality, and durability of the College and her alumnae,” President H. Kim Bottomly said before giving the pins to the awardees in

February. “Th e acorn, also represented on the pin, reminds Thus of our own potential to turn the personal privilege of our time at Wellesley into a catalyst for a life of purpose, meaning, and positive difference in the lives of others.” For ffffprofi les of this year’s Achievement Award winners, see page 20.fi

CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE IN THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

To be elected by the alumnae body at the annual meeting of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association on June 5 at 11:30 a.m. in Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall:

President-Elect President

2011–2012 2012–2015Karen E. Williamson ’69Washington, D.C.

Secretary/Treasurer

2011–2012Debra Drew DeVaughn ’74Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Director/Chair, Alumnae Admissions Representatives

2011–2013Patience Singleton Roach ’92Washington, D.C.

Young Alumnae Director

2011–2014 Y. Sophia Qiu ’08Cambridge, Mass.

Term Renewal, Directors

2011–2013Aniella Gonzalez ’93Mei-Mei Tuan ’88Georgia Murphy Johnson ’75

Respectfully submitted,2010–11 Nominating CommitteeKaren Capriles Hodges ’62, chairSandy Yeager ’86Aniella Gonzalez ’93Paulina Ponce de Léon Baridó ’05Mei-Mei Tuan ’88Anne Crary Berger ’91Susan Challenger ’76, ex officioffiffi

PROPOSED BYLAW CHANGE, JUNE 2011

In accord with Article XIV (“Amendments”) of the bylaws of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, the Governance Committeeof the WCAA board of directors proposes the following change to theWCAA bylaws, to be voted at the Annual Meeting on June 5. This isThan addition to Article IV (“Board of Directors”), Section 3 (“Meet-ings”), and proposes allowing board members unable to attend a meet-ing in person to participate electronically:

e. Any or all directors may participate in a meeting of the board of directors, or a committee of the board, by means of a telephone or video conference or by any means of communication by which all persons participating in the meeting are able to communicate with one another, and such participation shall constitute presence at the meeting.

YOUR ALUMNAE

ASSOCIATION

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Phyllis Beck Katz ’58—All Roads Go Where They Will, Antrim House Books, Simsbury, Conn.

Margaret Fleischer Kaufman ’63 and Susan Dubinsky Terris ’59, contributors—Chapter & Verse: Poems of Jewish Identity, Confl ux Press, Prescott, Ariz.

Nina Kaufman ’87—The Entrepreneur’s Prenup: How to Choose a Business Partner Who Won’t [Bleep] You, Vervante, Huntington Beach, Calif.

Malinda Lo ’96—Huntress, Little, Brown and Company, New York

Anne Sinnott Moore ’56—Houseplants Are Houseguests, Wheatmark, Tucson, Ariz.

Camille Cozzone Rankin ’76—Aimer Paris: To Love Paris, Photo Accents, New York

Holly Goldberg Sloan ’80—I’ll Be There, Little, Brown and Company, New York

Marilyn Wedge (Marilyn Weltz Wedge ’67)—Suffer the Children: The Case Against Labeling and Medicating and an Effective Alternative, Norton, New York

FRESH INK(Continued from page 15)

ALUMNAE CALENDAR

The Alumnae Association announces the following events for 2011. Unless otherwise noted, eventstake place at the College. For more information,

call the Alumnae Offi ce at 781-283-2331.

2011

MAY

25 Senior lunch and induction into the

Alumnae Association

JUNE

2–3 WCAA board of directors meetings

3–5 Reunion for classes ending in 1s and 6s,

and CE/DS

SEPTEMBER

10–11 Day to Make a Difference, Wellesley’s worldwide community-service event

30 through Oct. 3 Class of ’55 mini-reunion inthe historic Hudson Valley. For more information,contact Marilyn Horlick Fishel ’55, mjfi shel@

optonline.net, 914-937-7024

OCTOBER

14–15 WCAA board of directors meeting

16–17 Alumnae Leadership Council

CLUBNEWS FROM

AROUND THE WORLD

ON THE ROAD AGAIN The Wellesley College Club of San Diego hosted

President H. Kim Bottomly at the San Diego Yacht Club on Feb. 11.

Bottomly has visited eight Wellesley clubs this year, meeting over 600 alumnae,

current and prospective students, and guests.

CONNECTING IN JAPAN In January, more than 60 alumnae turned out in Tokyo to

greet T. James Kodera, professor of religion, and a group of students traveling for a Wintersession

course. The gathering included a lecture demonstration by a young kabuki actor (center).


Laura McLeod was a psychology major at Wellesley and later earned a master’s in education. She became an elementary teacher, reading specialist, and supervisor in the New Bedford Public School System.

An avid volunteer for the class of ’63 and planned giving chair since 1988, Laura has also been a board member of the College Club of New Bedford for over 40 years and an enthusiastic volunteer for the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Laura, pictured here in her home in Mattapoisett, also enjoys gardening, playing tennis, and bridge.

For a fi nancial proposal tailored to your circumstances, please contact Patricia Galindo, fiOffi ce of Planned Giving, 800.253.8916 or [email protected]. ffi

fi rst became acquainted with thefiWellesley planned giving program 40 years ago through an alumna in my local Wellesley club who provided fora much younger sister with a deferred annuity gift.

Prior to my 35th reunion, I made my fi rst planned gift into a pooled income fifund. Later, on the advice of my financial fiadvisor, I established a charitableremainder trust with appreciated stock. Since then, I have made two annuity gifts, one of which is deferred. In today’sinvestment climate, Wellesley annuitieshave very favorable rates.

By making life income gifts to Wellesley,I am providing income for myself during my lifetime and giving to Wellesley in the future. It’s a win-win situation. I know that Wellesley will use my legacy to further the education of women for many years to come.

Laura E. McLeod ’63Mattapoisett, Mass.

I

COUNT ME INNOW!

ARE WE

TO THECHALLENGE?

UU PP

PARTICIPATIONDRIVE 2011

HURRY! TIME IS RUNNING OUT. JUMP UP AND BE COUNTED TODAY AT www.wellesley.edu/CountMeIn

79spring 2011 | wellesley

OffiOffiO cece ff fororor RR Resesesourcesffiffiffiffiffi


AD WAS IN THE 20TH-ANNIVERSARY commem-orative Oreo tin on the counter, swaddled in plastic wrap and weighing a good deal morethan the snack foods Mom had unloaded in the kitchen of our beach rental. I mistook him for cookies, amazed at their heft and justa little hungry. “Are these double-stuffed?” I ffff

wondered, studying the print on the tin until the truth dawned on me, andI laughed loud and hard. Mom later told me she had purchased the tin on eBay for 25 cents.

My mother and sister had driven in from Pennsylvania to meet me and my aunt, uncle, and cousins at the southern tip of Ocean City, N.J., inApril—the off -season, just a week or so after the anniversary of my father’s ffffheart attack. We had assembled for a long weekend of kite fl ying, beachflstrolling, acoustic-guitar singalongs, and the crowning activity, a guerrilla ash-dropping ceremony. “Guerrilla” because it’s illegal to spread ashes inmost public parks or on public beaches.

In fact, Mom had only brought some of Dad in the tin. Dad would alsobe going to Jamaica later that year (smuggled in a travel-size shampoo bottle) and to the green at his beloved alma mater. This news made me wonder how Thmany people I had studied on top of, while spread out with my lit books on the quad lawn each spring semester.

The trip to Ocean City was meant as a sort of extended memorial ser-Thvice, nearly a year after Dad’s death in Panama. Mom, my sister, Anne, andI had returned unplanned from our vacation there dressed in tropical clothes to a Midwestern winter, with only a vague plan for how we would deliver the news of Dad’s death at 55 to my grandmother, without even his body as testament. Th e ashes only arrived months later. We had nothing to show asThevidence of our loss, and nothing to offer the hundreds of friends and family ffffmembers who turned up at our home to grieve. Even Dad’s packed suitcasehad made its way back entirely intact, sand still clinging to the treads of his sandals. Th e only measure of our loss was the breadth of his absence.Th

In those fi rst few days of household visitations, somebody circulated the fimost basic of accounts. We had taken a boat to an island to go snorkeling. Dad

had a heart attack in the water. Some vacationers had pulled him ashore, where they attempted CPR until I took over. We moved him to a boat, where I continued CPR while we sped to the mainland, a solid 15 minutes away at full tilt. Th e CPR hadn’t revived him. He was pronounced dead and Thtaken away the next morning, our last full day in Panama. And then we had fl own home.fl

What none of us were ready to share were the details that gave those events form and meaning and even an undeniable, solipsistic beauty. TheThvisitors didn’t know about the dimly lit dinner we attended the night Dad died, where the French hosts plied Mom with liquor until she was so drunk on her grief she could barely walk with us back to the hostel. They didn’tThknow that when Mom and my sister arrived at the pier after Dad had been declared dead, we got down into the boat to mourn over his body, his head resting on an orange life jacket, sandlike confetti in his eyelashes. They didn’t Thknow that I had chipped my tooth performing CPR, that my knees were eaten raw by the sandy bottom of the boat as we bounced through waves on our breakneck race. Th ey didn’t know the tang of bile on his mouth thatThsomehow telegraphed to my autopiloted brain that the body was just a body and no longer my father.

When my mother and sister went in to view Dad’s body before his autopsy, I stayed in the SUV. In a way, my failed CPR had granted me a last intimacy with him, and a reconciliation of his death that they couldn’t have.

Back in New Jersey, on a quiet stretch of beach near the lighthouse at Cape May’s Point State Park, my cousin poured fi ne champagne into plastic ficups while my aunt held a Macbook in front of her, the Beatles’ “Imagine” streaming through tinny speakers. It was Dad’s favorite song. We toastedhim and drank, taking turns to grab a handful of ash from the cookie tin and walk it out to the tide. Once everyone had gone and a fair amount of ash remained, my uncle picked up the tin and walked, barefoot and khaki-clad, into the frigid April waters. I took his picture on the 35 mm Nikon my father had passed to me years before.

Th ere is one photograph my father loved most from my childhood,Thtaken by my mother, likely with that very same camera. It shows Dad sleep-ing upright on our ugly brown couch, his head dropped back against the cushions, an infant me snoozing in the crook of his arm. A new father, he had fallen asleep while studying for his night-school law classes. An Oreopackage lays open within arm’s reach.Lynn Sternberger ’07 is a Boston-based editor and entertainment blogger.

By Lynn Sternberger ’07

DA Last Good-Bye

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NOTE

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The 30th anniversary of the Fisk Organ in Houghton Chapel was marked with a celebratory concert on May 7. For more on the instrument, see page 9.

Photo by Richard Howard

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