Scope Spring 13

Scope THE SKIDMORE COLLEGE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2013

ACCESS: working to widen opportunity for more students with financial need

ALSO :

LOCAL HISTORY PROJECT • GREEN CLEANING TIPS • LOG-ROLLING CONTEST

ADDY SHREFFLER ’13

5

Saratoga’s spiritual history

Scope CO N TEN TS

FE ATU R ES:

11 OILIN G THE HIN G ES Cover story: Can Skidmore financial aid keep opening the doors for more and more students?

4 Bountyous research

11

18

YOU AR E WHAT YOU E AT? Roundtable: Faculty and alumni experts talk food, from cultural identity to ecology to nutrition

admission and aid

D E PARTME N TS

L E T TERS & OB SERVATION S 2 CAMPUS SCEN E 4 ALU MN I N EWS 24 WHO, WHAT, WHEN 30 CL ASS N OTES 31

18 worlds of food

SAR ATOGA SIDEBAR 64

ON THE COVER: Get an inside view of financial aid’s facts and figures—see page 11.

(Illustration by Jon Reinfurt)

25 zoo architect

Scope SPRING 2013 Volume 43, Number 3 C O L LY E R V I C E P R E S I D E N T F O R A D VA N C E M E N T

Michael Casey EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR O F C O M M U N I C AT I O N S

Dan Forbush EDITOR

Susan Rosenberg srosenbe@skidmore.edu A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R

Paul Dwyer ’83 pdwyer@skidmore.edu CLASS NOTES EDITOR

Mary Monigan mmonigan@skidmore.edu

LETTERS

Teaching the constitution Thank you so much for presenting the Constitutional art programs [part of the We the People exhibition, spring Scope]. I wholeheartedly agree that the Constitution is unknown by a majority of people today. May it live within the Skidmore community and provide the basis of comfort for those who question our country’s direction. It is our roots and foundation!

Were you aware of the Constitutional Champions camps started in 2011 for kids in first through sixth grades that have sprung up all over the US? They’re supported by local donations, but primarily the National 9–12 Liberty Movement Project.

Our local Pikes Peak Patriot 9–12 group has

had a camp in the past two summers. We reworked the national curriculum to fit our historical backdrop of the Rock Ledge Ranch. It’s been a huge success and all-volunteer!

You can view our camp’s experience on www.912ppp.com.

Ann Baxter Macomber ’69 Colorado Springs, Colo.

DO THE WRITE THING Scope welcomes letters to the editor. Send your comments by e-mail to srosenbe@skidmore.edu or mail c/o Skidmore College.

Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

DESIGNERS

Michael Malone Maryann Teale Snell WRITERS

Kathryn Gallien Bob Kimmerle Peter MacDonald Maryann Teale Snell Andrea Wise

Tee off and serve it up for the T’breds

EDITORIAL OFFICES

Office of Communications Skidmore College 815 North Broadway Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 518-580-5747 www.skidmore.edu/scope SKIDMORE COLLEGE

Switchboard: 518-580-5000 Alumni Affairs and College Events: 518-580-5670 Communications: 518-580-5733 Admissions: 518-580-5570 or 800-867-6007 Scope is published three times a year

by Skidmore College for alumni, parents, and friends.

Printed on recycled paper (10% postconsumer)

9TH ANNUAL THOROUGHBRED CUP

GOLF AND TENNIS TOURNAMENT

SATURDAY, JUNE 22 • 18 holes at the Saratoga Spa State Park Golf Course (four-star rating by Golf Digest’s Best Places to Play)

• Tennis on Skidmore’s courts • Cocktails and buffet dinner at Skidmore Gather a group of friends or family and make it a Saratoga weekend.

G Accommodations available in Skidmore’s beautiful Northwoods Apartments. All proceeds benefit Skidmore athletics.

Details at skidmore.edu/fosa/outing/ D or contact Beth Brucker-Kane: 518-580-5677 • bbrucker@skidmore.edu or Tim Clemmey: 518-580-5621 • tclemmey@skidmore.edu

GARY GOLD

PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Financial aid and access certainly helped this issue in stark relief, In this issue of Scope, we explore the many institutions noting a dramatic shift in College’s commitment to financial aid achieve their admishow financial aid has been and its critical role in making Skidmore sions goals; however, distributed in socioeconomaccessible to the widest possible range of the cumulative effect ic terms. In 1995, the study students. Unquestionably, our scholaris ultimately negaobserves, colleges gave ship program has paid significant divitive—both for indineed-based grants almost dends: improving the strength and dividual schools and twice as often as non-needversity of our student body, and thereby for higher education based: 43% vs. 24% at prienriching the lives of every student at as a whole. Such a vate colleges, and 13% vs.

Skidmore. situation is often 8% at public universities.

This investment in our students has referred to as a By 2007, the gap at private S KIDMORE P RESIDENT P HILIP come at a substantial cost. Since 2006, A. G LOTZBACH “tragedy of the cominstitutions had shrunk to we have expanded our financial aid mons,” in which individual actors make 44% need-based vs. 42% non-needbudget from $22 million to an estimated decisions calculated to benefit thembased, while the percentage had actually $40 million next year—an increase of selves that collectively lead to injurious flipped at public universities, giving 82%. By contrast, our comprehensive fee consequences for all. The problem is 16% need-based vs. 18% non-needover that period has risen 31%. We have that directing more aid dollars to famibased aid. Stated another way, by 2007 funded these aid increases largely lies without financial need and away slightly less than half of aid recipients at through budget reallocation, endowfrom those with need reduces opporprivate institutions and slightly more ment growth, and gifts. During this tunities for students across the sociothan half at public institutions received time, the percentage of families seeking economic spectrum. In many cases it aid that was not necessary to meet their aid has grown by nearly a third, from also adds to the costs borne by individfinancial need. In 52% in 2007 to FINDING A WAY TO SUSTAIN ual schools. This outcome is a tragedy subsequent years, 68% for next year’s OUR COMMITMENT TO MAKING indeed, not only for higher education this trend has entering class, a SKIDMORE WIDELY ACCESSIBLE IS but also for our nation and the world. continued. Today trend that is likely CRITICAL TO OUR MISSION AND Although Skidmore has two small non-need-based to continue. We SUCCESS AS A COLLEGE. non-need-based scholarship programs aid represents also have seen a (Filene Scholarships in music and Porter more than 50% of all financial aid slow but steady rise in the average inScholarships in science and math), some awarded nationally. debtedness of our students upon gradua99% of our aid is based solely on finanIn many cases, schools have resorted tion. For the graduates of 2011, that figcial need. It is important to highlight to non-need-based aid to improve their ure was $21,000—lower than the nationone fallacy implied by the nomenclature position in the “market” by raising the al average, and quite manageable given of “merit aid.” Because we are a highly academic profile of their student body— the value of a Skidmore education—but selective college, every student we aid for example, targeting applicants with significantly higher than it was in 2000. has proven his or her merit by satisfying higher SATs and class ranks. Sometimes Beyond budgetary concerns, I have our rigorous admission standards. they are responding to the actions of been troubled by a national trend that, Finding a way to sustain our commitcompetitor institutions. Some schools in recent years, has seen more colleges ment to making Skidmore widely accesthat have struggled to enroll their inand universities replacing need-based sible is critical to our mission and succoming classes have made the calculaaid with “merit aid,” or more accurately cess as a college. It is certainly a fundation that offering non-need-based aid “non-need-based” aid. Need-based aid mental aspect of our bona fides in operwill help fill otherwise empty seats with goes to students who otherwise could ating as a “public good.” Moreover, bestudents who will pay at least part of not afford a college education, while cause our emphasis on need-based aid their costs, thus improving the financial non-need-based aid is designed not to follows directly from the commitment bottom line. A number of public systems provide access but to influence applithat Lucy Skidmore Scribner made in (most famously Georgia’s, with its HOPE cants’ choices—to encourage prospective launching the school that would beScholarships) have employed this apstudents and their families to select one come Skidmore, it is a proud part of proach to reduce potential “brain drain” institution over another. our heritage, and one I am determined from their states.

A 2011 US Department of Education to preserve.

The use of non-need-based aid has report (Merit Aid for Undergraduates) casts

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“A tide is rising in Pacific studies,” says history professor Tillman Nechtman.

Though he’s riding that tide, his latest research project sometimes leaves him feeling “afloat on the sea by myself.”

Nechtman always has a lot of ground —and a lot of ocean—to cover, considering that his specialty is the British Empire. There are still 14 pieces of it, and he was thinking of writing a book about the persistence of empire in small remnant states like Bermuda, the Falklands, and Gibraltar. But when his attention fetched up on Pitcairn Island, he knew that’s where it would stay awhile.

A remote islet in the South Pacific, Pitcairn was where the Bounty mutineers took up residence with their Tahitian women. Much has been written about the 1789 incident, but Nechtman’s focus is postmutiny—specifically the frauduHISTORIAN TILLMAN NECHTMAN IS NO SAILOR, lent administration of Joshua Hill, who NORTH ATLANTIC TO THE SOUTH PACIFIC. posed as an official British representative tended to come ashore with maritime and ruled the island from 1832 to 1840. adventurers. Denied any official authoriWhat was to be a mere chapter in a book ty there (and dismissed by history as a on empire is growing into The Last Refuge madman), Hill went to Pitcairn anyway, of Scoundrels: Pitcairn Island and the Dictapresented an extravagant resume of travtorship of Joshua Hill—The True Story of els and connections with everyone from the Man Who Would Be King Among the European royalty to Bounty Mutineers.

PITCAIRN HAS IT ALL— New York’s Seneca InIt’s a topic that SOUTH-SEA ADVENTURE, dians, declared himself Nechtman has pretty CLASS AND RACE, in charge, and promuch all to himself.

REDEMPTION AND REFORM, ceeded to rule with an While it may seem a AND COLONIAL CONTROL. iron fist. small story of a small Since Hill lied about his rights to govplace, he finds it disproportionately sigern the island, scholars have assumed he nificant to an understanding of 18thalso lied about his background. Nechtcentury British imperialism in the Pacific. man took a different tack: what if the Pitcairn has it all—a narrative of southstories were true? So began a global sea adventure, issues of class and race, archival manhunt, which has in fact redemption and reform, overseas power confirmed many of Hill’s claims. and colonial control.

With that, Nechtman says, the quesThe island sparked the ambitions of tion became “Why? If you had those Joshua Hill, an enigmatic zealot who bekinds of connections, why would you go came obsessed with saving Pitcairners to Pitcairn, this two-mile by one-mile isfrom the alcohol and immorality that

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GLENN DAVENPORT

Beyond the Bounty

BUT HIS MARITIME STUDIES COVER THE

land with about 60 people on it?” The answer he proposes is that with British imperial might in the Pacific being threatened by the French, Russians, and Americans, Hill saw in Pitcairn a model for a form of imperialism that had great progressive and evangelical potential— but only in the hands of the British. It was, says Nechtman, “the perfect stage for a colonial administrator, sane or otherwise, who wanted to stand in the global imperial spotlight.”

He adds, “The detective-story aspect of this is really fun, though I didn’t know this little island would take up so much of my life.” While he may never set foot on Pitcairn—“very difficult to reach, and very expensive”—Nechtman is charting a research trip that would include stops in Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, and Australia. Not bad, he allows: “How many people can say they have to go to Tahiti for work?” —KG

“History on the hoof”

BOLSTER COLLECTION

From interviewing archivists, to reDym confirms, “I’m coaching them, the fall and their own distillations this searching city registers and maps, to anaspring, the students presented Saratoga’s but really we’re all collaborating, doing lyzing and shaping data for use by citispiritual traditions in local and national genuine professional history.” In one zens and policymakers, “history on the contexts, including Gross discussing class meeting, they discussed old maps: hoof” is how Jordana Dym describes the Greenridge Cemetery, David Schlenker sometimes labels say “Catholic church” work of her “Public History” course. ’13 on St. Clement’s without “St. Peter’s” “SARATOGA PEOPLE TAKE THEIR Catholic Church, A historian of Latin America whose or “St. Clement’s,” HISTORY VERY SERIOUSLY, scholarship has covered city governAddy Shreffler ’13 on Temple Sinai had AND THESE STUDENTS HAVE ments, mapping, and travel writing, Dym Bethesda Episcopal several headquarters EARNED ACCEPTANCE INTO THE wanted to bring history home and handsChurch, and Sophie before it acquired its LOCAL HISTORY COMMUNITY.” on by offering last fall’s pilot course. Little Don ’14 covering own building, and a did she know the course would be such a Temple Sinai. In addition, the foursome few street names around cemeteries were hit that she’d add a two-credit workshop is writing essays for the Saratogian newschanged. Working from primary sources in the spring, to allow some of its stupaper (with help from Dan Forbush, can be “tedious and frustrating,” Dym acdents to continue their projects.

Skidmore’s executive director of commuknowledged with a grin, “but it results in The fall students conducted research nications and a board member of the some wonderful discoveries.” One thing for the Saratoga Springs Preservation Preservation Foundation) and also colGross discovered was that “the sheer volFoundation, which wanted data on the laborating with local journalist and hisume of articles, books, records, maps, and city’s “sacred spaces”—historic churches, torian Field Horne on his new book. interviews that inform a single written temples, cemeteries—to help develop a For her part, Dym was thrilled that history is astounding.” walking tour. (Earlier, two students had the course arrived at “one of those excitThe group also planned their oral preinterned with Sara Boivin ’96, the SSPF’s ing moments when you see students apsentations for the Preservation Foundaoutreach director, to select the sites). plying ‘traditional’ skills (research, analytion and public library audience. Gross After poring over documents in the pubsis), learning new ones (teamwork, ethics, says it was challenging to figure out lic library’s Saratoga Room, church storpublic speaking), and growing by leaps “how much content is appropriate, what age closets, and Skidmore’s special collecand bounds.” She adds, “It’s a great way voice would be most engaging, and what tions, and after interviewing historians, to help students connect their internstory to tell.” She adds, “I’m not used to clerics, congregants, and caretakers, the ships with their studies. Now we’re exframing my writing this way, but it was students wrote papers, created the cited to identify our next public-history fun to experiment with and learn about.” sacredsaratoga.weebly.com Web site, project.” —SR Drawing on their peers’ work from prepared oral presentations, and even worked up a few internship proposals. Because “we made connections with local historians who were really excited about what we were doing,” says Sara Gross ’13, “I took the spring workshop to keep working with some of these great people.”

Among them is Teri Blasko, who oversees the public library’s Saratoga Room of history documents. “I’ve been impressed,” she says, “that the students always seem well prepared before they come to us.” She also remarks, “Saratoga people take their history very seriously, and these students have earned acceptance into the local history community.”

THE VAULT AT SARATOGA’S GREENRIDGE CEMETERY, AROUND THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

Ian Berry, associate director and Malloy Curator at Skidmore’s Tang Museum, has been named to its Dayton Directorship.

He succeeds John Weber, the Tang’s director for eight years, who left to help found the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Beau Breslin, dean of the faculty, calls Berry “a brilliant artistic visionary, one who not only understands the current wave of contemporary art, but in every way helps to shape that wave.” He says Berry “acutely understands the importance of the Tang’s central mission as a teaching museum.”

Berry was the Tang’s founding curator in 2000, after serving as assistant curator at the Williams College Museum of Art. A SUNY-Albany graduate, he earned an MA in curatorial studies at Bard College in 1998. He has served and led a range of arts councils and associations, and in

2009–10 he held the Roy Acuff Chair of Excellence in the Creative Arts at Austin Peay University in Tennessee.

Over the years Berry has organized, and authored catalogs for, many of the Tang’s most memorable shows.

He worked closely with artists such as C URATOR I AN B ERRY IS THE NEW DAYTON D IRECTOR OF THE Nayland Blake, TANG M USEUM .

Kate Ericson and national model for best practices in colMel Ziegler, Nina Katchadourian, Los lege museums.

Carpinteros, Shahzia Sikander, Fred Berry says he’s honored to serve as diTomaselli, and Kara Walker. And his aprector, adding, “It is a pleasure to be part proach to collaborating with faculty on of a great team that lives the museum’s large interdisciplinary shows—from mission in every part of our daily work.”

Mapping Art and Science to Lives of the —BK, SR Hudson to We the People—has become a

SAM BROOK ’12

GLENN DAVENPORT

Meyers and Simon retire

R OY M EYERS

L INDA

The Skidmore faculty bade farewell this term to retiring professors Roy Meyers and Linda Simon.

Meyers joined the biology faculty in 1971, finishing his PhD at SUNY’s Downstate Medical Center the next year.

He helped shape Skidmore’s University Without Walls and taught early and often in its program for prison inmates.

Over the years Meyers taught a wide range of physiology courses and introduced computer modeling of physiologi-

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cal functions and interventions. Meyers published in major journals on both physiology and computers in pedagogy, and he served on Skidmore’s pre-med advising comS IMON mittee.

His Web-Human physiology simulator (co-authored in the late 1990s and frequently updated ever since) allows students to conduct finely tuned, complex experiments testing combinations of physiological functions, treatments, and reactions—from symptoms to lab analyses to diagnoses—through computer modeling, without risking the health of a live subject. The tool has been adopted by thousands of professors and researchers around the world, who

run some 100,000 experiments each year.

Simon came to Skidmore in 1997, with a Brandeis PhD in English and American literature and 14 years on Harvard’s English faculty. She taught fiction and nonfiction writing, 19th- and early 20th-century American lit, and courses on the memoir, contemporary imagination, and other topics.

A prolific scholar and writer, Simon published articles on Upton Sinclair, John Cheever, women’s biographies, Jane Austen, Charles Reznikoff, writing across the curriculum, and more. Her books include The Biography of Alice B. Toklas (1977), Thornton Wilder: His World (1979), Of Virtue Rare: Margaret Beaufort, Matriarch of the House of Tudor (1982), Genuine Reality: A Life of William James (1998), Dark Light: Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-Ray (2004), and Coco Chanel (2011), as well as several textbooks on writing. She is the general editor for the journal William James Studies and for the Camden House series Mind and American Literature. —SR

RUSTY RUSSELL

Berry leads Tang

EXPERT OPINION : Green clean with Richard Mickus What’s the best new thing in cleaning?

MARK BOLLES

One of the best innovations at Skidmore has been our autoscrubbers. They use just water to polish our terrazzo floors, and the results look better than when we used detergents. Plus, we don’t have to apply finish anymore, which also means we never need to strip the finish with solvents. It’s especially good for our science labs, where any fumes or chemical exposure could cause problems.

For carpets also, we don’t use detergents. We use a truck-mounted steam cleaner with water at 180 degrees, which is hot enough to sanitize without chemicals. We sometimes use stain removers for small spots, but steam cleaning on a regular basis keeps those to a minimum.

And I think the polished-concrete floors in the Northwoods apartment complex are working wonderfully. After they get 30 weeks— that’s one semester— of heavy use,

we can come in, scrub them right up, apply a very thin coat of polish, and they look terrific again. I bet we’re using 80 or 90 percent less products there than we need on some of our tile and other floors.

Do “green” products work well enough?

We started using a wider range of green cleaners back in 2000, after the government issued new regulations about housekeeping products. Back then, it’s true, a lot of those alternatives weren’t as effective, but over the past decade there have been huge improvements, not just for institutional use but for consumers too. Clorox, for example, has a line of green cleaners with no chlorine bleach in them, and I think they’re very good. At my house, I don’t think we use any cleaners that aren’t green.

At Skidmore we recently switched our glass and allpurpose cleaners to a peroxide-based alternative. For many applications, we need to use certified disinfectants, and our peroxide cleaner is starting the process of getting certified. We’d love it if that succeeds and we could use it in place of the harsher disinfectants. As it is, we don’t use bleach or ammonia—they’re just too potent, and no longer necessary. The green products are better for the environment, the employees, and the occupants. Same for the interior paints we use now: they’re not just low-VOC, but certified green. The fumes are so minimal and so harmless that we can paint while people are still

in their offices right down the hall and they don’t even notice an odor.

What about cloth vs. paper?

A great new product is microfiber wipes and mops. Unlike paper towels, they’re reusable—we can put them through the laundry 500 times! And unlike cloth, they rinse and wring out so clean that they don’t hold dirt and germs, and they dry quickly. For mopping, they’re much better than cotton string mops, which are heavy to handle, need bleach to disinfect them, and take a lot of drying to prevent mildew. We love the microfiber.

What’s the toughest cleaning job?

Showers and tubs, definitely. Like all of Saratoga, Skidmore has pretty hard water. But even in the bathrooms we use green products. (If a mineral deposit has built up a lot, first we try a scrubbing pad and elbow grease to scrape it off. We rarely use solvents like Lime Away—they’re dangerous and can erode the metal faucets and fixtures.) If we use our peroxide cleaner regularly— and if we make sure to dry off the surfaces right afterward—we don’t have much trouble with mineral buildups. In fact, this cleans better than our previous bathroom products.

Do you do spring cleanings?

The best method is to keep on top of cleaning year-round. If you maintain things regularly, you don’t need to schedule any special big cleaning. But it’s nice, after a stuffy winter, even if it’s still a little chilly, to open up the windows and air out the house.

Richard Mickus kept Union College clean before moving to Skidmore as supervisor of custodial operations in 2000; he now manages both housekeeping and painting.

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Speaking of... ...almost anything, Skidmore’s guest lectures embrace a huge array of academic and/or timely topics. A small sampling of this year’s offerings: • “New Age Imperialism: A Crisis in PanAfrican Conscience” by Dhoruba Bin Wahad, former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army cofounder

• “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” by Katherine Boo (First-Year Experience author), New Yorker • “The Crisis of Zionism,” by Peter Beinart (Perlow Lecturer), City University of New York and New America Foundation • “Can the Constitution Cope with Our Polarized Politics?” by Paul Pierson,

DAN FORBUSH

8 WATERLOGGING

I

n probably the first-ever intercollegiate log-rolling competition, Skidmore’s Will Hoeschler ’14, at right, spins Middlebury’s John Wyman into the drink. On the greenhorn Skidmore team, Hoeschler is the star, having won world titles at age 6, 13, and 17, but Middlebury has had three stars over the years, in Hoeschler’s three sisters—all thanks to their mom, Judy ScheerHoeschler, a seven-time champion log-roller from Wisconsin. In the Williamson Sports Center pool, Middlebury dominated by 6-1, with Hoeschler earning the lone Skidmore win. His advice for learners: “Never stop moving, and keep watching your opponent’s feet.” —SR

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UC-Berkeley • “Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England,” by Tom Wessels, Antioch University of New England • “Inventing the Fetish: Voodoo, Religion, and the European Thing for African Objects,” by Elizabeth Perez, Dartmouth College

worth the trip from anywhere!

Join us in Saratoga Springs for our seventh annual citywide celebration of the arts—music, dance, visual art, film, theatre, and literary art.

June 6--9, 2013

saratogaartsfest.org

8GOOD PLAY 4SPORTSWRAP

BOB EWELL PHOTOS

BLOCKER OR NO, ALL-ACADEMIC FORWARD MOLLY GILE ’13 GOES FOR HER SHOT.

Winter featured ice hockey’s Pack the Rink and basketball’s Big Green Scream. Both occasions featured lots of green face paint, Skids the mascot, and cheering fans of all ages.

Riding. Again undefeated in the regular season, Skidmore qualified 15 equestrians for this year’s Intercollegiate Horse Show regionals and was preparing for another trip to nationals in May. Basketball. The men went 15-11 en route to their fourth consecutive Liberty League playoff appearance.

Skidmore lost a tight game, 7772, to eventual champion Hobart in the semifinals. Aldin Medunjanin ’16 (at right) was a Liberty, ECAC Upstate, and d3hoops.com Rookie of the Year, and Tanner Brooks ’16 was a league all-rookie selection.

At 12-14, the women made the Liberty tournament but lost to St. Lawrence by 5844 in the opening round. Jordyn Wartts ’14 was the league’s Defensive Player of the Year; Angela Botiba ’15 was a first-team all-conference selection; Dani DeGregory ’16 and Skylar Caligaris ’16 made the league’s all-rookie team.

Ice hockey. After posting an 11-13-2 record, the Thoroughbreds earned a trip to the ECAC East playoffs, where they fell to eventual champion Babson, 7-1, in the quarterfinals. Zach Menard ’13 was an ECAC East firstteam selection, and Jack Even ’16 made the all-rookie team.

Swimming and diving. The women had one of their highest UNYSCSA finishes ever, taking seventh place.

The team broke 16 Skidmore records, led by a 5:10.12 third-place finish by Carrie Koch ’13 in the 500 freestyle and a 24.03 fourth place by Catherine King ’15 in the 50 free. The pair has combined for eight individual and five relay-team records.

The men also had one of their best finishes at states, taking ninth. They set 12 new Skidmore records, including all five relays. Jesse Adler ’13 set three new individual marks and Mario Hyman ’16 set two. —Sean Farnsworth THOROUGHBRED NEWS: Get full results and schedules for all teams at skidmoreathletics.com.

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Legacy society

Honor the past. Provide for the future.

“Joe and Edwin w ould be v proud to ery see Skid more tod —Anne P ay.” al

ity lets “A Skidmore annu de for titu gra my me show eived.” the education I rec

amountai n, bequest, and pooled Gift annuity, income fu nd donor

“Happy Pappy weekend left me with some of my favorite Skidmore mem ories.”

—She ila Salvo ’59, Be quest donor

ss ’74, —Susie Tucker-Ro Gift annuity donor

forever.” friends last “Skidmore nor us ’52, Tr t do llyer —Barbara Co

“Some of my fon dest memories an d friendships were formed in Sk idmore Hall.”

—Florence Andresen ’57, Bequest donor

Join the Skidmore College Legacy Society through a gift from your estate, or a gift that pays you income for life. Help guarantee the tradition of creative excellence at Skidmore for future generations. Plan your Legacy today. giftplanning@skidmore.edu • 518.580.5655 • www.skidmore.edu/giftplanning GIF T PL ANNING FOR SKIDMORE

JON REINFURT

FINANCIAL AID, ACCESS, AND...

BY PETER MACDONALD SPRING 2013

SCOPE 11

...THE STRESS OF SUCCESS Two years after Mary Lou Bates graduated from college in 1972, she took a job at Skidmore’s admissions office. Nearly 40 years later, and now the dean of admissions and financial aid, she’s still making her daily commute, reading applications, visiting high schools and college fairs, answering parents’ questions.

And losing sleep over bringing in each new class.

MARK MCCARTY

Of course, Skidmore has met the demonstrated financial In other ways, the stresses and strains couldn’t be more need of thousands of worthy students over the years, and different. In 1973 Skidmore received 1,700 applications, thereby helped transform their lives. Students such as Altaroughly 95% of which were accepted. In those “lean” years, gracia Montilla ’12, a coach for a Chicago-based nonprofit Bates recalls, “a student with a solid record could show up in that prepares underprivileged high school students for colAugust and join the freshman class.” This year, Skidmore relege. And entrepreneur C. Jerome Mopsik ’06, a business anaceived a record-breaking 8,200-plus applications, of which lyst for a Saratoga-area company that acquires and manages only 35% were accepted, a selectivity rate that underscores animal hospitals. And Nancy Wells Hamilton ’77, a partner its standing as one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. with the Houston law firm of Jackson The angst for Bates and her admissions “IT’S INCREDIBLY HARD ANY Walker who has a national practice in First staff isn’t about filling the class; it’s about TIME WE CAN’T ADMIT A COMAmendment law, intellectual property, and having to turn away well-qualified appliPELLING STUDENT BECAUSE OF commercial litigation (with clients includcants when the pool of aid money runs LIMITED AID RESOURCES.” ing Oprah Winfrey, CBS, and CNN). Their dry. In 2012 the disparity between their career successes—in many ways, the very shape and texture financial need and Skidmore’s available financial-aid dollars of their lives—are directly linked to the financial aid they rewas $2.3 million. And that gulf is widening. Despite expandceived from Skidmore. An effervescent, first-generation coling its resources earmarked for financial aid year after year, lege student from the Bronx, Montilla had no family resources ultimately the College must stay out of the red and refrain to put on the table. Mopsik came from an upper-middle-class from drastic cuts in other areas. Says Beth Post-Lundquist, Philadelphia family, which translated into just a modest aid director of financial aid, “We’ve stretched as far as we can. award; his parents gladly made the extra reach to send him We never want to turn anyone down because of money, but and his sister to top liberal arts colleges. Hamilton, even with the infusion of new aid dollars, we simply from Red Bank, N.J., would have been limited to a don’t have enough to go around, particularly when we state school had it not been for Skidmore’s support, need to honor the ongoing aid commitments to our realong with contributions from her grandparents. turning students.”

BETH POST-LUNDQUIST

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DIGESTS A LOT OF STUDENT-AID INFORMATION SO THAT APPLICANTS DON’T HAVE TO.

aid amounts awarded 2004–05

2005–06

2006–07

2007–08

2008–09

2009–10

2010–11

2011–12

2012–13

skidmore aid awarded

$17.6 mil

$19.9 mil

$21.4 mil

$24.3 mil

$26.5 mil

$28.9 mil

$32.1 mil

$32.9 mil

$36.2 mil

aid recipients, number

1,008

1,051

1,038

1,057

1,088

1,120

1,167

1,127

1,156

aid recipients, % of class 42.2%

42%

40.8%

41%

42.1%

43.3%

43.6%

42.8%

44.2%

average aid package

$17,466

$18,929

$20,653

$23,021

$24,322

$25,805

$27,505

$29,240

$31,315

tuition and fees

$39,815

$41,780

$44,250

$46,696

$49,265

$51,196

$52,170

$53,684

$55,764

“Financial aid did basically everything for me,” says Montilla. Starting college was a huge step for her: “I was so lost when I first came to Skidmore. So alone. Now, I’m a completely different person—I want to say, woman—because I’ve grown up so much. I’m confident and happy. I don’t feel like I’m behind anyone at all.” As for getting virtually all of her college costs covered, the psychology major says, “I felt some initial guilt, because it was a lot of money and no one from home was doing what I was doing. Then I thought about all the work I’d put in to get to this point, and I realized that I deserved it. I was so motivated and wanted to prove myself—that was a big deal to me.”

This year Skidmore awarded $36 million in grants to 1,150 students, about 44% of the student body. The average grant amount was $31,315—twice what it was in 2003–04.

This 10% annual growth rate over the past decade has easily outpaced increases in Skidmore’s comprehensive fee and overall US inflation. But it has also placed increasing stress on College finances, especially as employee health care, technology, and other costs have been claiming more budget dollars at the same time. As a percentage of its operating budget ($135 million this year), Skidmore aid has grown in the past decade from 15% to 22%, a clear reflection of the institution’s unflagging commitment to broad access. Alumni, parents, and friends have supported this commitment by contributing more than $60 million for scholarships over the same decade. Yet even with these investments, Skidmore officials have struggled to keep up with the demand. Between 2007 and 2013, the percentage of applicants requesting aid has risen from 52% to 68%. And while the proportion of students receiving aid has expanded by 20% over the past decade-plus, Bates still finds it “incredibly hard any time we can’t admit a compelling student because of limited aid resources.”

What is financial aid really worth?

Thanks in part to its determination to find more aid dollars in tough times, Skidmore has seen an important shift in the composition of its student body. American students of color increased from 13% of the student body in 2003 to 22% in 2012, and the international student population leapt from

1% to 6% (today’s students come from 43 states and 51 countries). These changing demographics are already being cited for helping to enhance the intercultural understanding of all students—a key goal of Skidmore’s current strategic plan. “Recent studies and firsthand experience tell us that diversity increases the intellectual and cultural vitality of our academic community,” asserts President Philip Glotzbach.

“Likewise, it links directly with creative thought. Interactions among disparate perspectives frequently strike the intellectual sparks that herald the emergence of a new idea.”

Bates is hardly one for hyperbole, but even she can’t resist touting Skidmore’s progress in opening its doors wider than they’ve ever been. She says, “Considering our relatively small endowment when compared with our peers, our commitment to access and diversity is second to none.” Skidmore’s endowment is squarely in the middle in a 17-member peer set (with the likes of Vassar, Colgate, Kenyon, Sarah Lawrence, and Trinity), yet in student diversity it scored fourth in US News & World Report’s 2011–12 “Campus Ethnic Diversity” breakdowns.

At the same time, Skidmore’s retention rate (freshmen returning as sophomores) has been climbing and now stands at 92%, and its six-year graduation rate is 88%, both strong figures. One example Bates points to is the College’s opportunity programs, which enroll and mentor students who come from disadvantaged secondary-school backgrounds but who show the ability and drive to flourish at Skidmore. Serving 170 students (over 5% of the student body), these programs have been hailed as national models not only for widening access but also for fostering high student achievement, from grade-point averages to graduation rates.

Another aspect of Skidmore aid that gives students a leg up is its attention to helping families keep their indebtedness reasonable. Rather than spreading smaller aid amounts among as many applicants as possible, Skidmore provides a complete package to each student it aids. As aid director Post-Lundquist says, “Skidmore’s policy is to meet the full need of everyone it admits; we don’t gap.” Gapping, or offering less aid than a student’s full need, is a growing practice at many colleges and universities. The problem, Post-Lundquist notes, is that gapped students often resort to taking on more g

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JON REINFURT

ernment funding for postsecondary education fell again, by 5%.

But in her analyses Baum also emphasizes longer-term trends, which are still positive for students hoping to attend private colleges. There, tuition and fees (adjusted for inflation) over the past decade rose just 2.4%, compared to 3% and 4.6% in the two previous decades. By contrast, those same costs for public colleges and universities grew LIKE ALMOST ALL COLLEGES, Skidmore builds each aid twice as fast in the past depackage starting with a federal, low-interest Stafford or Percade, at 5.2%. Which is not to Tuition economics kins loan, usually restricted to $3,000 or $4,000; next it adds say there aren’t warning signs That Skidmore has boosted a federally subsidized work-study job, usually limited to about $2,000; it looks for small state or federal grants to add; and for privates. Baum’s concern its financial aid budget and then it tries to fill the rest of the need with grants from its own is that “even the incomes of its diversity while maintainaid budget. Last year Skidmore’s contributions ranged from people at the top are going ing its median SAT scores and $2,000 to $56,000 depending on demonstrated need. down, and those are the peoeven improving other acaOne example: Felipe had $5,000 in savings; his parents ple who are supposed to be demic measures is remarkhad $280,000 in home equity, $30,000 in savings, and an able to pay without dipping able, given 2008’s global fiannual income of $105,000. Skidmore asked his parents to into their savings.” nancial crash and sluggish contribute $8,700 of their income, $3,000 from savings, and $10,000 from a Parents Loan and asked Felipe for $2,000 At Skidmore 56% of famieconomy ever since. In the of summer-job earnings and $1,000 from his savings. Skidlies do pay on their own. An decade of 2001–11 American more offered the rest, their calculated need of $31,700, as a often-forgotten fact, however, incomes from all strata, even $26,200 College grant, a federal work-study job for $2,000, is that the true cost of educatthe top 5%, did not rise, acand $3,500 in federal loans. ing each Skidmore student is cording to a College Board A second scenario: Lisa lived with her divorced mother, higher than tuition and fees. report co-authored by Sandy who had $60,000 and an income of $62,000 including child In 2011–12 the cost was Baum, professor emerita of support. Skidmore asked her mom to pay $5,000 and her dad to pay $6,000 (in 10 installments over the year), while Lisa pegged at $62,700, a full economics. With incomes contributed summer-job earnings of $2,000. That left $43,400 $9,000 more than that year’s still shrinking, the average in need, which was covered by $37,900 in Skidmore grants, $53,700 comprehensive fee. student’s net price (that’s a $2,000 work-study job, and $3,500 in federal loans.

In effect, every student is subout-of-pocket, work-study, sidized to some extent by and loan commitments, Skidmore’s endowment earnings, donations, and other inapart from grant aid) at a four-year school is up 4% from come. Still, the post-2008 economy has changed both the last year—double the rate of inflation. The average debt for wallets and the mindsets of full-pay families, according to a private-college graduate, $29,900 in 2011, also rose more than inflation, at 3.5%. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted govBates and Post-Lundquist. “Many of our fellow schools in loans, which at best makes for heavy debt burdens by the time they graduate; at worst, she says, “it adds the risk of extending the number of years it takes them to graduate, or even prevents some from graduating.”

Compared to its peers, Skidmore is in the lower third when it comes to the average debt of graduates. For the class of 2011 it was $21,000, well below New York State and national averages.

CALCULATING NEEDS AND AWARDS

Budgeting financial aid Aid as % of Skidmore budget

15.4% 16.7%

16.7% 5.9%

19.3%

6.4%

17.2%

16.8% 5.5%

14.0%

16.1%

17.7% 8.1%

15.8%

7.2%

77.4%

74.4%

80.5%

75.8%

77.0%

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

Aid from operating budget

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Aid from gifts/grants

Aid from endowed scholarships

GLENN DAVENPORT

the top 50 of US News & World Report’s rankings are proTimes article on aid and diversty. Wesleyan had been “needblind”—admitting students without regard to their ability to viding non-need-based or ‘merit’ aid,” Post-Lundquist says. pay, because it knew it could meet their need—but it has “At some of our peers 30% of financial aid is non-needbacked off slightly, now accepting 10% of its freshman classbased, while at Skidmore just 1% of our aid is.” In today’s es from candidates who can pay full fare. admissions and aid race, she reports, “PARENTS TELL US ABOUT Another well-funded college, Grinnell, is “Parents tell us about the packages that OTHER COLLEGES’ OFFERS, AND also considering becoming “need-sensiother colleges are offering them and ask EXPECT SOME ‘MERIT’ AID tive.” Williams and Dartmouth, which us what we can do. Or they tell us their FROM US TO SWEETEN THE POT.” had provided their aid exclusively through child was admitted to a very selective grants, are beginning to include student loans as part of elite school, so they expect some ‘merit’ aid from us to their packages. sweeten the pot.”

There’s no escaping the math. “Skidmore’s current operWith its emphasis on access and affordability, Skidmore ating budget is predicated on 42% of our students receiving has stood firm on restricting its non-need aid to the longaid,” Bates notes, “yet 68% of our applicants requested it.” standing Filene Music and Porter Presidential Math and SciEarnings from the enence scholarships for dowment provided about 12 incoming nearly 20% of the fistudents each year. nancial aid budget in In reconfirming this 2003–04, but after the policy at last Octodown markets in recent ber’s trustee meeting, years, that figure has Skidmore leaders fallen below 12%. Little agreed to accept the wonder that Skidmore price: losing some top too is becoming more applicants who get need-sensitive; Bates wooed elsewhere with now estimates that the ‘merit aid’ offers.

College accepts 25% of “The bigger price,” each incoming class says Glotzbach, with some considera“would be turning tion for the families’ our back on the prinability to pay on their ciple that a Skidmore own. “We’ve wanted education should be available to qualified MARY LOU BATES AND HER ADMISSIONS STAFF REALLY DO LOVE OPENING DOORS. to build our applicant pool in part to build students regardless of the number and strength of those who don’t need aid,” she their ability to pay. Arguably, every non-need-based dollar acknowledges, so this year’s big spike in applications was we offer takes away from what we can provide to those who gratifying on several levels. truly need it. If we expect to graduate students who are ethical and who value the common good, then Skidmore has to model this kind of behavior.”

Price vs. value These days, even the most elite and highly resourced Jerome Mopsik came to Skidmore as a transfer student, able schools are feeling squeezed, according to a recent New York to make the move thanks to an aid package that included g

19.1% 15.6%

19.9% 6.7%

13.5%

21.3% 8.4%

13.4%

21.1% 7.6%

21.7% 7.0%

13.3%

11.6%

6.9%

77.7%

78.1%

79.0%

79.8%

82.5%

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

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national study commissioned by the Annapolis Group, a conone of the College’s Palamountain Scholarships. Mopsik’s sortium of leading liberal arts colleges. In the survey, 79% of father, Eugene, a Penn grad and executive director of a pholiberal arts grads rated their college experience as highly eftographers’ trade association, was unswayed by money matfective in preparing them for a first job or admission to grad ters. He avows “a deep personal commitment to higher eduschool, compared to 73% from private universities and 64% cation. It’s the best investment parents can make to allow from national flagship universities. More striking was that their children to take maximum advantage of what life has 77% rated their undergraduate experience as “excellent,” as to offer.” He says, “Skidmore’s value proposition was extraagainst 59% from privates and 53% from flagships. On virordinary: the resources per student were very inviting, the tually every measure known to contribute to positive outfacilities were overwhelmingly good, the town had a lot to comes—challenging professors, small offer. Our family made a decision that we “I CAME TO SKIDMORE ON classes, mentoring—the liberal arts gradwere going to do whatever we needed to.”

FINANCIAL AID AND HAVE BEEN uates rated their experiences more highly Not everyone is as bullish as the MopFOREVER GRATEFUL TO THOSE than did university graduates. siks about the value of a four-year degree.

WHO MADE THAT POSSIBLE.” Additionally, liberal arts schools, while A recent New York Times article, “The Old representing just 3% of American higher education, produce College Try? No Way,” asks pointed questions: Why go into a disproportionate number of successful graduates and leaddebt with no guarantee of a job? Why not undertake your ers. A 2012 count showed that, per capita, liberal arts colleges own self-directed learning, as UnCollege.org recommends? turned out twice as many students who earned PhDs in sciWhy not just drop out like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark ence as did other institutions. A 1998 study found that liberZuckerberg, who made millions? The answer, it turns out, is al arts schools turned out 19% of US presidents; 8% of the clear and compelling. Apart from very rare exceptions, it wealthiest CEOs and 8% of Peace Corps volunteers; 23%, pays to go to college. A 2010 College Board analysis calcu19%, and 18% of Pulitzer Prize winners in drama, history, lates that the median earnings of bachelor’s degree recipients and poetry; and many more. working full-time in 2008 were more than twice those of high school graduates. By age 33, these higher earnings offset not only the four college years spent outside the labor The way forward force but also the average tuition and fee payments at a pubAt the end of the day, financial aid isn’t about numbers. It’s lic four-year university funded fully by student loans. about the students who are transformed by a Skidmore eduMoreover, grads from liberal arts colleges say they feel betcation because of that aid. And therefore it’s also about the ter prepared for life’s challenges, including careers, than do alumni, parents, and others who understand the value, not those from private or public universities, according to a 2011 just to the student recipients but to the campus community as

student deBt comparison

Average debt burden of borrowers, upon graduation in the class of 2011

franklin & marshall college

$31,617

gettysburg college

$29,067

dickinson college

$26,928

Bard college

$26,897

connecticut college

$26,545

st. lawrence university

$26,270

union college

$26,252

wheaton college

$25,778

skidmore college Bates college

$20,706

trinity college

$20,367

hamilton college

$20,262

colgate university

$19,721

kenyon college sarah lawrence college Vassar college oberlin college

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$21,000

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$19,480 $18,360 $18,150 $16,813

It’s just $125 per person. And it all goes to financial aid.”

These and other scholarship supporters, from every era and area, tend to share a belief in liberal education as a personal, professional, and public good. Skidmore’s codified “Goals for Student Learning and Development” set an expectation that graduates will, among many other things, acquire discipline-specific knowledge; understand social and cultural diversity; develop advanced learning skills, including the capacity to think critically, creatively, and independently; and hone their ability to analyze, integrate, and apply information and communicate the findings effectively. It’s a “daunting” list, as Glotzbach admitted at last year’s commencement ceremony, but, he told the new grads, “the intellectual and ethical tool kit you have acquired through your Skidmore education provides you the best possible platform for success in a world marked above all by rapid, persistent, and unpredictable change.”

It’s no coincidence that it’s the same tool kit expressly sought, more and more urgently, by medical schools, law schools, and employers in practically every profession.

Educational like that doesn’t come cheap. What Skidmore does is necessarily cost-intensive—from its large faculty and personalized mentoring, to its laboratory, studio, athletics, and other resources, to its comprehensive First-Year Experience program, to its research, service, internship, travel, and other opportunities. But the more world crises that arise, the more Glotzbach sees Skidmore as an incubator of creative problem-solvers. That’s why he and Bates and other Skidmore leaders not only defend the value of its ever more costly education, but also insist that it should be able to work its magic on a diverse community of the best and brightest students regardless of their finances.

JON REINFURT

a whole, and who make that knowledge material as donors.

Lawyer Nancy Hamilton says, “I came to Skidmore on financial aid back in the 1970s and have been forever grateful to those who made that possible.” She calls the growth in financial aid and diversity at her alma mater “a signature achievement” demonstrating that “Skidmore has its priorities straight.” A trustee, alumni board member, and longtime supporter of scholarship aid, she has enjoyed returning to campus for the annual scholarship dinners, where recipients and donors have a chance to meet. She reports, “Many students are surprised to learn that I and many others were also financial aid recipients.

My hope is that they’ll be inspired to give as well. To me, scholarship gifts are not so much about paying as they are about paying forward, investing in the future. The return on that investment— someone like me, sometime down the road—makes it the best investment you’ll ever make.”

Hamilton adds that the average debt for a Skidmore education “seems eminently reasonable” compared to the far larger debt burden of some grads, especially those from the for-profit institutes. She says, “We know the intrinsic value of the Skidmore experience—from having close relationships with outstanding faculty (expert, dedicated professors, not just graduate students) to having seats available in courses so that students can graduate in their chosen major within four years. Supporting financial aid extends those lifechanging educational opportunities to more students.”

Jerome Mopsik is on board with giving back, too. The former Palamountain Scholar is now an organizer, along with wife Emily Carnevale Mopsik ’07, for this year’s Palamountain Scholarship polo benefit. He declares it “the best deal in town for a summer gala. The best food, the best company.

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BRUCIE ROSCH

BY SUSAN ROSENBERG

“FOOD IS NOT JUST PART OF OUR PHYSICAL FABRIC. It’s part of our growing up and family life. We engage with it, usually in a group, at least a few times every day,” notes Spanish professor and cultural scholar Viviana Rangil. From body-mass index to tastes and taboos, our very identity is shaped by the food we eat.

Pour on some politics, global trade, and high tech, and it’s no wonder we devour news headlined “‘Pink slime’ served in school lunches,” “Drought threatens nation’s wheat crop long term,” “Health secrets of the shopping cart,” “Food-borne diseases rising,” and “Helping cities feed themselves.” Every budget cycle, legislators wrangle over federal farm subsidies, even though two-thirds of American farmers never collect one, according to an OnEarth magazine article. From 1995 to 2012, OnEarth estimates, nearly 90% of agricultural subsidy money went to just 20% of farms—the biggest holdings, owned by megacorporations like Monsanto, Cargill, and ConAgra. Subsidized or not, much of what’s grown in America’s breadbasket we never see on a plate. Corn goes for sweetener, cattle feed, and ethanol fuel; a lot of wheat is exported; soy is processed into additives as well as chow for farm animals from hogs to chickens to salmon. Nearly all corn, soy, and canola is now grown from genetically modified seed, and the growth hormone administered to dairy cattle is itself genetically modified.

Is this food system intensive and efficient, or a rapacious agro-industrial monster? Several Skidmore minds, on campus and off, are helping to lead new thinking on such issues, and Scope asked a few of them for insights.

More and smaller

Economics professor Mehmet Odekon has guided students in collaborative summer research on food-chain market sectors. They found that between 1997 and 2007 just 10 companies shared 56% of the seed market; in agrochemicals, the top 10 firms had an 89% share. And those top 10s add up to less than 20, since firms like Monsanto and DuPont are in both oligopolies. The project’s conclusions recommended policy changes to diversify the markets and support smaller-scale farming.

Lauren Mandel ’05 is documenting the role of urban agriculture on rooftops. A landscape architect and greenroof designer, she reports, “Some colleges and schools are planting their roofs with edibles. Restaurants are too, growing heirloom vegetables that are hard to find elsewhere.

Urbanites are beginning to realize that you can’t get any more local than your own roof!” Mandel covers this trend

in her new book Eat Up: The Inside Scoop on Rooftop Agriculture. She says large warehouse roofs are even hosting “commercial-scale farms, some with a few chickens or rabbits (for meat as well as manure), and some with bee hives” to help ensure pollination so high off the ground.

Hydroponics, using liquid nutrients rather than soil, is ideal for roof-mounted greenhouses. Mandel writes about greenhouse farms on Montreal roofs, and she says the Whole Foods chain buys from “a New York operation like this to get fresh year-round produce at competitive prices.”

Hydroponics, she suggests, “can feed a lot of people with very little labor, because it’s often highly mechanized.”

Biology professor Monica Raveret-Richter agrees that “high-input methods of agriculture are not the only route to high yields.”

Raveret-Richter, who has researched foraging behaviors in social animals from insects to birds to humans, teaches a popular course on the ecology of food and is currently writing a book on it. She says, “Understanding how the environment and evolution influence your choices really changes your way of approaching the food landscape.”

Raveret-Richter’s advice is to eat less meat, since raising animals is an extremely high-input enterprise. But with any food, she says, “eating close to the source” directs more of the price to the grower, reduces shipping and storage, and shortens the production line from farm to table.

She also calls for policy-level action, to cut back support for monocultured commodities such as corn and wheat and to boost it for “diversified, low-input, organic farms.”

She says data show that “we can feed people this way. Our challenge for advancing agriculture should be in productivity and sustainability, not just output.” Such farming, she adds, also “improves resilience in times or places of food insecurity.”

Journalist and food blogger Mary Nelen ’79 points back to Skidmore as “a good example of local food in action.”

Student advocacy for more locally raised products in the dining hall led to deals with area farmers and spurred the creation of the campus garden that now supplies hundreds of pounds of organic produce to the College’s dining service. Nelen was impressed that the students weren’t taking agriculture courses or getting academic credit but g

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of traditional curing for prosciutto and other meat.”

Along with butchering, his company teaches curing and sausage-making—spreading natural pork cultures into the nearby human culture.

Food cures

The spread of food cultures is of special interest to Rangil, both as an academic and as an expat from Argentina. “I grew up eating seasonal food and local game and fish,” she recalls. “On my great-grandfather’s farm, after a pig was butchered in the winter, we kids would help with cooking and preserving the pork.” On sabbatical this past year, Rangil researched “Latino foodscapes,” interviewing people who emigrated from Puebla, Mexico, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, to live in New York City.

While Rangil’s study subjects usually want to cook their familiar recipes, and many can’t afford not to cook, for nutrition consultant Marti Wolfson ’02 a big hurdle can be convincing people to cook. With a culinary degree from the National Gourmet Institute and experience teaching at a holistic health and lifestyle center, she’s a from-scratch fan. In place of eating packaged food or take-out, “cooking does take time, but it’s much healthier,” she says. “I also believe the act of cooking is very healing, and cooking with your family is quality time that’s nourishing on many levels.”

Wolfson has been pleased to see that the Food Network and other TV cooking shows seem to have revived Americans’ interest in preparing whole, unprocessed food at home.

Of course, food choices reflect not just social influences but basic biological adaptation. RaveretRichter says, “For humans in the wild, optimal foraging would draw us to sugar and fat and meat.” For 21st-century urbanites trying to stretch a paycheck and also honor their heritage, it might mean beans and grains, to afford enough for everyone at the table. In her research, Rangil has noticed “a strong sense of duty around nourishing the family—primarily among women, who are typically the cooks and shoppers.”

Rangil proposes that food both distinguishes cultural BRUCIE ROSCH

simply “wanted better food and taught themselves how to grow it. Can this be duplicated in other environments?

I think it can. Almost all of us should be doing it.” She’s currently writing a book titled From Scratch.

With organic gardens and farmers’ markets spreading, “this is a promising time,” Andrew Plotsky ’00 declares.

People like him, alarmed that “we have the fewest farmers we’ve ever had in this country” and eager to fix “a broken system,” are picking up shovels and, in his case, going online. Serving small farmers around Washington’s Puget Sound, he works for a local butchering company and also owns FarmRun, a media and marketing business. A self-taught pork connoisseur, he also raises a few heritage-breed pigs for himself, focusing on healthy, natural husbandry, humane slaughtering and hand-butchering, and old-fashioned, artisanal curing.

“There’s a lot of romance flying around in portrayals of small-farm life,” Plotsky cautions.

“My friends and I know how it really works—how freakin’ hard it is—but we’re committed to the economy and wellbeing of our small group.” He believes their paradigm has real promise to contribute to “a radical revisiting of classical agrarian society, which doesn’t go backward but uses modern technology to forge a new agrarian system.”

He acknowledges that when he started out, “the immediacy of taking life—and pigs are very charismatic— was difficult. But I’ve learned that it’s possible to love both pigs and pork.

The heartbreak and labor are worth it, to participate in a farming community.” In fact, true sustainable agriculture, he argues, is more than raising the food; it also includes “blacksmithing and carpentry and all the other jobs that make a farming lifestyle possible.” Plotsky wants his niche to be media, for communicating the value of small-farm products compared to cheaper, mass-produced supermarket fare. “The key for industrial meat processing,” he says, “is low price and high profit; for us, it’s quality. We scald and scrape the hide, rather than skinning the pig and losing good fat and flesh. Leaving the skin on also supports the biology

identities and bridges them. Her study is charting a Latinization of the US that’s “a reciprocal and transformative trend for both the Latino and US cultures.” Cuisines— from “authentically ethnic” to muddled to “fusion”— help “create alternative affiliations and ‘imagined communities’ that can reconfigure notions of citizenship,” she says. She also notes that Americans’ disposable incomes allow them to sample foreign foods as entertainment. “We like to ‘eat the other’—which can suggest a

devouring of a colonized culture, especially if we don’t try to understand that culture a little bit through its food.”

“You are what you eat” certainly cuts more than one way. For biologist Raveret-Richter, “We become part of our environment by eating of it.” As a youngster, she ate fish from Lake Michigan, before its pollution was widely recognized. As an adult she came to realize that “whenever you eat a fish, you join the marine ecosystem—and it joins you.” g

ERIC JENKS '08

by Mary Nelen ’79

Last spring Skidmore students took on the Real Food Challenge, a national effort to make food served on campuses as humane, fair-trade, ecologically safe, and local as possible. The goal is to make those descriptions true for 20% of campus food by 2020.

Recently well over 10% of dining-hall food has come from the student-run organic garden next to the Colton Alumni Welcome Center. How is this possible? Skidmore has four things going for it: a decent growing zone, a willing dining-services director, an aggressive grass-roots Food Action Group, and Gabby Stern ’13 and her compatriots.

Stern spent a summer not just toiling in the student garden, but also interning at American Farmland Trust and working with the farmers’ market in downtown Saratoga—a locavore’s trifecta. “I came into Skidmore with zero experience,” says the environmental studies major. “Then I started working the garden.

There I was, 18 years old, and it was the first time I’d harvested a carrot. There is a problem with that. How had I gone my entire life not knowing this?”

Under the umbrella of the Environmental Action Club, the Food Action Group began four years ago when students broke ground. Stern took over as manager of the garden in 2010 and contracted with the dining hall. She says, “A few professors gave their two cents, and we just learned on our own. We get a lot of support from the ES department; they covet this garden!

It has been a great part of my education.”

Stern got no academic credit for that work, but Faith Nichola

’14 did an internship in data analysis for last spring’s Real Food Challenge, providing findings to give Skidmore’s administration a better understanding of the issue.

Elizabeth Cohen ’14 grew up with a garden in her backyard, so the origins of a carrot were familiar to her. But coming to Skidmore put organic food in a different light. “Working in the garden made me think about where things are coming from. Affordability and access aren’t the same for everybody,” she says. Riley Neugebauer, Skidmore’s sustainability coordinator, also sees food as a social justice issue, arguing that “sustainability includes equity as well as ecology and economy. If people don't have access to one of their most basic needs—food—or if the only food they have access to is grown with pesticides that accumulate in our bodies over time, harms the environment that we are all a part of, and doesn’t tell a story about where it came from or who grew it or why that matters, then we have a justice issue.”

Margot Reisner ’14 followed her term as manager of the student garden with a semester in Australia to study permaculture.

Reisner, in the social and cultural track of the ES major, defines permaculture as “the mentality that everything we do as humans has to do with ecology. If there is a discrepancy between the way human systems work and the way ecology works, then you are going to have a problem, such as the health problems we see today due to what we are feeding our animals and putting into the air. Permaculture mimics the way ecological systems work.” After graduation, she plans to start her own farm. “I just want a place to have people live and be healthy,” she says.

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grain of salt. It’s nice that restaurants are offering more gluten-free or low-fat offerings, Wolfson concedes. Problem is, “many companies are jumping on the bandwagon by marketing packaged foods that replace fats with sugars, or sugars with artificial sweeteners.”

Socially engineered food?

The only answer, Wolfson says, is many answers. “Take our food back into our hands, support our local farmers, educate our children, train our doctors, and cast our votes every time we shop.” Rangil interjects, “We also need to acknowledge the privilege of being able to shop selectively and advocate for better systems without having to worry about putting food on our table.” The more-produce rule for school lunches is reportedly resulting in students’ tossing much of it into the trash. “We can’t afford to throw food away,” she says, “while we’re trying to teach our kids how to eat.”

Wolfson concurs “the population isn’t getting any smaller, and our food-supply expectations grow bigger by the second.” For her, one key to the problem of “how to feed the world but feed it with good nutrition” is to prune back the dominance of big agro. Andrew Plotsky, hog butcher for the world of his small circle, cites ag policy reforms too. While he respects the food safety concerns behind federal meat-packing regulations, he says, “they can only be met by big corporations with administrative departments to handle them.” Absent alternative rules for small “meatsmithing,” his processor is state-certified, not US-certified.

On rooftops too, Lauren Mandel would like to rewrite some ordinances. While more cities are beginning to allow small flocks of chickens, bee-keeping is usually prohibited, as bees are considered a nuisance or hazard. Mandel says, “We need ways not just to permit but to promote agriculture in residential and industrial zones.”

Economist Odekon shares the preference for small, local, diversified farming. “Unfortunately, the distribution of labor in global food production,” he says, “is following BRUCIE ROSCH

That inextricability is another obstacle for Wolfson’s clients. “Food sourcing is so tough. Products made in America may have ingredients from who knows where, and we don’t require labeling of genetically modified crops. You have to shop for different items at different places to get the safest of each.” Her realistic advice is just to buy whole foods and, when you need to buy packaged, “check the number of ingredients: the list should be short and they should be recognizable. I think that can be more important than the nutrition labeling, because the US Department of Agriculture ‘food pyramid’ is more about farm subsidies and lobbying than about sound nutrition.”

Blogger Nelen says one bright spot is the USDA’s 2012 measure requiring twice the previous amounts of fruits and vegetables in the national school-lunch program. “Getting sugar, fat, and processed food off cafeteria menus,” she says, “could begin to heal the damage done to a generation of students” whose early diets have “contributed to record rates of obesity and food allergies.” Nelen would also like to see “choices limited to healthy food at home.”

Wolfson confirms that starting good eating habits in youngsters is vital. She serves many clients who have food intolerances—to wheat and dairy, primarily—but “sugar is the number-one thing that people need to reduce or eliminate.

An excess affects everything in our bodies, and our need for it is minuscule.”

Genetically engineered crops worry her too, since “we’re just on the cusp of learning how they really affect us. The new field of nutrigenomics is starting to explore how food can influence our genetics and those of our offspring.”

She cites evidence that certain genes’ expression can be turned on or off “through a clean, highquality diet or a diet that’s poor or contaminated by pesticides, hormones, plastics, and metals.” Whatever complex of factors is at work, Wolfson says, “There is no question anymore that many chronic conditions today, from heart disease to bowel disorders to cancers, are directly related to a poor diet.”

But take the burgeoning healthier-foods market with a

BRUCIE ROSCH

the rule of comparative advantage. America and Europe, rich in capital, are producing capital-intensive grains and other commercial crops; developing countries, rich in labor, are producing labor-intensive fruits and vegetables.” Consequently industrial nations are increasingly dependent on imports for their produce, while the developing world must import its grain. Neither group can control how cleanly its imports are farmed. “The rampant use of fertilizers and pesticides in some countries is a serious health concern,” Odekon says, which makes “sustainable farming, urban and rural, more important than ever.” In his view, though, small ag can’t develop enough without “new institutional and legal frameworks—for example, new forms of collective ownership for urban agricultural cooperatives.”

Cooperative arrangements also apply to meal-making.

Attending Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico, Rangil more than once witnessed people with small incomes lay-

ing out enormous feasts for up to 500 visitors. In the United States, she points out, “we more often provide charity, giving away resources that are in excess of our needs, but this was genuine sharing, the breaking in half of our only piece of bread to give to someone else.” In her study communities, she says, “the money for such lavish holiday generosity sometimes comes from remittances sent home by a family member who left to find work in the States, perhaps even in agriculture.”

Such foodways serve as familiar cultural resources that can mean a lot to immigrants. As Rangil says, taste is a feeling, and in fact smell and taste are often the strongest senses for triggering memory and other associations, so “food is about the past and present, the bodily and the symbolic.” Curating its traditions, cultivating it, and sharing it “can bring people closer together and help us understand each other.”

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• 2003 • 1998 • 1993 • 1988 • 1983 • 1978 • 1973 • 1968 • 1963 • 1958 • 1953 • 1948 • 1943 • 1938 • 1933 • 1928 • 1923 •

It’s not too late to take part.

May 30–June 2 Rekindle old friendships • Rediscover Saratoga Springs Reconnect with faculty • Join the parade • Picnic on the green Go back to class • Visit the alumni art exhibition Enjoy live music and fireworks To register and get details, visit www.skidmore.edu/reunion

1938 • 1933 • 1928 • 1923 • 2008 • 2003 • 1998 • 1993 • 1988 • 1983 • 1978 • 1973 • 1968 • 1963 • 1958 • 1953 • 1948

2008 • 2003 • 1998 • 1993 • 1988 • 1983 • 1978 • 1973 • 1968 • 1963 • 1958 • 1953 • 1948 • 1943 •

2008 • 2003 • 1998 • 1993 • 1988 • 1983 • 1978 • 1973 • 1968 • 1963 • 1958 • 1953 • 1948 • 1943 •

CREATIVE THOUGHT AT WORK

Shaping interpersonal—and interspecies—dynamics

HILARY SCHWAB

If Jennifer Daniels ’94 is having a stressful day at work, she goes to see the caracal, a beautiful, black-eared desert cat that usually prowls in Africa and Asia. Or if she is jittery from fighting traffic around her office in Washington, D.C., she visits with the elephants, which she finds calming, especially

landscape architecture. She explains, “Landscape architecture was, for me, not about plants. It was about people in an environment—how to make that work.”

As a dancer and anthropologist, “I was ready to translate those interests into figuring something out about human beings and how they occupy their space.”

Next, in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Fox worked for the US Forest Service and Daniels worked for a landscape architecture firm on projects such as the design and construction of bridges and exhibits in Grand Teton National Park’s Rockefeller Preserve. A promotion for Fox brought them, with their three children, back east to Washington, D.C. Daniels became the first resident landscape architect at the National Zoo since its creation in 1889 by Frederick Law Olmstead (who also designed New York City’s Central Park and other famous sites—including Saratoga’s Congress Park). She had a steep learning curve, she admits, but notes that her background helped her build relationJEN DANIELS ’94 DESIGNS SPACES FOR ZOO VISITORS AND RESIDENTS. ships, understand politics, and embrace challenge and problem-solving. specializing in “activist training that when they’re being bathed.

Planning for animals as well as people helps groups stand up more effectively These are some of the quirky perks was new to her, and she loves it. She has for justice, peace, and the environment,” that Daniels gets to enjoy as the landto think about topography and nutrition, working with youngsters who had expescape architect at the Smithsonian’s efficiency and beauty, and what makes rienced violence. She says, “It shaped National Zoological Park, the 163-acre spaces safe, userwho I am,” and she home to animals ranging from the icon“LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE friendly, compliant adds, “These conflictic giant pandas to birds, monkeys and WAS, FOR ME, NOT ABOUT with regulations, and resolution techniques apes, amphibians and reptiles, and even PLANTS. IT WAS ABOUT fun. For a carousel, “I could be relevant in insects. “I never expected this to be my PEOPLE IN AN ENVIRONMENT got to pick the aniLos Angeles, Ireland, career, but it’s pretty exciting to touch a —HOW TO MAKE THAT WORK.” mals for the seats and or Israel.” In fact, she 65-year-old elephant,” she admits. plan how to section them according to took them to Russia, where she and husAfter her anthropology major at Skidwhich lived in wetlands, deserts, oceans... band Rick Fox lived for six years. She more—she was drawn initially to the I still smile every time I think about it.” learned the language and conducted diadance program, but ultimately chose an Also exhilarating is advocating for the logues from Siberia to Moscow, helping academic discipline over the performing zoo and its public support. Addressing people navigate the volatile interpersonarts—Daniels’s first job was as a facilitator “everything from conservation to reval dynamics of alcoholism, unemploymoderating dialogues on race relations, enue, I’ve become more of a strategic ment, and social isolation. especially between blacks and whites in planner in the process.”

Back in the US, Daniels had to decide New Haven, Conn., where churches, Off the job, she spends time with her what to do next. What she cared about community groups, and government kids. “And what dohey want to do?” she most was people, and how they use their agencies were seeking such interactions. asks with a sigh. “They say, ‘Mom, can we spaces, so she enrolled at the University She had gained the skills when an ango to the zoo?’” —Helen S. Edelman ’74 of Pennsylvania for a master’s degree in thropology professor, Jill Sweet, introduced her to leadership training through Futures for Children, which encourages American Indian students to graduate from high school, pursue postsecondary education, and give back to their communities through public service.

Daniels also studied with George Lakey’s program Training for Change,

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CREATIVE THOUGHT AT WORK

pulling for local kids “They pull the oars in and finish at their chins, but they’re out there,” says Bob Tarrant ’78, co-founder of the Saratoga Rowing Center. “We run sculling camps for 8- to 12-year-old kids—summer programs, after-school programs.” Tarrant continues, “At the novice level, kids that are 8 years old are easier to teach than novices that are 50.

Adults have to kick the door to learning back open. But little kids, by and large, are fearless. If you put a 9-year-old in a racing single on the third day of camp, she’ll flip and not care. She’ll figure out what she did wrong and not flip again.”

Neither Tarrant nor wife Jean Tierney

GARY GOLD

Tarrant ’79—known by many as Bean, he country could use a boost.” Sounds like says—rowed at Skidmore, as the college he and his wife are doing that, but he had no varsity crew in their student days. counters, “It’s the kids that are doing it.

They started Saratoga They’re the stars.”

“PUTTING A 9-YEAR-OLD Rowing Center in Chase jumps in with a IN A BOAT, WITH THE 2003, after he decidthought about Tarrant’s EQUIPMENT SIZES WE HAVE, style. “Don’t let him ed to leave his famiIT’S DEMANDING ON THEM. ly’s manufacturing fool you. He’s incredibly BUT THEY’RE LEARNING business. detail-oriented and SO MUCH OUT THERE.” He says, “We’ve methodical, as a coach had some cool successes with a couple of should be. He’s stern with the kids, but rowers who started at 8 or 9 and went on a lot of fun.” to the competitive rowing program” at Tarrant’s program is usually full. He Saratoga Rowing Association, a partner says, “Mostly we operate from waiting to the Tarrants’ rowing center. “It’s fun lists. Mom and Dad want to give their to watch them head off to row for Harkids a taste of rowing.” But it’s not easy: vard or Brown.” Started “Listen, putting a 9-year-old in a boat, in 1996, SRA has grown with the equipment sizes we have, it’s into a vibrant hub of demanding on them. I don’t let them rowing in what its head graduate to the next level until they can coach Chris Chase calls a steer a single and navigate on a small “rowing-crazy town. One river that may have 40 shells out during in 12 kids in the high a varsity practice. It’s sometimes a lot to school here in Saratoga ask, but it’s important. We keep our Springs is a rower.” camps small, no more than 10 kids with Chase explains that three coaches, because you can’t mess the Tarrants’ sculling around with kids on the water. But program for youngsters they’re learning so much out there.” makes his team stronger.

Tarrant smiles as he talks. “These kids He says, “Bob and Bean are amazing. They’re learning to scull in were both scullers. They equipment that’s oversized for them, taught their three daughwhich means they have to learn how to ters to scull. And doing handle it. It would be like asking you to the program for 8- to scull with sweep oars. You’d end up with 12-year-olds was a niche a lot of control as a rower.” they wanted to fill.”

Both coaches say they are operating Chase has 177 kids on at maximum capacity. “During practice the SRA team, “and we have 25 singles, 20 pairs, seven every kid can row a sincoxed quads, plus 10 boats with Bob’s gle. They come to us alkids in them,” says Chase. “We run two ready knowing how to practice times a day. It’s the only way it handle the boats.” When can happen.” asked if he knows of Is “it” getting all the kids on the water other learn-to-row proor getting all the kids to become great grams that teach elemenrowers? Either way, in Saratoga Springs, tary school kids, Tarrant with the Tarrants as youth coaches, rowreplies, “I haven’t heard ing starts early in life. of any in the United States.” That’s partly Adapted with permission from “Ahead of why he adds, “Bean and the Curve,” by Jen Whiting, in the NovemBOB ’78 AND JEAN TIERNEY TARRANT ’79 PREP FOR COACHING DUTIES AT THEIR SARATOGA ROWING CENTER. I feel sculling in this ber 2012 Rowing magazine.

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A Skidmore double and four both finished in the top 10 at October’s Head of the Fish Regatta (which also drew more than 30 alumni, including competitors in mixed eight and other races). Last spring a Thoroughbreds four came in second, just behind a West Point boat, at the state championships. This spring 43 students were rowing hard.

As the crew program has grown and thrived over the decades, outstripping the capacity of its old boathouse, the pace is picking up in the fundraising for a new facility. Designed by architect and Skidmore Hall of Famer John Onderdonk ’89, launched with a lead gift of $750,000 from Margaret and Michael Valentine (parents of former T’bred Martha ’09), and supported by other crew alumni and friends, the new boathouse plan has raised $1.1 million so far. Now the Valentine family has pledged to match all gifts of any size, up to $250,000. The $500,000 from a successful challenge

would bring the construction fund up to $1.5 million, enough for the $2.3 million project to break ground.

The Valentine Boathouse will include large storage bays, a training room, full locker rooms, a AN EARLY-MORNING THOROUGHBREDS WORKOUT ON FISH CREEK spectators’ deck, Neil Kaye ’81 (recalling the spartan conand more. Spaces are still available to be ditions back when he was starting crew named with major gifts, and young as a club sport?) has named a locker alumni can name an “oar of honor” for room. Levene is also coxing the challenge a five-year pledge of just $5,000. Already effort among fellow crew fans, with sights Luke Huber ’85 has named the viewing set on that $250,000 match. deck, Ron Levene ’86 has funded the terFor more, go to skidmoreathletics.com race between the main boathouse and and click “crew,” or send an e-mail to the sculling pavilion, Chip Babcock (hustclemmey@skidmore.edu. —SR band of Nancy Hamilton ’77) has funded a boat bay and the waterfront park, and

Putting a string around Putting around P utting a string ound my finger wasn’tar exactly any option. my wasn’t m finger w asn’t exactly exactly an option.

Whatever it takes,

W hatever it es,these remember remember totak save dates: to save these dates: Skidmore College Saratoga Horse Show Sk idmoreClassic College June 11–16 & 19–23 Saratoga Classic Horse Show:

June 19-23, 2013 Join 11-16 us for&the Alumni Division on Saturday, June 22 The Alumni Division on www.skidmore.edu/saratogaclassic Sa turda , June 22, 2013 518-580-5632 or 518-580-5633 www.skidmore.edu/saratogaclassic sclassic@skidmore.edu 518-580-5632 or 518-580-5633 sclassic@skidmore.edu

JOIN US FOR A WEEKEND OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND CELEBRATION OF THE SKIDMORE COMMUNITY

oct 18–20 President’s Hour Minicollege presentations Exhibitions at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery Thoroughbred athletic contests Under the Big Top with talented student performers registration and schedules: skidmore.edu/celebrationweekend, collegeevents@skidmore.edu, or 518-580-5670 lodging and dining information: saratoga.org or 518-584-3255

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BOB EWELL

How to float a boathouse

Reaching parnassus

The new members are: Frank and Barbara Underhill Collyer ’52. Barbara was an educator at Cornell, Brown, and the University of Texas.

In support of Skidmore crew, she donated a shell that was dubbed B-52 in her honor. She also established the Barbara Underhill Collyer ’52 Scholarship and recently endowed the position of vice president for advancement.

Shelby and Gale Davis of the Davis United World College Scholars Program.

Since Skidmore joined the Davis UWC network in 2004, some 70 students from 39 countries have attended Skidmore with support from the program, the world’s largest privately funded international scholarship program for undergraduates.

Jerome and Emily Farnsworth ’59.

Emily was a high-school teacher and librarian. She and her husband have been dedicated supporters of higher educa-

8CLUB

CONNECTION: NEW YORK CITY

M

PRESIDENTIAL TOAST PARNASSUS MEMBERS

TODD FRANCE ’89

A TO

tion, both at Skidmore and at his alma mater, Trinity.

Irving and Selma Harris, P ’76, ’79.

Parents of Jonathan ’76 and Lisa ’79, the Harrises have supported the Palamountain Scholarships and the Parents Fund.

After Jonathan’s untimely death, they endowed a scholarship and named a reading room in the Lucy Scribner Library in his memory; they later named the library’s Harris Lobby as well.

Paul and Barbara McGrew Jenkel ’62, P ’91. Parents of Cyndi ’91, the Jenkels contributed to the Thomas Endowed Fund for the Arthur Zankel Music Center in honor of Barbara’s friend Suzanne Corbet Thomas ’62. Barbara has helped run Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities, located at the Children’s Village, a treatment center for at-risk children.

Richard and Jean “Hadley” Sillick Robertson ’60. A prolific and longtime designer with Recycled Paper Greetings, Hadley has supported, along with her husband, a range of Skidmore causes from the annual fund to the Tang Museum to financial aid, for which they established the Richard and Hadley Sillick Robertson ’60 Scholarship.

Michael and Margaret Valentine, P ’09. Parents of Martha ’09, who greatly enjoyed being part of Skidmore crew, the Valentines gave a lead gift for the project now known as the Valentine Boathouse. And they recently pledged a matching-gift challenge to inspire further support for the project. —DF, SR

CHARLIE SAMUELS

Skidmore’s Parnassus Society, honoring donors of more than $1 million, now has nearly 100 members, after 14 were inducted last December. The inductees’ combined $19 million in gifts to Skidmore have provided “critical support for projects ranging from the annual fund and scholarships to the Tang Museum and Valentine Boathouse,” remarked President Philip Glotzbach. He went on, “These individuals have not let us settle, but have encouraged us to make Skidmore a place where creative thought is truly made material, and for that we are deeply grateful.”

ix and match: In March, three dozen students of color made career connections with alumni of color, at Skidmore’s first-ever Multicultural Speed-Networking Reception. The event drew more than 40 alumni, from the classes of 1989 to 2012, employed by a range of firms from Morgan Stanley to Urban Arts Partnership to Aetna Insurance. Wendy Wilson ’96 was impressed by “such a diverse group of students, all very focused and prepared.” Students were given five minutes with each alum in the room, to introduce themselves, ask questions, and network on professional topics; then they had a chance to follow up with alumni of special interest. Josin Lin ’09 enjoyed the “speed dating” format: “I like that we were able to rotate and speak with each student about our experiences after Skidmore. I think we should continue to host these events in the future, so that students will connect with more alumni.” —Daniella Nordin

It’s a January evening in a midtown Manhattan high-rise, where dozens of Skidmore volunteers, alumni job seekers and changers, and students nearing graduation are networking like crazy. The energy is high, the vibe is good, and the conversations are flowing. Everyone’s following the advice of Adam Wald ’94 to “meet at least three people and e-mail each of them the next day.” They’ve been reminded that networking is the best way, bar none, to land a job.

Jenna Hartwell, the Career Development Center’s associate director for alumni career development, kicked off this “Evening of Career Transition and Transformation” with a workshop, “The Road Not (yet) Taken,” featuring smallgroup brainstorming and a roadmap for alumni considering career changes. In its second year (and sold out well in advance), the event is a direct outgrowth of Skidmore’s commitment to provide “free career counseling to alumni for life,” as Hartwell puts it. “How cool is that?” she asks. “At most colleges you have to pay for it, or you get two ses-

PETER MACDONALD

CAREER CORNER: Alumni event makes a buzz sions and you’re done.”

Hartwell teamed with Wald, president of Skidmore’s New York City club and an alumni board member, and with Mike Sposili, director of alumni affairs and college events, to set the context for the evening. Then it got under way, as 43 alumni volunteers (and some Skidmore parents and staff) from 13 ENRIQUE TIBURCIO ’06 (AT RIGHT) DIVES INTO CAREER career fields made themNETWORKING AT THE NEW YORK CITY EVENT. selves available for faceto-face networking for almost two hours. member David Behrman, P ’13, chatted Wald, a voiceover actor who also prowith freelance writer Michele Herman vides career advice to artists, made a ’79 about potential work at his Behrman simple suggestion: “Write a little elevator House Inc. Nearby, volunteer David Harspeech for yourself—your own personal rison ’87, business analyst and senior VP story. In job interviews you’re often at Citigroup, was delighted to reconnect going to hear, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ with Enrique Tiburcio ’06, who as a stuSo be ready!” dent had job-shadowed with Harrison.

Among the buzz of conversations and “Enrique is doing extremely well for himconnections (video highlights are at self now,” says Harrison proudly. “He’s youtu.be/8JJ0r7joyoE), education puba VP at JP Morgan. And he talked with lisher and Skidmore Parents Council students last November at Skidmore’s ‘Wall Street 101’ panel.”

All in all, Hartwell says, the evening exceeded her expectations. “I wish I could adequately convey the level of engagement—and noise—in the room!

It was wonderful to observe so many thoughtful conversations, words of encouragement, and inspirational ideas.”

Now’s the time to join your classmates Hartwell underscores that this is just for a weekend at Skidmore, one way that Skidmore serves alumni on to plan your next big every step of career journeys that may get-together. span their lifetimes. “An instructor of mine once told me that building a career Reunion is like building a home: you start with a Planning Weekend: vision, but eventually you redecorate, SECTION I July 25–27, 2013, tack on an addition, or knock down a Thursday–Saturday (for classes 1954, wall.

In that metaphor, your college ex1959, 1964, 1969, & 1974) perience is your front door. I want our SECTION II July 26–28, 2013, Friday–Sunday alumni to know that, no matter where (for classes 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, & 2009) they go, what they do, or how much they accomplish, their front door is and alFor more information call 800-584-0115. ways will be Skidmore. The time they Reunion 2014 is May 29–June 1. Save the date! spent here is the point of entry to their professional lives.” —MM, PM

It’s right around the bend…

REUNION 2014

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PHIL HAGGERTY

WHO, WHAT, WHEN

MORTICIANS? Who are these students, where, and what’s on the shelves? Tell us your answers at 518-580-5747, srosenbe@skidmore.edu, or Scope c/o Skidmore College. We’ll report answers, and run a new quiz, in the upcoming Scope magazine.

FROM LAST TIME Early Sketchies? Lynn Lavorgna McCrea ’66 still recognizes some of the players, though the show took place before her time. She says, “The person on the far left, I believe, is Elizabeth Ferguson, who was one of my dear sociology professors.

I kept in touch with her for many, many years before she died a couple of years ago.” McCrea also spots Dean Norma MacRury, “sixth from the left.” And she guesses that the shorter woman next to her was a professor of music, “but I have lost her name in the recesses of my memory!”

MacRury, dean of the college from 1949 to 1970, is indeed the white-haired cast member in the middle, but her shorter neighbor is actually Edith Stonequist, wife of sociology professor Everett Stonequist. Up in front of them is the chaplain, Edgar Sather, in unconvincing drag. McCrea is also correct about the per-

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son at the far left: social-work professor Tish Ferguson (behind the stage-struck English setter). To her left is Russian and Romance-language professor Rudy Sturm (in glasses and necktie) and art professor Alice Moshier (in heroic armor).

What were they playing at? According to Skidmore’s history Make No Small Plans, it was sketch comedy—a popular way to raise funds for student aid, special events, community programs, and other causes in Skidmore’s early days. In 1937 “Faculty Flickers for the Foundlings” was a benefit for freshmen who had lost their belongings to a fire in the South Hall dorm. The performance pictured here, in May 1959, portrayed life at the mythical Breedlove College and featured parodies of Wagnerian opera with Moshier and government professor Henry Galant as Teutonic warriors.—SR

QG: CLASS NOTES — pp31–63 — ARE IN SEPARATE QUARK FILE

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BEAU STALLARD

SARATOGA SIDEBAR

THE KAYAK SHAK,

ON

FISH CREEK

AT THE OUTLET OF

SARATOGA L AKE,

IS A POPULAR LOCAL VENUE FOR WATER SPORTS.

PLYING SARATOGA’S WATERS Water is the word in Saratoga Springs, of course, but not just for drinking or bathing. The area is also brimming with liquid sports and recreation.

Saratoga Lake, just east of the city, is a busy attraction for fishing, boating, water-skiing, and sailboat racing. Anglers with their own craft can put in at the New York State Boat Launch on Route 9P and try landing a bass, northern pike, or walleye. For advice, lures, and bait, stop in at Saratoga Tackle and Archery, and for motivation, hook onto the lake association’s guide to fish species and record catches.

Need a boat, or just fuel or supplies? Point Breeze Marina rents and sells a range of boats and has dock space. At South Shore Marina, at DiDonna’s Restaurant, you can rent dock space, buy a seasonal boat-launch pass, and even rent a vacation property. Fish Creek Marina, on County Route 67 at the lake’s outlet near Skidmore’s boathouse, also has the lively Kayak Shak, where it seems a party is always about to break out. It offers half- and full-day rentals of kayaks, canoes, rowboats, and stand-up paddleboards. If you have your own nonmotorized craft, you can park and launch at the city’s new Waterfront Park off Crescent Avenue.

Need lessons? You can get instruction at the Saratoga Sailing Club—or just enjoy the beautiful boats in its regattas.

Likewise for rowing, in late spring and early fall you can watch the Skidmore crew pulling hard along the lake and creek, or you can sign up for the Saratoga Rowing Association’s instructional camps, lessons, and competitions—two highlights are the Saratoga Invitational in April and the leg-

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endary Head of the Fish Regatta (always an alumni favorite) in October.

For swimming, Saratoga Spa State Park is home to two public pools. The large Peerless Pool Complex is family-friendly, with a separate slide area and wading pool. The Victoria Pool is smaller, historic, and tucked into arched promenades for a more elegant vibe. It features an outdoor bar, but be there when it opens to have any hope of scoring a lounge chair.

Those looking for more thrills with their chills can head north to Lake George for parasailing or to Hadley for highadrenaline rafting or tubing that the Sacandaga Outdoor Center promises is “one of the best buzzes mother nature can dish out.” Its equipment includes water cannons and buckets to ensure that your every molecule gets doused.

On the other end of the drama and decibel scales, there are abundant options for peaceful paddling, from leafy Lake Lonely to Lake Moreau just north of town. For suggestions, along with thoughtful commentary and gorgeous photography, check out Saratoga Woods and Waterways, the blog of former Scope editor Jackie Donnelly, whose wanderings always include “looking closely, listening carefully.” Her favorite paddle? “It’s the Hudson River between the Spier Falls and Sherman Island dams, accessed by a boat launch on Spier Falls Road in Moreau,” she says.

After bumping over rapids in a whitewater adventure or paddling across a scenic lake, you may just be ready for the other Saratoga H20: a tall quaff of, or a long soak in, the famous fizzy waters. —KG

matter:/’maete(r)/ v. be of importance; have significance. (Oxford English Dictionary)

Skidmore is a College on the MOVE You can play a critical role in the energy that is Skidmore College.

Make your gift to the Skidmore Annual Fund, and say more than just “thank you” for the life-changing experience you had. Tell us “Skidmore matters today,” and it matters to you and to the next generation of students who will make their own impact on the world!

BE A PART OF IT!

Skidmore College, Annual Fund | 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 800-584-0115 www.skidmore.edu/annual_fund.

Scope

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage

Skidmore College 815 North Broadway Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-1632

PAID

ERIC JENKS ’08

Skidmore College

IT’S BIG. IT’S GREEN. AND IT’S DEFINITELY A SCREAM. SEE PAGE 9.