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SPRING 2019
Periodical Postage
PAID
Philadelphia, PA
and Additional
Mailing Offices
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
Just ask these lifelong friends profiled on pg. 42
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
SWARTHMORE FRIENDSHIPS CAN LAST FOREVER.
SPRING 2019
Remember your good times at
Swarthmore—and make sure
students experience their very
own—by investing in the
College’s future through your
will, a gift that pays you income
for life, or a charitable
distribution from an IRA.
CREDIT
giftplanning@swarthmore.edu
866-526-4438
swarthmore.edu/plannedgiving
GLOBAL CHANGE MAKERS
p20
(SEA)STAR GAZERS
p30
NEW STEAM DREAMERS
p36
in this issue
BEAUTIFUL COMPLEXITY
36
Full STEAM Ahead
At the intersection of the arts
and sciences, businesses thrive.
by Elizabeth Slocum
This tiny toy dog, made
with a quilling tool, arrived
from India and captured our
imaginations. STEAMventer
Disha Katharani ’06 has brought
new life to an ancient art form.
MOMENT IN TIME
On campus Jan. 23,
students held a candlelight vigil
for those who have suffered
while promoting equity
and inclusion.
20
2
47
FEATURES
DIALOGUE
CLASS NOTES
The Global Bridge
Editor’s Column
Letters
Community Voices
Alumni News and
Events
Swarthmore alumni are
creating change in their
home countries.
by Elizabeth Redden ’05
30
Stars of the Sea
Why are sea stars dying off ?
Ocean health plays a role.
by Kate Campbell
42
Linked by Letters
Even as their post-College
lives took different paths,
seven friends stayed
connected.
President Valerie Smith
Profiles
Studentwise
Annie Fetter ’88
Sam Dingman ’04
Books
Looking Back
Tiye Pulley ’19
Global Thinking
Their Light Lives On
John Derderian ’97
78
SPOKEN WORD
9
COMMON GOOD
Kenneth E. Sharpe
Swarthmore Stories
Quiz’more
Learning Curve
Emily McHugh ’90
Liberal Arts Lives
Sue Levin ’85
Jamey Clarke ’91
by Barbara Lea Couphos ’49
ON THE COVER
A map of the world composed of quills. Creative
entrepreneur Disha Katharani ’06 developed
a tool to make the art of quilling easier for
kids of all ages (see “Full STEAM Ahead,” pg.
36). Bulletin designer Phil Stern ’84 used the
product to visualize Swarthmore’s international
embrace (see “The Global Bridge,” pg. 20) as
“a bubbling cauldron of ideas.” Photo by
Laurence Kesterson.
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
1
dialogue
EDITOR’S COLUMN
Migrations
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
Interim Editor
Kate Campbell
LETTERS
BETTER OFF?
NO ‘ORDINARY’ ISSUE
It pains me to see that an alumnus you profiled in the winter
2019 issue is defending the immoral treatment of federal
employees, and ignoring the even-worse plight of lowwage employees of federal contractors, resulting from the
shutdown of 25 percent of the federal government.
In an interview with PBS’s Paul Solman on Jan. 10, Kevin
Hassett ’84 said that “in a sense, they’re better off ” because
the furloughed employees will get back pay when the
shutdown ends, but “in a sense” shows that he knows that
it’s harming those who depend upon their regular paychecks.
Besides being unable to pay essential expenses while
furloughed, they will be burdened by a huge backlog of work
when the shutdown ends.
The employees who are not furloughed because they are
deemed “essential” are being treated even worse, not getting
paid while not receiving the supposed “benefit” of forced
time off. And contractors’ employees are not going to receive
back pay for the work they didn’t do during the shutdown.
But that doesn’t mean that the government is saving
money. The costs of shutting down government functions
and getting them started again far exceeds any savings from
not paying contractors for work not done.
To be fair, Hassett did acknowledge (in a portion of the
interview that was not broadcast) that the first three weeks
of the shutdown would cost the economy some $20 billion
in output, and $10 billion for every week after that. All
this because President Trump was proud to shut down the
government if Congress would not force taxpayers to pay
billions of dollars for an ineffective border wall that Trump
claimed federal workers wanted, when polls showed that the
vast majority of federal workers did not want either the wall
or the shutdown.
Well before the shutdown, Hassett told the Bulletin, “I
am not a critic of President Trump’s.” As head of Trump’s
Council of Economic Advisers, Hassett’s defense of Trump’s
shutdown brings dishonor to the economics profession and
to Swarthmore, I’m sorry to say.
—FRED STOLLNITZ ’59, Silver Spring, Md.
Employee of the National Science Foundation (a government
agency), 1971–2006
The winter 2019 issue of the Bulletin was the best I’ve ever
received. This one I actually wanted to read! Thanks for
listening to us and covering a wide range of Swarthmore
alums in a genuine way. It’s so much more impressive for
a college to turn out people who—you can count on it—
approach their lives creatively and passionately than for a
college to have a few stand-out alums per class. Your issue
helped show that this is undoubtedly what Swarthmore does.
Good job.
—MARGARET COOTE ’98, Rochester, N.Y.
Class Notes Editor
Elizabeth Slocum
Senior Writer/Editor
Ryan Dougherty
Designer
Phillip Stern ’84
Photographer
Laurence Kesterson
Administrative Assistant
Lauren McAloon
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Editorial Assistant
Eishna Ranganathan ’20
Editor Emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
by
KATE
CAMPBELL
Interim Editor
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.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume
CXVI, number III, 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 Alumni Records, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390.
Printed with agri-based inks.
Please recycle after reading.
©2019 Swarthmore College.
Printed in USA.
pr inted w
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
i
th
e
2
We regret that the book cover
image for Pieces of Mind by
Carrie Figdor ’81 was cropped
in the winter 2019 issue. Please
accept our apology and enjoy
the full cover pictured here and
with the online article.
bit.ly/MINDMatters
Send address changes to
records@swarthmore.edu
nd
+ WRITE TO US: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
THE BIG PICTURE
Send letters and story ideas to
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
e c o-fri
SOME HUMMINGBIRDS, like this one in the
garden near the Hormel-Nguyen Intercultural
Center, travel more than 2,000 miles twice a year
during their migration.
This January, the Bulletin staff had its own
migration as we said farewell and good luck to
Jonathan Riggs—who brought energy and life to the
magazine as its editor since 2015. Jonathan traveled
2,716 miles to take a position at the University of
Southern California.
In his words: “Thank you all for the privilege of
being your Swarthmore College Bulletin editor.
It’s been an unbelievably rewarding journey, and
this place and its people have changed my life. I am
immensely proud of every issue my gifted colleagues
and I produced in your honor, and I’m deeply inspired
by the knowledge that they—and you—will continue
to shine the light of Swarthmore. Thank you for the
illumination!”
We’re excited to share this migratory spring
issue: on global alumni who pollinate new ideas
in their home countries, STEAM alumni busily
bringing new technology to the marketplace, sea
stars navigating intertidal currents, and loyal letterwriters who stayed close through many of life’s
journeys.
Enjoy!
ly
H-UV
ks
The ruby-throated hummingbird, Archilochus colubris, a precision flyer with a taste for
nectar.
bulletin.swarthmore.edu
facebook.com/SwarthmoreBulletin
instagram.com/SwarthmoreBulletin
Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Telephone: 610-328-8533
In the winter 2019 edition, I was delighted to see a print of the
1927 Swarthmore campus map. My parents, Laurie ’78 and Kevin
Browngoehl ’78, have a print of this exact map displayed on the
wall of their home in Bryn Mawr. They bought it at the Harriton
House flea market about 20 years ago, and I grew up looking at it
before I myself went to Swarthmore. We would love to learn more
about the map and how many other prints may exist out there!
—JUDY BROWNGOEHL ’09, Philadelphia, Pa.
in
CONTRIBUTORS
Beth Walrond Illustrator
Walrond uses bold
shapes and soft
textures to build
expressive characters,
scenes, and maps. Her
work can be found in
books, magazines, and
advertising campaigns.
Jacob Howland ’80 Professor
The McFarlin Professor
of Philosophy at the
University of Tulsa,
Howland recently
published articles on
Soviet literature and
ideological tyranny in
The New Criterion.
Elizabeth Coleman ’69 Poet
Coleman is a poet,
public-interest
attorney, environmental
activist, and teacher
of mindfulness. In
HERE: Poems for the
Planet, Coleman brings
together her love for poetry, for justice,
and for our planet.
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
3
dialogue
COMMUNITY VOICES
LAURENCE KESTERSON
RELAX AND RESTORE
I
NTENSITY has long
been a defining thread
of the Swarthmore
experience. Indeed,
students, staff, faculty,
and alumni take
pride in their ability to stretch and
challenge themselves and one another
intellectually and personally.
Without question, this commitment
to hard work leads to pathbreaking
research, innovative thinking,
transformative collaborations, and
lifelong friendships.
While a passion for knowledge and
commitment to ideas and ideals is
laudable, the sheer pace of life can
be relentless. Finding those fleeting
moments that restore us while doing
the important work we are called to do
is critical—sometimes even fun.
My special source of joy is an
exuberant golden retriever named
Qhubeka. (Her name is a Nguni
word that means “to move forward.”)
Because my travel schedule prevents
me from having my own dog, I
have happily taken on the role of
“godmother” to this gorgeous puppy
with soulful eyes. Qhubeka lives
At Swarthmore, a number of campus
with her parents, John ’66 and Paula
initiatives are underway to help
Lawrence Wehmiller ’67, a few blocks
students, faculty, and staff achieve
from campus.
greater balance in our lives. The
Smart, funny, willful, and
Matchbox and the newly renovated
enthusiastic, Qhubeka exists entirely
Hormel-Nguyen Intercultural Center
in the moment. She doesn’t hide her
provide members of our community
affection or her playful curiosity.
with popular spaces where they can
According to Paula and John, on her
recharge and socialize. Our plan to
daily walk she waits
reimagine Sharples
patiently at the end of
Dining Hall as a campus
by
the driveway of Courtney
commons will create
Smith House to check
yet more opportunities
if I’m home. She likes to
to unwind. Besides
“count her people.”
accommodating students
Time spent with
at mealtimes, this new
Qhubeka is a temporary
facility will become a
oasis from the rush of life and work
place where they can relax and take
that has unexpectedly enriched other
breaks; gather and foster relationships
parts of my life.
with others; and engage in creative
Without the occasional break
group activities.
and time to relax, reflect, play, or do
At this moment in our national
and global culture, we can find many
nothing, periods of intense work can
contribute to high levels of stress.
causes for concern and consternation.
Joy, on the other hand, has a way of
The pace of the news cycle and the
creating a ripple effect, and helps
expectations of connectivity work
to rejuvenate us. As the author Alex
against our intentions to reflect and
Soojung-Kim Pang has observed, “You
restore. Moreover, our lives carry
cannot work well without resting well.”
their own rhythms of joy and pain,
celebration and loss.
My wish for everyone in our
extraordinary community of learners
and doers is that we all find and
cherish our restorative moments. Like
the meaning behind Qhubeka’s name,
let’s together be inspired to “move
forward” with curiosity, enthusiasm,
and the intention to live in this
moment.
VALERIE SMITH
President
“Joy … has a way of creating a ripple
effect and helps to rejuvenate us.”
4
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Simple joys relieve the stress of everyday life
STUDENTWISE:
MY COLLEGE EXPERIENCE
How Swarthmore put a film career in focus
I NEVER THOUGHT of myself
as a filmmaker—that is, until my
sophomore year, when my culminated
racial and political frustrations
gave form to my first script. My
screenwriting professor, Rodney
Evans, met with me after reading
Swisher, a day-in-the-life story of a
young black man moving drugs in a
neighborhood where a violent act of
police brutality has occurred. When he
told me I should “just make it,” I didn’t
really understand how.
“Figure out a way to get money,” he
said. “Take a directing class with me.
I’ll help you figure out the rest.”
It didn’t strike me as real until I was
on set in West Philadelphia, managing
a cast and crew with the help of a
Lang Center summer grant, a New
York casting session, and months of
networking. Out of everyone I was
working with, from my producer
to the child actors, I was the least
experienced person on set. To use the
vernacular: That jawn had me geeked.
Stumbling backward into a film
minor was one of the most significant
learning experiences I’ve had at
Swarthmore. Convention has never
been my strong suit; I have an extreme
aversion to the idea of upward
mobility in any sort of field. I’ve
always thrown myself directly into
the process. After shooting Swisher,
I realized I knew relatively nothing
about photography—I had relied on my
good friends Kyungchan Min ’18 and
Julian Turner ’18 to sculpt the visuals.
So I enrolled in a black-and-white
photography course with Ron Tarver,
and weaseled my way into being his
TA so I could gain practical darkroom
experience.
All of my academic experience
prior to this had been concentrated
in the world of papers, research,
exams, and staring at a chalkboard,
not understanding why I should care
enough to do more than pass the class.
But working with my hands in the
visual arts gave a tangibility to my
dreams. Professors Evans and Tarver
pushed me to break free and also gave
me a frame of reference for my future—
as a biracial son of an immigrant
mother, having two black professors
with nonacademic backgrounds was
instrumental in owning my identity as
an artist. (Evans, a visiting assistant
professor of film and media studies,
is an established independent film
director; Tarver, a visiting assistant
professor of studio art, is a Pulitzerwinning photojournalist.) I could see
myself in them, and it inspired me to
stop inhibiting my true ambitions.
Now, I’m in the process of creating
my last student film here as well as my
senior exhibition at the List Gallery.
It still doesn’t feel real. But this is the
only thing that makes sense to me in a
place like Swarthmore. This is the only
thing that makes sense to me, period.
So I have to just make it.
By TIYE PULLEY ’19, a studio art
major and film & media studies minor
from Annandale, N.J.
SPRING 2019
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dialogue
AUTHOR Q&A
BEHIND THE BOOK
‘Republic’ Revolution
LOVE-LOVE: ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS ’96
by Jonathan Riggs
“Tennis has always made
sense to me as a conversation
between the players that
we, the spectators, get to
overhear,” says Rowan Ricardo
Phillips ’96. An acclaimed poet,
Paris Review sports columnist,
and Guggenheim Fellowship
recipient, Phillips lyrically
chronicles the remarkable
conversation that was the 2017
professional season in his new
book, The Circuit: A Tennis
Odyssey (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux).
“Often, art’s spark is set off by
what you love,” he says, “and I
felt compelled, in a good way, to
write this book.”
THE REPUBLIC dramatizes Socrates’s attempt to convince Plato’s
brother Glaucon that the just life of philosophy is preferable to the
unjust life of tyranny. Until I read Mark Munn’s The School of History,
I’d always assumed Socrates succeeded. But Munn speculates that
Glaucon died fighting for the Thirty Tyrants—the brutal oligarchy, led by
Glaucon’s relatives Critias and Charmides, that ruled Athens in 404–03
BCE, targeted Socrates’s public philosophizing, and put to death roughly
1,500 Athenians. This idea astonished me, but I found substantial
evidence to support it.
Munn’s hypothesis casts the Republic in a new and tragic light. If he is
right, Plato’s intelligent and courageous brother—suspended as he was
between the corruption of Athenian politics and the integrity of Socratic
inquiry, between kinsmen who were leaders of the Thirty and a just
friend who fell afoul of them—could not be saved even by the age’s most
capable advocate of virtue and philosophy. What went wrong? That
is the guiding question of Glaucon’s Fate, which focuses on Socrates’s
rivalry with Critias and explores the strange resemblance between
the ideological tyranny of the Thirty and Callipolis, the Republic’s
supposedly ideal (but in fact totalitarian) city of philosopher-kings.
Available now, Glaucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato’s
Republic (Paul Dry Books) is Jacob Howland ’80’s fifth book.
HOT TYPE: New books by Swarthmoreans
Bonnie French ’01
Race at Predominantly
White Independent Schools
Lexington Books
6
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
“My seven years as an
independent school
student, five years as an
independent school teacher,
and three years researching
independent schools have
led to this book,” French
writes, describing why she
was driven to explore and
confront the pervasive
individualized and systemic
racism she encountered.
“The fundamental question
of my research is this,”
the assistant professor
of sociology and criminal
justice adds, “how does
diversity in independent
schools relate to racial
equity in independent
schools?”
Edward Keenan ’59
Eliminating the Universe
World Scientific Publishing
Synthesizing nearly four
decades of the logical
expressive power of natural
language, this book is aimed
at linguists, logicians, and
computer scientists. Keenan
begins cheekily by thanking
Noam Chomsky for inspiring
him to “think I could
discover interesting things
about the mind without
doing any work, just sit on
my duff, ponder my language
and prove some theorems.
Of course things didn’t turn
out as simple as that, but
this work appears to have
brought me full circle.”
What has tennis meant to you?
I inherited my love of tennis from my
parents, but when schoolwork started
to pile up, I left playing behind. I think
I hit twice, maximum, on the courts at
Swarthmore. But as I grew older, tennis
came back to me with a spectacular
and vibrant intensity. I play every week
and catch as many matches as I can.
Looking back, tennis is one of the longest
relationships I’ve had in my life, even
thinking back to the sneakers, tracksuits,
and that old, wooden Slazenger racket
that I wish I still had around.
What’s the response been like?
I’ve been moved to hear readers say the
book made them want to go outside and
play, or catch up on the next season. The
book’s written in a style that reflects how
I feel about tennis: It’s a lyrical thing with
building increments, dips into sadness
and humor, has turns that are historical
and others that are more contemplative,
but most of all, there’s a deep love for the
game and for the sentence.
SUE KWON
by Jacob Howland ’80
For artists, where is tennis going?
Tennis has many great stories to be
told, with fascinating characters both
major and minor. At its best, tennis is a
beautifully multifoliate experience with so
many possibilities for writers to explore.
And The Circuit is just that: a possibility
to look back at a year from a different
horizon.
Submit your publication for consideration: books@swarthmore.edu
Adam Morris ’06
American Messiahs
Liveright
Dating back to the American
Revolution, our national
consciousness has been
influenced by a string of
dangerously charismatic
prophets, such as Cyrus
Teed, Father Divine, and Jim
Jones. “Although messianic
sects are usually dismissed
as ‘cults’ that distract
from more legitimate
social forces, Americans
claiming to be the messiah
have organized impressive
experiments in alternative
lifestyles,” Morris writes
in this re-evaluation, “and
often located themselves
on the radical fringe of
movements for progressive
social change.”
Naomi Sokoloff ’75 and Nancy
Berg, editors
What We Talk About When
We Talk About Hebrew
University of Washington
Press
Despite the vitality of
contemporary Hebrew
language and culture, why
is its study languishing at
American universities? In
this collection, essaysists
from across the U.S. share
their perspectives and
experiences. “One of my
main motivations for
working on this project
was to profess my enduring
belief in the value of
language learning as part
of a liberal arts education,”
Sokoloff writes. “It changed
the way I think, the way I see
the world, and the way I see
myself.”
SPRING 2019
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7
common good
dialogue
SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE
GLOBAL THINKING
ANIME NINJA
From Japan, he’s helping shape the world’s most
animated Netflix options
ON
THE
WEB
by Paul Wachter ’97
“Our hypothesis
was that excellence will find
a broad, global
audience.”
8
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
A PHINEAS VALENTINE
Phineas surprised
students and staff with
hand-made cards on
Valentine’s Day.
JOHN DERDERIAN ’97
Executive
INTERESTED IN ANIME?
DERDERIAN RECOMMENDS:
Aggretsuko, about a cute red
panda who sings deathmetal karaoke.
Devilman Crybaby, a not-forthe-faint-of-heart adaptation
of Go Nagai’s classic and
controversial manga.
Violet Evergarden, a visually
lush and emotionally rich
coming-of-age sci-fi series.
Castlevania, a dark fantasy
that’s also funny.
+
WATCH
bit.ly/PhineasValentine
BLACK HISTORY
MONTH
The Critical Conversations Symposium was
a great opportunity to
engage with one another
about the effects of
racial inequality and
discrimination.
+
EXPLORE
bit.ly/Swarthmore
BlackHistory
SONGS FROM WAR
Associate Professor of
Music Barbara Milewski
on WWII concentration
camp music.
+
LAURENCE KESTERSON
“The independent television team
was a scrappy group,” he says. “So
even though I was working on the legal
side, the team was open to anyone
finding interesting programming
opportunities.
“At first we were concentrating on
shows that would work for our existing
footprint,” Derderian adds. “But we
quickly learned that there were a lot of
global shows that worked well across
all markets.”
Among several examples is the
Australian drama series Wentworth,
set in a women’s prison, and the British
sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror.
“Basically,” he says, “our hypothesis
was that excellence will find a broad,
global audience.”
When Netflix launched in Japan in
2015 and in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South
Korea, and Singapore the following
year, Derderian found himself
spending more and more time in Asia.
After being named to his current
position, he relocated to Tokyo with
his wife and infant son.
As in other markets, Netflix has
quickly moved from signing licensing
deals for properties such as Naruto,
an anime classic that chronicles
the adventures of an eponymous
adolescent ninja, to producing original
content.
“As a team, we try to find stories
and storytellers that can flourish in
anime, which, because the worlds are
brought to life through drawings, is
essentially boundless as a narrative
medium,” Derderian says. “Some of the
best anime tackles unlikely subjects
and novel environments—but that’s
what makes it challenging and fun to
program.”
MARCUS MEISLER / NETFLIX
WITH MORE THAN 400 animation
production companies in Japan, it
makes sense that global streaming
behemoth Netflix would base its
anime operations in Tokyo—after all,
the genre has exploded in worldwide
popularity over the past few decades.
“Anime is a unique form of
storytelling,” says John Derderian
’97, Netflix’s Tokyo-based director for
Japan and anime. “There’s a broader
scale of emotions that are on display
than in, say, your typical Hollywood
blockbuster or television series.”
His own animated journey began in
March 2013, when Derderian, a former
corporate lawyer, left AMC Networks
to join Netflix to help them negotiate
and execute licensing agreements for
independent television. At the time,
the company’s international footprint
was relatively small.
“We had launched the service in the
United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and
the Americas,” he says, “but we hadn’t
yet expanded through Europe, Asia, or
Africa.”
Derderian’s interest in pop culture
started at Swarthmore, where he was
active in theater and reviewed films
for The Phoenix. Though his entrée
to Netflix was his law degree, he had
always been drawn to the creative side
of the TV industry.
READ
bit.ly/MusicWWIIcamps
ECONOMIST
AMANDA BAYER
Discussing diversity in
the field of economics.
+
LEARN
bit.ly/Swarthmore
Economist
EARTH SONG
Promise of a
New Day
by Elizabeth Coleman ’69
BOOKENDED by a foreword from the Dalai Lama
and a guide to activism by the Union of Concerned
Scientists, Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper
Canyon Press), the international eco-poetry
anthology I edited, grew out of my despair at the
results of the 2016 presidential election. It grew out
of my determination not to let hopelessness rule my
life; it grew out of my background as a public interest
lawyer, an environmental advocate, and a poet.
And finally, it grew out of my love for my four young
grandchildren and my concern for their future.
+
READ MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
9
common good
SPORTS SHORTS
EXPANDING ACCESS
MEN’S BASKETBALL
The Garnet won the Centennial Championship,
beating Johns Hopkins 79-61 and claiming the
team’s second conference title.
STEAL THIS COLLECTION! Winner of Swarthmore’s 2018
Newton Book Collection Competition, Martín Palomo ’19 says “Steal
This Collection! A Collection of Radical History and Activism”
encourages the challenging of authority, power, and assumptions
through engagement with texts that make us uncomfortable in order to
promote profound change through creative action.
“My collection hosts books that relate to the themes of social justice,”
says Palomo, a peace & conflict studies and history double major. “Most
of the books, at some point in time, have been considered radical texts
in their own field or by general readers. I hope that the theme conveys a
call to action in regards to social justice and the promotion of creative
action when dealing with conflicts. Ultimately, it’s a reaffirmation of our
commitment to each other and a reminder to settle for nothing short
of justice.”
WOMEN’S SWIMMING
The women’s swimming team was the
runner-up at the Centennial Conference
Championship for the second consecutive
season.
WOMEN’S INDOOR TRACK & FIELD
The women’s indoor track & field team
finished in second place at the Centennial
Conference Championships.
MEN’S INDOOR TRACK & FIELD
Daniel Belkin ’19 was named the Most
Outstanding Field Performer as the men’s
indoor track & field team finished third at the
conference championship.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
MEN’S SWIMMING
For the second time in program history, men’s
swimming captured the Centennial Conference
Championship, winning the 2019 title at
Gettysburg College.
“It’s critical for there to be a place where people can access information,” says Jetter ’74.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Swarthmore recorded its largest margin of
victory since 2015 with an 80–46 win over
Goucher.
Welcome and Needed
Marie and Cynthia Jetter College and Career
Center to Open in Chester
10
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
HALCYON
American economist
Frank Whitson Fetter,
Class of 1920, was the
subject of a recent
campus lecture by
Fulbright Scholar
Ramina Abilova, a senior
researcher and head of
the photo laboratory at
the State Museum of
Fine Arts of Tatarstan
Republic, Russia. She
researches amateur
photography and its links to everyday life history,
and highlighted her study of Fetter’s photography
of every day life and architecture and the historic
period that it documented.
ALYSSA NATHAN ‘21
by Ryan Dougherty
Men’s basketball dominated this season en route to the NCAA Division
III Tournament.
+ READ MORE: swarthmoreathletics.com
T
HE CHESTER
Education Foundation
(CEF) announced the
creation of the Marie
and Cynthia Jetter
College and Career
Center, which is expected to begin
serving the Chester community this
spring.
The Jetter Center is a revival of the
College Access Center of Delaware
County, which was co-directed by
Swarthmore and served the Chester
community for almost 10 years. And
it’s a testament to the passion Cynthia
Jetter ’74 and her late mother, Marie,
shared for expanding educational
opportunities for young people in need.
“Although my mother didn’t have
the opportunity to expand her own
education, she was such a strong
advocate for it,” says Jetter, who drove
the creation of the College Access
Center as director of community
partnerships and planning with
the Lang Center for Civic & Social
Responsibility. “However and
whenever she could, she tried to help
and support educational programs,
particularly for young people.
“I know I would not have taken the
leaps and bounds I did to get a better
education if not for her,” Jetter adds,
“and I know how much she gave up to
afford me that opportunity.”
The Jetter Center will extend
college and career services from the
renovated offices of the CEF and
through partnerships with schools and
community organizations throughout
Chester. “It’s a really nice program
that helps students who don’t have
any other resources in or outside of
school,” says Ashley Henry, project
director for youth empowerment
at the Lang Center. “It’s meeting
the students’ desire and meeting an
important need in the community.”
The CEF is a natural fit to continue
and expand the work of the College
Access Center, based on its 30-year
history of providing educational
support services and forging
community partnerships. When the
College Access Center closed last
June, Swarthmore committed to
ensuring continuous service to, and
partnership with, Chester youth.
“From the moment we heard that
the College Access Center might
be closing, colleagues such as Dion
Lewis [director of the Black Cultural
Center], Greg Brown [vice president
for finance and administration], and
I spent months strategizing with
[President] Val Smith about how we
might maintain programming with our
Chester partners,” says Ben Berger,
executive director of the Lang Center
and associate professor of political
science. “It wasn’t a question of
whether, but of how.”
Any support of the young people of
Chester in pursuit of higher education
is welcome and needed, adds Jetter.
“It’s critical for there to be a place
where people can access information,”
she says, “that allows them access to
greater opportunities.”
+ LEARN MORE: bit.ly/SwatAccess
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
11
common good
ANSWER KEY AT BULLETIN.SWARTHMORE.EDU
LAURENCE KESTERSON
CHORDS OF MEMORY
Kurt Eichenwald ’83 spoke on campus
in February about his latest book, A Mind
Unraveled, which centers on his life with
epilepsy, including challenges he faced as
a Swarthmore student, and his ensuing
decades-long battle not only to survive, but
to thrive. “People say this book is a story of
survival, no, this book is a story of control,”
he says. “It’s a story of my decision that, no
matter what happened, I would envision
a life I wanted to live and I would live that
life.”
CROSSWORD: WHO NEEDS CUPID?
by Roy Greim ’14
ACROSS
1. Theater preceder
6. Frenzied
10. Urban woe
14. Unit in electromagnetism
15. ____-Japanese War
16. Pride Month letters
17. Historical turning point
18. Lit. collection
19. “Nessun dorma,” e.g.
20. “Luck Be a Lady” musical
23. Mens ___
24. Look upon
28. Doesn’t make the grade
32. Unbridled joy
34. It could help you take a hike
35. Gets one’s feet wet?
36. Quiche variety
38. Leaves speechless
39. Jungle swinger
41. Words of comparison
42. If opposites attract, what
each shaded area of the puzzle
represents?
44. French farewell
45. Casino area with games of
chance
46. Name of four Holy Roman
Emperors
47. Shan’t
48. Catnap
50. Running total, in short
51. Tobacco giant
12
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
58. Emmy winner de Matteo
61. Cartoonist who drew party
animals
62. Parrish Parlors staple
63. Sword handle
64. List ender
65. Current president of the
College
66. Online amusements
67. Like morning grass
68. Mello _____
DOWN
1. In ____ (dazed)
2. Ex-NBAer Ginobili
3. Game
4. Montreal Canadiens, to fans
5. Items needed at McCabe or
Sharples
6. Carne _____
7. Matter’s superior
8. In the know
9. 1946 Swarthmore grad and
building namesake
10. You can do it to a tire or
a price
11. Baseball VIP
12. Sash
13. Video game franchise set
in San Andreas and Vice City,
briefly
21. Marshal under Napoleon
22. Dirty look
SPRING 2019
25. Phrase that casts doubt
26. Pre-Easter
27. Go extinct
28. Overwhelms, as with work
29. State whose lieutenant
governor is Josh Green ‘92
30. “Swan Lake” role
31. Family tree fig.
32. _____SmithKline
(pharmaceutical
manufacturer)
33. Chaney of horror flicks
37. Offers a helping hand
39. Came by
40. Decay
43. “Star Wars” ice planet
44. Expiration date?
47. “Yum!”
49. Quarrels
50. In the appropriate manner
52. Like a paper needing an
extension
53. Part of Caesar’s boast
54. Winter coat?
55. Regional SEPTA offering
56. Like 11% of Swarthmore
students: Abbr.
57. Common to London and
NYC
58. UPS rival
59. Brazil’s second-mostpopulous city
60. Right angle
The concert hall of Lang Music Building has been an architectural icon of the
College for decades.
Inspired Giving
At the February Board meeting, Manager Jane Lang ’67 announced that she
and her niece, fellow Manager Lucy Lang ’03, would designate $7 million
from her father Eugene Lang ’38, H’81’s Fund for the Future to upgrade and
renovate the Lang Music Building.
They also issued a challenge of their own: If the College could raise an
additional $1 million, they would give $1 million more, raising the total to $9
million.
Their decision energized their fellow Managers, who erupted into applause
and gave them a standing ovation. Manager Emeritus Samuel Hayes ’57 then
surprised the group by pledging $100,000 to the renovation effort. In quick
succession, John Chen ’76, P’19, David Singleton ’68, P’99, David Bradley
’75, H’11, and David McElhinny ’75, P’17 each committed the same.
“We are incredibly grateful for Jane’s and Lucy’s commitment to leading
by example,” said President Valerie Smith. “We are all inspired by their love
for the College and their desire to ensure that our students continue to enjoy
a world-class liberal arts education.”
+
Star Power
Films with ties to Swarthmore alumni
were among those nominated for the movie
industry’s greatest honor at February’s
91st Academy Awards. Steven Farneth
’00 was an executive producer of Green
Book (above), which won Best Picture. A
Night at the Garden, directed by three-time
Oscar nominee Marshall Curry ’92, was in
the running for Best Documentary Short,
while Roma, executive produced by David
Linde ’82, won Best Cinematography, Best
Foreign Language Film, and Best Director.
LEGENDARY American folk singer and
songwriter Pete Seeger would have turned
100 this May.
Christopher “Kit” Lukas ’56 was a
student at Swarthmore when he first
crossed paths with the activist and
musician—he was tasked with driving him
to the Philadelphia
Folk Festival.
The drive was the
start of decades of
friendship. To honor
Seeger’s work, Lukas
created the film If I
Had a Hammer: Pete’s
Legacy, which will air
on public television
May 3, Seeger’s
A film by
birthday.
Christopher
Lukas ’56 honors
“Swarthmore
Seeger’s legacy.
gave me the belief
that political and
social views are not something just for
the classroom, but for life,” says Lukas,
who served as cameraman, producer,
writer, director, audio person, and lighting
engineer on the film. “Pete was more than
just a folk singer—he had deep empathy for
every creature.”
—KATE CAMPBELL
LEARN MORE OR CONTRIBUTE: lifechanging.swarthmore.edu
COMPLEXITY
FROM CELLS TO
CONSCIOUSNESS
Swatties, surprise,
and a new paradigm
of interdisciplinary
scientific thought
by Brennan Klein ’14
FRISSON IS THAT FEELING when
you encounter something so stunning
that it sends a tingle down your spine.
For Conor Heins ’15 and me, a recent
scientific theory has been the source
of our frisson. We decided to organize
a cross-disciplinary workshop
with the hope that others would be
similarly inspired. If you had told me
that this scientific workshop would
lead us to Greece, with several recent
Swarthmore alumni, I would have
scoffed. Surprise: That’s precisely
what happened.
The idea that motivated us
originated from neuroscience as a
principled way of understanding how
brains perceive, interpret, and act
on their environments. Dubbed the
free-energy principle, this framework
is built on the idea that in order to
survive, our brains must be able to
predict things in our environments.
READ MORE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
13
common good
The College’s new mobile-first website design includes more
photos and videos, easier navigation, and numerous enhancements
to increase accessibility and improve search capabilities.
ENGAGE!
Swarthmore celebrates a dynamic website redesign this spring,
focused on making the site more engaging, accessible, and beautiful.
“The design and site structure is informed by quantitative
and qualitative research on how current and prospective
students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents use and engage with
Swarthmore.edu,” says Alisa Giardinelli, interim vice president for
communications.
The year-and-a-half-long process included focus groups and
other research that guided the project; wireframes and design
prototypes; the actual development and building of the site; the
migration of the previous site’s content to the new one; and the
creation of new content the site now features, says web designer
Steven Lin.
The new mobile-first design improves the site’s functionality and
includes the addition of a set of Spanish-language pages within
the admissions section. Pages specifically for alumni and parents
reflect the overall site improvements, including more photos, easier
navigation, and enhancements to the alumni directory.
“The new website represents more than 18 months of effort
and collaboration between ITS and Communications—a small but
mighty team of writers, developers, and designers,” says Giardinelli.
“We’re grateful to everyone who allowed us to visit their classes and
meetings, reviewed iterations of the site, and shared their thoughts
throughout the many stages of the redesign process.”
+
14
CHECK IT OUT: swarthmore.edu
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
YOUR CREDIT CARD
STATEMENT can also
be a political statement.
That’s what social
entrepreneur Mark
Hanis ’04 hopes to prove
through Progressive
Shopper, a web extension
that reveals the political tendencies of online
retailers. Using donation data culled from more than
500 companies, the left-leaning startup provides
buyers with real-time brand ratings, from “Highly
Recommended” to “Please Shop Elsewhere.”
Dismayed by 2016’s election results, Hanis and
co-founder Van Chappell began searching for ways
to turn their frustration into activism. “We realized,”
Hanis says, “that most people shop much more often
than they vote, donate, or advocate, and that our
most powerful action could be to find ways to change
consumer behavior.”
The pair leveraged public records, available
through the Federal Election Commission, on
corporations’ contributions during the 2016 and
2018 election cycles. Once Progressive Shopper is
installed in a browser, it pops up with that data when
a web user visits an online store. Apple, for example,
gets high marks from the plugin, with 95 percent of
its political contributions going to Democrats. At just
59 percent, however, Amazon gets a middling review,
with a note that “Better Options Are Available.”
“Consumers are no longer comfortable or happy to
buy what marketers put in front of them—they want
to consciously choose brands and companies that fit
with their values,” says Hanis, who’s also a research
fellow with Stanford’s Handa Center for Human
Rights and International Justice. “We set out to
make the process easier, to give consumers credible
information that’s easy to understand, right at the
point of purchase.”
—ELIZABETH SLOCUM
WHAT DID YOU SAY?
At Swarthmore, back in the day, or just a few years
ago, did you use phrases like: “Define your terms”
and “The personal is political,” or other slogans that
may or may not have gone out of fashion? We’d love
to know!
+
CONTRIBUTE: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
CREATIVE COLLABORATIONS
by Andrea Packard ’85
P
IECE TOGETHER:
The Quilts of Mary
Lee Bendolph, Swarthmore’s fall 2018
exhibition, was a dream
exhibition for me as an
artist, curator, and Swarthmore alumna.
When the exhibition, The Quilts of
Gee’s Bend, began a national tour in
2002 at Houston’s Museum of Fine
Arts, people were moved by the quilts’
innovative designs and the way the
repurposed fragments of worn fabric
embodied resilience in the face of
racism and poverty. In January 2017,
nearly 30 years after I joined my own
quilting group, I proposed to faculty in
the Department of Art and Art History
that we host an exhibition of Gee’s
Bend quilts.
I discovered that Mount Holyoke
College Art Museum curators had
begun organizing Piece Together, the
first one-person exhibition by one
of the most acclaimed quilters from
Gee’s Bend. We partnered, and I began
adapting the exhibition for two spaces
at Swarthmore: the List Gallery and
McCabe Library. A William J. Cooper
Foundation grant allowed me to
conduct research in Gee’s Bend, Ala.,
and to edit and publish the exhibition
catalog, which includes essays by
Swarthmore’s Provost, Professor
Sarah Willie-LeBreton, as well as
faculty and staff from Mount Holyoke
College.
Together with Susan Dreher, visual
initiatives and exhibitions librarian,
and Alicia Ruley-Nock, a Swarthmore
quilter, I curated a companion
exhibition, Responses to Gee’s Bend, to
hang alongside the Gee’s Bend quilts
in McCabe Library. It featured quilts
by 17 artists from around the country
and two quilts made by students who
took Black Art: Quilting as Culture, a
course taught by Ms. Ruley-Nock and
Professor of History Allison Dorsey.
Many projects grew out of Piece
Together, including Gee’s Bend Oral
Histories, a book by Yixuan Maisie
RUBIN BENDOLPH JR.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
HOW BLUE
(OR RED) IS
YOUR GREEN?
Mary Lee Bendolph, Strip Quilt, 2006, mixed fabrics including polyester, corduroy, and
cotton blend, 82 x 75 inches. Swarthmore College Permanent Collection.
Luo ’19 and Catherine Williams ’19,
who were awarded Petrucci Family
Foundation grants to conduct research
in Gee’s Bend. Provost WillieLeBreton and I mentored Maisie and
Catherine as they conducted research
and collected 15 quilters’ stories about
diverse topics, including farming,
religion, home remedies, quilting, and
civil rights activism.
In September, Mary Lee Bendolph
and 15 other Gee’s Benders came to
Swarthmore for the reception for Piece
Together. Maris Curran’s acclaimed
film about Gee’s Bend, While I yet Live,
was screened, and Bendolph family
members gave powerful testimony—
describing the darkness of racism as
well as the brightness of the quilts,
which embody their religious faith and
love of community.
This January, Swarthmore
purchased two of Mary Lee Bendolph’s
quilts: Fleet and Strip Quilt. I’m
thrilled that we will continue to learn
from the history and aesthetics of
Gee’s Bend.
+
READ MORE: bit.ly/GeesQuilts
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
15
common good
QUIZ’MORE
LEARNING CURVE
BUSINESS (ROLE) MODEL
She’s inspiring entrepreneurs of any age or gender
FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
?
How well do you know
your alma mater? Give
this the ol’ College try!
Swarthmore’s first professor of math and astronomy (1869-1906) also lived in the
College’s first observatory. Learn the identity of this pioneering academic in No. 5 of our
Answer Key below.
by Lauren McAloon
1
2
WHAT INSPIRED the
name of the College’s
student newspaper,
The Phoenix?
FOR WHAT SONG did
Vaneese Thomas ’74,
H’14 acquire a U.S.
Billboard R&B top 10
hit?
3
4
WHERE DID THE
WHICH GARNET
originate?
the first to become
coed?
NAME “Swarthmore”
ATHLETIC TEAM was
5
IN 1881, who became
the first recipient of an
honorary degree from
Swarthmore?
Know any fascinating Swarthmore trivia? Send your question/answer to quiz@swarthmore.edu. If we use it, we’ll send you a prize!
2. “LET’S TALK IT OVER.” That song and “(I Wanna Get) Close to You”
were the two biggest hits from her 1987 self-titled debut. One of the
founders of the Swarthmore College Gospel Choir, Thomas has since
released five more albums and has sung backup on countless recordings
by other musical legends.
1. “THE GREAT FIRE,” WHICH DESTROYED PARRISH HALL—the only
building on campus at the time—late in the night of Sept. 25, 1881. Happily, the College literally rose from the ashes. The first Phoenix was printed
in 1882 at the press of the Media Record, as were volumes II and III.
5. SUSAN J. CUNNINGHAM H’1881, the College’s inaugural professor of
math and astronomy (1869–1906). She built, equipped, and lived in the
College’s first astronomical observatory. It became College property upon
her death, was later converted to offices, and is now the Cunningham
House of the Scott Arboretum.
4. SWARTHMORE COLLEGE’S PING-PONG TEAM. In his March 1, 1955,
Phoenix piece, “They Said It Couldn’t Happen: Ping Pong Team Cops First
Win,” Tex Wyndham ’58 wrote that “Miss Jojo Black [Pesaresi ’55], in
addition to providing inspiration for the team, also played some exhibition
games with some of the members of the Drexel J.V.’s. This points the way
for the football and wrestling teams to follow the progressive example
set by the ping-pong team in making good use of the female talent of the
College.”
Swarthmoor Hall remains a Quaker retreat house.
SPRING 2019
3. ENGLAND’S SWARTHMOOR HALL, the home of Thomas and Margaret
Fell in the mid 17th century. After meeting Religious Society of Friends
founder George Fox, Margaret was so impressed with his teachings
that she took George under her wing and became a major leader in the
faith herself. After Thomas’s death, she and George later married, with
Margaret earning the sobriquet of “the mother of Quakerism.” To this day,
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
ANSWER KEY
16
“AM I TOO LITTLE to start a business?”
The simple question from a 9-year-old niece a decade ago
led to a realization for Emily McHugh ’90: “There’s a lot of
thinking around entrepreneurship that’s very male- a nd agecentric,” she says. “But the truth is, you’re never too young or
old, and gender doesn’t matter.”
Drawing from her own experience as co-founder of the
accessories company Casauri, McHugh began writing The
Little Girl’s Guide to Entrepreneurship: What I Know Now
That I Sure Wish I Knew Then. Among her applicable-toanyone lessons: Scaling back is OK if it helps you survive;
pride shouldn’t prevent you from asking for help; and risktaking can be immensely rewarding.
“You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to be
entrepreneurial,” says McHugh, who with her sister, Helena,
launched Casauri in 1999. “It’s really more of a mindset—
taking a certain amount of initiative and being willing to
take a chance.”
At Swarthmore, McHugh didn’t expect to head down
a business track; the trilingual French, Spanish, and
linguistics major simply hoped for a career that would put
her language skills to use. But a job at a French bank in
New York City led to an MBA at Columbia, where Casauri’s
business plan was born. The line’s colorful totes and laptop
cases—co-designed by McHugh and Helena, a Fashion
Institute of Technology grad—have been featured in Vogue
and USA Today and sold at the MoMA Design Store in New
York and Tokyo.
Looking back, an entrepreneurial spirit has always
been with McHugh—as a little girl growing up on a farm in
Jamaica, as a tween launching a part-time cleaning business
in New Jersey, and as a 20-something violinist busking in
the subways of New York. But she credits Swarthmore for
CRYSTAL SPEIRS
by Elizabeth Slocum
laying the foundation for her success.
“In any career direction,” she says, “whether it’s
entrepreneurship, medicine, science, you name it, the liberal
arts set you up for forward momentum.”
“Swarthmore made me feel like there was no
intellectual challenge I couldn’t overcome.”
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
17
common good
LIBERAL ARTS LIVES
SUE LEVIN ’85
BOLT THREADS
Bolt Threads designs biomaterials at the molecular level—“using inspiration from
nature,” says Sue Levin ’85, the company’s chief commercial officer. She is in charge of
introducing those materials into the marketplace.
LIBERAL ARTS LIVES
UNCOMMON THREADS
Bioengineering efforts make apparel from
proteins
by Tom Kertscher
18
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
A bite from a venomous spider once
left Sue Levin ’85 gravely ill after a
backpacking trip. When she recovered,
she went on to enjoy a variety of careers.
Today, she’s something of a spider
promoter as chief commercial officer at
Bolt Threads, a Bay Area bioengineering
firm drawing national attention for
developing a lab-grown spider silk spun
into a necktie.
“The company’s mission and its
performance got me over my spider
issues,” she laughs.
A history major and team captain in
softball and soccer at Swarthmore, Levin
went on to work as a global director of
women’s sports marketing at Nike, and
then started Lucy, a women’s activewear
retailer. She joined Bolt Threads in 2014,
becoming the first non-scientist and nonPh.D. holder on the company’s executive
team.
“For the first year or so,” she says, “I
think I understood only 20 percent of
what was being said most of the time.”
Though spider silk was studied in
the development of Bolt’s microsilk, no
arachnids are used in its production.
Somewhat akin to polyester, the
microfiber is made from proteins rather
than hydrocarbons.
Bolt’s aim is to replace polyester with
protein polymers made from renewable
resources, and to design them using
processes that are cleaner than what is
currently used in the textile industry.
The company has agreements, due to
be announced this year, with several more
of the world’s leading manufacturers of
apparel, footwear, and accessories.
“Somebody in your closet is working
with us,” Levin says.
PUNAHOU SCHOOL
Chief Commericial Officer
“My favorite part of our project was having them shift gears in the way we expect to them to
learn,” says Jamey Clarke ’91 (right) with Michael Chock, founder of Honolulu Luthiers Guild.
MAKING
WAVES
He’s melding music and
physics to help children
by Kate Campbell
DREAMY AND BUOYANT, the easyto-cradle ukulele’s sunny, plunky
sound is linked to all things Hawaiian,
even with its Portuguese origins.
High school physics teacher Jamey
Clarke ’91 wanted to keep the winsome
instrument’s positive vibrations going.
“We do a unit on waves and sound,
and I’ve always liked it when the kids
brought in their instruments,” says
Clarke.
When he heard about the Ukulele
Kids Club’s mission to provide
instruments and music therapy to
children in hospitals, Clarke thought
of his Punahou School students in
Honolulu. He convinced his principal
to allow the juniors and seniors to
build four-dozen ukuleles and ship
them to hospitals across the U.S.
“I thought it would be a good way
for them to make a connection to the
outside world,” he says. Plus, it would
enliven the curriculum and use the
high school’s new maker space.
But first, the teenagers would have to
buy into the idea of spending months
building something only to then give
it away.
More substantially, Clarke would
have to learn to build a ukulele.
“At Swarthmore, I was an
engineering major and an amateur
boat builder,” says Clarke. “I had this
really innovative class with Carr
Everbach where we measured the flow
rate of Crum Creek using honeycombs.
There was always a standard of
maintaining excellence and finding a
balance.”
After spending most of his career as
an engineer, Clarke shifted to teaching,
earning a master’s in education at
Harvard. The move to Hawaii came
when his wife accepted a pediatric
medical residency in Honolulu.
“I love the people, the culture, and
the diversity,” Clarke says. “You really
form a connection.”
Among those connections was local
luthier Michael Chock, who assisted
with the project that involved using
3-D printers, a laser cutter, and other
tools. “We worked together to design
an affordable instrument,” says Clarke.
“The students took a lot of pride in
their work and gained woodworking
skills in the process.”
Clarke wants his students to
appreciate that it’s OK if you don’t
know exactly how to do something
when you begin a project.
“The big picture we are teaching is
resilience,” he says. “We try to bake
that into our instruction while they are
honing their craft.”
JAMEY CLARKE ’91
Music Maker
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
19
20
THE GLOBAL BRIDGE
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
Swarthmore alumni are creating
change and growth in their home
countries
by Elizabeth Redden ’05
illustrations by Beth Walrond
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
21
even get here; the social justice aspect
is really important to them.”
Perhaps the quintessential example
of an international alum who returned
home to export the Swarthmore
ethos is Patrick Awuah ’89, H’04. The
founder and president of Ghana’s
Ashesi University, Awuah established
the institution in 2002 in an attempt,
he has said, “to create an institution
like Swarthmore College in Africa.”
The primary way Ashesi is modeled
on Swarthmore is in its broad
undergraduate curriculum, he says.
“At the time I was making this
decision [to found the university], the
higher education system in Ghana
was enrolling about 5 percent of the
country’s college-age individuals,”
Gunilla Nilsson ’92
Banker with a Different Bottom Line
SWEDEN
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EFUA ASIBON ’16
ADVOCATE FOR THE ‘DISLABELLED’
says Awuah, who won a MacArthur
Foundation “Genius Grant” in 2015.
“They were educating the leadership
of this country, in the public sector and
the private sector. Because there was
such a small cohort, they were going
to be the ones running the courts,
running the businesses, running public
services, and so on. What I felt was
missing was that there wasn’t the
attention to critical thinking, or to
having students deeply discuss ethics.
We wanted to demonstrate a new
approach.”
Here, eight former international
students share what they took away
from Swarthmore—and what they’ve
since given back to their communities.
UNLIKE FRIENDS who had the luxury of going on campus
tours, Gunilla Nilsson ’92 picked Swarthmore out of a book
of U.S. colleges.
“It was a lucky fluke,” she says.
“I had a wonderful time at Swarthmore,” Nilsson adds.
“I was exposed to topics in the classroom that I would
never have encountered had I stayed in Sweden. I met a
very diverse student body. And this possibly sounds a bit
goofy, but I really like that Swarthmore’s so idealistic. It’s
wonderful when you’re young to go to that sort of place,
because it really makes you feel like you can do anything.”
Nilsson studied economics at Swarthmore and went into
investment banking, a career she enjoyed but did not find
entirely fulfilling. “As I grew older, I guess my Swarthmore
roots came back to me,” she says, “and I realized I wanted to
do something that was more useful to society.”
So for the past decade, Nilsson has worked for Swedfund,
a development finance institution owned by the Swedish
government that invests in developing countries with an
aim toward creating jobs and alleviating poverty. As a senior
investment manager, Nilsson leads a team that invests in
renewable energy projects, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa
and in poorer countries in Asia.
“It’s quite fascinating to visit a site in Namibia, and a year
later you come back and see that there’s a very large solar
farm that’s been built,” says Nilsson.
“My job,” she adds, “is very Swarthmore.”
JONATHAN MACCARTHY
STUDENTS ARE DRAWN to
Swarthmore from around the world.
When they graduate, many return
home with aspirations to bring about
social change, build a business, or
otherwise make a distinctive mark.
This academic year, Swarthmore
enrolled 232 international students—a
number about double what it was a
decade ago—representing 54 countries.
“They like that they’re going to be
able to interact with faculty, that it’s
a small school—probably the same
things a domestic student would say,”
Jennifer Marks-Gold, director of the
International Student Center, says of
what draws them to the College. “Some
of them have projects they’ve started
in their home countries before they
Efua Asibon ’16 came up with of the idea for the nonprofit she cofounded, Dislabelled, while still in high school. As a freshman at
Swarthmore, she received a $4,000 grant from the Lang Center
for Civic & Social Responsibility that she used toward funding the
nonprofit’s first project, a summer arts and robotics program for
Ghanaian students with autism.
“In Ghana, there’s a lot of stigma attached to people with
disabilities,” says Asibon. “What we’re trying to do is to remove
the labels, sort of disable the label that has been placed on them.
“We are very much into making them self-sufficient and helping
them to be more productive—to let everybody see that if you give
them the right skills and support, they can do the work.”
Dislabelled is raising money to open a skills institute in Ghana
for adults with physical disabilities. Asibon says the planned
Dislabelled DREAM Institute will provide training in business,
digital skills, and basketry, and employ graduates to weave
baskets that can be sold as a source of sustaining revenue.
In 2017, Asibon was recognized with the Queen’s Young
Leader Award, an honor that “discovers, celebrates, and
supports exceptional young people” from across the British
Commonwealth. Apart from her work on Dislabelled, Asibon
is an account manager for Facebook in Ireland. She earned a
master’s degree in international development and humanitarian
emergencies from the London School of Economics and Political
Science.
“Growing up, I always saw people with disabilities on the
streets of Accra,” says Asibon. “I never saw them when I went to
church; I never saw them when I went to the cinema or when I
was hanging out with friends in restaurants or in school.
“I thought it was worrying that they were marginalized from
society. That really, really got to me, and I just felt like I needed to
do something about it. I’m someone who fights injustice.”
GHANA
“What we’re trying to
do is to remove the
labels, sort of
disable the label
that has been placed
on them.”
SPRING 2019
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23
JUAN VÍCTOR FAJARDO ’09 SOCIAL CHANGE-MAKER
SOFIA STECCHI
Alexandra
Papalexopoulou ’88
Builder of a Global Business
Juan Víctor Fajardo ’09 knew when he was at Swarthmore that
he wanted to one day return to Venezuela.
“I have always been aware of how much work is needed here,”
he says. “There’s just so much that needs to be done to guarantee
basic human rights and a decent life for Venezuelans.”
Fajardo manages a social program that supports private
schools in Caracas’s poorest neighborhoods. The program, Crecer
en Venezuela, or Growing Up in Venezuela, partners with an
elementary school and signed a second agreement with a high
school in February.
“Given the severe economic situation in Venezuela—
hyperinflation, people not getting paid enough, very low wages—
the situation makes it very difficult for private schools to operate
in poor areas,” Fajardo says. “We’re trying to figure out how
schools can become sustainable.”
Fajardo took a circuitous path to nonprofit work, first earning
a master’s in journalism from New York University. “I never
thought I’d be working in the nonprofit world,” he says. “I always
thought I’d be writing about this, mainly, but this work makes me
feel useful in this crisis. It’s not difficult to have an impact here,
because wherever you look, there’s an opportunity for a social
business or an entrepreneurial solution to a social problem.”
Enrolled in an MBA program at the IESA School of Management
in Caracas, Fajardo continues to work as a journalist, including as
AS STRATEGIC PLANNING DIRECTOR for Titan, an
Athens-based, family-led cement and building materials
company, Alexandra Papalexopoulou ’88 guided the
company’s international expansion.
“We started investing more and more abroad, going
from being mostly Greek-generated revenue in 1992 to just
below 7 percent last year. The rest is from other countries,”
Papalexopoulou says. Through a series of acquisitions,
partnerships, and greenfield investments, Titan expanded
to develop major operations in 10 countries, and now has
cement plants or joint ventures in Albania, Brazil, Bulgaria,
Egypt, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, and the United
States, in addition to Greece. The U.S. is Titan’s biggest
market.
Papalexopoulou has traveled the world to visit Titan’s
partners and many of its plants abroad. “I find it very
rewarding, very interesting,” she says.
Papalexopoulou, who studied economics at Swarthmore,
initially planned to pursue a Ph.D., before a stint as a
research assistant at the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development convinced her that a career
in academe was not for her. Instead, she earned an MBA at
INSEAD, in France, before returning to Greece to join Titan,
her family’s business.
Swarthmore helped prepare her for a business career,
and some of those skills were nuanced, Papalexopoulou
says. “Business is about interacting with people, thinking
critically, being able to not stress too much under pressure,”
she says. “In many ways, Swarthmore formed me into the
person I am today.”
VENEZUELA
“Business is about
interacting with
people, thinking
critically, being
able to not stress
too much under
pressure.”
a freelance editor for an English-language magazine, the Bolivian
Express.
Fajardo, who majored in philosophy and minored in Latin
American studies at Swarthmore, credits his time at the College
with helping him develop what he describes as an intellectually
honest way of approaching problems.
“Ultimately, what motivates my work is the idea that providing
education to underprivileged students is key to a democratic
society,” he says. “Through my life, my generation, we’ve
experienced [in Venezuela] a breakdown of the legal and
institutional basis of democracy. I want to live in a democratic
society, and this is what I ultimately work for through this very
powerful tool of education and critical thinking.”
“We’re trying to figure out how schools can become sustainable.”
GREECE
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25
Emanuel Jinich ’79 Mathematics Educator
Teaching calculus
one hour a day
is “the best hour
of the whole day.”
MEXICO
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CANADA
NATASHA LAUNI
EMANUEL JINICH ’79, A MATH MAJOR, discovered
Swarthmore’s education program his junior year. It would
mark the beginning of a prolific career.
“I’ve dedicated all my life to mathematics education,” says
Jinich, who has been a school director since 1990, the head
of K–12 private schools in Mexico City, and the author of
mathematics textbooks.
In the early 2000s, he and a group of colleagues developed
a mathematical software program for fifth- and sixthgraders that was sent to every public school in Mexico as
part of a Ministry of Education project promoting the use of
computers in education.
Jinich is now head of the Sephardic Hebrew School, a
private K–12 campus in Mexico City. But he’s never too far
from the classroom, where he can be found teaching calculus
one hour a day.
“It’s the best hour of the whole day,” says Jinich, who has
taught continuously since Swarthmore, going on 40 years.
He holds a master’s in mathematics education from the
Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National
Polytechnic Institute, in Mexico City.
“I don’t know why mathematics is so difficult for students
to learn,” he adds. “If and when I retire from being a school
director, I’m going to become a mathematics teacher fulltime once again.”
ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN ’07
HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER, LAWYER, WRITER
For Andrew Stobo Sniderman ’07, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and
the abuses at the Guantánamo Bay prison had a big effect in
setting him up for a career as a human rights defender, as did his
experience advocating for an end to the genocide in Darfur.
“The most formative practical experience I had at Swarthmore
was working on Darfur activism with a group of phenomenal
students,” says Sniderman, who co-founded the organization
that became the Genocide Intervention Network. “The College
gave us a little office in the basement of the train station and a
couple of computers. There were a few mice scurrying, so we set
up a mouse trap and we got a printer and a long-distance phone
plan. I remember having this feeling of limitless possibility, that
if we were clever enough and worked hard enough, we could
do anything. We were part of a student movement trying to use
American power for something worthwhile in this moment when
the abuses of American power were so obvious to all of us.
“Meanwhile, I’m kind of a foreigner,” Sniderman says. “Part
of me said I’d like to go back to Canada one day and be in those
rooms where we’re trying to decide our place in the world.”
Sniderman was able to realize that goal when he served as
human rights policy adviser to Stéphane Dion, the first foreign
minister under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Sniderman, a
Rhodes Scholar who earned a law degree from the University
of Toronto, has focused his career as a lawyer and journalist
on issues related to international human rights, refugee law,
and—closer to home—Indigenous peoples’ rights in Canada. In
April 2018, he argued his first case before the Supreme Court of
Canada, against the imposing of mandatory minimum fines, or
“victim fine surcharges,” on criminal offenders.
Now a visiting researcher at McGill University’s Centre for
Human Rights and Legal Pluralism in Montreal, Sniderman is
working on a book about an Indigenous reserve in Manitoba, the
white town next door, and the legacy of racism.
“I’m trying to explain using this very local case why these
reserves are separate and unequal,” Sniderman says. “It’s
inevitable that if you’re a Canadian righteously writing speeches
and working on global refugee policies that you come face to face
with the hypocrisies of Canada.”
SPRING 2019
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27
CICI CLOTHING
Su Wai ‘Hillary’ Yee ’14
Fashion Entrepreneur
CHINA
FENG HE ’03 STARTER OF STARTUPS
Feng He ’03 wanted to see “more creativity, more ideas coming
from a younger generation of Chinese.” So he co-founded
DemoHour.com, a Kickstarter-like crowdfunding website in China,
conceptualized as a platform to help individuals raise money for
passion projects.
“I was very interested in startups,” says He, who majored
in math at Swarthmore and earned an MBA from Stanford
University. “We just felt there was a lot of energy among young
Chinese to want to invent or create things, and there wasn’t a
good outlet or source of funding for them. We were trying to solve
that problem.”
“There was a lot of energy among
young Chinese to want to invent
or create things.”
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
Since selling the company in 2013, He now works on a different
Beijing-based startup, jiandanxinli.com, connecting users with
psychotherapists. He made a point while at Swarthmore of taking
classes in as many disciplines as possible, including English,
history, linguistics, psychology, and studio art.
“Both my education and my experience at Swarthmore gave
me confidence when faced with something very new, something
I’ve never done before,” he says. “I have this confidence that no
matter how hard it seems, I can probably learn it very quickly. It
goes back to Swarthmore. It was challenging for me to acquire
knowledge in all these different disciplines, but also Swarthmore
gave me a very well-rounded foundation. My education gave me
an appreciation for art, for the humanities, and a pretty good
understanding of technology.”
With startups, there are new challenges every day, He says.
One example: “You need to do marketing, and it’s just you and two
other guys; they have no idea and you just need to figure it out.”
“But I have some basic understanding of human psychology,”
He adds. “I can recognize that I’m seeing something beautiful, so I
can create a marketing campaign that will speak to people.”
MYANMAR
SU WAI “HILLARY” YEE ’14 IS MAKING Myanmar a more
fashionable place.
As CEO of MGOU Myanmar, Yee operates a master
franchise of a China-based retail brand. Since opening its
first Myanmar store in December 2015, MGOU has expanded
to 19 stores across the country, selling fashion accessories,
cosmetics, and household items.
Yee wears a second hat as CEO of Uniforms by CiCi, which
sells uniforms direct to employers. It’s a spin-off of CiCi
Clothing, a fashion brand she founded—currently on hold—
focused on professional women’s wear.
“I knew that I wanted to do business in Myanmar,” says
Yee, who majored in economics and Chinese at Swarthmore
and studied abroad for a semester in Beijing. “There are
more opportunities as an entrepreneur here. I feel like I have
an edge because I can bring forward-thinking ideas into a
market that is not as competitive.”
There are challenges, Yee notes: Support is limited. There
are very few investors or venture capitalists, and access to
capital is still quite low.
“But all in all,” she says, “it’s more like a blank space here,
so I will have more opportunities to grow.”
TRENDING UP! SWARTHMORE IS DRAWING MORE INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
“There is concern about international students being less interested in higher education in the United Sates, but we are seeing
the opposite in our applicant pool,” says Jim Bock ’90, vice president and dean of admissions. “International applications are up
14 percent this year. Many more families and students abroad are recognizing the value of a liberal arts education, and
Swarthmore, in particular.”
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Stars of the Sea
Why are sea stars dying? Ocean health plays a role.
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LAURENCE KESTERSON
by Kate Campbell
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SPRING 2019
CAMILLA SOUTO
MARGARET JOHNSON
A
Top: Intertidal anemone,
surrounded by Leptasterias sea
stars. Bottom: Skeletal sea star;
a CT scan shows an intricate
view.
LYDIA DANILLER
LL HAIL the
echinoderms! Among
them, a strange and
wondrous creature
that motors through
salt-soaked currents
and intertidal pools with self-generated
hydraulic power—and tube feet.
Call them by their common name,
sea star or starfish. But know they are
uncommonly marvelous and important
scouts of the ocean’s health. Though
frequently five-armed, some sea star
species can have up to 50.
Brainless, and heartless, they
still have the ability to regenerate
lost limbs, reproduce by splitting
themselves in half, and see in the dark
with a tiny eye on the tip of each arm.
So, really, how could anyone resist
complete infatuation with these
mysterious stars of the sea?
Sarah Cohen ’82, a professor of
biology, evolutionary ecology, and
genetics at San Francisco State
University, has devoted a lot of recent
attention to understanding their
evolutionary significance—and, more
recently, new threats to their survival.
“I am pretty possessed by sea stars
lately,” says Cohen, who researches the
Leptasterias, a genus of six-rayed sea
stars. “I spend a lot of time thinking
about sea squirts, or tunicates, too.”
Both sea stars and sea squirts are
intriguing, says Cohen, because they
have amazing powers of regeneration
and really different body organization.
“Sea stars, in particular, have body
plans that operate in completely
different ways than we are used to,”
she says. “Their body surfaces, under
magnification, show a teeming forest
of spines, waving tube feet, and small
pincers on stalks that act to clean off
debris and protect against predators.”
Their small size makes them
convenient subjects for lab study.
Cohen’s husband, Peter Barschall
’80, has even used his engineering
degree to help with experiments,
working with a collaborating physics
professor to construct tiny grippers
used to measure attachment strength
in the lab and field. And they have
used a miniature shower system to
replicate the tidal flow in coastal
habitats. Cohen’s lab at San Francisco
Leptasterias, a genus of sea star. “How marine species will be impacted by the
changes in environmental conditions and how able they are to adapt is an area of active
investigation,” says Sarah Cohen ’82, “but much less is documented in comparison to
terrestrial species.”
State’s Estuary & Ocean Science
Center can mimic storm surges, now
more common because of climate
change. This is one way to study their
attachment strength—think of those
tubular feet—and their tolerance to
temperature shifts.
Cohen looks at sea stars through
the lens of ecological, behavioral, and
environmental features, questioning
how those characteristics shape their
evolution and genetic systems.
“They are an eccentric organism
that’s globally important,” says Cohen.
“They’re also cute.”
In Greek, echinoderm means “spiny
skin”; the upper side of their body is a
nubbly surface of calcium carbonate
plates with tiny spikes, just one of their
many protective adaptations.
The variety and adaptability of
echinoderms is so expansive, in fact,
that defining that bumpy skin literally
scratches the surface of the operating
mechanisms of these carnivorous
predators.
“We look at the ways many of the
species perceive their environment
and if they use fine-tuned adaptation
versus acclimation,” she says. “I have
always been fascinated by organisms
that keep their offspring near them,
rather than letting them disperse great
distances.” Heartless—yet somehow
connected.
She wonders, though, how this
strategy works successfully in a
“TWO MAJOR CHALLENGES TO
PERSISTENCE OF MARINE SPECIES ARE
THE DIRECT AND INDIRECT EFFECTS OF
OVERHARVESTING AND DESTRUCTION
OF SPECIES HIGH IN THE FOOD WEB,
AND CHANGES IN ENVIRONMENTAL
CONDITIONS THAT SUSTAIN SPECIES.”
—SARAH COHEN ’82
population sense. Don’t they become
inbred and lack new genetic diversity
to adapt? And most important, what
happens when the environment
changes a lot? As coastal storms are
more intense and frequent, she says,
the organisms clearly face more stress.
“These species may be adapted
to local conditions and be good at
changing as local habitats change, up
to a limit,” she believes, “and then once
that limit is exceeded and they can no
longer adapt, they will disappear, at
least temporarily, from those areas.”
For an animal with an ancient
fossil record dating to the Ordovician
period around 450 million years ago,
disappearing—even temporarily—
is a red flag. Another new worry for
the communities Cohen studies is
the threat of sea star wasting disease,
or SSWD. The virus manifests in the
spread of white patches of eroded
tissue and devolves into destroying its
host so entirely that only a gooey mass
of the sea star remains. The cause of
the epidemic that has affected dozens
of species is mysterious, says Cohen,
and likely related to viral pathogens
and added environmental stress. She
and her students and collaborators are
exploring multiple possibilities. The
community of sea star researchers
remains vigilant for explanations.
“I really enjoy carrying out research
in a collaborative way, with colleagues,
students, postdoctoral associates,”
says Cohen, who even plans family
vacations around the Pacific Coast’s
best intertidal pools. “A great thing
about combining ecology and genetics
is that the puzzles involve varied
research, from fieldwork to wet lab
experiments to genetic analyses
and computational bioinformatic
comparative work.”
In general, Cohen says that staying
local, and not dispersing far, gives
sea stars the best opportunity for
adaptation. “Another way of saying it
is that the scale of dispersal matches
the scale of environmental variation,”
she says.
In her most recent study, Cohen
was surprised to find a unique genetic
group of sea stars clustered around
the outflow of the San Francisco Bay
into the Pacific Ocean. The discovery
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33
AMAZING
STARFISH
FACTS
They have no brain, no heart,
and no central nervous
system. Yet, if they are upside
down, they can quickly turn
over again.
Instead of blood, sea stars
have a circulatory system
made up primarily of
seawater.
“IN SOME
CIRCUMSTANCES A
BRAIN COSTS MORE
THAN IT’S WORTH.”
Sea stars commonly have
five arms but can have up
to 50, which they’re able to
regenerate. There are more
than 2,000 species.
Many sea stars eat by
pushing their stomach out
through their mouth and into
a bivalve’s shell. The starfish
then digests the animal and
slides its stomach back into
its own body.
of the population began as a practical
quest: She wanted to find “wave-bashed
rocky intertidal field sites” near campus
to bring her students to during class
periods.
“We want to see how evolution
happens in the wild,” she says.
Hands-on expeditions help her
classes see science in new ways. “For
some students, getting out at low
tide to look for sea stars and seeing
this unexpected home of strange and
colorful diversity is a life-changing
experience,” says Cohen, who still
remembers the stimulating labs and
inspiring field trips that marked her
time as a Swarthmore biology major.
“We went out and did biology. It made
bio real and electric, and the labs
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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Sea stars move using
hundreds of tube feet,
which are located on their
underside. The tube feet
are run by a hydraulic water
vascular system that is unique
to Echinodermata.
taught us to think and write.”
Researching with Cohen was a
gateway into a science career for
Alejandro Bellon ’15. He was part of
Swarthmore’s extern program and
spent a week in her lab, followed by
an experiential summer internship
funded by Swarthmore.
“Dr. Cohen was a great guide to have
helping me through it all,” says Bellon,
who just started a Ph.D. program in
Biology and Society at Arizona State
University incorporating ecology
with social sciences. Time in Cohen’s
lab involved going out to the marina,
at first to collect tunicates, and later
to check on field experiments. With
a collection of juvenile tunicates,
Bellon would test the water chemistry
and feed the invertebrates while
taking pictures to keep track of their
development. There were long hours
analyzing all those photos, too.
“I still love the fact that tunicate
larvae start off with a brain and tail
for mobility and then get rid of both
as they settle down for a life as filter
feeders,” he says. “Goes to show that
in some circumstances, a brain costs
more than it’s worth.”
Ultimately, Bellon gave his first
scientific presentation on his tunicate
work at the national meeting of Society
of Integrative and Comparative
Biology, in Austin, Texas. Cohen works
to impart that same enthusiasm in
all her students and interns—hoping
that together they will find answers
about Leptasterias that will ensure the
population continues.
Serendipitously, because San
Francisco Bay sea stars don’t move
around too much at any life-history
stage, she says, they are great narrators
for changes in local conditions.
Even when the news isn’t good.
“Recently, all our populations
associated with the local bay outflow
disappeared over the space of about
a year, first declining and then
disappearing completely,” says Cohen.
It’s not what they wanted to discover,
but they have been able to genetically
compare contemporary samples with
historic ones from the California
Academy of Sciences and other
collections.
“We found that the genetic
composition of these sea stars
along our Pacific coast has changed
dramatically over the past 100 years,”
she says. Her guess is that a feature of
species that do keep their brood nearby
is that there may be frequent local
extinctions, and that recolonization
may take a long time.
Often at the end of a day of faculty
meetings and writing, Cohen
strolls down to the bay to check on
experiments in the water.
“I get to laugh a lot with students in
our open-ended discussions,” she says.
“It’s a highlight of being a professor
and researcher who teaches the
practice of research to new students.”
The tide laps, the papers are graded,
the students’ projects are moving
forward. And somewhere, a sea star
devours its evening meal by pushing
its stomach out of its body and into the
bivalve. Evolution advances.
MARGARET JOHNSON
Sea stars have sensory nerves
at the end of each arm that
can sense light and dark and
also chemicals in the water
(e.g., the “smell” of their
prey).
LYDIA DANILLER
—ALEJANDRO BELLON ’15
Top: Cohen examines a Leptasterias sea star in her lab. Bottom: Green anemones and a
Pisaster, a genus of Pacific sea stars.
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35
S
T
E
A
M
AHEAD
At the intersection of the arts and
sciences, businesses thrive
by Elizabeth Slocum
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
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ecerum
“Swarthmore made me appreciate diversity a lot more than
I did before college,” says Disha Katharani ’06. “Even though in
my daily life I may not be encountering ethnically diverse people
the way I did at Swarthmore, it’s easier for me to understand that
diversity can exist in people’s perspectives, or in people’s style of
communication—and how diversity can be something that you
benefit from, rather than being an inhibitor or a challenge.”
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
LAURENCE KESTERSON
FULL
37
38
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
IN PURSUIT OF THE PERFECT CUP
The conversation started—as so many great ones do—over a
cup of coffee.
Only this talk included one of the top specialty roasters in
what’s arguably the coffee capital of the world.
Was it possible, Luis Fernando Vélez asked Eduardo Umaña
’15, to brew a sweeter, less bitter cup? The coffee connoisseur
had been using the reverse French press method at his Amor
Perfecto cafés in Colombia, but the process was tough to
replicate outside a shop. Umaña—an engineer, Bogotá native,
and fellow coffee lover—was eager to find an answer.
“I started exploring ways to brew coffee using negative
pressure,” says Umaña, forcefully pulling water through
the grounds to extract more of the coffee’s flavor. “Vacuum
brewing was largely unexplored, and there weren’t any
machines that could conveniently apply the brewing method
for making coffee at home.”
Enter the FrankOne, the first electronic vacuum-extraction
coffee brewer on the market (and, amazingly, the first coffee
brewer from Colombia, period), created by the Miamibased Umaña under Vélez’s mentorship after two years of
trial and error. Named for coffee-export pioneer and former
president Francisco de Paula Santander—“he’s a national hero
in Colombia, our George Washington,” Umaña notes—the
FrankOne draws the coffee away from its bubbly, bitter crema,
producing a cleaner, sweeter serving in about 30 seconds. The
result meets the Specialty Coffee Association’s Golden Cup
Standard: the “perfect” cup of coffee.
That fact alone has been enough to generate buzz among
coffee enthusiasts and techies. Nearly 1,800 backers
pledged more than $166,000 toward FrankOne’s successful
Kickstarter campaign, and Gear Patrol declared it “the most
interesting new coffee maker in a very long time.”
Umaña has a knack for marrying form and function while
reimagining objects used every day. As an engineering
student and SwatTank participant at Swarthmore, he
designed and manufactured a ceramic-and-leather watch,
still available for purchase through his website http://classic.
engineering. (The minimalist timepiece makes a cameo in
FrankOne’s Kickstarter videos.) For his senior project, under
guidance from Engineering Professor Carr Everbach, Umaña
created an artful Möbius strip-inspired lamp that can be
FRANK DE PAULA
“C
AN YOU HELP ME?”
The young kids at a Mumbai
activity center were thoughtfully
engaged in a paper art project. One
by one, they carefully rolled slender strips into colorful
spirals for use in larger tactile creations. But the children
were growing frustrated and losing interest fast, calling on
assistants for the cumbersome coiling work.
So Disha Katharani ’06 found a solution, a new spin on a
centuries-old art form.
“We developed a motorized tool for paper quilling,” says
the co-founder of the learning-focused Imagimake Toys.
“Once you insert the paper and press a button, the coil is
automatically formed. It’s really exciting and fantastic,
because it allows the child to focus on the forms and shapes
that they want to create—not the tedious task of rolling
paper. The possibilities are endless.”
The cornerstone of Imagimake’s Spyrosity kit, the
quilling tool is a recent winner of the Parents’ Choice
Foundation’s Fun Stuff award. But it’s also an example of the
interdisciplinary nature of many Swarthmorean startups—
fueled by the “STEAM” subjects of science, technology,
engineering, art, and mathematics.
“When I think about teaching engineering in a liberal
arts context, one of the best ways that we set our students
up for success is by helping them learn how to see the
deep connections between seemingly unrelated areas of
inquiry,” says Matt Zucker, associate professor and chair
of engineering. “Engineering also exposes students to all
kinds of technical problems, so they’ll have confidence and
adaptability no matter what project they decide to tackle.”
Businesses develop for all sorts of reasons: To fix a
problem. To fulfill a need. To do something better, more
efficiently, more effectively, more creatively.
Or sometimes—as in these STEAM-powered endeavors—
to do all of the above.
“At Swarthmore, I learned to learn,” says Eduardo Umaña ’15. “That is exactly what I need to be very good at to meet the responsibilities I have on
a day to day.”
turned on and off with a short, sustained whistle.
The FrankOne, though, is his biggest project to date, with
shipping expected to start this April. But it hasn’t been
without snags: In early January, when manufacturing was
about to begin, the motor in a 5-month-old prototype shortcircuited and died—a scary case of early life failure.
After an emergency meeting, a design tweak, and weeks
of continuous testing, production resumed. To Umaña, the
near-catastrophe was a blessing in disguise.
“Had we not discovered this, we would have found out in a
potentially unpleasant way,” he wrote to backers in an update
on his Kickstarter page. “Imagine having thousands of
machines all over the world that unexpectedly start to fail.”
It’s one of the downsides of a startup—having to navigate
uncharted waters. But Umaña is undeterred.
“I have too many ideas in my mind that I want to hold in
my hand,” he says. “I think I will be creating objects the rest
of my life. Being an entrepreneur makes that possible—it is
the only path that gives me the freedom to create.”
DANCE YOUR HEART OUT
Sarah Gladwin Camp ’05 is never quite sure what she’ll
“When I think about
teaching engineering
in a liberal arts context,
one of the best ways
that we set our students
up for success is by
HELPING THEM LEARN HOW TO SEE
THE DEEP CONNECTIONS BETWEEN
SEEMINGLY UNRELATED AREAS OF
INQUIRY.”
—MATT ZUCKER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND CHAIR
OF ENGINEERING
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
39
dance at all,” says Camp. “What I’m really teaching is how to
work together and take care of each other and share space
and take turns and behave in different situations.
“Dance is just the medium I’m using.”
LAURENCE KESTERSON
encounter on any given workday: a budget concern, a sick
employee, a mysterious monster hidden somewhere inside
her studio.
“OK, team,” she whispers to her pint-size crew. “You have
to be very quiet. I’ve been looking around for footprints and
trying to figure out where he is. Want to help find him?”
The youngsters gleefully join her on the enchanted
journey, crawling through cavernous tunnels, feeling drops
of rain upon their arms, and twirling around like tiny
tornadoes. In time, the secret search party transforms into a
delightful dance party, with a stop for story time in between.
For Camp, the founder of the creative-movement class
ZoomDance, every day is an adventure, brought to life by her
students’ imaginations.
“In my past as a nanny, I’d seen plenty of kids’ dance
classes that were slow and not that fun, working hard on
things that didn’t seem that engaging for the kids,” says
Camp. “So I devised a class that was really active and
adventurous, where we’d read stories and act them out,
and work on qualities and dynamics—being playful and
courageous, in addition to learning dance moves.”
What started in 2008 as a single class for South
Philadelphia preschoolers, advertised through flyers passed
out in parks, has grown into a full-fledged business. Today,
ZoomDance has three additional teachers, more than a
dozen weekly class sessions, party-hosting services, and a
summer day camp. The key, says Camp, has been adapting to
the needs of families.
Including her own: Since daughter Sydney came along
three years ago—born to Camp and husband Ben ’05—Camp
has tweaked her teachings and modified her workload,
hoping to strike the right work-life balance.
An athlete growing up, Camp “accidentally got interested
in dance” in college. She entered Swarthmore intending to be
a physics major, loading up on math and science classes her
first semester. For her PE requirement, though, her options
were limited, so she decided to give Modern 1 a whirl.
“I totally loved it,” says Camp, who made dance her major
and later earned a master’s in contemporary dance. “By the
second semester of my freshman year, I was doing six hours
“As an entrepreneur, I’ve got a huge amount of dedication and
drive and pride in what I’m doing because I’m building it from
scratch,” says Sarah Gladwin Camp ’05. “It’s like renovating a
house by yourself: You think, ‘I touched this. This is me.’”
“Swarthmore gave me the confidence of being able to
do a lot of things. TODAY, WHEN I ENCOUNTER A CHALLENGE, I ALWAYS
KNOW THAT I HAVE THE MINDSET TO THINK CREATIVELY ABOUT WHAT THE SOLUTION
CAN BE.”
—DISHA KATHARANI ’06
40
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
of dance a day, helping start a performance team, and looking
at studying dance abroad. I kind of just dove head-first into
it.”
What appealed most about dance was how it enabled
her to interact through motion, to be funny, awkward, or
unusual in the physical. It’s the perfect mode of expression
for children, Camp says—using their bodies and minds
creatively to bring out their personalities.
“Art is so important for everybody, but especially young
kids, because it alters how they see and relate to the world,
and how they interact and collaborate with other people,”
she says. “The way that our culture works right now, that’s
pretty essential.”
That’s the big takeaway from her ZoomDance classes, and
a large reason why her repertoire has resonated with local
families.
“I’ve realized that I’m not actually trying to teach the kids
IMAGINE IT, MAKE IT
Disha Katharani ’06 didn’t set out to create a toy company,
but her customers insisted. That’s what it felt like, anyway.
After Swarthmore, the math and engineering major
returned to her native India as an Ernst & Young consultant.
An MBA led to her first entrepreneurial journey, By the Buy,
offering buying and marketing support to retailers.
“We did a lot of work for children’s bookstores and
playgroups,” Katharani says, “so many of our services were
centered around kids as our target market.”
That included workshops and programs in the children’s
“edutainment” space—with a strong educational, skillbuilding, or craft-based objective. Sensing her audience
was much wider than she could reach through her clients,
Katharani launched Imagimake, a Mumbai-based children’s
activity center, co-founded with her husband, Ravi Kumar.
As parents began requesting activity kits to bring home or
give as gifts, a toy line was a natural next step.
“We were quite fortunate,” Katharani says, “that the
market led us to where the next turn should go.”
Imagimake has grown to more than 50 products, designed
to inspire a child’s imagination. Besides the crafty Quill
On line, the company has received critical praise for its
Mapology puzzles: pieces cut into the shapes of states or
countries, with separate flags identifying capitals and fun
facts about each location.
Although the toys are available on Amazon, through
Imagimake’s website, and in stores overseas, Katharani
hopes to further expand their reach in the U.S. and globally.
One way is through exhibitions. Her crew travels annually
to Germany’s Spielwarenmesse, the largest toy fair in the
world, and has exhibited stateside the past two Februarys
at Toy Fair New York. Katharani foresees a European
expansion in 2019, with orders already being filled in Greece,
Hungary, and Belgium.
As the business grows, through successes and setbacks,
Katharani stays grounded in her STEAM foundation formed
at Swarthmore—in the engineering logic that drives her
product development; the math that touches every business
function, from accounting to finance to inventory; and the
creativity gained from studying across the liberal arts.
“Swarthmore gave me the confidence of being able to do a
lot of things,” she says. “Today, when I encounter a challenge,
I always know that I have the mindset to think creatively
about what the solution can be.
“Spending four years at Swarthmore set me up for life.”
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
41
LINKED BY
LETTERS
Even as their post-College lives
took different paths, seven
friends stayed connected
by Barbara Lea Couphos ’49
LAURENCE KESTERSON
S
42
Barbara “Bobbe” Lea Couphos ’49 holds
a treasured moment in time: a photo with six
of the “Holy Seven.”
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
TARTING shortly after
our graduation on June 6,
1949, until March 2012, six
of my Swarthmore friends
and I maintained a lifelong
commitment to one another
via an ongoing group letter called the Round
Robin.
On campus, we were known as the Holy
Seven—or sometimes as the Unholy Seven—and
ever after we depended on our Round Robin to
keep us heart-connected. Every two or three
months, each of us would be thrilled to receive
in the mail a pleasantly fat envelope, from
which we’d eagerly take out and read the six
individual letters written by our fellow chums,
swap out our old letter for a new one, and then
mail a new fat envelope, sending our trusty bird
along on its next flight.
I remember these letters being chock-full of
our triumphs and heartaches, family upheavals,
world travels, and daily minutia, and I consider
the “Seveners” each to be a treasured, integral
part of my life. Today, only two of us remain,
but our memories—and letters—will last
forever.
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
43
Mary Lee Schell Herndon ’49, an English
literature major from Indianapolis who left
Swarthmore at the end of our junior year to
marry. (We flunked chemistry together—
the first failure we ever experienced—before
barely squeaking through the second time!)
She later got her B.A., had three daughters and
one son, and traveled extensively through five
continents. Mary Lee died in 2013.
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49, from New
Albany, Ind., majored in English literature. A
gifted writer, she became the senior editor of
the Swarthmore College Bulletin and ultimately
the College’s associate vice president. Always
gracious, poised, and lovely, she also built
a happy marriage, won many prizes for her
gardening, and continues her intellectual
pursuits and hobbies apace.
Laura Reppert Unger ’49, from Glenside,
Pa., majored in English literature and married
Richard Unger ’48; three of our Holy Seven
were in their wedding party. The devoted
44
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
mother of four sons who heavily invested her
creative energies in community service, Laura
died in 2013.
Lynne Davis Mifflin Schloesser ’49, M’64,
a Spanish honors student from Drexel Hill, Pa.,
earned both her B.A. and a philosophy M.A.
from Swarthmore. She was also crowned May
Queen in 1949; were we ever proud of her! Not
only was she a true beauty, but she was also
extraordinarily bright with a compassionate,
kind heart. The mother of five, she worked for a
time as a vocational counselor in Swarthmore’s
Dean’s Office before moving to France with her
second husband. She died in 2011.
Margaret “Peggy” Comfort Smith ’49, from
Haverford, Pa., majored in psychology. She left
Swarthmore early in our senior year to marry
Malcolm Smith ’48; they had two daughters and
one son. She went on to complete her college
education and to become first a teacher and
then a docent at a living history museum, where
she loved to spin yarn on a wheel, weave on a
loom, and churn fresh milk from a cow into
butter. Peg died in 2002.
Photos from the
Round Robin files: At left,
Peggy Comfort Smith ’49
and Lynne Davis Mifflin
Schloesser ’49, M’64,
roommates for several
years, circa fall 1947.
Above, Maralyn Orbison
Gillespie ’49 in 1948.
Susan “Susie” Reinoehl Flindell Miller ’49
arrived from Havana, Cuba, where she had lived
most of her life; she was deeply interested in
the Spanish language. She left Swarthmore our
junior year to get married, a union that proved
to be short-lived; she married again in the early
1960s and moved to Virginia. Susie attended
our 60th Reunion in 2009 and died in 2017.
And me, Barbara Lea Couphos ’49, known
as Bobbe Lea. Mary Lee and I were roommates
our freshman year, and I went on to work in
the NYC book publishing field, rising from
girl Friday to the foreign editor of Crown
Publishers. My first boyfriend at Swarthmore,
Paul Couphos ’49, became my second husband
after he reappeared in my life in late 1967;
we had a very good marriage until his death
in 2013. Since April 2014, I’ve been happily
ensconced in my older daughter’s lovely New
Milford, Conn., home, delighting in spending
time with my three granddaughters and their
families.
AS THE ONLY still-living members of our
beloved College gang, Maralyn and I chat
LAURENCE KESTERSON
SO WHO WERE THESE FABULOUS FRIENDS?
Barbara “Bobbe” Lea Couphos ’49 holds a 1949 Halcyon photo of Lynne Davis
Mifflin Schloesser ’49, M’64 (top left), who died in 2011. One of Couphos’s many
scrapbook pages (above) features memories and mementos from Swarthmore
in the late ’40s, including a photo of Caroline Reynolds Hiester ’50, who read
textbooks aloud for fellow student Rocky Bonavita ’49. “There’s also a photo of Ed
Dennison ’49 and me on a date in Philadelphia, and a portrait of Mary Lee Schell
Herndon ’49, my roommate our freshman, sophomore, and junior years,” says
Couphos (top right).
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
45
Top: One of the few photos of all members of the Holy Seven, taken in March 1948, when
Susan Reinoehl Flindell Miller ’49, newly married, came on a short visit to see her best
College chums. From left: Lynne Davis Mifflin Schloesser ’49, M’64, Peggy Comfort Smith
’49, Barbara Lea Couphos ’49, Miller, Laura Reppert Unger ’49, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie
’49, and Mary Lee Schell Herndon ’49. Bottom: At their 40th Reunion in June 1989:
Gillespie, Peggy MacLaren Ulrich ’49, Unger, Smith, and Couphos.
frequently on the phone. It’s great
fun to share chuckles and concerns,
and even “see,” in our minds’ eyes, the
smiles or sadness or wonderment of
our very different lives in our elderly
bodies.
The last flight of our treasured
Round Robin ended in 2012. I had kept
all the old letters that I had written,
and one day, several months ago, I sat
down and reread them. What a vivid
review of my own 91-plus years, but
also a heightened awareness of the
challenges bravely navigated by my
dear old classmates.
The underlying theme I
rediscovered was the immense lifeenriching importance provided by
our deeply experienced connection.
As students at Swarthmore, we
lived together, laughed and cried,
encouraged and listened, argued
with and applauded one another. We
celebrated our achievements and
commiserated our setbacks and loved
one another like sisters.
Never after April 1948 were all
seven of us together in one group, but
it meant everything to know that we
were only ever as far away as a letter in
the mail.
I am grateful for many things I
gained at Swarthmore, but in some
ways these friendships were the
best, bringing such color and depth
and connection to my life that I am
stunned by my good fortune,
To be part of such a special group of
strong, bright, loving women who each,
in her own unique way, made a positive
difference in her own life and in our
wider world. Wow.
SCRIBES AND SCROLLS
There is an entire aviary of Swarthmorean Round Robins—Joyce Favorite Akerboom
’49 wrote in to tell of a vivid memory of one she shared with a group that included
her “puckish pal,” the late Helen Blankenagel Miller ’48.
“One gal mentioned something about a ‘scroll’ in her letter. That was all Helen needed,” Akerboom remembered. “She typed her next contribution on toilet paper! We all
had a good laugh when the Round Robin came our way.”
46
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
class notes
A TREASURY OF ALUMNI-RELATED ITEMS
ALUMNI
EVENTS
ALUMNI WEEKEND
May 31–June 2
Join classmates and friends
on campus for the Parade of
Classes, Alumni Collection, and
so much more! Registration is
now open.
alumniweekend.
swarthmore.edu
ALUMNI COLLEGE ABROAD
Join fellow Swarthmoreans on
an educational journey.
bit.ly/SwatAbroad
“Flavors of Catalonia”:
Join Professor of Modern
Languages & Literatures
María-Luisa Guardiola on
Spain’s colorful coast:
Sept. 28–Oct. 6
GARNET HOMECOMING
AND FAMILY WEEKEND
Oct. 4–6
Save the date for this annual
celebration of what makes
Swarthmore special.
swarthmore.edu/
garnetweekend
DAVID SINCLAIR
LGBTQ+ ALUMNX
COMMUNITY DAY
April 28
No matter where you are in the
world, you can connect with
fellow LGBTQ+ alumnx in our
first worldwide gathering. Find
an event near you, or learn
more about a digital meetup.
bit.ly/swarthmoreLGBTQ
The Garnet had plenty to celebrate in February as two teams clinched Centennial Conference titles. The men’s
swimming team (above) won their second championship in three years, while men’s basketball dominated
en route to the NCAA Division III Tournament. More: swarthmore.edu
1944
Esther Ridpath Delaplaine
edelaplaine1@verizon.net
Frances “Wally” Wallin Shaw
died Dec. 22. Wally was born
in Grand Rapids, Mich., moved
to Pennsylvania, and attended
George School before majoring in
psychology at Swarthmore. She
married Robert Shaw ’41 in 1943.
After Bob finished law school,
they moved to Granville, Mich.,
and raised four children. She was
a social worker in a local Head
Start program and volunteered
in environmental organizations
before she and Bob retired to
Florida.
After Bob’s death, Wally
returned to Granville, where she
was surrounded by family and
wilderness neighbors. A memorial
service will be held this spring.
On a personal note, I am a proud
great-grandmother of Maya
Miller Delaplaine, born Dec. 21 in
Berkeley, Calif.
Nancy Grace Roman ’46 was
my neighbor for many years. Her
death on Dec. 25 was noted across
the country because of her many
contributions to astronomy and
spurring women to enter scientific
fields. After Swarthmore, she
received an astronomy Ph.D.
from the University of Chicago.
Against all odds, she climbed to
the top of her profession, serving
as chief astronomer at NASA from
its inception until her retirement.
She is known as the Mother of the
Hubble telescope, having lobbied
Congress for early funding. It
is said that more than anyone
she persuaded the astronomical
community to support space
astronomy.
We became reacquainted when
I moved into her condo building.
She urged me to join her Spanish
class that met at her Unitarian
church and, more recently, to
meet monthly with a group of
her Unitarian friends. Her many
accomplishments were celebrated
Jan. 15 at her church.
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
47
class notes
1949
GARNET SNAPSHOT
Marjorie Merwin Daggett
mmdaggett@verizon.net
Our sympathy to the family of
William Schweikle, who died in
October 2017 in Florida. He had
been a NASA engineer. His hobbies
were gardening and farming, but
most of all he loved spending time
with his wife, four children, and
many grandchildren.
Dorothy McCloskey Martin died
Aug. 1. Our sympathy to her family.
Condolences also to the family of
Margaret “Meg” Thomson Colgan,
who died in April 2018. During
college, we knew Meg wanted to
be a doctor, and she became an
outstanding one. She completed
medical studies at the University of
Rochester, where she met husband
Frank. She interned in pediatrics
in St. Louis, followed by a pediatric
cardiology residency and fellowship
in Houston. She, Frank, and their
family returned to Rochester, where
Meg held important pediatric and
teaching posts in several hospitals
over the next four decades. In 1992,
she was awarded the university’s
Gold Medal Award honoring her
“integrity, inspiring teaching, and
devotion to medical students.”
Even as her career grew, her main
focus was her family. For her five
children, she found time to be a
Cub Scout den mother and a Girl
Scout troop leader. She loved to
cycle, ski, and travel. In later life,
she volunteered at pediatric clinics
and delved into art history studies
enough to become a docent.
Meg’s obituary caught what we
remember of her—“she exuded
confidence, had an infectious
laugh, and a generous spirit.”
THE BCC
IS TURNING 50!
What does the
Black Cultural Center
mean to you?
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
48
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
The Rev. Tonen Andrews O’Connor ’54, resident priest emerita
at the Milwaukee Zen Center, received the Frank Zeidler
Award in December from the Interfaith Conference of Greater
Milwaukee.
1952
Barbara Wolff Searle
bsearle70@msn.com
Very short column this quarter. I so
wish that I was hearing from more
of you!
I received a lovely update
from Joan Berkowitz, who was
“surprised and delighted to
receive an Academic Star Award
this semester. My department
chair’s nomination reads in part,
‘I so appreciate Joan’s attention
to her students. Her students
appreciated her excellent presence
in the classroom and recognized
that Joan was in the business
of teaching to teach, and to do
that well.’” Joan is a University
of Maryland University College
professor.
All that’s left is to tell you about
myself. My grandson Powell
Sheagren ’22 finished his first
semester at Swarthmore. He is
adjusting well to the East Coast
(although we had to buy him lots
of winter clothes), and came home
with lots of stories. Grandson
Calder at the University of Chicago
is deep into quantum mechanics
and other such topics. As for me,
I’m getting along, wishing we had
more of the sunshine Southern
California is famous for.
1954
Elizabeth Dun Colten
36 Hampshire Hill Road
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
lizcolten@aol.com
Happy New Year 2019! What were
you doing 65 years ago? Studying
for comps? Worrying about orals?
It was a long time ago!
Fredericka Nolde Berger finds
satisfaction teaching Choral
Speaking the Scripture in Wesley
Theological Seminary’s doctor of
ministry program. The Bergers look
forward to granddaughter Astrid’s
high school graduation in May.
Travel is still on Beth Wood
Bowers’s agenda: Florida,
California, and Hawaii. Three
grandsons are in college, and the
fourth is a high school sophomore.
A Christmas family gathering was
scheduled in the Florida Keys.
Larry Franck enjoys his snow
bird schedule: Florida from Nov.
1 to Easter, but visiting Maryland
and Pennsylvania for Christmas
week. His sailboat, Whisper, has
participated since 1992 in the
seasonal parade of lighted boats
motoring around the mangoes at
the edge of Punta Gorda.
The Franklin Institute announced
its 2019 award recipients, and
Princeton Professor Emeritus
John Hopfield was among them.
John was honored “for applying
concepts of theoretic physics to
provide new insights in a variety of
areas, including neuroscience and
genetics, with significant impact on
machine learning.” Since retiring 10
years ago, John no longer teaches
undergrads, but he helps young
researchers find their areas of
study. He noted that the author of
a “scary” article (his adjective), bit.
ly/AlphaZeroNYT—recommended
for anyone with an interest in the
future of Al and its interaction with
human intelligence—once had a
class with him.
A 2018 highlight for Tonen
Andrews O’Connor was the award
she received from the Interfaith
Conference of Greater Milwaukee
“for exceptional service to society
through longtime direct work
with those incarcerated within
the state prison system … and
advancement of interreligious
knowledge, tolerance, and
friendship through extensive public
speaking.” Tonen will spend 10 days
in Japan in May to practice with
old friends at a little temple near
Kyoto, but also travels in the U.S.
to stay connected with her sons
and families. She finds it hard to
believe that her oldest greatgranddaughter is now in college!
Ann Reeves Reed has three
grandchildren in college, with two
more scheduled to attend next year.
She and Charlie enjoy the easier
living in their new (smaller) house.
“Still chugging along,” says Naomi
Lichtman Rose. She recently visited
her Boston great-grandchildren,
anticipated a granddaughter’s
upcoming wedding in Austin, Texas,
and planned a trip to Martinique
at the end of January. Tennis,
however, not so good!
Sally Richards Nicolai died Oct.
26. Although her health had
declined, she will be remembered
for her vibrant lifestyle and spirited
energy. An avid animal lover, she
was a lifetime member of Florida’s
Naples Zoo. Her former husband,
Karl ’53, died in 2009, but she is
survived by four children and her
longtime companion, John Keene.
Marlee Turner died Nov. 28.
Marlee started a teaching career,
co-founded a public relations firm,
and later became an owner of
Northern Pines health resort and
B&B in Raymond, Maine. Raised
in the Quaker tradition, she was
active in the League of Women
Voters and ran (unsuccessfully) for
state rep. Survived by three sons
and three grandchildren, she will be
missed by many lifelong friends.
1955
Sally Schneckenburger Rumbaugh
srumbaugh@san.rr.com
Gloria Chomiak Atamanenko
died in 2017. We send our sincere
condolences to her family.
Anne and Ron Decker took a
lovely voyage on the Queen Mary
2 from New York to England.
This was Ron’s second voyage to
England on the Cunard Line, the
first being in 1953 when he went
to Keele University for his junior
year. Also on that journey was Don
Sutherland ’53, now deceased, on
his way to Oxford with a Rhodes
Scholarship. Then, Paul Marcus
came to the dock to see Ron and
Don off. Ron and Anne plan more
cruises because Ron’s walking
problems make land tours difficult.
They live in a Chicago apartment
but are considering moving to the
D.C. area to be near family. Ron
still takes beautiful photographs.
Having survived an auto crash
after a truck ran a red light, Punky
and Anne Chandler Fristrom ’54
continue their activities at their
retirement home, Anne arranging a
musical program on Mondays, and
Punky—who received an award for
having attended 47 consecutive
California Association of Teachers
of English conventions—teaching a
poetry class monthly.
John ’53 and Joyce Bok
Ambruster moved from Tucson to
Flagstaff, Ariz., to be near family,
including four great-grandchildren.
Joyce says the move has “added a
new dimension to our lives.” They
are in an assisted living facility
called The Peaks, in a lovely
apartment surrounded by tall
pines and mountain views. “Health
holding up, but we do move more
slowly. Maybe it’s the altitude of
7,000 feet … or could it be age?”
Hank Bode’s travels are now “U.S.
domestic. We plan to continue our
annual migration to Cape Cod in
June. (More specifically, Mashpee,
Mass.)”
George Hartzell retired from
surgery in 2001, had an eight-year
stint as a substitute teacher, then
retrained and has done primary
care a few days a week since 2010.
He and his wife still live in their
home near Allentown, Pa.
Felix Carrady and his wife took a
month’s trip to China in September,
first to places new to him, then
to his old hometown, Shanghai,
which had changed so much that
he could not find his old house or
the prison camp. They planned
to catch a ship in Singapore this
March and travel to Southampton,
England, on a 37-day journey
with stops in Colombo, Sri Lanka;
Salalah, Oman; Aqaba, Jordan;
the Suez Canal; and then many
European locales, including Italy.
Tom Preston and his wife moved
into a retirement home, “which
will take care of us, whatever,
whenever.”
Carol Elkins still has “a super
time writing plays.” Three were
produced at the Tucson (Ariz.)
Fringe Festival.
Richard Burtis and his wife
have lived and worked for more
than 50 years in Brattleboro,
Vt., “a lovely, interesting part of
New England [where] two rivers
converge.” He retired from internal
medicine in 2015 and also worked
for World Learning and School for
International Training, helping to
ensure international students had
the appropriate immunizations and
access to local medical care.
Bill and Phyllis Klock Dominick
’57 continue their traditional,
joyous family reunions.
In 2014, Paul Berry and his
wife sold their Palo Alto, Calif.,
home and moved to a co-housing
community near Mountain View.
They have many children and
grandchildren: “One does math
for Lyft, one for Google, one is
a poet and social worker, one
campaigns for recycling, and the
granddaughter who graduated
from college in Tokyo is studying to
be a chef in Ireland.”
Besides working around the
house because of his wife’s health
problems, Bill Shepard managed
some academic work, including an
article about the story of the blind
men and the elephant, and stayed
in touch with local Muslims.
Finally, a happy note, from Larry
Handley: “My life has suddenly
taken a turn for the better!
When my wife, Jebba, died in
April 2015, I resigned myself to a
solitary existence.” Then came a
condolence letter from the woman
he had dated freshman year, until
the distance between Swarthmore
and her Cornell strangled the
romance. After that letter, they
were pen pals until her husband
died, then met and quickly became
the “very happy couple” who have
been together for three years.
Because my energy is waning, I
have decided this will be my last
column. It has been a privilege and
delight to interact with the many
generous people who took the
trouble to write over the years. I
am grateful to the editors who have
supported me and to all of you who
have given me this opportunity.
It’s time for someone else to have
the fun.
1956
Caro Luhrs
celuhrs@verizon.net
A nice e-letter from Phil Hawes
brings us up to date on his
Several Garnet Sage classes are in need of secretaries.
Interested? Email classnotes@swarthmore.edu.
fascinating adventures. Phil left
us after two years and became an
architect. He was part of the core
team that designed, engineered,
and built Biosphere 2.
A year ago, Phil taught a threemonth undergraduate “immersion”
Eco Village Design-Build course
at the Maharishi University of
Management in Fairfield, Iowa.
Students were required to produce
an urban design module for 75–100
people that could be repeated in
multiple variations and culminate
in an economically and ecologically
sustainable community of 5,000
inhabitants (i.e. an eco-village).
Phil now lives in Nara Visa, N.M.,
“a defunct town of 65 people”
adjacent to the Llano Estacado or
“Staked Plains” of Texas, named
by Coronado around 1540. Phil’s
mother homesteaded there 110
years ago. Twenty-five of the 65
residents are over 75, so “gravedigging is the only growth industry.”
It reminds Phil of his ranching
experience in the remote Kimberley
area of the Australian Outback.
That’s another fantastic story! Phil
welcomes phone calls (806-4109393) and visits from old friends.
Artist Mary Lou Jones Toal’s
holiday cards are always so
beautiful. This year, her painting
was of brightly colored little houses
in Shaftesbury, England.
France Juliard Pruitt had a
wonderful time last fall in Huron,
S.D., where she lectured on her
book Resilience and Compassion:
Surviving the Holocaust. She spoke
to 300 adults and 1,800 students
from seven school districts.
Sally Pattullo McGarry visited
Iceland last year with stops in
the Faroe and Shetland islands,
Edinburgh, and London. Gretchen
Mann Handwerger, Audrey Penn,
France Juliard Pruitt, and I met up
with her for a little reunion when
she came through D.C. last fall.
Bob Wallach enjoyed interviewing
two Swarthmore graduate
physicians for a gynecologic
fellowship at NYU, where he is
professor of gynecologic oncology.
Patti and David Steinmuller took
two big trips from their home in
Bozeman, Mont., last year. The first
was Overseas Adventure Travel’s
“Back Roads of Iberia” tour from
Lisbon to Madrid. The second was
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
49
class notes
a 64-passenger “UnCruise” from
Sitka to Juneau, Alaska, via the
Inside Passage. Each day they
stopped for kayaking and skiff trips
in the surrounding waters.
Sadly, James Anderson, a
Swarthmore resident, died Jan. 6.
In several ways, Jim was the most
unique member of our class: He
was our oldest classmate by 10
years or more; he fought in World
War II and Korea; and he was our
only classmate with a spouse and
children—we were still children
ourselves! Please see “Their Light
Lives On” to remember Jim and
other departed friends and the
happy times we had with them.
1958
Vera Lundy Jones
549 East Ave.
Bay Head, NJ 08742
verajonesbayhead@comcast.net
In February, my two daughters
and I will have visited friends in
Arizona, where they have moved
from Princeton, N.J., as we did
years ago. I wish they didn’t live so
far away so we could get together
more often, but it’s great fun to see
them—well worth the trip.
Please send me news about you.
Your classmates enjoy hearing
your news and keeping in touch.
at the International Conference
on Austronesian Linguistics.
Exhausting but fun.
“More exciting, however, was
reading The Heart Healers by
James Forrester, easily the most
gripping book I’ve read in 20 years.
Jim was director of cardiology at
Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, a
program consistently rated Best
in the West by U.S. News & World
Report. Jim himself was a major
player in the development of heart
disease treatment and the secondever recipient of the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the
American College of Cardiology.
Jim and I roomed together his
first year of medical school in
Philadelphia, and as someone who
has lived off his pacemaker for 15
years, I find it ironically touching
to be personally indebted to the
historical development that Jim
was among the leaders in. Who
would have guessed back then
(when ‘pacers’ didn’t even exist)?”
Susan Barker Gutterman made
a very good point: After being
widowed four years ago, she
become aware of the importance
of contact with her Swarthmore
classmates. She, in turn, maintains
a relationship with a classmate
who is very ill, and she takes
pleasure in providing relief to
another. “Recently, I saw this
sort of idea referred to as ‘social
infrastructure,’ an interesting term
for it.”
1960
1959
Jeanette Strasser Pfaff
jfalk2@mac.com
Miriam Repp Staloff
staloff@verizon.net
Edward Keenan wrote a delightful
note: “Although retired, I’m
considering getting a job so I’d
work less. This year I wrote a book,
Eliminating the Universe: Logical
Properties of Natural Language,
gave a month of lectures at Paris
Diderot University, and then, with
my wife, went to Antananarivo,
Madagascar, and gave a paper
50
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
Peter Faber “finally decided to
retire. The last month has been
something of an emotional thing. I
spoke at several tax conferences,
and they have been honoring me
and making a big deal out of my
career. Some of the testimonials
were a bit over the top, but over
the years people have said enough
bad things about me that I do not
deserve, to balance these nice
things that I do not deserve. One
comment was that, like the old EF
Hutton ads, ‘when Peter speaks,
people listen.’ When this was read
at the party, wife Joan [Schuster
Faber] could not resist saying, ‘Not
everyone listens.’”
Michael Westgate ’61 writes: “The
South Harwich Meetinghouse
on Cape Cod, dating to 1836, has
been beautifully restored at the
hands of Sara Bolyard Chase. ‘It
wouldn’t have happened without
Sara,’ says the meetinghouse board
president.” Sara’s analytical work
on the historic paints and finishes
of the church was made “actual”
by architectural details made by
daughter Lee Noel Chase ’90.
About three years ago, Will
Fairley “went up to the College
(that’s what they call it here in
Swarthmore, where I happily live)
to hear Charles Murray, the author
and social commentator. He spoke
on his book Coming Apart at the
Friends Meeting House. As he was
about to be introduced, maybe
half of the audience of mostly
students stood up and began
chanting loudly; they continued
for some 20 minutes. During this
time, Murray stood at the podium.
No one intervened. At the close of
this demonstration, the standers
filed out and Murray spoke. I have
just finished the bestseller by Greg
Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The
Coddling of the American Mind, in
which they discuss such speaker
disruptions. The event seems a
long way from 1960.”
Joan Stadler Martin “retired
from creating the Adopt-A-Stream
program at the Huron River
Watershed Council in 2011. I had
loved the work and the people, but
wanted to quit while I was ahead.
It was good timing because my
husband developed a serious bone
infection the next year that took
six months to heal. Since then, I
have developed several volunteer
activities, mostly with the county
courts, first as a mediator and
subsequently assisting in the Circle
process, which enables people to
resolve a conflict while retaining a
good relationship. The Circle is a
safe place to speak authentically;
the results are impressive. This is
done in the Peacemaking Court,
as part of the restorative justice
efforts we have in Michigan.”
Here is an amusing exchange
in response to one of our former
“topics”:
Linda Habas Mantel: “I brought
with me to Parrish 4th West a
portable Victrola and records
(which I still have, with my
Swarthmore name label) and a
clock radio (which I also still have).
That’s probably all the electronic
gear I had. I don’t remember
thinking about TV very much. Of
course, I had an immersion coil
to make hot water for tea, so Kay
and I could have our Constant
Comment and Pecan Sandies in the
evening.”
Kay Senegas Gottesman:
“Although I certainly remember our
evening ritual of tea and Sandies,
I never thought about how you/
we heated the water. I don’t know
whether I had any ‘electronic gear,’
but if I did, I don’t know how it got
there. I did not have access to a
car, so I guess I took all my clothes
down with me on the train. Since
Mimi was my roommate the last
three years, maybe she knows
whether whatever stuff we had was
hers or mine.”
Mimi Siegmeister Koren: “Kay
pays me a great compliment by
thinking I remember what was
mine and what was hers. I didn’t
respond to Jeanette’s original
request because ‘electronic’ to me
means computer-type stuff. We
had ‘electric’ equipment: I brought
a record player, probably a radio
(though I don’t remember listening
to one). No one had her own phone;
we relied on the dorm phone for
rare incoming calls.”
Elise Landau just had her
80th birthday. “Whether it is an
accomplishment or luck to have
reached the four-score mark, for
me it was special. In fact, I would
say it was the high point of my life.
That sounds odd, but it’s not an
exaggeration. Thanks to my sister
and my son, who persuaded me
to agree to a family get-together
and a party, I can’t remember
another weekend that was so
joyful. I could go on at length about
all the reasons, but I’ll just say
that I feel grateful to have been
able to celebrate with my family,
neighbors, and friends, including
three Swarthmore classmates. The
glow will fade, but the memories
will last.”
Many of us turned 80 recently
… or are about to. Please send me
your reactions to this milestone.
1961
Pat Myers Westine
pat@westinefamily.com
This is being written in early
January, so happy and healthy
2019 to all!
Barbara Hall Partee was awarded
an honorary doctorate in 2018
by the University of Amsterdam
(her sixth; the first was from
Swarthmore in ’89) and was
elected a corresponding Fellow
of the British Academy. She was
awarded the British Academy’s
Neil and Saras Smith Medal
for linguistics for her leading
contributions to the study of
semantics, syntax, and pragmatics;
the award was given the same day
as her fellowship induction. She
gives Swarthmore full “gratitude
for giving [her] the freedom and
encouragement to explore subjects
she loved most—math, philosophy,
and Russian, among which she
didn’t see any connection at the
time, but which turned out to be
great preparation for a field that did
not exist … she was well-prepared
to help get off the ground.”
This fall, Claire Faust Stephens
McMurray was influential in
getting National Space Society
chapters from four continents
to join an assembly call in India
at a World Space Week event. It
took all day due to the global time
differences and was a first-ofits-kind event. Grandson Stephen
graduates in May with a computer
master’s and a job in Austin, Texas;
granddaughter Meg has one year
left of high school.
Holiday cards and letters: Louise
Todd Taylor’s family in North
Carolina had some health issues
but seemed to be improving by
year’s end. Emily and Bob Rowley’s
card from Connecticut featured
a photo with Bob surrounded by
three generations of his girls,
including his first great-grandchild,
Ruby Grace, born fittingly on
Mother’s Day. Jean Geil’s letter
from her Hawaiian home spoke
of disasters, including a false
incoming-missile alert, volcanic
eruptions, and a hurricane. Her
older brother died in early 2018,
and she is compiling reminiscences
in a memorial booklet for his family.
Marilyn Emerson Lanctot has
a new knee, finished a king-size
quilt, went to six bluegrass festivals
where her husband played, and
watched her husband and son
play and sing on a Delaware
River cruise, raising money for
the Solebury Township (Pa.)
Historical Society. Sheila Maginniss
Bell visited Portugal with Scott
Arboretum, touring gardens in
Lisbon, Sintra, and the Douro
Valley, with stops at both a winery
and a cork farm. She still works
with Scott Arboretum, Art Goes
to School, the Swarthmore Senior
Citizens Association, the Aging
in Place committee, and Heeding
God’s Call to End Violence; sings
in two choirs; and is on church
committees.
Hugh Martin and family sent a
video for the holidays called “Going
the Distance,” showing shots of
vacations taken in the past 20
years and speaking of the family
developing great relationships
while being challenged by weather,
temperature differences, climbing
difficulties, and the realities
of life. Sandra Dixon wrote of
finding the perfect retirement
job: working 1–2 days a week at
a psychiatric urgent care clinic,
free to all, seeing walk-ins and
those brought by law enforcement.
The goal is to connect the clients
with longer-term care, as soon as
possible. The clinic professionals
set up counseling and addictiontreatment appointments, help with
transportation, and even supply
emergency food. Sandy spends
time with granddaughter Scarlet,
attended a summer music camp,
and works with an emergency team
encouraging neighbors to stock
supplies in case of a disaster. Her
yard is a Certified Backyard Habitat
with no invasive plants and with
native plants in 40 percent of the
plantable area.
The weather and predators limited
some of Pat Clark Kenschaft’s
garden’s output last year. She and
Fred visited her children in Virginia
and Massachusetts during the
year. Pat is co-chair of the Peace
and Service Committee of her
Quaker meeting and secretary of
the Cornucopia Network of New
Jersey.
David Henderson died Dec. 20
of injuries suffered when he was
struck by a car in a pedestrian
crosswalk in Bethany Beach,
Del. With a Ph.D. in geometric
topology from the University of
Wisconsin, Dave spent two years
at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton, N.J., and retired as
a mathematics professor after 46
years at Cornell. Dave’s first wife
was Beverly Burt West of our class,
with whom he had two children,
Keith Henderson ’84 and Rebecca
Henderson Wynne ’86. Dave wrote
several books and was working on
the fourth edition of Experiencing
Geometry on Plane and Sphere
with wife Daina Taimina, a retired
adjunct math professor at Cornell.
The class sends its sympathy to
the Henderson family. Please share
your memories of David with me to
be included in the next column.
My thanks to all who stay in
touch.
1962
Evelyn Edson
268 Springtree Lane
Scottsville, VA 24590
eedson@pvcc.edu
It was a pleasure to see that
David Gelber ’63 was awarded
an honorary degree at the 2017
Commencement. Dave and I worked
together on The Phoenix for several
years. I have an especially vivid
memory of a project we were doing,
a study of the social and economic
dynamics of Swarthmore Borough,
and Dave, leaning forward to
address a society lady we were
interviewing. “What we want to
know, ma’am,” quoth he, “is: Who
is the power elite?” I’m sure his
interviewing skills have become
more polished over the years.
Congratulations, Dave!
The tireless Maggy Reno
Hurchalla is in court, fighting the
good fight against a “vengeful
billionaire” in Martin County, Fla.
Allied with her are an impressive
collection of environmental and
First Amendment groups. Read all
about it, and consider making a
donation, at slappmaggy.com.
John Solodar was honored with
the St. Louis Audubon Society’s
Lifetime Achievement Award. John
served for 15 years on the society’s
Board of Directors. Among his
recent accomplishments was
reorganizing the group’s finances,
pulling them out of a morass
created by neglect after he left the
board. He was also credited with
leading and coordinating many
birding field trips. In University
City, Mo., he joined the Green
Practices Commission, of which he
is now chair. Its job is to vet ideas
for environmental sustainability
before presenting them to the city
government. “Somewhere,” says
John, “I seem to have developed
the skill of knowing how to run
meetings and making sure that
everyone has a say without
allowing the meeting to drag on
forever.”
Judy Markham Hughes retired
from teaching in UC–San Diego’s
history department, as of spring
2016, but still runs a small
psychoanalytic practice. In her
recently released ninth book,
Witnessing the Holocaust: Six
Literary Testimonies, Judy draws
extensively on the works of Victor
Klemperer, Ruth Kluger, Michal
Glowinski, Primo Levi, Imre Kertesz,
and Bela Zsolt. “The book conveys
the specificity and concreteness of
the persecution of the Jews from
the beginning of the Third Reich
until its very end. It thus secures
a place for narratives by those
who experienced the Holocaust in
person.”
Faithful New York correspondent
Cynthia Norris Graae recommends
Peter Biskind’s new book, The Sky
is Falling: How Vampires, Zombies,
Androids, and Superheroes Made
America Great for Extremism.
Cynthia quotes from a blurb by
Victor Navasky ’54 that Peter has
“made the persuasive and highly
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
51
class notes
readable case on why and how
our ‘extremist’ popular culture has
given us our most unpresidential
president ever.” Adds Cynthia:
“Peter is brilliant, and Swarthmore
should invite him to speak.”
Accessing the Healing Power
of the Vagus Nerve: Self-Help
Exercises for Anxiety, Depression,
Trauma, and Autism by Stanley
Rosenberg is now out from North
Atlantic Books. Stanley still lives
in Denmark, but moved from
Silkeborg to Copenhagen to be
closer to his son.
Susan Goodman Jolles keeps
trying to retire as harpist for the
Metropolitan Opera, but the Met
persists in calling her back. I
always look for her at the MetLive
broadcasts in Charlottesville, Va.
My husband, sister, nieces, and I
are faithful attenders.
Walter Carter had a knee
replacement, which seems to have
been successful. For those who
remember Walter and me swordfighting with our canes at the 55th
Reunion, you can hope that we will
be cane-free at the next event.
If you have ever looked longingly
at the Swarthmore-sponsored
tours of exotic places, I have
a report from Caroline Hodges
Persell, who went on the Iceland
trip in March 2018 with her
sister Nancy. “It was fascinating,
geologically and sociologically. We
saw and did so much in the first
two days that it felt like we had
been there two weeks. The group
was interesting and fun, the guides
excellent, and we did get to see
some Northern Lights.”
At our age (here, I speak for
myself), sometimes memories are
more engaging than our current
lives. I recalled recently taking
a group of Chester kids trickor-treating on Halloween 1960.
We stopped at the Democratic
Party headquarters where the
kids gleefully collected “Kennedy
for President” buttons. Then we
stopped at a house where we
were greeted at the door by a
lady with “Nixon” spelled out in
rhinestones on a brooch on her
bosom. The kids were chanting “All
the way with JFK.” The lady smiled
indulgently and said, “You can see
who I am supporting,” but gave
them handfuls of candy anyway.
52
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
You will notice that this class
column now appears at six-month
intervals instead of four times a
year. This schedule makes it a little
easier to fill it up, but still I count on
you for all the news. Write to me.
1963
Diana Judd Stevens
djsteven1@verizon.net
In her annual letter, Alice
Handsaker Kidder reported Dave
’62 is on a team researching
the history of First Church
Cambridge, Mass., related to its
complicity with slavery. He is
also working on planning a public
remembrance project to awaken
folks to this history. Alice helps
Clergy and Laity for Affordable
Housing organize small-scale
home repairs in urban Boston
and is co-director of Solutions
at Work. In May, Bill Steelman
retired from active ministry. He
writes a monthly email reflection
on biblical and theological issues,
reads extensively, and walks daily.
Linda retired from the Nantucket
Historical Association and is
exploring volunteer opportunities.
In 2018, Jeannette Jones
Gallagher expanded her piano
repertoire, tended to Neil’s care
after his rotator cuff surgery,
arranged canine playdates for
Maribel, and, with Neil and Maribel,
took a “Drive-Drive-Hug-Eat-Drive”
vacation to visit family and friends
in Pennsylvania. Gidget and Ted
Nyquist moved to Cave Creek, Ariz.,
as they prefer Arizona’s weather,
taxes, and politics to suburban
Chicago’s. In 2018, they celebrated
their 55th wedding anniversary
with their five daughters and their
spouses. Ted and Gidget sky- and
scuba-dive. Ted continues to
photograph and volunteers with
Flights for Life, which means he
picks up blood platelets in Phoenix
and flies them to Arizona cities.
Bob Putnam’s retirement last
April featured a day of symposia
and celebratory dinner. He is
completing his “last, last” book.
In 2018, Bob and wife Rosemary
Werner Putnam ’62 attended
the Swarthmore graduation of
grandson Gabriel Perez-Putnam
’18. The Putnams also traveled to
the Upper Amazon, Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland, China, Korea,
and Japan. They have a home in
Jaffrey, N.H., and downsized to a
Cambridge, Mass., flat.
Rad and Sandy Hutchison Smith
converted a room, once home to
Rad’s model trains, to a home gym
so they can exercise regularly.
The Smiths enjoy classical music
through live concerts and Rad’s
extensive CD collection, and
continue with Osher Lifelong
Learning classes at the University
of Michigan. After traveling to the
Galapagos, Sandy said it would be
great if the U.S. were half as tuned
in to conservation as the islands.
Nancy Hall Colburn Farrell
reports her multiple myeloma is
stably suppressed. During the
eight months she and Jack live in
Boulder, Colo., they participate in a
World Affairs discussion group. In
both Fort Myers, Fla., and Boulder,
they enjoy Silver Sneakers exercise
classes. Nancy continues with
piano and attended a piano camp
in Estes Park, Colo. Jane Jonas
Srivastava’s 2018 travels included
an Alaska cruise with her two
grandsons and their parents; dance
camp in Idaho; wilderness camping
in British Columbia’s Chilcotin area;
and a three-week trip to Vienna,
Krakow, Czech Republic, and
Slovakia. In between travels, Jane
dances, hikes, snowshoes, swims,
does tai chi, and volunteers for the
opera, the Rogue Folk Club, and
other groups.
A late report on Ellen
Perchonock’s 75th birthday party,
where people of all ages danced
to her favorite ’60s and ’70s
music. The dance floor was filled
with everyone singing along to
“Satisfaction” and “All You Need
Is Love.” The Dutch knew all the
English words. Dan Menaker
wracked his brain and provided
the following news: Son Will is
founding member of the cult-hit
humor podcast Chapo Trap House;
daughter Lizi is a therapist; wife
Katherine is head of the New
York chapter of the Hearing Loss
Association of America; and Dan
teaches with Billy Collins, Meg
Wolitzer, and Matthew Klam in
SUNY–Stony Brook’s MFA program
while dealing successfully with
Mr. R. Thrytus. Anne Howells
visited Janet Oestreich Bernstein
in Eugene, Ore., and then drove up
the foggy, rainy Oregon coast to
Cannon Beach.
Kelly Ann Lister attended Garnet
Weekend 2018 and talked with
several parents, enjoyed the
tailgate party and the Haverford/
Swarthmore volleyball game, and
met with the Bulletin staff. She
generally agrees with what the
Trump administration is doing,
especially its pro-life agenda. Kelly
Ann is concerned about its views
concerning transgender persons,
such as herself, and worries about
their job security.
At her new home in Amherst,
Mass., Barbara Perkins Tinker
has Swarthmorean company from
all stages of her life, including
First Day school, second grade,
and college. She enjoys visits
from Dorothy Earley Weitzman,
continues trio playing, and has a
lively intellectual life.
John Cratsley wrote that since
Holly retired from her architecture
practice, they have had a travel
explosion: Alaska with homestays
sponsored by four Unitarian
Universalist congregations; Laos
and Vietnam where John taught
mediation; and Road Scholar trips,
the Duoro River in Portugal and
Iceland. From Trinity, Fla., Polly
Glennan Watts reported she has
organized a singing group, joined
a chorus that does concerts at
nursing and skilled living facilities,
visited St. Thomas, and enjoys
seeing granddaughter Abby on her
new horse.
Keep the news coming!
1964
Diana Bailey Harris
harris.diana@gmail.com
John Warner Jr. of Mullica Hill,
N.J., died Feb. 10, 2018. The notice
provided no information on his
recent activities.
Peter Setlow wrote in late June
that he’s “still doing research on
bacterial spores, 50 years now
this August. My wife, Barbara,
retired from research with me but
still comes in now and then.” Their
oldest grandchild is off to college
this fall, although he decided
Swarthmore was too small for him.
Peter is happy there are still three
grandchildren to go. Their son and
daughter work at the University
of Florida, but Peter and Barbara
have no plans to leave Connecticut.
Sallie Blocksom Johnson wrote in
July that she has moved to a senior
residence, with “mixed feelings—no
cooking, no driving, no mowing of
the grass—yet I’m still close to my
dear son, Dion, and his companion,
Kristy, who just returned from
Portugal.” Sally’s now “editing a
long saga many years in the writing.
It’s set in California over 150 years
ago, an interesting time before
statehood and the Gold Rush. I’ve
loved the research and am sad to
finish it—in an odd way.”
Reuters reported Aug. 9 that
“a 2–1 decision by the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in
Seattle overturned former EPA
administrator Scott Pruitt’s
March 2017 denial of a petition by
environmental groups to halt the
use of chlorpyrifos on food crops
such as fruits, vegetables, and
nuts. Judge Jed Rakoff, writing
for the appeals court, directed the
EPA to ban chlorpyrifos within 60
days, saying the agency failed to
counteract ‘scientific evidence
that its residue on food causes
neurodevelopmental damage to
children.’”
Bennett Lorber was awarded the
2018 Distinguished Teacher Award
by the Association of American
Medical Colleges in November.
The award provides national
recognition for outstanding
contributions to medical education
made by gifted teachers.
Sue Zinn Eisinger “volunteered
at the polls in November, a 17-hour
day—not sure how many more of
those I have in me.”
Michael Gross reports that wife
Mary “Rickie” Snyder Gross’s
“dementia symptoms, subtle at our
50th, are more obvious now, but
she’s still her same bright self and
willing to argue any point that does
not require recent memory. And I,
of course, am becoming more of
a caregiver and learning the skills
and attitude this requires. We have
plenty of help at home and two
days of senior day care. We have
not moved and do not plan to. Our
joys are our local environment,
family, and friends.”
Mike Meeropol attended the
conference celebrating 50 years’
existence of the Union for Radical
Political Economics (URPE), at
the University of Massachusetts–
Amherst. He enjoyed getting
together with old friends, including
Heidi Hartmann ’67, Frank
Ackerman ’67, Michael Reich ’66,
Gerald Epstein ’73, and Patrick
Bond ’83. Mike’s article “How
URPE helped this ‘tenured radical’
thrive in a non-radical economics
department,” which noted that
“when you live long enough,
people are surprisingly interested
in what you did decades ago,”
was published in a special issue
of the Review of Radical Political
Economics. He hopes to make it to
our 55th Reunion.
We learned in early December
that Midwest Academy would be
presenting its inaugural Paul Booth
Labor Leadership Award at the
2018 Midwest Academy Awards
in D.C. The honor went to the
courageous, inspiring membership
of the West Virginia Education
Association and the AFT–West
Virginia, for their leadership
in sparking the “Red for Ed”
Movement in their state and others.
Nell Lee Kruger broke her long
silence to report that she and
Chuck “are back in the States
after 51 years. Hard to believe.
Left to keep our tax money, what
little there was of it, from going
to support the Vietnam War.”
Now they find “the creative and
political activity here at Kendal
at Longwood breathtaking and
contagious. Eight miles out in the
ocean south of Ireland on an island
with a population of 120—when all
were at home—began to feel not
where we wanted to/should spend
our later years. It would be fun to
visit Swarthmore while classmates
are there.”
Perfect timing—our upcoming
55th would be a great time to
get reacquainted. Meg Hodgkin
Lippert and her committee—Bernie
Banet, Sue Zinn Eisinger, Ellen
Faber Wright, Amy Stone, Lydia
Razran Stone, and I, Diana Bailey
Harris—have crafted what we
believe will be an engaging series
of discussions for the event, May
31–June 2.
1965
Kiki Skagen Munshi
kiki@skagenranch.com
smore65.com
By the time you see this, the
weather will be warmer, but as I
write, it’s winter. We had a couple
of inches of snow (yes, snow) on
New Year’s Eve here in San Diego
County. With the whole world
coming up the next day to see the
white stuff, traffic backed up 7
miles from the town stop sign. Julie
Bunce Elfving, in Kansas, had snow
earlier. “There was lots of wind
creating blizzard conditions and
even the symphony canceled—the
first time I remember that ever
happening.”
Helping Tom Wolf ’68 with his
new book, The Nightingale’s Sonata
(to appear in June), about his
grandmother, the famous violinist
Lea Luboshutz, Peter Bloom
noticed that a portrait of Lea’s
brother Pierre Luboshutz was
made by an artist named Yvonne
Dogeureau Skagen. Knowing no
other Skagens, he asked if I knew
anything about that woman. I
contacted cousin Olav in Oslo, the
family genealogist, and my greatgreat-in-law turned out to have
had artistic connections with the
Luboshutz family in Paris.
Dick and Gay Sise Grossman
“enjoy living close to our friends
and neighbors and working outside
on our beautiful land” at Heartwood
Cohousing in Colorado. Major 2018
trips included driving to Puerto
Peñasco, Mexico, and visiting NYC
to sing at Carnegie Hall with the
Durango Choral Society and other
choruses. “On two longer trips, we
spent a few days in London before
boarding a Viking cruise ship that
took us up Scotland’s coast, then
over to the north tip of Norway and
down the west coast.” In Bergen,
they visited with Norwegian friends
they had met in 1963, and in Oslo
stayed with a Servas host, the city’s
chief forester. The second major
journey was to Africa to visit Cape
Town and for Gay to attend the
International Conference on Family
Planning in Kigali, Rwanda.
George Thoma is retiring after 44
years at NIH. David Pao is “doing
well in semi-retirement,” working
at a retirement community and at
a Veterans Administration clinic
in Horsham, Pa., and sometimes
in Philly. David’s “infrastructure
needs a little tuning,” as he recently
got over a pinched nerve and is
recuperating with his right knee.
He still plays slow senior doubles
tennis. Vivian Ling, in D.C., is
being a “passionate grandmother,”
helping to raise another generation.
Read her Q&A in the winter
Bulletin: bit.ly/VivianLing.
Ann Erickson sings in her tiny
Episcopal mission in California, St.
Andrews in the Redwoods, with two
other people and a faithful guitarist,
and has experimented with music
in the Creative Writing Lab to see
how CD playing affected writing.
“We ended up both crying and
laughing (especially laughing!).”
John and Judy Johnson Thoms
“have joined the Unforgettables
Chorus, for people with dementia
and their caregivers. It’s fabulous.”
Their first concert was at St.
Peter’s Church in NYC’s Citicorp
building.
Peter Meyer, one of my best
correspondents (hint …), writes:
“I am still buried in the mass of
art, objects, designs, sketches,
books, and swatches of cloth my
parents accumulated over 63
years’ residence in their place in
Manhattan. … Remarkable how
many things people valued in the
past that have no value today.”
Selling the apartment has allowed
Peter “to bid on a smaller, less
costly, and more convenient one …
so we’ll have a two-bed, two-bath
pied-à-terre in ‘Midtown East’
to complement our home in New
Hope, Pa. (Visitors welcome in
both.)”
Ruth and Walt Pinkus spent much
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
53
class notes
of the year traveling, with some
plans affected by the terrible fires
in Northern California. After a year
full of travel, Meg and Earl Tarble
are settling into life in New Mexico,
enjoying several trips and shows
with the Albuquerque Newcomers
Club. “Earl is still active as
assistant treasurer of St. Chad’s
Episcopal, and Meg is involved
in the Order of the Daughters of
the King. She also attends the
Albuquerque Modern Quilt Guild
and is learning a lot.”
Leonard Barkan still teaches in
several departments at Princeton.
He recently finished a new book,
Reading for the Food, “about
the ways in which eating and
drinking weave their way into all
the operations of high culture—
poetry, painting, philosophy, music,
statecraft, etc.—from antiquity
to the Renaissance. My spouse,
Nick Barberio, and I continue to
spend delightful quality time in
Berlin, in addition to which we
have relocated ourselves from one
part of Manhattan to another, and
we’re very much enjoying being
equidistant from Lincoln Center,
Fairway, Central Park, and an
express stop on the IRT.”
1966
Jill Robinson Grubb
jillgrubb44@gmail.com
Yes, the government is shut down
(or it was in January), but we
also have the most representative
House of Representatives
ever. Furthermore, we’ve heard
from Mackie Nafe Chase for the
first time since she left Swarthmore
early, married Dick Chase, moved
to Vancouver, and had three
children. For Christmas, Dick’s
85th birthday, Mackie prepared
family feasts for vegetarian, glutenfree, and carnivorous tastes. She’s
mostly retired from the University
of British Columbia’s Continuing
Studies, and has enjoyed walks
on the Via Francigena between
Canterbury and Rome. Mackie
captures the drama of daily living
54
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
beautifully in her much longer
letter. Please post your entries on
swarthmore66.com.
David Clark’s Designing an
Internet showed up in The New
York Review of Books. The “an”
is important as the book is about
internets that might have been, not
just the one we have.
John Perdue retired from
market research two years ago.
He is catching up on his reading
and spending time with his six
grandchildren in Nashville, Tenn.
John and Paula Lawrence
Wehmiller ’67 announced the
arrival of granddaughter Wesley
Elisabeth to son Abe and Libby
Wehmiller.
Meg Sprague Oravetz is taking her
11-year-old granddaughter to see
the Dior show at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. A reunion with her
husband’s family added joy to her
year.
Roger North, whose band Freak
Mountain Ramblers was inducted
into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame,
plays in another band with son
Tye, 45, a bass player. They live
with Tye’s son Charlie, 15, in “the
bullpen,” so called because Tye
runs triathlons, Charlie runs cross
country and track, and Roger plays
tennis competitively on a senior
circuit.
Marcia Quade Barnett and
family are still skiing, mountain
biking, backpacking, enjoying
grandchildren, and volunteering to
keep development in Squaw Valley,
Calif., in check.
Rod ’67 and Dorothy Woods
Chronister explored the state’s
natural wonders while visiting their
granddaughter at the University of
Arizona.
Despite a difficult recovery from
chronic fatigue syndrome and
a mold biotoxin illness, Rachel
Folsom finds happiness in her
daughter’s success: Lizzie Folsom
Moll, master’s degree in hand,
is now an associate planner for
Seattle.
John M. Robinson was called
back to manage the Montgomery
Park Foundation, attends political
discussions and poker games,
and needs time to work on his HO
train set.
Catherine Young Kapp helps
protect the local immigrant/refugee
community, volunteers with an
elementary school art program,
and laughed when her golden
retriever jumped on the obedience
instructor, then bolted from the ring
after a bunch of ducks.
Still making furniture, Bill
Belanger is also treasurer of three
Quaker meetings and teaches
boating safety for the Coast Guard
Auxiliary. His wife is fully recovered
from her stroke and back playing
tennis.
Barbara Alden-Bosc has lived
in France for 20 years. She still
corresponds with Rita Baab Collie,
who recently lost her husband.
Maybe both could come to the next
reunion.
Steve Penrose, whose wife died in
2011, traveled with family to Ireland
and Italy. In Dallas, Steve is a
Court Appointed Special Advocate,
helping abused and neglected kids.
The Dallas Zoo, Dallas Opera, and
Magdalen House (a shelter for
women recovering from alcohol
abuse) have benefited from his
volunteering. Steve also enjoys
visits with Jack Hooke, Ross
Ogden, and the family of Eric
Jacobs.
Ross Ogden had both sons and
his grandkids to help him put up
the tree over the holidays. He’s
consulting with the Red Cross’s
Biomedical Services division on
workforce engagement issues.
Gareth Jenkins is the “fixit guy
and general dogbody” at the
National Institute of Flamenco in
Albuquerque, N.M. He plans to
attend this year’s reunion, May 31–
June 2, as do at least 10 others.
Linda Lynes Groetzinger, following
her own advice to be active for
positive improvement, works on
behalf of immigrants.
Pat Lykens Hankins had a pottery
show while her husband replaced
breakaway walls under their beach
house after Hurricane Michael.
Kathy Klemperer gave piano
lessons to grandchildren,
volunteered at a library, knitted a
hat, worked on zoning revision, and
practiced tai chi with her husband.
In China, Sandra Moore Faber
spoke about the Earth Futures
Institute, then spent Christmas
with family.
Jim Garrett was a criminal
prosecutor in Philly, married
wife Melanie 47 years ago, sent
both kids to Swarthmore, retired
to Pagosa Springs, Colo., won
a press association award for
his newspaper work, retired,
and returned to practicing law.
Jim reconnected with Stuart
Youngner. Both lament our political
landscape but enjoyed touring
Native American cultural sites and
pondering civilization’s demise.
Andy Daubenspeck shared Pam
Corbett Hoffer’s wish with his
Monday-night men’s group: “Hope
you are all still standing, even if
wobbling. This decade feels like
living in a bowling alley as a pin,
taking hits from the big ball coming
down the alley, and trying to prop
up a couple of pins while keeping
my eye on the ball.”
1967
Donald Marritz
dmarritz@gmail.com
swarthmore67.com
The Class of ’67 Scholarship
recipient, Alice Dong ’19, has
been very busy. On top of regular
coursework, she was the pianist
for Swarthmore’s Wind Ensemble,
played with the Fetter Chamber
Music Program, and took private
lessons funded by the Freeman
Scholarship. She also is an
Intermediate Microeconomics
TA and a Cornell Library desk
assistant. She is on track to
graduate a year early and will
return to Tortoise Investment
Management, where she worked
last summer. Let this also be a
subtle push to consider a donation
to our class scholarship fund. The
goal is to reach about $2 million to
give a full scholarship to a student
each year.
Judy Bartella still teaches
ceramics at George School. “Who
knew that a field trip to a pottery
in second grade would send me
on this journey? Grateful to Anita
Wyzanski [Robboy], fellow fine arts
major, for taking me over to the
Swarthmore studio to learn to ‘turn’
a pot just a few years ago.”
Howie Brown is the “unpaid
executive director of the Rhode
Island Coalition for Israel
(ricoalitionforisrael.org), a
grassroots Christian/Jewish action
nonprofit that supports Israel, the
Jewish people, and traditional
Judeo-Christian values. We fight
the boycott-divestment-sanctions
movement at the local level in
Rhode Island. I feel blessed to
have the time and energy to do the
work.”
Bob Cooter and Blair Dean
celebrated their 50th anniversary
in 2018. Bob writes: “Two of our
three children live nearby. I’ve been
a professor at Berkeley since 1975.
I live in a house overlooking San
Francisco Bay, bicycle to work, do
research, and dine with my family. I
also founded a successful internet
business. I have written books on
law and economics, and I travel a
lot to lecture. I am content to have
gotten more than I deserved in
life. I am old now, and the things
I remember best never really
happened.”
Eric Nelson died Oct. 24. His
career took him to Africa and Asia
before he and his family settled
down in Maryland. As a dedicated
developmental economist, his
passion was to improve the
working and living conditions of
people in postconflict countries.
After retirement, he and wife Chony
visited more than 60 national parks
and walked the 1,500-kilometer
Camino de Santiago. Andy Faber
called Eric “a great and loyal friend
[who] will be greatly missed” by his
friends and family.
Tom Laqueur retired after 45
years at Berkeley. “In a way this
changes little: I keep my office
for three years; I still teach; I
still write and fret about writing.
But retirement feels like more
of a moment that I would have
anticipated and will take some
getting used to.” His recent book
came out in French translation
and made it into Le Bon Marché’s
window. He made vast quantities
of cider from apples from his
own orchard, bought a still, and
converted some into 35 liters of
calvados, now resting comfortably
in a French oak barrel.
Karen Seashore and husband
Dan Bratton escaped the
Minneapolis winter to enjoy time
with their daughter and youngest
granddaughter in Boulder, Colo.
“It’s all good, and makes me
think that I will be able to endure
retirement—once I get the last
eight doctoral students to hurry
up.”
Jane Lang had a good 2018,
including traveling to see family,
“the powerful experience of a civil
rights tour, the Sun Valley Writers’
Conference, and a lazy summer
week on Block Island. If I freeze
the frame of this serene moment,”
she writes, “I enjoy the fact that
all 24 of my children, stepchildren,
and grandchildren are healthy,
employed, or in school as ageappropriate. This alone lifts me
up—how lucky and grateful I am!
As to the world around us, despite
some dark days and ominous
signs, I feel that our institutions
of government, with the mighty
help of the press and a surge of
voters, are working. At the risk
of being a Pollyanna, I believe we
will ultimately muddle through,
but I admit I don’t know what that
will look like.” In the meantime,
she reads, blogs (langfollow.
com), oversees the Eugene M.
Lang Foundation, sees lots of
plays, continues on the boards
of Swarthmore and the Atlas
Performing Arts Center (which she
founded), and helps see family
through life’s inevitable blips.
She tries to minimize complaints
about inaccessible hotel rooms,
overzealous TSA agents,
treacherous brick sidewalks on
Capitol Hill, and crosstown traffic
in Manhattan. “My wish is that
none of our classmates will have
any more weighty cares.”
1968
Kate Bode Darlington
katedarlington@gmail.com
The alchemy of our 50th Reunion
last June continues as we connect
with one another and discover
how much we share. In July, Hal
Kwalwasser invited Northern
California classmates to a minireunion. Some swam in the pool.
Everyone talked. And talked. And
talked. Attending were Caroline
Acker, Craig Benham, Ren Brown,
Stephanie Brown, Robin Darr
ALUMNI COUNCIL NEWS
Council members were on campus in full force in October for
a festive Garnet Homecoming and Family Weekend, hosting
a successful Career Networking Dinner and a delicious study
break with a cupcake truck near Parrish Hall.
Alumni Council’s annual Career Networking Dinner included
Council members and current students, as it has in the past,
but October’s dinner also included esteemed alumni and
members of other volunteer groups, such as the Alumni of
Color Steering Committee, Connection Chairs, the Council on
Presidential Initiatives, Garnet Club Advancement Council,
LGBTQ+ Steering Committee, and the Swarthmore Black
Alumni Network Executive Committee. Students who attended
this Career Networking Dinner had access to more diverse
professionals, and many connections were made.
Our thanks to the students who joined us, and to the members
of the volunteer groups who gave their time and advice. We
look forward to continuing this new, more-inclusive tradition at
the 2019 Career Networking Dinner!
Janet Erlick ’88 and Chase Smith ’22 engaged in conversation in
October during Alumni Council’s Career Networking Dinner.
alumni@swarthmore.edu
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
55
class notes
Masciocchi, Lynn Etheredge, Peter
Gutterman, Julian Lopez-Morillas,
Julie Tower, Chloe O’Gara ’70, plus
several spouses. Hal says: “It felt
just like the reunion in lots of ways.
By the end of the day, we were all
promising each other to do it again.
And we will.”
Sam Brackeen appreciates “the
fantastic work that was done
by the 50th committee. I was
surprised and pleased to interact
with classmates such as John
Seidenfeld, with whom I had limited
or no previous contact.” Now Sam
and John have a weekly phone call
for spiritual study and sharing.
Jay Kaplan is thankful to have
reconnected with many classmates
at the reunion, including George
Gill and Sue Knotter Walton, “with
whom my wife and I later spent
time. These were deeply moving
visits, cemented by the sharing
of recipes for barbecued chicken,
oven-roasted salmon, and granola
(along with too-many-to-count
dark ’n’ stormys).”
What a nice surprise to hear
from Joya Tanaka Konishi and Bill
Riddle. Joya writes from Japan
that she and her husband rebuilt
their house on the same property,
as is the Japanese custom, “among
our same old trees, which shows
appreciation to our ancestors who
originally made this garden.” Joya
is taking a Shakespeare course in
which “I am able to integrate a lot
of my [lifetime] experiences and
bits of knowledge. … I might as well
tell you, too, that for about 16 years
I have been dancing the Hawaiian
hula. … You can dance hula even in
old age.”
Bill Riddle, who transferred to
Pomona our junior year, wants
to reconnect with classmates:
“After all, we are all traveling down
the same path together.” Bill’s a
retired social worker near Seattle
whose interests include discussing
universal questions, mindfulness,
and working out. Check out his
profile on swarthmore68.com.
Classmates who are still going
strong include Jane Prichard
Gaskell, who is consulting for
international schools and climbed
to the Tiger’s Nest Buddhist temple
on a steep cliff 3,000 feet above
a Bhutan valley. Susan Almy was
re-elected to the New Hampshire
56
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
Legislature and will again chair
the Ways and Means Committee.
Vyto Babrauskas does forensic fire
consulting and is finishing a book,
Electrical Fires and Explosions
(movie rights undetermined as
yet). John Mather is “working on
an exciting new idea to see little
Earths way out there: a giant
starshade 100 meters across,
to cast a shadow of a star on a
ground-based telescope, to let us
see the little planets near the star.”
He invites people interested in
visiting NASA to contact him.
Chris Miller, a Brandeis
biochemistry professor and
department chair, has “decided
to hang up my pipettes and retire
next September. The time seems
right … I have not yet descended
to the inexorable state of totally
useless professor haunting the
department by rights of tenure
alone. I’ve started trying to put
some order into those accumulated
notes, letters, infuriated rebuttals
to manuscript-rejections, and
thermodynamics handouts that I’ll
be keeping from the dumpster’s
maw.”
At our 50th, some classmates
decided to reconnect with the
activism of our Swarthmore
years. Many worked on 2018
midterm campaigns: I knocked
on doors in Texas; Sam Brackeen
did far more than that for his
Pennsylvania congressional
candidate; Robert “Bud” Roper
campaigned in California, as did
Glenna Giveans and Dan Botsford
in New Hampshire, Bob Bartkus
in New Jersey, Nancy Bennett in
Rhode Island, Florence Daly Mini in
Pennsylvania, and no doubt other
classmates.
Hal Kwalwasser worked on voter
protection in Florida for a month
before the election and afterward
during the recount. He helped
recruit an army of people to work
in shifts overseeing the machine
THE BCC
IS TURNING 50!
What does the
Black Cultural Center
mean to you?
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
count, then the hand count. For 24
hours per day, “volunteers (of both
parties) sat with election workers
deciding which of the ballots
that the machines had failed to
read needed to go to the board of
canvassers to decide ‘voter intent.’
There were those of us at each
table arguing to the board about
what the answer to that question
should be. … It was one of those
exercises in democracy that gives
you faith in America.”
Thank you, Bronwyn Hurd Echols,
the only classmate to write an
entire villanelle after I threw in
the sponge on using the villanelle
form to request class notes. Check
out Bronwyn’s clever poem at
swarthmore68.com.
Ready for more connection? We
are invited to join the Class of ’69
at their 50th Reunion in June. See
you there?
1970
Margaret Nordstrom
hon.margi@comcast.net
It seems impossible that it’s only
a little over a year until our 50th
Reunion. Our class agents will
probably gather during this year’s
Alumni Weekend to discuss the
activities we should organize at our
50th, with the goal of attracting as
many classmates as possible. If you
will be on campus that weekend
and would like to participate in
this discussion, please let me
know. We’d love to hear about your
interests.
Since there is a three-month time
lag between my deadline for Class
Notes and when you actually get
to read them, some news may be
outdated. Please know that when
I get time-sensitive information, I
post it on our class Facebook page
as soon as I receive it. My next
Class Notes deadline is June 24. It
would be good to hear from you.
I retired from the State of New
Jersey in August, and while it’s
nice to have more time to do fun
stuff instead of being in a pressure
cooker, I feel an urgent need to
be employed at least part time.
Hopefully, by the time you read this,
I will have a new position. Even
though working in government can
have nightmare-like qualities, it is
incredibly interesting work and you
never run out of things to do.
Sad news: Mary Cornish writes: “It
is with a heavy heart and disbelief
that I report that our always
healthy, fun-loving, exuberant,
and totally loving classmate Bob
Di Prete passed from this world of
stomach cancer after a month’s
notice. Luckily, Bob had his lovely
wife, Kathy, and daughter Mary
with him when he made his final
departure.
“Everyone who knew him would
tell you that Bob was one of the
funniest men alive. Kindness itself,
Bob nonetheless possessed a
rapier wit and brilliantly acerbic
writing skill that made us laugh
for 50 years or more. The world is
less without him. He will be missed
by those who loved him or even
just knew his gentle spirit and soft
touch.”
Mary added that there would
be a memorial service in March
in Oregon, and that she, Eliot
Grossman, and Russ Benghiat
would probably attend. Mary
also expressed interest in doing
something in remembrance of Bob
at our 50th Reunion.
1972
Nan Waksman Schanbacher
nanschanbacher@comcast.net
Jonathan Betz-Zall retired for the
second time from Highline College,
“closing out the most successful
phase of his career.” He’s active
in social and environmental
justice causes through University
Friends Meeting, the Fellowship
of Reconciliation, the Northwest
Intentional Communities
Association, and the Nakani Native
Program, which he helped create
(nakani.org). He enjoys Zumba and
may lead his own class soon.
We extend our heartfelt sympathy
to Arlene Dannenberg Bowes and
brother Andrew ’74, whose father,
Arthur Dannenberg Jr ’44, died
peacefully at home in June. He
was 94 and a retired professor at
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public Health. Arlene, a dentist,
teaches part time at Penn Dental
Medicine.
Ben Chitty is “a librarian at
Queens College of the City
University of New York, active in
the teachers union, and a Vietnam
veteran against the now-endless
war.” He and wife Priscilla Murolo
published the second edition of
their book From the Folks Who
Brought You the Weekend: An
Illustrated History of Labor in the
United States.
Charles Grassie is “alive and
perhaps retired completely but
that never seems to last.” He
“spent some time in Haiti providing
medical care” and is thinking about
traveling.
Mark Gromko says, in retirement,
his main amusement has been
photography, which has taken
him to the Yukon, national parks
in Wyoming and Colorado,
Tanzania, and the Grand Canyon.
At Christmas, son Duncan ’07 and
wife Aurora Munoz ’10 traveled
from Germany to join the family
celebration.
Nancy Noble Holland conducts
her church choir, including the
premiere of a work by one of her
members, a film composer. Nancy
and husband Jim ’71 “enjoyed
going to the August Swarthmore
Alumni gathering on Martha’s
Vineyard, where we were delighted
to reconnect with Nan Waksman
Schanbacher [mutual, Nancy!] and
to hear President Valerie Smith’s
update on campus events.”
Lorna Kohler has magical
childhood memories of dancing
in the party scene of the San
Francisco Ballet Nutcracker.
Nowadays, she has an annual
gig playing English horn in eight
Nutcracker performances at the
San Jose Center for the Performing
Arts. Lorna shared memories of
helping to hand-build her parents’
house (designed by her father).
Sadly, it burned down in 2017. In the
2018 fires, Lorna writes, “my family
was lucky to get out alive.”
Marianne McKenna’s
architectural practice is thriving
in new quarters “with spectacular
360-degree views of Toronto.”
Recent projects were completed at
Princeton, Northwestern’s Kellogg
School of Management, and Yale’s
Adams Center for Musical Arts. “I
feel quite lucky to be alive and well,
have kids launched, and have great
opportunities flowing in.”
Last fall, John Lubar went to
China for three weeks. He brought
China: A Short Cultural History
from Professor Yuan Tsing’s spring
1970 course and read all 700
pages, “noting the sophomoric
comments [he] had written in the
margins.”
Rosalyn and Bill Prindle retired
from horse farming after two
intense years, doubling down on
their day jobs. Bill is a full-time
environmental consultant at ICF.
The race for a sustainable planet
continues, and Bill, ICF, and a host
of others are not about to quit.
Retirement? What retirement?
Last year, Hawaii residents Laurie
Tompkins and husband Larry Yager
weathered volcanic eruptions,
lava flows, an earthquake, and a
hurricane. Fortunately, “except for
very minor damage and occasional
days of dirty, ash-filled air, we and
our neighbors are fine. … Now, if
we could just persuade the tourists
to come back, for the sake of our
economy.” Laurie and Larry travel
off-island frequently and continue
to practice their art glasswork.
Your secretary, Nan Waksman
Schanbacher, spent summer 2018
changing diapers and mixing
formula for her utterly spectacular
grandson and discovered that
taking care of babies is a great
deal more exhausting than she
remembered! On the plus side:
So much time together is a
very special gift Nan hopes to
experience every summer.
1974
Randall Grometstein
rgrometstein@verizon.net
Your news suggests that happiness
really is a U-shaped curve, and
we are on the upswing. The lives
we are engaged in are ordinary
enough, but we are experiencing
them from a place of peace and
acceptance.
Patricia Heidtmann Disharoon
proudly announces the birth of
grandchild Daniela in October.
Pat is a primary care internist
and medical director for a drug
treatment center. “With seven
grandchildren, work, Girl Scouts,
and Sunday school, we keep busy!”
From Germany, Jean-Marie
Clarke is “half-retired”: “I am
working steadily, doggedly,
toward publication with a view to
capitalizing on work done in this
life. The same obsessions: being
human; linking head, heart, and
hand; and of course, Rembrandt.
Watching America drift away from
Europe and itself.”
Davia Temin is “still trying to make
a dent.” Her crisis, reputation, and
CEO leadership coaching business
is doing a lot around #MeToo,
including representing at least
12 aspects of the issue—boards,
leaders, accusers, and accused.
“Hard to define best practices that
are fact-based, thorough, fair, and
independent, but that is our goal:
listen to accusers, but accused are
innocent until proven guilty.” See a
recent profile in Bloomberg (bit.ly/
DaviaMeToo).
From Deborah Johnson in
Silverado, Calif.: “My longtime
partner, John Olson, and I were
married the Sunday before
Christmas at his mother’s assisted
living center. It was a wonderful
way to start the holidays, with
our families gathered to celebrate
our commitment. Hard to believe
that I married for the first time
at age 66. I’m retiring from my
consulting work and winding down
my nonprofit caring for children
in Kenya. Looking forward to
spending more time at our beach
home near Ensenada, Mexico.”
Kate Buttolph “turned 65 in 2018
and ran races for exercise and
fun (think Bolder Boulder 10K)
until September, then began real
exercise to stay limber enough
to chase, lift, and sit on the floor
with two grandsons, 4 and 7. Still
working on land conservation
and closed on 12 transactions
with Mass Audubon in western
Massachusetts. Finding new
drinkable craft beers, along with
great places to hike and birdwatch,
although work’s parking area
is great for seeing hawks and
eagles up close. Vermont is still
a destination, and I make regular
pilgrimages to N.J. to see friends.”
Len Roseman is back West with
Liz Taylor ’75: “Living in the Bay
Area in Walnut Creek and taking
care of my 99-year-old dad. We’re
glad to be here again, close to
family, friends, and our recently
married daughter, Rebecca, who
works for the startup Dandelion
Chocolate. We’re also closer to
our permanent home in Flagstaff,
Ariz.—no more twice-a-year,
2,000-mile drives for Liz from
the East Coast! I work for a credit
card startup in SF (how Silicon
Valley!). Liz invests time and money
improving food systems in Arizona.
She serves on nonprofit boards
and a state ag advisory council,
and runs our hyperlocal food
investment business in Flagstaff.”
John Whyte writes: “After serving
as Moss Rehabilitation Research
Institute’s director for more than
25 years, I stepped down in August
after we recruited a new director.
I will soon officially transition
to emeritus status, initially
working about 60 percent time
on remaining research projects
and playing it by ear to decide
how completely to retire. Tom still
composes music, and we look
forward to traveling more. Our kids
are both grown, with Jesse at Penn
law and Max making music in LA.”
Neil Heskel has an offer that’s
hard to refuse. “We rehabbed a
motel, The Island View Cottages.
Great venue for R&R, family
reunions, and weddings on
the beautiful Indian River in
Sebastian, Fla. Take a virtual tour
at islandviewsebastian.com. A
portion of the profits go to Haiti
Clinic, so you can do good while on
vacation.”
Since 2017, Alex Aleinikoff has
been University Professor and
director of the Zolberg Institute on
Migration and Mobility at The New
School. He also hosts a podcast on
U.S. immigration policy, Tempest
Tossed.
Dave Hoyt is a competition law
officer for Canada’s Competition
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
57
class notes
Bureau but is “starting to transition
to retirement and part-time work
as a mediator. I also contribute as
chair or secretary of a Community
Advisory Committee on Mental
Health, Democrats Abroad Canada
(Vancouver chapter), and a local
Kiwanis Club.”
Dave plans to attend our reunion,
May 31–June 2, which will please
organizer Rosanne Boldman
McTyre, who writes: “Once again
I am organizing our class reunion,
our 45th! Hard to believe, but
when I look at my own family—
three children, eldest almost 40,
and three grandkids—I feel that
while time has flown, we have all
accomplished much. Please save
the date and spread the word. It will
be fun—I promise!”
“Setting a course for Swarthmore
reunion, Captain.” “Make it so, Mr.
Sulu!”
1976
Fran Brokaw
fran.brokaw@gmail.com
Hello, classmates! First, fantastic
news: The Class of 1976
Scholarship is now permanently
endowed! Your generous
contributions help today’s
students. Extra kudos to Maurice
Kerins, who did most of the heavy
lifting. Thanks, Maurice!
It was wonderful to receive
missives from folks who haven’t
been in touch much. Yosef
(Jody) Branse, who lives in Israel,
writes: “A visit to my mother in
October afforded an opportunity
to fulfill a long-deferred dream: to
stroll around Swarthmore with my
wife. We flew to Philadelphia and
arrived on campus after a brief cab
ride. Despite the unseasonable
heat, we spent several pleasant
hours roaming the grounds after
a 40-year absence, enjoying
sights both familiar and novel,
as I reminisced, tried to recollect
buildings’ names, and took
numerous photographs.
“At one point, we stopped by a
room in Bond Hall, identified by
58
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
a sign as ‘Beit Midrash’ (Jewish
study hall), and through a
window could see a small class
in session. The teacher spotted
us, visibly observant Jews, and
graciously invited us inside. She
was Helen Plotkin ’77. We took
the opportunity to rest and, at the
end of her study group, to eat our
lunch and enjoy a conversation
with Helen.
“Toward evening, we walked down
Magill Walk and bought souvenirs
at the Swarthmore Campus &
Community Store. Our pilgrimage
concluded with a train ride back
to the airport and a return flight
numbered, coincidentally, 1864—a
notable year in Swarthmore history.
My wife was sufficiently impressed
by the visit to comment, ‘Now I
understand why you’ve been so
eager to get back there.’”
Tom Quinn writes: “I left the
East Coast for Seattle in 1976
to attend the University of
Washington (Ph.D. in fisheries,
1981) and then moved to Vancouver
Island, Canada, for four years of
postdoctoral work. I returned to
UW to teach in January 1986 and,
other than professional leave and
travel, have been here ever since,
studying fish. My research is on the
behavior, ecology, evolution, and
conservation of salmon and trout,
and their ecosystems. I wrote a
book on the subject in 2005, and
the new edition came out in 2018.
I teach a variety of classes and
conduct field work in the Puget
Sound area and Alaska. Bears and
all that sort of thing!”
Adam (Huan Kee) Chan and his
wife migrated to Australia, where
they built a small house near the
foothills in the quiet Adelaide
suburb of Athelstone. “Every
morning we go for a 5K walk in
the park or up the hill. Life is very
relaxed and laid-back.” Twice a
year, they head north to Townsville
to care for their two grandchildren
during school holidays, while their
parents work as geriatricians in
Townsville Hospital. Occasionally,
they return to Malaysia to visit
relatives and friends and enjoy
Penang’s hawker food. Adam
welcomes contact with Swarthmore
mates!
Bruce Robertson taught his last
classes at UC–Santa Barbara and
will retire in June. Before that will
be an opening of a major Carl Jung
exhibition, as UCSB’s art museum,
of which Bruce is director, is the
Jung Foundation’s American venue
for the launch of a book on the
psychologist’s artwork. Then Bruce
will start traveling—hope we see
you at the reunion in 2021, Bruce!
Jeff Bush lives in Boise, Idaho,
having moved postretirement three
years ago. He and wife Laurel have
been together for four years and
got married last year. They still own
a condo in Juneau, Alaska, where
they stay during frequent visits to
children and grandchildren. They
travel a lot but manage to spend
enough time in Boise to maintain a
substantial vegetable garden and
focus on their golf games.
David Vanderbilt has been on
Rutgers’s physics faculty for
more than 25 years, teaching
and researching in computational
materials theory. David published
his first book, a monograph
for graduate and advanced
undergraduate physics students.
He lives with his wife of 38 years,
Roslyn, and has two grown
daughters. No thoughts of
retirement yet!
As for me, Fran Brokaw, the
highlight of my year was my
daughter’s wedding in November. It
was in Birmingham, Ala., and I took
advantage of the location to travel
to Montgomery to visit the National
Memorial for Peace and Justice
and the Legacy Museum. It was
incredibly moving and encouraged
me to continue anti-racism work at
home in New Hampshire.
Best wishes to all of you, near
and far!
Diversity and Inclusion in Quality
Patient Care, a compendium of
cases and discussions supporting
conflict management in health care
workplaces. He also presented
on the topic of community
trauma from racist violence
at the American Public Health
Association’s 2018 meeting. Ed has
begun resigning from community
leadership and supportive roles but
continues commitments to dialogue
on difficult topics, improving
quality of life for rural Virginians,
and accessibility and affordability
of LGBTQ health care.
Bob Tench traveled to Europe
in the fall for both business and
pleasure. In September, he visited
Rome, where he presented a
technical paper on fiber amplifiers
at the 2018 European Conference
on Optical Communication. In
November, he went to Paris,
where he sat on the jury for the
(successful!) thesis defense of a
recent Ph.D. student at Telecom
ParisTech. “On a tour of Notre
Dame, we ran into a roadblock
by SWAT police armed with
submachine guns, and we could
see black smoke rising in the
distance from the recent riots.
Thank goodness that was as close
as we came to the disturbances!”
I am sorry to report the Nov.
3 death of Alison Wong Noto.
After Swarthmore, Alison earned
master’s degrees in graphic design
from the Rochester Institute of
Technology and in architecture
from Yale; she was an architect in
New York and Philly before moving
to Barrington, R.I. Alison and
husband Richard Noto ’77 raised
two daughters. Our condolences
to Rich, Katherine, and Patricia on
this sad loss.
1978 1980
Donna Caliendo Devlin
dmcdevlin@aol.com
Edward Strickler has retirement
in sight from the University of
Virginia School of Medicine; so
does husband James, who works
in city government. Ed was first
author of several chapters in
Martin Fleisher
marty@meflaw.com
I got a nice, long email from Joy
Hulse Wyatt, which I am reprinting
more or less in full:
“After a multidecade career in
human resources, I completed a
master of social work in May 2018.
I worked full time and added elder
care to my plate for five years,
helping my mother on the West
Coast until she died at 95. While
engaged in supporting her, I had
a lightbulb moment: I wanted to
work with individuals and their
families who were approaching
and adapting to end of life.
“I attended Fordham University in
Manhattan where I could complete
a degree with internships in three
years (and continue my 15-year
career at Franklin Templeton
Investments for half of it). I was a
palliative care fellow at Fordham
and gained social work experience
with dialysis and hospice patients.
“A licensing exam followed
graduation, and I surprised my
family and myself by taking and
passing the exam a month earlier
than planned. I am now a licensed
social worker with Calvary Hospital
working at Columbia Presbyterian
Hospital, where I support families
with individuals who are making
the transition from acute to
comfort care.
“A few things to note about this
journey: Grad school was not on
my radar for decades following
Swarthmore, but when it finally
occurred to me, I didn’t really stop
to think about how good or bad
an idea it was. I just did it (twice),
and the personal fulfillment that
came as a result is indescribable. It
was work, for sure, but studying—
reading, writing, testing—made
much more sense to me after so
many years of working because I
had goals and objectives to wrap
my academic work around. And
while I was finishing my studies,
my offspring were, too. They
graduated from Yale in 2017 (Kat)
and 2018 (Nat). We had a lot of
celebrating to do.
“I just got the new job I wanted,
where I wanted, in a new career at
age 60. While I was feeling as if I
was aging out of my prior career,
I entered this one with my new
employer telling me, ‘We hired you
because of your broad experience,
perspective, and, frankly, your
maturity.’”
As you know, it’s hard to avoid
writing about Anne Schuchat, but
she won the highly prestigious
John P. Utz Leadership Award,
presented by the National
Foundation for Infectious
Diseases. She gave a great speech
following a terrific introduction
by Anthony Fauci, head of the
National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases.
I participated in a nice minireunion in August with Doug
Perkins, Tom Long and Melanie
Wentz, Eric and Jodie Landes
Corngold, Alex Hoffinger ’81,
Charlie McGovern, and Jenny
Snyder Zito (along with many
spouses and children). We had
a great time in Vermont and are
beginning to look forward to our
(gasp) 40th Reunion.
1982
David Chapman
dchapman29@gmail.com
Gretchen Edwalds-Gilbert is a
Fulbright Scholar in Poland for
2018–19, working at the University
of Warsaw Institute for Genetics
and Biotechnology. “It should
be a great year of research with
some graduate teaching, and
a big change from my six years
as associate dean of faculty at
Scripps College.” An interesting
note: Allen Kuharski, a Swarthmore
theater professor, just finished a
Fulbright in Warsaw, and Gretchen
is renting the apartment he rented.
“He has been a great connection
for easing the transition. I’m still
happily married to Gary Gilbert
(Haverford ’82), a religious
studies professor at Claremont
McKenna College. Our son Jacob
graduated from Haverford in
2012, but his thesis adviser was
at Swarthmore (astrophysics)
and he did all his theater work at
Swarthmore—including working
with Allen Kuharski (small world).
Our younger son, Mark, graduated
from the University of Puget Sound
in 2017 (computer science), got
married last summer, and lives in
the Bay Area.”
Bettina Welz happily reports:
“My third (and last) child [Joshua
GARNET SNAPSHOT
From left: Phil Joson ’82, former assistant coach Tom Korn,
and David Chapman ’82 reunited in October as the 1982–85
men’s lacrosse teams entered the Garnet Athletics Hall of Fame.
Geselowitz ’21] is a sophomore at
Swarthmore. I never would have
predicted that I would have three
children attend my alma mater, but
I’m happy that all got/are getting
a great education and college
experience. My sense is that the
essential spirit of Swarthmore
endures.” Bettina is a psychiatrist
at Penn State’s Psychological
Clinic, where Ph.D. students get
their therapy training. “It’s a great
job!”
Michael Selby says “G’day”:
“I have been back in Australia
since 1988 and have a journalist
daughter, 24, and a son, 22, in
real estate. I was in advertising
for many years and in 2003
started a web-based business,
AustralianMuscleCarSales.com.
au. We sell old classic cars, which
has always been my passion. I’m
married to a physiotherapist, and
we live in beautiful Sydney. Come
say ‘hello’ if you are in the area.”
Molly Ierulli is “living in
Providence, R.I., teaching part time
at Brown. My daughter is in college
in Rome. Anyone local is welcome
to look me up!”
Rob Robinson writes: “After
leaving Sidley Austin LLP
(where I’d been a partner in
the structured finance practice
since 2002) earlier in the year,
I began as general counsel of
Nearwater Capital the week
after Thanksgiving. Nearwater
provides financing to securitization
transactions’ sponsors of their
risk-retention interests; it’s a direct
outgrowth of the Dodd-Frank
‘skin-in-the-game’ requirements
and similar laws that apply in the
EU and other jurisdictions. The
company started transacting
in 2017, is growing quickly in
its original business line, and
is likely to expand into other
securitization-related domains
in 2019. I’m thrilled to be head of
the legal function and part of the
management team. Our offices
are in the Seagram Building on
Park Avenue and 52nd Street in
NYC, a walking commute away
from my home. (I occasionally
run into Robert Ottenstein and
Steve Kargman, both of whom live
nearby.)”
Some good news from Anne
Bauman Wightman: “I recently got
back from the annual New Year’s
gathering of a bunch of classmates
and families. We’ve gathered every
year since graduation, with the
group fluctuating depending on
availability, family growth, and life
happenings. This year, we were
14: Tom Sgouros, Celia Gelfman,
Lydia Gelfman Sgouros, Margaret
Gillespie, Jason Greenberg, Jacob
Greenberg ’16, Sophia Greenberg,
Alan Dixon, Alison Simon, Lisa
“Hershey” Hirschkop, Leigh
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
59
class notes
ALUMNI PROFILE
1984
Karen Linnea Searle
swat84notes@gmail.com
Greetings! I hope you all have our
35th Reunion on your calendar—
May 31–June 2. Our reunion
committee is working hard to put
together an engaging weekend.
More info will come via email and
through our “Swarthmore College
Class of ’84” Facebook group.
Lots of news this round. John
Mackay was the co-principal
investigator and commercialization
lead on an NSF grant that
transformed a universitydeveloped software tool into a
startup company that analyzes
social media to predict actions
on contentious issues, such as
the Brexit vote. John previously
launched technologies that turned
into an IPO, were licensed to
General Motors, were tested on
the International Space Station,
60
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
and were championed by the U.S.
Navy as a national R&D success
story. John works, teaches, and
runs a technology development
consulting business in Dayton,
Ohio.
Neil Fisher and wife Meryl
spent three wonderful weeks in
Chile visiting their son, who was
studying abroad. Neil finished his
term on the board of The Children’s
Room, serving grieving children
and their families, and he and
Meryl started a new project, the
Library Initiative for Teens and
Tweens, dedicated to supporting
and enhancing teen library
programs in underresourced
Massachusetts communities. He
still sees area Swarthmore friends
and hopes to see more at our
reunion.
Ethan Landis was featured in an
August Washington Post article on
rooftop decks. The decks he and
his firm designed look amazing and
make us long for spring!
Jocelyn Roberts Davis has a new
book, The Art of Quiet Influence,
coming out in May. It combines
classic wisdom of the East (India,
China, Japan, and the Islamic
world) with modern-day research,
practices, and stories. Look for it
wherever fine books are sold!
Fellow Southern Californian
Chris DeMoulin writes: “Been
living in Malibu more than five
years now, very grateful to have
survived the fires with nothing
but a lot of smoke and ash to
clean up, when so many of our
friends and neighbors were not so
lucky. Surreal to see 50 burned
homes from your patio. Daughter
Olivia graduated with a dance
BFA from CU–Boulder and now
dances at Disneyland. Son Ethan
is a sophomore at Santa Monica
College, focused more on his
burgeoning skateboarding career
than school at the moment, as
befits a 19-year-old. I stepped back
from work in 2016 after my trade
show company was sold, and am
now running a small company
that owns the L.A. Comic Con
and preparing a couple of new
ventures to launch in 2019. But
most sunsets find Monica and
me as near the beach as we can
manage.”
Tim Pfaff published his first
novel, The Pfaffenhoffen Project,
about an American writer who
traces his family history back to
a small French village. Informed
of their parents’ “unfinished
business,” the writer and his
siblings seize upon the notion of a
reunion to celebrate their parents
and discover their heritage. What
they find surprises and amazes
them. Find the book on iTunes or
Amazon, or learn more at timpfaff.
com.
Gwyneth Jones Cote had lots
to share: “After being retired for
a year, I’m back in the game! I
received a phone call a few days
after we dropped our youngest off
at college. The recruiter mentioned
the organization, the Urban Land
Institute (ULI), as well as the
recently hired global CEO. He was
a guy I worked with when I first
graduated from Wharton, and
had really trusted and learned a
lot from. I went for interviews and
landed the job as ULI’s president–
Americas. I have never worked
for a nonprofit, so this is a new
experience. Our mission? Providing
leadership in the responsible
use of land and in creating and
sustaining thriving communities
worldwide. We are a memberdriven organization that is making
a difference in key initiatives
such as affordable housing and
housing for the “missing middle,”
sustainability, resilience for areas
routinely damaged by flooding, etc.
Meanwhile, Jack ’20 is an honors
economics junior at Swarthmore.
Cynthia, a freshman, loves the
University of Denver, and Qianxu,
a double major in communications
and anthropology, is very happy
at Wake Forest. She joins our
family for most holidays, and our
extended family simply sees her as
another ‘Cote kid.’
“I hope to see many people back
on campus for our 35th Reunion.
If you want to help, please email
me at gwynethjcote@gmail.com.
We need local classmates to assist
with buying beverages and snacks.
We also need folks who could set
up space and put out drinks and
food. Thanks in advance!”
Please send news (note the
new email address above). I look
forward to seeing you on campus
in May!
1986
Jessica Russo Perez-Mesa
jessicaperezmesa@yahoo.com
Karen Leidy Gerstel
kgerstel@msn.com
Kwai Kong’s wife, Maeda, died
last May, “ending our 33-year
marriage in a way none of us
expected. She lived courageously.
Together we raised six children:
a doctor, a social worker, a med
student, two in college, and one in
high school. Two sons-in-law and
now a beautiful granddaughter. I
view May 2018 as the start of the
second half of my adult life. Still
positive, hopeful, and continuing to
do good for the world.”
Utz McKnight has worked as chair
for five years to build the University
of Alabama’s Department of Gender
and Race. Keith Reeves ’88 visited
from Swarthmore, where he’s
political science chair. “He gave an
exceptionally interesting talk on
prisons and student engagement,”
Utz writes. “I also enjoyed hosting
Swarthmore students to give them
a taste of the work we do.”
Maija Bell Samei, in Chapel Hill,
N.C., is working on another book
of translation from Chinese, while
maintaining a minor editorial
position with the Journal of
Chinese Literature and Culture.
She happily reconnected with
Durham resident Felix Asiedu.
Norman Wright, chief of
operations at Optum/United
Healthgroup, joined Twin Cities
YMCA’s board. “The mission,
well beyond gym and swim, is
compelling and inspiring—building
healthy spirit, mind, and body.”
After 11 years at Tesla, Kurt
Kelty was recruited to Plenty by
daughter Emy, who leads their
growing operations. “I now get to
witness Emy’s leadership in action.
Our other daughter is a fantastic
elementary school teacher and
yoga instructor. Life is good!”
Murray Scheel lives in D.C. with
partner Brian and is an attorney at
Whitman-Walker focusing on LGBT
LAURENCE KESTERSON
Peake, Anne Bauman Wightman,
Evelyn Wightman ’16, and Leslie
Wightman. We enjoyed one
another’s company, assembled
a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle,
completed the NYTimes megacrossword puzzle, cooked yummy
food (including a not-quite-failed
attempt at making cheese—it
was cheese-like, it just wasn’t
mozzarella), took walks, and
‘sparklered’ in the new year. And
of course, we overindulged in ice
cream from Toscanini’s (20 pints
carefully packed in a cooler with
dry ice just for the occasion).”
Along with the men’s lacrosse
teams from 1983 to 1985, the
1982 team was inducted into the
College’s Garnet Athletics Hall
of Fame (or in my case the “Hall
of Worked Really Hard, but …”),
whose ceremony I attended in
October. There were too many
old friends and teammates at the
induction to list them all, but it
was great to see, in particular,
Scott Jordan, Bart Robins, and
Phil Joson, old teammates and
roommates all.
“We naturally tend to feel satisfaction when we understand why something works,” says
mathematician Annie Fetter ’88.
A NUMBERS GAME
She wants kids to savor learning math
by Kate Campbell
GLIDING FROM TABLE TO TABLE
in the Underhill Music and Dance
Library, Annie Fetter ’88 was an
animated coach—asking a motivational
question here, encouraging a new
approach there. Her work as a math
specialist for the Chester Children’s
Chorus last summer was especially
rewarding: She simply wants everyone
to love math as much as she does.
“It’s a master clarifier that helps
us make sense of the world,” says the
bass player who majored in math and
music.
But the problem is a lot of people
do math without completely
understanding it.
“People see math and music as these
things that some people are good at, or
some superpower they just have,” she
says. “In fact, both are systems that can
be learned and understood.”
Fetter is a founding member of
Math Forum, which started in 1992
at Swarthmore through a National
Science Foundation (NSF) grant.
Though the online math community
dissolved in 2017, she continues to
consult and speak at schools and
conferences nationwide.
“I’m focused on helping teachers
incorporate more sense-making
opportunities in their classrooms,” she
says, “so that math becomes something
students think about and understand—
rather than something they finish as
quickly as possible.”
These days, she is working on two
NSF grants for STEM education;
doing independent work with schools,
districts, and state organizations;
and leading sessions at regional and
national conferences. Since 2015,
she’s also volunteered at Math On-aStick, an area at the Minnesota State
Fair featuring geometric tile games, a
pattern machine, and other interactive
exercises.
The unconventional approach of
such programs helps children notice
and talk about numbers and shapes in
their everyday world, Fetter says. “It’s
composed of activities that may well
lead to mathematical thinking,” she
says, “but there are very few tasks that
have an answer, or even an end point.”
So, how does not having an answer
help people learn to appreciate math?
“Kids persevere to build designs
and patterns that they thought of,”
she says, “often making them more
mathematical as they play.”
The wonder they display dragging
their finger across a sand-covered
turntable and making a spiral or a
more complex design is a sign they are
connecting with the discipline. That
fun will spontaneously lead to deeper
questions of why and how—and reduce
the fear of not knowing an answer.
Asking students to notice and
wonder when approaching a problem
is a method Fetter helped to formalize.
“I’m the ‘Notice and Wonder’
person,” says Fetter. “This makes me
famous in a really small universe.”
Fetter’s fairly well-known in the
Swarthmore universe, too, coming
from a long line of alumni including
father Tom ’56, uncle, Bob ’53 (who
won the 2018 Joseph Shane Alumni
Service Award), grandfather Frank,
Class of 1920 (pg. 10), and about a halfdozen others.
“While I wasn’t pressured to come
to Swarthmore,” she says, “I know that
my grandfather was thrilled.”
Swarthmore’s innovative
environment informed Fetter’s whole
approach to teaching. After graduating,
she received a grant to work for Gene
Klotz, the Albert and Edna Pownall
Buffington Professor Emeritus of
Mathematics, developing workbooks
and computer-animated videotapes for
teaching 3-D geometry. “It’s safe to say
that while I would probably be a math
teacher with or without Swarthmore,”
she says, “I definitely wouldn’t be the
educator I am without being part of
that forward-looking community.”
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
61
class notes
elder law. He caught up with new
Foggy Bottom neighbor Michael
North ’87 and had a sighting of
Carin Ruff ’87 and Andy Podolsky
’88 at a Lion in Winter reading
at the Folger. “We restrained
ourselves, albeit with difficulty,
from whispering the lines.”
Judd Liebman runs Kaplan
International’s North America
English language operations.
“While the current political
climate is not ideal, I’m still excited
(even after almost 20 years)
about working with international
language education and cultural
exchange programs.” He, Kathy
Seidl ’88, and their twins, 14, live in
Lexington, Mass.
Auto industry veteran Pedro
Gregorio (bit.ly/PedroGregorio) is
often asked about self-driving cars.
“I’ve finally driven a Tesla Model 3
with Autopilot, so I can say that I’ve
glimpsed the future.” Its system
combines adaptive cruise control
and lane assist into a true autopilot
system—“It will even change lanes
when you use the turn signal.” The
only concession: Every 45 seconds
you have to touch the steering
wheel. Though it’s impressive,
Pedro isn’t completely sold: “If I
have autopilot, I want to go to sleep
and wake up at the end of my trip.
I’m sure we won’t have to wait too
many years before The Jetsons
becomes a reality.”
Karen Schultz Paige’s youngest
child, Jenny ’22, is a Swarthmore
freshman! “It was so neat to visit
in August—I look forward to
more trips. We have interesting
conversations about old and new
experiences. My eldest, Eric, is
graduating from Grinnell College
with an economics degree and has
a computer coding job lined up at
Nationwide Insurance.” Karen is a
program manager in Los Alamos
National Laboratory’s weapons
program; she enjoys her job and its
role in protecting the nation. She
welcomes visitors to beautiful New
Mexico.
Marian Staats is an Oakton
Community College English
professor. “Last year’s trek with
students from Chicagoland to
Yellowstone on an NEH grant was
successful, and we look forward
to presenting at the Association
for the Study of Literature and
62
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
the Environment in June, as well
as taking another group camping
this summer!” She also performs
with the Chicago Master Singers
and had a solo in Mendelssohn’s
oratorio Elijah.
Ed Gooding has a new job with
VIAVI Solutions and travels
frequently to Santa Rosa, Calif. He
writes:
I spend my free time ritin pomez
Happy as 2 garden nomez
Dont need no more pills or booze
Since I found my poetry muze
Thanks, Ed. And, no, it’s not too
silly to share.
Bruce Han joined a Singaporebased real estate private equity
fund but is considering moving to
Hawaii to teach school in 2020.
“After 17 years in Hong Kong, my
karma with that dynamic island is
finally ending.” His elder daughter,
a BU student, is in Paris this
spending; his younger daughter
enjoys Pratt. Wife Ellen teaches
Korean to haoles (Hawaiian
for Caucasian foreigners) at
multinational companies.
I, Jessica, was laid off last
February and enjoyed eight months
off. I’m now the Hawaii rep for a
small biotech firm promoting a
new tardive dyskinesia therapy to
psychiatrists and neurologists. I
have dinner plans with Jeff and
Karen Leidy Gerstel, who are in
town on business. It’s always great
to see Swatties!
I’m very sorry to report that we
lost two classmates recently: Alex
Namour and Martha Loukides
Walker. Our condolences to their
families.
1988
Mallory Easter Polk
malloryepolk@gmail.com
Greetings! This go-round, I had the
pleasure of hearing from a couple
of classmates I haven’t heard from
much (or ever) in the past.
Brad Mittman writes: “I live in
Aliso Viejo, Calif., and really love
it. My 23-year-old son, Andre,
is in his last year at the U.S.
Air Force Academy in Colorado
Springs.” Brad is semi-retired from
internal medicine and stills runs
his medical education company,
Frontrunners (gofrontrunners.
com). As a creative outlet, Brad
sings online with the Smule app
and has uploaded more than 700
videos to his YouTube channel.
What Brad really enjoys about this,
besides the breadth of genres, is
that it’s an extra way to express
himself, and it seems to inspire
other users to express themselves
similarly! Check him out at bit.
ly/BradYouTube. Brad adds: “I’m
single now, and looking to be
married soon.” So if you know
anyone nice, send them Brad’s way.
Teresa Scott and husband Fred
Joseph are very excited that their
elder son, Caleb Scott-Joseph
’23, was admitted to Swarthmore!
He plans to study astrophysics
and philosophy. “Crazy to think
he could meet his future spouse
this fall!” Teresa writes. Hearty
congratulations to the ScottJosephs!
I encourage you to reach out to
me with the details and news of
your life. I love hearing from my
fellow ’88ers! Till next time.
1990
Jim Sailer
jim.sailer@gmail.com
Phil Weiser is now Colorado’s
attorney general! Phil’s elections
demonstrate the importance of
every single person voting—in the
primary, he won with 50.4 percent
of the vote, and in the general
election, he won with 51.6 percent.
Such close races! Phil ran a
positive, issues-focused campaign
(with the slogan “Stronger,
Fairer, Weiser”), focusing on the
environment, health care, and
the importance of state attorneys
general in fighting excesses of the
federal government; he took office
in January. Many congratulations
to Phil and his family on a welldeserved victory!
Continuing with the good news:
Tom Dee was appointed Stanford’s
Barnet Family Professor of
Education. Tom is a nationally
recognized expert on school
accountability and reform, teacher
effectiveness, and education
finance. He and Sara Ranck live
in Northern California with their
children. Congrats, Tom!
Bill Martin was named
president and CEO of BlackThorn
Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical
company focusing on
neurobehavioral disorders like
Parkinson’s disease. Bill, who
was previously chief scientific
officer, has had a long career
in pharmaceutical R&D, with
positions at Merck and Theravance
Biopharma before helping to found
BlackThorn. Congrats, Bill!
Danielle Moss Lee is the new
CEO of Oliver Scholars, which
prepares high-achieving black and
Latino students from underserved
NYC communities for success at
independent schools and colleges.
Danielle also gave a thoughtful,
passionate TEDTalk at TEDWomen
2018. Way to go, Danielle!
Michele Sachar is a Swarthmore
mom! Son Jordan Rothschild ’22
is a first-year, living in Willets
just as his mother did freshman
year. Michele and husband
Brad Rothschild live in NYC with
daughters Talia, a 10th-grader, and
Mia, a seventh-grader. Michele
is director of strategic research
and insights at the consultancy
Grail Insights, where she has
worked for two years. Brad is the
director of a new documentary,
Tree Man. Michele had a “fabulous
get-together” in NYC this fall
with Anne-Marie Bairstow, Nancy
Bacon, and Margaret George to
celebrate birthday milestones. She
also connected with Diane Tucker
’91, whom Michele hadn’t seen
since graduation!
Jonathan Hugg was named
co-chair of the Financial Services
Litigation Practice Group at
Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis
LLP in Philly. Congrats, Jonathan!
His practice concentrates on
commercial and appellate litigation,
primarily financial institution, real
estate, regulatory enforcement,
and municipal matters.
Our condolences to Karen Pulis
and husband Scott, each of whom
lost parents in 2017. Karen is a
manager on State Street Bank’s
finance training team. Married
for 12 years, she and Scott love to
travel and vacationed in Hawaii last
July for a boat tour of the Nāpali
Coast, a helicopter ride, and a
private tour of Coco Palms estate.
Barbara West was on a writing
retreat last summer when she
discovered a turkey attacking her
Prius (seeing its own reflection in
the car doors and pecking it). She
filmed the encounter, including
her gentle effort to shoo the
turkey away from its fixation on
its own image, and then turned
the piece into a short film (bit.
ly/BarbaraTurkey), narrated by
Barbara with her own poetry. “It
all ties back into Buddhism—I feel
lucky to have that practice as an
ongoing support.”
Lisa Streisfeld has lived in the
Denver area for the past 20 years.
“I work in the Colorado Department
of Transportation’s RoadX Program,
which is focused on accelerating
technology for improved safety and
mobility. We developed a publicprivate partnership to deploy the
first commercial freight delivery
with an autonomous truck, which
drove more than 100 miles from
Fort Collins to Colorado Springs.
Skiing, hiking, and biking take up
most of my spare time.”
I, Jim, had lunch with Caitlin
Gutheil and husband Doug in
Manhattan in December. Caitlin
has a new short story, “Say It Was
Me,” in Enizagam, a literary journal
housed at the Oakland School
for the Arts. Way to go! Caitlin’s
“day job” is as a Maine Medical
Center research coordinator, with
a focus on conducting qualitative
studies and developing health
communications.
I’m proud to report that the FDA
approved the Population Council’s
newest product, Annovera, a
one-year contraceptive vaginal
system, for distribution in the
U.S. I have directed the Annovera
project at Pop Council for several
years now, and it was immensely
gratifying to see the approval. More
important, women will have another
contraceptive option to choose
from when it reaches the market
this year. (We are working on male
contraception, too!)
1992
Libby Starling
libbystarling@comcast.net
Apologies for skipping our last
class notes, but there was no news
to report! We are all busy in middle
age, whether we’re raising kids,
advancing a career, changing the
world, or simply living out our joys
and sorrows.
Kudos, first, to our newly
elected and re-elected officials!
Congratulations to Josh Green,
who is now Hawaii’s lieutenant
governor—and our highest-ranking
elected official. And congrats to
Marion Greene, who won a second
term as a Hennepin County (Minn.)
commissioner, representing parts
of Minneapolis and its suburbs.
(Perhaps a “green” name helps in
our election campaigns?)
Congrats to Michael Costonis,
who left Accenture after 26
years to be CNA Financial’s chief
operating officer. With this job
change, he is spending more time
in Chicago, allowing him to catch
up with Jason Dubner.
Congrats to Christina ProenzaColes, whose new book, American
Founders: How People of African
Descent Established Freedom in
the New World, came out in March.
“I studied at Swarthmore under
Kathryn Morgan, whose influence
was the bedrock that propelled me
to teach African Diaspora history
at Virginia State University,”
Christina writes. “While I was
teaching, I continually came across
examples of African-descended
men and women who made
major contributions to history
and fundamentally altered my
understanding of the founding of
the Americas. American Founders
documents black men and women
as key protagonists in the story of
American democracy.”
Rob Stevens is an associate
professor in Rochester Institute
of Technology’s mechanical
engineering department, where
he runs the Sustainable Energy
Lab. In the fall, Rob and another
faculty member took RIT student
teams to Haiti to help local women
develop sustainable businesses.
Meanwhile, Katja van Brabant
Stevens reported the world
premiere of Brent Askari’s new
play, Hard Cell, in Rochester, N.Y.
Brent is part of the ensemble Mad
Horse Theatre in Portland, Maine,
and will be onstage at Portland
Stage Company once Hard Cell
closes.
Keep up the good work, folks, and
be sure to reach out if your travels
bring you to the Twin Cities!
1994
Kevin Babitz
kevinbabitz@gmail.com
Greetings from Montgomery
County, Md., home of Brett
Kavanaugh, who has never been to
either Old Club or Olde Club.
Tina Shepardson is the new head
of the religious studies department
at the University of Tennessee–
Knoxville, where she is the
Lindsay Young Professor of Early
Christianity and a close colleague
of Jacob Latham ’97. She is
excited that her second book,
Controlling Contested Places (UC
Press, 2014), will be released in
paperback this spring.
Alexandra Grant is an artist in
LA, although she does projects
all over the world, including
recently Guatemala City, Mexico
City, and Paris. Check out her
work at alexandragrant.com or on
Instagram, @grantalexandra. She
writes: “I can’t help but see that
values I learned at Swarthmore
and a culture of philanthropy are at
the heart of my grantLOVE project,
which helps raise money for
artists’ projects and arts nonprofits
through the sale of limited editions
of my LOVE artwork—which you
can check out at grantlove.com.
“Also, after many years of
collaborating together on artists’
books—we published Ode to
Happiness in 2011 and Shadows in
2016—Keanu Reeves and I started
a small artist book publishing
company, X Artists’ Books
(xartistsbooks.com), as featured in
the NYT T Magazine last year (bit.
ly/XArtists).”
Katie Bowman Grisbacher
“returned to higher education on
the advancement staff at Lebanon
Valley College—wonderful to be
back on a college campus! My
husband, John, and I enjoy country
living with our four teenagers in
Lititz, Pa.”
As for me, Kevin, the federal
government shutdown is giving me
a chance to focus on our upcoming
25th Reunion. I trust that you
are similarly deep in preparation
and speculation. Will those guys
who started that epic Sharples
food fight be there? What does
the prankster crowd have in store
for us? Is WSRN bringing in the
Gin Blossoms for a concert in the
Amphitheater? Will there be a
surprise appearance by Al Bloom
or Andy Karich? Only one way to
find out!
1996
Gerardo Aquino
aquinonyc@yahoo.com
Melissa Clark
melissa.a.clark@gmail.com
Katy Yanda returned to school for
an occupational therapy master’s
at the University of New Mexico.
She works in maternal and child
public health and will focus on
pediatric early intervention when
she graduates. Katy lives in Santa
Fe with husband Chris Norris and
children Nessa, 10, and Silvan, 7.
They invite any and all to visit.
Andrea Gibbons published her
first book, City of Segregation: 100
Years of Struggle for Housing in
Los Angeles. She is a research and
teaching fellow at the University
of Salford School of Health
and Society in England. Check
out some of Andrea’s work at
writingcities.com.
Chris Marin spent New Year’s
traveling with his wife and kids
in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
63
class notes
“We spelunked, toured, and hiked
the Appalachian Trail (which isn’t
far with three kids!).” He works at
Microsoft while wife Liz oversees
son Nicholas’s physical and
occupational therapy.
Wishing everyone continued
success this year!
1998
Rachel Breitman
rachellbreitman@yahoo.com
Shirley Salmeron Dugan
shirleysalmeron@yahoo.com
I, Rachel, saw a number of
classmates this fall in D.C. Larry
McDowell came to visit, and I got
to meet his husband, baby Eudora,
and son Idris. Herrin Hopper
hosted a dinner party, and Silver
Spring, Md.-based Elizabeth Weber
Handwerker came, too. Larry
also caught up the next day with
D.C.-based doula Marialuz Castro
Johnson.
Giridhar Srinivasan lives near D.C.
with wife Maya and two young kids.
He runs a support group for dads at
his son’s private preschool, focused
on being a more effective parent.
In December, I got a quick NYC
getaway with Cat Laine and
Tamala Montgomery. We saw
Shirley Salmeron Dugan and Kara
Herzog Ross, as well as my former
middle school student and current
children’s book author Emma
Otheguy ’09 and her husband,
economics professor Timothy
Roeper ’07.
Cat lives in a loft she and
her husband refurbished in
Woonsocket, R.I. She is a program
coordinator at the Rhode Island
Council for the Humanities and
runs her own business, Painted
Foot, photographing business
executives, rock bands, children,
and artistic portraits.
Shirley lives in Westchester,
N.Y., and manages business
development for a Chicago-based
software company. She spends
weekends at swim meets or doing
Girl Scouts and community service
64
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
projects with her three daughters.
Tamala lives in the Philly suburbs,
and between raising son Aaron, 1,
with husband Ambrose, is a teacher
of English language learners in a
Philadelphia public school.
Kara is a White Plains (N.Y.) High
School librarian and has three
daughters. Her husband is a dean
at a Bronx middle school.
Dan Gallant, the executive director
of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, wrote
three op-eds for The Wall Street
Journal about social media policy
for nonprofits. He will head north to
Alberta to guest-teach a course in
spoken word performance at Banff
Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Brooklyn-based Margaret
Hutchins Silver teaches seventhgrade humanities at Bank Street
School for Children. She recently
saw her former student Ada Okun
’11. Margaret’s husband, Josh Silver
’97, teaches seventh-grade history
and English at the Abraham Joshua
Heschel School, running a Model
U.N. group and working on an
American history master’s online.
Son David is a seventh-grader and
daughter Hannah a second-grader.
Matt Neal works in education
reform in Texas, and was involved
in the Beto for Senate campaign.
He volunteers at the San Antonio
bus station with a group assisting
asylum-seekers the government
drops off there daily. “The
resilience of the refugee families
is a constant inspiration and a
humbling reminder of what really
matters.”
Kelli Tennent Griffis left behind
the D.C. grind in July for the sunny
skies of La Jolla, Calif. She isn’t
missing Northern Virginia winters
one bit, and takes advantage of the
balmy nights to host Zumba, salsa,
and hip-hop dance parties.
After finishing an MFA in 2016,
Maurisa Thompson is teaching at
a project-based learning school in
San Francisco. Her creative writing
was published in an anthology, The
City Is Still Speaking, and she is
hard at work on a YA novel about
social justice.
In Santa Cruz, Calif., Sibley
Verbeck Simon is developing plans
for small studios for homeless
people that also include security
and physical and mental health
services. He also cultivates rare
mammals of unusual sizes.
New to the California coastal
scene is Solimar Salas-Rodriguez.
After living in Puerto Rico for 20
years, she accepted a position
last March as director for museum
content and programming at Long
Beach’s Museum of Latin American
Art. She looks forward to road trips
and reconnecting with Swatties.
Seattle-based sports medicine
doctor Leslie Yen has been learning
daring new sports like stand-up
paddleboarding and skateboarding,
while also chasing after daughters
Lily and Skye. They all have
matching zebra pajamas, which
makes husband John feel left out.
Jude Uzonwanne was sad to
miss the reunion in June. He left
Florida last year for Singapore to
be a principal at IQVIA Asia Pacific,
working on corporate development,
private equity, sovereign wealth,
and brand management for
consumer health, life science, and
health care companies.
And welcome to our new class
kiddos. Kim Nelson Tener had
daughter Nelly in early 2018,
who at 5 months was one of the
youngest guests at our reunion.
She, husband Max, son Bobby, and
Nelly live in Long Island, where Kim
is a partner at a small law firm. Jen
Weiss Handler, husband Adam,
and daughter Josie welcomed baby
Danielle Max right after Christmas.
Jen works at the Atlanta office of
the San Francisco-based software
company Pivotal.
2000
Michaela DeSoucey
mdesoucey@gmail.com
Emily Shu
emily.n.shu@gmail.com
Happy 40th to many of us! Jon
Temin shared a birthday update
from the road this winter: “Steve
Dawson and I are in hour 12 of
driving through a snowstorm from
Asheville, N.C., to Washington,
D.C., having gotten together (along
with our wives) for a weekend of
concerts to celebrate.” Jon lives in
D.C. with his wife and two kids, and
Steve and his wife live in London.
Dana Liu moved to Palo Alto,
Calif., with her family, including
kids Alistair and Giselle. Margaret
Parker Stafford lives in San
Francisco with her husband and
daughters Caroline and Rebecca.
She has her dream job on faculty of
San Francisco General Hospital’s
family medicine residency
program. “I’ve also been doing local
advocacy with health professional
and interfaith groups to support
our communities in their struggles
with law enforcement violence and
deportation.”
Also in the Bay Area, Eva Allan
is teaching at UC–Berkeley
while organizing an art-based
relationship between the UCSF
medical school and the de Young
Museum. Eva is “just keeping it real
with small kids—a lice-eradication
program, potty training, stomach
bugs, magic formula and perpetual
motion experiments, creative
language acquisition, first ballet
recital, and ongoing conversations
about synesthesia, gender fluidity,
and social justice.”
Alison Young was named codirector of citizen science at the
California Academy of Sciences.
She is a founder and lead organizer
of the City Nature Challenge, which
is in its fourth year and happening
in more than 120 cities worldwide
in April. “My partner of nine years,
Ivan Veraja, and I got married in
November. It was a fun and festive
(and slightly cold!) weekend in
Yosemite. Neil DiMaio officiated,
and Emily Shu and Sarah Archer
attended. We live in Sonoma, so
if any Swatties are in the area for
wine-tasting, look us up!”
Beth Bonacci lives on a western
South Dakota ranch with her
husband, kids Wesley and Emmy,
dogs, cats, and chickens. She is
a freelance writer and produces a
monthly segment for South Dakota
Public Broadcasting, Little Pasture
on the Prairie. Beth also released
her third album under stage name
Eliza Blue. Bre Holt visited in
autumn, and “Alicia Googins is
going to visit this spring and will be
the first of what we hope are many
‘writers-in-residence.’”
Karen Lloyd received tenure in
LAURENCE KESTERSON
ALUMNI PROFILE
“If I trust the simple humanity of that process,” says Sam Dingman ’04, “there’s always
some alchemical moment that I never could’ve predicted, and suddenly we have our story.”
TRUST THE STORY
He finds gems in family lore and beyond
by Alexandra Sastre ’05
SAM DINGMAN ’04’S PATH since
Swarthmore has had some eclectic
twists and turns—but then again, don’t
all good stories?
He had spent his Swarthmore days
channeling his creative energy into
comedy, as a member of the improv
troupe Vertigo-go and producer of his
own sketch comedy show on WSRN.
“When I graduated,” he recalls, “I
promised myself I’d spend two years
trying to be an actor in New York,
and I knew I’d need a day job to keep
me afloat. So I spent two years as a
bellman at a luxury hotel in lower
Manhattan and then a few months as a
taxi driver.”
After being “nearly obliterated by a
speeding Jeep Wrangler,” he decided it
was time for a change. Next up was an
accidental seven-year sojourn through
the tech industry, with three years
spent at the music streaming service
LimeWire and four at Google.
As his professional life evolved,
so did his creative journey. Dingman
began to mine stories from his time
as a bellman and taxi driver, writing
his own performance pieces and
experimenting with podcasting,
then a new medium. Inspired by this
storytelling mode, Dingman joined
the team at WNYC’s On the Media
and eventually moved to the premium
podcast network Panoply. There, he
produced Karina Longworth’s hit
series on classic Hollywood, You Must
Remember This, and produced and
hosted his own show, Family Ghosts.
Family Ghosts tackles those secrets
hiding in dark corners that haunt and
define our family legacies. Its first
season brought together true tales
of secret uncles, jewel thieves, and
suspected arson. At once intimate and
tragic, these stories are rooted in the
notion that every family is somehow
haunted, no matter how friendly the
ghost. (The podcast was picked up
for Seasons 2 and 3, Dingman says,
but will have a new home, set to be
revealed in May.)
Family Ghosts has its own specter,
too, though one more poignant than
terrifying. Dingman recalls an acting
class he took with Lee Devin, now a
theater professor emeritus.
“One of the first things he said to us
was, ‘All great drama begins with the
family,’” he says.
That declaration would spark an
ongoing interest in how the familial
becomes legend, and how the truth can
be more astounding than fiction.
“I was always curious about what it
would be like to try and capture that
same dramatic vibrance in nonfiction,”
Dingman says, “where you can’t write
the perfect ending or script the perfect
line in the same way you might in a
film or a play.”
But unlike a scripted narrative,
true stories are harder to wrangle.
Producing an episode of a podcast
like Family Ghosts requires a delicate
balance between listening and
responding, of letting the story slowly
unspool.
“My favorite part of the work is the
exhilaration of sitting down for the
first interview,” he says, “having only
a gut instinct that it’s going to become
something special and having to trust
that I can find the path.”
This gut instinct, this trust, is driven
by something Dingman calls the
“Hairbrush Factor.”
“Does this podcast feel like
something a person has spent hours
dreaming about getting to do, sitting
alone in their bedroom, talking
into their hairbrush like it was a
microphone?” he asks. “If the answer
is yes, I think there’s probably a great
podcast in there.”
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
65
class notes
microbiology at the University of
Tennessee. She’s been doing fun
field work in Costa Rica, Panama,
and Svalbard. Sarah Scheckter
moved with husband Matt Farmer
back to Philly, where she is a
clinical psychologist with a private
practice in Bryn Mawr and he is a
Haverford classics professor. Keep
an eye out for Samantha Johnson’s
new EP, Flights and Landings, this
spring (samtwigg.net). Samantha
is a therapist and mentor at a large
secondary school in the U.K.
In January 2018, Miriam
Freedman welcomed baby Ezra,
who will soon be able to chase
after brother Noam, 4. Liz Blair
and David Plante welcomed Tilden
Josephine, a smiley baby who loves
laughing at the antics of brothers
Michael and Nathaniel. Liz is an
assistant professor of educational
foundations at the University
of Wisconsin–Whitewater, and
Dave is an assistant professor of
psychiatry and medical director
of the Wisconsin Institute for
Sleep and Consciousness at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Across the country, Uche
Eneanya finished medical school
and purchased a medical practice
(Comprehensive Pain Solutions
of New Jersey) in 2016. The
practice is doing very well. He also
purchased a new home with wife
Kia and kids Kylie and Christian
in Philly. Victor Piñeiro and wife
Evelyn welcomed Julian Daniel in
August. “Every once in a while, we
walk through Queens’s parks with
Kevin Schlottmann and his kids.
In a surreal and random note, I’ve
designed two games for Hasbro.
One, Awkward Hugs, is available
everywhere that sells games. The
next is a card game, due out next
fall.” Victor is also writing his first
novel and is SVP of social media at
creative agency Big Spaceship.
Amilcar Maceo Priestley stayed
true to his Brooklyn roots, residing
there with his wife and son. He
is an attorney and director of the
Afrolatin@ Project, an international
social justice organization and
digital archive of Afrolatinx oral
histories. Amilcar and his wife are
co-directors of the Afro-Latino
Festival NYC, the only music/
cultural festival and conference
celebrating Afrolatinxs in North
66
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
America, now entering its seventh
year. Newlywed Juan Mejía is
also in NYC, with wife Sarah
and daughter Lucia. “I work at
Human Pictures, a film production
company founded with two
childhood friends. We are working
with the Equal Justice Initiative
on a series of short films on racial
justice, an upcoming series on
the struggle for rights and the
U.S. Constitution, and a feature
documentary on Black Lives Matter
across Colombia and the U.S.”
We are saddened to share that
George Balgobin died in February
after a long illness. George had
been working on a sociology
dissertation at Northwestern, from
which he also earned a J.D. We
send our heartfelt condolences to
his family and friends, including his
partner, Melissa.
2002
Tanyaporn Wansom
swarthmore2002@gmail.com
Olga Rostapshova started a new
position as executive director of the
University of Chicago’s Energy and
Environment Lab, which works with
government agencies to design,
evaluate, and help scale programs
and policies. She would love to
connect with Swatties working in
energy and environment. Jonathan
Stancato has continued to develop
Inside Voice (bit.ly/JStancato), his
mind-body approach to voice and
song, and has become Yelp’s toprated voice teacher in NYC!
Fabienne François Keck and
husband Todd are settling into
their new home in Milton, Mass.
She would love to connect with
others in the Boston area. Andrew
Alderete moved to Boulder,
Colo., and started a consulting
company producing film concert
entertainment worldwide, such as
Harry Potter in Concert, Gladiator,
and Godfather Live. After a short
stint in Indian health care, Sonia
Mariano is back in Gisborne, New
Zealand, as an ER doc.
Ben Park works for the VA in
Minnesota and welcomed third
child Jubilee Park in 2017. Cris and
Danielle Harris Ortiz welcomed
son Emiliano in October. He joins
sisters Alaina, 8, and Briseis, 2, and
brother Dominic, 5. Renee Witlen
and husband Paul, in Yarmouth,
Maine, welcomed daughter Neri in
October, joining sister Noa. Renee
starts as a psychiatrist embedded
in primary care and OB/GYN
practices in Portland, Maine, after
maternity leave.
Corey Mark married Merrian
Brooks on Nov. 10 at the Newton
White Mansion in Prince George’s
County, Md. The event, which
celebrated African heritage, was
dubbed “Music Marries Medicine”
and was attended by Ayanna Butler
’03. Corey moved from his longtime home in Philly to join Merrian,
a doctor, in Gaborone, Botswana,
where he continues to perform and
teach music.
Furthering the Swarthmore
connection, Merrian and Corey
visited me, Tanyaporn Wansom,
during their January honeymoon
in Bangkok. I recently left my job
with the U.S. Military HIV Research
Program to join a Bangkok-based
NGO, Dreamlopments, as director
of HIV and hepatitis research and
advocacy.
I always enjoy hearing from you! If
you are not getting my call for class
notes, please email me to be added
to the list.
2004
Rebecca Rogers
rebecca.ep.rogers@gmail.com
Danny Loss
danny.loss@gmail.com
Our class updates are summed up
as “careers, children, activism”—
with many people doing all three!
Mark Hanis co-founded
Progressive Shopper, which
received coverage in Forbes (bit.ly/
PSForbes), The Washington Post
(bit.ly/PSWaPo) … and the Bulletin
(pg. 14).
Greg Lok’s emotional intelligence
and voice analysis startup Ambit
Analytics raised $1.1 million in preseed funding.
Jake Beckman had an opening
reception in October at University
of the Arts for a gallery exhibition
of recent sculpture as well as a
public art project.
Micah White is UCLA’s Activistin-Residence for winter 2019 and
has, with wife Chiara Ricciardone
’05, started the online Activist
Graduate School.
Morgan Simon became a Forbes
contributor writing about money
and social justice. Check her out
online.
Heather Sternshein’s “big update
is that we moved to Chapel Hill,
N.C.! I’m now associate director
of academics for MBA@UNC
(UNC’s online MBA program). Also,
somehow, I have a 1-year-old—time
flies!”
Nick Lum and his BeeLine Reader
were honored at the U.N. Solutions
Summit, which recognizes
10 entrepreneurs globally for
their work related to the U.N.
Sustainable Development Goals.
Audrey Dorélien and husband
Jason Kerwin welcomed daughter
Naomi Dorélien Kerwin in March.
The couple are both assistant
professors at the University
of Minnesota—Audrey at the
Humphrey School of Public Affairs,
and Jason in the Department of
Applied Economics. If there are
other Swatties in the Twin Cities,
Audrey would love to connect.
Elinore Kaufman and Maria
Alvarez “have a new team
member—Esperanza, born Nov.
20, making Maggie a very proud
big sister. We are also excited to
be back in Philly—Elinore finished
general surgery residency and is
doing a critical care and trauma
surgery fellowship at Penn. And
after a decade in cosmetology,
Maria is back in school, also at
Penn, to become a middle school
science teacher.”
After 11 years in Brooklyn, Kathy
Liu boldly moved to Manhattan
over the holidays to be closer to
work, which is still going well.
Rachel Block updates us on the
past few years: “Patrick Connolly
’01 and I got hitched in 2010. To our
surprise, we both ended up going
to law school soon after that. After
hitting the books in Hyde Park
at UChicago (yes, we also both
went to the same law school), we
kept heading west and are now
practicing—at different firms!—in
Seattle. In 2018, we welcomed son
Akiva. I was thrilled to introduce
him to Marc Boucai, who passed
through Seattle last summer on his
way to settling down in California.
We have stayed connected to
Swarthmore by participating in
the lively local alumni book club
(though I must confess that since
the baby arrived, I’ve been listening
to the audiobook versions, which
feels a bit like cheating).”
Dan Chamberlain and wife Emily
welcomed daughter Ava Rose on
Aug. 13.
Rebecca Ennen, who wins the
prize for connecting with the most
Swatties in the past year, writes:
“My partner, Ari, and I spent a
quiet Christmas with our 2.5-yearold, Misha, and neighbors Matt
Rubin Blumin, partner Jessie,
and their child, Amira, 4; and an
eventful New Year’s weekend in
Philly with Ester Bloom and Ben
Galynker ’03 and kids Lara, 6, and
Jules, 3, hosted by Ross Hoffman,
spouse Elsa, and kids Beatrice,
3, and Ambrose, 1. Our gang also
connected with Angela Fleury ’06,
Anna Headley ’03, Dan Consiglio
’03, and Liza Henty-Clark ’03, but
we missed many other West Philly
pals. We admired the podcasting
exploits of Sam Dingman, Khadijah
White, and Morgan Simon,
contemplated the sectarian origins
of Swarthmore, and toasted the
unsung legacy of ‘Fighting Quaker’
Smedley Butler.”
Congrats to everyone on the
accomplishments. We look forward
to seeing you at our (gulp!) 15th
Reunion!
2006
Wee Chua
wchua1@gmail.com
Hope 2019 is off to a great start!
I’m excited to share the wonderful
celebrations that closed 2018.
FUSE Fellow Patrice Berry is
doing great work in Oakland, Calif.,
ensuring college affordability by
addressing systemic barriers that
prevent access to aid.
Matt Meltzer married Jennie
Rossano in December, followed by
a honeymoon in Hawaii.
Ana Chiu and David Palsgrove
celebrated their wedding in August,
with Kenan Jaffe co-officiating,
James Madden in the wedding
party, and other Swatties filling the
dance floor.
Martyna Pospieszalska and
husband Rich welcomed first child
Ewalina on Dec. 18.
Reena Nadler and Jacob Ross ’05
welcomed son Benjamin Andrew
Ross (future ’41? Hey, it could
happen) on Dec. 29. All three are
doing great.
Caroline Carlson’s fifth novel for
young readers, The Door at the
End of the World, will be published
by HarperCollins in April. Caroline
and Zach Pezzementi ’05 live in
Pittsburgh and have loved catching
up with Swatties coming through
town.
Adam Bisno won the Fritz Stern
Dissertation Prize for research
on “Hotel Berlin: The Politics of
Commercial Hospitality in the
German Metropolis, 1875–1945.”
It is a deeply researched and
elegantly written exploration of
the institution of the grand hotel in
Berlin during 70 tumultuous years
of German history. Congrats!
Billy ’05 and Anisha Chandra
Schwarz are in transition in
Seattle, where Anisha is finishing
a neuromuscular neurology
fellowship and looking for her first
actual job. She frequently runs
into neurosurgery resident John
Ross Williams around the hospital.
Billy is finishing his second year
of felony defense work. Son
Narayan Chandra Schwarz started
preschool and has strong opinions.
Let them know if you are in the
area!
2008
Mark Dlugash
mark.dlugash@gmail.com
New York, N.Y.: Having spent the
past five years in London, Kyle
White and his wife moved back
to NYC in November. Although
SPOTLIGHT ON …
ADAM BISNO ’06
Adam Bisno ’06, a writer-editor at the Naval History and
Heritage Command in Washington, D.C., received the Fritz Stern
Dissertation Prize for research on “Hotel Berlin: The Politics of
Commercial Hospitality in the German Metropolis, 1875–1945.”
“Having written a dissertation I’m proud of would have been
reward enough,” Bisno says. “But to have my work recognized by
the very people whose work inspired and instructed me in my own
intellectual development—that’s a great feeling.”
+
CONTINUED: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
they miss friends and the travel
in England, they look forward to a
new adventure in the States.
Anna Mello is in NYC after 10
years of living abroad. She is a
fifth-grade science teacher at
the all-girls Chapin School on the
Upper East Side; she also teaches
robotics. During free time, she
hangs out with twin sister Maria
Mello, who also coincidentally
moved to New York in 2018.
Rita Kamani-Renedo works at
the International High School
at Prospect Heights, where she
teaches humanities to immigrant
newcomers. This year, she is
also teaching in CUNY Hunter’s
bilingual education department.
Scott Storm started an education
Ph.D. at NYU and was recently
honored by the National Council
of Teachers of English for his
teacher research. While excited
to be a student again, Scott
also still teaches and chairs the
English department at Harvest
Collegiate High School—the NYC
public school he co-founded seven
years ago. Scott lives in Brooklyn
with husband Patrick Hart ’06
and loves hosting role-playing
murder-mystery parties with Alex
Benn, Annie Burke Benn, Zachary
Weintraub ’06, Kenan Jaffe ’06,
Beth Krone ’09, and Liz Upshur ’07.
Rahul D’Silva started as head of
talent for Function of Beauty, an
NYC-based personalized shampoo
startup. He’s slowly building a
community in Harlem, where he
lives, but he still doesn’t have a
dog.
Working life: Yusha Hu sold
her company, Local Bushel, a
marketplace and distribution
company that sold farmtransparent food to restaurants,
and looks forward to exploring new
opportunities.
Camila Harrigan-Labarca
started a new position at Creative
Associates International, a USAID
implementer, and is now a financial
analyst supporting six development
projects with their financial
pipelines.
Cristina Schrum-Herrera left
her law firm job and started a
new position at the California
Labor Commissioner’s Office,
representing workers who are
retaliated against for exercising
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
67
class notes
their rights under the Labor
Code. She spends lots of time
cooking new dishes and playing
with daughter Nina, 2, and
enjoys hearing her tell her they
are best friends. She is moving
to Sacramento this spring and
hopes to make cool friends there.
Recommendations welcome.
Matthew Armstead finished
an MFA with Pig Iron Theatre
Company and enjoys the daily
dance between Philly’s theater and
activism worlds.
Jennesa Calvo-Friedman has a
new role at the ACLU as a National
Legal Department staff attorney.
Celebrations: Madalyn Baldanzi,
who lives in Brooklyn and teaches
sketch comedy at the Upright
Citizens Brigade Theatre, got
married in September to Daire
McKenna. Alyssa Work, Alex
Friedman ’09, Meredith Leich,
Marina Tempelsman ’10, Mairin
Odle, Nicco Aeed ’10, and Emily
Walz attended the ceremony
in Madalyn’s hometown of
Morristown, N.J.
Sarah Burford and Nate Allen
were overjoyed to welcome
daughter Raisa Allen-Burford in
July. She is a budding gourmand
and good at reminding her parents
who’s boss. In D.C., Sarah manages
the Media Arts grant program at
the National Endowment for the
Arts. Nate finished an international
relations doctorate at Johns
Hopkins in June, and is a policy
adviser at the U.S. Institute of
Peace.
And finally, before the 2018
midterm elections, George
Dahl created Measured Politics
(measuredpolitics.org), a small
organization to help donors more
effectively engage in political
activism while supporting
Democrats challenging Republican
incumbents in state legislative
races. With consulting help from
Ella Foster-Molina ’07, Measured
Politics is collecting data for a
randomized controlled trial on the
effect of campaign contributions
on candidate vote shares, along
with two other studies designed to
inform donors and activists. They
have big plans for November’s
Mississippi legislature elections,
and the team would love to hear
from interested Swatties.
68
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
2010
Brendan Work
theworkzone@gmail.com
And lo! Nigh upon their reunion,
in the ninth year of alumnity, the
Swarthmorites of twenty and ten
did multiply throughout the world,
and such was the sum of their
deeds:
Verily Urooj Khan did take leave
of her corporate job to join the
Bronx Defenders as in the Criminal
Defense Practice, and withal
she did make abundant posts on
Instagram to show the people the
pottery she did craft. Urooj resided
in the land of Brooklyn, wherein
abided Linnet Davis-Stermitz ’12,
Chris Sawyer, Will Treece ’11, and
Tiffany Liao, and so too did Urooj
create a Google Hangouts book
club with Neena Cherayil ’11 of
Philly and Chris Roney of D.C. and
of it she proclaimed, “It is great.”
The mighty Swarthmorite warrior
Brigette Davis joined battle against
the forces of sin, for she continued
studying the impact of racism on
health as a second-year population
health sciences Ph.D. student, with
a focus on social epidemiology,
at the Harvard School of Public
Health. She joined the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation’s
Health Policy Research Scholars
program, and behold! She was
“pretty excited” about a publication
coming out called Racism and
Health: Evidence and Needed
Research.
Plentiful were the deeds of Justin
diFeliciantonio, who increased
the local high school tennis team
in victories and whose wisdoms
on yogic techniques and mind
mechanics can be found at
medium.com/@difeliciantonio. And
the notes compiler said, “Go forth
and read!” For the blog was good.
It was foretold that Nicole
Singer, who was an elementary
art teacher, should dwell within a
house, and indeed she did close
upon one in Easthampton, Mass.
And by her merit she was named
this year’s recipient of the Carrie
SPOTLIGHT ON …
2019 FULBRIGHT STUDENTS
Swarthmore is again among the top
producers of U.S. Fulbright scholars
and students—a recognition it’s held
for more than 10 years—with nine
recent alumni receiving the honor
with the College’s backing.
This year, Nikhil Chopra ’18, Joseph DeBrine ’18, Mariah
Everett ’18, Madeleine Feldman ’17, Liliana Frankel ’18, Griffin
Kammerer ’18, Alice Liu ’18, Bridget Scott ’18, and Susan
Whaley ’18 received grants through Swarthmore’s sponsorship,
while a 10th alum, Pendle Marshall-Hallmark ’14, was honored
as an “at-large” candidate.
+
MORE: bit.ly/SwatFulbright
Nordlund Award for Pre-K–12
Feminist Pedagogy from the
Women’s Caucus of the National
Art Education Association, and
so it shall be that she shall bring
forth a short presentation about
feminist, gender-inclusive, queeraffirming pedagogy and advocacy
in elementary art teaching at the
NAEA conference in Boston.
The Swarthmorites were fruitful
upon the Earth and prodigious
in their make. Hannah Epstein
begat daughter Adina in June, and
Anne Miller-Uueda begat Declan
Avo Miller-Uueda on the nine
and twentieth day of November.
Indeed, her labor was supported
by the doula Cecelia Osowski ’15,
who thereupon did attend the birth
of Omari Faakye’s second child,
Solomon, on the selfsame day. And
yea! Cecelia was an amazing doula.
And there were in that day
sojourners among the tribe of
twenty and ten, those whose
footsteps marked the land. Colin
Schimmelfing checked out the
largest cave in the world in
Vietnam, ate amazing food in China
with Andrew Stromme ’12, and
volunteered in Austin, Texas, for
the Democratic Party, whereupon
he moved to Prospect Heights in
Brooklyn to manage an engineering
team at Flatiron Health. And Colin
had dominion over many things, for
he was righteous. So, too, among
the travelers was Seth Green, who
labored a moon’s duration with his
company Code Ocean in Tel Aviv.
Abundant were the weddings
among the tribe of twenty and
ten, for they were kind and loving
people, and it was very good. Helen
Hougen was married in Portland,
Ore., and within the caravan of
guests was Caitlin O’Neil, who
spake in the tongue of Portugal
and practiced the art of capoeira
and oft cast herself upon the
prison budget of California. In
Scott Amphitheater, Max Wilson
did wed his bride, Sara Forster
’11, before a multitudinous host
of Swarthmorites from the tribe
of twenty and eleven, the tribe of
1981, and Keith Blaha and Jeffrey
Lazarus withal. Glorious was
the dancing and merriment, and
thereafter Max and Sara betook
themselves by means of a single
car journey to Santa Barbara,
Calif., where Max became an
assistant professor of quantitative
and systems biology at UCSB, and
both surfed a modest surfing.
And other Swarthmorites did
prosper in the nation, and they
were called: Stephanie Appiah, who
worked for Jack Entertainment
in Detroit; Ashley Miniet, in her
final year of an Emory pediatric
residency; and G Patrick, who
did append to his name the
letters M and D upon completing
his preliminary year in general
surgery at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny
General Hospital. Yet suddenly
woe did betide G, for he had been
deceived by the television series
Grey’s Anatomy about the amount
of promiscuity in the field, and
four hours of sleep a night did not
suffice him, and he was aggrieved.
Overflowing was the majesty of
the Swarthmorites of twenty and
ten, but few indeed were those who
wrote in with updates, and thus it
was that the notes were short and
the scribe was cast into a vexation.
He may yet be summoned at
theworkzone@gmail.com.
2012
Maia Gerlinger
maiagerlinger@gmail.com
Happy New Year, 2012! I
accidentally saved this document
as “class notes winter 2018.” A
lot of people I know, and a lot of
people in these notes, have either
made huge life changes this past
year or are on the cusp of doing
so. Wishing you the best! Also, if
you’re like, “Ugh, not me. Same
ol’, same ol’,” don’t worry—you’re
doing a great job, as well. You do
you, man. Here are your notes!
California: Tania Doles now lives
in the Bay Area, where she looks
forward to reconnecting with
Swatties—something that was
lacking in Maine, although she
misses the state “from the bottom
of her heart.” Adam Bortner is
a resident physician at Family
Health Centers of San Diego.
“California really is as lovely as all
our Californian classmates made
it seem,” he muses, traitorously.
Melissa Frick begins a radiation
oncology residency at Stanford
in July. Miyuki Baker is in the
research fellowship year of
a performance studies Ph.D.
at UC–Berkeley, considering
spiritual social justice work in
East Oakland, and training to
be a life coach. Joseph O’Hara
lives in San Francisco and works
for JUUL. (Aren’t Miyuki and
Joseph together, like, California
in a nutshell?) Arsean Maqami is
WeWork’s director of construction;
he launched and is managing
general contracting entities in
California, Washington, Texas, and
Colorado.
Pennsylvania: Taylor Loughson
née Wuerker married Cait
Prendergast on Nov. 17. “Loughson”
is a combination of Taylor’s and
Cait’s mothers’ maiden names,
which is very cool. Zack Wiener
officiated Josh Glickenhaus and
Tori Barber ’13’s wedding, where,
he says, it was “really a cherished
honor to make Tori and Josh
snort-cry during the ceremony.”
Margret Lenfest finishes Penn vet
school in May and will specialize
in “canine sports medicine,” which
to me conjures up adorable images
of doggies in jerseys. Alexander
Burka finally finished a Ph.D. at
Penn and now works at a robotics
startup. Contact him “if you want
to know about local folk dancing
or be talked out of starting a Ph.D.
program,” he writes, interestingly,
for someone who actually
finished his. Timothy Brevart got
married after Thanksgiving and
honeymooned in Australia, where
he got punched by a mama wallaby
for trying to feed her baby. “Feel
free to leave that out (or add
that in),” he writes, confusingly.
Tim has been a Nasdaq software
developer for two years. Andrew
Cheng is teaching two courses
in Swat’s linguistics department
this spring, after which he will
return to UC–Berkeley to finish
his dissertation. Tayarisha Poe
made her directorial debut at the
Sundance Film Festival with the
drama Selah and the Spades.
Chicago: Hannah “Alex” Younger
is the program coordinator for
Columbia College Chicago’s
arts access partnership with a
public high school. “I do not know
how well it’s going. I’m teaching
a sculpture class and have
discovered that the only way for
teenagers to not mistake me for
another teenager is to wear giant
heels every day, so now they just
think I’m very fancy. Also, my
roommate turned our apartment
into a gallery, so I regularly
come home to the entire space
rearranged and I live in constant
fear of running into a painting.”
New England: Benjamin Lipton
and Julia Cooper were (“finally?”
Ben writes) married in October.
David D’Annunzio, Nick Felt ’13,
Rose Pozos-Brewer ’15, Andrew
Stromme, Philip Chodrow, Rose
Morris-Wright ’13, Katie Gonzalez,
Adriana Popa Aldgate, Oliver
Lipton ’18, and Joelle Moreno
’84 were there. Julia and Ben
live in Lawrence, Mass., where
Julia is doing a family medicine
residency, and Ben works for
GRIMM, a cybersecurity company.
“Number of cats in the house
steadily growing,” he concludes—
ominously? Joyfully? Hard to
tell. Maddie Williams wrote to
say that her first-year plant from
Swarthmore is still alive, which
honestly might be the most
impressive class note I’ve ever
received. Game over.
D.C./Baltimore: Sara Blanco
is training young women to
run for political office with
the nonpartisan organization
Running Start. Zachary Weiner
writes: “Lisa Shang and I were
visited on Christmas Eve by
nondenominational Santa Claus
who brought with him (or her?)
an 8-week-old puppy. Her name
is Pretzel; we adopted her from
Operation Paws for Homes, and
she loves socks, her squirrel toy,
and waking up at 3 a.m. to pee
on the floor. Her ancestry is in
question, and we have neither
submitted her information to
23andMe nor, relatedly, received
any further clarification.” He adds:
“(You are released to use any of
the above in the write-up without
feeling bad.)” As I am an entire
week late sending in these notes
(sorry, Bulletin!), I think I will!
Thanks, Zach!
New York/New Jersey: Maxwell
Bressman is about a year out from
being a “head doctor somewhere”
(unsure what that means). He’s
also the medical director for a
medical marijuana company.
He writes, reassuringly, “I tried
(and failed) to qualify for the
golf U.S. Open this year. I’m still
married.” Amelia Possanza works
in publishing and lives in Brooklyn
with Mariel Freyre ’15 and their
cat, whom I have met and who is
a very good girl. Callie Feingold
is a production coordinator at
CNN, working with a team of
documentary producers. She also
lives in Brooklyn, like literally
everyone I know. Natalia CoteMuñoz works at the Council of
Foreign Relations, where there are
two other Swatties, Liz Economy
’84 and Lorand Laskai ’13. Tasha
Lewis had a show at Philly’s Magic
Gardens.
North Carolina: Jennifer Yi is
finishing a Ph.D. and will defend
her dissertation by the beginning
of summer. She also fosters dogs,
avidly, and has an Instagram to
prove it.
Abroad: Pierre Dyer is doing an
MBA at London Business School.
William Campbell married Edie
Constable in July; he lives in
Singapore, where he misses things
from the USA. I, Maia Gerlinger,
live in Paris, where I am doing a
comparative literature master’s at
the Sorbonne.
2014
Brone Lobichusky
blobichusky@gmail.com
This spring finds classmates, once
again, making great strides in
their careers, serving as inspiring
humanitarians, and having fun
across the world.
Starting abroad, Emily Lau made
a big move to northern England,
where she is pursuing a master’s
in computer science with speech
and language processing at
the University of Sheffield. She
regularly ventures to London to
visit her boyfriend.
On the West Coast, Natalie
Campen is a third-year student at
USC’s Keck School of Medicine
and is completing her psychiatry
and surgery rotations this spring.
Leah Lee joined the UC–Berkeley’s
Department of Integrative
Biology as a graduate student.
In September, Harrison Tasoff
started as a science writer at
UC–Santa Barbara. Akunna Uka
sends greetings from sunny LA,
where she teaches middle and high
school speech and debate and
history, and has also completed
half of her coursework for a
master’s of education from UCLA.
When not at school (or school),
she canoes, camps, or catches up
with family.
Pendle Marshall-Hallmark
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
69
class notes
finished working at a Colombian
human-rights NGO last summer
and moved from Bogotá to Mexico
City, where she is taking MBA
classes and learning about Latin
American social entrepreneurship.
Paul Cato and Danielle Charette
are toiling away at Ph.D.s at
UChicago’s Committee on Social
Thought. In the fall, Paul was
invited to Susquehanna University
to guest-teach a course on
James Baldwin, speak about his
experiences as a black, disabled
student at predominately white
institutions, and discuss inclusivity
with the college president. In
January, he began work on his
dissertation proposal—hoping
to study theories of love found
in the work of black authors and
thinkers. Meanwhile, Danielle
co-edits the Tocqueville 21 blog on
contemporary democracy.
Corey Carmichael married Fritz
Eyerer ’12 in Maine in August.
Many Swatties attended, along
with the Screw Your Roommate
lobster costume that started their
romance. The couple moved to
Burlington, Vt., and would love to
connect with area Swatties.
Several classmates have made
their home in NYC, including
Rebecca Anuru (formerly Rebecca
Ahmad). She recently celebrated
the second anniversary of
choosing her forever last name,
which means “filled with light.”
Rebecca returned to her hometown
of the Bronx in September and,
shortly after, started her dream
job as program specialist for the
Coordinated Children’s Services
Initiative at Vibrant Emotional
Health, working to improve mental
health services’ access and
coordination for youth throughout
New York’s five boroughs. This
year, she hopes to expand her
agency, Anuru Rising Consulting,
to assist organizations in their
support of urban youths, while
also offering herself rest and
TLC. Alison Ryland moved to
NYC in the fall to work on a
master’s in applied statistics for
the social sciences at Columbia.
Mihika Srivastava made the big
move from Harlem to Brooklyn
in August, after completing a
master’s in international affairs
at Columbia. She is a writer and
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
communications strategist at
the Astraea Lesbian Foundation
for Justice, an organization that
supports grassroots human
rights and LGBTQ organizations
worldwide. Aside from that, you
can find Mihika indulging in
millennial clichés like becoming
a mother to far too many plants
and baking away all her problems.
Heidy Wang is preparing for a
pediatrics residency following her
graduation from the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine.
In nearby Philly, Ashley Gochoco
and Aaron Moser ’13 reside with
their miniature dachshund puppy,
Daisy. They wed in the Berkshires
on a sunny day last June. By the
bride’s side were maid of honor
Stephanie Lechich and bridesmaid
Alexandra Werth. Charlton Otte
’13 and Craig Pentrack were
enthusiastic groomsmen. Jillian
Ma purchased a home in Philly and
looks forward to hosting reunions.
She is in her third year of teaching
math and coaching robotics at an
area Quaker school. Last summer,
she traveled to Croatia with Caitlin
Sequira and Rebecca Teng. She
even appeared in a Buzzfeed video
in LA, thanks to Kendell Byrd ’17!
Your secretary, Brone, is in her
last semester at Temple’s Lewis
Katz School of Medicine and
patiently waiting to learn her
residency fate. The fall and winter
were spent traveling for general
surgery interviews, taking up
running at the insistence of her
golden retriever, and planning
postgraduation vacations.
2016
Z.L. Zhou
zzlzhou@gmail.com
Stephanie Kestelman
stephaniekestelman@gmail.com
California-based Aneesa Andrabi
started working in LA Mayor Eric
Garcetti’s office on the Great
Streets Initiative team.
Rachel Berger is an
administrative assistant at
Juvenile Law Center. Last year, she
participated in the Bread & Roses
Gender Justice Giving Project,
which raised money for Philly-area
grassroots organizations.
Jesse Bossingham started med
school at UNC–Chapel Hill.
Michelle Johnson is an outreach
program coordinator at UPenn’s
MindCORE while pursuing a
master of social work.
Deborah Krieger interviewed
David Sedaris last summer after
the release of his book Calypso.
Rainie Oet (who recently changed
their name from Jacob) is finishing
a poetry MFA at Syracuse,
graduating in May. Rainie has two
books of poetry under contract:
Inside Ball Lightning will be
published by Southeast Missouri
University Press in 2020, and
Glorious Veils of Diane will be
published by Carnegie Mellon
University Press in 2021.
Claudia Lo lives in Oakland,
Calif., and is a design researcher
on Wikipedia’s Anti-Harassment
Tools team, researching how awful
people are to each other.
Laura Rigell, a former RE-volv
Solar Ambassador, is now the
solar manager at the Philadelphia
Energy Authority. She and her
team won a $1.25 million grant
from the Department of Energy.
Michaela Shuchman produced
and starred in Behold Her, a play
exploring female Jewish beauty,
as part of Philly’s 2018 Fringe
Festival.
Kelly Smemo is pursuing a
master’s in higher education in
Boston, where she hangs out with
Ravenna Thielstrom whenever
possible. She’s also formed a deep
cat-sitting partnership with Tess
Amram ’15. Her podcast endeavors
with eternal partner in crime
Richard Monari have only grown in
scope and absurdity as they now
host two shows every other week.
Last summer, she road-tripped
THE BCC
IS TURNING 50!
What does the
Black Cultural Center
mean to you?
bulletin@swarthmore.edu
through Canada with Elaine Zhou
and was a counselor at Magic
Wizard camp on Swarthmore’s
campus with Leonie Cohen, Emma
Puranen ’18, and Nathan Graf.
Bennett Thompson is in the
final year of natural resources
master’s at the University of New
Hampshire, where he studies soil
biogeochemistry in agriculture—or,
in other words, looks for ways
for farmers to get the most out of
healthy soil. He’s happy to have
attended Alumni Weekend last
year and to have seen various
Swatties across the country.
RJ Tischler lives in West Philly
and is the debate coordinator
for ASAP/After School Activities
Partnerships. His band put out an
EP in October.
PJ Trainor officially finished a
master’s in applied mathematics
at Johns Hopkins. He still works at
the Applied Physics Lab and lives
in Baltimore, where he sees Luke
Barbano ’18. He also spends a lot
of time in Boston and visits some
Swatties there.
Jonathan White and Heather
Zhou moved to LA, where
Jonathan started a bioengineering
Ph.D. at Caltech and Heather
started a statistics Ph.D. at UCLA.
They celebrated their first wedding
anniversary just after starting
classes.
Last year, Elaine Zhou finished
an education master’s, left her
teaching job in Kentucky, and
embarked on that aforementioned
epic road trip with Kelly Smemo.
For the remainder of the summer,
Elaine visited East Coast Swatties,
including Annie Tvetenstrand,
Joe Boninger, Abby Holtzman,
and Sarah Geselowitz. She now
teaches English in Sevilla, Spain,
and has no plans to leave!
2018
Editor’s note: Your class needs
a scribe! If you’re interested in
becoming 2018’s class secretary,
please contact Class Notes Editor
Elizabeth Slocum at classnotes@
swarthmore.edu.
their light lives on
our friends will never be forgotten
expanded tributes at bulletin.swarthmore.edu
Charles Nuttle ’35
Charles, a World War II Army veteran,
avid tennis player, and devoted golfer—
who even once landed a hole in one—
died Jan. 11, 2019.
A lifelong New York Yankees fan,
Chuck held season tickets for years and
had seen all the greats play, including
Babe Ruth. In 2001, Chuck married the
love of his life, Charlotte, whom he had
dated when they were in their 20s. They
met again by accident while visiting
their mothers at a hospital, rekindled
their friendship, and were married on
Valentine’s Day when they were in their
60s.
Thomas Findley ’42
A research chemist who held 64 patents,
including one for epoxy, Thomas died
Nov. 1, 2018.
Opposed to materialism, Tom
traveled the world in a self-made canoe,
driven by the motto “Affluence is the
disease, poverty is the cure.” He settled
in Canada, where he lived for 30 years
in a cabin with no electricity or running
water, using solar panels to power his
computer.
Jane Hand Bonthron ’43
An English major, proud Navy veteran
and devoted volunteer who also enjoyed
playing bridge and golf, Jane died Dec.
15, 2018.
“My mother loved Swarthmore and
was an ardent supporter of the College,”
daughter Susan Jane Bonthron ’70
wrote in a tribute. “When she graduated
as an English major in 1943, she had
no definite career plans but knew
she didn’t want to end up at Katy
Gibbs as a secretary, so she marched
right down to the enlistment office in
Philadelphia and signed up for Naval
Officers Training School. When asked
if she would sign up as a seaman if she
wasn’t accepted in officers training, she
announced, ‘No, that would be a waste
of my education!’ She later wondered
Lucinda White Lohr ’43
Lucinda, who exuded energy and
made friends everywhere she went,
died Nov. 5, 2018.
The widow of Freeman Lohr ’43,
Cindy loved opera and was devoted
to the American Friends Service
Committee, League of Women
Voters, and Citizens’ Climate
Lobby, among other causes.
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71
in memoriam
Arthur Dannenberg Jr. ’44
Arthur, a medical researcher,
physician, and expert in the
pathogenesis of pulmonary
tuberculosis, died June 15, 2018.
Known to friends as Ark or
Art—and to his children as Lord
Macrophage—Arthur spent
most of his professional career
at the Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health in Baltimore. He
published extensively, taught
enthusiastically, and lectured
internationally.
“Trace the path of an inhaled
particle through the airway,” his
daughters’ beaus were ordered. His
love of running, swimming, and a
good question lasted his entire life.
how she had the audacity to answer this
way.”
Hilda Knier Findley ’43
A distinguished mathematics teacher
at the high school and university level,
Hilda died Dec. 6, 2018.
Strong, generous, and always there
for her family and friends, Hilda was
also a master gardener who encouraged
her loved ones to reach their full
empowered potential. Wrote her loved
ones: “She told her daughters, using the
language of the times, ‘A true lady can
do anything she wants to do and still
remain a lady.’”
Edward Babbott ’44
Edward, a lifelong educator and
environmentalist who possessed the
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
gift of magic, died Jan. 15, 2019.
Ed earned an Ed.D. from New York
University and found a calling as a high
school director of guidance. An active
member of the National Association
of College Admissions Counselors, for
which he served a term as president,
Ed also loved fly-fishing, photography,
needlepoint, the New York Giants,
Shakespeare, crafting poetic rhyming
toasts, and traveling.
“But what friends may not know,”
his loved ones wrote, “is that Ed was
a magician of the highest order. … His
magic was infectious, making cups
half-full to overflowing; transforming
loneliness to connection; in sum, you
left an encounter with Ed feeling as
though you genuinely mattered.”
Frances Wallin Shaw ’44
Frances, a psychology major who
credited her Quaker education for her
lifelong devotion to helping others, died
Dec. 22, 2018.
A social worker for preschool
children, a dedicated volunteer
furthering the causes of human services
and environmental responsibility, and a
loving mother of four, Frannie focused
her considerable gifts on making the
world a better place for all.
Nancy Grace Roman ’46, H’76
Nancy Grace, a trailblazing astronomer
whose scientific impact was so great
that she was credited as “the mother
of the Hubble telescope,” died Dec. 25,
2018.
Read more, pg. 77.
Robert, a longtime internist at New
York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center who
served as a Navy physician in World
War II, died Aug. 2, 2018.
A founding member of Mount Sinai’s
Department of Endocrinology, Robert
loved taking care of patients and
studying thyroid disease.
Floyd Hower Jr. NV
“Bud,” a retired Navy commander
beloved for his optimism as well as his
skill at pingpong, died Jan. 3, 2018.
Clayton Wright NV
Clayton, who served in World War
II and ultimately transferred from
Swarthmore to Ohio State, died Nov. 13,
2018.
Building an impressive career at Ohio
Power/AEP, “Bill” also devoted himself
to community service and even lived
and worked in Pakistan for two years
to help develop a functional electrical
distribution system there.
Susanne Bradley Bush-Wilcox ’47
A chemistry major at Swarthmore and
a resident of Santa Fe, N.M., Susanne
died Feb. 26, 2018.
Demaris Affleck Carrell ’47
Joan, a homemaker and one-half of a
matchbox marriage to the late Bruce
Hannay ’42, died Jan. 17, 2019.
Joan’s Swarthmore connections
also included daughter Robin Hannay
Nelson ’67, son-in-law Jeremiah Nelson
’65, and grandson Lorrin Nelson ’00.
A dedicated social worker who studied
history and philosophy at Swarthmore,
Katharine died Jan. 17, 2019.
Katy earned a master of social work
from the University of Wisconsin
at Madison and later founded the
Department of Social Work at Salve
Regina College in Newport, R.I. When
the Dr. Martin Luther King Community
Center in Newport was struggling, she
took the helm and ensured its survival.
A passionate, wide-ranging reader,
Katy was also a life member of the Jane
Austen Society of North America.
Calvin, a Navy veteran who spent his
career in the hand tool and hardware
industries, retiring from what is now
Stanley Black and Decker in 1988, died
Dec. 5, 2018.
An avid golfer and former adjunct
professor of marketing, Calvin also
served his community in many ways,
including as a Little League coach,
Board of Education member, and
deacon at First Church of Christ,
Congregational in Farmington, Conn.
Robert Segal ’46
Joan Anderson Hannay ’45
Katharine Hill Ostrander ’46
Calvin Kaiser ’47
Mary Lou Dutton Wolfe ’46
Mary Lou, an avid gardener and
librarian for the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society, died Jan. 2,
2019.
A mother of five, Mary Lou
was also a feature writer for
Green Scene magazine, for which
she enjoyed interviewing and
photographing local gardeners. A
Kendal at Longwood resident, she
loved walking in the woods with
her beloved dachshund.
Demaris, who with husband Jeptha ’45
helped establish Kendal at Oberlin in
Ohio and the Ninde Scholars Program,
died Nov. 19, 2018.
A professional volunteer once
named one of Dayton, Ohio’s “Top
10 Women,” Demmie had also done
testing for special education students,
been a ghost-speechwriter for an
Ohio governor and an assistant to the
director of the Dayton Philharmonic
Orchestra, and worked for both
Swarthmore and Oberlin colleges.
As her loved ones wrote: “Demmie
had a gruff exterior, a great sense of
humor, and was known for nudging
young folks (her own kids, grandkids,
and others) about their life plans,
encouraging them to aspire to learn
more and do more and helping to
connect them to new opportunities.”
Betty-Lou Monett Hess ’47
Betty-Lou, a onetime Stephen Minister
at First Presbyterian Church in
Deerfield, Ill., died Jan. 21, 2014.
Betty enjoyed traveling and loved
her family, especially her three
grandchildren.
Lada Hulka Young ’47
Lada, an information systems analyst
who worked at Princeton and Sunoco,
died Nov. 17, 2018.
A chemistry and economics major,
Lada was also a U.S. delegation
representative while at Swarthmore,
traveling to Czechoslovakia. As a news
correspondent in the 1960s, Lada wrote
articles about political issues and
Prague.
“She was a brilliant woman who was
a superhero to her family and friends,”
her loved ones wrote. “Elegant and
proper in everything she did—from the
way she spoke to how she dressed—she
led those in her life by not only the
spoken word, but by example, as well.”
Janet MacLellan Clark ’48
Janet, a beloved wife and mother active
in community service, died Nov. 24,
2018.
An accomplished gardener who had
a greenhouse in her home for a time,
Janet also loved tennis, Labrador
retrievers, reading, oil painting, bridge,
and needlework. In fact, she made
quilts for each of her grandchildren
when they were born.
Whitney Stearns ’48
Whitney, an engineering major who
served in the Navy during World War II,
died Dec. 5, 2018.
Passionate all his life about sailing
Penobscot Bay, Maine, Whit worked in
sales management for 40 years and as a
volunteer mediator for 25.
Theodore Bromwell ’49
Theodore, former chairman of the
Swarthmore Print Club, who went on
to sell cameras as owner of Bromwell
Marketing, died Nov. 17, 2018.
A “diminutive semi-genius,” friends
wrote in the 1949 Halcyon, “no matter
what, Ted’ll be good at it.”
Sarah Wood Fell ’49
Sarah, an active Quaker and librarian in
Bucks County, Pa., died Jan. 22, 2019.
An avid world traveler, Sally
completed graduate studies at the
Drexel School of Library Science and
served as a clerical librarian for the
United Nations.
Sally also volunteered for the
American Red Cross, working with the
Philip Gilbert ’48
Philip, an inspirational Quaker light
who was predeceased by his matchbox
wife, Alice Higley Gilbert ’48, died
Nov. 28, 2018.
Beloved for the way he lived every
aspect of his life to help others, Phil
was devoted to serving the Religious
Society of Friends on the national
and local levels, including acting as
honorary curator of Friends Historical
Library and an advocate and ally for
Swarthmore College.
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
73
in memoriam
Margaret Thomson Colgan ’49
Margaret, the first woman to serve
as president of the Rochester
Academy of Medicine in New York,
died April 7, 2018.
A distinguished pediatrician,
educator, and administrator,
Meg loved art history, skiing, and
spending time with her family.
“Her indomitable spirit infused
everything she attempted,” wrote
her loved ones. “She exuded
confidence, had an infectious
laugh, and a generous spirit.”
blood division for more than 40 years.
Deborah Welles Hardy ’49
Deborah, who attended Swarthmore
for two years before transferring to
Stanford, died Oct. 23, 2018.
An internationally respected
academic and longtime professor of
history at the University of Wyoming,
Deborah spoke four languages, was a
gifted pianist and gourmet cook, and
inspired all who knew her with her
strength, wisdom, and laughter.
William Schweikle ’49
A NASA engineer and Florida resident,
William died Oct. 9, 2017.
A member of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, William
loved to farm, garden, and spend time
with his family.
William T. Battin ’50
William, a professor who was
instrumental in starting Binghamton
74
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
University’s environmental studies
department, died Jan. 30, 2019.
William earned a Ph.D. from the
University of Minnesota, majoring in
zoology with a minor in physiological
chemistry, and taught at Wesleyan
University, Simpson College, and
Harpur College (now Binghamton
University), retiring as a distinguished
professor in biology and environmental
studies. Among his interests were
reading, art, music, opera, gardening,
and dining out in a wide range of
cuisine.
years there: hardware sales manager,
bicycle servicer, Mobil Oil distributor,
commercial trap fisherman, and
environmental specialist with the V.I.
Bureau of Fish and Wildlife. John even
discovered a new species of scorpion
that was named after him: Heteronebo
yntemai.
“His legacy to his children,” loved
ones wrote, “was an abiding belief
in kindness, honesty, fairness, and a
curiosity and respect for the natural
world.”
Laurence Stabler Jr. ’50
Laurence, an engineering major known
to friends as Jan or Larry, died Jan. 5,
2019.
A Quaker who joined the Merchant
Marine in World War II, Jan later
had several careers—as a building
contractor, in industrial and residential
real estate, and manufacturing
communication equipment. He loved
art and music—especially opera,
bagpipes, and Ragtime—and was a
member of the Barnacle Busters dive
club in Gainesville, Fla. A skilled
craftsman, Jan could build anything
with wood, metal, and stone.
Nancy, a lifelong learner and traveler
brimming with exuberance, wit, and
charm, died Dec. 2, 2018.
“She served as devoted caregiver
for her mother, sister Patricia, and
husband Marsh, but her favorite career
was grandma extraordinaire,” her loved
ones wrote.
“She attended Little League and
soccer games, ballet recitals, track
meets, film festivals and plays,
christenings, graduations across state
lines, and was blessed to share in the
lives of Sam, Corey, Geoff, Jane, Audrie,
Gemma, Morgan, Oliver, and greatgranddaughter Addy.”
John Yntema ’51
Marlee Turner ’54
An engineer and Merchant Marine
veteran who lived for many years in the
U.S. Virgin Islands, John died Jan. 18,
2019.
John designed and built the family
house outside Frederiksted, St. Croix,
and worked numerous jobs over his 33
David Henderson ’61
A beloved Cornell University professor
emeritus of mathematics, David died
Dec. 20, 2018.
An influential educator and author
of multiple textbooks, David also
spearheaded countless workshops and
initiatives to help elementary students
and secondary-school teachers learn
math in creative, active ways. “He was
an outstanding mathematician, but
also a great educator and an inspiring
person to work with,” a colleague said.
Nancy Pawell Norris ’52
Marlee, who ultimately received a
bachelor’s degree from Stanford, died
Nov. 28, 2018.
Quaker-raised and a mother of
three, Marlee co-founded a public
relations consulting firm and later
became an owner of Northern Pines
Gloria Chomiak Atamanenko ’55
A social worker and lifelong activist
and volunteer who nourished people
around her with love, generosity, and
a caring, joyful spirit, Gloria died Oct.
12, 2017.
A lover of nature, literature, and
thoughtful discussion, Gloria “will be
remembered as a bright, shining light,”
her loved ones wrote, “and a fierce but
compassionate advocate for those less
fortunate, in the various communities
where she lived and worked.”
Health Resort and Bed and Breakfast in
Raymond, Maine. Active in Rotary and
the League of Women Voters, she also
enjoyed canoeing, swimming, working
crossword puzzles, and reading, and
had traveled to 49 of the 50 states.
“Marlee always looked for the
positive in every encounter,” loved ones
wrote. “Although she enjoyed a good
argument, she never held a grudge, and
looked ahead to a better future.”
James Anderson ’56
A Bronze Star recipient whose
Swarthmore studies were interrupted
by two wars, James died Jan. 6, 2019.
Jim entered Swarthmore in 1943,
but was drafted into World War II late
that year. He returned home in 1945
and joined the Pennsylvania National
Guard, which called him up as a reserve
engineering officer in 1950 as war raged
in Korea. During a detour through
Pittsburgh, his sister Lois set him up
on a blind date with Elizabeth “Betsy”
Wright; 11 days later, they were married
and bound for Seattle, where Jim would
sail for Korea to join an engineering
battalion.
Back stateside, Jim and Betsy
welcomed son Sam ’82 in 1953, then
quickly moved to Swarthmore for Jim
to pursue an engineering degree. Two
more children followed during Jim’s
time as a student, with a fourth born
after graduation.
Jim founded a business importing
European construction materials, and
served as president of the 95th Division
Association for a number of years, often
speaking publicly about his own—and
others’—experiences of war.
John Seaman ’56
John, an eclectic New York-based
photographer and writer, died Feb. 5,
2019.
Following the 2012 release of John’s
self-published memoir, Bloody But
Unbowed, the Phoenix wrote: “A selfproclaimed atheist, Naturist, nude
photographer, recovering schizophrenic
and Swarthmore graduate, Seaman and
his memoir expose a psyche riddled
with the could-be contents of an
impossible work of fiction.”
Ph.D. from Cornell, died Dec. 16, 2018.
Sally was the first technical editor
for the Ecological Society of America,
a position she held for 25 years. A
devoted member of her Catholic
church, Sally and husband Joel helped
others prepare for marriage—a great
way, they found, to reinforce their own.
Sally also believed strongly in “walking
gently” on the earth, minimizing her
carbon footprint, and appreciating
simple pleasures, like homegrown food
and community.
Bryan Butler ’71
An IBM employee and respected leader
in patent law, who taught courses at
Lincoln Law School and authored a
treatise on patent damages, Bryan died
Oct. 1, 2018.
With an exuberance, wit, curiosity,
and generosity admired by loved ones,
Harriet Nerlove Mischel ’58
Harriet, one of the first women to be
awarded at clinical psychology Ph.D.
from Harvard rather than Radcliffe,
died Sept. 13, 2018.
At Swarthmore, Harriet worked with
pioneering social psychologist Solomon
Asch on children’s development of
understanding of metaphor. She
was a faculty member in Stanford’s
psychology department for more than
15 years before moving to New York,
where she started a clinical therapist
practice and joined the faculty of New
York Presbyterian Hospital.
Rasaba Sudarkasa-Kyasa ’66
Rasaba, a Michigan resident who went
by Delmer Scudder at Swarthmore, died
May 5, 2018.
Sarah Graetz Gagnon ’69
Sarah, a homesteading ecologist with a
Candace Putter ’69
A social worker who advocated
tirelessly for the vulnerable,
Candace died Sept. 11, 2016.
As a Stoneleigh Fellow from
2008 to 2011, Candace established
the Pennsylvania Academic
and Career Technical Training
Alliance, a coalition of juvenile
justice facilities voluntarily
committed to improving education
and training services for youths in
their care. The coalition operates
within Pennsylvania’s Bureau of
Juvenile Justice Services and has
more than 50 affiliates across the
state.
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
75
looking back
in memoriam
Alison Wong Noto ’78
Thomas Morrison III ’75
Thomas, one of the founders of the
Black Student Union at Swarthmore,
died Dec. 13, 2018.
Building an impressive career
that included roles as a Wall Street
brokerage firm vice president; city
manager for Plainfield, N.J.; and
director of finance for the city of
Hartford, Conn., Thomas also loved to
play golf and was especially proud of
his family, including his father’s legacy
as a Tuskegee Airman.
Peter Cook ’71
Peter, a lawyer, savvy investor, and
financial strategist, died Jan. 12, 2019.
An avid photographer and ocean
lover who grew up sailing the waters
of Frenchman Bay, Maine, Peter also
enjoyed traveling with his second wife,
Thea Duell ’72, before she and Peter
both developed terminal illnesses in
2014; Thea died last June.
“He will be remembered,” loved ones
wrote of Peter, “for his kindness, sense
of humor, way with words, and the ever
present twinkle in his green eyes.”
Lewis Shuster ’77
Lewis, an influential director of more
than a dozen life sciences companies,
died Dec. 13, 2018.
“Lew was a tremendously thoughtful
and insightful board member,” his
colleagues at Principia Biopharma
Inc. wrote, “but more importantly, he
was a kind and generous individual
who brought a great deal of passion
and energy to our industry and to the
pursuit of our mission.”
John Palmer ’71
John, a Florida resident who majored
in history at Swarthmore and worked
in the insurance industry, died Dec. 19,
2018.
Julius Nicholas ’73
Julius, an electronic engineer, family
man, and Army veteran of Korea and
Vietnam, died Jan. 10, 2019.
A staff writer for many years at the
Delaware County Daily Times, Julius
also taught computer classes and was a
transportation provider for the Chester
County (Pa.) Housing Authority.
Self-taught in many areas of the arts
and sciences, he was often contracted
for his services as a singer, composer,
portrait artist, photographer, painter,
and computer technician.
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Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
Alexandre Michel Namour ’86
Alexandre, a New York Police
Department sheriff and one-half of a
matchbox marriage to Leah Schanzer
Namour ’92, died Feb. 3, 2019.
Bryan Berg ’97
An economics major at Swarthmore
and a Florida resident, Bryan died Jan.
25, 2018.
Emre Eren ’99
Emre, a Swarthmore sociology &
anthropology graduate who lived in
Istanbul, died March 4, 2018.
George Balgobin ’00
George, a sociology Ph.D. student at
Northwestern, where he also earned a
law degree, died Jan. 30, 2019.
A passionate defender of human
rights, and a lover of music and cooking,
George had been writing a dissertation
that blended ideas about criminal law
with political socialization theory. “As a
searcher for those ideas and truths that
substantiate personal values,” loved
ones wrote, “George had an open mind
and heart and was always willing to
re-examine his beliefs in the light of life
experiences.”
Wonju Kim ’02
Martha Loukides Walker ’86
Martha, a mother of three and a
social worker with a passion for
helping the underserved, died Jan.
24, 2019.
A longtime elder at Bethel
Christian Church in Bristol, Conn.,
where her husband, Chris Walker
’79, is a pastor, Martha also enjoyed
gardening, hiking, and canoeing.
+
Wonju, a research laboratory technician
at the University of Minnesota, where
he received a degree in economics, died
Nov. 4, 2013.
An accomplished musician, excelling
at classical violin, jazz saxophone, and
piano, Wonju also enjoyed gardening
and Bible study.
Marcus Barnette ’09
A sociology & anthropology major at
Swarthmore, Marcus died in April 2018.
to report a death notice, email records@swarthmore.edu
NASA / COURTESY FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY
Bryan delved deeply into interests
including photography, sailing, skiing,
scuba, tennis, golf, history, philosophy,
theater, and music.
A former New York and Philadelphia
architect and a Rhode Island garden
club president, Alison died Nov. 3, 2018.
Devoted to her daughters, her
matchbox husband, Richard Noto ’77,
and her dogs, Alison had a self-effacing
manner that belied how talented,
intelligent, strong, funny, and caring she
was—which only made her loved ones
treasure her more.
WHEN ASTRONOMER Nancy
Grace Roman ’46, H’76 died Dec. 25,
her pioneering spirit and scientific
legacy were memorialized across
the globe. One of the first female
executives at NASA, Roman was
instrumental in the development of
the Hubble Space Telescope.
“We were always questioning,” she
said. Lego even created a Women of
NASA collection featuring Roman.
In The Meaning of Swarthmore,
Roman said the greatest gift she
received from Swarthmore was the
ability and eagerness to learn new
things. “The College gave me a good
background in the fundamentals
of my field that permitted me to
understand problems, techniques,
and instruments well outside my
research experience,” she said. “I am
the only person I know who did not
have any English courses in college,
but writing seminar papers was a
great learning experience. I think my
biggest asset in my NASA job was the
ability to speak and write easily and
well.”
SPRING 2019
/ Swarthmore College Bulletin
77
spoken word
GREAT
EXPLORATIONS
by Kate Campbell
KENNETH E. SHARPE, the William
R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political
Science, retires this spring after
teaching political philosophy, practical
ethics, Latin American politics, and
foreign policy for more than 40 years.
Surrounded by books and artifacts, he
discussed his life and Swarthmore.
How do you feel about leaving?
It’s very difficult—this is a dream job.
How can one not love teaching students
who are so committed to learning
and inquiry and so compassionate?
They really want to understand and
then transfer that knowledge to the
world. I’ve never had a dull moment in
terms of teaching. The students were
always teaching me by the questions
they asked—for me that’s always made
78
Swarthmore College Bulletin /
SPRING 2019
teaching a process of social engagement
and collaboration, not a one-way street.
Swarthmore enabled me to teach and
research in a broad range of fields,
and the students helped me puzzle
things out. I couldn’t have done what I
did without the support to explore, or
without the reflectiveness and probing
minds and open hearts of the students
and my colleagues. My 45 years as a
teacher here have also been 45 years as
a student. It has been quite wonderful
for me.
What have been among your
favorite research topics?
The topics that captured my
imagination and concern over the
years have changed. Theoretical
concerns about the balance between
human agency and structural
determination—how to create the
spaces for positive human action and
wise decision-making—have been
another. A third has been substantive
concerns about things like when
and how the misuse of political and
economic power is successfully
challenged, the erosion of democracy
and the rise of authoritarianism, the
How has communicating across cultures enriched your experiences?
I’ve loved doing field work and
research on every project I have done
and relished the active deliberation
and reflection with the colleagues and
students I’ve worked with, and become
friends with. Each topic has taken
me down unexpected trails—through
coffee fields in the highlands of the
Dominican Republic, on foot and on
mule; across the manufacturing floor
of automotive plants; into executive
suites and prosecutors’ offices; and
into legislative and bureaucratic
offices in Washington, Mexico City,
and Central America. Whether it’s
talking to farmers or interviewing
Contra attack survivors in Nicaragua,
or talking to policymakers and
politicians and Salvadoran guerrillas,
or shadowing doctors in a palliative
care unit, I’ve had to teach myself how
to talk to nonacademics and learn from
them. Quite often I found that solving
one problem forced another onto my
research agenda.
What were some pivotal moments
in your career?
Studying peasant organizing and
consciousness-raising in the
Dominican Republic led me to
explore the international political
economies of coffee and automobile
manufacturing. Studying U.S. drug war
policy in Latin America led me to shift
my focus to the politics that sustained
a drug war in America by turning a
public health problem into a criminal
problem and wreaking havoc, while
being destined, inevitably, to fail. Forty
years ago, I never would have imagined
my current focus on practical
wisdom—how the major institutions
we work in can be designed to corrode
or encourage the judgment and virtue
we need to flourish. These research
experiences, as frustrating as they
have often been, have also been
deeply moving and powerful learning
experiences.
LAURENCE KESTERSON
LAURENCE KESTERSON
causes and alternatives of irrational
government policies that have led to
foreign interventions and to the war
on drugs.
in this issue
BEAUTIFUL COMPLEXITY
36
Full STEAM Ahead
At the intersection of the arts
and sciences, businesses thrive.
by Elizabeth Slocum
This tiny toy dog, made
with a quilling tool, arrived
from India and captured our
imaginations. STEAMventer
Disha Katharani ’06 has brought
new life to an ancient art form.
MOMENT IN TIME
On campus Jan. 23,
students held a candlelight vigil
for those who have suffered
while promoting equity
and inclusion.
SPRING 2019
Periodical Postage
PAID
Philadelphia, PA
and Additional
Mailing Offices
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306
www.swarthmore.edu
Just ask these lifelong friends profiled on pg. 42
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN
SWARTHMORE FRIENDSHIPS CAN LAST FOREVER.
SPRING 2019
Remember your good times at
Swarthmore—and make sure
students experience their very
own—by investing in the
College’s future through your
will, a gift that pays you income
for life, or a charitable
distribution from an IRA.
CREDIT
giftplanning@swarthmore.edu
866-526-4438
swarthmore.edu/plannedgiving
GLOBAL CHANGE MAKERS
p20
(SEA)STAR GAZERS
p30
NEW STEAM DREAMERS
p36
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2019-04-01
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
2019-04-01
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.