Some items in the TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections may be under copyright. Copyright information may be available in the Rights Status field listed in this item record (below). Ultimate responsibility for assessing copyright status and for securing any necessary permission rests exclusively with the user. Please see the Reproductions and Access page for more information.
Andreas in 3-D
swarthmore
swarthmore college
bulletin | april 2012
c4-c1_covers_2nd_3-29.indd 1
4/3/12 7:43 AM
campus view
In spring, this
resplendent old cherry
tree in front of Martin
Hall carpets the grass
beneath it with
pink petals.
c2-01_View_output1.indd 2
4/3/12 7:54 AM
c2-01_View_output1.indd 1
4/3/12 7:55 AM
departments
4: FROM THE EDITOR
5: LETTERS
Readers react.
6: COMMUNITY VOICES
Meeting the Challenges Ahead
By Garikai Campbell ’90
7: COLLECTION
• Swarthmore and Ghana connect
• New Board chair Gil Kemp ’72
• Christina Paxson ’88 to lead Brown
• Helen North remembered
• Former Arboretum director honored
• Garnet sports news
38: CONNECTIONS
• African safari on tap
• Career connections via video
• Bicoastal business connections
• Lax Conference explores business
startups and more
40: CLASS NOTES
The world according to Swarthmoreans
45: IN MEMORIAM
Farewell to cherished friends
52: BOOKS + ARTS
Ambassador James C. Hormel ’55 and
Erin Martin, Fit To Serve: Reflections on
a Secret Life, Private Struggle, and Public
Battle to Become the First Openly Gay
U.S. Ambassador, New York: Skyhorse
Publishing, 2011
Reviewed by Rick Valelly ’75
68: IN MY LIFE
“Lincoln Was a Hero—
and Robert Pattinson is Ugly”
Developing student potential
By Tatiana Cozzarelli ’08
72: Q&A
Creating a Lively, Relevant Space
Karlene Burrell-McCrae brings a distinct,
new style to the Black Cultural Center.
Interview by Sherri Kimmel
02-03_TOC_output1.indd 2
4/3/12 8:24 AM
in this issue
features
14: Andreas in 3-D
Powered by heavy doses of caffeine,
engineering major and ceramicist
extraordinaire Andreas Bastian ’12 charges
from one innovative project to another.
By Sherri Kimmel
14
20
20: Tracking Away from Worry
Anxious moments trouble most of us.
Tamar Chansky ’84 literally wrote the book
on how to kick worry out of the way.
By Robert Strauss
24: From Business to the Board Room
Former Board Chair Neil Austrian ’61
reflects on college, career, and consensus.
Interview by Jeffrey Lott
29: Earnest and Edgy
The College archives boast a wealth of
alternately sarcastic and serious magazines
that demonstrate the long and storied
legacy of Swarthmore’s student literary
scene.
By Eli Epstein-Deutsch ’10
34: A Deal That’s Sweet as Syrup
Dan Werther ’83 has found his niche—as
owner of confection company Sorbee
International.
By Carol Brévart-Demm and Lauren Weiler
24
34
profiles
56: Thinking Outside the Cell
Julie Zimmerman ’68 opens doors to
learning for prisoners.
By David Treadwell
60: Cori the Explorer
Cori Lathan ’88 explores at the frontier of
modern technology.
By Christopher Maier
Left: Perched on the porch of historic Robinson House, Karlene BurrellMcCrae surveys the campus. Meet the new director of the Black Cultural
Center/dean of the junior class on Page 72. Photo by Ken Yanoviak.
63: Artist Without Borders
Nathan Florence ’94 trains an activist’s eye
toward diverse communities and artistic
media.
By Elizabeth Vogdes
On the cover: Andreas Bastian ’12 with his 3-D printer. Photo by Ken
Yanoviak. Story on Page 14.
02-03_TOC_output1.indd 3
4/3/12 8:24 AM
From the Editor
Carl so
colo w
Yesterday I saw tiny violet
flowers cropping up outside
my office in Sproul Hall.
(According to the adjacent
sign, they’re called Scilla
bifolia.) It seems everyone I
meet talks about the Dean
Bond Rose Garden, from
which seniors choose their
Commencement roses. The
heralded beauty of this
campus—which I’ve been
waiting to glimpse since my dead-of-winter
start date—is beginning to reveal itself in
small but magnificent ways.
Likewise, other flowers are sprouting on
this hill. I’ve begun to meet the articulate,
friendly, and incredibly curious and engaged
students (you’ll find one example profiled
on Page 14); the cordial and intellectually
charged faculty (you’ll hear from two in that
same story); and a committed, personable,
and dynamic administrative staff (see Page
72 for one of the vibrant new faces on
campus). I’ve also been delighted to meet
several gracious alumni at on- and offcampus events and have received warm notes
of welcome as well as visits to my office.
But as I begin to settle my hands on my
keyboard, you may wonder what changes I
have in mind for this venerable publication.
Early on, I have no major pronouncements to
make. Accurately reflecting our community’s
passions, experiences, and interests is a key
objective, of course. I also hope to take what
has been so robustly developed in print, e.g.,
the popular class notes, and use digital tools
to heighten engagement with classmates and
the College. This could mean more deliberate
use of social media, such as
Facebook and Twitter, and
more multimedia on the
magazine website (videos,
audio slideshows) to extend
the story platform from
print to the electronic arena.
Greater reader participation
in print and online is a
goal for me—by any means
possible.
Hearing from new voices,
in general, is an aspiration for me and for
the College leadership. A new, occasional
column—Community Voices—debuts
this issue. Columnists will vary and may
be anyone in the campus community—
alumni, students, professors, or staff. The
only proviso is that the topic must pertain
specifically to Swarthmore today or highered topics more broadly. If you have opinions
on a topic or recommendations for an
author for this column, I would love to hear
them.
I’ve already met with some alumni to
hear their thoughts on what’s working well
in the Bulletin and what could be improved
or contemporized. I’ll be on the road some
this spring, holding focus groups and
meeting more informally with other alumni
to hear readers’ thoughts. But if we don’t
encounter each other face-to-face, please
send me an email or letter and let me know
your opinions on the magazine today and
ideas for the future during this time of new
opportunity for the Bulletin.
—Sherri Kimmel
skimmel1@swarthmore.edu
on the web
swarthmore
college bulletin
editor
Sherri Kimmel
associate editor
Carol Brévart-Demm
designer
Phillip Stern ’84
publications interns
David Fialkow ’15, Grace Leonard ’15
administrative assistant
Janice Merrill-Rossi
editor emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
contacting swarthmore college
college operator
610-328-8000 www.swarthmore.edu
admissions
610-328-8300 admissions@swarthmore.edu
alumni relations
610-328-8402 alumni@swarthmore.edu
editorial and creative services
610-328-8568 bulletin@swarthmore.edu
registrar
610-328-8297 registrar@swarthmore.edu
world wide web
www.swarthmore.edu
changes of address
Send address label along with new address to:
Alumni Records Office
Swarthmore College
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390
Phone: 610-328-8435
Or email: alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin
(ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume
CIX, number 4, is published in August,
October, January, April, and July by
Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390. Periodicals
postage paid at Swarthmore, PA and
additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530620. Postmaster: Send address changes to
Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390.
©2012 Swarthmore College.
Printed in U.S.A.
This issue and more than 15 years of Bulletin archives are at www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
Also on the College website:
What Makes a GOOD SOCIETY?
If you weren’t among the 600 registered guests
for Swarthmore’s first TEDx event on March 31,
you can savor the day vicariously. Check out
www.tedxswarthmore.com for videos of the 12
speakers, which included President Rebecca
Chopp, distinguished faculty members, alumni,
one parent, and a Swathmore senior.
4
04-05_Front_output1.indd 4
The dozen speakers presented highly
individual 18-minute talks on the theme “What
Makes a Good Society?” Artistic interludes were
provided by students: a virtuoso solo Chopin
piano performance, a Tri-Co a cappella group’s
rendering of three compelling songs, and original
verse recitations by two members of the College’s
spoken-word group. These highlights also can be
found at www.tedxswarthmore.com.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 8:28 aM
letters
Article’s Animal-fur
Orientation was Disconcerting
It was with great chagrin that I read the
January issue of the Bulletin containing the
article about Joseph Altuzarra ’05—not
because I think the Bulletin, or Swatties,
should not be interested in fashion; I am,
and I happily admit it. However, it was quite
disconcerting to read about Altuzzara’s
seemingly heavy reliance on animal fur,
mentioned three times in the text, including
the disturbing and somewhat cannibalistic
image of his dog wearing a fox-fur parka.
I would think that the Bulletin would
avoid glorifying the ethically questionable
practice of fur farming. Additionally, it was
unnecessary to mention that the price of a
coat was $20,000. I can’t imagine that price
would be an issue in discussing the work of
most other alumni and is certainly not an
indicator of quality or aesthetic excellence
even in the world of fashion.
Amita Sudhir ’98
Charlottesville, Va.
Guard Against Political
Polarization
I enjoy receiving your magazine and being
part of the Swarthmore community, through
my son Preston ’15. One of the great benefits
of a liberal arts environment is that it forces
one to think new thoughts, or at least to be
confronted with ideas that may differ from
those you feel most comfortable with.
I found such a moment of dissonance
in reading your recent article “Re-branding
the Right.” This was surprising to me, as my
political trajectory is somewhat similar to
that of Putnam’s. My political coming-of-age
was also with Kennedy. I became a Democrat
in the seventh grade while watching the
first Nixon-Kennedy debate. Much of my
career has been spent working in Congress
(always for Democrats), and so I have seen
many political movements come and go and
the intensity of particular “isms” become
subsumed, compromised, or just plain tired.
And as a Democrat, I have also become
tired of the attacks on my party and beliefs as
being suspect; not quite “American,” “pink”
or “socialist.” So imagine my surprise when
I found myself becoming uncomfortable
with the article in question, where the
“Americanism” of the Tea Party (in caps, to
designate a defined set of beliefs?), is held
suspect because of a collective “coolness to
blacks,” “predilection against immigrants”
and the desire to join church (Christian) and
state. ...What bothers me about this article, is
in its view that this grass-roots response by
concerned citizens to current troubles is not
just wrong, but dishonest.
Many in the middle and lower-middle
class are fearful that if they lose their job,
or their home, or if someone gets sick,
then all they have worked hard for is lost.
That this fear would lead them to look for
new political ideas is understandable. And
Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 simplified tax idea
took him briefly to the top of the Republican
polls. Paul Ryan has provocative ideas on
the budget. And then there is Ron Paul …
Correct or not, having a debate over such
ideas is not a bad thing.
So to dismiss these concerns as
illegitimate (“If the economy were OK …
the Tea Party would make no sense”) I think
does a disfavor to open political dialogue. I
am especially concerned that in a liberal arts
environment that stresses the importance of
diversity, openness and discourse, that such
ideas—regardless of the messengers—are
seen as beyond the pale and “risk smearing
[the Republican] party’s brand for a very,
very long time.” Swarthmore should not
be yet another enabler for the current
polarization in national politics.
Scott Cooper P’15
Chevy Chase, Md.
Robert Strauss, a former Sports
Illustrated reporter and Philadelphia
Daily News feature writer, is a
freelance writer and regular
contributor to the Swarthmore
College Bulletin. His book Daddy’s Little Goalie: A
Father, His Daughters, and Sports, portraying the
experience of a father raising girl jocks, was
published last year to wide acclaim by Andrews
McMeel Publishing.
Lauren Weiler, from
Downingtown, Pa., is a
professional writing major in
her sophomore year at
Champlain College in
Burlington, Vt. Last summer, she interned in the
publications office at Swarthmore College. In her
free time, she enjoys snowboarding, crafts, and
playing the glockenspiel. During the week, she is
most often found reading poetry with friends on
the Champlain campus.
A Great Connection
Clinton Etheridge’s “What is Africa to Me?”
in the January 2012 Bulletin is a remarkable
example of the transformative power of the
Peace Corps experience combined with a
Swarthmore education.
In Clinton’s family pilgrimage back to
the Gambia that he served in 40 years ago,
he rediscovers, despite what Thomas Wolfe
writes, you can always go home again if you
are at home in the world, as the Peace Corps
experience teaches you to be.
Clinton eloquently describes the
ineluctable bonds connecting volunteers
with others who at first seemed so different.
Through the Peace Corps, strangers become
family. Students you teach become leaders
in their society, crediting you with changing
their worldview and creating unprecedented
opportunities. The life lessons Clinton
learned four decades ago as a Peace Corps
volunteer are timeless and universal: People
are more alike than they are different, judge
people as individuals, and respect Islam.
As a Swarthmore and Peace Corps
alumnus, I salute Clinton for conveying
so poignantly the power of the Peace
Corps experience. I hope that many
more Swarthmore alumni will experience
something similar.
Kevin Quigley ’74
Arlington, Va.
President, National Peace Corps Assn.
contributors
Chris Maier, a freelance writer,
is also creative director at
Poccuo, a design and
communications firm in
Washington, D.C. Beyond
Poccuo, he has sharpened his communications
skills as a fiction writer, editor, journalist,
university lecturer, and copywriter. He co-founded
the literary magazine Ninth Letter and served as
founding editor for the regional online culture
magazine Smile Politely.
april 2012
04-05_Front_output1.indd 5
5
4/3/12 8:28 AM
community voices
Meeting the
Challenges
Ahead
By Garikai Campbell ’90
In December, the Board of Managers
approved a set of strategic directions for
the College. This plan is the culmination
of almost two years of conversation and
analysis, which included extensive internal
discussions as well as reviews of trends in
higher education more generally. As we begin
to implement these strategic directions,
I would like to highlight a few of the
challenges and opportunities that emerge
from my perspective as a mathematics
faculty member.
It seems appropriate to begin with shifts
in the preparation of incoming students.
Consider that over the last decade, the
number of students taking five or more
Advanced Placement (AP) exams has more
than tripled. More students earned a 3
or higher on a science AP exam in 2010
than even took a science AP exam in 2001.
However, that greater number of students
in 2010 was 50 percent of the total test
takers, down from 57 percent in 2001.
We should not reduce the analysis of this
phenomenon to a simple assessment of good
versus bad preparation; these shifts are, in
part, a reflection of the tension between the
various modes of teaching that students
experience—whether that mode is discovery
and project-driven or lecture and contentdriven. These are tensions that affect the
extent to which breadth of knowledge is
privileged or limited relative to depth of
understanding, and lead to real differences
in how students are prepared. It is more vital
than ever that we support both students and
faculty as they re-examine their learning and
teaching, balancing rigorous critical thinking
with exploration, play, and discovery.
Approaches to teaching and learning
have already shifted in some significant
ways. For more than 30 years, the National
Science Foundation (NSF) has funded
6
6_CommunityVoice_3rd_3-28.indd 6
More than ever, we must
think deeply about how we develop
the ability to collaborate both
within and across boundaries,
to appreciate different practices
and ways of thinking.
Research Experiences for Undergraduates,
opportunities for undergraduates to engage
in research, sometimes very advanced work,
often over the summer and in small teams.
Twenty years ago, the NSF funded about 50
such programs across the country. Ten years
ago, it funded about 125 programs, and in
2010, almost 750.
This expansion reflects the growing
acknowledgment that intense interaction
beyond traditional classroom work is one of
the more powerful ways to engage students.
Access to intense, independent modes
of learning, in all disciplines, not just in
the sciences, has always been a distinctive
strength of Swarthmore, but the need and
desire to broaden such access has accelerated.
Expanding the ways we connect students
with not only research but other forms of
creative, high-impact learning and work
experiences will be a challenge, but one filled
with exciting possibilities.
Equally important will be expanding
the populations with whom we successfully
connect. Note that, in 2008, women made
up almost 57 percent of the undergraduate
population nationally, yet represented
fewer than 20 percent of the bachelor’s
degrees awarded in engineering and
computer science. There are similarly
troubling national statistics regarding
degree-attainment rates for minority
and first-generation populations, in the
sciences and more broadly. For these
same groups, the enrollment growth is
outpacing overall enrollment growth, in
some cases substantially. Such outcomes
should be intolerable at any moment but
are particularly problematic given future
demographics. It is imperative that we
commit to becoming more successful with
increasingly diverse populations.
Adding to these imperatives, we live
in a tremendously fertile moment of
intercommunication and collaboration.
Seventy years ago, 90 percent of the
mathematics papers catalogued by the
American Mathematical Society’s Math
Reviews were single authored. For more than
a decade, the majority of papers have been
co-authored, and the number of co-authors
has been climbing. These data are again from
the sciences, but a similar story can be told
about almost any discipline. More than ever,
we must think deeply about how we develop
the ability to collaborate both within and
across boundaries, to appreciate different
practices and ways of thinking, and to bring
our own perspectives and talents to the table.
These are all directives a small, residential,
liberal arts institution is perfectly suited to
help students develop, and we should seize
every opportunity to champion that point.
The challenges ahead are undeniably
complex, but our strategic plan expresses
a vision for how we can best meet those
challenges. It has been extraordinarily
rewarding to be so integrally connected to
the process that produced this vision, and I
look forward to seeing it realized.
Garikai Campbell ’90 is associate vice
president for strategic planning and special
assistant to the president, and associate
professor of mathematics.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 9:27 AM
Collection
Patrick Awuah ’89, president of Ashesi University
College, addresses first-year students in the David
Cornfield & Linda Archer Cornfield Courtyard at the
college in Ghana. Some members of the 650-member
first-year class are enrolled in Re-Envisioning
Diasporas, a new cross-continental course offered by
Swarthmore and Ashesi.
Cross-cultural classroom
unites Ghana and Swarthmore
Seven Swarthmore students sit in the
Language Resource Center, slightly
disoriented, with eyes glued to a dark screen.
They listen to the sounds of a tour guide
talking about African slaves in a former
compound, forced to shuffle around in this
darkness in chains.
This video is not a typical educational
documentary. It is footage shot by the
students’ fellow classmates, more than 5,000
miles away at Ashesi University College in
the West African nation of Ghana.
This classroom connection—the
most recent and most innovative of
many exchanges between Ashesi and
Swarthmore—is the product of a deep bond
between the two colleges, forged when Ashesi
President Patrick Awuah ’89 founded the
Ghanaian institution in 2002, modeling it on
his alma mater.
Re-Envisioning Diasporas, offered for the
first time this spring, is adding an important
new dimension to the way some Swarthmore
students are learning. Cross-listed in
film and media studies and literatures in
translation, the class is structured so that
students interact, via Skype, for 30 minutes
per class meeting, with their 35 Ghanaian
counterparts in an exchange of ideas about
the meaning of diaspora. The course is
april 2012
7-13_Collection_output1.indd 7
co-taught by professors Sunka Simon
and Carina Yervasi at Swarthmore and
Mikelle Antoine at Ashesi. It is funded by
the SUNY Center for Online International
Collaborative Learning (COIL) and the TriCo Digital Humanities Initiative.
“We were told at the COIL Institute
that the idea of 30 minutes of synchronous
discussion per class was too ambitious, but
that time is what makes us not two separate
classes, but one,” said Yervasi, an associate
professor of French.
Yervasi and Simon believe that the video
of the former slave compound represents the
power of the cross-cultural learning that is
taking place.
“Having the guard take [the students] to
a dark place and hearing this shuffling has a
much more powerful effect when you hear
the sound yet see nothing,” says Simon, an
associate professor of German. “It forces
students to ask themselves, ‘What does my
voice sound like? What identity do I have?’”
The course also has had a meaningful
impact on those taking it.
“A lot of the kids in Ghana consider
themselves in diaspora, and an important
part of thinking about diaspora is, ‘How do
people in different parts of the world react
to having this sort of experience?’” said Koby
Levin ’15. “There are some kids here, who, if
they don’t consider themselves in diaspora,
have a family history of that. It’s a union of
two perspectives that would never clash if we
didn’t have these technologies, and we learn
from that clash.”
The course has had its share of
technological problems, but the participants
say the institutions’ common background
has made the process well worth it.
“It’s hard when a really great discussion
is happening and there is something that
hampers communication, like an echo,”
said Mike Jones, director of the Language
Resource Center and coordinator of
the technological aspects of the course.
“However, we are really lucky to have this
institution in Ghana. They and we both have
a vested interest.”
Although the form of learning has
changed, the course is still deeply engrained
in the ideals of the College.
“This entire course is so Swarthmore,”
said Simon. “It speaks to the notion of
speaking to others, providing multiple
perspectives, yet also pushes the envelope.
If Swarthmore is to remain Swarthmore,
this [type of cross-cultural learning] has to
happen.”
—David Fialkow ’15
For more on Re-envisioning Diasporas,
visit bit.ly/diasporas
7
4/3/12 8:47 AM
collection
150
150 years ago: Benjamin
Hallowell, man of peace
By 1862, the campaign to create what would
become Swarthmore College was renewed,
but there were conflicting ideas on the nature
of what was then being referred to as “the
boarding school.” Some supporters wanted
a grammar school, some looked toward
a “normal school”—to supply teachers
to local Quaker primary and secondary
schools. Benjamin Hallowell looked further.
In a letter to future Swarthmore President
Edward Parrish, Hallowell wrote, “The
Institution must, from its commencement,
possess faculties for pursuing a liberal and
extensive course of study … equal to that
of the best Institutions of learning of our
County. …”
Hallowell’s words carried weight. He
was a well-known scientist and educator.
His boarding school in Alexandria, Va.,
was known particularly for mathematics.
Paradoxically for a lifelong Quaker, one of
his better-known fellow alumni was Robert
E. Lee, future commander of the Confederate
Army, who studied mathematics with
Dedication (right) of a textbook
by Benjamin Hallowell (above).
Hallowell to prepare himself for West Point.
In 1860, Hallowell became the first
president of Maryland Agricultural College,
now the University of Maryland, on the
condition that the school would not employ
slave labor. During the Civil War, Hallowell
was clerk of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting, a
body that included Virginia and Maryland.
A confirmed pacifist, Hallowell nevertheless
rejoiced when his former pupil Gen. Lee was
driven from Pennsylvania.
After the war, Hallowell, acting for
the Baltimore Yearly Meeting, wrote to
president-elect Ulysses S. Grant, advocating
peaceful relations with the Indian nations of
the West. Under Grant’s “Peace Policy,” some
Dynamic new website
debuts this spring
In late March, the College
launched a dynamic new website
(www.swarthmore.edu). Larger
and more dramatic visual imagery
and improved site navigation are
among the ways in which the new
site eclipses the former one, which had
been in place for six years. The site was also
developed with attentiveness to compliance
with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Motivated by the explosive increase in
multimedia and social media on the Web
as well as revolutionary changes in the use
of handheld and tablet devices, the website
update represents the first phase of a more
extensive redesign project. It includes
a reorganization of the homepage and
primary subsites, in particular the About, Academics, Admissions
and Aid, Giving, News and Events, and Student Life pages; an A–Z
index; the Alumni, Parents, and Visitors dashboards; and Spanish
have all been redesigned.
8
7-13_Collection_output1.indd 8
Indian agencies in the Plains were staffed
by Quakers. In 1872, his old friend Edward
Parrish, after serving as the first president of
Swarthmore College, died in the West while
on a mission for the Quakers to broker a
peace treaty between the Indian nations of
the Plains and the United States.
Hallowell’s last major scientific work
Geometrical Analysis (1872) is dedicated “To
Swarthmore College, including the Youthful
Laborers of both sexes … who are devoting
themselves to the pursuit of a knowledge
of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good in
every Department of Science and Nature.”
—Christopher Densmore
Curator, Friends Historical Library
With a contemporary graphic design and content
developed during the last 18 months by the in-house
Web staff, the new site incorporates visual elements
and multimedia that reflect the campus’s energy.
Future changes include additional, redesigned
academic and administrative sites as
well as enhanced viewing for mobile
phone and tablet devices.
According to Nancy Nicely, vice
president for communications,
extensive community input from
alumni, current and prospective
students, faculty, and staff, informed
this re-imagining of the Swarthmore
site. “From our community members
we learned that we needed to capture
a better sense of place and also how
to best organize our content,” she
says. “Our community members also
affirmed how deeply they value true and authentic storytelling
about the individuals in our community, and about Swarthmore as
an institution. These qualities need to be hallmarks of the new site.”
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 8:48 AM
Deep and Abiding Commitment
and creative” thinker. She added that she was
“looking forward to working more closely
with Gil in his new role, most immediately
in implementing the recommendations
outlined in our new strategic plan.”
“I am deeply honored to be selected as
Swarthmore’s next Board chair,” Kemp says.
“I know firsthand the value and impact
Swarthmore education can have. It’s been
extremely gratifying to support the College
in the past, and I’m looking forward to
deepening my involvement and further
ensuring its success.”
Christina Paxson ’82 Tapped
to Lead Brown
Christina Paxson ’82, dean of Princeton’s
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs and Hughes Rogers
Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, was
appointed president-elect of Brown University
in March. Paxson, who joined the Princeton
faculty in 1986, is an award-winning economist,
whose research—focusing on health, economic
development, and public policy—has been
published widely in a plethora of scholarly
journals.
In an interview with The Brown Daily Herald,
Paxson said, “I loved my time at Princeton, but I
find the Brown character to be very appealing,”
citing Brown’s university-college model and
adding that she had received her undergraduate
degree from Swarthmore, another small, liberal
arts college.
Paxson, who is married to Arthur “Ari”
Gabinet ’79, will begin her tenure at Brown on
July 1.
Kat Clar
k ’12
him, Kemp’s philanthropy includes the gift
of a residence hall named for his grandfather,
After serving on the College’s Board of
David Kemp; an endowed scholarship named
Managers for the past nine years, Giles
for his father, Walter Kemp; the West House,
“Gil” Kemp ’72 will become its 13th chair
home of the vice president
in May. The appointment
for development and alumni
was announced at the
relations, named for former
Board’s quarterly meeting
Vice President Dan West
in late February. Kemp will
and his wife Sidney; the
succeed Barbara Mather ’65,
men’s and women’s locker
who held the position for
rooms, in honor of former
eight years.
cross-country coach Joe
Kemp—the founder and
Stefanowicz, under whom
former president of Home
Kemp trained and in 1970
Decorators Collection,
broke the outdoor mile
one of the nation’s
record in 4:15.5, which
leading direct sellers of
remains unbroken.
home furnishings and
“Gil’s deep and abiding
accessories—served as chair
commitment to this
of the College’s Annual
institution makes him
Fund for three years, is chair
Gil Kemp named new Board chair.
the ideal person to lead
of the Board’s Development
Swarthmore into the
and Communications
Committee, and former chair of the Strategic future,” said Board member and chair of its
Governance Committee Jack Riggs ’64.
Planning Council, whose direction-setting
In her announcement to the campus
document Strategic Directions will guide the
community, President Rebecca Chopp
College community’s planning during the
recognized the retiring and incoming chairs,
coming decades.
praising Mather as a “wise and careful”
Reflecting his commitment to students
steward of the College and Kemp as a “skilled
and honoring those who have influenced
What makes a good society?” Now there’s a question that many members of the
Swarthmore family tackle often. On March 31, 12 speakers addressed the topic at the
first TEDxSwarthmore event. One of them was Mary Jean Chan ’12 (kneeling, fourth from
left). A political science honors major and English literature minor from Hong Kong, Chan
bested four other students in the TEDxSwarthmore Student Challenge to earn a spot on
the roster of speakers. Her topic was “A Tapestry of Narratives: Conversations through
Poetry.” For more on TEDxSwarthmore, go to tedxswarthmore.com.
april 2012
7-13_Collection_output1.indd 9
9
4/3/12 8:48 aM
collection
Helen North—Brilliant,
Gracious Scholar
Helen North supported generations of students.
The campus community was saddened by
the death of Centennial Professor Emerita of
Classics Helen North, on Jan. 21. More than
just a brilliant scholar and teacher, North
cultivated relationships among Swarthmore
students for more than 60 years. Gentle
and gracious, with a robust and ready
sense of humor, she was fiercely and firmly
committed to intellectual excellence and the
highest ethical standards. Her students loved
her for these characteristics and because she
so successfully modeled for them the joy in
living the life of the mind.
“Under Helen North’s leadership, the
Classics Department, in the best Swarthmore
tradition, valued scholarship highly but
teaching even more highly, in our case rooted
in strong language teaching,” says Gilbert
Rose, Susan Lippincott Professor Emeritus of
Modern and Classical Languages. “She was a
woman of enormous accomplishment.”
“Professor North was the most lovely,
supportive, and wise friend one can have,”
adds Professor of Classics Rosaria Munson.
“I think that she had literally hundreds of
friends who benefited from her affection and
learning.”
North joined Swarthmore’s faculty in
1948, and although the College served as
her longtime home, she also held visiting
teaching appointments at several institutions,
including Cornell University, where she had
earned undergraduate and graduate degrees.
She also served as Classicist-in-Residence
at the American Academy in Rome and
held two teaching and research posts at the
American School of Classical Studies in
Athens.
North received many major academic
awards to support her scholarly work,
including fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright
Program, Ford Foundation, National
Humanities Center, and the Guggenheim
Foundation. A prolific writer, she was the
author of Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and
Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (1966),
her first book and a still much-cited work
for which she received the Goodwin Award
of the American Philological Association
in 1969. North is also the author of From
Myth to Icon: Reflections of Greek Ethical
Doctrine in Greek Literature and Art (1979),
in addition to dozens of articles and reports
in classical and professional publications.
For her years of service, she received
the American Philological Association’s
Distinguished Service Medal and the
Centennial Medal of the American Academy
in Rome as well as honorary doctorates
from Trinity College in Dublin, Fordham
University, Yale University, and La Salle
University, where she was a longtime trustee.
Although she retired from teaching
at Swarthmore in 1991, North remained
thoroughly engaged with the College
10
7-13_Collection_output1.indd 10
When it comes to the Oscars, it’s not only
Hollywood that knows how to do glitz and
glamour. While much of the U.S. population sat
with eyes glued to the TV on Feb. 26, about 50
students—some in seriously red-carpet-worthy
garb—gathered in Upper Tarble to witness
on a large screen that most famed night in
entertainment. This was Swarthmore’s annual
Oscars Party—a campus favorite for the past
several years.
Sponsored by the student-run Movie
Committee, the event featured food from local
businesses, including Margaret Kuo’s and
Renato’s Pizza. Beyond savoring these treats,
attendees were encouraged to pose for the
camera on the Red Carpet, which stretched
several yards across the venue. All attendees
received an Oscars Award ballot, on which they
could predict winners in each category. The
canniest—or luckiest—movie critic won a $50
Amazon gift card as well as a voice in choosing
the last movie to be shown by the Movie
Committee this semester.
The Swarthmore Oscars fun actually began
well before the party. Earlier in the week, the
committee hosted a Pub Nite Quizzo on Oscars
trivia. Each member of the winning group
received an Oscar figurine that allowed them to
skip to the front of the food line at the party.
Pictured from left are: Steven Gu ’15, Darien
Sepulveda ’15, and Joyce Wu ’15.
community. Until recently, she continued to
meet weekly with her colleagues in classics
to read, translate, and discuss Greek poetry.
She also regularly attended the yearly lecture
given in her name. Alan Shapiro ’71 gave this
year’s talk on March 29. Although she found
herself in some demand as a candidate for
dean or president at other institutions, North
always resisted, once saying her friendships
with former President Courtney Smith and
Dean of Women Susan Cobbs brought her
“close enough.”
“Teaching Greek, Greek literature in
translation, and mythology and religion was
just delightful,” she added. “I would have
been a fool to give that up.”
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 8:48 AM
Claire Sa
wyer s
At the east entrance of the Scott Arboretum
a new plaque honors the memory of former
director Judy Zuk. When Zuk left the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden in 2005, after a 15-year
tenure there, a type of yellow magnolia tree
(left, with Zuk) was named for her.
Former Arboretum Director
posthumously Honored
Last year, the late Judith Zuk, director of
the Scott Arboretum from 1983 to 1990,
was honored posthumously when the
east entrance to the Scott Amphitheater
was dedicated to her. The entrance is now
identified by a plaque bearing her name,
followed by the words “In memory and
appreciation of her vision of the Arboretum
as a context for learning.” Zuk died in 2007.
Zuk worked as the Arboretum’s
educational coordinator for four years
(1977–1981). During her tenure as director,
Zuk established the Arboretum Assistants
volunteer program and an international
travel program as well as dedicating several
gardens, among many other activities. Claire
Sawyers, current director of the Arboretum,
april 2012
7-13_Collection_output1.indd 11
says: “I loved Judy as a friend long before
following in her footsteps as director of
the Scott Arboretum. As a colleague and
mentor, she was always warm, encouraging,
and generous. Given she provided entry to
horticulture for many with her infectious
enthusiasm and generous spirit, it is fitting
that the entrance to a very special place here,
the Amphitheater, now pays tribute to her
and her lasting impact on the development
of the Arboretum.” Zuk was a recipient of
the Scott Medal in 1998. In 2005, a type
of yellow magnolia tree, developed in the
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where she worked
between 1990 and 2005, was named after her.
A “Judy Zuk” magnolia grows in the center
of the peony garden below the Megan Bevan
Terrace between Clothier Hall and Sproul
Alumni House.
8 Faculty Members Promoted
In February, the Board approved the
following promotions: From associate to full
professorship: Aurora Camacho de Schmidt
(modern languages and literatures—
Spanish); Eric Jensen (physics and
astronomy); and Elizabeth Vallen (biology).
From associate professor to associate
with continuous tenure: Jane Gillham
(psychology). From assistant professor to
associate with continuous tenure: Tariq alJamil (religion); Linda Chen (mathematics);
Luciano Martinez (modern languages
and literatures—Spanish); and Tomoko
Sakomura (art history).
11
4/3/12 8:49 aM
collection
Garnet Swimmers Smash Several Records
Following a dominating 71-57 win against
CC semifinalist Haverford on Jan. 18, the
Garnet was just one game out of a playoff
spot entering the final month of the season.
The team lost six of its last seven games to
miss out on the postseason.
continued his assault on the program’s
record book, reaching a pair of career
milestones as a junior. On Dec. 3, in a victory
over Ursinus, Gates became the 18th Garnet
player and fastest in program history to reach
1,000 points (57 games). Against McDaniel
on Feb. 15, Gates eclipsed the 500-rebound
mark for his career, becoming just the 13th
player in program history to reach 500 career
rebounds and the eighth player to record
1,000 points and 500 rebounds.
12
7-13_Collection_output1.indd 12
In one of its best championship meets in a
decade, the Garnet women earned 23 medals
and smashed several school and conference
records. The performances of Supriya Davis
’15, Kate Wiseman ’15, and Margaret Regan
’14 will go down as some of the greatest in
program history.
Davis won six gold medals (200 IM, 100
butterfly, 200 butterfly, 200 medley relay,
400 medley relay, 400 free relay) and set
school and championship records in the
200 IM (2:08.60) and 100 butterfly (55.95).
For her achievements, Davis was named
most outstanding performer of the CC
championship meet, becoming the first
Garnet woman since Alice Bonarou ’02 in
1999. The last time a first-year received the
ce
An All-Conference season from Katie Lytle
’14 and extraordinary debut season from
first-year Elle Larsen helped the Garnet
achieve a nine-win season in 2011–2012.
Lytle led the Garnet in scoring (13.3 ppg)
and rebounding (9.8 rpg) during the
season, finishing seventh and fourth in
the Centennial Conference (CC) in each
category, respectively. Lytle also finished
the season with 12 double-doubles, tied for
third in the CC. Larsen finished with the
highest shooting percentage in the entire CC
(50.6), finishing second in scoring among
Centennial first years (12.5 ppg). Major
contributions came from Kayla Moritzky ’14
(7.9 ppg, 3.1 apg), Madeline Ross ’13 (7.8
ppg ), and Genny Pezzola ’12 (6.5 ppg ).
The combo of Lytle and Larsen helped the
Garnet string together impressive victories
over Widener, Middlebury, Dickinson,
and Washington before the winter break.
Women’s Swimming (4th, CC
Championships)
Centennial Conferen
Women’s Basketball (9-15, 7-13
CC )
A tough-luck season ended well for the
Garnet, as the team rallied to win two of its
last three games, including victories over
CC semifinalist Washington College (8478) and rival Haverford (91-80), the latter
particularly satisfying, as it marked the team’s
first win in the series since 2007 and the first
in the careers of seniors Mike Giannangeli
and Marc Rogalski. Playing a critical role
in the upset victory, Giannangeli netted a
career-high 19 points, and Rogalski recorded
his second career double-double (12 points,
10 rebounds). Also pivotal in the Garnet’s
season-ending win over Haverford were
Davis Ancona ’14 (19 points, six blocks), Will
Gates ’13 (20 points), and Jordan Federer ’14
(nine points, seven assists).
Leading the team in scoring (18.0 ppg)
and rebounding (6.7 rpg) for the thirdconsecutive season, Gates earned a spot
on the All-CC Second Team. Gates also
Dave E vans
Dave E vans
Men’s Basketball (3-22, 3-15 CC)
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 8:50 aM
Women’s Track and Field (6th,
CC Championships)
Dave E vans
Left to right: Katie Lytle ‘14 enjoyed an AllConference season in women’s basketball; Will
Gates ‘13 led the men’s basketball team in scoring
for the third season; with six gold medals, swimmer
Supriya Davis ‘15 was named most outstanding
female performer of the Centennial Conference; John
Flaherty ‘14 won gold and silver medals for the men’s
swim team; in men’s track-and-field, Matt Heck ‘13
earned a silver medal in the 400-meter dash.
april 2012
7-13_Collection_output1.indd 13
Kenyetta Givans ’12 continued her stellar
Garnet career with another standout
performance at the indoor championships,
winning her seventh career gold medal
in the 60-meter hurdles in a school- and
conference-record time of 8.95. Givans also
earned a bronze medal in the 200-meter dash
with a personal-best time of 26.67.
The distance medley relay team of
Hannah Rose ’12, Margret Lenfest ’12,
Stephanie Beebe ’12, and Ruth Talbot
’15 also earned a gold medal at the CC
championships with a time of 12:40.05,
helping the Garnet finish sixth overall with
66 points, the team’s highest score since 2002.
Also earning medals were Melissa Frick
’12 (silver/5,000-meter run / 17:43.44),
Rebecca Hammond ’13 (bronze/800-meter
run/2:17.00) and the 4x800 relay team of
Beebe, Hammond, Frick, and Jen Johnson
’12 (bronze/9:44.97).
The Garnet spent much of the 2011–
2012 season smashing decades-old school
records. Osazenoriuwa Ebose ’15 broke
the school’s 30-year-old shot put record
in January, reaching 37-1.25 to move past
Cristi Charpentier ’82’s previous mark of
36-11.25. Ebose improved on her own record
with a toss of 39-08.00 at the Haverford
Keogh Invitational in late February. At the
Boston University Valentine Invitational, the
Men’s Track and Field (7th, CC
Championships)
A breakout season from Matt Heck ’13 and
strong showings from the underclassmen
helped the men’s indoor track-and-field team
improve in 2011–2012. With Heck leading
the way, the Garnet finished seventh at the
season-ending CC championships with 30
points, its best score since 2005.
Heck earned a silver medal in the
400-meter dash, less than three weeks after
breaking the school’s 16-year-old indoor
record with his time of 49.94. Heck was the
Garnet’s lone medalist at the championships,
but several other members delivered
noteworthy performances. The 4 x 200 relay
team of Heck, Tim Vaughan-Ogunlusi ’15,
Jason Heo ’15, and Daniel Ly ’12 finished in
fourth place with a time of 1:34.41, second
all time in College history. In the triple jump,
Ly finished fourth with a jump of 43 feet,
10 inches. The distance medley-relay team
of Richard Scott ’14, Erick White ’15, Cary
Chester ’13, and Jonas Oppenheimer ’15
finished fifth with a time of 10:46.64.
—Mark Anskis
‘12
John Flaherty ’14 earned a gold medal in
the 400 IM and a silver in the 200 butterfly
to lead the Garnet to a fifth-place finish at
the CC championships. Flaherty shaved
nearly a full second off the decade-old school
record in the 400 IM (4:10.11) to become
the first Garnet male to win gold at the
championships since 2009. The Garnet’s
other medalist at the CC finals was junior
Josh Satre, who took home a bronze medal
in the 1,650 freestyle (16:48.80). Other
strong performers at the meet were Charlie
Hepper ’13 (6th/400 IM/4:18.15), Tim
Brevart ’12 (7th/100 freestyle/47.30) and
the Garnet’s 400 free relay team of Brevart,
Daniel Duncan ’13, Flaherty ’14, and Neil
Palmer ’12, which finished fifth and posted
the fourth fastest time in school history
(3:13.18).
distance medley relay team of Beebe, Givans,
Johnson, and Hammond smashed the school
record by 18 seconds, with a time of 12:16.23.
Finally, at the NYU Division III Invitational,
Hammond bested the 800-meter dash record
with a time of 2:15.00.
Henr y A inley
Men’s Swimming (5th, CC
Championships)
honor was 1995. Davis’ six gold medals were
just one shy of the CC record of seven for a
single championship.
Close behind Davis were Wiseman and
Regan. Wiseman claimed five gold medals
(50 free, 100 free, 200 medley relay, 400
medley relay, 400 free relay), setting the
school record in the 50 freestyle (24.16) and
100 freestyle (53.09). Regan earned four
gold medals (400 IM, 200 breast, 200 medley
relay, 400 medley relay), defending her title
in the 400 IM with a school-record time of
4:36.87 and breaking the Gettysburg pool
record in the 200 breaststroke (2:25.26). The
trio also teamed up with Erin Lowe ’14 and
Becky Teng ’14 to dominate the relays, taking
first place in the 200 medley (1:49.12), 400
medley (3:58.93) and 400 free (3:34.67),
setting school records in each event.
Before this meet, the most gold medals
won by an individual Swarthmore swimmer
in a championship meet was three; Davis,
Wiseman, and Regan all easily bested that
mark.
As a team, Swarthmore finished in fourth
place with 527. But with every 2012 medal
coming from younger students, the future
certainly looks bright.
13
4/3/12 8:50 aM
14
14-19_Bastian_output1.indd 14
4/3/12 9:07 AM
Andreas in 3-D
Manipulating the immutable is engineer/inventor/ceramicist’s motivating force.
By Sherri Kimmel
Photos by Ken Yanoviak
Take a page out of his notebook. Any
page. There will be drawings, you can be
sure. And there will be words, printed in
a neat, artistic hand. But while designs for
a high-tech printer dominate the upper
margins, the page’s bottom half features
sketches of wood-kiln-fired clay tea cups
modeled on millennial-old Japanese folk
pottery. This spiral-bound notebook tracks
the musings of the inventive mind of
engineering major Andreas Bastian ’12 as he
moves between two very different disciplines.
“He’s always sketching something,” Matt
Zucker, assistant professor of engineering,
says of his spirited advisee. “He combines
engineering with artistic creativity. It’s fun
to look over his shoulder and see what’s
going on in his notebook. Andy is a talented
designer who has the ability to visualize
structure and mechanics in 3-D. He’s
particularly gifted at that.”
Bastian’s notebook is tangible evidence
of two qualities Zucker ascribes to him:
“creative and disciplined.”
At left: A page from Andreas Bastian’s notebook.
Center: Bastian secures a fiber-optic cable on his 3-D
printer. Left: A ceramic mug Bastian produced in a
wood-fired kiln.
april 2012
14-19_Bastian_output1.indd 15
15
4/3/12 9:12 AM
Working out his ideas in the notebook,
Bastian explores the dynamic between
engineering, his major, and ceramics, his
other passion.
Son of an astrophysicist father and a
mother who kept a ceramics studio at
their home in New Mexico, Bastian’s early
memories reflect his current passions. While
his father told him bedtime stories that
featured charged-particle interactions, his
mother taught him to draw and play with
clay. They offered one mantra to their eldest
son: “Do what makes you happy.”
“I love engineering for the problem
solving, the understanding I gain, and my
application of that knowledge,” Bastian
says. “It’s an intellectual pursuit rather
than an emotional one, which ceramics is
for me. Ceramics is a collaboration with
forces beyond your control, due to the
unpredictability of the wood-firing process,”
he says, his eyes lighting up. “I welcome
surrendering control.”
The early-morning light streaming
through the windows of Beardsley Hall’s
third-floor ceramics studio has been Bastian’s
boon companion since he began sneaking
into the ceramics studio, trusty French press
coffee pot by his side, his sophomore year.
“I particularly liked working in the early
morning because the studio was guaranteed
to be completely deserted, which allows for
uninterrupted focus,” he says.
“He understands that time is his friend,
not his enemy but a resource,” says Syd
Carpenter, professor of studio art and
department chair. Carpenter, a ceramicist
who has taught Bastian for three semesters,
became aware of this early on, when she
arrived in the studio at 7:45 a.m. to find he
had been working well ahead of her—long
enough to throw several pots.
Bastian is not the first engineering major
Carpenter has seen in her classes. “Physics
majors, too, are interested in the potter’s
wheel. It’s an outlet for the visual part of
their practice and a good marriage of the
disciplines,” she explains.
“In the studio Andreas is one of a number
of students doing outstanding work,” she
adds. “He is a distinctive spark of ambition
and imagination in this extraordinary group
of makers. They’re glad he’s there, because
he’s doing work on such a high level. He
invents in the clay studio. I think, ‘How did
16
14-19_Bastian_output1.indd 16
he do that?’
“I call him amazing Andreas, because
of his range and how he is able to make
connections between multiple disciplines,”
Carpenter continues. “This is what a college
like this is for—for a mind like his to come
here and make these connections between
engineering, ceramics, design, folk art. He
has the initiative to investigate not only the
intellectual side but the tactile and practical
side.”
While Bastian discovered the ceramics
studio his sophomore year, he also was
learning about 3-D printing. According to
Bastian, the technological advances promised
by 3-D printing—the process of creating
three-dimensional objects from a
digital file using a materials
printer—will change how
many things are made.
“It’s like the invention
of the cotton gin,” says
Bastian, as he leans
toward the 3-D printer
he created and which
operates in a lab in Hicks
Hall. “It frees human capital
for other things. Or the
invention of the printing press.
It killed the scribe industry, but people
gained a lot of printing work. The same thing
happens with 3-D printing. You still need
someone to run the printer, make parts and
materials.”
Almost anything can be created on 3-D
printers, he explains. That includes food,
jewelry, even prosthetic devices and artificial
organs. Just this February, in Belgium, a 3-D
printer used laser-fueled heat to melt metal
powder in the shape of a jawbone; the exact
replica was implanted in an elderly woman.
“This is a whole new medium, an incredibly
powerful tool for expression,” says Bastian,
his words delivered rapid fire.
At Swarthmore, he says, interest in 3-D
technology, which began garnering media
attention in the early 2000s, is “starting to
gain traction. A lot of my fellow engineering
students were excited about 3-D printing,
but a lot had never heard of it before coming
here.”
The inspiration for designing his own 3-D
printer struck “when I was sitting at McCabe
[Library] working at the reserve desk.”
A grant from the Halpern Family
Top left image: A CAD model of a gear that served
as a test case for the 3-D printer built by Bastian.
Adjacent: The wax version of the gear, generated by
the 3-D printer. Center: A stoneware bowl created
in a wood-fired kiln. Right: Bastian also works in
2-D, as he shows on the blackboard how the printer
interprets data.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 9:25 AM
Foundation Engineering Fund, established
in 2007 by Michael Halpern ’68 and
Christine Grant ’69, provided seed money
for Bastian’s printer project. He worked on
it last summer—sometimes for 90 hours a
week—under the direction of Lynne Molter,
engineering department chair, and Zucker,
who provided a sounding board for Bastian’s
design ideas.
“I’d say, ‘Show me something simpler—
the KISS [Keep it simple, stupid] rule,”
Zucker says. He also offered advice on the
electronics and code part of the project.
Trying to work out bugs meant, for Bastian,
logging one 17-hour day, under highly
caffeinated conditions, thanks to the French
press.
“In the end, Andy found open-source
software and made modifications to control
his device,” Zucker says. “He picked up the
technical know-how from the hobbyist 3-D
printing community and was able to dig
down and modify it for his own customized
hardware.”
april 2012
14-19_Bastian_output1.indd 17
“Swarthmore is the
right place for me,” says
Andreas Bastian ’12. “I
walk out of class with a
glow of amazement over
a concept I just learned.
My freshman year, I
realized I was changing—
I’ve experienced personal
and intellectual growth
here.”
17
4/3/12 9:14 AM
Bastian constructed a wax mold and
cast a simple heat sink for his printer’s
motor, making his project, he says, the
first successful demonstration of an
independently produced wax 3-D printer
using selective laser sintering—a technique
that uses a laser to fuse small objects into
a 3-D shape. After he published his results
on his website, a hobbyist wrote a story for
Hackaday.com. From there, news spread
through the blogosphere.
“It’s out there,” Zucker says of his
student’s project. “People already are talking
about it. It’s a pretty resounding success,
though there are still some loose ends to tie
up.”
Though Bastian has gained solid
suggestions from fellow hobbyists online,
he’s also traveled to New York City to
connect informally with other 3-D
aficionados. “I came back with ideas for
my senior design project—and for the next
prototype for this beast,” he says, gesturing
toward the wood-and-plastic contraption.
His senior project involves processing
plastic bottles into material to be used in an
inexpensive 3-D printer that he assembled
and is modifying.
While working out the kinks in that
project early this spring, Bastian is
contemplating his post-Swarthmore future.
Plan A is getting his dream job—one that
combines engineering and art—or spending
a year doing ceramics.
As he sorts that out, Bastian’s mind
turns to other matters. “Data visualization
is one of my hobbies,” he says. Then there’s
blacksmithing, molecular gastronomy,
hunting wild mushrooms in the Crum
Woods, and Ultimate Frisbee. And the logical
next question is: How many interests do you
have, Andreas?
“Too many.” He pauses. “A lot.” g
“Ceramics is a collaboration
with forces beyond your
control,” Bastian explains, his
eyes lighting up. “I welcome
surrendering control.”
Watch a video about the musical
staircase Bastian and other engineering
students installed in Sharples this
spring. Go to bit.ly/musicalstaircase.
With Professor of Studio Art Syd Carpenter, Bastian discusses tea bowls and a
serving bowl before he starts the firing and glazing processes.
18
14-19_Bastian_output1.indd 18
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 9:17 AM
Engineering—right major for a jack of all trades
Before arriving at Swarthmore four years ago, Andreas Bastian ’12 had his
hands—literally—in a variety of disciplines: from drawing, to construction,
metallurgy, and blacksmithing. He even applied his creative-thinking skills
to food prep.
“I’ve always been interested in making things from scratch,” Bastian
says. “I understand something better and can appreciate it more if I
understand the process by which it was made. You’ve seen how this
approach manifested in my 3-D printer project, but in high school, I applied
this approach to the humble sandwich—part of a larger trend at the time of
learning more about cooking.”
“I grew the tomatoes and basil, made the mozzarella from milk from a
local farm, and baked my own bread,” he explains. “At the time I regretted
not growing the wheat for the flour, but the sandwich turned out just fine
without this step.”
With all of these eclectic interests, it could have been difficult to
find the proper place to prosper after graduating from high school in
Charlottesville, Va. “Swarthmore was the first time I found a place that
really clicked,” he says. “It was the right place for me to experience new
things.”
And engineering was just the right major. “I walk out of class with a
glow of amazement at a concept I’ve just learned,” Bastian says. “I have
incredible classes with very interesting people who have very diverse ways
of thinking. I was conscious even freshman year that I was changing and
achieving personal intellectual growth here.”
His favorite course has been Linear Physical Systems Analysis, taught by
Eric Cheever, professor of engineering. “It covers this incredibly powerful
mathematical system,” says Bastian. “We analyzed thermal, electrical,
hydraulic, and mechanical systems and learned tools to allow us to interact
with the mathematical relationships underlying everything. It was difficult
but rewarding—even though sometimes I had to spend 16 to 18 hours on a
take-home exam,” he says with a wry smile.
Bastian’s adviser, Assistant Professor of Engineering Matt Zucker,
explains that Swarthmore is one of only nine liberal-arts colleges with a
dedicated engineering program. “It’s a general engineering major,” he says.
“We produce generalists who are good all-around problem solvers.”
—Sherri Kimmel
april 2012
14-19_Bastian_output1.indd 19
19
4/3/12 9:20 AM
Dan Z. Johnson
20
20-23_Chansky_5th_4-2.indd 20
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 9:32 aM
Tracking Away from
WORRY
Psychologist/author
Tamar Chansky ’84 shows
how to surmount the
roadblocks that anxiety
throws in our path.
By Robert Strauss
It is the rare person who has avoided anxious
moments. Those moments could be severe, but they
could also be simple, yet the purpose of life is not to
dwell on them, says psychologist Tamar Chansky ’84.
Chansky has authored four books on the topic, the
latest being her most inclusive: Freeing Yourself from
Anxiety: 4 Simple Steps to Overcome Worry and Create
the Life You Want.
She paints a visual image of a typical anxious
moment. “There is a machine at the shopping mall
nearby that is a tornado simulator. You pay two dollars
to go into this phone booth kind of machine. You get
gale-force winds in a tiny box, and then you come out
and look a mess. Then you go on.”
“And I think that is what worry and anxiety are
like,” says Chansky. “You sort of step into this box. It
throws you around, and you are never going to solve
a problem in there. It is only when you get out of that
box and clean yourself up and you start thinking,
‘Worry isn’t the way. Worry is in the way.’ We never
learn anything from worry. We can quiet it down, and
that is where the action starts.”
Chansky’s specialty in her private practice in
Plymouth Meeting, just outside of Philadelphia, is
april 2012
20-23_Chansky_5th_4-2.indd 21
anxiety. She uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT),
a discipline she says is goal oriented, rooted in the
present, and buttressed by lots of empirical research.
Therefore, it works well with anxiety and its related
afflictions, like substance abuse, eating disorders, and
obsessive compulsive disorder.
In her practice, she sees more acute problems—
at the extreme, people who really cannot function
because of their anxieties. She came to realize that the
CBT principles she was using for those patients could
be translated to the more-general public.
“I think I felt really compelled to write because I
was hearing this knowledge I was accumulating from
my patients,” she says. There were principles that
anyone could use, and she felt an obligation to share
them more widely. “Due to the metaphors that I had
developed in session with patients, I felt the message
could be simpler and more inviting.
“In this book, there are four steps I outline, and in
each step I say, ‘You already know how to do this.’ I
want people to feel welcome and confident to adopt
these strategies in their lives. I wanted it to be familiar
so that they wouldn’t be afraid to try.”
Chansky is not afraid to use examples of anxiety
21
4/3/12 9:32 AM
“If we can turn around, so to
speak, as soon as possible, and
get back on our track, then
maybe we cannot be detoured by
anxiety,”
?
“I didn’t learn until I went to
Swarthmore that it was OK not
to know something—
and even better to
ask.”
22
20-23_Chansky_5th_4-2.indd 22
and its aftermath in her own life, especially in a humorous
way. She writes about how she, husband Phillip Stern ’84,
and their daughters, Meredith, 19, and Raia, 10, were on a
trip in Italy, and the GPS in the rental car was screaming
that they had taken a wrong turn and had to go back
where they began. Her husband turned the GPS off, but,
in fact, it was right. For a while, there was tension in the
car, but long term, the anxiety of being on the wrong trail
was resolved; it was a lesson nonetheless.
“If we can turn around, so to speak, as soon as
possible, and get back on our track, then maybe we can
not be detoured by anxiety,” says Chansky. “That is what I
am trying to accomplish for people. If you can read those
symbols, those signs, quickly, and shorten the trip worry
takes you on, how differently life would go.”
Chansky has no qualms about using what she has
learned in her practice, primarily from working with
children, in the treatment of adult anxiety.
“Different monsters, but the same setup,” she says.
However, sometimes it is easier for children, even when
they seem more vulnerable, to let go of their anxieties
than adults. “Kids have fewer layers. They are more eager
to change, so they tend to change faster.”
When she was a kid, and even into college, Chansky
was not really thinking of a career in psychology. She
grew up in Swarthmore and graduated from Swarthmore
High School in 1980, viewing from not-so-afar those
who populated the campus in the activist 1970s. Her
parents are retired now, but her father was an educational
psychologist and statistician, and her mother was a nurse,
eventually working in the College infirmary.
“I have to admit, I thought the students at Swarthmore
were kind of strange,” says Chansky. “They didn’t wear
shoes in the winter. They wore sandals, and maybe I
thought they were weird.” She went to Temple University
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 9:33 AM
“If you change the thought, then you change the
feeling and the behavior,” says Chansky. “My angle
on this is to really try to creatively help people to
see their anxieties in a less threatening way.”
first to study English literature and writing, then
transferred to Swarthmore after two years, having
changed her view a bit about Swarthmore students.
“I began to see the gray areas and that maybe
I was like those kids,” she says. “What made
Swarthmore inviting to me was how comfortable
people were in questioning things, in not knowing
things. I often tell my patients, I didn’t learn until
I went to Swarthmore that it was OK not to know
something—and even better to ask.”
Chansky switched to psychology because,
while writing, she always was thinking about how
to help people, especially out of their doldrums,
and especially children. She stuck near her
hometown—getting advanced degrees at Temple
and the University of Pennsylvania (where daughter
Meredith is now a freshman).
Her studies quickly drew her to cognitive therapy,
developed by Aaron Beck, professor emeritus in
psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Tamar really is the expert on the use of CBT
for kids with anxiety, and her books on the topic
are important,” says Judith Beck, Aaron’s daughter
and the president of the Beck Institute for Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. “She has an
excellent understanding of why it is kids get anxious
and how they view themselves.
“She writes in a very clear, straightforward,
practical way,” says Beck. “Parents who are reading
the books have a good sense of what they need to
do.”
april 2012
20-23_Chansky_5th_4-2.indd 23
Chansky’s mode in her books is to show that
what the anxious person perceives is not what
is actually happening. Too often, he or she sees
doom and gloom, when the situation is just one of
passage—a metaphorical cloud overhead may only
mean one should find an umbrella, not imagine a
hurricane.
“If you change the thought, then you change the
feeling and the behavior,” says Chansky. “My angle
on this is to creatively help people see their anxieties
in a less threatening way. It is just that detour—turn
around.”
Chansky relieves any potential personal stresses
“many days of the week” by taking a walk in the
Wissahickon Woods near her Chestnut Hill house.
Her greatest anxiety is cooking, “but I am working
on it.” And her greatest joy is being with her family,
especially for long dinners.
“A lot of times, people will talk about how their
kids won’t sit for dinner for more than five, 10
minutes. Our dinners are an hour, and we have to
cut ourselves off. We are a family of talkers,” she says,
noting that connecting with others may just be the
best kind of anxiety therapy. g
23
4/3/12 9:33 AM
From Business to the Board R
Former Board o
f Managers’
Chair N eil Austrian ’61
re fle cts on college,
career, and consensus
Interview by Jeffrey Lott
Photographs by Terry Renna
At 71, Neil Austrian ’61 is vital as ever—
gregarious, engaging, and happy to be
working. He’s made several attempts to retire
during the past decade, all of them futile. Austrian’s
long and varied business career has taken many
turns, but like a successful tight end, he’s stayed
on his feet while managing companies such as
advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach; private
equity firm Dillon Read; cable TV’s Showtime/The
Movie Channel; the National Football League; and
a variety of entrepreneurial ventures. In October
2010, Austrian was asked to return to Office
Depot for a second stint as its CEO, where he has
made a three-year commitment. He has served
on the Office Depot board since 1998 and ran the
company on an interim basis for six months in
2004. He and his wife, Nancy, live in Delray Beach,
Fla., a few miles from Office Depot’s headquarters.
Austrian credits his liberal arts degree and
engineering major for his agility—and his
success—in so many different industries. And an
important part of that liberal education, Austrian
will tell you, was athletics.
Austrian’s relationship with Swarthmore began
in fall 1957 as a freshman from Pelham, N.Y., and
ended with his resignation from the Board of
Managers after 21 years on the Board, eight of them
as its chairman.
Jeffrey Lott sat down with Austrian last fall
at the Office Depot headquarters in Boca Raton.
Their wide-ranging conversation covered a lot
of ground—from the way he manages a global
corporation—Office Depot had $11.6 billion in
sales in 2010—to the early deaths of his parents and
the mentors who helped take their place, to how he
views Swarthmore today.
For Austrian, the quality of personal
relationships seems to matter more than bottom
lines and split decisions; and it’s through these
24
24-28_Austrian_output1.indd 24
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 10:06 AM
d Room
relationships that he has been successful in
business; nurtured a family; and maintained a
wide circle of friends, many of whom were his
teammates or fraternity brothers at Swarthmore.
You said in a recent interview that your liberal arts
education at Swarthmore was the best thing that ever
happened to you. Could you elaborate?
Pelham, N.Y., was pretty homogeneous in the
1950s. People at Swarthmore had a broader
range of interests—and allowed their interests to
change—so the person you became at Swarthmore
was very different than the person you were when
you came in. For me, in engineering classes, there
was a right answer: Two plus two is four. But in
the humanities or social sciences, you might get an
argument about that. In terms of thinking outside
I would not have sur vived at Swar thmore were it not
for athletics.
the box and preparing myself to tackle problems
that I hadn’t seen before, that was good experience
for me.
At Swarthmore, it was almost required to have
intellectual curiosity.
Yeah, I think it was. But you have to look back to
the time. And you know, in the ’50s and early ’60s,
what probably changed the country was Vietnam,
to a great extent. But Vietnam really wasn’t an issue
when I was in college. Most of the social issues that
were taking place at Swarthmore, where they had
petitions to sign every night while you waited in
Parrish to get in to eat, concerned far-off places that
most of us had never heard of. But a half-dozen
people felt the need. The only issue that I could
really get involved with at that time was Chester,
because it was right there, so you were aware of
what was going on in Chester. My brother was
registering [black] voters during the summer in
Georgia. There was a social influence in our house.
Neil Austrian ’61 outside Office Depot headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla.
april 2012
24-28_Austrian_output1.indd 25
25
4/3/12 10:07 AM
College was not just about academics, obviously.
Swarthmore changed my life in terms of being
exposed to people who thought very differently
from me, who grew up in different circumstances,
who just looked at things very differently. And it
was also the first time I was around people who
expressed their social conscience. But I would
not have survived at Swarthmore were it not for
athletics.
Why is that?
Academics were very time-intensive. We had 8
o’clock classes in engineering. Invariably, I had a
lab from 1 to 4 or later. The athletics that started
at 4:30 or 5 gave me an outlet. After dinner, I’d
be up until 1 or 1:30 studying, just to get the next
day’s work done. Athletics gave me a chance, I
think, to do something else, to be with a group
of people who had the same sense of why sports
were important at a school like Swarthmore. It
was important for one reason: It was fun. We’d all
grown up playing sports. We were all competitive.
It was a chance to test ourselves in a different way.
Were most of your college friends on the football
team?
They were. And we were all in the same fraternity,
DU, but we represented a lot of different academic
interests.
Why did so many of you go into business?
I think maybe athletics had something to do with
it. Business is competitive. There are very few
people who want to be in business to not succeed
or grow. And I think when you play a sport—any
sport—you’d like to win. You’re going to be a
good sport, but you’re not playing just to provide
an opponent for the other team.
How did you get into business after Swarthmore?
I graduated as an engineer—although I knew
after my freshman year that I didn’t really want
to be an engineer. But [Professor of Engineering]
Sam Carpenter convinced me that the thinking
and technical discipline of engineering, coupled
with a liberal arts background at Swarthmore,
would be extraordinarily useful because I wanted
to go into business. Bill Robinson [’60], one of
my best friends at Swarthmore, who had been an
honors history major, had landed a job with IBM
in sales and said to me, “Hey, if a history major
can do this, an engineering guy ought to be able
to.” And Moon Mullins [Edgar Mullins Jr., then
assistant professor of mathematics]—who was the
academic adviser to the football team and also was
26
24-28_Austrian_output1.indd 26
a technical adviser to IBM—paved the way for me
to get an interview.
I worked in the Chester office. In those days
at IBM, for the first year or so you were sent to
school for six or eight weeks at a time, then back
to the field office, then back to school. That’s
where I met Nancy; she was teaching for IBM
in Philadelphia. She’d graduated from Penn, an
economics major, and was in the first or second
class that admitted women to the Wharton
School. Although she didn’t teach my class, we
met in September [1961] and got married the
following September.
That October, the Cuban missile crisis came
up—and we still had a draft. So rather than risk
the vagaries of the draft, I applied to the Naval
Officer Candidate School in Newport and was
commissioned as an ensign, then assigned to a
ship in Iwakuni, Japan, 20 miles from Hiroshima.
When Nancy and I got there, we asked to live
out and learn Japanese. We had three great years
there—and Nancy’s still fluent in Japanese.
After the Navy, you went to Harvard Business
School.
I knew I wanted to go to graduate school when
we got back. I got out of the Navy in January 1966
and went back to IBM in Philadelphia before
going to Harvard in the fall—with Nancy and our
first child, Neil Jr., who had been born in Japan.
IBM gave Nancy a job in their Boston office. We
had our second son [J.J.] during my second year
at Harvard.
After receiving an M.B.A. from Harvard Business
School in 1968, Austrian joined the investmentbanking firm, Laird, Inc., which was pioneering
private equity investing. In 1970, he and four
partners started the private equity firm Dryden
& Co. In 1973, Austrian joined advertising giant
Doyle Dane Bernbach as its chief financial officer,
becoming its chief executive in 1975. He ran
Showtime/The Movie Channel—a joint venture
of Warner Communications and Viacom—from
1984–1986, then returned to private equity
management at Dillon Reed. The National Football
League hired him as its president and COO in 1991.
He retired from the NFL in December 1999.
So it’s been a great career. I’ve had fun jobs all
along the way. People always ask me, what’s your
favorite job, and it’s hard, because they were all
fun jobs at that point in my life, and I never look
back. You look ahead. And I’ve just been very
fortunate. I mean, Nancy and I have been married
Most of the social
issues that wer e
taking place at
Swar thmore, wher e
they had petitions
to sign ever y night
while you waited in
Parrish to get in to
eat, concer ned far-of f
places that most of us
had never hear d of.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 10:07 AM
I don’t ascribe to the idea that nice guys finish last
for 49 years. We have six kids—three of whom are
adopted. Life’s been pretty good.
Working at the NFL, where the major business
happens on Sundays, did you have to be away from
your family on weekends?
For most of my life, I have refused to work on
weekends—even at the NFL. The weekend is family
time. Paul Tagliabue [then commissioner of the
NFL] and I had an agreement that somebody had
to stay home and look at the games on television.
So I didn’t go to a game every weekend—and if
I did go, more often than not I took Nancy and
whichever kids were still around.
Your father died while you were quite young.
He did. And my mom died a couple years before
him—the summer between my sophomore and
junior year. And my dad died September 1962. He
was in New York Hospital and couldn’t even attend
our wedding. So Nancy—this tells you something
about Nancy—got the whole bridal party together.
We drove up to New York after the reception and
were remarried in the hospital chapel so that my
father could see us get married. He died the day we
got back from our honeymoon.
What impact has that had on you, losing your parents
at that age?
A lot of things happened all at the same time.
Losing my mom was very hard, especially on my
father, because she was his nurse. He was a dentist,
and they were together 24 hours a day. I think that
my getting married and going off to Japan at age
22 made me fiercely independent very quickly. And
I grew up maybe a lot faster than I might have.
We were on our own. In a lot of ways, it made our
marriage much stronger. I regret that my parents
didn’t get to know Nancy; my mother never met
her. My father had met Nancy but only several
times before he died. He never met our kids. So that
part’s kind of a missing piece of life.
april 2012
24-28_Austrian_output1.indd 27
27
4/3/12 10:09 AM
What’s been the biggest source of satisfaction in your
professional life?
At the end of the day, accomplishing what you
set out to accomplish but doing it having fun at
the same time. Being successful while also being
considered a nice person. I don’t ascribe to the
idea that nice guys finish last. I think if you can be
100 percent honest with the people with whom
you work—and they know that when you say
something, you believe it, that you’re going to
stand by it, you get the trust of the people that
you work with. At the end of the day, the CEO
basically leads by example, sets the course, and it’s
the rest of the people that really have to execute.
What’s your biggest source of frustration? Details.
At some point, you have to get involved, but to
me, the daily grind of details gets frustrating.
Also, in [Office Depot], part of the frustration was
the many levels of bureaucracy that we’ve had to
break down to empower the right people to make
their own decisions, as opposed to thinking that
the next level up is going to make that decision for
them.
Office Depot was hit hard by the recession, losing
nearly $1.5 billion in 2008. What do you see as your
role here now?
What I’m doing is a turnaround at this point—
basically trying to focus the company on a set
of very specific initiatives in the short term to
get us back to the profitability we once enjoyed.
I’m having fun in that leadership role, and I
believe I’m making a difference. Now we’re seeing
some of the differences, and I think that’s the
best part—when what you do can affect 42,000
employees.
It’s a leadership position. You’re not going to
do anything yourself. You’ve got to do everything
through the people that work with you. For me,
the biggest job is to set the agenda and strategy
and make sure everybody’s on the same page.
In the late 1990s, you grappled with the role of
athletics as a member of the Board of Managers.
The College made a big effort to turn its football
program around but ended up dropping the sport
after the 2000 season. What was your role in this?
You know, it’s extraordinarily difficult for me,
because the decision and the way it happened
was both institutional and personal. After that
28
24-28_Austrian_output1.indd 28
Board meeting that Saturday [when the decision
was made to drop the football and wrestling
programs], and after I went and talked to [head
football coach] Pete Alvanos, I think sides got
chosen right after that. And I think some Board
members thought I was disloyal in writing a letter
to alumni. I don’t think that the alumni at large
really understood the process. In fact, I know they
didn’t. I don’t think they understood that there
was absolutely no consensus, and no consensus on
the Athletic Review Committee two weeks before
the recommendation got made.
If there were one thing that you could say to set the
record straight about what happened that year,
what would it be?
When we have difficult decisions that are going
to affect a large number of people, much greater
care needs to be taken to give time and weight to
a minority viewpoint. Because, at the end of the
day, it may not be the minority.
Those of us who didn’t want to see this happen
viewed it as an important decision. You can’t
get consensus on every issue—nor should you
even try, whether you’re running a business or a
college. But there are certain things about which
you should make a greater effort, when you know
what their relative importance is, and how many
different parts of the community will be affected.
What led you to re-engage with the College by
reaching out to President Chopp—offering to host
a reception and cocktail party in New York this past
year?
Tom Spock [’78 and a member of the Board of
Managers] and I worked together for years at the
NFL [where Spock was the chief financial officer],
and he knew how deeply hurt I was. He set up
a dinner in New York with Rebecca and myself.
And we talked for a couple hours. I thought
that if I could get her in front of those who were
disaffected, that it might be step one in terms of
healing all the wounds. I’ll do anything I can to
help her be successful.
Professor of Engineering
Sam Carpenter convinced
me that the thinking and
technical discipline of
engineering, coupled with
a liberal ar ts backgr ound
at Swar thmore, would
be extraor dinarily useful
because I wanted to go
into business.
You were invited to come to the DU pig roast last
fall. Were you just unable to come?
Right. I would have loved to do it. I just didn’t
have the time. Maybe next year. g
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 10:09 AM
Earnest
and
Edgy
By Eli Epstein-Deutsch ’10
Magazine covers courtesy of the Friends
Historical Library
Literary magazines,
whether ephemeral
or durable, have
enlivened student
life at Swarthmore
through the eras.
april 2012
29-33_LitMags_output1.indd 29
This paper originated in a humble
desire to introduce into college life
a little spice, to vary the monotony
of those essays of a multifarious
character, some economical, some
critical, some philosophical, which
characterize a college journal.
Thus opens issue one of The
Alligator, Swarthmore’s first student
publication, founded in 1887. As a
statement of purpose, it can’t be beat.
I almost wish I had uttered those 37
words when I was standing in front of the
Swarthmore Student Budget Committee
in 2008, explaining why I’d just put out a
magazine, Night Café, and why it should give
me money to keep it running.
My purse-string-holding audience was
skeptical. What were we actually doing
that The Phoenix couldn’t? Besides, there
was no money left in the budget, and
the literary magazines that existed were
folding due to lack of submissions. The
field was saturated. We’re going to be
like so different from the pamphletsized books of poetry and short
autobiographical fiction put out by
various student groups, I explained.
We’re going to be a real generalinterest magazine. Like The
Atlantic or New York Review of
Books, a hub of nonacademic
intellectual life. But hopefully
cooler. My claims grew yet
grander. The deliberations
continued as I waited
outside in the hall, for
literally hours.
After the committee
denied us funding, we
organized a letterwriting campaign;
35 people wrote
in support. The last day of the semester, we
were awarded $6,000.
Everyone enters college believing deep down
that the immediately visible status quo is
how things always have been. I had the same
thought before I plumbed the musty archive
in McCabe’s Rare Book Room shortly after
I graduated. It houses every issue of every
literary magazine that its heroic campus
librarians have managed to track down. Had
I surveyed such specimens as the Roc, the
Dodo, the Vulture, the Grouse, the Tupenny
Puffin (notice a theme?) the “bee in my
bonnet”—as Jonathan Franzen ’81 describes
the mad magazine-starting impulse among
Swarthmore students—would I have felt a
new satisfaction at entering a well-formed
tradition?
I found this trove of curiosities that
went a long way towards illuminating
the development of the student literary
experience at Swarthmore. Following are
some highlights.
1887: the alligator
The Alligator is the urtext, the common
ancestor from which all of Swarthmore’s
magazine culture descends. Almost illegibly
scrawled in longhand, bound in scaly brown
leather, The Alligator has a mysterious
aura, though it’s permeated with familiar
elements. It was edited by “The Cabal,”
whose monikers, Phite, Petros, Baron, and
Bah, seem straight out of Hogwarts. Printing
services are attributed to one Devil Mac, and
29
4/3/12 11:12 AM
Wanted: A Bath by X.Y.Z.
Lost: A Freshman with a Wart on his
Nose, two miles North of Media.
Found: On the sofa, in the parlor:
“Fur Spoons”
1937: the bullet
The next significant literary magazine didn’t
come along until the Great Depression. The
Bullet was exclusively devoted to laying out a
mock political platform for something that
it calls “Straight-Shooting Americanism: a
satirical laissez-faire” ideology. “We are at
present experiencing the worst industrial
decline in the history of the nation, which
is rapidly undermining the morale of
big business, and of the leisure classes,”
announce The Bullet’s anonymous editors,
on no-nonsense brown newsletter stock. “To
stave off a threatened flight of gold from the
dollar, and of aristocracy from the country,
The Bullet presents its Recovery Program.”
The Bullet shares with The Alligator
elements of surrealism and Gonzo lunacy;
its suggestion was to erect “large public
reservoirs in the vicinity of Wall Street to be
filled with eyewash, in which idle bankers
may float bonds.” However, it is a much more
focused and pointed document, presenting
a scathing caricature of the American right’s
30
29-33_LitMags_output1.indd 30
Old literary magazines aren’t cool. You know what’s cool?
New literary magazines.
W.H. Auden H’64
contributed to
the Dodo.
ho w ard coster
branch offices are claimed in London, New
Jersey, and Paris.
“Nota Bene,” The Alligator announces
beneath its masthead. “Subscribe early
to avoid the rush.” This is followed by
an illustration of a skinny youth with an
even skinnier neck dressed in clogs and
pantaloons and carrying what looks like a
wood splitter. “Our Office Boy Soliciting
Subscriptions” reads the caption.
The comics and sketches look like a
Ralph Steadman version of the 19th-century
caricaturist Honoré Daumier. Snake-infested
skulls and pipe-smoking lizards hobnob with
cravat-wearing buffoons and long-nosed
fishermen. A Sisyphus in tails and a top hat
lifts a giant boulder marked “Thesis.” (That
allegory would seem all too relevant to
Swarthmore’s contemporary seniors.)
The sensibility seems almost Dadaist at
times. An announcement in the middle of
the issue reads:
ability to use economic crises to advance
plutocratic values. This is a message that
resonates eerily with the present.
1939–1954: The dodo
The Dodo, which launched a mere two years
after The Bullet folded, could not have been
a more different animal, in style and content.
Artfully laid out in crisp print on glossy
white paper, it was the first truly polished,
well-established student-run magazine in
the Swarthmore annals. W.H Auden H ’64,
was a frequent Dodo contributor when he
was on the faculty in the early ’40s; another
prominent figure was Diane DiPrima ’54,
the Beat poet, alchemist, and tarot reader
(currently poet laureate of San Francisco)
who dropped out of Swarthmore to live in
Manhattan.
As its name self-deprecatingly prophesied,
the Dodo did go extinct. But not before
standing for 15 years as the campus literary
standard and inaugurating what was surely
the golden age of Swarthmore publications,
which lasted up until the early 1960s.
Similar to the early New Yorker, the Dodo
balanced its heavyweight literary roster with
a distinct levity of spirit. The tone is less
absurdist or satirical than simply insouciant,
perhaps even a bit twee. Ogden Nash is an
evident formal influence (“You Wake Me
every Single Morn/by loudly tooting your
own horn/It’s really not sophisticated/to
be so Egotisticated,” wrote Erwin Ephron
’54, who would go on to be known in the
advertising world as “The Father of Media
Planning.”
Some issues of the Dodo begin with a
column called Moultings, analogous to The
New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, in which the
editors hold forth on a subject of concern.
“What good are English majors to a nation
at war?” they ask in 1940. “Well, we might
suggest that they be dropped instead of
bombs, just to scare the Germans. Seriously
though, we think that the enrollment in the
Humanities should be just as high now as it
ever was. The job that we will have after this
war of mopping up broken ideas and broken
lives is going to make our present efforts look
small.”
“Even now,” they conclude, “in the middle
of the conflict, [the English major] can be
of tremendous use in making propaganda
… and in any number of little ways, like
cleaning up after the parades go by.”
The 1950s: the lit and
nothing
What finally killed off the Dodo in 1954? I
was unable to reconstruct its demise. It had,
by all appearances, a healthy advertising base
among Swarthmore businesses, a consistent
editorial voice, and a solid coterie of regular
contributors. I can only speculate that it fell
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:12 aM
The work of Diane di Prima ’54,
now poet laureate of San Francisco,
appeared in the Dodo.
april 2012
29-33_LitMags_output1.indd 31
victim to a general principle of
Swarthmore publications: Old
literary magazines aren’t cool.
You know what’s cool? New
literary magazines.
A case in point: just the
Dodo’s display font makes me
want to put on a starched white
blazer and head directly to the
nearest post-Prohibition jazz
and martini bar. The new bad
boy on the scene, The Lit, was,
despite appearing outwardly as a
carbon copy of the Dodo, where
the action was. The rhyming
quatrains were still there, just
now existentialist flavored. As
contributor Charles Sullivan ’55
quipped in “The Rise of Western
Man,” “Twinkle, twinkle, little
chi-chi/How I wish that I were
Nietzsche: Far above the earth so
bright/In the syphilitic night.”
The Lit’s editors, Victor
Navasky ’54 recalled, were a
tight-knit group that included
Hugh Nissenson ’55, who would
go on to become an awardwinning novelist, and Valerie
Worth ’55, a future children’s
book author. They “saw
themselves as having affinity
with Fitzgerald and Gertrude
Stein: the Lost Generation,”
says Navasky, editor emeritus of
The Nation. “There was some
snobbery involved,” he admits,
in the group’s idolization of
European culture, partially
explained by the fact that Albert
Camus’ The Stranger came out
their senior year.
The second issue of The Lit
was a rollicking francophilic tour
de force. The bulk of it consisted
of profiles by editor-in-chief
Edward Esmerian ’54, who
somehow managed to score (or
pretend to score) interviews with
dozens of major Parisian artists
and intellectuals, including
Jean Cocteau, Camus, and
Fernand Léger. The Lit’s moody
pretensions were satirized
by The Flit, a contemporary
publication whose raison d’etre
was parodying the former:
In the café at the corner of
the Rue des Deux Haricots
… flickering candles sink
into the sucking necks of
green encrusted bottles.
Tired flies waltz erotically
over the heads of gloomy
intellectuals. The poete
[sic] sits sulkily, his feet
poised on a nearby garbage
can, perusing l’humanity
with Weltanshauung bereft
of inspiration.
Then the eccentric, shortlived Nothing took the whimsical
art of sending up boho, Euroaping intellectual patter to the
next level. “We feel there is an
ultimately useful place in Art and
in Society for a sophisticated,
self-conscious nihilism,” opened
its first issue. It featured “A
Play WITH VERY FEW ACTS
AND NO CHARACTERS AT
ALL (Curtain),” along with a
Beckettian satire called “Waiting
for Pogot”:
Adler: What are we doing
here anyways
Sailor: We’re Waitin’ for
Pogot.
Adler: Ah. I think we
should hang Ourselves.
Sailor: Hang Ourselves?
That is whuffo?
Adler: It might give us an
APPETITE
Sailor: I HAVE an appetite
Adler: Think of it!
You might have TWO
appetites—a hitherto of
RUMINANTS an’ other
privileged classes.
Nothing, calling itself “the
magazine of togetherness,”
produced several tiny, origamiesque issues, with baubles such
as a dried leaf lovingly stapled
to the cover of each copy,
which was covered with quips,
sketches, one-liners, and other
curated oddities. Nothing’s
second volume, titled the Great
Welschmertz issue, folds into a
kite shape. Stamped on the front
is the slogan GOD IS FOOD
above a blue fleur-de-lis, and a
man smoking six pipes at once,
a bird head wafting from the
left-most one. The style is highly
reminiscent of The Alligator.
The ’60s:
Earnestness and
Edge
Call it charm, call it
sophistication, call it
preciousness, or aestheticism.
Whatever animated the prolific
Swarthmore magazines of the
’40s and ’50s with preening
concern for typography, design,
and high-falutin editorial flair,
it had departed by the early ’60s.
31
4/3/12 11:12 AM
The identity-based student literature of the 2000s has a distinctive
nature: individualistic, expressively poetic, based on personal crisis
or defiance. A characteristic poem from Mjumbe, Swarthmore’s first
African-American literary publication, reads: “I Don’t Like Being
Choked By Your Narrow Margins That’s NOT ME! / I want to pick
and choose / And taste and wriggle / so don’t bind you by binding
me.”
Yet the publication’s early issues were unapologetically universalist
and polemical, collectively written manifestos in favor of black
humanism, defined as “The manner and action by which The
Material Things are used to carry out The Idea without exploiting,
messing over, messing up, or hustling other people and nature.” But
a few semesters later, it had become something closer to its current
incarnation.
During the ’80s, at least three substantial (and fairly
interchangeable) new long-form cultural magazines appeared (The
Bystander, Collection, and Magazine), marking the birth of that genre
in the Swarthmore repertoire. They were distinguished by neither
having a firm editorial viewpoint (as in the anti-McCarthyite OCAC
or right-baiting Bullet), nor by setting a literary tone, as did The Lit,
or even The Alligator in its own deranged way. Such urgent concerns
as divestment in South Africa, abortion, the contemporary role of
’60s and ’70s radicalism, and the ontological status of Reagan (was
he really human or some cruel media-generated simulacrum?) were
considered cogently and evenhandedly.
The specter of postmodernism impinged on the debate. A
common theme sounded was the (now fairly clichéd) sense of
instability between fiction vs. reality, whether in government and
media rhetoric or creative authorship. William Saletan ’87, now a
Slate commentator, wrote an essay on the former; Shoshana Kerewsky
’83, a fiction writer, tackled the latter.
Jonathan Franzen was in his formative years at Swarthmore,
writing dialogue in his playwriting seminar, and eventually helming
the The Nulset Review, which he renamed the still-current Small Craft
Warnings. He offers a bit of insight into the naming process: He and
his co-editors thought that Nulset (a pun on the math term Null Set)
smacked too much of ’70s style “ ‘antic nihilism’ … and I didn’t like
’70s antic nihilism,” he says. Small Craft Warnings was the suggestion
of Franzen’s hall mate and best writer friend Tom Hjelm ’81, who
Franzen said had a critical influence on the early development of his
art.
“We [learned by] ridiculing each other’s writing. And the great
thing about a small school was, very quickly we ended up as editors.
You really learn a lot in a hurry about your own prose [by] editing
someone else’s.”
The ’70s and ’80s: Polemics, Postmodernism,
and Jonathan Franzen
By the early ’90s, the angst-ridden, contested postmodernist
instability of the 1980s cultural ’zines (all interchangeable vessels
of confusion and conflict) had resolved, on the one hand, into
total fragmentation; on the other, the more confident, self-aware
postmodernism of Spike.
“Identification” ruled much of the literary scene. There were
magazines for the Jewish group, Asian Americans (Celebrasian),
El efth erios K ost ans
No more Lit, no more Nothing, no more Grouse, (a publication that
was dedicated, quite literally, to elegant grousing.)
When the Baby Boomers got to Swarthmore, they were
scrupulously and unprecedentedly square and dutiful, any bourgeois
niceties seemingly purged by a commissar memo. Representative
publications like the OCAC Newsletter and the inaptly named
Snark were admirably principled in their devotion to bone-dry
enumeration of political detail.
After the literary desert of the early and mid-’60s, the Swarthmore
Review appeared like a bolt from the blue in 1969. Sharing the
era publications’ unconcern with design values, it was filled with
raw, bizarre, provocative, sometimes juvenile literary experiments.
These recalled John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse and occasionally
Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Co-founder Don Mitchell ’69, an
accomplished fiction writer who teaches at Middlebury College,
confirmed the publication’s title.
Calling it Swarthmore Review had been, in retrospect, a
“wrongheaded … attempt to drape ourselves in the mantle of the
college,” when it was in fact a
thoroughly rogue publication,
Mitchell explains. Well, perhaps
not thoroughly rogue: Many of
the stories were produced by
Mitchell and co-editors Barry
Yourgrau ’70 and Nick Kazan
’67 for academic credit, in the
first creative-writing seminar at
Swarthmore College.
Nonetheless, the Swarthmore
Review was the opening volley in
what would be three successful
Victor Navasky ’54 edited The Lit before
careers. Kazan, son of the
he edited The Nation.
director Elia Kazan, has been
a playwright and a Hollywood
screenwriter, while Yourgrau is a multimedia cabaret artist, doyen of
very short fiction, and essayist.
Right after college, Mitchell got a book deal and screenplay option
for a short-story collection that his Swarthmore writing teacher had
encouraged him to pen about his adventures hitchhiking across the
country. In “Toni Warlock,” for instance, published in the Swarthmore
Review, Mitchell’s narrator is propositioned by a homosexual
occultist who picks him up just south of Big Sur, Calif. This and
similar stories were published as Thumb Tripping: Everything You
Need to Know About the Marijuana Society, with a lurid, psychedelic
cover, in 1971.
“It’s kind of shocking,” Mitchell reflects, “that all three of us made
it as creative artists of one kind or another.”
The 1970s continued, to some extent, the darkly libertine spirit that
first appeared in the Swarthmore Review. The establishment poetry
magazine The Nulset Review was moderately more edgy but still had
nothing on Mitchell, Kazan, and Yourgrau’s production. A new spirit,
however, had also emerged on the scene: that of identity politics.
32
29-33_litMags_output1.indd 32
The ’90s and beyond: The Great
Fragmentation, spike, and what’s next?
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:12 aM
Quinn D eEskimo
Jonathan Frazen ’81 edited Small Craft
Warnings, which is still being published
on campus.
Spanish speakers, campus
conservatives (which was funded
by outside organizations) and
women’s issues; one magazine,
Ourstory, was dedicated to
identity questions. In the
globalized, multicultural 1990s,
issues of stereotyping, cultural
representation, empathy,
appropriation, and exoticism,
were primary concerns. The
genres of preference were short
personal essays and poetry.
Design values, particularly
in Celebrasion (which paid
For its sheer profusion of magazine content
and enthusiasm, the ’90s may have rivaled
the ’50s as the golden age of Swarthmore
publications.
april 2012
29-33_Litmags_output1.indd 33
close attention to layout) often
were impressive. For its sheer
profusion of magazine content
and enthusiasm, the ’90s may
have rivaled the ’50s as the
golden age of Swarthmore
publications.
This could be due to the
status the medium enjoyed in
the culture at large: “In the mid’90s, magazines were awesome,”
said Jason Zengerle ’96, who
co-founded Swarthmore’s longrunning humor magazine Spike.
He is now a journalist and senior
editor at The New Republic.
Might magazine, started by
novelist Dave Eggers in the early
’90s, was a direct inspiration for
Spike.
For the first decade or so of its
run, Spike perfected a distinctly
collegiate blend of erudition,
irreverence, oblique political
commentary and lowbrow
sensibility. (A feature article that
perfectly captured all of these
qualities was “Choose Your Own
Adventure,” in which the reader
gets to play a developing country
in a budgetary crisis.)
Spike’s continued success was
owed to a sequence of talented
editors, including Christine
Smallwood ’03, who went on to
be an editor at The Nation, and
Mark Lotto ’00, a senior editor
at GQ.
“Some of my successors [such
as Mark] were really smart; they
were doing things that were
much wittier than us,” Zengerle
continues.
Zengerle was clearly
pleased that some legacy of
his publication has survived,
even though Spike couldn’t
maintain its energy and is now
published once per semester,
according to the College website.
In the last decade, Night Café
was renamed Nacht Magazine
and found a niche somewhere
between social commentary
and the millennial avant-garde.
Other literary magazines listed
on the site are Mjumbe; ñ
(Enie), published in Spanish;
remappings (representing the
Asian community); and Small
Craft Warnings.
The wider media world seems
to have collapsed into a welter of
search-engine-optimized blips
interspersed with celebrity gossip
and gratuitous photographs
of Sarah Palin. Nonetheless,
innovative startups like Lapham’s
Quarterly, Cabinet, Canteen,
Triple Canopy, and Wag’s Revue
(an online, non-ADD-inducing
’zine started by Brown students)
have sparked a thriving indie
publishing scene to satisfy
the lust of the most ravenous,
discerning magazine aficionado.
If there is a silver lining
to the decline of magazine
publishing, one has to look to
history to discover it. In 1900,
when photography challenged
the dominance of painting, it
provoked self-interrogation and
a realignment of the medium;
it had to figure out what it
fundamentally was. If magazine
culture is going to do something
similar, a good place to start
might be those dusty archives
where unsung Swarthmore
librarians have been saving us a
piece of our tradition. g
Eli Epstein-Deutsch ’10, who
majored in modernist studies,
was the founder of Night Café,
now Nacht Magazine. He is a
freelance editor in New York City
and is helping curate a show of
contemporary Chinese art for the
soon-to-open Kunsthalle Beacon
in New York near Dia:Beacon.
33
4/3/12 11:13 Am
A DEAL
34
34-37_Werther_output1.indd 34
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:27 AM
That’s Sweet As Syrup
Dan Werther ’83 has found his niche—as owner of
confection company Sorbee International.
By Carol Brévart-Demm and Lauren Weiler
Photographs by Eleftherios Kostans
After almost three decades of boosting and shaping
the enterprises of others—as a lawyer, business operator, and
fundraiser—Dan Werther ’83 concluded that what he really wanted
was to run his own business. So he bought Sorbee International—a
company that began about 30 years ago as a small, sugar-free candy
business. The first and largest supplier of sugar-free lollipops to
dentists’ and doctors’ offices ar:ound the United States, the company
produces and sells candy and confection products worldwide.
The Sorbee headquarters sprawl across a large section of the
second floor of the Neshaminy Interplex Business Center in
northeast Philadelphia. With several small offices bordering a vast
central area, the space seems big for a staff comprising only a CEO,
CFO, head of marketing and product development, head of sales,
and a couple of administrators who handle accounts receivable and
accounts payable.
One of the white-walled rooms, “the product room,” is bright
with boxes of low-sugar Dream Bars; neatly arranged bottles of
sugar-free, lite, and full-sugar syrups; stands bearing sugar-free
Crystal Light chewy and hard candy and full-sugar Country Time
lemonade candy; and cylindrical containers of multicolored sugarfree lollipops—samples of the 50-or-so products currently being
manufactured by Sorbee.
It has been close to four years since Werther bought the company,
after almost three decades contributing to the success of others. In
his office adjoining the product room, Sorbee’s owner and chief
executive officer neither looks nor acts like a stereotypical business
tycoon, despite his crisp shirt, floral tie, and gray pants with wellpolished black shoes. He speaks clearly but softly and exudes youthful
enthusiasm as he explains how the company—his company—moved
two years ago from smaller quarters to allow for future expansion.
april 2012
34-37_Werther_output1.indd 35
35
4/3/12 11:27 AM
By the time Werther bought Sorbee,
at age 47, he had more than two decades
of experience as a lawyer and businessman
under his belt.
After graduating from Temple University
School of Law, he was a business lawyer for
firms in his hometown, Philadelphia, and in
New York City. Then, he became interested
in becoming a businessman himself,
bemoaning the isolation that is the lot of
most lawyers.
“Law is so much different from the
business world,” Werther says. “With law,
you’re working 24 hours a day, seven days
a week. The business world allows more
time—with five-day weeks—and that was
really different for me. And I had more of a
penchant for business and certainly more of
an interest.”
During the 1980s, he began to move away
from business law to managing businesses.
By 2008, he was at a crossroads.
“I’d been a lawyer, business operator,
fundraiser, and banker, but I still had to
figure out what I really loved,” he says. “It
turned out to be operating a business, but
I had yet to do it for myself. That’s why I
bought Sorbee. I bit the bullet and wrote the
check. I own 100 percent of it, and I run it on
a day-to-day basis.
“Sorbee was a likely target, considering its
food and confection orientation as well as its
large and consumer-facing business model—
these were actually all things I’d enjoyed and
worked with in the past,” Werther explains.
“What motivated me was the fact that
Sorbee had great products but an absentee
management. I believed that with time and
attention, I could establish my own imprint
on the business, fix some things, and use it
as a platform to acquire other branded food/
snack/confection/possibly organic foodrelated businesses or business lines in the
future.”
As a business owner, Werther carefully
decides which products to sell under the
Sorbee name. Since buying the company, he
has secured an ongoing licensing deal with
Kraft under that manufacturer’s Crystal
Light and Country Time trademarks for use
in candy products—Crystal Light sugar-free
hard candies and Country Time full-sugar
lemonade hard candies, currently Sorbee’s
two largest-selling product lines.
“The hard-candy market is small,
36
34-37_Werther_output1.indd 36
compared to everything else,” he says. “There
is a much-larger market for chocolate and
gummies.” To compete with sales of other
companies, Sorbee created Crystal Light
sugar-free fruit chews, and Country Time
fruit chews are to come soon.
For a new business owner in pursuit
of a deal, talks at the negotiating table may
be tense—with an occasional touch of
melodrama.
Early in 2010, in preparation for the
introduction of a new line of syrups,
Werther worked with a licensing agent to
first approach diet brands such as Weight
Watchers and Nutrisystem that would sell
his sugar-free syrup under their companies’
names. He explains that sales of sugar-free
syrup had been mediocre at best and to
prevent the line from being discontinued, it
needed to be bumped up with a good license.
He planned to seek brand names not only to
endorse the sugar-free syrups traditionally
manufactured by Sorbee for diabetic
consumers but with an eye to including
full-sugar varieties as well. He came close to
signing a contract but reconsidered. Instead,
he suggested his agent reach out to restaurant
chains.
The agent’s pitch enticed the International
House of Pancakes (IHOP)—the largest
breakfast chain in the country, which had
just initiated a licensing program—to offer
Werther a contract for Sorbee to become
IHOP’s sugar-free syrup licensee.
Werther, his chief financial officer, head
of sales, and head of marketing and product
development flew to Los Angeles to the
IHOP headquarters. Anticipating the value
of the contract they were about to sign, they
were excited. “We thought that with the
IHOP name, we could turn our sugar-free
syrup from a $500,000 line to $5 million line.
We couldn’t have been happier.”
Once in the board room, Werther
and his three colleagues sat on one side
of the table. Moments later, close to a
dozen IHOP executives walked into the
room. “I’m thinking, ‘There’s something
disproportionate about this. Something
doesn’t look right,’” Werther recalls. “We
hadn’t been asked to prepare a presentation,”
he says. “So I winged it, and when we were
done, IHOP’s position was, ‘You guys are
good. We have a lot of friends at Walmart
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:28 AM
For a new business owner in pursuit of a deal, talks at the negotiating table may be
tense—with an occasional touch of melodrama.
[which carries Sorbee’s Kraft-branded products]. You have a
good reputation there. But we just don’t think that launching
your first IHOP-branded product as a sugar-free syrup is the
right way to go.”
Werther and the Sorbee executives didn’t know how to react.
“I think I even started packing up my stuff,” says Werther.
But the meeting wasn’t over. He continues: “Then, one of the
senior executives reached over, put her hand on my arm and
said, ‘But you guys have a really good reputation. We think you
should consider taking our entire retail syrup license.’”
About one month later Werther signed a long-term exclusive
deal with IHOP, which, together with sister restaurant group
Applebee’s, forms the business for a public company known as
DineEquity Inc. The deal guarantees Sorbee the IHOP license
for the next decade. At the end of last year, Sorbee launched all
of IHOP-branded syrups via mass merchandisers around the
country.
In the months since signing the license contract, Sorbee
employees have worked on new syrup products, designing a
unique bottle and crafting flavors, labels, and packaging. “We
think we have everything perfect,” Werther says.
He’s enjoying life as a small-business owner. Having missed
personal contact with clients as a lawyer, he says, “I love the small
company atmosphere, because you get to know everyone, both
on a professional and personal level. Each individual brings his
or her unique qualities to the job. I’m a coach and mentor, but
everyone does multiple jobs. Some CEOs only oversee, but all of
us are really engaged in what we do, and, as CEO, I need to learn,
too.” There’s been very little turnover among his staff of eight.
The staff size may change soon, though. Werther anticipates
that the company, whose revenue has been less than $10 million
until now, will grow, with revenue from the syrup alone expected
to exceed $15 million.
“By next year,” he says, “the business is expected to almost
triple in size.” He gestures in the direction toward the large
central space. “That’s why I’ve kept that space in the middle
empty. ” g
april 2012
34-37_Werther_output1.indd 37
Sorbee owner Dan Werther is not only a businessman but also a
philanthropist. At the 2010 Sweets and Snacks Expo, he set up a
Crystal Light Candy poster board, pledging to honor all who signed it
by donating a certain sum for each signature to the Juvenile Diabetes
Research Foundation.
37
4/3/12 11:28 AM
Alumni College Abroad
Ferrer
o-Laba t
Connections
If you’ve always yearned to see elephants in their native habitat, Alumni College in Africa is for you.
Welcome to New Members
The Alumni Council
welcomes the following new
members, who will begin
three-year terms in June:
Kenneth Mark Gibson ’76
Atlanta, Ga.
Physics teacher
Westminster Schools
Joseph Armah ’98
Norwalk, Conn.
Energy financial services
associate
GF Energy Financial
Services
Donna Gresh ’83
Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.
Research staff member
IBM Corp.
Diana Aronzon ’05
Cambridge, Mass.
Consultant
Harris Miller & Hanson Inc.
Barbara Stubbs Cochran ’67
Washington, D.C.
Curtis Hurley Chair in
Public Affairs
Missouri School of
Journalism
Paige Madeline Gentry ’07
Durham, N.C.
Law student
Duke University
38
38-39_Connections_output.indd 38
Carolyn Kelley ’75
Austin, Texas
Landscape architect
Carolyn Kelley Landscape
Archs
Benjamin Keys ’01
Chicago, Ill.
Assistant professor
Harris School of Public
Policy Studies
University of Chicago
Jules Moskowitz ’66
Prairie Village, Kan.
Retired vice president
General counsel
DST Systems Inc.
Leonard Nakamura ’69
Philadelphia, Pa.
Economic adviser
Federal Reserve Bank of
Philadelphia
Thomas Newman II ’87
Pompton Plains, N.J.
Senior project manager
HydroQual Inc.
Cathryn Polinsky ’99
San Mateo, Calif.
Director of software
development
Salesforce.com
Lourdes Maria Rosado ’85
Havertown, Pa.
Associate director
Juvenile Law Center
Evan Wittenberg ’91
Palo Alto, Calif.
Chief talent officer
Hewlett-Packard Co.
Swarthmore Alumni College Abroad invites
you to join us “on safari” from Oct. 10 to 26.
Travel with Biology Professor Sara Hiebert
Burch ’79, alumni, and friends to the premier
safari destinations of Kenya and Tanzania.
Travel from grasslands to highlands,
to reserves and national parks, enjoying
intimate game drives and up-close
encounters. See breathtaking landscapes, and
meet gracious local people en route from
the world’s largest volcanic crater to the
edge of the Rift Valley, where the diversity of
wildlife offers opportunities to see the “Big
Five”—elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros, lion,
and leopard—and endangered species such
as the black rhino.
Throughout our adventure, stay in toprated game lodges that give you an intimate
experience of the landscape, flora, and
fauna. Highlights include the unparalleled
game viewing in the Masai Mara Reserve as
well as visits to Amboseli National Reserve,
Serengeti National Park, Ngoro Ngoro
Conservation Area, wildlife haven and Masai
homeland Olduvai Gorge, and Lake Manyara
National Park.
Please contact the Alumni College Abroad
office (800-789-9738 or alumni_travel@
swarthmore.edu) for more details and to
reserve your place on our 2012 Safari.
Alumni Council Video Project
Swarthmore’s Alumni Council has created
a new way for alumni to connect with
students and help them in their transition
to the “real world.” Piloted by Jove Graham
’96, Nina Paynter ’97, and Martha Marrazza
’09, the Career Video Project is a series of
short clips hosted on Swarthmore’s website
and viewable by students and alumni. Each
60-second video features an alumnus or
alumna answering a question about career
development. Career Services provided a list
of hot topics, including finding out about
corporate culture, acing an interview, making
the most of a gap year, and getting into a
competitive graduate school. Catherine
Salussolia ’04 organized an initial recording
session in October during the fall Alumni
Council meeting. Cary Chester ’13, a
student peer counselor with Career Services,
recorded the videos. Contact information
is provided with each video, allowing the
viewer to ask more questions, network, and
obtain further mentoring.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:33 aM
The videos provide a virtual connection
between students and alumni and valuable
real-life career advice not just for students
but for alumni returning to the workforce
or changing fields. Visit swarthmore.edu/
careerservices.xml to see the first of the
career videos and to find out how you can
contribute your wisdom.
Recent Events
London Bob Patten ’60, Scholar in Residence
at the Charles Dickens Museum, invited
London alumni to celebrate Dickens’ 200th
birthday with a private tour of the museum.
Bicoastal business connection
a well-coordinated success
Swarthmore alums from across the country
participated in coordinated receptions
hosted by the Swarthmore Business Network
on March 1. More than 100 graduates turned
out in Boston, Houston, New York, San
Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Speakers included Boston-based Chris
Ciunci ’95, founder and CEO of Tribalvision,
discussing how an idea can become a
business plan and how he acquired his
first customer, then turned that first step
into a rapidly growing business. In San
Francisco, Ellen Hanak ’79 of the California
Public Policy Institute spoke about watermanagement policy in her state, and Brendan
Moriarty ’04 discussed the challenges and
opportunities of land conservation in this era
of stressed budgets.
After attending the event in New York,
Ana Chiu ’06 says, “Thanks so much for
organizing these events! The NYC one was
great. I met a lot of great Swatties who of
course are doing interesting things. Can’t
wait for the next one!” New York also
attracted Leo Deibel ’12, who wrote, “The
event was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful
seeing and speaking to all the alumni.” Leo
chronicled his bus journey to New York City
to network with Swarthmore business alums
in a recent issue of The Phoenix.
The Swarthmore Business Network was
formed in fall 2010, when Rob Steelman ’92
april 2012
38-39_Connections_output.indd 39
In Boston, Chris Ciunci ’95 (left), founder and CEO of
Tribalvision, was the featured speaker at a gathering
of about 18 alumni. Networking in New York were
(from left): Ana Chiu ’06, Cindy Brome ’77, Al Weller
’68, Arlyss Gease ’10, and Jo-Anne Suriel ’00.
created the affinity group on LinkedIn, a
business-networking website. The goal of the
group is to “bring together the community
of business alums by providing a forum for
career and community development,” he
says. “Job postings, career-switching advice,
graduate-school guidance, supplier/customer
inquiries, and other business-related topics
are being discussed openly online among the
800-plus members.”
The Swarthmore Business Network is
balancing its online and in-person activities
with more events planned for 2012. For more
information, visit the LinkedIn site: http://
www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2471375 or
contact Rob Steelman at robsteelman@alum.
swarthmore.edu.
Lax Conference a big draw
Alumni, students, faculty, staff, parents, and
friends came together on March 18 for the
13th annual Jonathan R. Lax ’71 Conference on
Entrepreneurship. Keynote speaker David Gelber
’63 (left) described his own recent transition
from veteran news producer to entrepreneur, as
co-founder of Roaring Fork Films and co-creator
and co-managing director of Years of Living
Dangerously, a multiplatform, multimedia project
that will highlight the disastrous effects of climate
change.
Panelists Brian Heaney ’83, Robert Lamb P’12,
John Mercer ’65, Davia Temin ’74, Menno van Wyk
’67 (below, center), and Phil Weiser ’90 discussed
topics including converting an idea into a business,
finding the support you need, the qualities needed
to be successful, and the landscape for startup
businesses in the current economy.
For more on this year’s conference, go to www.
swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
stu ar t w atson
Chicago Associate Professor of Political
Science Ben Berger visited Chicago over
spring break to discuss the subject of his
recent book Attention Deficit Democracy:
The Paradox of Civic Engagement, which was
named one of the Top 10 Books of 2011 by
the Zocalo Public Square Institution.
39
4/3/12 11:33 aM
books + arts
“Ambassador Hormel!”
James C. Hormel and Erin Martin, Fit To
Serve: Reflections on a Secret Life, Private
Struggle, and Public Battle to Become the First
Openly Gay U.S. Ambassador, New York:
Skyhorse Publishing, 2011.
Reading this book, I often noticed how well
its beautifully designed dust jacket conveys
the book’s central message: that a proud gay
man ably served his country as its diplomatic
representative to another sovereign nation.
The cover shows James C. Hormel III ’55
standing against the backdrop of massive
granite columns, looking right at you.
Handsome, silver-haired, conservatively
dressed, and tall, he looks every inch like a
United States ambassador—which is exactly
what he was from 1999 to 2000, when he
filled the U.S. embassy to the Grand Duchy
of Luxembourg.
Hormel’s service as the first openly gay
U.S. ambassador was a major milestone in
dismantling “straight government”—that is,
breaking the presumption that high public
office in America is reserved exclusively
for straights. Ambassador Hormel did not
succeed, to be sure, in his determined quest
to get the U.S. Senate to do that openly and
candidly. The Senate coalition supporting
the nomination, which had been reported to
the Senate by a 16-2 majority of the Foreign
Relations Committee, never topped 58, two
votes shy of the supermajority necessary
to break the hold on his nomination. So
President Bill Clinton—who first nominated
Hormel in early October 1997—finally made
a recess appointment in early June 1999.
Filibusters, however, can generate national
controversy. This was one of those dramatic
filibusters. The country had an important
(if not entirely civil) conversation about
who is “fit to serve” the United States.
Hormel dispassionately but vividly sketches
homophobic demonization by his attackers
outside the Senate, and the unctuous
hypocrisy of his Senate opponents. Their
nasty attacks on Hormel eventually produced
a backlash in elite opinion. Hormel—a longtime activist in the Democratic Party and a
leading strategist of the gay rights struggle—
showed persistence and grace under fire.
Hormel’s personal qualities made a strong
52
52-53_Books_output.indd 52
impression on his supporters in the White
House and the Senate—and had much to
do with the celebratory nature of Hormel’s
swearing in at Foggy Bottom. Rep. Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose congressional
career Hormel helped to launch, watched
with intense admiration from the audience.
Hormel raised his hand and took the oath:
“I swear that I will support and defend the
Constitution of the United States against all
enemies …” As Hormel writes, “With that,
I became the highest ranking openly gay
person in the political annals of the United
States.” Secretary of State Madeline Albright
hugged Hormel. Sen. Ted Kennedy “took
to the microphone, shouting ‘Ambassador
Hormel!’ Cheering rocked the room.” In a
speech Hormel modestly noted, “I thank
all of you for a moment that I hope will
become but a footnote in the history of our
diplomatic relations and our efforts to ensure
basic constitutional equality for all citizens.”
A funny thing about such footnotes: They
are intensely interesting. They illustrate how
political parties bring new constituencies
into the mainstream. Take Ebenezer Basset,
America’s first African-American diplomat.
President Ulysses Grant appointed him
U.S. ambassador to Haiti. Like Hormel,
Bassett was an activist: He recruited African-
American men to serve in the Union Army
during the Civil War. Or consider the first
female ambassador, Ruth Bryan Owen,
appointed by FDR in 1933 to be minister
to Denmark. A daughter of William
Jennings Bryan, she served in the House
of Representatives, as a widow and mother
of four children, shortly after the 19th
Amendment established female suffrage.
Twin themes—social change through party
politics and changed national conceptions of
who is “fit to serve”—run through all these
stories.
Besides being an inside account of
how he became America’s first openly
gay ambassador, Hormel’s memoir tells
the story of how the personal became the
political. Early in his adult career—as dean
of students at the University of Chicago Law
School, where he earned a J.D.—Hormel
was a closeted moderate Republican and the
privileged scion of a Minnesota industrial
fortune. Coming to terms with his sexual
orientation had a deeply politicizing effect,
turning him into a very liberal Democrat
and for a time putting him in touch with
countercultural protest.
Hormel remained very devoted to
his family—and he developed a deep
friendship with his ex-wife and her second
husband. Ultimately, he decided that he
would use his wealth to institutionalize
the gay rights struggle, supporting social
change litigation and helping to establish
the Human Rights Campaign, today the
most influential advocacy group for LGBT
(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered)
citizens. One also sees Hormel becoming
a generous, judicious and wise benefactor
in a wide range of cultural and educational
institutions, including Swarthmore College.
It is our community’s great good fortune
that he has bequeathed (with the help of
a talented collaborator, Erin Martin) this
marvelous account of his life and times.
—Rick Valelly ’75
Claude C. Smith ’14 Professor of
Political Science
Watch Hormel accept an honorary
doctor of laws from Swarthmore in
2009 at bit.ly/hormeldegree.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:59 AM
Carol Gilligan ’58, Joining the
Resistance, Polity Press, 2011.
This semi-autobiographical book
reflects on the development of the
author’s keystone ideas on gender
and human development and
how her personal experiences are
connected and interwoven with
those ideas..
Books
Carl Abbott ’66, Portland in
Three Centuries: The Place
and the People, Oregon State
University Press, 2011. This
history shows Portland from
its first contact with European
settlers to the present day and
highlights many of the men
and women who have shaped
its growth during this 300-year
period.
Sylvia Shin Huey Chong ’94,
The Oriental Obscene: Violence
and Racial Fantasies in the
Vietnam Era, Duke University
Press, 2012. An analysis of the
visual representations of the
Vietnam War provides new
insight on how Americans chose
to cope with the trauma and
violence of the Vietnam War and
its consequences.
Gerard Helferich ’76, Stone of
Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of
the Maya, Lyons Press, 2012. This
story details the 400-year search
april 2012
52-53_Books_output.indd 53
John Paterson ’53 and
Katherine Paterson, The Flint
Heart, Candlewick Press, 2011. For
more information on this awardwinning children’s book, based
on a British fantasy from 1910, see
p.47
for the lost sources of Maya
jade, blending together a tale of
rulers, archaeologists, scientists,
prospectors, and entrepreneurs,
all in a treasure hunt for a
civilization’s most valuable
resource.
Helen Heusner Lojek ’66, The
Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and
Place in Contemporary Plays,
Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. This
book looks at how contemporary
Irish plays convey meaning
through the use of space—where
the action is set geographically
and how the stage is set.
Andrea Rugh ’57, International
Development in Practice:
Education Assistance in Egypt,
Pakistan, and Afghanistan,
St. Martin’s Press, 2012. This
book describes the challenges
of education in developing
countries and takes a close look
at three different countries’
approaches to studying,
planning, and implementing
projects.
Nayan Shah ’88, Stranger
Intimacy: Contesting Race,
Sexuality, and the Law in the North
American West, University of
California Press, 2011. This book
reveals the intersections between
capitalism, the state’s treatment of
immigrants, sexual citizenship, and
racism in the first half of the 20th
century.
Jonathan Seitz ’96, Witchcraft
and Inquisition in Early Modern
Venice, Cambridge University
Press, 2011. This book uses
records of Inquisition witchcraft
trials in Venice to study how
individuals, across class
boundaries, understood the
division and characteristics of
the natural and the supernatural
and how they shaped early
modern beliefs.
Martha Sielman ’82 (curator),
Masters: Art Quilts, Vol. 2: Major
Works by Leading Artists, Lark
Crafts, 2011. This follow-up
volume to Sielman’s Masters:
Art Quilts showcases, via
commentaries and stunning
illustrations, the leading
techniques in contemporary
quilting and an array of themes
including portraits, nature,
abstraction, realism, and political
Mark Whitaker ’78, My Long
Trip Home: A Family Memoir
Simon and Schuster, 2011. With
interracial themes that echo
Barack Obama’s Dreams from My
Father and James McBride’s The
Color of Water, and the drama of
Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle,
this memoir is a reporter’s search
for the factual and emotional
truth about a complicated and
compelling family—a truth that
leads him, finally, to both forgive
his parents and gain a new
knowledge and acceptance of
himself.
commentary of 40 of the most
creative and talented quilters
from around the world.
Jon Van Til ’61 and Roger A.
Lohmann (editors), Resolving
Community Conflicts and
Problems: Public Deliberation and
Sustained Dialogue, Columbia
University Press, 2011. This
collection of essays studies how
open debate and discussion
about different social attitudes
can strengthen a college campus,
among other networks and
societies, including college
campuses.
53
4/3/12 11:59 AM
Thinking Outside the Cell
Julie Zimmerman ’68 opens doors to learning for prisoners.
Roge r S. Duncan
Fifteen years ago, Julie Zimmerman ’68 was running a small publishing
company, Biddle Publishing, and a self-publishing co-op, Audenreed Press,
when she got a collect call from a prisoner on death row named A.J. Banister.
He had appeared in Dead End, a book that Zimmerman’s firm had published
on the death penalty, and he wanted to help her promote it. “That call,”
Zimmerman says, “changed my life.”
Zimmerman became friends with the prisoner and helped him publish
his own book, Shall Suffer Death.
One day a friend was driving Zimmerman up to the Maine State Prison
in Thomaston so that she could meet with one of her prisoner friends. The
friend, who taught at a youth detention center, was describing how difficult
it was to teach in that environment because of the rigid regulations and
inconsistent schedules. Zimmerman suggested that prisoners should have the
opportunity to take a correspondence course. “My friend gave me this look,
and by the time we’d returned home, we had the plan mapped out.
“We wanted the courses to be creative, but not accredited,” she explains.
“We wanted prisoners to think outside the cell, beyond prison politics or
the next prison fight. Most important, we wanted prisoners to feel respected
and valued. They don’t feel respect from the prison administration, from
Julie Zimmerman ‘68 manages 50 volunteers and supports 450 inmates from
the tiny College Guild office in Brunswick, Maine. Here she reads a letter from an
inmate.
56
classnotes_final3_4-2.ndd.indd 56
other prisoners and, in many cases, even their families. We wanted to say to
prisoners, ‘Here’s a stranger who wants to spend time reading what you have
to say.’”
Zimmerman sold the publishing companies and started College Guild in
2001 with a strong three-word mission: “Respect Reduces Recidivism.”
Today, College Guild offers more than 20 correspondence courses
(e.g. Logic and Puzzles, Exercise and Relaxation, Short Story Club, Greek
Mythology, and Families) to 450 prisoners around the country. A teacher
leads each course; readers often assist with reading and with writing
commentaries on the work of the students. Everyone—prisoners, teachers
and readers—corresponds on a first-name-only basis.
An office administrator oversees the day-to-day operation of the
College Guild office and is the only paid employee. All teachers and
readers contribute their time and expertise without compensation. Private
contributions and a small foundation grant cover the modest budget (about
$30,000 per year).
Powerful word-of-mouth, compelling results and a reference to College
Guild in Playboy in June, have created an overflow of prisoners wanting
to enroll in College Guild courses. About 200 prisoners are on the waiting
list, not surprising since College Guild is the only program in the country
offering free correspondence courses for prisoners.
Zimmerman and the 40 volunteers from around the country who serve
as teachers or readers are gratified by knowing that they’re enriching the lives
of prisoners. A stream of thank-you notes pours into the College Guild office
throughout the year.
Here are some examples: “There are so many voids in prison, and it
is beautiful to be able to fill these voids with some knowledge.”… “When
people see me working on my assignments, they always ask me what kind of
‘credit’ I’m getting for doing it. My reply is always, ‘I’m bettering myself.”…
“Your words are always welcomed, and I even tried to tone down the violent
actions in this unit.”… “Never again will I need drugs or alcohol to be my
recreation, my escape from life’s drudgeries.”
Swarthmore played a significant role in preparing Zimmerman to
dedicate her life to educating the incarcerated. Her ties to the College run
deep, as her grandparents, parents, brother, aunts, and uncles all attended.
While at Swarthmore, she became a companion and friend to a teenager who
was hospitalized with schizophrenia. The teenager attended Zimmerman’s
graduation. Today, Zimmerman’s work powerfully reflects the Quaker belief
that all lives are sacred, that no one among us is all hero or all villain.
She has maintained her positive outlook despite personal travails. Because
of a debilitating neurological condition, she can no longer drive, and it is
difficult for her to stand for long. A member of her own family was a murder
victim, yet she remains a staunch opponent of the death penalty. She notes
that she’s lost four friends to execution.
Zimmerman does not view herself as a hero. “This work is incredibly
gratifying,” she says. “It helps me to think and to learn and to feel. It rounds
me out as a human being.”
—David Treadwell
For further information, go to: www.collegeguild.org.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:42 aM
Cori the Explorer
Cori Lathan ’88 explores at the frontier of modern technology.
Last spring, Corinna “Cori” Lathan ’88 found herself breathing in the crisp
15-degree air of northwest Greenland. She had just arrived at Thule Air Force
Base, a U.S. Army outpost about 950 miles from the North Pole, where she’d
be spending a day testing the prototype of a new neurobehavioral assessment
software she and her colleagues had designed—a tool that allows medics to
track indications of neurological impairment in soldiers, from traumatic
brain injury to post-traumatic stress disorder. But first she wanted to get out
and explore the icy arctic landscape.
“Beautiful hike along the Greenland coast,” she wrote on her Twitter feed.
“Saw two huge arctic hares romping.”
Lathan—who dubs herself an “entrepreneur, engineer, designer,
roboticist”—is perhaps best described as an “explorer.” Whether navigating
the new horizons of human performance engineering or observing the fauna
of the frigid northern frontier, she’s driven by an innate curiosity about
almost everything.
What had led Lathan to Greenland was AnthroTronix, the research and
development firm in Silver Spring, Md., of which she is founder and CEO.
She collaborates with a staff of 12 to build human interface technologies that
empower people to overcome physical or cognitive disadvantages. Her work
ranges from the cartoon-looking CosmoBot that leads children through
goal-oriented activities to the snug-fitting AcceleGlove that allows military
personnel in the field to communicate with off-site software using silent
hand gestures. Toss in some research on how astronauts’ perception of threedimensional space is affected by the conditions of outer space and inventing
a piece of equipment that allows amputees to regain their critical sense of
balance, and you start to get a sense of how exploration plays into Lathan’s
daily routine.
Given the cutting-edge nature of her work, it’s no surprise that when
the media spotlight shines on Lathan—which it often does—she’s revealed
as one of nation’s leading innovative thinkers. Forbes, Time and The New
Yorker have all featured her, and MIT’s Technology Review magazine has
dubbed her one of the world’s top 100 innovators.
But, she says, “‘innovation’ is such a buzzword these days” that it’s
important we don’t lose track of what it really means. In March, when she
delivered a talk at TEDxSwarthmore, she aimed to give more texture to the
term.
“To me, innovation is creative problem solving,” she says. “So then
the question becomes, what are problems that matter? How do you find
problems that matter? What do you innovate around?” She pauses. “That’s
our goal: to innovate around problems that matter.”
Lathan’s search for “problems that matter”—or, at least, challenges
that would allow her to “do something cool”—picked up steam at age 16,
when she arrived at Swarthmore to begin an early college career. She selfcreated a special major—biopsychology and mathematics—that let her dig
into science, math, and the mind. She got swept up in the anti-apartheid
movement that had its grip on campus. She logged plenty of hours on the
rugby field. And she hung out in the genetics lab studying fruit flies—for fun.
60
Classnotes_final3_4-2.ndd.indd 60
Cori Lathan ’88 demonstrates the AcceleGlove, which allows military personnel in
the field to communicate with off-site software using silent hand gestures.
“My lack of focus—or, should I say, my multidisciplinary tendencies—
were apparent even then.” She laughs. “I was just always looking for
interesting things to do.”
After graduating from Swarthmore, her passion for discovery led her
to a year of research in Paris, and then back to the United States, where she
enrolled at MIT, concurrently completing a master’s in aeronautics and
astronautics and a Ph.D. in neuroscience. With her hard-earned degrees in
hand, she accepted a professorship at the Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C. But just as she was about to receive tenure, in 1999, she
decided to abandon the predictable world of academia for a life in R&D—an
environment more suited to her “multidisciplinary tendencies.”
Thirteen years later and a year after taking the neurobehavioral
assessment software to Greenland, the software has been tested in controlled
environments from the arctic to the tropics. Lathan and her team are now
testing the software with marines returning from Afghanistan. It’s touted for
its ability to quickly gauge a user’s reaction time, spatial process, memory,
and responses to multiple-choice questions. And, as long as military
personnel have a standard mobile device and a stylus, it’s as easy to use as a
game on your mobile phone.
But launching this product in the military sphere is just the beginning,
Lathan believes.
“What excites me is that it has the potential to monitor the cognitive
health of anyone,” she says. “So I see this system as having a tremendous
impact beyond military injury.”
How far-reaching might this new software be? That’s a question—like
most questions—that Lathan is very eager to explore.
—Christopher Maier
Go to bit.ly/tedxswarthmore for more.
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 11:43 AM
Artist Without Borders
Nathan Florence ’94 trains an activist’s eye toward diverse communities and artistic media
Marian Florence
When Nathan Florence ’94 arrived at Swarthmore from Utah, he planned
to take premed courses. Yet he loved painting and wondered if pursuing
art could be a realistic goal. As he pondered which path to take, he received
some transformative advice from Stanford University psychologist Anne
Jones Fernald ’65. She told him if he “put the same amount of work into
anything [as one would into studying medicine],” he could be successful.
Florence took that wisdom to heart, switched his major and has devoted his
considerable energy to an artistic career.
Florence charted his distinctive course, pushing boundaries with a bit
of the pioneer spirit that he was surrounded by growing up in Utah. Before
graduating, he earned an Altman Award and Scholarship for Fine Arts
Studies. When various postcollege fellowships did not pan out, he created
his own artistic residency by traveling to Scotland and Italy. His trip was
ultimately financed by the sale of many of the more than 100 paintings he
produced during that year abroad.
Florence’s recent paintings have combined his interest in patterned
textiles and paint. “I seal printed cotton with a matte medium, which gives
the fabric a clear protection so you can still see the pattern coming through,
but then I can paint right onto that like gesso,” he explains. “I figure out how
Nathan Florence ’94, shown here with a recent painting of his wife Marian titled
Full Flower, returned to his hometown of Salt Lake City (“this very bright blue dot
in the middle of a very red state”) in 2001, when Marian got a job there.
april 2012
classnotes_final3_4-2.ndd.indd 63
the pattern of the cloth either conflicts with or enhances what I’m painting
onto it. I try to go into it without overthinking it at the beginning, so the
pattern is unpredictable.”
Florence’s subjects tend to be portraits, human figures and landscapes
(see his work at www.nflorencefineart.com). By using the same pattern in
different colors and shades, his recent paintings lend an almost ghostly tone
to otherwise representational images.
“I definitely feel like my paintings are autobiographical,” he says, but
that doesn’t exclude touches of whimsy and even surrealism. One of his
largest paintings, for example, is called Let Us Go To and Build Us a Tower, a
revisiting of the story of the Tower of Babel, which in this case, is built with
luxury SUVs.
This kind of painting enables Florence’s activist side to come to the fore.
“But I’ve also done a painting of myself as Don Quixote, because I feel like
in some ways I’m tilting at windmills,” he says. “I’m wrestling with issues but
then, in the end, I really haven’t made any difference in the world except I’ve
done this painting, and maybe it’s a little cathartic.”
Florence also recognizes the powerful role that art plays in a home and
is honored every time someone buys a painting. “If I can make a piece of
art that can somehow resonate with someone else—that’s a pretty amazing
thing!”
Despite his years of diligent work, Florence says “it took me forever to be
OK with being an artist.” Perhaps partly in response to this feeling, Florence
has found that his understanding of what constitutes art “has expanded to
include a sense of community involvement, activism, and education. I’m
really interested in education and the need for change in the way we think
about teaching kids,” he explains. “It’s a much broader definition for me.”
In the last few years, Florence has helped start a charter school near Salt
Lake City, the hometown to which he returned in 2001. The school’s name,
the Weilenmann School of Discovery, suggests his primary interest. He
drives his 7- and 9-year-old children to work with him every day. Florence
also spent several summers teaching art in Calcutta for a charity affiliated
with Mother Teresa’s organization—which he dubbed “art teachers without
borders.”
Florence has now added filmmaker to his repertoire. At a panel discussion
that revolved around a gay artist originally from Zimbabwe who had been
a married Mormon, Florence was inspired by the atmosphere of support,
tolerance, and unconditional love for this man in a room filled with a variety
of people—Mormons, artists, gay activists, art enthusiasts. “Gay rights is one
of the civil-rights issues of our time,” he says. Florence decided this story
would make a compelling documentary, found someone to produce it for
him and will soon be releasing a trailer with the working title Reconciliation:
Art and Belief.
“Swarthmore was a very important catalyst in my way of thinking,”
Florence says. “Again and again, I come back to Quaker roots and the pillars
of community and tolerance. I have a tremendous respect for the Quaker
tradition, and a lot of that has certainly informed where I’m going.”
—Elizabeth Vogdes
63
4/3/12 11:45 aM
in my life
“Lincoln Was
a Hero—and
Robert Pattinson
is Ugly”
In social studies class at Sophia
Academy, Tatiana Cozzarelli ’08
teaches girls from diverse
backgrounds to make connections.
By Tatiana Cozzarelli ’08
Photographs by Scott Kingsley
My seventh-grade students walk into
an unfamiliar school, where we have
been invited to hear visiting author
Julia Alvarez. The girls are highly excited
at the prospect of meeting the famed
science, and social studies (that’s me!).
Dominican-American writer, but it’s the host
Now in my third year at Sophia, I find the
school that quickly draws their attention.
experience exhausting—but immensely
They have never seen anything like it. They
At Sophia Academy we help our
are astounded at how big it is, surprised
rewarding.
Sophia has a strong, intentional focus on
by unexpected amenities—a big cafeteria,
students become confident young
social justice, which makes it a perfect fit
band instruments!—and completely in love
for me. My education classes at Swarthmore
with the library. “I want to go here!” they
women who can think critically and
gave me a deeper understanding of the
whisper not so quietly. We settle in to see
injustice of the American educational system
the presentation by Alvarez. My students
deconstruct the messages society is
and the awareness that teachers could be
are mesmerized. I peek over to my left and
see one, Harielys, the proudest Dominican I
sending them about what it means to social-justice advocates and social-change
agents. Reading Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the
know. She’s trying to be on her best behavior,
Oppressed gave me a clear picture of how the
but, as Alvarez speaks, I see her nodding her
be a young female.
American educational system, historically,
head wildly, giggling to herself, and making
actually ensured that oppressed people
the hand sign we use for “me too!” I am
remained oppressed. Taking education seminars such as Professor of
struck by the unfairness of the educational system but also by how
lucky my students are and how lucky I am to be with them.
Education Lisa Smulyan’s Sociology of Education showed me how
education could be a weapon. My involvement with Intercultural
This visit last school year illustrates one of my strongest feelings
about working with my students—while there are systemic disparities Center groups—Enlace, COLORS (for queer people of color), and
the Swarthmore Queer Union—taught me even more about privilege
in our nation’s educational system, my school seeks to provide
students with as many opportunities as possible. I teach social studies and oppression.
Learning did not stop at the classroom door.
to girls from low-income families at Sophia Academy, a small, private
My Swarthmore experience directly affects my teaching. My
middle school in Providence, R.I. About 60 girls, grades five to eight,
students know that sometimes our “heroes” were not so heroic (like
attend. There is one teacher for each subject—math, language arts,
68
68-69_Cozarelli_3rd_4-2.indd 68
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 12:02 PM
Columbus) and that often people disagree
about what makes a hero (like Lincoln).
In every case, they learn not to trust every
“truth” that society, or even a textbook, tells
them.
I also aim to create a learning community
where students share ideas and learn from
each other as well as from me. I want them
to feel ownership of the information I teach
them and share with others. I want them to
find connections between the historic events
and the world they see today. I ask them to
engage with multiple sources, to decide how
each work is biased, and to use the facts to
assemble a narrative of history with which
they agree.
My students often find this work exciting.
Last week, while on recess duty, I overheard
the following conversation between two
seventh-graders:
Kimani: “Lincoln was NOT a hero!” (at
the top of her lungs)
Alaisja: “YES HE WAS! HE FREED THE
SLAVES!”
Kimani: “HE JUST WANTED TO SAVE
THE UNION! HE DIDN’T CARE ABOUT
SLAVES!”
Alaisja: LINCOLN WAS A HERO . . . and
Robert Pattinson is ugly!
Kimani: (Lets out a yelp and pretends to
faint on the floor.)
For those of you who don’t spend your
time with teenagers, Robert Pattinson plays
the vampire Edward in the Twilight movies.
This recess exchange shows the youthful
enthusiasm with which my students engage
topics, the way their teen minds vacillate
between complex subjects and youthful
crushes. And it shows that they are excited
about what they are learning and able to take
what they learn into a social context.
In addition to shaping good learners,
at Sophia Academy we help our students
become confident young women who can
think critically and deconstruct the messages
society is sending them about what it means
to be a young female. We want our middleschoolers to learn about the pressures placed
on girls in our society, and we want our
students to become allies. Kiara, a seventhgrader, says, “Until I came to Sophia, I always
wanted some Prince Charming to come be
my boyfriend and save me. Now I know that
those are just stories we hear as kids and that
we can save ourselves.”
april 2012
68-69_Cozarelli_3rd_4-2.indd 69
We also strive to make our students
leaders in their communities, capable
of standing up for what they believe
in. Recently, I took two winners of an
essay competition to see the film Miss
Representation at another school. There,
we met several other students who had
accompanied their parents to see the film,
described as “An Inconvenient Truth of
sexism in the media.” My students were
moved to tears by the film and insisted that I
show it to all seventh- and eighth-graders.
Janai, a seventh-grader, wrote: “I wanted
to see the movie to see how women are
portrayed in the media and how that affects
kids like me. ... I also want to share the
message with my little brother. The messages
affect boys too, and so I want to teach my
brother not to see women like that.” Janai,
like many of our students, understands the
importance of the social curriculum she gets
at Sophia Academy and can clearly articulate
how she will spread that message to others.
We measure the progress of our students
by the quality of their ideas, their emerging
reading and writing skills, their ability to
think critically—and yes, by the use of
conventional standardized tests. Although
standardized tests should never be the
sole measure of a student’s progress or
of a school’s achievement, they are one
method of tracking progress. At Sophia, we
have worked to teach students how to take
Tatiana Cozzarelli ’08 brings lessons learned at
Swarthmore into her Sophia Academy classroom.
standardized tests—a skill they will need
to get into college. This year, our eighthgrade class rose to 100-percent proficiency
in reading and 92 percent in writing. The
statewide proficiencies for “economically
disadvantaged students” in Rhode Island
are 64 percent in reading and 48 percent
in writing. It feels good to have such high
numbers in a school that spends relatively
little time on standardized-test drills but
much time on reading and writing.
My work at Sophia Academy is exhausting
but incredibly rewarding. As the only social
studies faculty member, I teach all the classes
in that subject from fifth to eighth grade. I
am able to see my students’ thinking develop,
and I get to help mold them into critical
thinkers. It is beautiful to witness them
becoming thinkers, leaders, and agents for
social change. g
Tatiana Cozzarelli ’08 graduated from
Swarthmore with a special major in sociology
and anthropology & educational studies. From
her women’s studies courses and classes such
as Introduction to Asian American Literature
and Latin American Women’s Testimonial
Literature, she encountered histories and
stories that resonated with her experiences and
those of her peers and friends who come from
diverse backgrounds and walks of life.
69
4/3/12 12:02 PM
q+a
c rea ting
Karlene Burrell-McRae’s voice has a beguiling lilt that reveals her
Jamaican origins, and her clothing displays boldness—in style and hue.
She became the director of the Black Cultural Center and dean of the
junior class in July, after serving as the University of Pennsylvania’s Black
Cultural Center director since 2000. She immersed herself in all things
Swarthmore—quickly booking meetings with 40-some faculty and staff
members. Soon she fielded an offer to head to the Chester County Prison
during the spring semester to co-facilitate a class led by Keith Reeves ’88,
associate professor of political science; and Tom Elverson ’75, counseling
associate in the dean’s office.
She couldn’t refuse: “I see myself as a scholarly practitioner. Theory
informs the practice. The practice informs the theory. I thought, ‘Great,
I get to know students in a different way.’ It was a win-win all the way
around.”
Burrell-McRae is definitely on the fast track—often that means beating
the path between her office in Robinson House, a three-story stone
mansion on the corner of Elm and College streets, which has been the
Black Cultural Center’s home for 42 years, and her office in Parrish Hall.
Though a Philadelphian for the last 18 years, Burrell-McRae spent
her early years in Jamaica. Her family moved to New York when she
was 10 to afford the children better educational opportunities. BurrellMcRae studied anthropology at Colby College, then earned an M.S.W.
and Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She, husband Kamau,
daughter Coltrane Louise, 8, and son Moses Blake, 6, live in Philadelphia.
Burrell-McRae sat down with another newcomer, Sherri Kimmel,
Bulletin editor, in February. They enjoyed a fast-paced talk about diversity,
social justice, the penal system, fashion, art and, oh yeah, the Oscars.
Tell me about the Robinson House.
Originally it was seen as a kind of safe space for black students.
Is that how it’s seen today, or is there a different emphasis?
It will always and should always be a safe space for black students. My
emphasis is on still being able to create a safe space for black students
who feel they need that, without it being exclusive to everybody else.
You have to be able to have balance. It’s part of the Swarthmore tradition,
it’s part of the Swarthmore community, and I think there’s a way to be
able to have both.
What is your vision for the next generation of the BCC?
I started in July, so I’m still giving myself those few more months to talk
with students and alums and staff members to see what it’s been like
and what their vision of the space is as well. Some of it has to include
education. Some of it has to include community service. For example,
I really want to bring faculty members to the house to teach, especially
seminar classes that connect to issues that impact the black community.
For example, Professor [Keith] Reeves [’88] is teaching a class on the
politics of punishment, and there are 15 Swarthmore students who have
been selected—a very diverse group of students—and they’re going
72
72-c3_output1 .indd 72
a L i v e ly , R
into the Chester County Prison to
have a class with 15 inmates. The
majority of those inmates are black
and Latino. Disproportionately,
there are more blacks and Latinos
who are incarcerated. That impacts
the black community. And so a
lot of the students are meeting
at the center for their debriefing
discussions. For some students,
this is their first engagement
with the center—through their
intellectual engagement. We need
to do more of that type of work.
So it sounds like you’re trying to
build a stronger conduit to the
academic program.
Yes. But there will still be
leadership development. It would
be a disservice to not support
black students in their leadership
possibilities. There are four groups
on campus that are open to anyone
interested in the African diaspora,
but the focus is on black student
leadership. The center should
continue to advise those student
groups. It allows them to be more
committed to learning about
themselves and who they are.
That makes them better stewards
and better citizens of Swarthmore
when they leave. I think you have
to do both.
Let’s talk a little bit about diversity more broadly. We often think of
racial diversity first, and currently, 38 percent of the student body here
comprises students of color, including international students, and 9
percent are black. What are some of the other kinds of diversity that are
important here at Swarthmore?
I think there are many. Class is big, and I think people don’t want to talk
about that. I think learning differences is another big issue. Of course,
there is the issue of ethnicity. Yes, I’m black, but I’m Jamaican, right? And
that plays out differently in terms of how I see the world than someone
who was born and raised here their entire life. I think we tend to lump
race and ethnicity. Sexual orientation and identity are significant. We
need to think more about transgender folks, transsexuals. That’s an
important part of the fabric of Swarthmore. Athletes versus those who
swarthmore college bulletin
4/3/12 12:21 PM
, R e lev ant Sp a ce
have a few pieces by a Haitian artist. I also have
masks and bowls and things from all around the
world when I had a chance to travel. We collect
it because it’s a reflection of who we are, of our
history and our culture. And I want our children
to be affirmed by that—before they leave the
house and when they come home from a hard
day—what it means to be black.
You must feel very much at home in the Black
Cultural Center since there’s some nice African
art in there. There’s a lot of beautiful art. The
last director [Timothy Sams] did an amazing job
making sure that that was reflected in the space.
Are you hoping to increase that?
There might be interesting ways to do that over
time. Some of our student artists may want to
create something for the center. Can we use
that space to showcase students’ artwork? The
idea is to really ensure that the BCC is a livable,
vibrant, and relevant space.
Ken Yano via k
I’m going to veer slightly off, more on an art/
entertainment angle. The Oscars are coming up
this weekend, and one of the nominated films is
The Help. What did you think of it?
I’m reminded of the resilience of black women,
of how we often don’t get credit for helping to
sustain our families and cleaning our houses
and trying to raise decent human beings, and
we’re still figuring out how to battle other
people’s perception of us—as loud and bossy.
All of this sort of negativity. That it took a white
woman to tell that story for people to be OK
Since arriving on campus in July, Karlene Burrell-McRae, shown here in her office at Robinson House,
with it, I struggle with that. Sometimes for us to
has immersed herself in the Swarthmore community
have validation, it has to come from someone
who doesn’t look like us, doesn’t sound like us but who can empathize.
aren’t is a big deal. When we think about programming, do we think
Will some of the revenue earned from this blockbuster be used to help
about our athletes? How does that impact them when we always plan
folks in the black community?
events between 3 and 6 p.m.? And don’t forget about gender. Women
still make a lot less than men, right? But we don’t talk about that either.
So you’d like to see some social justice result from the great outcome
How does that impact us in the short term? How does it impact us in the
they’ve had with this film.
long term in terms of retirement and pension plans? All of that has to be
Yes, I would.
included when we think about issues of diversity.
Did I hear you say something earlier about African art? Actually, my
husband and I collect art. We collect mostly paintings. I think we are up
to about 65 or 70 pieces of art, mostly by black American artists, and we
Anything else you want to say?
No, just that I love life, and I love being in the present,
and I love people. g
april 2012
72-c3_output1 .indd 73
4/3/12 12:21 PM
ALUMNI WEEKEND 2012
JUNE 1–3
Revisit your favorite campus beauty spots,
and revel in the nostalgia—the scent of
the Rose Garden, the magnificence of the
amphitheater, the shady green of Crum
Woods, the excitement of the playing fields.
Wonder at the changes to the campus you
knew in the past. Reconnect with classmates
and old friends while making new ones.
Enjoy the all-alumni reception and dinner on
Friday evening, and pick up some fascinating
facts during the faculty lectures to follow.
Participate in a conversation with President
Rebecca Chopp before joining the Parade
of Classes on Saturday morning. Celebrate
class successes at Alumni Collection. Sing or
listen to Handel’s Messiah or attend a panel
discussion to work up an appetite for your
class dinner.
Classes ending in “2” or “7” and all Garnet
Sages are celebrating reunions, but the entire
alumni community is welcome to join in.
For more information and to register online,
go to http://bit.ly/alumniweekend2012.
c4-c1_covers_2nd_3-29.indd 4
4/3/12 7:43 AM
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2012-04-01
The Swarthmore College Bulletin is the official alumni magazine of the college. It evolved from the Garnet Letter, a newsletter published by the Alumni Association beginning in 1935. After World War II, college staff assumed responsibility for the periodical, and in 1952 it was renamed the Swarthmore College Bulletin. (The renaming apparently had more to do with postal regulations than an editorial decision. Since 1902, the College had been calling all of its mailed periodicals the Swarthmore College Bulletin, with each volume spanning an academic year and typically including a course catalog issue and an annual report issue, with a varying number of other special issues.)
The first editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin alumni issue was Kathryn “Kay” Bassett ’35. After a few years, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 was appointed editor and held the position for 36 years, during which she reshaped the mission of the magazine from focusing narrowly on Swarthmore College to reporting broadly on the college's impact on the world at large. Gillespie currently appears on the masthead as Editor Emerita.
Today, the quarterly Swarthmore College Bulletin is an award-winning alumni magazine sent to all alumni, parents, faculty, staff, friends of the College, and members of the senior class. This searchable collection spans every issue from 1935 to the present.
Swarthmore College
2012-04-01
51 pages
reformatted digital
The class notes section of The Bulletin has been extracted in this collection to protect the privacy of alumni. To view the complete version of The Bulletin, contact Friends Historical Library.