Class of 2010 – News

Anne Connell '10, Fulbright teaching assistantship recipient

�ֲ��ý News — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:17:40 +0000

Anne Connell ’10 has received an English Teaching Assistantship from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. These grants support recipients in positions as teaching assistants abroad who work with local students on their English language skills and knowledge of the United States. As the same time, the teaching assistants pursue individual research.

Connell will teach in Germany. She feels a deep engagement with the work of breaching language barriers and exploring the circumstances of Germany’s Turkish population.

This longtime student of German language and culture is ready to make the transition from visitor to social and cultural participant, and hopes that the Fulbright experience will enable her “to become an active, integrated and contributing member of a community in Germany.”

Outside the classroom, Connell will continue exploring the intersections of race and women’s healthcare policy in Germany, a topic she investigated for her 2009 senior politics thesis.

Emily Grady '10, Fulbright teaching assistantship recipient

�ֲ��ý News — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:50:24 +0000

Emily Grady ’10 has received an English Teaching Assistantship from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. These grants support recipients in positions as teaching assistants abroad who work with local students on their English language skills and knowledge of the United States. As the same time, the teaching assistants pursue individual research.

Grady will teach in Argentina. As an environmental studies major at �ֲ��ý, she co-founded two student environmental organizations, lobbied Maine’s senators for comprehensive climate legislation and co-founded an environmental leadership training program for �ֲ��ý students.

Now, as she teaches English in Argentina, she hopes also to continue her environmental advocacy, both with local organizations and, hopefully, in her own curriculum.

“I hope to partner with an environmental organization or government agency to first, learn about the ways environmental issues are perceived, discussed and managed in Argentina,” she says, “and second, to couple that knowledge with my experience working in sustainability education.”

Sports Notes: Rower Danica Doroski ’10

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:00:30 +0000

Danica Doroski’s success shows that rowing is more than poetry in motion

By Andy Walter

Rowing is often described in poetic terms, which is understandable. William Wordsworth defined poetry as emotion recollected in tranquility, and rowing spectators have lots of tranquil time on their hands as they wait, sometimes hours, for brief glimpses of their boat.

While passing the time, they might easily daydream of eight bodies moving gauzily as one, their boat rippling quietly and intently through the water among ducks and water lilies.

“People do have this romantic image of rowing, and that’s fine,” acknowledges �ֲ��ý head coach Peter Steenstra. “But when you’re right there on the boat, it’s almost violent.”

“I get sentimentally feminist when I think about it,” she says, “but I really feel like rowing for �ֲ��ý has empowered me as an athlete.

You have to understand the rigors of rowing to appreciate what Danica Doroski ’10 did at �ֲ��ý: help guide to four straight NCAA team appearances, including the best team finishes (second place in 2009 and 2010) in �ֲ��ý history.

Doroski was an alternate during �ֲ��ý’ first trip to NCAAs, in 2007, when the team placed third. She rowed on the national stage as �ֲ��ý finished fifth in 2008, second in 2009, and second in 2010.

Still, only recently did Doroski really self-identify as an athlete.

“I get sentimentally feminist when I think about it,” she says, “but I really feel like rowing for �ֲ��ý has empowered me as an athlete. I feel confident in the weight room next to anybody, the big football players or whomever, really pulling my weight.”

A native of Wayne, Pa., Doroski played volleyball and was a distance runner in high school but was not a varsity prospect when she arrived at �ֲ��ý. Like others who take up rowing in college, she got interested after heading out to the Androscoggin with friends who were also interested in the sport.

In an age of increasing sports specialization, rowing remains refreshingly unusual in that you can pick it up in college. “It requires no athletic skill,” says Steenstra. “Anyone can do it.”

But in another sense, rowing is sport at its purest and most demanding. “Rowing is a matter of wanting to — you have to enjoy the training, you have to enjoy the team, and you have to love racing,” Steenstra says. “And if that doesn’t all fall into place, people end up leaving. It’s a sport that is based on, he who works hardest will win.”

Doroski says she got hooked when she first saw the �ֲ��ý Boathouse and its idyllic setting along the Androscoggin River in Greene and felt the character and personalities of the �ֲ��ý crew. Since then, she’s been a vital example to others. “She won her place every year out of sheer determination and consistent effort,” says Steenstra.

“The women who are in the program now, we dedicate most of our lives to rowing,” Doroski says. “We still take our studies really seriously, but we’re always ready to be out and practicing.”

This ethic was in evidence right to the end of her �ֲ��ý career, as Doroski and her rowing team flew to Sacramento to compete in the NCAA Championships on Memorial Day weekend — they finished second to Williams — and hustled back to campus for Commencement on Sunday.

�ֲ��ý arrived at the 2010 championships ranked fourth behind Williams, Ithaca, and Trinity, all of whom had defeated �ֲ��ý in the regular season. Yet during a conversation in mid-May, Doroski exhibited a measured confidence as she looked ahead to the championships. “It’s going to be Williams and �ֲ��ý, a showdown between us two,” she said prophetically.

“There was never a question as to whether or not Danica’s going to be there or give me her all.”

As the only graduating senior to make the NCAA-bound squad all four years, Doroski provided team continuity during the turmoil of three different head coaches since 2006. (Steenstra took over in 2008, and was preceded by an interim coach and by Andrew Carter, who helped grow the program in the early 2000s.)

“There’s a lot to be said for that one person that just seems to always be there,” says Steenstra. “There was never a question as to whether or not Danica’s going to be there or give me her all. She is always competitive, always pushing her teammates, and always working.”

An environmental studies major, Doroski volunteered four years with the Junior Naturalist program sponsored by the Stanton Bird Club for elementary school children, leading field trips to measure the age of trees in a nearby old-growth forest and holding sessions with the youngsters, like “Terrific Trees with Danica.”

Just as Doroski noticed her own maturation as a athlete, others noticed a change, too. “I saw Danica shortly before she graduated, and I had never seen her so laid back, so relaxed, so self-confident,” says Susan Hayward, environmental coordinator for the club’s Thorncrag Nature Sanctuary. “What a huge difference from when I saw her as a first-year, trying everything and being so excited, but not having that core of assurance.”

Her friends, meanwhile, describe Doroski as humble but not without pride in what’s she’s accomplished at �ֲ��ý. “Danica never gloats,” says Briana Gerrish ’10, Doroski’s first-year roommate and close friend. “But I could see throughout the years how much crew has meant to her and how proud she was of being an integral part of such a great team.”

In turn, Danica remains almost astonished at what rowing has done for her. “Rowing taught me a level of competition I didn’t even realize I had in me.”

Revisiting her first impressions of �ֲ��ý

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:00:25 +0000

About to graduate, a student circles back

By Becca Chacko ’10

I played with the hair bands looped around my wrists and found myself saying “um” and “like” just as I did when I was 17 and being interviewed for admission to �ֲ��ý.

But this time it was just three weeks before I would graduate from �ֲ��ý, and I was on the Olin concert hall stage playing the role of a high school senior.

The occasion was Maine Day, when counselors and college-hunting students from high schools around the state visit �ֲ��ý — this year, more than 100 attendees from about two-thirds of Maine high schools.

The program focused on searching for and applying to colleges. �ֲ��ý admissions staff proffered essay-writing tips and a roadmap for the process, and staged a mock reading of applications. Current �ֲ��ý students from Maine, sharing the benefits of hindsight, recalled their own searches.

As for me, a senior admissions fellow, I helped assistant dean Johie Farrar ’03 lead a college-interview workshop. I had interviewed more than 50 prospective applicants last fall, and got quite used to talking about �ֲ��ý: Why I love it, what needs improvement, how a prospective student could succeed here.

The resume that began “I am a responsible and friendly individual” seemed distant and unimpressive.

So now here I was in the mock interview that unexpectedly reawakened my 17-year-old self, once again being asked to explain not only which classes and activities I undertook in high school, but why I chose them and what they meant to me.

It felt strange to revisit my resume from Palo Alto High. The resume that began “I am a responsible and friendly individual” and offered my neatly bulleted accomplishments now seemed distant and unimpressive. Why did I once feel so strongly about Prop 77? What did I really accomplish as president of the Second Harvest food drive? There on the Olin stage, I couldn’t even remember things as basic as the high school subject I’d struggled with the most.

But Johie’s questions did help me clarify for the Maine high school students what I love most about �ֲ��ý. When she asked what I was seeking in a college, I said I wanted a place where students could collaborate without cutthroat competition, integrate into a small community where they felt like names and not numbers, and become broadly educated, well-rounded scholars.

And then I remembered why I volunteered to help Johie in the first place — my own real interview as a prospective �ֲ��ý student. It cemented my decision to attend. The relaxed atmosphere of Lindholm House, the senior interviewer who put her feet up on her chair, contributed to my seeing �ֲ��ý as a collaborative and comfortable environment. It was a place where my interviewer was trying to get to know me, not to trip me up. — Now at the Boston-area consulting firm Circadian, Becca Chacko will enter the Harvard Business School’s 2+2 Program in 2012.

Students Still Love the Sixties

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:00:14 +0000

What is it about the ’60s that inspires students?

In April 1960, a group of �ֲ��ý students picketed Woolworth’s in Lewiston in solidarity with black college students who had conducted sit-ins at segregated Woolworth lunch counters in Greensboro, N.C., and elsewhere in the South.

�ֲ��ý picketer John Lawton ’60 told The �ֲ��ý Student that informed action is an antidote to the “philosophy of drift.”

Those 1960 sit-ins helped spawn SNCC (the) while in the North, the group SDS () began its activism around the same time.

Fifty years later, the era’s vigorous, large-scale activism continues to captivate students, even as the era’s leading activists enter their 70s. “They seemed so fearless,” says Cynthia Alexandre Brutus ’13 of Brooklyn, N.Y.

(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

With Ashley Booker ’12 and Josalynne Cottery ’12, Alexandre Brutus saw a bit of ’60s glory in the flesh when they attended at Shaw University in Charlotte, N.C. Funded by the �ֲ��ý Multicultural Center, the three students were selected to attend through a competitive essay process.

Alexandre Brutus went to the April event seeking clues to how she might mobilize her fellow students today. “I’ve had encounters with people who seem confident in their ignorance,” she says. “I need to be unafraid to speak out.”

She met Gina Belafonte, daughter of keynote speaker Harry Belafonte, and they talked about having courage to perform in the public arena. Belafonte asked, “What are you afraid of?” She then motioned to a nearby chair. “Stand on the chair and just talk. The only barrier to you is you.”

Ashley Booker, meanwhile, got a radical perspective from Willie Ricks during a session on Pan-Africanism and education. Ricks, who helped to coin the slogan “Black Power,” asked the young people attending, “Why are you begging your master for your education?”

While the SNCC event helped the three women begin to find their social-justice voices, two �ֲ��ý seniors, Ariela Silberstein and Anthony Phillips, used their honors theses to give full voice to their ideas about the ’60s and activism.

Silberstein, of New York City, did her history thesis on the radical group . For his African American studies thesis, Phillips, of Philadelphia, looked at the opposing forces of integrationism and nationalism within SNCC.

Phillips has long been involved in social-justice issues in Philadelphia, and Silberstein, the child of parents who came of age in the ’60s, grew up in Greenwich Village. She recalls the moment she first saw the townhouse at 18 West 11th Street that exploded in 1970 when members of the Weather Underground accidentally detonated a bomb.

The two students deserve credit for “grappling with the historical roots of seemingly intractable contemporary problems, says Jensen.

But importantly, each student went beyond their initial motivation, beyond media-generated stereotypes, and beyond secondhand academic commentaries, says their adviser, Associate Professor of History Hilmar Jensen.

(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

For example, Phillips sought out and interviewed civil rights leader Bob Moses during his �ֲ��ý visit last year. Silberstein tracked down and interviewed former members of the Weather Underground.

In doing so, the two students deserve credit for “grappling with the historical roots of seemingly intractable contemporary problems, like ongoing wars of imperial overstretch and the deepening persistence of race and class inequality,” says Jensen, who also attended the SNCC 50th event.

Another SNCC attendee was Multifaith Chaplain Bill Blaine-Wallace. Like Jensen, Blaine-Wallace is keenly aware of �ֲ��ý’ historic and contemporary reputation for helping to channel the social-justice impulse. He asks, “For students who have that fire in the belly” — whether it be John Lawton in 1960 or an Anthony Phillips today — “how can �ֲ��ý create conduits to the real world?” — HJB

�ֲ��ý College chemistry major wins top award at international conference

�ֲ��ý News — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:26:46 +0000

Marilla Pender-Cudlip ’10, a recent �ֲ��ý College graduate and a chemistry major from Torrington, Conn., was honored with a top prize and 100 euros in prize money for her research poster at the 10th European Biological Inorganic Chemistry Conference, held June 22-26 in Thessaloniki, Greece.

The EUROBIC conference represents the best work in the field of bioinorganic chemistry, the study of metal ions in biological systems. Out of 297 posters at the conference, Pender-Cudlip’s and two others shared the top prize.

She stood out amidst an accomplished group. Most of the presenters were graduate students presenting doctoral work or postdoctoral associates and professors presenting material pending publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Pender-Cudlip, who graduated in May, attended the conference with chemistry professor Rachel Narehood Austin. “You could think about the award as an analogy to a young musician winning a music competition,” says Austin. “It signals that this is a person with the talent and training to rise to the top in a very competitive field.”

Pender-Cudlip’s poster exhibited research from her senior thesis, which involves AlkB, one of a class of chemicals called metalloenzymes, or enzymes that contain a bound metal ion in their structures. The research explores the reaction mechanism of AlkB as it oxidizes hydrocarbons called alkanes.

The enzyme is thought to be a prime catalyst employed by naturally occurring bacteria that feed on hydrocarbons — potentially linking the research to events like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “The importance of this research lies in understanding as much about AlkB as possible,” says Pender-Cudlip.

The research is part of an extensive project that she has been working on with Austin for the past three summers at �ֲ��ý. “It’s been nice working on the same project for so long,” says Pender-Cudlip, because it provided a consistent backdrop to her learning during the academic year.

“My understanding of chemistry broadened by taking more classes, while my lab experience grew because I spent every summer at �ֲ��ý,” she says.

Pender-Cudlip is no stranger to academic honors. During her time at �ֲ��ý, her awards included the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater and Beckman scholarships, which support selected students in the sciences.

While Pender-Cudlip was a bit surprised by the EUROBIC honor, she felt confident presenting her research. “I gained practice from the Mount David Summit” — a showcase of academic achievement at �ֲ��ý — “and the chemistry seminars that all majors present to the department.”

WCSH news offers update on Kaluba '10, a 'teen who cares'

Jay Burns — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:14:11 +0000

WCSH-TV, southern Maine’s NBC affiliate, updates its 2007 story on Chomba Kaluba ’10, who received a Teens Who Care award three years ago. The update notes that Kaluba, who grew up in Zambia, “hasn’t stopped helping others.” He has worked with efforts to eradicate HIV/AIDS in Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa. He went to Guatamala with the Maine-based group to help families who work at the garbage dumps. And he’s to help people in his native Zambia.

WMTW news calls Pricefalls.com 'a great concept and a local one'

Jay Burns — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:17:11 +0000

For its Project Economy series, southern Maine ABC affiliate WMTW-TV spotlights , the Dutch auction website founded by �ֲ��ý economics major Elliot Moskow ’10. Reporter Keith Baldi localizes the story even more by explaining how Auburn-based Agren Appliance has turned to Pricefalls to sell some products. “The upside is huge” of selling online, says owner Jason Agren. To find out who comes up with these ideas, “you have to go no farther than �ֲ��ý College here in Lewiston,” says Baldi, who interviewed Moskow during Commencement week. Moskow says that “I always knew if I put in enough hard work I could do anything. Obviously, most of the kinds who come to �ֲ��ý are hard workers. I really just had that mindset the whole time, kept at it and put a lot of time into it.”

2010 Commencement honorand addresses

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:26:50 +0000

A pioneering choreographer, leading researchers in the fields of climate change and reproduction, a best-selling novelist and one of television’s best-known journalists offered brief remarks and received honorary degrees during �ֲ��ý College’s 144th commencement ceremony May 30.

The 2010 �ֲ��ý honorands are:

Rennie Harris, the choreographer who brought hip-hop to the mainstream world of dance
James McCarthy, a scientist recognized internationally for helping to communicate the science of climate change
Jane Pauley, the veteran television journalist
Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and 1977 �ֲ��ý graduate
Teresa Woodruff, a researcher responsible for pioneering work in the care of women who will become infertile due to cancer treatment

Here are their remarks:

Hip hop choreographer Rennie Harris: “Movement is the last manifestation of your reality. What you do is who you are. Not what you say … Take action. Define your reality.”

Climate change scientist James McCarthy: “Balancing on the boundary can be some of the most exciting territory of all … and from this emerges a wonderful gift: New understanding and appreciation of whole worlds of ideas that appear to stand apart, and this can be an extraordinary opportunity for creativity.”

Television journalist Jane Pauley: “How often we get hung up on what we can’t do. Think about what you can. And if you can’t think of anything, keep thinking.”

Elizabeth Strout ’77: “The best part of what waits for you is that liberating prize of life, those remarkable moments when we understand that we are not the most important person in the world. The man on the side of the road is. The person on the airplane suffering is.”

Cancer and fertility researcher Teresa Woodruff: “As �ֲ��ý graduates, you are equipped to tackle the seemingly intractable problems of our day. We are all counting on you to become the thought leaders and doers of the 21st century.”

Commencement message: Don’t compare yourself to others, says journalist Pauley

Doug Hubley — Sun, 30 May 2010 18:46:50 +0000

“I saw this headline,” renowned television journalist Jane Pauley told the 455 members of the �ֲ��ý College class of 2010: ” ‘Inspiration is everywhere, but you have to be looking.’

“Congratulations, and may you find inspiration everywhere you look.”

Pauley was one of five honorary degree recipients at the College’s 144th commencement ceremony, which began at 10 a.m. May 30 on the historic Quad.

The other honorands were Rennie Harris, the choreographer who brought hip-hop to mainstream dance; James McCarthy, a scientist recognized internationally for helping to communicate the science of climate change; Elizabeth Strout, a 1977 �ֲ��ý graduate who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction last year for Olive Kitteridge; and Teresa Woodruff, a researcher responsible for groundbreaking research in caring for women who will become infertile due to cancer treatment.

Text: Read the five honorands’ addresses

Always uplifting, the ceremony this year had a conversational, convivial spirit, as presenters on stage passed laughs around, friends and families jostled for camera angles and cheered on their graduates, and the breeze shook loose maple seeds that came glittering down like confetti in the sun.

In her welcome, �ֲ��ý President Elaine Tuttle Hansen looked back four years to the convocation ceremony that was her first address to this group of students. Joking that she “felt fairly confident that none of you remember what I said” on that occasion, she recalled her theme on that day in 2006: the value of the skills of listening and questioning.

“Four years later,” Hansen told the students, “you have not disappointed my expectation that at �ֲ��ý you would develop into the incendiary listeners and tough questioners that the world needs.”

Harris, the Philadelphia choreographer, has proven to the world his conviction “that hip-hop can transcend boundaries of race, religion, gender and economic status,” �ֲ��ý trustee Geri FitzGerald said in introducing him. “He has transformed not just the art of dance, but our very notion of what art is and where it comes from.”

In his remarks, Harris offered insights distilled from his decades in making dance. “Movement is the last manifestation of your reality,” he said. “What you do is who you are, not what you say.”

He also asked the students to remember that we are in this life “to understand love on many, many levels” — and that being so, “remember when you’re looking down at someone . . . make sure your hand is reached out to pull them up.”

Saying that a discussion of climate change would take him at least an hour instead of the five minutes allocated for each honorand’s talk, McCarthy instead borrowed a page from the script of the 1967 film The Graduate.

He cited the famous scene at a graduation party at which young Benjamin Braddock is offered a single word of advice: “plastics.” But the solitary word that the Harvard researcher held out to his �ֲ��ý audience was, instead, “boundaries.”

He asked the �ֲ��ý graduates to reflect on the boundaries they have sought out and crossed in their time here, discovering new interests and abilities, and a newly expanded sense of the human family. By pausing at the boundary between different worlds, he said, we can understand the commonalities between those worlds.

“This can be an extraordinary opportunity for creativity.”

Pauley, one of the best-known female broadcast journalists to emerge during the 1970s, exhorted her audience of exceptional achievers to always judge themselves fairly. She warned against the pitfall of comparing oneself unfavorably to others — a bad habit suffered by Pauley herself and, as she related, by writer Mark Twain.

Later, with a story about some advice that helped children’s book creator Maurice Sendak create the popular Where the Wild Things Are, Pauley asked her listeners to focus on their abilities, not shortcomings. “How often we get hung up on what we can’t do,” she told the seniors. “Think about what you can.”

Strout, who also wrote the best sellers Amy and Isabelle and Abide With Me, was introduced by college trustee David Foster, a �ֲ��ý classmate, as the “most spectacular member of the class of 1977.”

Referencing the �ֲ��ý tradition of plunging through a hole in the ice into the campus pond in the dead of winter, Strout called this occasion “a big-deal Puddle Jump day.” But her remarks in other ways, too, gave the alumni-to-be a bracing splash of rhetorical cold water.

She described, first, a doctor she knows who vows never to help with a medical emergency on a plane, lest the outcome be unpleasant. And second, a man taken ill on the roadside being looked after by numerous passers-by.

“The best part of what waits for you is that liberating prize of life, those remarkable moments when we understand that we are not the most important person in the world,” she said. “The man on the side of the road is. The person on the airplane suffering is.”

She concluded, “Look forward to that relief of not being the most important person in the world, and you really will be all right.”

Woodruff drew lessons for her audience from the transformational outcomes for women and families that have resulted from her research. “Create your opportunities” rather than passively responding to circumstances, she said. Remember the value of teamwork. And above all, maintain your optimism even in the face of seemingly intractable problems.

“You have a world of possibilities awaiting you.”

Of the 455 seniors that �ֲ��ý graduated Sunday, 241 are women and 214 are men. Forty-nine graduates come from Maine, and 28 of the United States were represented in the class. Twenty-six of the graduating students come from other countries.

Psychology was the most common major among the class of 2010, with 55 graduates. Economics was a close second, with 54 majors, and politics was the third most popular, with 47. Twenty-nine women and 20 men took double majors. Two women and one man took three majors.

Sixty-seven members of the class of 2010 earned bachelor of science degrees, with the remaining 388 receiving bachelor of arts degrees.