HWS Pulteney Street Survey - Spring 2021

Spring 2021

A LI M AR PET ’15 S UPE R B OW L CHAMP ION

DEFYInG THE ODDS INSIDE

On Mentorship Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Receives the Elizabeth Blackwell Award

Zoom!

With spring weather taking hold in Geneva, Ronan Perry ’24 skateboards through the Mini-Quad.

Contents

Pulteney Street Survey | Spring 2021

HILL & QUAD

FEATURE STORIES

HWS COMMUNITY

CLASSNOTES

03 | U pfront: A Letter from

24 | Defying the Odds:

44 | A Century of Living

52 | C atch up with

President Jacobsen

10 | National Science

Ali Marpet ’15 and the Super Bowl

33 | Mentoring through the Unknown

Foundation Grants

13 | Renovating the IC 22 | Record-Breaking ADOD

46 | N ew Trustees 50 | Tribute to Bill Heywood, Class of 1922

your classmates

96 | The Last Word

On the cover: Guard Ali Marpet ‘15 of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gives a thumbs up moments after he helped the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win Super Bowl LV 31-9 over the Kansas City Chiefs at Raymond James Stadium. / P H OTO BY TOR I R I CH M A N / TA M PA B AY BU CCA N EER S

Volume XLVII, Number 1/ THE PULTENEY STREET SURVEY is published by the Office of Marketing and Communications, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney Street, Geneva, New York 14456-3397, (315) 781-3700. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Pulteney Street Survey, c/o Alumni House Records, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney St., Geneva, New York 14456-3397.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges are committed to providing a non-discriminatory and harassment-free educational, living, and working environment for all members of the HWS community, including students, faculty, staff, volunteers, and visitors. HWS prohibits discrimination and harassment in their programs and activities on the basis of age, color, disability, domestic violence victim status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, or any other status protected under the law. Discrimination on the basis of sex includes sexual harassment, sexual violence, sexual assault, other forms of sexual misconduct including stalking and intimate partner violence, and gender-based harassment that does not involve conduct of a sexual nature.

EDITOR, VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Catherine Williams / SENIOR EDITOR Bethany Snyder / DESIGNER Lilly Pereira / aldeia.design / CONTRIBUTING WRITERS/EDITORS Paige Mullin Cooke, Ken DeBolt, Alex Dwyer ’23, Mackenzie Larsen ’12, Mary LeClair, Bethany Snyder, Natalia St. Lawrence ’16, Andrew Wickenden ’09 and Catherine Williams / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Ben Barnhart, Louis Brems, Kathy Collins ’09, Kevin Colton, Ken DeBolt, Adam Farid ’20, Jacob Hannah, Jennifer Johnson, Laura Kozlowski, Carmen Mandato, Quinn Moss, Julien Ollivier, Dan Reade, Tori Richman, Kathy Killius Regan ’82, P’13, Bobby Yan / ART OBJECT Photograph © 2021 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / PRESIDENT Joyce P. Jacobsen / THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIR Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 / VICE CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Cynthia Gelsthorpe Fish ’82 / VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT Robert B. O’Connor P’22, P’23 / William Smith Alumnae Association Officers: Kirra Henick-Kling Guard ’08, MAT ’09, President; Katharine Strouse Canada ’98, Vice President; Julie Bazan ’93, Immediate Past President; Carla DeLucia ’05, Historian / Hobart Alumni Association Officers: The Hon. Ludwig P. Gaines ’88, President; Paul Wasmund ’07, Vice President; Dr. Richard S. Solomon ’75, P’10, Immediate Past President; Andrew Donovan ’12, Historian. / For questions and comments about the magazine or to submit a story idea, please e-mail Catherine Williams at cwilliams@hws.edu.

The pages of this publication were printed using 100% recycled paper which enables the environmental savings equivalent to the following: • 244 trees preserved for the future • 18,227 gal. US of water saved • 35,342 lbs. CO2 saved from being emitted • 403 MMBTU of energy not consumed * * These calculations were derived from the RollandEco-calculator.

Upfront On Resilience DEAR MEMBERS OF THE HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COMMUNITY, In February, it was my privilege to join with Chair of the Board of Trustees Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 in paying tribute to the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the 41st recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Award. With Justice Ginsburg’s children – Jane Ginsburg in person and James Ginsburg via Zoom – it was a welcome opportunity to celebrate a remarkable public servant who, with quiet determination, became a cultural icon. During a uniquely challenging year, Justice Ginsburg’s strength of character offered a powerful reminder of the human capacity for resilience and perseverance.

Just a few days later, Ali Marpet ’15 put on an incredible performance in the Super Bowl. That singular moment was the culmination of years of hard work and dedication and, as you’ll read on p. 24, Ali is as devoted to his community and family as he is to football. He is bringing great pride to his alma mater and I’m thrilled for his success, as I am for the accomplishments of the many alumni and alumnae profiled in this issue of the magazine. In the following pages are stories of resilience and triumph of alums who are deeply engaged in their work and who draw inspiration from the lessons and mentors they encountered here on campus.

The Year of Engagement I announced last fall has taken on new meaning as we have navigated the many complexities of teaching and learning in person Accepting the Elizabeth Blackwell during a pandemic. Against the backdrop of COVID-19, there have been moments Award on behalf of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is her daughter, of celebration great and small: awards and honors for students and faculty, the Jane C. Ginsburg (right), the Morton arrival of spring blossoms, the availability of vaccines, and seeing loved ones in L. Janklow Professor of Literary and person. Among the highlights was the extraordinary outpouring of support the Artistic Property Law at Columbia Law School.

Colleges received during a record-breaking Athletics Day of Donors when, in just 24 hours, the Herons and Statesmen donated more than $800,000 to support our student athletes. Many thanks to James F. ’56, L.H.D. ’12 and Cynthia L. Caird L.H.D. ’12 for their assistance in helping us to jumpstart that day, and for their commitment to the Colleges over many years.

As we head into graduation season, the Colleges will celebrate the Classes of 2021 in May and, after a year-long delay due to the pandemic, the Classes of 2020 in June. Both ceremonies will be live on the Quad and available to watch online. After a year of Zoom meetings and virtual gatherings, I know I speak for everyone on campus when I say how excited we are to congratulate our most recent graduates in person.

Those live celebrations will hopefully be harbingers of what is to come – a lively fall semester with the return to fully in-person classes; concerts, lectures and symposia bringing people together; athletics competition in full flight; and the reoccurrence of traditions like Homecoming. As we look ahead to the Bicentennial in 2022, we do so fully anticipating that we will be able to all gather again in community on the shore of Seneca Lake.

Sincerely,

Joyce P. Jacobsen, President

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American Pioneers

Honoring Blackwell and Ginsberg

After the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the fall, Associate Professor of American Studies Kirin Makker made this collar out of paper for the Elizabeth Blackwell Statue on the Hobart Quad, a fitting tribute to Justice Ginsburg.

In recognition of a lifetime of extraordinary achievements and public service, including authorship of landmark decisions impacting women’s rights and gender discrimination, the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was posthumously honored as the 41st recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Award on Feb. 3, 2021, the 200th birthday of the award’s namesake, the first woman to receive the Doctor of Medicine degree.

The award — conferred by Hobart and William Smith to women whose lives exemplify outstanding service to humanity — celebrates Ginsburg’s extraordinary achievements and public service.

At the Cornell Club in New York City, President Joyce P. Jacobsen and Board Chair Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 presented the award in person to Ginsburg’s daughter, Jane C. Ginsburg, the Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at Columbia Law School. Ginsburg’s son, James Steven Ginsburg, the founder and president of Cedille Records, joined remotely from Chicago.

Jane Ginsburg noted: “We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of tributes to our mother, and we have not been able to participate in the acceptance of all of them, but this one was very special … not only for the remarkable graduate that it commemorates and for the extremely distinguished prior recipients … but also because of a very deep family connection to Hobart College [through] my mother’s beloved … cousin Richard Eugene Bader, Hobart Class of 1954.”

In a video tribute recorded for the award ceremony, Nina Totenberg, NPR’s legal affairs correspondent focusing on the Supreme Court, said, “I think it’s very fitting that the Elizabeth Blackwell Award is going to Justice Ginsburg, for she too was a pioneer in American life.”

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Hill & Quad Biking for a Cause Jonathan Garcia ’23 shattered both his distance and dollar goals in a fundraiser for children’s cancer research in September. After pledging to ride 500 miles and raise $2,000, the mathematics major ended up biking 600 miles and raising $3,525 while participating in the Great Cycle Challenge. “I was inspired to take part in the challenge because I love biking and because my brother was diagnosed with a rare yet treatable cancer when he was a child,” Garcia says. He rode five or six times a week, with “shorter” two-hour rides on the weekdays and longer rides on the weekends. Though he mainly stayed in and around Geneva, he biked three times around the entirety of Seneca Lake.—Alex Dwyer ’23

CELEBRATING BLACKWELL Continuing the celebration of the Elizabeth Blackwell Award on Feb. 3, 2021, Professor of Women’s Studies Betty Bayer facilitated a virtual conversation with Janice P. Nimura, author of The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, a dual biography of Dr. Blackwell and her sister, Emily, who earned her medical degree shortly after Elizabeth.

Professor of Art and Architecture A.E. Ted Aub III and head winemaker at Hosmer Winery Julia Hoyle ’11 conducted a conversation about the spaces and objects in Geneva, N.Y., that Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell lived in and visited, as well as the ways in which she is remembered. Aub created the Elizabeth Blackwell sculpture dedicated in 1994 that rests on the Hobart Quad.

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Newman Fellowship Gabriela Martinez ’22 is one of only 212 students nationwide to be named to the 2020-2021 cohort of Newman Civic Fellows

by Boston-based non-profit Campus Compact.

Martinez, who is studying anthropology, education and entrepreneurial studies, works as civic lead of outreach for the Center for Community Engagement and ServiceLearning, coordinating the Community Lunch program, the Holiday Gift Program and the Blood Drive.

Named for Campus Compact co-founder Frank Newman, the fellowship is a oneyear experience emphasizing personal, professional and civic growth for students who have demonstrated a capacity for leadership and an investment in solving public problems.

Racial Equity Leadership Alliance In Nov. 2020, the Colleges became an inaugural member the Liberal Arts Colleges Racial Equity Leadership Alliance (LACRELA), a partnership of more than 50 liberal arts institutions committed to improving and advancing racial equity. The allegiance will support key elements of the HWS Strategic Diversity Plan.

Created by the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center, LACRELA offers resources and opportunities to enable administrators, faculty and staff to foster a more inclusive campus community.

Presidents of alliance member colleges meet quarterly to share strategies, seek advice and identify ways to leverage LACRELA for collective impact on racial equity in higher education. The Center is developing an online repository of resources and tools for member institutions.

HWS employees will have 24/7 full access to the virtual resource portal.

We’re Running Out of Room for the Trophies!* Changes brought about by the ongoing pandemic have been no match for both novice and experienced members of the Debate Team as they continue their competitive streak.

Bart Lahiff ’20 and Sarim Karim ’22 finished in the quarterfinals of the 2020 United States University Debating Championships; Sreyan Kanungo ’23 and Karim finished as quarterfinalists at the Hart House IV at the University of Toronto, one of the premier tournaments in North America; and William Lewis ’23 and Elise Donovan ’22 finished as varsity semifinalists at the Huber Debate tournament, hosted by the University of Vermont. As individual speakers, Eesha Anjum ’23 was awarded fifth best ESL speaker at the Huber Debates and Kanungo was recognized as the fourth best ESL speaker at Hart House.

First-year team members made strong showings as well. Eden LaRonde ’24 and July Winters ’24 won the Tertiary Division of the Jamaican Debate Open, while Maya Ratner ’24 and Christi Ashenden ’24 were named champions of the Rookie Division at the 2020 Novice Regional Championships hosted by McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Brendon Bennet ’23 and Jesse Whalen-Small ’24 made it to the novice semi-finals at the Hart House IV, the first

novice team from HWS to ever qualify for elimination rounds at this major competition.

Team president Reed Herter ’22 stands among the top students in the North American debate circuit. Herter served as a chief adjudicator for the “Feed the Hungry” tournament in Nepal, tournament director for the 2020 United States Universities Debating Championships, chief adjudicator of the 2020 Maharashtra Debate Open in India and aid to assistant coach Marlene Pierce in running the 2020 Jamaican Open.

As a debater, Herter has placed as a semifinalist at the Masters Competition at the World Championships held in Bangkok, Thailand and been in elimination rounds at the 2019 Eastern Regional Championships and the Asian Queer Open 2020.

“I’m thrilled with the performance of all of our students,” says Associate Professor of Philosophy Eric Barnes, who also coaches the Debate Team. “The team has never been bigger or more broadly successful, with a wide range of students competing against top ranked opponents and bringing impressive awards back to campus.”

* Great News! Keith Cohen ‘81 has agreed to fund a new trophy and plaque case for the Debate Team to be located in Stern Hall!

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Celebrating Commencement Working within the constraints of State and County regulations, the Colleges intend to hold in-person Commencement ceremonies for the Classes of 2021 on May 16 and for the Classes of 2020 on June 6.

2021 Commencement Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden will deliver the 2021 Commencement Address and receive both an honorary degree and the Elizabeth Blackwell Award. On Sunday, May 16, during the Commencement ceremony for the Classes of 2021, the Colleges will also present honorary doctorates to Director of Public Health for

Ontario County Mary L. Beer RN, MPH and Executive Director of the Boys & Girls Club of Geneva and the Geneva Community Center Christopher N. Lavin ’81 .

“Carla Hayden has served communities and the country as a champion for access to knowledge and literacy.

With indefatigable energy, she is a trailblazer and a role model whose work has helped people across the nation enjoy the freedom and opportunity that the library holds,” says President Joyce P. Jacobsen. “Our community looks forward to celebrating her remarkable professional achievements.

She will be joined by two individuals whose leadership of our community here in

Geneva has never been more influential or needed. Mary Beer and Chris Lavin have risen to the challenges the pandemic created, solving monumental problems and always delivering hope.”

A guiding force in recording and proliferating the intellectual and creative life of the United States, Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress and the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library. Since beginning her career with the Chicago Public Library in 1973, she has been committed to the free and open access to ideas and information, helping people across the country harness the opportunities the library holds. Hayden has been an important and powerful voice for the needs of the nation’s reading public, especially for young readers, championing literature as a fundamental vessel for human experience and possibility.

At left, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden will deliver the Commencement Address and receive an honorary degree and the Elizabeth Blackwell Award. Top, Director of Public Health for Ontario County Mary L. Beer RN, MPH and Executive Director of the Boys & Girls Club of Geneva and the Geneva Community Center Christopher N. Lavin ’81 will both receive honorary degrees.

Since 2008, Mary L. Beer RN, MPH has led Ontario County Public Health, managing disease prevention, health education promotion and community health protection for more than 100,000 residents, including Genevans. A registered nurse with more than 40 years of experience, Beer directs the county’s COVID-19 response, implementing safety guidelines, investigating and containing outbreaks and overseeing public communications. During her career, she has been a tireless advocate for public health laws prohibiting smoking, efforts that have reduced smoking rates countywide. A hospice volunteer and past president of the S2AY Rural Health Network board of directors, Beer is devoted to improving public health and well-being through health equity, access and personal engagement.

2020 Commencement

Christopher N. Lavin ’81 is responsible for a diverse expansion of programming at the Boys & Girls Club of Geneva and the Geneva Community Center. Named executive director in 2015, Lavin has launched new health, education and arts and entertainment initiatives to meet the developing needs of the community.

In collaboration with the Colleges, he oversaw the formation of the HWS Geneva Corps in 2017, which engages dozens of HWS students in tutoring and mentorship for K-8 students from Geneva schools. At the start of the pandemic and in response to the changing needs of the community, he quickly pivoted his organization to prepare and serve thousands of hot meals for Geneva families hit hard by economic challenges.

After a one year delay because of the pandemic, the Colleges will celebrate the Classes of 2020 with an in-person Commencement ceremony on the Quad.

As we reported in a previous issue of The Pulteney Street Survey, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Bishop Michael B. Curry ’75, will deliver the Commencement address on Sunday, June 6. An honorary doctorate will be awarded to Curry, as well as to Margaret “Peggy” Bokan Greenawalt ’66, an influential philanthropist and advocate for increased female leadership, and to G. Peter Jemison, a celebrated artist, activist and Historic Site Manager of Ganondagan State Historic Site.

“Bishop Curry’s inspirational ministry of love and redemption is as vital as ever, and we are excited to celebrate his exemplary life of service to those in need,” says President Joyce P. Jacobsen. “We will recognize Bishop Curry alongside two other esteemed honorees who have devoted themselves to education, opportunity, arts and culture in exemplary ways that reflect the Colleges’ history and our future aspirations.”

In 2015, Michael B. Curry ’75 was elected as the 27th Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, becoming the first African-American to hold the Church’s top leadership office.

He has dedicated his life and ministry to making what he calls “the redemptive power of love” a palpable force in the world. In the churches he served in North Carolina, Ohio and Maryland, Curry developed emergency assistance resources, educational centers, summer camps, preaching missions and networks of family day care providers. He has preached and written about social and economic inequality, ideological division, faith and love, expanding on the sermon he delivered at the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In 2016, Curry returned to HWS to participate in the President’s Forum and receive the Hobart Alumni Association’s Medal of Excellence.

Margaret “Peggy” Bokan Greenawalt ’66 is a noted philanthropist devoted to supporting education, the arts, and the advancement of women in leadership roles. She rose through the hierarchy of the finance industry, holding leadership positions at Citibank, Citicorp and Monchik-Weber.

She has served on the boards of directors for not for profit organizations such as The White House Project, the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, the Chestnut Hill Historical Society and the Philadelphia International Theater Festival for Children. Through the Margaret Greenawalt ’66 Annual Scholarship, she annually pays off the student loan debt of two William Smith graduates who intend to pursue careers in finance and who have completed internships on Wall Street.

Fine artist G. Peter Jemison is a member of the Heron Clan of the Seneca Nation and a leading authority on Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history. His artwork appears in the British Museum, Museum of Mankind, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum. Jemison serves as the historic site manager of the Ganondagan State Historic Site in Victor, N.Y., which tells the story of Haudenosaunee contributions to agriculture, art, culture and government. He has served as a consultant to the Smithsonian Institute’s Native American Museum Training Program and the National Endowment for the Arts and is on the board of trustees for the National Museum of the American Indian.

Pictured above, top to bottom: Michael B. Curry ’75, Margaret “Peggy” Bokan Greenawalt ’66, and G. Peter Jemison

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Academic, Scholar and Teacher Kirk Named Provost and Dean of Faculty

“ I’m very excited to work with President Jacobsen, the faculty and staff to create opportunities for innovation and inclusion as we educate future leaders.”

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Dr. Sarah R. Kirk has been appointed the new provost and dean of faculty.

Currently serving as Associate Provost and Professor of Chemistry at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., she will begin her new position on June 30.

An experienced scholar and administrator, Kirk recently completed a four-month term as the Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Willamette, following a five-year rotating term as the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development. She replaces Dr. Mary L. Coffey, who announced that she will be stepping down from her position to relocate to North Carolina to spend time with her family and to engage in other academic and nonacademic pursuits.

“Dr. Kirk is an impressive academic, scholar and teacher who has the experience and vision necessary to lead the academic function at Hobart and William Smith to a new level of excellence while building on the momentum that Dr. Coffey, the faculty and the Office of Academic and Faculty Affairs have generated,” says President Joyce P. Jacobsen. “Her commitment to the professional development of faculty and her strong community engagement make her a compelling leader for the Colleges.”

Kirk holds her Ph.D. and master’s degree in organic chemistry from the University of California, San Diego, and her bachelor’s in chemistry from Whitman College. At Willamette, she oversees leadership training, coordinates the faculty mentoring program and faculty development workshops, and supports diversity and equity initiatives.

Kirk also serves as the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant and STEM Administrator on an NSF-S-STEM grant, both of which address barriers impacting the retention and promotion of minoritized groups in STEM fields.

“I have long admired Hobart and William Smith and am very excited to join an academic community known for its dedication to pedagogy, faculty scholarship and student mentorship, as well as its pledge to equity and diversity,” says Kirk. “I’m very excited to work with President Jacobsen, the faculty and staff to create opportunities for innovation and inclusion as we educate future leaders.”

Coffey, who has served at HWS since 2019 and will remain as Provost and Dean of Faculty through the end of June, has played a crucial role in helping to navigate HWS through the COVID-19 pandemic. She quickly shifted instruction in the spring of 2020 to a remote model, instituting policy changes to address the impact of the pandemic, creating an entirely remote Maymester program which became the most successful in the Colleges’ history, and preparing faculty and campus for the return to in-person instruction in the fall of 2020.

“This was not an easy decision for me to make, and it was a deeply personal one that quite frankly I struggled with, precisely because I hold the faculty of this institution in such high esteem,” Coffey explains. “I have every confidence in Sarah Kirk’s ability to be an outstanding Provost and Dean of Faculty, one who will continue the work already underway, and will do so collaboratively and with intentionality.”

“I remain deeply appreciative for everything Dr. Coffey has done for the Colleges and for me personally,” says Jacobsen. “She has been a stalwart colleague, helping to lead the Colleges through the pandemic. Most importantly, though, she has established an ethos that values innovation and that prioritizes student success and faculty scholarship. This will be enormously important as Dr. Kirk begins her work in June.”

New STEM Scholars Program In March, 15 students were inducted to the new STEM Scholars program designed “to elevate and recognize the importance and value of historically underrepresented scholars in STEM fields,” says Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Khuram Hussain.

Announced in 2020, the STEM Scholars Program offers opportunities for academic support and financial aid to ensure all students have the resources to succeed in their chosen fields. STEM Scholars can serve as paid peer mentors and participate in monthly meetings on research and internship opportunities.

Going forward, the Office of Admissions will award financial aid packages annually to 15 incoming students demonstrating aptitude in STEM fields, and these students will participate in a weeklong summer welcome program.

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HWS Awarded $1M in NSF Grants Grants from the National Science Foundation will support a collaborative research project that explores the ways cities shape animal evolution by studying eastern gray squirrels and an atmospheric science project that will result in the most expansive and comprehensive lake-effect snow database in existence for the Great Lakes. Together the grants total nearly $1 million.

Urban Evolution: As the lead institution for the urban evolution project, the Colleges received $426,452 of a total $1.5 million grant, with the remainder being split between collaborating researchers from Yale University and the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

HWS Associate Professor of Biology Brad Cosentino will serve as principal researcher for the project, which will also involve HWS student researchers.

Cosentino will explore how urbanization affects evolution by attempting to discover why melanic gray squirrels declined in rural forests but persist in cities. “We typically think of cities as places where nature and wildlife are absent, but some species do well in urban areas — and there’s evidence that life in cities evolves very rapidly in response to dramatic environmental change,” explains Cosentino.

Researchers will measure the degree to which melanism changes between cities and the surrounding forests using 10 cities in the U.S. and Canada. They will conduct visual surveys of coat color, perform live-trapping for genomic analyses and conduct some experimental work in Geneva, N.Y. and Syracuse, N.Y. to understand the mechanisms of urban evolution. The project will also engage K–12 students and thousands of citizen scientists in recording observations of squirrel coat colors and measuring evolution in schoolyard and backyard settings.

Lake-Effect Snow: The Colleges will receive $514,733 for a three-year atmospheric science project, that will support Professor of Geoscience Neil Laird (principal investigator), Associate Professor of Geoscience Nicholas Metz (co-principal investigator) and student researchers as they address lingering questions around the weather interactions that regularly impact lake-effect storms.

As Laird and Metz explain in their proposal, “Lake-effect snowstorms have large impacts on people and communities in the Great Lakes region, as well as areas beyond the typical lake-effect snowbelts, and there remain several unanswered scientific questions regarding multi-scale interactions that regularly affect these storms.”

Featuring “a wide range of educational and training activities” for students, the project will explore the relationship between lake-effect storms and varying jetstream wind patterns, while “providing valuable insight into complex lake-effect weather systems that are difficult to forecast, as well as the snowfall produced by these storms.”

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Associate Professor of Geoscience Nicholas Metz and Professor of Geoscience Neil Laird are creating the most comprehensive lakeeffect snow database in existence for the Great Lakes.

As part of his work, Cosentino will look at the coat colors of squirrels, relying on the observations of thousands of K–12 students and citizen scientists.

>> Associate Professor of Biology Brad Consentino, pictured here in his lab in Eaton Hall, is investigating how cities shape animal evolution.

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Overheard

It’s an honor to have #RBG in the Blackwell sisterhood.

I know what it’s like not to have the funds that you need and that are essential for obtaining an education. Because of others, I was able to go to school. We wanted to create this scholarship for a good student who needs financial support and who has an interest in politics or law.

JO SE P H “JO E ” WATER S ’59, on creating the Leslie T. and Joseph D. Waters ’59 Annual Conservative Scholarship to support an academically qualifying and financially deserving student pursuing a major or minor in political science.

B I L L I E J E A N K I N G , professional tennis legend, pioneer and advocate for women’s equity in athletics, and the first athlete to receive the Elizabeth Blackwell Award, on the awarding of the Blackwell to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in February

That road trip changed me just like Selma’s protests changed America.

But as we all know the journey to justice isn’t over.

The R EV. CH AR LES CLOUGH EN JR . ’64 on his travel to Selma, Ala., in the wake of Bloody Sunday and witnessing the violence against marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

I realize that I daydream a little bit while I move through the world …

There’s a part of my brain — the visual part — that is paying attention while other things are happening.

Class of ’64 Endowed Professor of Art and Architecture NICH OLAS R UT H discussing the real-world inspiration for portraits he created of cell towers, street signs and billboards, in Now This, a documentary film about the awardwinning printmaker.

My DREAM JOB is my current job – it’s pretty amazing to say that at the age of 35.

LIZ COST ’07, who was recently named vice president of marketing at Sony Music Nashville

I’m confident that in our most difficult times … in the midst of our own struggles and failures, it’s how we overcome those moments with bravery that we really shine.

R AC HE L HE ND E RS ON ’ 06, senior vice president of corporate and social good at Fenton, during the Founder’s Day virtual panel

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The brain and the internet have similar network architecture.

Both have short network distances between any two components.

As with social networks, where any individual is just a few friendship links away from anyone else, most parts of the brain are just a few hops from almost any other part.

Associate Professor of Psychological Science DANIEL GR AHAM, author of An Internet In Your Head, to be published by Columbia University Press in May 2021

What went wrong with it was that I fell in love with being upside down.

Retired Air Force Colonel and Hobart Alumni Association Medal of Excellence recipient C. R I C HA RD “ D I C K ” A ND ERE G G ‘67, describing why his original plan to spend four years in the Air Force became a lifetime career.

The quote is from an oral history for the Vietnam War Commemoration, a project that collects and preserves oral histories from those who served.

The Day on the Hill experience allowed me to gain insight into life after HWS and how alums can find their presence on Capitol Hill.

It was great to hear how their HWS education has given them a lift in their careers and how they have utilized their voice to advocate for themselves.

Economics major HRI THIK BIS WAS ’23

The philosophy is based around communication, trust, love, hard work; it’s been really exciting the last few years to see the change in the culture at One Bills Drive and how inspiring that can be, and obviously you see it translate to wins on the field as well.

Buffalo Bills Senior Director of Community Relations and Youth Football P RE STO N T EAGUE ’02, on the culture shift under head coach Sean McDermott and General Manager Brandon Beane, in The Finger Lakes Times.

It’s a critical time for New York.

The pandemic has taken its toll. And it’s the right time for me personally to step up and serve my city. I’m in this race because I love New York.

LIZ CR OT T Y ’93 on why she’s running to be Manhattan’s next District Attorney

It’s a population I connect with — not just as a person of color myself, but also because I understand their dreams and wants, as well as that of their parents and families.

DADA

The correct answer J O S E P H RIS HE L ‘ 6 2 gave to the question ‘For a 20-point bonus, what modern art movement sounds like baby talk?’ during the nationally televised G.E. College Bowl, held on January 29, 1961. The HWS team, consisting of Rishel, Jerry Levy ’63, Marcia Berges Hodges ’61 and James Zurer ’63, defeated Baylor University to become undefeated champions in the academic competition.

Francis Picabia, 1919, Réveil Matin (Alarm Clock), ink on paper, 31.8 x 23 cm

Director of Alumni and Alumnae Relations CH EVANNE DEVANEY ’95, P’21, P’23 on serving as the mentor for Posse 9

Love is that thing that helps you to change the trajectory of somebody else’s life because somebody’s love did it for you.

The RE V. LA KI SHA WILLIAMS ’96, assistant director of advocacy and community engagement for #DegreesNYC, during the Founder’s Day virtual panel

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Pitch Perfect Pitch Celebrates 10 Years with Win for Nusom ’23

BY N ATA L I A ST. L A WRE N C E ’ 1 6

HWS celebrated the 10th anniversary of the newly renamed Todd Feldman ’89 and Family Pitch Contest by awarding Matthew Nusom ’23 a $10,000 grant for SymBio, a design company that reimagines how people manage their landfill, recycling and organic waste.

SymBio’s first product is a lunch tray that uses color-coded sections and indicative letters for composting, recycling and landfilling, allowing diners to place items on trays based on how they will be disposed after the meal. The grant will allow Nusom to produce and distribute 5,000 trays.

This year’s judges, including entrepreneurs and past Pitch contestants Ato Bentsi-Enchil ’17, Mattie Mead ’13, Sam Solomon ’17 and Sara Wroblewski ’13, selected SymBio because of the timing of the opportunity — New York State’s Food Donation and Food Recycling Law and a ban on polystyrene, single-use foam food will take effect in Jan. 2022 — and the immediate impact $10,000 will make toward launching Nusom’s vision.

Nusom has already developed strategic partnerships with local educators and companies, including a schoolteacher at Geneva West Street Elementary School, sustainability-education company Impact Earth and waste solutions company Closed Loop Systems. In the future, he envisions schools, hospitals, airports and other institutions will use SymBio products.

The Pitch marked its first decade by renaming the competition in honor of entrepreneur Todd Feldman ’89 and his family, who generously support the HWS Entrepreneurship Fund and the Opell Challenge. Feldman has spent his career developing ideas and building businesses, including creating and patenting The Nuddle Blanket with his wife Jenn (the first blanket with a foot pocket) to co-founding real estate software platform Leonardo247.

Launched in 2011 by the Centennial Center for Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Pitch has shown the importance of cultivating student ideas and how “any one of them can change the world,” says Centennial Center Director Amy Forbes.

From Contestants to Judges Winner of the inaugural Pitch in 2012, Sara Wroblewski ’13 is the CEO and founder of the nonprofit One Bead, which provides high-impact entrepreneurial programming to students across Boston. onebead.org 2013 Pitch contestant Mattie Mead ’13 is co-founder and CEO of Hempitecture, a public benefit corporation focused on healthy insulation for the residential and commercial building sectors, including HempWool®, an insulating fiber-based batt derived from industrial hemp biomass. hempitecture.com

2014 Pitch winner Ato BentsiEnchil ’17 is the founder of Black Adam Africa, a boutique investment firm specializing in private equity, investment advisory and project financing committed to building and financing high-growth and highpotential businesses in Africa. linkedin.com/company/blackadam-africa/about 2017 Pitch winner Sam Solomon ’17 is the founder of Pizza Posto, a gourmet, sustainable farm-to-table food truck that operates out of Geneva, N.Y. and the co-owner of Spotted Duck Creamery. pizzaposto.com

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Three Decades on the Night Shift

BY BE T HANY SNYDER

Just as the Hobart and William Smith campus was coming to life on the morning of Nov. 13, 2020, Heavy Duty Custodian Mark Cardinale was calling it a day — or rather a night — for the last time. For 33 years, he worked the night shift, 11:30 p.m. to 8 a.m., primarily in the science buildings.

“Mark has been a staple here for three decades,” said Cardinale’s manager, Housekeeping Supervisor Janet Rasmussen. “Between his sense of humor and his work ethic, we have some big shoes to fill.”

Cardinale witnessed much growth and change over those 33 years, from the renovations of Gulick and Rosenberg Halls to the building of the Katherine D. Elliott Studio Arts Center and the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts. Still, the thing he loved best about working at HWS is the same thing he’ll miss the most: “the people.”

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HILL & QUAD |

Envisioning the New Intercultural Affairs Center

BY A N DREW WI C K EN D E N ’ 0 9

DESIGN PLANS for a renovation of the HWS Intercultural Affairs Center are now underway.

For generations of students and alums, the “IC,” as it’s known on campus, has provided a welcoming environment with support for personal growth, academic success and leadership skills as well as programming designed to broaden cross-

cultural understanding, foster an appreciation for diversity, inclusion and social justice, and strengthen community bonds.

In the fall of 2020, faculty, staff and students toured the current space with a design team from SWBR Architects, discussing what functions the space could serve in the future, how the renovation can support the mission of

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Intercultural Affairs and the Colleges’ Strategic Diversity Plan, and which aspects of the space should be preserved to sustain the spirit of the IC. After consultation with the community, the building will be upgraded and expanded, and will stay in its current location, remaining on Pulteney Street near the entrance to campus at

Hamilton Street. “We heard again and again from so many people that the historic location of IC on Pulteney Street at the heart of campus was important,” says Director of Intercultural Affairs Alejandra Molina. “We want students and alums to walk into the IC and it’s still the space they know, but also speaks to 21st century intercultural education.”

The renovation will be a process of “evolving the space to accommodate the needs of our students and club populations without losing the ‘home away from home’ feeling,” says Director of Opportunity Programs Renée Grant.

“From my first tour of campus, it was clear that if we are going to say that we are committed to

equity and inclusion, then we need to make sure that a space dedicated to our values matches our aspirations,” says President Joyce P. Jacobsen. “I’m very excited that we are making this project an immediate priority and that it has the support of our community including the Board of Trustees.”

Hrithik Biswas ’23 hopes the new space will attract “all students

Above is an initial rendering of the new Intercultural Affairs Center.

from different walks of life … to innovate, inquire and collaborate,” while Student Trustee Nuzhat Wahid ’22 expects the updates will “expand the reach, space and opportunities the IC can continue to provide for our many communities on campus.”

“We are looking at a space that has really embodied a sense of community and belonging

for generations, especially for students who may not have felt that sense in other spaces on campus,” says Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Khuram Hussain. “This project signals our commitment to that sense of belonging.”

Details about the renovation including how you can support the project will be available soon.

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Campus Scene In a year like no other, this photo stands out as being emblematic of the times. From his Henry House office, Associate Professor of Men’s Studies Chip Capraro talks with students via Zoom in his “Golf Course Architecture” First-Year Seminar course. The students remained in their residence hall rooms for the initial introduction to one another and Professor Capraro.

Courses for the rest of the semester happened in person with social distancing and the use of face masks.

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HILL & QUAD |

Putting the “Science” in Science-Fiction

BY A N DREW WI C K EN D E N ‘ 0 9

The Trias Residency for Writers is supported

by The Peter Trias Endowed Fund for Poetry and Creative Writing. The residency was created through a generous bequest from Peter J. Trias ’70, and is designed to give distinguished writers time to write while they mentor Hobart and William Smith students and contribute to the artistic community on campus and in the City of Geneva.

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In Jeff VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander, released this April and receiving rave reviews, a mysterious envelope sends “Jane Smith” on a dangerous, complex quest revolving around a taxidermied hummingbird and a taxidermied salamander. The titular animals are fictional, but their scientific plausibility is the product of the research and creativity of Professor of Biology Meghan Brown.

During VanderMeer’s tenure at HWS as the 2016-17 Trias Writer-inResidence, he and Brown forged a working friendship based on a shared fascination with science and the role fiction can play in connecting humans to the natural world. As VanderMeer developed the novel, Brown was enlisted to create ecological profiles for the species — including names, physical and behavioral traits, diets, migrations, defense mechanisms and reproduction strategies — that “would have biological realism which enabled them to be believable in the novel,” she explains.

Her text appears throughout the novel to bring the species’ ecologies to the reader.

Brown says the Hummingbird Salamander collaboration was not only “delightful, but also instructive,” as it allowed her “to be a feminist and an environmentalist and an ecologist” simultaneously as she designed the species and engaged in a creative process to bring ecological tenets to a broad audience.

VanderMeer notes that having worked with Brown during his Trias residency, he was “incredibly impressed with her sharpness and point of view” and that he wanted the “made-up creatures that were essential to the novel to originate with someone else so that I would have to respond to them… [so enlisting Meghan] meant that the voice in which the hummingbird and salamander facts are presented is different than my voice.”

The “challenges organisms face and how they cope with them became a creative outlet, but also an outlet to tell the same story that I write in my scientific publications, just to a different audience,” Brown explains. “Being able to use these mythical creatures to help explain ideas of climate change and environmental contaminants and think about language that would help someone understand how those threats interact with an amphibian and a bird…that was really rewarding and really enjoyable.”

Brown studies and teaches about the critical role humans play in shaping our Earth home. Her non-fiction publications address questions such as: How does climate change impact organisms in European mountain lakes? Did Cuba’s Revolution shape its modern ecology?

What role do non-native species play in the conservation of vulnerable environments? She is a Fulbright fellow, a National Science Foundation grantee, and a recently featured scientist in National Geographic.

VanderMeer is the author of more than 20 books, including Dead Astronauts, Borne and The Southern Reach Trilogy, the first volume of which, Annihilation, won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. A three-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, VanderMeer speaks and writes frequently about issues relating to climate change as well as urban rewilding.

ATHLETICS

Down This Road Before

BY K EN DEB OLT

On March 12, 2020, as Hobart basketball practiced in Newport News, Va., on the eve of its first appearance in the NCAA round of 16 and as Hobart hockey prepared to board a bus to Adrian, Mich., for its sixth consecutive NCAA playoff appearance, the decision was made that both tournaments would be canceled due to COVID-19.

Since then the word “unprecedented” has been bandied about in reference to the pandemic with extraordinary regularity. But that’s not the full story.

Two previous instances of novel global events had a dramatic impact on Hobart and William Smith athletics.

The pandemic commonly referred to as the Spanish Flu ravaged the world population from 1918 to 1920.

Campus officials restricted students to the Colleges’ grounds to prevent the disease from reaching the Student Army Training Corps, which could have hindered the country’s efforts in World War I. The combined impact of the pandemic and war cost Hobart the 1917 and 1918 lacrosse seasons as well as the 1918-19 basketball season. Somehow, Hobart football played on.

The longest shutdown of sports at HWS came two decades later during World War II. Following the 1942 football season finale at Rochester, Hobart Athletic Director Francis “Babe” Kraus ’24 announced the cancelation of all intercollegiate athletic contests for the duration of the war. The announcement

came on the heels of a recommendation by the Association of American Colleges for institutions to place an emphasis on intramural sport, focusing on the fitness of all college men, many of whom would soon enter the armed forces.

The 1942 decision ultimately wiped out three seasons of football and lacrosse and two seasons of basketball.

Sports for women during World War I and World War II did not resemble today’s college sports landscape. Contests were often held between classes or between houses on campus, something more akin to today’s intramurals. When a quarantine came to William Smith Hill in 1918, the games played on as the women of Miller House defeated Blackwell House 19-12 in basketball.

The 1921 edition of the Pine yearbook reflects on William Smith athletes’ lives in the aftermath of the Spanish Flu: “Due to the wholesale vaccination of the college, and the sad effect thereof, some of our budding athletes were forced to recline in cushioned ease for several weary weeks. This somewhat delayed our series of interclass basketball games.”

Over the years, pandemics and world wars have interrupted sports at the Colleges. COVID-19 stopped all HWS sports for a year, the longest pause since World War II.

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HILL & QUAD | ATHLETICS

Athletic Study Mentors Contribute to Academic Success

BY K EN DEB OLT

Thanks to a collaboration between the Hobart and William Smith Athletics Departments and the HWS Center for Teaching and Learning, Statesmen and Heron student-athletes have a new resource in their quest for academic excellence.

Athletic Study Mentors (ASM) are teammates who serve as peer facilitators, helping student-athletes with time management, note-taking, reading and study skills and the transition to college life. Nominated by their coach and embedded within their team, ASMs are hired, trained and supported by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). The program began as a pilot project during the 2018-19 academic year with 10 of the Colleges’ varsity teams and has since expanded to all 23 teams.

This academic year, 21 ASMs provided support to their teammates through workshops and one-on-one meetings. “The program is designed to provide student-athletes with support that is real, responsive and responsible,” explains CTL Assistant Director Ingrid Keenan.

Daniel Masino ’21 helps both Statesmen and Heron basketball firstyears make the transition to college studies. “I strongly feel the proactive training helps first-years have an easier transition,” he says. “It’s very helpful to have someone they know they can go to for pretty much any question they have throughout the semester.”

The program has shown clear results. In Fall 2017, HWS first-year student-athletes had an average GPA

of 3.03. By the second year of the ASM program, that average had risen to 3.17 and this past fall it was 3.26.

While ASMs are responsive to students’ needs and help them identify effective strategies, they also serve as role models who can set an example with their own study habits and academic engagement.

Hobart basketball first-year Matthew Brand ’24 appreciated the example Masino set and his willingness to listen and offer advice. “I knew Dan was someone I was going to look up to and I knew I was going to pick his brain every opportunity I got,” Brand says. “He was available to help me with anything — whether it was schoolrelated, life-related or basketballrelated.”

William Smith lacrosse senior Sadie Mapstone ’21 is in her first season as an ASM, working with Heron first-years.

It was a job made more challenging

by COVID-19. “I ran workshops over Zoom with the entire first-year class two times in the fall, had a 30-minute one-on-one meeting with each firstyear at least once and made myself available for additional one-on-ones,” she explains. Mapstone took advantage of nice weather and had “walk-andtalk” one-on-ones outside whenever possible and, of course, made sure to wear masks for all in-person meetings.

Keenan shares that the feedback CTL received on the program has been universally positive. 77% of firstyears rated ASM as ‘very helpful’ to ‘I couldn’t have done it without them.’

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“ I knew Dan was someone I was going to look up to and I knew I was going to pick his brain every opportunity I got. He was available to help me with anything — whether it was schoolrelated, life-related or basketball-related.”

MAT T H EW BR AN D ’ 2 4 , talking about DA N MAS INO ’21 (pictured above) who has excelled on the court and in the classroom.

PHOTO BY KEVIN COLTON

PHOTO BY BEN BARNHART

The 24-hour Athletics Day of Donors event held on Feb. 24 shattered the record for most dollars raised in a single day as alums, parents and fans donated more than $800,000 in support of the Statesmen and Herons.

“I can’t say thank you enough for the generosity of our donors,” says Deb Steward, associate vice president and director of athletics and recreation, acknowledging the support “will allow us to make meaningful enhancements to the student-athlete experience and reaffirm the lifelong affinity that our students have for these Colleges.”

The fundraising total includes a challenge gift of $25,000 from James F. ’56, L.H.D. ’12 and Cynthia L. Caird L.H.D. ’12, which provided bonus money to the top three Hobart (soccer, rowing and lacrosse) and top three William Smith (rowing, soccer and lacrosse) teams for percentage of dollar goal met, and also supported prizes to the teams with the most creative fundraising videos (Hobart soccer and William Smith basketball).

All 23 teams as well as the sports medicine and strength and conditioning programs exceeded their dollar goals for the day. Each team also received a $500 boost from the Heron Society and the Statesmen Athletic Association.

“It’s hard to say who’s more competitive, the current Statesmen and Herons or our passionate fan base that once again demonstrated its dedication to the Colleges and to our championship-caliber athletic programs,” says Vice President for Advancement Bob O’Connor P’22, P’23. “We are most appreciative to the Cairds, to our coaching staffs, Deb and our SAA and Heron Society boards for their steadfast support.”

On Athletics Day of Donors, coaches appeared on the webcast to thank donors for their support.

In a single day alums, parents and fans donated more than $800,000 in support of the Statesmen and Herons.

ADOD Smashes Donor Records

Remembering the Historic ‘Soul Patrol’

BY KE N DE BOLT

Before the 2001 Minnesota Twins outfield of Torii Hunter, Jacques Jones and Matt Lawton adopted the moniker “Soul Patrol,” there was Hobart’s all-Black lacrosse midfield unit of Malcolm Anderson ’87, Raymond “Tiny” Crawford ’87 and Mark “Skip” Darden ’87, P’17. Anderson and Darden came up with the nickname after their pregame routine of watching Soul Train.

In November, US Lacrosse Magazine featured the trio in the story “The Inside Story of Hobart’s Historic ‘Soul Patrol.’” The article was born out of a podcast published in February of 2020 featuring the former Statesmen, “A History of African Americans in Lacrosse: Part 4,” hosted by Dr. Fred Opie, who played lacrosse at Syracuse.

The piece touts the program’s dominance on the field with Anderson, Crawford and Darden helping Hobart win four straight Division III national championships while outscoring opponents by 425 goals, and praises beloved Coach David J Urick. Darden compares the 10-time national championshipwinning coach to a certain 10-time World Series-winning catcher: “He’s like the Yogi Berra of lacrosse because of his sayings.”

The article reflects on their admission to Hobart as well. “As soon as I stepped foot on campus, my mom looked at me and said, ‘This is where you’re going to go, isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Mom I can’t say no. This is heaven,’” Anderson recalls.

Anderson and Darden also note their growth as scholars thanks to the influence of the late Student Resource Center Chair Dean James Henderson ’75. Darden reflects: “He helped us as Black athletes transition from being on the lacrosse field, being rising stars, to being even better students.”

Today, Anderson is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Atlanta, Ga., area, Crawford is retired from the U.S. Marine Corps and lives near Miami, Fla., and Darden is a partner in the law firm Addison-Darden near Baltimore, Md. Visit the HWS website to read the US Lacrosse Magazine story.

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DEFYInG THE #74 ODDS Ali Marpet ’15 captured lightning in a bottle going from Hobart to NFL-starter to Super Bowl Champion.

S T O R Y

ALI MARPET ’15

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEER 24 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

D E B O L T

PHOTO BY CARMEN MANDATO / GETTY IMAGES

K E N

B Y

Throughout his college career, Marpet kept his sights locked on reaching his next, higher goal.

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DEFYING THE ODDS |

he odds of a high school kid becoming a professional football player in the NFL are roughly the equivalent of being struck by lightning. Only 224 of the approximately 15,000 seniors on NCAA football rosters are selected in the annual NFL Draft and nearly all of them played in Division I. Add to that the fact that the average NFL career lasts just 2.5 years and the chances that Ali Marpet ’15 from Hobart College would get drafted in the second round and develop into an elite player starting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and would be, in his sixth season in the league, protecting the greatest quarterback of all-time in the Super Bowl… well, the odds are astronomical.

With dogged determination and fierce dedication, Marpet has made defying the odds look easy. Out of 1,700 NFL players this season, Marpet’s play was ranked 79th overall by the website Pro Football Focus and third among left guards. The native of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., just finished the third year of a fiveyear deal with the Buccaneers and is without question on an upward trajectory.

THE SUPER BOWL

Marpet and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won Super Bowl LV 31-9 over the Kansas City Chiefs.

Imagine going to work knowing that you’re going to be watched by nearly 100 million people.

That was Ali Marpet’s work day on Feb. 7, 2021. He drove to 4201 N. Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa, put on his uniform and did his job. When he was done, the cannon thundered, the confetti rained down and it slowly started to sink in: Marpet was a Super Bowl Champion.

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“After the game, celebrating with friends and family, that’s where it really felt real.

That’s where it really sunk in,” says Marpet, the starting left guard for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Actual fans at Super Bowl LV were outnumbered by cardboard cutouts 30,000 to 25,000, but Marpet was able to bring two people to the field for the postgame celebration, his dad William Marpet P’15 and his girlfriend Maeghan Kane.

While attendance was limited, Marpet felt the support of Hobart and Tampa fans near and far. He estimates he received more than 300 text messages and thousands of notifications from his Instagram account, @AliMarpet.

The celebration continued three days later with a sunsoaked boat parade on the Hillsborough River through Tampa. While Tom Brady’s 10-yard pass of the Lombardi Trophy to Cameron Brate made headlines, Marpet was enjoying the celebration on a larger boat dedicated to the linemen.

The only Statesman to play in the modern NFL, Marpet has been with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for his entire sixyear career. He has started all 89 games he’s played — none bigger than the Super Bowl.

Offensive linemen have a largely thankless job. Often times when the TV analysts mention them, it’s related to a holding penalty or a missed block. But in the third quarter of the Super Bowl, Marpet got recognition for a key block that sprung running back Leonard Fournette on a 27-yard touchdown run.

On the snap of the ball, instead of moving forward and blocking the man in front of him, Marpet took a step back and ran to his right (called “pulling” in football parlance), parallel to the

the road to beat the NFC East Champion Washington Football Team, the NFC South Champion New Orleans Saints (who topped Tampa twice in the regular season) and the NFC North Champion Green Bay Packers.

Winning in the playoffs on the famed frozen tundra of Lambeau Field is a bucket list dream for nearly every football player.

For his part, Marpet was named All-Pro by ProFootballFocus.com and All-NFC by the Pro Football Writers of America. He has allowed just one regular season sack since the start of the 2019 season.

PHOTO BY TORI RICHMAN/TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS

THE ATHLETE line of scrimmage, sweeping around the right end just ahead of Fournette. Kansas City cornerback Charvarius Ward was the only player in a position to stop Fournette, but the 6-foot-4, 307-pound Marpet made quick work of the 6-foot-1, 196-pound Ward and Fournette was off to the races.

Marpet followed Fournette to the end zone and was the first to congratulate him on the TD that gave the Buccaneers a 19-point lead.

When CBS showed the replay, announcer Jim Nantz noted Marpet’s key block.

For Marpet, it was just football. “For me, the intensity of the Super Bowl — where I felt it — were the first three plays of the game and toward the end of the game. The rest was just playing football.”

The media attention in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl is intense. Even with the move to virtual interviews, Marpet fielded questions from reporters representing major, world-wide media outlets like “The Athletic,” CBS Sports, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, NFL Chile, The New York Post and USA Today,

regional media like WSYR in Syracuse and WHAM in Rochester and, of course, Geneva’s Finger Lakes Times.

“The Super Bowl is really a production,” says Marpet.

“There’s all of the media availability and then there’s the logistics of family coming into town. The tickets and the travel — it really does take two weeks to figure that stuff out.”

The Super Bowl victory was the culmination of a fantastic playoff run for the Buccaneers. Marpet and his teammates had to go on

As children, most of us dream of reaching the pinnacle, usually on the world’s grandest stages: visiting the stars, curing a deadly disease, writing a timeless classic, selling out a worldwide stadium tour or winning a world championship.

Most of us scale down our goals as circumstances and realities come into focus.

For Marpet, the path to Super Bowl Champion took the opposite trajectory. As the now sixth-year Tampa Bay Buccaneer starter grew and flourished on the Hobart football team, he adjusted his goals higher and higher.

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DEFYING THE ODDS |

20 pounds of muscle and started every game as the Statesmen won the Liberty League and advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament. That tournament run came to a close at St. Thomas in Minnesota. The No. 3 Tommies ran away with the contest, but DeWall saw something special in Marpet’s performance that day.

“When you’re playing games that late in the year, you’re playing teams that are just loaded with talent. St. Thomas was loaded,” says DeWall. “Ali’s a sophomore, still kind of coming into his body and learning technique, but he was out there competing even though

the score was pretty lopsided.

When I watched that video later, that’s the point for me where I started to think Ali could make the NFL.” Marpet continued to grow and improve. An inch taller and weighing in at 290 pounds as a junior, he caught the eye of a scouting service.

His combination of size and speed made the scout tell Cragg and DeWall to “get ready, because there’s going to be a lot of people coming to see him.”

Marpet, who just before the Super Bowl received a box of Hobart cookies sent by the food service workers in the Scandling Campus Center, was appreciative of

the gesture and for all of the Sodexo employees’ hard work to keep him well fed.

“That was one of the sweetest things I’ve gotten in a while,” Marpet says. “A big shout out and thank you to them. Also, a big shout out to them for feeding me. It wasn’t an easy job.”

Indeed, by the time he was a senior, Marpet tipped the scales at 310 pounds, a gain of 50 pounds from his initial day on campus. He didn’t allow a sack in his final season at Hobart, leading the Statesmen to a fourth straight Liberty League Championship.

The Statesmen played their way back to the NCAA quarterfinals and Marpet was

PHOTO BY KEVIN COLTON

Marpet took his first step on the path to NFL stardom when he chose to attend Hobart.

“There were a lot of things along the way that had to line up almost perfectly for me to end up where I am,’’ Marpet told The New York Post in the run up to the Super Bowl.

“There wasn’t one moment that made the difference. It was a collection of moments.

Me going to Hobart instead of trying to try to walk on at a D-I AA school or maybe going to another D-III school that didn’t take football as seriously [as Hobart]. There were so many ways this could have played out.’’

The next moment was a debate between then Hobart Head Coach Mike Cragg P’13 and then Offensive Coordinator Kevin DeWall ’00. Marpet played on the offensive and defensive lines at Hastings High School.

Cragg wanted the first-year on the defensive side of the ball, but DeWall liked Marpet’s footwork and agility and wanted his help on offense.

DeWall, now Hobart’s head football coach, got his wish.

“It’s really tough to find the combination of big, athletic, intelligent offensive linemen because they get gobbled up by the Division I and Division II programs. In Division III, players are more of a project, taking more time to develop,” he says.

When Marpet arrived at Hobart, he was listed at 6-foot-3, 260 pounds. A year later, he had added

Hobart football captains Jacob Price ’15, Matt McGriff ’15, Troy Robinson ’15, Ali Marpet ’15, Patrick Conlan ’15 and Mike Berkowitz ’15 pose with Liberty League Commissioner Tracy King with the 2014 Liberty League Championship plaque.

28 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

Ali Mapert ’15 is the only Statesman to play in the modern NFL and the first to play in the league since Fred King ‘36.

being selected in the second round of the NFL Draft by Tampa Bay with the 61st overall pick — the highest a Division III player has ever been chosen.

Marpet is often asked what he would say to an aspiring player in Division III chasing an NFL dream. He offers encouragement. “The work ethic, the passion, the intensity that a lot of the guys I played with at Hobart is NFL caliber,” says Marpet. “It’s just physically, we’re cut from a different cloth. I want people to know that our physical gifts might be different, but the NFL mindset, the approach, the process — a lot of my teammates had that.”

THERE WASn’T ONE MOMEnT THAT MADE THE DIFFEREnCE. IT WAS A COLLECTIOn OF MOMEnTS. ME GOInG TO HOBART INSTEAD OF TRYInG TO TRY TO WALK On AT A D-I AA SCHOOL OR MAYBE GOING TO AnOTHER D-III SCHOOL THAT DIDn’T TAKE FOOTBALL AS SERIOUSLY. THE ACADEMIC THERE WERE SO MAnY WAYS THIS COULD HAVE PLAYED OUT.’’

named to four All-America teams and earned a share of the Liberty League Offensive Player of the Year Award, a first for an offensive lineman.

Throughout the season, scouts from every NFL team dropped in on practices and games to evaluate and interview the rising star.

“I asked one of the scouts that came through how Ali did,” recalls Cragg, who now serves as the Colleges’ Senior Director of Development for

Athletics. “He said, ‘Best I’ve had in 20 years.’ I already knew how dedicated he was, how much he was going after this, how smart he is and how athletic he is. I was 100 percent positive that he was going to make it in the NFL.” Marpet earned an invitation to the Reese’s Senior Bowl and played so well he was invited to the NFL Scouting Combine. That stellar performance put Marpet on a trajectory that led him to

“You look at a guy like Ali, he has this balance which is so incredible, producing a sync between physical fitness and mental excellence,” former Hobart Dean and Professor of Philosophy Eugen Baer P’95, P’97 told the NFL Network in 2015. “That’s Ali, that’s what he aspired to. To graduate from Hobart College with a degree in economics and a minor in philosophy. That’s him.

And then there is the football player. WOW!” Marpet is genuinely grateful for his Hobart education.

When asked about influential professors or classes, he pauses. “I don’t know if I should answer that,” he says.

“There are tons. I feel like I’ll leave people out.”

He eventually mentions Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Steven Lee: “The reason I’m giving him a particular shout out is because I took a social justice class with him and that helped shape my worldview a little bit and the sense of responsibility I feel for my community here in Tampa.”

A leader in Tampa Bay, Marpet has been an active participant in projects ranging from youth leadership to voter registration to social justice causes. He helped establish the team’s Social Justice Initiative in 2018 and leads monthly activities in the community. Marpet is one of four Bucs on the team’s Social Justice Player Board, facilitating important conversations and programming related to social justice causes in Tampa and throughout the NFL. Marpet helped launch the Buccaneers Youth Leadership Program, which is committed to uplifting students in East Tampa through mentorship, after school support and community events. He encouraged fans to register and vote in the run up to the 2020 elections and recently provided support to the Innocence Project and Robert DuBoise, a Florida man who was exonerated after spending 37 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

Marpet also lends his support to a wide range of charities, including Metropolitan Ministries, Cut for a Cure, National CMV

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DEFYING THE ODDS |

Foundation and Turkey Time with the O-line, which provides complete Thanksgiving meals to 700 families in need.

“One of the things we talked about in class is moral courage, that’s different from courage,” says Lee. “Moral courage is very important if you’re going to go out and do big things.”

Marpet is doing big things.

He was voted the recipient of the 2020 Ed Block Courage Award by his teammates, an honor that recognizes one player from each NFL team for professionalism, strength, dedication and being a community role model.

While he initially intended to only mention Professor Lee, Marpet later rattles off his admiration for the lessons taught by Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Hobart College Scott Brophy ’78, P’12; former Associate Professor of Economics Elizabeth Ramey; Director of the Jazz Guitar Ensemble Gregory Wachala; and former adjunct instructor Dr. Janet VanLone.

He cites VanLone’s personal empowerment class: “It was very beneficial to me to prioritize mental health and how to think about it in a healthy way.” Marpet’s lessons in economics also have served him well. He has spent four seasons as an NFLPA Player Representative serving on the NFLPA Finance Committee, which oversees the association’s budget.

THE FAMILY

The Marpet family has been a favorite topic of sports writers since Ali was shooting up draft charts back in 2015. His father Bill is an Emmy-award winning fashion videographer. Ali’s mom Joy Rose P’15 founded a rock band, Housewives on Prozac, and is the executive director of the Motherhood Foundation. Ali is the third of four children; his sister Zena is an emergency room nurse in California, brother Blaze is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at Northwestern and brother Brody lives and works in Tampa helping Ali. Marpet credits the example his parents set with putting him on his path to success.

“I think the absolute and total commitment to a cause that they showed just rubbed off on me,” he told Sports Illustrated before the Super Bowl. “It wasn’t them saying, Hey, find something you’re passionate about. It was just about them being them.

They had a pursuit and a passion, and me seeing that was probably the best thing they could have showed me.”

Marpet shared the Super Bowl spotlight with Zena during the CBS pregame show when the network produced a segment saluting essential workers and their role in keeping the country running during the pandemic. The emotional four-minute video opens with

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Celebrating the Super Bowl win with his girlfriend Meghan Kane and father Bill Marpet P’15.

a shot of Zena working in the hospital and talking about being on the frontline of the fight against COVID-19 with Jennifer Hudson’s powerful rendition of “Stand By Me” in the background.

“My sister has got to be one of the most selfless people I know,” Marpet tells the television audience,

reported to be 96.4 million.

Later in the segment, there’s a photo of Zena and Ali — the latter wearing a Hobart Statesmen hoodie — smiling as Zena says: “D3 football player, here he is protecting Tom Brady. It’s kind of like, ‘What?’”

A CBS video crew spent about eight hours with Zena.

“She crushed it obviously,” Ali says with a clear sense of pride. “It’s awesome. She’s a rock star and it’s cool to give those people— my sister and her co-workers and all of the other essential workers — the shout outs they deserve.”

Family is important to Ali. “I light up when I talk about my family,” he says.

“I could not be more proud of them. I love and respect them so much for everything that they do.”

PHOTO BY KYLE ZEDAKER/TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS

WHAT’S nEXT?

One week removed from the Super Bowl, Marpet was asked how long he would take to savor the victory.

“I think that it continues through this week and then I think next week we’ll get back at it. So two weeks, we had the celebrations and now I’m in the post-celebration, low-key do-nothing stage.”

The bright lights and celebration are exciting and intense, but the attention at One Buccaneer Place quickly turned to the next goal: repeating as Super Bowl Champions.

“Obviously, that’s going to be everyone’s goal,” he explains. “We had a team meeting the Wednesday after the game and the 2020 Bucs are done and whatever the 2021 Bucs are going to be — the roster’s going to look different, people are going to go and some are going to come. It’s a long

process to build that, but it’s starting now.”

While Marpet is hard at work in the weight room and video room preparing for next season, he’s also taking the time to plan engagement opportunities in the community and do more outreach with local charities.

“Part of the off season is going to be building up the Social Justice Initiative program for what we do as a team next year,” he says.

“And then secondly, trying to continue to build those relationships with those who do so much in the community down here in Tampa, like Metropolitan Ministries.”

Near the end of the CBS tribute to essential workers, Zena Marpet spoke for so many in the HWS community when she said, “I’m incredibly proud of where he is, Super Bowl or no Super Bowl.”

Zena Marpet, Ali’s sister, discussing her brother during the Super Bowl pregame.

I’M INCREDIBLY PROUD OF WHERE HE IS, SUPER BOWL OR nO SUPER BOWL.”

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PHOTOGRAPH BY JULIEN OLLIVIER

Mentoring through the Unknown

Blank canvases, sudden setbacks, ambiguous futures, fresh starts.

Whether exciting, challenging, unsettling or invigorating, life’s turning points are full of uncertainty. When questions of purpose and process shadow the path forward, the guidance and support of mentors bring light and clarity. In this way, expertise becomes a torch to be passed and shared, illuminating new experiences and opportunities and empowering new generations to reach new heights. Here, seven HWS graduates reflect on the role of mentorship, formal and informal, in facing the unknown — and achieving success.

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RUIWAN XU ’11

Embracing Change, Adding Value

BY NATALIA ST.LAWRENCE ’16

The founder and CEO of CareerTu, Ruiwan Xu ’11 is changing how people ‘architect’ their careers.

“Your mentor only has one hour for you. What are you going to use it for?” Ruiwan Xu ’11 likes to ask young professionals. Her advice? Touch base with them during life’s big moments. And leave the conversation having added value.

Xu is the founder and CEO of CareerTu, an online school in digital marketing, data analysis and product design that has helped thousands of professionals land positions at technology firms including Amazon, Google, Tencent and Alibaba.

CareerTu’s success has been explosive. In 2019, the company earned an exclusive spot with YCombinator, the incubator that has helped launch Airbnb, Dropbox and Instacart. With headquarters in both New York City and Chengdu, China, the startup already has nearly 200,000 users and 500 recruiting partners.

Along the way, Xu has become a game changer in the marketing and advertising industry. In 2020, Forbes named her to their list of 30 Under 30.

Xu says that in order to make the leap and launch her own company, she relied on guidance from her mentors, who gave her clarity when she reached a crossroads in her career.

While working as a product-marketing manager at Amazon where she oversaw growth marketing for Audible, Amazon offered Xu the chance to join their expansion team in Australia. But Xu had already had her own idea for a startup. She had a successful blog about leveraging online tutorials to launch a career in digital marketing. At the same time, LinkedIn estimates suggested that the U.S. had a shortage of more than 150,000 people with “data science skills.”

The market seemed wide open for online education and technical skills training.

Xu sought out her mentors, including vice presidents at Amazon and a startup founder who had previously sold their company to Google, to help her weigh her options. She says they were able to share guidance based on personal experience.

“Amazon jobs will always be there,” Xu summarizes.

“Your dreams won’t be.”

Now as a CEO and first-time founder, Xu has developed her own mentorship philosophy.

“The world is constantly changing. I have to lead my team to embrace changes. This year, it’s about being open-minded,” Xu says. “The future is

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unknown, but we have learned a few things about solving problems. The challenges will always be there. Our whole culture for that reason is about embracing the changes. Keep conquering.”

At the heart of CareerTu is Xu’s belief in the accessibility of knowledge. In China, she explains, there aren’t many pathways for professionals who want to continue their education. By creating a skill share platform, Xu hopes that professionals will be able to pivot more easily and follow their potential.

Xu graduated from Hobart and William Smith with her B.A. in art and architecture. After receiving her master’s from Simon Business School at the University of Rochester and joining Audible, Xu found a common language between architecture and product design. “People may think there is no connection between these two worlds, but it is not true. In both fields, you’re constantly talking about the user experience or user behavior. My architecture background gave me a strong foundation for understanding this way of thinking,” she says.

Classes with Professor of Art and Architecture Stanley Matthews allowed Xu to develop a creative approach to user thinking and problem solving.

When she launched her startup, she also found herself thinking back to instruction with Assistant Professor of Economics Warren Hamilton and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Computer Science Kevin Mitchell, who taught her the foundations of microeconomics, accounting and making data-driven business decisions.

“I am so grateful to the HWS network, who generously offered opportunities and their time,” Xu says. Last year, she hired Kerui “Cary” Chen ’12 to become CareerTu’s Vice President of Product.

“Maybe your mentor has tried a couple of things in their career. By generously sharing that information, they can help you identify an opportunity,” Xu says. On the flip side, she emphasizes: “If someone generously shares their time with you, you need to be able to add value.”

“I am sure there will be students reading this article who say, ‘How am I going to add value to a CEO’s time?’ I think there is always something we can try and something we can do. Share your view, your thinking. Your generational perspective.”

PHOTO COURTESY RUIWAN XU ‘11

MENTORING THROUGH THE UNKNOWN |

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MENTORING THROUGH THE UNKNOWN |

The Art of Listening

BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ’09

Mustafa Sayed ’11 is the executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute, a think tank creating cultural understanding and reducing conflict.

Diplomacy is only as productive as each party’s capacity to listen. This principle, which Mustafa Sayed ’11 absorbed from mentors around the globe, serves as a model for his work as executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute.

Based in Islamabad, Sayed heads the think tank’s efforts to promote dialogue among Pakistan, China and neighboring countries. By informing and engaging government officials, educators, students and the general public, the Institute works to “reduce the chances of conflict, increase connectivity in terms of energy and infrastructure and … promote a better understanding of each other’s cultures,” Sayed says.

His curiosity about the “interplay of states and their interests” began early, inspired by his father, Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a former journalist who began his tenure as a member of Pakistan’s Senate in 1997. He has been “a professional compass,” playing “a fundamental role in navigating my journey in international diplomacy,” Mustafa says.

When the younger Sayed arrived at HWS, his perspective on public service grew increasingly nuanced. Professors encouraged debate and critique with the goal of “understanding the other person’s perspective … and where that perspective comes from,” he explains. “Difference of opinion was not shunned — it was welcomed … which I think was of immense value to my personal and professional growth.”

As Sayed learned during an internship with then Republican Florida Congressman Adam Putnam, this kind of deep engagement is inextricable from public service. With constituents vying for limited attention and resources, Sayed says it was vital to manage

“expectations with what realistic deliverables they could be given and what realistic action could be taken in response to their requests.”

At the Pakistan-China Institute, academic research, policy debates and humanitarian concerns converge, revealing challenges but not always a clear or preferred path forward. As an independent entity adjacent to but outside of government, the Institute must “engage and keep the doors of dialogue open to find that common ground,” Sayed says.

On “multifaceted issues like climate change, like national security,” Sayed says, “being able to distinguish these nuanced differences and finding those areas of cooperation is something that certainly was honed in my work in Washington and certainly from the counsel of my father.”

In a polarized world, the “track II” diplomacy of think tanks like the Pakistan-China Institute opens vital avenues of communication and platforms for those who might not otherwise have a voice.

“For countries in the developing world that have abject poverty and illiteracy rates, I think it is important to echo [their] interests … on the world stage,” Sayed says, “particularly in the COVID era where marginalized communities have been hit the hardest … [R]epresenting their interests in international and important forums is, I think, an important responsibility as a citizen, an academic and a think-tanker.”

Regardless of the stakes or stakeholders, Sayed says, “it’s important to engage, learn, read — and sometimes just to listen … and soak it in like a sponge.”

“ Difference of opinion was not shunned — it was welcomed … which I think was of immense value to my personal and professional growth.”

MUSTAFA SAYED ’11, on his time at Hobart and William Smith

PHOTO COURTESY MUSTAFA SAYED ‘11

MUSTAFA SAYED ’11

MONICA WAGNER ’78

Remembers the Notorious RBG Working as a law school research assistant and clerking for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her tenure on the U.S. Court of Appeals was the beginning of a lifetime of mentorship for Monica Wagner ’78

PHOTO BY MICHAEL PARAS PHOTOGRAPHY

BY BETHANY SNYDER Monica Wagner ’78 was a student at William Smith when she first heard of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — then a professor at Columbia Law School — through Professor Emeritus of Political Science Joseph DiGangi. With his encouragement, she began reading Ginsburg’s writings and soon applied to attend Columbia to study under her.

“I was very excited about who she was as a lawyer,” Wagner says. “We shared a passion for working in the public interest, for doing good in the world as lawyers.” In the summer before her second year at Columbia, Wagner began working as Ginsburg’s research assistant. Soon after, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals; after earning her law degree, Wagner spent a year there clerking for Ginsburg.

It was the beginning of a lifetime of friendship and mentorship.

The political science major, now serving as deputy chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau in the Office of the Attorney General of New York, maintained correspondence with Ginsburg throughout her storied career, with the justice sharing wisdom, offering advice and providing perspective.

“One of the things she gave me is her view of me,” Wagner shares.

“She wrote to me that I never let the bad guys get

me down. It’s not something I’d thought about myself, but it’s true. I try not to let the terrible things in the world get me down. She reminded me of that.”

Wagner credits Ginsburg’s example for helping to shape her career, which includes practicing environmental and employment discrimination litigation with Terris & Sunderland in Washington, D.C., opening her own practice handling real estate transactions and family law matters in Great Barrington, Mass., and serving as a member of the Clinton Administration transition team.

“She inspired me to practice the law the way I still practice law,” says Wagner, explaining that Ginsburg “was a very careful legal thinker … never a person who engaged in anger or strong emotions either as a lawyer or when she was a judge. I litigate for a living and I take a very careful approach. I tell the judge what my case is about, what the facts of my case are and how the law applies to the facts of my case in a very quiet way — which was the way that she taught me.”

When Ginsburg’s body was lying in state at the Supreme Court, Wagner was one of many of her former clerks invited to stand vigil on the court steps. “It touched my heart to see little girls there,” she says. “One woman, probably in her 20s, knelt at the bottom of the steps to honor RBG. That was because she became a cultural icon. It was a wonderful development.”

When Wagner was turning 40 and the two arranged to have

lunch at a club in Washington, D.C., Ginsburg showed up with a happy birthday banner. “Here she was on the U.S. Supreme Court and she brings a happy birthday banner and tapes it to the wall of the dining room in the club,” recalls Wagner. “She was a lovely person in my life. How much I miss her! It was a huge personal loss for me as well as a huge loss for our country.”

The last letter Wagner received from Ginsburg, dated Aug. 18, 2020, ended: “Stay well, and continue to thrive in your work and your days.” “I cried when I got that, because I knew she was saying farewell,” says Wagner. “I cherish her last words to me.”

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DANIEL BORNSTEIN ’95

Building Resilience

BY KEN DEBOLT AND BETHANY SNYDER

At the Citadel, Daniel Bornstein ‘95 prepares tactical athletes — military service members, firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical service workers and veterans — for the physiological, behavioral and cognitive aspects of their jobs.

Daniel Bornstein ’95 learned the importance of resilience at a young age: When he was 11, a fall resulted in a life-changing back injury. But it was that very accident that put him on a path to a leadership role at the Citadel and with the National Physical Activity Plan.

Broken ribs, fractured vertebrae and herniated discs not only shifted Bornstein’s life from one of activity and athletics to immobilization and recovery, it introduced him to what would be two fundamental components of his life: public service and physical fitness.

The firefighters who came to rescue Bornstein when he fell on the stairs left an indelible imprint.

At 18, he began volunteering with his hometown department in Bedford, N.Y. “It gave me my first taste of community service and public service,” he says.

When he came to HWS, he volunteered at Geneva’s Nester Hose Co. #1.

Bornstein’s fitness returned through a steadfast dedication to physical therapy, piquing his interest in sports medicine and leading to a job in the clinic where he’d spent years in rehab. As a high school senior, he reached out to the late HWS Coordinator of Sports Medicine Doug Reeland P’09, P’13, who hired him as a student trainer for the Hobart football team. Bornstein describes his time working with the Statesmen and being mentored by Reeland as “probably four of my most favorite years of my life.”

After graduation, the psychology major moved to Tucson, Ariz., and founded two fitness companies.

It was fulfilling work, but that sense of service, of making an impact on a broader scale, was missing.

Bornstein entered a Ph.D. program in exercise science at the University of South Carolina, where he “learned about the importance of physical activity in improving population health and of environment and policy in shaping individual-level behavior,” he explains.

The idea of improving health and fitness on a broad level led Bornstein to think about the impact of physical inactivity and low fitness on military readiness and national security. “When I had the chance to do research in that area at a military college, I jumped at the opportunity,” he says.

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Bornstein has been at the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, for more than eight years.

An associate professor in the department of health and human performance, he is also director of the Center for Performance, Readiness, Resiliency, and Recovery, which offers programming for those who work with tactical athletes (military service members, firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical service workers and veterans).

“Just like you need to prepare a sport athlete for the demands of their sport, we need to prepare tactical athletes for the physiological, behavioral and cognitive aspects of their job,” says Bornstein. “We’re protecting and serving those who protect and serve.”

Bornstein also serves as chair of the expert panel developing a military sector for the National Physical Activity Plan (NPAP). An effort to increase population levels of physical activity to prevent chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers and infectious diseases, the NPAP is organized around societal sectors including education, health care, transportation, urban planning, sports and the military.

Bornstein’s work with the NPAP allows him to be of service, which he describes as one of the most important life lessons. “Service was part of the HWS experience and part of my firefighting experience,” he explains. “Giving back is one of my guiding principles.”

The man whose life has been well served by mentors is now a mentor to many. “Educating students who make a difference — helping them to be ready and resilient for their challenging jobs — is by far the most rewarding aspect of my job,” he says.

Key to serving and protecting those who serve and protect is instilling in his students the message of resiliency that Bornstein learned at a young age.

“Resiliency is the ability to get up after you’ve been knocked down,” he says. “It’s inevitable that we’re going to be knocked down. The question is, how do we respond to that?”

PHOTO BY LOUIS BREMS, THE CITADEL

MENTORING THROUGH THE UNKNOWN |

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TAMARA PAYNE ’88

Following the Facts Tamara Payne ’88 is the principal researcher and coauthor of The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, a collaboration with her father – the late Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Les Payne P’88. When Les died in 2018, Tamara completed and published the epic biography. In 2020, The Dead are Arising won the National Book Award.

In 2021, the book won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in the category of Biography/Autobiography.

BY NATALIA ST. LAWRENCE ‘16 In the American imagination, author Tamara Payne ’88 contends, “it’s as if Malcolm X sprung out of nowhere. He has been presented as angry and fully formed.” Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, who has a well-documented upbringing and family life, it is “as if Malcolm had no childhood. As if he had no trajectory,” she says.

When Les Payne met Malcolm’s brothers, Philbert and Wilfred Little, he identified the erasure, and began to ask questions. Who was Malcolm X as a child? What was his family like?

He knew, Tamara says, that this information would be powerful in helping to understand the human rights activist. “He also knew that in the process of learning more about Malcolm, we would better

understand ourselves,” she says. How do our families influence us? How are our lives shaped by the world we are born into?

The influence of family in Tamara’s own life is unmistakable. She says she always knew she wanted to be a writer. That she would grow up to write, alongside her father, what NPR has called today’s “definitive biography on Malcolm X,” may have germinated while listening to the “Ballot or the Bullet” speech or “A Message to the Grassroots” as a child.

“Malcolm X has always been in my life. My father admired him, and he would play speeches at home. I was five or six years old, I didn’t know what a ballot was, but when you listen to Malcolm’s critique, his analysis and the way he uses language, you learn from him… Malcolm was a master of the English language.”

At the Colleges, where Tamara majored in English, her time as a student coincided with a literary boom of Black women writers. “Because of the freedom we had in our studies, I was able to spend a lot of time with Black women writers like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and so many others,” she says. “One of my favorites was, and still is, Zora Neale Hurston.”

As she took courses in a variety of subjects and studied abroad in China, Tamara incorporated writing and research into her everyday life. When the opportunity came to work alongside her father, Tamara was ready to accept.

“I knew this was going to be an important story, because no one had heard the story like that before from Malcolm’s brothers, [and because of the kind of journalist my father was]” Tamara says, remembering how Les Payne’s first interview extracted astonishing details and launched his nearly 30-year journey of writing The Dead are Arising.

Through diligent reporting, Les and Tamara learned about the influence of Malcolm’s parents in his life. Followers of Marcus Garvey, Malcom’s mother would sing songs to her children in French and cared about their schoolwork. Malcolm’s father instilled a strong work ethic in the children.

He also took young Malcolm to some of his meetings. They also uncovered information that scholars and reporters had previously described

as unattainable, including what happened at Malcolm X and Jeremiah X Shabazz’s 1961 sit-down with the Ku Klux Klan and a momentto-moment account of Malcolm X’s murder in the Audubon Ballroom.

As the principal researcher, Tamara combed through primary documents, including Malcolm’s many journals and letters. She tracked down people in his various circles, including family, friends, classmates, sworn enemies, FBI agents, Nation of Islam figures and political leaders from around the world, and would often join her father during their interviews.

Les would interview people multiple times over the course of several years and would always cross-verify the facts. As Tamara penned in the biography’s introduction, he had an “investigative persistence and skill in obtaining truth from reluctant sources.” Through his mentorship, Tamara says she developed a journalistic approach to her work.

“You may think you’re writing a story that’s going in one direction. Then the facts push you in another direction — maybe even the opposite direction. You have to go where the facts go,” Tamara says. When writing about Malcolm X, Les and Tamara had to unpeel layers of obfuscation.

“The goal of this book is to put Malcolm finally in the context of American history, and to give recognition to how important he really is,” Tamara explains. “After he died, people all over the world were turning to him. Even here, he never left the stage. When navigating white supremacy, people turn to Malcolm, because [of the way] he critiqued it. He gave clear expression to what it was like to be oppressed in such a system. He offered solutions in how to confront it: [gaining] control of economic development, embracing one’s own beauty, self-defense. He was preaching that.”

As a mentor, Tamara says her father’s approach was instructional. “He wanted to make sure I was learning these lessons,” she says. “And I wanted to practice this craft.” A founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Les Payne’s legacy of mentorship includes a current membership base of 4,000 journalists.

As Les’ partner on this project, and as his confidant, Tamara encouraged her father to bring

PHOTO BY BOBBY YAN

MENTORING THROUGH THE UNKNOWN |

his own experience to the book. “He didn’t want to insert himself, so I had to really encourage him to put himself into this work like when he saw Malcolm speak in Hartford, Ct.,” she says.

In the months since its publication, The Dead are Arising has garnered glowing critical praise. Time Magazine named the biography a “Must-Read.” The New York Times Book Review said the book is “brimming with detail, insight and feeling.” In the citation for the National Book Award, the judges describe the work as an “intensely human portrait” “written with a dedicated beauty and uncompromising detail.”

Amid the reception, Tamara says that, for her, the impact of the biography is personal and political. “To complete the life’s work of Les Payne, that was huge, and would not have been possible without the support of my family,” she says. “I’ve heard from people who’ve read the book who said there was stuff about Malcolm they never knew before. This isn’t just Black history. The Great Depression happened and the Great Migration happened: to Americans. The reverberations of those periods happened: to Americans. Not just Black Americans, not just immigrant Americans.

We have to put these stories into the context of American history.”

JEFF VUKELIC ’88

What Would Dad Do?

1. REFLECTIVE LEADERSHIP: “If you talk to most leaders, they surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are,” says Vukelic, who is “always looking to get better through education and learning from others.” A lifelong “student of leadership,” he turns to his business coach, his peers, his employees and the examples his father and grandfather set as they guided the company through the Great Depression, World War II and the beverage industry’s evolution during the 20th century. “My dad is a leader I always look up to,” Vukelic says. “Even now that he’s my coworker and friend, even now that he’s coming to me for advice, there’s not a decision I make that I don’t ask, ‘What would dad do?’”

BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ’09

2. COMPETITIVENESS: While running a soft drinks bottling company during Prohibition, Vukelic’s grandfather Stephen was also making moonshine and ferrying Canadian liquor across the border. Years later, when his grandson heard the stories and asked how he was never caught, Stephen said, “I had the fastest boat in the river.”

Although competition in the industry looks a little different today, Vukelic and his brother Paul, who runs Try-It, have always answered when opportunity has knocked. Since the 2005 acquisition of Saratoga Eagle, Vukelic has brought four additional companies under their umbrella and expanded distribution into 13 counties.

Jeff Vukelic ’88 is president and CEO of Saratoga Eagle Sales & Service, which distributes beer, cider, wine, spirits and soft drinks across

3. TRANSPARENCY: Saratoga Eagle has operated as an essential business throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns. Alongside revised delivery schedules

Jeff Vukelic ’88 learned firsthand from his father and grandfather how to lead a company through challenging times. Now, steering the fourthgeneration, family-owned beverage company through the pandemic, he reflects on the key lessons that have guided the business in safety, success and good spirits.

PHOTO BY DAN READE

northeastern New York. The company’s parent, Try-It Distributing, was founded in Lackawanna, N.Y., by Vukelic’s grandfather. Initially a soft drink bottling company during Prohibition, Try-It began selling beer in the Buffalo region after the 21st Amendment passed in 1933.

The company acquired an Anheuser-Busch distributorship after World War II and later expanded under Vukelic’s father Gene. Since Jeff joined the company in 1992, Try-It has formed the subsidiary Balkan Beverage and, in 2005, acquired Saratoga Eagle, which delivers more than five million cases annually.

and safety measures like contact tracing and quarantining, Vukelic says the company’s culture of transparency has been critical to maintain service and keep customers and employees safe: “During COVID, we were happy to have people working, but we have to keep our stakeholders healthy — that’s first and foremost. Our people want to know they are going to be ok, so we are in constant communication about the short-term and long-term solutions.”

4. PERSPECTIVE: “What I like about the liberal arts is the perspective it gave me on business — and outside of business,” says Vukelic. “It rounded me out.” In his personal and professional life, he has relied on a balanced outlook that was nurtured at HWS, where he studied economics and political science with Professors Emeriti Pat McGuire, Joe DiGangi and Craig Rimmerman, ran cross-country under the tutelage of Coach Ron Fleury, and met his wife Elaine Bruno Vukelic ’91. As Vukelic leads Saratoga Eagle through uncharted waters, he says balance is critical, especially in the beverage industry, because “when you’re selling beer, you have to have fun.”

5. TEAMWORK: With nearly 200 employees, Vukelic says Saratoga Eagle’s success depends on a “hungry, humble and smart” team working toward the same goals with the same energy.

During the pandemic, he has been able to depend on “people filling in and stepping up. Our core values revolve around our will to win — doing the right thing when no one’s looking, working hard, paying attention to details, failing fast and learning from it. We had a goal of growing organically and exponentially, which has been rewarding and challenging, but most importantly we’ve done it as a family business.”

MENTORING THROUGH THE UNKNOWN |

FEVEN YOHANNES ’04

Divine Messages Feven Yohannes ’04 and her identical twin sister Helena have always seen beauty as a way to connect with other women. For the Eritrean refugees born in a camp in Sudan, makeup was a way to form relationships in their predominantly white neighborhood in Rochester, N.Y., and how Yohannes built friendships on the Hobart and William Smith campus.

Connection is at the heart of the twins’ new company, 2.4.1 Cosmetics, which works to empower women by enhancing their natural beauty. And two of those connections — in the form of tweets, posts and online direct messages, or what Yohannes calls “divine messages” — have allowed the twins to form mentor relationships with two of the biggest names in beauty: Diane von Furstenberg and Bobbi Brown.

In 2015, Feven won the “How I Became the Woman I Wanted to Be” contest sponsored by House of DVF, a reality television show that followed the life of fashion icon von Furstenberg.

Entries were accepted in the form of 140-character tweets and a recent photo posted on Twitter; the prize was a new car, painted in bold colors reminiscent of von Furstenberg’s iconic wrap dresses, a style that had long been one of Yohannes’ obsessions.

Her winning entry read: “From Eritrea to a refugee camp in Sudan, I carry the pride of my people & the strength of my mother,” and was accompanied by a photo of Yohannes in a geometric-print dress standing in front of a backdrop with a strikingly similar print, taken at the DVF Journey of a Dress Exhibition the previous year. The dress may have looked like a DVF original, but it was one Yohannes had made from fabric purchased at the Makola Market in Accra, Ghana.

von Furstenberg awarded Yohannes the car, along with shoes, a signed handbag and one of those iconic dresses. After their meeting, Yohannes struck up an email relationship with her idol, and eventually formally asked von Furstenberg to be her mentor. They now have monthly check-ins, where von Furstenberg has counseled her to be intentional and to speak from the heart. “Diane reminds me to be authentic, to always remember the story of where I came from and to share that story,” Yohannes says. “I carry that lesson in everything I do.”

The second mentor connection for the twins began in 2018, when Yohannes’ sister Helena tagged makeup maven Bobbi Brown in a post on Instagram after listening to Brown on an episode of the NPR podcast How I Built This with Guy Raz. “We realized we look at makeup the same way, which is a practical solution to enhance natural beauty,” Yohannes explains. “Hearing Bobbi was an affirmation of what we already believed.”

Soon after the Instagram post, Brown reached out to Helena through direct message, and Helena began cultivating the relationship. “We thank God for Twitter and Instagram,” says Yohannes. “This is where social media is amazing.”

The twins had been communicating with Brown through Instagram messages for about a year when they launched 2.4.1 Cosmetics, at which point they sent her samples of all their products.

Brown subsequently posted about them on her account, resulting in a wave of new customers for the sisters.

The relationship was taken to the next level during the Black Lives Matters protests when Brown — whose makeup ventures have always focused on inclusivity — asked Helena to jump on a call, part of an effort to connect with entrepreneurs

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of color working in the beauty space. At the end of the call, Brown said she would like to mentor the twins.

“Bobbi is a breath of fresh air and a wealth of knowledge,” says Yohannes. In the summer of 2020, when their lip gloss collection was selected as part of Oprah’s Favorite Things annual holiday gift list, they reached out to her. “We were worried about what would happen if we couldn’t fulfill certain orders, if we had an avalanche of sales,” Yohannes explains. “Bobbi was very firm: ‘It’s okay, just create a wait list.’” The lip glosses quickly sold out, the twins created a wait list and six weeks later, they were able to fulfill those orders, just as Brown predicted.

Today, the sisters communicate regularly with both von Furstenberg and Brown in an organic way. “When we’re experiencing something with the business, we reach out,” Yohannes explains.

“Because they’ve already been there, they provide us with perspective and advice. It’s so important to ask the people who’ve made it and are coming back to give us a lesson.”

When it comes to establishing mentor relationships with successful people, Yohannes suggests having specific questions to ask. “Any time you have the opportunity to connect with someone who has achieved in their career what you’re hoping to achieve, write down three goals or three questions,” she says. “This helps you focus the conversation and won’t waste the mentor’s time — especially if you have that one shot.”

As 2.4.1 Cosmetics continues to grow, Yohannes hopes to connect with — and perhaps establish a mentor relationship with — another of her idols, Oprah. In the meantime, she looks forward to being a mentor herself. “I want little Black girls to look at me and say, ‘I can do it, too.’

PHOTO BY QUINN MOSS

BY BETHANY SNYDER

Feven Yohannes ‘04 and her twin sister Helena are headed to the top of the beauty empire with 2.4.1 Cosmetics and the help of mentors like Diane von Furstenberg and Bobbi Brown, and recent inclusion on Oprah’s Favorite Things gift list.

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HWS Community FANFARE | HONORS | AWARDS | CELEBRATIONS

99+ A Century of Living

BY B ETH A N Y S N YD ER

At least nine Hobart and William Smith alums have reached the remarkable milestone of living 99 years or more. The Office of Alumni and Alumnae Relations reached out to them to gather their reflections and share their wisdom from a century of living.

Ivan Kuhl ’43, age 100, says that computer systems are the most important invention of his lifetime, while James Elsner ’41, who is 101, has similar technological thoughts. “I was going to say the iPhone,” he shares, “but it’s the internet because you can’t use an iPhone without the internet.”

Both Elsner and former Trustee Donald Goode ’38, P’63, GGP’22, our oldest living alum at 107, have fond memories of watching athletics competitions on campus — for Elsner it was Hobart football games versus the University of Rochester, while Goode enjoyed both football and lacrosse, as he managed the freshman lacrosse team. On a more somber note, Kuhl recalls sitting with fiancé Ruth Amidon Kuhl ’44 at Sill House when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

When it comes to offering advice to current HWS students, Elsner encourages them to “have a purpose,” while Kuhl suggests that they “stay out of trouble.”

Perhaps of greatest interest to younger generations is to what the alums attribute their longevity. Goode says it’s about being active — including keeping your mind active — and moderation.

Kuhl recommends finding someone to love as a life partner and Elsner says to “keep on breathing.”

At the time of press, we learned our oldest Hobart alumnus, Donald W. Goode ’38, P’63 passed away on March 31, 2021. An article celebrating his considerable life will be featured in the next issue of the Pulteney Street Survey.

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Left: Alta Essom Boyer ‘36; Below, top to bottom: Donald Goode ‘38, P’63, GGP’22, Ivan Kuhl ‘43, and James Elsner ‘41.

<< Coxe Hall in the 1930s when Boyer, Kuhl, Elsner and Goode were students on campus.

The oldest living William Smith alum, Alta Essom Boyer ’36, who is 106, chose to respond in the form of a poem.

A noteworthy salute to HWS… In old Geneva

by Seneca Lake HWS stands proud as years accumulate grads far and wide hold degrees and point with pride Bishop Hobart shares honors with William Smith smile on the generations forthwith Bless and all participate all systems great the time is now let’s celebrate

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HWS COMMUNITY |

New Trustees Board of Trustees Elects 5 New Members At its winter 2021 meeting, the Board of Trustees unanimously elected its newest members to serve four-year terms beginning in July.

“I am thrilled to welcome these accomplished and passionate members of the Hobart and William Smith community onto the Board,” says Board Chair Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17. “They each bring a significant amount of experience and insight, and their perspectives will be tremendously helpful as we work together to further the Colleges.”

From top to bottom: Hon. Jeremy A. Cooney ’04, Josephine Grayson P’18, Dr. Paula Miltenberger P’23, Mehrnaz “Naz” Vahid-Ahdieh ’85, P’17, and Stephen Wong ’89.

HON. JEREMY A. COONEY ’04 New York State Senator Cooney was adopted by Anne Cooney ’63, P’04 from an Indian orphanage and recently made history as the first Asian elected to state office from Upstate New York.

Cooney serves as the State Senator for the 56th District of New York, representing the City of Rochester.

Previously, he served as senior director for downstate community relations for Empire State Development under Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, the first chief of staff to Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, personal aide to U.S. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, and as a vice president for the YMCA of Greater Rochester.

A third-generation HWS alum, Cooney earned a B.A. in public policy studies,

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minoring in economics and philosophy, and graduating cum laude with honors. He went on to receive his J.D. from Albany Law School.

He is married to urologic surgeon Dr. Diane Lu, M.D. JOSEPHINE GRAYSON P’18 Landscape architect and philanthropist Grayson spent a decade in the financial markets before becoming a landscape architect and environmentalist. Driven by creativity, social good and beautiful spaces, Grayson now pursues her interests in art and her family’s philanthropic organizations, The Peter and Josephine Grayson Foundation and the Fund for Individual Potential. She holds a B.S. in environmental planning and design from Rutgers

University as well as a B.S. in business from the College of New Rochelle; she has also completed extended study programs at Parsons School of Design, Universita Bocconi in Milan, and the School of Visual Arts in New York.

She is a former member of the HWS Parents Executive Committee and served as a judge for the 2020 Pitch Contest. Lifetime members of the Cook Parents Circle, Grayson and her husband Peter P’18 have two children, Eric and Bradley ’18.

DR. PAULA MILTENBERGER P’23 Psychologist and mental health expert Miltenberger is a licensed psychologist and founder of Women’s Mental Wellness, a private practice that provides comprehensive mental health care for women.

Outside of her private practice, Miltenberger is a consulting psychologist for Medical City Dallas’ Women’s Hospital, where she works with women experiencing high-risk pregnancies as well as candidates for fetal surgery. A published author on issues related to loss and perinatal depression, Miltenberger earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Texas at Southwestern Medical

School in Dallas; a B.A. in international relations from Baylor University and a B.S. in psychology from University of North Texas. A board member of Family Gateway, Miltenberger and her husband Bay P’23 have four children, Bryce ’23, Bo, Brady and Brooks.

MEHRNAZ “NAZ” VAHID-AHDIEH ’85, P’17 Citi Private Bank Managing Director Vahid-Ahdieh began her career with Citi Private Bank as an intern and has since risen to managing director.

With more than three decades of experience, she leads the bank’s Global Law Firm Group, managing more than 200 employees in 14 locations.

Vahid-Ahdieh created and developed Citi Private Bank’s mentoring program and led the company’s diversity committee for North America.

She holds a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University; a B.A. in economics and sociology from William Smith; and series 24, 7 and 63 licenses. A judge for The Pitch contest and former member of the William Smith Alumnae Council Honors Committee, she joined the President’s Leadership Council in 2019 and serves on the board of the Tahirih Justice Center. Vahid-Ahdieh

and her husband Shahin Ahdieh have two daughters, Leila Vahid-Ahdieh and Marjorye Santos ’17.

STEPHEN WONG ’89 Goldman Sachs Executive Wong serves as Goldman Sachs’ managing director and chairman of Investment Banking for Hong Kong and Asia Pacific ex-Japan, and head of the firm’s real estate group. He has been an executive at Goldman Sachs since 2005 covering corporate, financial sponsor and sovereign clients throughout the Greater China region and Silicon Valley. Wong graduated cum laude with a B.A. in economics from HWS and went on to earn a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

A life-long collector and one of the world’s foremost authorities on baseball history and its artifacts, Wong is the author of Smithsonian Baseball: Inside the World’s Finest Private Collections and Game Worn: Baseball Treasures from the Game’s Greatest Heroes and Moments, both of which were runners-up for the Casey Award.

Entrepreneur of 2020

BY PAIG E M ULLI N COOKE

Gina Perini ’95, the Chair of the Board of Directors and CEO of Somos Inc., was named the winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year 2020 Award, New Jersey Program.

Perini leads Somos, a top provider of registry management and data solutions. The award honors her vision, strategy and leadership, including leading the expansion of the company’s portfolio of products and services.

Perini joined Somos in 2012.

“We’ve created a culture where voices are respected and embraced, where we use critical thinking, agility and creativity to solve our customers’ problems,” Perini says. “So much of the culture that has been built had its foundation in what I learned during my time at HWS.”

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HWS COMMUNITY | Michelle Poulin ’15

New Endowed Fund Focuses on Teachers

BY B ETH A N Y S N YDER

Organizations such as the Learning Policy Institute and the Economic Policy Institute have been sounding alarm bells about teacher shortages for years — shortfalls that have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. A new permanent endowed scholarship fund for students pursing a degree in education will help to mitigate the problem.

The Nancy M. Bailey Endowed Scholarship Fund, created to encourage HWS students to earn an education degree and go into the teaching profession, was established by Nancy Malfitano Bailey ’71. Bailey majored in English and education at William Smith and went on to a career as a teacher at the college level, retiring as professor emerita of teacher education at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y. “It’s so important that teachers be honored and nurtured,” says Bailey, noting that she has been

concerned about the dwindling numbers of students enrolled in education programs for several years. “It alarmed me well before the pandemic — and teaching is so much harder now with everything that’s going on.”

The fund will provide assistance to one or more HWS students who are academically qualified and have demonstrated financial need, with preference given to those in their third and fourth year who are pursuing a degree in education.

Bailey earned a master’s in education from Nazareth College and a Ph.D. in literacy from SUNY Buffalo. At HWS, she was a member of Hai Timiai and was a founding member of Koshare Dance Collective.

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Nonviolent Social Movements Harvard Kennedy School graduate student Michelle Poulin ’15 has been awarded a Topol Research Fellowship at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Under the guidance of Professor Erica Chenoweth, a leading scholar in alternative solutions to political conflict, Poulin will research the success rates of recent international nonviolent protest movements and gather data for the Carr Center’s Nonviolent Action Lab. Poulin notes that studying abroad in Taipei, Taiwan, during her senior year at HWS — a time of social upheaval in Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as an election year — helped to inform her interest in social movements.

“My time in Taipei changed the way I think about social movements and democracy,” she explains. “It’s safe to say I wouldn’t have been able to land this fellowship without HWS providing me with a great education and the chance to study abroad in an incredible country.”

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HWS COMMUNITY |

TRIBUTE

Lorimer ‘Bill’ Heywood From the Hobart Class of 1922, Heywood is thought to be the longest serving class correspondent in HWS history.

BY HE N R Y J . LE N Z ’ 72

“We had a hell of a time. So be it with all of you for another year,” Pulteney Street Survey class correspondent Lorimer Dexter Heywood wrote in his column in 1922. He went on to serve as class correspondent until his death in 1977, thought to be one of the longest serving class correspondents in the Colleges’ history.

Born in Boston, Mass., the son of Charles L. Heywood and Grace Johnson Heywood was educated in East High School, Rochester, N.Y., and registered with the local draft board in 1918 as World War I was coming to a close.

His first job was an inspector at the Taylor Instrument Company, where thermometers, barometers and compasses were made. Bill enrolled at Hobart in January 1919, where he became the associate editor of the Herald newspaper and the art editor of the Echo & Pine yearbook. As a student, he was elected Senior Class President and was a member of the Honor Council, the Glee Club, Phi Epsilon and a Druid.

Heywood’s yearbook biography describes him as: “This little fellow is the editor of this book. He is as busy as the proverbial cat on the marble floor.

Who would think a man of such small stature could have so many brains? We don’t either. … Bill is also an artist and hopes to land a job with Mack Sennett’s Movie Company painting the girls. His sense of humor is found in his ‘Raven’ column: ‘The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.’”

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After earning a Bachelor of Science degree, Heywood got a job as a reporter at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

In the roaring 1920s, he moved to The Big Apple and joined the Art Students League at Gramercy Park, studying with artist Kimon Nicolaïdes and connecting with painters, writers and poets to discuss the issues of the day.

In 1932, he married the former Deal Dunham and they moved to West 11th Street in Greenwich Village. Deal served as the secretary and business manager of The Little Red Schoolhouse on Bleecker Street and was loved by generations of students until her retirement in 1966.

Their son Geoffrey remembers his dad as a warm and witty man.

Heywood’s newspaper career spanned more than 40 years, during a time when famous front pages included the Hindenburg disaster, D-Day and V-E Day, the first atomic bomb tests and the assassination of JFK. He served as a copy reader and then an editor for the New York Herald Tribune in the 1930s and again from 1947 until his retirement in 1965, with stints in between at the Associated Press and Philadelphia’s Public Ledger.

He worked on an Underwood typewriter and joined colleagues at Bleeck’s, a prohibition speakeasy 10 yards from the rear door of the Herald Tribune on 40th Street, after they put the edition to bed. It was difficult to determine where the Tribune left off and Bleeck’s started and vice versa; Heywood often talked about wanting his ashes placed in an urn over the bar there.

Upon his retirement, his colleagues wrote: “Lorimer is perhaps the most popular man in the office, plump, bearded, with sort of a Cupid air about him and a small boy attitude towards life, the first person you’d show anything

funny to, knowing you’ll be rewarded with a burst of laughter. He does innumerable crossword puzzles and draws very well. And his Christmas cards are legendary.”

Heywood and Deal retired to Bucks County, Pa., where he resumed his drawing and oil painting with gusto.

A loyal alum, he donated back to the Colleges often over his lifetime.

In Classnotes he wrote: “The good wife and I still hold forth in Rabbit Gulch, watching the house wrens nourish and launch into this wicked world their successions of broods, admiring the doe as they bring this year's fawns to the meadow out front, to show them how to find the apples that fall from our unsprayed trees, and note the woodchucks stuffing themselves in preparation for another winter’s snooze.”

And he mused: “Breaking away from the newspaper business was tough, but I retired to revel in the glories of nature and to test whether I might not have been happier had I followed in the footsteps of Michelangelo rather than Joe Pulitzer.”

A life well lived. A life of consequence.

And a Hobart life.

One of Heywood’s drawings of life in New York City.

New Artistic Director of K Art

BY BE T HAN Y SN YDER

Brooke Fitzpatrick Leboeuf ’01 has been named artistic director of K Art. The commercial art gallery in Buffalo, N.Y., is the first of its kind in the country owned by a Native American and solely showcasing the artwork of national-level Native contemporary artists.

Leboeuf, who earned a degree in art history from HWS and a master’s in art history from the University of Buffalo, leads the curation of artists and their works for the gallery’s ongoing rotating exhibitions. She previously served as project coordinator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and managed two privately held collections.

K Art is owned by Dave Kimelberg, member of the Bear Clan of the Seneca Nation, and features artwork by G. Peter Jemison L.H.D. ’20, member of the Heron Clan of the Seneca Nation and leading authority on Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history.

In January, Leboeuf, Jemison and Kimelberg participated in a virtual discussion on making space for Native American art, moderated by Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture Angelique Szymanek. In the talk, Leboeuf noted that prior to the launch of K Art, there had not been a concentration of Native art in a commercial gallery space. “Hopefully it will finally get the recognition it deserves,” she said.

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THE LAST WORD

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Writing Women Back into the History of Chinese Art

BY L A RA C . W. B L A N C H A R D, LUC E P R O F E S S O R O F E A ST A S I AN ART

The painting Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, attributed to Emperor Huizong (r. 1101–25), depicts nine women and three girls, most of whom are carrying out a few of the steps involved in sericulture, the processing of silk fabric. This horizontally oriented handscroll is viewed from right to left (in the same direction that columns of Chinese writing would be read), so the painting begins with four women beating silk with poles to remove gum from the fibers. Next to them, two women sit together, reeling thread and sewing. A girl holding a painted fan tends a brazier. Finally, a woman irons a damp length of silk with a pan full of hot coals; two women assist by pulling the silk taut, a girl closely observes the process, and beneath the silk, a small child plays. All are gorgeously attired, wearing layers of vibrantly colored and patterned silks.

The women’s hair is piled atop their heads, held with combs and hairpins, while the girls’ hair is looped over their ears. All except the very smallest wear makeup, with floral designs painted on their foreheads. From these details, we should understand that the women are of high rank, likely the emperor’s concubines; Huizong had at least a dozen consorts. Nevertheless, the painting is not a portrait of real women but an idealized vision: the painter’s rendition of the most beautiful women he could imagine, in part based on an eighth-century court painting that no longer survives. Huizong, in fact, is most likely not the artist but the patron of Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (he often took credit for paintings made by court artists at his direction).

His palace women would not usually appear in public, as gender segregation was practiced at the Chinese court of the

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early twelfth century, and this painting was likely private as well.

Some aspects of the painting hint at the idealization of the figures. Court ladies did perform the steps involved in processing silk as part of an annual ceremony, to demonstrate their virtue: sericulture was coded as the work of virtuous women. However, not all the steps in the process of making silk are depicted in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk—not even the most important steps, which were fully documented in paintings of only a century later. Depicted here are the steps that have the most emotional resonance, those that correspond to poetic themes describing the longings of women separated from their beloveds. Pounding cloth with poles, in romantic poetry, is the pastime of women missing lovers gone to the frontier, rising in the middle of the night to adorn themselves and work out their frustrations. The painting’s Chinese title focuses on this activity: it

PH OTO G R APH © 2 0 2 1 MU S E U M O F F I N E A RT S , B OSTON

can be translated as “Pounding Silk,” but—given the number of homophones in the Chinese language—it sounds just like a phrase meaning “pounding love.” Other motifs in the painting also have a double meaning: for example, the word for “thread” is pronounced like the classical Chinese word for “longing.”

These female figures are supposed to be both virtuous and rapturously devoted to the emperor. The painting has political import, too, as so many court paintings of the time did: the making of silk alludes to the bolts of textiles rendered to the court as taxes, and devoted concubines are a metaphor for the emperor’s loyal subjects, suggesting that he is a just and effective ruler.

Many paintings from the same historical era, the Song dynasty (960– 1279), depict idealized female figures: images of imperial concubines like the ones shown here, courtesans, goddesses, or virtuous wives and mothers. Only official portraits of empresses from this period are intended to represent

living women, and even those are likely idealized. When writing about premodern Chinese images of women, I contend that they are mostly figments of male artists’ imaginations, telling us more about men’s thought processes than women’s realities. That is just one way, however, that women appear in the art historical record. Chinese art history does not rely only on visual imagery: it also draws upon an extensive textual record dating back to ancient times, and these widely circulated accounts include information about historical women in the arts—empresses, imperial concubines and literary women who commissioned and collected art, as well as women from all walks of life who made paintings and wrote calligraphy. Women artists and collectors were few compared to men and their artworks often not preserved, but hundreds of historical sources describe their lives and art. They made

and collected landscapes and images of nature, religious icons and figure paintings—the same subjects that appealed to men. Huizong’s painting shows what premodern culture wanted Chinese women to be; the textual record gives a fuller picture of their actual passions and achievements.

Professor of Art and Architecture Lara Blanchard, who holds the Luce Professor of East Asian Art and the Lloyd Wright Professorship in Conservative Studies, is the winner of the prestigious 2020 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize (China) from the Association for Asian Studies for her book Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire: Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry, which analyzes images of women in painting and poetry of China’s middle imperial period. Winners are judged to have made “the greatest contribution to increasing understanding of history, culture, society, politics or economy of China.”

The prize citation reads, in part: “Her trenchant analyses of the possible audiences and functions of these works and themes serve as a model for how to write women back into the histories of art and literature in pre-modern times.”

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Parallels

Deanna Perin Egelston ’94 Applied research mathematician at the Department of Defense Phi Beta Kappa Robert L. Beinert Memorial Prize Helen Heath Scholar Dean’s List Major: mathematics Minor: physics Hometown: Rockville, Md.

1. If you weren’t a mathematician, what would you do?

Policy or legal work

1. I f you weren’t a mathematician, what would you do?

Probably biology, maybe medicine

2. Favorite class at HWS? Abstract Algebra

2. Favorite class at HWS? Abstract Algebra

3. What motivates you?

Passion for the things I do

3. What motivates you?

Trying to be my best self

4. What one word describes what it’s like to be a woman in a STEM field?

Challenging

4. What one word describes what it’s like to be a woman in a STEM field?

Inspiring

5. What do you wish people understood about math?

It’s more accessible than people think

5. What do you wish people understood about math?

It involves logic and reasoning, not just solving equations

Connor Parrow ’21

6. Favorite mathematical theory?

Central Limit Theorem

Blackwell Scholar

6. Favorite mathematical theory?

Group Theory 7. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Hairdresser 8. Most challenging professor?

Associate Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Computer Science John Vaughn P’08

7. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Pediatrician 8. Most challenging professor?

Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Jonathan Forde

9. Favorite William Smith tradition?

Moving Up Day

9. Favorite William Smith tradition?

Moving Up Day

10. What technology can you not live without?

The iPhone

10. What technology can you not live without?

My phone

11. What would you go back and tell your 10-year-old self?

Girls can excel in the sciences

11. What would you go back and tell your 10-year-old self?

You don’t have to live up to everyone’s expectations

Plans to earn a Ph.D. in mathematical biology William Ross Proctor Prize Debate Team Dean’s List Majors: mathematics and biology Hometown: Waterloo, N.Y.