A selection of recent mentions of �ֲ���ý and �ֲ���ý people in the news media.

Karen Hastie Williams ’66

Karen Hastie Williams, barrier-breaking lawyer, dies at 76 — The New York Times

News outlets around the country reported on the trailblazing achievements of Black lawyer Karen Hastie Williams, who died July 7 at age 76.

In 1974, Hastie Williams became the first Black woman hired as a clerk on the Supreme Court, working for Justice Thurgood Marshall.

“She was the first woman and the first person of color to make partner at Crowell & Moring, a white-shoe law firm in Washington, D.C., and she repeated the same achievement on a series of corporate and nonprofit boards,” according to The New York Times.

She and her husband were “among the capital’s power elite, part of a generation of Black professionals who had entered the establishment in the post-civil rights era. Mrs. Williams made it a point to give back. At Crowell, on corporate boards and in a long list of nonprofit positions, she set herself up as one of the city’s leading mentors for women and people of color in legal and government circles, propelling dozens of promising young lawyers into successful careers.”

Read the stories:

• “,” The New York Times, Aug. 8, 2021
• “” The Washington Post, July 24, 2021
• “,” LDF, Aug. 11, 2021
• “,” DC Bar, July 27, 2021

Al Fereshetian and Curtis Johnson, �ֲ���ý athletics

Curtis Johnson taking baton from Al Fereshetian as �ֲ���ý men’s track and cross country coach — Lewiston Sun Journal

Speaking to Wil Kramlich of the Lewiston Sun Journal, Al Fereshetian used a track analogy to explain his decision to retire after 26 years as head coach of men’s cross country and track and field.

“You know, you want to pass that baton,” said Fereshetian, who has been .

If one of the runners in a relay race gets too tired, Fereshetian explained, “then you almost are stumbling to pass that exchange, and that doesn’t make for…a very successful relay. 

“So, I feel like I’ve been able to maintain a good pace up to this point, but I can see if I hung in there too much longer I’d probably be hitting that point where I wouldn’t be able to keep moving that baton the way I want to — and the way it needs to for the team to be successful.”

• Read the story: “,” Lewiston Sun Journal, June 26, 2021

John Baughman, politics faculty

Celebrities running for office are boosted by the political moment — Teen Vogue

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman tells Teen Vogue writer Tyler Baum that celebrities with little political experience who run for office can take advantage of the growth of “negative partisanship.” 

That’s the tendency, explains Baughman, of many voters “not simply to support their own party…but to actually vote against the other party’s candidates.” 

When a voter is motivated to vote against one candidate, it lowers the bar for what it takes to earn the vote, says Baughman, opening the door for a celebrity or other newcomer.

• Read the story: “,” Teen Vogue, July 22, 2021

Alexandria Onuoha ’20

Protecting Black women college students from “far-right misogynoir” — Suffolk University News

In a Q&A interview with Suffolk University News, Alexandria Onuoha ’20, a doctoral student in applied developmental psychology at the university, talked about researching the impact of far-right ideologies on Black woman college students.

Using ideas developed by feminist scholar Moya Bailey, who coined the term “misogynoir” to describe the racist misogyny directed toward Black women, Onuoha is exploring what she calls “far-right misogynoir,” the “direct hate and prejudice towards Black women from far-right groups and individuals.”

In her psychology studies at �ֲ���ý, she says, “at first I didn’t see myself reflected as a Black woman.” As her coursework and skills deepened, “I learned I can study things about my community in a scientific way that can impact change.” 

That culminated in a senior thesis on “attitudes toward Black LBGTQIA+ individuals and whether religious commitment affects perceptions toward them. I became more and more interested in the Black women college experience.”

• Read the story: “,'” Suffolk University news, April 8, 2021

Andrew Kennedy, chemistry and biochemistry faculty

�ֲ���ý College professor guiding students through COVID-19 data — Lewiston Sun Journal

In a Q&A with the Lewiston Sun Journal, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Andrew Kennedy explains how two students inspired a data-visualization project to track COVID statistics among schools of the New England Small College Athletic Conference during the 2020–21 academic year.

Jillian Serrano ’21 and Wuyue Zhou ’21 were student researchers in the Kennedy lab, which focuses on epigenetics: how genes can change their function without being altered themselves.

The pair “wanted to have a sense for how outbreaks would unfold at other, similarly sized colleges that were also coming back to their campuses in-person,” Kennedy said.

The result was a dashboard updated daily with information about COVID in the NESCAC. The two students “did everything,” Kennedy says. “I would simply meet with them daily for data visualization and to discuss what the data might mean.”

The power of data became clear in late March, when �ֲ���ý saw a surge in student cases. Based on data from similar spikes and lockdowns at other NESCAC campuses during the year, “it was predictable that a lockdown [at �ֲ���ý] would be able to arrest the spread of the virus on campus without exceeding available isolation housing for infected students.”

From April 1 to 13, �ֲ���ý implemented in-room restrictions for all students, which stopped the surge.

• Read the story: “,” Lewiston Sun Journal, July 25, 2021

Amy Belding Brown ’69

An Irish immigrant saves the work of a brilliant poet in Emily’s House — Booktrib

Author Amy Belding Brown ’69 is a “master of historical fiction,” says a Booktrib review describing Brown’s new novel, Emily’s House, as “emotionally satisfying because of Brown’s exquisite writing.” 

The novel explores the relationship between poet Emily Dickinson and her confidante, Margaret Maher, the Irish maid responsible for saving Dickinson’s work from certain destruction, albeit against the poet’s expressed wishes.

• Read the story: “” Booktrib, Aug. 3, 2021

Julia Sleeper ’08 and Kimberly Sullivan ’13

Tree Street Youth celebrates 10 years of community, safety and hope — Lewiston Sun Journal

The Lewiston Sun Journal looked back at the humble beginnings of Tree Street Youth, founded as a summer activities camp in 2011 by Julia Sleeper ’08 and Kim Sullivan ’13 and now a robust nonprofit offering a range of youth-centered programs and partnerships.

“The building where Tree Street Youth started in 2011 had been a paint shop,” writes Sun Journal intern Ellie Wolfe ’23. “After that, it was a preschool. Then it was a big, empty building.” 

Sleeper, who is now Tree Street’s executive director, recalls how she and Sullivan “painted it up, designed a summer camp, and ended up running our very first summer program in 2011, with eight teenagers from the neighborhood as street leaders.”

• Read the story: “,” Lewiston Sun Journal, July 18, 2021

Jenn Lemkin Bouchard ’99

Jenn Bouchard returns to Mystic Saturday — The Westerly Sun

The Sun of Westerly, R.I., profiled Jenn Bouchard ’99, author of the novel First Course, when she returned to the area for a book signing at Banks Square Books in Mystic.

Bouchard spent part of her childhood in nearby Gales Ferry, Conn., when her father was executive officer of the USS Groton submarine in the mid-1980s. “Coming back is a bit of a homecoming for me,” Bouchard said. 

Bouchard’s novel tells the story of 24-year-old Janie Whitman, who after a series of life-altering catastrophes retreats to her family’s summer house in Maine, where she seeks solace and stability among family, friends, and food, and finds romance along the way.

As a notes, the book is “about food — and a lot more.”

The novel is set in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. that Maine has been a touchstone since her first college visit to �ֲ���ý.

“I had moved every two or three years throughout my life due to my father’s Navy career as a naval submariner, and I was so excited about the prospect of staying somewhere for four years.”

• Read the story: “,” The Westerly Sun, July 22, 2021

Nancy Hohmann ’68

Belle, the Oxford Hills therapy dog, knows when someone needs her — Advertiser Democrat

A feature story in the Advertiser Democrat of Norway, Maine, notes that “Nancy Hohmann and her therapy dog, Belle, are regulars at schools and nursing homes around the Oxford Hills of western Maine.”

Hohmann and Belle began their routine after Hohmann saw “how much pleasure a visiting therapy dog brought to her mother during her final days.” The retired public school educator “decided doing the same would be a good way to pay it forward: by providing that joy to others.” 

Hohmann, who has long experience helping people gain confidence by engaging with animals, including therapeutic horseback riding, describes Belle as “three-quarters golden retriever and one-quarter Irish setter craziness, which makes her all the more interesting,”

• Read the story: “,” Advertiser Democrat, July 28, 2021

Allen Kendunga ’18

Kickstarting Rwandan careers with entrepreneurship training — Ladderworks

In a Q&A story with Ladderworks, Allen Kendunga talks about founding Talent Match in Rwanda to help college students develop entrepreneurial skills through career development programs.  

“There is a saying that ‘to whom much is given, much is expected,’ and I believe I have been given much, so it’s high time I gave back,” Kendunga said. “I also strongly believe that the right education and platforms can transform lives. I have seen firsthand what young people can do if they are given the tools, information, and support to transform their communities.”

• Read the story: “,” Ladderworks, Aug. 8, 2021

Victoria Wyeth ’01

Victoria Wyeth: art in action — The Hunt

“Some people might resent being charged with propagating their family legacy,” writes Michael Bradley in a profile of Victoria Wyeth in The Hunt magazine. “Not Wyeth. She covets the role and enjoys the opportunity to educate people about her grandfather [Andrew Wyeth], his father — famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth—and her uncle, Jamie. 

“She introduces them to others on her terms, not as someone whose life is tied completely to some ancestral mandate. ‘When you come from a famous family, you can change who you are or be true to yourself,’ she says. ‘I choose the latter.’”

• Read the story: “,” The Hunt, Spring 2021

Maybe it expressed a sergeant’s snark toward the officer corps. Or a budding scientist’s thrill at a big find.

Either way, the hand-lettered label that future �ֲ���ý professor William H. Sawyer Jr. affixed to one of his World War I–era microscope slides gets right to the point: “Gonococci. Highest ranking officer in Marseille. W.H.S.”

Translation: The slide contained Gonococci bacteria that, presumably, had been cultured from a specimen provided by an Army bigwig stationed in Marseille. Which meant the bigwig had tested positive for gonorrhea — “the clap.”

We presume this to be true thanks to the discovery last spring of a trove of teaching slides in a storage room in Carnegie Science Hall, many prepared by Sawyer, a 1913 �ֲ���ý graduate, when he worked in an Army lab in the French city during the war.

Sawyer’s few dozen slides, each with his handwritten “W.H.S.,” feature a veritable What’s What of deadly pathogens that cause diseases like meningitis, diphtheria, and anthrax. (Yikes! Anthrax!? But don’t worry: All the samples are “fixed,” meaning dead, inert, and non-revivable.)

Malachowsky, who worked with a colleague to scan and digitize the old slides, says that the stained bacteria on some of the professionally prepared slides have faded over time. But the bacteria fixed on Sawyer’s slides are still visible more than a century later. “Some of that is luck,” she says. “Some are techniques. Either way, he did a good job.”

Not that Sawyer’s skill would surprise anyone. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate, he earned a master’s degree from Cornell before attending one of the , to learn the basics of bacteriology and pathology as the country ramped up to enter the Great War. After the war, he served as a �ֲ���ý biology professor, retiring in 1962.

After training, Sawyer, by then a sergeant in the U.S. Army, was deployed to the port of Marseille, where one of the Army’s 11 “base sections” were funneling war supplies from incoming ships to the front lines, everything from tins of corned beef and instant coffee to trench mortars and machine guns.

These clips show what life was like in November 1918 where William Sawyer was stationed: U.S. Army Base Section No. 6. in Marseille, France, including unloading freight, such as rations and vehicles — and playing some basketball.

In Marseille, Sawyer joined the section’s laboratory, one of some 300 labs that the Army aggressively deployed throughout Europe to identify and fight the infectious diseases that always accompany armed forces.

Among soldiers, the one-two punch during World War I was influenza and bacterial pneumonia, the latter often as a secondary infection. American combat deaths in World War I totaled 53,402, of influenza and pneumonia by the end of 1918.

Meanwhile, sexually transmitted diseases cost the Army some seven million person-days and led to 10,000 men being discharged. Indeed, among Sawyer’s slides, Gonococci specimens are by far the most common, says Anna Marie Bowsher, a research technician who worked with Malachowsky to image the slides, preserving the evidence of Sawyer’s wartime work for future generations.

“The slides themselves are interesting but you don’t really know anything until you put a slide under the microscope,” says Bowsher. “Even today, there’s a lot of things that we don’t know until we look under a microscope. I think that’s really cool.”

Bowsher is also captivated by the fact that Sawyer cared enough about his work to bring the slides back to �ֲ���ý. “I can’t imagine ever having the opportunity to do what he did — work in a military base lab — so it was great to live vicariously through the experience” of imaging the slides.

All those Gonococci slides suggest that the disease was widely present at Base Section No. 6, says Bowsher, who works in the �ֲ���ý lab of Travis Gould and Paula Schlax. Only the “highest ranking officer” slide has such a detail on its label.

Maybe, says Bowsher with a chuckle, Sawyer notated the officer on his label to record a brush with fame, “like seeing a celebrity at the mall. Maybe he was like, ‘I got to interact with someone I never would have met otherwise by taking his sample and looking at it.’”

(And who exactly was the “highest-ranking officer” with the clap? An educated guess says it may have been Col. Melvin W. Rowell, who, as Army records indicate, stepped down from his base section command in March 1919, when the station was still active.)

Captivated by the science and history of Sawyer’s slides, Kennedy has been pondering “what it means to find these slides, many prepared during the 1918 pandemic, during today’s pandemic.”

From a biomedical perspective, “we’re in a very different place now.” In 1918, scientists didn’t yet know about viruses. “Now, we saw accurate illustrations of the new coronavirus even before it was detected in the U.S.”

But politically, “we’re in a similar place” when it comes to the pandemic, Kennedy says. “In 1918, the mask became a political symbol, and there were riots about it — which always seems to happen with disease: People tend to get frustrated and turn on one another politically.”

These days, Kennedy is teaching students the newest concepts in neuroscience, such as the physical underpinnings of our memories and emotions. He has pondered what slides Sawyer probably created in Marseille but did not keep for his �ֲ���ý teaching.

In 1918, school was still out on what organism was causing the pandemic. “There was considerable debate in the scientific community, , about the cause of influenza,” says Kennedy.

At the time, many scientists thought that Pfeiffer’s bacillus caused influenza because the bacteria was found in the lungs of people sick with the flu. (Scientists were so confident of the bacterial cause that Pfeiffer’s was renamed Haemophilus influenzae.) But as it turned out that the bacterium was only a secondary invader after the influenza virus.

For a scientist during wartime, the ability to culture and mount bacteria on a slide for examination under a microscope “was seen as a critical part of the health system,” says Kennedy. With Sawyer in Marseille at the height of the pandemic, there’s little question that he was trying to culture H. influenzae. Given the overall high quality of Sawyer’s other slides, says Kennedy, “I’m confident he was probably able to culture H. influenzae,” which is notoriously difficult.

And some of the pathogens that Sawyer cultured and mounted in 1918–19 in Marseille were doozies: Bacillus anthracis (which causes anthrax), Balantidium coli (balantidiasis), Corynebacterium diphtheriae (diphtheria), Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis), and (meningitis).

But no H. influenzae is to be found. Kennedy’s theory is that “he probably brought them back but then didn’t keep them when it was found out that H. influenzae was not the cause of influenza.”

What scientists and other scholars do, explains Kennedy, is filter out what’s no longer thought to accurately explain our world. “I don’t tell my students, ‘We’re going to learn something today that’s no longer true.’ We don’t teach phrenology,” the idea that skull shape reflects personality. And in Sawyer’s case, he may have quite literally “filtered out the slides that weren’t important for his students.”

As a comparison, Kennedy describes how his neuroscience students are learning concepts that replace filtered-out ideas from just a few years ago. “Fifteen years ago, it was thought that only about 2 percent of the genome was useful and the rest was ‘junk DNA.’ But we know now that, in fact, pretty much besides encoding for proteins.”

“So my students don’t know the ‘junk DNA’ idea — which seems amazing to me, because everyone over the age of 25 knows it well.”

Sawyer, who died in 1963, two decades before Kennedy was born, would be happy to know that his slides have found their way back into a �ֲ���ý classroom.

At �ֲ���ý, even basic courses are taught by professors, not teaching assistants. This fall, Kennedy taught a First-Year Seminar, “The Molecular Brain.”

In part, the course examines how researchers continually adjust their thinking about what’s true, such as how the brain works.

He showed the students Sawyer’s collection. “They thought the slides were wild.” (Indeed, it’s unlikely that any other college has such a collection.)

As Kennedy thought about finding slides during one pandemic that were created during a different one, he wondered what life might’ve been like at �ֲ���ý during the 1918 pandemic — and what future generations will wonder about life at �ֲ���ý in 2020–21.

As a class project, his students journaled about what it’s been like starting adulthood at �ֲ���ý during a pandemic. “We’re going to seal these journals — I’m writing one, too — into a time capsule, and they have to design a mechanism by which this capsule is hand-delivered to a member of the �ֲ���ý community of their choosing 100 years from now.”

Jack Allard ’16

Former All-American lacrosse star released from hospital after long coronavirus battle — multiple outlets

On April 17, Jack Allard ’16, a two-time All-American lacrosse player and politics major at �ֲ���ý, walked out of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania as medical staff applauded.

Jack Allard ’16 (left) and classmate Charlie Hildebrand celebrate a big �ֲ���ý lacrosse win over Tufts in April 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Allard’s dramatic story — his weeks long fight with COVID-19 — had drawn steady attention from the national media but this happy chapter was particularly well-chronicled.

Not long after first showing COVID-19 symptoms in mid-March, Allard was hospitalized in New Jersey. He was placed on a ventilator and later airlifted to Philadelphia to take part in a trial for an experimental treatment. There, his condition improved day-by-day.��

https://twitter.com/RHSBOYSLACROSSE/status/1251141155640741888

Due in part to Allard’s young age and otherwise good health, his family speaking out, and his high school and college lacrosse teams rallying around him, his story drew international attention.

“He took personal responsibility for lifting the Bobcats to national competitiveness,” wrote Lasagna. “Most importantly, his teammates will tell you that he is a better and more giving person, a more caring mentor than he is an attackman.”

Five weeks ago, former standout and All-American Jack Allard was confirmed positive for . He was put on a ventilator. Last Thursday, he walked out of the hospital. For Jack and the hundreds more who have recovered, we’re optimistic.

— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy)

From his family’s home in Ridgewood, N.J., Allard told Matt DaSilva of US Lacrosse Magazine that his story should serve as a cautionary tale.����

“We need to listen to our scientists and our doctors when they give us warnings and give us guidance,” he said. “People my age think it’s not going to hit them and, if it does, it’s going to be a slight flu. That’s clearly not true. It took me to my knees.”

Read the stories:

• “,” US Lacrosse Magazine, April 22, 2020��
• “,” USA Today, April 19, 2020��

Andrew Mountcastle

�ֲ���ý professor leads effort to print coronavirus protective gear — Sun Journal��

Steve Collins of the Lewiston Sun Journal reported on an initiative led by Assistant Professor of Biology Andrew Mountcastle to 3D-print face shield visors to protect medical personnel from the coronavirus.

The Androscoggin County Emergency Management Agency is distributing the shields, which faculty and staff from �ֲ���ý, Bowdoin, Colby, and other institutions with access to 3D-printers are creating.��

“I feel it’s the least I can do to support members of my community and state who need it most,” Mountcastle said.��

Read the story:��

• “,” Sun Journal, April 3, 2020��

See also:��

• “Shields up! �ֲ���ý helping to ease PPE shortages,” �ֲ���ý News, April 3, 2020��

Jane Costlow��

In teaching stories of disaster, hope lies hidden in plain sight — Literary Hub

Writing in Lit Hub, Jane Costlow, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, reflected on teaching a course, “Catastrophe and Hope,” during the very kind of catastrophe her students read about.��

As an added layer, this semester is Costlow’s last as an instructor before she retires. For her, there will be no opportunity to incorporate the present moment into her future teaching. But she’s trying to convey to her students that upheaval like this need not be defeating.��

“My experience of life first in the Soviet Union and then in post-Soviet Russia had convinced me … that people in extraordinarily constrained political and economic conditions make lives of dignity, lives inflected with moments of joy and commitment,” says Costlow, whose background is in Russian literature.

“I wanted my students to read a book like Zhivago because it’s about a society that comes apart, lives that are profoundly—viciously—unsettled, and yet there are forms of endurance, too.”��

Read the essay:��

• “,” Literary Hub, April 24, 2020

Ru Freeman ’94

We owe more to our young writers: On the relevance of the workshop — Literary Hub

Also in Lit Hub, writer and writing professor Ru Freeman ’94 argued that creative writing faculty and university writing departments should prioritize not the craft of writing or the parsing of prose, but helping students understand their own experiences within their society and become “fearless” writers who speak truth to power.�� ��

“We must commit, as a collective, to bringing a fierce energy to our classrooms where a few students may develop an intensity of discomfort in their intestines, but most will finally identify their guts as being part of the body they inhabit,” Freeman writes.��

“With passionate effort, our students might yet go from being a concert of crows cawing in the same register, safe within the dull shades of uniformity, to articulating the music and iridescence of a truly creative menagerie.”��

Read the essay:��

• “,” Literary Hub, April 16, 2020

Todd Nelson ’78

T.S. Eliot and Me — The Ellsworth American��

Retired high school English teacher Todd Nelson ’78 wrote a column for the Maine Ellsworth American about reading the poems of T.S. Eliot and, after a fashion, encountering the poet himself.��

Nelson lived for a time near the London home where the late Eliot had lived. Nelson took to the poet in high school and college; Eliot’s “Four Quartets” helped inspire his senior thesis on religious poets.��

“Eliot follows me, bursts from his poems informing my own arc,” Nelson writes. “It’s a life’s work fathoming Eliot’s poems. Why not? It was a life work to write them; to weave the threads of memory, history, family experience, religion, and philosophy into self-study.”��

Read the essay:��

• “,” The Ellsworth American, April 17, 2020

Anne Williams

Piecing together the history of jigsaw puzzles — multiple outlets��

As quarantined Americans turn to jigsaw puzzles to pass the time, several news outlets have turned to Professor Emerita of Economics Anne Williams, an expert on toys and puzzles, for a history lesson.��

The first jigsaw puzzles were made with scroll saws — also known as jig saws — and were intended to teach geography, said Williams, author of The Jigsaw Puzzle, Piecing Together a History.��

During the Great Depression, families used jigsaw puzzles not only for entertainment, but for income. “They set up the saw in their kitchen or their basement, started making jigsaw puzzles and selling them to their neighbors or renting them out through the local drug store,” Williams told CBS News.��

Read the stories:��

• “,” CBS News, March 29, 2020
• “,” NPR, April 5, 2020
• “,” CNBC, April 5, 2020

Phyllis Graber Jensen

Documenting history during the pandemic — UPAA��

In a roundup of the how college photographers were documenting the closure of their campuses, the University Photographers’ Association of America featured work by Phyllis Graber Jensen, director of photography and video for the �ֲ���ý Communications Office.

The �ֲ���ý photography focused on the experiences of and historic transition to remote learning in mid-March.��

Graber Jensen told the UPAA that she was guided by professional training and her instincts. “I didn’t yet have specific directions or assignments, just my usual internal, professional guidance — ‘�ֲ���ý Communications needs to document this’ — plus the unequivocal support from my boss to forge ahead.”

Read the story:

• “,” UPAA��

Henry Colt ’19

In a time of crisis, a twentysomething rookie reporter learns the value of community newspapers — Anchorage Press��

As the coronavirus sent the country into a lockdown and sent people scrambling for information, Henry Colt’s thoughts turned to his recent stint as a reporter for the Daily Sitka Sentinel in Alaska. For this 2019 graduate, the pandemic underscored the value of community newspapers.��

“Newspapers, of which more than one in five have closed in the U.S. during the last 15 years, are as vital to their communities as potlucks, concerts, salmon-sharing and marine-invertebrate-themed house parties are to Sitka. And in Sitka, few things are more vital than the Sentinel,” Colt wrote in the Anchorage Press.

“Who else will tell you that an electric fishing boat took its maiden voyage? That your neighbor just won a $50,000 grant? That an injured great horned owl passed its rehabilitation test with flying colors?

“Who else, when crisis strikes, will tell you exactly what’s happening in Seattle, D.C., and Italy — then tell you exactly what’s happening at the Backdoor Café, the Pioneer Home, and Mount Edgecumbe High School?”��

Read the story:��

• “,” Anchorage Press, March 29, 2020

Andrew Kennedy and Michelle Greene

When professors are cut off from their students, what do they do? — 207��

NewsCenter Maine’s 207 news magazine talked to professors Andrew Kennedy and Michelle Greene, whose remote class “movie trailers” were a hit among their students and thousands of people on the internet.��

https://twitter.com/Prof_AJKennedy/status/1241071316599439365?

Kennedy, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, made a trailer for his course “Mechanisms of Memory.”��

“It’s like preparing for a baseball season, and you show up to your first game and after the fifth inning the umpire says, ‘Well actually we’re gonna play football now,’” Kennedy told 207’s Rob Caldwell, referring to the abrupt shift to remote learning.��

“So I was learning these new tools and learning how to make videos. I went down a rabbit hole of, ‘This is funny; I might as well try it.’”����

Inspired by @Prof_AJKennedy 's great class trailer and my own lifelong desire to be James Bond, I present Neuroethics 2020: The Classroom is Never Enough.

— Michelle Greene (@MGreenePhD)

Greene, an assistant professor of neuroscience, made her trailer in James Bond fashion. Her students appreciated a section about her new teaching assistant — her cat, Tesla.��

“To not have those in-person dialogues is hard,” she told Caldwell. “That being said, we still have deep, rich, lovely conversations.”��

Read the story:��

• “?” 207, April 14, 2020

See also:��

• “�ֲ���ý professors’ humorous movie-trailer videos brighten the move to remote learning,” �ֲ���ý News, March 27, 2020��

Mara Tieken

Coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating a rural access crisis — Bangor Daily News��

For the Bangor Daily News, Mara Tieken, an associate professor of education and expert on rural education and issues, wrote that while images from the coronavirus pandemic are primarily urban — empty streets, subways, and airports — the crisis also poses serious risks for rural communities.��

In rural areas, hospitals tend to be sparse and under-resourced, fewer rural residents than urban dwellers have internet access, food banks are running low, and newspapers that deliver important information are scaling back or closing.��

“Right now, what rural communities need most is access: to health care, to the internet, to food, to information,” Tieken writes. “This access will help mitigate the worst effects of an already deadly crisis. But what is particularly frustrating about this moment is that these inequalities were identified long before now.”��

Read the story:��

• “,” Bangor Daily News, April 22, 2020

Andrew Kennedy, Gabrielle Chua ’18, and �ֲ���ý students

Molecule created by �ֲ���ý students could lead to more effective treatment for cancer and Alzheimer’s patients — Multiple outlets

A variety of news organizations reported the invention at �ֲ���ý of Bobcat339, a molecule created by students that could have implications for research and treatment of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Andrew Kennedy and seven students co-authored a paper describing the molecule, which inhibits the ability of a certain enzyme to regulate genes. This class of so-called TET inhibitors could one day limit the aggressiveness of cancers.

With their professor, Andrew Kennedy (right), three of the seven student coauthors of the scholarly article describing Bobcat339 posed last May in a Dana Chemistry lab: from left, Michael Bennett, Haoyu Sun, and Nathanael Kuzio, all ’19. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Gabrielle Chua ’18 was the student who ultimately structured the molecule.

“It’s big for the field of epigenetics, it’s big for cancer research, and it’s big for the field of memory,” Kennedy told local NBC affiliate WCSH-TV, whose segment on the molecule was shared on Facebook by “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.”

Read the stories:��

• “,” WCSH-TV, Oct. 25, 2019��
• “,” Maine Public, Oct. 30, 2019

Holly Ewing

�ֲ���ý snags federal cash to help study Lake Auburn — Sun Journal

Steve Collins of the Sun Journal reported that the college will receive $842,000 of a $6 million National Science Foundation grant to figure out how to track and predict cyanobacterial blooms in lakes.

Holly Ewing, professor of environmental studies and the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, is key to the investigation, which is led by Alberto Quattrini Li of Dartmouth College.

Often important sources of drinking water, U.S. lakes are experiencing increases in cyanobacterial blooms, says Holly Ewing. The NSF project will allow better water-quality monitoring than ever before.

The multi-institution, multidisciplinary team will use boats and aerial drones to collect a wide variety of data on several lakes, including Lake Auburn. The project requires understanding communities’ relationships with their lakes, Ewing said.

“Understanding people’s values with respect to how we pay attention to lakes, how we interact with lakes — there’s definitely a cultural and place-based component to that,” she said. “And all of this is intimately related to the science.”

Read the story:��

• “,” Sun Journal, Oct. 25, 2019

Ryan Smith

Auburn’s Ryan Smith wins marathon, qualifies for U.S. Olympic Trials — Sun Journal

�ֲ���ý staff member Ryan Smith talked to the Lewiston Sun Journal’s Adam Robinson about his victory in the Hartford Marathon in October, which qualifies him for the U.S. Olympic Team marathon trials.

Smith, manager of purchasing, accounting, and licensing for �ֲ���ý Information and Library Services, ran the marathon in 2 hours and 18 minutes.

He’s now headed to Atlanta for the Feb. 29 trials, where he hopes to break the top 50 (the top three in each gender make the Olympic team).

“I’m certainly excited to see the full-time professionals, as always,” Smith said. “In terms of nerves, I think the pressure of trying to qualify is much more nerve-wracking than actually competing there. I’m just going to try and beat as many people as possible.

“That sounds more fun than nerve-wracking, especially because it’s a hilly course and I’m really good on hills.”

Read the story:��

• “,” Sun Journal, Oct. 18, 2019

Nolwazi Nosisa Ngwenyama ’16

UCT’s 2020 Mandela Rhodes scholars — University of Cape Town News

The University of Cape Town announced that Nolwazi Nosisa Ngwenyama ’16, a �ֲ���ý graduate and graduate student in gender studies, has won a prestigious Mandela-Rhodes scholarship.

Nolwazi Ngwenyama ’16 listens to a speaker at the Office of Intercultural Education at �ֲ���ý in 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The scholarships are awarded to African citizens with “exceptional leadership capacity” and provide funding for postgraduate study in South Africa.

Ngwenyama triple-majored in politics, anthropology, and women and gender studies at �ֲ���ý. A native of Eswatini, she volunteers with the United World Colleges Eswatini National Committee.

Read the story:��

• “,” University of Cape Town News, Nov. 7, 2019

Rebecca Herzig

For Millennial women, body hair presents a complicated choice — HuffPost

In the HuffPost, Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Rebecca Herzig helped guest writer Sofia Barrett-Ibarria round out her argument that while choosing not to remove body hair might be a “feminist” choice, body hair is more complicated than a “to shave or not to shave” binary.

In 2014, Rebecca Herzig heads to the lectern to deliver a talk. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Herzig is the author of Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. In the HuffPost, she pointed out that while there is some mainstream acceptance of body hair on women, the stigma around body hair can have real, negative consequences, especially for women who are not “able-bodied, white, young, thin and toned, expensively dressed, etc. — in every other way,” she told Barrett-Ibarria.

Read the story:��

• “,” HuffPost, Nov. 5, 2019��

Peter Weyand ’83

Inside the six-figure project to solve the mystery of NBA flopping — The Guardian

It’s a phenomenon that baffles and frustrates basketball fans: flopping. And from a science perspective, Peter Weyand ’83, a professor of applied physiology and biomechanics at Southern Methodist University, knows more about it than almost anyone, writes The Guardian’s Patrick Hruby.

Funded by Houston Rockets owner Mark Cuban, Weyand and his team set out in 2014 to measure how much force it takes to knock someone over and what it looks like when a basketball player is genuinely set off balance, vs. embellishing a light hit or straight-up faking a foul — that is, flopping. They ran tests using first a dummy, then real people wearing heavy padding.

Turns out, it doesn’t take much force to knock someone over. “In many cases, if the defender just doesn’t move their feet, then down they go,” Weyand said. “I’ve been through thousands of charge-block collisions, and never realized how easy it was.”

A rather obvious indication of a flop, the SMU team found, is when players stick their arms straight up as they go down — that doesn’t happen naturally.

Read the story:��

• “,” The Guardian, Oct. 30, 2019

Renee Leduc ’98

Will 5G Affect Weather Forecasts? — BBC Click

The program quotes Renee Leduc ’98 on how a recent Federal Communications Commission action could harm meteorologists’ ability to forecast the weather, including dangerous hurricanes.

The issue has to do with an FCC decision to auction off specific wireless radio frequencies to commercial wireless providers for next-generation 5G networks.

The scientific community, including Leduc, opposes the move. They say that giving these frequencies to 5G networks will interfere with unique measurements from weather satellites that are very important to weather forecasting models, the two most well-known being the American model (GFS) and the European model (the ECMWF). The FCC says the interference is not a threat.

Renee Leduc is quoted in this BBC Click story about how turning over specific radio frequencies to wireless providers could harm weather forecasting.

Founder and principal of the consulting firm Narayan Strategy, Leduc is a member of the American Meteorological Society’s Board on Enterprise Economic Development and its International Affairs and Radio Frequency Allocation committees.

She told The Washington Post that it’s “crucial” that the question of interference is “decided in a way that is informed by atmospheric science since the measurements are so crucial to sound weather predictions.”

The issue is front and center at the World Radiocommunications Conference, which ends Nov. 22 and where “for the past month they have been working to coordinate the deployment of 5G technologies across the world,” Leduc tells �ֲ���ýNews.

Read the stories:

• “,” The Washington Post, March 8, 2019
• “” Nature, Nov. 22, 2019

Carrie Jones ’93

The unstoppable Carrie Jones; New thriller ‘In the Woods’ released — Mount Desert Islander

Down East arts journalist Nan Lincoln spoke with author Carrie Jones ’93 about her new young-adult thriller, In the Woods.

The novel, co-written with Steven E. Wedel, follows a teenage girl as she investigates possibly paranormal events. The two writers’ conversation, however, ventured into Jones’ other projects, from the children’s book festival she helped organize to her prolific books and blogs.

“I have to write — all the time,” Jones said. “If I don’t get my ideas onto the page they pile up. But I love seeing where my characters will take me. It’s always a new adventure.”

Read the story:��

• “,” Mount Desert Islander, Oct. 27, 2019��

Matt Moretti ’06

Pioneering mussel farmer buys rival, plans expansion — Portland Press Herald

The Portland Press Herald reported that Bangs Island Mussels, a Portland, Maine-based producer of rope-grown mussels, bought local competitor Calendar Island Mussel Co.

Bangs Island Mussels is owned by Matt Moretti ’06.

In 2016, Matt Moretti ’06 feeds mussels into a machine that works to break apart tissue connecting many of the clusters. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

The company produces mussels by growing them on ropes suspended from rafts, selling the product to Portland restaurants as well as wholesalers. The key to sustainable mussel farming, Moretti told PPH reporter Peter McGuire, is scale, and with the new acquisition Bangs Island Mussels can double its production and workforce.

“The economics of it are such that the faster you can add on volume to your production, the sooner your costs drop and profits go up,” he said.

Read the story:��

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Nov. 18, 2019����

Elizabeth Strout ’77

Oprah reveals Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout as new book club pick — CBS This Morning

With bestselling author Elizabeth Strout ’77 sitting next to her, Oprah Winfrey announced on CBS This Morning that Strout’s new novel, Olive, Again, is her new book club selection.

Olive, Again is the sequel to Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Olive Kitteridge.

Winfrey said she admires Strout’s ability to take “the simplest of things and turn them into something that feels real to us.”

Oprah Winfrey talks with Elizabeth Strout ’77 on CBS This Morning.

Melissa Wong ’01

Women Of The C-Suite: “Fear is a liar; fear will tell you the craziest things” with Melissa Wong, CEO of Retail Zipline — Authority Magazine

Carly Martinetti of Authority Magazine, a publication on the platform Medium, interviewed Melissa Wong ’01, co-founder of Retail Zipline.

Building a company, Wong said, requires fearlessness — even when you think you should be afraid.

“Fear is a liar,” she said. “Fear will tell you the craziest things. When I first started, I legitimately feared our company would fail. … When you’re in the moment, don’t let feelings of fear lead your actions or choices.”

Working in communications for Old Navy showed Wong how hard it is for large retail brands to get their own stores to implement ideas. So she and a co-founder started Retail Zipline, which streamlines that kind of communication.

Read the story:��

• “,” Authority Magazine, Nov. 3, 2019��

Invented by �ֲ���ý students in their professor’s lab, a molecule with a �ֲ���ý-inspired nickname carries enough pharmaceutical promise that �ֲ���ý has filed a provisional patent application for the molecule.

Synthesized in 2017 in the lab of Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Andrew Kennedy, the molecule Bobcat339 has the potential to govern the function of genes related to memory loss and genes that aid and abet the spread of cancer.

A provisional patent application protects the college’s intellectual property for a year until a formal patent application is completed.

All told, seven �ֲ���ý students broadly contributed to research leading to the creation of Bobcat339; for their contributions, the seven are co-authors of the ” which��outlines the synthesis and promise of Bobcat339.

With their professor, Andrew Kennedy (right), three of the seven student coauthors of the scholarly article describing Bobcat339 posed last May in Dana Chemistry lab: from left, Michael Bennett ’19, Haoyu Sun ’19, and Nathanael Kuzio ’19. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The student coauthors are Emma Jarczyk ’17, Joseph Alp ’18, Gabriella Chua ’18, Kelly Wassarman ’18, Haoyu Sun ’19, Nathanael Kuzio ’19, and Michael Bennett ’19. Kennedy is a coauthor, too, as is Assistant Professor of Biology and Neuroscience Martin Kruse, who contributed a cell culture experiment.

The Kennedy lab works in epigenetics, a field that looks at how genes can change their function without being altered themselves. Kennedy’s ongoing work includes important achievements in potential therapies for the autism-spectrum disorder called Pitt Hopkins Syndrome.

About that Bobcat name

Giving a novel compound like Bobcat339 a simple nickname is useful, says Kennedy. And that’s a vast understatement, since the molecule’s full name is: 1-([1,1′-Biphenyl]-3-yl)-4-amino-5-chloropyrimidin-2(1H)-one.

While “Bobcat” places the creation at �ֲ���ý, the numerals “339” also tell a story. The first “3” identifies Haoyu Sun, the third of four students (thus far) who have synthesized molecules for testing in the Kennedy lab. (Nos. 1, 2, and 4 are Jarzyk, Wassarman, and Kuzio.)

The last two numbers, 39, indicate the specific page of Sun’s well-worn lab notebook, where you can find the description of Bobcat339’s creation — its recipe, if you will — which took place on May 31, 2017. (Each page of each student’s notebook, front and back, describes the synthesis of one molecule that the lab will test, totaling upward of 50 molecules.)

Last May, Haoyu Sun ’19, researcher No. 3 for Bobcat339, displays the pivotal page 39 of her notebook describing the synthesis of Bobcat339. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The field of epigenetics tries to answer a question that confounded early cell biologists. If nearly every cell in our body contains our entire genome, how is it that some cells become the liver, and others become brain cells?

“How does this happen?” Kennedy asks, rhetorically. “It’s as if you handed the exact same blueprint to three different contractors, and they create three different homes.” At one level, “it just doesn’t make sense,” he says.

The answer, he explains, resembles how two libraries might arrange the same collection of books. The Neuron Library would place neuron-specific books up front for frequent use, and put books about liver cells into storage so they’re inaccessible until needed.

The Liver Library, however, would do it the other way around, putting the liver books up front for frequent access and storing the neuron books.

To extend the library metaphor, there’s a very powerful “librarian” at work: Known as DNA methylation, it’s a process that decides where and how genes are either read or put into storage, and thus what kind of cell the genome produces.

Presto! Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Kennedy draws the chemical structure of 1-([1,1′-Biphenyl]-3-yl)-4-amino-5-chloropyrimidin-2(1H)-one, aka Bobcat339:

Methylation refers to the placement of methyl groups, composed of parts of molecules made of a single carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms, directly onto DNA. This placement “alters whether or not genes near that methyl mark are expressed or silenced,” Kennedy explains.

Enter Bobcat339, a molecule that throws a “wrench in the gears” by preventing a certain enzyme, known as TET1, from doing its usual job of removing a methyl from a gene.

This ability gives Bobcat339 promise in the world of drug discovery. “There’s great interest in creating TET inhibitors as an avenue to potentially dial back the aggressiveness of some cancers,” Kennedy explains

The lead author (and it’s not the professor)

For a lab like Kennedy’s, creating a novel compound is pretty straightforward, as it is for a chef creating a new soup.

A chemist can “quickly make a molecule that’s never existed on this planet — probably never existed in the universe,” Kennedy says. “The possibilities are infinite for molecular structure.”

Creating a new soup or molecule is easy; it’s far harder to create a dish that dazzles the palate — or a specific molecule to accomplish a specific epigenetic task, says Kennedy. “My students and I will go to the chalkboard and design dozens of ways to make a molecule. And we try to rationalize, based on what we know, the most likely route to success.”

It involves a lot of trial and error. Kennedy compares it to how a climber might imagine a new route to a peak. “You can see the peak. And you might imagine that the north face is the easiest way up. But then you start the climb and find an obstacle you couldn’t see from the ground. So you have to backtrack and try again.”

Enter one of Kennedy’s trailblazers: Gabriella Chua. She’s the lead author of the paper describing Bobcat339, not Kennedy. “It’s often the case in science,” explains Kennedy, “that the lead author knows more about the genesis and trajectory of the project, and this is very true in Gabby’s situation.”

Gabriella Chua ’18, the lead author of the paper describing the creation of Bobcat339, served as the eyes and ears for Kennedy’s lab during her senior year. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

During her senior year, Chua served as the Kennedy lab’s eyes and ears as the team churned out and evaluated dozens of new molecules, including Bobcat339.

Chua was well-prepared for that leadership role thanks to earlier courses with Kennedy and other �ֲ���ý professors, including her junior-year advanced organic chemistry course, where Kennedy “pushed us to do our own, more independent problem solving and thinking,” she said.

“Grappling more with uncertainty than with certainty.”

Instead of just seeking answers to questions, as she had so far in her coursework, she was now being asked to frame original research questions.

That meant “grappling more with uncertainty than with certainty,” she says. “I became curious with the process of science, and how we’ve been able to make definitive conclusions about the things we consider ourselves to understand.”

Senior-year research in Kennedy’s lab was a “way to follow these curiosities in a productive way,” she says. Importantly, “he gave me the space and trust to do these things.”

Chua’s job was to evaluate the lab’s progress and develop new approaches, tracking “what was working and what wasn’t, trends that we wanted to aim for, or trends that I saw that weren’t working.”

After graduation, Chua spent a year doing research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. After considering offers from a variety of top doctoral programs, Chua has joined the Tri-Institutional Program in Chemical Biology, jointly sponsored by Weill Cornell Medical College, The Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“Bobcat339 is the product of really hard work and great relationships, but there’s also a splash of good luck.”

For Chua, the name “Bobcat339” says something about the mindset needed to do research. “You can work as hard as you want, and things might still not turn out well. All the compounds that we tested could just as easily have not worked.”

When it does work out, as with Bobcat339, Chua says it’s good to be grateful — and a bit humble. “Bobcat339 is the product of really hard work and great relationships, but there’s also a splash of good luck.”

And, she adds, believing that there’s good luck out there, that maybe something can tip the scales in mysterious ways, “makes me excited and optimistic for the future.”

For Kennedy, the achievement of Bobcat339 speaks to his students’ rapid intellectual growth over their four years. “They go from receiving knowledge and memorizing information they need to know, to the mindset of, ‘how do we, as scientists, tackle a problem?’” he says.

“They make that transition very quickly. It’s like they become different people.”

U.S. Provisional Patent Application

“Cytosine-Based TET Enzyme Inhibitors” U.S. Provisional Pat. Ser. No. 62/822,774, filed 03/22/2019

PCT Application

“Cytosine-Based TET Enzyme Inhibitors” PCT Application Intl. App. No. PCT/US19-23760, filed on 03/22/2019

Funding

This work was supported in part by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103423, the Foundation for Pitt Hopkins Syndrome Therapeutics, the University of Pennsylvania’s Orphan Disease Center’s 2018 MDBR Pilot Grant Program, the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, and �ֲ���ý College.

��

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Kennedy has a microscope in his Dana Chemistry office that he cherishes but never uses.

It’s a gold-plated Bausch and Lomb compound microscope once owned by his great-grandfather, T. Francis Kennedy, and since passed down to him.

A prominent early-20th century physician in Rhode Island, Frank Kennedy, among other good deeds, once joined a Red Cross medical response team to the great Halifax Explosion in Nova Scotia in 1917.

Frank Kennedy took the microscope with him to Paris for several research stints at the Pasteur Institute before World War II.
Back home, Frank Kennedy’s son John Kennedy — Andrew’s grandfather — used it during his own medical studies. His wife Muriel Kennedy, Andrew’s grandmother, used the microscope at the House of Good Samaritan Hospital in Watertown, N.Y., where she was a nurse.

The microscope continued on to Andrew’s father, Thomas Kennedy, who took it to medical school in the 1960s. By then it was being used less and less — better equipment was coming onto the scene.

Andrew first saw the microscope as a teenager. One time his grandmother was visiting and she reminded him, “You can see anything if it exists and you have the right instrument.”

The quote is a metaphor for how Kennedy’s students are discovering what’s around them using the right instrument — in this case, �ֲ���ý and the liberal arts.

Many of his students like science, he explains, and many arrived at �ֲ���ý with their heart set on medical school, “but now they’ve seen new things, and are having different experiences,” he says.

“That’s what a liberal arts college does, right? It gives you a wide range of experiences and different paths to knowing things.”

The microscope is a liberal arts metaphor in another way, he adds. “This object has been useful to different people in different ways, and has been owned by a scientist, by a physician, and a nurse: three professions that have commonalities.” As a �ֲ���ý graduate in the STEM field, Kennedy says, you can travel in many different directions.

In his own research on understanding the chemical mechanisms that encode and maintain long-term memory, Andrew uses far more powerful microscopes than the antique on his desk.

“But in some ways, they’re less beautiful than this instrument,” he says.

His �ֲ���ý mentors taught neuroscience major Alex Gogliettino ’17 of Branford, Conn., how to think like a scientist.

Headed to a Ph.D. program at Stanford University, Gogliettino describes his biggest �ֲ���ý discovery: You can make a career from being curious and asking questions.

As an English major, I can guarantee that I won’t be called upon to inject a drug into a mouse brain. But for neuroscience honors candidate Alex Gogliettino ’17 of Branford, Conn., that’s a basic skill.

Already accepted into doctoral programs in neuroscience for next year, Gogliettino has spent hundreds of hours in a �ֲ���ý lab using a mouse model to analyze and interpret a possible treatment for an exceptionally rare autism-spectrum disorder in humans.

In preparation for his honors thesis research, he spent the past two summers working at , receiving support from a �ֲ���ý Summer Research Fellowship and the Kelsey Prize for Neuroscience Research, named for Professor Emeritus of Psychology John Kelsey.

This year, he’s brought all his �ֲ���ý training to bear on his thesis, “DNA Methylomics: Targeting TET1 as a Treatment for Intellectual Disability,” and as he explained it to me, this was my immediate thought: This is important, and I need to know more.

When somebody asks you about your thesis, what’s your elevator speech?

My adviser and I are basically knocking down a protein — that is, blocking it from being made in the brain — to try to enhance learning and memory in mice that have been genetically modified to have a certain intellectual disability.

The protein is the one in my thesis title: TET1, or “Ten-eleven translocation methylcytosine dioxygenase 1.”

We are also trying to better understand the molecular mechanisms that underpin learning and memory.

How do you make what you write accessible to students, like me, who are not in STEM fields?

That’s one of the biggest challenges in science: Communicating to individuals who are not necessarily involved in science what exactly you are doing.

My actual thesis delves deeply into the molecular biology, but in the first few pages I discuss what this topic means to me personally and how it is addressing a societal issue and a pressing biomedical issue, intellectual disability. I explain why I’m intrigued by it.

And why are you intrigued by it?

OK, this gets pretty philosophical. Humans have the capacity to recall just crazy amounts of detail from earlier parts of our lives. And that capacity really is what makes us who we are. We are what we can remember about our past. That’s just crazy, and it’s just a unique, really interesting puzzle.

And also, there are diseases of the brain, like Alzheimer’s and many others, where individuals can’t do that. And in rare disorders like the one I am studying, Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome, they have impaired language and memory function.

Can you go into a little more detail about Pitt Hopkins?

Individuals with this disease are missing a functional copy of a single gene known as Transcription Factor 4.

Pitt Hopkins is an extremely rare disease. There are only about 500 people in the world that we know of. Individuals with Pitt Hopkins Syndrome often do not develop language — spoken or sign.

My project is based on Pitt Hopkins research being done at �ֲ���ý by my thesis adviser, Andrew Kennedy. We think one of the reasons is a disruption in their capacity for verbal memory.

How is your relationship with your adviser, Andrew Kennedy?

He’s new, and I didn’t really meet him until this year.

Last year, I was taking a neuroscience class, and my professor, Nancy Koven, was saying how �ֲ���ý was hiring a new professor and we should go to the research talk that each candidate gives. I went and I thought that he was asking really interesting questions about learning and memory.

So I just emailed him, a cold email saying, “I would love to work with you.” He emailed me back and said, “That would be cool. Here are the projects that you can work on.”

Alex Gogliettino’s thesis adviser is Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Kennedy, shown teaching an organic chemistry lab on Feb. 9, 2017, in Dana Chemistry Hall. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

I really like working with him. He’s always available through email, phone, etc. He’s only 33 and has just finished his post-doc so he knows what’s like to be an undergrad.

More important, he also went to a small college, Providence College, so he knows what the relationship between a small-college professor and a student is. He really cares and understands that this whole thing is a learning experience.

What is your thesis routine?

The most important part was to make sure I familiarized myself with the literature, so I started reading last May. That’s probably one of the hardest parts of a project like this: wrapping your head around what is actually happening in the field, where the barriers to new knowledge are, and what we know vs. what we don’t know. That is a really important part of science.

Last semester, almost every morning from around 9 to 12, I would write. I would have the most energy in the morning, and writing is very taxing, that’s the best time for me.

The spot where I wrote really didn’t matter. I would just go somewhere I was comfortable and could work for three hours. It would depend. I would mix it up. First floor of the library sometimes. Then the third floor, then the second floor. And sometimes in my room at my desk.

Was going through the literature daunting?

When you start familiarizing yourself with the field, the first pieces of literature you are going to read are pretty intense. Honestly, reading a scientific paper in an unfamiliar field takes about five hours to go through. You’ve got to just take your time and start as early as you possibly can.

I started out with reading review articles, which are not necessarily studies per se, but are reviewing the literature. They give you a scope of the field. They give you perspective, help you familiarize yourself with the jargon and, again, tell you what’s known and what’s not known about the field.

And once I started to get a feel for that, I started delving deep into the hard-core research papers. It was daunting, a little bit, but I would just take my time.

What has been most enjoyable about working on your senior thesis?

The most interesting part are the questions we are asking about our ability to recall things��from the past, and how that fits into the bigger picture of understanding how the brain gives rise to consciousness. That is the coolest part.

The most difficult?

I think the most difficult part is that this work is technically difficult and very time-consuming. That’s not negative, just challenging.

Working with animals requires a good amount of dexterity and injecting drugs into a mouse brain is pretty hard. In the grand scheme of cognitive neurobiology research, it’s pretty simple surgery, but at the undergraduate level it is probably one of the most challenging things that I would do.

Neuroscience major Alex Gogliettino ’17 of Branford, Conn., poses in a Carnegie Science Hall laboratory on Feb. 28, 2017. The red light helps create a calm environment for the lab’s�� work with mice. Since mice cannot see red light, they behave as they would in their preferred, darkened environment. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Also, another component of my thesis involves working with big data and doing computer-science work, so I had to teach myself a lot of computer science stuff, too. That was tough and challenging, but you grow and learn a lot from it.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Especially with lab theses, there is only a certain amount of control when you run the experiments. And there is a lot of stuff you can’t control. That is just going to happen.

One of the most important parts of doing thesis, and being involved with science at all, is just understanding that nothing is ever going to be perfect. You are going to mess up and you are going to fail. But don’t be discouraged or shy away from that. Just learn from your mistakes and move on. Be a little too optimistic at times because you need that positive energy to keep going, because there will be a lot of roadblocks to be found, but you can overcome them.

Plans for next year?

I hope to continue doing neuroscience research for the next five years, at least.

I’ve been accepted to a couple neuroscience Ph.D. programs, at Washington University and Vanderbilt, and am heading to Stanford for interviews this week.

I have the potential opportunity to work with a professor who advised Professor Kennedy, doing the same sort of work at a research university that we’re doing here at �ֲ���ý.

Interviews are just a great time to talk science with professors and be immersed in an environment where everyone is as passionate about studying neuroscience as you are.

The malfunctioning of a single human gene causes an autism-spectrum disorder called Pitt Hopkins Syndrome.

The syndrome has profound impacts on intellectual development and cognition, mobility, breathing, digestion and other functions. Notably, it affects communication: Most people with Pitt Hopkins are unable to use language, even sign language.

In recent years, a handful of researchers have made great strides in understanding Pitt Hopkins. And one of them teaches at �ֲ���ý.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Kennedy, who joined the �ֲ���ý faculty in August, is among the disorder’s first and leading researchers. And the work that he’s doing with his �ֲ���ý students may be bringing a therapeutic approach to Pitt Hopkins within reach.

Pitt Hopkins is extremely rare. Fewer than 600 cases have been diagnosed worldwide. Until this decade, Pitt Hopkins research was minimal, although its genetic connection was discovered in 2007.

Kennedy’s Pitt Hopkins research is a facet of his broader investigation into how cognition, specifically memory formation, is affected by so-called epigenetic factors — biochemical mechanisms that control how genes are organized.

“I don’t know what it’s like caring for someone with a developmental disability, but I imagine it requires hope,” he says. “Hope includes uncertainty, and it requires investigation and effort, probably setbacks and imperfect outcomes. But at the core there has to be hope.”

Kennedy’s research has attracted about $427,000 in grant support to �ֲ���ý in all. His broader investigation is being funded by a $339,300, three-year grant from the INBRE Investigator program, part of the award from the National Institutes of Health, administered by the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.

That investigation is focusing on ways that, in non-diseased brains, a process called DNA methylation affects long-term memory formation.

In addition, �ֲ���ý has received $88,000 from the , a volunteer nonprofit established by families of children with the disorder, to support Kennedy’s Pitt Hopkins–specific research.

“Pitt Hopkins syndrome, although rare, is a ruinous disease,” says Matt Auer, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the �ֲ���ý faculty. “When Andrew applied for the �ֲ���ý chemistry appointment, his postdoctoral research on DNA methylation and its impact on long-term memory formation got the attention of my colleagues in chemistry and neuroscience.

“We were thrilled when Andrew accepted our offer to join �ֲ���ý. After just one semester, he is emerging as a key interdisciplinary bridge-builder in the sciences at the college.”

Founded in 2012, the Pitt-Hopkins Research Foundation essentially inaugurated Pitt Hopkins research when it reached out to J. David Sweatt, a neurobiologist then at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

“After just one semester, Andrew is emerging as a key interdisciplinary bridge-builder in the sciences at the college.”

The first molecular neurobiologist in the U.S. to investigate the disorder, Sweatt hired Kennedy as a postdoctoral research associate in 2012, and the pair went on to create the first mouse model of Pitt Hopkins — a fundamental advance, as it gave them and other scientists a basis for further study of the disorder.

With the team of Sweatt and Kennedy, “we got really, really lucky,” says Audrey Davidow Lapidus, foundation president. “It was like hitting the jackpot twice. The two of them really spearheaded some amazing research.” (Sweatt now chairs the pharmacology department at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.)

Lapidus and her husband, Eric Lapidus, are the parents of Calvin, who was diagnosed with Pitt Hopkins at 13 months and is now 5 years old. “He has profound developmental delays,” his mother says. “He still cannot walk. He likely will never talk. Some of the other kids with this disorder have severe seizures and breathing episodes, like apneas and hyperventilation.”

The failure of a single gene — TCF4 on chromosome 18 — is the root cause of Pitt-Hopkins, but that failure has a ripple effect. Because TCF4 produces a protein that helps other genes to be read, “it’s a compounding problem,” says Kennedy. “It’s not just one gene not working, it’s a whole family of genes that TCF4 controls not working correctly.”

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Kennedy in his lab in Carnegie Hall on Dec. 14, 2016. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Sweatt and Kennedy capitalized on the fact that there are drugs that “affect gene expression in kind of a wholesale way, called epigenetic modifiers,” says Kennedy. He works specifically with a category of modifiers called histone deacetylase inhibitors, or HDAC inhibitors.

They correlated genes known to be affected by HDAC inhibitors with the genes involved with Pitt Hopkins. One drug in particular emerged from this detective work: Vorinostat, marketed as a cancer treatment under the brand name Zolinza.

“We treated the Pitt Hopkins mice with the drug, and it profoundly improved their capability of learning and remembering,” Kennedy says.

“And this went across every type of behavior that we looked at, whether it be maze-solving, object association, or even object location memory.”

It was an electrifying discovery — all the more so because Vorinostat has already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, albeit for a different use. “So there’s a possibility that we can now look at this in a clinically controlled trial setting,” hopefully within five years, says Kennedy.

“Single-gene disorders are a sort of Rosetta Stone for figuring out larger issues like autism, Alzheimer’s, and schizophrenia.”

At �ֲ���ý, Kennedy’s PHRF-funded work will pursue the Vorinostat angle from two directions. First, he and his students will continue to scrutinize specific genes affected by Vorinostat. Second, they will investigate the potential of other FDA-approved HDAC inhibitors for treating Pitt Hopkins.

“We’d like to pick one with the least number of side effects before going into a clinical trial,” because Vorinostat does have side effects, Kennedy says. “We want to know exactly which horse to put our money on before going to clinical trial.”

Moreover, the INBRE-funded study will have a bearing on the Pitt Hopkins work. HDAC inhibitors require ongoing use to be effective, but therapies that target DNA modification, specifically DNA methylation patterns, may have longer-lasting effects on cognition.

What are the students in Kennedy’s charge doing? “They’re going to be trying different therapies on mice, and then giving them tasks to learn and seeing if they do any better than control mice. This is all based on the hypothesis that the epigenome [the complex of chemical compounds that can control the genome] can be targeted to improve learning and memory.”

With a collection of model molecules in the foreground, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Kennedy is shown in his Dana Chemistry Hall office on Dec. 14, 2016. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

At the same time, genetic material from the treated mice will be sent away for sequencing. “We’ll be looking exactly at the changes in the genome that occur by going into the neurons and assessing what changed there.”

While the number of known Pitt Hopkins cases is only in the hundreds, the work being done by Kennedy and other scientists in the field reaches beyond that single disorder: a growing body of scientific evidence shows that single-gene disorders like Pitt Hopkins hold clues to understanding afflictions that are vastly more common.

“They hold so much promise for unlocking treatments for other cognitive disorders,” says Lapidus. “They are a sort of Rosetta Stone for figuring out larger issues like autism, Alzheimer’s, and schizophrenia.”

She points out that the initial PHRF grant to Sweatt’s lab at Alabama was followed in 2014 by a research grant of more than $1.8 million from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. “They recognize that this is really important, especially with regard to figuring out what we can do about autism.”

Researchers like Sweatt and Kennedy, she says, are “not just researching a rare disorder in some little bubble. This really does have larger ramifications.”

But it’s nevertheless true, as Kennedy points out, that researching an orphan disease “means there are fewer resources and less awareness. Tasks such as organizing a clinical trial, which require large numbers and control groups to be meaningful, can be daunting with such a small population.”

“It can also be hard on the parents that have to wait on the pace of scientific research,” he adds, “but it’s clear that the fact that research is occurring produces hope.”

The �ֲ���ý faculty during Commencement 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In the 1970s and ’80s, President Hedley Reynolds began an expansion of the �ֲ���ý professoriate that markedly increased the number, as well as the quality, of the college’s faculty.

When Reynolds retired, in 1989, all but 16 of the 159 faculty members had been appointed during his presidency.

This strategy elevated both the value and the reputation of the �ֲ���ý education during the late 20th century, helping to make the college the national presence that it is today.

But another consequence of Reynolds’ strategy, and an inevitable one, is playing out in this century as the young fresh faces of the 1970s and ’80s approach retirement age.

In 2012, �ֲ���ý filled five tenure-track openings. Last year, it filled four. This year, out of a total of 11 long-term hires, nine individuals have filled eight tenure-track positions, including two postdoctoral spots that will convert to tenure track a year from now.

In short, as President Clayton Spencer noted in a recent letter to the �ֲ���ý community, the 2015–16 academic year was the college’s largest faculty-recruiting year in recent memory.

And the boom isn’t over: “This year we will search for 15 new faculty — 11 tenure-track, three long-term lecturers, and one senior, tenured position to lead the new Program in Digital and Computational Studies,” Spencer wrote.

Of course, as in Reynolds’ day, this influx of fresh talent amounts to an exciting process of renewal for the college. “What �ֲ���ý looks like in the future is at least partially revealed each time we hire a new faculty member,” Dean of the Faculty Matt Auer writes in his overview of the new tenure-track hires.

Let’s meet them.

+Wesley Chaney, Assistant Professor of History

Wesley Chaney, Assistant Professor of History. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic, Assistant Professor of Physics

Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic, Assistant Professor of Physics. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Nathan C. Faries, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

Nathan Faries, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Carolina González Valencia, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow

Carolina Gonzalez Valencia, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Andrew J. Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Andrew Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Chemistry. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Yinxing (Mia) Liu, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

Mia Liu, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Andrew M. Mountcastle, Assistant Professor of Biology

Andrew Mountcastle, Assistant Professor of Biology. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Jeffrey S. Oishi, Assistant Professor of Physics

Jeffrey Oishi, Assistant Professor of Physics. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

+Patrick W. Otim, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow

Patrick Otim, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in History. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)