Summer 2013 magazine by Dickinson College

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summer 2013

dickinson magazine

summer 2013

volume 91

number 1

[ contents ] 18 Flowers From the Flood: From smartphones and Google to

Dickinson Published by the Division of Enrollment, Marketing & Communications Publisher and Vice President Stephanie Balmer

government surveillance and DNA databases, the world is awash in data. What are the consequences, and how will we navigate the deluge?

Executive Director of Marketing & Communications Connie McNamara

26 Through a Glass, Sustainably: Ask a dozen experts what

Editor Michelle Simmons Assistant Editor Lauren Davidson

sustainability is, and chances are you’ll get a dozen definitions. The

Contributing Writers Matt Getty MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson Tony Moore

new Baird Sustainability Fellows program tackles them all—one

Student Assistants Carson Koser ’15 Erin Owens ’15 Sasha Shapiro ’15

conversation at a time.

College Photographer Carl Socolow ’77

32 Peace of Mind: From Perestroika to daily

neighborhood disputes, Brad Heckman ’89 mediates the global with

Multimedia Specialist Sarah Sheriff

the local.

Designer Amy Wells Magazine Advisory Group Christina Van Buskirk Gail Birch Huganir ’80 David Richeson Adrienne Su Jim Gerencser ’93 Paula Lima-Jones

34 First Hand: The Trout Gallery’s latest exhibition

highlights the embedded journalism of the American Civil War—and the technology that made it possible.

Web site www.dickinson.edu/magazine E-mail Address dsonmag@dickinson.edu Telephone 717-245-1289 Facebook www.facebook.com/DickinsonMagazine © Dickinson College 2013. Dickinson Magazine is published four times a year, in January, April, July and October, by Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773, Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA 17013-1773. Printed with soy-based inks. Please recycle after reading.

Read Web exclusives at www.dickinson.edu/magazine.

d i c k i n so n magazin e Fall 2012

up front

Tony Moore

your view

Dickinson matters

ask the archivist

college & west high

in the game

in back

40 fine print 41 kudos 42 beyond the limestone walls 44 our Dickinson

Matt Zugale

54 obituaries

56 closing thoughts

12 1

[ your view ] Conestoga origins I want to tell you how thrilled I was to see the football trophy of the Conestoga wagon in the spring issue. I remember my dad, J. Shaber Barr, buying the hand-carved wagon and horses from Hotel Brunswick in Lancaster. My dad knew the man who had hand-carved the wagon and horses. We had it in our dining room until he had it made into a trophy for the rivalry between Dickinson and Franklin & Marshall. I thank you so very much for the picture of it, as I haven’t seen for a long time. Barbara Barr Jones ’53 Norristown, Pa.

“That other school”

A-Z misses out

Bill Durden’s comment in the spring issue about the nationwide name recognition that distinguishes our Dickinson from “that other school in northern New Jersey” brought to mind an incident that I hadn’t thought about for more than 60 years. The basketball point-shaving scandal of the early ’50s enabled Dickinson to schedule games with teams in New York City that we could never before consider playing against. So it was off to the Big Apple and games with CCNY and NYU. We stayed in a hotel in Newark and depended on subway transportation to get to their gyms. When we finally arrived at CCNY’s gym, we were greeted by one of their officers, who was upset that we had not arrived sooner: “Your game is due to start in five minutes” was his frantic “hello.” The game that was to start in five minutes pitted the CCNY junior varsity’s team against the school then known as Fairleigh Dickinson Junior College. Both “Dickinson” schools have come a long way since that incident, but there is no contest as to which school has come further, thanks to the leadership of President Durden and his predecessors.

I really enjoyed the A-Z feature on President Durden’s time at Dickinson. I must admit, however, that I was disappointed that the Latin American, Latino & Caribbean studies (LALC) major was not featured. I know it is impossible to incorporate every important event that came about under Durden’s time here into this list, but I do believe that the success of the LALC program is an important one to be remembered. Its official recognition as a major in 2010 and subsequent burgeoning growth represents a huge mile marker in Dickinson’s curriculum. It is truly interdisciplinary, requiring majors to draw from at least three different departments and encouraging them to utilize their experiences abroad as the foundation for their senior capstone projects. “Global” in the context of LALC, then, is about exploring not just a geographical region but also diverse intellectual frontiers—the epitome of a Dickinson education. Dickinson has continued to expand upon this momentum: In conjunction with the October 2012 Indigenous Issues Across the Americas Carlisle Symposium, the LALC department hosted the first-ever Indigenous Issues in Latin America

Tom Young ’53 Raleigh, N.C.

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

Symposium, which featured significant contributors to contemporary indigenous-rights movements in Argentina and Bolivia. And, of course, it has spurred an array of new initiatives: several Mosaic and service opportunities within the U.S. and internationally to countries like Cuba, Argentina, Guatemala, Spain and the Dominican Republic, not to mention the new Cuenca/Mendoza Dickinson program. As an LALC major, I am admittedly biased and naturally feel that the list would have been more complete had the program been included. At the same time, I am impressed with the feature that has been produced and am grateful for the A-Z reminder of why Dickinson is so great—and how President Durden has helped make it that way. Amanda Jo Wildey ’13 Lima, Peru

LGBTQ&A is A-OK

Cover kudos

I read the Brian Patchcoski interview in the winter issue, and I wanted to voice my support for the Office of LGBTQ Services. In my last semester at Dickinson, rather than thinking about conclusions, I found myself thinking of beginnings. Looking back, I see myself: an awkward kid, jaded and cynical, dying to see change in the world but unwilling to realize the change myself. This naturally draws me to make comparisons. Who am I now? Well, I’m still a bit awkward, but I am patient and hopeful, and I feel empowered to change the world. I also see changes in the place I have called home for the last four years. Along with the sexual-assault protest and the Idea Fund, the force to which I attribute the most credit in improving Dickinson’s climate is the Office of LGBTQ Services. Before the office was created, discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity were horribly limited on this campus. Each year saw improvements, but students were overloaded, and not much could be done. The conversation was limited, and there was no visibility of transgender/ gender-nonconforming people. Discussions of LGBTQ issues were just that: There was no discussion of race, class, spirituality, national origin or of any other identity. The Office of LGBTQ Services has strived to recognize diversity among individuals. The office creates a space in which no one is ostracized, marginalized, sidelined or ignored. We can all express ourselves. The office connects students with other students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni and organizations who want nothing but for these students to blossom and to shine. They do so much to remind us all that change is possible.

I would like to compliment you on the winter issue’s cover. It is the most elegant, serenely beautiful cover I’ve ever seen on Dickinson Magazine. Excellent work!

Jo s h ua Dav i s ’ 1 3 Milford, Pa.

Bill Helsel ’64 El Sobrante, Calif.

First-generation impressions I am responding to Carla Seybrecht Skladany ’61’s letter, “That’s Not Me,” which appeared in the spring 2012 issue. When I received the e-mail from President William G. Durden ’71 asking me to participate in Brenda Bretz ’95’s study on first-generation college students who graduated from Dickinson, I was initially ecstatic to be a participant. Then, after further thought, I hesitated. After reading “That’s Not Me,” I am glad I followed my gut instinct by not being a participant. And here are my two reasons why: Would I be stereotyped as a first-generation college graduate? And would I be further stereotyped as a first-generation high-school and college graduate? Surely, a rarity today. In my opinion, that study would never capture the essence of who and what I am, and most important, what made me who and what I am. When I look back critically at my family’s two preceding generations, several had the values, mannerisms, local social position, quiet leadership and even the prosperity similar to some of the Old Philadelphia upper class in its day, rather than the stereotypes of the backgrounds and experiences of those who never graduated from college proffered by so many academics before and now. I and many members of my family never fit into many of those stereotypes that are so dear to academics’ hearts. I’ve read many of their books, papers and articles on the subject, and I too say, “That’s Not Me.” I felt that the study’s conclusions would most likely highlight many of the supposed stereotypes of first-generation college students, let alone a first-generation high-school and college graduate like me, and Carla’s letter to the magazine confirmed that for me.

“In my last semester at Dickinson, rather than thinking about conclusions, I found myself thinking of beginnings. ... Who am I now? Well, I’m still a bit awkward, but I am patient and hopeful, and

I feel empowered to change the world.” —Joshua Davis ’13

Bob Mordeczko ’88 Bryn Mawr, Pa.

[ Dickinson matters ] Our data, ourselves Nancy A. Roseman, president

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

hat a privilege it is to reach out to the Dickinson community through my first magazine column. While I look forward to addressing a wide variety of topics, how convenient that the focus of this issue is science! That said, you have my promise that Dickinson Magazine will not become a science journal. Big data is a significant new idea with seemingly limitless reach. Information about us is gathered constantly, sometimes with our knowledge, but increasingly not. Our wired world tracks our movements, what we purchase, what Web pages we briefly linger on, the GPS coordinates of photos we take. Enormous amounts of information, and evolving technologies to organize it and wield it usefully, have spawned a new discipline: big data. Earlier this year, a research group publishing in the journal Science demonstrated that using anonymously provided DNA-sequence information, they could identify from whom the DNA came. They performed this feat using a relatively small amount of genetic information, combined with publicly available genetic databases that are used either for genealogy studies or biomedical research, and other publicly available information. Experts in the field—and the authors themselves—were surprised by how easy it was to pluck the needle out of the human haystack. In fact, the databases used in this study are all freely available on the Internet. The process they used was not itself particularly sophisticated, but like most breakthroughs, it required a novel and imaginative approach. This work has sparked much debate among biomedical researchers, bioethicists and policy makers about a host of issues given that our DNA serves as what some have called a future diary of our health—a diary that becomes easier to read as biomedical research

We have gone from that

-letter alphabet as disorganized white noise to identifying a single person out of the human family using relatively little genetic information.

advances. Already, there are well-defined markers for certain cancers and chronic diseases. The ability of insurers and employers to discriminate against individuals based on their genetic information is not so farfetched, and, as a result, there are those lobbying for more robust laws protecting against a potential new form of bias: genetic discrimination. In reading about this leap from an anonymous piece of DNA sequence to the unique individual it belongs to, I reflected on touring, in the mid-â&#x20AC;&#x2122;90s, one of the most sophisticated automated DNA-sequencing laboratories in the country, at MIT. Eric Lander, the extraordinary scientist who led the charge to sequence the human genome, told us of the thousands of DNA letters, or nucleotides, they could sequence in a day. That was actually the easy part. He then described the real problem being solved in a back room of the building, a fair distance from all of those robots busily going about the business of generating all those data. There, computer scientists, geneticists and mathematicians were furiously trying to develop software that would be able to organize and analyze all of those sequence data, make sense out of that four-letter alphabet constituting our genetic code. At that time, the main challenge of the Human Genome Project wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t generating the sequence; it was having the tools to assemble and interpret it. There simply wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any software that could handle the sheer volume of data those robots were generating. Having that four-letter alphabet laid out before us had little utility then, but with the advent of what we now call big data and the development of the necessary computational tools, scientists reached the point that allowed biomedical researchers and others to get to work studying the human genome. What is so remarkable, and a little frightening, is that in approximately 20 years, we have gone from that four-letter alphabet as disorganized white noise to identifying a single person out of the human family using relatively little genetic information. Big data is playing an increasingly significant, oftentimes invisible, role in our lives. Navigating all of its ramifications, as exemplified by the implications surrounding this latest manipulation of human genetic information, is exactly the kind of challenge a liberal-arts education prepares us for. Biologists who are worrying that they are unprepared for the ethical and other challenges posed by the very research they are doing would have benefitted from what the liberal arts have to offer. Dickinsonians are ready for this increasingly interconnected and complex world. Instead of being limited to becoming highly specialized and technically competent, especially in a world where competency is fleeting as technology speeds by, our graduates have the foundation to navigate and succeed in a world where intellectual flexibility and breadth across disciplines is more valuable than ever.

[ ask the archivist ] M

“Is there any evidence that East College was used as a hospital during the Civil War?” —Scott Wetzel ’05

ost Dickinsonians know that Confederate forces camped on the grounds of the college in the days before the Battle of Gettysburg. Many do not know, however, that people injured during the brief shelling of Carlisle on July 1, as well as wounded soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg, convalesced at the college in the days and weeks that followed. Confederate forces marched into Carlisle on June 27, 1863. Soldiers bivouacked on Dickinson’s campus, and officers took meals with college president Herman M. Johnson and his family. After three days, word came for the troops to march south toward Gettysburg, and the Confederate occupation of Carlisle came to an end. Union forces arrived in town on July 1, coming from Harrisburg. A Confederate cavalry unit, approaching Carlisle from the southeast later that same day, was unaware that their fellow Southerners already had left town. When the Union commander refused to surrender, the cavalry unit shelled Carlisle for several hours that evening. In a July 3 letter to her brother Harmar Murray, class of 1858, Margaret Murray wrote, “The College is used for a hospital where the wounded were taken after the engagement.” A few days later, more wounded men began arriving from the Gettysburg battlefield. Union and Confederate troops alike were cared for at the college’s improvised hospital. Several other documents of the period refer to a hospital at the college, though none of these sources indicate specifically which college buildings were used. Isaac Harris, with the U.S. Sanitary Commission, mentioned in a July 7 diary entry that he had delivered supplies to the college hospital through a “drenching rain,” while Professor John K. Stayman wrote to one of his students, Edgar E. Hastings, class of 1865, that the hospital was merely temporary and that there would be sufficient time “to cleanse and ventilate the building” before the fall semester began. Stayman was correct, and the fall semester did open as planned in late August. The meeting minutes of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees for Sept. 19, 1863, included a resolution to apply to the U.S. government for compensation for the recent use of the college buildings, but whether Dickinson ever received recompense for its contribution to the war effort is unknown. —Jim Gerencser ’93

Instruments pictured are from the medical kit of William Longsdorff, class of 1856. Courtesy of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Send your questions for Ask the Archivist to dsonmag@dickinson.edu.

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

Architects: Cannon Design

[ college & west high ]

Kline Center gets a makeover

F 112

ollowing the demolition of The Depot in February, crews have been hard at work laying the foundation for the expansion of the Kline Fitness Center. As it begins to take shape, it promises to take Dickinson to a new level by enhancing physical-fitness and education opportunities, supporting scholarathletes in their endeavors, meeting the needs of a highly competitive NCAA Division III institution, launching an intercollegiate squash program and adding contemporary social spaces for all students above and beyond the current offerings. View progress photos and learn more about all of the facilities-enhancement projects at go.dickinson. edu/facilities.

After an enjoyable workout students will be able to gather at a juice bar for healthy refreshments. Even better news: a glass of orange juice has only 112 calories.

[ college & west high ] Dedication: “Learn to live together

summer

Events art music lectures

Aug. 2-4

Volunteer Leadership Summit Aug. 14

Buzz Jones Big Band Aug. 25

Convocation Aug. 30

The Trout Gallery First Hand: Civil War Drawings from the Becker Collection Reception and Lecture— Harold Holtzer, Metropolitan Museum of Art Sept. 17

Clarke Forum Program Racial Reparations— David Eng, University of Pennsylvania Sept. 24

Clarke Forum Program African Genomic Variation— Sarah Tishkoff, University of Pennsylvania

r. King’s legacy was not just for himself,” says Paula Lima-Jones, director of the Office of Diversity Initiatives (ODI), “but it also inspired others to leave their legacies.” On April 11, Dickinson community members gathered in front of Allison United Methodist Church (UMC) to commemorate the life and impact of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with a plaque dedication in his honor. The plaque recognizes King’s 1961 visit to Dickinson as part of the college’s Representative American Preachers series. King’s sermon, “The Dimensions of a Complete Life,” exhorted all present to “learn to live together as brothers, or perish as fools.” Two years before the historic March on Washington, King shared his rationale for, and commitment to, civil rights during that speech: “The cause is right, and we have cosmic companionship. Thus we can walk and never get weary.” To honor that walk, the plaque notes King as “Prophet of Justice, Apostle of Peace, Minister of God, Martyr of Mankind.” It also quotes from the speech: “Hate and bigotry are the most dangerous forces in the universe. We must never allow this type of thing to develop [again] in society.” The recognition has been a long time coming, says Joyce Bylander, interim vice president for student development—beginning in 2011 with Corinthia Jacobs ’11’s research for the Africana studies course

History of Blacks at Dickinson. Her research uncovered information about Noah Pinkney, who was a former slave, Civil War veteran and Carlisle entrepreneur. Pinkney became a Dickinson fixture, selling pretzels, sandwiches, ice cream, cakes and pies from under the steps of East College. In February, the college dedicated a plaque to him. Frank Williams ’15, a student assistant in the ODI, continued Jacobs’ work and, with help from the staff of Archives & Special Collections, investigated King’s 1961 visit. “It was amazing,” says Williams, to find letters from King. This discovery, says Bylander, along “with a desire to make visible the history of Dickinson College and its impact on students throughout our history,” led to the decision to memorialize King’s visit. “It’s not all about celebrating an African American man who did great work in the civil-rights movement,” asserts Lima-Jones. “It’s about the contemporary conversation.” Honoring King and engaging the Dickinson community in discussion is a continuation of the journey toward full diversity and inclusion, she says. “Whether you’re conscious of it or not, diversity is part of your experience,” she continues. “We all need to grow.” —Erin Owens ’15

1961

The year Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Dickinson.

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

as brothers or perish as fools.” Public Affairs 2.0 Marriage equality, growing income inequity, technology and democracy, the Second Amendment—all were subjects of this spring’s speaker series hosted by the newly formed Public Affairs Committee (PAC). The committee is the result of the Student Senate’s efforts to modernize the 50-year-old Public Affairs Symposium. Titled Next Great Debates: Perspectives on Emerging Problems, the lectures tackled current issues and featured speakers that would resonate with students across the ideological and political spectrum—from Heritage Foundation Fellow Ryan Anderson and economist and author John Lott to California’s Prop 8 plaintiff Kris Perry and Equality Trust co-founder Richard Wilkinson. The keynote event on April 25—the annual Poitras-Gleim Lecture—saw Clay Shirky, widely quoted writer, academic and consultant on the social and cultural effects of the Internet. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired and Harvard Business Review, and one of his books, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, was named by The Guardian as one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books ever written. Shirky’s lecture focused on how the Internet and mobile technology can foster collective action. Using open-source software Linux as a model and metaphor, he extended the concept to governments, media, corporations—all of which could benefit from ad-hoc collaboration over competition. “We need to start thinking through the possibilities of pooling our resources to solve problems that we previously could not have taken on together,” he noted, pointing to a new paradigm of “open-source government.” “The Poitras-Gleim Lecture has always brought some of the world’s brightest and most innovative minds to Carlisle, and this was no exception,” said PAC chair Will Nelligan ’14. “The connections that Clay has spent a lifetime drawing—between technology and psychology, the fine arts and the media arts, are the same connections that we make at Dickinson every single day.” —Michelle Simmons

Beyond the Capstone Commencement 2013

n addition to being the last to shake President William G. Durden ’71’s hand after descending the Old West steps, members of the class of 2013 will distinguish themselves in ways far beyond the limestone walls— from the Peace Corps and Teach for America to Deutsche Bank and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. But just as impressive as the new adventures in what folks like to call the “real world,” the Fulbright and Rotary awards and the acceptances to top graduate and professional schools was the process by which these bright and promising students became confident Dickinsonians. In the following pages and online, you’ll meet some of those graduates and learn more about their paths to success. • Digressions and Excursions: Meet six of the 526 graduates who found their passions at Dickinson (Page 12). • A Culmination of Work: View a sampling of capstone project titles, from physics to American studies (Page 15). • Ten Visions, One View: Get a behind-the-scenes view of the senior studio-art show and what it took to get there (dickinson.edu/magazine). • The Multifarious Worlds of English 404: Seniors take to the roundtable to work on wide-ranging theses (dson.co/english404). • Life Beyond the Limestone Walls: Find out where graduates are headed—jobs, internships, graduate and professional schools (dson.co/dsonlimestone).

For full Commencement 2013 coverage, including videos, photos, speeches and more, visit dson.co/dickinson.grad.

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

[ college & west high ] Digressions and Excursions

Meet six of the 526 graduates who found their passions at Dickinson Will Golinkin

Trang Ha

Favorite professor: It’s a tie among Michael Poulton (IB&M),

Favorite professor: History professor Hilary Smith. She wants to

International Business & Management (IB&M) and Spanish Houston, Texas

Hector Reyes-Zaga (Spanish) and Marc Ruhl (political science). Favorite class: Global Economy taught by IB&M professor Michael Fratantuono. How I decided my major: Business and Spanish were always strengths of mine. How to balance athletics with academic life (co-captain of men’s tennis): Prioritize and know how long it takes to finish things. Who I would be if I could be another person for a day: LeBron James

seems to have it pretty good these days.

Who I would most like to have dinner with: Jamie Dimon. What’s next: I’ll be working as an ultra-high-net-worth analyst in

the Houston office of J.P. Morgan’s private banking division.

Advice to first-years: Get off to a strong academic start and set a

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

Matt Zugale

precedent of success for yourself; doing very well from the start will lead to continued success, rather than having to catch up later.

International Studies Hanoi, Vietnam

make the classroom not just a place to study knowledge but to build an intellectual community. Favorite writer and book: Parker Palmer and his book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. His words flow like a river into the inner self of the readers, telling them to listen to the voice inside themselves to discover who they are instead of letting the world define them. Study-abroad experience: Since I’m an international student, Dickinson already is a study-abroad experience. I also took a summer program in Japan, a semester in Italy and a year in Korea. Club involvements: Dickinson Christian Fellowship and Global Ambassadors. I met wonderful people who became my support system here at Dickinson and beyond. Most memorable campus event: The basketball game last semester between Dickinson and another school that I don’t even remember. We won. Advice to first-years: Don’t give yourself the pressure that you have to have everything in your life figured out before the end of college. Enjoy life, take one step at a time, figure out who you are first before what you want to do with your life. What’s next: Return to Vietnam to work for a few years before going to graduate school.

Jessica Cooper

Antonio Marrero

English Chantilly, Va.

Biology (Molecular Medicine/Molecular Genetics) Pennsburg, Pa.

Favorite class: English 220, because that’s when I decided to be

Path to Dickinson: I started off at Montgomery County Community College. I chose biology in community college because I knew that, as a Marine, the method of winning wars is often the destruction of life. After excelling in community college, I chose to transfer to Dickinson because this college was incredibly enthusiastic about accepting me. I appreciated the enthusiasm and felt that Dickinson really wanted to become a part of my success story, and thus I wanted to become a part of Dickinson’s story. Transformative academic experience: My work with Professor Tiffany Frey of the biology department. Dr. Frey pushed me not only to be a student of biology but to become a scientist ready for the world. Senior research project: Lovastatin Treatment Leads to Increased CD14 mRNA Levels in Murine Macrophages and Human Monocytes. Favorite involvement: Student athletic trainer for the Red Devils. Advice to incoming students: Fortune often favors the bold, and I know that there are other bold men and women starting off at community college who might feel daunted by the road to the top. Whether it is financial hardship or academic hardship, I want to help them realize that the top of the mountain is attainable as long as they are willing to start the journey and keep moving forward. What’s next: Attending the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pa. I plan to help bring the gift of medicine to those around the globe who need it most.

a major.

Favorite professor: It’s a tie between English professors Dave Ball

and Claire Bowen [Seiler].

Biggest challenge at Dickinson: Finding a new group of friends

the first few years when I wasn’t sure who I wanted to be in college yet. Favorite spot on campus: The benches to the left of East College. Recent great book I read: Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Favorite book: Alice in Wonderland. Favorite movie: Brave. Who I would most like to have dinner with: My grandfather, because I miss him. Who I would be if I could be another person for a day: My dog (he’s got it made!). What’s next: My new position as digital media specialist at Home Front Communications. I’ll work with clients on their social-media presence as well as develop digital content for their blogs and Web sites. What the future holds: Happiness!

dickinson magazine

Avery McGuire

Christopher Mealey

Anthropology Ithaca, N.Y.

Biology Manchester, N.H.

Dickinson legacy: Co-founded the Handlebar, an on-campus, student-run bicycle-repair shop and launched the Green Bike Program. Top talents: Can build a bike from the ground up and cook and bake from scratch, including hand-kneaded bread and English muffins. Quirkiest hobby: Writing fan letters to food companies that produce my favorite snacks. Best score: A box of Justin’s Nut Butters, courtesy of founder Justin Gold ’00, that included a variety not yet released to the public. Clubs and organizations: Social Justice House, Students for Sustainable Agriculture, the Outing Club and the new Cycling Club. Favorite trip: Sweden, where I studied during my junior year abroad. Favorite meal: Breakfast, hands down. Senior thesis topic: New Nordic food and its role in national identity. Nordic peoples are concerned with preserving their natural landscape and their cuisine incorporating local, fresh, in-season ingredients. This topic combined all of my interests: Sweden, sustainability and food culture. What’s next: After a six-month internship with the Nordic Food Lab in Copenhagen, I plan to pursue an advanced degree in food studies and publish a cookbook of my own recipes. Advice to first-years: Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

What I’ve studied: The migratory habits of lionfish in South

Summer 2013

Caicos Island and sea grasses in Queensland, Australia, and on the Chesapeake Bay. Current research: Invasive species fascinate me. Why do some species take over a region while others decline? And how do these species affect small-island fisheries? What’s next: College of Charleston to pursue a master’s in marine biology. Clubs and organizations: Photography Club, Habitat for Humanity, Alpha Lambda Delta, Scroll and Key. On pole-vaulting: That moment when you’re upside down, flying through the air, is an awesome experience. When do you get to do that? You’re free. Favorite road trip: My friends and I rented a 12-foot-long camper van and drove to the center of New Zealand for a Lord of the Rings-themed trip. Favorite movie: Mel Brooks’ Dead and Loving It. My sisters and I watched it all the time growing up. Advice to first-years: Just explore. Each year, you’ll meet new people and have new experiences. If you mine those little experiences you’ll find that they really add up.

Fight like a Girl The Perpetuation

A C ulmination of Work

They fulfilled the prerequisites, declared the majors, aced the exams and became experts in their fields of study. For many members of the class of 2013, all of that effort culminated into one final project. And whether they had to defend a thesis to faculty members, present their research at a public symposium or compile a catalog andexhibit of art, the pressure was intense. In recognition of that effort, here are the titles of several of those crowning achievements.

and Subversion of Gender-Power Dynamics: An Interview Study in Central Pennsylvania Indigenous Activism and Reemergence in Argentina: Reclaiming History and Rights Detection of Emotional Secondary Trauma

Bioinformatic Prediction of Expression Patterns Based on Promoter Sequence in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Spatially Embedding a Dynamically Coupled Array of Kuramoto Oscillators: A Model for Neural Networks LeBron James and the

Infrapolitics of a Working-Class Athlete Skeletal Dissolution Caused by Ocean Acidification Four Letters Sounds Likeâ&#x20AC;Ś Hoarding and the Processes of Capitalism, Consumerism and Citizenship

[ in the game ] Men’s Lacrosse

The team highlighted the spring season, going 18-1, advancing to the quarterfinals of the NCAA National Championship, winning a third straight Centennial Conference (CC) title and earning a fourth consecutive bid to the NCAA tournament. Unbeaten in the CC for the second time in program history, Dickinson rolled past rival Franklin & Marshall College 16-2 in the final. The Red Devils broke numerous CC and school records, with the senior class finishing with a 65-10 record over four years. (See opposite page for more.) Women’s Lacrosse

The women’s lacrosse team put up a challenge every time out, competing for a spot in the CC playoffs through the final day of the season. Strong leadership from the veterans and a talented core of underclassmen kept the Red Devils in the playoff hunt. Carly O’Brien ’15 and Caroline Clancy ’16 were named secondteam All-CC while Kara Glazer ’13 broke into the school top 10 for career and single-season assists. Glazer finished fifth all-time with 56 in her career, handing out 23 this spring to rank sixth on the single-season list. Dual-sport athlete Jen Morrissey ’16 set the school record for assists by a first-year with 18 this season. Men’s Baseball

The baseball team experienced some highs and lows during the season. The Red Devils set a handful of records en route to a 15-24 record, including the single-season record of 80 stolen bases while the pitching staff recorded 254 strikeouts. Hank Sanders ’14 earned secondteam All-CC and team MVP honors as catcher. He was just two shy of the school record for hits in a season with 56, ranking second in the CC with a .406 batting average. Sanders finished

18-1 men’s lacrosse team record

second in program history, throwing out 17 steal attempts and committing just three errors in more than 200 chances behind the plate. James Santoro ’13 received the Moe Lederman Award. He hit over .300 for his career, hitting a grand slam in his first collegiate at-bat and a three-run homerun in his final plate appearance as a Red Devil. Women’s Softball

The softball team earned five spots on the All-CC team, led by Carly Jordan ’13 and Chelsea Homa ’14, earning second-team honors. Melissa Osborn ’13, Katie Swade ’15 and Casey Ditzler ’16 all received honorable mention. Homa made her third-straight appearance on the All-CC team, ranking second in the CC in strikeouts and third in ERA this season. Jordan earned All-CC honors in 2013 as well. Osborn set school records with 141 starts in 142 games played in her career, ranking second all-time with 278 assists. Ditzler led the team with a .297 batting average behind a team-high 30 hits on the year. The Red Devils finished 15-25 overall and 5-11 in the conference.

Women’s Tennis

The Red Devils faced strong competition early in the season. They came alive in conference play, posting an 8-2 record to claim the No. 3 seed in the CC playoffs. Alysia Rodgers ’13 earned first-team All-CC honors in both singles and doubles, leading Dickinson to the playoffs for the third time in four seasons. Shannon Lavery ’14 earned first-team honors in doubles, and the duo made their second-straight appearance on the All-CC team, going 12-5 overall and 9-1 in the conference. Men’s Tennis

The team rallied to compete for a CC playoff bid behind some strong individual performances, falling short on the final day of the season. Will Golinkin ’13 earned All-CC honors for the second straight year. He was a second-team selection in singles, playing in the top singles and doubles flights. He had a strong year in doubles, joining Christian Mueller-Wolf ’13, who was also one of the Devils’ top singles players in 2013. Men’s Golf

The men’s golf team challenged for the CC title in one of the strongest fields in conference history. The Devils placed third overall, combining for the low round on the final day of the tournament. Team MVP Chris Noonan ’15 led the way, earning All-CC honors while tying for third in the individual standings. Arthur Worthington ’13 garnered Dickinson’s StudentAthlete Advisory Committee Sportsmanship Award for 2012-13.

Need more Red Devil sports? Check out all the stats, scores, schedules and highlights at www.dickinsonathletics.com. Information about live streaming and radio broadcasts is available on a game-by-game basis, so check the Web site regularly or follow @DsonRedDevils on Twitter for the latest updates.

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Summer 2013

Rewriting the Record Books The success of the 2013 men’s lacrosse season was a culmination of years of hard work, commitment and dedication by a number of remarkable individuals. Head Coach Dave Webster ’88 built a program focused not just on winning games but also on community outreach and service trips aiding disaster victims and underprivileged communities across the country. Leading the way have been (from left) senior captains Greg Hanley, Matt Cherry, Brandon Palladino and Christian Beitel, who played an integral role in all aspects of the program. All four earned All-American honors during their careers and graduated as the winningest class in the program’s history, with 65 wins and just 10 losses.

Women’s Golf

Just shy of earning All-CC honors, MaryElizabeth Baskette ’16 led the team and was voted MVP. She finished eighth as the Red Devils captured fourth in the team standings. The team held off Franklin & Marshall College to claim its home invitational by three strokes. Men’s Track and Field

The team placed fourth at the CC championships and sent juniors Ryan Steinbeck and Aaron Pannnell to the NCAA Outdoor Championships. Pannell earned All-American honors, ran to a third-straight conference title in the 100 meters and repeated in the 200, while Casey Caslin ’13 claimed the title in the shot put. The Devils won the 4x800 while Ryan

Steinbock ’14 placed second in the steeplechase and third in the 1500 meters. Steinbock broke the conference and school record in the 3000 this season, while Pannell broke the 100-meter mark as well. Women’s Track and Field

The team placed sixth at the conference championships. Vivian Butali ’13 earned All-CC honors with a trio of third-place finishes in the 100 meters, as well as the long- and triple-jump events. Mary Nolte ’13 qualified for nationals in the 1500, joining Pannell and Steinbock on the trip to University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for the championships. Kristina Link ’15 also earned All-CC honors, tying for third in the high jump.

The Red Devils rewrote the record books, improving each year and building the foundation for a dominant lacrosse program. This year, the team rose to a No. 2 national ranking and held the spot for virtually the entire season. They captured a third-straight CC championship to earn a fourthstraight bid to the NCAA Tournament. Dickinson became the first team in conference history to finish the regular season undefeated overall, going unbeaten in CC play for the second time in four years. Palladino was named the Division III Player of the Year, earning first-team All-American honors for the secondstraight season. He was the CC Player of the Year as well, becoming the first player in conference history to be named first-team All-CC all four years. Cherry joined Palladino as a first-team All-American, while Hanley received honorable mention. Dickinson had seven All-Americans in 2013, while eight players were named All-CC. —Charlie McGuire, sports information director

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Flowers from the

Flood Can big data save the world by drowning it?

Jacob Thomas

By M a t t G e t t y

ight for the blind. Limitless clean energy. A crime-free world. The cure for cancer, diabetes and any other disease you can name. Sound pretty good? What about skies teeming with unmanned drones, implanted RFIDs tracking your every move, 24-7 advertising beamed directly to your optic nerve? Behold the twin visions of the future promised and threatened by the latest high-tech catchphrase, “big data,” a sprawling, information-powered trend touching everything from your most recent Facebook status update to NASA’s Jet-Propulsion Laboratory. “Some people think we’re watching the planet grow a nervous system,” says Rick Smolan ’72, whose recent book, The Human Face of Big Data, assembled more than 100 writers and photographers to detail how the ability to capture and analyze vast amounts of information is changing the world. “All of our smartphones, Google searches and credit-card purchases are generating a constant stream of digital exhaust. Now there are ways to measure this exhaust and analyze it in real time, and that’s creating some pretty powerful tools.” Many of those tools are already at work. Pick up the newspaper—or rather click on a link generated by an algorithm analyzing your last 1,000 Google searches—and you can read about how Target mines data to advertise to pregnant customers before some of them even know they’re expecting. Tap a personalized in-app ad on your iPad, and you can watch a Netflix series crafted from data on what millions of viewers watch and when they fast-forward, pause, rewind or stop watching altogether. As Smolan quickly discovered, however, the big-data mine runs much deeper than advertising and entertainment. “At the beginning of this project, I thought the whole thing was just about finding a better way to sell people J.Crew sweaters,” he says. “But the story is vastly more interesting than that. A lot of what’s happening has the power to truly change how we live. And in most cases, there’s a lot of upside.” A taste of that upside includes: • using spectral analysis of satellite images to find mosquito larvae in Uganda and more efficiently fight malaria; • eyeglasses powered by parallel-processing computers reproducing the human retina’s complex code to enable the blind to see; • a service that helps police triangulate the exact location of a crime in seconds from the sound of a single gunshot; • and a project harnessing mountains of genetic information to create human-designed organisms that could replace fossil fuels.

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Even the building blocks of life—

codes so immense and complicated they once looked impenetrable—are becoming increasingly easy to catalog.

Jacob Thomas

Channeling the flood

So the obvious question: How is this all possible? Though there’s a slew of complex math and computer science involved, the short answer is information—lots and lots and lots of information. In 2010, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told attendees at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe that humanity had generated five exabytes of data from the dawn of time to 2003 (each exabyte equals one quintillian bytes), whereas now we create that much information every two days. Some have quibbled with Schmidt’s numbers, but there’s no denying that we’re living in the time of the flood. “We have the ability to collect more data than ever,” says Assistant Professor of Computer Science John MacCormick, whose recent book, Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future, explains how big data’s complex tools work. “But we can also analyze the data now. You need both for this to be a meaningful trend.” Without that ability to analyze, you get something like Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” a fictional ever-growing collection of books holding all of the information in the universe and ultimately rendered useless because there’s simply too much to explore. Everything becomes nothing. All the information all the time becomes information overload. Enter big data, the means to turn that overload into a working load, the means to channel the flood, water the digital jungle and make it

flower into something useful. “I remember when I was in graduate school in the 1970s working as a research assistant in Harvard’s Joint Center for Urban Studies, and I was running a regression on 100,000 observations in a study of urban loan applications,” says Associate Professor of International Business & Management Stephen Erfle, who introduces students to data-driven decision making in his Managerial Economics course. “It took Harvard’s mainframe computer system half of the weekend to run. Now, you could do that in minutes.” Even the building blocks of life—codes so immense and complicated they once looked impenetrable—are becoming increasingly easy to catalog. “When I started at Dickinson, that was the year when the Drosophila Melanogaster [fruit fly] genome sequence was published,” says Kirsten Guss, John R. & Inge Paul Stafford Chair in Bioinformatics. “Now the genomes of 12 different drosophila species have been published, as well as honey bees and flower beetles. That this information is so accessible—literally a click away—that’s amazing to me.” Pattern power

The secret is pattern recognition, a relatively simple task most children learn to perform by age 5 but computers have taken to new heights thanks to advances in processing power. Driving much of big data, pattern-recognition algorithms fuel everything from IBM’s Jeopardy!-winning

robot, Watson, and your phone’s voice-to-text function to DNA sequencing and threedimensional brain imaging. “The simplest way to understand pattern recognition is to look at the example of the nearest-neighbor algorithm,” says MacCormick. “Take handwriting recognition. You might think that to develop the program you’d sit down and think very carefully about what an ‘a’ looks like, what a ‘b’ looks like, and then you’d program details of that into a computer. In fact, that’s not how it’s done at all.” Instead, he explains, you feed the program hundreds of thousands of samples of handwriting that has already been labeled. (If you’ve ever had to identify those squiggly CAPTCHA letters to recover your e-mail password, you’ve contributed to a similar set of labeled samples for computers converting ancient books to text.) Then the algorithm compares each new handwritten character to the labeled handwritten letters and tags the new character with the letter it most resembles—its nearest neighbor. Size matters

The programs can get much more complex, determining the most popular of several nearest neighbors or factoring in the whole word’s, phrase’s or sentence’s nearest neighbor, but as

graceful as the algorithm is, the critical component is the sheer size of the sample. “This is only possible with vast amounts of data,” says MacCormick. “There’s cleverness in how the algorithm is designed, but it’s not explicitly coded to recognize each individual letter. It learns that from this huge volume of data.” The impact reaches far beyond handwriting. That constant stream of bits we all generate—Smolan’s “digital exhaust”—is also reshaping age-old notions like the importance of place. New York’s Justice Mapping Center, which is profiled in The Human Face of Big Data, uses geographic information systems (GIS) to visualize crime data in a way that could change how governments evaluate the cost of crime. Rather than focusing on the cost of incarceration in the prisons themselves or where crimes are committed, the system uses a wealth of information to show the cost per each city block where an incarcerated criminal lives, highlighting the places where educational investments can have the greatest impact. “GIS has been around for 50 years, so I have to laugh every time somebody calls it a hot new trend,” says Dickinson’s GIS specialist, James Ciarrocca, who helps students from a variety of courses visualize geographic data. “But

Google

Each time you type a CAPTCHA,

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essentially you waste 10 seconds of your life, says inventor Luis von Ahn. So he added a second squiggly—a reCAPTCHA, which translates otherwise undecipherable words in ancient handwritten texts. More than 100 million words are being deciphered each day—the equivalent of 2.5 million books per year. —From The Human Face of Big Data by Rick Smolan ’72 and Jennifer Erwitt.

the explosion of location-enabled devices has greatly increased our ability to answer questions with GIS.” Companies considering a new store location have long used surveys to take a snapshot of location-based demographics. Now, thanks to nearly universal GPS devices, information on the potential customer base, shopping habits, traffic patterns and more is widely available. Similarly, governments have used GIS for decades to track the spread of contagious diseases. Big data just provides new and surprisingly more effective tracking tools. As Ciarrocca points out, “Google has documented how they can use the locations of people searching for symptoms to track the spread of the flu faster than the CDC.”

“For me, big data is like Walmart,” she explains. “Almost everything is there, and you can go into one place and get it all, but if you want to get something specialized, you still have to go to the small mom-and-pop store.” Guss is confident that computers will help unlock more biological mysteries in the coming years, but no matter how big the data get, she doubts we’ll ever have all the information. “I remember when the human genome was sequenced, and a friend said, ‘So are you done now?’ ” she recalls. “But the answer, of course, is no. Then, for instance, we were surprised to find that only 1.5 percent of the genome codes for proteins. … Now we had a new question—what is the function of the other 98.5 percent of the genome? Every answer opens another question.”

Bigger reward, bigger risk

Relying so heavily on this flood of information, however, is not without its pitfalls. As Erfle puts it, “You can answer bigger questions, but that means you can make bigger mistakes.” That’s why he teaches students not only to use data but to question it. As they learned regression analysis this spring, students like Xiang Yao ’15—who helped menudrive.com develop an algorithm to make personalized recommendations based on hundreds of thousands of online food orders— also learned the importance of ensuring that results pass the sniff test. “Before you get to big data, you have to understand data,” Erfle explains. “You need to be able to look at the final result, kick the tires and say, ‘Does this make sense, or are there some other variables we should consider?’ ” Similarly, as amazed as Guss is at the power big data lends to biological research, she still sees value in small data. Aspects of bioinformatics such as missing heritability (traits for which numerous genes play small roles) and mirtons (which silence gene expression) still demand investigation on an organism-byorganism basis.

Quantify everything

Yet even outside of the realm of science, big data is answering questions once thought to lie beyond the reach of numbers. Amazon and Netflix harness algorithms to weave together nebulous threads of personal literary and cinematic taste. Companies like Next Big Sound use social-media data to identify bands on the rise long before they hit the charts, essentially calculating buzz—that indefinite mystical property long sought by every record label’s A&R department. “Things previously thought of as unquantifiable are now quantifiable,” says Assistant Professor of Sociology Erik Love, whose upcoming research project on Islamaphobia will explore the 133,000 gigabytes of Twitter updates the Library of Congress is currently cataloging. “Now you can measure qualitative things like taste, culture, class, race. Social scientists have done this for years, but now you can do it on a much larger scale.” With computer science and cultural analysis colliding, Love thinks big data promises big opportunities for students. “There are a lot of new jobs out there for those who can sift

through all these data,” he says. “And it’s not just about computer programming. It’s about asking the right questions. That’s exactly what people who have a social-science background at a place like Dickinson are equipped to do. Our students get that interdisciplinary background and learn how to ask big questions. That’s becoming more and more valuable.”

Jacob Thomas

Who owns our data?

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Summer 2013

Just as it promises big opportunities, leveraging all of this information also raises some big questions. Concepts like constant surveillance, real-time mapping and online click-tracking can worry the least paranoid among us, as the recent news about the National Security Agency’s phone and Internet data-mining program clearly shows. Big data’s striking resemblance to Big Brother prompts some to wonder if attitudes toward freely sharing so much information might change. “I think as this continues to develop, you’re going to see more people question how much locational data they’re willing to give away,” says Ciarrocca. “Right now, I don’t think people think a lot about things like how their car’s GPS tracks where they’re going all the time. As we see more and more of this, we’ll need to have conversations about how much privacy we’re willing to give up in exchange for convenience.” Then there’s the question of who deserves to benefit from all these data. With private companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google owning the biggest information treasure troves, how much are we willing to rely on a simple “Don’t be evil” edict to steer big data toward common good? Researchers like Love are thankful they’ll soon be able to take advantage of Twitter’s generous tweet donation to the Library of Congress, but it’s troubling to think of what would happen to this kind of research otherwise. “I actually think that if Twitter could go back now [they made the donation in 2010], they probably wouldn’t make that donation,” says

The future looks big

Regardless of the answers, we’ll need to start asking these questions soon, because big data shows no signs of getting any smaller. With wearable computers like Google Glass already on the market and futurists envisioning a workable computer-brain interface within the next few decades, Schmitt’s five exabytes every two days could start to look tiny pretty soon. “We’re exactly where the Internet was in 1993,” Smolan says. “This will all look primitive and crude in just a few years. You can stick your head in the sand, but there’s no going back. Any tool can be used for good or evil, so what we really need to do is figure out what we want big data to do for us. How do we use it for good? That’s the conversation we need to have—and we need to be having it now.”

Andrew Esiebo

Love. “It’s just an incredibly valuable dataset, but it’s theirs. They own it. They get to decide whether they want to share it. Traditionally, sociologists relied on public information like census reports, but now if we want these richer data sources, we’re at the mercy of private companies. Figuring out to what extent Facebook or Amazon has an obligation to share these data or protect them—I think you’ll see a growing ethical and legal debate about this in the coming years.” But if we are the ones generating all these data, Smolan wonders, shouldn’t we benefit from it? In one extreme case from The Human Face of Big Data, he highlights Hugo Campos’ petition to win access to the information his pacemaker relays to doctors. “They’re telling him he can’t have it; it’s proprietary information, but he’s like, ‘Wait a minute—that’s my heart!’ ” Smolan explains. “I hope the book can help start this conversation about who owns our data. Even if there are no privacy concerns because it’s all aggregated, we still need to ask, ‘If someone’s going to profit from our data, shouldn’t we get a piece of that?’ ”

The victory over smallpox taught us that even the most horrible and persistent diseases can be eradicated through concerted effort and vigilance. The next target is an equally terrible scourge—polio. And this time some unlikely digital weapons are being brought to bear to defeat this relentless enemy that leaves its victims disabled for life.

The battlefield is northern Nigeria, where entire regions and their

populations remain largely unmapped, and where religious tensions and ongoing strife have led to thousands of children unvaccinated. … Now, armed with thousands of GPS-enabled cell phones, inoculation workers have fanned out across the countryside. Their progress in making inoculations is mapped in real time, and their efforts are targeted toward regions that have been identified as polio “hot spots.”

With an estimated one million new victims each year, the scourge of

polio will not be defeated easily or soon. But with the tools of big data joining the fight, the image of a child in leg braces may one day be as much of a historical artifact as a face disfigured by smallpox scars.

—From The Human

Face of Big Data by Rick Smolan ’72 and Jennifer Erwitt.

Stop for a moment and

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GLASS THROUGH A

SUSTAINABLY

create a mental picture of sustainability. By

Tony

Moore

olar panels drink in the sun, powering homes and businesses. Electric cars move silently through city streets between recharging stations, and everything you use is recycled and reborn later. Organically grown agricultural products color your table, and the post-meal scraps create biofuel to run everything from lawnmowers to Dreamliners. Ah, sustainability. But now ask Neil Leary, director of Dickinson’s Center for Sustainability Education (CSE), to define sustainability, and that picture disappears, replaced by something much more complex. “Sustainability is about answering a fundamental question,” he says. “How do we improve the human condition in this and future generations, equitably and without damaging environmental systems necessary to support healthy and vibrant societies?” In other words, it’s a lot bigger than your recycling bin, and Dickinson has been at the forefront in thought, dialogue and action. This year, the CSE ratcheted up the dialogue by creating the Baird Sustainability Fellows program (seniors Courtney Blinkhorn, David Dean, Emily Eckardt, Giovania Tiarachristie, J.J. Luceno, Sarah Ganong and Taylor Wilmot.) The CSE also partnered with the Clarke Forum on Contemporary Issues to bring leading experts to campus under the forum’s spring theme, Living in a World of Limits (See Page 31).

We never ran out of whales

“He has me so conflicted,” says Taylor Wilmot ’13 of Michael Shellenberger. “I wonder at times, ‘Does he believe everything he’s saying, or is he just trying to provoke people to think about these things?’ ” The first in the series of provocateurs to come to campus through Living in a World of Limits, Shellenberger is cofounder

of the Breakthrough Institute, a joyfully contrarian environmentalist and a serious proponent of technology as the main defense against the climate crisis. He is a practiced button-pusher—and he’s jabbing at Wilmot before even stepping into the room—but those buttons often activate parts of the brain that may previously have been waiting for him. “People say things like, ‘These are dark times!’ ” he begins. “Really? People are living longer, more farmland is reverting to nature. We’ve got a huge carbon and climate challenge, but personally I’m more optimistic than I’ve ever been.” Interjecting, David Dean ’13 asks, “Your opinion is that we’ll continue to find and make energy indefinitely?” “No question about it. … There’s not going to be any trouble with energy,” Shellenberger says. “It’s an exciting moment in the United States. We are displacing coal with gas and appreciating that there are problems with gas that need to be fixed. We might stop coal exports from the United States. We might keep coal in the ground.” “But then we’ll start natural gas exports.” “I hope so,” Shellenberger responds. “We went from whale oil to kerosene not because we ran out of whales. There were still a lot of them, but when you have kerosene, why use whale oil? When you have gas, which doesn’t have any heavy metals going into the air, not to mention half the carbon, why wouldn’t you use that? “The question is, are things getting better or worse?” he asks. “We invented the automobile, the Internet, electricity— every major technology. A lot of these things were developed for reasons we might disapprove of, like warfare. It’s not just good things have bad consequences. Bad things have good consequences. We’re not utopians in terms of any of these new technologies.”

Courtney Blinkhorn ’13

‘You can’t return to a past that never existed’

“Utopias have a bad batting average,” David Orr tells students during a classroom visit on March 27, echoing Shellenberger on at least one point. A looming national environmental figure from Oberlin College and the University of Vermont, Orr has a true knack for dropping nuggets that resonate: “There is no past to go back to.” “Nobody knows where the tipping points are, but you’d be foolish not to know that we are at or near tipping points.” “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” “Sustainability: No one really knows what it means.” On this last point, Orr may be right, but he’s convinced that contemplation and action can achieve it. “Where we have to go, I really don’t know,” he says. “But the point at a college or university is to think as deeply as we can about the human predicament.” In her Baird blog, Emily Eckardt ’13 comments that Orr’s “grandest mission has been on a local level. I admire [him] for pairing a theoretical, historical, scientific and political analysis of the sustainability movement with a community-based initiative.” Orr heads a community-based effort called the Oberlin Project, which he sees as just another seed to grow a bigger movement. “If you create a really cool, sustainable Carlisle, Pa., and we create a really cool, sustainable Oberlin, Ohio, it doesn’t amount to anything unless it goes viral,” he says. “The main point that I gathered from Orr is to consider the bigger picture,” says Sarah Ganong ’13. “But if everyone out in the community, and ultimately in the world, doesn’t buy into sustainability then I wouldn’t define what we’re all aiming for to be sustainable at all.” It’s complicated, and Orr admits this, but he insists that action in the face of uncertainty will always trump inaction. “So what are you going to do?” he asks. “You might say, ‘I’m not going to do a damn thing.’ ” That’s your choice. It’s not a choice that anyone coming out of a liberal-arts college would be proud to make, though.”

David Dean ’13

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“You might say, ‘I’m not going to do a damn thing.’ That’s your choice. It’s not a choice that anyone coming out of a liberal-arts college would be proud to make, though.” —David Orr

Emily Eckardt ’13

Speak softly and carry a green stick

If you’re not going to do a damn thing, you don’t want to tell Bill McKibben about it. McKibben, environmental heavyweight and founder of 350.org, is on campus for a three-day residency after having accepted the inaugural Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Global Environmental Activism last year. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s, well, spearheading global environmental activism. At a student roundtable meeting, the issue at hand is divestment: Should Dickinson rid its endowment portfolio of any investments tied to the fossil-fuel industry? For McKibben, it’s a statement more than a question, and it’s one he’s been making across the country. “In the end, it comes down to a moral issue,” he says. “It’s wrong to wreck the climate, so it’s also wrong to profit from that.” McKibben, like Shellenberger and Orr, is effective in communicating the logic of his points in deceptively simple ways, and his logic generally is aimed at pushing for change. The change he wants to spark on campus is crystallized by another simple statement: “If colleges aren’t going to divest, who is?” he asks, and it really prompts only one answer. Unlike Orr, who takes a boots-on-the-ground approach, and Shellenberger, who may almost be seen as an anti-activist, McKibben sees large gestures that lead to large changes as the best approach. “By all accounts, Dickinson is right in the thick of it—the farm, the Treehouse, all of it,” he says. “The only place Dickinson has left to demonstrate its leadership is addressing the endowment with regard to the issue of divestment. There is always an opportunity cost when you don’t lead. And the risks of inaction, monetary and otherwise, are higher than the risks of action.” The issue is nearly as complex as pinning down a definition of sustainability, and McKibben’s stop at Dickinson is but one of many as he pushes for change on campuses across the nation. And while only a handful of colleges in the United States have made a commitment to divest at this point, McKibben sees the decision as inevitable in the end. “I look forward to coming back to Dickinson,” he says, “to celebrate when divestment happens.”

Giovania Tiarachristie ’13

“There is always an opportunity cost when you don’t lead. And the risks of inaction, monetary and otherwise, are higher than the risks of action.” —Bill McKibben

J.J. Luceno ’13

Sustainability: Maybe we do know what it means

So if you sat in on Living in a World of Limits, you might think that sustainability is as simple as it is complex. Abstract and tangible, impossible and imperative. It’s about the environment, people, financial policy, perception. It’s global and it’s local. It’s the here and now, and it’s the distant future. It can be realized through technology, through a systems approach, through a social/political movement. It’s something we can all take on in a million different ways, and it’s something that we each have to take on in at least one way. Wilmot found inspiration in Carlisle’s brownfield sites—all former factory sites in the early stages of redevelopment— studying them and presenting her findings to the community. Giovania Tiarachristie ’13 documented racial tensions surrounding food-security initiatives in a low-income neighborhood in Harrisburg. In her Baird Fellows biography, Tiarachristie says she looks at sustainability as a “holistic approach to existence … [following] the intergenerational and cross-cultural human path toward social justice and harmony.” Shellenberger speaks of this human path as well, and he sees you on it, following yourself to a better world. This, in the end, is what sustainability is all about: creating that picture of sustainability in your head, placing yourself firmly in it and going forth into the world. “Do what you’re passionate about,” he tells students. “Do what you’re good at. Get out into the world and do stuff. Get experience. Make mistakes. Work hard. As Pindar said, ‘Become who you are.’ Embrace life. That’s it.”

Taylor Wilmot ’13

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

Sarah Ganong ’13

A Natural History Dickinson students are challenged regularly to get outside their comfort zones and participate in an interdisciplinary course of study. This year, a new program honored seniors who have done just that during their Dickinson career. The Baird Fellows Sustainability Program, launched by the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE), is “designed to bring together student leaders who have helped forward sustainability at Dickinson,” says Lindsey Lyons, assistant director of CSE. “The intent is to create an interdisciplinary forum for discussion and collaboration.” The program is named after Spencer Fullerton Baird, class of 1840, a noted naturalist and zoologist credited with having introduced laboratory practice and field exploration to American education. He was the driving force in creating the National Museum of the Smithsonian Institution and was named its second secretary in 1874. An early member of the National Academy of Sciences, Baird also served as the first U.S. commissioner of fisheries and co-founded the Woods Hole Biological Laboratory, which recently joined Dickinson as a partner for off-campus study. With majors as varied as environmental science, political science, English, Spanish and sociology, all of the student

candidates in the program were seeking to grow in their own sustainability efforts and to find ways to question the status quo. For its inaugural semester, CSE had partnered with The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues on its spring speaker series, Living in a World of Limits, which included Michael Shellenberger from the Breakthrough Institute; Peter Bechtel ’81, director of Andorinha Azul Ambiental, and Ruth Mkhwanazi-Bechtel; David Orr from Oberlin College; and Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and recipient of Dickinson’s first Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism. With heavy hitters such as these, there was no shortage of challenges thrown at the students (see Page 26). The inaugural cohort of candidates pushed right back, confronting conventional wisdom about sustainability and aiming for more inclusive conversations. And as expected, all seven candidates were named Dickinson’s first Baird Fellows at Commencement. “The Baird experience has been that of a tightrope,” notes J.J. Luceno ’13. “I often find myself balancing between competing contradictions and insights. That’s the point, isn’t it? The aim is that ... we should end up with not just more but tougher questions.”

Learn more about the individual Baird Fellows at dson.co/ bairdfellows2013.

Michael Shellenberger

David Orr

Peter Bechtel ’81

of mind

Peace dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

Matt Zugale

Brad Heckman ’89 mediates the local with the global

n the opening scene of the comedy Wedding Crashers, a couple navigating a nasty divorce spits insults and accusations at one another while the mediators, played by Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, attempt to steer the conversation in a meaningful direction. As the rhetoric grows more heated, Wilson’s character interjects amiably: “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we are making progress.” After describing that scene, Brad Heckman ’89 laughs and admits that, although amusing, the Wedding Crasher’s interpretation is inaccurate. Instead, mediation is serious business: it’s an opportunity for two parties to meet, discuss and reach their own agreement with the help of the mediator—a neutral third party trained in conflict resolution. For Heckman, running the largest mediation organization in New York City is the logical result of years of traveling and a diligent commitment to providing conflict-resolution opportunities to communities in the United States and abroad. Heckman’s interests in peace studies began before he came to Dickinson in 1985. As a child, Heckman was influenced by his uncle Jim, an avid peace advocate and conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. Heckman admits that it was his uncle who taught him that there are alternate ways to serve one’s community. At Dickinson, Heckman studied political science and was motivated by class discussions on possible consequences of the Soviet Union’s political and economic policies during Perestroika. “This constant conversation offered me a lot of different political viewpoints and really inspired me to see what was happening on the ground in a country that was on the verge of change,” Heckman recalls. “I wanted to be part of something that was happening on the global front.” After graduation, Heckman moved to Poland to teach English at Nicholas Copernicus University. In his first two years in Europe, he witnessed peaceful protests of the Solidarity movement, as well as the dissipation of the Soviet Union. The political confusion and economic disarray after the Berlin Wall’s collapse provided Heckman with the perfect platform to help struggling communities resolve their disputes peacefully and effectively. Heckman then returned to the United States to earn a master’s in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. He later worked with Ray Shonholtz, founder of Partners for Democratic Change. Heckman remembers how

By Sasha Shapiro ’15

his mentor “dragged” him to a variety of international hotels with the sole purpose of negotiating room rates with frustrated managers. “He showed me that pretty much everything is negotiable,” Heckman notes. Together, they set up 11 mediation centers throughout the former Soviet Bloc—all of which continue to operate today. “There was just a tremendous openness to new ideas and new ways of thinking,” Heckman recalls. “I was really lucky to be part of that whole environment.” This openness was vital to the operation’s success: Heckman and Shonholtz focused their efforts on establishing centers that were locally operated and managed and that reflected local needs and culture. Heckman’s stints in Eastern Europe were generally limited to two weeks, which was just enough time to train people in the necessary skills to sustain these new centers. An ongoing desire to serve his own community brought Heckman back home to New York City, though, where he became senior director of mediation services and, later, vice president of Safe Horizons, the nation’s leading domesticviolence victim-assistance organization. When it became apparent that Safe Horizon’s mediation program did not fit the organization’s mission, Heckman founded the Peace Institute, which has grown into one of the country’s leading nonprofit mediation organizations. “In some ways, building a nonprofit organization is like having an art studio,” says Heckman, who calls himself an amateur artist and incorporates his own whimsical illustrations into his mediation trainings as well as his presentations to community members and potential donors. “There’s something fundamentally creative about building an organization, putting together a staff and a structure and then helping people.” Because mediation is still a relatively new concept for many, Heckman also teaches two graduate courses as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. One course, Mediation Skills for Global Affairs, explores the foundation of mediation and peace-building activities, and students learn to mediate a variety of personal and professional conflicts. His second course, How to Build Your Own NGO, teaches students the fundamentals of creating and running their own nonprofit organization. Some have launched their simulated organizations in the real world. “I actually have to pinch myself sometimes,” he says. “I’m actually doing what I really believe in and really love.” Learn about Sasha Shapiro ’15’s summer internship experience at the Peace Institute at www.dickinson.edu/magazine. 33

fi r st

Civil War-Era Drawings from

Civil War-Era Drawings dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

hand

m the Becker Collection

“Siege of Petersburg: A Night Attack,” March 31, 1865, by Andrew McCallum, published April 22, 1865. This issue of Leslie’s was published 23 days after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and one day after Lincoln’s assassination. McCallum’s drawing appears to be more a victory celebration than a representation of death and destruction. The curving lines of explosions and earthworks form a pinwheel of light and dark rotating in space. This dramatic and unusual composition expresses the triumph of the moment.

From the Becker Collection 35

n 1900, when Joseph Becker retired from his four-decade career with Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper, he took with him nearly 700 original drawings that he and other artist-reporters had produced since the 1860s, most notably of the American Civil War. The war was one of the first major conflicts covered by the newly emerging medium of illustrated newspapers such as Leslie’s and Harper’s Weekly. Combat illustrators, known as “special artists,” prepared drawings of various aspects of warfare and camp life and shipped them to their editorial offices, where the images were engraved and paired with news articles. On June 7, The Trout Gallery, in collaboration with Archives & Special Collections, opened First Hand: Civil War-Era Drawings from the Becker Collection with 51 of those drawings and corresponding illustrations from Leslie’s, illuminating the origins of what we today call embedded journalists. The “special artists” endured many of the same dangers and privations as the subjects of their sketches. In a letter accompanying his drawing of the bloody two-day Battle of Shiloh, Henri Lovie noted, “I commenced on the extreme left wing, and visited every division, obtained guides, listened to all stories from all sides, and made upwards of 20 local sketches of positions and scenery, including all the battle-grounds—there were many—and send them to you in something like their logical and chronological relation, a task of no little difficulty.” Some of the more intriguing elements of the exhibition, says Phillip Earenfight, director of The Trout Gallery and associate professor of art & art history, are the mid-19th-century technological innovations—from steam engines and railroads to the rotary press—that allowed the artists to quickly convey their sketches to editorial offices in New York City, where a stable of engravers re-created the images (and often reinterpreted them) for mass production. On the following pages are some of those sketches, their accompanying illustrations and portions of the exhibition’s narrative. The exhibition runs through Oct. 19, and a reception will be held Aug. 30, with guest lecturer Harold Holzer, writer and leading authority on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era. Running concurrently with First Hand is Carlisle & the Civil War, an exhibition that focuses on how the Civil War affected the lives of Carlisle residents and Dickinsonians. Drawing from material organized and published by Dickinson’s House Divided Project in collaboration with Archives & Special Collections, the exhibit provides intimate views of a war that pitted Pennsylvanians and Dickinsonians against each other over a range of conjoining issues, from slavery and abolitionism to nationalism and expansionism. —Michelle Simmons

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Summer 2013

“Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee: Centre, Sunday Morning,” April 6, 1862, by Henri Lovie, published May 17, 1862. About 100,000 men fought in the Battle of Shiloh. Henri Lovie was the only artist who depicted the full two days of this bloody battle in which one out of every four men was killed, injured or went missing. Leslie’s published a 16-page supplement devoted to a series of Lovie’s Shiloh panoramas. The illustrations are some of Leslie’s best engravings and considered by many to be among the earliest and most graphic depictions of the human cost of the war.

“Squirrel Rifles: Sketch at the Depot in Xenia, Ohio,” Sept. 5, 1862, by Henri Lovie, published Sept. 27, 1862. According to Leslie’s, “The Squirrel Rifles are from this indomitable county, and, like the Bucktails of Pennsylvania, derive their appellation from the fact of their proficiency in hunting the animal whose name they at once usurp and glorify.” On the back of Lovie’s drawing, he notes, “Everybody seems to be as if in a wild dream, unable to realize the exact state of affairs.”

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

“One Thousand Contrabands Building a Levee on the Mississippi River,” March 13, 1863, by Francis H. Schell, published May 9, 1863. By mid-1861, the Union claimed escaped or captured slaves as contraband of war. Leslie’s published numerous articles and images that underscore the vital role played by contrabands on behalf of the Union. Although the engravers were mostly faithful to Schell’s drawing, the addition of the black woman in the center foreground anchors the composition while bringing a vivid, unmistakable image of contraband labor to the reader’s attention.

[ fine print ] A Fine September Morning By Alan Fleishman ’61 A Fine September Morning tells a compelling story of hate, hope and love driven by one man’s obsessed determination to rescue his brother from the horrors of Russian civil war, oppression and holocaust. Alan Fleishman ’61 blends historical fact and fictional characters and continues the epic family saga begun in his successful debut novel, Goliath’s Head.

That Time I Joined the Circus By Jennifer J.J. Howard ’94 This young-adult novel centers on Lexi Ryan, who unintentionally runs away to join the circus. A music-obsessed, slightly snarky New York City girl, Lexi is on her own attempting to track down her long-absent mother, who is rumored to be in Florida with a traveling circus. When Lexi arrives at her new, three-ring reality, her mom isn’t there … but her destiny might be. Surrounded by tigers, elephants and trapeze artists, Lexi finds some surprising friends and an even more surprising chance at true love. With humor, wisdom and a fresh voice, this debut novel by Jennifer Howard ’94 illustrates the magic of circus tents, city lights, first kisses and the importance of an excellent playlist.

Rwanda and the Moral Obligation of Humanitarian Intervention By Joshua Kassner ’94 Joshua Kassner ’94, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Baltimore, offers a compelling argument for why the international community should have intervened in Rwanda, grounded in basic rights that run counter to the accepted view on the moral nature of humanitarian intervention. His argument is based on the claim that the violation of the basic human rights of the Rwandan Tutsis morally obliged the international community to intervene militarily to stop the genocide. The arguments presented by the author have implications for our understanding of the moral nature of humanitarian military intervention, global justice and the role moral principles should play in the practical deliberations of states.

Sports in the Aftermath of Tragedy: From Kennedy to Katrina By Michael Gavin ’98 In Sports in the Aftermath of Tragedy: From Kennedy to Katrina, Michael Gavin ’98 explores how columnists have written about the role of sports in the national recovery from specific tragedies. Beginning with John F. Kennedy’s assassination and including subsequent national tragedies such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, this book studies the people considered “American” in these columnists’ work. Other tragedies examined are the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the bombing of the 1996 Olympics and the 2011 Japanese tsunami that affected both the Japanese and American women’s soccer teams when the two competed against each other in the final round of the World Cup.

i ci n k isn z ien eSummer Summer 2013 4040 d id ck osno n m amgaagzai n 2013

Kudos Promotions The following were promoted to the rank of professor: Neil Diamant, Asian law and society; Carol Ann Johnston, English; and Karen Kirkham, theatre. The following received tenure and were promoted to the rank of associate professor: David Ball, English; Alex Bates, Japanese language and literature; Shawn Bender, East Asian studies; Christopher Bilodeau, history; Scott Boback, biology; Catrina Hamilton-Drager, physics and astronomy; Elizabeth Lee, art history; John MacCormick, computer science; and Mariana Past, Spanish.

Metaphysics and learning theory figure prominently in George Allan’s latest study of Alfred North Whitehead.

Publications George Allan, professor emeritus of philosophy, published Modes of

Learning: Whitehead’s Metaphysics and the Stages of Education. A highly accessible reading of Alfred North Whitehead’s writings on education and their connection to his metaphysics, Modes of Learning discusses a series of analogies between Whitehead’s ideas about how we learn and key concepts in his later metaphysical writings. William G. Durden ’71, president of Dickinson from 1999 to 2013, published

Living on the Diagonal and Other Selected Writings, a collection that features the original essay “Living on the Diagonal: Notes to a 21st Century College Student From a Retiring College President,” as well as selected op-eds, speeches and Dickinson Magazine columns. Melinda Schlitt, professor of art history and William E. Edel Professor of

Humanities, published an article, “ ‘...viri studiosi et scientifici...’ Pietro Antonio Cecchini, Michelangelo, and the Nobility of Sculptors in Rome,” which appeared in the volume she edited, Gifts in Return: Essays in Honour of Charles Dempsey. She also received an $8,000 grant from the Lila Acheson Wallace-Reader’s Digest Publications Subsidy at Villa I Tatti to help underwrite publication costs for the volume. Assistant Professor of Sociology Amy Steinbugler published Beyond Loving: Intimate Racework in Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Relationships. In her book, Steinbugler examines interracial intimacy as a lens for thinking about contemporary issues of race and racism in the United States. Grants and Awards Andrea Lieber, associate professor of religion and Sophia Asbell Chair in Judaic Studies, received a $3,000 grant from Repair the World Foundation. The funds will help support a service-learning project that will give students a hands-on opportunity to apply technology in a religious setting and study the history and people of the Harrisburg Jewish community.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded $4,500 to Tullio Pagano, associate professor of Italian, to participate in its five-week Summer Seminar: Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento—New Perspectives. Carolina Castellanos, assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese, also received an NEH award of $3,300 to participate in its Summer Institute: Brazilian Literature—Twentieth-Century Urban Fiction. Assistant Professor of English Jacob Sider Jost’s Prose Immortality, 17111819 received the 2012 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize at the University of Virginia Press, which is awarded to the author of a scholarly book-length manuscript in 18th-century studies. Sharon Kingston, assistant professor of psychology, received a community mini-grant of $1,200 from the Society for Community Research and Action. The grant supports a project that will target inhalant use among middle-school youth in Cumberland and Perry counties in Pennsylvania. The project includes partnerships with the Cumberland/Perry Drug and Alcohol Commission, the Youth Advisory Board and the Cumberland/Perry Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition.

Presentations and Lectures Wendy Moffat, professor of English and author of E.M. Forster: A New Life, joined fellow innovative biographers Sarah Bakewell, Sir Michael Holroyd and Max Saunders to discuss the future of literary biography. The event was hosted by the Institute of English Studies and Stephen Spender Trust in partnership with the Centre for Life-Writing Research, King’s College, London.

[ beyond the limestone walls ]

90 years of

alumni council

BY Jennifer L. Blanck ’92 Alumni Council President

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

hat’s the big idea? Ninety years ago, it was the creation of the Alumni Council at Dickinson. That’s right— the council turns 90 this year. That’s 90 years of representing the alumni community, advising the college leadership and serving the college community. It’s also hundreds of thousands of volunteer and staff hours dedicated to making Dickinson the best it can be. To commemorate the anniversary, we hosted three events during last month’s All-College Alumni Weekend. At each opportunity, current and past council members connected, celebrated and reminisced. We talked about where we were and how far we’ve come. The energy was infectious; I can only imagine what it would have been like to have all of the 400-plus alumni who have ever served on the council together in one room! Throughout the years, the Alumni Council and Dickinson have undergone quite the transformations. We’re now beginning a new phase. This issue marks the first with our new president, Nancy Roseman, and she’s got big ideas of her own. The Alumni Council is excited to welcome her to Dickinson and will be there to support her and the college.

It’s also a time of change for the council. This is my last column, as my term ended on June 30. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to serve as the Alumni Council president for the last two years and to be a member since 2006. I’ve worked with amazing alumni, students, staff, faculty, parents and friends of the college and would like to take this opportunity to show my appreciation. Thank you, Bill ’71 and Elke Durden, for all that you have given to Dickinson and the college community. Thanks to my executive committees and all the council members with whom I served. Thanks also to everyone who supported Dickinson, the Alumni Council and me. I especially want to thank Kathy Marcello ’80 P’13, executive director of alumni & parent engagement. Since taking over the management of the council soon after my term began, she has continued to do double and sometimes triple duty on the job. I am indebted to her talents, dedication, stamina and positive attitude. I also want to thank Cindy Stites ’77, who was the president before me. I’m so grateful for the big ideas she brought to the council; I hope I’ve been able to build upon them. I’m excited to share that Ty Saini ’93 will be the next president. Ty will continue the Alumni Council’s upward trajectory and offer his own big ideas. If you have big ideas for Dickinson, don’t hesitate to contact any member of the council. In the meantime, thank you for reading, and thank you for supporting Dickinson!

Dickinson’s first ‘blah’ The Alumni Council isn’t the only Dickinson fixture turning 90 this year (see opposite page). It turns out Dickinson Magazine also is celebrating its 90th anniversary, if one counts the original publication, The Dickinson Alumnus, as the vanguard of alumni engagement. In May 1923, a small group of idealistic alumni printed Vol. 1, No. 1, of The Dickinson Alumnus, offering it at a subscription price of $2 a year. Half would be held by the Alumnus for expenses, and the other dollar would support the reorganized General Alumni Association, out of which grew the Alumni Council. “Born of a great hope in a cradle of humility, The Dickinson Alumnus utters this, its first ‘blah,’ ” opens its first editorial. “If The Dickinson Alumnus does nothing more than inform the alumni of things they should know, it will justify itself. But it hopes to do more, as it ought to do more. Its voyage is definitely not charted. It will strive to steer a true course, its objective being a better and finer Dickinson.” —Michelle Simmons Throughout its 90 years, Dickinson Magazine has strived to “steer a true course” in its coverage of all things Dickinson. We’ve been through many incarnations, and we’d like your feedback on our latest. Please visit www.dickinson.edu/magazine and fill out our reader survey.

[ closing thoughts ] More than a souvenir program by Hugh Howard P’13

ith a newborn in your arms, you’re poised at one end of the tunnel. When that wee girl co-curates a senior art show at The Trout Gallery, you have reached the other. That realization struck me this past February with the opening of Articulating an American Aesthetic: Frank von der Lancken. The work of an obscure painter went up, with 10 youthful curators at hand to interpret (they were easily identified by their wrist corsages or, in the case of the male student in the class, a boutonniere). The college celebrated its undergraduate art historians in style, with speeches by President William Durden ’71 and Professor of Art & Art History Melinda Schlitt, who teaches ARTH 407: Art Historical Methods, the senior seminar that culminated in the exhibition. In Schlitt’s talk and toast to her students (one of whom was my daughter Sarah ’13), she termed the evening the “capstone moment,” the chance to acknowledge the seniors’ uncounted hours of work. Indeed, from 5 to 7 p.m., the clinking of wine glasses accompanied canapés and chatter as proud parents admired the meticulously hung show, as did a mix of faculty, community members and many undergraduates (as museum director Phillip Earenfight explained, the latter are a guaranteed presence when free wine and hors d’oeuvres are on offer). A small exchange I overheard led me to muse more deeply upon what it all meant. An exhibition catalogue was available, and I went in search of one at the front desk. As a new supply was fetched from a nearby cardboard box, a tall, rusty-haired undergraduate appeared at my side. “Do you have any more of those souvenir programs?” he asked. I had to suppress a smile. In the months since, however, I’ve pondered his turn of phrase. It was certainly apt enough, as the college staffer behind the counter handed us each a catalog. But the young man’s borrowing from the sports arena made me reflect on the liberal-arts education that Sarah and her peers, now graduated, received at Dickinson College. Taken literally, “souvenir program” might be heard as a dismissal of the seriousness of the enterprise, as if the exhibition catalog were as disposable as the outdated roster of last year’s not-so-successful Red Devils football team (record: four wins, five losses). I would argue: Not so. As a historian who makes his living writing about architecture and art, I immediately recognized not only the

sophistication of the show’s installation but that the catalog itself represented one of those bridge moments when the amateur achieves the status of the professional. Henceforth that von der Lancken catalog has a place in the academic literature. The students’ well-researched text, together with the color plates, make it an essential reference for future scholars looking to delve still deeper into von der Lancken’s life and works. A dividend will likely accrue to the artist’s reputation. Possessed of little ambition for fame, von der Lancken (1872-1950) spent less time making art than teaching (at Pratt, Chautauqua, the University of Rochester and elsewhere). Individual paintings of his were exhibited at the National Academy of Design, and two are in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, but he lived to see his work on display in a one-man show just once, in Tulsa, Okla., his home late in life. Yet sophisticated training gained in Paris and New York City produced a painter of consummate skill who may be about to gain fresh recognition. The exhibition represents something else too. On our college tour five years ago, the sales pitch we heard at several colleges, of which Dickinson would be Sarah’s early-decision choice, echoed one another. All the professors teach undergraduates, we were told. Students get to do real research. For me, the appearance of the 26 paintings and drawings at The Trout Gallery constituted the fulfillment of the promises made by a Liberty Cap to a 17-year-old and her father in August 2008. Schlitt’s seminar nurtured the curiosity of 10 students, exposing them to beauty, demanding of them critical thinking. The rewards? A credential gained, a collaborative experience and the confidence on display that Friday in February at having both completed a truly professional endeavor and advanced the understanding of an artist of whom little had been written. As parents, my wife and I felt as if we were standing in the departure lounge. We understood with sudden clarity that we were there to wish Sarah and her cohort well as they embarked upon the next leg of their journeys. Several class members are bound for graduate school in art history, but whatever their eventual destinations, all will be off to seek their own, independent places in the world. They’re better equipped to do so, I believe, thanks to their sojourn in Carlisle and, in particular, their venture into the picture space of Frank von der Lancken.

Hugh Howard P’13 is the author of The Painter’s Chair and Houses of the Presidents.

dickinson magazine

Summer 2013

September

Inauguration of

Nancy A. Roseman 28th President of Dickinson College Carlisle, Pennsylvania

www.dickinson.edu/28thpresident

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P o s ta g e p a i d at C a r l i s l e , P A and additional mailing office

[

well-stated

]

I’d say 95 percent of what I’m seeing is good for humanity. Any tool can be used for good or evil. R i c k Sm o l a n ’ 7 2 ,

“Flowers From the Flood” (See Page 18).

“The syllabus is essentially the timetable, nothing more. The students are responsible for pursuing the consequences of their own ideas.” associate professor of English, on the English 404 capstone seminar. Learn more at dson.co/english404.

Dave Ball,

They kind of just drop you in a community and say, ‘Go. Teach and learn.’ on her experience as a Fulbright teaching assistant in Indonesia. Learn more at dson.co/mcnamarafulbright.

Kathryn Macnamara ’11

Books and stories aren’t these aloof, set-in-stone things. We get to react, argue, agree and look at every work as living and breathing. Cogan Fellow M a r t h a

Mihalick ’01.

Learn more at dson.co/cogan2013.

Now, parents, repeat after me, ‘Graduates, we love you very much. But not a penny more.’ president of the Lincoln Center for the Arts, in his 2013 address to Dickinson graduates. Full Commencement coverage is available at dson.co/dickinsongrad.

Reynold Levy,

My whole life changed because I went to college, and I want other students to have the same opportunity. There are thousands out there who simply need someone to believe in them and help them find their way. Gilbert Bonafé ’11,

National College Advising Corps. Learn more at dson.co/findingthatjoy.