Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly Winter 2018

Mount Holyoke wi n t er 2018

Alumnae Quarterly

Makerspace Where innovation and transformative teaching bring ideas to reality

I N TH I S I SSU E TREES OF MOUNT HOLYOKE THE IMPACT OF RUTH MUSKRAT BRONSON HOW TO RUN FOR OFFICE REMEMBERING A CAMPUS SKATING RINK

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President’s Pen AS T H E FIN IS HIN G TOUCHE S are

business cultures and models of entrepreneur-

added to the new Community Center, where

ial growth.” Expanding on this research, a 2015

contemporary dining meets the historic feel of

Forbes magazine article identified reasons

the Mount Holyoke residential experience, we

why women make better entrepreneurs than

are turning our attention to the programming

men: superior calculated risk-taking, a lesser

that will be centered in it, as well as to the

tendency to overconfidence, higher levels of

opportunities represented by the vacated

ambition, and a greater propensity to consider

kitchen and dining spaces in the residence

the long-term view and to work harder to

halls. In all that we are doing, there is intent

overcome obstacles.

to bring together creativity and analysis,

We might recognize some or all of these as

to engage intellectually and socially, and

hallmark qualities of a Mount Holyoke educa-

to ensure that we sustain a community of

tion. And with the launching of the MEDIAL

imaginative learners.

Project—or “MHC Empowering Discovery,

In this issue of the Quarterly, you will find

Innovation, and Artistic Learning”—through

a feature on the Makerspace, “In the Making,”

a $500,000 grant from the Sherman Fairchild

which describes just a few of the ways that

Foundation we are not only able to invest in

our students, faculty, and staff are taking

the Makerspace and other creative spaces on

advantage of this facility, which we have been

campus—including a media lab and digital

piloting since 2014. Use of the Makerspace by

music production and recording studios—but

both individuals and classes continues to grow,

we are able to connect our innovation-hire

and plans are under way to create a larger,

faculty members to these spaces and facilities.

more flexible, and more permanent home for

As we expand our interdisciplinary efforts, we

all of this activity in the former kitchen and

are further expanding our educational efforts

dining areas of Prospect Hall. These plans

to develop future innovators, whatever ideas,

also include specially designed classroom

majors, and careers they decide to pursue.

Creative ideas emerge from students in courses from across the curriculum, and supporting these ideas is a way to support women entrepreneurs.

— S O N YA S T E P H E N S

space. As the feature demonstrates, creative ideas emerge from students in courses from across the curriculum, and supporting these ideas is a way not only to sustain and renew the kinds of connections and pedagogies a liberal

Acting President Sonya Stephens

education encourages and promotes but also to support women entrepreneurs—historically underrepresented (and underfunded) and yet most likely to persist and succeed.

Indeed, according to a 2015 study by the Centre for Entrepreneurs more women entrepreneurs are needed. The study, “Shattering Stereotypes: Women in Entrepreneurship,” found that “women entrepreneurs are more likely to work toward controlled, profitable growth with relatively little interest in merely positioning themselves for lucrative exit,” according to Sarah Fink, then head of research prefer to re-invest business profits over equity investment to scale sustainably.” And John Winter, then chief executive of Barclays, a financial supporter of the study, attributed the success of women entrepreneurs to the ways in which they tend to develop “different

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Courtesy of MHC Office of the President

at the Centre. Women, Fink wrote, “often

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NUMBER 1

Contents F E AT U R E S

D E PA R T M E N T S

16 In the Making

2 LYONS SHARE

A growing do-it-yourself maker culture on campus is capturing students’ imaginations, transforming teaching, and sparking innovation

Love for the clock tower, Lauret Savoy’s work, fire ropes, support for alumnae

5 UNCOMMON GROUND

Cover: James Gehrt; trees: Millie Rossman; political button: Kyley Butler ’18; choreography: courtesy of Margaret Wiss ’16; sword cabinet: Deirdre Haber Malfatto

European Alumnae Symposium, remembering Gloria Johnson-Powell ’58, Athletics Hall of Fame inductees, Mountain Day alumnae reunions, Association names executive director 10 The Female Gaze Choreographer Margaret Wiss ’16; poet Holly Mitchell ’13; authors Sarah Giragosian ’06 and Leigh Purtill ’88 12 Ten Minutes With Computer science professor Valerie Barr ’77 13 The Maven Emily Martz ’94 on running for office 14 Insider’s View Rooke Theatre

1o 34 MoHOME MEMORIES The John D. Rockefeller skating rink; hand-drawn campus map 36 On Display Women’s riding hat 37 Then and Now Library atrium 38 A Place of Our Own Williston Memorial Library in winter

40 CLASS NOTES 80 MY VOICE

28 22 The Best of Both Worlds

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Barbara Cellana Bernard ’48, “A Working Life”

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By embracing both parts of her cultural identity Ruth Muskrat Bronson, class of 1925, found a fuller life

28 Trees that Teach and are

Remembered

The trees of the Mount Holyoke campus tell stories and evoke memories of all who have inhabited this place

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LETTERS

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LINKEDIN

Lyons Share RINGING PRAISE I’ve always wanted to know what the inside

of the tower looks like (“Inside the Clock Tower,” fall 2017, p. 14). I lived in Pearson’s Hall 1981–83 and loved looking at the clock tower and hearing the bells. Thank you to the people who keep it in working order. It’s such a wonderful piece of the MHC experience.

Great article!

—Julie Lydon Kellerman ’85 via Association website I love those bells and the clock. I was in Safford Hall freshman year, and the bells were welcome friends. They sound “right” to me, and very few other bells do. They sounded just as wonderful at our fiftieth reunion.

—Beverley Evans ’64 via Association website I lived on the second floor of Brigham Hall in 1989–90. I had just arrived at MHC as a transfer student and could hardly believe my good luck in landing at such an amazing college. Now I live in California, just down the street from a church with a bell tower, and the pealing of its bells always makes me smile with good MHC memories.

—Lisl Smith Christie ’92 via Association website

Join the Conversation quarterly@mtholyoke.edu

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facebook.com/aamhc twitter.com/aamhc instagram.com/mhcalums alumn.ae/linkedin

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So interesting to see the bell up close! I have very fond memories of the bell, as my freshman year I lived in the closest room on campus to the clock tower: the fourth-floor corner room in Brigham. The bell tolling on Mountain Day was the sweetest sound ever!

—Karen Hopkins ’92 via Association website SAVOY’S IMPACTFUL BOOK

Reading Trace changed the way I look at history (“Lessons of the Landscape,” fall 2017, p. 30). I had viewed the displacement of Native Americans as something that had happened in the past, but Professor Lauret Savoy’s book showed me that it is all still happening right now. That means I can be part of doing something about it. It is the most influential book I have read in a long time.

—Emily Dietrich ’85 via Association website

@fullspectrummidwife A good mail day . . . #mountholyoke #womenscollege

FIRE ROPES, REMEMBERED? I arrived at MHC in the fall of 1976 and never

saw a fire rope (“A Great Escape,” fall 2017, p.

35)! They must have been mostly gone by then?

I lived in newer dorms my first two years; perhaps with the newer construction they were never introduced.

—Caroline Foty ’80 via email I never used a fire rope. It was just “there,” coiled up on a hook next to the window in any dorm room above the first floor in the older dorms. If there was training, it was a well-kept secret. Maybe some enterprising student(s) figured out how to use the rope and used it to “escape” for an after-hours assignation!

—Win Archibald ’63 via email THANKS TO MARIE CASOVORA It is wonderful to see Marie’s efforts (“Ending

Poverty through Dairy and Community,” fall 2017, p. 12) to help alleviate poverty and empower the poor in the Philippines. This piece highlights the significance of undertakings such as hers at this critical juncture in the

country’s economic development. More than economic growth, we need inclusive growth to ensure that the poor participate and share in economic growth, a lesson that is relevant not only for the Philippines today, but globally as well.

Efforts like Marie’s help give the next generation a fighting chance.

—Maria (Corina) Gochoco-Bautista ’78 via Association website SHARED MEMORIES I want to add some information about the

use of Sycamores as a dorm (summer 2017, p. 14). In the months leading up to the fall of 1959, more women chose to accept admission to the class of 1963 than the College anticipated. With lack of space in the other dormitories, Sycamores was reinstated as a dorm, and fifteen of us freshman lived there 1959–1960. We had big sisters in Torrey.

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I also want to share with the College a special memory I have of Dr. Virginia Apgar ’29 (“Tools of a Trailblazer,” fall 2017, p. 36). I grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, and my family attended the Tenafly Methodist Church. Dr. Apgar lived in Englewood, and she and her mother also attended the Tenafly Methodist Church. One time when I was about thirteen years old, Dr. Apgar invited my mother and me to her apartment, where Dr. Apgar and I played violin-viola duets.

At that time, I only knew that she worked in Manhattan as a doctor. I had not heard of Mount Holyoke. It was not until I was a student that I learned that Dr. Apgar was a renowned and highly respected alumna, physician, and teacher. Every time I read about her in the Quarterly, I am reminded of my wonderful encounter with her many years ago.

—Judith Williams Irving ’63 via email

“I have always loved both art and science,” says Allie Miller ’11. Mount Holyoke gave her the space to combine her interests. #PoweredByMountHolyoke

CONNECTING THROUGH LOSS The article by Dihann Geier ’78 (“Welcome to the Club,”

fall 2017, p. 80) resonated with me. She spoke about the “club” one joins when a parent, sibling, or child dies. It helps to share our reflections about such things. A moment changes everything, but the adjustment takes a lifetime. I called Dihann immediately to talk, and we discovered we have many things in common (besides MHC!).

—Christine Stone Thomforde ’69 via email

WE SHARE D

We asked students about life on campus. Listen to what #MHCStudentsSay. What was YOUR favorite study spot when you were here?

#PoweredByMountHolyoke #STEMGirls My alma mater still leads among baccalaureate colleges! A remarkable achievement! #Science #womeninSTEM @JAN I CE NAEG E LE JAN I CE NAEG E LE ’ 78

My favorite study spot was the politics lounge in Clapp. It had a big table to work at and a hot plate to make tea. It was almost always empty.

And when I needed to review what I was studying, I would walk over to a classroom and use the blackboard to write down everything I had learned.

—Gretchen Schmelzer ’87 Hooker in the middle of the night with all of those chalkboards.

Creepy but worth it.

—Claire Salier-Hellendag ’04 The stacks in the library, surrounded by books with sun streaming in through the beautiful windows!

—Beth Fisher Cutler ’82 The Thirsty Mind!!

—Christy O’Brien FP’04

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MOUN T H O LYO KE ALUMNAE QUARTERLY Winter 2018 Volume 102 Number 1 EDITORIAL AND DESIGN TEAM

Taylor Scott Senior Director of Marketing & Communications Jennifer Grow ’94 Editor Millie Rossman Creative Director Anne Pinkerton Assistant Director of Digital Communications Jess Ayer Marketing & Communications Assistant CON T RIBUTORS

Kyley Butler ’18 Alicia Doyon Sara Rottger ’19 Maryellen Ryan Elizabeth Solet

QUARTERLY COMMITTEE

Lisa Hawley Hiley ’83 Carolyn E. Roesler ’86 Sara Rottger ’19, student rep

The Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly is published quarterly in the spring, summer, fall, and winter by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. Winter 2018, volume 102, number 1, was printed in the USA by Lane Press, Burlington, VT. Periodicals postage paid at South Hadley, MA, and additional mailing offices.

Ideas expressed in the Alumnae Quarterly do not necessarily reflect the views of Mount Holyoke College or the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College.

The Alumnae Quarterly welcomes letters. Letters should run not more than 200 words in length, refer to material published in the magazine, and include the writer’s full name. Letters may be edited for clarity and space.

To update your information, contact Alumnae Information Services at ais@mtholyoke.edu or 413-538-2303.

.@aamhc the cult is a question?

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

President Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67

It’s always been a given @SOX YG EO LO G I ST

President-elect Maria Z. Mossaides ’73 Vice President Susan Brennan Grosel ’82 Treasurer and Chair, Finance Committee Tara Mia Paone ’81 Clerk Markeisha J. Miner ’99 Alumnae Trustee Elizabeth A. Wharff ’75 Young Alumnae Representative Tarana Bhatia ’15 Chair, Nominating Committee Nancy J. Drake ’73 Chair, Classes and Reunion Committee Melissa Anderson Russell ’01 Chair, Communications Committee Marisa C. Peacock ’01 Chair, Volunteer Stewardship Committee Charlotte N. Church ’70 Chair, Clubs Committee Elizabeth McInerny McHugh ’87 Directors-at-Large Katherine S. Hunter ’75 Amanda S. Leinberger ’07 Alice C. Maroni ’75 Executive Director Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 ex officio without vote

The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. 50 College St. South Hadley, MA 01075-1486 413-538-2300 alumnae.mtholyoke.edu quarterly@mtholyoke.edu POSTMASTE R

(ISSN 0027-2493; USPS 365-280) Please send form 3579 to Alumnae Information Services Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association 50 College St. South Hadley, MA

Thank you to Dihann Geier ’78 for her eloquent essay on how she has dealt with the pains and losses inflicted on everyone at some point in their life. I read every word, but I was truly inspired and heartened by her last two paragraphs.

—Sally Hart Tornow ’75 via email QUESTIONING WORD CHOICE I loved the story on playwright Bryna Turner ’12 (“Purposeful

Anachronisms,” summer 2017, p. 30). Thank you for featuring such a bright young alumna!

But I have to quibble with the use of the word “seminal.” While an English major at Mount Holyoke, my professors (male and female) avoided that word, because we were an institution for women’s education. This is a distinctly male word—its Latin root, semen—to use to discuss any period in MHC’s history but particularly the period where the women in Turner’s play—Mary Woolley and her partner, Jeannette Marks—met and fell in love.

I think it’s a good word to retire in a publication for graduates of a women’s college.

—Hannah Wallace ’95 via email ALUMNA IDENTIFIED As a one-year exchange student at Mount Holyoke (1970–71) and

husband of an alumna, Roye Werner ’73, I enjoy reading through the Alumnae Quarterly. The article on the pictorial history of the Quarterly (“Style with Substance,” fall 2017, p. 16) caught my eye.

I believe that the person featured on the front and back covers of the winter 1971 issue is Marisabina Russo ’71, who has had a very successful career as a writer and illustrator of children’s books.

—Reid Andrews via email Editor’s note: Thanks to Mr. Andrews for correctly identifying Marisabina (Cookie) Russo Stark ’71.

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N E WS

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THE FEMALE GAZE

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TEN MINUTES WITH

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INSIDER’S VIEW

Uncommon Ground Alumnae Convene in Latvia to Explore Culture M OU N T H O LYO KE CO LLE G E’S fourteenth European

Guests were immersed in a weekend of Latvian culture: food, film, music, and fashion. The symposium included presentations by prominent speakers, an active panel discussion, walking tours, and several performances, including music by College professors Larry Schipull and Linda Laderach (pictured). Keynote speaker Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, former two-term president of Latvia and one of the country’s most influential public figures, shared, “Language, literature, and culture each play key roles in creating our national consciousness, bringing the essence of being Latvian into the wider European and global human contexts.”

Symposium participants also had opportunities to connect with fellow alumnae and converse with Acting President Sonya Stephens about the College’s Strategic Plan for 2021. Alumnae Association President Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67 gave an update on the current activities and strategic plan of the Association.

In celebration of the European Council’s thirtieth anniversary, chair Silvia Maulini ’80 presented awards to junior-year- and senior-year-abroad students, a recent graduate, and a European alumna.

“What an extraordinary time you prepared for us in Riga; it was magic!” says participant Louise Demarest Thunin ’66. “The word that comes to mind is ‘nourished’—I was nourished intellectually (such magnificent presentations!), socially, and ‘cuisine-ly!’

There was joy in every moment from beginning to end.”

To read more and to see photographs from the event go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/riga.

Sarmīte Vaļka

Alumnae Symposium drew more than 130 guests, including alumnae from all over the world. They met in Riga, Latvia— described as “the Paris of the North”—during the weekend of October 6–8, to explore the topic “The Story of Latvia’s Strength: How a Culture Saved a Nation.”

The event, which is held every two years in a different European city, is planned by the Mount Holyoke European Alumnae Council and supported by the Alumnae Association and the College. This year’s symposium was organized by Indra Priede ’92, Aniela White Staszewska ’05, and Ilze Ziņģe Krēsliņa CG’89.

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Remembering Gloria Johnson-Powell ’58

holy-

During Family and Friends weekend, three alumnae and a coach were inducted into the Mount Holyoke Athletics Hall of Fame at a reception and gala dinner in their honor. The class of 2017 includes founding coach of the Mount Holyoke golf team Bob Bontempo, whose successful athletes included the 1987–88 team, which finished second in the nation at the NCGA Division III Championships; four-year volleyball standout Michelle Johannes ’93, who as a student-athlete was named to numerous all-conference and all-tournament teams; basketball player Jessica Justice ’03, who holds a number of Mount Holyoke records, including all-time leading scorer; and tennis standout Jean Osachuk ’80, who as a student amassed a record of 54–10 as the number-oneranked singles player all four years.

“This year’s class of inductees covers four decades of athletic, academic, and professional excellence at Mount Holyoke College,” said Lori Hendricks ’92, director of athletics and chair of physical education at Mount Holyoke. “These individuals are examples of Mount Holyoke’s legacy of developing the remarkable talent of its student-athletes not only for excellence in their sports, but also for extraordinary contributions to our world.”

To read more about the hall of fame—and to submit a nomination—go to alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/halloffame.

— B Y S A S H A N YA R Y

2017 Annual Report Online

The Alumnae Association’s annual report for the fiscal year July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2017, is now online at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ annualreport2017.

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Athletics Hall of Fame Celebrates Four Newest Members

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Gloria Johnson-Powell and Shakti: courtesy of MHC Office of Communications; Fiske: Anne Pinkerton

Gloria Johnson-Powell ’58, a prominent child psychiatrist whose work influenced landmark national legislation in 2000 that established the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, died on October 11 at the age of eighty-one.

Part of the National Institutes of Health, the institute studies the health of people of color and seeks to raise national awareness about the prevalence and impact of health disparities between races and to eliminate them.

Johnson-Powell received her degree in economics and sociology from Mount Holyoke and attended medical school at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.

After completing her residency at UCLA, Dr. Johnson-Powell became a professor of child psychiatry in the university’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, where she taught for fifteen years. She then joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where she was the institution’s first African-American female professor, and taught there for a decade. During this time she was also senior advisor on community and social policy research at the Judge Baker Center for Children in Boston.

Dr. Johnson-Powell completed her career at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, where she was associate dean for cultural diversity and a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics.

Dr. Johnson-Powell also worked and taught at universities in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, and Brazil. Her numerous awards include the Rosa Parks Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Foundation and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in recognition of her work on child abuse and sexual assault.

Co-author or co-editor of several books, Dr. Johnson-Powell’s Black Monday’s Children: A Study Of The Effects Of School Desegregation On Self-Concepts Of Southern Children was the first textbook in child psychiatry to address this issue.

With her daughter April Powell-Willingham, she co-wrote the story of her mother’s life, “The House On Elbert Street: The Biography Of A Welfare Mother.”

Dr. Johnson-Powell is survived by her three children, April Powell-Willingham, Allison Powell Schuler, and Daniel Befakadu Powell, and eight grandchildren.

Fidelia Fiske Collection in House In November, Archives and Special Collections received from the Shelburne Free Public Library an extensive collection of materials once belonging to Fidelia Fiske, class of 1842, including more than 1,100 documents and letters, many of which were written to her

by Mount Holyoke students.

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News

The Board of Directors of the Alumnae Association and I are delighted to announce that Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 has been named executive director of the Association. Nancy is passionate about Mount Holyoke and the Association. She has been an active and involved volunteer. She brings considerable business acumen to the position. And, over the last two years, she has been instrumental in implementing innovative projects in

Learn more about Perez at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ nancyperez.

collaboration with the College in her role as interim executive director.

— A L U M N A E A S S O C I AT I O N P R E S I D E N T M A R C I A B R U M I T K R O P F ’ 6 7 O N T H E N A M I N G O F N A N C Y B E L L OW S P E R E Z ’ 7 6 A S E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R A F T E R A N E X T E N S I V E N AT I O N A L S E A R C H .

V8s Celebrate 75 Years

Shakti Program a Continued Success In its second year, Mount Holyoke College’s Shakti Program brought inspiration and motivation to young Indian women through a series of workshops and panels tackling issues from women’s leadership styles to developing personal goals.

Held in August at the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, MHC Shakti featured leadership lessons from successful, professional Indian women. The program encourages participants—girls in grades eleven or twelve—to develop confidence, resilience, and flexibility while introducing them to trailblazing women who have left their marks on the fields of media, sports, fashion, finance, social services, politics, and more.

To learn more about MHC Shakti go to mtholyoke.edu/mhc-shakti.

New Faculty Join College In the fall the College welcomed fifteen new tenured and tenure-track professors and four lecturers. Learn more at alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/faculty2017.

Thirty alumnae returned to campus in October to celebrate the seventyfifth anniversary of the V8s. After an afternoon of rehearsals, the group performed in Chapin Auditorium on Saturday night along with student members of the current V8s.

Mount Holyoke Acting President Sonya Stephens and Alumnae Association President Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67 presented the group with a certificate of achievement honoring the V8s’ long history as the oldest continuing, female collegiate a cappella group in the nation.

DID YOU KNOW?

More than

50 languages are spoken by the

68 percent of MHC professors

who speak a language other than English.

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In Memoriam

This winter and spring, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum will feature an exhibition of bold, improvisational quilts and prints by Mary Lee Bendolph, an acclaimed quilt maker from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The generous gift that sparked Piece Together: The Quilts of Mary Lee Bendolph came in 2012 from alumna and New York gallerist Renee Conforte McKee ’62, who donated to the museum two fine art etchings—To Honor Mr. Dial (2005) and Mama’s Song (2005).

These pieces were among the first prints Mary Lee Bendolph made in collaboration with Paulson Press in Berkeley, California.

The exhibition will be on view January 23– May 27, 2018.

To learn more about this and other exhibitions go to artmuseum.mtholyoke.edu.

Mary Lee Bendolph (American, b. 1935).

Mama’s Song, 2005. Color aquatint etching.

Gift of Renee Conforte McKee (Class of 1962).

2012.52.1

“One thing I learned from Mount Holyoke’s community?

Listen, listen, listen.

Everyone has a story.”

—Kimberly Ho ’18

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Bendolf: Laura Shea; In Memoriam and #wearemhc: courtesy of MHC Office of Communications

Quilt Exhibition at MHC Art Musuem

Margaret “Marlou” Switten, professor emerita of French, died on September 7. Switten received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College in 1952.

She began teaching at Mount Holyoke in 1963, following a decade of teaching at the Hampton Institute.

With a focus on early troubadour poetry and lyric, she authored numerous publications, and with Robert Eisenstein of Mount Holyoke, and Fred Cheyette and Chick Chickering of Amherst College, she created “The Medieval Lyric,” a set of anthologies and compact discs, and “Teaching the Medieval Lyric with Modern Technology,” a CD-ROM application. Together these two digital creations comprised a project of international importance. Her 2007 retirement citation noted that “during her forty-four years at the College, the remarkable reach of her fields of expertise— embracing French and Occitan language and literature of the Middle Ages, music and poetry of the Middle Ages, and French literature of the eighteenth century—has brought vitality to our collective intellectual life.”

Jane Kaltenbach Townsend, professor emerita of biological sciences, died on November 12 at the age of ninety-four.

She taught in the biological sciences department for more than twenty-four years, after teaching at Northwestern University and serving as a research fellow at the Wenner-Gren Institute of the American Cancer Society in Stockholm. She continued her research for more than two decades after retiring, publishing her last paper at age ninety-one.

“I have learned about acceptance, understanding, and patience.”

—Mira Kelly-Fair ’17 See more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ wearemhc.

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News

Alumnae around the World Celebrate Mountain Day 2017

College Announces Maria Scholarship Award On October 3, when the bells rang on campus indicating that Mountain Day had arrived, the tradition was celebrated by those far beyond the campus gates. From Massachusetts to Malaysia, more than 160 groups of alumnae gathered to share the day. Most met at ice cream shops for a cup or a cone, but some hiked mountains, walked by the ocean, rode bikes, or enjoyed a meal. To see a slideshow of alumnae Mountain Day gatherings go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ mountainday.

College-Association Approve New Agreement The Board of Trustees of the College and the Board of Directors of the Alumnae Association approved a new, tenyear agreement between the two organizations at their respective meetings on October 14, 2017. The organizations have worked together closely over the last year to implement the recommendations of the Commission on the Relationship between the College and the Alumnae Association. The new agreement commits to continuing this work.

To read more about the progress of the Commission and to access the full agreement go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ agreement.

Join an Alumnae Association Trip Abroad Get Ready for Reunion!

For more information visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/reunion.

In response to the devastating hurricane that swept through Puerto Rico last fall, Mount Holyoke is offering two full and two partial scholarships for students enrolling in the class of 2022 or transferring from a college or university on the island.

“The Mount Holyoke College Maria Scholarship Award recognizes and rewards the educational merits of students who have persevered in their programs of study and through their community engagement, and who are preparing to give back to their home, which will need their leadership and talent in the years ahead,” said Gail Berson, Mount Holyoke’s vice president for enrollment and dean of admission.

Through the Maria Scholarship Award, the College will award two full-tuition scholarships, a value of close to $200,000 per recipient over four years, to admitted first-year students from Puerto Rico.

The College also will award a renewable $25,000-per-year merit scholarship to two students who transfer from the University of Puerto Rico due to circumstances arising from the storm.

Along the Dutch Waterways, April 18–26, 2018

We invite you to join one or more of the Alumnae Association’s upcoming travel opportunities, including a cruise through the Dutch waterways.

For more information and to register visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/travel.

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CHO R EO GRA P HE R

Interpretations in Movement AR E YO U AN ARTI ST?

Email your submission to quarterly@ mtholyoke.edu.

MARGARET WISS ’16 IS INTERESTED IN THE interactions between dance and science. In her choreography she explores how dance and the environment— both inside and outside the body—interact, calling upon her dancers to share their own feelings and experiences as she begins each new piece.

In Superposition, her most recent production, which she created for the 2017 MHC Faculty Dance Concert in November, Wiss drew upon her work of the past year to create a composition for nine student dancers who interpret questions including, “How do you matter after you’re in a campus bubble?” The question is not intended to only be emotional.

“I did a lot of research into particle physics and the Big Bang theory—how matter started,” Wiss says. “I’m really interested in dance not necessarily as an art form but also how it relates in different fields, in the interdisciplinary sense. Most of my inspiration comes from science . . . and most of my choreography stems from scientific research.”

Wiss, who grew up in Boston the daughter of artists, began dancing at the age of three. She choreographed her first original piece when she was ten and brought her love for and dedication to dance with her to Mount Holyoke, where she designed a dance kinesiology major with long-term plans of becoming a physical therapist for dancers.

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After graduation Wiss went on to choreograph original work for PDX Contemporary Ballet in Portland, Oregon; the DanceBARN Festival in Minnesota; and the Harvard Ballet Company. She also stayed in touch with her Mount Holyoke dance teachers, and when she returned to campus to attend the 2016 Faculty Dance Concert professors James Coleman and Terese Freedman made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: returning to Mount Holyoke to teach.

This past fall, Wiss joined the department for the semester as a visiting artist to teach classes in pointe and repertory, where students learned Superposition.

The residency was a success. Over three days in November, student dancers from the five colleges performed at Mount Holyoke in Kendall Hall’s dance studio before sold-out audiences. Wiss was one of the five female choreographers whose work was showcased during the performance.

The weekend was a near culmination of her time at Mount Holyoke, as her residency came to an end in December. “Returning to Mount Holyoke has had a profound impact on me as an alumna and an artist,” says Wiss. “To the MHC and Five College dance community: thank you.” — B Y J E N N I F E R G R O W ’ 9 4

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Watch a video clip of Superposition at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/wiss.

Nothing happens until something moves, March 2016.

Senior Thesis Performance.

Left to right: Helena Kleinschmidt ’16, Margaret Wiss ’16, Isoke Samuel ’18

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Female Gaze

BOOKS

PO ET

Eight Days on Planet Earth

Words to Live By

Cat Jordan HARPE RCO LLI NS

IN THE FALL Holly Mitchell ’13

To the universe, eight days is a mere blip, but to Matty Jones it may be just enough to change his life. In this young adult novel that combines romance and science fiction, Matty’s father leaves and a strange girl suddenly appears in a field near Matty’s house where a spaceship is said to have landed fifty years ago. As Matty unravels the mystery of the girl in the field, he realizes there is far more to her than he first imagined and in time learns to believe in the things he cannot see.

Cat Jordan (Leigh Purtill ’88) is a writer of young adult novels, a choreographer, and a teacher. Born in Europe and raised in the US on the East Coast, she lives in Los Angeles.

Queer Fish Sarah Giragosian D RE AM H O RSE PRESS

Courtesy of Margaret Wiss ’16; courtesy of Holly Mitchell ’13

Queer Fish is a collection of poetry that crosses the boundaries between human and animal realms as readers follow a horseshoe crab, an anglerfish, a condor, a tortoise, a damselfly, and a squid all exploring their potential for both love and empathy.

Sarah Giragosian’s ’06 poems have appeared in Ecotone, Prairie Schooner, Baltimore Review, and the Missouri Review, among others. She teaches in the Department of Writing and Critical Inquiry at the State University of New York at Albany.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

See more recent alumnae books at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ winter2018books.

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And the Fullness Thereof after “As for the World”

by Yehuda Amichai As for the world, I am a forehead guiding dome & little else in the push.

As for my life, I am a reaction wonder led a student to oxidize.

As for action, I walk after years of listening in the seat of a Volvo.

As for the palm of your hand, I am the orange held in its warmish shape, reading the wrinkled print beneath.

As for the signals, as for the plans, the writing, the place, the fertile drift of spores in the air, I am like someone’s inscrutable invention. And as for fate, it’s not in my dusted makeup.

As for the silence, I am crumbs palmed away from a wedding plate.

As for the cry, I am a butter knife making serrated whispers into bread.

was named a recipient of Poets & Writers’ Amy Award, given annually to New York-area women writers under age thirty and named for Amy Rothholz, a 1979 Mount Holyoke alumna and promising poet who passed away at the age of twenty-five.

Originally from Kentucky, Mitchell was an English major at Mount Holyoke and received multiple awards from the College, including a Gertrude Claytor Prize presented by the Academy of American Poets. After graduation, she moved to New York and studied at the Poetry Project and New York University, where she earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing.

At the 2017 Amy Award ceremony, held at the Grolier Club in Manhattan, Mitchell, whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Narrative Magazine, Paperbag, and Washington Square Review, read alongside her three fellow recipients, a young honoree in high school, and the esteemed poet Grace Schulman. Each of the award winners shared one of Rothholz’ poems and a few of her own, filling the room with the words of generations of women.

Rothholz, whose family collected her work in a posthumously published book, Iced Tigers, was known to write poems in the style of a poet she admired. Mitchell’s poem “And the Fullness Thereof,” shared here, was written using that same technique, a fitting similarity in a shared Mount Holyoke experience.

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Ten Minutes With

COMPU T E R SCI E NCE P RO F ESSO R

Taking an Interdisciplinary Approach After teaching at Hofstra University and serving as chair of the computer science department and director of interdisciplinary programs at Union College, VA L E R I E B A R R ’ 7 7 was appointed to Mount Holyoke’s Jean E. Sammet Endowed Chair in Computer Science last fall. The honor comes after years of following in the legendary footsteps of Sammet, a 1948 graduate of the College. Both Barr and Sammet came to Mount Holyoke at age sixteen, and Barr recently completed a term as chair of the Association for Computing Machinery Council on Women in Computing, of which Sammet was the first female president.

Barr also shares Sammet’s passion for interdisciplinarity: a fundamental belief that in order for students to succeed in the world, they need a well-rounded educational experience that instills in them the abilities to make vital connections and to solve problems.

On interdisciplinarity: It’s critical that people have some foundations—some exposure to the humanities and social sciences—because we can teach people how to solve problems, but how do they know which problems to solve? How do they know which problems are interesting? How do they figure out the impact of the solutions they come up with?

Mount Holyoke students are going off to be software developers and to work at places like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft, and I’m certainly thrilled that the caliber of our programs is such that they can go do that. But I also have a student who is a double-major in biology, and I say, “You should be looking at the medical device world; healthcare is a

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tech industry. Every industry is a tech industry, so you don’t have to go to the top five [tech companies]. You can go into any field from computer science.”

On following in Jean Sammet’s footsteps: The course she taught at Mount Holyoke in 1973 was all about humanities and social science applications of computing.

When she was here in 2016, I had the good fortune to be at dinner with her and

she said, in her very Jean way, “We didn’t bother with the sciences. That was easy.

We did really interesting stuff like talk about anthropology and archaeology and applications of computing.”

To be doing the work I want to do seems really to fit. It’s very much in keeping with what Jean was thinking about in 1973 and the direction I think computer science should be going. I think it is part of my job to make that happen here at the College.

There are plenty of people out there doing just plain old ordinary computer science.

We need to have a different job and mission.

Lisa Quinones

On her vision for the department: We are embarking this year on a curriculum review with an eye toward expanding offerings in ways that will make our courses appealing toward a wider range of people at the College. With the ubiquity of computing everywhere, we have an obligation to prepare students, regardless of their major, to be able to help address problems that lie at the intersection of fields. I really want to work on building connections across campus that both bring other students over to computer science to get a foundation [and] send the computer science students to those fields because of the potential to apply computing in those fields.

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Running for Office

By E M I LY MARTZ ’94

We saw in the fall 2017 elections a wave of new leadLet us know ers emerging, at quarterly@ many of them mtholyoke.edu. strong, intelligent women.

Many who had never run for office before. They decided to run to make a difference, to get things done in a new way.

It was with that same conviction to my community and my country that I decided to declare myself a candidate for United States Congress. And since I launched my campaign in July I have learned a lot about what it takes to run for office.

There are many resources for women, whether you are running for school committee or city council, or for a role on the state or federal level. I found Emerge America and EMILY’S List to be invaluable resources.

Republican female candidates can look to Maggie’s List and VIEW PAC (Value in Electing Women) for similar support.

I’ve also learned very quickly along the way. I offer here five pieces of advice that I have been given, and that I call upon every day and plan to revisit daily between now and Election Day 2018.

AR E YO U RU N N I N G FO R O FFI CE?

Kyley Butler ’18

Lisa Quinones

The Maven

THE CAND I DAT E MAV E N

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Know why: Why do you want to run? Be sure you are very clear about why you are doing this, and why you are qualified. And be able to articulate both at anytime, anywhere.

For me, it’s to help fix the growing gap of economic opportunity, particularly in rural areas like mine. I have the necessary economic development expertise, gained during a career of more than twenty years, that enables me to build partnerships with people regardless of background or political party. We need this sort of independent thinking and economic development expertise to set the country on a better path.

Develop an ego: Learn how to eloquently brag about yourself and your qualifications. Learn how to say that you are the best candidate and that you will be the best leader, and be comfortable convincing others of this.

I am now comfortable telling people that I am the only candidate, including the incumbent, who has both a long and proven track record in various aspects of economic development and in stepping into leadership roles when I am most needed. We need this kind of dedication to public service in Washington.

Accept help: People want to be a part of your campaign, and they want to be useful. Some can give money, and others can give time. Start lining up volunteers well before you need them. Get contact information from every person you meet. Be ready to delegate tasks.

They will be ready when it’s time to make phone calls, make signs, send postcards, come to an event, or march in a parade on your behalf.

For my campaign, we have created captains in different parts of the district so that the captains can also help recruit volunteers.

Ensure support: Running for office requires many hours away from home and requires you to give your time and attention to many people beyond your loved ones. Do your best to make sure that your family and personal support network is heading into the experience with eyes—and lines of communication—wide open.

Beware the naysayers: There will likely be people who question your decision to run or who offer unsolicited advice about what you should be doing instead. Remind yourself of why you are committed to your campaign and of the many people who believe that you are the best candidate. Return to “Know why,” and continue your good work.

Emily Martz ’94 is running for US Congress in New York’s 21st District.

A resident of Saranac Lake, she previously worked in the financial services industry, as a college professor, and, most recently, as director of operations and finance for a local nonprofit. Learn more at martzforcongress.com.

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Alice Withington Rooke Theatre

— B Y J E S S AY E R

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Deirdre Haber Malfatto

Built in 1966, the Alice Withington Rooke Theatre, originally named Laboratory Theatre, was renamed in 1977 to honor the mother of then-trustee Dorothy Rooke McCulloch ’50.

Located off Morgan Street between Creighton Hall and Abbey-Buckland Hall, the site was also home to the original campus theatre, Playshop Laboratory, a small experimental theatre founded in 1928 by Jeannette Marks, former English literature professor, torn down in 1965 to build the current building, commonly referred to as Rooke Theatre.

Spanning several levels and more than nineteen thousand square feet of floor space, the theatre is accessed through the main lobby, which also serves as a classroom, where Noah Tuleja, director of Rooke and lecturer in theatre arts, often teaches his advanced directing class.

Off the lobby and up a short staircase is the main performance stage, which can be viewed by nearly two hundred people in red plush seats in an intimate, wood-paneled setting. Here, the theatre department presents several shows a year with students filling all the typical theatre-related roles, including director, actor, set designer, and costumer. The stage, twenty-five feet wide, is raised in front, with a fully equipped technical booth directly above the seating area to provide light and sound effects for each production.

On the next level is a costume shop, where wardrobe needs for each production may be handmade on site—if they are not already within the extensive collection of costumes in the theatre’s collection or available from other nearby colleges. Students can enroll in costume-making classes with Costume Shop Manager Elaine Bergeron, who also oversees the shop crews, hair and make-up crews, and student designers. In the back, behind the theatre, is the shop room, where faculty teach students the arts of woodworking and set building.

A green room for the actors features posters of past productions held at Rooke. And photos from past productions, dating back to the 1940s, line the nearby halls that lead to classrooms and faculty and staff offices.

The basement houses the theatre’s second performance space, the black box theatre, where many classes are held and student-produced work is performed. Also on this floor is a weapons cabinet, which secures props like swords and knives used for battle scenes, as well as a dressing room for the actors to use.

More than fifty years after its debut, Rooke Theatre still opens its performances to the general public, and with four diverse productions during any given academic year there is sure to be something for everyone to enjoy.

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Insider’s View

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Rooke Theatre, as it is known, is far more than the stage before which audiences gather: 1 a sound booth is crucial to a successful show; 2 tiered, upholstered seats offer comfortable viewing; 3 the shop room is

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essential for building sets; 4 the lobby offers space to gather during intermissions; 5 bins of mannequin arms are among the many props and materials available to cast and crew; 6 the costume shop features many options from which to assemble each show’s wardrobe needs; 7 the black box theatre in the basement is often used for student performances; 8 a locked cabinet houses a sword collection; and 9 the green room, featuring posters of past shows, is a respite for actors.

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Written by Abe Loomis • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Photographs by James Gehrt

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As a teenager in middle school in India, Michelle (Misha) Ali ’17 remembers listening to music with her friends and saying things like “Wow, this song is so purple.”

Her friends would laugh, and at first she thought it was because they were seeing different colors. Only later did she realize that the vibrant auras lighting up the periphery of her vision were unique to her experience.

“I read this book called The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran,” Ali says, “and there’s a section in the book where he talks about synesthesia. As I was reading it, I was like wait, wait, wait, he’s talking about this as if it were a case study. I thought this was how everyone perceived the world.”

It wasn’t until she encountered the Makerspace at Mount Holyoke that Ali found a way to bridge that gap in perception—to share with others a simulacrum of what she sees when she hears music. At a workshop with Makerspace Coordinator Shani Mensing ’15, Ali casually mentioned an idea she had for an electronic device that would light up in different colors depending on the audio input it was receiving—or the music it was “hearing”—to simulate the experience of synesthesia.

Mensing was intrigued. She asked Ali to describe the concept in an email and shared the idea with Luke Jaeger, technical project administrator in the computer science department. Soon Ali had a team behind her, a micro-grant, and, eventually, an award-winning entry in Hampshire College’s February 2016 hackathon. That November, a more advanced version of her machine—called MuSyC for Music-Synesthesia-Color—was a finalist at the Tech Expo at MIT Media Lab’s Hacking Arts Conference.

“Without the Makerspace, and the encouragement from people there and the resources available there,” Ali says, “I honestly would not have even pursued these projects or even thought that I could pursue these projects.”

Now a research associate at the brain and cognitive science department at MIT, Ali—whose MuSyC device continues to evolve—understands the power of such transformations.

“At Mount Holyoke,” she says, “people are encouraged to branch out.

And that I think is really valuable for people who may not necessarily have thought that they could do any kind of engineering and they’re like ‘oh wait, wow, I can actually do this?’ There were definitely times when I was really frustrated with my MuSyC project or things didn’t work and I would go to Shani, or go and sit with Luke, or talk to [Associate Professor of Computer Science] Audrey St. John, and I would come out of the Makerspace feeling like hey, whatever I want to do, I can do it. I can make anything. That reassurance is incredibly valuable.”

For Mensing, creating the conditions for students to pursue ideas big and small is at the heart of the Makerspace and of a broader “maker” culture on campus.

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The College’s current Makerspace, in Room 211 of the Art Building, inspires creativity and innovation and offers resources to support novices and experts alike as they turn their ideas into reality.

Community members have access to all of the materials and tools in the space, including a bank of computers, a laser printer and three-dimentional printers, sewing machines, a soldering station, battery banks, and an array of art supplies. Plans are under way to relocate the Makerspace to Prospect Hall in 2019. The new, larger space will feature additional sophisticated equipment and resources and is funded in part by a grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation that helped to establish MHC’s MEDIAL Project.

“Makerspaces are great—and making in turn is so great,” Mensing says, “because you’re actually doing something hands on, you’re creating something from nothing, and you’re able to see a result immediately. Going from adding code and then seeing something light up and knowing that you were able to do that really is a very transformative experience. And what’s nice about actual hands-on experiences is that they really demystify technology. It’s ‘I did this myself’ rather than having something just handed to you. That experience creates a sense of empowerment.”

Makerspace faculty lead Katherine Aidala, a professor of physics who also chairs the physics and engineering departments at Mount Holyoke, agrees.

“We’re thinking about the Makerspace and the maker culture as having multiple levels of engagement,” she says.

“We regularly do creative circuit workshops, wearable circuit workshops, arduino micro-controller workshops—that sort of get students’ feet wet. It’s very powerful because it’s exposing students to these ideas in a context that’s relevant to them.

If we infuse the entire four years at Mount Holyoke with maker experiences, we end up expanding people’s worlds.”

The room where Mensing and Aidala facilitate such learning, Art 211, is a kind of hub for maker culture on campus. It houses an array of equipment including a laser cutter, a vacuum former, two 3-D printers, sewing machines, soldering tools, and computers.

Prior projects, including a leather bear and a wooden engraving of an Eduardo Galeano poem, line the walls, and student workers move busily through the room, helping their peers find what they need, teaching them how to operate the equipment, and brainstorming with them to generate ideas for projects.

Jennifer Ann Lamy ’18 started working in the media lab when she was a sophomore and watched as it transitioned into

the Makerspace. That spring, she says, she saw interest in the new campus resource begin to take hold.

“It was interesting to see a flow of students from lots of different departments coming in to work on different projects,” she says. “I think everyone within them has a little maker.

Because there’s always something that you want to make. And you don’t necessarily have the equipment or the materials to do that, whereas when you come here you have all of that available to you. Which is the nicest thing.”

An architecture major, Lamy has used the space for her own academic work and loves the creative possibilities it affords.

In the Makerspace, she says, she can “just go crazy with my projects because I know that I don’t need to sit there and cut everything by myself, so I can get a little more creative.” She is currently working on mapping the effects of forces such as sound, car traffic, and pedestrian movement on a park in Sapporo, Japan, using the laser cutter to make intricate cuts indicating direction and force as part of the site analysis.

Lamy’s co-worker in the Makerspace, sophomore Katie Kelso, was drawn to the space by the workshops offered around particular holidays—costume design for Halloween, for example, and making molded chocolates for Valentine’s Day. She loved those experiences and wanted to do more. Last fall, she used her skills to help design a prop incorporating neopixel strips into fabric to illuminate the electrical vivification of Frankenstein’s monster in an October production at the Rooke Theatre of Mary Shelley’s classic novel.

“I’m a theatre major, and I do lights,” Kelso says. “So this is nice because it’s a new way of lighting the stage. It’s not just from above or having a big lighting unit on stage. Now you can do little things here and there that really help make the show pop.”

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How time in the Makerspace led to an idea becoming a reality Created by Regina Ye ’18, the ZIRUI Go Case is a magnetic travel toiletry case that consists of four TSA-approved modules. Three of the modules hold liquids, and one is for small miscellaneous tools, such as Q-tips and cotton pads. Pronounced “zee RAY,” ZIRUI is Ye’s name in Chinese and, conveniently, means smart beauty. She has filed for a patent for the product, which in December reached a funding goal on Kickstarter to go into production.

Here’s a look at the process leading up to fulfillment: SUMMER 2016: Ye had a tech internship with a start-up company in Berlin, Germany, funded by Mount Holyoke’s Lynk initiative.

FALL 2016: Ye enrolled in Entrepreneurship: Idea to Prototype taught by Rick Feldman, entrepreneurship coordinator and lecturer for the interdisciplinary minor in entrepreneurship, organizations, and society.

The class was about taking an idea and developing it into an actual business venture.

The idea: Ye wrote on MHC’s Gates blog: “I love beauty products, and I love to travel, but the two never seem to go well together. Liquids tend to leak, powders tend to break, and today’s toiletry cases are either too bulky or fragile. What if I could make something that was compact and easy-to-use, that would keep my liquids from leaking and look sleek?

“I pitched the idea to my classmates and interviewed people outside of the class and even outside of Mount Holyoke. The positive responses made me believe ZIRUI was a worthwhile venture.”

The daughter of entrepreneurs and a passionate traveler, Regina Ye ’18 was inspired to create the ZIRUI Go Case after returning from a trip and finding that her shampoo had spilled all over her suitcase. The Go Case is a TSA-approved travel case that protects personal products and prevents leaks.

Ye created the prototype in the Makerspace.

SPRING 2017: Ye pursued an independent study with Professor Feldman, where she continued to develop her product while also earning academic credit.

She spent a lot of late nights in the Makerspace, finishing models and using 3-D printers to create prototypes.

Ye also participated in some pitch competitions to get more involved in the start-up community, where she also met mentors and friends.

Ye participated in Valley Venture Mentors’ Collegiate Accelerator program, where she worked on the product full time.

NOVEMBER 2017: ZIRUI’s first product, the ZIRUI Go Case, was launched on Kickstarter.

DECEMBER 2017: The project’s funding goal of $20,000 was achieved.

FEBRUARY 2018: The expected date for fulfillment. Learn more at getzirui.com.

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WEB EXCLUSIVE

Watch a video of the Makerspace at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/makers.

COU RT ES Y MHC OFF ICE OF COM MU NICATION S

SUMMER 2017:

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Illinois, Klemperer has lived the “do it yourself” philosophy that comes with maker culture, and he believes that imparting it to students can have a real impact.

“What we’re looking for,” he says, “is for students to have that transformative experience where they start out thinking this isn’t for me, people have told me this isn’t for me, I haven’t had good experiences with this. And then, in a very low-stakes, high-support environment, they get to reshape who they think they are.”

Klemperer describes discussions in the Makerspace where students talk about challenges as much as successes and the ways such conversations build trust and create an environment where being a beginner feels like a safe and shared experience.

Then, he says, “you get to solve all sorts of problems, you get to make cool things, you get to make an impact on the world beyond what you thought you could before. That’s really what I’m excited about when I teach in that space.”

Abe Loomis is a freelance writer based in western Massachusetts. Contact him at abe.loomis@gmail.com.

Students in Jon Western’s American Foreign Policy class designed and built drone rovers in the Makerspace and used them to simulate a humanitarian-relief mission.

Nick baker

Such integrations of art and technology are the motivating force behind a recent $500,000 grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation that launched the College’s MEDIAL Project. “MEDIAL” stands for “MHC Empowering Discovery, Innovation, and Artistic Learning.”

The grant will be applied largely to upgrading media and film production and audio and sound production facilities, including a new digital music lab. There are also plans for substantial upgrades to the Makerspace.

“This grant is a wonderful illustration of the liberal arts in the twenty-first century,” says Jon Western, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, who notes that making, experiencing, and teaching art in the twenty-first century is increasingly technological and collaborative.

The funds support expanding artistic spaces where students can create, exhibit, and perform art that incorporates a mix of disciplines and technologies, as well as creating new courses and reformulating existing ones. The improvements are aimed at elevating and sustaining a powerful maker culture at Mount Holyoke—one of the most important goals in The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2021, the College’s strategic plan—and helping to transform teaching and learning across the curriculum.

Like many of his colleagues, Western has already found opportunities for such innovations in his own classes. The Carol Hoffmann Collins ’63 Professor of International Relations teaches the course American Foreign Policy, and during a unit about the use, power, and ethics of drone technology, he took his students to the Makerspace to build drone rovers and then simulated a humanitarian-relief mission in Kendade Atrium—at lunchtime.

“I gave the students incentives to compete against each other, and we put teams together. We put the rovers on one end of the atrium, and they had to get across,” Western says. “But we did it during a time when there was an interface of students in that space that we couldn’t control. So those students were picking up the drones and looking around, trying to figure out who was running them. And my students were trying to get the task done.”

As a result, Western says, his students experienced some of the things that drone operators in the real world might experience—engaging with technology while that technology is engaging with humans outside of the operators’ control. The next step, he says, was to take that experience back into the classroom and for students to consider how they thought about the technology and how they thought about “the inability to control the environment around which they were trying to engage with the technology.” And then, Western says, “thinking through the questions of the moral and political and social implications of all of this.”

To further promote such learning, the College has recently made several “innovation hires,” a new category of teaching position that invites candidates to join the faculty community to shape innovative directions in curriculum. One such hire, Peter Klemperer, is both an assistant professor in computer science and an innovation hire in engineering, which means that he teaches hands-on classes with few or no prerequisites, such as robotics, iDesign Studio, and, beginning next semester, a course called Engineering for Everyone.

A lifelong tinkerer whose earliest projects included building skateboard ramps for himself and his friends in his native

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I IE B ES BO I I ORLDS By embracing both parts of her cultural identity, Ruth Muskrat Bronson, class of 1925, found a fuller life.

By Erin Binney Illustration by Sarony Blacklock

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Ruth Muskrat Bronson, class of 1925, belonged to two different worlds. On the one hand, her father was Cherokee, and she was raised in a Cherokee community in the Oklahoma territory. On the other hand, she attended a governmentrun boarding school and likely was exposed to white culture by her Irish mother, even if only through stories.

From a young age, Bronson identified with both cultures, and she didn’t want to choose between the two.

So she didn’t.

Though it wasn’t a popular sentiment in the early 1900s, Bronson believed diversity could enrich both individuals and communities. As a result, she embraced both parts of her cultural identity and encouraged other Native Americans to do the same.

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An undergraduate Ruth Muskrat stands on Skinner Green with books in hand.

Bronson set out on a different path than her peers.

After high school, she worked for the YWCA on an Apache reservation, took classes at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Kansas, and lectured around the country about Native American affairs.

She also represented Native American students at the World’s Student Christian Federation Conference in China in 1922; according to one account, she was the “poet delegate.” Her impressive resume earned her a full scholarship to Mount Holyoke.

Bronson arrived in South Hadley at age twenty-five as one of a limited number of students admitted with advanced standing. She entered as a junior.

A SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENT Her transition to life at Mount Holyoke wasn’t exactly seamless, according to Bronson’s friend and classmate Harriet Stoddard, class of 1925, who had also transferred. “Ruth Muskrat gets so discouraged over things here,” Stoddard told her parents in a letter dated November 18, 1923. “She was almost on the point of giving up and going back to Nebraska last week. She has to make up Latin for entrance credit and she finds chemistry awfully hard.”

But soon Bronson was making plans to hike Bear Mountain with friends and forging connections with her professors. As her letters show, she loved meeting

MHC Archives and Special Collections

Bronson’s mixed heritage was not unusual for someone of her generation. Since the mid-1800s Native Americans had been removed from reservations and educated in government boarding schools. There, they gained exposure to white Americans, and romances blossomed. Interracial couples who married typically had to choose between life on the reservation and life in white society, with almost no opportunity to move between the two.

There was a growing awareness in the first few decades of the twentieth century, however, that individuals could and did belong to more than one race. In 1930 use of the term mulatto was eliminated from the census as a racial classification, and special instructions were provided for reporting the race of interracial people, including those with Native American and white lineage.

While Bronson’s racial background was not uncommon, her pursuit of higher education was.

Not many Native Americans, and particularly Native American women, went to college. Mount Holyoke’s first students of Cherokee lineage were Elinor Boudinot, class of 1846, and Mary Boudinot, class of 1849. And Smith College graduated its first Native American student, Angel De Cora, in 1896.

For most Native Americans, continuing their European-American education beyond high school was often unappealing after disappointing experiences at government boarding schools. The majority of students had returned to their families practically as strangers and were unable to apply what they had learned to reservation life. For those who were interested in attending college, the financial cost was typically prohibitive.

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informally with her teachers in the evenings to enjoy a cup of tea and good conversation.

“It might not have meant so much to some other girls who have had such opportunities all their life, but to me it was the opening up of a whole new world of joy and beauty and womanliness,” she wrote in a letter that appeared in the Mount Holyoke News on May 14, 1926.

Bronson also developed a special relationship with her English professor, Miss Snell. A former Lyon herself with a master’s from Yale and a doctorate from the University of Michigan, Ada Snell, class of 1892, embodied the type of accomplished faculty that President Mary Woolley wanted at the College. Upon Snell’s retirement in 1938, she was remembered for her ability to spark students’ interest in poetry, a subject Bronson already found appealing. Rather than forcing her to reject her Cherokee heritage like other teachers had done, Snell encouraged Bronson to tap into and celebrate that heritage in writing assignments.

Even Stoddard noted the effect Snell had on Bronson. In a January 1924 letter home to her parents, she wrote, “She [Miss Snell] has succeeded in working Ruth Muskrat into ‘Indian’ tunes and images—fancy that. Making an Indian write natural instead of a la Tennyson—Well!—” With a natural gift for language and a newfound support for expressing herself, Bronson declared English as her major. She also studied sociology.

she called Coolidge. The Red Man in the United States, written by G.E.E. Lindquist, was a study of the social, religious, and economic life of Native Americans. Bronson also delivered a speech that proposed a way forward.

“We want to understand and to accept the civilization of the white man; we want to become citizens of the United States and to share in the building of this great nation that we love,” she told Coolidge. “But we want also to preserve the best that is in our own civilization. We want to make our own unique contribution to the civilizations of the world—to bring our own gifts to the altar of that great spiritual and artistic unity which such a nation as America must have. This is the Indian problem which we who are Indians find ourselves facing.”

After Bronson’s presentation, the former governor of Massachusetts invited her to have lunch with him and the First Lady. On June 2, 1924, Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting automatic American citizenship to Native Americans born in the US.

In a 1923 meeting at the White House, Bronson presents President Calvin Coolidge (left) with a book of Native American history. Reverend Sherman Coolidge is pictured on the right.

Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress

A WAY WITH WORDS At the same time she was pursuing a EuropeanAmerican-style education, Bronson held tightly to her Native American background. While she was a student, she educated the local community and even national leaders on Native American affairs. In fact, while most students were making plans for the winter recess in December 1923, Bronson was contemplating how she should greet President Calvin Coolidge.

She had been invited to the White House as part of the Committee of One Hundred, a group designed to advise on Native American policy. Bronson was there representing Native American students. For the occasion, she intentionally wore ceremonial Native American regalia that included a white buckskin dress, beaded moccasins, a headband, and a leather belt with large silver medallions—all of which had been made by Cheyenne and Apache women.

The same woman who made her dress also created an intricately beaded cover for the book Bronson presented to the “Great White Father,” as

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Shortly after becoming the first Native American to graduate from Mount Holyoke, Bronson accepted a position teaching junior high school English in Kansas at the Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University), the largest Native American boarding school in the country. Her students came from nearly sixty different tribes. In addition to her classroom teaching, Bronson sponsored the eighthgrade class, served as advisor for a literary society, and taught Sunday school.

The Haskell Institute was different from other government boarding schools because it was run by Native Americans, allowing the teachers to weave Native American culture into lessons. Bronson took full advantage.

In her memoir Essie’s Story: The Life and Legacy of a Shoshone Teacher, former student Esther Burnett Horne recalled, “Ruth always tried to make the subject matter come alive for us, and she always tried to bring some of our culture into the literature that she taught. When she taught Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline,’ she wove in some of the history and even some of the legends of the Indian people who lived in the different areas that Evangeline moved through in her wanderings. . . . It made the readings so much more relevant to our understanding of who we were.”

Bronson also taught her students to have “a healthy respect for themselves as individuals and a pride in their heritage,” Horne wrote. “When Ruth would tell us to have pride in who we were, she’d say, ‘Indians are people, too. Don’t forget that.’”

At the same time, Bronson replicated some of the experiences she had enjoyed at Mount Holyoke.

By sprucing up her living quarters and inviting the girls to friendly gatherings, she made it possible for students to get to know faculty. The opportunity for these students to leave their teepees, adobe houses, and dormitories and spend time in “a pretty room,” Bronson said, was significant.

Bronson attributed her interest in celebrating her students to her college experience. “I care more about what happens to the inner selves of these boys and girls than I did before,” she wrote in her May 1926 letter. “Somehow out of my two years at Mount Holyoke I learned to care more for the individual and to respect personality.”

Bronson was awarded the Henry Morgenthau Prize for making the best use of her college education during the first year after graduation.

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Her personal life also flourished around this time. In 1928 she married John Bronson, who supported his wife’s work throughout their relationship.

A DISTINGUISHED CAREER After leaving the Haskell Institute, Bronson continued to build a career focused on bettering the lives of Native Americans and helping them reach their full potential as leaders in both their tribal communities and the larger US society.

In 1931 she began working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Initially, she was based in Kansas City as a guidance and placement officer for boarding school graduates in eight Plains states. In 1936 she moved to Washington, DC, to head up the scholarship and loan program. Bronson had long believed that scholarships were a crucial need of Native American youth. During her tenure, she helped send more than two thousand Native Americans to college.

In 1943 Bronson stopped working to spend more time with John and their five-year-old daughter, Dolores, whom the couple had adopted a few years earlier, but she continued to advance her cause in other ways. She published Indians Are People, Too, an educational text designed for Native American students, and helped to establish the National Congress of American Indians as a unified voice of tribal nations, serving for a time as the organization’s executive secretary. Still in existence today, the nonprofit successfully lobbied for passage of the HEARTH Act of 2012, which allows for tribal self-determination in land leasing and economic development decisions.

Once Dolores was grown, Bronson returned to the workforce as a health education specialist for the Indian Health Service, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. In this new role, she was able to work directly with the people of the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona, sharing information about health hazards and hygiene. For her work she received the Oveta Culp Hobby Service Award, the government’s highest civilian award at the time.

Bronson left government service in 1962 and joined Save the Children USA, a charity devoted to helping impoverished youth. First as a volunteer and then as a staff member, serving for a time as national program chairman, she worked with Native American tribes in Arizona on community development projects until her retirement ten years later.

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“INDIANS ARE PEOPLE TOO”

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THE FIRST BUT NOT THE LAST Along with her professional accomplishments, Bronson counted among her achievements the enrollment of three more Native Americans at Mount Holyoke in the two decades after she graduated.

Ensuring another Native American received the same caliber of education she had became a goal of Bronson’s during her early years at the Haskell Institute.

“I’m going to bend all the energy I have to send another Indian girl to Mount Holyoke, and I shall never be satisfied until some other girl of my people can have the same great experience that was mine when I went there,” Bronson wrote in 1926. She didn’t have to wait long to see this happen.

Less than two years later Verna Nori, class of 1932, of the Laguna Pueblo enrolled in the College. While she was a student, Nori represented Mount Holyoke and Native Americans at three international conferences. After graduating, she became president of the Government Day School for Indians in New Mexico.

Another Native American, Evelyn Yellow Robe, class of 1942, reportedly received a scholarship from the Bureau of Indian Affairs while Bronson was in charge of the program. Following graduation from Mount Holyoke, Yellow Robe worked as a speech instructor for a few months at the College. She went on to earn a master’s and a doctorate in speech pathology from

Northwestern University, taught at Vassar College, and became internationally known in the field of speech pathology, having settled in Germany with her husband, Dr. Hans Finkbeiner.

Yellow Robe, who was raised in the Lakota tradition—part of a confederation of seven Sioux tribes— was selected in 1948 to appear in the second edition of Indians of Today, a book published by the activist group Indian Council Fire. Bronson wrote the foreword.

Following Bronson’s lead, these Native American women embraced a multicultural, blended worldview.

In doing so, they proved that they could contribute to society and become leaders because of, rather than in spite of, their backgrounds. As Bronson noted in her book Indians Are People, Too, “Under the right kind of circumstances this blending can build for the individual a more satisfying life and for the world a richer personality than any one culture could produce.”

Erin Binney is a freelance writer and editor based in western Massachusetts.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Read Ruth Muskrat’s full speech to President Calvin Coolidge at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/muskrat.

L E F T Ruth Muskrat in her graduation robe at Mount Holyoke commencement; R IGH T Bronson wearing

the ceremonial regalia that was designed for her meeting with President Calvin Coolidge.

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By Clarisse Hart ’03 Photographs by Anja Schütz

Trees Teach Remembered that

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To nearly everyone who has spent time on campus the memory of Mount Holyoke is a memory of trees: the whispering shade over conversations on Skinner Green, the blooms that brighten spring exams, the crimson and gold fanfare of Mountain Day. The Mount Holyoke College campus features 1,200 planted trees and thousands more forest trees in the wilder areas on Prospect Hill and around Lower Lake and Upper Lake.

The planted trees—representing more than 175 species—hail from dozens of countries. All are cared for by a team of college staff. All hold a history of this place.

Diverse Roots

Over the decades, the College’s trees have been planted thoughtfully, with an eye toward longevity, aesthetics across multiple seasons, and, increasingly, toward diversity.

“The diversity of students on campus is incredible—not just where they’re from, but their histories and what brought them here,” says Tom Clark, director and curator of the Mount Holyoke Botanic Garden.

“Why shouldn’t the trees reflect that?”

Nearly half of campus trees are oaks, maples, and pines, but even within these steadfast local varieties, which include the large grove of sugar maples around Mary Lyon’s grave, there is remarkable variation.

Look closely at the tall pine between the Kendall Hall parking lot and the playing fields—the campus’s sole lacebark pine—and you’ll see beneath its feathery needles a trunk that looks like marble: smooth and dappled with gold, grey, white, ruby, and green. The sugar maples behind Ciruti Center are of a variety (Newton Sentry) that grows tall and thin, like towering green pencils, without pruning or encouragement. The trunks of the maples near Brigham and Dickinson halls, and in the courtyard of the WillitsHallowell Center, flaunt a deeply

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FACING PAGE and RIGHT, TOP: The

College’s only lacebark pine (Pinus bungeana), on the north side of Kendall Hall parking lot.

RIGHT, BOTTOM (3): A paper-bark maple (Acer griseum) on the east side of Brigham Hall is one of five on campus; a paper-bark near MilesSmith is dedicated to Elizabeth Topham Kennan ’60.

cinnamon-hued bark, which rolls off in rich, metallic-looking sheets to reveal a rose-colored trunk. These are paperbark maples, a unique species native to central China, rare in the landscape because they are exceedingly difficult to grow from seed.

All across campus are pockets of trees difficult to find in local yards and greenways. A trident maple on Skinner Green, planted in 1996, grew from a seed sent to campus from Arborétum Mlyňany in Slovakia as part of an international seed exchange. Today Botanic Garden staff are raising many tree saplings grown

from seeds collected by Clark and his colleagues on excursions to the trees’ distant home ranges. One such tree (a mountain pepperbush, its seed collected from North Carolina in 2014) will be mature enough to be planted on Botanic Garden grounds for Arbor Day this spring.

On the north end of the Kendall Hall parking lot, on the way to the playing fields, is a rich concentration of unusual conifers, including bald cypress, golden larch, and an umbrella pine, one of the oldest tree species on earth (pre-dating the dinosaurs) and historically regarded

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TOP: The College’s only river birch (Betula nigra) sits on the lake side of Prospect Hall; BOTTOM: One of many on

campus, this pin oak (Quercus palustris) stands on the west side of the Health Center.

initiative, a program that will continue. Interns were involved with a wide range of activities, centered mostly on the care of the living collection within the Botanic Garden’s grounds, gardens, and greenhouses.

They create interpretive materials and help organize the First-Year Plant Sale, all while developing a broader understanding and appreciation of the diversity of plants and the vital role they play in the world.

Tree education is part of coursework, too. Students majoring in fields as diverse as biology, environmental studies, economics, and art come together in Biology Professor Martha Hoopes’ fall-term ecology class to

monitor long-term study plots in the woods above Upper Lake. By identifying trees and shrubs and measuring their growth, students can observe the impacts of invasive species on local forest dynamics and explore pressing global change issues playing out right on campus.

Campus trees also have been the foundation for Local Flora, a class taught by Professor Amy Frary ’90, chair of biochemistry. Students in this class learn to identify more than seventy-five tree species and an equal number of smaller plant species, all from specimens on campus. “Knowing what’s out there really enhances your appreciation

as one of five sacred trees in its native Japan. This umbrella pine, planted in 2011, is the only one of its kind on campus, and for good reason; they’re very slow growers (this one is less than twenty feet tall), intolerant of drought and extreme cold, and unlikely to reach maturity in any of our lifetimes.

The tree’s glossy, needle-like leaves are soft to the touch and on close inspection reveal a surprise: they are actually not leaves at all (the real leaves are tiny brown scales) but modified stems made of the same unique material as cactus pads. The whorled, spreading arrangement on each branch, resembling the ribs of an umbrella, is how the tree got its name.

Lessons to be Learned

Each year, dozens of students use the trees on campus as a learning tool.

The Botanic Garden, which in its three acres includes many campus gardens and trees as well as the Talcott Greenhouse, is actually a department within the science division. Clark likens it to the Mount Holyoke Art Museum: “We exist to ourselves as a multi-faceted scientific entity but play a direct role in supporting the academic mission.”

Last summer three students interned with the Botanic Garden as part of the Mount Holyoke Lynk

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when you step outside,” says Frary.

“It’s not just this massive anonymous green. You know that’s an oak, that’s a maple. It’s the same pleasure I get from taking art history classes and then going into a museum.”

Frary uses weekly walks and field trips to help students connect with the trees on a personal level. “I tell students, you’re going to know a bunch of new friends on campus by name—even in the winter, when it’s almost like a magic trick because there are no leaves.” Students’ final projects for the class tend to be interdisciplinary; recent presentations have focused on medicinal plants, tree diversity around a restored section of Lower Lake, and plant components used in fiber arts. In recent years, there have been long waiting lists for the class, which is capped at eleven students. “I sprinkle in a lot of natural history and bits of info that I don’t hold them responsible for,” Frary adds. “We do scratch-and-sniff twigs. They’re shocked that the distinctive odor of the black cherry tree is cyanide. And then we talk about why plants would be making these compounds.”

Sarah Paquet ’03 says she has retained more information from Frary’s class fifteen years ago than in “any other classroom, ever.”

Whenever she returns to campus, a large sycamore between Mary Woolley Hall and the Rockies is always her first stop. Eastern sycamores are majestic native trees—one of the largest broadleaved trees in the eastern United States—with a dense canopy that can grow well over one hundred feet high. Their broad trunks are flanked with marbled bark that tapers to a luminous ivory where sunlight filters into the upper branches. In fall, their broad, maple-like leaves turn golden yellow. The soft seed balls that give the tree its nickname (“button-wood”) provide food for finches and squirrels throughout the winter.

Tree Traditions

Many alumnae have touchstone trees that they return to during a campus

visit. At least forty trees on campus are designated as “class trees,” planted or adopted by graduating or reunion classes. At the turn of the twentieth century, “tree exercises” and the adoption of a class tree were a standard part of Commencement weekend, held just after the alumnae meeting. In 1916 a notable tree exercise included a group of student leaders gathering at their tree to act out their four years in pantomime and song and then burying a box of class souvenirs near the tree’s roots, to be dug up at their twenty-fifth reunion.

Although official tree exercises are a thing of the past, more than half of the classes since 1940 have planted a tree. The species (selected in collaboration with Facilities Management and the Botanic Garden) range from small flowering dogwoods and magnolias to towering heritage oaks. Some are planted in memory of a classmate; others are planted in scenic locations or for a bloom color that corresponds to the alumnae year. A magnificent river birch adopted by the class of 1987 sits between the Prospect Hall dining patio and Lower Lake. Unlike the river birches in domestic front yards, which are multi-trunked and heavily pruned, this tree has been allowed to mature into its natural form— with a wide, weeping canopy that shades a favorite student study spot (and provides habitat for Jorge the goose). The tree is visible from the newly renovated Blanchard Hall and Community Center, its golden leaves a standout in the diverse tableau lining the lake in fall.

A Long History

The ages of most campus trees are unknown. It wasn’t until 1990 that campus trees were systematically inventoried and labeled—work begun under former Director of the Botanic Garden Ellen Shukis. Since then, each tree has been tracked as part of a campus-wide plant database that’s rich with information about the plants’ origins. Look closely at the tags on campus trees;

ABOVE:

This Shawnee Brave Bald-cypress (Taxodium distichum )is one of three on campus, all on the north side of the Kendall Hall parking lot.

in addition to the plant’s name and home range, a numeric ID begins with the year the tree was planted.

Trees planted before the 1990 census begin with an “E,” for “existing.”

One older tree with a welldocumented history is the copper beech outside Dwight Hall. Perhaps the best-known tree on campus, this beech of European origin was planted in 1904 by botany professor Asa Kinney to honor the birth of his daughter Elizabeth Kinney Worley, class of 1924. The beech, now more than eighty feet tall, with massive, elephantine branches and burgundy leaves that sweep the round windows of the library’s Octagon Room, is sometimes referred to as the “million dollar tree.” When the connector between the Miles-Smith library wing and Dwight Hall was built in 1990, the College went to costly lengths to ensure that the tree could remain, and

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A Tree Remembered: The Black Walnut The first issue of the Mount Holyoke News, published in October 1917, devoted a good portion of its front page to the demise of a beloved tree felled by a summer storm. The black walnut tree, with a 102-foot spread to its branches, was said to be the oldest and largest in Massachusetts.

Nearly a dozen photographs in the Archives show groups of students perched atop the walnut’s massive trunk before it was hauled away and processed into wood.

The United States government is said to have offered $200 for the trunk, intending to make it into gunstocks for the war. An outcry in the Mount Holyoke community led to an alternative set of uses: entrance paneling for the new Clapp Hall—as well as a great many knitting needles, coat hangers, and gavels for club meetings, all purchased by alumnae to support the Endowment Fund Campaign.

The walnut had been the class tree for the classes of 1912 and 1916. In 1941, as custom dictated for the twentyfifth reunion, the class of 1916 dug out the box from their fallen tree. Although the contents were mostly destroyed from the disruption of the tree’s fall, some items were still identifiable, a fact extolled in reunion notes.

Shortly after, the new Clapp Hall was finished, and another well-loved tree on campus—a pink hawthorn, about which poems and songs were written by students in the 1930s—was dug up and moved to the spot formerly occupied by the black walnut.

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ABOVE, TOP (2) : An unusual sugar maple (Acer saccharum “Newton Sentry” ) is one of two on campus, both bordering the Ciruti Center; BOTTOM and MIDDLE RIGHT : The copper beech (Fagus sylvatica, Atropurpurea Group) near Dwight Hall is perhaps the most recognized tree on campus.

FACING PAGE, TOP:

The College’s only umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata), on the north end of the Kendall parking lot; MIDDLE, BOTTOM:

One of five American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), near North Rockefeller Hall.

that its sensitive surface roots would not be compromised by construction.

Other construction efforts have been similarly mindful of the tree. In 2004 students, faculty, and alumnae gathered to celebrate the beech’s centennial with a cake.

When it comes to size, other showstopper trees on campus are the massive pin oaks, like the one that shades the Health Center, with soaring canopies and trunks four feet wide. An educated guess would place their collective origin as the dozens of pin oaks planted throughout campus in the aftermath of the Great Hurricane of 1938, which blew down more than 1,200 trees on

campus, including ninety percent of the trees on Prospect Hill. Major Otto C. Kohler, then superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, led a major replanting effort in 1946 to establish seventy pin oak and linden trees, mostly along College Street and in front of the library. (You will still find the originals in both places—similarly sized to the oak at the Health Center.)

In 1948, an additional two hundred pin oaks, sycamores, crabapples, and scarlet oaks were planted, many of which still stand today near Skinner and Mary Woolley halls.

Subsequent storms have shown the resilience of campus trees, like the Halloween snowstorm of 2011, which

damaged 90 percent of the planted trees on campus. All but fifty trees were saved and restored. A new tree was planted for every tree removed.

Today, wood from felled campus trees is recycled into building projects—lumber for doors, bureaus, cabinets, and even educational displays.

Rings from a segment of an elm tree removed in 1997 are used in teaching geology students the growth variability that follows climate shifts, as part of Professor Alan Werner’s Global Climate Change class.

“We don’t throw a lot away,” says James Roy, carpentry supervisor for Facilities Management. “We try to reuse everything, down to the little pieces.” A red oak removed between the Rockies and Mary Woolley Hall was crafted by carpenter Mike Laizer into Shaker-style bookcases for Ciruti Center. An ash tree near Clapp became a door in Mary Lyon Hall and radiator covers for the President’s House. In his ten years at Mount Holyoke, Roy says he has purchased very little pine and hardwood for his shop’s carpentry projects. Not only are felled trees used for projects, but worn wood is repurposed. Dorm desks, dining hall tables, old cedar lamp posts, and cypress window sashes original to the nineteenth century greenhouse are all being reimagined into new and useful campus infrastructure. And in this way the trees of Mount Holyoke live on.

Clarisse Hart ’03 directs outreach and education at Harvard Forest, a research department of Harvard University, and is involved in her town government consulting on tree-related issues. She earned a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Emerson College and is pursuing a doctorate in forest resources at the University of Massachusetts.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Learn more about favorite trees at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/trees.

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O N D I S P L AY

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T H E N A N D N OW

MoHome Memories

A Celebrated Winter Respite The John D. Rockefeller skating rink

IN THE A R E A OF CA MPUS where Porter Hall now stands, overlooking Lower Lake, there once stood a covered skating rink.

The rink, donated to the College by John D. Rockefeller, measured 120 feet by 50 feet and was one of the first buildings built after the Great Fire of 1896 destroyed the original Mount Holyoke seminary building. The project was enthusiastically celebrated by the campus community. In the opening pages of the February 1896 issue of The Mount Holyoke, the editors wrote of the importance of students and other community members having a place on campus to go during the winter months where they could continue their physical education and nourish their mind, body, and spirit. “When winter closes down upon us it is different, and anything which tempts us out for the needed exercise is a gift to be held in great esteem. The new skating floor does just this,” they wrote.

At the request of Rockefeller, construction of the rink was completed by January, and students returned from winter break to celebrate its grand opening with a celebratory carnival. Bunting and streamers in class colors hung from the rafters as student skaters wore

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outfits honoring their own class years. During intermission, participants sang the college alma mater and Skating Song, an original song written specifically for the event by Margaret Geddes Lundy, class of 1898. In addition, a twelve-piece band was on hand to perform music throughout the day. According to The Mount Holyoke, the chants “H-o-l-y-o-k-e, Holyoke, Holyoke are we—Rah! rah! rah! Rockefeller,” closed out the ceremony.

Just one year later, the rink was moved closer to Lower Lake to allow for the construction of Porter Hall. And in the years that followed it was often used as a service building, until it was eventually torn down in 1934.

— B Y J E S S AY E R

WEB EXCLUSIVE

View more photos of students skating on campus, and read the lyrics to Skating Song at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/skating.

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FRO M T H E A RC H IVES

A Visual Guide Campus map

MHC Archives and Special Collections (2)

This Mount Holyoke campus map—the outside cover of a 1950s admission brochure—was hand illustrated and showed not only the layout of campus buildings and roads but also people interacting in the space. Figures are shown skating on Lower Lake, riding horses, relaxing on Skinner Green, and even donning graduation robes.

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The cover (top) and details of an admission brochure from the mid-1950s.

While the map depicts a campus recognizable as the one we know and love, close viewers will note changes over the past seventy-five years. Text reveals that campus was 660 acres, compared to the eight hundred of today. Other differences include the residences of Bridgman Hall, Cowles Lodge, Le Foyer, Mountain View, Sycamores, and Woodbridge Hall—none of which are used as student residence halls today (and a few of which are no longer standing).

—BY SARA ROTTGER ’ 19

Keep up with Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections at mhc-asc.tumblr.com or follow them on Instagram and Snapchat at mhcarchives and on Twitter @ASCatMHC. Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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On Display

ARTIFACT

Style in the Saddle Riding hat

A RECENT DISPLAY at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum featured this traditional English women’s riding hat. Estimated to be about two hundred years old, the hat is still remarkably intact. And it is remarkably different from the impact-resistant plastic or resin helmets worn by today’s equestriennes. Constructed out of beaver felt, lace, and gilt, the hat was one of two items in The Material Life of Equestriennes, which also featured an Apsáalooke (Crow) saddle.

Affixed to the inside of the hat, made by Boston milliner John M. Peck, is a well-worn illustration of an eagle and American flag.

Selected by interns—and equestriennes—Madeline Ketley ’17 and Katia Kiefaber ’17, the hat and saddle represent the long

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history of equestrianism at Mount Holyoke, which will celebrate its centennial in 2020.

In putting together the exhibit the interns recognized their work as “laying the cultural context,” according to Kiefaber, of campus equestrian activity, which began long before the College’s program was officially established. With the support of the Almara History in Museums J-Term Internship, the students conducted research at Skinner Museum, which houses both objects in its permanent collection, and Archives and Special Collections.

To view a photo of the saddle, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/riding.

—BY SARA ROTTGER ’ 19

Petegorsky/Gipe

John M. Peck (American) Woman’s riding hat, 1800-1825 Beaver felt, lace, and gilt Joseph Allen Skinner Museum, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts SK B.18.U.F.1.1

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Then and Now

Library Atrium THE N

N OW

1930s: MHC Archives and Special Collections; 2018: Ryan Donnell

1930s In 1935, as students accessed the Williston Memorial Library from the doors opposite Clapp Hall, they entered on the same floor as students do today, but the center of the building was divided into levels, and lighting was provided on each level by hanging lamps rather than skylights.

The ground floor was split into several rooms, including at least three coat rooms, one designated for faculty. A large room, labeled “staff” on the floor plan from the time, was presumably an office or meeting space for College employees who worked in the library.

The ground level also included a kitchenette and a student bathroom.

2018 One floor up, the “delivery room,” as it was called on the floor plan, featured a curved wooden circulation desk and rows of card catalogue cabinets. Walking through this area students could reach the main reading room.

A second floor, which could be accessed by a balcony in the reading room or by the main marble stairs upon first entering the library, included several rooms labeled “study” on the floor plan as well as a room for “maps and charts.” The balcony is no longer accessible, as the space is now fully open from the ground floor to the glasspaneled roof, but the stairs that led to the balcony remain and can be ascended to imagine the space in a previous layout or simply to offer a new view of the iconic reading room.

In 1935, as students accessed the Williston Memorial Library from the doors opposite Clapp Hall, they entered on the same floor as students do today, but the center of the building was divided into levels, and lighting was provided by hanging lamps rather than skylights.

Called the “court” on the redesign plans, the Williston Memorial Library atrium has existed in its current architectural layout since 1992, when a major renovation designed by well-known architect Graham Gund opened the space previously sectioned off into levels. The space is still accessed through the Clapp Hall-facing entrance, and the original entryway feeds into an open, neoclassical atrium, with a clear view to the glasspaneled roof, complete with white brick walls and a stairway that leads to direct access of the fourth-floor main reading room. The main circulation desk is on the right, just off of the atrium and leading into the Miles-Smith library addition, also completed in 1992.

The centerpiece of the current area, which serves as a popular study and social spot for students, professors, and other campus community members, is the twelve-foottall, almost incandescent “Clear and Gold Tower” glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly, installed in August 2013 in the sixteenth-century marble wellhead from the island of Murano in Venice. The atrium has since become one of the most photographed spots on campus.

— BY SARA ROT TGER ’19 WEB EXCLUSIVE

View past floor plans of Williston Library at alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/library.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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In December 1987 I came out of the library very late at night to discover the world transformed. It had snowed at least a foot.

I fell back into a pristine patch and made a snow angel.

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Deirdre Haber Malfatto

Deirdre Haber Malfatto

—KIRSTEN MOFFETT REOCH ’90

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Jim Gipe

APlace PlaceofofOur OurOwn Own

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My Voice

ESSAY

A Working Life

By BAR BAR A CEL LANA B E RNARD ’48

HAVE A STO RY TO S HAR E?

Pitch your topic at quarterly@ mtholyoke.edu.

I can fathom why I have always tried to pack so much living into the few years I thought I’d have. I am now 90¼, and in retrospect I am delighted I was fooled, because oh my, what a ride it has been!

There was no question that as an only child of an immigrant laborer and a stay-at-home mother that I would go to college. No one had to convince me. I loved learning, still do, and I am still grateful that when my young father’s sudden death during my freshman year meant the end of an income for my mother and me, Mount Holyoke found a way for me to remain in college.

In those days yearly tuition and board was $1,400. And that $1,400 seemed impossible. I received a $200 scholarship from my hometown of North Adams, Massachusetts, and was eligible for a full-tuition scholarship. To earn the rest, I took on loans and three campus jobs. I also typed term papers, ironed blouses, and wrote children’s stories.

As a nursery school teacher, my first job following graduation, I was interviewed on a Pittsfield radio station.

The host asked about the children’s stories I had published.

The owner of a local music store who was about to open a children’s record division heard me, and soon I was hosting The Barbara Bernard Story Hour on Saturday mornings.

This led to The Barbara Bernard Amateur Hour, another children’s show, and The Barbara Bernard Women’s Show,

both sponsored by local businesses. I was busy, and I loved it. At the end of two years I had earned and saved enough money not just to repay my loans but to help my husband buy a business. This made it necessary to give up my jobs and move to Holyoke. I hated leaving where I had been so happy, but I was ready to tackle life in Holyoke with enthusiasm. After all, I had gone to college just across the river.

I had not been in Holyoke a full week when I received a call asking if I would do a radio program, It Happened in Your Own Backyard. Soon I was hosting a daily live women’s television Attending MHC show, The Barbara Bernard Show. I interviewed the top in the 1940s entertainment talent as well as meant knowing local residents and politicians.

When John F. Kennedy ran for we could have the Massachusetts senate seat against longtime incumbent any career.

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., he was a guest on my show. When he ran for the presidency, his mother and sisters were guests.

I still write a personal perspective column for the Springfield Republican, and I continue my freelance work, writing captions for food and fashion photographs for public relations and advertising firms in New York. I love working, nurturing my family, and being involved in the community. I established an endowment at Mount Holyoke, and when I receive thank-you notes from recipients of the interest this endowment annually creates, I remember what it was like to walk in the shoes these students wear now.

I believe strongly in working, keeping busy, and remembering that sometimes it is pure luck to be active and happy. I also know that sometimes you have to work for it. I’ve had success and happiness both ways, and I owe a debt of gratitude to a family who knew education was vital and to Mount Holyoke for providing it.

Barbara Cellana Bernard ’48 lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and was the 2017 recipient of the William G. Dwight Distinguished Service to Holyoke Award. In addition to her long career in journalism she was the founder, in 1950, of the Holyoke Golden Age Club, the first independent club of its kind for seniors in the United States.

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Lydia Nichols

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF MY MOTHER, everyone in my family died young. This is the only reason

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...

INTRODUCING THE

s s a

l C Color Cup Which animal will triumph?

Which color will prevail?

You decide: February 13–15

...

Show your class pride this FebruMary. mtholyoke.edu/go/classcolorcup2018

MHCQ_Winter18_AdvAd_press.indd 1

12/13/17 11:27 AM

50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075

Equal work? Equal pay.

The average full-time working woman in the US will lose $418,800 in wages over a forty-year period, due to the wage gap.

Graduates of women’s colleges report that they develop self-confidence and initiative, key factors women need to advocate for higher wages in their professions.

The Women’s College Advantage.

Learn more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/poweredbymhc

#PoweredByMountHolyoke SOURCES: National Women’s Law Center, based on US Census Bureau, 2015 American Community Survey Data; “What Matters in College After College”: a 2012 report by Hardwick Day prepared for the Women’s College Coalition

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