Barnard Magazine Winter 2022

WINTER 2022

THE YEAR OF SCIENCE

How Barnard’s community is helping to solve today’s most pressing challenges

Arthur Ross Greenhouse administrator Nick Gershberg speaks to scholars and staff from the New York Botanical Garden (page 9). PHOTO BY CARRIE GLASSER

Features

Departments

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2 Views & Voices

3 From President Beilock 4 From the Editor

What Is Our Planet’s Destiny?

5D ispatches

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How Can Human Beings Thrive?

Headlines | Meet Our New Chief Health Officer; Barnard Honors the Lost Women of Science; STEM at Barnard: By the Numbers; A Greenhouse Gathering; Learning Beyond the Gates 13 D iscourses Community | Designing ‘Undesign the Redline’ Bookshelf | Books by Barnard Authors Student Spotlight | The Brains Behind Grey Matters CU 43 N oteworthy Q&Author | Kyle Lukoff ’06

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Passion Project | Galvanizing Young Investors AABC Pages | From the AABC President; Your AABC Board Nominees

How Do We Change the Faces of STEM?

Class Notes Obituary | Myriam Sarachik ’54 In Memoriam Parenting | A Neuroscientist Talks Parenting

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How Do We Communicate Science?

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How Far Can We Go?

Last Word by Nia Ashley ’16 Crossword

Cover and Table of Contents Illustrations by Max-o-matic

Views & Voices

LETTERS The Fall 2021 issue of Barnard Magazine is absolutely stunning. The use of graphics plus actual photos, the attractive and very readable fonts, and the use of color come together seamlessly. Most of my professional career was in alumni relations, so I saw many alumni magazines over the course of several decades. This new magazine stands out in every respect. Of course the content is also strong — I always read the alumnae profiles and my class notes first. Congratulations!

—Adrienne Aaron Rulnick ’67

EDITORIAL

Nicole Anderson ’12JRN David Hopson COPY EDITOR Molly Frances PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Lisa Buonaiuto CONTRIBUTING EDITORS N. Jamiyla Chisholm, Kira Goldenberg ’07 WRITERS Marie DeNoia Aronsohn, Mary Cunningham, Lauren Mahncke, Veronica Suchodolski ’19 STUDENT INTERN Solby Lim ’22 EDITOR

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF BARNARD COLLEGE PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE Amy

Veltman ’89

ALUMNAE RELATIONS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Karen A. Sendler

Thank you for making my day — or night, since I finished this after dinner the day it arrived in the mail [“Crossword,” by Rebecca Goldstein ’07, Fall 2021]. It brought me back to my senior year in 620 when our entire suite would work on New York Times crossword puzzles throughout the week. I recall we would occasionally complete a Sunday puzzle! I was fortunate to live with at least three English majors, so I’m sure that helped. Thank you for a wonderful evening diversion!

—Jessica (Bloch) Whitehill ’96

ENROLLMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

TOP BARNARD STORIES READ ONLINE “Moving Forward” “What’s Your Story?”

“Transforming the Food System” “ ‘But What Can I Do?’ ”

PRESIDENT, BARNARD COLLEGE

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE DEPARTMENT IN THE MAGAZINE? Dispatches?

Discourses?

Features?

Noteworthy?

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

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Write us at magazine@barnard.edu CORRECTIONS In the introduction of “Heart to Heart” [Fall 2021], we incorrectly stated that author Merle Myerson ’78 received a second doctorate in education. Her second doctorate was in exercise physiology.

In “Bookshelf: Books by Barnard Authors” [Fall 2021], we inadvertently omitted the byline of our second contributor, Solby Lim ’22. We apologize for this error.

VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENROLLMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

Jennifer G. Fondiller ’88, P’19

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Quenta P. Vettel, APR

DEVELOPMENT

VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Lisa Yeh P’19

Sian Leah Beilock

Winter 2022, Vol. CXI, No. 1 Barnard Magazine (ISSN 1071-6513) is published quarterly by the Communications Department of Barnard College.

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) 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

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From President Sian Leah Beilock

PHOTO BY DOROTHY HONG

Spaces in Mind In December, I joined a group of experts made up of faculty, staff, and alumnae for a panel discussion on parenting and the science behind the teenage brain. We reflected on the cognitive impact of the COVID-19 crisis on young people’s ability to stay resilient in the face of today’s mounting academic and personal stressors — and how parents can help. Our experts dug into this important subject, drawing on scientific research and scholarship, applying clinical experience and pedagogy. It was a special evening. But it is also representative of many similar and meaningful conversations and lectures that have taken place across campus over the past four months as part of the Barnard Year of Science (BYOS) and that will continue throughout the spring.

BYOS has been an opportunity to illuminate the College’s remarkable achievements in STEM — both the teaching and the learning that have helped produce generations of pioneering women scientists who’ve contributed critical knowledge and ideas to a range of fields from chemistry to computer science. At Barnard, we continue to innovate and grow in our scientific pursuits. Our success hinges on all young women (regardless of race, religion, or financial background) having access to first-rate resources — this encompasses our faculty and staff, our equipment and technology, our labs and classrooms. These are essential building blocks in supporting and advancing the sciences at Barnard and launching future scientists on their career and life trajectories.

To do the work of science, you need more than the materials and information at your disposal. You need an environment that enhances intellectual thinking. In my book How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel, I spent a great deal of time researching this very topic. Speaking with scientists and examining case studies and real-life experiences, I found that our body and surroundings greatly impact how we think, behave, and process emotions. For instance, being in nature — or even peering at green space through a window — can improve productivity and help us focus.

The physical spaces we occupy affect our bodies and our brains. They matter for each and every one of us, and they matter for the Barnard community. That’s why we’ve initiated plans to renovate and expand Altschul Hall, the primary science hub on campus.

As our STEM programs continue to grow, it is imperative that our physical footprint and resources do as well. In the past year, we’ve set in motion a campaign with a commitment of $250 million toward this undertaking, which will allow us to house sciences under one roof, update our facilities and labs, and accommodate faculty increases. In doubling our programmable space to 99,000 square feet, we will be designing with the future in mind so that our architecture is responsive to changing needs and practices.

It is an ambitious project, but I am pleased to report that we are currently 85% to our goal and hope to reach it this academic year. There are very few times in an institution’s history when a renovated building can transform the trajectory of a college and propel it to the greatest heights. This is one of those times. With Altschul Hall’s new state-of-the-art facility and the growing eminence of our science program, Barnard will be known as the place for women interested in the sciences to achieve their dreams. I look forward to the vital experiences that Altschul’s new building will inspire and the collaboration, community, and scholarship that will flourish inside its walls. B

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From the Editor

The Language of Botany A few weeks ago, I made my way to the Arthur Ross Greenhouse for the very first time. After climbing up a narrow stairway, I arrived at the sprawling rooftop facility.

It was humid and sunlit and, as one would expect, filled with many different species of plants. There was a room of cacti with curious names like “Peruvian Old Man” and “Owl Eye”; there were bright purple orchids and trees whose leaves nearly touched the glass ceiling. In short, it was magical.

I had stopped by to attend an Open House event with the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) fellows (see page 9).

That afternoon, I learned a great deal about the greenhouse — the history, the scholarship, the interdisciplinary coursework that takes place there on a daily basis. But I also came away with something I didn’t quite expect: a lesson in language.

During a conversation about a NYBG fellow’s research, Hilary Callahan, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Biological Sciences, shared with us the relationship between diaspora and the technical term in botany, “diaspore,” which she said “refers to the smallest unit of dispersal.” She explained that if “the founding diaspore can arrive and survive somewhere,” it can also “potentially thrive and expand over time into a large population” — and in many ways, this relates to how we understand diaspora in a global context, from the migration or dispersion of populations to the dissemination of agricultural crops.

This moment stood out because it illuminated something that is so often overlooked: the connections between science and other disciplines. And for me, as a writer and editor, language is an entry point to making sense of the world, and in this case, it was the linchpin for understanding a botanical term.

So what does this have to do with the Magazine? Well, a lot, actually. The Winter issue is dedicated to the Barnard Year of Science (BYOS), and the content reflects Barnard’s ethos and approach to STEM — that it is multidisciplinary and plays a fundamental part in everyone’s life, whether you work in a lab or you’re in the arts.

In these pages, you’ll read about the Lost Women of Science podcast, which is bringing attention to the groundbreaking yet little-known contributions of female scientists. We speak with the editors of a new student-led journal, Grey Matters Columbia University (CU), about their mission to uplift neuroscience through a range of topical, accessible articles. And our editorial package, “In the Pursuit of Science,” explores how the Barnard community is turning to science to tackle today’s most pressing challenges, from climate change to representation in STEM. In this issue, you’ll find that science stories are also narratives about the most salient issues of the moment: They’re about equality, health, innovation, economics, and more.

And as I learned one November afternoon in the Arthur Ross Greenhouse, they’re also about language and, importantly, discovery. Welcome to the Barnard Year of Science.

Nicole Anderson ’12JRN, Editor

Dispatches

PHOTO BY JORG MEYER

News. Musings. Insights.

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Headlines community as a whole.

What kinds of resources do students need to thrive?

With our Pandemic Response Team, we’re going to continue to work on setting up a system where we can say to students: “We have the scaffolding in place — testing, contact tracing, clear policies on vaccination and masking — so that you don’t have to worry about it.” We want to create an environment where you have trust in us and trust in the system that we’ve created.

This includes communication with the leadership of the College to ensure that we’re always thinking about the best way to protect the Barnard community.

With the Francine LeFrak Center, we’ll be looking at the ways in which we can bake wellness into a person’s development both during their time at Barnard and in the future. The programming that we’re building out right now will be focused on how to help people identify what they want or need to work on and how to do that in a supported way throughout their college experience.

by Nicole Anderson ’12JRN This fall, Dr. Marina Catallozzi joined Barnard as the inaugural Vice President of Health and Wellness and Chief Health Officer. In this new role, she’s leading the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being in addition to overseeing the Primary Care Health Services, the Rosemary Furman Counseling Center, and the Pandemic Response Team. We caught up with Dr. Catallozzi to chat about her work in adolescent health and her own wellness practices.

What excites you most about this new position?

I’ve been really focused on adolescent and young adult health my entire career, but wellness has always been woven into that work. In this role, I get to address physical health, mental health, and financial wellness not only for students in the community but also for everyone who’s part of their support network, including faculty and staff. I was a first-generation student myself, and this is something that would have been incredibly helpful to have in college.

The idea of the Feel Well, Do Well initiative and the Francine LeFrak Center is to provide built-in scaffolding for people as they develop the skills that they’ll bring to the workplace and for them to be able to support their own wellness as they deal with challenges in the future. Critical to this framework is the lens of diversity and inclusion — and ensuring that really everyone has access to these resources. In this way, wellness can be tailored both to each individual and to the 6

What your favorite advice for patients or students?

In adolescent and young adult medicine, we have an approach called “motivational interviewing,” where we are helping the person to define what it is that they want. It’s a different approach to care, because it encourages young people to listen to themselves, to develop and pay attention to their inner voice. The piece of advice I try to give is “be kind to yourself” because this is a fast-paced world and it’s easy to be self-critical. That means different things to different people, and again it is an opportunity for people to listen to themselves. The second piece of advice is to find trusted people in your life and to cultivate and maintain those relationships. That can be an educator, a healthcare provider, a family member, a friend, or a therapist — but really build a community of people who know you and know your values. B To read the full interview, visit barnard.edu/magazine

PHOTO BY NINA WURTZEL

Meet Our New Chief Health Officer

How do you practice wellness?

This need for wellness practices has really come to the forefront for me in the past two years. My partner is an adult infectious disease provider, and our children are 12 and 16 years old. We were on the frontlines every day at the height of the pandemic, and so we really needed to build in some sustainable practices.

One thing we did as a family was Self-Care Sunday, which included one person getting to choose a family activity like a game, meal, movie, or self-care practice, such as doing five minutes of meditation together.

Barnard Honors the Lost Women of Science

President Beilock spoke with the producers of a new podcast celebrating the accomplishments of women in STEM

ILLUSTRATION BY POLLY BECKER

by Solby Lim ’22 On November 3, President Sian Leah Beilock hosted New York Times technology and healthcare reporter Katie Hafner and Memorial Sloan Kettering bioethicist Amy Scharf for an on-campus/online event to discuss the launch of their new podcast, Lost Women of Science. Scharf and Hafner are the podcast’s executive producers and the founders of the Lost Women of Science Initiative, a nonprofit organization that’s partnered with Barnard to empower young women and girls to pursue STEM careers. The event was part of the Barnard Year of Science, a campuswide celebration of everything related to science, technology, engineering, and math at the College.

President Beilock moderated the discussion and connected the podcast’s mission to Barnard’s advancements in STEM fields. “Highlighting what women have contributed to science in the past, thinking about what they’ll contribute in the future, both at Barnard and beyond, is something that’s really in line with what [the College] is doing,” President Beilock said. “We’re so excited to partner with Amy and Katie to hear about what they’ve done on the podcast.”

The podcast lays out reported narratives on women scientists who made groundbreaking achievements in their fields yet have gone largely unacknowledged for their pivotal work. “Part of our mantra is that for every Rosalind Franklin or Marie Curie, whose story has been told, there are scores of women — these amazing scientists — whose stories haven’t been told,” said Hafner. “And we’ve accrued a database of between 150 and 200 women whose stories deserve to be told.”

This cohort is made up of scientists from diverse backgrounds and represents a wide cross-section of disciplines, from math and physics to botany and computer science. The podcast kicked off its inaugural season with the story of Dr. Dorothy Andersen, a pediatric pathologist who, in the 1930s, helped to identify cystic fibrosis. Each subsequent season will shine a spotlight on a seminal scientist whose work has largely flown under the radar.

The goal, Scharf said, is to at once honor the past and chart a new path for the future. “The Lost Women of Science Initiative is a dual mission. It’s not only to tell the stories of these women whose stories must be told, but in telling them we hope to then help create relatable role models who can inspire girls and young women to begin the STEM pipeline and if they’re in the STEM pipeline, to persevere through.” B WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 7

STEM at Barnard: By the Numbers

34% of the Class of 2021 were STEM majors, compared with about 26% nationally. ● 36% of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous scholars from the same class year, who are significantly underrepresented in the field, majored in STEM at Barnard, compared with about 23% nationally. ● 10% of each Barnard graduating class enroll in medical school. ● Barnard ranks #9 in the U.S. in graduating women who go on to earn doctoral degrees in STEM-related fields. ● Since its launch, the Summer Research Institute (SRI) — which includes one of the largest gatherings of women scientists in NYC — has facilitated and funded research opportunities for more than 650 students. ● 84% of recent SRI participants are pursuing an advanced degree or are working in a STEM field, and since 2014, participation in SRI increased by over 100%. ● Columbia student enrollment in Barnard’s natural science courses increased 48% between 2010 and 2019. ● Our two newest programs — Neuroscience & Behavior and Computer Science — are among Barnard’s top 10 most popular majors. Barnard had just four CS majors in 2013 and currently has more than 100 declared CS majors. ● Barnard’s science faculty have been awarded more than $10 million in grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health in the past few years. ● 60% of Barnard’s STEM faculty is female.

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ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTINA SPANÒ

More than ever before in the College’s 132-year history, young women are pursuing STEM-related fields at Barnard, from research in the lab to coursework across disciplines.

Here’s the data to prove it.

A Greenhouse Gathering

PHOTOS BY CARRIE GLASSER

by Nicole Anderson ’12JRN This November, the Arthur Ross Greenhouse hosted a special open house for scholars from the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and Barnard staff. Vanessa Bezemer Sellers, the director of NYBG’s Humanities Institute, invited a cohort of research fellows to join a guided tour of the 2,100-square-foot facility led by Greenhouse administrator Nick Gershberg and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Biology Hilary Callahan.

The event, Gershberg says, marked the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that the Greenhouse was able to open its doors to outside guests.

“The Greenhouse is part of Barnard’s long tradition of providing the opportunity for students and visitors to interact directly with living plants from around the world,” says Gershberg. “The plant collection and the research possibilities we offer serve as a launch pad for exploration of a diverse range of studies, including not only the sciences but all of the liberal arts.”

For many visitors, it was their first time stepping inside the Greenhouse and exploring the collection of roughly 650 plant species housed in the rooftop glass structure atop Milbank Hall. Gathering near leafy plants and a table of orchids, NYBG fellows learned about the facility’s unique history and resources while sharing their own research projects with Barnard staff.

“Barnard’s Biology Department greenhouse has always had a connection to the New York Botanical Garden. We share many of the same early founders and supporters, and, of course, through Professor Emily Gregory, this botanical tradition is firmly part of our legacy,” says Gershberg. “We are proud to actively maintain this rewarding connection, and, needless to say, we were thrilled to be able to host the contingent from NYBG. We could not think of a better way to recommence our community activities.” B WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 9

Learning Beyond the Gates

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL HILL

At Barnard, students and faculty have the opportunity to collaborate with a range of leading research institutions, including museums, foundations, and government agencies.

This map highlights a selection of our many partner institutions across New York City and beyond.

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WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 11

How You Can

Support STEM at Barnard The Barnard Science Fund

STEM Program Support

A special category of the Barnard Annual Fund launched in the Barnard Year of Science, the Fund supports all aspects of science-related learning, research, and innovation on campus.

Gifts of ALL sizes help underwrite: + l aboratory equipment and maintenance, +e nhanced support for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors who identify as first-generation and/or lowincome, + faculty and student research, + c ommunity engagement initiatives that benefit neighbors in Morningside Heights and Harlem, + and more

As we celebrate the Barnard Year of Science, we hope to further engage the Barnard community in supporting efforts to ensure that STEM not only grows but flourishes at the College, such as: +R esearch and mentorship experiences for students in STEM, such as Science Writing Fellows, Barnard Computing Fellows, the Summer Research Institute (SRI), and the Science Pathways Scholars Program (SP)2 +S TEM scholarships and internships, which allow us to provide exceptional opportunities to students from all backgrounds +A cademic support for STEM departments, which support faculty members as they further their own research and make strides in their respective fields +E ndowed faculty chairs in the sciences, which are among the highest honors we can bestow and draw outstanding educators to the College

The Barnard Annual Fund

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Altschul Hall Renovations Barnard’s STEM offerings have significantly expanded, and demand continues to rise. Meeting our students’ needs requires support for capital improvements to Altschul Hall and enhanced STEM programming.

For gifts of $250,000+, we would be pleased to discuss commensurate naming opportunities within the renovated spaces. In addition, Barnard will be dedicating a new lab — the Athena Society STEM Lab — in Altschul Hall to recognize planned giving donors who support STEM initiatives and programs.

Give now at barnard.edu/gift For questions about these and more ways that you can support STEM at Barnard, contact Kate Martinez, Assistant Vice President of Development and Alumnae Relations, at 212.853.8329 or at kmartinez@barnard.edu.

Discourses

PHOTO BY NINA WURTZEL

Ideas. Perspectives. A closer look.

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Community

Designing ‘Undesign the Redline’

On campus, an exhibition examines the history of racist housing policies that led to widespread segregation in New York City and across the U.S.

by Kira Goldenberg ’07

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The stakeholders and a group of Barnard students met throughout 2020 and into the summer of 2021 to brainstorm and learn together, making redlining central to discourse on campus long before the exhibition was on display.

“Redlining is something that is often talked about very casually and often not well understood,” Rocco says. “As someone who studies neighborhoods and revitalization, it comes up over and over again.”

LIVING HISTORY The entire nation remains impacted by legacies of redlining, the historical practice used to, in the words of the exhibit, “shift segregation from superstructure to infrastructure.”

Starting in the 1930s, federal planning officials from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), a New Deal-era program that offered government-insured mortgages, created neighborhood-level, colorcoded maps illustrating which areas were “good” investments. Areas where Black residents lived were predominantly categorized as a “hazardous” investment and demarcated in red on the HOLC maps, blocking minority communities from both public and private funding sources and denying them access to those government-backed mortgages.

Additionally, white people were often prohibited from selling their homes to people of other races.

Housing discrimination — combined with the fact that Black people were often refused the postWorld War II GI Bill benefits that forged a thriving middle class — segregated Black Americans into

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN KING

Just beyond the entrance to the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning on the Barnard campus, the vestibule is filled with six large, stop-sign-red panels.

They mark the start of the exhibition “Undesign the Redline,” which opened on September 30, 2021. This interactive installation — a joint effort among staff, faculty, community members, and students — combines history and storytelling with community outreach to reckon with systemic racism and the legacy of redlining in Barnard and Columbia’s neighborhoods and in New York City as a whole.

The intention is to bring the Barnard community together in conversation around structural racism and how “redlining” — the race-based practice of denying financial services (especially mortgages) to people based on where they live rather than on their individual qualifications — has continued to impact the present and how to change that going forward.

“I think that this is an important narrative to have in an institution like ours, where many people from many different backgrounds are going to school together,” says Miriam Neptune, senior associate director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW) and one of the core organizers of “Undesign the Redline” at Barnard.

Neptune witnessed firsthand the kind of critical learning and dialogue that the Undesign project provoked when she helped bring the exhibit to Smith College in 2016 during her tenure there as the digital scholarship librarian. “I saw residence hall students coming together with their whole dorm to have a conversation on race and class at 9 o’clock at night,” she recalls.

Neptune wanted to spark these kinds of crucial conversations on Barnard’s campus, too. So she reconnected with April De Simone, co-founder of Designing the We, the mission-driven design studio behind “Undesign the Redline.” De Simone, who has a background in architecture, created “Undesign” after an archival research trip during which she stumbled upon an old redlining map of her hometown, the Bronx.

“Everything you’ve seen your community go through is predicated on these decisions,” she says. “How do we show this to the world?”

With De Simone on board, Neptune also brought together a formidable team to collaborate on the interdisciplinary endeavor, including urban studies professor Mary Rocco, community organizer Vanessa Thill ’13, French and Africana studies professor Kaiama Glover, Center for Engaged Pedagogy executive director Jennifer Rosales, and BCRW senior program assistant Pamela Phillips. The project not only tapped the Barnard faculty and staff but also engaged students and community members representing local organizations and institutions, including the Schomburg Library, the Apollo Theater, and the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative. “Undesign” was funded primarily by the Barnard Library and Academic Information Services (BLAIS), with additional support from Humanities New York and the Trustees of Columbia’s “Addressing Racism” seed grant.

communities that lacked attention and investment for decades, a phenomenon that Neptune described as “a practice of structural racism that we can document.”

The history of who thrives and who doesn’t in New York City’s neighborhoods is particularly fraught. This is especially true in the Morningside Heights and Harlem neighborhoods, where Barnard and Columbia University reside. In 1968, Columbia announced plans to build a gym in Morningside Park, public land that borders the campus’s eastern edge. It marks the boundary between Morningside Heights and, at the bottom of the park’s steep topological drop, south Harlem. University affiliates would enter the planned gym from the top of the hill and have access to the facility’s top eight floors. Two bottom floors with their own entrance, about 12% of the total space, would be available for community use. The University faced an uproar from a coalition of students and community activists, who dubbed the segregated design “Gym Crow,” leading Columbia to scrap the project.

“You can’t really help unless you know the context,” Neptune says. “You can’t make yourself genuinely a part of something if you’re not aware of the conditions that have created the situation.”

CREATING NEW FUTURES “Undesign the Redline” is organized into sections that aim to simultaneously educate and involve viewers. They include an introduction to structural racism; a lesson on redlining through historical maps of New York City; where redlining fits into the broader history of racism; first-person stories; and how to “undesign the line.” “We acknowledge how, in this wonderfully diverse college community in the city at large, we have all been impacted in some way, or unwittingly contributed to, or some of us have benefited from, the idea of a hierarchy of human value,” Neptune says.

Each element of the installation contains an interactive component. Visitors are invited to put push pins into the old redlining maps marking places they once lived and where they have moved since, which encourages people to think about how past events influence people’s choices today.

“The exhibition captures this narrative of spatialized psychologies of inequity,” says De Simone. “It really begins to contextualize who is in the position of

authority and how we are in some form complicit.”

Other panels of “Undesign” offer the chance for visitors to add their own encounters with legacies of redlining, posting handwritten cards onto the exhibit among recent history, such as an account of Inwood’s 2020 rezoning, and longer histories, like Manhattan’s origin as Lenape tribal territory. There is also an area for people to add ideas about how to conceptualize and invest in a more equal future.

It’s a vital conversation for the country at large but has an important resonance at the College, says Thill: Graduates exit Barnard’s protective gates to be faced immediately by choices whose contours are shaped by systemic racism.

“It’s the most pressing thing you encounter as a young graduate living in New York,” says Thill, the Milstein Center’s exhibits designer and a visual artist. “Trying to find affordable rent, moving into neighborhoods that have been disinvested, how to not exacerbate these problems further.”

For Thill, the exhibition not only prompts vital learning and reflection but is also a call to action for students and city dwellers to take part in creating a more equitable future. “I’m honored that I can bring what I have learned over the past five years of activism and organizing to the project and to the campus, where I was a student, to start those conversations sooner.” B “Undesign the Redline” will be on display in the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning until May 2022. For more info, visit library.barnard.edu/undesign.

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Bookshelf

Books by Barnard Authors

by Solby Lim ’22 NONFICTION A Milkweed Chronicle: The Formative Years of a Literary Nonprofit Press

by Emilie Buchwald ’57 Buchwald, a poet, author, and teacher, tells the story of the literary and visual arts journal and award-winning nonprofit press she co-founded in Minneapolis in 1979. In the process, she offers a valuable first-person perspective on the literary publishing world.

Not Dead Yet: Rebooting Your Life After 50

by Barbara Ballinger ’71 and Margaret Crane Writer, editor, and creator Ballinger teams up again with her longtime writing partner for this memoiristic guide to fully living one’s golden years, sharing insights and affirming solutions for those in the boomer generation and looking toward the future with hope, empathy, and inspiration.

One Pound, Twelve Ounces: A Preemie Mother’s Story of Loss, Hope, and Triumph

by Melissa Harris ’95 The author chronicles her experiences of pregnancy and caring for a premature baby in her latest book, One Pound, Twelve Ounces.

Harris’ moving memoir opens a window onto the lived reality of motherhood during and after high-risk childbirth.

The Red Menace: How Lipstick Changed the Face of American History

by Ilise S. Carter ’95 Carter’s debut book traces the history of beauty in the United States through lipstick production and trends. Carter offers an extensive view into the development of the makeup industry while exploring the interwoven topics of race, gender, and social upheaval.

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Toward Camden

by Mercy Romero ’96 A professor and author grapples with the official — and the untold — narratives of life and diaspora in the Cramer Hill neighborhood of her hometown of Camden, New Jersey. Romero examines the relationship between its Puerto Rican and African American communities, taking on issues of memory, property, and everyday life through history.

Logjam of a Beauteous Mind

by Peter Simon Karp After Mona Pecheux Karp ’57 died of lung cancer, her widower penned this memoir of her travails in treatment and of the caregiving team that formed around her. Karp reflects on his life with Mona and shares their experience with vulnerability and humor.

Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments

by Erin L. Thompson ’02 An art historian and professor of art crime, Thompson examines the complicated origins and legacies of public monuments across the United States, covering the most iconicized and wellknown American statues, their significance, and contemporary reckonings with their troubled histories.

Todd Bolender, Janet Reed, and the Making of American Ballet

by Martha Ullman West ’60 The stories of artist-dancers Todd Bolender and Janet Reed form the backbone of this exploration of the development of American ballet. West traces the art form’s history from its European origins and extends her historical narrative across the U.S., offering an expansive understanding of the form.

When to Talk and When to Fight: The Strategic Choice Between Dialogue & Resistance

by Rebecca Subar ’81 An accomplished educator and consultant, Subar has expertly crafted a guide to understanding the politics of negotiation that weaves together complex analysis and profound storytelling to examine how community organizing, advocacy, and group mediation happens, offering insights into methods of dialogue, resistance, and protest.

FICTION Voices in the Dark: A Century of Classic Nepali Short Stories About Women translated by Ann Hunkins ’89 A poet and translator, Hunkins brings classic Nepali literature to the forefront in this collection of short stories that center women and issues of gender. Hunkins worked directly with the Nepali authors to create the truest possible translations of their stories.

The Days of Afrekete

by Asali Solomon ’95 Author and professor Solomon’s novel explores the profound, complex dynamics between two college friends who have long drifted apart and are now navigating middle age. Solomon brings immense life and humanity to her characters in a story

that celebrates both change and the lasting effects people have on one another.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS The Magic of Kindness! (Triple Trouble Plus One, Book 5)

by Diane C. Wander ’70 The fifth in Wander’s series about a set of 12-year-old triplets and their 10-year-old sister recounts the adventures of the Hoffman kids when they are challenged to participate in a kindness campaign when schools are forced to close because of a tropical storm.

POETRY Borderline Fortune

by Teresa K. Miller ’04 In this collection (winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series), Miller explores inheritance, intergenerational conflicts, and the changing environment while reflecting on her family history and weaving together issues of trauma, grief, and humanity.

Liar

by Jessica Cuello ’93 Winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize, Cuello’s latest book ranges through her life and interrogates the past as object. Cuello’s genre-defying collection centers her unique voice and challenges traditional standards of writing and poetry. B

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 17

Student Spotlight

The Brains Behind ‘Grey Matters CU’

A joint Barnard and Columbia literary journal seeks to make neuroscience more accessible to the public For some, neuroscience can be intimidating — and mystifying. “When I tell people that I am a neuroscience and behavior major, the most frequent response I get is, ‘Wow. Intense,’” says Rochelle Vayntrub ’22. “There is a prevailing stereotype of neuroscience being something foreign and impenetrable.”

This stereotype is exactly what Vayntrub and her peers set out to dismantle with Grey Matters Columbia University (CU), a joint Barnard and Columbia literary journal geared toward making neuroscience more accessible to the public by demonstrating how it permeates daily life.

In their inaugural issue (spring 2021), for instance, they addressed how language is processed while reading, how the brain reacts to seeing a painting, and the challenges with sleep after bingeing a television series. “We wish for a conversation about neuroscience to happen as casually as a conversation about the newest 18

Top: L-R: Sylvester Benson GS’23, senior editor of scientific review; Rebecca Yeh ’22, co-editor-in-chief; Marcus Cooley CC’23, senior editor of revision editing; Rochelle Vayntrub ’22, co-editor-in-chief; Sam Hutchinson CC’23, outreach director.

PHOTO COURTESY GREY MATTERS CU

by Mary Cunningham

blockbuster movie,” states the journal’s “About Us” section.

With the Barnard Year of Science officially underway (October was Neuroscience and Behavior Month) and the Barnard Department of Neuroscience & Behavior growing rapidly (the program, launched in 2019, now has more than 100 majors), the new, semesterly neuroscience publication is right on time.

THE ORIGIN STORY Shortly after Vayntrub transferred to Barnard from Georgetown University for her junior year, she got down to work. In November 2020, she sent an email to the original Grey Matters chapter, a student-run organization at the University of Washington (UW), to ask about starting a Barnard/Columbia version — at the time, only UW and Vassar College had chapters. She also reached out to Rebecca Yeh ’22, a fellow neuroscience and behavior major who had transferred from the University of Maryland at College Park, to see about collaborating with her. “I found this opportunity to be one where I can meet many students, as well as be able to discuss my work in research with my non-STEM peers in a comprehensible way,” says Yeh, who agreed immediately to work on the project. Today, the publication is helmed

by Vayntrub and Yeh, who serve as its co-editors-in-chief.

Yet starting a publication and forming a team during the pandemic was rife with challenges. As transfer students, Vayntrub and Yeh had to get to know other students. And recruiting an entire team while remote sometimes felt like a Sisyphean task. They found success, nonetheless, by relying on social media and asking professors to share the news with their classes. “Applications came pouring in,” says Vayntrub. “It soon became clear to us that Grey Matters was an opportunity that many students had been waiting for.”

Elynn Isabella Chang CC’23 was one such student. Chang saw a post about the journal on her class page, and she was surprised there wasn’t already a publication like Grey Matters on campus. As the editing coordinator for the spring 2021 issue, Chang was excited to explore the intersections between neuroscience and music. “The thought of working with both like-minded but different people was intriguing,” she says. “I also wanted to actively take part in making something [that] I’m passionate about accessible to all.”

Throughout the process, Vayntrub says, Barnard’s Department of Neuroscience & Behavior was an indispensable source of support — particularly Rae Silver, the Helene L. and Mark N. Kaplan Professor of Natural & Physical Sciences, and Michele Miozzo, the Department of Neuroscience & Behavior’s administrator. “The department supported us from the day of our conception to the printing of our first issue and continues to do so today,” says Vayntrub.

A PEEK INSIDE THE SPRING 2021 ISSUE The spring issue of the journal consists of four main themes — Nurturing the Nervous System, Where Our Axons Meet, Mental Health and Neuropsychiatry, and Making Headway in Neuroscience — and explores a vast subset of topics under the neuroscience umbrella. In “Integrating Medicine and Minds,” for example, Atara Schulhof ’22 delves into different forms of holistic medicine, such as acupuncture, neurofeedback, and aromatherapy. And in “DID I Do That?,” Anastasia Velikovskaya ’21, former outreach director for Grey Matters CU, tackles dissociative identity disorder (DID), once known as multiple personality disorder.

“As a writer, my biggest takeaway was that it takes a village to produce even one piece,” says Velikovskaya. “I am grateful for the entire team of editors, illustrators, and scientific and lay reviewers who gave me feedback every week and helped my article come to fruition.”

To make the journal even more accessible to a large audience, each article

included a scannable Spotify code that led readers to a podcast version narrated by one of the team members.

Throughout the publication, there is a swell of eye-catching illustrations — all created by Barnard and Columbia students. Josef Pawl GS’22 illustrated the menstrual cycle in the article “That Time of the Month” to help readers easily visualize and understand the science behind menstruation.

A TEAM EFFORT True to their commitment to interdisciplinary work and inclusivity, Grey Matters CU invited both STEM and non-STEM majors to collaborate on the spring issue, as well as on the upcoming fall issue and beyond. For each publication, writers pitch ideas for consideration, and generative editors and scientific review editors are matched to those that are selected (illustrators are also matched to articles based on their preference). To ensure accuracy, Grey Matters CU recruits Columbia-affiliated Ph.D. neuroscience students to help edit articles and offer expertise through the Graduate Student Review process.

“Getting to work with so many editors and graduate student reviewers completely enhanced my writing skills, from things as simple as jargonless word choice to broad notions of scientific accuracy,” says Samuel Hutchinson CC’23, a writer for the spring issue.

One of the cornerstones of the journal is that students from both sides of Broadway helped bring the vision of the spring issue to life — something the Grey Matters CU team takes pride in. “The ColumbiaBarnard partnership has been imperative to the success of Grey Matters thus far,” says Chang. “This collaboration has been so seamless that oftentimes it doesn’t feel like a partnership at all. We are just a collective undergraduate student body, all passionate about sharing neuroscience with the world.”

For Vayntrub, successfully leading the team and bringing a journalistic spin to neuroscience was a direct result of the campus support they received.

“Since starting the organization, I have felt incredibly empowered by Barnard to pursue this passion,” says Vayntrub. “Out of all the universities in the country, I cannot imagine a better place for a woman to found a science publication than Barnard.” B The fall issue of Grey Matters CU — its second edition — was published in early December and includes stories on homelessness, psychedelics, pollution, neurocinematics, and more. For updates, visit greymattersjournalcu.org or follow Grey Matters CU on Instagram.

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 19

IN THE PURSUIT OF SCIENCE How the Barnard community is seeking answers to today’s biggest challenges

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his issue is dedicated to the Barnard Year of Science (BYOS), a campuswide celebration of all things related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). And it comes at an interesting time, when a global pandemic and a climate crisis have thrust science — the people, the ideas, the research, the facts — to the forefront of our minds and our daily lives. We’ve witnessed the discoveries and the innovation that science has helped usher into the world. Whether through scholarship or professional endeavors, the Barnard community has been integral to these pursuits, influencing the vast world of STEM, from astronomy to neuroscience. In these pages, we learn about how students, faculty, and alumnae are contributing to today’s scientific opportunities while actively working to solve some of the most pressing questions of our time.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MAX-O-MATIC

WHAT I S O UR P L A N E T ’ S D E ST INY?

Combating Climate Change

As Miami’s first chief heat officer, Jane Gilbert ’87 is working on a robust plan to protect the city’s residents from the threats of rising temperatures — with a focus on equity by ​​Ayana Byrd ’95

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n a career that has spanned disparate fields, from arts education to sustainability strategic planning, Jane Gilbert ’87 has fine-tuned a number of important skills, including an often overlooked one: listening. So, when Miami residents began voicing concerns about the climate threat that most impacted their well-being, the environmental scientist was in a critical position to act. And now, as chief heat officer — the world’s first — for the city, Gilbert is in a groundbreaking role that allows her to make a difference for the city’s most vulnerable populations.

“The purpose of this position is to put a spotlight on the increasing risks associated with extreme heat in Greater Miami,” says Gilbert. “I bring together departments within Miami-Dade County, the National Weather Service, health departments, community health organizations, and the hospital and university sectors to identify ways we can mitigate the heat through urban development patterns and reduce actual local temperatures and ‘feels like’ temperatures.”

Many could find it daunting to navigate so many different groups and industries, but it’s an aspect of the job that Gilbert has been preparing for since college. “Something I learned back at Barnard was how interdisciplinary environmental science and environmental challenges are,” she says. “Certainly the field requires a strong foundation in science — which Barnard gave me — but it also requires courses in political science, economics, and history. And so that foundation has been critical to the work that I do, because this issue of extreme heat is absolutely an equity issue.”

Gilbert entered Barnard as a transfer student her junior year. She came to the College already knowing that she wanted to major in environmental science. “​​I’d always done well in math and science,” she says. “I was passionate about making a difference in my community and was concerned about how our development and consumption patterns were impacting our natural world.”

After graduating from Barnard, Gilbert worked as an environmental management consultant for Arthur D. Little, conducting risk assessments throughout North and South America. When she moved to Miami, her résumé grew to cover many of the areas that are critical to her current position — she worked in nonprofit education, community engagement, and program development in sustainability and health policy for organizations including Wells Fargo and Arts for Learning/Miami.

In 2016, Gilbert became Miami’s chief resilience officer, helping to create the city’s climate adaptation strategy. This involved doing outreach work and speaking with residents, including those who live in lower-income-earning communities. Their top concern, which was voiced again and again, was about heat — including the risks of not having air-conditioning in a city that experiences an average of 133 high heat days a year, the impact of living in neighborhoods that 22

have as little as 10% tree cover (compared with about 40% in more affluent areas), and the dangers of simply waiting for buses at unshaded shelters under the hot sun. “Miami is known internationally for its risk of sea level and increased flood risks,” Gilbert says. “[Heat] was something we hadn’t considered at the level that we had been focusing on [these other areas]. And it really called for a singular focus to address it.”

Gilbert left her role as chief resilience officer in August 2020 to start her own consulting firm. One of her clients was Miami-Dade County; she worked to help accelerate their climate action strategy and develop a carbon mitigation plan. Just months later, in November 2020, the city of Miami elected Daniella Levine Cava, who soon called Gilbert to rejoin the administration as chief heat officer. “[The mayor] is very committed to having a robust response to climate change equity, and economic recovery issues, and engagement issues. And she comes from a social services background,” says Gilbert. “She called me and said, ‘I really want to create this position in partnership with the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. Would you consider doing that?’”

Since beginning the position in June, Gilbert has been putting together an interagency task force to activate public education initiatives and outreach.

She is also working with the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other organizations that can help paint a clear picture of the current extreme heat situation and determine the best steps for moving forward. “We really want to bring the right stakeholders together, because it’s very much an interdisciplinary problem to address,” says Gilbert.

As her office further clarifies how to tackle the crisis, they have already formulated a number of solutions. These include adding tree canopy, vegetation, and permeable surfaces to certain neighborhoods, all of which “can make a difference of 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit,” explains Gilbert. Miami is also developing climate resilience hubs, where people can go to cool off, recharge, and learn tips on energy efficiency. In addition, she stressed the need for policies that address equity issues, such as for people who work outdoors in extreme heat or indoors in warehouses without air-conditioning.

As critical an issue as heat is for Miami, it is also a growing global concern. According to a study by the University of Washington, extreme heat contributed to the deaths of 12,000 people each year in the United States over the past decade.

Numbers are also alarmingly high in nations across the world.

In addition to Miami, the cities of Phoenix, Arizona; Athens, Greece; and Freetown, Sierra Leone, have also created chief heat officer positions. “It’s a​​ direction that cities are going to be moving in more and more,” says Gilbert. “They see that it’s not just an urban planning issue.

And it’s not just an emergency management issue. It’s actually something that needs a more holistic focus.”

Something I learned back at Barnard was how interdisciplinary environmental science and environmental challenges are. Certainly the field requires a strong foundation in science — which Barnard gave me — but it also requires courses in political science, economics, and history.”

WHAT I S O UR P L A N E T ’ S D E ST INY?

Environmental Justice

Visiting Professor Christian Braneon employs data science to address inequalities caused by climate change

by Mary Cunningham

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n a Saturday this past July, Professor Christian Braneon and a team from Columbia set out via car and bike to collect air humidity data in and around the South Bronx, East Inwood, and Harlem. Their goal? To create a heat map of the neighborhoods to illustrate how air temperature varies in different parts of the city. “What you find is that the temperature near Columbia is not as high as it is in the South Bronx at the same time of day,” says Braneon.

Braneon has partnered with South Bronx Unite for the project, which is part of a larger, multiyear initiative sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to record urban heat islands in cities across 11 states. He hopes that the temperature data will help community stakeholders advocate for more green space in neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by extreme heat.

For Braneon, this heat mapping project is an extension of the work he’s been doing for over 14 years as a climate scientist and civil engineer. In his early 20s, he became both fascinated and perturbed by the fact that while the wealthiest nations are responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, lowincome nations are often more adversely impacted by climate change. “I was interested in helping people in low-income countries that would be affected by climate change and that lacked access to water,” he says. Environmental justice would soon become one of the driving forces in Braneon’s career. And climate change, he discovered, is at its heart a social justice issue.

He followed this passion to graduate school at the Georgia Institute of Technology. There, he researched how climate change affects farmers’ irrigation demands and water use. While still in grad school, Braneon found a job at a civil engineering firm in Austin, Texas, where he helped cities prepare drought contingency plans. He then moved to Atlanta to work as a physical scientist in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and Sustainability and later served as the assistant director of the Center for ServeLearn-Sustain at Georgia Tech.

In 2017, Braneon joined Barnard’s Environmental Science Department and, in 2020, he started as co-director of the Environmental Justice and Climate Just Cities Network at the Earth Institute of Columbia University. In his Barnard courses, students learn everything from how to collect and analyze environmental data — like water samples from the Hudson River — to how to examine issues around urban land use and the distribution of water. Teaching the material is one piece of the pie for Braneon; he also wants to help students get “better at thinking outside the box,” he explains. “The most important thing we do as faculty is help students think more critically and see things from different perspectives.”

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Outside of the classroom, Braneon is busy working as a remote sensing specialist for the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where he helps integrate the agency’s satellite imagery and climate science into urban and regional planning. And his work is getting recognition: Braneon was recently awarded the 2021 AXA Award for Climate Science.

Despite everything Braneon has accomplished, he still asks himself, “What can I do to make a bigger difference?” His ultimate goal is to see his work manifest itself in systemic change. This means starting at the ground level rather than taking a top-down approach. “Often I’m working with stakeholders side by side as I do the research so that they’re informing the questions I ask and the way I approach the research,” he says. “I think by taking that approach, the work I produce is more likely to be adopted and influence decision-making.”

Sustainability in Action Doing our part to combat climate change calls for a multilayered, college-wide effort.

Here are some of the steps that Barnard is taking to meet its goal of carbon neutrality and the progress that has been made so far.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE CLASSROOM 65 sustainability and climate change courses offered in 56% of departments ❧ 43 faculty in 21 departments engaged in sustainability or climate research

A PATHWAY TO NET ZERO The College has reduced carbon intensity — the amount of carbon by weight emitted per square foot — by 37% since 2005

ENGAGING COMMUNITY 700+ students, faculty, and staff are engaged in sustainability efforts on campus annually ❧ 600 daffodil bulbs planted on campus and 400 bulbs in Morningside Park in fall 2021

OUR CIRCULAR CAMPUS

370+ material exchanges on Rheaply, Barnard’s community reuse platform ❧ 1.1 tons of material diverted from landfill ❧ 4 electronic-waste recycling hubs ❧ Food scraps collection in 5 academic buildings, 30 offices, 3 dorms

SOURCING LOCALLY 90% of dairy milk for Barnard’s coffee program from within 100 miles of campus ❧ 80% of bakery items from within a 40-mile radius from partners such as Rockland Bakery ❧ Produce from New York vendors, including Baldor Foods in the Bronx and Satur Farms in Cutchogue

EXPANDING GREEN SPACE 25,000+ square feet of green space on campus ❧ 12,000+ square feet of green roofs and outdoor terraces ❧ 3 community gardens on campus

Barnard is working to expand climate teaching across the curriculum, to reduce our own emissions from operations, and to build a Circular Campus. This regenerative framework is designed to reduce costs, emissions, and waste, while supporting equity and access for our students and our neighbors.”—Sandra Goldmark, Barnard’s Director of Campus Sustainability and Climate Action and Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Theatre

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 25

HO W CA N HU M A N B E I N G S T H RIVE?

Our Future

During the Barnard Year of Science, we’re contemplating some big questions that get to the heart of our own survival, progress, and destiny as individuals, as a society, and as a global community.

We asked Barnard faculty members from a range of disciplines, from economics to psychology, to weigh in on the question “How can human beings thrive?” This is what they said.

JJ MIRANDA Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences The largest life-form on Earth deceptively doesn’t look like an individual entity.

In the Fishlake National Forest in central Utah is a grove of quaking aspen over a hundred acres in size. If you walk above ground, you will see what appear to be multiple independent trees. Each aspen is strong and appears to thrive with space to stretch. But underneath the soil, all the trees within sight are physically connected to each other. These individuals share the same roots. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that this life originated from a single seed during the last ice age.

Tens of thousands of trees, millions of pounds. Every fall, the foliage of each tree changes color at the same time. Every spring, the leaves of each tree regrow at the same time. Such is the nature of their interconnectedness. New saplings grow, old trees die, but the whole remains. The grove shares the same genes, nutrients, and future.

In a time when so much emphasis is placed on individuals, it’s important to remember that all humans also share the same roots — and future. Whether the question is a global pandemic, or climate change, or immigration, or civil rights, humans should remember that even when apparently standing alone, we are connected. Perhaps we have something to learn from this one example of biology: Somewhere in the forests of Utah, life thrives, not as individuals but as an immense whole greater than the sum of its parts.

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BELINDA ARCHIBONG Assistant Professor of Economics There’s a quote I like from the philosopher Brian Barry’s book Why Social Justice Matters that I keep on my office wall to remind me about why I study inequality within economics: “Social institutions perpetuate cumulative inequality. If there is any determinism involved, it is political.” To improve human well-being, we first and foremost need to be committed to improving our institutions so that they establish equal access to those things necessary to live a good life — things like health, education, or quality environment, which we refer to in economics as human capital and public goods.

My research and my work is driven by my personal and professional experiences growing up in Nigeria and the United States and trying to understand, like many thinkers before me, why seemingly identical individuals, groups, and regions in terms of resources and talents have such disparate economic outcomes. Specifically, I study the ways in which historical institutions and environment contribute to persistent inequality. I research topics from the economics of epidemics and vaccinations and the effects of epidemics on gender inequality to the importance of information and communication technology for mental health and the consequences of prison labor for societal well-being.

What all this research reveals is the importance of our social and political institutions in shaping, reinforcing, or alleviating deep inequalities that can be exacerbated by negative events like the current pandemic. As individuals, we have enormous power and responsibility to shape our institutions; the way we use this power determines what kind of society we create, one that hopefully ensures distributive justice, equity, and freedom for all.

LOGAN BRENNER Assistant Professor in Environmental Science I had the unique experience of being raised by two psychoanalysts. Psychoanalysts believe that understanding one’s past can liberate an individual from the bonds of conflicts and fears and enable them to live more fully in the present.

While I didn’t follow exactly in my parents’ footsteps when I pursued environmental science, perhaps I didn’t stray too far. I am a paleoclimatologist, someone who reconstructs ancient climates, and I have come to realize that I am a “psychoanalyst of the planet.” Although my coral samples don’t lie on a couch to tell me about their childhoods, I do analyze their geochemical composition, which responds to the climate of the world when they lived. Studying coral gives me context and a baseline understanding for the changes in the ocean that we are seeing today.

For example, I can reconstruct the temperature of the Great Barrier Reef over the past 25,000 years by measuring different metals in fossil corals. This record’s real value comes from our ability to assess when the reef was and wasn’t able to adapt to temperature shifts, which can inform policies aimed at its preservation and the support of the communities that rely on it.

Paleoclimate demonstrates that every yesterday has a lesson and teaches us how to protect and support those most vulnerable. In order to thrive, humans must dig into the past so that we can make sense of the present and, most importantly, use our knowledge to safeguard the future of our planet and all its inhabitants.

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HO W CA N HU M A N B E I N G S T H RIVE? REBECCA WRIGHT Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center and Druckenmiller Professor of Computer Science Computing technology can help humans thrive in today’s world and in the future — and it can also be harmful. For example, robotics and automation can improve efficiency in business, lead to safer roads and factories, and help people with physical or cognitive disabilities. At the same time, their adoption also has the potential to lead to widespread job loss and intensify economic inequality.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can allow us to extract knowledge from data to improve our understanding of climate change, quickly design vaccines in response to new virus mutations, and contribute to efficient and robust distribution and delivery of renewable energy. But the use of AI can also further entrench historical and present racial and gender disparities. Social media has the power to connect people, enable them to find community online, and help maintain friendships across physical distance. Yet social media platforms also have the power to sow divisiveness, spread misinformation and disinformation, exacerbate mental health issues, especially in teenage girls, and lead to feelings of isolation.

By ensuring that technologists learn — and develop a culture — to think about the ways in which their technologies will be used, build multidisciplinary collaboration into the design process, and ensure that all stakeholders have a seat at the table, we can work toward a world where computing technology is a force for good and the benefits of technology are shared equitably by all people. This will enable us to make progress on today’s most pressing problems, to advance society, and to help humans continue to thrive.

MARY ROCCO Term Assistant Professor, Urban Studies People live in cities. This built environment, where we live, work, play, and learn, affects our ability to thrive. Too many neighborhoods actively imperil residents.

Decades of segregation, redlining, discrimination, and wealth extraction at the hands of public and private actors continue to inhibit residents in those places from decent work, clean water and air, affordable housing, and quality education. The ongoing pandemic, effects of climate change, and racialized capitalism conspire to create even more hostile environments to thrivance. While city planners and other urban strategists promote the “livable city” in the form of sustainable mobility, affordable housing, and vibrant and safe public spaces, these benefits remain elusive in distressed places while accruing in those that are already doubly or triply advantaged.

The fate of all must not be tied up in the accumulated advantage of some.

Luckily, people-powered innovation transcends the boundaries of wealth and advantage. Local residents in neighborhoods around the globe respond to health and climate threats. Following the onset of a global pandemic and shortages in everything from personal protective equipment (PPE) to food, neighbors formed hyperlocal mutual aid efforts to support vulnerable residents and one another.

In the face of ongoing dangers from climate events and environmental racism, people living in frontline neighborhoods mobilize to fight for amelioration of the toxicity. People have always been our greatest sources of innovation and leadership in addressing threats to their own abilities.

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TARA WELL Associate Professor of Psychology People thrive when they feel that they have a sense of control over their environment. A good deal of research in psychology shows that a sense of control is a key ingredient to success. For instance, psychology professor Carol Dweck ’67 introduced the idea of the growth mindset. When we approach new tasks and challenges as opportunities to learn and grow from those experiences, we feel a sense of efficacy and confidence, providing a foundation to stretch ourselves further. On the other hand, when we view setbacks as evidence of our shortcomings, we can get stuck in self-criticism and self-blame that’s unproductive and makes it more difficult to continue to take risks that would help us grow.

Another psychological perspective that can help us thrive is to be mindful of the questions you ask to make sense of events. For example, when something unexpected happens, we seek to make sense of it. Many of us tend to ask, “Why did this happen?” or “Why me?” In asking why, we seek to understand adverse events to prevent them from happening again. But we often end up arguing for our limitations and ruminating about setbacks.

Instead of asking “why,” try asking “what,” like “What’s next?” or “What’s the best way to respond to this?” Life is inherently uncertain, so trying to control external events to protect yourself against setbacks is often less effective than seeing obstacles as challenges and growth opportunities.

THEA ABU EL-HAJ Professor, Education Program Director/Chair In order to thrive, people need to learn, across their life span, in contexts that treat them with dignity and that make space for creativity, risk-taking, meaningful work, and collective, justice-oriented action. As an anthropologist of education, I have explored education across a myriad of family, community, and school contexts.

Through my research travels across time and space, I’ve learned three key lessons.

First, all education entails learning forms of personhood, and as such, it is consequential to how we come to understand ourselves. People cannot thrive unless their ways of being, knowing, and doing are recognized, honored, and nurtured.

Second, all education is both social and political — fundamentally bound to collectivities but also to the structural conditions of our societies. Humans cannot thrive when the institutions within which they live and learn are founded on knowledge, norms, and values that uphold structural oppressions.

Third, and most importantly, I have seen the powerful ways that humans thrive when they can collectively take transformative, justice-oriented action, writ small and large. Most often, I have seen the possibilities for this kind of action in familial and community spaces where nondominant knowledge, forms of creative expression, and values are kept alive and created anew. These transformative spaces can also be created in classrooms, schools, and universities if we learn to center students, de-center dominant stories, and foster risk-taking and creativity over content requirements and right answers.

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HO W DO W E C H A N G E T H E FA CES OF ST EM ? diversity to the fields of STEM.

Opening the Doors of STEM

Barnard’s alumnae and students are helping diversify a field that traditionally left women behind

by Amanda Loudin

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he faces of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) have traditionally and largely been white and male, and the recent U.S. Census statistics confirm that is still the case. While women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, the male STEM contingent remains at 73%. There are many theories as to why, but one thing is clear: Women are facing formidable challenges in the pathways to STEM careers.

Barnard is among the institutions that are changing that picture. From the College’s Science Pathways Scholars Program, known as (SP)2, to alumnae who stand out in their respective STEM fields, there’s reason for optimism. In this article, you’ll find inspiration in how these women are bringing more 30

CLOSING GAPS IN RURAL AMERICA Susie Spikol ’90 was always interested in the environment and loaded up her Barnard schedule with related classes. Still, her major was English literature, mostly because she wasn’t quite sure how she would apply her passion for the environment to an actual career. “I never saw female role models in the field,” she says.

“Jane Goodall, maybe, but that was about it.”

Spikol also admits that she lacked confidence in her math and science skills, a likely result of the traditional teaching methods during her middle- and high-school years. “I can remember doing labs in middle school where I was told to be the ‘note taker’ because I had neat handwriting, while the boys were handling the burners,” she says. “Research shows this is the age where girls usually drop out of science, and it becomes a very male-dominated world.”

While Spikol eventually did make a career out of her love of the natural world — she’s currently a naturalist and a community programs director at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, New Hampshire — she wanted to make sure today’s young girls didn’t fall through the cracks as she did.

The result is her pet project, Lab Girls, an afterschool program designed to help middle-school girls stay in love with STEM. SHARING A LOVE OF NATURE Spikol’s path to her current career involved a series of different jobs and experiences, each building on the next. While at Barnard, she interned with the Central Park Conservancy, working with naturalists who taught young students about nature in the park. Postgraduation, Spikol took a job at a youth residential center for environmental education, living and

PHOTO OF SESAE MPUCHANE BY MBAKI KHUPE PHOTOGRAPHY-IMAGENATION; PHOTO OF SUSIE SPIKOL BY BARB ELLIS

teaching 24/7, which didn’t leave time for anything else in her life. “I loved the work but also realized it wasn’t really sustainable long term,” she says. “I asked around about career paths and eventually applied to Antioch University, getting a master’s in environmental studies.”

The combination of her English lit degree and her master’s prompted Spikol to recognize the importance of communication in environmental science.

“The natural world needs someone to speak for it,” she says. “I was inspired by women who wrote about nature and realized there was room for a holistic approach. I spent a lot of time thinking about my time at Barnard and what a treasure it was to dig into a topic and fall in love with it.”

All of these experiences helped Spikol develop the formula for Lab Girls.

A standout feature of Lab Girls is that Spikol established it with a rural setting in mind. “I grew up in Brooklyn and had lots of opportunities to go to museums or participate in programs that interested me,” she says. “In rural areas, girls generally don’t have those museums or university-sponsored programming, so they don’t get many opportunities to learn about careers in STEM.” Lab Girls is hoping to fill that void in New Hampshire. At the moment, Spikol runs Lab Girls in a school district encompassing 11 surrounding rural towns. Participants are fifth through eighth graders, and sessions run weekly for six weeks. “We bring in women who are in STEM careers and let them talk about their work, how they got there, and what they like about it,” she says. “They share tips for getting into the field and also include a hands-on component for the girls.”

Recently, for instance, an owl researcher worked with the girls, teaching them how to identify calls, take apart a pellet, and help them interpret owl behavior. “I really want this to be a safe space for girls to mess around with the tools of science,” Spikol explains. “It’s compelling for these girls to see female role models and imagine themselves in a similar career.”

In addition to the specialists Spikol invites to speak with students, she recruits high school girls to serve as mentors to the younger students. Soon the program will expand into two other districts in the region, and as a result of the pandemic, Spikol was inspired to add a remote/virtual option, which was enthusiastically received. “We had about 175 girls sign up, which was huge for us,” she says.

Spikol got the program off the ground initially after winning funding from a local women’s organization with a “shark tank” approach. “I pitched the idea and walked out of there with $11,000 for my organization,” she says. “It has taken off since then.”

While the program is

gaining traction, Spikol knows there’s still a long road ahead in increasing women’s representation in STEM. “When you look at the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, you see that most of the protestors are female,” she says. “But when you look at the table of leaders, it’s mostly male. We still have a long way to go to gain a seat at the table.”

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN AFRICA Although Sesae Mpuchane ’72 grew up on the other side of the world from Susie Spikol, both women share

Susie Spikol ’90 observing an owl pellet with participants of Lab Girls (top); Sesae Mpuchane ’72

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 31

HO W DO W E C H A N G E T H E FA CES OF ST EM ? a love of STEM and a dedication to bringing more young girls into the field. Unlike Spikol, Mpuchane pursued a STEM career from the outset, entering Barnard on a scholarship to study biology in 1968.

Now retired, Mpuchane has left an indelible mark on the field of STEM in Botswana.

Before heading to the United States for college, Mpuchane did her primary and secondary education in Swaziland, after emigrating there with her family from South Africa at age 8. While at Barnard, she says, Mpuchane “connected with people from various nationalities and was able to share with them the challenges faced by many women in various countries.

Barnard gave me an international outlook to problem solving.”

Following graduation from Barnard, Mpuchane became a graduate assistant at the Black Studies Institute at Ohio University. “Through that program, I registered for an MSc degree in medical microbiology while assisting undergraduates from disadvantaged communities improve their biology competencies,” she explains. “That exposure helped me develop a keen interest in education and a teaching career.”

Upon completing her studies at Ohio University, Mpuchane returned to Africa, applying for a position in the biology department at the University of Botswana. It was here that Mpuchane noticed something amiss in the STEM fields. “I was struck by the low participation of girls and female academic staff in STEM programs,” she says. “I took an interest in programs, activities, and organizations that addressed issues of lack of parity of women in STEM.” Additional education pursuing a Ph.D. in food microbiology at the University of Surrey in the U.K. further cemented Mpuchane’s belief that girls were too often left out of the STEM equation. “I realized the lack of parity was universal,” she says.

Motivated to change that imbalance, Mpuchane took on the role of coordinator for the University of Botswana’s program called Women in Science (WIS).

In this position, Mpuchane began chipping away at the low representation of young girls in STEM programs.

THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT From her time in the States and then in Botswana, Mpuchane had the unique vantage point of comparing and contrasting the lack of STEM career paths for young girls in both countries. “The situation in Botswana is similar to that in many countries, including the United States,” she says. “There are more girls than boys at the primary, secondary, and tertiary level of education. Generally, girls also outperform 32

boys in many courses, except in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Fewer girls then participate in these programs.”

Through WIS — which Mpuchane coordinated between 1999 and 2003 — she collaborated with Botswana’s ministry of education as a way to get the word out about the STEM programs. “That partnership was very beneficial, as we were able to reach thousands of young girls,” says Mpuchane.

Results of Mpuchane’s efforts are wide reaching.

During her tenure with WIS, the project published seven booklets to prepare girls for careers in fields such as engineering, mathematics, computing, and agriculture. One booklet targeted parents to assist them in encouraging their daughters in the STEM disciplines, and another profiled several Botswanan female scientists. Additionally, WIS held career fairs, science clinics, visits to secondary schools, a mentorship program, and a regional conference that brought together South African and U.S. women scientists to address gender imbalances in STEM. Other resources included a mentorship program and partnerships with universities in the States that run similar programs.

Mpuchane’s efforts have not gone unrecognized.

In 2005, the U.S. Embassy awarded her the Botswana Vanguard Women Leaders award, and in 2016, the Botswana Academy of Science named her a fellow.

Even in retirement, Mpuchane continues to actively encourage young girls to pursue careers in the sciences. “I’m associated with various groups and institutions working to bring parity in STEM participation,” she says. “I make presentations and participate in workshops and science fairs and encourage young girls to form science clubs.”

The work has paid off. “There are a number of organizations and institutions addressing the problem,” she says. “Today there is gender mainstreaming, positive action, and data to support those efforts.”

I really want this to be a safe space for girls to mess around with the tools of science,” Spikol says. “It’s compelling for these girls to see female role models and imagine themselves in a similar career.”

(SP)2: Unlocking STEM Education

PHOTO BY CARRIE GLASSER

A

s a young girl, Iris Liu ’22 loved nothing more than learning about weather as her mother read related picture books to her. “Upon seeing my deep interest in these books and science as a topic, my mother got me a children’s science encyclopedia when I was 7,” Liu (above) says. “I remember looking through the pages and finding one on atoms. I was truly amazed because learning about the existence of atoms answered my own questions about the universe.”

This early exposure to science was the first step on a path to Barnard’s Science Pathways Scholars Program — (SP)2 — in which Liu is a physics major. Designed to provide STEM education and mentorship to exceptional minority and firstgeneration students, (SP)2 was seemingly tailor-made for Liu. “I learned about (SP)2 when Professor Sedelia Rodriguez encouraged me to apply,” she says. “I found the program appealing because it is focused on helping us find research opportunities and working towards becoming research scientists. If it weren’t for the professors encouraging us, I probably wouldn’t have sought research opportunities until I was a junior.”

Instead, armed with the confidence her professors instilled, Liu participated in the Summer Research Institute (SRI) after her freshman year and every year since.

In this program, Liu took on a project centered on the environmental parameters contributing to storm asymmetry between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. “I eventually published a journal article detailing my findings and presented a poster at the 2020 American Meteorological Society conference,” she says. “The project made me realize just how much I enjoy the process of scientific research.”

Post-graduation, Liu hopes to continue her education, in applied physics or materials science, eventually becoming either a professor or a research scientist at a national lab. “Additionally, I would like to engage in more outreach at my institution and teach as a TA or a tutor,” she says.

As she reflects on her academic and eventual career paths, there’s no question that Liu’s mother planted the seeds for her to pursue STEM. But the (SP)2 program allowed her to take the next steps. “I know for sure I would not be in such a good place for a graduate school application if the (SP)2 professors didn’t encourage and help us find research opportunities early in our college careers,” she says. “The friendships I’ve made through the program have been invaluable as well. My peers are some of the most incredible people I’ve ever met, and I’m a better person and scientist for having met them.”

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 33

HO W DO W E C O M M U N I C AT E SCIENCE?

‘It Belongs to All of Us’

Journalist Natalie Angier ’78 believes science should be part of our daily discourse

by Kat Braz

I

n one of her most vivid childhood dreams, Natalie Angier ’78 watched as gallons of milk poured from the Milky Way galaxy and Good Humor truck music jingled in the background. The Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer and columnist for The New York Times says her fascination with the night sky began at a young age, even though in the Bronx neighborhood where she spent her early childhood, she recalls, she was more likely to see police helicopters than stars overhead.

“We spent two weeks a year in the Catskills, and the night sky was something that always astonished me,” Angier says. “I would have been an astronomer, but I learned early on that I probably was not a born scientist.”

She did learn that she was a born feminist. Angier remembers reading her elementary school chapter books and realizing the storylines largely involved boys going on adventures. The one story she recalls that featured a female character was comparatively static. “I remember being horrified, thinking ‘Where are our lives?’”

When Natalie was 12 years old, her family relocated to New Buffalo, Michigan.

After high school, she attended the University of Michigan for two years before 34

deciding to transfer to Barnard, where she studied English, physics, and astronomy.

“Barnard was the only school I considered because I thought a women’s college would be the kind of environment I would feel most comfortable in,” she says. “Being a lifelong feminist, I wanted the support of other women.”

While studying in the physics library at Columbia, Angier spotted a copy of New Scientist, a popular British science magazine. The publication was unlike any available in the United States at the time. “It combined stories about science with politics and social issues and humor,” Angier says. “It was a full-bodied magazine, and I thought we needed something like that. I, personally, was going to start that magazine. That was my goal.”

Angier didn’t end up starting her own magazine but did achieve the next best thing. Soon after graduating from Barnard with high honors, she joined the original staff of Discover magazine, launched by Time Inc. in 1980. One of several popular science titles started around that time, Discover aimed to nurture an interest in science among educated nonprofessionals.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NATALIE ANGIER

Natalie Angier ’78 on assignment in Gorongosa National Park, in Mozambique

She later worked as the science writer for Time magazine, an editor at the now-defunct women’s magazine Savvy, and a professor at New York University’s graduate program in science and environmental reporting. She joined the staff of The New York Times in 1990 and the following year won a Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting. She’s authored four books, including The Beauty of the Beastly: New Views on the Nature of Life and the New York Times bestseller Woman: An Intimate Geography, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

In her writing, Angier promotes women in science by highlighting their work.

Indirectly, this acknowledgment can help women gain more prominent roles in the scientific community, receive often-overdue recognition, and even win prestigious prizes. In 1991, Angier penned a column for the Times rebuking the National Academy of Sciences for electing a class of 60 with only six women that year.

“I wasn’t the only one writing about it; others were doing the same,” Angier says.

“But the truth is you have to pay attention. The National Academy started to feel the heat, and they responded to that pressure.”

Angier wrote a follow-up column in 2003 titled “No Parity Yet, but Science Academy Gains More Women” in which she acknowledged that the ratio had budged. Nearly one-quarter of that year’s 72 American inductees were women.

The profiles she’s written on scientists focus more on women than men, she says, although she takes issue with focusing too much on any individual when talking about science, as it’s not an accurate portrayal of how it is carried out.

“Science is very much a team effort, and the concept of a great man, usually, or even a great woman of science is a mistake,” Angier says.

“The Nobel Prizes emphasize how ‘we can only acknowledge a maximum of three individuals,’ and then people fight over who deserves the credit.

But if you look at a science journal and you see how many authors are listed on every single paper, how can you possibly say this is one person’s work?”

Another thing that raises her hackles? The term “STEM education,” which Angier wrote about in a 2010 New York Times essay expressing her disdain for the “odious” acronym particularly because the term “basic and applied sciences” adequately covered all the disciplines in STEM. “The word ‘science’ has such a noble history behind it,” Angier says. “Science encompasses biology, physics, chemistry, geology, ecology, psychology, and on and on. It pisses me off that engineering and technology each get their own letter

as though the world we build is ever so much more important than the one we were given and that we increasingly muck up.”

Years spent accompanying researchers in the field and observing experiments in labs have only deepened Angier’s appreciation for the scientists seeking to understand how the world works. As a science journalist, she advocates for science being part of our daily discourse.

“Science is glorious and interesting,” Angier says.

“I’ve always believed that people should understand science better than they do, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. The role of the science writer is to present science in a way that makes people feel like they are part of the scientific enterprise, that it’s not just the property of the scientists. It belongs to all of us. It’s like art or music or anything else. It’s a part of human culture.”

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 35

HO W DO W E C O M M U N I C AT E SCIENCE?

The Science of Writing

A peer-to-peer writing program prepares students to become strong communicators of science

by Andrea Cooper

O

ne feeling stands out for Ainsley Walker ’23 when she remembers her early days as a first-year in a Barnard chemistry class. “I was really nervous coming in concerning lab reports,” says Walker, a dual major in biology and sociology. “We wrote them every week. So every week I felt nervous for the next one.”

But she performed well in the class. Her self-described imposter syndrome eventually gave way to a growing awareness of her strong science writing abilities. By the end of the academic year, she applied to be a science writing fellow, an opportunity offered through the Erica Mann Jong ’63 Writing Center, which provides peer-to-peer writing guidance for students in science classes. “I could help people feel more confident about their writing,” Walker says, “because I had been in that position of feeling insecure.”

She’s now part of an experienced group that advises Barnard students on how to develop their science writing skills. And this program comes at a time when communicating the science in fields from healthcare to climate is more crucial than ever. About 130 students applied to be writing fellows last year. Thirty-three were accepted; 12 of those are designated science writing fellows.

The inspiration for more instruction in science writing at Barnard came from a group of fourth-year science majors in 2017. They recognized writing was essential for their studies but believed the College could do more to prepare students for the task. There were no classes or much class time devoted to science writing, they argued.

“It would be a quick review of what a lab report is, and go do the lab. The emphasis was always on the science and never on the writing,” says Vyoma Sahani ’20, outreach coordinator for the science writing fellows initiative.

Following conversations between students and faculty, fellows from the Writing Center started working with Biology 1500, an introductory course with several hundred students, in 2018. The science partnership expanded, and in 2020, funding became available to hire and train fellows focused exclusively on science writing. Today, each science writing fellow is assigned to work with students in a specific science course, plus spend an hour a week at the Writing Center, where they assist students with papers on topics from genetics to Victorian poetry.

The ethos of the program is apparent in its selection process for fellows.

Along with being skilled writers, based on their writing samples and faculty recommendations, successful applicants are great listeners who can make

students feel comfortable and heard, Sahani says.

Each applicant receives a piece of writing to review during the interview to see what questions about it they might ask a student during a coaching session.

Fellows receive significant training in a semesterlong course taught by Pamela Cobrin, senior lecturer in English and director of the Writing Program, before working with students. The training continues for science writing fellows with twice-weekly meetings where fellows discuss pedagogy, readings, and workshop development.

Although science writing fellows have broadbased scientific knowledge, they aren’t charged with teaching scientific principles and don’t typically comment on a paper’s content. “Their job isn’t to say, ‘I think you might have done your t-tests wrong,’” says Jessica Goldstein, senior lecturer in biology and director of the Introductory Biology Laboratory Program.

Rather, a fellow might talk through a lab report with a student “thinking about whether or not all the pieces are cohesive,” says science writing fellow Jasmine Wang ’23, a biochemistry major. A student might discover strategies to make her points clearer, expand upon her ideas, or better demonstrate how the results of an experiment proved her hypothesis.

Through these one-onone guided conversations, fellows encourage students to have confidence in their own voices, ideas, and perceptions. “It’s really about helping them spur their own thought process,” Wang says.

Group coaching is available and offers unexpected benefits for students in the same class. Frequently asked questions can be addressed, and a student might pose a query that others hadn’t considered yet.

Science fellows offer workshops for targeted groups as well, from first-year writing classes to senior seminars. Topics range from how to read a scientific article to data and bias, which considers sources of bias and how language used to describe data can sway the reader.

The program has developed partnerships with several organizations on campus. It conducts workshops and drop-in hours for Access Barnard, which supports students who identify as international, first-generation, or low-income.

Through Beyond Barnard, alumni applying to

We believe that STEM students should learn how to communicate effectively so that their scientific work is understood by everyone, not just specialists in their fields.”

36

PHOTO BY NINA WURTZEL

Science writing fellows (top row, from left): Karen McComish ’23, Vyoma Sahani ’20, Marturia Yami ’23; middle row: Jasmine Wang ’23, Sarah Braner ’22, Kylie Tanganon ’23; bottom row: Mirabella Chau ’22, Isabelle Estraghi ’22, Ainsley Walker ’23, Priyanka Dondeti ’23

medical school can book appointments with science writing fellows to get an outside perspective on how to strengthen their applications.

Ruya Tazebay ’24, who plans to double major in neuroscience and classics, has found her meetings with science writing fellows to be valuable. She likes that the guidance comes from peers who share her experiences at Barnard, “somebody who’s taken the same course, likely with the same professors, and perhaps even written the same reports. It’s nice knowing that I’m part of a greater community during these sessions.”

For her part, Goldstein says that the science faculty is delighted to have the support in Bio 1500 and other classes. About 70% of Bio 1500 students choose to meet with a science writing fellow. Goldstein has seen improvements in the overall structure and organization of students’ lab reports since the writing partnership began.

The partnership also gives faculty and fellows a chance to highlight the need for great writers in every discipline, including the sciences. “There is a responsibility on scientists to be excellent communicators to get their message out about what they’re doing, about what is the purpose of science, what is a fact,

what is a belief, and how science deals with data and facts,” Goldstein says. She’s seen heightened interest from students in how scientific information is communicated and spread, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fellows earn a stipend per semester and can stay in the job until graduation, with a minimum commitment of three semesters. Sahani is hopeful the program will grow with additional funding, and she’s passionate about the need. “We believe that STEM students should learn how to communicate effectively so that their scientific work is understood by everyone, not just specialists in their fields,” she says. “We also want students who are not actively pursuing STEM degrees to be able to understand, interpret, and engage with scientific language and data so that they’re always part of this conversation.”

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 37

HO W FA R CA N WE G O ?

Forming Bonds

Karen I. Goldberg ’83 uses chemistry to tackle global energy problems

by Marie DeNoia Aronsohn

F

or Karen I. Goldberg ’83, bonds are of central importance in work and life — and making and breaking molecular bonds has been foundational to her pioneering research in alternative fuel sources. As a renowned chemical scientist, Goldberg has amassed a long list of academic accomplishments: among them, pushing the boundaries in the development of alternative energy feedstocks — that is, moving away from petroleum and learning to use other carbon resources for our fuels and chemicals.

Her interest in science, and chemistry specifically, is rooted in her time at Barnard. While an undergraduate, Goldberg pursued research projects with professors at Cornell and Columbia Universities and at AT&T Laboratories. She then went on to earn her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. After postdoctoral work at Ohio State University, followed by faculty appointments at Illinois State University and the University of Washington, Goldberg joined the University of Pennsylvania as a Vagelos Professor in Energy Research and the inaugural director of the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology in 2017.

“The Vageloses’ dedication and investment in finding viable solutions to climate change was a critical factor in this decision [to take the job at Penn],” Goldberg says, “and the Barnard connection made it even more special.” (Roy and Diana Vagelos ’55 are longtime Barnard trustees, whose generous support has funded numerous projects, including the Diana Center.)

In 2018, Goldberg marked another triumph when she was elected to the highly prestigious National Academy of Science.

All along the way, molecular bonds have been critical. “I feel that that’s the key to everything.

Chemistry is largely about making and breaking bonds between atoms, so the more we can figure out how we can control those processes, the further we can go with making all the things that we want, from pharmaceuticals, to plastics, to fibers, to fuels and more,” says Goldberg. In fact, she believes, the solutions to many of the world’s problems, among them climate change, lie in developing a greater 38

understanding of the making and breaking of molecular bonds.

Goldberg made a compelling case about the power of chemistry to solve the climate crisis last month when she visited Barnard’s campus for two days, delivering two lectures as part of a series of ongoing events for the Barnard Year of Science.

“Climate change is really a chemistry problem,” she posited during her lecture, “and science has helped us solve such big chemistry problems in the past.”

Goldberg pointed to a historic crisis at the beginning of the 20th century when the world population was expected to surpass global food sources. The problem, she explained, was a projected shortage of fertilizer. At the time, world agriculture depended on bird manure (guano) from tropical islands and on nitrate deposits in Chile for fertilizer. “We needed to find a way to make fertilizer on a large scale. Chemists saved the day,” Goldberg said. The key ingredient of fertilizer is nitrogen, and scientists recognized that there is a huge

PHOTO COURTESY OF KAREN GOLDBERG

amount of it in the air — but not in a form that can be used for fertilizer.

An innovation called the Haber-Bosch process provided the solution. “Chemists found a way to break the very strong nitrogen-nitrogen bond in gaseous nitrogen and form the nitrogen-hydrogen bonds needed to make ammonia [a potent fertilizer]. This was the single most important technical advance in the 20th century. Billions of people on earth are alive today because of the Haber-Bosch process,” said Goldberg.

In much the same way, new chemistry is needed to allow us to move away from burning fossil fuels as our primary energy source. Anthropogenic use of fossil fuels directly tracks with the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) — a greenhouse gas that absorbs heat — contributing to global warming and climate change. CO2 levels today are higher than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years. Reducing CO2 is pivotal to stemming the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Goldberg’s work investigates how CO2, methane, and even discarded plastics might be used as carbon feedstocks for fuel. “We have to change where we get our energy. Scientists are working hard to improve processes for getting energy from the sun and wind, but we will also need liquid fuels to store that energy for use at night and for other purposes — to keep flying planes, for example,” she says. “This is the moment in time for a moon-shot effort in renewable energy research. You need a lot of scientists with varied expertise and new ideas working together to diversify our energy landscape. The clock is ticking on climate change, and a lot of money and effort needs to be put into this problem now.”

Goldberg understands the importance of such hard work and commitment. She remains deeply connected to Barnard and views her college experience as key to her career and life, preparing her for the challenging, once male-dominated STEM profession.

“It was so nice because it was small. You got to know your professors, and they got to know you. Barnard had everything to offer as a small liberal arts school but had all that a large university [Columbia] offered as well. And to top it off, it was right in the middle of an exciting and vibrant city. It was like this perfect environment, and it still is,” says Goldberg.

Goldberg did run up against sexism, though. “In my sophomore year,” she says, “I took an honors organic chemistry class at Columbia, and it was myself and another Barnard student. I remember hearing, the first day, Columbia students walking into class saying, ‘Oh, good, girls in the class — they will lower the curve.’”

In graduate school at Berkeley, prejudice

surrounding women in science also felt daunting. But Goldberg says that Barnard had prepared her well: “The education I got there, and the courses, gave me a very solid foundation to get through graduate school.

But it also gave me the confidence that I needed to continue during times of challenge.”

Goldberg points to Barnard professor Bernice Segal in particular. Segal, who led the Chemistry Department through much of the 1970s and ’80s, died in April 1989. “Professor Segal was tough but also inspiring and nurturing. I still remember Professor Segal telling me that I was actually good at this. It wasn’t just that I worked hard. I can’t even put into words what that meant to me.

“I think it’s realizing the impact Barnard had in setting me off on my trajectory — giving me the foundation both in science and the courage and the faith in myself to keep going.”

So last year, when the renowned chemist was asked to renew her connection with the College and become a member of Barnard’s Board of Trustees, the obvious answer was yes. Some bonds are built to last.

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 39

Where Art and Technology Converge

In a new course, students create kinetic sculptures that spin, roll, or give the illusion of flight

by N. Jamiyla Chisholm

T

echnology is an effective tool in navigating everyday life, of course, but it can also be used in myriad inventive ways. Last spring, assistant professor of computer science Mark Santolucito asked 23 students in his Creative Embedded Systems course to conceive of and implement their own creative uses of computation by producing kinetic sculptures — sculptures that move.

To teach the class remotely, Santolucito employed every technique at his disposal, such as an overhead desk camera to show students the pieces he was discussing.

Students who lived near campus had access to the College’s Design Center in the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, where they could use resources such as drills and 3D printers to make their projects a reality.

“Students were required to build and design from scratch a creative sculpture that connected to motors and the internet, so we can trigger all of these sculptures remotely at the same time,” says Santolucito. “I provided some high-level configuration constraints, such as telling them, ‘You need to use a particular programming style, you need to connect to this code that we already wrote for you.’

But from there, they were free to design and build however they liked.”

Producing a computer-powered sculpture that could be activated from a cell phone wasn’t without challenges. Students had to program and design an object that told a complete narrative. “The key benefit of this class was that it gave computer science students an opportunity to take ownership of creating artistic digital systems from the hardware to the software level,” explains Santolucito.

Students spent as many as 40 hours over three weeks on the sculptures. “I enjoyed exploring aspects of mechanical and electrical engineering that I don’t usually see as a computer science major,” says Pazit Schrecker ’21, whose Carousel 40

for COVID Times sculpture consisted of two motors, an ESP32 (a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip), a Raspberry Pi (a tiny computer), regular paper, card stock, cardboard, origami paper, a Lego wheel, a Lazy Susan, string, and a number of wires. “I’ve been exposed to new types of problem-solving challenges and projects through this class, which helped me see how art and engineering can overlap and work together,” she says.

Yiyun Wang ’21, who made an automatic cat toy from her home in Wisconsin, says that facing limitations inspired her to expand her scope and collaborate with peers. “Since the problems we could encounter usually don’t have a standard answer key — how to design my device or how to make things interesting — it is helpful to learn from different perspectives,” says Wang, who plans to attend graduate school for computer science.

Once the sculptures were completed, local students displayed their work in the Department of Computer Science’s lounge in March. Similar to other assignments, Santolucito says, the project was openended to encourage students to think independently.

“It’s building a foundation for students to continue to learn through their entire life,” Santolucito says.

“I don’t think you’re going to find any class at Barnard that is purely science or purely art. I think that’s the nature of what we do here — everything is interdisciplinary.”

The Creative Embedded Systems course was funded by a grant provided by the Global Columbia Collaboratory, jointly founded by the Data Science Institute and Columbia Entrepreneurship.

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN KING

HO W FA R CA N WE G O ?

Research on the Rise

The 2021 Summer Research Institute boasts record-breaking growth and participation

by Veronica Suchodolski ’19

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN KING

B

arnard’s popular Summer Research Institute (SRI) leaped to new heights last summer, supporting 243 students as they pursued scientific research on campus and around New York City — doubling in size from its founding in 2014 and growing 33% since 2019. (SRI 2020 was canceled due to COVID-19 restrictions.) “It is so wonderful to be able to give our dedicated and intelligent STEM students a chance to shine again and develop skills they can use to bolster their careers,” says associate professor of psychology Koleen McCrink, who codirected the program with associate professor of chemistry Marisa C. Buzzeo ’01.

The annual program provides students the opportunity to conduct funded research with a faculty mentor in STEM fields, while also attending panels and workshops designed to hone their scientific skills. On July 28, 2021, students presented their final research at the Lida Orzeck ’68 Poster Session, which was held virtually. “The scope and diversity of our students’ research projects was truly remarkable,” said Buzzeo after the poster session. “It was thrilling to see students back in the lab this summer, engaged in hands-on work alongside one another.”

This year’s SRI was groundbreaking not just for the size of its student cohort.

More than 150 faculty members joined the program as mentors, the highest-ever faculty participation. Additionally, the Computer Science Department, inaugurated in 2019, joined SRI, with 26 students pursuing research.

“It is such a privilege to support the faculty in the execution of the Summer Research Institute each year,” says A-J Aronstein, dean of Beyond Barnard and a key player in planning SRI. “With so many students and mentors, it takes a true crosscampus effort to carry out this program.”

The importance of that faculty mentorship cannot be overstated. For SRI

researchers Olivia Kowalishin ’21 and Esha Julka ’24, the idea for their computer science research project came from the top: Learning about President Sian Leah Beilock’s research on test anxiety motivated them to explore self-disclosures of test anxiety on social media using an area of computer science called natural language processing.

Kowalishin, the only English major participating in SRI 2021, might not have thought to do scientific research without President Beilock’s research inspiration. She didn’t take her first computer science course until her junior year. “I definitely struggled with test anxiety, so I think it’s really interesting to see how other people express that as well,” Kowalishin says of President Beilock’s work. “I really wanted to work on this project this summer because it was so focused in the actual text, and I think that’s really interesting from a computer science perspective.”

That interdisciplinary spirit cuts to the heart of SRI’s mission. “Exposure to research is a critical part of a Barnard education, and we want students to feel that they have the opportunity to thrive in a community of scholars regardless of their discipline and regardless of their specific interests,” says Provost Linda Bell.

The Summer Research Institute’s 10-week program provides student researchers with a stipend and access to subsidized on-campus housing. Student financial support for SRI is derived from a combination of grants and programs as well as the generosity of many individual donors. The capstone event, the Lida Orzeck ’68 Poster Session, is supported by the generosity of Trustee Lida Orzeck ’68.

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 41

2022 CELEBRATING THE BARNARD YEAR OF SCIENCE HONORING

BARNARD ALUMNAE AND FACULTY MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2022 6 P.M. EDT AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY OR CELEBRATE WITH US VIRTUALLY

GALA CO-CHAIRS KARLIE KLOSS, TRUSTEE CAROLINE BLISS SPENCER ’09, TRUSTEE

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All proceeds help to underwrite student financial aid for new generations of visionaries and trailblazers at Barnard College.

212.853.8311 | gala@barnard.edu barnard.edu/gala

Noteworthy Connecting alumnae. Celebrating community.

Barnard College Summer School for Women Workers in Industry science lab, circa 1928.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BARNARD COLLEGE ARCHIVES

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 43

Q&Author

A Word With Kyle Lukoff ’06

The award-winning writer tells us about his path from school librarian to children’s book author

by Michele Lynn ’82 In his most recent work, Too Bright to See, author Kyle Lukoff ’06 navigates the topics of grief, friendship, self-discovery, and gender identity within the framework of a haunting ghost story. Named a 2021 National Book Award finalist, it was called “a gentle, glowing wonder, full of love and understanding” by The New York Times. His earlier works are A Storytelling of Ravens and the Stonewall Award-winning When Aidan Became a Brother. Lukoff spent eight years as an elementary school librarian — with students ranging from 2-year-olds to fifth graders — and 10 years as a bookseller before turning to full-time writing. The experience, he says, shaped him as an author.

“I don’t know if I would have been able to write for children if I hadn’t spent so much time talking to kids about books, finding out what they like and don’t like, what they’re able to handle and what doesn’t interest them,” he says. “Being professionally required to read widely within those genres also helped me stay current with the market and figure out what kinds of stories needed to be told. Kids are also an endless font of inspiration for characters.”

We caught up with Kyle to talk about writing for children, the dichotomy of censorship and recognition, and the power of literature.

What was the impetus for writing Too Bright to See? Melding together two ideas into one brainstorm. I had wanted to write a ghost story using the first sentence of a short story my dad wrote when he was young. I also wanted to write a middle-grade novel about a trans boy. One morning, I was talking to a mom at my school, telling her I couldn’t figure out which story to write first, and realized that I could combine the two.

This year, you were named as a National Book Award finalist for Too Bright to See, and your work was pulled from shelves as part of school book bans and library censorship campaigns. Would you speak to your feelings about both of these experiences?

Both experiences are surreal and strange, and both signal a professional milestone 44

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KYLE LUKOFF

What made you decide to focus on creating children’s literature?

A combination of proximity, failure, and familiarity. I didn’t think I had the patience to write an adult novel and wasn’t able to sell my young adult novel, so I decided to turn a weird idea I had in 2006 into a picture book, which became my 2018 debut, A Storytelling of Ravens. Everything unfolded from there.

that I had dreamed of but not expected. With a battle raging over whether trans people should be allowed to exist or not, this honor from the National Book Foundation proves that literature is an important tool in shaping broader discourse and fighting for liberation.

In Too Bright to See, the main character, Bug, lives in a community with no transphobia. It reminded me of this Dan Levy comment about not including storylines with homophobia in ​​[Levy’s Netflix sitcom] Schitt’s Creek: “I have no patience for homophobia. As a result, it’s been amazing to take that into the show. We show love and tolerance.…” What inspired you to create the supportive community in which Bug grows up?

I am similarly bored by transphobia! It’s intellectually lazy and cribs its talking points from a variety of reheated moral panics. I don’t enjoy stories where transphobia or homophobia is the engine that drives forward the narrative because they force the trans or queer character to constantly respond or react to straight/cis people instead of exploring what a life could look like freed from those restraints.

I’m not interested in circumscribing my life around cis people’s opinions about my identity, and I feel the same about the characters I create.

What role has Barnard played in your writing and your life?

I was deeply happy at Barnard and threw myself headfirst into campus life. I don’t know who I would be without those four years of intellectual, social, and personal growth. But once I came out as trans, toward the end of junior year, I decided that it was important for me to continue to live my values as a person — now a man — who believes in self-determination for women, and the importance of women’s spaces, and so decided to politely remove myself from alumnae life. Which makes me sad, to be honest, but I also don’t feel right using space or resources intended for women, as someone who is now a man. But I don’t regret going to Barnard and am proud to be a graduate.

Have any of your books been inspired by your time at Barnard?

My 2020 picture book, Explosion at the Poem Factory, was cribbed from a poem of the same title by Amitai Schleier, which won the 2007 Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest, an annual event put on by the Philolexian Society (a literary and debate society at Columbia).

Philo was one of the first student groups that I joined and one that I still feel connected to.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Know when to give up on a project that isn’t working for you and how to persist on a project that you know you can’t give up on.

What’s up next for you?

My second middle-grade novel, Different Kinds of Fruit, comes out in April of 2022. My first nonfiction picture book, If You’re a Kid Like Gavin — a biography co-authored with young trans activist Gavin Grimm — comes out in July. B WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 45

Passion Project

Galvanizing Young Investors

A new startup from two Barnard alums is transforming the way Gen Z invests

Eve Halimi ’19 (left) and Anam Lakhani ’19

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After completing an internship on Wall Street the summer before her senior year at Barnard, Anam Lakhani ’19 had, she says, “a few extra bucks for the first time in my life.” Wishing to invest that money in the stock market, she downloaded some investment apps but was frustrated by the difficulty she encountered when using them and by the lack of friends with whom she could discuss investing. So it was fortuitous when she and Eve Halimi ’19 found themselves paired together in the Athena Center’s senior seminar entrepreneurship class and tasked with developing a social action project.

They discovered that while they were both economics majors who had worked in different sectors of the financial industry, they were preparing to enter the full-time workforce with little idea about how to invest their money.

“What was even more concerning was that none of our classmates or friends, especially our female friends, were talking about investing and didn’t really know how to,” says Lakhani.

They became determined to create a new platform to make it easier for the next generation to invest. That idea became Alinea, an investing app designed for members of Gen Z, which they launched in November 2020 and lead as co-CEOs. The company’s name comes from the French word alinéa, which Paris native Halimi defines as “moving to the next line … which essentially is a new chapter.

That’s what we’re creating: a new chapter in investing.” In the past year, their company was featured in Forbes and Yahoo! Finance.

Since investing can be intimidating, especially with the abundance of information available, Alinea is designed to make investing simple, personal, and transparent — and at the tip of your fingers. To allay the anxiety of young investors, the app offers a calm and familiar experience inspired by products the younger generation enjoys on a daily basis. “We’ve used the

PHOTO COURTESY OF NINA WURTZEL

by Michele Lynn ’82

analogy that we’re like Spotify for investing,” says Lakhani.

“We have a feature that no one else has, which is creating your own playlist of investments, which we call a stack,” she says. “So I could have my ‘Eve stack,’ where I’m bundling up all my favorite companies and investing as little as $1 in all of them.” Alinea focuses on diversification, with Halimi remarking that over 90% of day traders lose money on single stock picks.

Among the Alinea-created stacks, the most popular categories are women-led, blockchain, clean energy, and electric vehicles. The founders say impact investing matters to their generation because young people want to invest in issues they care about. To help Gen Z incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into their strategy, the app provides an ESG score for each stack.

Alinea uses an Instagram Story-style format so that users can learn about diverse topics related to investing. “Through [the Instagram] Stories format, which is familiar to our generation, we are bringing education to our peers,” says Halimi. At the same time, they are making investing a more social experience. Lakhani notes that “a huge part of [what we noticed] when we were getting started was the lack of community. We want users to be able to see what their friends are doing so that they can share knowledge and talk about investments.”

There is no fee to invest through the app. “Everything we’ve built so far has been for the customer first, and we haven’t prioritized monetization,” says Halimi. “We are figuring out monetization right now, have a lot on the product road map that’s very exciting, and are looking to raise another round of funding pretty soon.”

Halimi and Lakhani raised $2.3 million in their first round, which was challenging as young women in the financial tech space. “I think 95% of the investors we spoke to were older white men, and it definitely made it harder for them to understand the problem and to take us seriously,” says Halimi. “We were seeing male-founded startups doing very similar things or in earlier stages than [we were] and raising money much faster and in bigger amounts.” But their tenacity and hard work have paid off: They applied and landed a spot at Y Combinator — a startup fund and program that helps founders launch, build, and scale their startup.

When the pair completed the three-month Y Combinator program, they had launched an app, received a license from the SEC, and secured investors, including the Harvard Management Company. They have added three Columbia University grads to their team as chief technology officer and lead engineers and are growing the community of users through student ambassadors at campuses throughout the country. And they have hired a team of student interns who are involved with product management.

While their initial target audience was young women, they are now committed to empowering all of Gen Z. In a survey Alinea recently did at colleges, they learned that nearly 85% of students are not investing their money. “This is often because of a lack of education, knowledge, and confidence,” says Lakhani. “This has detrimental effects because when you don’t start investing early, you have to play catch-up later on.”

If a college graduate starts investing $1,000 each year in the S&P 500, beginning with their first paycheck, she will earn $1.28 million over the next 50 years (assuming an interest rate of 10%). “You’re losing the potential of [earning] over a million dollars in your lifetime by not investing, and that’s what is hurting a lot of women out there, and that’s what is so important to us to fix,” says Halimi.

Providing young people with the tools to learn and enjoy investing is a crucial step in the co-CEOs’ larger mission to support women more holistically. “Having financial freedom, security, and wellness is as important as good health,” says Halimi. B

What was even more concerning was that none of our classmates or friends, especially our female friends, were talking about investing and didn’t really know how to.”

WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 47

Parenting

A Neuroscientist Talks Parenting Psychology professor Nim Tottenham ’96 breaks down how parents can apply her research to their daily lives

by Veronica Suchodolski ’19 When Nim Tottenham ’96, a professor of psychology at Columbia and a parent of two, set out to research normative human brain development, she made an important discovery: Early childhood experiences can literally change the way we think, not just as children but into adulthood. That means that parents — whose position as a child’s first social partners has an outsized influence on their brain development — have a big role to play in ensuring well-being later in life.

We called up Tottenham, who runs the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Lab at Columbia, and asked her to break down her research and share how parents can translate her findings into their day-to-day lives.

In brief, what is the science behind how parents influence us in early childhood?

Our research is motivated by the seemingly bizarre way that humans grow up, which is namely that we spend an extraordinarily long time with our parents — more so compared to most, if not all, other species.

Our research is asking ‘What good is a parent, period?’ What we find is consistent across species: Parents are a very effective buffer of children’s fear responses. Even though a child may face something threatening, the presence of a parent who themselves is calm and regulated is a really powerful shield against stress-related elevations in children’s neurobiology and physiology.

Conversely, if the parent themselves expresses too much fear and distress, then the parent may be just as effective at amplifying children’s stress and fear neurobiology.

How can parents help in regulating their children’s emotions without getting in the way of their emotional growth?

One of the questions we’re interested in is ‘When do these effects come into play?’ That buffering effect that I was describing earlier may be particularly important at very young ages. As children get older, then increasingly they’re going to need experiences of autonomy. We need to learn how to fall down; otherwise, we’re going to get really hurt in the future when we have a really big fall. Learning how to manage difficult situations is an important developmental task. Despite parents’ best intentions, removing all obstacles from children’s paths may not be in the child’s best interest, since learning to live with challenges will certainly be part of life.

What can parents do if they feel like they’re having difficulty managing their own stress levels?

The goal is not that parents should present an emotionally blunted picture of the world to their children, but to help them understand that emotions, even really big ones, happen, but after they crescendo, big emotions also come to an end. I don’t mean to imply that we should be stoic robots.

If I’m sad about something that I should be sad about, I let my children know that I’m feeling sad. I help them understand that this is normal and, 78

actually, by talking it through, I will be less sad later and that this feeling resolves over time. Parents can really be thought of as scaffolding the way that children’s brains are developing and the way that their emotional understanding and responses are developing.

What are steps we can all take in supporting the well-being of children?

As a society, we have to decide if we care about children. And a child is never just a child. They don’t exist on their own; they are inextricably tied to their families. So if we care about children, then we have to care about families. And how do we support families? Because that’s really the medium in which children live and grow. B

Last Word

Quandra Prettyman (1933-2021) A Mentor, a Trailblazer, an Institution

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BARNARD COLLEGE ARCHIVES

by Nia Ashley ’16 It’s hard to imagine Barnard without Professor Quandra Prettyman. She taught my mother before me, an experience shared by many Black legacy students. She taught the mothers of my writing, the Barnard writers whose legacy led me to the College.

During the English major graduation celebration, she looked from my mother to me and then down at my then 6-year-old godbrother, saying, “I taught you, you, and I’ll see you when you get here.” His bright smile beamed back at her.

I believed her.

Quandra Prettyman was an institution.

How do you eulogize an institution? What can we possibly put forth that captures the enormity of her influence? The scholarship, the fellowship, the beauty?

Like my mothers, by birth and by canon, I can only tell what I know to be true.

Before I took Quandra Prettyman’s Early Black Literature course, Frederick Douglass was the oldest Black writer I’d ever read. My mother had taught me of oral histories and West African folktales. She explained how slave owners denied enslaved Africans the ability to read or write, and the great importance of the words of those who learned in secret. I admired many Black writers as a child, but my perception was that literature began for us with the men of the 19th and 20th century. Professor Prettyman showed me that was far from true. In her course, I learned of slave narratives. From those texts, I discovered the diversity of perspective and the depth of experience of those who’d had their basic humanity denied and who lived to speak their truth. Hello, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Price, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth. Hello, roots of the Black imagination — long, thick,

and deep. Professor Prettyman showed me that Black people’s contribution to English literature defied national borders, colonialism, and white supremacy. I, too, am America, England, the Caribbean, and Africa, waxing poetic on liberty and autonomy like an 18thcentury philosopher.

How do you thank someone who cracks open your perceptions of yourself and those who came before you? Had it not been for Professor Prettyman’s course, there would have been no other opportunity offered within the English major that included Black voices in the pre-20th-century canon. During her 50 years as one of the few Black professors in the English Department, she remained committed to centering Black literature in English literature education.

How do you eulogize a revolution?

In 2016, I was one of only four Black women to graduate with a degree in English, despite it being the most popular major at Barnard at the time. All four of us had taken one of Professor Prettyman’s courses. All four of us had decided, like Professor Prettyman, that English literature was where our voices belonged, where we had always been, where we would continue to be, limited only by our own intellectual curiosity.

How do you eulogize the truth? You don’t. You just continue to speak its name, so it’s never forgotten, so it will always be, as it has always been.

Quandra Prettyman. Always. B WINTER 2022 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 79

“BYOS” Crossword

Flowering REBECCA GRAY

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Dare to Be

@Barnard Pre-College Programs

WE’RE BRINGING SUMMER BACK! Offering noncredit and for-credit program options for rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors Young Women’s Leadership Summer Institute: June 30 - July 21, 2022 Pre-Baccalaureate Courses: June 30 - August 13, 2022 Athena Summer Innovation Institute: July 24 - August 13, 2022 Applications Open Now! Visit precollege.barnard.edu to apply today!

Financial Aid Application Deadline: Friday, February 11, 2022 Summer Application Deadline: Friday, April 15, 2022

ILLUSTRATION BY ROWAN WU

BARNARD REUNION JUNE 9-11, 2022

Does 2022 mark a milestone graduation anniversary for you?

Connect, engage, and celebrate with us at Barnard Reunion, a cherished annual tradition.

Get more details at REUNION.BARNARD.EDU