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SPRING 2016
MR. MATH
Periodical Postage
PAID
Philadelphia, PA
and Additional
Mailing Offices
p34
AVIAN INSPIRATION
p38
SMART SUITCASE
p67
ISSUE
II1
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
VOLUME
CXIII
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
THE BEST SEAT
IN THE HOUSE
AWAITS
GREEN QUEEN
The Conjurer
of Compost
p20
SPRING 2016
IN LOVE
WITH
OCTOPI
ALUMNI WEEKEND JUNE 3–5
swarthmore.edu/alumniweekend
LAURENCE KESTERSON
p30
in this issue
34
HEY, KIDS!
Absolute Value
Don’t let math get
your goat—love its
beauty thanks to
Dan Finkel ’02’s
company.
ASHWIN RAO ’99
by Michael Agresta
MOMENT IN TIME
Arboretum staff painted this
dead weeping hemlock purple as
a reminder of the natural world’s
beauty—and fragility.
20
24
30
FEATURES
The Conjurer of
Compost
Rebecca Louie ’99
empowers the eco-curious.
by Carrie Compton
Our Moment Is Now
Swarthmore’s Office of
Sustainability is ready
to go.
by Jonathan Riggs
The Fates of Our
Fathoms
Swarthmoreans’ love of
the sea translates into
activism.
by Ester Bloom ’04
2
DIALOGUE
Editor’s Column
Letters
Community Voices
Karin Colby
Rewind
Laurie Sorgen ’89
Books
Global Thinking
Helen Fox ’94
9
COMMON GOOD
Swarthmore Stories
Learning Curve
Gareth Jenkins ’66
Liberal Arts Lives
Urooj Khan ’10
Ethan Borg ’94
43
CLASS NOTES
Alumni News and
Events
72
SPOKEN WORD
Josh Coceano
WEB
EXCLUSIVES
BULLETIN.SWARTHMORE.EDU
FLIGHTS OF FANCY
Enjoy galleries of Sayed Malawi
’18’s bird photography and
bird-inspired Swarthmore
student publications.
TWINKLE, TWINKLE LITTLE STAR
Katia Lom ’06 speaks about her
lyrical Web short where opera
meets animation.
ACTION FIGURES
Horticultural superhero Josh
Coceano on growing campus’s
most creative Instagram account.
THE MUSIC PLAYS ON
Arthur Bryant ’76 shares the
novels, poetry, and music that
remind him of his late wife, Nancy
Johnson, and her writing.
WEAVE ONLY JUST BEGUN
Former College President David
Fraser discusses the intersection
of weaving and science.
SWARTHMORE
TO SILICON VALLEY
Read the techie takeaways from
students and alumni after a San
Francisco trek.
Profiles
Hanna Rosenblatt Alger ’56
Brian Chen ’07
ON THE COVER
Photo of Rebecca Louie ’99
by Laurence Kesterson
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
1
dialogue
EDITOR’S COLUMN
WHEN THAT APRIL
WITH HIS SHOWERS SWEET
LAURENCE KESTERSON
I’VE BEEN TOLD that the beauty of spring at
Swarthmore is unforgettably inspiring. Since
this will be my first, I’m ready to ooh and aah.
(And achoo.)
But even now, with winter still holding on, I
see ample inspiration on campus. Outside my
window, countless tiny crocuses are pushing
their purple noses up through frozen soil, bringing color and courage to a still-too-cold world.
In all the best ways, the Swarthmoreans in
these pages—composters and crusaders, dreamers and deep-sea divers—remind me of these
remarkable flowers who, no matter what, are
brave enough to break new ground and bloom.
by
Editor
Managing Editor and
Class Notes Editor
Carrie Compton
Designer
Phillip Stern ’84
Photographer
Laurence Kesterson
Editorial Assistants
Aaron Jackson ’16
Aziz Anderson ’17
Administrative/Editorial Assistant
Michelle Crumsho
Editor Emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
JOSH COCEANO
We welcome letters on subjects covered
in the magazine. We reserve the right to
edit letters for length, clarity, and style.
Views expressed in this magazine do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of the
editors or the official views or policies of
the College.
Send letters and story ideas to
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Send address changes to
records@swarthmore.edu
CBD MIA?
Welcome, Jonathan, to your new job as
editor of the Bulletin.
I see not a word about your immediate predecessor, Carol Brévart-Demm,
in your first issue. Carol was a mainstay
of the Bulletin for many years, and in my
opinion, one of its greatest strengths.
—STEPHAN HORNBERGER P’97,
Philadelphia, Pa. and Cusco, Peru
JR responds: Thanks for your letter,
Stephan. We couldn’t agree more about
the wonderful, one-of-a-kind Carol.
Over her 21 years of writing for the
Bulletin, she dazzled readers with her
beautiful, award-winning pieces, and
colleagues and friends with her
unrivaled warmth and generosity.
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
Editor
Jonathan Riggs
Website: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Telephone: 610-328-8435
Facebook: www.facebook.com/
SwarthmoreBulletin
JONATHAN
RIGGS
2
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
SPRING 2016
Although she retired in September
before I came aboard, Carol made a big
impression on me, both from reading her
work as well as meeting her in person.
After my arrival at Swarthmore, I made it
a point to seek out Carol’s wisdom and am
proud to now call her a friend. I’m even
prouder that she will return to these
pages as a freelance writer every issue,
starting with her piece on Michaela
Shuchman ’16 (pg. 15).
I know that I am speaking on behalf of our
entire community when I say how grateful
we are to Carol for everything she’s brought
—and will bring, going forward—to the
Bulletin, Swarthmore, and our lives.
+ READ Carrie Compton’s tribute to Carol:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume
CXIII, number II, is published in October,
January, April, and July by Swarthmore
College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore,
PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage
paid at Philadelphia, PA and additional
mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620.
Postmaster: Send address changes to
Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College
Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390.
Printed with agri-based inks.
Please recycle after reading.
©2016 Swarthmore College.
Printed in USA.
Misplaced Admiration
LETTERS
A CHAIN OF
CREATIVITY
Carrying On
Thank you for the charming
sketch of Alan Gordon ’81
(winter 2016, “Jack-of-SomeTrades”). I didn’t know him at
Swarthmore, but I did know
Professor Susan Snyder and
I am delighted that he credits
her as an inspiration. She was
just that: erudite, witty,
imaginative—it is no surprise
that Professor Snyder helped
detonate his explosion of
creative activity. I’m sure
other alumni can supply similar testimonials. My own? A
lifelong love of Spenser’s
Faerie Queene, whose beauty
and side-splitting comedy she
brilliantly exhibited to the
students in her Renaissance
Epic seminar. Experiences like
that are the enduring benefit
of a Swarthmore education.
—ANTHONY
DANGERFIELD ’78,
Medford, Mass.
Lynne Steuerle Schofield ’99’s
essay, “Grief and Gratitude,”
touched me deeply with its
fearless self-examination. If my
husband had not died in 2011,
just shy of our 30th anniversary, I would never have worked
in the Congo twice with Doctors
Without Borders, my son would
not have matured as he has, and
I would not have the delight of
sharing my home with my daughter, son-in-law, and new granddaughter. I miss my husband
always, sometimes with a vague
ache, sometimes a sharp pang. As
many bereaved whom I know
personally and professionally, I
live with sadness enveloped in a
sense of great good fortune.
—BERTHA FUCHSMANSMALL ’72, Sainte-Anne-deBellevue, Quebec, Canada
Repellent Rosenberg Read
I write to protest the Bulletin’s dereliction of journalistic duty
in publishing Carrie Compton’s “Correcting the Record”
(winter 2016). I can understand why Michael Meeropol ’64
continues to minimize the guilt of his parents. But the Bulletin
has some duty to the truth: Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
were traitors in the service of one of the most evil regimes that
has ever disgraced human history.
At a minimum, any piece on the Rosenbergs should at least
mention the extensive work by Ronald Radosh, authoritative among case experts, in which he argues both that Ethel
Rosenberg was guilty of treason and that she should not have
been executed.
Compton’s stenography of the Meeropols’ whitewash
disgraces journalism, the Bulletin, and Swarthmore College
and grossly misinforms alumni credulous enough to take her
account for an approximation of the truth. I hope the Bulletin
will make some substantial acknowledgment of its failure to
meet minimum standards of journalism in a subsequent issue.
—DAVID RANDALL ’93, Brooklyn, N.Y.
WHAT’S
COOKING?
Reading Dominic Tierney’s essay, “War and the Liberal Arts,”
(fall 2015) I appreciated his description of the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq as erroneous. However, it was not “driven by a
mistaken view of the Iraqi threat” as he claims. Since 2003,
multiple former U.S. intelligence officials have revealed that
members of the Bush administration made false claims of Iraqi
WMDs and ties to al-Qaeda to garner support for attacking Iraq.
Referencing Gen. David Petraeus, Tierney asserts, “The
‘surge’ strategy that helped Iraq … in 2007 emphasized cultural awareness and winning Iraqi hearts and minds.” But the
welfare of Iraqi society deteriorated during the surge. Through
2007, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled—the “fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world” per
Refugee International. Potable water and electricity access
remained below preinvasion levels, and millions of Iraqis were
in need of emergency assistance (per Oxfam International).
The ongoing crisis in Iraq is rooted in our illegal war of
aggression and military occupation. With over 1 million dead
(American and Iraqi) and millions more suffering from physical
wounds, PTSD, displacement, food/water insecurity, and ongoing bombing, admiration for U.S. policy in Iraq is misplaced.
—DAHLIA WASFI ’93, Dover, Del.
DT responds: “The war was certainly driven by a mistaken
view of the Iraqi threat. Bush became a convert to regime
change after 9/11, when he concluded that Saddam, armed with
WMDs, might ally with terrorists—which we now know is wildly erroneous. While the Iraq War was the greatest mistake in
U.S. foreign policy since Vietnam, the surge in 2007, along
with outreach to Sunni insurgents, led to a significant reduction of violence—between 2007-08, Iraqi civilian deaths fell
about 90 percent. Iraq remained an extremely vulnerable, divided, and unstable society, but it would have been in an even
worse state without the surge.”
BEAUTIFUL NIGHTMARES
In “Swarthmore in a Box” (fall 2015) Matt Zencey ’79
described a recurring dream of a return to Swarthmore, in
which he is “always running hard to keep up academically.” I
was surprised and pleased to learn that I am not the only one.
Almost nightly I find myself back on campus. What is it
about our time there that, even decades and (one hopes) many other successes later, we still feel the unique Swarthmore
pressure to perform?
—SARA DZIKIEWICZ HEARD ’87, Brooklyn, N.Y.
BAT-TASTIC BEGINNING
As a career higher-ed communicator and magazine editor,
welcome, Jonathan. Telling the stories of colleges like Swarthmore
is a privilege and a delight. I love the new design, and the winter
2016 cover is simply gorgeous. Opening the book was irresistible!
—MEG KIMMEL P’98 and S’56, Davidson, N.C.
+ WRITE TO US: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
For our summer issue, the Bulletin is collecting favorite recipes—and related Swarthmore stories—from students,
faculty, staff, alumni, and friends. Whether your culinary skills are lackluster or legendary, we want to hear from you!
Email your favorite recipe and why it’s meaningful to Michelle Crumsho at mcrumsh1@swarthmore.edu by June 15.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
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dialogue
COMMUNITY VOICES
PETER ARKLE
THE LIFE AQUATIC
Keeping your head above water, in and out of the pool
S
TAYING AFLOAT is
that’s all it takes to determine success
one of life’s greatest
or failure, elation or despair.
challenges. Taken
Swimmers know this and ignore it
literally or metaphorat their own peril: Every lackadaisiically, I’ve found the
cal finish to the wall in practice, every
solution: swimming.
breath before a turn that reduces
I learned to swim before I could walk
momentum into the wall, every
and spent every summer at our neighskipped lap can mean the difference
borhood pool with family and friends,
between winning and losing. For proof,
proudly living in my chlorine-decilook no further than the greatest swimmated swimsuit. When I
mer of all time at the 2008
fixed my sights on making
Olympics. Michael Phelps
my high school’s prestikept his eight-gold-medal
by
gious swim team, I comdream alive when he won
mitted to year-round
the 100-meter buttertraining. And when the
fly by one-hundredth of a
time came to look for
second.
colleges, I searched for
Swimming is a painsan environment where
taking art that requires
I would be challenged academically,
patience and faith. As a swimmer, you
physically, and emotionally.
will spend most of your season swimThrough it all, swimming has taught
ming more slowly than you did at the
me not just how to stay afloat, but how
end of the year before, anticipating the
to charge forward.
glorious taper at the end of the season
That’s what I tell my swimmers
when you have your chance to achieve
here: To succeed in or out of the pool,
peak performance. The rest of the year
you must be dedicated and relentis spent grinding through training
less. Competitive swimmers battle
meant to build strength, perfect
unforgiving water, the clock, and one
technique, and train the heart, lungs,
another. It can be tedious, too: Many
and muscles to most efficiently process
swimmers spend the equivalent of a
fuel and oxygen.
full day each week staring at the
This means months of excruciating
bottom of the pool, working to shave
hard work with an unpredictable payoff fractions of seconds. Sometimes
off. Not everyone is up to the challenge;
KARIN COLBY
Coach
“Swimming is the best teacher, even
if you don’t spend your winters
smelling of chlorine.”
4
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
it takes a special type of discipline to
stay motivated. A person like that is
unique, if not a bit crazy. A person like
that is better positioned to set high
goals and achieve great things in the
water as well as on land. A person like
that is a swimmer, and, I’ve come to
realize, a Swattie.
Students attend Swarthmore with
the desire to be challenged, to learn
to think critically, and to expand
their perspectives and abilities. The
College’s mandatory swimming test is
one piece of this growth that helps students find and improve a strength many
didn’t know they had. Through physical
education classes, students step away
from a desk and challenge their bodies
to learn unfamiliar movements. To find
the strength and patience to swim, to
find comfort amid the chaos of water, is
an empowering accomplishment.
I’ve found that swimming is the
best teacher, even if you—unlike my
teams and me—don’t spend your winters smelling of chlorine. Whether it’s
learning to swim, just enjoying a dip,
or training with an adult masters team,
there are endless lessons to learn when
it’s just you versus the water.
By stripping down to your purest
self, swimming requires a delicate
balance of strength and relaxation, of
frustration and comfort, of determination and patience, of working against
and in harmony with your environment to find the perfect buoyancy.
Just like Swarthmore.
Just like life.
KARIN COLBY teaches physical education and is the aquatics director and
head coach of Swarthmore’s men’s and
women’s swimming teams.
WINGS OF LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY
REWIND: FOUND IN TRANSLATION
Swarthmore’s mission is true in any language
WHEN I LOOK BACK at
Swarthmore, and my double
majors in German and English literature, I see that it shaped my life in
ways my 18-year-old self could never
have foreseen.
I applied to Swarthmore while
in Germany as an
exchange student my
by
senior year of high
school. Becoming bilingual in the language had
’89
been a goal since my
adolescence. Although
my oral fluency flourished during that
year, I still had a lot to learn academically in terms of reading and writing
German.
The Swarthmore German program’s
literature-based curriculum allowed
me to truly engage with the language.
Without formally studying it, I grasped
complex German vocabulary, syntax,
and grammar. Likewise, courses in
the Swarthmore English department
inspired my love of Geoffrey Chaucer
and my awareness that words in any
language, well-crafted, offer the writer
power over their world.
Upon graduation, I left for Japan
to explore its language and culture. I
wanted to immerse myself in a language with little shared
linguistic heritage. I
returned four years
later, humbled and
happy.
Knowing that I
wanted to support
language development, I set my sights
on a master’s in teaching English to
speakers of other languages. For a few
years, I taught English as a second language (ESL) in New York and then in
Mexico.
Fatefully, a German position at
a local high school opened up and I
jumped into it without requiring
further training in the language, even
though I had not used my German
LAURIE SORGEN
professionally for almost 10 years.
The rigor and high expectations at
Swarthmore informed my teaching
philosophy and fueled my passion. My
students’ joy at discovering German
language and culture—as I had so many
years before—touched me deeply.
When they met with success on the
German Advanced Placement exam,
I shared their elation.
In 2009, my school district offered
me an opportunity to teach ESL. I
reconnected with my Mexican experience by studying Spanish formally at
various colleges and in Spain one summer. Completing the course sequence
for Spanish certification felt easy. I
realized my Swarthmore education
had achieved its mission—I had truly
learned how to learn.
Today, I use my knowledge of
languages to reach my Spanishspeaking immigrant students. Many
lack literacy skills and, subsequently,
struggle. It is my mission to nurture
their linguistic development, using
Spanish and English, so that they may
live their dreams.
I want them to realize what several
studies support: Multilingualism
provides many intellectual, cultural,
and cognitive advantages.
In fact, it’s given my life meaning
and substance in countless ways.
Although I don’t currently use my
German or Japanese professionally,
for example, my underlying proficiency
still connects me to the greater world.
It’s a perspective I wish more
people could experience, especially
when so many feel that language and
cultural differences separate us. It
reminds me of the biblical story of the
Tower of Babel, where God creates a
variety of languages so that it is no
longer possible for human beings
to communicate in one tongue.
Punishment is one way to read that
story; opportunity is another.
I’m glad that we speak different
languages. For when you are able to
understand one other than your own,
you realize how much human beings
have in common. Yes, it can be a challenge to learn another language, but
the effort and accomplishment help
you develop something even more
precious: empathy.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
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dialogue
BOOK REVIEW
WINDOWS 95
FOREVER
by Pam Harris and Kate Carter
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE:
populated by the brilliant, competitive,
and eccentric. The quiet of the library
is disrupted by a lively discussion.
Pam Harris, librarian: Did you know
that The Rolling Stones extorted millions of dollars from Bill Gates to market Windows 95?
Kate Carter, librarian: What?!
Keith Richards, rock star: Mick
hated the idea. But I had lost a lot of
money in the collectibles market.
Beanie Babies. They’re my heroin.
Pam: And that focus groups helped
shape Windows 95?
Gail Kelly, engineer: We’d ask
people to think out loud while they used
the prototype. People would say things
like, “This engineer is very attractive.
Hello, Nurse!” And then we’d tell them
to stop thinking out loud.
Pam: Or that Matthew Perry and
Jennifer Aniston from Friends starred
in the instructional VHS cassette?
Wayne Riley, videographer:
Microsoft originally suggested we use
Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt from Mad
About You, but Helen Hunt had an
existing relationship with Linux.
Kate: Where are you getting this?
Pam: Restart Me Up: The
Unauthorized, Un-Accurate Oral
History of Windows 95 (Devastator
Press) by Lesley Tsina ’96. Clearly, she
put her Swarthmore degree in theater
to good use. It reads like a movie script,
but with jokes about X-Files fan fiction
and Comic Sans.
Kate: You had me at Mulder and
Scully.
PAM HARRIS and KATE CARTER
work in McCabe Library.
HOT TYPE: NEW BOOKS BY SWARTHMORE GRADUATES
John Brady Kiesling ’79
Greek Urban Warriors
Lycabettus Press
6
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
Fluent in ancient and
modern Greek and trained
as an archaeologist and
historian, Kiesling made
headlines in 2003 when he
resigned his diplomatic post
to protest the U.S. invasion
of Iraq. Rebutting a deeply
flawed official investigation,
the Athens-based scholar
untangles the history of
notorious far-left Greek
terror organizations 17N
and ELA. The book’s chilling
dedication—“to the innocent
dead”—is a stark reminder of
the cost of terrorism.
Heather Rigney
Shumaker ’91
It’s OK to Go Up the Slide
Tarcher Perigee Paperback
Sharing her “renegade rules
for raising confident and
creative kids,” Shumaker is
the best kind of parenting
ally: wise, wry, and unfailingly kind. She seeks to
empower parents to question what’s truly best for
their kids, whether it’s
banning homework or
skipping kindergarten. “This
book is intended as a bridge
between child development
research and actions in everyday life,” she writes. “As
we leap forward with new
knowledge about children,
we need to stay open to new
ideas and be flexible.”
PUBLISHER Q&A
THE MUSIC PLAYS ON: ARTHUR BRYANT ’76
In 2002, a car accident nearly killed Arthur Bryant ’76, wife
Nancy Johnson, and son Wally. They spent the next four
years navigating precarious, against-all-odds physical and
emotional recoveries. A former journalist turned acclaimed
poet, Johnson penned a brutal, beautiful memoir of that
difficult time, The Rubber Orchestra, before dying of ovarian cancer in 2012. To honor his remarkable wife and her
remarkable talent, Bryant published her book last year.
Why did you need to publish this book?
Because Nancy knew she needed to write it.
She started working on it shortly after the
crash and spent her last years finishing it.
Literary agents told me it was wonderfully, powerfully written, but that no company would publish a memoir by someone who
wasn’t already famous, unless they were
available to sell it. Nancy, of course, wasn’t.
KATHY HESTER
Did the book surprise you and your son?
I had (and have) no memory of the crash or
the six months after. So while I had heard
stories, many details in that time period were
new to me. In addition, Nancy was a very private person. The first time I learned several of
Thomas Laqueur ’67
The Work of the Dead
Princeton University Press
Poetically, powerfully
sweeping across human
history, Laqueur explores
what the rituals of caring for
the departed reveal about
the living. Their story is
ours; their absence shapes
art and architecture, communities and civilizations.
In every era and every culture, Laqueur finds the dead
body imbued with meaning.
“This thing—this inanimate
thing—that is always more
than a thing, has been the
stuff of our imaginations
since the beginning,” he
writes. “We need it. It does
massive work for the living.”
her intimate thoughts and feelings was when
I read them. For Wally, the book was a real
eye-opener: He was 7 when the crash took
place and 17 when the book was finished.
How can readers honor Nancy’s memory?
Spread the word about The Rubber Orchestra and share it with others. Buy her
award-winning poetry book, Zoo & Cathedral. Contribute to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Wally, who Nancy loved totally, was
born with cystic fibrosis.
What have you learned from this experience?
Loving people, enjoying life, and trying to
make the world better and fairer are what
really count. Your control is limited and, no
matter what you do, you never know what
cards you are going to be dealt. When you’re
dealt bad cards, love, help, and the willingness to fight are essential. Never give up.
And, if you can, keep smiling.
+ VIEW Arthur Bryant ’76’s book selec-
tions that share the spirit of The Rubber
Orchestra and its author, Nancy Johnson:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
Sasha Issenberg ’02
Outpatients
Columbia Global Reports
Whether it’s Hungary for
dentistry or South Korea for
an organ transplant, increasingly, “patients with passports” book cheaper prices
and shorter waits outside
of their homelands. Medical tourism is big business,
Issenberg finds, but at what
cost? “At its best, medical
tourism is a form of wealth
transfer that could help to
subsidize the most costly
aspects of maintaining a
modern health-care system,”
he writes. “At its worst, medical tourism does not create
new inequalities as much as
magnify existing ones.”
SPRING
SPRING 2016
2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
7
dialogue
GLOBAL THINKING
SEA QUEST
Helen Fox ’94 seeks to save the world’s coral reefs
by Michael Agresta
LOOKING BACK, Helen Fox ’94
admits she was probably destined to
become a marine biologist. An early
swimmer, Fox grew up influenced by
her mother’s longstanding amateur
interest in ocean life—as well as by the
obstacles that had stood in her way.
“My mother’s college adviser basically told her that she could either
get married or pursue her interest in
marine biology,” Fox says. Although
her mother chose family life over a
scientific career, she encouraged her
daughter to explore all her options.
Taking this advice to heart, Fox arrived
at Swarthmore in 1990, enrolling in
so many introductory classes that she
joked about majoring in Intro.
Sophomore year, Professor Rachel
Merz took two vanloads of students,
Fox included, to visit marine labs
in the coastal Carolinas. Soon after,
Fox declared her major in biology.
This led her to further research in
New Mexico, Cape Cod, Mass., and,
before long, Australia on a Fulbright to
research coral reefs with University of
Queensland professors.
By that point, Fox was already
well-acquainted with coral reefs.
During a gap year between high school
and Swarthmore, she had traveled
with her family to Australia, where she
audited courses with the professors
who would later become her Fulbright
advisers. She even waitressed on
Australia’s Heron Island and became
scuba-certified there, in the heart of
coral-reef-diving country.
“Coral reefs are often called the
rainforests of the sea,” Fox says, due
to their vast biodiversity. “They are
beautiful, spectacular places.”
Vibrant and vital, coral reefs support
an estimated 25 percent of all marine
life, including more than 4,000 species of fish. About 500 million people
8
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
depend on them for food, coastal
protection, building materials, and
tourism revenue, according to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
These days, unsustainable fishing
practices, pollution, and global warming
threaten the world’s coral reefs, so Fox
has devoted her career to addressing
these problems. For her doctoral work,
the target of her interventions was the
illegal but still prevalent practice of
fishing with underwater explosives.
“It’s an effective way of killing a lot
of fish quickly,” Fox says, “but terrible
for coral reefs—it turns these beautiful three-dimensional, life-sustaining
structures into moonscapes of rubble
fields.”
Fox worked as the director of marine
science for the World Wildlife Fund
for more than a decade and then as
the senior director of research and
monitoring at Rare, an international
conservation nonprofit that uses the
tools of social marketing to influence
human behavior.
In addition to saving coral reefs, Fox
is proving her mother’s college adviser
wrong—demonstrating that in today’s
world, regardless of gender, a marine
biologist can balance research with
raising a family. She’s now preparing
HELEN FOX ’94
Scientist
to take her version of a sabbatical to
spend time with her children, 9 and 13.
This February, she left Rare to run a
small conservation consultancy working with several nongovernmental
organizations.
In her new role, Fox will continue to
bring scientific principles to bear on
the complex work of understanding the
impacts of community-based conservation through monitoring, evaluation,
and learning.
“In general, rigorous evaluation of
the social and ecological impacts of
conservation interventions isn’t really
done,” she says. “We’re trying to help
the conservation sector become more
evidence-based.”
“[Fishing with explosives] is
terrible for coral reefs— it turns
beautiful, life-sustaining structures
into moonscapes of rubble fields.”
common good
SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE
ON
THE
WEB
HONORARY DEGREES
This year’s recipients:
cultural historian Leo
Braudy ’63, ecosystem
ecologist F. Stuart
“Terry” Chapin III ’66,
and advocate for deaf
communities Carol
Padden.
+ APPLAUD
bit.ly/SwatHonDegrees16
THE FARTHEST FIELD
In a nonfiction epic,
journalist Raghu Karnad
’05 narrates a war
through the lives and
deaths of a single family
—his own.
+ LISTEN
TEACHING THE
TEACHERS
Professors Betsy Bolton
and Kenneth Sharpe
reflect on how teaching requires lifelong
learning.
+ EDUCATE
bit.ly/SwatProfsTeaching
PIONEERING WOMEN
From Lucretia Mott to
Kathryn Morgan, learn
about some of the dedicated women who have
influenced Swarthmore
through the years.
+ INSPIRE
bit.ly/SwatWomen
JJ HARRIS
bit.ly/Karnad
THINK DIFFERENT
From Swat to
Silicon Valley
Alumni advise students on
how to break into tech
by Ryan Dougherty
GUIDED BY ALUMNI HOSTS in January,
11 students saw behind the scenes of Silicon
Valley giants like Google and Apple to crack the
code on a life in tech. Swarthmore’s Center for
Innovation and Leadership sponsored this week
of experiential learning through the generous
financial support of two alumni. Students visited
six companies and bonded with dozens of alumni,
learning firsthand about the intersection of tech
and the liberal arts.
+ READ THEIR TAKEAWAYS: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
9
common good
LIVING BLACK
HISTORY
“College girls like unusual socks,” Life reported.
SOCK IT TO US
“No one in America is more responsible for setting styles
at sporty summer resorts than the Eastern College girl,”
proclaimed the “Girls’ New Fads” cover feature for the
June 26, 1939, issue of Life magazine.
“My involvement in this journalistic endeavor was to
wear my plaid-laced ‘shag’ socks,” remembers Jacqui
Quadow Russler ’42. “Alas, the shoot conflicted with an
exam, so my socks were commandeered by another coed.”
Although it took Russler, who passed away in December,
nearly 77 years to track down a copy of the feature—“the
whole thing slipped my mind”—she was delighted to see
her fashion statement immortalized.
—JONATHAN RIGGS
AN AWARDWORTHY
LEGACY
The late electrical engineering professor Carl
Barus taught at Swarthmore from 1952 to 1985.
He was always special to
his students, whom he
and wife Bunty were fond
of entertaining at their
home.
In 1978, the Institute of
Electrical and Electronic
10
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
Engineers created The Carl
Barus Award for Outstanding Service in the Public Interest. According to
the website, it’s “conferred
upon engineers or other
technical professionals in
recognition of courageous
actions to protect the
public health, safety, or
welfare, despite risk to
their professional career”—a fitting tribute to
this kind, wise man.
—BILL BELANGER ’66
SPRING 2016
IN THE FOYER of McCabe Library, there is a wooden bench
from Longwood Progressive Friends Meetinghouse.
Longwood’s annual meeting, held from 1853 to 1940, offered
the chance to discuss a broad range of reforms. Perhaps
seated in this very bench, Sojourner Truth often attended
the organizational meeting, famously advocating for peace:
“You can’t make life, so don’t take it.”
The last clerk of Longwood was Jesse Holmes, a
Swarthmore College professor—the sale of the Longwood
meetinghouse funded a lectureship in his name at Howard
University.
Next, there is the Elizabeth Powell Bond Rose Garden.
Her brother was Aaron M. Powell, the last editor of the
National Anti-Slavery Standard. He began speaking out
against slavery after attending a meeting where Sojourner
Truth walked down from the podium, pointed directly at
him, and told him to become an anti-slavery lecturer.
A little farther up the hill is Swarthmore Friends
Meetinghouse, the site of the Swarthmore College Institute
of Race Relations. The roster of lecturers at the first two
meetings in 1933 and 1934 included African-Americans
E. Franklin Frazier, W. W. Alexander, William White,
Ralph Bunch, and James Weldon Johnson; white lecturers
included Franz Boas and Melville Herskowitz.
Next time you are in McCabe Library, crossing the Rose
Garden or at a Collection in the Friends Meetinghouse,
remember you are in a living black-history exhibit.
Remember also that you are part of that history.
—CHRISTOPHER DENSMORE
“Next time you are
[on campus] remember
you are in a living blackhistory exhibit. Remember
also that you are part of
that history. ”
—Christopher Densmore
Curator, Friends Historical Library
1
2
PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
UNBEWEAVABLE
Woven Enchantment
F
ORTY YEARS AGO, David
Fraser was enchanted by wefttwined Bedouin textiles found
in Cairo bazaars. Fraser, an
internationally recognized epidemiologist and Swarthmore
president from 1982 to 1991, subsequently mastered the weaving technique, the world’s oldest,
and wrote the definitive book on the subject.
Since 2000, Fraser and his attorney-wife,
Barbara, have studied and collected rare
antique textiles in the mountainous Southeast
Asian settlements of the Zo tribal peoples (also
known as Chin), which comprise about 50
related linguistic groups. As the only recent
Zo collectors known to have worked in the
field, the Frasers have slept on mats, eaten
ceremonial mithan (a domesticated ox), and
gotten stranded crossing rivers. The research
culminated in their award-winning 2005 book,
Mantles of Merit: Chin Textiles from Myanmar,
India and Bangladesh.
Last winter, the Frasers acted as curatorial
consultants for a Philadelphia Museum of Art
exhibit, which relied heavily on their own collection. Art of the Zo: Textiles from Myanmar,
India and Bangladesh featured everyday and
ceremonial pieces, including colorful wedding blankets, loincloths, skirts, mantles, and
shrouds reflecting the cultural traditions and
artistic skill of these groups. A sample work in
progress was displayed on a backstrap loom, on
loan from Fraser, built by a Zo man.
The Frasers plan at least one more collecting trip, this time to the home village of their
Yangon, Myanmar-based dealer. Why their
shared passion for learning about Zo
textiles? “We have no business doing this
except that we’re liberally educated,” Fraser
says with a smile.
— ELIZABETH VOGDES
1. This weaving is
practiced only by women
and is considered the
highest form of art in the
culture. The cotton and
silk warp-faced plain
weave woman’s breast
cloth (akhen), 1920-50,
pictured here was made
by an unknown member
of the Chin, Khami, or
Mro people.
2. “These extraordinary
textiles offer us rare and
exceptional beauty. As
records of the artistic
traditions that illuminate
Zo values, they also are
highly valuable in
preserving a living
culture,” say Barbara
and David Fraser.
+ UNRAVEL David Fraser’s own fabric sculpture:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
11
common good
Dead Authors’
Society
INTERESTED IN brushing up on your
Latin this summer by reading medieval
texts full of action, adventure, and
theology?
Join “Medieval Latin (Summer 2016):
St. Patrick,” the fourth annual free online
course offered by Classics Professor
William Turpin and Jen Faulkner of East
Longmeadow High School with the expert
help of medievalists Bruce Venarde ’84
and Carin Ruff ’87. Past “students” include
undergrads, parents, and alumni, as well as
others from around the world.
There are no grades and no judgments.
Edited texts, with extensive grammatical
and vocabulary help, are posted on the website and should be relatively easy to read by
anyone with a year of college or high school
Latin, no matter how rusty.
Once a week for an hour and a half,
participants will meet online to read aloud,
translate, and discuss the readings via
Google Hangouts or Zoom. Or you can audit
(and post questions) in real time or with
archived sessions on YouTube.
“I love working with people returning to
Latin from all walks in life,” Turpin says. “So
much of our reading is often solitary, which
is no doubt as it should be, but reading along
with others can be a wonderful change.”
Class begins Sunday, June 5 at 2 p.m.
EDT.
+ QUESTIONS? Join the Google Plus
community: bit.ly/MedievalLatin2016 or
email wturpin1@swarthmore.edu
When John Freeman
’96 launched his eponymous literary journal in October, he made
the decision for it to be
more consciously international than its peers.
“I can’t believe that
the English-speaking
world has some sort
of peculiar genius that
produces storytelling
LAURENCE KESTERSON
THE
PROUD
CROWD
William Turpin amat Latin.
12
IN LOVE
WITH LIT
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
that trumps all others,”
he says.
Words are what matter, he believes, in any
language, which is why
Freeman’s is less a moneymaking venture and
more a labor of literary
love. It appears semiannually and is available
only in bookstores and
on Amazon.com with no
website or subscription
options.
Apropos, arrival was
the theme of the inaugural issue, which
featured work from
well-established voices including Louise Erdrich, David Mitchell,
Lydia Davis, and Haruki Murakami as well as
new talents such as
Sudanese-born Fatin
Abbas. The next issue
will appear in May on
the theme of family.
A respected poet,
nonfiction author, and
former president of the
National Book Critics
Circle, Freeman is famous for his unconventional, illustrious career
path. After a decade
freelancing book reviews and literary interviews for newspapers
at a time when cultural
coverage was shrinking,
he landed the editorship
of the London-based literary journal Granta.
It was a dream job,
but ultimately required
too much focus on office
politics. In 2013, after
five years at the helm, he
left to focus on teaching, writing, and living
in the spirit of his evocative last name—a feeling he hopes marks his
journal, too, with its focus on globally diverse
literature.
“I like to read things
from elsewhere,” he
says. “I think of storytelling as a way to pay
attention to and witness
the world.”
—PAUL WACHTER ’97
Announcing the LGBTQ alumni affinity
group. It will host social events on
campus and around the country,
provide mentoring opportunities, and
engage the College on LGBTQ issues.
Contact pride@swarthmore.edu
Paula Smith ’82’s work is rewarding.
Risky Business
WEB EXCLUSIVE
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Animator Katia Lom ’06 discusses her starry art career:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
EVS Crew Leader Hank Robinson and President Valerie Smith celebrate
Black History Month at a luncheon hosted by Environmental Services.
Risk isn’t just something to avoid blindly, says Paula Smith ’82, especially when it
comes to colleges like Swarthmore.
“Risks stem from the range and complexity of pursuits in the liberal arts,” she says.
“To yield relevance and value, liberal arts
colleges need a risk-management model
that keeps the academic mission central.”
Inspired by this challenge and drawing
upon five years’ experience as the chief
academic officer at Grinnell College, Smith
founded the Purposeful Risk Engagement
Project and wrote the book Engaging Risk:
A Guide for College Leaders (Rowman &
Littlefield). Earlier this year, she led a panel on this topic at the annual meeting of the
American Association of Colleges and Universities, where she explained why a little
administrative foresight protects so much
more than a financial bottom line.
“I understand on a personal level why
threats to a college’s academic purpose—
threats that undermine the quality of teaching, learning, and scholarship—are the vital
risks to focus on,” she says. “It’s simple:
Nothing matters more.”
While Swarthmore has a risk-management model in place, too many other colleges do not, according to Smith. Knowing
that keeps her inspired to balance her
work as a professor and novelist with her
risk-management expertise—after all, she’s
found, they’re not so different.
“Both fiction and risk management enlist what Henry James called ‘the imagination of disaster,’ ” she says with a smile.
“Authors invent the most interesting trouble our characters can get into and—like a
good risk-management expert—equip them
to handle it.”
—JONATHAN RIGGS
+ READ A Q&A with Paula Smith ’82:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
13
common good
Her Power to Enamour
DURING AN EIGHT-WEEK residency in rural
Maine, artist/sculptor Tasha Lewis ’12 created visual
responses to all 644 pages of the Gabler edition of
James Joyce’s masterpiece for her project,
Illustrating Ulysses.
Available at McCabe Library or for sale on
IllustratingUlysses.com, the book features 18 styles—
from watercolors to embroideries, prints to Polaroids—
so each page stands alone while also serving as a
reference to the original text.
“I learned a huge amount about Ulysses during my
intense rereading and creation,” Lewis says. “I hope I’ve
passed on my insights in this visual version.”
+ YES I WILL YES: TashaLewis.info
1
2
A PORTRAIT OF TWO ARTISTS
Tasha Lewis ’12 on James Joyce
14
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2016
3
“Nausicaa [1] is defined
by consumerism, both
Gerty’s female saccharine view of products
and Bloom’s voyeuristic
view of her. Accordingly,
I gathered historic ads as
the visual foundation for
this chapter. In order to
imbue these sources with
a feminine touch, they
were printed onto fabric
and hand-stitched. The
embroidered stitch may
represent the floral
touches in Gerty’s language or the geometric
lines of the male gaze.”
“Circe [2] is a grimy
fantasy chapter written
in the style of a play. I
chose to use silk-screen
monoprints to capture the
nightmarish or hallucinatory quality of each page
because they are fast, raw,
and unpredictable. I was
totally out of my comfort
zone during the creation
of these images, and I think
that was an essential—
although difficult—element
to the process. Using markers, crayons, and chalk
pastels I was able to echo
the threadbare environment and constantly changing textures of costume and
language in the chapter.”
“Telemachus [3]: In keeping
with Joyce’s direction of
white and gold as the colors
and theology as the science
of this section, I illustrated each page with Xerox
transfers of black and white
religious imagery illuminated with gold leaf. For me
the transfer process, which
uses an acrylic medium to
transfer ink from a copy
onto a new sheet of paper,
is an interpretive process
where mistakes can be
made, images are inverted,
and like Buck Mulligan, I
profane the sacred.”
ALL HER WORLD’S A STAGE
by Carol Brévart-Demm
“The nice thing about Swarthmore’s
theater department is that it’s
designed with all our individual interests in mind,” she says. “Allen Kuharski
has worked so hard to create a wonderful department—everyone has been so
supportive that I’ve been able to adapt
my schedule as both a student and a
professional.”
An improv comedian with
Vertigo-go, a singer with Grapevine,
and a Wharton RA, Shuchman fulfilled her acting thesis requirement
before beginning Starcatcher rehearsals by playing opposite her best friend
LAURENCE KESTERSON
AFTER GRADUATION, Michaela
Shuchman ’16 aspires to be an actor.
Actually though, she already is one.
“I grew up in the Philly theater community, where I was lucky enough to
be part of a couple of professional theater productions,” she says. “When I
was in 10th grade, I played in Fiddler
on the Roof.”
Today, she’s juggling her senior year
with the starring role of Molly in the
Walnut Street Theatre’s production of
the Tony-winning play Peter and the
Starcatcher, which runs March 15–
May 1.
Michelle Johnson ’16 in Airswimming
at Swarthmore’s tiny “black box” Frear
Theater.
As a Lang Scholar, the honors theater major and education minor is also
in her second year of implementing a
theater curriculum for Philadelphia
middle-school students, and this May
she’ll tour local schools with a solo
performance piece. Her goal isn’t necessarily to encourage students to
become actors, but to use the skills of
acting—communication, community
building, conflict resolution, self-confidence, and public speaking—in their
everyday lives.
Being able to spearhead such a
deeply personal and impactful project is just one reason why Shuchman
knew she wanted to come to a school
like Swarthmore rather than attend an
acting conservatory.
“I always knew that I wanted to be
an actor, but I didn’t want to only be
able to bring a high-school education
to my characters. That’s why I’ve taken
courses in biology, history, statistics,
psychology, and dramaturgy here,” she
says. “My experience at Swarthmore
has made me a much richer presence
onstage because I can bring a deeper
knowledge to my work.”
Whether she’s playing a vulnerable
asylum inmate, a fiery 13-year-old, or
anyone in between, Shuchman draws
her inspiration from powerful women
she’s seen, both onstage and off.
“The opportunity to be a role model
for other young women who see my
shows is a dream for me,” she says.
“I’m the only girl in Peter and the
Starcatcher, so for me to be up there
leading this thing is huge.”
+ NOW PLAYING: MichaelaShuchman.com
Rising star Michaela Shuchman ’16 stays grounded.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
15
common good
The
Game-Changer
MEN’S TRACK &
FIELD
Corey Branch ’17,
Jordan Reyes ’19,
Dominic CastroWehr ’16, and Paul
Green ’16 captured
the program’s first
gold in the distance
medley relay at
the Centennial
Conference Indoor
Championships.
by Mark Anskis
16
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
WOMEN’S TRACK &
FIELD
Sarah Nielsen ’16 was
named All-Centennial
Conference by
finishing second in
the mile at the indoor
championships.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
You might wonder what inspired Landry
Kosmalski to accept the Swarthmore men’s
basketball head coaching job in 2012.
After all, Kosmalski was leaving an assistant coaching position at Davidson College,
his alma mater and the alma mater of NBA
MVP Steph Curry, to inherit a Garnet basketball program that was coming off a 3–22
season and had not made the postseason in
nearly 20 years.
But where others saw a challenge,
Kosmalski saw an opportunity—not only to
work at a college that perfectly matches his
values but also to revive a program with untapped potential.
That potential came to fruition during
his fourth season as coach, when the Garnet soared to new heights, advancing to the
Centennial Conference playoffs for the first
time since 1997, reaching the Centennial
championship game, and setting a new program record with 22 wins in a single season. For his efforts, Kosmalski was named
Centennial Conference Coach of the Year
by his peers.
The Texas-raised Kosmalski lives and
leads with thoughtfulness and purpose. A
young father who was originally attracted
to Swarthmore because it offered a perfect
work-life balance, he’s known for his interest in the lives of his players on and off the
court. He’s also known for his fondness of
handwritten notes—which he often delivers
to staffers on their birthday and to prospective student-athletes who recently visited
campus.
Not surprisingly, Kosmalski excels in
the small details: Practice plans are scheduled down to the minute with everything
accounted for, from snacks on the bus to
the angle of screens in a play, and even the
color of the coaches’ polo shirts.
Oh, about the polo shirts. On the sidelines, Kosmalski forgoes the near-universal
suit-and-tie wardrobe of college basketball
coaches—he doesn’t want to put himself
above his players.
“That’s kind of perfect for Swarthmore,”
he says, “which is a great fit with my values, too.”
Although his coaching tenure started off
rocky—the team stumbled to a 7–18 record
in his first season—it was all part of the
process for Kosmalski, who saw the value
of putting egos aside to build a foundation
for long-term team success.
Landry Kosmalski is leading the Garnet into a new era.
“We decided as a staff that we were not
trying to win games,” he says. “We were
going to create a culture.”
That culture includes purposely winnowing his already-small recruiting pool of student-athletes to the ones he believes are
driven to succeed—at sports and in life.
“We are very particular about the
attitude, skill set, and toughness we want,”
he says. “And then we narrow it down even
further to what kind of person would benefit from the Swarthmore experience and fit
in with our community.”
Following this year’s breakthrough
season, the future is bright for Kosmalski
and the program—the Garnet will return a
majority of its impact players next season.
“In the grand scheme of things, we think
we can be one of—if not the—best team
in the whole country,” he says. “We don’t
want to put any restrictions on ourselves:
Just because it hasn’t been done here yet
doesn’t mean it can’t.”
+ LISTEN TO LANDRY TALK ABOUT THIS
YEAR’S SEASON: bit.ly/Landry16
MEN’S SWIMMING
The team placed
second at the
conference
championship
meet, its highest
finish since 2010
and a four-place
improvement from
last year.
WOMEN’S
SWIMMING
Emily Bley ’19 set a
program record and
recorded an NCAA
“B” cut time with
her 4:36.13 mark
in the 400-yard
individual medley
at the conference
championships.
WOMEN’S
BASKETBALL
Jess Jowdy ’16 landed
on the All-Centennial
Conference Second
Team after averaging
17.5 points, 7.0
rebounds and 3.6
assists per game.
LEARNING CURVE
ENERGIZED AND OCCUPIED
A life journey like no other
has gratified Gareth Jenkins ’66
AS A KID, Gareth Jenkins ’66 wanted to be a mathematical
cosmologist.
The direction his career took instead may not be as mysterious as the origin of the universe, but Jenkins remains a
little bit puzzled by it.
“I feel it could have turned out in a somewhat more orderly
way,” he says.
Even Jenkins’s path to Swarthmore was circuitous.
After high school, he spent an “ignominious semester” at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. When he withdrew in
1958, his “carefully constructed life plan suddenly blew up.”
Jenkins enlisted in the Army. He earned a spot in the
intelligence service, trained in Russian, and spent two years
on the Aleutian Islands in Alaska listening in on Soviet airwaves.
After his service, his parents—who lived in Swarthmore—
suggested Jenkins inquire with the admissions dean. At
Swarthmore, he studied history, economics, and philosophy.
Next, Jenkins earned a master’s in history at Harvard,
where he met his second wife. They moved to her native
Italy, where he apprenticed with stonemasons to restore an
abandoned, 12-house Tuscan village he and friends bought
for about $6,000.
“There was no electricity, no running water; most of the
houses had no windows, doors, or floors,” he recalls. “The
place was a big, incredibly picturesque ruin.”
Jenkins returned to the U.S. in 1986. He taught AP
economics and ran the history department at Albuquerque
Academy in New Mexico until 2002, when he spent two
years volunteering as a stonemason at Ghost Ranch, a former residence of Georgia O’Keeffe. Since 1997, he has been
SWEET WILLIAM PHOTOGRAPHY
by Elizabeth Redden ’05
a director of FanWing, a company that created a new type of
fan-powered plane.
As convoluted as his path may seem, it’s brought him not
only a rich and varied life, but joy, too.
“I’ve kept myself energized and occupied,” Jenkins says.
“I am very happy doing all sorts of wildly different kinds of
things.”
“My carefully constructed life plan
suddenly blew up.”
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
17
common good
UROOJ KHAN ’10
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Lawyer
“Before I went to law school, I taught for a few years in D.C. It grounded me and gave me a
sense of how the law affects the lives of real people,” says Urooj Khan ’10.
LIBERAL ARTS LIVES
COMPASSIONATE CRUSADER
A new lawyer advocates for immigrants
by Jonathan Riggs
18
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
Urooj Khan ’10 may work in corporate litigation, but her passion is purely pro bono.
A 2015 graduate of Columbia Law School
and soon-to-be member of the New York
state bar, she spends much of her free time
tackling immigration and asylum law gratis.
It’s a very personal mission: When Khan was
5, her family emigrated from Pakistan.
“I was able to come to the U.S. through
the hard work of my parents,” she says.
“This is my way of paying it forward.”
In addition to her parents’ example, Khan
credits Swarthmore with helping shape her
decision to go to law school as well as with
giving her a framework to live ethically and
committed to social justice.
In 2014, as part of the Columbia Law
School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, Khan
took on the case of Michael C., a Nigerian man fleeing persecution by Boko Haram.
For six months, Khan and a partner met
with Michael weekly to compile a 40-page
affidavit to help him tell his story. After
filing a brief arguing that he had a legal
claim to asylum in the U.S. and backing it
up with hundreds of pages of documentary
evidence, they were able to successfully
argue his case before a judge.
“Just a few months ago, Michael called
to say he was still so thankful for our work,”
says Khan. “He told me that he would never
forget us, that we changed his life and gave
him hope at a time when he had none.”
She’s happy to report that not only is
Michael C. now on the path to U.S. citizenship, but he’s working to bring his family
over as well.
“It means so much to know that I had
an impact not just on his life, but on his
children’s and his wife’s,” she says. “It’s so
gratifying to be able to help a new generation of Americans.”
LORI & ERIN PHOTOGRAPHY
LIBERAL ARTS LIVES
Ethan Borg ’94 demonstrates his therapeutic skill on wife Jennifer Leigh ’94.
MEDICINE MAN
East meets West in his
healing hands
by Matt Zencey ’79
AN ACUPUNCTURIST and Easternmedicine healer, Ethan Borg ’94
says his “goal is to put myself out of
business.”
To that end, he has invented a revolutionary form of what he calls “intuitive” medicine. Ordinary people can
use it, he says, to treat hundreds of
health complaints with just a few
minutes of training, which he offers
for free.
His approach, called “EM,” is a type
of “energy medicine” that combines
ancient Chinese systems, including
feng shui, with modern knowledge of
anatomy and physics. According to
Borg, EM allows practitioners to
diagnose and treat people over long
distances, using “nontouch healing
techniques.”
His journey began at Swarthmore
when Western treatments failed to
relieve his chronic fatigue syndrome.
“Eastern medicine was the one
approach that had a truly beneficial
impact on my well-being when I was
sick,” he says.
After graduation, he worked in
the tech industry, but couldn’t resist
exploring his passion. Borg went to a
top acupuncture school and, for the
past 13 years, has run a thriving alternative-medicine practice, currently
located in Rochester, N.Y.
In addition to seeing patients in
person, he can also deliver what he
calls “broadcast energy treatments” to
people anywhere in the world.
If you’re skeptical, Borg
understands.
“From a Western perspective,” he
says, “it is a huge leap of faith to try
alternative medicine.”
Even so, he has gained the confidence of Western practitioners. He
gets many referrals of patients with
Lyme disease, and earlier in his career
he helped scores of couples overcome
fertility problems that resisted conventional treatment.
His own father, a radiologist, sees
the benefit of Borg’s work. “Both
my parents would prefer I were a
Western-medicine doctor,” he says, but
they have made their peace with his
choice—both come to him as acupuncture patients.
ETHAN BORG ’94
Healer
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
19
THE
CONJURER OF
COMPOST
Rebecca Louie ’99
empowers the eco-curious
LAURENCE KESTERSON
by Carrie Compton
20
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2016
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
21
R
EBECCA LOUIE ’99 pauses outside the door of a quiet cubicaled room and whispers, sotto
voce, “This is where the magic
happens.” She’s joking, but there’s something to the notion.
Inside the cavernous shared writers’ space, Louie undergoes
a magical transformation into the green goddess of blogging, The Compostess, and author of 2015’s Compost City:
Practical Composting Know-How for Small-Space Living.
Beyond, there is more wizardry. In the kitchen area, Louie
cracks open the lid of a yellow 5-gallon bucket she keeps
under the sink and lifts from the mound of refuse a crinkled
tamped-down grocery bag, which aids in creating an airtight
environment needed for the fermentation of food waste, a
process known as bokashi.
“Bokashi is like precomposting through fermentation, and
its big benefit is being able to process all food waste—cooked
food, meat, dairy, bones—things you normally wouldn’t put
into your compost pile,” says Louie.
The room fills with an earthy, sweet smell of 30-plus
pounds of fermented food waste as she sprinkles a sort of
magic dust—wheat bran inoculated with “effective microorganisms,” a patented collection of microbes that are anaerobic fermenting machines—readying the mushy coffee
grounds, wrinkled cherry tomatoes, and crumbly chunks of
tofu for transformation from waste to soil nutrients, from
garbage to goodness. Louie, who takes pride in diverting any
little bit of waste from landfills, delights in this potion.
22
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2016
“These buckets were upcycled from the Potbelly Sandwich
Shop downstairs,” Louie says as she folds even more
office-users’ food scraps into the mix. “I used to have to
ask the workers for them, but now they save them for me.
You can transform this vessel into a tumbler, a worm bin, a
bokashi bucket …”
Louie is never short on ideas for ways to compost, a knack
she attributes more to the scalable nature of composting
than to her own guile.
“Composting takes time and care and attention, but I think
it’s worth the challenge for people with busy schedules or
who live in cities,” says Louie. “I get excited about helping
find the intersection where it all fits. We make choices all
of the time to do things we want like go to Zumba or happy
hour. So my goal is to find where composting also fills some
sort of need, without feeling intimidating or scary or gross.”
Louie’s methods for casting the composting spell extend
beyond her blog and her book. The eco-curious of New York
can schedule a one-on-one consultation; attend an informational boot camp or one of her many lectures delivered to community, cultural, educational, and gardening groups; or book
her and wiggly trash-eating worms for a child’s birthday party.
“Composting is very democratic—people can participate
at the level they’re interested in,” says Louie. “Not everyone is going to become an urban farmer, with a garden on
their roof. But imagine a parent says, ‘Instead of a hamster,
we’re getting a worm bin,’ and they feed them lettuce cuttings every week. Sure, it’s not all their garbage, but you have
to start somewhere.”
LOUIE’S TRANSFORMATION into a composting guru
came in her late 20s and somewhat out of the blue.
“I was a city girl; I was never environmentally inclined,”
she says. But then in 2005, she experienced sustainability-as-lifestyle at a Costa Rican yoga farm, which immersed
her in green living—from composting toilets to solar power.
She had just left her New York Daily News entertainment
reporter job, when the work became celebrity obsessed,
making it increasingly difficult “to sneak in all the critical-cultural theory that I learned at Swarthmore.” When
Louie returned to New York, she found the green lifestyle
had followed her home.
“I started cooking a lot more, and then I had all these scraps.
I was like, ‘I can clearly use this. I will not waste,’” says Louie.
“COMPOSTING IS VERY DEMOCRATIC—
PEOPLE CAN PARTICIPATE AT THE
LEVEL THEY’RE INTERESTED IN.”
—REBECCA LOUIE ’99
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Rebecca Louie ’99 sometimes buries bokashi in her window boxes—a move that saves her money on soil.
Her freezer in Queens quickly filled with food scraps (eventually even family members were loading her up), and every few
weeks she made a long slog with the heavy, leaky bags onto the
subway to a compost drop-off in Union Square.
Next, Louie tried her hand at vermicomposting, composting with earthworms, and “totally killed them.”
“Overfeeding is a common problem in worm keeping, but
they’re just so cute!” she says. “It’s like a dog, you want to see
them eat, but you have to resist overdoing it.”
Finally, in 2010, she enrolled in a master composting class
at the Queens Botanical Gardens, a three-month course that
gave her the knowledge to balance her approach.
“I was a terrible composter when I started, so I’m very into
providing easy gateway drugs into composting,” says Louie,
who does bokashi and worm composting in her Queens
apartment. “By diverting a banana peel into the soil, you’re
putting carbon and nutrients where they should be, underground, which will create plants that suck more carbon from
the atmosphere outside. The cycle is very literal, and it predates all of us. To participate in that is very healing.”
BACK AT THE WRITERS’ SPACE, Louie hefts the
unwieldy bucket of fermented waste down the steep stairs,
her folding grocery cart waiting below. Every two weeks
Louie hauls away a full bucket, taking it either to her cabin in
the Catskill Mountains or to The Children’s Garden, a community space in Manhattan’s East Village.
“I am able to divert at least 10 gallons of office food waste
a month just because collectively, we do this one very
low-maintenance thing,” she says during the 10-minute bus
ride to the garden. “This is the corner of the world where I
can participate right now. It’s that simple.”
The garden is little more than a 20-by 50-foot plot of earth
at the corner of Avenue B and 12th Street. Since 2009 it
has digested an average of 4 tons of fermented bokashi buried there each year. The ground is level; there is no towering
mound of refuse. The soil ecosystem processes and transforms waste every few weeks, and luckily, the city’s rats
disdain fermented food. A volunteer, one of four there to
help Louie bury the waste, mentions a man who bicycles
from Brooklyn to drop off his food waste, because he likes
the garden and his child attends school nearby.
“That’s the magic of New York,” says Louie, instantly
enlivened. “You can create these systems that make it really
easy for people to participate. They’re literally passing by,
and—blink, ‘I’ve participated.’ It’s amazing. It’s mind-blowing.”
+ GROW YOUR GREEN KNOWLEDGE: thecompostess.com
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
23
OUR
MOMENT
IS NOW
Swarthmore’s Office of Sustainability is ready to go
by Jonathan Riggs
MELISSA TIER ’14, Swarthmore’s
sustainability coordinator, keeps a
copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
on her shelf.
“The history of life on Earth has
been a history of interaction between
living things and their surroundings.
To a large extent, the physical form and
the habits of the Earth’s vegetation and
its animal life have been molded by the
environment. Considering the whole
24
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
span of earthly time, the opposite
effect, in which life actually modifies
its surroundings, has been relatively
slight,” Carson wrote in words first
published in 1962. “Only within the
moment of time represented by the
present century has one species—
man—acquired significant power to
alter the nature of the world.”
Carson’s words and her scientific
research have long inspired Tier, from
her summers visiting one of Carson’s
research sites in southern Maine to her
post-baccalaureate work at Columbia
University’s Center for Research on
Environmental Decisions to her return
to Swarthmore last June.
As excited as Tier was to be back,
memories of challenging Swarthmore
moments were still fresh in her mind—
her junior year had occurred during
the turbulence of 2013.
LAURENCE
LAURENCE KESTERSON
KESTERSON
GREEN ADVISORS
James Chen ’17, Melissa Tier ’14,
Dan Manson ’17, Aurora Winslade,
Kelley Langhans ’16, and Rachel
Hottle ’18 compost on campus.
“As a young alum, I was nervous about managing the Office of
Sustainability given some of the tensions around student activism I had
experienced earlier,” she says.
After all, when it comes to sustainability, stakes—and passions—are high.
The Board of Managers’ decision not to
divest, for example, inspired a variety of
protests, including a Parrish Hall sit-in.
What Tier found, however, was a
campus still passionate about sustainability, but with a diversity of activities
and projects underway, many inspired
by those times.
That’s one of the many reasons why
she was eager to welcome Aurora
Winslade, Swarthmore’s sustainability
director, who arrived in January.
“I feel privileged to be here,” Winslade says. “There are many opportunities, and Melissa and I are ready to
support the community to make the
most of them.”
AS A TEENAGER in Southern
California, Winslade volunteered at a
local organic farm, which inspired her
to take an ecology course as a student
at the University of California, Santa
Cruz (UCSC).
“I was exposed to how challenging—
globally, societally—the environmental issues we face are,” she says. “It was
life-changing for me to realize that
everything we care about is built on the
foundation of a functioning ecological
system, and that this system is in danger of being unable to support us without significant changes in how we live.”
Thus inspired, Winslade joined
Matt St. Clair ’97—then a graduate student at the University of California,
Berkeley—and other young leaders
across the state to help establish the
University of California sustainability policy. In addition to co-founding a number of student programs
that continue today, she went on to
launch UCSC’s sustainability office,
found sustainability policies for the
University of Hawaii, create academic
programs on sustainable community
food systems and sustainable facilities management, and spearhead statewide initiatives to help Hawaii reduce
energy consumption.
She heard about the Swarthmore
position from St. Clair, who is now
the director of sustainability for the
University of California’s Office of the
President.
“Aurora is an amazing fit for
Swarthmore because she comes to sustainability from a social justice lens,”
says St. Clair. “She’s a unique combination of a visionary and a doer who is
constantly learning and growing.”
GREEN
MILESTONES
1863
26
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
OUR GREEN
FOUNDING
From the beginning,
the Quaker value of
environmental stewardship informs both
Swarthmore’s location as well as
its direction.
SPRING 2016
1929
THE SCOTT
FOUNDATION
The Scott Arboretum is
created in honor of
Arthur Hoyt Scott,
Class of 1895. Today
it encompasses more
than 300 acres and
exhibits over 4,000
plants.
While Tier will focus on community
engagement and Winslade will take
a top-down approach, their roles will
overlap, inform, and complement each
other locally, nationally, and beyond.
One of the first and largest of their
responsibilities is to implement the
sustainability framework adopted by
the Board of Managers in September.
“It is important that we have this
framework to guide our building projects as the College increases enrollment
and expands its square footage. In addition to showing what’s possible in terms
of energy, buildings, and storm-water
management, we are already discussing
how to expand it to include additional
sustainability areas such as landscape
and waste management,” Winslade
says. “We have a great starting point
with building and energy guidelines
from the framework, the College’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2035,
and the many projects already underway at the College. I look forward to
helping us meet our existing targets and
to expanding our goals, establishing
clear metrics, and integrating sustainability into all aspects of campus life,
learning, and operations.”
STUDENTS WILL BE KEY to the
success of the Office of Sustainability,
and Tier and Winslade will serve as the
1930–32
CRUM WOODS
CLEANUP
During the
Depression, the
College organizes
and funds work
parties to clear paths,
open trails, cut dead
trees, and haul out
trash.
1961
CRUM WOODS
PRESERVATION
President Courtney
Smith galvanizes
community opposition
to the construction of
a major highway—the
eventual Blue Route—
whose proposed path
would divide Swarthmore from a portion of
the Crum Woods.
Aurora Winslade is Swarthmore’s new
director of sustainability.
center and supporter of Swarthmore’s
environmental groups. That includes
the now-formally institutionalized
Green Advisor (GA) program, with 30
residential GAs last semester. They
support sustainable lifestyles among
all campus members and manage the
College’s public and residential compost system. (Swarthmore is one of the
nation’s few campuses where students
manage campuswide composting.)
1990–92
ACADEMIC
FUNDING
The James H. Scheuer
’42 Summer Internship
in Environmental Studies and the Environmental Studies program are
established.
“Sustainability is becoming a more
meaningful part of residential life,”
says Tier, “which is a really exciting
new norm.”
Students are also working with
the Office to examine broader College
waste issues, like fridges, lamps, and
furniture left behind when students
leave in May; creating consistent signage; and reducing overall waste.
They also organize tours to Chester,
where campus waste is incinerated,
and help the community grapple with
the social and environmental consequences of its trash. Others, with
financial and logistical support from
the College, attended the Conference
of the Parties of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate
Change in Paris or are helping revitalize Swarthmore’s community garden.
As students, Tony Lee ’15 and Erik
Jensen ’15 led the installation of an
electric charging station and solar panels on Field House Lane, which enabled
the College to become a partner through
the U.S. Department of Energy’s
Workplace Charging Challenge.
The Office has also delivered a slate
of sustainability-related programming,
including co-hosting Eban Goodstein,
head of the environmental policy program at Bard College, as well as hosting the Green Advisors’ annual audit
1999
WIND
POWER
Swarthmore begins
purchasing Renewable
Energy Credits (RECs)
in the form of wind
power. Since 2011, 100
percent of the College’s
greenhouse-gas
emissions generated as
a result of electricity
are offset by RECs.
2003
GREEN
ROOFS
The first green roof is
installed on a shed
behind Papazian Hall.
With subsequent installations on Alice Paul
and Kemp Halls, as
well as LPAC, the College now has more than
45,000 square feet of
green roof.
to analyze Swarthmore’s waste
disposal. In June, the president’s
staff will convene for their first
Sustainability Leadership Retreat,
to be facilitated by Leith Sharp, the
director of executive education at
the Harvard School of Public Health
and the Global Environment.
Ultimately, Tier and Winslade
want Swarthmore’s sustainability
changes, both short- and long-term,
to be integrated into student learning, literacy, and leadership opportunities so that every alum, wherever
they go next, will do so empowered
and equipped to create changes of
their own.
“We try to think of our work
within the term ‘just sustainabilities’—coined by environmental
scholar Julian Agyeman—so it’s
about more than environmentalism,”
Tier says. “It makes sense that the
Swarthmore community would be
interested in something this broad,
interdisciplinary, and tied into real
action and real benefit for other
people.”
A PORTION OF TIER and
Winslade’s time is spent in construction meetings, ensuring that designs
meet or exceed sustainability standards that will ensure the College’s
2014
SUSTAINABLE
BUILDINGS
The Board of Managers
commits $12 million to
making the planned
Biology, Engineering,
and Psychology
building a model for environmentally intelligent
construction practices.
2015
CLIMATE
INITIATIVE
President Val Smith
signs the White House
Act on Climate Pledge
to accelerate and
enhance Swarthmore’s
sustainability practices.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
27
new buildings are roughly equivalent
to LEED platinum or better.
“It’s important for alumni to know
we’re doing that as part of regular,
daily conversations,” Tier says. “We’re
also in the process of determining
exactly how we measure compliance
with the framework and creating our
own internal verification process.”
To better help the College take
responsibility for its carbon emissions,
the Office of Sustainability also established a carbon charge, a fee initially
proposed by a group of faculty and staff
and recently approved by the Board.
Launching in the next fiscal year, it
will create a source of funds for campus projects to reduce energy use and
greenhouse gas emissions. This development will put Swarthmore at the
forefront of this issue, joining schools
like Yale and Princeton in establishing
an internal tax on carbon.
Another responsibility of the Office
is reporting to external groups, like
the Association for the Advancement
of Sustainability in Higher Education
and Second Nature, to keep track of
the College’s greenhouse gas emissions
and various data metrics.
Despite all these developments, not
every community member may feel
satisfied with the speed or direction of
progress, to which Winslade and Tier
say they understand and are open to
suggestions and input.
“Across our community, we may not
all agree on every point, but I believe
we can all agree there’s much work to
be done and endless opportunities to
change,” Winslade says. “If we come
together where there are shared goals,
we can make a difference and continually improve.”
This is an auspicious time, she
believes, since President Valerie Smith
came in last year supportive of the
mission and potential of the Office of
Sustainability and eager to build upon
the groundwork laid by former president Rebecca Chopp, who signed
the American College & University
Presidents’ Climate Commitment and
convened a committee to write the
College’s first Climate Action Plan in
2010.
In fact, the enthusiasm of Smith and
other Swarthmore leaders was a key
factor in Winslade’s decision-making
process.
“I saw that shared commitment
when I came in for my interviews—
that thoughtfulness, passion, and
engagement—so Swarthmore felt like a
place where I would be welcomed and
able to have an impact,” she says. “This
is a great place and a great time to be
doing this, in large part because of
GREEN PHILANTHROPY
by Randall Frame
Recycle. Compost. Use public transportation. Go vegetarian. Add
“green philanthropy” to the list of ways you can express sustainabilityrelated values.
Swarthmore’s newest green philanthropy giving option was created in December, when the Board of Managers established the Fossil
Fuel Free Fund. Together, three Board members—Elizabeth Economy
’84, Gil Kemp ’72, and Christopher Niemczewski ’74—contributed a
total of $100,000 to launch the fund.
“I am delighted that the Board has taken this important step, a
step that reflects the College’s strong commitment to sustainability,” says Economy, the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director of Asia
Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations.
Donors may also make gifts of any size and endow named scholarships, professorships, or summer research opportunities under the
Fossil Fuel Free umbrella, which will be managed separately from the
College’s general endowment investments.
The original “green giving” option, of course, is the Swarthmore
Fund.
28
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
the foundation laid by the people who
came before.”
Citing previous administrators and
sustainability professionals as well as
students and faculty, staff and alumni,
protesters and activists, Winslade and
Tier are honored to be charged with
the privilege and responsibility of
charting Swarthmore’s course going
forward while looking back.
“Even though the Office is relatively
young, it’s building on a long tradition,”
Winslade says, “from Quaker roots and
the preservation of natural land; to
the students, faculty, and community
members who’ve taken action; to the
ingenuity of the operational staff who
have helped Swarthmore achieve
some of the most impressive energyuse reduction numbers of our peer
institutions.”
What’s done here echoes around
the world and into the future, something neither member of the Office of
Sustainability takes lightly.
“We’re grappling with solutions to
real ecological problems implemented
on a practical, day-to-day level across
communities, countries, and the
one planet we have,” Winslade says.
“Being a part of creating and implementing those solutions at a place like
Swarthmore is one of the best uses of
our time Melissa and I can imagine.”
“Swarthmore Fund donations are not intermingled with the endowment,” says Karl Clauss, vice president for advancement and
alumni relations. “Swarthmore Fund gifts are applied exclusively to
current, annual expenses, including financial aid, programming for
students, and maintaining campus facilities.”
You may also designate Swarthmore Fund gifts specifically for
sustainability initiatives. One possibility is the President’s Climate
Commitment Fund, established in 2012 by Jonathan E. B. “Jeb” Eddy ’63 and Edith Twombly Eddy ’64.
It supports such initiatives as the reduction or offsetting of carbon or other greenhouse gas emissions; innovative replacements
of less-than-efficient technologies, systems, and devices; student
summer research opportunities; technology to enhance or expand
the reach of educational activities; and course development, workshops, and speakers.
The Carbon Neutral Weekend Fund was established during the
2007 Alumni Weekend to make the event more environmentally responsible, but accepts gifts at any time. Most recently, the money
raised supported major retrofitting for energy-saving lighting.
Finally, you may also make gifts of any size to the College’s general endowment fund in support of sustainability efforts such as the
Lorax Fund for Environmental Sustainability. Established in 2007, it
supports activities that move Swarthmore College and its community toward a more environmentally sustainable future.
GET INVOLVED!
JOIN THE SWARTHMORE
SUSTAINABILITY NETWORK
ON LINKEDIN
bit.ly/SwatLINetwork
READ THE SUSTAINABILITY
FRAMEWORK
bit.ly/FrameworkSum
VIEW THE WHITE HOUSE ACT
ON CLIMATE PLEDGE SIGNED BY
VALERIE SMITH
bit.ly/SwatClimatePledge
ATTEND/ADDRESS A
SUSTAINABILITY COMMITTEE
MEETING
bit.ly/SwatSusCom
CHECK OUT THE OFFICE OF
SUSTAINABILITY WEBSITE
swarthmore.edu/sustainability
CONTACT AURORA AND MELISSA
KYUNGCHIN MIN ’18
sustainability@swarthmore.edu
Let’s join students like Stuart Arbuckle ’17, pictured volunteering at the Neighborhood Foods Farm in
West Philadelphia, to grow a greener future together.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
29
A DEEP RESPONSIBILITY
30
We hold the future of the
ocean and all its creatures in
our hands.
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2016
THE
FATES
OF OUR
FATHOMS
Swarthmoreans’ love of the sea
translates into activism
DAVID HARRINGTON
by Ester Bloom ’04
HEATHER YLITALO-WARD ’06 WAS 17
years old when she had her first close encounter
with an octopus.
“I was sitting in a tide pool, looking out at the
ocean, when a wave came in and a small octopus
swam right up next to me,” says Ylitalo-Ward,
who was living with her family in Costa Rica at
the time. “It was about the size of a golf ball and
it looked as if it had red polka dots all over.” The
creature circled her legs for a while, like a cheerful Disney sidekick, before swimming away.
Over several internships, jobs, and a Ph.D.
from the University of Hawaii, Manoa in 2014,
Ylitalo-Ward has sought to understand the living octopus in all its complexity. “There is
something alluring about their intelligence,
their camouflage, and the way they can squeeze
their bodies into tiny spaces,” she says.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
31
Regularly referring to octopods as “the charismatic megafauna of the invertebrate world,”
Ylitalo-Ward cites octopuses’ intelligence—
their defining evolutionary advantage—as her
main draw to the species as a research subject.
Accordingly, their wily ability to adapt and
evade has helped the octopus endure for more
than 300 million years, despite the fact that
their nutrient-rich, chewy bodies are delicious
to predators. Octopus cyanea, or the day octopus, which Ylitalo-Ward studied as a Ph.D.
student, for example, is at a higher risk from
predators than its nocturnal brethren but has
outfitted itself remarkably for survival. It can
change not only the color but also the texture of
its skin, effectively becoming invisible against
the backdrop of a coral reef. It releases dense,
voluminous, foul-smelling ink clouds to befuddle predators and is known to “walk” along
the ocean floor while carrying halved coconut
shells as body armor and shelter.
For years Ylitalo-Ward has studied octopuses
in labs and in situ, and she is now as invested in
the conservation of the endangered habitats of
these canny creatures as she is in the creatures
themselves.
“The ocean covers over 70 percent of the
planet, generates almost half of the world’s oxygen, absorbs and stores carbon dioxide, and provides one of the main sources of protein to the
world’s populations,” she says. “Conservation of
oceans is essential to humankind’s survival.”
“I WANT TO MAKE A
DIFFERENCE IN THE WAY
HUMAN BEINGS
NEGATIVELY AFFECT
THE NATURAL WORLD.”
—AARON STRONG ’06
32
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
Ylitalo-Ward’s Swarthmore classmate Aaron
Strong ’06, a Stanford Ph.D. student in environment and resources, is also working to conserve
marine ecology, though his research mostly
explores questions about how societal ideals
factor into conservation. “We’ve too long overlooked the value of conservation and elevated
the values of resource extraction and capitalism,” he says, explaining that those long-established precedents are hard to displace.
As it happens, Strong and Ylitalo-Ward first
met long before Swarthmore.
“Heather and I were best friends when we
were 8 years old in Kyoto, Japan,” he says.
She recalls, “We would run around the temple grounds that were close by and ride our
bikes and chase bugs.” They went to the same
international school and then lost touch, only
to reconnect as first-years at Swarthmore: They
“both showed up in Willets,” says Strong. “I distinctly remember the jaw-dropping moment
of seeing Heather’s unmistakable name on the
student list and getting extremely excited to
surprise her at her door.”
They went on to intern in tandem at the lab
at Woods Hole in Cape Cod, Mass., where they
shared a focus on climate change, and then pursued parallel doctorates. Strong calls YlitaloWard’s research into the intricacies of octopods
“awesome,” admiring its thorough and concrete nature. His work focuses on more abstract
notions. “How do we define the next generation of conservation programs? Do we focus
on a single species or take a more holistic
approach?” he says, adding that it’s not easy for
any agency to manage an ecosystem and all its
components all at once.
Strong’s work, which he will continue next
year as a professor of marine policy at the
University of Maine, focuses less on individual
organisms and more broadly on changing regulations to benefit individual organisms.
“These days, I’m not a biologist; increasingly I’m not even a scientist,” he says. While
at Stanford, he has helped develop California’s
new climate change policies as part of a technical working group advising the California
Air Resources Board on its cap-and-trade system, and he looks forward to doing more in
Maine, where he will work on state initiatives to implement the recommendations of its
Ocean Acidification Commission. He describes
his role as being “on the less charismatic side
of science and policy-studies: water pollution,
the role coastal ecosystems play in controlling
climate change, and what can we do about
ocean acidification.” And the situation is dire.
According to recent research, he says, “even if
FORTUNATELY, work like Ylitalo-Ward’s—
which balances academic cephalopod research
(how the female rock octopus, for example,
decides which of her various mates should
father her children) with the practical (how
fisheries make profits without devastating
cephalopod populations)—can inform decisions
about the best route to conservation.
Only a few short years after Ylitalo-Ward came
face-to-face with her first octopus in Costa Rica,
she decided to focus on octopods while studying
abroad at the School of International Training in
Zanzibar, Tanzania. Ylitalo-Ward spent her days
there observing and interacting with octopus
spear fisherman on the tiny island of Misali. The
experience sparked her realization that effective,
locally led conservation efforts can enable hunters to make a living while still respecting
their prey, especially through the use of lowtech and low-impact—rather than newer, more
destructive—hunting methods. Recently, YlitaloWard put her realization into practice as a fisheries data consultant for the organization Blue
Ventures in Madagascar, which works with
coastal communities to create sustainable hunting habits for hunters and octopods alike. More
and more fisheries in the area are now following
the same model, the aquatic equivalent of letting
the ground lie fallow, increasing their ultimate
octopus yield by refraining from fishing for discrete periods of time.
As for Strong, he points out that different
interest groups often have disparate priorities
and occasionally conflicting viewpoints about
dynamic ecosystems, such as oceans: some people rank conservation most highly while others value regulation of hunting or the tourism
DAVID HARRINGTON
we do a decent job and stabilize things by the
end of the century, our models suggest that twothirds of all coral reefs around the planet will be
degraded.”
Acidification is also a concern of YlitaloWard’s. Many octopuses dwell in and rely on
the intricate ecological universes of coral reefs,
which climate change is leaving bleached and
weakened.
A research team led by the U.K.’s National
Oceanography Centre, whose findings were
published in the journal Global Change Biology,
found a direct link between climate change and
reduction of life on the sea floor, writing, “The
weight of the marine creatures that will be lost
is greater than the combined weight of every
person on Earth.”
“When it comes to sustainability and conservation, science doesn’t tell us what to do,” says
Strong. “We have to decide what we want to do.”
“I was always an H. P. Lovecraft fan, so tentacular
creatures hold a place in my heart,” Ylitalo-Ward says.
She and fellow ocean-saving scientist Aaron Strong
(right) are lifelong friends.
industry. And as he segues into teaching, he
seeks to balance them all in his work.
“I want to make a difference in the way
human beings negatively affect the natural
world,” he says.
Both Strong and Ylitalo-Ward are optimistic that progress can be made and that the fate
of the octopus, and other species like it, can be
improved. After all, a well-functioning marine
ecosystem is in the best interest of all animals,
humans included.
“Thanks to the ocean, we are constantly finding new uses for biological compounds in treatments for everything from a stomach ache to
leukemia,” Ylitalo-Ward says.
It continues to provide her with inspiration,
as well. On a diving trip to Borneo last October,
she was treated to “one day that was particularly spectacular in terms of cephalopod sightings,” featuring everything from giant cuttlefish
to pygmy squid, as well as a tiny, blue-ringed
octopus, “a notoriously difficult animal to spot
in the wild.”
The experience left her humbled and firmer
than ever in her commitment to her field.
“I left that day compelled to keep working
with cephalopods, in whatever capacity possible: protecting their habitat, ensuring sustainable fishing practices, researching their
behavior in a lab,” she says. “These animals
have captured my curiosity, my imagination,
and my heart.”
SPRING 2016
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33
±×>
Absolute Value
Math for Love founder Dan Finkel ’02
helps kids find joy in his favorite subject
by Michael Agresta
IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that math class can be boring.
But it doesn’t have to be, according to Dan Finkel ’02. An elementary-school math whiz who went on to
exhaust his district’s math resources
halfway through high school, Finkel
eventually majored in mathematics
at Swarthmore before earning a Ph.D.
in the subject at the University of
Washington. Now, he’s working with
teachers and school curricula to shape
citywide math education in Seattle
through his mission-driven company,
Math for Love.
Even so, Finkel is the first to admit
that, for many, math ≠ love.
“Math class can seem like a place
34
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
where there’s this set of rules you’re
supposed to follow to solve a problem
you don’t care about,” Finkel says. “For
most people, if that’s all they’re getting,
they understand really quickly that
there’s no way to bring their personality to bear in solving that problem, so
they leave.”
Reaching kids before they give up
on math has become Finkel’s mission.
His hope is to communicate a broader
sense of what math can be: a pleasurable mix of creativity and logic, not so
different from the sorts of games that
enthrall children of all ages.
THE ARITHMETIC OF ORIGINS
Finkel is the product of a family of
educators and game-players. His
father was a humanities professor at
Evergreen State College, an experimental school with no departments
and no grades. Finkel’s mother earned
a Ph.D. in leadership and policy studies from the University of Washington
and researched the effect of childrearing on women’s careers. So it’s no surprise that, even as a kid, Finkel took
a critical perspective on his school’s
pedagogy.
“I was good at math from a very
young age, but it wasn’t really clear
what that meant,” he says. “Math
teachers told you what to do and then
you’d do it. It never really felt like anything that special. Being good at math
MATH MENTOR
ASHWIN RAO ’99
Helping people of all ages
appreciate math is a big plus
for Dan Finkel ’02.
SPRING 2016
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35
ASHWIN RAO ’99
Married Math for Love mavens Finkel and Katherine Cook square off for a game of their
co-creation, Prime Climb.
just felt like a result of playing endless
hours of cribbage with my brothers.”
Finkel’s epiphany came in the
summer after ninth grade, when he
attended a math camp at Hampshire
College in Massachusetts.
“It was the first time I was really
challenged in math, the first time I
really saw how beautiful math was,”
Finkel says.
To demonstrate the beauty and originality of math to skeptics, Finkel
offers an example: What if we agreed
that 2 + 2 = 12?
“It sounds obviously false,” Finkel
says. “But in math you can figure out
what would happen if it were true.
Sometimes you just get nonsense. But
DAN 411
What’s your favorite
number?
I like to notice nice
things about the numbers I’m around. I’m
36 years old, for example, which is the first
nontrivial example of
a “squangular” number, a number that’s both
36
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
in this case, you say 2 + 1 = 11, and 2 +
0 = 10. So maybe it’s not a number line,
maybe it’s a number circle. Suddenly
you have a whole different model for
how numbers might work.
“The fundamental questions for
me in math are the ‘what if ’ or ‘I wonder’ questions,” Finkel adds. “You
start to think about new rules or how
things could be different. Then you
have the tools to actually pursue it.
Pedagogically, that’s the moment when
people realize that they have more control than they thought.”
THE CALCULUS OF CREATION
At first, Finkel resisted majoring in
math at Swarthmore. Instead, he opted
square and triangular.
It’s square since 6 x 6 =
36, and triangular since
1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8
= 36. Every number has
so many amazing properties, I can’t commit to
just one.
Who’s your hero?
Alexander Grothendieck:
one of the top mathematicians of the 20th cen-
SPRING 2016
tury, a beautiful writer,
and a person who acted
from conviction.
What’s your favorite
Math for Love-inspired
epiphany?
Last year, I led a workshop of math-hesitant
K-12 teachers. Working with pattern blocks,
we explored the question of how many blocks
to take classes in subjects like philosophy, English, and physics, most of them
circling around the question of how the
mind works. Still, he always had at least
one math class on his schedule. When
it came time to declare a major, though
his interests remained eclectic, math
was the only subject where Finkel had
enough credits to qualify. Professor
Don Shimamoto was a favorite teacher,
someone who could effectively communicate difficult mathematical concepts
in his lectures but also knew how to sit
back and let students explore their abilities in seminar.
After Swarthmore, Finkel returned
to his native Washington state to pursue a Ph.D. in math. There he met his
wife, Katherine Cook, a fellow student in his department. She is now
creative director of Math for Love;
Finkel is founder and director of operations. The Math for Love concept
grew slowly during Finkel’s graduate
career, during which he taught math
for future high-school teachers and
got a grant to work with Seattle second- and fourth-grade teachers.
“I was expecting it’d be slower to
get started,” he admits. “We were
embraced very quickly by this community. It became full-time work almost
right away.”
Finkel estimates that Math for
Love now works with 50 to 100 teachers across Seattle. He and Cook organize teacher circles, classroom
you could use to make a
hexagon. Over an hour,
different people made
different observations
about what was possible,
and when we put them
all together, we realized
that we had proved that
you could make a hexagon from any number of
blocks you liked. To have
that kind of power over
the infinite is pretty ex-
citing—it was a thrill for
everyone involved, myself included.
How did math help you
and your wife woo?
Katherine wrote me
a love letter when we
were dating that started
“Dear Dan” and ended
“Love, Katherine.” The
body of the letter was a
math proof. I loved it.
demonstrations, workshops, and
grade-level support for teachers. They
also design curriculum for a summer-school program and offer free lesson plans on mathforlove.com.
Though he has his complaints about
the failings of math education in
schools, Finkel prefers to work within
the system rather than outside of it.
“You have to change what’s happening during school hours,” he says.
“That’s when the time is being put in.
We don’t want Math for Love to only
be available to kids whose parents can
sign them up for something extra after
school. We want it to be available to
everyone.”
At the same time, he’s wary of the
system he’s up against.
“There’s a sense of a graveyard of
good ideas,” he admits. “You see math
reformers in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s
who wrote great, popular textbooks,
but faded away. You need humility in
the face of the system that is so big and
has so much inertia. It’s hard to really
get it to change direction.”
THE GEOMETRY OF GOING FORWARD
Finkel takes courage from what he sees
as an ongoing cultural change, where
math-and-science fans can finally be
cool, or even, in the case of Matt Damon
in Good Will Hunting and The Martian,
big-screen heroes. If students, teachers, and parents all start to believe that
math class isn’t boring, then maybe
they’ll come to it with an open mind,
ready to have fun. Then, they might
realize that many of their favorite
games are already based on math.
“Math for Love is really about having
a chance to play while doing math,” he
says. “We’re always finding good games,
or sometimes even making our own.”
One such game of Finkel and Cook’s
own creation is called Prime Climb,
which has won several awards and
was named among the Dr. Toy Best 10
Educational Toys of 2015. Available on
Amazon and in select retail stores, it
began with the concept of movement
based on arithmetic operations.
To move their pieces along the board
from the number one to the number
PUZZLE!
What fraction of this
image is shaded?
Hint: Look for triangles
of equal size
+ WATCH THE SOLUTION: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
“FOR MANY,
MATH ≠ LOVE”
101, players roll a pair of dice and,
based on the results, choose to perform
addition, subtraction, multiplication,
or division. The mathematical result
tells them which square they’ll land on
that turn.
Prime Climb’s rules may seem complex, but an innovative board design
makes the game child’s play.
“We were thinking the game would
work for ages 10 and up,” Finkel says.
“But parents would play it with 5-yearolds, and the kids would understand
how the colors worked.”
These 5-year-olds aren’t necessarily
mathematical supergeniuses—they’re
ordinary kids excited by a colorful
pattern that, to them, has nothing in
common with rote math education.
That color pattern elegantly demonstrates how each large number (primes
excluded) is made up of smaller factors
multiplied together.
“They’re looking for clues, figuring
out a mystery instead of memorization,” he says.
For Finkel, that’s the key—the
success of Prime Climb is just one
small step toward a world where math
is embraced, not reviled, by the next
generation of schoolchildren. Speaking
like a true Swarthmore alum, he sees
a solid grounding in math—real math:
creative, beautiful, thought-provoking—as an education in thinking.
The value of mathematic training,
for him, is absolute, no matter what a
child ends up doing with his or her life.
“The word ‘mathematics’ originally means learning,” he says. “What’s
so powerful about the critical thinking skills you learn in math is that you
really can apply them anywhere.”
+ VIEW DAN’S TEDX TALK: bit.ly/DanTedx
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
37
38
Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2016
SAYED
DREAMS
OF BIRDS
Exploring Swarthmore’s
winged inspiration
JACQUI OAKLEY
by Jonathan Riggs
AVIAN AND OTHERWISE, rare birds
abound at Swarthmore.
Among the many roosting in the
College’s Peace Collection is Horace
Gundry Alexander, a world-famous
pacifist, Quaker, and adviser to
Mahatma Gandhi.
Nowhere in the 14 boxes of papers by
the Englishman who eventually moved
to Swarthmore is there more passion
than in the slim folder, “Writings re:
birds.”
“The sight of a scarlet tanager,” he
writes, “a bird that only spends a few
summer months in this part of the
States, always makes me tingle with
excitement.”
Birds mean something almost
indescribable to humanity, he says,
who “must sometimes escape from
himself, from his problems, his accomplishments, his sins and even his loves;
he must forget himself.
“That is what birds have meant
to my Quaker ancestors. That, at
bottom, is what birds mean to me,”
he writes. “They are something ‘different’—‘wholly other’ they sometimes
seem. And so they help to redeem man
from the sin, the bondage of self.”
Losing himself in them, Alexander
finds that “life and death, time and
space slip away,” yielding “an immortal moment.”
For countless Swarthmoreans, birds
have been the perfect vessel for their
own immortal moments.
THE DREAMER
Growing up in Virginia, Sayed Malawi
’18 was 8 when the stunning photo of
an indigo bunting on a library copy of
The National Wildlife Federation Field
Guide to Birds of North America caught
his eye.
“When I found out there are over
700 kinds of birds in North America
alone, the diversity grabbed me,” he
says. “I knew I had to see them all.”
By the time he came to Swarthmore,
Malawi had acquired an incredible
amount of bird-related experience and
knowledge. Eager to share it and to
build a community, he launched Bird
Club at the beginning of last year.
In addition to bird walks through the
Crum Woods several times each week,
the Bird Club has also hosted guest
speakers and sponsored a bird-banding
trip where members got to see—and
even touch—two northern saw-whet
owls.
“Starting the Bird Club has been a
great opportunity to reacquaint myself
with why I love birding,” Malawi says.
“The beginning’s the best part, because
every time you go out, you’re seeing
birds you’ve never seen before. Being
able to share that joy with new people is
really rewarding.”
THE SCIENTISTS
Swarthmore is an institution unafraid
to see the world from a bird’s-eye view.
In 2004, the College installed fritted
glass on the science center to make the
structure more bird friendly. (Up to a
billion birds die each year when they
fly into glass windows, according to the
American Bird Conservancy.)
That approach, of course, doesn’t
end at architecture.
“Our students are intrinsically interested in birds,” says Alex Baugh, an
assistant professor of biology who is
wrapping up an international study of
the hormonal mechanisms that give
rise to songbird personality.
Rebecca Senft ’15, one of his students who participated in this
research, ended up making it her honors thesis. In fact, her paper on songbird brains and stress was recently
published by leading scientific journal
PLOS ONE. The winner of last year’s
Oak Leaf Award, Senft is a first-year
student at Harvard’s Ph.D. program in
neuroscience.
“My bird work with Alex helped me
realize what I wanted to do,” she says.
“I am incredibly thankful to have had
this opportunity—it was my introduction to neuroscience research.”
Their work has helped increase our
SPRING 2016
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39
overall understanding and appreciation of avifauna, including why “birdbrain” isn’t a pejorative.
“The attitude about birds as though
they’re not very intelligent has really
shifted,” Baugh says.
“Bird brains are so interesting and
unique,” Senft adds. “Instead of having
a brain with a layered cortex, many of
the cortical functions are found in distinct neuronal clusters called nuclei.”
“Yes, birds behave differently than
mammals,” says Baugh, “but we see
now they’re doing all kinds of very
complex and interesting behaviors that
we didn’t know about until recently.”
Currently, Baugh’s students work
with tufted titmice and Carolina chickadees in the Crum, studying how
they physiologically and behaviorally
cope with stress. The highlight of this
research, he says, is that it’s exciting
for students to participate in discovery—especially when it occurs in their
own backyard.
“Swarthmore has a huge asset with
the Crum Woods and I’m really thrilled
Sayed and the Bird Club are so enthusiastic and engaged in that,” Baugh
says. “It really benefits our students to
have experiences in nature, and what’s
beautiful is that they’ve done it on
their own.”
“WHENEVER
YOU SEE AN
OWL, IT FEELS
LIKE IT’S
LETTING YOU.”
—SAYED MALAWI ’18
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
THE LEGEND
Every bird walk is an opportunity to
get hooked—it only takes one exhilarating experience. Malawi’s came
when he saw his favorite bird, an owl,
hunting at dusk.
“Owls are so secretive and we know
so little about their world,” he says.
“Whenever you see an owl, it feels like
it’s letting you—it’s a privilege.”
Out of the world’s more than 10,000
species, Malawi’s birding life list is in
the 500s. Although he began his career
poring over that fateful guidebook,
eager to see a variety of birds, he’s now
more philosophical, inspired by a similar journey.
No discussion of birds and
Swarthmore—of birds, period—is complete without Phoebe Snetsinger ’53,
considered by many to be the world’s
all-time greatest birder.
Memorialized by classmates in The
Halcyon as the “Gal from chicawgo
[sic] with curly hair and curly eyebrows … shy smile and warm friendliness … keen scientific mind … unselfish
as they come … invaluable friend,”
Snetsinger came to birding late.
In 1965, she was a 34-year-old
housewife who’d dreamed of becoming
a chemist but had put aside her ambitions to raise a family.
When her neighbor—a fellow housewife intellectual—lent her a Peterson
field guide and a pair of binoculars,
Snetsinger’s world changed.
“What an incredible gift!” she
wrote in her memoir, Birding on
Borrowed Time. “The first bird I really
saw through those binoculars was
a fiery-orange male Blackburnian
Warbler that nearly knocked me over
with astonishment—and quite simply
hooked me forever.”
Birding became her dearest hobby
and, after a terminal cancer diagnosis in 1981, her self-prescribed treatment—ultimately an effective one,
since her cancer went into remission. Throughout cancer recurrences,
Snetsinger refused to slow down.
Traveling around the world on special birding trips that ranged from
arduous to dangerous—she survived
shipwrecks, physical assault, and
earthquakes—Snetsinger saw birds
on every continent, becoming the first
person ever to view 8,000 species and
her field’s biggest, best-loved celebrity.
As she wished, she died in her sleep
on a birding trip—in 1999 at age 68 in
Madagascar.
“Birding is the best and most exciting pursuit in the world, a gloriously
never-ending one,” she wrote earlier
that year, warning readers not to “let
[this opportunity] pass without considering taking part in the greatest
avian celebration ever witnessed.”
THE LOVER
“Celebration” is an apt descriptor,
Malawi says as he talks about the
infinite variety of birds, from the familiarity of the robin to the otherworldliness of the scarlet ibis.
“There are so many kind of birds, so
many colors,” he says. “Everyone wants
to have a connection with the natural
world, and it’s easy with birds.”
For a long time, he’s considered
turning his passion into his profession. Malawi has analyzed thermal
imagery of Galapagos finches at the
Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in
Washington, D.C., and created enrichment activities for a captive family of
keas (alpine New Zealand parrots) at
the Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation in
Qatar.
Malawi’s favorite experience was
when he coaxed the shy kea father out
of hiding with a new-wave medley of
Duran Duran, a-ha, and Depeche Mode.
“He really got into that,” he says with
a laugh.
That cross-species connection—true
human/avian communion—has long
fueled spirituality, art, and even our
dreams, according to Mark Wallace,
professor of religion.
He’s still haunted by an experience
he and his students had one summer,
sitting in a circle at Crumhenge when
a great blue heron flew overhead and
landed on the creek’s edge.
“We just watched its movement as
it hunted, and then it took off again.
Herons are like pterodactyls—huge—
and watching that bird was magical,”
he says. “It was like being in the presence of a deity, something ancient,
unknowable. I don’t know if there
really is a God, but if there is such a
being, maybe that’s it.”
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
1
2
3
1. A red-tailed hawk snacks on a squirrel in the middle of campus. 2. Sayed Malawi ’18 before a Bird Club walk. 3. Read Rebecca Senft ’15’s paper on
songbird brains: bit.ly/SenftBaugh
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
41
the time—shopping malls, parking lots,
freeway traffic—the riot and exuberance of birds is an antidote to banality and tedium,” he says. “Watching
them is meditation itself: an exercise
in mindfulness and soulfulness. I try to
harmonize my inner life with the outer
life of birds.”
DIGITAL IMAGE COURTESY OF THE GETTY’S OPEN CONTENT PROGRAM
1
2
3
1. Professor Alex Baugh helps students examine songbirds in the Crum Woods. 2. Phoebe
Snetsinger ’53 from The Halcyon. 3. Noah’s dove is just one of many birds that have captured
humanity’s imagination in religion, culture, and art.
“BIRDS OPEN
US UP TO THE
WORLD OF
THE DIVINE.”
—MARK WALLACE
42
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
Along those lines, he’s working on
a book tentatively titled A Beaked and
Feathered God or When God Was a
Bird, about animism, the belief of primordial people that everything is alive
and sacred.
“That’s my entry point—birds open
us up to the world of the divine,” he
says, citing the familiar Christian
depiction of the Holy Spirit as a dove.
“For me, these spectacular creatures
have both a theological as well as a
local resonance.”
Wallace’s interest was further
piqued when he and his wife moved
into a house overlooking the Crum
Woods and daily witnessed displays of
extraordinary beauty (rose-breasted
grosbeaks singing), tenderness (pileated woodpeckers parenting), and violence (red-tailed hawks hunting).
“In a world that seems dead much of
THE BEGINNING
It’s a Swarthmorean sentiment echoed
across decades and disciplines—with
their ability to sing and soar, birds fascinate and inspire us. And, regardless
of whether our interest in them is scientific or spiritual, poetic or prosaic,
they always will.
“Birds are awesome,” Malawi says.
“I want everyone to get excited about
them.”
And so he continues to make plans
for the Bird Club by bringing in more
guest speakers, connecting with avian-loving alumni, and leading countless walks—anything to spark and
stoke the delight he feels at all things
feathered.
Tall and thin in green jeans and
flared-tongue hiking boots, Malawi
pauses in the middle of the Crum
Woods. Behind him in a line, the inaugural members of Swarthmore’s Bird
Club freeze.
There it is, a staccato succession: “ha! ha! ha!” machine-gunning
overhead.
With a practiced sweep, Malawi lifts
his perfectly calibrated binoculars to
search the branches overhead; again,
the club members follow suit.
Straining to look upward, they don’t
see him raise his iPhone. They hear it,
though, when Malawi launches an app
that plays a throaty, rolling response.
The wind rustles through the trees.
They hold their breath. They wait.
Something flashes far above and—
magically, miraculously—answers
back.
“Red-bellied woodpecker,” Malawi
says with a grin.
Only then do the club members
exhale, one by one, grinning at each
other and all around them with wonder, like so many of their fellow
Swatties: eyes and ears—and maybe
even hearts—palpably open to beauty,
to boundless potential, to birds.
LYDIA DANILLER
ALUMNI PROFILE
“Each day had a destination and a purpose—a perfect combination for renewal,”
Hanna Rosenblatt Alger ’56 says about her epic European walks.
WALK OF LIFE
Catching up with Hanna Rosenblatt Alger ’56
is easier said than done
by Marilyn Lewis
AT AGE 79, Hanna “Terry” Rosenblatt
Alger ’56 strapped on a backpack for
the first time and walked—550 miles.
With a friend, she traveled along a medieval pilgrimage route from Pamplona
to Santiago de Compostela, Spain,
where, tradition says, lie the bones of
James the Great, patron saint of Spain
and the first of Jesus’s apostles. Last
year, at 80, she walked another old pilgrim path, 450 miles across France.
“Sit down,” her husband, Gene,
urges most days. But Alger’s mind fires
when she’s in motion. In fact, she spent
much of a 19-year career at Bell Labs in
Murray Hill, N.J., pacing and problemsolving.
Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1935,
Alger was 3 months old when her family immigrated to the U.S., settling in
East Orange, N.J., where her chemist
father, an expert on the catalytic properties of platinum, had found work.
When it came time for college, she
followed sister Christine (Rosenblatt
Downing ’52), and brother Gerd ’55 to
Swarthmore. “I was basically given no
choice,” she laughs.
She gleefully admits that she wasn’t
a spectacular student, but Heinrich
Brinkman, who taught math from 1933
to 1969, saw her light.
“He asked me, ‘What are you doing
this summer?’ I said, ‘I guess factory
work,’ and he said, ‘Oh no, now you
have a Ford Foundation scholarship to
teach high-school math,’ which was a
surprise to me,” she remembers.
After Swarthmore, Alger carved a
career path in technology unusual for
a woman at the time. Sent directly to
the secretarial pool at an IBM interview, she talked her way into a class of
mostly male technical trainees instead.
Returning to New Jersey, she joined
Bell Labs as a senior technical aide in
1961. When she applied to a workplace
program supporting select employees in
earning master’s degrees in technical
fields, her thin math background disqualified her until Brinkman stepped
in. Thanks to his vote of confidence,
Alger was admitted. She earned an
M.S. in applied mathematics in 1966.
After 10 years away to rear two children and start a Christmas tree farm
in rural New Jersey, Alger resumed
work as a systems analyst at Bell Labs,
where she worked until her retirement
in 1989. In 1987, she was awarded the
coveted title of Distinguished Member
of Technical Staff—due to her networking skills more so than her technical contribution, she jokes.
“One of the things that Swarthmore
gives you is a sense that it doesn’t
matter what facts you learn—discovering how to learn and how to use your
knowledge is the real takeaway,” she
says. “That ‘Renaissance man’ approach served me well at Bell Labs and
in life.”
At 70, she and Gene reinvented
themselves, selling the tree farm
to daughter Katrina and moving to
Berkeley, Calif., drawn by family and
the restaurants, culture, and warm
weather. Since then, Alger has chaired
a vibrant gathering of retired women
whose activities—including a book
group, writing group, and regular discussions of New Yorker articles—have
become central to her existence.
When 80 rolled around, it offered
Alger another invitation to assess her
life, so she tackled it the best way she
knew how: on her feet, with a second
pilgrimage, this time alone, through
southern France to the Spanish border.
“Sit down,” Gene continues to urge,
but Alger’s too busy, observing her
family’s 50th season selling Christmas trees at the New Jersey farm and
planning new adventures for 2016:
a four-day hike near home, another
Spanish pilgrimage, and—her favorite—the 60th reunion of Swarthmore’s
Class of ’56.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
53
ALUMNI PROFILE
“I love building new things,” says Brian Chen ’07.
LIKE A BOSS
Entrepreneur Brian Chen ’07 brings the world
its first smart suitcase
by Heather Shumaker ’91
BRIAN CHEN ’07 understands the
anguish of lost luggage. Once, after he
returned from a trip to Ecuador, his
suitcase didn’t. When it turned up two
weeks later, his prized digital camera was
missing, along with his trip photos. So
when a friend called in 2013 with an idea
to prevent this from happening again,
Chen leapt at it.
“We’re in this day and age where
we have smart thermostats and smart
watches,” he says. “Why not smart luggage?”
Today, he is co-founder of Bluesmart,
a company devoted to smoothing travel
through technology. Its first product is a
sleek carry-on suitcase that’s controlled
through a smartphone app. Travelers can
track its location, lock and unlock it remotely, check its weight, and even receive
notification if they’re leaving it behind
by mistake. The time, he says, has come
for this product, which also doubles as a
phone charger.
“Twenty-five million suitcases are lost
per year. People are hungry for it,” says
Chen. “Plus there’s been little innovation
in suitcases over the years. Suitcases
didn’t even get wheels until the 1970s.
We took an everyday object that people
haven’t cared to reimagine, and now we’re
reimagining it.”
Bluesmart launched with a crowdfunding campaign through Indiegogo that
quickly turned sensational.
“We set a goal of $50,000,” says Chen.
“We hit the goal within two hours. People
loved the idea. Everyone has had some
mishap with luggage.”
The campaign has since topped
$2 million. Chen, who was in his first
semester of business school at the MIT
Sloan School of Management when the
campaign rocketed to success, took a
leave of absence to focus on the company.
He moved to Hong Kong with his team to
oversee initial luggage design and manufacturing, and now lives in San Francisco,
Bluesmart’s world headquarters.
Chen and his four fellow co-founders
recently shipped the first batch of “suitcases that can’t get lost” to Indiegogo supporters. Buzzfeed named it one of the best
products of the year (“insanely clever!”);
Fast Company called it a “carry-on bag
that James Bond could get behind.” By the
end of 2015, they had raised an additional
$11.5 million from Silicon Valley investors such as Y Combinator.
An English literature major, Chen says
he never could have imagined making
smart suitcases when he was a student
at Swarthmore. Smartphones and apps
didn’t exist, of course, but his keen interest in entrepreneurship did. For Chen,
it began in elementary school when his
family moved to Taiwan.
“Entrepreneurship was part of Taiwan’s story,” he says. “I wanted to be an
entrepreneur before I knew how to spell
the word. It always played in my mind
that entrepreneurship was a force of good
in the world.”
After graduation, Chen landed a job
at Endeavor, a New York City-based
nonprofit devoted to supporting entrepreneurs with big ideas in developing countries. That’s how he met his friend Diego
Saez-Gil, an Argentine who dreamed up
smart luggage. (Chen’s other Bluesmart
co-founders all hail from Argentina.)
The Bluesmart suitcase went on retail
sale in December. It’s graphite black, with
blue highlights. Why blue?
“We liked the color,” he admits. “The
world is blue. Part of our mission is to
connect the world through travel and
technology.”
Now that lost luggage may be a thing of
the past, what about those pesky security
lines?
“We’re trying,” says Chen. “Joking
aside, that’s one of travel’s headaches, so
we’re looking into solutions.”
All it might take is a little entrepreneurial spirit—and the right carry-on.
SPRING 2016
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
67
spoken word
ADVENTURES IN
THE ARBORETUM
JOSH COCEANO went from Scott
Arboretum intern to the College’s
full-time horticulturist. When he’s not
tending plants, Coceano curates the
world’s only photo collection
(instagram.com/joshcoceano) that
regularly captures 1980s action figures
cavorting in Swarthmore’s sylvan
settings. He shared his predilection
for play and plants with Bulletin editor
Jonathan Riggs.
72
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2016
What sparked your interest in
horticulture?
Growing up in rural Virginia, being
outside around plants was part of life. I
remember being a kid and “helping” my
mom, which was really me playing with
my dinosaurs in the vegetable garden.
My everyday life helped me develop an
appreciation for not only the beauty of
plants, but also for what they do for us.
What did you do before
Swarthmore?
I taught third grade back home, mostly
English as a second language students.
I really enjoyed teaching, but being
inside a classroom all day drained my
spirit. I need to be outside!
What’s so special about plants?
Look at an acorn: It’s tiny but it develops into a giant tree that provides oxygen, food, and shelter. Yes, there’s science to explain it, but there’s magic and
mystery tied to it, too. When you think
about the sheer diversity of plants—not
just here in the temperate region of the
Northeast, but all over the world—how
can you not look around in awe?
How do you come up with your
Instagram vignettes?
I don’t want to just collect all these toys
and put them away; I want to actually
still play with them. Part of what I do at
the Arboretum is taking snapshots, so I
keep a supply of action figures with me.
Sometimes these scenes just pop into
my head. It’s good to be serious in life,
but it’s also good to keep a sense of play.
One of the things I appreciated about
teaching elementary-school kids is that
they are spontaneous, fun, and creative.
Is that your approach to gardening?
Yes. Gardening allows everyone’s
self-expression to come out. No two
gardens are ever the same, so don’t
be intimidated to try your hand at it.
Just remember: With any art or craft,
everybody starts off as a neophyte. It’s
OK to buy a little $5 plant and try. If it
dies, you can just compost it—circle of
life—and try again.
How can our community better
appreciate plants?
Be conscious that our campus isn’t the
norm. I went to a school for horticulture and my college campus wasn’t
maintained like this. I thought it was
fantastic, too, that President Smith
planted a tree for her inauguration—we
have a leader who really embraces our
mission. We want the Arboretum to be
a resource for the Swarthmore community, so please explore, experience, and
immerse yourself in it.
+ WATCH JOSH IN ACTION:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
What inspired your love of action
figures?
I have a collector’s mentality, even with
plants. Right now, I love salvias so I’m
collecting all these different salvias.
Before action figures, I collected stamps
and coins. But as a kid, I loved this great
toy line called Dino-Riders, where
this group of humans crash-landed on
prehistoric Earth. My mom was really
good about encouraging me while also
making sure I spent time outside. She
limited how many toys I could have.
Now that I’m an adult with a full-time
job, I can indulge a bit.
in this issue
34
HEY, KIDS!
Absolute Value
Don’t let math get
your goat—love its
beauty thanks to
Dan Finkel ’02’s
company.
ASHWIN RAO ’99
by Michael Agresta
MOMENT IN TIME
Arboretum staff painted this
dead weeping hemlock purple as
a reminder of the natural world’s
beauty—and fragility.
SPRING 2016
MR. MATH
Periodical Postage
PAID
Philadelphia, PA
and Additional
Mailing Offices
p34
AVIAN INSPIRATION
p38
SMART SUITCASE
p67
ISSUE
II1
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
VOLUME
CXIII
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
THE BEST SEAT
IN THE HOUSE
AWAITS
GREEN QUEEN
The Conjurer
of Compost
p20
SPRING 2016
IN LOVE
WITH
OCTOPI
ALUMNI WEEKEND JUNE 3–5
swarthmore.edu/alumniweekend
LAURENCE KESTERSON
p30
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2016-04-01
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
2016-04-01
49 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.