Pulteney Street Survey - Fall 2019

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1. What’s the biggest technological innovation of the past decade?

Combining IoT devices, artificial intelligence services, and UX interaction into voice-enabled technology 2. What does being a Druid mean to you? Being recognized for my leadership and contributions to campus life, which I hadn’t realized were widely recognized.

Theodore Brodheim ’82, P’20 Cofounder, StartEd Technology Accelerator and President, Altamira Advisors Druid Major: English Hometown: New York, N.Y.

3. What was your first computer?

Apple IIe 4. What role does faith play in your life? Cultural identity 5. What did you want to be when you grew up? A mountain climber 6. What technologies do you think are in our near future? Flying cars 7. What are your most-used apps on your phone? Spotify, Calendar, and eMail 8. How do you feel about social media? Meh 9. Twitter or Instagram? Twitter 10. How do you define success?

Having lots of friends and being able to laugh at myself 11. What’s your proudest achievement? 28 wonderful years of marriage and 3 great kids

1. What’s the biggest technological innovation of the past decade?

Artificial intelligence 2. What does being a Druid mean to you? Acting as a role model, being a support system for my peers and promoting character, loyalty and friendship 3. What was your first computer?

HP Notebook (which I still use today) 4. What role does faith play in your life? I believe that everything happens for a reason, which keeps me motivated to move forward in life.

Hamdan Ahmed ‘20

5. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to join the Air Force.

Druid

6. What technologies do you think are in our near future?

Edible technology 7. What are your most-used apps on your phone? Reddit, Calendar, Messenger, Real Cricket 19

Newman Civic Fellow Major: Computer science Hometown: Rawalpindi, Punjab, India

THE PULTENEY STREET SURVEY | HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES | Fall 2019

Parallels

8. How do you feel about social media? It’s distracting 9. Twitter or Instagram? Instagram 10. How do you define success?

Making a difference in the global community 11. What’s your proudest achievement? Founding the South Asian Student Association and helping to start Friday prayer for Muslim students

INSIDE Updated Athletics Logos for the Herons and Statesmen

Explore HWS

100 Fascinating, Obscure, Pivotal and Sometimes Profound Things You Didn’t Know (or Forgot) About Hobart and William Smith Colleges

President Joyce P. Jacobsen has dedicated the first year of her presidency to exploration. In this issue, we join her in the act of discovery as we investigate some of the memories, moments, people and places that define Hobart and William Smith Colleges. To follow along with President Jacobsen’s year of exploration, visit hws.edu/explore.

(Photo of the Milky Way over Seneca Lake by Kevin Colton.)

To capture the star trails on the cover, Chief Photographer Kevin Colton took a photo every 30 seconds for two hours. Put together, the image reveals the motion of the Earth and, to our eyes, the movement of the stars.

Contents

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019

HILL & QUAD

FEATURE STORY

HWS COMMUNITY

CLASSNOTES

2 | Upfront: A letter from

18 | Explore HWS:

44 | Reunion Recap

50 | Catch up with your

President Joyce P. Jacobsen

7 | News & Notes 14 | New Statesmen and Herons Athletics Logos Revealed

100 Fascinating, Obscure, Pivotal and Sometimes Profound Things You Didn’t Know (or Forgot) About Hobart and William Smith Colleges

46 | Alum Event Photos

classmates and meet the new Classes of 2019 Correspondents

VOLUME XLV, NUMBER ONE/ 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 / ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNER Peggy Kowalik / SENIOR EDITOR Bethany Snyder / CONTRIBUTING WRITERS/EDITORS Ken Debolt, Alex Kerai ’19, Mary LeClair, Bethany Snyder, Andrew Wickenden ’09, Catherine Williams, Amanda Zumpano / COVER PHOTO: Star trails over Bozzuto Boathouse. Photo by Kevin Colton / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Paul Ciaccia ’15, Kevin Colton, Adam Farid ’20, Jonathan Hartnett ’19, Alex Kerai ’19, Lauren Long, Van Urfalian / PRESIDENT Joyce P. Jacobsen / THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIR Thomas S. Bozzuto ’68, L.H.D. ’18 / VICE CHAIRS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Cynthia Gelsthrope Fish ’82, Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 / VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT Robert B. O’Connor / William Smith Alumnae Association Officers: Julie Bazan ’93, President; Kirra Henick-Kling Guard ’08, MAT ’09, Vice President; Jane M. Erickson ’07, Immediate Past President; Carla DeLucia ’05, Historian / Hobart Alumni Association Officers: Dr. Richard S. Solomon ’75, P’10, President; Ludwig P. Gaines ’88, Vice President; Frank V. Aloise ’87, Immediate Past President; Rafael A. Rodriguez ’07, Historian / For questions and comments about the magazine or to submit a story idea, please e-mail Catherine Williams at cwilliams@hws.edu or Bethany Snyder at bsnyder@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.

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Upfront Dear Members of the Hobart and William Smith Community,

I

PHOTO BY KEVIN COLTON

am honored to serve as the president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and grateful to the many alumni, alumnae, parents, faculty, students and staff who have already extended such a warm welcome to me. Your enthusiasm for the Colleges and your passion for our collective future are palpable.

Already in my short time here, I’m getting a sense of the character of the Colleges. Nearly every person with whom I have interacted has told me a story about an admissions counselor, professor, coach, staff member or alum who took a chance on them or who encouraged them in some significant way. Just the other day, an alumna reached out to the Colleges via social media to President Joyce P. Jacobsen tell us that she is “eternally grateful to HWS…. You turned us into explorers of ourselves.”

What a great phrase — explorers of ourselves. That is what an excellent liberal arts education provides — the tools necessary to explore and to take joy in doing so.

Hobart and William Smith is a place that values the life of the mind as it also prepares students to lead lives of purpose and meaning, what the Colleges call “lives of consequence.” That mission of intellectual discovery and self-actualization resonates powerfully, and is one of the things that attracted me to Hobart and William Smith.

A key component of my first year as president is learning all I can about the Colleges and beginning to develop connections with the people who make this place special. I’ve made “Explore HWS” the theme of my first year because I want to encourage everyone around me to participate actively in the practice of learning and to see the Colleges from new perspectives. You can follow along on my journey of exploration through my podcast, in which I interview some of the intriguing people who teach and learn here, as well as the graduates who bring such pride to the Colleges. I’ve also launched Instagram and Twitter accounts so as to share visuals of some of the things I’m discovering, like a first edition (1651) of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (one of my favorite books) in the Colleges’ Archives and the lab table of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. That table, pictured on the opposite page, is a powerful representation of the determination and accomplishments of one of the Colleges’ most notable graduates. I have since moved it to the President’s Office as a reminder to visitors and myself of the insight and perseverance that echo through the Colleges’ history.

We are at a pivotal time in the life of the Colleges and in the history of higher education. Disruption is a prevailing theme, whether in the form of shifting demographics of college-bound students or new technologies that are challenging us to rethink how to learn. Cost and financial aid are critical concerns as we seek to make a Hobart and William Smith education accessible. But for students of history, this theme of disruption is nothing new. Every generation faces some degree of disorder, and every generation is measured by its ability to rise to its challenges.

I believe the Colleges’ ability to rise to its current challenges will be determined in no small part, as it has in the past, by the commitment and confidence of our graduates, faculty and staff, current students and parents. I invite you to explore the Colleges by serving as a volunteer, joining me for a campus event or attending one of the many regional events we have planned around the nation (see p. 47). Together, we can enhance the academic effectiveness of the institution, expand our reputation and build our financial resources with the goal of ensuring that all HWS graduates go on to lead lives of consequence.

Sincerely,

Joyce P. Jacobsen President

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The Cayuga Connection

FOUR THINGS

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is a childhood hero. I vividly recall being inspired by her biography, part of a collection of biographies of women at my local library. When I discovered she was an alumna (an 1849 graduate of Geneva Medical College), I was thrilled. On my first official day on campus, I was shown Dr. Blackwell’s lab table in the Blackwell Room, which I’ve since moved to my office (pictured left).

The Elizabeth Blackwell Award, established on William Smith's 50th anniversary, is a tribute to women who, like Blackwell, were “firsts” in their fields.

PRESIDENT JACOBSEN IS EXPLORING

Dr. Peter Wilson, Class of 1844 and a member of the Cayuga Nation, was the First Native American graduate of Geneva Medical College and is thought to be the first Native American to earn a medical degree. He practiced medicine, served as an interpreter and was a noted orator, arguing before the New York Legislature on behalf of the Cayugas to demand restitution for their land. I have much more to learn about Dr. Wilson and the Colleges’ own complicated history with the Seneca people. Look for more in the next issue of the Pulteney Street Survey.

Geneva Medical College 1827-1872 Used by Elizabeth Blackwell

Geneva and the Finger Lakes

As an economist, I’m very interested in the role that the Colleges play in the Geneva and regional area.

According to a 2019 analysis by the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, HWS’ state economic impact totals more than $254 million. The region’s impact on the Colleges, however, is immeasurable. Through the Geneva Partnership, Geneva 2020, the Finger Lakes Institute and community-engaged scholarship in individual classes, the Colleges’ curriculum intersects with the region in multiple and profound ways.

Traditions

I’m looking forward to attending our many time-honored annual events like Moving Up Day, Founder’s Day, the William Smith Welcome, Charter Day, Ben Hale Dinner and the Hobart Launch, which offer each College the opportunity to celebrate unique, historic traditions, creating an arc of experiences between the very first graduates and today’s students.

Have a suggestion for something you’d like President Jacobsen to explore? Email your ideas to president@hws.edu or tag your social media posts #ExploreHWS.

WAYS TO EXPLORE HWS SOCIAL MEDIA: Follow President Jacobsen: @JoycePJacobsen Follow the Colleges: @HWSColleges

PODCAST: The Pulteney Street Podcast www.hws.edu/pulteney-street-podcast Join President Jacobsen as she explores the Colleges through interviews with some of the fascinating people who make HWS such a vibrant place. New episodes are added every three weeks.

Follow President Jacobsen’s cat, Mr. Butters: @MrButtersHWS Follow the Statesmen and the Herons: @HWSathletics

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or your podcast app of choice.

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Hill & Quad

Welcome Classes of 2023!

First-years from as far away as Germany and Nepal and as close as the neighboring Finger Lakes arrived on campus in August to start their collegiate careers as the Classes of 2023. The academically impressive group of students, with a median high school GPA of 3.51 and SAT score of 1300, hail from 24 states and 15 countries. During Orientation, the newest Herons and Statesmen met their peers and professors, and participated in their first Day of Service. The semester officially kicked off with Convocation. The keynote address was delivered by Matt Lamanna ’97 (right), associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who spoke about his own career exploration.

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Six Scholars Earn Fulbright Opportunities

Matt Lamanna ’97

“This is a place to explore your interests, who you are and who you’d like to be,” Lamanna told the crowd of students and faculty gathered on Stern Lawn for Convocation 2019.

“Who can say just where those explorations will take you?”

Carey

Hauslauer

Kellett

Kellogg

Smith

Taylor

Continuing the Colleges’ tradition of being among the nation’s top producers of Fulbright scholars, six Hobart and William Smith graduates are working abroad as part of the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.

Alexandra “Sasha” Carey ’18, MAT ’19, who earned her degree in sociology and education, is serving in Bulgaria; Loretta Hauslauer ’19, a sociolinguistics major, is serving in Malaysia; Cynthia Kellett ’19, who earned her degree in international relations, is serving in Germany; Meredith Kellogg ’19, a comparative literature and Greek major, is serving in the Czech Republic; Miranda Smith ’18, MAT ’19,

a sociology major, is serving in Malaysia; and Brandi Taylor ’19, MAT ’20, an English and Africana studies major, will begin serving in Kenya in January.

All of the graduates will be English teaching assistants in their respective countries.

Created in 1949, the Fulbright Program is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the U.S. and numerous nations around the world. Participants, chosen for their academic merit and leadership qualities, are given the opportunity to study, live, teach and conduct research abroad for one year in order to exchange ideas and seek solutions to shared global concerns.

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PHOTO BY LAUREN LONG

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Commencement 2019

Honorary Degrees Awarded The Colleges awarded honorary degrees to Edward A. Froelich ’55 and Gloria Robinson Lowry ’52 during Commencement 2019.

Froelich, a retired senior supervisory analyst and vice president at Pershing LLC, has been a driving force behind the growth of Hobart and William Smith’s campus through a lifetime of philanthropy. He was inducted into the Hobart Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006 and again in 2010, when he was only the third person to join the Hall of Fame in the “benefactor” category. A Seneca Society member for his philanthropy, Froelich

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The 2019 ceremony was the 194th Commencement of Hobart College and the 108th Commencement of William Smith College.

The Colleges awarded degrees to 247 Hobart students, 248 William Smith students and 12 master’s candidates, as well as one College Experience Certificate through the HWS and ARC partnership program.

Above: Dorothy Wickenden ’76, L.H.D. ’14 delivers the 2019 Commencement address.

received the William J. Napier ’57 Award in 2003, an Alumni Citation in 2005 and the Distinguished Service Award in 2012.

Lowry, whose honorary degree was awarded in absentia, graduated from William Smith as president of her class and the College’s first African American alumna, before going on to a long and distinguished career as a fifth grade teacher in Pasadena, Calif. Each year, an award in Lowry’s name is given to a William Smith student of color who has demonstrated a commitment to justice and inclusivity.

PHOTO BY VAN URFALAIN

Recalling the struggles of both family members and famous women, Commencement speaker Dorothy Wickenden ’76, L.H.D. ’14, executive editor of The New Yorker and a former HWS Trustee, advised the Classes of 2019 to remember that “every generation has terrors to stare down. Shake off apathy and inertia. Seek the highest good.”

In his final valedictory address as interim president, Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. ’12 reminded graduates that change happens through “debate, compassion, action,” and thanked them for their “diverse voices and experiences [that] have changed the trajectory of the institution for the better.”

Edward A. Froelich ’55, L.H.D. ’19

Gloria Robinson Lowry ’52, L.H.D. ’19

news Notes

by Alex Kerai ‘19

Dean of Global Education Tom D’Agostino P’15 was featured in an August Newsweek article about American study abroad in Hong Kong. With protests escalating during the summer, D’Agostino discussed the Colleges’ study abroad program, which sends students to more than 60 destinations worldwide and was ranked third in the nation by the Princeton Review.

“We want them to go — we're not canceling our program — but at the end of the day our responsibility is to take all the information we have, give it to our students and their families, and they need to be comfortable with the decision,” D’Agostino said.

Associate Professor of Political Science and Yemen expert Stacey Philbrick Yadav appeared on CNN International and on the BBC World News to discuss the Yemen civil war, specifically the campaign in the port city of Hodeidah and its implications for the humanitarian crisis and prospects for newly-announced negotiations. “[Yemeni government and Saudi-backed] coalition forces have been tightening around the port … and we have already seen a rapid deterioration in humanitarian conditions over the past several months,” she explained on the BBC.

Looking at King through a New Lens

by Bethany Snyder

In his first book, The Drum Major Instinct: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Theory of Political Service, Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Rose examines what he argues is one of Dr. King’s “greatest contributions to the struggle for justice — his theory of political service.”

The concept of the drum major instinct comes from a sermon King delivered just months before his assassination in 1968, in which he told the congregation at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga.: “We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade.” King warned that this desire could lead to “snobbish exclusivism” and “tragic race prejudice.”

He then implored his congregation to adopt a redefinition of greatness, one which was predicated upon serving others. When defined in this manner, King argued, “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.”

By drawing on King’s sermons, political speeches and writings, Rose uses his book to explore how King transformed the Christian notion of service into a politically salient concept.

He argues that King wanted all to work to create a more just, democratic society and that his thoughts continue to resonate in contemporary struggles.

“We have to get involved in collective action that transforms structures of injustice,” Rose says. This idea informs the way Rose approaches his work at the Colleges, including teaching about social justice and chairing the Admissions and Retention and the Diversity, Equity and Social Justice faculty committees. “It’s about using my privileged perch to constantly work to create a more just society.”

Clifton Hood, the George E. Paulsen ’49 Professor of American History and Government, discussed New York City’s City Hall subway station in an article in The New York Times. “There’s this jewel of a station below City Hall right in the heart of Manhattan,” Hood told the paper. “Almost no one knows about it and very few people have seen it firsthand.” The article highlighted Hood’s expertise on New York City history, in particular its subways.

Professor of Religious Studies Michael Dobkowski, an expert on the Holocaust, genocide and terrorism, discussed rhetoric around the ongoing political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela in a Miami Herald article. Asked if the term genocide applies to events in Venezuela, he told the paper, “If we start calling everything a genocide, when we really face a genocide nobody’s going to pay attention.”

Associate Professor of Theatre Heather May was selected for Indy Convergence’s artist residency in Indianapolis and a performance in Portland, Maine, at PortFringe this summer. May’s piece, “Rearranging the Furniture,” was “incited by a round of visits to doctors that left me feeling unmoored,” she says. “This performance is a diagnosis of a disease plaguing us: lack of vision.” The piece promotes May’s scholarship and artistry through community, dialogue and social justice.

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Spotlight

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1. The Multicultural Networking and Career Conference featured panel discussions, a luncheon and workshops with students, alumni and alumnae of color.

2. President Emeritus Mark D. Gearan L.H.D. '17, P’21 unveils his official portrait, which now hangs in Coxe Hall. Former Interim President Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D.’12 and former Board Chair Maureen Collins Zupan ’72, P'09, L.H.D. ’16 look on.

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3. Professor of Geoscience Neil Laird and Associate Professor of Geoscience Nick Metz co-led this year’s geoscience field course that focuses on forecasting and observing severe convective storms across the Central Plains of the United States. During the 15-day course, the group traveled through 15 states, covered 6,050 miles and observed 11 tornadoes.

4. President Joyce P. Jacobsen chats with Evan Dawson during his WXXI show "Connections" in the WEOS studio in the Scandling Campus Center.

5. Led by Associate Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies May Farnsworth, students in the summer abroad program to Quito, Ecuador, visit the Equator.

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6. Orientation Coordinator Steven D’Alterio ’21 sits on the steps of Coxe Hall.

Along with Sophie Ritter ’20, MAT ’21, D’Alterio spent the summer on campus preparing for the arrival of the Classes of 2023.

7. The Environmental Studies Summer Youth Institute participants take classes with the Colleges’ top-rated faculty, discuss environmental stewardship and climate action, and travel through the Finger Lakes Region and Adirondack Mountains. Here, Associate Professor of Biology Bradley Cosentino (right) discusses the ecosystem that supports life in the quaking bog.

8. Students in Associate Professor of Media and Society Leah Shafer’s Maymester class “Introduction to Media and Society” make a video at Fribolin Farm. Maymester allows students to take an intensive course on campus in May. This year, 84 students participated.

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9. At the Bozzuto Center for Entrepreneurship, Board Chair and Chairman of The Bozzuto Group Thomas S. Bozzuto ’68, L.H.D. ’18 speaks to students participating in the HWS Summer Sandbox Idea Accelerator — a program designed to serve as a launching point for student entrepreneurs and startups.

10. Hobart and William Smith Colleges welcomed 75 youth from the Boys & Girls Club of Geneva for a summer college experience. Professor of Dance Donna Davenport leads a movement workshop in the Gearan Center.

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A view of the Bourtzi watchtower through a window at Methoni Castle in Greece earned Jonathan Hartnett ’19 a first-place tie in the 2019 Study Abroad Photo Contest sponsored by the Center for Global Education. To see all of the photo contest winners, visit www2.hws.edu/photo-contest/.

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OVERHEARD

“Wow!”

— Yalemwork Teferra ’21, after hearing that Convocation speaker Matt Lamanna ‘97 is one of the only scientists to discover a dinosaur on every continent

“It took me about six months to go into a grocery store. I couldn’t walk into a supermarket because of the abundance.” — Eric Lax ’66,

L.H.D. ’93, discussing his return to the U.S. after two years of service in the Peace Corps in Micronesia, as heard on Episode 3 of the Pulteney Street Podcast: Inside HWS with Joyce Jacobsen

“Move out of your ’safe spaces,’ beyond ’self-care’ and selfies.”

— Dorothy Wickenden ’76, L.H.D. ’14, Executive Editor of The New Yorker, at Commencement 2019

“My goal is to make beautiful objects that have a tragicomic tension and reward long looking.” — Professor of Art and Architecture Nick Ruth, who was recently named the Class of 1964 Endowed Professor, is an awardwinning painter and printmaker whose work has appeared in more than 100 exhibitions nationally and internationally

“Everyone was gathered in the Common Room. We all watched the towers go down that day. I remember being with people that I didn’t even know. If it says anything about what the climate was like, in tough times, we became family.” — Carolyn Lluberes-Kim ’04, discussing 9/11 as part of the Intercultural Center storytelling video project during Reunion 2019

“The lake is critical to the economy of this region. Not only does it supply drinking water for over 100,000 people, but people come here for our wineries, for vacation, because of the lake.

If the water quality in the lake declines sufficiently, it will have a negative impact on that.” — Associate Professor

of Environmental Studies Beth Kinne, as heard on episode 2 of the Pulteney Street Podcast: Inside HWS with Joyce Jacobsen

“Hobart has prepared me with the skills needed to find success in situations where everything goes as planned. It’s also given me the confidence to achieve success when everything goes wrong.” — Patrick Gray

’19, a volunteer member of the Geneva Fire Department’s Nester Hose Company

“You were called here to study as well as make a difference. Now is your time to enter a complicated world and in kindness and with justice, offer yourselves.”

— Christine Janis ’76, former portfolio manager at the American Stock Exchange and retired faith leader, during her Baccalaureate address

“We are better for having known you and we will be a better institution for having you here.” — Vice President for

Campus Life and Posse Program Liaison Robb Flowers to the Posse 3 cohort at their graduation ceremony

“The heat of the flame, the deafening sound of the rocket and the energy of the crowd combined to make a surreal moment I will remember for years to come.”

— Sheerya Desai ’21 describing the launch of the rocket at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility that took the Colleges’ RockSat-C experiments into space

“[It’s] a good thing for students to keep in mind: their best-laid plans may become obsolete, and they need to be open to new things as they arise.” — Hon.

Shireen Avis Fisher ’70, as heard on the Career Journeys podcast from The Herald and the Salisbury Center for Career, Professional and Experiential Education

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Exploring Kn wledge We asked faculty who received tenure this year to answer the question:

What has been the idea you’ve spent your career investigating or exploring, and why?

Here are their responses.

Gabriella D’Angelo, Associate Professor of Art and Architecture

Architecture’s ability to empower all people, to confront issues, to elicit conversations and to move beyond ego in playful overtures in order to realize new opportunities for our built environment are key driving forces within my design work, as well as within my teaching.

Given the uncertainties of our future world and the current problems we face, there is an opportunity and obligation to design more ethically, intentionally and, at times, radically. Questioning the traditional boundaries that have defined architecture with an experimental, interdisciplinary, collaborative and socially conscious approach inspires a momentum for me to conceive

of an architecture that is interactive, playful, adaptive and democratic. Architecture should afford spaces of joy, renewal, protection, knowledge building and sharing. Focusing much of my efforts on community-engaged projects in addition to experimental architectural performances and poetics, I hope to continue to challenge architectural discourse while making good design accessible to all. ​

David Finkelstein, Associate Professor of Geoscience

Modern lakes and ancient lake deposits have fascinated me for more than 35 years. Did the earliest microbes evolve in lakes and ponds? What role did fire play in Cretaceous

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lake ecosystems? What do the minerals in ancient lake deposits reveal about the paleo-water chemistry? I use geochemical, biogeochemical and sedimentological information recorded in lacustrine archives (rocks and sediments) to answer these questions. Over the last six years, I have successfully built a research program with Hobart and William Smith students, faculty from HWS and colleagues from other institutions. My recent scholarship focuses on investigating rapid climate change during the Holocene, Pleistocene, and Cretaceous; lake environments conducive for harboring early terrestrial life; characterization of the early geochemical evolution of lake and pond waters in the New York Finger Lakes; and the modern chemical and stable isotopic signatures of precipitation in Geneva, N.Y.

Keoka Grayson, Associate Professor of Economics

I have spent my career thinking about inequalities and inequities. Why? I think it’s necessary.

And I owe the universe.

Leslie Hebb, Associate Professor of Physics

I have spent my career measuring the fundamental properties of stars other than the sun and the extra-solar planets that orbit them. A star’s mass,

radius, temperature, chemical composition, luminosity and age are the basic properties that define it, and these change over time as a star evolves throughout its lifetime. One reason why this is important has to do with our desire to know whether we are alone in the universe. Over the past 30 years, this has become more than a philosophical question; it has become a scientific one.

Scientists are working to detect life on planets around other stars, but the subtle signals from biological organisms must be made in the presence of the host star’s overwhelming brightness.

Furthermore, just detecting the presence of the planet itself is only made by its indirect gravitational or other influence on the star itself. Therefore, in order to detect planets around other stars and any life that may exist on them, we must first know the stars and their properties extremely well.

to explain why individuals earn different wages and the underlying factors that influence those determinants. I make connections between outcomes and the factors that influence those outcomes, while paying close attention to the underlying factors that affect those determinants. Broadly defined, I am interested in the many connections between marital outcomes, education and wages and how those factors differ by race, gender and nativity. ​

Liliana Leopardi, Associate Professor of Art and Architecture

Christopher Lemelin, Associate Professor of Russian Area Studies

Christina Houseworth, Associate Professor of Economics

I examine the factors that influence the decision to work, including marital decisions, as well as wages and other determinants that influence employment outcomes such as education. More specifically, I’m interested in inequalities in the labor market. I study measures of wage inequality, the determinants that help

writer use language not only to express homesickness, but also to assuage that sorrow and reestablish his identity in a culture not his own? Languages — verbal, musical and painterly — are tools with which we understand and shape our worlds and how they achieve this has fascinated me from the beginning of my academic career.

My research interests encompass a range of subjects, but there is one constant in all of them: my fascination with language. My love of languages started with French in high school and continued in college with Russian, when I engaged language directly. Then, when I started studying linguistics in college and graduate school, I became fascinated not only with how languages work as systems, but also with how language is used to express our reality and even to shape it. My research addresses these issues in several ways: How does a poet capture what a painter expresses in her canvases? How does a composer interpret in music what a poet writes in words? How does an émigré

For the past seven years, I have been interested in researching magic and the renaissance belief in the occult virtues of precious and semi-precious stones. Most elite class individuals of that period, in fact, owned and/or wore on their person such stones in order to protect themselves from an illness or cure themselves from one. Many were also treated with potions made of ground precious and semi-precious stones. While this might at first appear like a rather unusual area of research for an art historian, my interest in the subject arose from an earlier project that focused on reframing the use of ornament in Renaissance paintings. It was that research that allowed me to realize that what often appears as ornamental and symbolic to our eyes was instead highly meaningful and functional to the early modern individual. I am currently finishing a book project on this same subject.

Justin Rose, Associate Professor of Political Science

I’ve spent my career seeking to find the best means by which I can use my perch within higher education to effect structural change. I firmly believe that higher education is a source of structural injustice, but also a potential antidote. (see p. 7)

Katherine Walker, Associate Professor of Music

Frank Harte was quoted as saying, “Winners write the history, losers write the songs.”

The basic idea captured in this statement underwrites all of my professional work, namely that music provides an alternate — and too often unexamined — lens for examining our world and its history.

Music history often resides in the cracks of our geopolitical fault lines and, as such, it can be used to make visible and interrogate some of our biggest assumptions about who we are.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 13

HILL & QUAD |

Herons and Statesmen Launch New Brand Enhancements

by Alex Kerai ‘19

The 2019-2020 athletic season kicked off with an evolved brand identity that honors the traditions of the Statesmen and Herons while looking toward the future. The designs offer a refreshed look for athletics while maintaining long-established iconography.

“We’ve held fast to the traditional colors and mascots of each school while elevating their appearance to better reflect the fiercely competitive nature of our athletic teams,” says William Smith Athletics Director Deb Steward. “The new designs contemporize our programs.”

The aesthetic of the new logos, with analogous shields and fonts, demonstrates the coordinate relationship of the Colleges while also echoing the Colleges’ overall shield branding.

The Colleges partnered with athletics branding firm SME, Inc., whose clients include the New York Yankees, the Kentucky Derby, Washington & Jefferson College and more. The project was supported in part by the Heron Society and Statesmen Athletic Association (SAA).

SME hosted multiple focus groups with coaches, faculty, students, staff, the boards of directors of the SAA and the Heron Society, and alums. Feedback from these sessions determined the final designs: the recognizable mascots that have been associated with Hobart and William Smith Athletics for generations updated to reflect a more unified brand.

“Everyone had a very strong opinion and we listened closely to every viewpoint,” says Interim Director of Hobart Athletics Brian Miller.

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“It ignites and energizes all the tradition of old in this new image. We love it. We think it adds to our recruiting; it adds to the feel and the family environment and the camaraderie on our campus. We’re very excited about this next step.”

— Hobart Head Lacrosse Coach Greg Raymond

“The new logo modernizes us.

The new brand is strong, it’s bold, and I think it defines the women of William Smith well. It has the energy and the strength of our sports programs inherent in it.”

— William Smith Head Rowing Coach Sandra Chu

“A common denominator of all perspectives was pride in our history and a desire to remain committed to that.”

Representatives of Hobart Athletics, William Smith Athletics, the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of Marketing and Communications worked with SME to develop comprehensive style guides that govern the usage of the graphics.

The iconic symbols of the Hobart Statesman and the William Smith Heron originated in surprising ways. Until 1936, when a New York Times article noted Hobart’s “statesman”-like behavior at play, Hobart went without an official mascot or nickname although some sources claim they were called the “Deacons.” The mascot “Bart the Statesman” was created in October 2004 based on a design by Adam Chaput ’07, who wanted to bring more school spirit to games. William Smith Athletic teams adopted the Heron following a campus-wide contest in 1981. After a powerful and graceful great blue heron flew over field hockey practice, Mary Stowell Nelson ’82 and Ginger Adams Simon ’83 were inspired to submit the Heron nickname, which was ultimately chosen over 175 proposals.

The colors of purple, orange, green and white have been affiliated with Hobart and William Smith for more than a century: the inaugural William Smith class of 1912 chose the colors green and white, while The Herald notes the “orange and royal purple of Hobart” as far as back as the late 19th century.

With 23 varsity teams, the Statesmen and Herons have a tradition of excellence through performance in competition and scholarship. HWS teams have captured 113 conference championships since 1995 and 28 team and individual national championships since 1972. Approximately 25% of students participate in athletics at HWS at the varsity level.

“As an alum, I was really excited when the new logo came out. It pops; it has a new energy behind it. When our guys see the new gear, there’s going to be a lot of smiles on their faces. They’re going to embrace it.”— Hobart Head Basketball Coach Stefan Thompson ‘13

“I looked through a lot of my old pictures to see what we were wearing and it was all over the place. I think the new logo connotes more action, more movement. There’s a fierceness and it’s a little more contemporary.

Aesthetically, I think it fits more with who we see ourselves as Herons.” — William Smith Head Soccer Coach Aliceann Wilber

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 15

HILL & QUAD |

Kicking Off the Season with Coaching Staff Changes

by Amanda Zumpano

RISKIE

WESTON

Director of William Smith Athletics Deb Steward and Interim Director of Hobart Athletics Brian Miller recently announced the hiring of five coaches.

Stefan Thompson ’13 takes over as head coach of the Statesmen basketball

team after performing assistant coach duties at Wilkes University and Hobart.

Over the past two seasons, he helped his alma mater to an overall record of 3816 while capturing the 2017-18 Liberty League regular season championship.

The first Hobart player to earn All-America honors from the National Association of Basketball Coaches, Thompson led the Statesmen to an 82-31 THOMPSON record over four seasons.

Tim Riskie now leads the William Smith tennis team while continuing his role as the Hobart head tennis coach. He has led the Statesmen to an overall record of 95-67 in his first eight seasons.

Riskie has mentored two ITA All-Americans, 44 All-Liberty League selections, and two Liberty League Rookies of the Year. He and his assistants were named the Liberty League Coaching Staff of the Year in 2017.

Riskie will coach a William Smith team that was 14-7 overall and 6-2 in the Liberty League last season. The Herons earned the third-seed in the Liberty League tournament and advanced to the semifinals.

Pat Cosquer takes over both Hobart and William Smith squash teams after 11 years as the head coach of the men’s and women’s squash teams at Bates College. He mentored eight AllAmericans, a two-time College Squash Association Individual Champion, five NESCAC Players of the Year and 51 All-NESCAC performers. He was named the NESCAC men’s coach of the year in 2010 and 2016, and the women’s coach of the year in 2010.

Cosquer inherits a William Smith team that went 10-10 and finished second in the Liberty League last year, and a Statesmen team that finished 8-13 overall and third at the Liberty League Championships.

R.C. Weston leads the William Smith swimming and diving team after

spending the last five years as the head swimming coach at Alfred State College, where he guided both teams to best-ever second place finishes at the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference and mentored six AMCC Divers of the Year. Prior to Alfred State, Weston was an assistant coach at Binghamton COSQUER University and the head coach and aquatics director at Milligan College in Tennessee.

Weston inherits a Heron team that finished sixth at the Liberty League Championships last season and went 6-1 in dual meets. Weston succeeds Kelly Kisner, who served as head coach for 30 seasons. Compiling a record of 206-95-1 in dual meets, Kisner holds the program record for dual meet victories (206), more than her five predecessors combined.

“I’m excited about the impact that all of our outstanding new coaches will have on our Heron student-athletes, teams and department,” says Steward. “They understand at the core of their passion for teaching collegiate student-athletes that they are teaching life lessons through sport.”

Cait Finn made history this fall when she became the first woman to coach football at Hobart College, joining the staff as a defensive assistant coach. She was the first woman to play football for Warwick Schools in Warwick, N.Y., playing running back and safety in seventh and eighth grade for the Wildcats. A certified strength and conditioning specialist who holds national-level coaching certification from USA Weightlifting, Finn completed internships at Villanova and Notre Dame and joined the strength and conditioning staff at Princeton before serving as head strength and conditioning coach, assistant athletic director for student-athlete performance and interim athletic director at Rosemont College. Finn also works full time on campus as the assistant director of the Centennial Center for Leadership where she coordinates the HWS Leads certificate program and oversees the Leadership Institute, the Center's scholars program.

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FINN

AL SMITH JR. ’19 B.A. IN MEDIA AND SOCIETY

YOUR GIFT TO THE ANNUAL FUND BROUGHT FIRST GENERATION STUDENT AL SMITH JR. ’19 FROM HARLEM TO HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH.

Emily Bak ’19 Computer Science Study Abroad Stipend

Scholarships provided Al with the accessibility and security he needed to succeed in the classroom and on the football field. He is now a sales and marketing associate for Bozzuto Management Company in N.Y.C.

Alvin Randall ’19 Biology Guaranteed Internship Program

Bailey Carter ’19 Art History Annual Fund Scholarship

MAKE A GIFT TO THE ANNUAL FUND TODAY. FROM SCHOLARSHIPS TO GUARANTEED INTERNSHIPS TO STUDY ABROAD STIPENDS, YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS HELP STUDENTS FIND THEIR CALLING — AND MAKE THEIR DREAMS COME TRUE.

Questions? Contact Dulcie Meyer P’20 at (315) 781-3082 or dmeyer@hws.edu.

www.hws.edu/give Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 17

100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

Fascinating, Obscure, Pivotal and Sometimes Profound Things You Didn’t Know (or Forgot) About HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

The contents of this list have been gathered, adapted, paraphrased from and/or informed by back issues of this magazine, back issues of The Herald, HWS Archives materials, The H Book, The WS Book, Geneva Historical Society publications, the William Smith Centennial timeline, George S. Conover’s History of Ontario County New York (1893), Charles F. Milliken’s A History of Ontario County, New York and Its People, Volume 1 (1911) and “Tales of Hobart and William Smith Colleges,” the blog of John Norvell ’66, P’99, P’02, former director of alumni relations. Contributors include Alex Kerai ’19, Bethany Snyder, Andrew Wickenden ’09 and Catherine Williams.

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Extinct birds, adolescent pranks, modern art… academic innovation and remarkable feats of athleticism…global movers and community shakers… …the nearly 200-year history of the Colleges is impossible to summarize briefly, let alone comprehensively, but here’s a sampling of the people and places, ideas and stories, historic firsts and unexamined moments that definitively shaped the mission, values and personality of HWS.

1.

The last time Seneca Lake froze over was in March of 1912. G. Allen Burroughs, Class of 1913, took the opportunity to ice skate to Watkins Glen — a 35-mile journey that, according to The Hobart Herald, he made in two hours and 10 minutes. He caught a train back to campus the next morning.

2.

The first William Smith students weren’t allowed on the Hobart campus — they were permitted access to the library and the chapel via public sidewalks only. But according to a 1959 William Smith College history pamphlet, the members of the Charter Class broke that rule at least once: “Some two months after its doors were opened, dark green having been chosen as the official color, the whole freshman class, the only class then in existence, stole quietly out of Blackwell House on a dark November midnight and painted a large white ’12 on the green board fence of the Hobart athletic field. It was not till long afterward that the girls learned that several Hobart students were jointly accused of this vandalism and saved from expulsion only by lack of proof.”

3.

The iconic scissor sculpture that stands outside the Warren

Hunting Smith Library is actually a duplicate. In the spring of 1989, Professor of Art and Architecture A.E. Ted Aub’s “3-D Design” class erected a 20-foot-tall wooden sculpture of a giant pair of scissors that, at the end of the academic year, was torn down by unknown vandals. The following November, a permanent metal version of the sculpture was erected in its current location. The class issued a statement that read in part: “The scissors are not only interesting and exciting in a visual sense, but they also symbolize the distinct coordinate system here at the Colleges. Just as two parts of the scissors work together, so do the separate colleges of Hobart and William Smith.”

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100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

HWS students have elected student representatives to serve on the Board of Trustees for almost 50 years. Wendy D. Puriefoy ’71, an expert on school reform and civil society who served as the president of Public Education Network, was the first Student Trustee, elected to the Board of Trustees in 1970.

In her pitch to fellow students in The Herald that year, she wrote that “by electing a student Trustee, we, the student body, have the opportunity to make our points known to the Trustees of the Colleges and have every right to expect that college policies will be formulated as a result of the varying points of view.”

The first building erected as part of Geneva College was named Geneva Hall because it was largely financed by the citizens of Geneva. Constructed between 1821 and 1822, it is the oldest standing academic building in Western New York.

20 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

William Smith’s gift to form the college that bears his name was mainly in the form of real estate. The Colleges owned an entire block in Chicago until 1907 and the Smith Opera House in Geneva until 1912.

Since 1968, Geneva Scholarship Associates have raised more than $2 million in endowed funds to enable students from Geneva schools to attend HWS.

A photo of Elon Howard Eaton P’37 is displayed along with some of the birds he collected, including (above) a common reed bunting, a Greenland wheatear, male and female ring-necked pheasants, a yellow-headed parrot and an eclectus parrot. The passenger pigeon is below.

8.

Elon Howard Eaton P’37, a renowned ornithologist who established the HWS Biology Department in the early 20th century, amassed a meticulous collection of birds between 1880 and 1933. The collection includes extinct species — like the Labrador duck, passenger pigeon (shown at right), ivory-billed woodpecker, Eskimo curlew, great auk and Carolina parakeet — which has enabled new research using DNA sampling techniques unimaginable in Eaton’s time. In 2012, approximately 1,000 taxidermy birds were transferred to the New York State Museum in Albany, where Eaton served as state ornithologist and curator for six years.

Approximately 300 birds — from the collections of Eaton, Professor of Biology Theodore O’Dell of the Class of 1920 and William Smith, who was also a bird enthusiast — remain on campus today, fittingly on the second floor of Eaton Hall. Among the rarest specimens are the peregrine falcon, a number of passenger pigeons and an Adélie penguin referenced in a 1959 study in Nature magazine.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 21

100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

9.

A Hanging at Sea: Philip Spencer and Melville’s Lost Manuscript HERMAN MELVILLE c.1860

by Andrew Wickenden ’09

consisted of that overheard remark and a passage in his diary written in Greek. Spencer was just two months shy of his 20th birthday.

After Melville’s death, the Billy Budd manuscript was lost for nearly 30 years. When it was finally rediscovered and published in 1919, the book helped revive the author’s reputation and cement his legacy as one of the most important novelists in U.S. history, says Associate Professor of History Matthew Crow.

In Crow’s current book project, he details the lasting resonance of Melville’s novels and how they reveal the dilemmas of discretionary judicial power in American culture.

Crow, whose scholarship explores the intersections between American legal, political and cultural history, is the author of Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection and is the faculty athletic fellow for the Hobart crew team. Here he illuminates the indelible connection between Spencer and Melville.

Q: Who was Philip Spencer?

Herman Melville, today renowned for his masterpiece Moby-Dick, died in relative obscurity while revising Billy Budd, the story of a charismatic young sailor unjustly put to death by a captain who feared he was plotting a mutiny.

The short novel takes its cues from the real-life story of Philip Spencer, who left Geneva College without a diploma in 1841 and, after another attempt at higher education at Union College, joined the U.S. Navy. It was aboard the U.S.S. Somers that Spencer reportedly made an off-hand remark about seizing command of the ship and was hanged days later alongside two crewmates, alleged coconspirators, without a customary court martial. Evidence

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A: “Spencer was a dynamic, brilliant young guy, which makes the story and substance of his life like a great classical tragedy. He was born in Canandaigua. His father was an active politician who sent him to Geneva College, where he spent a couple years without ever graduating. The story goes, he was brilliant but lazy, spent a lot of time partying, didn’t devote himself to his studies, so his father pulled him out and sent him to Union, where he spent a year before he enlisted in the Navy.

He was executed in 1842 aboard the U.S.S. Somers. Melville’s cousin, Guert Gansevoort, was first officer on the Somers who initially reported

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY MATTHEW CROW

rumors of mutinous speech coming from Spencer. The captain tried him at sea and hung him and two other people, and while the Articles of War technically give captains the authority to do that, it isn’t clear there was evidence in this case. At the time, Spencer’s father was the Secretary of War, so the hanging was a scandal of epic proportions. Melville later said, the innocence of these sailors is still discussed in social circles.

Even though the captain was eventually found not guilty in the court martial, this event leads to lots of discussions that lead to reforms in the military.”

Q: How and why did Melville fictionalize this story in Billy Budd? What was it that drew his artistic interest?

A: “The accusation of mutiny, the power of capital punishment, the power that gives to captains — Melville gets it all from the story of Philip Spencer. Melville calls Billy “the handsome sailor,” which people said about Spencer. He had a charisma that flirted with a kind of leadership, an embodiment of convivial youth. Billy is this type of character, a figure that reminds everybody of youth and possibility, which is part of what makes him so attractive and part of what gets him killed. The first officer starts whispering about Billy starting a mutiny because he resents Billy’s

charisma and his own attraction to Billy. The captain asks Billy to answer this charge, and Billy is so furious he punches the first officer and kills him with a single punch. He is then tried by the captain, found guilty and hung.

Spencer’s life forms the core of Melville’s last, and arguably, greatest work — a sailor who’s hung at sea — but I think Melville was also drawing on his cousin’s experience, as well as his own.

Melville was in the Navy for a while and had insight into that power, and how it’s used and can be abused to exercise cruelty and judgment over other people.

Part of what Melville wants us to look at is the human cost of things. The story of Philip Spencer allows him to see and play with what a single life means in the scheme of things. In that one life, you get to look at all the things that are at stake: what it means to have power over somebody’s body, to punish somebody, what war powers mean, who is free and who is not, what it means when you are attracted to somebody and there’s no socially acceptable way to express it — all these aspects that Melville can illuminate with one story. He is paying close attention to dramatic changes across society and what they mean for human beings. He is perceiving history on a grand scale, always looking for the flipside of the coin, trying to illuminate an aspect of the present that people are ignoring or trying not to look at.”

Q: How does your current scholarship approach the themes of Billy Budd and Melville’s other work? What do his novels and stories tell us about the American legal system, history and politics?

A: “Melville pays attention to discretionary power. After the American Revolution, he sees that we’ve replaced discretionary power — the arbitrary whims of men — with the law. The law is king — that’s what Thomas Paine would say. Melville says, oh really? He looks at

all the ways discretionary power survives the Revolutionary Era and exists in the U.S., the ways people come into power over others, the legal authority over people’s bodies and souls. What rights do you have? How secure are you? What are the possibilities of justice? What does it mean to be judged?

Part of what I hope Melville does is prepare us for how to be human and humane, to make us aware. We see it in the ways the perspective of Melville’s narrator is always shifting. He’s a writer of the romantic era but he anticipates modern and postmodern techniques.

There are moments in Billy Budd when it almost reads like a drama, then it goes psychologically internal, then at times seems like straight reporting. On the one hand, he allows you to read this as something that’s happening on the other side of the world, but when the narrative perspective shifts it becomes very present. It’s part of his way of connecting you to something you didn’t think you were connected to.

There’s also something instructive and important for us to take away from this story as a school. For me, a big part of the story is about the ethics of teaching and learning, because there’s a sense in which the school failed Philip Spencer, even as he failed himself. What a liberal arts college can do is connect a student to their own intelligence and help them discover it — not just to know a bunch of stuff but provide a space and setting where a person discovers something about themselves and is given tools to do something with it.

That’s what makes a small liberal arts college a bit of a miracle. How do you create a setting where the value of a life and mind is nurtured, regardless of its relative abilities? How do you create an intellectual environment where a potential Philip Spencer feels like they’ve been invited, where their sense of self matters? That’s the constant challenge that the story leaves me with.”

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 23

100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

Honoris causa

The institution has awarded honorary degrees since 1827, recognizing the contributions and achievements of graduates, administrators, benefactors, writers, artists, scientists, scholars, members of the clergy and public servants, including three Presidents of the United States.

10.

Millard Fillmore L.L.D. 1850 13th President of the United States

Fillmore accepted his honorary degree just weeks after the death of his predecessor, President Zachary Taylor. On a tour of Europe five years later, Fillmore declined an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford because he “had not the advantage of a classical education” and, as the diploma was issued in Latin, believed that “no man should … accept a degree he cannot read.” (The 1850 honorary degree from Geneva College was inscribed in Latin.)

11.

Anna Botsford Comstock L.H.D. ’30 First female professor and head of the nature study department at Cornell University; first woman to serve as an HWS Trustee and to receive an honorary degree from the Colleges

Comstock pioneered experimental courses in public schools, broke new ground in the sciences and, in 1923, was voted by the National League of Women Voters as being among the 12 greatest women in the country. She was also instrumental in the founding of William Smith College, guiding William Smith himself in the planning process. Her advice and support was so vital that Smith insisted — even wrote into his will — that three trustees of Hobart College must represent the interests

24 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

of William Smith College and that one must be a woman. The initial three trustees included Theodore J. Smith, Henry B. Graves and Anna Botsford Comstock, who served on the Board until her death in 1930.

12.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt L.L.D. ’29 32nd President of the United States

In 1929, then-New York State Governor Roosevelt called on students in his Phi Beta Kappa oration to take on fully their duties as citizens. The success of government and the future of the country, he said, “lies … in the hands of the younger generation … It is my hope and my belief that the trend to greater individualism and simplicity in the educational world will be followed as in the past by changes in social, economic and political thought.”

13.

Soong Mei-ling Chiang L.H.D. ’43 First Lady of the Republic of China

14.

Eleanor Roosevelt L.L.D. ’47 First Lady of the United States; First United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights

On campus to receive her honorary degree, Eleanor Roosevelt participated in a radio panel discussion on “The Moral and Civil Responsibility of Education to the Community,” broadcast from Coxe Hall.

She said: “It seems to me that one of the first things we have to consider is that which will

be the basis of any secure peace, the definition and safeguarding of human rights throughout the world.”

15.

Princess Ileana of Romania Litt.D. ’54 Great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander II

16.

Alexandra Lvovna Tolstoy L.H.D. ’62 President of Tolstoy Foundation; daughter and secretary of Leo Tolstoy

17.

Nat King Cole L.H.D. ’65 (posthumous) Jazz vocalist, pianist, songwriter

18.

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz L.H.D. ’70 First African-American president of the National Education Association and director of the United States Department of Labor Women’s Bureau

19.

Dr. B.F. Skinner L.L.D. ’72 Psychologist

20.

Fred Rogers L.L.D ’85 Creator and host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

In his 1985 Commencement address, Fred Rogers shared his warm, neighborly advice with graduating seniors and the HWS community: “What [makes] the difference between wishing and realizing our wishes? Lots of things, of course, but the main one, I think, is whether we link our wishes to our hopes and our hopes to our active striving. It might take months or years for a wish to come true, but it’s far more likely to happen when you care so much about it that you’ll do all you can to make it happen.”

"...It might take months or years for a wish to come true, but it’s far more likely to happen when you care so much about it that you’ll do all you can to make it happen.”

21.

Wangari Maathai P’94, P’96, Sc.D. ’94 Recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Price; Founder of the Green Belt Movement

When she accepted the Elizabeth Blackwell Award on campus in 2008, Wangari Maathai emphasized how important it is “to manage our resources sustainably, share those resources more equitably and manage those resources with an understanding that we are only a passing cloud.”

22.

Gloria Steinem L.H.D. ’98 Writer, activist, feminist organizer

In her 1998 Commencement address, Gloria Steinem urged graduates to consider the power of their own actions: “If the language of either/or diminishes and the language of and increases, we will have opened up a whole world of new connections and possibilities because the art of behaving ethically and effectively is behaving as if everything we do matters.”

23.

William Jefferson Clinton L.H.D. ’17 42nd President of the United States

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100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

The Herald was founded in 1879 and is still going strong, in print and online at HWSHerald.com.

Koshare debuted on the Bartlett Theatre stage in 1971. When the HWS dance collective’s annual show celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2016, it featured 140 dancers in 20 pieces, including styles from Ghanaian and Afro-Caribbean traditions, to classical ballet, contemporary, tap and hiphop. Since moving to the Smith Opera House in 2013, Koshare has sold out two performances annually in the 1,300-seat venue.

The Colleges’ literary magazine, Seneca Review, was first published in 1970. Long a home for poetry and nonfiction work that defies categorization, the magazine began publishing lyric essays in 1997.

As John D’Agata ’95 and the late Seneca Review editor and Professor of English Deborah Tall wrote in 1999, the lyric essay, “with its malleability, ingenuity, immediacy, complexity, and use of poetic language …give[s] us a fresh way to make music of the world.”

Mosaic NY, the Colleges’ social justice theatre company, has written 105 original scripts since it was founded in 2013 by Assistant Professor of Theatre Heather May. Hobart and William Smith’s solar farms deliver 50 percent of the Colleges’ electricity. Split between two sites in the Town of Geneva and the Town of Seneca, the farms generate up to five megawatts of electricity through more than 16,000 panels, which span the equivalent of 14.5 football fields.

Harriet Tubman’s first biographer, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, lived at 629 S. Main Street, now the HWS Office of Admissions. An internationally renowned children’s author at the time, Bradford authored two books based on interviews with Tubman — Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman and Harriet Tubman, Moses of Her People — which provide the basis for much of what is currently known about Tubman’s life.

In 1961, a team of students from Hobart and William Smith appeared on G.E. College Bowl, a weekly intercollegiate competition on CBS. In their win over Baylor University, Jerome Levy ’63, Joseph Rishel ’62, James Zurer ’63 and Marcia Berges Hodges ’61 retired undefeated, and HWS joined Colgate and Rutgers as the only undefeated teams in the nation.

In 1994, more than 700 volunteers from the Colleges and the local community came together on behalf of Geneva in the inaugural HWS Day of Service. Today, HWS holds three community-wide Days of Service each semester, which, combined with the volunteer projects students undertake throughout the academic year, totals more than 80,000 hours of service annually. Under the leadership of Katie Flowers, the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning has established a national model for service, earning recognition as one of the top programs in the country by Washington Monthly.

The Afro Latino Alumni and Alumnae Association (ALAA), which promotes the interests of “all graduates of color,” celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2019. ALAA members serve as mentors to students and fellow alums, and regularly organize and sponsor career panels and networking conferences like the Multicultural Networking and Career Conference and the Salisbury Diversity Fellow Program.

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MOSAIC New York

33.

A Timeline of Our Coordinate Colleges

by Alex Kerai ’19

T

here is arguably no more defining feature of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and no more interesting topic to explore, than the coordinate system.

For generations it has informed and influenced students and graduates as they navigate collegiate life and go into the world. In recent months, the Board of Trustees has taken steps to examine the meaning of coordinate, its inclusive and exclusive processes, and the ways in which change for the institution can ensure that all students are provided equal opportunities. The April 2019 release of the Board’s Report and Action Steps on the coordinate system is best understood within the context of its history. The coordinate structure has changed through the decades, as has the lived experience. Every effort has been made to ensure that the information here is as accurate as possible, including consulting HWS Archives, faculty and staff, as well as past editions of The Herald and other written histories of the Colleges including Hobart and William Smith: The History of Two Colleges by Warren Hunting Smith, the nephew of William Smith. We welcome your reflections and suggestions; email us at coordinate@hws.edu.

A Coordinate Beginning On Dec. 13, 1906, a deed of gift was signed providing Hobart College for men with $475,000 for the creation of a “coordinate” college for women. The gift, equal to about $13.5 million today, came as the result of a long-standing plan by local Geneva philanthropist William Smith to create a women’s college in Geneva. His generosity led to both the creation of one college — William Smith, and the saving

of another — Hobart, which had for some years faced financial challenges.

William Smith was deeply influenced by the local suffragist movement. While he had considered creating an academy to educate women, it was after consultation with friends like Elizabeth Smith Miller and Anna Botsford Comstock L.H.D. 1930 that he decided to found a college to educate women broadly, not just vocationally.

Comstock, who was a member of the advisory board for the new College and later joined the Hobart and William Smith Board, played a key role in the debate. “It was left to me to decide whether it should be coeducational or co-ordinate,” writes Comstock in her autobiography. “I decided on the latter because, with an old institution like Hobart, I felt coeducation would so change it as to alienate the alumni body. I had always been, and shall always be, a believer in coeducation. But circumstances alter cases, and I am sure that my decision was wise in the case of William Smith College....” It was decided that Hobart and William Smith students would receive largely the same education, sharing classroom facilities, faculty, a president and Board of Trustees, but they would not take classes together.

The first joint commencement was held in 1922 on the celebration of Hobart’s

Centennial, also William Smith’s 11th graduation. Organized to take advantage of the “great number of events on the program,” according to a July 17, 1922, issue of The Hobart Herald, the decision became tradition and signaled the beginning of a new student experience.

Each year, Hobart and William Smith alternated which College received its diplomas first. By 1942, baccalaureate ceremonies were also combined.

The two Colleges became more closely linked during World War II. Facing declining Hobart enrollment because of the draft, the Colleges entered into an agreement with the Navy’s V-12 College Training Program, which brought 1,000 soldiers to campus over the course of two years. Men were housed in traditional William Smith dormitories while women lived in smaller spaces like fraternity houses. Because it was no longer affordable to offer duplicate classes for men and women, students of both Colleges began taking classes together. By 1938, all classes were coed with the first joint course catalogue published in 1940. In 1942, The Hobart Herald dropped “Hobart” to become The Herald, representing both colleges.

In 1943, President John Milton Potter elevated William Smith from a Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 27

100 THINGS TO EXPLORE | department under Hobart to equal standing with the men’s college, giving the Colleges the name “Colleges of the Seneca.” That name, used primarily in legal documents and for the charter in New York State, remained in effect until 2010 when the Board unanimously voted to change the legal name to Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Each college had its own yearbook through 1961 — Hobart’s Echo/Echo of the Seneca and William Smith’s Pine. The first joint yearbook, the Echo and Pine, was published in 1962.

In 1972, 50 years after the first joint Commencement was held, students voted to receive their diplomas from their classmates, regardless of their affiliated College. The practice remained with some alterations, depending on the wishes of the graduating classes. In the late 1980s, the tradition of processing and graduating by respective College returned. In 2016, as part of a studentdriven initiative, students voted to receive their diplomas in alphabetical order rather than by College. Voting has happened each year since, with students deciding each year to continue the practice.

Athletics began in the early days of both Hobart and William Smith with scrimmages and intercollegiate matches organized by students. Dr. George J. Sweetland 1897, Hobart’s first Athletic Director, arrived in the fall of 1915 to lead the new Department of Athletics.

Nineteen years later, Marcia Winn L.H.D. ’70 became the first Athletic Director of William Smith College. The passing of Title IX legislation in 1972 helped to solidify the importance of women’s athletics at the Colleges and across the nation. Today, Hobart and William Smith have two of the top athletics programs in the nation.

In 1993, with the competition for 28 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

students accelerating and in an effort to streamline the recruitment process, what had previously been two separate admissions offices — one for Hobart and one for William Smith — were combined. This new Anna Botsford enrollment management Comstock L.H.D. model made admissions 1930 traveling, recruitment and reporting more efficient and placed the office under a dean of admissions and financial aid. The physical offices merged in 2006 with the creation of the Thomas Poole Family Admissions Center.

A Culture of Respect In 2014, a committee was assembled to “examine, research and offer recommendations designed to elicit important positive change” on a wide range of topics from athletics to the Greek system, and from coordinate practices to community spaces. The Culture of Respect Steering Committee included 22 members of the Colleges’ community, led by its co-chairs — Professor Emeritus and former Interim President Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. ’12 and former Director of Admissions and Assistant Vice President for Institutional Advancement Mara O’Laughlin ’66, L.H.D. ’13.

Published in 2015, the Culture of Respect Report states: “the notion of gender and concepts of gender identity are in profound transition today in our society.” The report notes conversations in the community that “argued on behalf of our transgender students, asserting that there is no place in the system for them,” while equally hearing “strong support for a system that purposefully and deliberately empowers both men and women.” The report acknowledges the Colleges’ academic programs that encourage the study of gender and equity — like Women’s Studies, Men’s Studies and LGBT Studies — while also noting the changing definition of

gender identity: “it’s a continuum, not a bipolarity; a continuum with a long and complex middle.” The report determines that “the coordinate system is uniquely structured to explore these issues and the needs of every person on that continuum,” ultimately recommending that, “the coordinate system should not be eliminated or abandoned but be contemporized.”

Concurrent to the Culture of Respect Report and as part of a required assessment of the Colleges’ operations and educational approach, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education issued its assessment that the Colleges had fulfilled all standards and characteristics of excellence. The Middle States review notes: “The coordinate system is a clear point of distinction for Hobart and William Smith and contributes to the values of its educational outcomes.” The review also “…encourages the Colleges to find additional ways to explore the purpose and value of the coordinate system to articulate further the distinctiveness of Hobart and William Smith.”

Following the publication of the Culture of Respect report and the Middle States review, in 2015 President Emeritus Mark D. Gearan L.H.D. ’17, P’21 asked the Alumni and Alumnae Associations’ Executive Committees to examine ways to “contemporize” coordinate. A position statement authored by the Executive Committees was sent to President Gearan and the Board. It reads, in part: “… appreciation of the ‘other’ has always been a guiding tenet for enabling the development of Hobart and William Smith students. Vital to this tenant are values of inclusion, equity, empathy, respect, leadership and community. The Associations firmly believe that upholding this tenant and enhancing these values are essential as the Colleges look to contemporize the coordinate tradition.” A list of specific recommendations from the Executive Committees’ position statement was presented to the Student Experience Committee of the Board in early 2019.

Since 2010, the Office of Student Life and the deans of Hobart and William

Smith have offered students and alums the opportunity to be recognized by their selected name, gender and pronoun, and to affiliate with their College of choice.

The practice was codified in the 2015-2016 Community Standards. The Offices of the Deans and the Office of Student Life have supported numerous students and alums through this practice.

Contemporizing Coordinate In the summer of 2018, 42 members of the faculty “who believe it is time to move toward uniting the Colleges and ending the coordinate system” signed a letter to Interim President McGuire and the Board of Trustees. The letter recommends a “community-wide conversation” about the viability of the coordinate system with emphasis on “the voices of transgender and non-binary students and graduates… [and a] celebration of the rich history of the Colleges and an optimistic vision for the future.”

Just after the faculty letter was made public, a Facebook group was organized by graduates to share their perspectives.

The group, “HWS Coordinate Values,” includes members of the graduate community, faculty, staff and current students. Discussions began in September 2018 and continue today.

In Oct. 2018, The Herald published an edition that includes eight first-person accounts from transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming identifying/ questioning students and alums that detail their experiences within the coordinate system, with some supporting coordinate and others calling for a new structure.

At its fall 2018 meeting and after more than a year of discussion, the Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming the Board’s commitment “to the coordinate heritage and mission of Hobart and William Smith Colleges” while also recognizing that “historic structures, policies and procedures” must change to meet the needs of students.

The Board of Trustees tasked the Student Experience Committee of the Board to create “specific recommendations that will

adapt our coordinate Moving Forward ... the Board of Trustees construct to ensure unanimously passed a with Coordinate that all students resolution reaffirming the are welcomed The Board of Trustees’ policy Board’s commitment “to and supported.” reaffirms a commitment to the coordinate heritage The Board coordinate along with a range and mission of Hobart asked that those of near- and long-term action and William Smith recommendations be steps designed to contemporize Colleges” while also delivered by the April the system. Among the policy’s recognizing that “historic 2019 Board meeting. initiatives is a requirement that structures, policies and In a letter to all new members of the HWS procedures” must change the entire HWS community — faculty, staff to meet the needs of community on Oct. and students — learn about students.

29, 2019, Chair of the the coordinate college system, Board Thomas S. including its traditions and Bozzuto ’68, L.H.D. importance. The administration ’18 wrote: “The Board recognizes that for is also tasked with providing a new many, our coordinate nature is a source degree option to students and alums, of strength and pride. Emerging from the creating three diploma choices: Hobart suffragist movement and ensuring that College, William Smith College, and women have equal access to opportunities, Hobart and William Smith Colleges. our coordinate mission has influenced Other initiatives include a review of all generations of Hobart and William Smith forms and materials to ensure gendergraduates to consider gender as they neutral language and the cultivation of a navigate the world. It is also evident that in more inclusive environment through the order for the Colleges to remain relevant creation of an LGBTQ+ alum group and into the 21st century and to embrace the reimagining of student Orientation expanding notions of gender, historic practices. structures, policies and procedures that Many of the policies approved by have existed for decades must undergo the Board of Trustees are already in change. To meet the needs of all students, action while others are in various states Hobart and William Smith must evolve. It of progress under the leadership of is the belief of the Board of Trustees that President Joyce P. Jacobsen. we must do so without losing the core “The initiatives and the tasks put values and the heritage that define us....” forth by the Board are, in my estimation, The Student Experience Committee designed to ensure that all members of held multiple sessions on campus to our community understand and explore discuss the issue with faculty, staff and the Colleges’ history and traditions, as students, retaining a national expert they also provide students and alums on inclusion and diversity to guide more options and greater autonomy in dialogue. In addition, the Committee how they are identified and affiliated,” consulted with the leadership of the says Jacobsen. “We are working to bring Alumni and Alumnae Associations this policy to reality and I’m grateful and surveyed the entire alum network, for the good advice, direction and gathering data from thousands of perspectives of many in the community graduates about their views on the issue. who are helping.”

They also established a dedicated email

To read the Coordinate Report and Action Steps approved address so that anyone could reach the by the Board as policy, communications from the Board committee to share perspectives. All of of Trustees to all alums and parents, the 2017 report this information was used to generate from the Alumni and Alumnae Executive Committees, the the recommendations that came forward Oct. 2018 issue of The Herald, the 2018 letter from 42 members of the faculty to the Board and the Culture of to the Board of Trustees. The Board Respect Report, go to hws.edu/coordinate. approved those recommendations as policy on April 6, 2019.

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100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

34.

Constance Pittis Davis ’13

35.

Among the World War II POWs in Germany during the bombing of Dresden were Edward Reginald Crone Jr. ’45, Gifford Doxsee ’46 and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Litt.D. ’74. There, they saw some of the most traumatic destruction of the war.

“Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn,” Vonnegut would later write in his breakout 1969 novel SlaughterhouseFive. “It wasn’t safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day … Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals.” Billy Pilgrim, the time-traveling World War II veteran at the heart of the book, was based on Crone, who had hoped to use his time at Hobart to become an Episcopal minister, but who died in Dresden, first refusing food and water and ultimately succumbing to what has been described as “general despair.” After a five-year search for his remains following the war, Crone’s parents brought him home to be buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, N.Y. Every Memorial Day until his own death in 2007, Vonnegut sent flowers to be placed on Crone’s grave.

30 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

“I have seen nothing more thrilling,” wrote Constance Pittis Davis when describing the World War I Victory Parade on July 14, 1919. A member of the Class of 1913, Davis went to France in 1918 as a YMCA worker. She later wrote in the William Smith Alumnae Bulletin that “the city went perfectly wild-mad with excitement.

There was applause for them all but what my impressions and feelings were when our Americans came into view would be hard to describe. Really, I felt as though I would actually explode with pride and joy that I could claim the same country.” After the war, Davis stayed in Europe, traveling extensively while working in various capacities to rebuild the continent.

36.

The S.S. Hobart Victory was one of about 100 victory ships — “victory” class cargo ships assembled to replace those vessels damaged or destroyed by German U-boats — named in honor of American colleges and universities during World War II. Assembled at a Richmond, Calif., shipyard owned by Henry J. Kaiser Sc.D. ’43, the S.S. Hobart Victory was launched on Friday, May 25, 1945 carrying supplies to troops in Japan. Thanks to Grady E. Jensen ’44, P’83, L.H.D. ’04, a World War II veteran, artifacts from the decommissioned vessel were installed in the library in 2009 through a long-term loan from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration. Shortly after the donation, Jensen hired a professional model-maker to create a 16-inch miniature of the ship, which he also gave to the Colleges.

37.

In the summer of 1946, five barracks from the Sampson Air Force Base on the east side of Seneca Lake were moved to campus to house the influx of veterans attending college on the GI Bill. Students lived in four of the barracks buildings, located on the south side of the Quad where the Colleges’ science buildings now sit, while the fifth barrack was converted into a cafeteria.

38.

George Frasca ’56 flew 246 combat missions during the Vietnam War. When he retired from the Air Force in 1979 as a lieutenant colonel, he had served as a controller, target pilot, fighter pilot and trainer, and earned 19 air medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

39.

The campus’ Air Force ROTC program was mandatory for incoming Hobart students from 1951 to 1964. Following ongoing protests during the late ’60s, the Colleges announced in 1970 that the program would be disbanded the following year.

41.

Charles J. Folger of the Class of 1836 devoted himself to public service from his days as a Geneva firefighter and later as president of the Geneva Village Board of Trustees, to his tenure as a State Senator and eventually as Secretary of the Treasury in the Cabinet of President Chester A. Arthur, who came to Geneva for his funeral in 1884. The C.J. Folger Hook & Ladder Company, founded two years later, continues to fight fires in Geneva.

40.

John Norvell ’66, P’99, P’02, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former director of alumni relations, was in the 13th Fighter Squadron during Vietnam. He flew the last unofficial combat mission out of Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base. There, the 13th adopted a 200 lb. black Asian leopard, Eldridge, which became the mascot of the squadron, which from then on was nicknamed the “Panther Pack.”

Read more about Norvell on his blog, An American Family, at jenorv66.wordpress.com

42.

A national expert on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Col. Katherine T. Platoni ’74 was first commissioned as a U.S. Army officer in 1979. A practicing clinical psychologist, she has been deployed four times, serving at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan. She also supported the New York Police Department at Ground Zero during the aftermath of 9/11.

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100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

A Partial History of Hobart and William Smith’s Curriculum 43.

Geneva College established its medical school in 1834 and conferred its first degrees the following year.

The curriculum consisted of two intensive 16-week terms during which, according to the Warren Hunting Smith's The History of Two Colleges, students “attended lectures and watched operations. Animals were dissected...” as were “corpses from Auburn prison....” The medical school issued its last degree in 1872.

44.

In 1809, Geneva Academy students were taught “the respective branches of literature on the following terms:” • reading, writing and arithmetic ($2.25 per quarter); • English grammar, book-keeping, geography and mathematics, including geometry, mensuration, algebra, surveying, navigation and astronomy ($4 per quarter); • and the Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages ($5 per quarter).

45.

Courses for the inaugural Class of William Smith included Greek, Latin, English, history, economics, sociology, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy and music — in keeping with William Smith’s vision that the college educate women through

32 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

a non-vocational, nondenominational curriculum. At the time, women’s education, where it existed, typically did not encompass what are now known as the liberal arts.

46.

The Colleges have been at the forefront of a number of academic movements, establishing programs that were among the nation’s first in Far Eastern studies (now Asian languages and cultures) (1959), Russian studies (1959), Black studies (now Africana studies) (1970) and Middle Eastern studies (2011).

47.

As fascism spread through Europe in the 1930s, HWS President William Alfred Eddy Litt.D. ’47 introduced a new curriculum requirement mandating that all students take a course in citizenship each year. Eddy, who had grown up in Lebanon, served as an intelligence officer with the 6th Marine Regiment during the First World War. When the U.S. entered World War II, he left HWS to coordinate intelligence in North Africa and the Middle East, and was later appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt L.L.D. ’29 as an Envoy to Saudi Arabia. As the AP reported that year, the announcement in Eddy’s 1936 inaugural address was “believed to

be the first time such a requirement has been set up in any college.” Culminating with a senior-year concentration on the “operation of American society today,” the requirement focused on the “administration of government, the nominal and virtual control of affairs in local communities, the formation of public opinion, and the avenues for effective leadership in local and national life.”

48.

As early as Septmber 1924, The Hobart Herald mentions coed classes.

By 1938, all classes were coeducational with the exception of physical education, which wouldn’t become coed until 1973.

49.

World War II and the draft decimated the number of men enrolled at Hobart, leaving fewer than 40 civilian students on campus in the early 1940s.

President John Milton Potter negotiated a contract to establish a unit of the Navy V-12 on campus. To accommodate the Navy training, the Colleges switched to a trimester academic calendar, which remained intact until 2000.

50.

The Navy V-12 program, which ran at Hobart from July 1, 1943 through October 13, 1945, brought more than 900 trainees to campus. Their presence was crucial in keeping the doors of the Colleges open, though the fate of the Colleges was still touch-and-go. By the time the V-12 program was decommissioned, civilian enrollments were only approximately 50 men and 150 women. When the GI Bill was introduced soon after the war, however, enrollment surged to more than 1,000 in just a year.

51.

During World War II, the faculty designed a new curriculum called “History and Literature,” which during the late 1940s evolved into the “Western Civilization Curriculum” that defined a generation of education at HWS. The series of courses traced the historical, philosophical, religious,

political and psychological history of Western Civilization. Students read Dante, Machiavelli, Plato, Homer, the Bible and other canonical works of Western literature, and were required to complete four- or five-hour qualification examinations — or “quals” — to graduate.

Once, when asked on a test what was written over the Gate to Hell in Dante’s “Inferno,” a Hobart student responded: “Welcome to Western Civ. III.”

52. The HWS Honors program was

instituted in 1949. Since 1990 — as far back as the Colleges’ digitized records trace — 924 students have graduated with Honors.

53.

In the spring of 1965, Professor of Economics William Bennett taught the first HWS computer programming course, though it was more than a year later that the Colleges’ first computer, an IBM 1130, was installed in the basement of Lansing Hall.

54.

By the mid-’70s, “Myth, History and Theory” had replaced Western Civilization in the curriculum, offering “a new sort of enterprise with truly holistic opportunities for learners, and [inviting] them to be active in their entirety in order to satisfy the need to do something with great, patient engagement of self,” as Professor Emeritus of History Frank O’Laughlin, one of Western Civ’s architects, wrote in the 1973 Hobart and William Smith Quarterly.

55.

As the era of Western Civ came to a close, the Colleges’ faculty and students led the movement to diversify the curriculum, bringing new voices, new lenses and new modes of understanding to campus, including — not surprisingly for a coordinate college — an emphasis on exploring gender.

• In 1973, after nearly a decade offering individual courses in women’s studies, HWS became one of the first colleges in the country to offer a major in the field.

• The Colleges launched what is believed

to be the nation’s first academic program in men’s studies in 1986.

• In 2002, HWS became the first college or university in the U.S. to offer an undergraduate major in the field of LGBT Studies.

• The Fisher Center for the Study of Gender and Justice, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018, has hosted more than 175 events on campus, with presenters including Angela Davis, Michael Kimmel and Terry Tempest Williams, among many others. Since its founding, the Fisher Center has been the campus and community hub for exploring gender-related fields in the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences, hosting speakers and events that focus on democratic ideals of equity, mutual respect and common interest.

56.

The Colleges’ study abroad program began in 1975 when Professor Emerita of Art & Architecture Elena Ciletti led 29 students on a term-long immersion in Italy.

57.

Until 1994, the Colleges required all students to pass a swimming test to graduate. William Smith began the requirement in 1939, and Hobart followed suit in 1948. Until the late 1960s, when Bristol Pool was opened, the test was held at the YMCA in downtown Geneva.

While most students got it out of the way in their first year, there are stories of some turning up at Bristol three hours before graduation to take the test.

58. In the spring

of 1996, a vote by the faculty and the Board of Trustees approved the “goals curriculum” that shapes students’ academic experiences today. In order to graduate, students must demonstrate proficiency in critical and creative thinking, quantitative reasoning, scientific inquiry and the artistic process, and must have an understanding of social inequities, cultural differences and ethical judgment.

59.

The First Generation Initiative was established in 2006 to ensure that first-generation students have academic, social and co-curricular guidance, as well as visibility on campus. In 2018, Board Chair Thomas S. Bozzuto ’68, L.H.D. ’18 — who was himself a first-generation student — established the Bozzuto Family First-Generation Endowed Scholarship with a $1 million gift.

60.

Since 2006, the Colleges have partnered with Ontario ARC to offer the College Experience program, making it easier for students with developmental disabilities to take college courses and participate in college life.

61.

As of the spring of 2019, the top 10 most popular majors (by number of students declared) are: 1. Economics 2. Media & Society 3. Psychology 4. Political Science 5. Biology 6. Environmental Studies 7. History 8. English 9. Architectural Studies 10. International Relations

62.

HWS has produced 117 Master’s of Arts in Teaching graduates since the announcement of the program in 2003.

63.

HWS offers joint degree programs in engineering, business and nursing through partnerships with the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University; the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College; Clarkson University; the Saunders School of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology; and the University of Rochester School of Nursing.

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100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

65.

64. Among the HWS

philanthropists who have propelled teaching and learning and fueled the Colleges’ growth, former Chair of the Board of Trustees William F. Scandling ’49, L.L.D. ’67 is distinguished by both the size and reach of his gifts.

As the single largest donor to the Colleges, contributing more than $50 million throughout this lifetime, he is responsible not only for the creation of the Scandling Campus Center but a number of endowed scholarships that support HWS to this very day. Scandling and his classmates, W. Price Laughlin ’49, L.H.D. ’67 and Harry W. Anderson ’49, L.H.D. ’67, took over operations of the campus dining hall during their junior year. Their enterprise, the Saga Corporation — an homage to the Seneca capital Kanadesaga — expanded into one of the country’s leading foodservice companies, operating at 458 colleges in the United States and Canada.

The William Scandling — the 65-foot, steel-hulled research vessel owned and operated by the Colleges — was named in Scandling’s honor in celebration of his 80th birthday in 2002. Originally launched in 1976, the vessel’s service area includes all of Seneca Lake, where most of the work is conducted, and extends via the New York Barge Canal System to Cayuga and Oneida Lakes, the lower Great Lakes, the Hudson River and points beyond. The Scandling is outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment to meet the teaching and research needs of the Colleges, including the physics of waves and currents, the chemistry of water quality monitoring, the biological questions raised by native plankton and invasive species, and the geology and environmental history of the glaciers of the Ice Age that formed the lake.

66.

The Seneca Society honors those whose philanthropy has remarkably altered the course of Hobart and William Smith history through cumulative gifts of more than $1 million. Today, 69 individuals and couples make up the Seneca Society.

67.

GIVING ADDS UP. Over the past three years, alumnae and alumni who have donated $250 or less have raised $1.3 million to support the Colleges‘ greatest needs.

W. Price Laughlin ’49, L.H.D. ’67, William F. Scandling ’49, L.L.D. ’67 and Harry W. Anderson ’49, L.H.D. ’67, (far right) help with food prep in the Old Barracks Dining Hall.

34 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

68. There are more than 100

clubs and student organizations on campus covering a wide range of students’ interests, including many dedicated to learning about and celebrating the cultural and religious heritage of the community. A sampling of some of the clubs is below: Sankofa: Black Student Union Koshare Dance Collective Alpine Ski Club Equestrian Team Latin American Organization Caribbean Student Association

Beautiful Minds Ducks Unlimited Asian Student Union Pride Alliance Fencing Women’s Collective Random Acts of Kindness

70.

2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), an academic access and support initiative between New York State and its independent colleges, founded by State Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve P’89, L.H.D. ’10. Hobart and William Smith Colleges were among the inaugural institutions to implement HEOP; since 1969, more than 1,000 students have participated in the program. In 2006, Eve's name was officially added to the program title in recognition of his dedication to increasing access to higher education.

71.

69.

In 2019, the Peace Corps ranked HWS No. 3 among small-size schools on the agency’s list of top volunteer-producing colleges and universities. To date, 235 HWS grads have served or are currently serving in the Peace Corps.

While the U.S. government’s international exchange Fulbright Program was created in 1946, the first recorded mention of HWS students receiving the award doesn’t occur until 1974, with a note in The Herald. Career Services records show that since 2005, 44 HWS students have won Fulbright scholarships, including six this year alone (see p. 5).

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100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

The Collections of HWS

The expansive Collections of Hobart and William Smith Colleges contain many original works of art in all media including a particularly impressive assembly of works on paper. To see the Colleges’ Collections, go to www.hws.edu/academics/davisgallery.

73

75

72 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Divan Japonais, 1893, Lithograph, 81 x 60 cm., Gift of Theodore C. Max '50.

36 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

77

Alison Saar (b.1956), Inheritance, 2003, Woodblock, 81 x 59 cm. Gift of the George D. and Frieda B. Abraham Foundation.

74 Arthur Dove (1880-1946), Happy Clamshell,"1938, Watercolor and ink on paper, 13 x 18 cm., Gift of Richard A. Scudamore ’55.

76 James Rosenquist (1933-), Fast Feast, 1977, Mixed media print, 188 x 92 cm., Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William E. Welsh Jr. P'84.

Mary Cassatt (1845-1927), Antoine Holding Child, 1905, Drypoint, 23 x 17 cm., Gift of Robert North in memory of Marion de Mauriac North '32.

78 DeWitt Parshall (1864-1956), China Cove, Carmel, n.d., Oil on masonite, 102 x 127 cm., Gift of Richard A. Scudamore '55.

Frank Romero (b.1941, U.S.) Arrest of the Paleteros, 2010. 32 color lithograph, 77 x 117 cm. Art Intern Purchase, Friends of HoughtonPaula Kalenik ’71.

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100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

79.

The Rev. Dr. Alger L. Adams ’32, D.D.’83 arrived in Geneva in 1928 only to discover that Hobart College, which had granted him a scholarship, would not house him because of his race. With the encouragement of the city’s African-American community, which welcomed him into their homes with open arms, Adams became the first black man to receive a degree from Hobart, graduating magna cum laude as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to found churches outside New York City before leaving the active ministry to devote himself to civil rights initiatives, the arts and his community. A novelist, painter, musician and lifetime member of the NAACP, Adams had a creative spirit shaped by a sense of service. For many years, he and his wife Jessie Wells ran The Westchester County Press, a weekly paper, and The Creative Printery, a workshop for students interested in the printing process, to offer the local African-American community a cohesive voice. (See p. 47 for details on the upcoming Alger Adams Dinner.)

38 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

82.

80.

Hobart’s oldest active fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Society, was chartered in 1844 as the third chapter in the nation. The first William Smith sorority, Theta Phi Alpha, was founded in 2017.

In 2013, the Colleges opened the Muslim Student Center, located in Stewardson House on South Main Street. With the nearest mosques in Rochester and Syracuse, the center was created to provide a space that enriches the religious and cultural diversity on campus, as well as a place to pray that is easy to access. In the fall of 2019, at the request of students for a more centrally located space, the center was moved to Medbery Hall. The new location, which includes two wudu stations and a separate prayer room, hosts Friday Prayers and frequent discussions.

83.

Since 2011, the Trias Residency has brought nine internationally renowned writers to campus who have led workshops, delivered public readings and invited colleagues to read from their own work and teach master classes with student writers.

81.

Since 2007, the Abbe Center for Jewish Life has been home to the Colleges’ Hillel program and a magnet for students of all faiths.

Situated directly across the street from Temple Beth-El, the Abbe Center — made possible through the generosity of former Trustee Richard K. Abbe ’92, P’19 — serves as a residence hall and hub for Jewish life on campus. Features of the Abbe Center include the Tina Wasserman Kosher Kitchen and the Wasserman Garden of Quiet Repose, named in honor of Trustee Dr. Richard L. Wasserman ’70 and his wife Tina, a bestselling cookbook author who is an expert on the Jewish diaspora.

Programming includes Friday night Shabbat dinners, Rosh Hashanah Eve dinner, the pre-fast dinner before Yom Kippur, bagel brunches, a Passover Seder, Jewish cooking classes, dinners with guest speakers and more.

Tom Piazza (2011-12) Mary Gaitskill (2012-13) Piotr Sommer (2013-14) Chris Abani (2014-15) Mary Ruefle (2015-16) Jeff VanderMeer (2016-17) John D’Agata ’95 (2017-18) Donald Ravel (2018-19) Lidia Yuknavitch (2019-20) Between them, Trias Residents have received a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Grammy Award,

a Nebula Award, and National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships.

Named for Peter Trias ’70, the Residency is a unique program among undergraduate institutions, designed to give distinguished writers time to write while sharing their craft and experience with promising HWS students and the Geneva community.

84. In 2017, the Gearan Center for

the Performing Arts earned LEED Gold from the U.S. Green Building Council, making it the first building on campus to receive an official LEED certification. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is the most popular and widely used green building system globally.

85.

The HWS LGBTQ+ Resource Center, which opened in the fall of 2017, sponsored the Colleges’ first Lavender Graduation Ceremony in 2019, celebrating graduating seniors who identify as queer or gender-nonconforming.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 39

100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

The Highlights Reel: HWS Athletics

86.

Hobart and William Smith varsity teams have won a combined

28 national

championships and, since cofounding the Liberty League in 1995, 113

conference championships.

40 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

87.

Hobart Lacrosse holds the record for the most NCAA Division III national championships, with 13 wins between 1980 and 1993, 12 of which were consecutive.

The Statesmen won a previous three national championships in the 1970s (the 1972 USILA College Division National Championship and the 1976 and 1977 NCAA Division II National Championships).

89.

In 39 seasons as head coach of the William Smith soccer team, Aliceann Wilber P’13 has amassed more than 570 wins — more than any other coach in Division III women's soccer.

She was only the third coach in NCAA women’s soccer history to surpass the 500-win mark.

On March 14, 1910, William Smith played Alfred in basketball in the College’s first intercollegiate competition. The president, dean, faculty and physical director allowed the game as an experiment. With a defeat and final score of 22-4, the experiment was considered a failure and William Smith would not play intercollegiate basketball again for 20 years. During the 2018-19 season, the Herons basketball team scored more than 1,700 points with a 17-9 record.

90.

The Hobart and Cornell lacrosse teams first met in 1898, marking the beginning of the longest running rivalry in the college game.

Hobart won that first game by a score of 2-1.

Over the past 120 years, the Statesmen have come out ahead 47 times, Big Red 87. (There have been only four ties.)

88.

91.

HWS alums have gone on to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Games in 1992 (Kate Hendrickson Borg ’89, kayaking), 2004 (Kent Smack ’97, crew) and 2012 (Trevor Moore ’07 and Rob Crane ’09, sailing). Dr. Allyson Shirtz Howe ’94, an All-American and a Scholar All-American in soccer, is now Team Physician for the U.S. Women’s Hockey team, which won Olympic gold in 2018.

92.

Athletic Director Emeritus at the University of Florida, Jeremy Foley ’74, who retired in 2016, enjoyed a long and distinguished career as the director of athletics, where he oversaw the Gators Division I program that accumulated 27 national championships, 130 SEC titles and 105 Academic All-America awards.

93.

The Colleges have produced 50 Academic All-American honorees and more than 650 All-American athletes, including Tampa Bay Buccaneers guard and captain Ali Marpet ’15.

94.

Over the years, various teams have come and gone, including wrestling, track and field, baseball, fencing, skiing, the rifle team and Hobart swimming and diving.

95.

The William Smith Cross Country team has been an All-Academic team in each and every one of its 26 years of existence.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 41

100 THINGS TO EXPLORE |

96.

Between 1976 and 2001, HWS Folk Fest packed the Quad with acts like Doc Watson, Bela Fleck, Toots and the Maytals, Phish and The Slip, as well as a number of faculty, staff, student and alum performers, including Folk Fest’s founder, Matthew Stamell ’78, P’04 (right).

42 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

“Sam’s Bar – Ask for Cosmo”

97. From 1947 to 1986, the Twin Oaks was the primary

advertising in The Herald in 1957, with a few words in a few square inches: “Sam’s Bar — Ask for Cosmo.” Located on Tillman Street and operated by Cosmo Fospero, the bar was a home away from campus for generations of students and faculty. “An enjoyable place; the service and drinks are good, vibes are friendly and there’s plenty of space to hang out,” according to a succinct review in an October 1974 issue of The Herald. “The tequila sunrise cost .50. No draft beer available.”

and finally ...

"M

a”

at

Sid

eS

ho

w

student haunt. Located at the corner of Pulteney and Hamilton, where the HWS entrance marker is today, the Oaks offered a chance to get away from the pressures of the day amid the memorabilia of the past: autographed footballs, ancient lacrosse sticks and yellowed photos of HWS. Those nostalgic for the legendary tavern — and those too young to remember it — can get a taste of the atmosphere at the Twin Oaks tent at Reunion.

99. Sam’s Bar & Grill, better known as Cosie’s, first started

Lifelong learning:

Five years after graduation, any HWS alum can return to the Colleges and take up to two courses per semester, for credit, for free.

98. Anita Carlson — known as “Ma” to Side Show regulars

— operated the Geneva watering hole from 1985 until her death earlier this year. The jukebox offerings didn’t change for years, and Alumni House and Communications have created a Spotify playlist (search for “Side Show” or go to hws.edu for a link) that includes 151 songs selected by Carlson’s family that represent an era.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 43

HWS COMMUNITY |

FANFARE | HONORS | AWARDS | CELEBRATIONS

HWS Community 1,000+ alumnae and alumni

54

classes

9

decades

“It took a couple days to recover from the spectacular Reunion!

It reminded me what a special place Hobart and William Smith really is and how lucky I was to have spent my formative years there.” — Gia Palermo ’94

Above: Alums march down Pulteney Street in the Reunion parade.

Right: Alums enjoy fireworks on Saturday evening.

Far right: Up2Somethin’ takes to the stage on the Coxe Hall steps.

44 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

A soggy spring gave way to beautiful weather as more than 1,000 alumnae and alumni representing 54 classes and nine decades returned to campus for Reunion in June. Classmates took part in cherished Reunion traditions, including the parade on Pulteney Street, the Reunion Forum and fireworks over the Quad. The Classes of 1969, celebrating their 50th Reunion, were awarded the Founder’s Cup for having the highest percentage of donors.

Interim President Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. ’12 introduced then President-Elect Joyce P. Jacobsen at the Saturday luncheon. “I anticipate that by the end of this weekend, you will be steeped in old memories of faculty and classes, competitions won and lost, young love and, of course, The Oaks,” she said to the crowd gathered under the tent. “But I also anticipate that you will leave your alma maters with tremendous and vibrant hope for our future.”

Rawlins and Zola Join Board

by Bethany Snyder

The newest members of the Hobart and William Smith Board of Trustees began their four-year terms on July 1. Michael E. Rawlins ’80, P’16 and Warren K. Zola ’89, P’18 were elected to the board in February.

Rawlins is the principal user experience design architect at The Walt Disney Company’s Direct to Consumer and International Division. At Hobart, he double-majored in history and art history, graduating with high honors in history, and was a Druid. As an alumnus, he has participated in the Professionals in Residence series, was a judge for the Pitch competition and was the 2019 keynote speaker for the Multicultural Networking and Michael E. Rawlins ’80, P’16 Career Conference hosted by the Salisbury Center for Career, Professional and Experiential Education. He is among five of six children in his family to attend Hobart and William Smith; his son Dylan Rawlins graduated from Hobart in 2016.

“It’s really a compelling thing to be able to be part of a community as long as I have been,” he says. “As a Trustee, I’m excited about building new relationships that will span a long period of time and helping to advance the Colleges’ mission.”

Zola has served as the Executive Director of the Boston College Chief Executives Club, a program of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, since 2014. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Warren K. Zola ’89, P’18 Carroll School’s departments of Business Law & Society and Operations Management, where he teaches courses in sports law and the business of sports. After graduating with an economics degree with honors at Hobart, Zola earned a J.D. from Tulane University and an M.B.A. from Boston College. He has been an active member of the Massachusetts Bar since 1993.

“The Colleges have had a profound impact on so many people, including myself and my daughter, Gabrielle Aulwes-Zola ’18,” Zola says. “As an alum, it’s an honor to give back and help shape the future of this institution that is preparing students to lead lives of consequence.”

“I’m excited about building new relationships that will span a long period of time and helping to advance the Colleges’ mission.”

“It’s an honor to give back and help shape the future of this institution that is preparing students to lead lives of consequence.”

Tommy the Traveler Podcast Miniseries In 1968, with the ongoing war in Vietnam and the associated draft, many college campuses were active sites for the anti-war movement and related protests.

On the Hobart and William Smith campus, where there were regular anti-war demonstrations, the arrival of Tommy Tongyai triggered a series of unforgettable events.

Tongyai, also known as “Tommy the Traveler,” allegedly working as a government agent for the Ontario County Sheriff, infiltrated the student body in an effort to arrest student

protesters. He was, as HWS Trustee Dr. Richard L. Wasserman ’70 says, an “agent provocateur.” Tommy’s actions would eventually lead to the firebombing of the ROTC Office in the basement of Sherrill Hall and the midnight drug raid of Superdorm (known today as JPR).

In the aftermath, the Colleges were featured on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and in The New York Times.

Now, almost 50 years later, the era is being revisited.

Throughout the summer of 2019, a miniseries from The Seneca Scene — a podcast from the student-run Herald — dove

into one of the most altering times in America and its effect on HWS with more than 20 interviews from people on campus at the time, including students and faculty, archival research, and video interviews from a 1971 documentary directed by Marc Weiss ’69.

“I don’t know where [Tommy] came from, or why he was there to incite everybody to do all this stuff,” Shirley Napolitano Banker ’72 says.

“I didn’t have any idea. Before that we were just doing our normal protest stuff and going to classes.”

The series emerged from a conversation between former Interim President Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. ’12 and then Herald Editor-in-Chief Alex Kerai ’19. Intrigued by the Tommy incident, Kerai assembled a team of students, including Albright Dwarka ’21, Henry Duerr ’21, Russell Payne ’21 and Grace Ruble ’21, to help research and plan the series, which he led and produced. “It was an incredible opportunity to interview people who were on campus at this time,” Kerai says, “because you realize how real history is.”

To listen to the miniseries, go to hwsherald.com/podcast or search for The Seneca Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 45

HWS COMMUNITY |

Alum Event Photos

1|

2|

3|

4|

5|

1| Sraddha Fonseka ’97, Karin Richards Moore ’89 and Susan Richardson Askew ’97 at the inaugural WS@Work in Washington, D.C. event in May. 2| Along with President Joyce P. Jacobsen and former Trustee William C. Green ’83, past winners of the William and Diane Green P’83, P’87 Endowed Scholarship and their families gather in East Aurora, N.Y., in August to celebrate this year’s recipient, Calvin Klube ’23 (left).

3| President Jacobsen is surrounded by guests at the Westhampton Summer Gathering hosted by Trustee Thomas B. ’61, L.H.D.’06 and Mary Jane Poole P’91 in August.

4| Tyler Robbins ’10, Andrea Lippa Robbins ’10, Donald Robbins ’77, P’10 and Pamela Clark Robbins ’79, P’10 celebrate at the HWS Day at the Races at the Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in August.

5| Trustee Andrew McMaster Jr. ’74, P’09 and his wife Suzanne host a summer gathering for President Jacobsen at the Tokeneke Club in Darien, Conn., in August.

46 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

HWS Community

events

New events are added daily. For details and to register, go to www.hws.edu/alum

Friday, Oct. 18, 2019

Hobart and William Smith Campus

Regional Gatherings Join President Joyce P. Jacobsen for a regional event!

PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION

Nov. 6, 2019 | Chicago, Ill.

February 7-8, 2020

Nov. 20, 2019 | Baltimore, Md.

Hobart Basketball Winter Alumni Weekend

D r . J oyce P. J acobsen

Nov. 21, 2019 | Washington, D.C.

William Smith Basketball Winter Alumnae Weekend

29th President of Hobart College and the 18th of William Smith College

Jan. 14, 2020 | Los Angeles, Calif.

Hobart Hockey Alumni Weekend

of

Stay tuned for events in New York and Boston!

March 27, 2020

A Celebration of the Rev. Dr. Alger L. Adams ’32, D.D. ’83 HWS Campus

Oct. 19-20

BASKETBALL

Fall Alumni Weekend

Save The Date

FOUNDER’S DAY Nov. 7

| HWS Campus

Join us for a ceremony reflecting on the life and legacy of the first black man to receive a degree from Hobart.

All classes are welcome each year.

Special celebrations this June are planned for the Classes of 1960 / 1965 / 1970 / 1975 / 1980 / 1985 / 1990 1995 / 2000 / 2005 / 2010 / 2015

Let your classmates know you're attending by going online at hws.edu/reunion or call (315) 781-3700 to add your name to the list of those planning to return.

hws.edu/reunion Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 47

HWS COMMUNITY |

When Art and Fashion Collide

by Bethany Snyder

Jonas Wood X Louis Vuitton Artysquare 90

The artwork of Jonas Wood ’99 has been hanging on gallery and museum walls for years, but thanks to a collaboration with French fashion house and luxury retailer Louis Vuitton, it now hangs around the necks of fashionistas around the world.

Known for multidimensional and partially abstract paintings, drawings and prints of rich color and complex form, Wood’s work was featured at two major shows this year: an exhibition of new work at the world-renowned Gagosian in New York City, which ran from April to July, and his first major solo museum exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art, which ran from March through July.

On the heels of the Gagosian show — and just in time for New York Fashion Week — the Louis Vuitton x Jonas Wood textile collection was announced. The scarves, shawls and stoles feature Wood’s reinterpretations of Louis Vuitton’s iconic monogram pattern, along with many of Woods’ best-known subjects, including plants and basketballs. The collection of 11 pieces launched worldwide on Sept. 13.

Wood graduated from Hobart College with a degree in psychology, but it was a minor in studio art that helped set him on a path that led to the international stage. The influence of his mentor, Professor of Art and Architecture Nick Ruth, steered him in the direction of graduate art studies at the University of Washington, where Wood earned an MFA. Now, his “lush interiors, tender portraits, and vibrant still lifes,” as described by the website artnet, are on display around the world.

Wood’s work is part of the permanent collections of the Met, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, among others. Based in Los Angeles, Calif., he is married to artist Shio Kusaka. They have two children.

Jonas Wood, Greenhouse 2, 2019, Oil and acrylic on canvas

Jonas Wood ’99 stands with his mentor Professor of Art and Architecture Nick Ruth at the Gagosian during the exhibit opening.

48 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

ALUM NEWS Rip Rawlings ’94 The New York Times bestselling military novel Red Metal calls on the 22 years of Marine Corps service of author Lieutenant Colonel H. Ripley “Rip” Rawlings IV ’94.

After graduating from Hobart with a degree in English and German literature, Rawlings served in the Marine Corps but the writing bug was always there. His first novel is about a military crisis in which Russia attacks Western Europe and east Africa to seize a rare Earth mineral, cowritten with Mark Gearney. “I really flourished under the kind of academic environment HWS provided,” Rawlings says. “When I stop to recollect, it seems we lived a lifetime in the confines of our little campus.”

Sarah Walters ’19 After graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, Sarah Walters ’19 found her next step with the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester where she is their Holocaust Education and Community Relations Program Director. An individual major in Genocide, Human Rights, and Peace Actions, Walters worked closely with Professor of Religious Studies Michael Dobkowski to create coursework that reflected her interdisciplinary nature. While on campus, Walters served as vice president of HWS Hillel, was a member of Hai Timiai and traveled as a representative for William Smith College at the 10th International Humanitarian Law Dialogues for the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trails in Germany.

Creating Places of Abundance and Comfort There wasn’t a title to describe the work that Phylicia Robinson Dove ’09 does, so she created one: fashion activist. Dove is the owner of Black Monarchy, an artisan and fashion boutique in Buffalo, N.Y. The store specializes in custom clothing and accessories from all over the world, including India, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and the Seneca Nation, but heavily concentrated from Africa.

Dove works closely with the refugee and immigrant population to create the vibrant merchandise.

“I sit with my tailors and they teach me,” she says. “They are so open to sharing their craft.”

Dove’s community work expands far beyond fashion. She also created Alabaster Box, an outreach event that has provided haircuts, manicures, socks, shoes and food to more than 600 homeless people, or “displaced guests,” as she says, as well as free dental care through a partnership with the University of Buffalo School of Dental Medicine. “We’re showing them that in a world that teaches us scarcity, there is a

place where there is abundance,” Dove says. Her goal is to expand Alabaster Box through mobile units that travel across the country providing showers, refrigerators and electricity.

Dove has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including the 2019 Remarkable West Sider Award from West Side Community Services in Buffalo.

As for the future of Black Monarchy, Dove hopes that it will become the leading local franchise and fashion boutique in the world. “It’s more of a

movement than just the boutique space,” she says. “It’s a place of comfort, of conversation.”

Creating something out of nothing isn’t new for Dove.

As a William Smith student, she created her own major, social justice and advocacy. “The Colleges were the grooming grounds for my advocacy,” she says. “It’s where I learned to be inclusively excellent.”

Visit www.blackmonarchy.com/ to learn more.

PHOTO BY KEVIN COLTON

by Bethany Snyder

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 49

CLASSNOTES THE LAST| WORD

A

The Rev. Nita C. Johnson Byrd, Dean of Spiritual Engagement and Chaplain

“Who is this person that I call myself?”

s a college chaplain, I have the privilege to journey beside young adults who are on an exploration of life. Throughout this journey, possibilities are investigated, potential is tapped, lives are transformed and the individual is constantly striving to do more. My role is to be a voice reminding students that outward and inward exploration are equally important.

We forget that our mere existence is the greatest miracle of all. However, when we acknowledge the beauty of our own existence, we are faced with the question: “Who is this person that I call myself?” Exploring the possible answers to this question is the exploration of identity that must be honored when a person takes steps into adulthood.

This road is often clouded with a fog of misconceptions, however, namely that this is a journey of independence where identity is determined in isolation. The opposite is also a misconception, namely that one’s identity is defined exclusively by societal norms. These misconceptions must be counteracted with the ideas that 1) we are socially constituted beings who form identity in community; 2) we possess rationality and intuition, granting us the power to narrate the particularities of our identity; and 3) our identity is multifaceted and often hangs in a dialectic tension of society’s opposites, and thus opens space for unprecedented markers of identity. As a chaplain who is an Episcopal priest, I explore identity with students through the lens of my community.

As I interact daily with the Hobart and William Smith community and the larger community of Geneva, N.Y., I also bring my life of experiences from North Carolina, where I was born. The relationships in these places honor the voices of those I know around the world and throughout time, including a woman whose approach to identity was groundbreaking in the 20th century.

The first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray is part of the fabric of the women and men who were members of the St. Titus’ and St. Ambrose parishes in Raleigh and Durham, N.C., where I served in my early years of ministry. The Rev. Dr. Murray’s work for a better world grew from her identity that was grounded in the very soil and people of North Carolina, as described in her autobiography, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family.

For Murray, identity was not exclusionary. In her family autobiography, she did not alienate portions of her identity, but integrated the various aspects of her ancestry and community into the richness of her total being. This gave her strength to focus her intellect on the challenges that she and others faced in the 20th century.

Murray trusted her intellect and intuition to narrate her own identity in a way that allowed her to emerge as authentically herself. She states in a 1967 letter to the chairwoman of the National Organization for Women: “…as a human being, I cannot allow myself to be fragmented into Negro at one time, woman at another, or worker at another. I must find a unifying principle in all these movements to which I can adhere … This, it seems to me, is not only good politics but also may be the price of survival.”1 Murray paid this price of survival to define her own identity as she named herself “The Imp, The Crusader, The Dude, The Priest” in ways to navigate a world that was not always accepting of a non-binary person of color.

The price of survival is the currency that we must all be ready to invest in our personal exploration of identity. Murray’s avant-garde approach to defining her identity serves as an example to a generation of people who strive to create a new space for identities that are formed within communities navigating a virtual reality that has compressed spatial distance while expanding cultural awareness in an unprecedented manner.

Therefore, as I serve as a chaplain in this unique place called a college, I must always trust that the students at HWS have the God-given reason and courage to explore the possibilities that will be integrated into their identities in the days and years to come.

1| Pauli Murray, November 21, 1967, letter to Dr. Kathryn F. Clarenback, Chairman, National Board, National Organization for Women; https://sites.fhi.duke.edu/paulimurrayproject/credits/

80 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

Setting Records The 24-hour 2019 Athletics Day of Donors fundraising challenge set new records for most donors and most dollars raised in a single day.

Let’s break it down.

TOTAL RAISED

BY DONORS

165,895

$

TOTAL RAISED

BONUS FROM THE MASON CHALLENGE*

$28,000

193,895

$

*The Mason Challenge was sponsored by Trustee Scott ’81 and Lynn Nowadly ’80 Mason P’13.

23 total teams

TOTAL DONORS

3,515

TOP TEAMS: Hobart Rowing:

$

26,890

from 558 donors

William Smith Soccer:

$15,898 ALUMS: 27% STUDENTS: 14%

from 527 donors

Every team surpassed their donor goal, including: William Smith Field Hockey:

588.6% of goal

Hobart Lacrosse:

437.5% of goal

PARENTS: 22% FACULTY/STAFF/FRIENDS: 39%

HWS Athletics Day of Donors was a collaborative initiative between Hobart Athletics, William Smith Athletics, the Heron Society, the Statesmen Athletic Association, coaches of all HWS sports and the Office of Advancement, with support from the Office of Marketing and Communications.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2019 / 81

Non profit org.

U.S. Postage PAID Burlington, VT Permit No. 19

Pulteney Street Survey

300 Pulteney St., Geneva, NY 14456

1. What’s the biggest technological innovation of the past decade?

Combining IoT devices, artificial intelligence services, and UX interaction into voice-enabled technology 2. What does being a Druid mean to you? Being recognized for my leadership and contributions to campus life, which I hadn’t realized were widely recognized.

Theodore Brodheim ’82, P’20 Cofounder, StartEd Technology Accelerator and President, Altamira Advisors Druid Major: English Hometown: New York, N.Y.

3. What was your first computer?

Apple IIe 4. What role does faith play in your life? Cultural identity 5. What did you want to be when you grew up? A mountain climber 6. What technologies do you think are in our near future? Flying cars 7. What are your most-used apps on your phone? Spotify, Calendar, and eMail 8. How do you feel about social media? Meh 9. Twitter or Instagram? Twitter 10. How do you define success?

Having lots of friends and being able to laugh at myself 11. What’s your proudest achievement? 28 wonderful years of marriage and 3 great kids

1. What’s the biggest technological innovation of the past decade?

Artificial intelligence 2. What does being a Druid mean to you? Acting as a role model, being a support system for my peers and promoting character, loyalty and friendship 3. What was your first computer?

HP Notebook (which I still use today) 4. What role does faith play in your life? I believe that everything happens for a reason, which keeps me motivated to move forward in life.

Hamdan Ahmed ‘20

5. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to join the Air Force.

Druid

6. What technologies do you think are in our near future?

Edible technology 7. What are your most-used apps on your phone? Reddit, Calendar, Messenger, Real Cricket 19

Newman Civic Fellow Major: Computer science Hometown: Rawalpindi, Punjab, India

THE PULTENEY STREET SURVEY | HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES | Fall 2019

Parallels

8. How do you feel about social media? It’s distracting 9. Twitter or Instagram? Instagram 10. How do you define success?

Making a difference in the global community 11. What’s your proudest achievement? Founding the South Asian Student Association and helping to start Friday prayer for Muslim students

INSIDE Updated Athletics Logos for the Herons and Statesmen

Explore HWS

100 Fascinating, Obscure, Pivotal and Sometimes Profound Things You Didn’t Know (or Forgot) About Hobart and William Smith Colleges