Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly Spring 2005 by Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College

Spring 2005

A Climate of Caution How the USA PATRIOT Act Affects Our International Students

A Dancer’s Vision

A Student’s Week

A Biographer’s Quest A Decision’s Power

features 10 A Climate of Caution How the Patriot Act Is Affecting MHC’s International Students, and What the College Is Doing About It by Erica Winter ’92 Although MHC’s international students have been affected less than most students by the USA PATRIOT Act, many are reluctant to express their opinions on national-security laws for fear of government retribution.

14 Imagination and Irony in Motion Martha Mason ’88 Brings a Snappy Vision to Dance by Mindy Koyanis Dancer/choreographer Martha Mason brings a collaborative, community-embracing vision of the arts to audiences through her Snappy Dance Theater.

22 Seven Days and Seven Nights A Week with MHC Students

16 Life Histories The Power of Biography

text by Elizabeth M. O’Grady ’06; photography by Erin E. Beckwith ’06 Student photographer Erin Beckwith toted her camera everywhere last fall to capture a week’s worth of campus life.

by Maryann Teale Snell ’86 Biographies are flourishing partly because “personal histories have a way of rousing our imagination, making us feel gloriously alive,” as one MHC biographer put it.

Winner of the Quarterly’s 2004 Essay Contest by Mollye Maxner FP’05 The winning essay is a poignant piece about a decision the author’s father made as a soldier in Vietnam and its moving consequences for two families decades later. (See p. 3 to enter the 2005 contest.)

Roger Ide

20 Tiny Actions

On the Cover The USA PATRIOT Act has prompted a climate of caution among many Mount Holyoke international students. Some declined to have their photographs taken or to speak on the record in connection with this topic. Photos by Gregory Cherin; photo illustration by John Bidwell

departments Viewpoints

Volume 89 Number 1 | Spring 2005

Your comments on white-privilege awareness, MHC architecture, and embracing difference

Campus Currents

Alumnae Association unveils new strategic plan, alumstudent videoconference on Patriot Act, Mary Lyon Award winners, alumnae mentor students, career services update, and clubs’ news

Off the Shelf

Emily Giglierano ’06

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In “Plato Without Apologies,” MHC classics professor Bruce Arnold argues that liberal-arts institutions shouldn’t lose sight of their core mission in a rush to meet students’ practical needs.

Quarterly Committee: Avice A. Meehan ’77, chair; Susan R. Bushey ’96; John Grayson (faculty rep.); Diana Bosse Mathis ’70; Jen E. Nicholls ’05 (student rep.); Marissa H. Saltzman ’07 (student rep.); Julie L. Sell ’83; Carol Sliwa ’80; Susan Beers Betzer ’65, ex officio with vote; W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, ex officio without vote Quarterly Deadlines: Material is due November 15 for the winter issue, February 1 for the spring issue, May 15 for the summer issue, and August 15 for the fall issue. Ideas expressed in the Quarterly are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of either the Alumnae Association or the College. Published in the spring, summer, fall, and winter and copyrighted 2005by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at South Hadley, MA 01075 and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Lane Press, Burlington, Vermont.

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Alumnae-run bed-and-breakfasts, announcements, travel opportunities, and classified ads

Last Look

Deborah Sharp Bidwell ID

News of your classmates, and miniprofiles

Bulletin Board

Class Notes Editor DesignER

Books by alumnae on menopause, gardening, life with breast cancer, the politics of “racial destiny,” abstract modernist paintings, work/life integration, MHC’s role in the rise of American science, and other topics

Class Notes

Emily Harrison Weir

Editorial Assistant

A new admission office, Recyclemania, studying young stars, a liberal arts path leads to medical school, faculty exchange with China, setting sail on the Bounty, passing the Musicorda baton, and other news

Alumnae Matters

Managing director of Print and Online Magazines

The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College is an independent organization that serves a worldwide network of diverse individuals, cultivates and celebrates vibrant connections among all alumnae, fosters lifelong learning in the liberal arts tradition, and facilitates opportunities for alumnae to advance the goals and values of the College. Comments concerning the Quarterly should be sent to Alumnae Quarterly, Alumnae Association, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; tel. 413-538-2301; fax 413-538-2254; e-mail: eweir@mtholyoke.edu. Send address changes to Alumnae Information Services (same address; 413-538-2303; ais@mtholyoke.edu). Call 413-538-2300 for help with general questions regarding the Alumnae Association, or visit www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu. Reach other College departments by calling 413-538-2000. POSTMASTER: (ISSN 0027-2493) (USPS 365-280) Please send form 3579 to Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

viewpoints White Privilege Awareness Not New at MHC I was pleased to read of MHC’s ongoing commitment to engaging in “difficult dialogues” in “Sustaining a Diverse Community” (winter). I recall attending Claude Steele’s lecture on “stereotype threat” and hearing about the faculty’s efforts to be more inclusive and aware. Now more than ever, it is critical that the faculty (and the College as a whole) model relentless self-examination in preparing students to be effective intercultural leaders. The College would do well to continue to encourage students to explore their attitudes and beliefs about people who may look, dress, or speak differently. I am grateful for the opportunity that MHC’s diverse environment (including an intergroup dialogue class) afforded me for learning and growth. I appreciated reading the perspectives of faculty, students, and administrators, all of whom seem to be honestly confronting the challenges inherent in (and the inevitable rewards associated with) fostering a community that strives for respect, celebrates diversity, and promotes intercultural understanding. The organization mentioned in the article—the White Privilege Awareness Project—is not quite so new. It was founded in 1998 (then called White Women Against Racism) by myself and three other women as part of the action plan component of 2

Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Psychology of Racism class. Additionally, the support, dialogue, and activism group is not the first of its kind at MHC. In 1992, a similar group formed following the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King. In 2004, the White Privilege Awareness Project organized the second Five College conference on racial justice, “Understanding Whiteness, Recognizing Privilege.” (See http://whiteprivilege.mtholyoke. edu for more information.) Catherine B. Orland ’01 Brattleboro, Vermont

Architectural Associations I read the winter “Last Look” article with ever-growing delight. Maureen Meister ’75 wrote about the architectural connections between campus buildings and buildings in Winchester, Massachusetts. I was raised in Winchester and left it in 1969 to attend MHC. I knew a few of those buildings quite well, especially the “red brick Richardsonian Romanesque town hall” and one of the two “Gothic Revival churches” in town. As I read Maureen’s observations about architecture, I now finally know why, when I first set foot on MHC’s campus in 1968 for a tour and an interview, I immediately felt completely at home. And why I always did my studying in the library’s immense, beautiful reading room.

Thank you, Maureen, for making a connection between Winchester and MHC that I never would have dreamed of making on my own, even though I did it in reverse order from you. Lorain Heindel Giles ’73 Yarmouth, Maine

Thanks for the article on MHC architecture (winter). In 1999 I brought my granddaughter Selena and her friend to my twenty-fifth reunion. They loved MHC’s library the best. … Now, thankfully, locals have a place to hang out and FPs a home. I commuted from my home, husband, three children, and dog sixty miles away from 1972 to 1974. I hung out in Clapp with its Cape Cod aquarium, collection of birds, and one of tiny unborn babies. I loved the Tower Room best with its books, cushions, and couches. I looked out over the campus the way we had looked out over two states from my dad’s fire tower on Mt. Hale. Sally Walker Kusek ’74 Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Embracing Difference I enjoyed your winter issue on campus diversity and also on Samantha Abeel’s learning disability. I have been an intellectual property attorney since 1988, and am also a mediator in this and other areas of the law. I find that to make all parties [in mediation] move toward settlement, I must take care of the unvoiced issues arising from

expectations of race, culture, class status, national origin, gender, disabilities, etc. Under all the differences, we are all just human beings trying to do the best we can in a world that is sometimes bewildering or difficult for us to navigate. We could use some help, understanding, compassion, and empathy from others, and we can extend the same to our fellow human beings. I am lucky to have friends of different races, cultures, religions, and social/economic backgrounds who help me to empathize, understand, and connect with each of the participants. Generally, finding and acknowledging common ground helps us to reach out for one another to begin to understand our differences; whereas it is less helpful to first focus on our differences. Often, the person best situated to help you is your “enemy.” We just need creative thinking outside the limited remedies of law, societal conditioning, and our own histories and limitations. [Dealing with] your “enemy,” someone “different,” or a situation you perceive to be bad for you is an opportunity to grow out of your own limitations, to obtain a broader vision and a bigger heart. I commend the [Quarterly] for introducing different people into our lives and [showing] how they cope with the challenges of their lives. Wean Khing Wong ’84 South Pasadena, California

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

To keep you connected to Mount Holyoke and your classmates, we need your e-mail address. What’s in it for you? A free periodic e-newsletter with updates about new services for alumnae and upcoming events sponsored by the Alumnae Association. Also, the e-newsletter’s “lowdown” column gives you a straight-from-the-student’s mouth summary of hot topics on campus.

Information about alumnae events in South Hadley and in your home area. An effortless way to stay connected to your classmates. (For example, many class scribes send messages to their class e-mail lists.)

Please send your current e-mail address to ais@mtholyoke.edu. Or log onto the Alumnae Association’s Online Community at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/onlinecommunity. Note: The Alumnae Association never sells or gives away e-mail addresses to outside organizations.

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currents

ten years and as president of the South Shore club in Boston, was a good friend of the wife of the Newhall Center’s anonymous donor. The room features maple wainscoting decorated with squares and rectangles of the same aqua “ice” panels that appear in the reception area. Sleek wood-backed chairs, upholstered in blue, await visitors. “All of our peer institutions have been able to offer daily info sessions,” says Anci, “but we didn’t have the space. We’d have to book a room elsewhere on campus. Now we can offer an info session at the Office of Admission and from there launch a campus tour. We can also provide seats for all who come—in the past people would sometimes have to stand or sit on stairs.” The twice-daily info sessions in the Jenkins Room are led by assistant director of admission Christy O’Brien FP’04, who acts as “the face of Mount Holyoke” for visitors and also supervises the students who lead campus tours. Early in the semester, admission staff members were abuzz about their beautiful new home. “We have gotten all we could have hoped for and more,” says Anci. “We look forward to using the space to continue to achieve and surpass the ambitious goals set for the College’s enrollment effort.”

A “New” Newhall Center for the Office of Admission

information sessions. It also incorporates technologically upto-date features such as a DVD player, cable television, and wireless tablet computers on which students and interviewers can record information and access the Internet. Prospective students’ families can also use the tablets to view videos, news stories about the College, and other online content. The new living room and information session room are nothing if not handsome. A curved stone walkway traverses the living room from the front door to the back entrance; it is echoed overhead by a curved row of translucent aqua acrylic panels and pendant lighting. The colors of the stone are reflected throughout the living room, which is decorated in contrasting hues of nutmeg and slate blue. The room also features elegant white columns and comfortable, modern chairs, sofas, and tables. Anci is delighted with the renovations. “We describe ourselves as both venerable and hip,” she says. “So the design of this space is a metaphor for that. The stone, which is as old as time, is a ‘venerable’ element, while the acrylic ‘ice’ panels above are the ‘hip’ elements. The stone path, which curves from the parking lot entrance to the College Street entrance, acts as a pathway to the College and also has meaning as a metaphor for prospective students, who are embarking on a path to their futures.” The information session room is named in memory of Joy Mooney Jenkins ’53. Jenkins, who served as class president for www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

One Bottle at a Time: ECO-reps Educate Students About Recycling

I Paul Schnaittacher

fter occupying temporary quarters for a good part of 2004—281 days, to be precise—the Office of Admission celebrated the new year by moving back to the Newhall Center on College Street. Between April and December, while Newhall underwent substantial renovations, admission staff set up shop in a doublewide trailer across from Pratt Hall and in the basement of Wilder Hall. With the completion of the renovations, the admission office is now able to welcome prospective students and their parents with grace and style. Visitors began raving about the “new” Newhall as soon as it opened. Visit coordinator Deborah Boyden reports that one of the first parents who visited the space in early January exclaimed, “This is the most beautiful admission office I’ve ever been in!” Boyden also notes that the faculty and alumnae book display— which visitors encounter immediately upon arriving—is generating a great deal of interest. “People have been taking down books and reading while waiting in the reception area,” she says. According to Diane Anci, dean of admission, it’s been twenty-five years since Newhall was last renovated. Over time, as the number of families visiting campus increased, more space was needed to adequately introduce families to the College. The expansion provides a larger living room and a spacious new octagonal room for the Office of Admission’s twice-daily

f the eco-reps succeed in their efforts, fewer newspapers and plastic bottles will be tossed into the trash at Mount Holyoke. Instead, recyclables will land where they belong, in recycling bins. The four ECO-reps—Kelly Ferguson ’05, Heidi Roop ’07, Alicia Murchie ’07, and Ashley Mark ’07—are charged with increasing environmental awareness on campus. Working with Nancy Apple, director of safety and environmental affairs, and representing each of the four residential quads, the ECO-reps are developing ways to help the campus community practice greater environmental

stewardship, as called for in The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2010. Because recycling is high on their list of environmental priorities, the ECO-reps entered Mount Holyoke in RecycleMania, a ten-week competition among forty-nine colleges and universities across the nation that ended April 9. Participating schools posted their recycling totals every week on the RecycleMania Web site (www. recyclemaniacs.org), and the campus with the highest recycling rate per student won a trophy as well as a halfpage spot in each school’s newspaper. At Mount Holyoke there was also an on-campus competition in which residence halls competed against each other to see which could generate the highest rate of recycling. At press time the national contest was still under way; Mount Holyoke was holding steady at ninth place. In addition to organizing Mount Holyoke’s participation in RecycleMania, the ECO-reps are developing ways to lower energy consumption in residence

halls and are working with Dining Services to reduce waste. “Their primary focus has been educating students about ways to reduce food waste and about the positive things Dining Services is doing environmentally,” says Apple. For example, a lot of students are taking meals ‘to go’ into classrooms or computer rooms. As a result we have more materials, such as bottles, that could be recycled. So we’ve been placing recycling containers at convenient locations around campus.” Dining Services also began a trial composting program in Prospect Hall in January and expanded the program to the other kitchens in March.

How Do I Procrastinate? Let Me Blog the Ways WHEN END-OF-THE-SEMESTER PAPERS AND EXAMS LOOM, PROCRASTINATION ESCALATES. As a recent article in the Mount Holyoke News shows, today’s students are taking advantage of technology to find new and effective ways to avoid studying. Here are a few of the strategies News staff shared with readers.

c Call people on your cell phone that you

haven’t talked to in three months or more and ask them extensive questions about their life and relationships.

c Reorganize your iTunes collection by rank-

ing, category, album, and date added. c Check in with Facebook and Friendster

every half hour and write comments to all of your friends. [Both are popular Websites allowing students to connect with friends and make new ones.] c Browse LiveJournal.com [an early and

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

popular blog site], start with a friend, and expand until you are checking out Dave from Alaska and the gerbil he keeps by his bed.

c Reorganize your [e-mail] inbox and vari-

ous mail folders by date received (this is especially effective if you are a neurotic senior who has saved every e-mail sent to you ever). [Reprinted with permission from Mount Holyoke News]

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campus

currents

A “New” Newhall Center for the Office of Admission

One Bottle at a Time: ECO-reps Educate Students About Recycling

I Paul Schnaittacher

c Call people on your cell phone that you

haven’t talked to in three months or more and ask them extensive questions about their life and relationships.

c Reorganize your iTunes collection by rank-

ing, category, album, and date added. c Check in with Facebook and Friendster

every half hour and write comments to all of your friends. [Both are popular Websites allowing students to connect with friends and make new ones.] c Browse LiveJournal.com [an early and

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

popular blog site], start with a friend, and expand until you are checking out Dave from Alaska and the gerbil he keeps by his bed.

c Reorganize your [e-mail] inbox and vari-

ous mail folders by date received (this is especially effective if you are a neurotic senior who has saved every e-mail sent to you ever). [Reprinted with permission from Mount Holyoke News]

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campus

CHRISTOPHER PYLE, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, AND ELEVEN STUDENTS JOINED THE CREW OF THE HMS BOUNTY during J-Term, sailing south from St. Petersburg, Florida, to the Dry Tortugas, east to Key West, and back to St. Petersburg. Alumnae Association President Susan Beers Betzer ’65, who lives in St. Pete, waved goodbye to the sailors with an MHC pennant (see p. 32). Students lived and worked as eighteenthcentury sailors did, but with a twenty-first-century twist: they maintained a running Web log, or blog, about their trip, using a satellite phone and a laptop computer. Read all about it at www.mhcbounty.blogspot.com. Pyle says the crew sailed the group out from Key West, but the students sailed the 180-foot ship back to port.

Quick Takes College Responds to Tsunami Disaster Throughout the winter and spring, members of the Mount Holyoke community have responded generously to relief efforts following the devastating tsunami in Asia. Immediately after the disaster, staff began attempting to contact students and alumnae known 6

to reside in the affected areas; there are about 150 MHC alumnae living in affected countries, as well as about seventy-five students who are citizens and/or residents of the countries. The good news is that apparently no MHC community members were among the tsunami victims. The bad news, of course, is what we have all seen on the nightly news and read about in the papers—overwhelming losses of

LITS Recognized for Excellence Students, faculty, and alumnae know what an outstanding resource MHC’s library is—and now the rest of the world does too. Library, Information, and Technology Services (LITS) has received the Excellence in Academic Libraries Award from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). The award, one of the most prestigious an academic library can receive, recognizes “academic librarians and staff who work together as a team to develop academic libraries that are outstanding in furthering the educational missions of the institutions.” LITS was cited for its “creativity and innovation in meeting the needs of their academic community, leadership www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Happy Birthday, Copper Beech In 1904, just outside Dwight Hall, botany professor and director of the Botanic Garden Asa Kinney planted a copper beech sapling to commemorate the birth of his daughter Elizabeth Tucker Kinney ’24. Last December 9 that venerable tree turned 100. Its birthday was celebrated by students, staff, and faculty at an outdoor party organized by Ellen Shukis, director of the Botanic Garden. Partygoers donned hats, feasted

Student Edge

Chris Pyle Opposite page: Paul Schnaittacher

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Unity o n t h e B o u n t y

College Responds to Faculty Exchange with China In December, the presidents of Mount Holyoke and Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) signed an agreement for a faculty exchange, after consultations between representatives of the two institutions. Faculty from BLCU will become teaching associates in Chinese at MHC, and our professors will teach in their areas of expertise. MHC professors may also arrange two-week lectureship visits. Mount Holyoke will welcome its first BLCU faculty member in September, and expects to send a professor to BLCU in May 2006 on a short lecture trip.

CLASSICS MIGHT NOT SEEM AN IDEAL MAJOR FOR AN UNDERGRADUATE planning to attend medical school. But for Katie Flachs ’06, it’s the best choice possible. Flachs, who says she has wanted a career in medicine for as long as she can remember, has been accepted into Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s highly selective Humanities and Medicine Program. Students accepted into the program are not required—and in fact are not permitted— to take MCATs, and should complete no more than one year of chemistry and biology while they are undergraduates. Instead, they are free to pursue a humanities major and, during an intensive summer program after their junior year of college, they take courses at Mount Sinai in physics, organic chemistry, and medical ethics. They also participate in daily clinical rotations, shadowing a variety of doctors. Once accepted into the program, they are guaranteed acceptance at Mount Sinai after finishing their undergraduate work. Katie first learned about the program at a meeting of SCRUBS, a Mount Holyoke organization for premed students. She applied during sophomore year and was accepted in spring 2004. “I was incredibly excited,” she says. “It’s a unique program, pretty much the only one of its kind. I like the flexibility it offers a humanities major who has a lot of different interests. I like that I can devote as much time as I want to my major.” It was a “really great” high school Latin teacher who fired Katie’s interest in classics, and she came to Mount Holyoke knowing she wanted to major in classics yet also go on to medical school. “A premed major might make more sense for a medical career,” she says, “but I was most interested in classics and knew that a liberal-arts college would be a good place for me.” The Mount Sinai program allows Katie to delve into studies that she might have to forego if she pursued a more traditional route to medical school. For example, last fall she studied abroad at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. The semester gave her the chance to explore Rome while taking courses in Roman civilization, Latin, and art history. Katie expects that Mount Sinai’s program will make her a well-rounded physician, better equipped to cope with the complexities of her patients’ needs. And her expectations are not unfounded. According to a study published in 2000 in Academic Medicine, students in the Mount Sinai program “excel in the clinical/community setting and have greatly enriched the medical-school environment. This program demonstrates that success in medical school does not depend on a traditional premed science curriculum.” Katie envisions herself working in a rural community, but the location doesn’t matter, she says. The important thing is to make a difference: “I’d like to be a general practitioner in a rural area, perhaps working with a federal or state rural health program to deliver care to people who wouldn’t otherwise have access to it.”

in developing and implementing exemplary programs that other libraries can emulate, and substantial and productive relationships with classroom faculty and students.”

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

on cake, and paused to write notes and poems to and about the tree, which was decorated with a corsage for the occasion. “I love this place,” one student said to another while leaving the party. “Only at Mount Holyoke would they hold a birthday party for a tree!” Women Can’t Do Science? Mount Holyoke College has joined other Women’s College Coalition members in running a full-page advertisement in the March 20 New York Times promoting the longstanding and ongoing success that women’s colleges have had in educating women in the sciences. Under the heading “Women Can’t Do Science?” the ad refuted the claim and saluted “our many distinguished alumnae and faculty who have made major contributions in the sciences” and students now preparing for science careers. See the ad at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu 7

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An Uncommon Route to Medical School: Classics

lives, homes, schools, and businesses. The MHC community moved quickly to offer help. Students formed MHC Collaborates, an organization working with other campus groups to channel some or all of event proceeds into aid for tsunami survivors. The group has also placed donation canisters around campus to help raise funds. In addition, Cristina Ilangakoon ’95, a native of Sri Lanka, spent several weeks during January and February traveling to hard-hit communities, assessing needs and providing funds for school supplies, clothing, and village rebuilding. The e-mail fundraising campaign she organized has raised more than $31,000.

Student Edge

Chris Pyle Opposite page: Paul Schnaittacher

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Unity o n t h e B o u n t y

in developing and implementing exemplary programs that other libraries can emulate, and substantial and productive relationships with classroom faculty and students.”

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

[ campus currents ]

An Uncommon Route to Medical School: Classics

of one of KH 15D’s two stars periodically carries it into the shadow of the ring, resulting in eclipses that now last as long as twenty-eight days. Hamilton-Drager is hoping to discover why the eclipses last so long—do their length and depth have something to do with the shape of the disk, which may be changing over time? She’s also curious about the dust particles or rocks the disk is composed of. “We think this ring could be made of large particles that are precursors to planet formation,” she says. Of course, if a planet is indeed forming, it’s not something she or any of us will witness during our lifetimes—that will take a million or more years. But in the meantime, she says, “we can map out what’s happening and utilize this system as a model for our own solar system.” Because it’s always night somewhere, one way to gather maximum information about KH 15D is to observe it from numerous locations around the world. So in 2001–2002, aided by a class of 1905 fellowship from the Alumnae Association, Hamilton-Drager visited the Max-Planck-Institüt für Astronomie in Heidelberg, Germany, and began organizing a team of scientists to gather data on KH 15D. Thanks to her efforts, the star is now being monitored from observatories in the U.S., Germany, Uzbekistan, Hungary, Spain, Israel, and Chile. Hamilton-Drager is in charge of organizing and analyzing the data on KH 15D. This October, she and nine other scientists from Harvard, Berkeley, and other institutions will present their latest findings on KH 15D at Protostars and Planets Five in Honolulu. Held every seven years, the conference brings together specialists in planets, meteors, and star formation. And while in general changes happen slowly in the night skies, for Hamilton-Drager time is of the essence—both of the orbiting stars in KH 15D are expected to pass entirely into the shadow of the ring in 2012 and remain eclipsed until approximately 2035. The prospect creates a satisfying sense of anticipation for Hamilton-Drager. Near the end of her career as an astronomer, she’ll be returning to the star from which it all began.

Brainstorms

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Top: Ben Barnhart; center: courtesy of Musicorda; bottom: courtesy of Dance Department

ONE DAY WHEN FIVE COLLEGE TEACHING FELLOW IN ASTRONOMY CATRINA HAMILTON-DRAGER ’91 was a senior in high school, her physics teacher asked his students what colleges they were applying to. When she told him she was considering studying astronomy at SUNY-Stony Brook, she was taken aback by his response. Astronomy, he said, was a male-dominated field that she’d never be successful in. Call it luck or call it fate, but a week or two later she received a flyer from Mount Holyoke. After reading it, she thought, “I’ll show him, I’ll go to Mount Holyoke.” Hamilton-Drager graduated from MHC with a special major in astrophysics and went on to earn an M.S. from Arizona State and a Ph.D. from Wesleyan. A specialist in spectroscopic and photometric observations of young, sunlike stars, this spring she’s teaching a course on spectroscopy of the planets. “It’s awesome to be back,” she says. “It’s always been my goal to come back to Mount Holyoke and teach astronomy.” Stars have fascinated Hamilton-Drager all her life. “I’ve known I wanted to be an astronomer since I was five,” she says. “I remember looking up at the night sky and being astounded by what I saw.” Since the late 1990s, when she was a graduate student at Wesleyan working with astronomer William Herbst, she’s been closely studying one star in particular, known as KH 15D. Discovered in 1998, KH 15D is unusual because it appears to “wink.” That’s because the system is actually a binary, composed of two stars orbiting a common center of mass. As a result of their formation, like many “baby” stars, they are surrounded by a circumbinary ring of material, which makes the system as a whole resemble the planet Saturn (although the ring in this case is much thicker than Saturn’s). The orbital motion

Paul Schnaittacher

Unlocking a Star’s Secrets

the MHC campus, a November dance concert featuring the first movement of Serenade, a work by renowned ballet choreographer George Balanchine. Mount Holyoke also hosted a February 18 panel, “Careers in Dance: Beyond Performance,” at which dancer/choreographer Martha Mason ’88 and other FCDD alums shared their experiences of life after the Five Colleges. Both Mason, cofounder and artistic director of the Snappy Dance Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Jelena Petrovic ’93, a performer and choreographer whose satirical dance I’m Happy That You’re Happy premiered in Amsterdam in January, were profiled in the twenty-fifth anniversary program of events. A PDF is available online at http://www. fivecolleges.edu/sites/dance/documents/ Dance_25_program.pdf.

Sports Shorts Winter Sports Wrapup Not cold nor slush nor snow could stop the Lyons this winter. The season came to an end with impressive victories. The squash team finished its season with three straight wins and took the Epps Cup (D Division) at the Howe Cup Team Championships February 18–20. The swimming and diving team broke four College records at February’s NEWMAC Championship. And the entire campus

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Catrina Hamilton-Drager ’91 is back on campus teaching a course in spectroscopy of the planets and continuing her research on young, sunlike stars.

New Director for Musicorda Musicorda founders Leopold Teraspulsky and Jacqueline Melnick have passed the baton to a new director after leading the summer music festival for nearly twenty years. Melnick, 80, and Teraspulsky, 83, founded the six-week program for violinists, violists, and cellists in 1986. Over the years it has grown to encompass the Chamber Music Institute, in which young preprofessional musicians study with masters; the Festival Series, Friday-evening concerts by faculty and other guest artists; the Young Artist Series, twice-weekly concerts by students; the Musicorda Road Company, which presents young artists at venues throughout western Massachusetts; and the Children’s String Workshop, a program for Holyoke schoolchildren. Taking the helm as artistic director is Rachel Barton Pine, an internationally recognized violinist who lives in Chicago. Pine, 29, attended Musicorda during 1987 and 1988. She has since performed with symphonies in Chicago, Saint Louis, Dallas, and Baltimore, and in 1992 was the first American and youngest performer to win the J. S. Bach International Violin Competition in Leipzig, Germany. Pine was named “classical entertainer of the year” in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Music Awards. For information on Musicorda’s 2005 season, which runs June 25–August 7, go to http://www. musicorda.org/.

Sara Belding ’05 reached the 1,000point milestone in MHC’s last game.

cheered as the basketball team ended its regular season as top seed—for the first time ever—in the NEWMAC conference. In the quarterfinals, the team defeated number-eight seed WPI 64–49 before falling to Clark. Five indoor track and field athletes qualified to compete in the ECAC championships. Senior high-jumper Jen Hawkes placed second, reaching 5’3.75”, while the distance medley relay team of Rachel Mallory ’07, Malai Tananone ’07, Halaina Demba ’08, and Meghan Lynch ’08 placed tenth in its race with a time of 13:19.78.

Still Dancing After All These Years The Five College Dance Department (FCDD), one of the largest dance departments in the country, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary during the 2004–2005 academic year. Events included alumnae and faculty concerts, a lecture by New Yorker critic Joan Acocella, a photo exhibition, and, on Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

Brainstorms

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Top: Ben Barnhart; center: courtesy of Musicorda; bottom: courtesy of Dance Department

Paul Schnaittacher

Unlocking a Star’s Secrets

[ campus currents ]

Catrina Hamilton-Drager ’91 is back on campus teaching a course in spectroscopy of the planets and continuing her research on young, sunlike stars.

Sara Belding ’05 reached the 1,000point milestone in MHC’s last game.

and What the College Is Doing About It

The ﬁrst thing you need to know about how the USA PATRIOT Act is affecting Mount Holyoke and its international students is that we don’t have the whole story. How do we know this? We found a climate of caution among most international students on campus, and some are afraid even to talk about their experiences with national-security laws. And it’s not just that students are declining interviews; they are also holding back from expressing their opinions among peers. When members of the newly formed campus American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter asked students to sign a petition supporting a Student Government Association resolution against the Patriot Act, several international students expressed interest, but would not sign, says ACLU member Shannon Hanson ’06. The international students told her they were afraid that if they signed it, the U.S. government would

Anna was supposed to be at graduate school this past fall. Instead she traveled through various countries and e-mailed me about her experiences. Anna had returned to her home country after graduation to visit her family, and subsequently was not allowed back into the United States. The reason given by a U.S. Embassy ofﬁcial was that her acceptance letter to graduate school contained “dangerous words,” which prompted a closer look at her visa application. She was told that the United States has a list of words to watch for, including “biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, recombinant DNA technology, virology ... take any elementary biology course and they are all there,” Anna said in December 2004. “Since I was accepted to the combined programs of cell biology, genetics, and molecular biology, it automatically became ‘dangerous’ ... no longer cancer research,” she said. After extensive

ﬁnd out, and “something would happen. At the moment,” says Hanson, “I can understand their fear.”

The National Picture The USA PATRIOT Act, passed in 2001 after the September 11 terrorist attacks, allows the U.S. government to ﬁnd out more information about more people than ever before, and to use that information to restrict them in a variety of ways. Immigrants and those on temporary visas (including students) are prime targets. “One paradox of many” in the current effort to increase national security is that the government is tracking international students because “they present a more stable group” than other newcomers, says Anthony Lake, former national security adviser, former MHC professor of international relations, and currently Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

Increased monitoring of students includes provisions like SEVIS—the Student Exchange Visitor Information System. This mandatory student-tracking system was proposed well before the 2001 attacks, but was pushed through in the Patriot Act. One part of SEVIS, for example, monitors at all times the number of credits an international student is taking. If a student falls below twelve credits, she can be deported. The Patriot Act was passed in a rush, and “had the burden of proof backwards,” says Lake, referring to the presumption of innocence in the U.S. justice system. Under the law, the burden of proof, Lake says, is no longer on the government. The experiences of “Anna” ’04 (we agreed not to use her real name or identify her whereabouts) illustrate how current national policies can impede international students once they leave the protected Mount Holyoke sphere.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Gregory Cherin and John Bidwell

How The Patriot Act is Affecting MHC’s International Students,

questioning, the official told Anna that the file “had to be sent to the U.S. State Department for further investigation because my acceptance letter is not clear enough [and] this is a potentially dangerous field,” Anna said. “I am afraid that if I [complain] too much about this, who knows what will happen to my visa, and I might [receive] a letter saying I am being denied entrance to the States forever,” she said. Later, Anna wrote that she had been granted another visa interview; in February, Anna was granted permission to enter the country, and she will go to graduate school after all.

On College Street Back in South Hadley, international student applications are not down; they may even be up slightly, says Jale V. Okay ’84, assistant director of admission and coordinator of international recruitment. With 347 international students, Mount

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

By Erica Winter ’92

Holyoke has the third-highest percentage (15 percent) of international students at any four-year college in the country (according to U.S. News & World Report). For most international students on campus now, the efforts of Mount Holyoke staff and alumnae have paid off. Alumnae and staff work together to keep international students interested in and applying to the College; staff keep the safety net tight once students get to campus. Many students say they have been barely touched by the current provisions. Some feel the laws are unjust nonetheless, and are very uncomfortable with being singled out. Others see the added scrutiny as a small price to pay for safety. Vesselina R. Stankova ’05 is one of many Bulgarian students at Mount Holyoke. Since she started her ﬁrst semester just before the 2001 attacks, Stankova

and What the College Is Doing About It

ﬁnd out, and “something would happen. At the moment,” says Hanson, “I can understand their fear.”

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Gregory Cherin and John Bidwell

How The Patriot Act is Affecting MHC’s International Students,

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

By Erica Winter ’92

Michele B. Patton ‘07 president of the campus ACLU chapter (left, with chapter vice president Shannon L. Hanson ‘06) holds a copy of the resolution the Student Government Association passed against the Patriot Act.

When Emma A. Kwaa ’08 came from Ghana to Mount Holyoke last September, she had to fill out a lot of forms, but had no trouble with border security. Kwaa says her parents were less concerned with the national security laws of the United States than with its reputation for street violence. Isabella Ki Yan Fung ’08 came to Mount Holyoke this past summer from Taiwan. She has a negative opinion of United States government policies and her experiences at the border. Fung had heard there would be “stepped-up security,” but had not known what that meant, she says. When she entered the United Sates, Fung was “greeted” with photographing and fingerprinting. She felt trapped by this, believing that she had no choice but to comply or go back to Taiwan. Fung, originally from Hong Kong, had been fingerprinted for her Hong Kong identification card, but that border experience felt very different, she says. The feeling she had upon arriving in the U.S., she explains, was that there was a lot going on that she

Web Extra Share Your Views on the Patriot Act and Civil Liberties Please join other Quarterly readers in a Web-based discussion on Tuesday, June 7, from 7 to 8 p.m. (Eastern time). At www. alumnae.mtholyoke.edu, you’ll ﬁnd instructions about how to participate. You must sign up in advance to receive the password for this discussion.

raises no red flags. Majors are changed once students declare them, but this is well after student visas have been approved. Money helps. The generosity of Mount Holyoke’s financial aid is a significant factor in international students’ continued desire to come to the College, no matter what concerns they might have over our national policies. Over the past five years, Mount Holyoke has given between 88 and 93 percent of international students some sort of financial help. Most of all, it’s the network. Mount Holyoke connections run far and deep. Both College staff and alumnae make an enormous commitment to international recruitment and international students’ satisfaction once they arrive. This commitment helps shield international students from the thornier sides of national policy, and continues to attract foreign students

Still, Mostly Above the Fray With international students running into some harsh national-security realities once they graduate, how is Mount Holyoke holding current international students above the floodwaters, and still convincing prospective international students that coming here is a good idea? We’re under the radar. In a strange twist, international women benefit from a U.S. government assumption that they are not as dangerous as men. A case in point is the National Security Entry/Exit Registration System (NSEERS). The program still has a provision requiring men (but not women) over sixteen years old from any of twenty-five designated countries to register with the U.S. government every time they leave or enter the country. Several current MHC students are from Pakistan or Bangladesh, two countries on that list. Also, unlike Anna, whose graduateschool application included “dangerous words,” liberal arts undergraduates have far less specific areas of study. All majors for MHC’s incoming international students are listed simply as “liberal arts,” which

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

MHC immigration specialist Jennifer Medina (left, with Denica Koycheva ‘05 of Bulgaria) says Patriot Act changes limit how long an international student can stay in the U.S. after graduation.

to a country where they may feel less than ofﬁcially welcome. Then there is Mount Holyoke’s International Recruitment Committee, current international students who send e-mails and postcards to prospective international students, and do online chats with accepted applicants.

Sometimes the connections are indirect, but no less effective. First-year student Emma Kwaa found out about Mount Holyoke from a U.S. embassy official. The official interviews Ghanaian high school students who want to come to the United States, and sends the interview reports to the schools the students are interested in attending, including Mount Holyoke. “She’s an incredible resource,” says Jale Okay. Okay also notes the network of international alumnae who interview prospective students and hold events promoting Mount Holyoke in their home countries. This “gives us visibility and credibility,” she says. “People find us through them.” International alumnae “do a lot for us,” she adds. “This really is a global network.” And it might just get us through this.

Civil Liberties in the Classroom

Paul Schnaittacher; sidebar: courtesy of Chris Pyle

could speak of the differences she has seen in traveling before and since. Stankova has experienced the same heightened security that all air travelers have. She credits MHC with her smooth sailing. “I feel we’re supported,” she says. Mount Holyoke makes sure international students know what to do when traveling, Stankova says, such as taking along an up-to-date transcript as proof of college enrollment. Overall, Stankova thinks that greater ﬂight security is worth greater scrutiny. Burcin Alici ’05 is from Turkey, and is a Muslim. While she has heard that it is harder to get a visa to study in the United States, she has not had any problems. She has noted the increased security at airports (having her picture taken at the border, for example), but says no one has treated her badly. One change that does affect her is the stricter limit on how long an international student can stay in the country after graduation. A student visa includes Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows an international student to work for up to twelve months during or after her U.S. education. Many international students save their OPT time, planning to work for a year after graduation while applying for a work visa, says Jennifer Medina, Mount Holyoke’s immigration specialist. The limit is now strictly enforced, making it harder for students to buy time to get a work visa. An international undergraduate can apply for the work visa starting in April of her senior year. However, the number of visas available was cut recently from 115,000 to 65,000. Mount Holyoke students who apply for work visas after graduating in May could be too late to win a spot, says Medina.

was not being told. “I would feel better knowing why,” she says. Fung also worries that the speed with which surveillance databases were created leaves them open to hackers. If it were Americans being ﬁngerprinted by another country, “they would complain,” she says. Fung’s objections are shared by many other students, domestic and international alike. In fact, one major effect of the Patriot Act on Mount Holyoke’s campus can be seen in the political reaction to the policy in the Student Government Association (SGA). In addition to the ACLU petition, this year there have been widespread discussions on campus about whether the SGA should pass a resolution against the Patriot Act, and whether it should weigh in on political issues at all. In a February 15 vote, the SGA decided to support the resolution against the Patriot Act with thirty-one voting yes, two no, and eight abstaining.

PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER PYLE has been teaching constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke for twenty-nine years and says these issues are “more salient today than ever.” Pyle does not formally cover the Patriot Act in his classes, but students often raise the subject. For twenty-five years, Pyle taught a privacy-rights class, but he stopped years ago because “privacy no longer exists,” he says. Several factors account for the end of privacy, he says, with the Patriot Act and similar provisions acting as the nails in the coffin. “Even before the Patriot Act stripped judges of their constitutional role in authorizing searches,” Pyle explains, “computerized data-surveillance killed the Fourth Amendment.” “The Patriot Act essentially undid my life’s work,” says Pyle, whose investigations and awardwinning articles in the early 1970s “helped end government spying on lawful political activity.” Some constitutional rights still have a fighting chance, though, and they are alive and well in Pyle’s Civil Liberties class. His current twenty-five students are examining the issues of due process, equal protection, and freedom of speech using historical and current examples. This semester, students will hear a classmate’s grandfather—Irving Feiner—speak about his experiences as part of a noted freedom-of-speech case. Feiner was criticizing the government in a speech on a street corner in Syracuse, New York, in 1949, when police arrested him “rather than restrain threatening bystanders,” says Pyle. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the arrest, saying it prevented a riot. Dissenting justices wrote that the arrest amounted to censorship of unpopular views. “Feiner’s experience will be contrasted to that of Ward Churchill, a controversial professor who was recently prevented from speaking at Hamilton College because angry opponents threatened violence if he spoke,” says Pyle. The University of Colorado professor compared 9/11 victims to Nazis, igniting nationwide debate about free speech.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

MHC immigration specialist Jennifer Medina (left, with Denica Koycheva ‘05 of Bulgaria) says Patriot Act changes limit how long an international student can stay in the U.S. after graduation.

Civil Liberties in the Classroom

Paul Schnaittacher; sidebar: courtesy of Chris Pyle

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

Snappy’s signature image shows Mason (upside down) with Jim Banta.

By Mi

ndy Ko

yanis

martha mason ’88 brings a snappy vision to dance

Lavender Leotard. The dancers shape-shift in response to their own inclinations and Mason’s directions: “What happens if you alternate the rhythm of the ﬂicker?” she asks. “I’m looking for the negative space.” Mason tilts the chair forward, while quickly gesturing with her arms to the dancers: “I don’t know if this will ‘read’ on stage unless the audience knows you’re looking in a mirror … The things that look most interesting to an audience often hurt the most on the body.”

Mason then leaves the duet to its own development while she works with two other dancers on a different vignette. Mason directs, counting out the beats as she leaps, lifts, somersaults, supports and is lifted, inverted, supported. The sequence ends with a human slide down the curves and angles of her partner’s head, neck, and spine. Mason calls out, “Let’s do it again!” Martha Mason is artistic director of Snappy Dance Theater, a dancer, arts activist, and Pilates movement practitioner. Mason embodies compact energy, and at times her dark eyes give her an expression of astonishment. Her hands and arms move in rhythm with her voice when she

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Roger Ide

i thin an ol d bri Mass ck in achu dustr s e t ial bu t Mart s, in ha M ildin a stu g in C dio a . Mas s on ’8 ambr warm 8 idge, culti as an Her back to a vates i n c ubato move mirrored wall, Mason r, me n t coaches two dancers interpretinto d ance. ing an illustration from Edward Gorey’s The

becomes engaged in conversation. Dance critic Theodore Bale says, “On stage Mason is glamorous, elegant, sexy, but there is always a side that is powerfully expressive.” The insight that penetrates the dancing also influences how Mason manages the company in collaboration with her husband, Jürgen Weiss, Snappy’s executive director. Audiences are responding to Snappy’s spark. The three-man, four-woman company was selected to cap the 2003–04 Bank of America Celebrity Series; was named best contemporary dance company in the 2004 Boston Phoenix readers’ poll; was one of three American companies invited to perform at a Tokyo festival last year; and has been invited to the Open Look Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, this year. At home, Snappy is distinctive for its frequent performances and community and educational outreach. The group performs in schools through its “Snappy4kids” and “Physics Is a Snap” programs, and invites comments and ideas from the public through works-in-progress performances. Mason also exercises her collaborative impulse by dreaming big for the New England dance scene as a whole. When Dance Umbrella, the primary producer of contemporary dance in New England, folded in 2001, Mason called a community meeting to find new ways of promoting dance and dancers. Mason dared to ask, “Will we fly or fold?” In a time of plummeting financial resources and waning community support, she took a leap of faith, choosing larger performance venues and increasing the number of performances. She also launched a drive to “go pro,” hoping to make her company self-supporting through performances and touring while paying members adequate salaries. Mason says, “Snappy has the potential to be a big fish in a small pond, but [we want] the power to grow the pond so others can grow too. The vision is not of Snappy as the only company in the state to be fully salaried, but as one of many such companies that will bring recognition to dance in Boston and Massachusetts.” With her eyes on that big picture, Mason also must focus on each piece in Snappy’s repertoire. The company explores life’s irony on the border between tragedy and comedy. While seemingly lighthearted, Snappy’s work often has elements that evoke powerful and at times unsettling images, such as a pas de deux of ghosts dancing with their own tombstones. This kind of expressive freedom is a long way from Mason’s early dance training in classical ballet, which focuses on all dancers looking the same and performing identical moves. By age sixteen, she was exploring the dimensions offered by modern dance. Mason choreographed her first work then, finding choreography a compelling channel for creative expression.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

At Mount Holyoke, where she majored in dance and French, Mason says Jim Coleman and Terese Freedman gave her a clear sense of anatomy and functional movement that has informed her dance, choreography, and Pilates practice ever since. As the first MHC undergraduate to create a full-length dance performance as an honors thesis, Mason also developed a versatile, hands-on approach to all elements of dance and production. After graduating, Mason returned to Paris, where she’d spent her junior year, to dance professionally with Companie Richard Mouradian. When her money and visa ran out, Mason moved to New York City and embarked on a classic artist’s life of waiting tables between taking dance classes and performing in regional touring and off-Broadway productions. The demanding schedule took its toll; at twenty-four, Mason suffered a severe knee injury that forced her to take a year off as a “dancer on hold” and work a routine nine-tofive office job. To rehabilitate her knee, Mason began to study the Pilates method of balancing body and mind. This interest developed into her own practice as a certified Pilates instructor, practitioner, and master trainer. That year proved a turning point, and Mason emerged convinced that her work had to align with her creative impulses and vision. Workshops she took with the innovative movement company Pilobolus inspired Mason and a founding partner to start their own collaborative choreographic process with Snappy in 1996. As a solo choreographer, Mason found that what one person imagines takes different forms as a movement is interpreted by different bodies. Saying she would get bored using only her own ideas when designing and executing movement, Mason welcomes creative interaction with her dancers. She talks about collaborative choreography as a negotiation without limits. The dancers are her sounding board, and they brainstorm as a group. “The magic happens when the end result is something that everybody—and nobody—thought of.” The magic is visible back at Green Street Studios. In the duet, the dancers’ bodies arc in unison, a single arm in back moving like a pendulum. Mason’s gaze takes in the shape, the effect, the interaction between the static and the dynamic. Then Mason jumps up to demonstrate the next move. With one foot grounded, one stretched along the strong base of another dancer’s body, and her arms outstretched, the energy passes from the floor, through the bodies, and out through the skylights.

Snappy’s signature image shows Mason (upside down) with Jim Banta.

By Mi

ndy Ko

yanis

martha mason ’88 brings a snappy vision to dance

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Roger Ide

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

LIFE HISTORIES The Power of Biography By Maryann Teale Snell ’86

With our fragmented lives yanking us in all directions, it’s a wonder that a book two or three inches thick can still entice us. But such is the appeal of storytelling—and it’s not limited to novels. Personal histories too have a way of rousing our imagination, making us feel “gloriously

Illustrations by John Bidwell

alive,” as Mount Holyoke history professor Carole E. Straw puts it.

In an ideal world, biographers could speak directly with their subjects. Here, English professor Chris Benfey www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu “interviews” painter Edgar Degas.

Biographies are “flourishing, and I think it’s because we have exyou inquire into their lives.” But Benfey, who’s also written cellent historians writing them.”(See p.19 for a sampling.) Straw about Emily Dickinson and Edgar Degas, looks instead for those has written one herself, as have a number of Mount Holyoke who are “puzzling, peculiar, difficult, secretive … people who professors and alumnae. Topping the list of high-visibility MHC destroy their letters and avoid photographers.” biographers is Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Writer Nina Petrovskaya intrigued Catherine LeGouis Joseph J. Ellis (history) who recently penned another New York (French) “because she incarnated Russian decadence but Times best-seller: His Excellency: George Washington. later became its victim. Also, she was at the center of one Judging by the heaps of biographies in bookstores, the genre of the most intriguing love triangles of her period.” Larry is popular and likely to stay that way—for the simple reason that Fine (Jewish studies) says he’s “quite attracted to the lives of humans are, by nature, nosy. We have “an mystics”—which inspired his fascinaendless fascination with trying to undertion with sixteenth-century mystic Isaac stand what makes people tick,” says retired Luria, known for his “unusual capacity professor Eugenia W. Herbert (history), coauto commune with the souls of departed “You wrestle in the thor of a book on Benjamin Franklin. prophets and sages.” arena against the lions, “People read biographies not merely to Biographers do “tend to write about be voyeurs, but to be elevated,” surmises people with whom they identify,” suggests just as your subject author Pam Moore Proctor ’67. “They Karen Sasha Anthony Tipper ’63. When rewant to glean, from the famous and notsearching Lady Jane Wilde (Oscar’s mother), does”—whether you’re so-famous, secrets that will ennoble their she “very much empathized with many of own lives and perhaps teach them how to her views,” Tipper says. Leah B. Glasser reading a biography or live life more fully.” Indeed, a well-crafted (English) at first looked to writer Mary biography can offer a near total-immersion Wilkins Freeman “to satisfy my definition writing one. experience. While being transported in of writing as a form of self-affirmation.” But time and place, we can compare and conthe more Glasser read, the more she discovtrast the subject’s ordeals and adventures ered Freeman’s complexities—“her conflicts, with our own, imagining how we’d measure up. “It’s something for example, between self-fulfillment and self-sacrifice.” Ultimateof a vicarious trial,” comments Straw. “You wrestle in the arena ly, this duality, “which found expression both in her life choices against the lions, just as your subject does”—whether you’re and in her fictive themes,” is what appealed to Glasser most. reading a biography or writing one. Personal knowledge of a subject inspires biographers too. Mary Ann Quarles Sanders ’47 had known Edna Mahan—who Why They Write “fought for women’s issues in the American Correctional AsFor writers, the allure of piecing together someone else’s persociation and became the leading name in corrections in New sonal history is varied. “It is often assumed that biographers are Jersey”—since she was five years old (Sanders’s mother was drawn to subjects who left big paper trails, kept diaries, wrote on the board of the New Jersey Reformatory). Pam Proctor every day to their mothers,” says Christopher Benfey (English), has collaborated on a number of celebrity autobiographies author of a book on Stephen Crane. “They answer back when and memoirs, including one about her friend Anh Vu Sawyer,

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

LIFE HISTORIES The Power of Biography By Maryann Teale Snell ’86

Illustrations by John Bidwell

alive,” as Mount Holyoke history professor Carole E. Straw puts it.

In an ideal world, biographers could speak directly with their subjects. Here, English professor Chris Benfey www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu “interviews” painter Edgar Degas.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

a Vietnam refugee who made a harrowing escape from Saigon. “Her passion and transparency inspired me,” Proctor explains. “What I hoped would draw people was the power of one woman’s faith.”

A Daunting Task It’s a biographer’s business to track down every microdetail of a person’s life and then condense the minutiae into something readable. In writing about Ben Franklin’s family life, Herbert says she and her coauthor “wanted to satisfy Franklin experts, but above all, we wanted a book that would be enjoyable to a more general audience.” In Fine’s case, his subject’s teachings were so “complex and abstruse, employing the most elaborate and technical language,” that “making sense of it all was exceptionally challenging,” he admits. “Encapsulating a life is always daunting, even when you have 600 pages to fill,” says Elizabeth Bashore Brayer ’54. By the time her editors had picked over her biography of Kodak magnate George Eastman, she says, there were enough leftover quotes and photos for another whole book. At the other extreme, finding details sometimes requires extensive digging. LeGouis says her subject “reinvented herself completely” at age twenty, and material on her early life has been hard to find. Gary Steigerwalt (music) found a dearth of personal correspondence when researching pianist and composer Helen Hopekirk. “To the annoyance of her future biographers, she had not been a packrat,” he says dryly. But over time he has turned up nearly 150 letters she wrote, as well as personal information “from an astonishing array of individuals.” Proctor says that in her experience, “There were so many unknowns.” She tracked down answers by “doing endless interviews and digging deep into historical sources.” The details, she says, “were part of a giant puzzle” she had to piece together. Susan

History professor Joseph Ellis “interviewing” his biographical quarries, Washington and Jefferson.

WHOSE LIFE IS IT?

Horowitz Nagel ’76 relished the digging. Scouring the letters, daily diary entries, and schoolbooks of Countess Mary Nisbet made her feel like Nancy Drew, she says. “I woke up every morning and couldn’t wait to solve the next part of the mystery.” In writing her political biography of Dolley Madison, Catherine A. Allgor FP’92 was not surprised to find a mountain of information. As is true with most key historical figures, “everything has been seen—and possibly even quoted—somewhere else.” The challenge, she says, was not in “finding a trunkful of papers no one else has seen” but in “re-visioning material that’s been out there for a while.”

A Sampling of Biographical Works by MHC Faculty and Alumnae Catherine A. Allgor FP’92 (history, University of California-Riverside) The Last of the Founders: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Henry Holt, forthcoming in 2006) Christopher Benfey (English, MHC) The Double Life of Stephen Crane (Knopf, 1992); Degas in New Orleans (University of California Press, 1999)

To Reveal or Not As any biographer gets to know a subject well (often referring to him or her simply by initials), the question arises of how to address not only the favorable details of the person’s life, but also the bad and ugly. “Most lives do have a bit of scandal in them, if you look for it,” notes Herbert. “We live in a confessional age,” adds Proctor. “Every reader wants the subject to spill her guts, so that we might partake of her experience at a visceral level.” Some authors suggest their subjects wouldn’t want anything less. Says LeGouis, “Nina Petrovskaya never sought to avoid scandal, so toning down that aspect of her life would be a form of betrayal. She was much more committed to living out her chosen persona than to reticence or modesty.” Steigerwalt found some raging letters from Helen Hopekirk. “I debated whether or not to include her most sarcastic words,” he says, before realizing “they presented a side of her … not revealed in other materials.” Despite seeing medieval pope Gregory the Great as “a remarkably good guy,” Carole Straw was disappointed to learn that he could also be “punitive, harsh, and vindictive” and sometimes exhibited a “truly contemptible” pettiness. However, “suppression of evidence that contravenes one’s argument is a cardinal sin for historians,” she says. “Someone who does that is not a historian, but a novelist.” “My job,” says Nagel, “was to be the messenger of truth. So I told the whole story”—including how Mary Nisbet endured a high-proﬁle divorce, had her children taken from her, and “went down in the annals of British history as an adulteress.” Karen Tipper’s chronicle of the Wildes, too, was not without its blemishes; “I tried to write about them objectively,” she says. Allgor, meanwhile, uncovered “a rather interesting episode of insider trading.” She also thought she’d happened upon “a James Madison love child. But the evidence is very sketchy,” she says. “I refer to it, but it’s very mitigated.” “Alas,” Herbert reveals, “the scurrilous stories circulated by Ben Franklin’s political enemies” were unsubstantiated. “Not that he probably didn’t have liaisons; but he was a very cagey fellow and knew how to cover his tracks.” Brayer says people always ask whether George Eastman was gay and why he committed suicide. Even after seventeen years of research, it was impossible for me to answer either question unequivocally,” she notes. “I ignored the most outrageous rumors—and there were many—but tried not to omit any that were not wholly speculative. He was such a private person that I’m not sure even his best friends knew him very well.”

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Historian Catherine Allgor notes Dolley Madison’s achievements.

What It Takes In the end, what does it take to write someone else’s life story? “You must be flexible, open-minded, judicious, and fair,” says Straw. Patience, stamina, and motivation are key. And then, biographers admit, there’s “obsession”—a thorough understanding of what makes their subject tick. This, says Proctor, enables an author to tell a story “with authority and passion.” Adds Straw, “Empathy is a sine qua non. If you cannot connect with your subject and understand how and why he acts, you are lost.” Also, says Allgor, “You need to have a compulsive eye for detail—but then you need to resist it and see the big picture. You’re constantly answering the question, ‘So what—why is this important?’ That’s why I love the way Joe Ellis writes. He’s described his approach as ‘landing the plane’: he looks over a time period or a person’s life from a distance, like in a plane. And every so often he lands the plane, we get out, we look around. Then we get back in the plane and go up.” Researching another’s life so deeply can—and often does— have a lasting influence on a writer’s own perspective. As Frank W. Brownlow (English) observes, “Biographical writing takes one out of oneself, if it’s any good at all, and brings other ways of thinking, seeing, and feeling into one’s life.” Straw “learned so many lessons” from her subject “that it would be otiose to catalogue them all,” she says. In the writing process there’s “an interesting intersection of biography and autobiography,” notes Glasser. “Any biographer, whether claiming to be ‘objective’ or not, must come to terms with the psychology of the peculiar relationship that forms between biographer and subject. Often it is full of conflict and ambiguity.” And, as Benfey asks, “What is biography, finally, but an admission that truly we are puzzles to one another, and cannot ever be entirely solved?” Maryann Teale Snell is a writer and editor in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

Elizabeth Bashore Brayer ’54 (journalist/author) George Eastman: A Biography (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) Joseph J. Ellis (history, MHC) His Excellency: George Washington (Knopf, 2004) American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (Knopf, 1997); Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (W. W. Norton, 1993) Larry Fine (Jewish studies, MHC) Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford University Press, 2003) Leah Blatt Glasser (English, dean of ﬁrst-year class, MHC) In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (University of Massachusetts Press, 1996) Eugenia W. Herbert (history–emerita, MHC) The Private Franklin: The Man and His Family (W. W. Norton, 1985) Catherine LeGouis (French, MHC) Russian decadent writer Nina Petrovskaya (in progress) Susan Horowitz Nagel ’76 (humanities, Marymount Manhattan College) Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin (William Morrow, 2004) Pam (Priscilla) Moore Proctor ’67 (president, College Applications Consultants) Song of Saigon: One Woman’s Journey to Freedom (Warner Faith, 2003) Mary Ann Quarles Sanders ’47 (sociology–emerita, Rhode Island College) Excellent Effect: The Edna Mahan Story (American Correctional Association, 1994) Gary Steigerwalt (music, MHC) Pianist and composer Helen Hopekirk (in progress) Carole E. Straw (history, MHC) Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (University of California Press, 1988) Karen Sasha Anthony Tipper ’63 (English, Nichols College) A Critical Biography of Lady Jane Wilde, 1821?– 1896, Irish Revolutionist, Humanist, Scholar and Poet (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002)

a Vietnam refugee who made a harrowing escape from Saigon. “Her passion and transparency inspired me,” Proctor explains. “What I hoped would draw people was the power of one woman’s faith.”

History professor Joseph Ellis “interviewing” his biographical quarries, Washington and Jefferson.

WHOSE LIFE IS IT?

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Historian Catherine Allgor notes Dolley Madison’s achievements.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

Paul Schnaittacher

BY MO

LLYE M

AXNER

FP’05

This ess ay was the ﬁrstin the Q prize w uarterly inner ’s 2004 Seventy essay c -nine M o n test. HC alum and fac nae, stu ulty sub d e m nts, itted wo about a rk tellin pivotal g us educati ence th onal ex at chan periged the by runn ir life. E ers-up A s s ays b igail Se ’96 and cord Fle Lisa A. m S ing z efel ’88 at www are onli .alumna n e e .mtholy essay. P oke.edu lease se /go/ e p. 3 fo about e r inform ntering ation the 2005 essay c ontest.

E.J., I’ve never seen you, except for a picture on the Internet of you in your army uniform. You’re slightly slumped back, your dark hair askew. Though I’m writing to you , I’ll never meet you. You’ve been dead for thir ty-four years; I’m only twenty-nine. But I think of you every day. I’m writing to tell you that in 2002, thirty-three years after your death, an unlikely conversation commenced between our fathers. I hope this is OK. I hop e it’s what you’d have wanted. On June 8, 1969, you met my father in Vietnam. In a single conversation with no records of your past, my father, a medic sometimes ordered to make psychological eva luations, was ordered to judge your ﬁtness for duty. You said you didn’t know where you wer e, or how you got there; you wanted to go hom e. My father said everyone wanted to go hom e from this terribly crazy war, but that, like the rest of the young recruits fresh from train ing in the

Photo taken by Mollye Maxner’s father during his time in Vietnam

Y TIN S ION T C A

U.S., you’d adjust. You’d only been in Vietnam three weeks. It would just take time. He sent you back out to duty. That night in the guard post, you took your own life. Night. Life is a spinning wheel. A single cog is shot into the flow; the wheel is splintered into pieces. What will be woven from the threads spun of this broken wheel? In 1968 my father left his pregnant wife to go to Vietnam. He went, believing in God, humanity, and government. He returned a year later with those beliefs shattered. My father also left for Vietnam believing in himself; he returned with irreconcilable shame and pain too big for one man to carry. Night. Your limp body is brought into the medical aid station. My father knows he missed something, something big…Time cannot reverse. He doesn’t cry. He forgets your name. In 1969 your father received a frightening letter from you and immediately wrote to the army, asking that they please check up on you, his son, to be sure you were OK. He didn’t know that immediately was already too late; you had killed yourself the night before on a skinny peninsula across the world. Night. Your father sits to write to you, still not knowing of your death. In the middle of his second sentence, after the word “nothing,” an officer knocks. Pen in hand, letter unfinished, your father knows he’s too late—that you’re gone. In the fall of 2002, my father asked if I could possibly find your name. I said I’d try; inside I knew the request was absurd. I didn’t know how to find the name of a nineteen-year-old boy who died in a jungle across the world, a name my father had forgotten. How do you find a forgotten name? But I holed myself up in a tiny apartment in D.C., and took to the winding paths of the Internet. Through a grace beyond chance, I found you. I found your name. I gave it to my father. Night. My father, a man I have never seen cry, breaks open, a rubbing of your name in his hands. His twenty-sevenyear-old self smashes into his sixty-year-

old self, cracking a pain lodged in him thirty-three Junes ago. I sit shaking by his side as he screams, fists clenched, face crimson. I found your name. I gave it to my father. Night. We contact your father, who just happened to post a remembrance to you on a Wall Website three weeks before I looked for you. Were we all looking for each other? Your father responds to us with these words: “I’ve been waiting thirtythree years for some clarity about the death of my son.” Did you die in action as the first telegram indicated, or did you die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, as a second telegram revealed? A conversation commences to piece together your story. We open hibernating wounds, in hope of finding peace from their relentless grip. Finding your name was a heartrending gift to my father and to yours. I didn’t know that it would also be a gift to me. I thought I was somehow just an observer of the torrential wave of your painful history. But sometimes learning is a rogue storm spawned in the depths of an unknown sea. Night—I sit with your military records, your letters, your father’s letters to you—and I break. Yes, the attempt to comprehend the injustices done to you by the army is excruciating. But it is something else, something much smaller, that shatters my very foundation of self. I don’t know how to hold the powerlessness of our tiny human actions, in the face of the gargantuan motions of government and policy and military maneuvering. I don’t know how to believe in life when life includes a letter written two days too late by a man to his already dead son. I don’t know how to stand up from this chair when in my hands I hold a copy of his letter to you, a letter arrested mid-sentence, stopped by a knock at the door. For the first time I am afraid—afraid of drowning in the watery depths of an absurd humiliation of human powerlessness. I feel myself falling—falling from the weightlessness of our tiny human actions. E.J., for almost three weeks I was caught between the weight and weightlessness of your story. But inside me,

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

e wa s m a n r you Finding nding gift to t-re urs. I o y a hear o t er a n d h t a o u ld f w y t i m t a now th k t ’ . n d i d t to me f i g a also be

the storm of learning was raging. As my heart was tearing apart, I was grasping something that would change my life forever: for each tiny action wedded to regret, there are ten or a hundred that create the light of hope. E.J., finding your name was the tiniest of actions, but the powerful reverberations within our families are extraordinary. What has been woven from the threads of a splintered wheel, threads of two fathers unknowingly brought together through your death? An indescribable tapestry of their courage to face pain, sadness, guilt, and anger with honesty, heartbreaking vulnerability, and unending kindness. I am honored to know these men. My father says that if he sees you in heaven, he’ll ask your forgiveness. Your father has forgiven my father. I hope that they are both able, someday, to forgive themselves. E.J., living so close to your story has changed me. I believe the tiny actions make life worth living: in the tiny actions lives our humanity. Mollye Maxner FP’05, a native of Northampton, Massachusetts, is majoring in choreography and playwriting. She is the artistic director of Chimaera Physical Theater and a founding member of the IRIS Ensemble. After graduation, Mollye will continue to develop her movementperformance work, pursuing tours to theater festivals in Macau, Taiwan, Turkey, and elsewhere. 21

Paul Schnaittacher

BY MO

LLYE M

AXNER

FP’05

Photo taken by Mollye Maxner’s father during his time in Vietnam

Y TIN S ION T C A

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

e wa s m a n r you Finding nding gift to t-re urs. I o y a hear o t er a n d h t a o u ld f w y t i m t a now th k t ’ . n d i d t to me f i g a also be

2005 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Mount Holyoke women have thousands of talents and experiences that no one, not even their friends, knows all about.

SEVEN DAYS & SEVEN NIGHTS A WEEK WITH MHC STUDENTS 3PHOTOS BY ERIN BECKWITH '06 TEXT BY ELIZABETH M. O’GRADY ’06

9 During a typical week, a Mount Holyoke student must wear

many different costumes. Like an understudy in a play, she studies all her parts to be prepared for the next seven days, constantly hoping that she will be able to keep her roles straight. She is always rushing, multitasking, forever busy, and forever attempting to maintain some order in her life. She may fall asleep on Sunday night as a Mount Holyoke woman and wake up Monday morning a Five College student, a singular, foreign, and unique voice in the classrooms of UMass or Amherst. On Tuesday, she may be a scientist, experimenting with test tubes in molecular biology. When she steps out of Carr Laboratory at four o’clock, she is a singer: a member of the Glee Club or one of the popular campus a cappella groups. At 9:30 that night, she’s transformed into a food critic, wondering with her friends who decided that a saltine could be a cookie at M&Cs. By Wednesday, is she a hard-working, sleep-deprived student, spending her night in the dark, espresso-scented recesses of the library? Or is she a highly experienced procrastinator, discussing movies, politics, men, or women with her floormates? Maybe she will demonstrate for them a few moves from her African dance class in the middle of the hallway. Her floormates can be amazing mysteries. Mount Holyoke women have thousands of talents and experiences that no one, not even their friends, knows all about. These moments in the hallway or the bathroom when she finds out the quiet girl who lives next door is a national squash champion or a published writer are highlights of the Mount Holyoke experience. On this particular Thursday, she hands out information on Transgendered Awareness Week or Voices for Planned Parenthood in Blanchard, then rushes across campus for a ride on the stationary bikes in Kendall to exercise off the pent-up aggression from a debate in her Existentialism class that morning.

1 In a science lab, Leszek Bledzki demonstrates how to monitor water quality in preparation for field work.

5 Mind and body development meet as Dru MacGregor ’07 works out on the Stairmaster in Kendall sports complex.

2 Riding the PVTA bus that connects five area campuses

6 Emily Hoering ’08 discovers a present from her sophomore “elf.”

3 Relaxing in North Mandelle’s rec room after a long, lively day

7 Students chat with one another and a professor between classes at the crossroads outside Clapp Laboratory.

4 Posing, pre-party, in Las Vegas Night finery at 1837 Hall

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

2005 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Mount Holyoke women have thousands of talents and experiences that no one, not even their friends, knows all about.

SEVEN DAYS & SEVEN NIGHTS A WEEK WITH MHC STUDENTS 3PHOTOS BY ERIN BECKWITH '06 TEXT BY ELIZABETH M. O’GRADY ’06

9 During a typical week, a Mount Holyoke student must wear

1 In a science lab, Leszek Bledzki demonstrates how to monitor water quality in preparation for field work.

5 Mind and body development meet as Dru MacGregor ’07 works out on the Stairmaster in Kendall sports complex.

2 Riding the PVTA bus that connects five area campuses

6 Emily Hoering ’08 discovers a present from her sophomore “elf.”

3 Relaxing in North Mandelle’s rec room after a long, lively day

7 Students chat with one another and a professor between classes at the crossroads outside Clapp Laboratory.

4 Posing, pre-party, in Las Vegas Night finery at 1837 Hall

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

2005 T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 S M

… she puts all her other roles to rest and attempts to relax before the next week begins.

By Friday, she is tired. Yet she rejoices that the weekend is here over “blazin’ cod nuggets” or “chicken fryz” at dinner. And as she eats by the lake at Prospect Hall, she feeds the ducks even though she knows she shouldn’t; she is a rebel, too. She hops on the PVTA bus to escape South Hadley to the far-off lands of Northampton and Amherst, or maybe she watches a movie with friends, or stakes out a free place in the Williston Library. Or perhaps this weekend she will put the books aside and shed the jeans, pajamas, or riding pants for feathers, jewels, or pinstripes and gamble the night away at Las Vegas Night, the Mount Holyoke student’s one major outlet for vice, corruption, and some serious dancing. But for right now, on this Friday night, she puts all her other roles to rest and attempts to relax before the next week begins. 3 On one ethereal afternoon, as she walks toward the academic green where the sidewalks converge, she smiles at a classmate or a professor who has changed her perceptions of gender or taught her to eradicate the word “interesting” from her vocabulary, or maybe greets someone she has never met. This convergence reminds her of that moment when she realized she can relate her knowledge from today’s American history lecture to the lecture in geography, that her roommate from Hawaii listened to Ace of Base in sixth grade too, and that no matter how different every student at Mount Holyoke is, each woman understands her stress or elation because she has her own collection of costumes and her own lines to memorize.

2 1 Remember the “joys” of communal bathrooms? 2 Anneliese Lilienthal ’05 (front) and others research in the library’s reading room. 3 Students enjoy lakeside seating during lunch outside Prospect Hall. Ducks often beg for food nearby.

5 9 4 A cappella groups, including Nice Shoes, sing at Friends and Family Weekend. 5 With nothing clean to wear, Jennifer Leahy ’05 confronts her laundry. 6 Students and their guests take a ﬂutter during Las Vegas Night. 7 Birth control and sexual health information on display during a big party night 8 A typical dorm hallway—scattered with stuff, streaming with light, and has seen it all.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

9 Dorm doors provide shorthand introductions to each room’s occupants.

2005 T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 S M

… she puts all her other roles to rest and attempts to relax before the next week begins.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

9 Dorm doors provide shorthand introductions to each room’s occupants.

matters

a solid foundation and that more than 30,000 alumnae have the potential to form an even more powerful global network—especially when they are eager to stay connected to one another and to the College. To support and serve this vibrant and growing group, the Alumnae Association has rewritten its mission statement and completed a new strategic plan. The mission statement and strategic plan reflect goals and objectives critical to enhancing institutional vitality. The plan articulates the nature of the Alumnae Association’s independence as making it possible to communicate in the open, holistic tradition of the liberal arts. It also spells out the Association’s desire to be a strong collaborative partner with the College. At the core of the strategic plan is the determination to achieve the dream of becoming a world-class alumnae association.

UPDATES FROM THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

Here’s Where We’re Headed: Our New Strategic Plan to Serve You

—Susan Beers Betzer ’65

Mission Statement The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College is an independent organization that serves a worldwide network of diverse individuals, cultivates and celebrates vibrant connections among all alumnae, fosters lifelong learning in the liberal arts tradition, and facilitates opportunities for alumnae to advance the goals and values of the College. Vision Statement Relaunch the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College as a world-class organization that is valuable, visible, relevant, and inclusive.

Strengthening Our Network: Strategic Plan 2005–2010 History/Background In 1838, not yet one full year after the founding of the Mount Holyoke Seminary, Mary Lyon founded the Memorandum Society for graduates of the seminary. The Memorandum Society, foremother of the Alumnae Association, was created by Mary Lyon because of her “concern for the future well being and stimulation of her students” and “to develop group solidarity.” Mary Lyon suggested that the goals of the Memorandum Society should be to obtain and perpetuate facts about its members, to increase the facility for improvement of its members,

and to print and disseminate a catalogue of all members every five years. The establishment of the Alumnae Association in 1872 sought to promote the prosperity of the Mount Holyoke Seminary and to bring together in social reunion all members of the seminary. Today, the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College attempts to meet all of these goals. The Alumnae Association is dedicated to serving the needs of alumnae and assisting alumnae in their desire to continue to serve the College. As we plan for the future of the Alumnae Association, we recognize that we build on

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

GOAL I. Alumnae Connections: Serving a Global Network Develop the Association into an integrated global organization, ensuring that core benefits are accessible to alumnae around the world. g

Integrate the global perspective in every Association initiative Through an active awareness-building campaign, clearly define membership

Continue to improve communications and connections to and among alumnae worldwide Ensure that the Alumnae Association is a welcoming and inclusive organization for all alumnae Enhance career networking and lifeexperience networking and provide alumnae with easy and effective access to each other and to Association services

assist the College by offering their intellectual capital and skills GOAL II. The Alumnae Association and the College: Forging a Powerful Partnership Actively identify and develop initiatives that enhance our working relationship and build new partnership opportunities. g

g g

Build new strategies for connecting international alumnae g

Develop the technological infrastructure and maintain the information necessary to provide alumnae with active, global, and around-theclock connections. g

Goals I. Alumnae Connections: Serving a Global Network II. The Alumnae Association and the College: Forging a Powerful Partnership III. Campus-wide Collaborations: Linking to Students, Faculty, and Administrators IV. Effective Board Governance Achieving Strategic Goals

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I am absolutely delighted to present to you the Alumnae Association’s new strategic plan, “Strengthening Our Network: Strategic Plan 2005–2010.” This initiative—developed with much reflection, input, and participation from alumnae and the Association’s board of directors and Strategic Planning Committee—represents the goals, hopes, and dreams of the Association. Answering the important questions of “Who are we?” and “Who do we want to be?” this plan offers great opportunities for us to relaunch the Association as a worldclass organization that is both an independent entity serving alumnae and a strong collaborative partner with the College. Our executive director, W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, and I hope that you will take a few moments to read through the plan and join us in enthusiastically supporting the goals it puts forth as we move forward to achieve its vision and to continue strengthening our network.

benefits to alumnae and current students and articulate the value of maintaining a relationship with the Alumnae Association and the College

Continue to collect and maintain accurate biographical information on all alumnae Build a dynamic Online Community by adding new services and improving and promoting current services for alumnae and students Update technology for more effective support of strategic plan objectives Support and encourage staff training

Use the Internet and staff resources to support more effectively the work of Alumnae Association club, class, and committee volunteers

Research technologies needed to support online academic programs

Establish strong faculty liaison connections

Explore distance-learning opportunities

Work with the College to create a streamlined process for encouraging alumnae to

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

Advance the goals of the College and the Alumnae Association through collaborative initiatives Work with the College to translate today’s Mount Holyoke College to alumnae Build visibility and reinforce Mount Holyoke’s distinctive strengths Develop and share with the College knowledge about the worldwide alumnae community

GOAL III. Campus-wide Collaborations: Linking to Students, Faculty, and Administrators Provide current students, faculty, and administrators with a strong and rewarding relationship with the Association by informing them of the benefits available to them and by creating opportunities for students to experience those benefits while still on campus. g

Use the Internet (e-mail, Web) effectively to communicate and support transactions with a worldwide alumnae body

Foster opportunities for alumnae to participate in lifelong learning, both on and off campus and online. g

Increase alumnae awareness of and participation in important College programs

Develop strong and effective networks among alumnae, students, administrators, and faculty through on-campus or Web-based programs that add value for each constituent Create targeted communication plans for each group to increase awareness of the Alumnae Association and services available to that group Extend selective access to the Online Community to current students and encourage their participation Continue to work closely with the SGA Alumnae Student Advisory Committee to strengthen Alumnae Association programming for current students Cultivate relationships with faculty that lead to the creation of programs reflective of the campus’s intellectual vibrancy

[ alumnae matters ]

alumnae

matters

UPDATES FROM THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

Here’s Where We’re Headed: Our New Strategic Plan to Serve You

—Susan Beers Betzer ’65

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

GOAL I. Alumnae Connections: Serving a Global Network Develop the Association into an integrated global organization, ensuring that core benefits are accessible to alumnae around the world. g

Integrate the global perspective in every Association initiative Through an active awareness-building campaign, clearly define membership

g g

Build new strategies for connecting international alumnae g

Develop the technological infrastructure and maintain the information necessary to provide alumnae with active, global, and around-theclock connections. g

Getty Images

benefits to alumnae and current students and articulate the value of maintaining a relationship with the Alumnae Association and the College

Use the Internet and staff resources to support more effectively the work of Alumnae Association club, class, and committee volunteers

Research technologies needed to support online academic programs

Establish strong faculty liaison connections

Explore distance-learning opportunities

Work with the College to create a streamlined process for encouraging alumnae to

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

Use the Internet (e-mail, Web) effectively to communicate and support transactions with a worldwide alumnae body

Foster opportunities for alumnae to participate in lifelong learning, both on and off campus and online. g

Increase alumnae awareness of and participation in important College programs

[ alumnae matters ]

alumnae

Nominees for Alumnae Association Directors, Committee Members, and Committee Chairs

This year's Mary Lyon Awards went to Blossom Damania '92 (left) and Jennifer L. Rochlis '94.

The Nominating Committee of the Alumnae Association is pleased to announce the following slate of directors and committee members for election at the May 21 annual meeting. All terms are for three years, beginning July 1.

GOAL IV. Effective Board Governance: Achieving Strategic Goals Organize the Association’s structure, staff, and volunteer workers to meet the needs and priorities of the Alumnae Association and its members. g

Support Alumnae Association staff and volunteers in their endeavors to meet our strategic goals

Board of Directors Clerk Sandra A. Mallalieu ’91, North Reading, Mass., class agent, reunion gift caller; Boston North Shore Club—president, admission representative, Book Award chair; associate director, Harvard University Business School

Develop funding strategies to increase the Alumnae Association’s Founder’s Fund endowment Configure the board structure to align with emerging needs Continue to review annually the Joint Agreement between the College and the Association

Director-at-Large Maureen McHale Hood ’87, Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Club—president, program chair, newsletter/directory editor and assistant admission rep.; class of ’87—class agent, reunion gift caller, reunion welcome and hospitality chair; MBA, Georgetown University; marketing director, Procter & Gamble

Create annual plans that will enable the Association to achieve this multiyear strategic plan. g

Annually, develop detailed tactical plans and timelines Use planning and measurement instruments to assess annual progress toward each goal Refine priorities and plans to best meet the mission statement and vision statement

Strategic Planning Committee Caroline Fuller Sloat ’65, cochair Katie Glockner Seymour ’79, cochair Carmen Boston ’84 Peggy Brumfield Bruton ’57 Catherine C. Burke ’78 Kristen A. B. Comings ’93 Blair L. McElroy ’95 Jennifer L. Mele ’93 Aili Petersen ’02 Linda Ing Phelps ’86 Cynthia L. Reed ’80 Ex officio: W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, Alumnae Association executive director; Susan Beers Betzer ’65, Alumnae Association president

Young Alumnae Representative Lisa M. Utzinger ’02, Cambridge, Mass., class agent, reunion gift chair; Boston Club—young alumnae chair, assistant admission representative; assistant director of board relations, New England Conservatory

Two Honored With Mary Lyon Award Jennifer L. Rochlis ’94 and Blossom Damania ’92 received the Alumnae Association’s 2005 Mary Lyon Award at a campus ceremony on February 7. The award is given annually to alumnae who graduated fewer than fifteen years ago and who demonstrate promise or sustained achievement in their lives, professions, or communities consistent with the humane values that Mary Lyon exemplified in her life and inspired in others. Rochlis was recognized for her exceptional achievements in astronautics, especially in human factors engineering and the interface between humans and robots. She is an aerospace engineer in NASA’s Automation, Robotics, and Simulation Division. The citation lauded her for “demonstrating to NASA how a human operator could efficiently and safely control a robot from inside the space station. [Her] work focused on what information the astronaut needed to operate the robot, how to evaluate the human-robot interaction, and how to train astronauts to be teleoperators.”

Damania was honored for her outstanding contributions to the fields of biochemistry, microbiology, and virology. She is an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The citation praised the work Damania has already done with Kaposi’s sarcoma—a type of cancer that frequently develops in association with HIV—and noted colleague’s beliefs that she is “destined to make important contributions to the understanding of Kaposi’s sarcoma as well as its treatment, thus improving the outlook of patients with HIV and other diseases.” If you know of a young alumna who should be considered for the Mary Lyon Award, please send her name and résumé, and names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of references to Rochelle Calhoun, Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 010751486; rcalhoun@mtholyoke.edu

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Paul Schnaittacher

[ alumnae matters ]

Work with all College departments to collect and share alumnae information appropriately in support of departmental programs and goals

Committee Chairs Alumnae Relations Chair Cynthia L. Reed ’80, Lexington, Mass., class president, reunion gift caller, Web site coordinator, Alumnae Association Strategic Planning Committee member; cofounder, Alumnae Community-Based Internship Program; master’s in health administration, Yale University; former executive director, Health Care Innovations

Nomination of Awards and Alumnae Trustees Chair Ellen Jacobson Petrino ’68, Westport, Conn., Investment

Committee (1989–99), trustee (1991–96), treasurer (1986–89), Finance Committee member, New York City Celebration Committee, reunion gift caller, Long-Range Planning Committee chair, cornerstone representative, Fairfield Villages Club corresponding secretary and special gift volunteer; senior consultant, Evaluation Associates Committee Members Alumnae Honors Research Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67, New York, N.Y., MHC Women in Technology conference participant; Ph.D. in education, New York University; chief operating officer, Girls Incorporated of New York

Alumnae Quarterly Kara C. Baskin ’00, Alexandria, Va., young alumnae chair, Washington, D.C., Club; Louise Sproule Prize recipient; former editor-in-chief, Arrive magazine; former production assistant, NBC News, Washington Bureau; assistant editor, The New Republic; literary editor, Gail Ross Literary Agency; managing editor, Jewish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Alumnae Relations Elizabeth A. Dollins ’93, Pittsburgh, Pa., class agent; Pittsburgh Club—admission representative, vice president, Book Award chair, treasurer, newsletter/directory editor, secretary; MST, University of New Hampshire; math teacher, The Ellis School Erica Metzger-Hare ’98, New York, N.Y., Young Alumnae Taskforce member; N.Y. Club— admission representative, program chair, young alumnae chair; MBA, New York University; service line manager for the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, NYU Medical Center Classes and Reunions Janette E. Dubin ’88, Jamaica,

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

N.Y., vice president, class agent 2003–present, reunion gift caller, reunion chair, reunion costume and program chair (various terms 1988–2003); N.Y. Club—young alumnae chair, area coordinator, assistant admission representative 1994–96; vice president, ACE USA Insurance Company Finance Anne E. Bolton ’72, Lexington, Ky., class president, reunion chair, class cornerstone gift caller, class alumnae fund gift caller; chair; Hospice of the Bluegrass Board of Directors; vice chair, Lexington Chamber of Commerce; vice chair, Goodwill Industries of Kentucky; chair, Lexington Arts and Cultural Council; YMCA of Central Kentucky; professionals division chair, United Way of the Bluegrass; former vice president of sales, financial services, Lexmark International; financial consultant, Smith Barney Nominating Jennifer Harris Daniels ’75, Cincinnati, Ohio, class secretary/ scribe, class reunion scribe, reunion gift caller, reunion dinner chair, class agent, Classes and Reunions Committee member; Houston Club—sales chair and assistant admission representative; Sarah Williston Scholar; M.D., Case Western Reserve University; neurologist/ neuro-oncologist Carrianna K. Field ’97, Hartford, Conn., Nominating Committee member 2004–05, class reunion room chair, class agent, reunion gift caller, reunion cochair, class social cochair; Young Alumnae Task Force chair 1999–2001; young alumnae representative, Board of Directors 1999–2002; Executive Director Search Committee member 2002–03; Executive Director Transition Team chair 2003–04; student, University of

Connecticut School of Law Nomination of Awards and Alumnae Trustees Astrid E. Merget ’67, Bloomington, Ind., Alumnae Trustee; reunion caller; dean, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Margaret Claytor Woodbury ’58, Ann Arbor, Mich., former Alumnae Association president; former trustee with a long history of service to the College; retired physician and professor, University of Michigan Medical School

Alumnae Association Board of Directors *President Susan Beers Betzer ‘65 *Vice President Kayla R. Jackson ‘86 *Clerk Amy Poltenson Krauss ‘89 *Treasurer Patricia Steeves O’Neil ‘85 Alumnae Quarterly Avice A. Meehan ‘77 Alumnae Trustee Arleen McGrath Heiss ‘70 Directors-at-Large Pamela R. Broadley ‘74 Antoria D. Howard-Marrow ‘81 Joanna MacWilliams Jones ‘67 Ellen Hyde Pace ‘81 Caroline Fuller Sloat ‘65 Nominating Chair Catherine C. Burke ‘78 Young Alumnae Representative Virginia Radley Emes ‘00 Executive Director *W. Rochelle Calhoun ‘83 ex officio without vote *Executive Committee The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc., 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; 413-538-2300; www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu.

[ alumnae matters ]

Nominees for Alumnae Association Directors, Committee Members, and Committee Chairs

This year's Mary Lyon Awards went to Blossom Damania '92 (left) and Jennifer L. Rochlis '94.

Support Alumnae Association staff and volunteers in their endeavors to meet our strategic goals

Create annual plans that will enable the Association to achieve this multiyear strategic plan. g

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Paul Schnaittacher

[ alumnae matters ]

Work with all College departments to collect and share alumnae information appropriately in support of departmental programs and goals

Nomination of Awards and Alumnae Trustees Chair Ellen Jacobson Petrino ’68, Westport, Conn., Investment

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

[ alumnae matters ]

Most students were hosted by alumnae through the Alumnae Stay Program, a network of volunteers who provide free housing to students traveling for academic and employmentrelated business. Each day, Gomez and host Nancie Fimbel ’68 commuted to work together. Gomez would then join her mentor, Mari Ellen Reynolds ’91, director of development at Community Foundation Silicon Valley. In addition to working alongside Reynolds, Gomez explored other aspects of the foundation’s operations. “Jennifer spent time with many different groups and departments. Our organization was happy to introduce someone to the nonprofit world who might not otherwise have the opportunity,” explains Reynolds. Other participants were equally enthusiastic about the program. In San Diego, Hanna Kim ’05 collaborated with

Kelly Price Abernethy ’86, communications and development director at Cal-Diego Paralyzed Veterans Association. Kim, an art major, assisted with the creation of a new logo, contributed to the organization’s newsletter, and raised funds for an exhibit of work by artists with spinal-cord injuries. She says, “This was my first experience working for a nonprofit, and it was a rewarding, life-changing month. I felt a special bond with my mentor, as she was both an MHC alum and a successful woman of color.” Kristel Thompson ’05 worked in Boston with Nancy White Ahmadifar ’69, program coordinator for the Office of Jobs and Community Services. “Having Kristel with us was like a breath of spring air in the midst of the midwinter chill,” says Ahmadifar. “I found that in sharing my work and workplace with her, my

own work seemed more interesting and important.” At Foundation for a College Education, Crystal Johnson ’05 partnered with director Stephanie Wick ’86 to increase the number of students of color from East Palo Alto, California, who enroll in and graduate from four-year colleges and universities. Johnson, who performed grant research and updated resources for students, appreciated the introduction to the nonprofit sector. “Not only was I engulfed by a great deal of knowledge, but I was able to gain an understanding of how I could contribute to this field,” says Johnson. Wick commended the program and hopes it will continue. “The more opportunities we can give our undergraduates in different communities across the country, the better,” she says. “We need more Mount Holyoke women in these fields.”

In March, the Mount Holyoke Club of Cape Cod hosted speaker Kate Carney MA’58 at a luncheon at the Regatta of Cotuit. The topic of Kate’s talk was “Character Portrayal.”

We’re Everywhere! Dana Feldshuh Whyte ’60 (right) and Judith Dolger Widmann ’63 met on a heli-hiking trip in British Columbia last August. “Judy was in my group, so we learned that we were both MHC alums right off,” says Whyte. The program, run by Canadian Mountain Holidays, flew participants by helicopter to ridges, alpine lakes, and isolated areas 8,000 feet high that would have taken several days to reach by foot. At the end of the day, “helicopters pick you up wherever you end up and spirit you back to the lodge for a shower and great food,” says Whyte. “We hiked together in all kinds of weather conditions, and the scenery was spectacular.” Note: If you’ve met another alumna unexpectedly under unusual circumstances and have a photo to prove it, please send picture and description to the Alumnae Quarterly, 50 College St., S. Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

The Alumnae Association supports more than 100 clubs and informal groups around the world. Contact the assistant director of clubs Krysia Villón ‘96 at 413-538-2738 with club-related questions, ideas, comments, and brief overviews of activities for possible inclusion in this section.

The Lyon Lecture Series brought “a meeting of the minds” to more than 100 alumnae and guests in five cities this year. In December, Eva Paus, professor of economics and director of global initiatives, gave a talk titled “Globalization: What Does It Mean for Us?” in San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. This spring, politics professor Vincent Ferraro spoke on “American Hegemony and the Problem of Global Governance” in New York; and Penny Gill, professor of humanities and politics, shared “What My Students Have Taught Me” with participants in Boston. Krysia Villón ’96, who organized the series in tandem with club representatives, said it was a wonderful introduction to her new job as assistant director of clubs for the Association.

In December, the Mount Holyoke Club of Franklin County welcomed John Grayson, professor of religion, who spoke at a luncheon. Professor Joseph J. Ellis spoke at the Mount Holyoke Club of Atlanta’s winter event at the Atlanta History Center. The club’s holiday party was held at the home of Chuckie Ellithorp ’46.

Courtesy of Dana Whyte

[ alumnae matters ]

Jennifer Gomez ’05 didn’t spend January Term in South Hadley, but she did experience a new side of Mount Holyoke during the three-week period. As one of four students selected to participate in the first alumnae mentoring and communitybased internship program, Gomez lived and worked with alumnae in San Jose, California. “I’ve never been in a position before where I could shadow someone all day,” says Gomez. “This experience helped me formulate what I want to do in the future.” The internship program, sponsored by the Alumnae Association and the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts’ CommunityBased Learning Program and supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, matched students of color with alumnae mentors who are leaders in community-based nonprofit groups.

Clubs Corner

The Mount Holyoke Club of Northeast PA held its fall meeting at the home of Bev Eighmy ’60. Bev and her husband gave a talk titled “You Can Never Go Back: Afghanistan 1971–75, 1988–92, 2002” about their years in Afghanistan. In January, the Mount Holyoke Club of Northern New Jersey

hosted professor of theatre Joyce Devlin, who performed her one-woman show Imagine a Woman My Age. The Mount Holyoke Club of New Haven held a wine and cheese event, and heard a talk by Professor Vincent Ferraro on American foreign policy. In January, the Mount Holyoke Club of Colorado held a luncheon and dinner the same weekend where Robin Blaetz, associate professor of film studies, gave a talk. In February, the Mount Holyoke Club of Minnesota viewed Laura Greenfield’s Girl Culture: A Photographic Exhibit, featuring photographs of girls and young women, at the Minnesota Center for Photography in Minneapolis. In December, the Mount Holyoke Club of Central Ohio held a holiday lunch for alumnae, current Mount Holyoke students, and their mothers at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Columbus. The Mount Holyoke Club of Mid-Tennessee hosted the Glee Club and the V8s at Vanderbilt in January for dinner and a concert. The Mount Holyoke Club of Dallas/Fort Worth held its annual meeting in January, where members discussed plans for 2005, elected a treasurer, and saved time for relaxation and conversation. In February, Helen Mar Parkin ’69 led members on a tour of the Helen A. Houp Fine Art Conservation Center. In December the Mount Holyoke Club of Fairfield Villages attended the Glee Club’s vespers

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

concert at St. Bartholomew’s in New York City. The Mount Holyoke Club of Hartford met in January to discuss On Common Ground, a book about the homes of Hartford writers. The Mount Holyoke Club of Philadelphia held a luncheon in February at which Keally McBride ’91 gave a talk titled “Gender and the Global Economy.” The Mount Holyoke Club of Philadelphia met at the Old Guard House Inn for a February Founder’s Day luncheon. Karen Wilbur ’68 presented her talk, “Mothers and Daughters: Between Ourselves,” at the Mount Holyoke Club of Southwest Florida’s February luncheon and meeting. In March, the Mount Holyoke Club of Chicago attended a talk on the allure of the city’s architecture, copresented by Alice Sinkevitch ’75 and a local architect. The Mount Holyoke Club of South West Florida hosted a March luncheon with guest speaker John Lemly, professor of English, whose topic was “Playwrights in the Garden of South Hadley.” In January, the Mount Holyoke Club of Southwest Florida hosted Joan Cocks, professor of politics and chair of critical social thought, at the Sarasota Yacht Club, where she spoke on “The Pitfalls of Nationalism in the World Today.” In March, The Mount Holyoke Club of Central and Northern Arizona took a tour of the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.

The Mount Holyoke Club of San Diego continued its successful Third Thursday events, organized by Yvonne Chadwick-Mehta ’98. The Mount Holyoke Clubs of Northern California and the Peninsula celebrated Founder’s Day with a tea at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. The Mount Holyoke Club of Northern California enjoyed a January wine-tasting event hosted by Serena Schiller ’00 and Jean Olson ’70 at Jean’s home. In March, the Mount Holyoke Club of Delaware met at the Terrace Restaurant at Longwood for a lecture on the planning and design of the gardens. In March, the Mount Holyoke Club of Britain joined the annual Seven College Conference of London for a luncheon and lecture from author Diane Johnson. In April, the Mount Holyoke Club of Northern New Jersey planned to meet for brunch, and a lecture on “the Great Books” from MHC professor Jim Hartley, at the home of Sylvia Davies Diehl ’49.

CORRECTION: In our winter article on the Day Students’ Organization, the Quarterly incorrectly stated that Louise Briggs Appleton ’39 was once a day student. Appleton notes that the day student lounge at MHC was given in memory of her husband by the Beveridge Foundation “because I feel compassion for these students who need a place to call home on campus, a place for their belongings and books and to relax.” We regret the error.

[ alumnae matters ]

Alumnae Mentor Students in Community-Based Internships

In March, the Mount Holyoke Club of Cape Cod hosted speaker Kate Carney MA’58 at a luncheon at the Regatta of Cotuit. The topic of Kate’s talk was “Character Portrayal.”

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Courtesy of Dana Whyte

[ alumnae matters ]

Clubs Corner

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

[ alumnae matters ]

Alumnae Mentor Students in Community-Based Internships

[ alumnae matters ] Alumnae Association President Susan Beers Betzer ’65 wished bon voyage to an intrepid group of MHC sailors in January. Since they set sail on the Bounty from St. Petersburg, Florida— which is Betzer’s home—she waved the group off with an MHC pennant tied to a yardstick. See p. 6 for more about the students’ trip. (No mutiny on this ship!)

Proposed Changes to the Alumnae Association's Bylaws

The class of 2006, just one year away from graduation, garnered insight from alumnae during a Junior Banquet with the theme “Pieces of the Puzzle: What Will the Next Piece Show?” Over a gracious multicourse dinner, approximately 125 juniors connected with alumnae while receiving advice on how best to spend their last three semesters at Mount Holyoke and prepare for life after graduation. Junior class president Lisa Frazier said organizers “wanted the class to feel they have some grounding for the decisions they’ll need to make and have already begun to make. Alums have been here before—literally—and understand what’s going on in students’ heads.” Following a keynote address by Jane Brown, vice president for enrollment and college relations, a panel of

At its winter meeting, the board of directors proposed bylaws amendments to be considered at the annual meeting of the Alumnae Association on May 21. These changes reflect the Association’s new mission and goals as outlined in the Strategic Plan 2005–2010 and adjust the duties and composition of the Association’s officers, board of directors, and committees. Most notably, the proposed changes call for the formation of an Alumnae Relations Committee, and changes to the Classes and Reunions Committee and Clubs Committee. Note: Current wording appears crossed out, like this; proposed wording appears in regular type.

alumnae reflected on their junior years at Mount Holyoke and shared their postgraduation experiences. Panelists included Doris O’Keefe ’74, senior cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society; W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, Alumnae Association executive director; Danielle Bessett ’96, a Five College women’s studies research associate from New York University; and Courtney Masland ’01, Mount Holyoke assistant director of admission. Students and alumnae also met in focus groups to discuss typical dilemmas such as how to achieve balance in life, whether to take time off, what to do during the summer, and whether to pursue a thesis or independent study. “This was exactly the kind of thing I wish I had had as a junior,” said O’Keefe. “This is even better than a career counselor.”

Article I: Introduction Section 2. Mission. The mission of the Alumnae Association is to support Mount Holyoke College in its commitment to excellence by cultivating an active, independent association of alumnae who are connected, informed and actively involved in the life and work of the College. The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College is an independent organization that serves a worldwide network of diverse individuals, cultivates and celebrates vibrant connections among all alumnae, fosters lifelong learning in the liberal arts tradition, and facilitates opportunities for alumnae to advance the goals and values of the College.

How to Get Access to the New Alumnae Career Services

Internet Resources: A new Web page (www. alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/career) provides basic information for those embarking on a career search, a set of self-assessment exercises, and a selection of Web links. Ashworth also writes a “Career Corner” column for the Association’s periodic e-newsletters. (To receive the newsletter, send your e-mail address to ais@mtholyoke.edu.) Workshops: Ashworth will lead several presentations this spring for alumnae at MHC and around the country. The series began with an April event in Washington, D.C., focusing on helping young alumnae plan a career transition. Upcoming events include: “Back-to-Class” sessions during Reunion (May 20 and 27): Ashworth and Judy Allen, associate director of the Career Development Center, will cofacilitate “Career Fitness: Aligning your Work with your Personality.” Recognizing both an organization’s style and your

personality tendencies can be invaluable in making wise choices for career advancement. The session will include interactive exercises and small-group discussions. For more information, contact Maya D’Costa, assistant director of campus programs, at 413-538-2066 or mdcosta@mtholyoke.edu. Following the workshops, Ashworth will offer individual career-consulting appointments. To schedule a consultation, call the Career Development Center at 413-538-2080. A June 12 event with the Mount Holyoke Club of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas: Ashworth will discuss the art of networking and how to plan a career move at any stage of professional life. For more information, contact Katherine M. Axt ’01 at 214-636-0269 or katherineaxt@yahoo.com or Claire A. Sanders ’83 at 817-922-9835 or c.sanders@tcu.edu. g Teleclasses: Ashworth plans to launch themed “teleclasses” (conference calls for preregistered participants) in the fall. Topics will range from networking to marketing.

For more information about these programs, or to seek careerdevelopment support, please visit www.alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/go/career or contact Ashworth at 413-538-2599 or cashwort@mtholyoke.edu.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Top: James Borchuck; bottom: Helen Merena

As detailed in the last Quarterly, the Association now sponsors a host of career-support services and programs tailored to alumnae needs. Upcoming offerings led by Cori Ashworth, alumnae career and professional consultant, include the following:

Section 3. Goals. 1. Foster enduring connections among alumnae. The Association must meet the challenge to be creative, proactive and cost effective in its efforts to build connections among alumnae and to continually reinforce the connection between alumnae and the College. The Association will continue to foster connections through a variety of

communications vehicles and activities including initiatives which increase alumnae interaction with students and engage alumnae in ways that bring them back to campus. Connecting Alumnae: Building a Global Network. Develop the Association into an integrated global organization, ensuring that core benefits are accessible to alumnae around the world. 2. Promote connections between alumnae and the College. Alumnae comprise the College’s largest constituency and are one of its greatest resources. Reinforcing a sense of loyalty and connection to the College for each alumna through her lifetime is the cornerstone of the Association’s mission. Association efforts to cultivate linkages through activities lay the groundwork for a myriad of contributions from alumnae. The Association is the focal point through which alumnae become engaged. In order to ensure that alumnae aremeaningfully involved, the Association should be a part of all strategic plans for initiatives that include alumnae. Alumnae and the College: Forging a Powerful Partnership. Develop initiatives that enhance our work relationship with the College and build new partnership opportunities. 3. Campus-wide Connections: Linking to Students and Faculty. Provide current students, faculty, and administration with a strong and rewarding relationship with the Association by informing them of the benefits available to them and creating opportunities for students to experience those benefits while still on campus. 4. Effective Board Governance: Achieving Strategic Goals. Organize structure and sup-

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

port, both staff and volunteer, to meet the needs and priorities of the Alumnae Association and its members. Article III: Officers Section 3. Duties. 2. Vice President. The Vice President shall be an ex officio member of the Clubs, Classes/ Reunions, and Program Committees; shall assume the duties of President in the absence of the President; shall fill the office of President for the unexpired term in the event of a vacancy in that office; and shall perform such other duties as may be designated by the President of the Board. Article IV: Board of Directors Section 1. Membership. 1. Composition. The Board shall consist of fifteen fourteen members, including the Officers of the Association (President, Vice President, Clerk and Treasurer); the chairs of the Alumnae Relations, Classes and Reunion, Clubs, Nominating and the Alumnae Quarterly Committees; the Alumnae Trustee (in the third year of her term as Trustee); a person dedicated to the admissions effort; a young alumna (within ten years of graduation); and six three members-at-large with portfolios to be determined by the Board. The Executive Director of the Alumnae Association and the Editor of the Alumnae Quarterly will serve on the board as nonvoting ex officio members. Article V: Executive Committee Section 5. Action Without a Meeting. Any action which may be taken at any meeting of the Executive Committee may be taken without a meeting provided that all members of the Executive Committee shall submit their votes in writing or electronically, and provided

further that the record of such action and the result of such vote shall be filed with the minutes of the meetings of the Executive Committee. Such written vote shall be treated for all purposes as a vote at a meeting. Article VII: Standing and Special Committees Section 1. Standing Committees. There shall be the following standing committees of the Board: Alumnae Honors Research Committee, Alumnae Quarterly Committee, Alumnae Relations Committee, Classes & Reunion Committee, Clubs Committee, Finance Committee, and Nomination of Alumnae Trustees/Awards Committee. Section 4. Composition and Responsibilities of Standing Committees. 2. Alumnae Quarterly Committee. a. Composition. The Alumnae Quarterly Committee shall include the chair; four members elected by the Alumnae Association membership; a student representative and a faculty representative, both of whom shall be selected in accordance with procedures adopted by the Board, and who shall serve without vote. The Editor Managing Director of the Quarterly shall be a nonvoting an ex officio member of the Alumnae Quarterly Committee without vote. b. Responsibilities. The Alumnae Quarterly Committee shall work with the Association staff in planning and creating the major content for each issue, both print and electronic; implement the editorial policies as set by the Board in accordance with the purpose and goals of the Association, and contribute, as appropriate, to the Alumnae Association’s strategic communications program.

[ alumnae matters ]

An MHC Send-Off for the Bounty

Alumnae Help Puzzled Juniors

Proposed Changes to the Alumnae Association's Bylaws

How to Get Access to the New Alumnae Career Services

For more information about these programs, or to seek careerdevelopment support, please visit www.alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/go/career or contact Ashworth at 413-538-2599 or cashwort@mtholyoke.edu.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Top: James Borchuck; bottom: Helen Merena

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

[ alumnae matters ]

An MHC Send-Off for the Bounty

Alumnae Help Puzzled Juniors

a. Composition. The Alumnae Relations Committee shall include the chair and five members elected by the Alumnae Association membership; one student representative. b. Responsibilities. The Alumnae Relations Committee shall strengthen connections with Mount Holyoke College alumnae by understanding their needs and expectations and assisting the Alumnae Association in meeting those needs. 4. Classes and Reunion Committee a. Composition. The Classes and Reunion Committee shall include the chair and five members elected by the Alumnae Association membership. No member of the committee, with the exception of the Chair, shall be a member of the same class as any other member of the committee. b. Responsibilities. The Classes and Reunions Committee shall be a resource to encourage, support, and coordinate class organization of alumnae and to be responsible for reunions.

Honorary Degree Candidates Sought The Alumnae Association seeks nominations for honorary degrees of alumnae of achievement, distinction, and outstanding intellect and character who have contributed to learning or to society at large. Please include a curriculum vitae or other documentation to substantiate the strength of your candidate(s); and names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of references. Send nominations to W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; rcalhoun@mtholyoke.edu.

Mary Lyon’s Patriots The first virtual roundtable discussion between alumnae and the campus community took place February 9. The seminar, “Mary Lyon’s Patriots: NYC Alumnae and MHC Students Grapple with the Patriot Act and Globalization,” used video conferencing technology to bring students and faculty in South Hadley together with alumnae in New York City. “Most of us have moments where we miss the classroom atmosphere,” says Emily Bieber ’02, Mount Holyoke Club of New York cochair for young alumnae. “And there has been an absence of easily accessible forums for alumnae to discuss politics, current events, and

other topics.” Organized by Bieber, Jennifer Gieseking ’99, and Harold Garrett-Goodyear, Mount Holyoke professor of history and acting chair of the program in critical social thought, the seminar enabled alumnae to continue the intellectual vibrancy of their Mount Holyoke experience by participating in thoughtful dialogue from afar. “We hope to integrate these discussions as a solid part of the MHC community,” says Bieber. “And in the long term, we’d love to get this started in other cities, too.” For more information about future seminars, contact Bieber at eabieber@mtholyoke. edu or Gieseking at jgieseking@gmail.com.

We’re Everywhere!

5. Clubs Committee. a. Composition. The Clubs Committee shall include the chair and six members elected by the Alumnae Association membership. The Committee shall maintain geographic diversity within its members. b. Responsibilities. The Clubs Committee shall be a resource for alumnae who organize or who wish to organize into a club based upon their geographic location and to encourage, motivate and coordinate with such clubs. 3. 6. Finance Committee. a. Composition. The Finance Committee shall include the chair and three members elected by the Alumnae Association membership. The Treasurer shall be the chair of the Finance Committee. The Vice President shall be an ex officio member.

Barbara Gillam ’59, Sally Choate Moore ’58, and Christina M. Tree ’65 (left to right) met in Switzerland in September at the annual convention of the Society of American Travel Writers. “We spent a week in St. Moritz attending professional development sessions, meals, and other functions where we often sat together,” Gillam says. Julie Steers Wilson ’60 and Priscilla Rand Baker ’59 also attended the convention but missed the photo op.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Lynn Grisard Fullman

[ alumnae matters ]

3. Alumnae Relations Committee.

shelf

Nakamura Jakuemon IV: The Art of Onnagata Acting By Rei Sasaguchi ‘53 University Press of New England. 2005. $37 Rei Sasaguchi’s book on onnagata, kabuki actors who specialize in female roles, focuses on Nakamura Jakuemon IV, the most distinguished onnagata. Besides being designated a ningen kokuho (living national treasure), Jakuemon, who is still acting at the age of eightyfour, has recently been awarded a bunka kunsho (order of cultural merit) for his artistic achievements. The first half of this volume demonstrates how onnagata emerged in the early history of kabuki and how Jakuemon’s onnagata art is grounded in the four-century-old kabuki tradition. The second half comprises the synopses of the twenty-one wellknown kabuki plays from Jakuemon’s repertoire, illustrated with marvelous pictures taken by some of Japan’s leading kabuki photographers. Rei Sasaguchi is an art historian who has been following and writing about traditional Japanese theater for the past twenty years. The book can be ordered from New York Kinokuniya Bookstore, 212765-7766, kinokuniya@ kinokuniya.com.

Enter Sandman By Stephanie Williams, edited by Ellie McGrath ’74 McWitty Press. 2004. $22 It’s hard to tell which is more compelling: this “charming and unflinching” novel or the dramatic story behind its creation. Author Williams, like her book’s main character Trisha Portman, seemed to have it all—hot job in Manhattan, youth, beauty, devoted friends, and an adoring boyfriend. But both fictional heroine and real-life author were struck by breast cancer. As Williams fought for her life, she wrote this novel exploring “the tyranny of the superficial, the power of friendship—and the mystery of what people choose to leave behind.” One reviewer wrote, “Enter Sandman is nothing you’d expect—particularly if you expect a book by a young woman dying of cancer to be depressing or preachy … [the book] is funny, feisty, and full of a kind of spirit we would all do well to imitate.” Realizing Williams didn’t have time to find a publisher the usual way, editor Ellie McGrath formed a publishing firm to bring this book to print more quickly. McGrath placed the first copy of Sandman in Williams’s hands just three weeks before she died in July 2004 at the age of thirty-three. Ellie McGrath ’74 has had a long editorial career as a writ-

Saving the Liberty Bell By Marty Rhodes Figley FP’03 Lerner. 2005. $23.95/$5.95 Eleven-year-old Johnny Mickley longed to be a hero and have some part in helping America gain its independence. The British Army was just miles from Philadelphia and planned to melt the city’s famous bells to make cannons. What could the colonists do? When they finally came up with a plan, Johnny was a part of it. But would they get Philadelphia’s most famous bell to safety? Marty Figley lives in the Washington, D.C., area and is the author of several children’s books. Her next will be about the War of 1812.

er and editor at Time magazine, Time-Life Books, and Condé Nast Publications. She is the author of My One and Only: The Special Experience of the Only Child. Sandman can be ordered from www. mcwittypress.com. 100 Questions and Answers About Menopause By Ivy M. Alexander and Karla A. Knight ’74 Jones and Bartlett. 2005. $19.95 While some women sail through menopause, others experience a range of symptoms, from hot flashes to sleepless nights. 100 Questions and Answers about Menopause helps women understand their symptoms, along with management options that include lifestyle changes,

Herald-Tribune and the Bradenton Herald as well as several magazines. Hibiscus: Hardy and Tropical Plants for the Garden By Barbara Perry Lawton ‘52 Timber Press. 2004. $27.95 In Hibiscus, Lawton surveys both kinds of the popular flowers: the tropical, subtropical, and warm-temperate plants whose pure, clean colors are such grand assets to modern gardens and homes, and the hardy perennials and shrubs that thrive in spite of poor weather, bearing bright flowers year after year. The book contains chapters that chronicle the history and traditions of their use, as well as the uses of hibiscus relatives including hollyhocks, okra, and cotton. A photographic gallery of hibiscuses illustrates the richness of the many species and cultivars from which the gardener may choose. Barbara Perry Lawton has served as editor and manager of publications at the Missouri Botanical Garden, president of the Garden Writers Association, and garden columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her other books include Magic of Irises and Mints.

herbs, alternative therapies, and prescription medications. Menopause also takes on the hormone-therapy controversy, natural hormones, and how to make the best decisions about treatment and lifestyle. The authors, who are nurses, provide easy-to-read answers to questions about menopause, as well as other midlife health risks such as osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, and breast cancer. The book also contains a listing of organizations, Web sites, and resources devoted to helping women manage their menopause symptoms and overall health. Karla A. Knight, RN, MSN, is a contributing writer for Nursing Spectrum. She lives and writes in Maynard, Massachusetts.

Flashover By Catherine A. Hosmer ‘49 iUniverse. 2004. $15.95 All his life, Dan Mariner just wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, staying “on the line” as a firefighter. But after long months of healing from a fire that nearly took his life—and succeeded in taking his father’s—Dan is asked by his chief to return to his old hometown to help search for a dangerous serial arsonist. He agrees reluctantly, planning to stay only a few weeks. Soon after he arrives, however, he is quickly catapulted into arsonist’s gruesome world as new fires become more explosively dangerous and the numbers of unsuspecting murder victims mount. With a town full of people now depending on his investigative talent, Dan is drawn into the rush to stop the pathological arsonist. Catherine Farmer Hosmer has published two previous novels, Conversations with Jean and Rabble’s Curse. She is a freelance writer with the Sarasota

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Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

Five Elements–An Epic By Krishna Shrinivas, translated by Edith Rusconi Kaltovich MA’56 AuthorHouse. 2004. $23.45/$11.95 With Los Cinco Elementos, Kaltovich makes Indian poet Krishna Shrinivas’s classic poem “Five Elements” available for the first time in Spanish. The poet examines life’s basic elements—water, wind, fire, earth, and the void—emphasizing their

irrational effect on humans. Kaltovich says the poet’s work is “enlivened by the keen observation of reality and foreshadows Spanish romanticism and surrealism.” The poem is presented here in both English and Spanish; the layout allows readers to compare the text in both languages or focus solely on one. The result is a two-lane road into an influential poet’s work that is already garnering praise from academics. Edith Rusconi Kaltovich is a bilingual writer, poet, and translator, and president of the New Jersey Poetry Society. After retiring from the Trenton Public School System, she became an adjunct Spanish professor at The College of New Jersey and Mercer County Community College. She has published other translated works and two books of poetry. Dead End by Judith Skillings ‘72 HarperCollins/Avon. 2004. $6.50 Rebecca Moore used to be a damn good reporter, until her meddling resulted in a botched sting and a dead lover. Fired from The Washington Post, she lands in rural Maryland, in charge of her late uncle’s classic car restoration shop: a business deep in debt and staffed by ex-cons. As if that’s not bad enough, she discovers the dead body of her rival stuffed in the glassbeading machine. Caught between a cocky D.C. cop who knows too much about her past, a local lawyer who’s interested in her future, and a killer who’s not giving up, she’s forced to throw down her wrenches and start investigating.

Dangerous Curves by Judith Skillings ‘72 HarperCollins/Avon. 2005. $6.50 First, a teenage dancing girl bleeds to death in the back seat of the Bentley being hauled to Rebecca Moore’s restoration shop. Then a second dancer floats to the surface of the Potomac. Both girls had known one of Rebecca’s employees from the gentlemen’s club where the young women worked. The cops think their job is done; Rebecca thinks she’d better do something fast, like answer the club’s ad for a replacement dancer. Her lawyer can’t dissuade Rebecca from going undercover; her rogue cop friend can’t protect her if she does. She doesn’t care. All that matters is revealing the killer and preventing more senseless deaths— starting with her own. Judith Skillings lives in Pennsylvania, where she’s a part-time writer and a sometime mechanic at The Frawley Company.

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[ off the shelf ] Modernism’s Masculine Subjects: Matisse, the New York School, and PostPainterly Abstraction By Marcia Gagliardi Brennan ’88 MIT Press. 2004. $30 Brennan traces how postWorld War II abstract modernist paintings came to be seen as metaphorical embodiments of both idealized and highly conflicted conceptions of masculine selfhood. She

Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin By Susan Horowitz Nagel ’76 Harper Collins. 2004. $24.95 The story of one of the most influential women of the Romantic era, this biography of Mary Nisbet details such accomplishments as helping to bring the smallpox vaccine to the Middle East, financing the removal and safe passage to England of the classical marbles from the Parthenon, and striking a political deal with Napoleon. These achievements were overshadowed, however, by Mary’s affair with her husband’s best friend. Nagel’s work is a lively and informative portrait of a woman who both defined and shaped an era.

Susan Nagel, a humanities professor at Marymount Manhattan College, is the author of a critically acclaimed book on the novels of Jean Giraudoux. She has also written for stage and screen, scholarly journals, the Gannett newspaper chain, and Town & Country. Defining Women’s Scientific Enterprise: Mount Holyoke Faculty and the Rise of American Science By Miriam R. Levin University Press of New England. 2005. $26 This book focuses on the relationship between women and science, and how female science professors at Mount Holyoke advanced themselves and the school. Levin suggests that the New England Protestant culture present at Mount Holyoke in the early years contributed to the zeal of women faculty and created a learning environment that allowed science faculty to form a niche for themselves and contribute to the development of the scientific enterprise. Levin examines science at Mount Holyoke in four external dimensions: religion, gender, geography, and pedagogy. She shows how the unique blending of a religious and female school took place in a particular geographic setting—a relatively isolated college town. Levin presents a case study of an academic path to doing science that is an alternative to the standard research-university model. Miriam R. Levin is associate professor of history at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of numerous publications on the history of science, technology, and education. An article about her recent talk at MHC is online at www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/ comm/news/levin.shtml

Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction By Michele Mitchell ’87 University of North Carolina Press. 2004. $59.95 Between 1877 and 1930, African American activists promoted different strategies for progress and power built around “racial destiny,” the idea that black Americans formed a collective whose future existence would be determined by the actions of its members. In this book, Mitchell examines the implications of racial destiny, demonstrating how it linked particular visions of gender, conduct, and sexuality to collective well-being. Mitchell reinterprets black protest and politics and recasts the way we think about black sexuality and progress after Reconstruction. Michele Mitchell is associate professor of history and Afroamerican and African studies at the University of Michigan. She is coeditor of Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas.

cultivars involved and suggestions for their use in the home garden. Plants are grouped in the book as they are at Winterthur, the result of seventy years of work by Henry Francis du Pont, one of America’s most artistically gifted horticulturalists. This book unlocks a treasure house of accumulated wisdom for the home gardener. Ruth Joyce has been associated with the Winterthur garden for more than twenty years, and is a lifelong gardener and student of horticulture.

of Labor and Industrial Relations. How to Bounce Back When You Think You Can’t: The P.R.I.D.E. Factor—For Adults, Parents, Teachers, and All Those Who Care for Children (or for the Child Within Themselves) By Carol Ann Munschauer ’69 and Dave Hood AuthorHouse. 2004. $29.25 The ability to bounce back from everyday adversities as well as large-scale disasters is essential to one’s health and longevity. Clinical psychologist Munschauer and children’s television host Hood team up to create the P.R.I.D.E. factor, offering advice on how to sustain, rekindle, and revitalize self-esteem and motivation after failure, illness, injury, or disappointment. Anyone who thinks “I shouldn’t have done that” or “That shouldn’t have happened to me” can find in The P.R.I.D.E. Factor the help necessary to rebound, look forward, and move on to a healthier outlook on life. Carol Ann Munschauer was awarded the Edith Sabshin national teaching prize in 2001 for her work in translating psychoanalytic concepts for the layperson. She lives in Amherst, New York.

The Winterthur Guide to Color in Your Garden Text and photos by Ruth Nolin Joyce ‘49 Winterthur/University Press of New England. 2004. $19.95 Heavenly color combinations are the hallmark of the worldrenowned Winterthur garden in Delaware. This guide illustrates and describes the delightful scenes that make up the landscape of Winterthur, an American country estate. The book also gives specific cultural information, with photographs, of the genera, species, and

Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives Edited by Ellen Ernst Kossek ’79 and Susan J. Lambert Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2005. $99.95 Organizations and individuals are becoming more likely to recognize the importance of balancing work and family even as the increasing complexity of modern life makes such a balance harder to achieve. Work and Life Integration addresses the intersection between work, life, and family in new and interesting ways. It discusses current challenges and sets the stage for future research agendas. This book enlightens the research community and informs public debates on how workplaces can be made more family-sensitive by producing contributions from psychologists, sociologists, and economists. It is intended for both practitioners and academics interested in creating meaningful lives. Ellen Ernst Kossek is professor of human resource management and organizational behavior at Michigan State University’s Graduate School

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Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

members that Emily could take with her out into the world. The resulting template is Words to Live By, a fill-in advice book that gives readers the perfect place to pass their knowledge on to the next generation. Developed by a motherdaughter team, this personalized journal provides tips for those writing in and organizing the journal and offers writers leading sentences at the top of each page, along with ample room to fill in a lovingly penned life lesson. From healthy minds, bodies, and spirits to friendship, marriage, work, and parenting, writers will find thoughtprovoking springboards to giving sound advice. An ideal gift for graduations or milestone birthdays. Kate Marshall is the coauthor of The Book of Us and The Book of My Pet. Emily Marshall is a freshman at Wesleyan University.

Deadmistress By Carole Bernstein Shmurak ’65 Sterling House. 2004. $12.95 The headmistress of a posh private school for girls has been found brutally murdered in her office. When professor and educational consultant Susan Lombardi learns that her close friend John has been accused of the crime, she wastes no time setting out to clear his name. While doing so she uncovers some troubling secrets about the school’s faculty and staff, and it soon becomes clear that John is definitely not the only one with a motive for murdering the “deadmistress.” Carole B. Shmurak is professor emerita at Central Connecticut State University, where she still teaches a course in the history and philosophy of education. As Carroll Thomas, she is also author of the Matty Trescott young adult novels.

Words to Live By: A Journal of Wisdom for Someone You Love By Emily Marshall and Kate Lacy Marshall ’81 Broadway Books. 2005. $13.95 When Kate Marshall was preparing to send her daughter, Emily, off to college, she decided to create a treasury of advice from valued family

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All You Really Need: A Professional Organizer Tells You What to Have, How to Hold It, and When to Stop By Jane Campbell ’80, MA’84 Pinninti Publishers. 2005. $11.95 Jane Campbell channels her decades-long enthusiasm for organization into “an entrylevel organizing cookbook” to help ordinary disorganized folk put some order back in their lives. She sets guidelines for deciding what to keep and what to pitch, and offers tips on learning for oneself how much stuff is just too much. Jane Campbell’s business, Back In Sorts Organizing Systems, is based in Rockville, Maryland. Her book is available at www. pinnintipublishers.com

examines the critical discourses in which the work of artists including Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock could stand as symbolic representations that at once challenged and reproduced such prevailing cultural conceptions of masculinity. Reviewers found it “a fascinating and rigorous account” and praised the “imagination, intelligence, and intensity” with which Brennan “situates postwar modernism within a compelling cultural history.” Marcia Brennan is assistant professor of art history at Rice University. She previously taught art history at Brown University and the College of the Holy Cross.

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announcements

This column carries announcements of services and events sponsored by the Alumnae Association, alumnae clubs, and College-related organizations for the benefit of MHC or members of its community. Announcements (except for classifieds) are free, but space is limited. Club and class products, most of which benefit the Alumnae Association’s Alumnae Scholar Fund, are included once a year in the fall issue. Products are always viewable at www.alumnae. mtholyoke .edu, or a listing may be requested by calling 413-538-2300.

The SummerMath Program Each July fifty to sixty high school women from across the country come to Mount Holyoke for four weeks to open their minds to mathematics, computer programming, and a college environment. Do you have a daughter or friend of high school age who would like to spend a month with a diverse group of academically motivated students at Mount Holyoke? Please visit www.mtholyoke.edu/proj/summermath, or contact Charlene and James Morrow at 413-538-2608 or summermath@mtholyoke.edu. The 2005 program will be held June 26–July 23.

For details about placing classified ads, contact Emily Weir (413-538-2301; eweir@mtholyoke.edu).

deadlines Winter issue (received in early February) November 15 Spring issue (received in early May) February 15 Summer issue (received in early August) May 15 Fall issue (received in early November) August 15

The SEARCH Program MHC is recruiting students for Summer Explorations and Research Collaborations for High School Girls (SEARCH), a four-week campus program. We encourage girls with a sense of curiosity and adventure about mathematics to apply. Students will explore exciting topics outside the usual high school curriculum. Do you have a daughter or friend who would like to find out what is exciting about mathematics? Please visit www.mtholyoke.edu/proj/search or contact Charlene and James Morrow at 413-538-2608 or search@mtholyoke. edu. The 2005 program will be held June 26–July 23. Art Exhibition—Architecture of Silence: Cistercian Abbeys of France David Heald, chief photographer for the Guggenheim Museum, made seven trips to France between 1985 and 1995 to photograph medieval Cistercian abbeys. The 900-year-old buildings are renowned for their austere design and refined construction. Architecture of Silence: Cistercian Abbeys of France began as a book of photographs published in 2000; the traveling show includes forty large-format black-andwhite photographs that are saturated with surface detail, penetrating illumination, and rich tonal range. The

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Spring 2005

exhibit will be on view at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum through July 3.

Cindy White Morrell ’68 (cmorrell@mtholyoke.edu) at 135 Woodbridge St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1128.

classifieds

Personal and Professional Coaching I can help you reach your life goals. Coaching provided by phone. Want to explore it? Contact me for a complementary coaching session. Laura Schreiber Washburn ’71, master’s from Stanford, licensed clinical social worker, and trained coach. Coach@LauraWashburn.com

Classifieds are $2 a word and may be placed only by members of the MHC community. Send ad copy and a check made out to Alumnae Quarterly, MHC, 50 College St., MA 010751486. See deadlines in box at left.

My Life Closed Twice: Surviving a Double Loss An inspirational memoir by Sandra Klamkin Schocket ’58 chronicling the sudden deaths of her husband and son. This heartwarming story offers practical advice and encouragement for those seeking new paths to healing or the courage to explore new territories in life. At bookstores and Amazon.com. FIMO Necklaces and Hand-Knitted Winter Socks http://www.angelfire.com/ mt/holyoke/products.html The Orchards DVD/VHS Produced by WBGY-TV in Springfield, From Tee to Green: The History of The Orchards chronicles the story of this eighteen-hole championship golf course designed by Donald Ross for the daughter of industrialist Joseph Skinner and owned by MHC. From its beginnings to its 2004 role as the site of the USGA’s U.S. Women’s Open, it has been called a gem. The story, told with photographs from the College’s Archives and rare memorabilia, traces the rich history, lore, and traditions of The Orchards. Available in DVD or VHS format (please specify) for $19.95 plus $2 shipping; Massachusetts residents should add 5 percent tax. An excellent gift to yourself or for alumnae friends and golfers in general. Send order and check, payable to the MH Club of Greater South Hadley, to

MHC Class and Club Products Lots of MHC-related class and club products are for sale. For details and photos of many items, please visit www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/item.cfm?id=56 or phone the Alumnae Association at 413538-2300 to request a printed copy of the information. Florida Spirit Collection Notecards The MHC Club of Southwest Florida is selling “Florida Spirit” notecards featuring original artwork by Alice Jeghelian ’49 and Penny Pollock ’57. Treat yourself (and your correspondents) by writing on cards featuring the warm colors of Florida’s flowers, animals, and seascapes. Cost: eight cards for $12 plus $2 shipping/

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handling; proceeds will support the College. To order, contact Elaine Deme ’52, 426 North Shore Drive, Sarasota, FL 34234, 941355-1918, Elainedeme@comcast.net Rental in Laos Laos. Two historic houses share large garden in quiet downtown district of Vientiane near the Mekong. Housekeeper, gardener, laundry. Allison Brown ‘73, aabrown13@yahoo.com Tortola B.V.I. Rental Tortola: Three-bedroom house sixty feet above Long Bay Beach. Relyea@ optonline.net or 203869-7344.

travel opportunities Norwegian Fjords and Baltic Sea June 12–24, 2005 Embark in Bergen, Norway, and cruise the Norwegian coast to explore the stunning beauty of the fjords and the picturesque town of Flam. Then call on Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, before visiting the recently reborn Baltic States as they embark on their post-Soviet renaissance. From the medieval lanes of Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia, to the legacy of Gdansk, Poland’s “Solidarity” movement and a free and vibrant St. Petersburg, Russia, experience their rich traditions and newfound cultural vitality. Throughout the journey, your understanding of this rapidly changing region will be enhanced through included and optional excursions led by expert guides. We also invite you to join an optional overnight excursion to Vilnius, Lithuania; a two-night pre-cruise program in Bergen, Norway; and a two-night optional excursion in Stockholm, Sweden. With the romantic White Nights of Summer, the deluxe MS Le Diamant, and an exclusive itinerary that includes meeting Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, this is an ideal opportunity to experience one of the most important historical developments of our time, as well as the Baltic region’s rich cultural and artistic heritage. Village Life in Medieval Bruges July 25–A ugust 2, 2005 Discover the history, art, architecture, customs, and lifestyle of western Flanders. The trip includes all excursions and accommodations. See the Grand Place, a UNESCO world heritage

Santa Fe Condo Rental Cozy 2 BR, 2 bath adobe condo with kiva fireplaces, short walking distance to historic plaza Rent by week or month. Mary Kimmel Helne ’62, www. casa-sonrisa.com Book: From Amherst to Cashmere Fifteen copies still available of Margaret Jean Taylor’s (’57) From Amherst to Cashmere, a hand-made, boxed, bound-in-silk edition of fifty books, with ten color etchings for selected poems of Emily Dickinson. Cost $1,600. Between now and March 2007, 25

percent will go to class of 1957’s fiftieth reunion gift. Send $5 for prospectus to Taylor, 46 Hillcrest Place, Amherst, MA 01002-2528 or visit www.mjtgallery.com Organic Coffee Direct from Finca Cristina in Costa Rica. Visit www.cafecristina.com or call 800-355-8826. Tina Carman ’01 Italy Home Vacation Rentals High-quality villas, farmhouses, apartments in several price ranges. Rome, Florence, Venice apartments. Personalized service from Italy experts. Italian Vacation Villas Inc. Alice Tetelman ’62. 202-333-6247, www.villasitalia.com

Sponsored by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College

site, with its beautiful guild houses, and the Manneken Pis in Belgium’s capital, Brussels. Experience two days in Bruges with guided walking tours and a private canal cruise before visiting the renowned Groeninge Museum. Learn about the Flemish art of lace-making during a demonstration; take a walking tour of Lille, France, Europe’s cultural capital for 2004; and visit the Musée des Beaux-Art. In Ghent, view the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb altarpiece and cruise the city’s canals. Explore Antwerp, including the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin, and visit Rubenshuis, home of Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. Have a World War I expert show you around Ypres, site of the fiercest battle of that war, and visit the Flanders Field Museum. Participate in a village forum to gain an understanding of daily life in Flanders. Galapagos Islands Cruise: A Family Adventure July 29–A ugust 9, 2005 Join us on a sea adventure in the Galapagos Islands, an ideal opportunity to experience this fascinating archipelago with your family. Traveling on the privately chartered MV Santa Cruz, our “floating classroom,” gives this journey an extra touch of magic. The trip begins in Quito, Ecuador, the center for aristocratic eighteenth-century Hispanic culture. Visits include the city’s preserved colonial section, the ethnographic museum, and a lively Indian market. A short flight takes us to San Cristobal Island, where we will begin a seven-night cruise through the Galapagos Islands. As we journey in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, Ecuadoran

naturalist guides will give daily onboard briefings and accompany us on shore. We will explore exotic wildlife and landscapes ranging from tropical forests to crater lakes and lava formations. A highlight will be workshops for the younger travelers, including a variety of specially developed arts-and-crafts projects. You can add an optional week in Peru, including Lima, Cuzco, and a train ride to Machu Picchu. Village Life in the Alps September 16–25, 2005 Enjoy a memorable seven-night stay in the former Olympic village of Igls. The village’s working farms and charming shops are adjacent to historic Innsbruck, dramatically surrounded by the Alps. In southern Tyrol, visit Bolzano and Merano, Italy. At the Südtiroler Museum of Archaeology, view the archaeological and geological find of a 5,300-year-old man found in the mountains on the Italian-Austrian border in 1991. Visit a working Tyrolean farm and enjoy the family’s hospitality. Explore King Ludwig II’s fairytale Neuschwanstein Castle, in its magnificent mountain setting in Füssen, Germany. Board the local tram for Innsbruck and walk the streets of this imperial mountain city. Visit a silver mine in Schwaz and witness how miners extracted the silver that once made Tyrol one of Europe’s richest regions. Travel to Salzburg to visit Mozart’s birthplace and attend local village festivities in Igls. This is an exclusive opportunity to experience the distinctive cultures and traditions of village life in the Alps of Austria, Italy, and Germany and see how these cultures have influenced the unique state of Tyrol.

Interested?

For more information, visit http://www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu, and look under Association Services. Or contact Nancy Lech, Lech Educational Travel, c/o Alumnae Association, MHC, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; 413-733-1921, nlech@msn.com.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

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Plato Without Apologies

A Liberal Arts Education Offers a Great Job, and a Great Deal More

Interest in the American liberalarts curriculum is waning in favor of greater specialization and career-oriented studies. As one notable critic bitterly formulated the problem, “In the state where the acquisitive individual especially values material goods…such a one pays no attention to education.” He means education in its liberal sense, studying mathematics and philosophy rather than accounting and business. The outraged critic is Plato, writing about 2,400 years ago in The Republic. Plato: still relevant after all these years Plato’s diagnosis reveals that the decline of the liberal arts—a hot topic in highereducation circles—is of long-standing interest because the problem is deep-rooted in human nature. In a competitive economic environment, it’s alluring to consider education a shortterm instrument for acquiring a successful lifestyle rather than a long process in cultivating the soul. Plato thought personal happiness and health depended on learning to reason adequately and to meet the complexity of the cosmos and human experience with real discernment, even wisdom. But try to explain that to a seventeen-year-old writing college applications and wondering how she will meet college expenses and afford the goods (and goodies) her parents enjoyed. Wouldn’t it make more sense to take a degree in “casino management” (which is possible, though not at MHC) and work the odds to your own advantage? The cultural trends and economics of higher education make it difficult for all but prestigious liberal-arts colleges such as Mount Holyoke to make a go of it. And even they cannot afford to leave perplexed applicants facing the future with only the arguments of Plato’s Republic to brace them against the tide of concerns common to the debtor class. So colleges argue that, if you want to make a livable income, a liberal-arts degree will most usefully serve your purpose. Schools that continue uncompromised by “professional” programs can claim that attendance places their graduates in a

privileged confraternity of upper-income earners. The school is certifying that it sends out the best and brightest and provides them with a network to help with the job search. More honorably—and more publicly—schools argue that a liberal-arts education is the best training for employment in today’s highly technological society because intense study of the liberal arts develops the productive capacities of reasoning analytically, solving problems, and communicating effectively. You want a great job? Study Plato! I have told students that myself. However, I can’t ignore the irony that the purpose of a liberal-arts education as traditionally conceived—to pursue knowledge for the pleasure it gives, to seek to know why the world is as it is, and to delve into the complexities of human experience because such knowledge is deeply interesting—has been pushed aside in favor of utilitarian arguments, internship strategies, and résumé-writing workshops. It serves no purpose to blame students (or the institutions serving them); the world is what it is. In fact, it’s exactly what Plato said it is, a place where material goods are more alluring to human nature than rigorous study. Nevertheless, Plato’s appeal still holds significance. What’s most at stake in preserving a comprehensive liberal-arts education is the capacity it holds for us to renew ourselves and the world we live in through study pursued with passionate interest. Plato believed that such study subordinated an individual’s appetitive drives to the higher powers of the rational faculties. While a life lived with the aid of developed reason is better in many respects, we shouldn’t neglect the other issue that Plato touches on—that study renews us and can change us in ways laws and regulations cannot. Liberals-arts institutions will endure because the need to explore the world and to renew our experience of it will inevitably percolate powerfully in the human consciousness. Liberal-arts institutions probably need to make prudent and limited compromises to meet students’ practical needs, but we shouldn’t lose sight of our core mission, and we shouldn’t apologize for being so enthusiastic about what we study, even if it’s Plato. Bruce Arnold is MHC associate professor of classics.

www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Gregory Cherin

By Bruce Arnold

a place of

our own

Long ago it was a place of our own, perhaps our first. Each time we return it is still a place of our own, where we treasure what we remember while we explore with delight what is new. Lanterns still light canoesinging seniors ready for “purposeful engagement in the world.” Lanterns still glow when we return to Blanchard (now grown grand), to Porter (now housing the Center for Global Initiatives), and to students from everywhere enriching the community. Through the years of coming and going, the spirit of Mount Holyoke endures as it welcomes us back.

Gregory Cherin

Bernarda Smith Erwin ’43