Barnard Magazine Spring 2021

SPRING 2021

BACK IN BLOOM TV VETERAN SUSAN ROVNER ’91

ALUMNAE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

THE FIRST-YEAR CHANGEMAKER

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Her Leading Role

by Anna Fixsen ’13JRN

Susan Rovner ’91, P’23 spent more than two decades creating some of America’s favorite shows. Now she’s taking the creative reins at one of the country’s largest entertainment companies PHOTO BY TERENCE PATRICK/NBCUNIVERSAL

Features

Departments 2 Views & Voices

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3 From President Beilock 4 From the Editor 5D ispatches

Data Driven

by Kira Goldenberg ’07 From teaching robotics to building AI technology, these three alumnae cracked the code to successful careers in computer science

Headlines | Sister Act; Barnard Health Ambassadors; Move-In Week; Class of 2025 Wit & Whimsy | Springtime in the City 13 D iscourses Bookshelf | Books by Barnard authors

Danah Screen ’15

Student Perspective | The Changemaker

PHOTO BY DOROTHY HONG

Strides in STEM | Testing the Waters Arts & Culture | Athena Film Festival Goes Virtual; Regina K. Scully

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41 N oteworthy Passion Project | A Second Act

Sketchbook A glimpse inside the creative world of The New Yorker cartoonist Amy Hwang ’00

Q&Author | Avni Doshi ’05 Volunteers | Bridging Boundaries AABC Pages | From the AABC President Class Notes PHOTO BY DOROTHY HONG

Alumna Profile | Lisa Thurau ’82

Sources | Supporting Barnard Women Athletes Parenting | Back to School Post-Pandemic: Ask an Expert Virtual Roundup In Memoriam Obituaries | Barbara Ann Rowan ’60; Barbara Rose ’57; Betsy Wade ’51 87 Last Word by Michele Lynn ’82 88 C rossword Cover photo

by Carrie Glasser

Views & Voices

What Alumnae Are Saying on Social Media...

“Absolutely congratulations to Mary Gordon [“A Life of the Mind,” Winter 2021] on her retirement last year after more than 30 years teaching at Barnard. She was the first person to tell me, when I applied to the Creative Writing concentration as a Barnard English undergrad decades ago, ‘You’re a writer.’ Prolific woman.” —Solvej Schou ’00

EDITORIAL

Nicole Anderson ’12JRN David Hopson COPY EDITOR Molly Frances PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Lisa Buonaiuto CONTRIBUTING EDITOR N. Jamiyla Chisholm WRITERS Mary Cunningham, Lauren Mahncke, Veronica Suchodolski ’19 STUDENT INTERNS Solby Lim ’22, Isabella Pechaty ’23 EDITOR

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF BARNARD COLLEGE PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE Amy

Veltman ’89

ALUMNAE RELATIONS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

“Wonderful article [“Doing the Work,” Winter 2021].

Congrats and yeah for Barnard’s thoughtful admissions that saw the potential and admitted these stellar women!”

—Marcia Lynn Sells ’81, P’23

Karen A. Sendler

ENROLLMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENROLLMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

Jennifer G. Fondiller ’88, P’19

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS AND SPECIAL PROJECTS

Quenta P. Vettel, APR

DEVELOPMENT

VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Lisa Yeh

PRESIDENT, BARNARD COLLEGE Sian Leah Beilock

“The alumnae notes in the quarterly mag are my FAVORITE READ, esp. the obits. [These women] led fascinating lives!”

—Gabriella Spitzer ’13

“[Gordon’s] class The Modern Novel was one of my favorites! I looked forward to every lecture. Congrats to her on her retirement, and I’m ordering her book now!”

—Antonia Fasanelli ’96

CORRECTION The caption for the photograph that appeared on page 45 in the Winter 2021 issue misstated the full name of BOSS and the date of the event pictured. The correct name is the Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters, and the dance took place in April 1969. Thank you to Ruth Louie ’71, for bringing these errors to our attention.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. We would love to get your feedback on the Magazine. Please share your thoughts, ideas, or questions with us at magazine@barnard.edu.

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Spring 2021, Vol. CX, No. 2 Barnard Magazine (ISSN 1071-6513) is published quarterly by the Communications Department of Barnard College.

Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send change of address form to: Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598

EDITORIAL OFFICE

Vagelos Alumnae Center, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 212-854-0085 Email: magazine@barnard.edu Opinions expressed are those of contributors or the editor and do not represent official positions of Barnard College or the Alumnae Association of Barnard College. Letters to the editor (200 words maximum), submissions for Symposium (400 words maximum), and unsolicited articles and/or photographs will be published at the discretion of the editor and will be edited for length and clarity.

The contact information listed in Class Notes is for the exclusive purpose of providing information for the Magazine and may not be used for any other purpose.

For alumnae-related inquiries, call Alumnae Relations at 212854-2005 or email alumnaerelations@barnard.edu.

To change your address, write to: Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 646-745-8344 Email: alumrecords@barnard.edu

From President Sian Leah Beilock

PHOTO BY DOROTHY HONG

Coming Together In this year of historic challenges, Barnard has made extraordinary strides. Our community has responded to the pandemic with dedication and courage, contributing knowledge and experience to solve complex problems and to help the College carry out its mission to nourish intellectual growth. Each step of the way, we’ve used scientific rigor to inform our actions.

From the moment we started planning for the 2020-2021 academic year, the College has been guided by a data-driven approach to ensure the health and safety of the Barnard community on campus.

For the Fall semester, we made the difficult but necessary decision to stay remote in our teaching. But with so many students choosing to live near campus, we also made it a priority to provide health and safety support to our community. Throughout the Fall semester, nearly one-third of our students — those living in Morningside Heights and across the city — participated in the College’s comprehensive asymptomatic testing program on a weekly basis. And from early August to mid-May, we have conducted over 50,000 tests.

Our testing program is part of a multilayered approach the College has taken to COVID-19, including contact tracing, mask-wearing, facility upgrades, and social distancing. These steps have enabled us to gradually open up the campus. By mid-October, students were able to return to laboratories at Altschul Hall, make art in the studio, and reserve study space at the Milstein Center by following the College’s rigorous protocols.

These health and safety protocols in the fall equipped us with critical insight into how to reduce transmission of the virus by early detection and tracing, and as a result, we had the tools, data, and systems in place to welcome students back to campus in the spring for a hybrid of in-person and remote learning. Roughly 80% of our students enrolled this semester are living locally, whether on campus or in the NYC area.

During move-in week in January, I joined my colleagues in greeting students and their families outside the main entrance on Broadway. It was exciting to witness residential students walk through the gates once again. This moment put into focus all that we have achieved over this past year. Even as we were dispersed across the globe, we maintained our sense of community, and we thrived. And this signaled to me that the semester ahead would be a continuation of this remarkable work.

Over the past few months, it has been truly inspiring to see how the Barnard community has hit the ground running while being mindful of our shared responsibility to adhere to health and safety guidelines in response to COVID-19. Thanks to the implementation of our Feel Well, Do Well initiative and the efforts of our Pandemic Response Team, we’ve been successful at keeping Barnard safe and functioning at a high level, which ultimately has enabled us to be innovative, resourceful, and importantly, have some fun.

This sense of ingenuity has extended into and beyond the classroom. The story “Testing the Waters” underscores the teamwork that went into a campus-run project to monitor coronavirus in wastewater, involving the participation of student researchers, a graduate lab technician, professors, plumbing staff, and the Pandemic Response Team. It was an intricate and time-intensive project that came together as a direct result of each member’s commitment to learning and to keeping Barnard safe during the pandemic.

As I write this letter, we are just a few weeks from Commencement. Students are sitting on the grass in the afternoon sun, and the magnolia tree is once again in bloom. This tree endured a long, tough winter, but it is now festooned with pink blossoms — serving as a lovely reminder of how resilient we are and just how much we’ve grown this past year. B

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 3

From the Editor

The Thing With Feathers When I sat down to write my first editor’s letter, for the Spring 2020 issue, we were a few weeks into a statewide stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. As our reality quickly changed over the following months, so did the content in the Magazine. On a near-daily basis, I learned about the countless instances of students, staff, faculty, and alumnae who, in response to this historic crisis, were spurred to action. They served their communities, launched new projects, advocated for systemic change, and engaged in important yet difficult conversations. Over the past 12 months, it was critical that we tell these stories, however difficult and complicated they may be.

But as we worked on this issue, we experienced a sea change yet again. With the nationwide rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program, there’s a palpable sense of relief and optimism. While the pandemic still impacts our everyday lives, we find ourselves making plans, ready to step out and venture to new places, and eager to see those people from whom we’ve been apart for so long. For my colleagues and I, we’re looking forward to the time in the not-so-distant future when we can come together to send the Magazine to press from our office on campus.

The Spring issue seeks to capture this shift — this undercurrent of hope. In these pages, you’ll read about different generations of Barnard women who’ve uncovered new opportunities, even through the challenges of this past year. In “Last Word,” Michele Lynn ’82 writes an essay on her decision to get a master’s in her late 50s, which required her to adapt to a whole new learning environment nearly 40 years after she graduated from Barnard. Our feature story spotlights Susan Rovner ’91, P’23, who has been the creative force behind numerous TV hits. She tells Barnard Magazine about her new role as chairman of entertainment content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming. And then there’s Susan J. Feingold ’61, who, after decades working in the field of artificial intelligence, began composing operas later in life — often inspired by her career in STEM and by climate change.

As Susan tells us, “It’s never too late to take a step in a new direction.”

Throughout the issue, you’ll find some comic relief and lighthearted moments, from our “Wit & Whimsy” column by humor writer JiJi Lee ’01 to our sketchbook feature on New Yorker cartoonist Amy Hwang ’00. It goes to show that the Barnard community has faced the past year with spirit, pluck, and plenty of imagination, and it gives me much hope and enthusiasm for the future.

Nicole Anderson ’12JRN, Editor

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Dispatches PHOTO BY JON KING

News. Musings. Insights.

The newly installed Portrait of Dorinda Essah by painter Kehinde Wiley welcomes the Barnard community in the lobby entrance of Milbank Hall. It is part of a series of six paintings from the William Morris Gallery exhibit “Kehinde Wiley: The Yellow Wallpaper.” Two of these works are on long-term loan to the College.

6 Headlines 10 Wit & Whimsy

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 5

ILLUSTRATION BY ANITA RUNDLES

Headlines

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Sister Act

Denise and Francine LeFrak join forces to bring critical wellness programming to Barnard

by Nicole Anderson ’12 JRN “I believe so strongly that women must speak up for other women in their philanthropy,” says Francine A. LeFrak, and this is the ethos — one that was instilled by her mother Ethel, Class of ’41 — that has inspired Francine and her sister Denise to come together to collaborate and build upon their shared passion for championing women. “We found out, at this stage in our lives, that we have the ability and the right formula to work together successfully,” explains Denise.

Francine is the force behind the new Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being at Barnard.

The Center, which was announced last October, will establish a centralized hub for the College’s wellness programs, offering critical services to support students’ physical, mental, and financial well-being.

Starting in January 2022, the first floor of the former LeFrak Gymnasium in Barnard Hall — which Francine and Denise’s parents, Ethel and Samuel LeFrak, generously funded in 1998 — will undergo a renovation to create a brand-new home for the Center and its myriad wellness initiatives, including the Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard campaign, in addition to a fitness center, a space for financial wellness programming, and a dance studio.

“Our mother graduated with a degree in economics from this great College, so when the idea of a center for well-being, incorporating three pillars of wellness — financial, physical, and mental — presented itself, I wanted to move forward with it because it felt closely aligned with my Foundation and our passions,” says Francine. “The idea of enlisting my sister in this venture was crucial to me: It models the importance of our relationship and our desire not only to honor our mother’s legacy but to honor each other.”

For Denise, the Center provided all the right ingredients for an ideal partnership. “The Center for Well-Being was Francine’s idea, but I immediately felt that it was a project I wanted to be involved with in a meaningful way,” she says.

Denise realized there was an essential component

Collaboration is nothing new for Denise and Francine, who’ve joined forces numerous times, combining their expertise and experience, with impressive results.

to the Center’s health and wellness mission that she wished to bring to fruition: a resource for students who are grappling with substance abuse, whether it is their own relationship to alcohol and/or drug use or the addiction issues of a family member, friend, or partner. In March, the College announced the creation of the Denise LeFrak Foundation Alcohol and Substance Awareness Program (ASAP). Funded by a generous gift from the Denise LeFrak Foundation, the program will name a room in the Center, which will serve as a dedicated and centralized space for ASAP’s individual and group counseling, in addition to events and campus-wide outreach.

“Everybody has someone in their lives or knows someone with some kind of addiction or addictive problem,” says Denise. “In general, people stigmatize addiction, and it is proven that this approach doesn’t help anyone get better. Having a program available that increases awareness and provides access to positive ways in which to address problems will create a community of support.”

While the Center will present a range of programming, Francine is particularly excited for students to have access to resources for enhancing financial fluency.

“What I want for the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being is to see women learn about and embrace their financial future, be comfortable discussing investments, and to feel empowered and confident so that they are relying on themselves for their financial stability,” she says. “As a result, they will understand the impact that being financially sound has on their physical and mental wellness.”

Collaboration is, of course, nothing new for Denise and Francine, who’ve joined forces numerous times, combining their expertise and experience, with impressive results. One such project is the Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park, which has become a favorite skating and recreation facility for Brooklyn families. “We are able to create and achieve things working together that would not be as significant if we did them on our own,” says Denise.

Francine notes that there’s a special synergy between the two of them, bolstered by mutual respect and encouragement for one another’s interests and abilities. “We developed a partnership and communication style that works, and we support each other. I love working with Denise and learn so much from her.” Denise couldn’t agree more. “After our mother’s passing, we spent a lot of time together and found out that each of us had different things that we excelled in,” she adds. “We became this powerhouse team and complemented each other in different ways.”

And this project is proof of the sister’s exemplary teamwork. As Francine says, “Sisters coming together in their efforts to support women and women’s wellness in an innovative way is the secret sauce for the Center’s success.” This venture is not only a culmination of their collective efforts but also a celebration of their mother’s many contributions to Barnard over the years, which were driven by her enduring devotion to and support of women’s education and her alma mater.

“We have seen the powerful things taking place at Barnard over the years. We recognize Sian as the inspirational thought leader that she is and believe in her vision to help impact Barnard women,” says Francine. “I want this Center to be the model for other colleges and universities on what well-being means. I want women to have the tools to feel self-confident.” B SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 7

Headlines

#MaskUpBarnard: The Barnard Health Ambassadors Keeping Campus Safe When the COVID-19 pandemic struck last spring, Barnard sprung into action, with many alumnae, students, faculty, and staff lending their talents, time, and expertise to support and protect the Barnard community, as well as their local communities. Some got creative by launching new business ventures, while others stepped up as frontline workers and volunteers for meal services.

For the campus community, the College implemented various initiatives to promote health and safety, including the Barnard Health Ambassador Program (BHA). Launched virtually in September 2020, the program currently consists of six students, three faculty, and 18 staff members who aim to cultivate community, educate their peers, and ensure a healthy campus experience for all.

“It’s been exciting to invent the program and to see how the BHAs are community driven. Our student BHAs come up with great ways to engage the community by designing fun activities that are remote alternatives to in-person gatherings. They’re truly committed to showing that being safe and separate doesn’t mean the community can’t come together in meaningful ways,” says Allie Emmerich, Program Director for Arts Education and a staff Barnard Health Ambassador.

While classes were remote over the fall semester, the Barnard Health Ambassadors kept everyone updated through email and newsletters. They also harnessed the power of social media to promote fun initiatives, share resources on safety protocols, and provide updates, including Barnard/Columbia case numbers. Now that many students are back on campus, the BHAs provide in-person resources, such as masks and hand sanitizers.

And despite the 6-foot degree of separation, they are creating opportunities to connect.

“I appreciate my time as a student health ambassador because it gives me a chance to look out for my peers by sharing important information with them. It’s not only about protecting students against coronavirus, it’s also about protecting their well-being in general,” says student health ambassador Naomi Jones ’23. “I want students to feel like they are not alone in this pandemic: Your thoughts and feelings matter, and we want to hear your concerns!”

Visit @bhabarnard for more information and updates. B Clockwise from lower left: Cindy Krumholtz, Auden Barbour ’22, Naomi Jones ’23, Tamia Lewis ’24, Sarah de Freitas, Inkyoung (Ken) Kim

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PHOTOS BY JON KING

by Mary Cunningham

By the Numbers

2025 is Barnard’s most selective year yet for admissions

Celebrating Move-In Week 2021 Residential students returned to campus for the spring semester this January. Masked greeters, including President Sian Leah Beilock, welcomed students and their families and friends outside the main gate.

“Our admitted class is truly impressive, and the record-breaking number of applicants this year is a testament to the value of the education we offer and the Barnard experience as a whole,” said Jennifer Fondiller, Vice President for Enrollment and Communications. “It’s a recognition of not only our academic excellence but also the strong sense of community on which we relied to get us through the most difficult days of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

10,395

applications received from around the world

1,084

students admitted to the Class of 2025

10%

increase in applicants from last year

Winter Break Barnard’s campus was covered in a blanket of snow after several storms hit the Northeast.

Students braved the cold and built socially distanced snowpeople — spaced 6 feet apart — outfitting them in the garb of this unusual winter.

Office Hours Outdoors This semester, the College set up tents on Futter Field so that students, staff, and faculty could have a safe space to gather. In March, Professor Karen Fairbanks, chair of the Department of Architecture, held her office hours outdoors beneath one of the tents. Students and passersby could pick up a snack and an Architecture Department sketchbook.

19%

identify as first-generation college students

64%

identify as women of color

43

states and territories represented

40

countries represented SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 9

Wit & Whimsy

Springtime in the City: Expectation vs. Reality

by JiJi Lee ’01 Expectation: I will take a leisurely stroll around the farmers market, examining and sniffing fresh produce, as if I am Julia Child shopping at an open-air marché in Paris or the type of person who knows when fruit is ripe or not.

Reality: I take a deep whiff of berries and instantly get stung by a bee.

Expectation: I will go out, wearing my brand-new floral dress and open-toed shoes, because it’s a 70-degree day and my weather app is showing a smiling-sun emoji.

Reality: It starts hailing within five minutes of leaving my apartment, and I’m forced to create a makeshift umbrella out of my sandals. The smiling-sun emoji on my weather app has turned into a devil-face emoji with lightning bolts for eyebrows.

Expectation: I will go jogging.

Reality: Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get too ambitious here!

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY LAURA MISHKIN

Expectation: Springtime means romance is in the air! At the park, I will lock eyes with a comely stranger who will engage me in a friendly and stimulating conversation on current events, movies, our favorite bruschetta toppings, and the book Lincoln in the Bardo, because even though I’ve owned this book for two years, I will have definitely read it by spring.

Reality: The only thing that’s in the air is pollen. Seasonal allergies keep me in bed. I never find out what a bardo is.

Expectation: I will become a plant owner. I’ll have orchids, ferns, and whatever plants I see on Reese Witherspoon’s Instagram. My apartment’s balcony will be a veritable Garden of Eden. I will relax languorously in a stylish hammock.

Reality: I forget to water my plants. The dry, brittle leaves turn my balcony into a fire hazard. My hammock becomes a resting place for the local squirrel population.

Expectation: I will eat an ice-cream cone and it will melt all over me.

Reality: I eat an ice-cream cone and it melts all over me.

Expectation: After deconstructing my makeshift umbrella and reassembling the parts into open-toed shoes, I will finally have the opportunity to show off my freshly painted pedicure.

Reality: After neglecting my feet all winter, my toenails look like oyster shells. Passersby gawk at my hardened heels. Children run away in horror. A bird pecks at my toes, mistaking them for seafood. And after all that, my feet don’t even produce a pearl.

Expectation: I will finally work on my novel, because the birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and my creativity is blossoming like a yellow daffodil.

Reality: I do not write my novel because it’s actually sunny and warm out and I have to enjoy spring while it lasts — which, as always, is a long and indulgent five to 10 minutes.

JiJi Lee is a features contributor for The Onion and a contributing humor writer for The New Yorker and McSweeney’s.

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 11

Barnard was such a pivotal and impactful experience in my life. I wanted to honor and recognize that by including Barnard in my estate plans and by joining the Athena Society. I felt it particularly important to contribute in this way to demonstrate my commitment to the College and, hopefully, to help others access it and benefit from it, as I did.”

—M.J. Hawes ’92

To learn more about how you can join M.J. in support of Barnard and its world-changing young women, please contact JiHae Munro | 212.853.8313 and Alison Robbins | 212.853.8314 plannedgiving@barnard.edu

Discourses Ideas. Perspectives. A closer look.

PHOTO BY JON KING

14 Bookshelf 16 Student Perspective 18 Strides in STEM 20 Arts & Culture

Laboratory technician Nicole Rondeau ’18 is part of the team of students, faculty, and staff spearheading a campus-run project to monitor coronavirus in wastewater to keep the community safe during the pandemic.

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 13

Bookshelf

Books by Barnard Authors

by Isabella Pechaty ’23

NONFICTION Spirited: Cocktails From Around the World

by Adrienne Stillman Krausz ’08 Drawing from a worldwide community of bartenders and cocktail devotees, Stillman has compiled one of the most exhaustive beverage almanacs to date. Stillman, who personally tested and perfected every recipe, documents each beverage with its history, heritage, and photo, creating an indispensable mixology dictionary.

Seeing Like an Activist: Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement

by Erin Pineda ’06 Pineda reexamines the legacy of the civil rights movement through a contemporary lens and points out how it is often used to silence new generations of activists. Pineda argues that holding up the methods of the civil rights movement as the gold standard overgeneralizes the practices of civil disobedience and political participation that served activists decades ago and can continue to serve activists today.

Nostalgia After Apartheid: Disillusionment, Youth, and Democracy in South Africa

by Amber R. Reed ’05 Reed considers one of the unexpected outcomes following the institution of the South African democracy: a “nostalgia” felt by Black residents for some aspects of apartheid life in rural Eastern Cape. She offers a new viewpoint on how poorly enacted systems of democracy coupled with economic shortcomings of the post-apartheid state affected the rural Black population, resulting in many residents seeing South African democracy as a repression of their own African customs.

Rarities of These Lands: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic

by Claudia Swan ’86 Swan tracks the variety of foreign products that traveled in and out of Dutch hands during the Netherlands’ political and economic height of the 17th century.

As the republic gained independence from Spain, the Dutch strove to establish a new national identity through the many exotic goods — “rarities,” they called them — they traded with Middle Eastern countries.

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Preserving Neighborhoods: How Urban Policy and Community Strategy Shape Baltimore and Brooklyn

by Aaron Passell, Associate Director of Urban Studies Challenging the idea that historic preservation is exclusively an elite project that causes gentrification, professor and urban sociologist Passell investigates distinct processes of preservation through two case studies of Brooklyn and Baltimore. Passell’s work is born out of an interest in the intersection of social life and urban environments and how historic preservation, in particular, can facilitate resistance to change and foster investment in neglected neighborhoods.

Weaving Modernism: Postwar Tapestry Between Paris and New York

by K.L.H. Wells ’05 With modernism quickly becoming the dominant aesthetic after World War II, Wells examines how tapestry in France helped promote this change in style, capturing the attention of artists from Picasso to Matisse. Offering new abstract artists an established medium to create and distribute their work, tapestry found its way into modern homes and offices across America and France. Inside the book, readers can examine works by such notable artists as Helen Frankenthaler, Josef Albers, and Frank Stella.

Two American Crusades: Actors and Factors in the Cold War and the Global War on Terrorism

by Marian K. Leighton ’64 Informed by decades of working closely with the

United States intelligence community, Leighton details America’s complicated involvement in conflicts across the 20th and 21st centuries. The book treats the Cold War and the global war on terrorism as interlinked conflicts — inseparable from each other and from historical and international contexts — shedding light on why peace continues to evade American foreign policymakers.

Simply Julia: 100 Easy Recipes for Healthy Comfort Food

by Julia Turshen ’07 Turshen uses her experience as a private chef and as a New York Times bestselling cookbook author to share her holistic philosophy on home cooking.

Turshen amasses a variety of delicious, soulful, and low-maintenance recipes to prepare in your own kitchen. Complete with the chef’s tips on everything from buttermilk to menu planning, the cookbook provides ample ideas for the aspiring home cook.

Making Milton: Print, Authorship, Afterlives

by Marissa Nicosia ’07 (with Emma Depledge and John S. Garrison) Nicosia and her co-editors have compiled 14 original essays examining the rise of John Milton — best known for his epic poem “Paradise Lost” — to becoming one of the most widely accepted contemporary thinkers and writers of the 17th century. The essays study Milton’s work by looking at how it came into existence, positing that the means of production and distribution significantly influenced how he wrote and how his writing was then received.

A Regarded Self: Caribbean Women and the Ethics of Disorderly Being

by Kaiama L. Glover, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies Professor Glover details a new way to study and understand the protagonists of Caribbean women writers. She challenges the notion that these writers and their characters are inseparable from their community and seeks to establish a new literary identity of “the regarded self.” Highlighting how these female characters define their identities in radical, sometimes uncomfortable ways, Glover provides a fresh look at women in Caribbean literature.

The Polio Pioneer

by Linda Elovitz Marshall ’71 Children’s author Marshall follows the life and legacy of Dr. Jonas Salk, one of the most influential American physicians of the 20th century. Featuring colorful illustrations and accessible language, Marshall’s book turns attention to the role of vaccination in our society as she explains Dr. Salk’s many contributions to the influenza vaccine, the polio vaccine, and the medical community in general.

FICTION The Comeback

by Elizabeth Lee ’08 Lee (under the name E. L. Shen) tells the story of Maxine Chen, a middle schooler struggling with maintaining a perfect identity both within the high-pressure world of figure skating and in the scrutinizing environment of being a Chinese American at her New York school. Maxine’s story of finding friendship and community in the face of grueling competition and racism will inspire an audience of young readers.

POETRY Qorbanot: Offerings

by Alisha Kaplan ’11 Taking its title from the Hebrew word for “sacrificial offerings,” Kaplan’s book examines, through poetry, the timeworn concept of sacrifice.

In this joint effort with visual artist Tobi Aaron Kahn, Kaplan muses on the traditional, historical, and intimate ramifications of sacrifice through the legacy of Holocaust survivors and the Orthodox Judaism religion. B SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 15

Student Perspective

The Changemaker

by Mary Cunningham In early January, all eyes were on Georgia. After the Senate race was too close to call in November, Georgians returned to polling sites to cast their ballots once more. The stakes were high: The outcome of the election would determine the majority in the Senate. In the days leading up to the election, Audrey McNeal ’24, serving as a campaign intern for Reverend Raphael Warnock, was busy organizing and conducting outreach to people all over the country through emailing and phone banking. The goal was to mobilize the youth vote. “We’re not up next, we’re up now,” says McNeal, whose work has centered on increasing political engagement among the young and making her own voice heard.

But galvanizing her peers to take action is nothing new for the 19-year-old, who has stepped up time and time again to serve her community. Last year, she ran to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, not only winning the most votes in her home district but also becoming the youngest elected delegate from her district. And in 2018, she interned with Stacey Abrams during her gubernatorial run.

McNeal grew up in a historically red county outside of metro Atlanta. When she reached high school, she noticed that few of her peers were having bipartisan conversations. While there was a sizable Young Republican Club, the Young Democrats’ presence was very meager, recalls McNeal. “I thought to myself, if we don’t start political conversations, especially in a world where the media we consume is already very catered to our beliefs, then some people would just never know to change their minds about some things or at least strengthen their own political beliefs by encountering the other argument or the other side.”

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“I think historically young people have really been the change that we’ve wanted to see in America.”

Recognizing the need to foster more open dialogue around politics, McNeal founded Political Converse, a club to bring Democrats and Republicans together to engage in civil debates and explore bipartisan solutions. Along with this effort, McNeal co-founded Stronger Together with a local university professor to advocate for students of color in counties across Georgia by pushing for initiatives like a Senate study committee on educational development. She also participated in American Legion Auxiliary Girls Nation, a weeklong program to introduce teenage girls to public service, and the Model Atlanta Regional Commission, for which she served as the chair for the natural resources committee. These collective experiences are what cemented McNeal’s interest in politics. “I realized I wanted to dedicate my life and my career to be in service to something that’s greater than myself,” she says.

Now, McNeal is determined to get more young people to participate in the

PHOTO BY JON KING

Audrey McNeal ’24 has canvassed for Sen. Raphael Warnock, campaigned for Stacey Abrams, and confirmed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at the DNC. She’s only a first-year, and she’s just getting started

political process; she wants them to know that their voice and their vote have power. “I think historically young people have really been the change that we’ve wanted to see in America,” remarks McNeal.

McNeal’s passion for youth engagement prompted her to run for delegate in her home state of Georgia in March 2020. She recognized the important role 18to 24-year-olds play in the election cycle, especially in red states like Georgia. “I thought that I could propel people to vote,” she says, and after running a successful online campaign — McNeal notes that instead of going door to door, she went email to email — she was elected as a delegate to the 2020 Democratic National Convention (held virtually as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic). In August, she joined delegates across the country to confirm Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party platform. “Just me being a part of confirming someone like Kamala Harris, who is the first person of color and first woman vice president, was

really amazing and profound,” she remarks.

After the convention, McNeal realized there was still critical work to be done, particularly in her home state. As the runoff election was heating up, she landed an internship working for Reverend Raphael Warnock’s campaign. A key factor of the race was communicating the stakes of the election to young people and securing their votes. “It was really interesting seeing young people so touched from not only people in our state but people from all over the nation — just using social media to say like, look, the whole country really is counting on you, like you can make a difference and change the majority in the Senate,” recalls McNeal.

Despite the uphill battle, McNeal and her team were determined to give it their all. They conducted outreach across the country, encouraging people to contribute whatever they could to support the campaign. “I guess the underdog mentality helped us know that every call, every text message, every door that we canvassed really did matter,” says McNeal.

And their hard work paid off: On January 6, 2021, Warnock clinched the victory, along with fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff. (Warnock is the first African American senator, and Ossoff the first Jewish senator, from the state of Georgia.) “They were a very dynamic duo, and they stood for a lot of hope for the people of Georgia. I mean the significance is really uncanny,” McNeal notes.

While McNeal is still determining her career path — law school or a position as a public servant are possibilities — she knows she wants to be a political science major. She’s already taken quite a few poli sci classes — including Intro to American Politics, The American Presidency, and, as her First-Year Seminar, Writing American Lives — and is looking forward to exploring more of the department’s offerings during her time at Barnard. And her political aspirations extend beyond the campus gates. She also wants to take advantage of her time in New York City by participating in advocacy efforts and getting more policy experience, possibly by working for a state or local official.

For now, she continues her political involvement through projects like the Partnership for Southern Equity Youth Initiative KTSE (“Keep That Same Energy”), firmly rooted in the belief that young people can spark meaningful change. “They challenge systems and they change them, which I think is a really powerful thing, being a young person in politics,” she says. “It’s our place to call out our society and be the change that we want to see.” B SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 17

Strides in STEM

Testing the Waters

A campus-run project to monitor coronavirus in wastewater is part of a multipronged effort to keep the community safe during the COVID-19 pandemic

by Robin Lloyd On a chilly Tuesday morning in early January, Nicole Rondeau ’18 jumped on her bicycle and pedaled from her South Harlem apartment up the 110th Street hill to meet at Altschul Hall with Barnard plumber Oliver Rose, co-chair of the Environmental Science Department Brian Mailloux, and assistant professor of biology JJ Miranda. Their mission that morning? Brave the basements of campus buildings to retrieve sewage samples on the first official day of an unflinching project to monitor wastewater for the virus that causes COVID-19.

This ongoing effort has provided administrators with valuable snapshots of campus health for more than four months now, adding another layer of data to mandatory nasal-swab test results and numerous other efforts to protect the Barnard community during the global health crisis. The project’s launch 18

samples in the lab.

“They literally do the dirty work, and they’re doing it for themselves, for their friends, and for the College. And that has just been really nice to see,” says Miranda, who carved out time from his schedule last fall to lead the team in developing a safe and streamlined set of laboratory procedures. Cell and molecular biology major Lina Ariyan ’22 was among those putting in many hours of work early on, even commuting from Rockland County during winter recess to test lab procedures (naturally, the team has, at all times, adhered to required coronavirus risk-reduction guidelines). To detect coronavirus genetic material in the samples, the team modified the same gold-standard method recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for analyzing nasal-swab samples, a technology called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. Ariyan and Rondeau perform professional-level laboratory biology for the project, Miranda says; it’s work that is typically performed by people with graduate degrees. “This isn’t the expert team that most places have,” he adds. “They have really stepped up to do high-quality science in pretty stressful times.”

The project’s day-to-day procedures are so efficient that a report of the lab results on samples — collected on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings — is emailed by dinnertime that same day to the College’s pandemic response team of experts, who oversee coronavirus testing, contact tracing, and quarantining on campus. Mailloux, Miranda, and their group of researchers create the reports, highlighting time trends in rising, falling, or steady concentrations of the virus detected in wastewater. This real-time data helps the pandemic response team make informed decisions.

The coronavirus wastewater-monitoring idea was the brainchild of Mailloux, a groundwater microbiology specialist who has helped run similar community health projects for many years in Bangladesh, where groundwater was sampled for fecal matter and naturally occurring arsenic. Last summer, Mailloux — aware of the Miranda Lab’s expertise in virology — asked Miranda, “Is anyone PCRing coronavirus at Barnard? If not, what would we need to do this?” Miranda determined that such a campus-run project was feasible, although some tensionrelieving humor was unavoidable. “It became a running joke when I talked with

PHOTOS BY JON KING

was timed to coincide with the reopening of campus to students this winter.

Many campuses nationwide, including Columbia’s, have recently initiated similar wastewater efforts, because infected people typically shed the coronavirus from both ends. Because the virus’s genetic material shows up in human waste, signaling a past or current infection, testing the waters can catch cases potentially missed by nasalswab testing or before those results come in. This project, funded by the President’s Office, required the overnight development of new collaborative relationships and close partnerships among various members of the campus community, many of whom previously had only a passing acquaintance. But another highlight particularly pleases Mailloux and Miranda: the core involvement of Rondeau, a post-baccalaureate laboratory technician, and a half-dozen current student researchers who help retrieve sample bottles and do most of the filtering, concentrating, and analysis of decontaminated

people in my lab and classes,” Miranda says. “I’d say, ‘Brian Mailloux wants to measure coronavirus in poop water. But if he wants help, I’ll do it.’”

Once the project was green-lit in the fall, the team inadvertently tackled the toughest scenario first, choosing to test their analytic procedures, called an assay, first on wastewater from a communal academic building rather than a dormitory. “In a dormitory, you have toilets, kitchen sinks, showers, and washing machines generating a mix of wastewater,” Miranda says. “And the fecal matter of interest there is diluted and relatively easy to handle. A communal building, however, only has toilets, more or less.” As a result, the output from the building was much more concentrated than it needed to be, at least at the start of the semester. “It turned out we had set the bar higher than we needed to,” Miranda says. The issue resolved over time since more people started to use the building — and its entire plumbing system — as the semester proceeded.

Currently, the team focuses on six buildings, chosen to represent meaningful slices of the student, staff, and faculty population. Wi-Fi-enabled automated pumps, installed with Rose’s help at the traps in each building’s wastewater outflow pipe, turn on periodically for 24-hour sessions three times a week. If weather makes it dicey for team members to get to campus, Mailloux can turn the pumps on and off remotely using his smartphone. In each building, the pumps deliver material from the outflow through tubing to a pre-labeled glass bottle housed inside a miniature refrigerator that keeps intact any virus that is present. The vessels hold a composite sample, which provides an average picture of the health of everyone who worked, visited, or lived in the building during the previous 24 hours. Team members retrieve the full bottles, placing them in a rolling cooler and swapping in pre-labeled empty bottles for the next day’s collection.

Mailloux, Rondeau, and Rose lug the cooler to an Altschul biology department teaching lab that is now dedicated to the wastewater monitoring project to avoid any cross-contamination. There, Rondeau sets the bottles in a hot-water bath for an hour, which inactivates the viruses and bacteria in the samples but doesn’t degrade the virus’s structure.

At noon, a student joins Rondeau; donning green lab coats and goggles, they begin processing the material,

filtering and concentrating the liquid from 40 milliliters to 200 microliters. Finally, the pair performs the PCR analysis to test for the presence of the coronavirus. In the late afternoon, Rondeau emails her results to the project’s team for the final report.

“It’s really encouraging when we see a couple of days or weeks go by during which everything is staying clean,” Mailloux says, meaning that Rondeau’s lab analysis detects no coronavirus in recent samples taken from all six buildings.

Down the line, Miranda plans to expand the project’s data analysis to test for new variants of the virus that may or may not make it more transmissible or deadly. And although Miranda did not envision that his virology know-how would be put into the service of a campus wastewater monitoring project, he and all the team members take pride in the project. “This is why we do science. Everyone is putting their expertise together to make something useful and tangible for the community,” Miranda says.

The project is set to continue as long as it is necessary. As Ariyan puts it: “For the sake of the world, I hope the project ends sooner rather than later. But as long as it is ongoing, I would definitely love to stay on and work on this.” B This page, left: Janet Vo ’22 removes a sample bottle from the refrigerator to bring for analysis and adds a new sterile bottle to prepare for the next sample.

Below: Professor Brian Mailloux examines a sample of wastewater that was just collected.

Opposite page: Professor JJ Miranda and Abigail Schreier ’21 analyze wastewater sample data.

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Arts & Culture

Athena Film Festival Goes Virtual

This year, the festival transformed its signature event into a virtual program, streaming a record number of films about women leaders directly to viewers’ devices

by Lauren Mahncke The 11th annual Athena Film Festival — co-founded

by Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership and Women and Hollywood — might not have welcomed the usual crowds to its annual celebration this year, but it did break new barriers, reaching a global audience with its robust programming. Streaming over 75 films directly into viewers’ living rooms, this first-ever virtual festival responded to the past year’s unique challenges while celebrating women’s efforts to solve them.

The festival — held throughout March in honor of Women’s History Month — celebrated fearless women in leadership roles, with over 89% of the films directed by people who identify as women or nonbinary and over 50% of directors identifying as people of color.

The virtual format provided audiences with the opportunity to watch shorts and feature-length films anywhere in the United States, including Hawaii and Puerto Rico, in addition to viewing prerecorded panels and conversations.

“I am so proud of how the festival team pivoted our operations and programming to be responsive to this moment and to leverage the opportunities that emerged from a virtual format,” says Umbreen Bhatti ’00, Constance Hess Williams ’66 Director of the Athena Center. “Year-over-year, this signature event continues to grow, connect with new audiences, engage more filmmakers, and advance the conversation around gender equity.”

The festival kicked off on March 1 with the U.S. premiere of Tracey Deer’s Beans, a coming-of-age story that highlighted often-marginalized Indigenous voices by exploring the 1990 Oka Crisis. And there was plenty more to see, with a curated lineup that offered nine shorts programs, more than 20 panels and Q&As, and a slate of documentary and narrative 20

features.

As we’ve grappled with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, resiliency has become all the more important. The festival shined a spotlight on this very topic through their program area Resilience Through Uncertainty, showcasing films about women leading with compassion and perseverance through the most difficult circumstances. Julia Scotti: Funny That Way tackles the complexities of gender dysphoria, identity, and healing with the story of comedian Rick Scotti, whose gender awakening at age 47 led to hormonal treatments, surgery, and a new identity as Julia Scotti — and the loss of her family, friends, and career.

Susan Sandler’s documentary tracks Julia’s comedic comeback, life on the road, and reunion with her children, bringing a bit of laughter and relief to a year that has challenged us all.

For far too long, women have been sidelined or underrepresented in the sciences. The Making It Happen: Women in STEM program area, supported by the festival’s partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, helps right this wrong with films like Picture a Scientist. Sharon Shattuck and Ian Cheney’s documentary features scientific luminaries that overcame sexism, institutionalized discrimination, and more to help make science more diverse and equitable.

Unapologetic, directed by Ashley O’Shay, bravely tackles another epidemic that continues to plague America: institutionalized racism and police brutality. The documentary, which follows abolitionists Janaé and Bella as they work within the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago, received this year’s Breakthrough Award. The $25,000 award, sponsored by Netflix, recognizes first- and secondtime filmmakers whose film hasn’t received U.S. distribution.

While this year’s virtual festival may have come to a close, the program lives on as a year-round educational platform, advancing women in film. The Parity Pipeline Continued on page 86

Fierce Compassion

Women’s stories of “love, resilience, and joy” drive the Athena Film Festival’s most ardent supporter

OPPOSITE PAGE: FROM THE FILM UNAPOLOGETIC; THIS PAGE: PHOTO BY ROBIN MARCHANT

by June D. Bell Regina K. Scully’s perfect weekend is spent in the dark. She’s happiest in a movie theater soaking up film after film. A lifelong cinephile, she’s drawn to what she calls “DNA changers,” documentaries and narratives that radically and enduringly transform viewers’ perspectives.

Making those types of movies is the mission of her organization, Artemis Rising Foundation, which has produced more than 200 films on themes such as social justice, recovery, and healing. Scully was the executive producer of The Invisible War, which dug deep into sexual assault in the military, as well as I Am Evidence, which took an unsparing look at how the extreme backlog of untested rape kits affects victims.

Both won Emmys.

The Artemis Rising Foundation is also the largest supporter of Barnard’s Athena Film Festival, which this spring celebrated its 11th anniversary.

“Without Regina’s commitment — her early and sustained commitment — the festival would not exist,” says Melissa Silverstein, the festival’s artistic director and co-founder.

“She wanted to support and invest in the Festival, publicly. She is deeply committed to women philanthropists using their resources and voices to create change and inspire others.”

Scully’s generous donations over the past decade provide critical, general operating support that sustains the festival from year to year and bolsters its work to educate, connect, and empower women filmmakers. “It is Regina’s leadership and loyal commitment that undergird all of our efforts each year and allow us to grow and thrive,” says Victoria Lesourd, Chief of Staff at the Athena Center,

who manages the festival and works on its annual fundraising.

Scully is not a Barnard alumna (Georgetown is her alma mater), but she admires how Barnard nurtures and empowers women. “I have a real affinity and fondness for this school,” she says.

The Athena Film Festival highlights cinema that focuses on women’s leadership and showcases women’s creativity as producers, directors, and writers, an aim that resonates with Scully. “I love the emphasis on female storytelling and women behind the lens. Athena’s mission is in great alignment” with that of Artemis, she says.

Scully notes that the Athena Film Festival and the Artemis Rising Foundation are both named for deities. Artemis, she says, is “the goddess of fierce compassion, and to me, the greatest stories are told through a compassionate lens.”

That compassion extends to her most recent documentary, What Would Sophia Loren Do?, which was screened at the 2021 Athena Film Festival and is available on Netflix. The short initially appears to be a valentine to Scully’s mother, Nancy Kulik, who idolizes the iconic Italian actress. But in a compact 32 minutes, the film also dips into a bottomless well of heartache and grief. Nonetheless, “it is a recovery film,” Scully says. “It’s about love, resilience, and joy.”

Fifteen other films produced by the Artemis Rising Foundation have screened at the Athena Film Festival. Attendees at the first festival, in 2011, viewed Miss Representation, a documentary exploring the subtle and overt media and cultural factors that discourage women from pursuing leadership roles. Scully was the film’s executive producer.

Silverstein credits Scully’s support with empowering female directors and producers as they find and raise their unique voices.

“All the images in our culture have been white and male,” she says. “Now, it’s all about disrupting the status quo and bringing in new storytellers, because stories are how we connect with one another.”

Thanks in no small part to Scully’s generosity, she says, the Athena Film Festival showcases a world “where women are front and center, unapologetically.” B

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PHOTO BY TERENCE PATRICK/NBCUNIVERSAL

Her Leading Role

Susan Rovner ’91, P’23 spent more than two decades creating some of America’s favorite shows. Now she’s taking the creative reins at one of the country’s largest entertainment companies

by Anna Fixsen ’13JRN

Susan Rovner ’91, P’23 can’t recall a day when she didn’t love television. As a kid growing up on Long Island in the late ’70s, she would scramble downstairs, flick on the tube, and sit transfixed by spine-tingling episodes of The Twilight Zone or giggle along to the slapstick antics of Larry, Moe, and Curly in the Three Stooges shorts. As family lore has it, her mother once encountered a young Rovner draped over the television set completely asleep. When she asked what her daughter was doing, a bleary-eyed Rovner reportedly replied, “I wanted to be on TV.” Rovner may never have starred in a TV show herself, but her work has very likely been beamed into your home: Gossip Girl, Everwood, Westworld, One Tree Hill, You, 2 Broke Girls, and Cold Case — to name just a few — are all projects she has shepherded in her two decades as one of the most respected names in the business, most recently as president of Warner Bros.

Television (WBTV).

Last fall, she landed her most ambitious role to date, as chairman of entertainment content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a title that puts her at the creative helm of an empire that includes seven television networks — NBC, Bravo, E!, Oxygen, Syfy, Universal Kids, and USA — and the network’s year-old streaming service, Peacock.

For Rovner, the promotion is a capstone to a career defined by hard work and an ardent love of the medium.

“I approach everything that I do in television as a fan, not a critic,” she says. “[My shows have] really run the gamut, but I loved them all so equally. I think my approach to all of it was, ‘How do I help make this show the best it can be?’”

Rovner’s on the phone from California, where she lives with her mom, husband, and three kids (two are college-aged and attend Barnard and Columbia; the youngest is still in high school). Rovner joins NBCUniversal at a critical moment in television history, one that in the past year saw production grind to a halt and advertising dollars plummet during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are broader existential questions too, especially as streaming ventures continue to gobble up traditional television audiences, and Hollywood faces a reckoning over racial and gender inequality, encapsulated by hashtags like #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite.

Rovner’s new role places her squarely at the center of some of these issues, but her colleagues and collaborators point to her ability to thrive in what can be, at times, a turbulent and toxic industry. As Greg Berlanti, the Golden Globe-nominated writer, director, and producer behind series like Dawson’s Creek, Everwood, and You, puts it, “Television has been forever changing. [Susan’s] been a real constant.”

As a child and young adult, however, Rovner didn’t know that a career in television was a possibility. She grew up in a lower-middle-class household just outside of New York City (“My full name is Susan Rosner Rovner and I’m from SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 23

Roslyn, Long Island,” she quips); not working was never an option. “I think my work ethic and so much of what defines me is because I’ve just always had to,” she says.

So when she enrolled at Barnard in 1987 as a math major, television was nowhere on her radar. “I knew that I wanted to be in an environment that would let me find my voice, that would let me speak,” she recalls. Rovner switched to a political economics major her junior year, while working waitress and retail jobs to support herself. After graduating in 1991, she intended to go work for the Federal Reserve Bank, but Rovner remembers, “I had this moment of truly freaking out and being like, ‘Do I want to do this for the rest of my life? I don’t think I do.’”

She decided to take a leap of faith and move to Los Angeles, giving herself three months to find a job. If she couldn’t, Rovner reasoned, she would simply move back to New York. “I wish I could say there was a direct plan — there wasn’t,” she laughs.

Once in L.A., Rovner made a friend who happened to work at the Fox Broadcasting Company. Rovner’s mind was blown. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God. This is amazing.

You do this?’” she recalls. “I didn’t leave her alone until she helped me find a job.”

The friend came through. Rovner secured an interview for a personal assistant job on the movie side of an agency called Triad Artists. “I gave the interview of my life,” Rovner says. Though she had zero Hollywood experience under her belt, Rovner’s business acumen and math background impressed her would-be boss, and she landed the job. It was far from glamorous, filled with typical PA tasks like picking up the phone, making photocopies, and running errands, but a whole new world was opening up to her, and she was getting exposure to big-name writers and producers.

She was hungry for more.

Rovner spent a total of two years in the agency world before moving to a production company that made TV movies in 1994. “It was sort of production boot camp because it was very small and we did everything,” she explains. By the mid-’90s, Rovner was moving up, in both her career and her life. She was offered a job at ABC in 1996 to work on movies for television. The following year, she married her husband, Robert Rovner, a television writer and producer also from the New York area (they met on a blind date in Los Angeles). Disney acquired ABC, and Rovner — by then the executive director of her department — felt she needed a change. In 1998, an opportunity came up to be the director of drama development at WBTV. It was a step back, in terms of both title and pay, but something told Rovner it was the right move. “I was terrified,” she says, “[but] my heart told me to take the job, and it was the best thing I ever did.”

Rovner thrived at WBTV. Throughout the early-to-mid 2000s, she worked with writers and producers on shows like The O.C., Cold Case, and Everwood and collaborated with noted producers and directors, including J.J. Abrams and Jerry Bruckheimer. Still, being a woman in Hollywood was no cakewalk. “You know, it was really, really hard,” Rovner says of those early years. “There was a ton of sexism. There was also very much a belief that you could not be both a mother and an executive. And I really didn’t have a ton of women that I was close to ahead of me to look at who had done it.”

A women’s conference at Time Warner (WBTV’s parent company) in 2010 marked a turning point. There, Rovner learned about something called “the Tiara Syndrome,”

“[Susan] prioritizes the storytelling, and she has her pulse on how to work with artists in a way that allows them to expand their imagination.”

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Clockwise from top: The Rev, airing on USA Network; American Auto, picked up

by NBC for the 2021-2022 season; Mr. Mayor, airing on NBC.

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Susan Rovner (right) as a Barnard student with a friend; during her tenure at Warner Bros. Television, Rovner developed Gossip Girl (center) for the CW Network and Westworld (right) for HBO.

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a phrase coined to describe a woman’s tendency to work hard hoping to be “crowned” with a raise or a promotion. “Unfortunately, that’s not how the world works,” Rovner says. “I loved it [at Warner Bros.], but I was stuck. And all these men around me were getting promoted,” she continues. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to tell them what I want. I’ve got to demand it.’”

Post-epiphany, Rovner took charge of her destiny. In 2010, after eight years as senior vice president of drama development for WBTV, she was named the executive vice president of development. Four years later, she added co-president of Warner Horizon Scripted Television to that title. And in 2019, after more than two decades at the company, she was elevated to joint president, a role that included overseeing scripted series across the five major American broadcast networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the CW Television Network) and streaming platforms, including Apple TV+, Netflix, and Hulu.

Advocating for herself may have been a new concept for Rovner, but her collaborators also point to her unwavering advocacy for people and ideas she believes in. Writer and producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa recalls struggling to get a movie based on the Archie comic books off the ground.

After fits and starts, he wound up pitching it to Rovner at WBTV as a television series. “I walked into her office, and before I even said what I was there for, she said, ‘I love your writing, I love the Archie comic-book characters.

We’re going to make the show, and it’s going to be a monster hit,’” Aguirre-Sacasa remembers.

That meeting set the series Riverdale into motion, which, after airing on the CW, became one of Netflix’s most popular series worldwide. Says Aguirre-Sacasa, “Susan saw Riverdale before anyone else did — meaning she saw the potential in the idea.”

Berlanti, the writer-producer, says Rovner encouraged diverse voices before “inclusivity” became a Hollywood catchphrase. “Ten, 15, 20 years ago … it was still pretty much a given that most stories would be from a straight, white, cisgendered male point of view,” he says. “And the reason that this [more diverse] kind of storytelling became so ascendant is because of executives like Susan.”

Ava DuVernay, the Academy Award-nominated director, writer, and producer, has worked on numerous projects with Rovner over the years, notably on the critically acclaimed series Queen Sugar. DuVernay describes the experience as a “nourishing” one, in part because Rovner gave her complete creative latitude. “She prioritizes the storytelling, and she has her pulse on how to work with

artists in a way that allows them to expand their imagination,” DuVernay says.

“And when artists expand their imagination, they’re able to come up with ideas that feel fresh and execute them in ways that they would want to see. She plants those seeds.”

Indeed, nurturing a positive corporate culture is the first thing on Rovner’s to-do list (a paper list she literally keeps in her home office) while at NBCUniversal. She wants to create an environment in which “there’s collaboration, that we can treat each other with mutual respect that we embrace different points of view, and that we’re inclusive and have a diverse body [of employees],” she says. Rovner is also looking to grow and define the content strategy for Peacock, the streaming service that NBCUniversal launched last July (there are also premium, paid-subscription tiers). Even as she grows Peacock, she hopes to keep the company’s traditional TV channels (known as linear networks), such as NBC and USA, healthy by continuing to serve their audiences and seeking out compelling programming.

The challenges are formidable — How do you get a fan of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, say, to sign up for Peacock? — but Rovner is excited to reveal more about her game plan in the coming months. Already under her tenure, the company has announced it’s ordered The Best Man: The Final Chapters, a spinoff series based on Malcolm D. Lee’s 1999 rom-com, to stream on Peacock, and La Brea, a drama about a sinkhole upending a family of Angelenos, for NBC this fall.

Which brings her to the final item on her list: to win. “It’s sort of a joke, but not,” she says. “I want to have the best shows, I want to have shows that resonate with our audience, I want to get great ratings, and I want to make a lot of money for the company.”

As Rovner makes good on that plan — between countless video calls, making sure her kids are set for their remote school days, and walks through the neighborhood — she still remains a fervent television fanatic, one who thinks that Sex and the City represents perfect television and has even been known to incorporate Barnard into the plotline of Riverdale.

“She’s not just a great executive, she’s a great mom and a great wife and really is doing it all,” Berlanti reflects.

“Supergirl is one of our shows together, and, you know, it’s very true of her.” B

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DATA DRIVEN

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY ADRIÀ RAMÍREZ DALMAU

When Galina Datskovsky ’83 was a student at Barnard, she was one of the few undergraduates in her class to major in computer science and often the only woman in her courses across the street at Columbia. She remembers it being a somewhat solitary experience.

“It was kind of an interesting thing to be at Barnard but not to be at Barnard,” she says.

A lot has changed since then. Computer science has become a tremendously popular major nationwide: The number of undergraduates majoring in computer science more than doubled from 2013 to 2017, From according teaching to The New York robotics Times, toto the point where demand for spots in classes often exceeds supply. building And though women AI technology, overall still earn these bachelor’s degrees in computer science at far lower rates than three men do, at Barnard Barnard it has alumnae become one cracked of the College’s top 10 most popular majors, right up there with the perennial code favorites to successful like economicscareers and English. The College only recently moved the major in-house with in the computer launch of its Computer science Science Program in 2019, but for decades, alumnae have followed their passion by for the Kira discipline Goldenberg regardless, ’07 during and after their time at Barnard.

Within the College, that includes the Athena Digital When Galina Datskovsky Design Agency, ’83 was which a student launched at Barnard, in 2015 under she was theone of the few undergraduates auspices in of her the class Athena to major Centerinfor computer Leadership science Studies. and often the only woman The agency in her — courses its aptacross tagline: the“Think street at Bold.

Columbia.

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She remembers it being aBe somewhat Bold.” —solitary offers coding experience. classes“Itand wasa kind professional of an interesting thing to be at Barnard website-building but not to be business at Barnard,” that serves she says. real-world A lot has changed since then. clients.

Computer At Columbia, science has students become have a tremendously long been able popular major nationwide: The to number completeofthe undergraduates major, and bymajoring 2017, the number in computer of science more than doubled from faculty 2013advising to 2017, according Barnard students to The New hadYork jumped Times, from to the point where demand for spots one to inthree classes to often meet the exceeds growing supply. demand.

And though women overallAnd still of earn course, bachelor’s in thedegrees world atinlarge, computer Barnard science alumnae at far lower rates than men do, atpursue Barnard their it has dreams become wherever one of the theyCollege’s lead, following top 10 most popular majors, right upthe there College with ethos perennial of “majoring favorites in like unafraid.” economics and English. The College only recently We spoke moved to the three major alumnae in-house fromwith across thethe launch decades of its Computer Science Program inwho 2019,have but for done decades, just that. alumnae have followed their passion for the discipline regardless, during and after their time at Barnard.

Within the College, that includes the Athena Digital Design Agency, which launched in 2015 under the auspices of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies.

The agency — its apt tagline: “Think Bold. Code Bold. Be Bold.” — offers coding workshops and professional web-development services to real-world clients.

Through Columbia, students have long been able to complete the major, and by 2017, the number of faculty advising Barnard students had increased from one to three to meet the growing demand.

And of course, in the world at large, Barnard alumnae pursue their dreams wherever they lead, following the College ethos of “majoring in unafraid.”

We spoke to three alumnae from across the decades who have done just that.

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 29

Galina Datskovsky knew she wanted to be a computer scientist by the time she graduated from high school at age 15 and started at Barnard.

Her parents and two older brothers had all pursued careers in STEM. “I knew from the day I set foot in the door, that’s what I wanted to do,” says Datskovsky, a technology expert who specializes in fields such as compliance, information governance, artificial intelligence, and data analytics.

Datskovsky graduated from Barnard in just three years and immediately entered a Ph.D. program at Columbia, where she studied natural language processing, a type of artificial intelligence that seeks to improve computers’ ability to understand the complexity of spoken language. She went on to do stints at IBM and Bell Labs before joining forces with a couple of friends in the late ’80s to start a company, MDY Advanced Technologies, that tracked and organized documents, one of the earliest moves toward digital record-keeping in a world that was still overwhelmingly analog.

“We were ahead of our time, and that gave us a competitive advantage,” says Datskovsky, pausing to lift up her terrier, Luke — the latest in a long line of pets named after Star Wars characters — so he could say hello. When her company was sold to CA Technologies, then one of the largest tech companies in the world, Datskovsky went to work for them, running the informational governance business there.

“That job was very planning-intensive, organizationally intensive, because of all the time- zone differences, cultural differences, and an extremely travel-intensive job,” she explains.

Her husband, whom she met when she was a senior at Barnard and he was a first-year Ph.D. candidate, had a travel-heavy job too. One year, they both randomly overlapped in Switzerland on Valentine’s Day. Eventually, Datskovsky says, CA was sold, and then sold again to HP, and she finally grew tired of the jet-setting life. She decided it was time to give her notice.

“That was my first time leaving a job without having anything lined up,” she says. She moved into consulting for technology startups, and one of them, VaporStream, eventually brought her on as CEO. The company offers clients — from financial services and 30

PHOTO BY JON KING

Galina Datskovsky ’83

governments to healthcare companies and higher education institutions — a secure messaging system that meets a variety of security regulations and compliance rules. “Even if your chats are secure, your privacy is not there,” she says. For example, encrypted texting apps like WhatsApp protect the content of user messages, but the company still collects individual metadata on its users, like where they are texting from and where their texts are going. VaporStream, Datskovsky says, only collects metadata in aggregate, preventing the company from being able to identify individual users. It also prevents other potential privacy violations, like screenshots or forwarding, which allows businesses to remain fully in control of their communications.

Through all her adventures, Datskovsky never forgets her roots; her family emigrated as refugees from Russia in 1976. They were allowed to carry $250 per person.

“I remember going to a store with my mother and thinking, ‘I’d love to have that candy or those potato chips,’ but I’d never ask her for it, because I knew she needed real food,” she recalls. “When you say no man is an island ... I think I really have to put Barnard into that.”

She says that the scholarship the College gave her allowed her to build an innovative career in technology development, working with earlier technologies that paved the way for the systems in use across the world today.

“I am eternally and forever grateful to Barnard,” she says. “The fact that I was able to get this education. ... How much more can you do for somebody? Everything else was gravy.”

“When you say no man is an island ... I think I really have

to put Barnard into that.” She says that the scholarship the

College gave her allowed her to build an innovative career in technology development.

Cecily Morrison ’02 Cecily Morrison, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England, didn’t originally set out to devote her career to inclusive design-oriented artificial intelligence. She majored at Barnard in ethnomusicology.

“I was determined to have a career in the arts,” she says.

Still, she feels that her time in Morningside Heights helped forge her into the research scientist that she ultimately became — one focused on building AI technologies to help people who are blind understand who is around them. “It wasn’t necessarily one particular skill that I learned — it was having my thinking challenged and stretched, which has prepared me for a career of challenging myself and challenging others,” Morrison says. “Is this really the right thing? Is this something we could think about in a different way?”

Her journey from undergrad to Microsoft began with a Fulbright scholarship in Hungary, where she remained for two additional years to teach English. Her students all looked at individual computer screens set against the classroom wall, which felt counterintuitive to the interaction and communication required for language learning. It was that frustration that first turned her attention to technology development.

“Not having a handle on technology means I didn’t really control the interactions my students were having in classes,” she says. “In order to have technology in the classroom, I then had to adopt particular ways of teaching that didn’t reflect the goals that I wanted.”

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 31

In pursuit of more useful technologies, Morrison earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Cambridge and went on to help the U.K.’s National Health Service look at the implementation of technology to support care in mental health. She then brought her health tech expertise to Microsoft Research.

In her current role at the company, Morrison uses an inclusive design perspective — which seeks to correct mismatches between people’s needs and their environment — and her team works to improve accessibility for people living with disabilities.

“The choices that we make often inadvertently change that environment, and they can include or they can exclude,” she says. “Are we fundamentally changing someone’s access to the world by the decisions that we make?”

With those principles in mind, Morrison has specifically directed her attention to developing tools to help people who are blind, including one of her own children, understand their social environment. Her work incorporates stakeholders throughout the process as she develops both physical products and the algorithms that will run them. This participation is crucial, because watching future users interact with the prototypes both reveals what features need adding or tweaking and improves the accuracy of the AI algorithms the devices depend on.

One example, called Project Tokyo, involves a headset equipped with cameras and sensors that feed data to a computer and helps people who are blind or have low vision by using sounds to alert wearers to people’s identities and locations in their vicinity.

If the bystander is someone in the headset’s facial recognition system, it will say that person’s name into

“It wasn’t necessarily one

particular skill that I learned

— it was having my thinking challenged and stretched,

which has prepared me for a career of challenging myself and challenging others.”

the wearer’s ear. This functionality enhances the wearer’s ability to proactively approach others rather than having to wait for someone to come and identify themselves and start a conversation, Morrison explains. During that development process, the team came to realize that children often see adults at chest height, meaning they had to build the device in a way to prompt younger users to lift their heads to be able to employ the facial recognition technology. If a system is well built, she says, its users aren’t always aware of how they are using technology to expand their own capabilities.

“They might say, ‘It makes me feel like I have freedom’ or ‘It makes me feel like I can just be,’” she says.

After years of living and working in the U.K., Morrison has a clipped accent that’s not British, exactly, but is a far cry from her Boston roots. Her ambiguous speech patterns become a game with the kids who pilot her work.

“Lots of kids who are blind like this game, because they like accents, and they can never guess [mine],” she laughs.

But continually eschewing assumptions is what drives Morrison, an ethos of inclusivity that she dates back to her undergrad days.

For Morrison, Barnard is a place where “people from different perspectives on the world were constantly challenging each other.” Needless to say, she was predisposed to think about what the world felt like for others, providing the perfect foundation for her own path in life.

PHOTO BY JONATHAN BANKS

Danah Screen ’15 Danah Screen was officially a biology major. But she couldn’t ignore the siren song of computer science.

“In my house, ‘computer science’ was like fixing the desktop and getting it up and running,” she says. But she’d loved being on the robotics team in high school, so she ended up auditing a bunch of computer science classes unofficially at Barnard, sitting quietly in the back of various lecture halls. Once, Screen almost got caught when a TA asked her what discussion section she was in, but another student came over with a question, and she bolted.

“It got to the point where I would take notes sometimes in class, and if a friend would miss it, I’d be like, ‘Here are the notes,’ and my friend would be like, ‘Why are you like this?’” Screen laughs, then continues, “What you’re passionate about always finds a way to come back full circle.”

The transition started while Screen was still at Barnard: She applied to be assistant coach of the robotics team at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. She landed the role, working with students in the F.I.R.S.T. Tech Challenge, a robotics competition for students in grades 7-12 in which they went head-to-head designing, building, and programming a robot, the same extracurricular she’d loved participating in during her own high school experience. At Horace Mann, she aimed to be both supportive and to cultivate a spirit of independence in her students so that, on game day, they knew they could depend on one another.

Her enthusiasm was contagious.

“In March of my senior year, they offered me a full-time job,” she says. “But in the back of my head, I was like, ‘I should apply to grad school for biomedical engineering.” She took her quandary to Elida Martinez-Gaynor, Screen’s mentor in the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP). (CSTEP provides yearly support and opportunities for a cohort of students of color from New York State who are pursuing careers in STEM-related fields.) Martinez-Gaynor told her to take a leap of faith and accept the job, Screen recalls. She stayed at Horace Mann for five years, becoming so beloved that a student described what would typically be a stressful period cramming before a competition as “one of the most fantastic weekends of my life.”

This ability to motivate students to work with enthusiasm is a central part of Screen’s SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 33

operating philosophy: Everyone waiting to speak to her on Zoom encounters this Maya Angelou quote: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

To that end, Screen also involved her Horace Mann students in running camps for local children in Barbados and Rwanda, both projects aimed at expanding access to robotics education. She watched as camp participants felt their worlds widen.

“These kids are just as brilliant. They should have all the opportunities as my students in the States,” she says. It’s a passion first ignited by an undergrad experience teaching in a school in Harlem: “A lot of who I am as a teacher, as an educator, as a global contributor, comes from my Barnard experience.”

Screen, who earned a master’s degree in computer science from Fordham in 2020, moved over to Dalton at the start of the current school year. There, as the head of the robotics program, she

“What you’re passionate

about always finds a way

co-teaches the coding half of the curriculum, working with a colleague who has expertise in building the physical components of robots. She is also the interim chair of the school’s engineering department. As such, she had to plan how to keep students who are used to collaborating in-person on builds engaged throughout the remote fall trimester, mailing them prototyping kits. Most students returned to on-site schooling in early 2021.

“It’s been so nice to see some of my students in person. I was like, ‘I’ve never seen you outside of a Zoom box,’” she says.

She’s hopeful that, by summer, there will be plenty of enthusiasm shared among her students for upcoming robotics competitions, delayed a few months by the pandemic. Well, that and some Barnard spirit.

“I talk about Barnard all the time,” she says. “I tell all my students: If I could do college again, I would.” B 34

PHOTO BY DOROTHY HONG

to come back full circle.”

COMP SCI IN DEMAND Barnard’s computer science program launched only in January 2019, but the burgeoning offering — which brought the major oncampus for the first time — is firing on all cylinders. It’s one of the College’s most popular majors, graduating more than 30 students in 2020 and on track to see an even higher number graduate in 2021.

Much of that rapid scaling is thanks to Rebecca Wright, the program director and Druckenmiller Professor of Computer Science. After adding a second full-time faculty member and a couple of faculty fellows, she is pushing to integrate the discipline more broadly on the campus. That includes courses, like one on privacy, that are geared toward both computer science majors and non-CS majors: The final project can be technical, such as coding-based, but it can also be theoretical, like a research paper.

Completed projects have ranged from looking at surveillance in humanitarian protections to a deep dive into the Patriot Act. More coding-minded students have built programs that simplify privacy terms and conditions or dissect data breaches.

Students also have the opportunity to be Computing Fellows, who attach to specific courses to assist students and professors, lead computational projects, and teach workshops.

For example, Wright says, embedding Computing Fellows in an intro-level neuroscience lecture allows the students in the class to learn about the power of computation tools to analyze data more efficiently.

“They’ll learn a little bit of coding if they’re not familiar,” Wright says of the students with access to Computing Fellows, who are based in the Vagelos Computational Science Center. “But it’s mostly to show them in a meaningful way, in a fun way, in an accessible way that computing is valuable and useful, and it’s something they could learn to do.”

The Computer Science Program has also launched a distinguished lecture series and holds talks and events — currently all online due to COVID-19 — open to alumnae and to the broader community. Recent topics included the future of social media and cybersecurity.

Additionally, Wright notes, in summer 2020, nine Barnard students were able to participate in mentored research projects that “gave our students the tools they need to envision and create a new and better normal as we move forward, rather than returning to the old normal.” That included projects on qualitative data analysis, internet usage during the COVID-19 pandemic, and building a data-sharing system. Despite the challenges posed by the all-remote learning environment, the students were able to successfully collaborate with each other and faculty.

“For those students, we’ve really focused on developing community and providing academic support as well as the curricular offerings,” Wright says. “I think they very much appreciate having a center of activity on the Barnard campus.” B

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 35

SKETCHBOOK A glimpse inside the creative world of The New Yorker cartoonist

AMY HWANG ’00

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When Amy Hwang ’00 started drawing cartoons as a freshman for the Columbia Daily Spectator, little did she know that this extracurricular activity would one day develop into a full-time profession. After graduating from Barnard with a B.A. in architecture, Hwang found a job working for an architecture firm. On a whim, she sent in her first cartoons to The New Yorker via snail mail, but it wasn’t until her late 20s that she pursued cartooning seriously. Since then, she’s built up an impressive portfolio, with her work regularly featured in the pages of The New Yorker as well as other outlets, including in the weekly emails of Usual Wines and in EatingWell magazine.

Hwang’s cartoons are often inspired by personal experience, and at the heart of each one, you find a candor and playfulness that underscore the nuances of everyday realities. “I think cartoonists are good at seeing the world in a way that cuts to the truth of a matter. We see incongruences and bring them to life,” Hwang explained in her 2019 TEDxYale talk. And her work has garnered industry recognition: The National Cartoonists Society presented Hwang with the 2019 Silver Reuben Award for Best in Gag Cartoons. We asked Hwang to complete our Sketchbook questionnaire for a little insight into her creative process.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

My daily thoughts and observations.

Which classes at Barnard most informed your work?

Pulling all-nighters in the architecture studio reinforced my appreciation for sleep.

The opposing concepts of misery and comfort are common to my cartoons.

What is your creative process like?

My process is a combination of brainstorming ideas and then finessing them up to the last minute. It helps to have the urgency of a deadline to come up with ideas, but I also like to have enough time to let them gestate. Then I look at them later with fresh eyes to see if they were funny to begin with.

PHOTO OF AMY HWANG BY AIKO AUSTIN; CARTOONS COURTESY OF THE NEW YORKER

How would you describe your style or aesthetic (in 3-5 adjectives)?

Soft, flat, and gray.

What is your favorite project or piece, and why?

I don’t have a favorite piece, but I can say that my more popular cartoons are not necessarily my favorites except that they earn more money in royalties.

Where would I have found you sketching or making artwork on campus?

In the back row of Schermerhorn 501 during an art history lecture, at the library, or in an actual art class.

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 37

What do you listen to while at work in your studio?

My answer to this varies day to day. Sometimes I listen to music — usually without words. Sometimes I have a television show or movie on in the background — something with a lot of words so I don’t have to look at the screen. I do not listen to podcasts because I find them too distracting.

Who is at your dream dinner party?

Other cartoonists. I don’t get to see cartoonist friends in person much, due to the nature of our work and because I live outside the city and have very little free time.

What artwork was on your dorm wall?

I had postcards of Edward Hopper paintings, a postcard of a sculpture by Duane Hanson (Woman with Dog), and one or two Sam Gross cat cartoons torn from a New Yorker daily calendar.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Procrastination. I am not talking about procrastinating doing something like watching a movie. I wouldn’t be able to handle that level of guilt. I reorganize cabinets or complete a minor home improvement when I procrastinate.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Having the freedom to do what I want on my own terms.

What is your favorite place to see art?

For me, it is less about the place — NYC has many great museums — and more about having the space to see the art. I dislike crowds of people in museums.

Which living person do you most admire?

I have no idea. I do admire the younger generation, though, because I think positive change can happen with them.

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What is your greatest extravagance?

Being a full-time cartoonist is an extravagance.

What is your current state of mind?

Usually I have an “I can do it” attitude with a veneer of calm, but sometimes I need to scream into a pillow.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Making it to every next day is a greater achievement than the one before. The culmination of my life to this point is the greatest achievement, for me. That is, until I’m dead.

Where would you most like to live?

I like where I live right now in Westchester. It’s not perfect, but I don’t think any place is. If my circumstances permitted, I would like to live in Taipei.

What is your most treasured possession?

I’ve been living with a baby/toddler/small child for the past 10 years — I’m not overwhelmingly attached to any material possessions. Everything I need is easily replaced with money, which is also replaceable. I suppose my home insurance policy is important to me, should I encounter widespread damage to my possessions.

Who are your heroes in real life?

Moms.

What is your motto?

“Patience and fortitude conquer all things.” It’s by Ralph Waldo Emerson. B

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 39

BARNARD REUNION REIMAGINED JUNE 2-5, 2021

From engaging lectures with distinguished faculty to enriching social experiences, Reunion Reimagined 2021 is an opportunity for you to safely reconnect online with Barnard, your classmates, and alumnae across geography and generations.

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER AT REUNION.BARNARD.EDU

Noteworthy Connecting alumnae. Celebrating community.

Posture class do’s and don’ts demonstration, 1935. Students are shown how to properly wear graduation attire.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BARNARD ARCHIVES

42 Passion Project 44 Q&Author 46 AABC Pages 49 Class Notes 55 Alumna Profile: Lisa Thurau ’82 60 Sources 71 Parenting in a Pandemic 78 Virtual Roundup 82 In Memoriam 83 Obituaries 87 Last Word 88 Crossword

A Second Act

After half a century working in STEM, Susan J. Feingold ’61 launched a career as a full-time composer

by Veronica Suchodolski ’19 42

ILLUSTRATION BY LOUISA CANNELL

Passion Project

Music has always been a running theme for Susan J. Feingold ’61: piano lessons as a child, oboe in the high school band, her father’s 78-rpm record collection of opera arias. But it would take 50 years from when she minored in music at Barnard until she became a fulltime composer, setting the practice aside after feeling discouraged by her college composition course.

“Writing music was hard for me in the beginning,” recalls Feingold, who now composes operas and song cycles, which can be heard on her SoundCloud under the username suefein132. “I hadn’t been a child prodigy and written music all my life.”

Now, her second act as a composer offers a lesson in resilience and creative curiosity. “It’s never too late to take a step in a new direction,” Feingold says. “That is my motto.”

Having majored in math with a minor in physics, followed by a master’s in physics from Columbia, Feingold spent her career at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. “Physics was my great love,” Feingold says. “And it will always be my great love, especially cosmology — what happens in the universe.” At Haifa, she worked as a scientific advisor in the Technion Computer Center, eventually earning a doctorate in science in the area of artificial intelligence in 1976 when the field was still in its nascent stage.

Despite following a technical career, Feingold remained involved in music as a singer in a choir in Israel, and again when she moved back to the New York area in 2003 after the death of her husband.

Returning to composing, though, was serendipity.

“It turned out, a friend of a friend who wrote poems wanted one of them set [to music]. And I said to myself, ‘Well, I used to write music. I’ll try to set his poem,’” Feingold says. At first, “it was like pulling teeth. But I persisted. When I decide to do something, I stick to it until it’s done.”

The song she wrote was, according to Feingold, very hard to sing. But when the conductor of her choir put out a call for submissions of original choral compositions, Feingold was inspired to write another piece, prompting the choir conductor to recommend that she find a composition teacher. She did, and her love for composing expanded from there.

Since 2014, Feingold has turned her attention to composing full-time. She wrote an opera from 2016

to 2019, and she’s also written two song cycles in the past couple of years — one about the legendary ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky and one about the environment.

The environment is an especially important theme for Feingold, who describes herself as an environmentalist. She’s written songs about the fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and about the sea level rising, as well as part of a Requiem Mass for the climate. Feingold says science and music are parallel pursuits in her life, but the influence of a life spent in the sciences remains. Her musician page on Facebook is called “Music and Science,” and she uses it to share science articles that interest her, alongside her music.

Composing has been a journey of trial and error for Feingold, but she hasn’t let the missteps get to her. She talks about learning to send recordings of a singer to the accompanist to play along to rather than the reverse and realizing that hiring a big orchestra to perform her compositions is a significant expense. “So I will never do that again,” she says with a laugh.

This learning on the job also includes the time she waited six months to get setting permission from a poet whose words she wanted to use for one of her pieces and when another musician pointed out to her that she could try writing for oboe if she found writing for piano difficult — her “learning mistakes.”

“You’ll always find that there’s a smarter kid on the block, but you shouldn’t care,” Feingold says. “If you really focus on what you want to do and you stick to it, eventually it will come out for you.”

Even the pandemic hasn’t been discouraging for Feingold — in fact, it’s had its upsides. “Of course, I miss going out like everybody else, but I’ve been sitting at my computer writing songs,” Feingold says. “So it’s not been as bad for me as [it might be] for someone who has nothing in particular that they want to do.” She’s even had one of her songs performed in a virtual concert, and the online format allowed her to be featured alongside an artist with a big following, giving her exposure to a larger audience. “Also, I mean, how many movies can you watch?” she jokes.

These days, Feingold is working on a new opera, an autobiographical work called Lifetimes. She has the libretto written, along with the lyrics to three songs.

She anticipates working on it for the next couple years. “I’ll see where I’m up to by then, and then maybe I’ll do something else. But it will always be music,” Feingold says.

That sentiment aligns with her advice to aspiring composers: “If you have a passion, you should focus on it, because that’s what makes life worth living.” B SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 43

Q&Author

A Word with Avni Doshi ’05

The writer — whose debut novel, Burnt Sugar, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize — discusses her journey into the literary industry and writing her first book

by Solby Lim ’22 After countless drafts over the course of a seven-year writing process, Avni Doshi ’05 published her debut novel, Burnt Sugar, in the United Kingdom in 2019.

The deeply moving novel is set in India and explores loss, love, and a profoundly intricate mother-daughter relationship. Doshi — whose writing has appeared in British Vogue, The Sunday Times, and Granta — first won the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize for the book’s unpublished manuscript (initially titled Girl in White Cotton) in 2013 and was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. We caught up with Doshi about her new novel, the transition from the art world to writing, and advice to burgeoning writers.

How does fiction provide a space of storytelling?

I suppose I think of fiction as a space for exploration and uncertainty. I can come to writing and be surprised by what emerges. And through imagined means, fiction can sometimes come closer to the truth of an experience than anything else.

Why was it important for you to write on themes of memory, history, and the relationship between mothers and daughters in Burnt Sugar?

I wasn’t thinking in terms of themes when I started writing — I don’t know how to do that.

For me, writing fiction is about the characters and the sound of the sentences. That’s what holds the story together, and themes emerge later, almost magically. But memory shows up in everything I write. I guess it’s important to me because that’s what makes us human.

Remembering is the basis of how we relate to one another.

What were some of the challenges you faced writing your book?

I couldn’t find the right way into the book for a long time. I couldn’t get the voice. Once the narrator’s voice was clear in my mind, the writing happened relatively quickly. I had preconceived ideas of what a novel should sound like. I had to let go of that.

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You’ve spoken about the challenges to getting your novel published. Can you tell us about this journey?

It took eight drafts to get it to where it is today. I wanted to quit all the time — in fact, I did quit very often. I suppose I have an obsessive personality and tend to fixate on things. So I kept coming back to the manuscript again and again.

Something about the story stayed with me, but it continued to shift and change as I moved to different continents and had new life experiences. Some of those have made their way into the book.

How did your studies at Barnard help you on your journey to becoming a writer?

I read widely while I was at Barnard, from art historical texts to novels and essays about South Asian culture and religion. Writing fiction is something I came to relatively late, and Burnt Sugar is a compost heap of all those diverse experiences.

When I was 18, I wasn’t sure what I was interested in. It was a time of discovery, and a liberal arts education was perfect for that. I studied art history at Barnard, and the theories and methodologies of looking at art are also interesting when thinking about literature. Art history brings in a lot of philosophy. We read Derrida, Foucault, and others, and I think the idea of memory and “the archive” in the novel were influenced by some of those thinkers. Also, the narrator in the novel is an artist.

What inspired you to move from the visual art world to the literary world?

I loved studying art history, but working in the art world was a different animal. I was never fully convinced by the art market and the commerce around art. In terms of the writing, I was doing mainly essays and criticism — it was interesting but not fulfilling creatively. I began to experiment with fiction on the side. But I didn’t consciously move from one world to another.

I wasn’t really sure of where the book would go and if anyone would ever read it.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers or artists looking to work in creative industries?

Creative endeavors are a gamble. They’re rarely lucrative. If you have a day job, keep it. Money is useful and necessary. You don’t need an MFA; I’m sure it’s useful, but I’m not convinced it’s worth going into debt to become a writer. Write for the process, because you love it, and because you have to do it. It’s lonely and challenging, mentally and physically. This isn’t meant to be negative, just honest. And anyway, if you have that pull to make art, nothing in the world will stop you. B SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 45

THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR ALUMNAE VOLUNTEERS. THE BARNARD COMMUNITY COULD NOT GROW WITHOUT YOU. To hear from more volunteers and to get involved yourself with the Barnard community, visit our.barnard.edu/volunteer-opportunities.

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WANDA COLE-FRIEMAN ’94 Beyond Barnard Panelist, Class Agent “Helping my class raise funds to support our current students and faculty is rewarding because you know the funds will contribute to much needed programs to support our future alumnae in times of need.”

In addition to her work as a Class Agent fundraiser, Wanda served as a virtual event panelist for Beyond Barnard in September, sharing insight about her professional path and advice with current students on the importance of women in healthcare today, especially during COVID-19.

ILLUSTRATION BY CLAIRE ROLLET

This past year was a testament to the beauty that can bloom when we nurture our resilient foundation.

Around the world, alumnae volunteers have stepped up in myriad ways. ● Barnard Alumnae Circles bridged physical boundaries by connecting students and alumnae in our global community through nearly 50 subcommunities of virtual networking groups based on region, industry, affinity, and identity. ● In addition to their peer-to-peer fundraising, Class Agent volunteers reached out to each and every incoming first-year student this past summer to make sure they felt a warm welcome, even from afar. ● More than 900 alumnae professionals have participated in the Barnard Connect program through Beyond Barnard so far, serving as virtual career mentors not only to students but also to their fellow alumnae.

In celebration of National Volunteer Month (April), meet just a few of the countless alumnae volunteers who continue innovating what it means to keep the Barnard community connected in an ever-evolving world.

RHODA BERLEY ’57 Class Agent “My Barnard family has widened considerably to my delight.

Volunteering at the College has given me the opportunity to ‘give back’ and say thank you for the great education.”

As a Class Agent and fundraising volunteer for more than 25 years, Rhoda has been able to build connections with her peers, which became especially vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has helped raise considerable funding from her class and helped to engage both alumnae and students over the past year.

RONA WILK ’91 Class President, Class Agent, AABC Reunion Committee Chair, Awards Committee “Volunteering for Barnard has been especially important during the pandemic, as something to stave off isolation. And boredom — you can’t be bored volunteering for Barnard!”

In her role as chair of the Reunion Committee, Rona helped bring to life Reunion Reimagined, an engaging virtual experience — the first of its kind at Barnard — that successfully captured the heart and energy we look forward to every year during this weekend of milestone celebrations.

PEGGY WANG ’90 Founding President, Barnard Club of Taiwan, Regional Ambassador, Alumnae Circles Host, Class Agent “Through all the activities that I do, I am just glad to create a bond and community for alumnae and current students.”

As a resident of Taipei, Peggy brought the global alumnae community together as an Alumnae Circles host, helping to support students who left campus at the start of the pandemic and deepening the local Barnard bonds.

JORDAN HOLLIS ’16 Beyond Barnard Volunteer “It has been great coming together with others to support current students in these trying times. I am reminded that Barnard is more than just your four years on campus. It’s a lifetime of support.”

Jordan participated as a Beyond Barnard volunteer, helping students and her peers navigate remote career exploration when traditional professional development opportunities were put on pause.

KARLA JAY ’68, Ph.D. Alumnae Circles Host, Event Panelist “Barnard’s launch of the Alumnae Circles created the perfect community service opportunity for me. The focus on LGBTQ alumnae and students meshed perfectly with my interest in strengthening intergenerational dialogue, understanding, and ties.”

In addition to hosting an Alumnae Circle that connected and empowered LGBTQ+ alumnae and students, Karla reflected on what it means to be resilient through challenging times as a virtual event panelist.

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 47

In Memoriam 1940

1948

Shirley Greene Sugerman-Rosenberg 11/23/20

Jean Dunn Silver 11/7/20

1941 Marie Turbow Lampard 11/30/20

1942 Amelie Anderson Sloan 12/31/20 Marjorie Schaefer Thiell 12/15/20

1943 Genevieve Wielunska Connolly 7/30/14

1945 Jessie Scott 2/26/20 Marion Berenson Thorne 2/27/19

1946 Marian Ruebel Gosey 6/6/20

1947 Carla Sandhop Dietrichson 1/12/21 Mary-Ann Hirsch Hobel 2/3/21

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Katherine Battley Phipps 12/18/20 Hope Franz Ligori 3/26/20 Lois Williams Emma 12/4/19

1949 Patricia Cecere Doumas 1/18/21 Janet Dryden-Nevius 2/1/21 M. Gloria Hillman Valdez 11/10/18 (unverified)

1950 Alice Jones Taylor 1/11/15 Carolyn Kimmelfield Balleisen 11/16/20

Alice Ribbink-Goslinga 3/1/20 (unverified) Rosemary Jenkins Lareau 11/9/20

1953 Sabra Toulson Jayne 2/13/21 Barbara Glaser Sahlman 1/4/21

1954 Alice Payne Kjellgren 1/11/21 Rosemary Ronzoni Bisio 1/28/21

1955 Joy Gould Boyum 1/27/21

1956 Evelyn Garrett Wright 12/31/20

Judith Jarvis Thomson 11/20/20

Harlene Freedman Weiss 4/17/20

Marie Noyes Murray 12/17/20

1951

Mona Tobin Houston 1/15/21

1957

Mimi Feitler Cole 11/13/20

Susan Levy Stassa 4/25/18

Elizabeth Wade 12/3/20

1952

Andra Kadilis 12/4/18

Cornelia Schaeffer Bessie 1/14/20

Helene Dubrow Grossman 11/19/20 Jane Lyman Holtz 12/19/20

Barbara Rose 12/25/20

1958

Elinor Sosne 12/15/20

1968

Doreen Zinn Rothman 1/6/21

Bonnie Fleming 9/7/19

1970

Ina Browner Brown 10/9/20

1959

Susan Lowenstein Barry 8/2/17

Louise Heublein McCagg 11/26/20

1960

Ann LaPidus Sontz 8/15/10

1971

Barbara Rowan Gossett 10/31/20

Marilyn Maiorca 5/26/17

1974

Ellen Katzoff Joseph 1/13/21

1961 Patricia Rosen Kaplan 2/14/21

1962 Barbara Greifer Kane 12/30/20

1965 Katharine Wylie 1/15/21

1966 Ann Ledley 5/1/20

1967 Ruth Balen 7/11/20

Celia Blumenthal 5/25/16

1976 Janie Trencher Perlstein 6/30/19

1980 Dani Walthall 11/17/18

1981 Carmen SanchezZambrano 1/1/14 (unverified)

2001 Ayelet Kattan 2/7/21

Obituaries

Lady Justice

Barbara Ann Rowan ’60 blazed a trail through the legal world and beyond

ILLUSTRATION BY ROWAN WU ’18

by Susan Goldhor ’60 I remember her as a quiet classmate. But Barbara Ann Rowan’s accomplishments spoke volumes: She mastered multiple languages, became the first Black woman assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) in the Southern District of New York, and founded an investigative consulting firm whose reputation in an ethically challenged field was one of enormous integrity. Rowan died last October in Arlington, Va. The cause, said her husband of 48 years, Harold W. Gossett II, was COVID-19.

After leaving Barnard with a bachelor’s in Spanish, Rowan began a master’s program at NYU in Brazilian area studies, passing the Department of State (DOS) exam and hoping for a career in diplomacy. But according to Lisa Zornberg, an eminent trial lawyer who interviewed Rowan in the summer of 2020, the DOS interviewer flatly stated, “You know we don’t hire women,” so Rowan left the master’s program and enrolled in the School of Law, studying at night and working full-time during the day as the foreign trademark coordinator for Richardson-Merrell, Inc.; her father had died, and she’d become the income earner for her mother and grandmother.

With a law degree, Rowan spent a brief time with South Bronx Legal Services before she and an NYU classmate opened a twoperson shop in Greenwich Village handling whatever cases came their way. She eventually argued a case opposing NYU’s midterm eviction of husband and wife professors from a university-owned building that so impressed the presiding judge he recommended her to the U.S. Attorney’s office. As a defense attorney, she’d found that her sympathy was often with the victims, and she was happy to be on the other side. Her 1971 appointment made the front page of the New York Amsterdam News.

As the first Black woman and only the third woman AUSA in the criminal division, she did her work and did it well in that office of mostly white men, helping to break ground for other women. It was during that time that she met her future husband, an FBI agent.

Rowan was “a great, great trial lawyer, as natural as anybody who ever worked in a courtroom,” wrote Zornberg, who also quoted John Siffert, an AUSA who interned for Rowan in 1971: “I learned so much from her. She was fabulous, and she taught me that smart people could have fun practicing law.”

Rowan left the Southern District in 1974, and a few years later, she and her husband joined the staff of the House Ethics Committee’s “Koreagate” investigation,

after which she served as an assistant director of the Federal Trade Commission. In 1980, she founded an investigative consulting firm, Rowan Associates, which her husband joined after leaving the FBI. They successfully collaborated for 35 years.

Having relocated to Virginia, Rowan was attending an Alexandria Bar Association event in 1982 when a speaker used a racial slur. She was the only Black attorney present and the only person seated for the speaker’s standing ovation. Afterwards, she sparked a group protest letter to the bar, a public apology, and the formation of the Northern Virginia Black Attorneys Association. To a Washington Post reporter, she said, “It was not a pleasant welcome to the Alexandria Bar. My goodness, I thought I’d stepped into the last century.”

Barbara Rowan made sure her voice was heard. B SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 83

Putting pen to paper, art critic Barbara Rose ’57 shaped the way we understand postwar art

by Judith E. Stein ’65 Barbara Rose ’57, the acclaimed art critic, curator, and filmmaker, died on December 25, 2020, at the age of 84. A trailblazer in the field of American art history, Barbara wrote the popular textbook American Art Since 1900: A Critical History (1967), which brought attention to previously unheralded artists. Unafraid to hold contrarian views, Barbara later wrote about contemporary painters ignored by colleagues who 84

ILLUSTRATION BY ROWAN WU ’18

A Champion of Art

favored video art and installations and at a time when publications like Artforum proposed that painting had “ceased to be the dominant artistic medium.” They were wrong. It was very much alive.

In 1965, Art in America published her seminal essay “ABC Art,” on the art shortly to be labeled minimalist. In it, she illuminated the shifting zeitgeist of the early 1960s as many young painters, sculptors, dancers, and composers turned their backs on the modernisms of their elders and instead favored a “blank, neutral and mechanical impersonality.” But Barbara didn’t “invent art movements,” she emphatically told an interviewer in 2018. “I just notice coincidences.”

Morningside Heights was the right place at the right time for a young woman intoxicated by contemporary culture in the mid-1950s. A painter and ardent cinephile since her girlhood in Washington, D.C., Barbara transferred to Barnard from Smith in 1955. She enhanced her studies with studio art classes at Teachers College and binged on double features at the Upper West Side movie theatres. At the West End Bar, she met Beat Generation writers, former Columbia students who still gathered there.

As in most college curricula, modern art was “European” and halted after Pablo Picasso. Barbara studied with the Baroque scholar Julius Held and with the classicist Marion Lawrence. Lectures by Meyer Schapiro, Columbia’s brilliant medievalist, drew her across Broadway. Schapiro was a rare academic who believed that to understand current art, one needed to befriend artists and visit their studios, a credo Barbara made her own.

She knew many of the soon-to-be-iconic artists of the ’60s, including Jasper Johns, Philip Glass, and Donald Judd. Vibrant and outspoken, Barbara went on to grad school at Columbia when women there were a barely tolerated rarity. By 1964, with her thesis underway and her orals passed, she left the program to focus on contemporary art.

Following a brief marriage to the future economic historian Richard Du Boff, she wed painter Frank Stella abroad in 1961 during her Fulbright year researching Spanish Renaissance art. The couple had two children, Rachel and Michael, and divorced in 1969. Following a 10-year marriage to “Hound Dog” lyricist Jerry Leiber, Barbara and Du Boff remarried in 2009 on what would have been their 50th wedding anniversary. In 1984, the same year Rachel graduated from Barnard, Columbia awarded Barbara a doctorate based on her publications.

Barbara’s reviews in major art magazines segued into contributing editorships at Vogue, New York magazine, and Partisan Review. Among her publications are monographs on Claes Oldenburg and Barnett Newman, as well as a significant number that advanced the careers of women artists, such as the painters Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner. During Barbara’s six-decade career, she served as curator of exhibitions and collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, taught at Yale and Hunter College, among other institutions, and wrote, produced, or directed a number of documentaries on artists, including one on sculptor Mark di Suvero.

Fearless when confronting art world pieties, Barbara courageously crossed the private/public divide with an account of her abortion, illegal in 1957. The landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade was still pending when “The New York Abortion” appeared in New York magazine in May 1972 and was reprinted in Barnard Magazine that fall. The doctor had used no anesthetic, she wrote, “because in case the apartment was raided, the equipment could be folded back into the ample closets and everyone had to be up and out.” My own experience, while at Barnard in 1962, little differed. Barbara and I became friends five years ago when she reviewed my book Eye of the Sixties. I was touched when she wrote to me as her newest “forever” friend, “although not sure how long my forever will be.” Alas, it was all too short. B

A Way With Words

Pioneering journalist Betsy Wade ’51 broke barriers for women in news

by Kat Braz

ILLUSTRATION BY ROWAN WU ’18

When Betsy Wade ’51 became the first woman to edit the news in the 105-year history of The New York Times, she noted the spittoons vanished from the city room within her first week. Her landmark appointment to the copy desk in 1956 signaled a new era for women in journalism, previously relegated to women’s pages that covered the “Four F’s” — family, food, furnishings, and fashion.

Wade began her career writing for the New York Herald Tribune’s women’s page after earning her master’s from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Wade’s boss, a woman, summarily fired her once she learned Wade was pregnant. Wade then took a position as beauty editor and assistant women’s editor at the Newspaper Enterprise Association before joining the staff at the Times.

In her Times obituary, Robert D. McFadden wrote, “She was soon recognized for her cool appraisals

of articles and her deft pencil — invisible to readers, but all too apparent to colleagues — as her surgical excisions and repairs saved the Times from factual errors and its writers from clumsy sentences, phrases of dubious taste, and embarrassing flaws in grammar, spelling, and syntax.”

She took the same scrupulous approach addressing sexism and gender inequalities in the workplace. As a founding member of the Times’ Women’s Caucus in 1972, she identified deep-seated discrimination affecting women’s hiring, wages, promotions, and leadership roles throughout the organization.

That led to the class-action lawsuit Elizabeth Boylan et al. v. The New York Times, brought forth by Wade and six other plaintiffs in 1974 after management continually dismissed their concerns. (Wade’s name was attached to the suit because it came first alphabetically among the plaintiffs. She married Columbia Journalism Review founding editor James Boylan in 1952, and it was her married name that appeared on her Times paychecks.) The case was settled in 1978.

“Women of every generation at the Times have fought their own versions of discrimination in the newsroom. But Betsy was the first, and her battle the riskiest,” wrote Wade’s Times colleague Jan Benzel in a profile for the Columbia Journalism Review that ran after Wade’s death on December 3, 2020, at age 91.

Never one to shy away from risk, Wade was part of a covert team that met in a secret hotel suite to edit the Pentagon Papers, which won the Times a 1972 Pulitzer Prize. In 1977, amid the class-action lawsuit, Wade, who had been the foreign desk copy chief — another women’s first — was reassigned to assistant travel editor.

She returned to the national copy desk in 1981 but never regained a leadership position at the paper. In 1987, she took over the Practical Traveler column, which she wrote until her retirement in 2001.

Though Wade received little compensation from the settlement, and it likely curtailed her career advancement, she recognized the group’s groundbreaking role in the fight for gender equality, commenting, “We know that we opened doors for a new generation that may not know they were ever closed.” B

SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 85

ATHENA FILM FESTIVAL Continued from page 20 Program provides opportunities to help women storytellers hone their craft and promote their projects by offering screenwriting labs, the Athena List annual script competition, and unique funding opportunities, such as the Alfred P. Sloan Athena List Development Grant for a woman pursuing a science-themed working project.

“In a year that has been so difficult for the world — and the arts community — I am deeply grateful to our network of loyal sponsors who came together in support of Athena this year,” says Victoria Lesourd, the Athena Center’s chief of staff. “Women are bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout of COVID-19, and I am so glad that through our festival we are creating a space for women to come together, share their stories, and be in community.” B

change in the past year. Whether students pressure them to take the same credit load have been to college before or not, next year that they took online. will likely be different. As we transition “Be there to listen, mostly, and when back to in-person learning, parents should appropriate, advise without judgment. It’s provide space for autonomy. College-aged possible that your child has suffered some children are supposed to be leaving home distress that may not become apparent until and separating from their families. It is they’re back at school. If your child needs a time for them to establish independent emotional support while away, support identities. Being home for a year may have them, direct them to the appropriate Gray delayed this process, so supporting theirRebecca services available on campus, and inform independence is important. the college if you have serious concerns.

“Understand that online and in-person At the end of the day, this is your child, learning can put different demands upon and what they want most is for you to your child. They may find they need to take love them.” —Lisa Edstrom, Senior Lecturer, fewer courses or can handle more. Don’t Department of Education B

CROSSWORD ANSWERS Puzzle on page 88

.

PARENTING IN A PANDEMIC Continued from page 71 some things you can do to help ease the transition. Arrange for your child to visit their classroom and meet their teacher one to two days before school officially opens.

If that’s not possible, ask the teacher to send pictures. The school setup is likely to be very different, and this will help your child know what to expect. Also, arrange a playdate with a classmate.

“Create a photographic social story that can serve as a visual plan for your child. The story can have pictures and text describing what your child’s day will look like when they return to school. Most importantly, have an open discussion with your child on their level, and reassure them that you will help make this transition as easy as possible for them.” —Hannah Hoch, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology College-Aged Kids Are Navigating Big Changes, Too “Transitions are hard at any age. Some people handle them better than others, but many of us struggle. We have had lots of 86

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Last Word

Starting a Master’s at 58

ILLUSTRATION BY ELLICE WEAVER

by Michele Lynn ’82 Last year, in addition to logging countless hours doomscrolling, I used the Internet for a better purpose. Thanks to the magic of social media algorithms, an ad for a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies at North Carolina State University made its way to my Instagram feed. The more I learned about this interdisciplinary program, the more I realized that it was the perfect fit — one that allows me to craft my own course of study. I applied, was accepted, and enrolled last May, nearly 40 years after graduating from Barnard.

If, during college, I had looked into a crystal ball that predicted I would enroll in grad school in my late 50s, I would have thought that the crystal was cracked. This was not my plan. I originally started grad school in my 30s but had to withdraw after a semester due to health issues. Once I healed, a baby was the next thing on my agenda. Between parenting and working, grad school fell by the wayside. But I never lost my desire to return to academia.

Barnard helped instill in me a love of learning and the idea that I could achieve my dreams and make an impact. These beliefs guided me as I took this leap, despite knowing that I would be in my 60s when I next wore a mortarboard. I’ll be in my 60s regardless, so why not greet that decade with more knowledge?

Being in school in the 21st century is very different from when I first stepped through the Barnard gates in 1978. The last time I wrote a term paper, my research consisted of perusing the card catalog and then walking through the stacks in the now-demolished Barnard Library in Lehman Hall, sneezing from the dust. I wrote out my paper in longhand and then used my IBM Selectric typewriter (with power return!), eliminating typos with Wite-Out. To help me learn how to use Google Scholar, Moodle, and other words that hadn’t yet been coined during my college years, I hired my 24-year-old son’s best friend from Vassar College, whose experience in that college’s writing center proved invaluable to me.

In my first few decades, I was always the youngest in every group. I started

Barnard at the age of 16, thanks to a November birthday and skipping second grade. Fast forward to today: Not only am I old enough to be the mom of nearly every classmate, I am older than all of the professors with whom I have studied so far. Last semester, in my history seminar on the civil rights and Black Power movements, we discussed events that had occurred 50 years earlier, just as I had done in the World War II history class I took at Barnard.

Fifty years seemed like eons to me when I was an undergraduate, as I’m sure it does for my current classmates. It’s surreal to study “history” that I can recall.

At Barnard, I rolled out of bed, threw on clothes, and hurried out of Reid or Brooks to make it to class on time. My process is similar these days, although because of the pandemic, I “commute” from my bedroom to home office, attending classes via Zoom in an outfit that generally consists of pajama bottoms and something more professional on top.

But for all the differences between undergrad and graduate school, what still holds true is that learning is a gift and privilege. The interdisciplinary nature of my program allows me to expand my knowledge across a range of subjects. The concentration I have created — communications and social justice — enables me to combine my professional work as a writer with my passion for social change.

I am not yet sure how I’ll use my degree, but I do know that I love the journey. B Michele Lynn is a writer in Chapel Hill, N.C. SPRING 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 87

Crossword

The Quad by Rebecca Gray ’13 ACROSS 1 Peruse 5 Art critic Barbara* 9 Foursome

11 Dorm and dining hall opposite 62A* 13 Cabbie’s question 14 Second first lady

16 Stimpy’s buddy of cartoons

17 Most Barnard grads* 20 “What business is ____ yours?”

22 Fire sign 23 Spanish custard 24 “All The Things She Said” pop duo 25 Adage 27 “____ and the Swan” (Yeats poem) 28 Nickname for this crossword constructor 30 How to bring on new employees, virtually 32 Nucleus 33 “____ day will come” 34 With 36A, COVID-19 clue location* 36 See 34A* 39 Done: Fr. 40 Future J.D.’s exams

44 Esau’s other name

46 “Star Wars” princess 47 Pirate’s exclamation 48 Capitol feature 49 _____ Enterprise (Star Trek ship): Abbr.

50 Ventilation opening 54 Dubai’s location: Abbr.

55 Apian 57 Campus hall with greenhouse* 59 Denise or Francine; former campus gymnasium* 60 Nosy ones 61 Verb with “thou” 62 Dorm opposite 11A*

DOWN 1 Cross-reference words 2 NBA position 3 Region 4 Part of NPR (abbr.)

5 McEntire of country music 6 Boo-boo 7 Mr.: It. 8 Etsy, e.g.

9 Something run up at a bar 10 Childbirth assistant 11 Capital of Vietnam 88

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45 Docile 50 Puts on TV 51 Indonesian tie-dyed fabric 52 NYC to Montauk train system 53 With 34D, author of Night (1960) 56 “Summer Girls” boy band 58 “___ Mir Bist Du Schön” (1938 hit) *Denotes Barnard-related clue Solution on page 86 Rebecca Gray ‘13 is a burgeoning crossword constructor, writer, educator, and musician based in Boston, Mass. This is their first published crossword, and they would greatly appreciate feedback and critique! Among other pursuits, they lead virtual support groups and writing workshops for people with chronic pain. They can be reached at gray.rebecca.rose@gmail.com.

PRE-COLLEGE PROGRAMS Each year, we welcome hundreds of young women in high school from around the globe to pursue their passion in a rigorous yet developmental academic setting.

Experience a Barnard College summer by participating in one of our 4 DYNAMIC PROGRAMS. Each program has distinctive classes to choose from, such as fashion, psychology, media, playwriting, leadership, climate change, poetry, economics, earth science, and physics.

ONLINE EXPLORATORY INSTITUTES

Summer Session I: Young Women Writers Institute | STEMinists in Training Summer Session II: Young Women’s Leadership Institute &

CREDIT BEARING PROGRAM

Summer Session I: Pre-Baccalaureate Program (Online/hybrid courses) As a Barnard Pre-College student, you will get the unique opportunity to: ● Delve into college life ● E xplore an area of interest on a deeper level

● Prepare for college through our Beyond the Gates and Junior Junction preparatory sessions ● Create memorable moments with your community of peers and Barnard student leaders

APPLICATIONS Summer Session I: Currently open Summer Session II: Apply by June 15, 2021 ELIGIBILITY Exploratory Institutes: Open to rising high school sophomores and above, and gap-year students Credit-Bearing Program: Open to current high school juniors, seniors, and gap-year students FOR PROGRAM INFORMATION AND TO APPLY, VISIT:

precollege.barnard.edu

Thank You

to Our Scholarship Donors for Lighting the Way

In a time filled with challenges and uncertainty, our community of alumnae, parents, family members, and friends of the College continued to help Barnard uphold its mission to give financial aid to all qualified applicants and to provide a singular educational experience through scholarship gifts.

Endowed scholarship funds bolster the Barnard experience and provide lasting support to the College, as they are permanently invested in Barnard’s endowment. Current-use scholarship funds help us meet the immediate needs of our students.

Thank you, scholarship donors, for your dedication to Barnard’s students and to the College’s mission.

92 Number of new scholarship funds established at Barnard over the past four years

40% Approximate percentage of Barnard students who receive financial aid

$43,000 Approximate amount of the average financial aid award

54 Number of alumnae who have established new scholarship funds over the past four years Each year, roughly a quarter of Barnard’s operating budget supports financial aid, and the College relies on the generous gifts of alumnae, parents, and friends to help meet this need. Endowed scholarship funds generate returns each year, supporting generations of Barnard students in perpetuity, while current-use funds help us meet our significant annual financial aid needs.

To learn more about establishing a scholarship fund, please visit giving.barnard.edu/scholarships or contact Kate Martinez, assistant vice president of development and alumnae relations, at 212.853.8329 or kmartinez@barnard.edu.