Milestones

News briefs about the accomplishments, awards, and transitions of Mount Holyoke faculty, staff, students, and alumnae.

September 2008
Report from Mexico City
At work this year in Costa Rica, Lowell Gudmundson, professor of Latin American studies and history, will travel to Mexico City to give two talks as part of an Africanists colloquium in that city sponsored by the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History. He speaks first, on September 18, to a small group of researchers in social sciences working on topics related to the African diaspora. On September 19, he presents at a more public forum as part of the National Institute of Anthropology and History's annual "Book Fair." Gudmundson will be joined by scholars from the University of Costa Rica and the Honduran Institute of Anthropology to discuss "Africans and Their Descendants in the History of Central America."

Gudmundson has received a grant from the NEH for his project Deepening Democracy and Disciplining the Democrats: Coffee, Cooperatives, and the Lessons of Costa Rican Development.  The grant will allow Gudmundson to forge ahead with his extensive research on the historical bases for the relative success of Costa Rican democracy and that nation's agrarian policies and coffee growing industry. He will also work on a book on this subject.

MHC Grads Win Multiple British Fellowships
Hannah Bailey ‘08 and Chelsea Shields-Mas ‘08, who are embarking on graduate work at the Centre for Medieval Studies at York, England, each have been awarded two highly competitive fellowships. The students, who both spent their junior year at York, received the Centre Fellowship of 700 pounds and also the University Fellowship, worth 3,000 pounds. Centre director Linne Mooney told Carolyn Collette, Professor of English Language and Literature on the Alumnae Foundation, that very little funding is available for non-British students and that Bailey and Shields-Mas were extraordinarily strong candidates for the awards because of the breadth of their work and training. Bailey is especially excited about the course on Early Medieval York, which covers the city's Anglo-Saxon and Viking history. “This is an interdisciplinary course, so we have plenty of subjects and approaches to chose from,” she said.

August 2008
Brown to Read from New Book on Nantucket
Delivering the third annual Bette and Frank Sprigg Lecture, associate professor of English Lois Brown will discuss her new biography, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution, Friday, August 22, 2008, at the African Meeting House at 29 York Street in Nantucket.  She will read from 5 to 6 pm; a book signing and reception will follow.  Brown also directs the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts.

Born into a free black family in Portland, Maine, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930) was a pioneering playwright, performer, journalist, novelist, feminist, and public intellectual.  She is best known for her 1900 novel Contending Forces: A Romance of Negro Life North and South. In this critical biography, Brown documents for the first time Hopkins's early family life and her ancestral connections to eighteenth-century New England, the African slave trade, and twentieth century race activism in the North.

June 2008
School's Not Out for Summer
Rosario De Swanson, visiting assistant professor of Spanish, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to participate in a Summer 2008 Institute titled "The Literature of Equatorial Guinea: A Pedagogical Perspective" at Howard University. The NEH Summer Institutes provide intensive collaborative study of texts, topics, and ideas central to undergraduate teaching in the humanities under the guidance of faculties distinguished in their fields of scholarship. The institutes aim to prepare participants to return to their classrooms with a deeper knowledge of current scholarship in key fields of the humanities.

Friends in High Places
Lindsay Chura '06, who won a prestigious Gates Scholarship for study at Cambridge University starting in fall 2008, recently learned that she has been placed at Cambridge’s Trinity College, her first choice.

Chura also reported that she has been awarded a Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship through the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She will be working for ten weeks this summer as a health and science writer for U.S. News and World Report in Washington, DC. Competition for the 14 AAAS fellowships awarded was very steep; most of the other fellows are either in Ph.D. or postdoc programs.

May 2008

MHC Math Major Recognized Nationally
Taylor Pressler FP ’08, a mathematics major doing an honors thesis in chemistry, recently received an Honorable Mention for the American Statistical Society's Gertrude M. Cox Scholarship for the most promising female graduate student in statistics.

Pressler, who will be entering in a Ph.D. program at Ohio State this fall, is pleased with the award. “Most of the awards and recognitions I have won in the past few years have been for my scientific studies and accomplishments,” she said. “While I am proud of all of my accomplishments, this award has special meaning to me as it is my first professional award and I have received it for my work as an aspiring statistician. My professors at MHC have been such wonderful mentors to me, and I do not think that I would have ever been worthy of such an honor without their support. I am very happy and my family is very proud.”

Mathematics professor Margaret Robinson, Pressler’s academic advisor, said, “I join all her professors in saying that she is a wonderful and very rewarding student to teach. Taylor is the real thing: a true scholar with a great intrinsic interest and fire to understand things deeply.”

April 2008

UN Recognizes Take the Lead Project
As a result of her Take the Lead (TTL) initiative, TTL alum Alex Abend was formally invited to be a special guest at the United Nations' first Autism Awareness Day. Cited for the “significant contribution” she made through her project, Abend was honored for her “inspiring personal efforts and dedication.”

Mount Holyoke's Take the Lead, a four-day program for high school juniors, gives student leaders the chance to join a network of young, action-oriented advocates who are passionate about important issues. Many Take the Lead alumnae have changed the world in significant ways, receiving local, regional, and national recognition for their outstanding projects.

On its Web page, the United Nations said, “Ms. Alex Abend, a New Jersey teenager with a nine-year-old brother with autism, was recognized for her work in organizing a 'Family Night' for families with autism. This successful project makes it possible for people with autism and their families to enjoy a night out for dinner, without being judged by others. The project is growing and has participating T.G.I. Friday restaurants in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.”

March 2008

And the Awards Go to …
Chandra Manning '93 has won two awards for her first book, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Knopf, 2007). The Avery O. Craven Award given by the Organization of American Historians will be awarded March 29 in New York, and the Lincoln Prize Honorable Mention will be awarded April 1 in New York by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Manning graduated summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke; earned an M.Phil. in Irish history and literature from University College Galway, Ireland, in 1995; and took her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2002. She has taught at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and is currently assistant professor of history at Georgetown University, where she teaches classes on nineteenth-century U.S. history. While she offers classes on such topics as the Civil War and Reconstruction and the United States in the Jacksonian Era, students generally think of her as "The Baseball Professor" thanks to her most popular class, The History of Baseball and American Society from the 1840s to the 1950s. She researches and writes primarily about the Civil War. Above all, she is a fervent Red Sox fan who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband Derek and 21-month-old son Aidan.

MHC Idol
Music major Jessica Cucco '09 was selected for the semifinals at the National Association of Teachers of Singing Contest/Auditions in Boston on February 23. The contest, which includes singers from all over New England, is sponsored by the association's Boston chapter and was held at Boston University. Cucco sang in the very competitive Division 2 for undergraduates. She is an active performer on campus: she performed in The Cabaret in Blanchard in December and codirects the M & Cs a cappella singers. She will be giving her junior recital in April in McCulloch Auditorium in Pratt Hall.

February 2008

Floating Irish
Lauren Noonan '10 was chosen as a member of the colleen’s court for the annual Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade. Noonan, who was one of five finalists for the title of grand colleen, was chosen from among an original field of 15 contestants. Noonan and the other finalists were evaluated on their responses when asked what it would mean to be chosen as grand colleen. The selection took place during the St. Patrick's Committee of Holyoke Grand Colleen Coronation Ball, held at the Log Cabin Banquet House in Holyoke on February 23. Chosen as grand colleen was Ashley M. Reidy, a student at Providence College. Other members of the court include Ashleigh M. Kelliher, who attends Holyoke Community College; Julia S. Page, of South Hadley, who attends Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island; and Katelyn E. Whalen, of South Hadley, who attends St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. The finalists will make up Reidy's court, and the five young women will all be on one float during this year's Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade, which takes place March 30. The parade is one of the second largest in the country.

'03 Geologists Report In
Two students who completed senior theses with professor of geology Steven R. Dunn in 2003 have been in touch with him recently.

Jennifer Wright '03 has just received the 2008 Mineralogical Society of America Mineralogy-Petrology Research Grant for her dissertation work with David Hirsch at Western Washington University. Only two such awards are given annually for the finest research proposals in mineralogy and petrology nationwide. Her proposed research title is "Measurement of Metamorphic Kinetics through Combined High-Resolution X-ray-Computed Tomography (HRXCT), Electron Microanalysis (EMPA), and Sm-Nd Isotopic Dating." This work will show the rate of mineral growth in metamorphic environments (when rocks experience high temperatures and pressures, underneath the Himalayas or Andes mountains, for example).

Kay Achenbach '03 is finishing up her dissertation under Michael Cheadle at the University of Wyoming, and has just accepted a three-year postdoctoral position with Roger Searle at Durham University in England. Her work is significantly improving knowledge about how oceanic crust is created at midocean ridges.

January 2008

MHC's Holt To Lead MASFAA
Gail Holt, senior associate director of Student Financial Services, has been named president-elect of the Massachusetts Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators starting July 1, 2008.

December 2007

Herbert Garners Second CAA Award
Robert L. Herbert, Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, has received a second major award this year from the College Art Association (CAA). Herbert, an eminent scholar of nineteenth-century French art, was named CAA’s 2008 Distinguished Scholar. The CAA has also bestowed on Herbert the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art, which recognizes “an author who, among other distinctions, has demonstrated particular commitment to his or her work throughout a long career and has had an impact, nationally and internationally, on the field.”

September 2007

Public Policy Fellow
Janice Arellano ’07 was recently selected as one of approximately 20 Public Policy Fellows at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in Washington, DC. She will spend the year working in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. 

August 2007

CDC Salutes a Future Captain
David Gardner, Director for Pre-Health and Science Counseling at the Career Development Center, is being promoted from Commander to Captain in the Coast Guard Reserve. This achievement is awarded to only 48 servicemen and women.

Gardner became a reservist for the U.S. Coast Guard when he went to Trinity College in Hartford, after four years on an aircraft carrier in the Navy. While attending college, he also was learning how to run search-and-rescue boats directly involved in saving lives. Over the years, the Coast Guard has become Gardner’s second career, one that he plans to continue as long as possible. After beginning as a navigator, Gardner was a deck officer, search rescue controller and senior reserve officer. He has served as chief of international operations and is currently on the international exercise planning staff.

In the Coast Guard, officers move up through the ranks on a regular basis, but those accepted for promotion must display “consistent high performance.” Gardner admits that it is fairly rare to attain captainship. “I think the reason I was selected is my breadth of experience working with other branches of the U.S. and foreign militaries,” he said. He deeply appreciates the professionalism of the Coast Guard and the opportunities it provides his family, especially two young sons who are “very proud” of their father.

Next summer, as Captain, Gardner will receive a new assignment that he will fulfill alongside his work at the CDC. He is looking forward to another challenge.

Cobb Honored by American Statistical Association
George W. Cobb, Robert L. Rooke Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, was honored July 31 in Salt Lake City by the American Statistical Association (ASA), the nation's preeminent professional statistical society.  Cobb was one of three individuals presented with the ASA's 2007 Founders Awards for members who have rendered distinguished service to the association. The awards, which are the highest given by ASA, were presented at the Presidential Awards Session at ASA's 2007 Joint Statistical Meetings.

Cobb was honored "for extraordinary contributions to advances in statistical education, for exemplary and altruistic service to the profession, including serving as an ASA vice president; for vision, creativity, and eloquence in advancing undergraduate statistics education; for effective outreach to the mathematics community; for promoting the role of statistics in the liberal arts; and for mentoring future and current statisticians."

Selection criteria for the Founders Award include service over an extended period of time and in a variety of leadership roles, including chapter, section, committee, officer or editorial activities, in which effective service or leadership was provided within ASA or on behalf of ASA to other organizations. Typically, no more than two awards are granted each year, but, when warranted, up to five awards may be granted in a given year. Three awards were presented this year.

Students and Professor Become Wikipedians
Associate professor of psychology and education Sandra Lawrence and her students became Wikipedians in July when the article they wrote collaboratively using the wiki tool on ELLA, MHC's online learning management system, was published in Wikipedia.

The article arose from a course assignment during the fall and spring semesters of 2006-2007 of Education 205: Whiteness, Racism, and Inequality in Schools and Society. Students collaborated in small groups to identify, research, and write profiles of white antiracist activists and the work they do to advance social justice. Lawrence compiled the profiles, composed an introduction, and posted the entry to Wikipedia.

Among Lawrence's pedagogical goals for using the wiki tool and posting to an online encyclopedia are providing busy students with a more flexible means for collaboration as well as a real audience for writing. She has personal goals as well. Since students tend to learn about who perpetrates racism but are less knowledgeable about who challenges institutional racism, one goal is to make visible information about antiracists and the organizations. And since 8 percent of adult online users consult Wikipedia on a typical day as determined by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (2007), the likelihood of visibility is high. Read the article.

June 2007

Four More Fulbrights
Mount Holyoke alumnae will be traveling and studying abroad next year on Fulbright grants. Kasey Kozara '04 has won a Fulbright to study public health in Bangladesh; Beth Robertson '05 will study economic development in Nepal; Caitlin Smith ’07 has been awarded a grant to study biology in Canada; Jasmine Tillu ’05 will go to Argentina to study the teaching of English as a foreign language.

Ferraro Course Named in Top 100
One of the many mind-expanding tools made available by the World Wide Web is the open courseware project, which invites college professors to post their course outlines, reading materials, and lecture notes free of charge to the public. The Open Education Database (OEDb) Web site recently included Ruth Lawson Professor of Politics Vinnie Ferraro’s World Politics class materials as one of the 100 best open courseware projects.

It is not surprising that Ferraro would devote the time and energy necessary to share his course materials on the Internet. He is passionate about disseminating information about world politics on the Web, as witnessed by his international relations homepage, an extensive compilation of resources and materials that contains about 12,000 entries and counting. Ferraro is pleased that the OEDb took note of his World Politics course. “My decision to post my materials on the Web is rooted in the fact that more people are turning to the Internet for information, and scholars have an obligation to make sure that reputable and accurate materials are available to the general public.”

May 2007
Chancellor's Medallion
Martha Ackmann, senior lecturer in gender studies, received the Chancellor's Medallion at the 2007 Commencement exercises at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Chancellor Richard Wells made the surprise presentation after Ackmann concluded her keynote address to the graduating class. 

The medallion was presented in recognition for Ackmann's commitment to "social justice and equality in the public sphere."  In presenting the award, Chancellor Wells noted that Ackmann's book, The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, was featured as the UW-Oshkosh common intellectual experience for freshmen the past two years. He called Ackmann a "tireless advocate for recognition of the determination, resilience, and indomitable spirit of the Mercury 13 women" and called on the assembled Wisconsin congressional delegation to put forward the names of the Mercury 13 for a Congressional Gold Medal. Read the press release.

FP Wins Lighthouse Scholarship
Yelena Chepurina FP’08 was recently awarded a Lighthouse Scholarship by Lighthouse International, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving vision and to helping people of all ages overcome the challenges of vision loss. Chepurina, who is visually impaired, moved here ten years ago from Kazakhstan and lives in Westfield. She is majoring in psychology.
 
“Of course I was happy to get the scholarship,” she said. But she added that she was not entirely surprised to learn of her success. “Sometimes you just get a feeling. I don’t know why, but I had an intuition that I had a high chance of receiving it.”

Chepurina will travel to New York City in June with her husband and five-year-old twins to receive the award. 

December 2006

Gudmundson Presents at Unesco Workshop
Lowell Gudmundson, professor of Latin American studies and history, made two presentations to a day-long workshop on the development of didactic materials on the history of Central Americans of African descent, hosted by UNESCO-Costa Rica on December 18 in San José. The gathering brought together senior scholars from Central America, Panama, Canada, and the U.S. with a view to producing classroom materials on the history of slavery and the many contributions of peoples of African descent in the region since then. Gudmundson’s work on Guatemalan and Nicaraguan communities involves documentary as well as visual evidence and historical memory studies. Examples of the work can be seen on MHC’s Latin American Studies Web site.

This latest consulting follows upon Gudmundson’s earlier efforts this year with the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights in San José and their program to develop didactic materials targeting African-descent communities in the region, as well as serving on two postgraduate thesis committees in this area for the Diaspora Program in History at the Universidad de Costa Rica. 

Christmas Baskets in Zimbabwe
When Getrude Chimhungwe returns home for J-Term she will come bearing gifts--or at least the money to buy gifts. Chimhungwe, a junior from Harare, Zimbabwe, is collecting monetary donations from the Mount Holyoke community to assemble Christmas food baskets for struggling families in her city. The baskets will go to selected families chosen by two organizations: Chiedza Child Care Centre and Tariro Organization, both located in Harare. Her inspiration for the project came from the economic hardships many families are facing right now in Zimbabwe. “Providing a Christmas basket, which will feed a family of six for about seven to 14 days, will cost approximately $20 to $25,” Chimhungwe said. “Donations of any amount will be greatly appreciated.” Those interested in making a donation should contact her at Getrude Chimhungwe  or 413-546-5064 to make arrangements.

November 2006

Global Message
Alumna Arzu Gurz Abay '94 was pleasantly surprised to see an article in the October 25 Kölner Wochenspiegel (the Cologne, Germany, Weekly Mirror) advertising opportunities for German-speaking students to come to South Hadley as Foreign Fellows through the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives. Foreign Fellows pursue a full course of study at the College, while working for six to eight hours each week in their respective language departments.

Foreign Fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis to students who have successfully completed at least one year of university-level studies, whose previous school and university record reflects outstanding achievement, and who plan to return to live and work in their own countries after the completion of their studies in the United States. The fellowships cover the cost of tuition, room, and board for one academic year, plus a stipend.

For German-speaking Foreign Fellows, application can only be made through their home universities of Leipzig and Bonn.

Keeping Her Eye on the Prize
The Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation (DMR) presented Patricia Romney, principal of Romney Associates and visiting associate professor of psychology, with its first Diversity Leadership Award in recognition of her pioneering work. The award was presented at the DMR's first annual Statewide Diversity Conference October 18 in Worcester.

Commissioner Gerald Morrissey cited Romney for her "outstanding contributions" as a management consultant and her commitment to the goals of the DMR. Civil rights officer Jerry Scott congratulated Romney for her dedication and for always "keeping her eye on the prize." In 1999, under the leadership of Morrissey and Scott, Romney served as lead external consultant, and the Romney Associates team expanded diversity work across the state.

In accepting the award, Romney said, "DMR has served as my model for excellence in diversity initiatives. Their dedication and commitment to diversity is inclusive and it is sustained."

Ignorance of China Is No Longer an Option
Jonathan Lipman, Felicia Gressitt Bock Professor of Asian Studies and Professor of History, will be a featured speaker at this year’s National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference December 1-3 in Washington, DC. Lipman’s talk, titled “Ignorance of China Is No Longer an Option,” will examine how Americans understand China and the Chinese and the importance of looking at China’s growing power, status, and influence.

“In this talk I hope to go beyond the Top Ten Things We Need to Know about China toward a more sophisticated, humane vision of the world's largest polity,” Lipman said. “Using the techniques of all of the social and humane sciences, we must combat oversimplification, nationalistic polemic (on both sides of the Pacific), and the temptation to rest on conventional cliches. Only through our own careful study can we help our students toward the knowledge they need to cope with China's growing power, status, and influence.”

October 2006
Future President
Lowell Gudmundson, professor of Latin American studies and history, was recently elected vice president/president elect of the New England Council of Latin Americanists (NECLAS), the regional professional association of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), at its annual meeting hosted by Middlebury College October 28. Gudmundson has held several elective and committee positions within NECLAS and LASA since coming to MHC in 1991 to lead its Latin American studies program.  Gudmundson will succeed Mark Williams, a political science professor at Middlebury College, who assumed the presidency from Aldo Lauria-Santiago of Rutgers University at the most recent meeting. Mount Holyoke will host NECLAS 2007, bringing more than 100 Latin Americanists from throughout the region and beyond to campus for a Saturday conference next fall.

On the Lecture Circuit, Again!
Martha Ackmann, senior lecturer in gender studies, is just back from a visit to University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where her award-winning book, Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight, was selected as the school’s Common Reading. Next week she’ll be on the road again, traveling to Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she will be writer-in-residence October 25-27. She will lecture on narrative nonfiction, meet with writing classes, and present a talk on writing about women in science.

September 2006
Shopping and Science
Edward Fitzgerald, director of chemical laboratories and lecturer in chemistry at MHC, will celebrate National Chemistry Week this year at the Holyoke Mall. As the chair of the education committee of the local section of the American Chemical Society, Fitzgerald will help make science more accessible by allowing shoppers to participate in hands-on chemistry activities Saturday, October 21. Students from MHC's chemistry club and other local colleges will staff a booth near Target from 11 am to 3 pm. "Every year the American Chemical Society celebrates National Chemistry Week. It's important for everyone to understand some chemistry since we all do chemistry every day," Fitzgerald said. "Our hope is to get kids and parents to understand that chemistry is fun and rewarding."

June 2006
MHC Student Wins Scholarship

Eva Goodwin ’08, of Saratoga Springs, New York, recently received a DAAD Undergraduate Scholarship to study in Germany next year. DAAD is the German Academic Exchange Service, a publicly funded, independent organization of higher education institutions in Germany. Goodwin is one of 62 students from more than 50 Canadian and U.S. colleges and universities, including Yale and Brown, selected for the scholarship. For more information visit DAAD.

Virtual Kudos
The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) awarded a silver medal to Mount Holyoke's new virtual tour. According to CASE, MHC's tour was among 100 entrants in the "Web site" category. Every year, CASE sponsors a Winners Circle of Excellence awards program for alumni relations, communications, and fundraising professionals. The national competition, considered the "Olympics" or "Academy Awards" of higher education, is highly competitive. In April, leading higher education communication expert Bob Johnson named MHC's virtual tour a "link of the week," praising its "strong use of film clips and student voices [to bring] the tour to life."

May 2006
Martha Ackmann to Give Commencement Speech at OIT
Martha Ackmann, senior lecturer in women's studies, will give the commencement address at the Oregon Institute of Technology June 17.

OIT is known in the Pacific Northwest for its engineering, science, and technology programs. OIT President Martha Ann Dow has been particularly committed to bringing more women into scientific fields. "OIT is pleased to welcome Martha Ackmann to our Klamath Falls campus for commencement 2006," Dow said. "Her work as an author and journalist is inspiring. She brings previously untold history to light and our society is better for her work."

Ackmann, whose work has been featured on the Today show, CNN, and the BBC and in many newspapers around the country, is author of The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight (Random House 2003).

April 2006
MHC Cyclists in Top Six at West Point
Frances Morrison '09 and Metzi Anderson '08 together scored a total of 134 points to lead the Mount Holyoke College cyclists to a sixth place finish out of the 20 Division II colleges and universities competing at West Point April 22-23. Overall, Mount Holyoke ranked fifteenth out of the 34 Division I and Division II colleges and universities competing in the Twenty-Second Annual Army Spring Classic. Mount Holyoke finished just ahead of Cornell (133 points) and behind Tufts (153 points).

At Saturday's cold, 28-mile road race, Morrison finished seventeenth out of 37 riders in the Women B Division, and Anderson narrowly missed winning the race in an exciting, 40-mile-an-hour photo finish at the line. In Sunday's wet and soggy criterium, Anderson finished third and Morrison ninth out of 28 riders. And, in the final event of the weekend, Anderson climbed the 2.5-mile individual time trial from the Hudson River to the radio towers overlooking the West Point campus for another second place finish.

MHC Swim Team Named Academic All-American Team
The Mount Holyoke College swim team was named Academic All-American Team for the fall semester of 2005 by the College Swim Coaches Association of America. The team was recognized in the Superior category, which means the grade point average of the entire swimming and diving squad, including all team members on the eligibility list, must average 3.25 or better. MHC’s team had an average GPA of 3.57.

The team has been ranked as Superior for the past eight semesters. “The award is a great indicator that the swimmers and divers work extremely hard both in the pool--setting 30 records this season--and in the classroom,” said swimming and diving coach Dave Allen.

In addition, nine women were named to the NEWMAC All-Academic team with a 3.5 GPA or higher, the largest number of swimmers and divers from any team in the conference.

MHC Says Good-Bye to Jewish Chaplain
Lisa Freitag-Keshet, Mount Holyoke’s interim dean of religious and spiritual life and Jewish chaplain, will be leaving the College at the end of the year. Since coming to Mount Holyoke in July 2002, Freitag-Keshet has had the opportunity to lead many holiday activities, organize Jewish cultural events, teach Hebrew courses, and oversee the activities of Eliot house, the campus’s center for religious and spiritual life.

Freitag-Keshet said her four years here have been very meaningful. “I wish Mount Holyoke the best in its continued success in educating a diverse community of women to be partners in creating a wise and peaceful world,” she said.

Freitag-Keshet will be moving to Israel to continue her career as a Jewish educator.

Rev. Sherry Tucker, chaplain and adviser to the Protestant community, will serve as interim dean of religious and spiritual life next year.

Capitol Breakfast
Professor of History on the Ford Foundation Joseph Ellis spoke on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, April 5, as part of the "Humanities on the Hill" program sponsored by the Federation of State Humanities Councils. Ellis was introduced by Congressman Richard Neal (D-MA), a Mount Holyoke trustee. Among the nearly 50 attendees were Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Congressman Charles Taylor (R-NC).

Ellis talked about the changing views of our nation's founders, noting that they all go through alternating periods of adulation and debunking and asserting that the mature perspective sees them as great but flawed human beings.

"Humanities on the Hill" is a spring ritual--a two-day event during which board and staff members of state humanities councils across the country come to Washington, DC, to host members of Congress at a breakfast or reception at which the humanities themselves are the centerpiece.

March 2006

Admission Record Set
More young women applied to Mount Holyoke this year than ever before. And by quite a margin. As of February 20, the College had received 3,059 applications--representing a surge over what had been the previous high watermark: 2,936 in 2002. One of the likely reasons for the boost is increased visits to campus by potential applicants and their parents in response to the newly renovated admission facility at Newhall Center and its spectacular Joy Mooney Jenkins '53 Meeting Room that allowed the admission staff to add daily information sessions to the campus visit program. In addition, admission staff members visited 800 high schools this year, 100 more than in past years.

Narration 101
The 2006 edition of the New McGraw-Hill Handbook, a popular text for college composition classes nationwide, draws upon the work of Michelle Ducharme, the College's publications writer, to demonstrate narration. The excerpt comes from Ducharme’s essay "A Lifetime of Production"--a tribute to her father’s 35 years in the corrugated box industry--that was published in Newsweek in 1996. This is the second time a McGraw-Hill textbook has used Ducharme's essay. In 2002, the piece was published in its entirety, alongside essays by Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes, in the first edition of Jumpstart with Readings: A Workbook for Writers.

February 2006
The Luck of the Irish

Chelsea C. Twohig ’06 was chosen as a member of the colleen’s court for the annual Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade. Twohig, who was one of five finalists for the title of grand colleen, was chosen from among an original field of 21 contestants. The selection took place during the fifty-second annual Grand Colleen Coronation Ball. The colleen pageant is open to women between the ages of 17 and 22 who live in either South Hadley or Holyoke and are of Irish descent. The parade this year takes place on March 19.

Show of work by Marion Miller
Horse and Rider, an exhibition of paintings by professor of art Marion Miller inspired by scenes at the College's Equestrian Center, opens at the Oxbow Gallery at 275 Pleasant Street in Northampton on Friday, February 10, and runs through Sunday, March 5. There will be an opening reception on Friday, February 10, from 5 to 8 pm.

The paintings on view are part of a series of works based on horses and riders that the artist has been working on for the past six years. Some of the canvases have been shown at the First Street Gallery in New York City; that show was reviewed in NY Arts Magazine.

"There is a kind of magic between horse and human," Miller notes, "and from the artist's point of view, the combinations of movement, scale, and mass are powerfully exciting visual phenomena."

A figurative artist who has been compared to Vermeer and Degas, Miller is well known for her portraits and equestrian paintings. Her portrait commissions have included two poets laureate, novelist John Irving, and several judges; most recently she was honored to receive the commission to paint the official portrait of former Smith College acting president John Connolly.

Crossword Puzzler
Mount Holyoke College was one of the answers in the January 25 New York Times crossword, according to Robert Shilkret, Norma Cutts DaFoe Professor of Psychology, whose wife, Cynthia, is a Times crossword enthusiast. The clue for # 52 across was Mount __ (oldest of the Seven Sisters).