Four ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seniors are hoping to get the chance to spend the next year seeking answers to some big questions. Finalists for the Watson Fellowship, these students are exploring differing approaches to work across cultures, persistent traditions amid changing political boundaries, how meaning can be made from movement, and community-driven approaches to power grids.

The Watson Fellowship offers college graduates support to travel for a full year exploring a complex topic. Fellows receive $40,000 along with health insurance and a year’s worth of student loan payments (if needed). In exchange, they must remain outside of the United States for a full year, beginning in the August following their college graduation.

“This is some version of heaven,â€� said Robert Strong, director of national fellowships. “The Watson allows ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ies to spend a year traveling the earth constrained only by the limits of their curiosities, which Watson believes should be limitless.â€� ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is one of 41 colleges and universities that can nominate students. Each institution is allowed to nominate up to four students from within their own highly competitive pool. The last time ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students were awarded a Watson was in 2023, when two ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seniors, and , received the prestigious fellowships.

This year ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has four nominees: Poppy Marsh ’26 of San Francisco, Calif., John Harun-DeLong ’26 of Fairbanks, Alaska; Brett Karpf ’26 of Ridgewood, N.J., and Linh Hoang ’26 of Hanoi, Vietnam. And if awarded, their travels could span 19 countries — from Nepal to Norway to New Zealand.

We caught up with these four finalists, to learn more about what they hope to accomplish if they receive a Watson. Poppy Marsh, a double major in English and politics, has proposed a project to explore identity and community among those impacted by political borders in five countries. Marsh was an Otis Fellow in 2024 and spent eight weeks in the Italian Dolomites, hiking and talking to people about climate change and environmental degradation. Marsh sees the Watson as “the grandparent of the Otis,â€� with a longer time frame, larger scope, and increased independence on the part of the fellow. For the Watson, she explains, “I’m curious about individual and communal conceptions of identity as it relates to the invention of the modern state through, around, and between communities whose presence on this land predates the state’s modern borders. So my project is thinking about this through distinct methods of cultural, linguistic, and social preservations of these communal identities as they relate to the land that they’ve remained on.â€�

Marsh’s interdisciplinarity shows up in her work at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Her politics thesis, which is “a comparative study of the refugee accommodation regimes in Greece and Kenya,â€� focuses on policy differences in shifting communities. Her year-long poetry thesis allows another way to explore questions of place. “For that, I’m interested in ideas of homeland, ideas of what it means to come from a place and no longer be with it or what it means to come from a place and remain with it.â€� 

Marsh’s idea for the Watson builds on questions of belonging, but never aims to find answers or offer solutions. “I’m not really after a specific political or social definition. I’m not interested in proving a rightful belonging to land or affirming a rightful belonging to land. That’s so far from my place. What I want is structured around open-ended curiosity. I want it to be stretchy. I want it to be bent and folded and contradicted. I want it to be able to hold water and leak as well, depending on where I am.â€� 

Marsh credits her first-year seminar professor and advisor, Senem Aslan, professor of politics, for her growing enthusiasm and curiosity about these questions. Aslan has been Marsh’s advisor all four years and has encouraged Marsh to move toward these goals. 

John Harun-DeLong ’26 of Fairbanks, Alaska, could have selected any number of big questions to follow for his proposed year abroad. He is a cellist, on the debate team, and majoring in biochemistry with minors in philosophy and Hispanic Studies. But within those varied interests is a throughline:  “Climate change is what really drives me. I need to think of it. For me, my life isn’t just my own body. It’s like my entire community of Alaska and my hometown. And so the destruction of that is fundamental. Everything that shaped you, if those are being destroyed, that’s the most complete destruction of the self that can exist, really.â€�

Though he aims to work toward a MD/PhD in the future, Harun-DeLong first wants to spend time understanding, and comparing, power grids around the world to work toward more sustainable and safer solutions for the U.S.. 

His plan is to travel to countries with a decentralized power grid or microgrids that are more resilient than the aging – and vulnerable – grid in the U.S. It isn’t only the science that interests Harun-DeLong. These microgrids also “allow [citizens] to have truly democratic control over the grid because the people in the village are supposed to maintain and decide what the best grid policy is.â€� 

There’s a precedent for Harun-DeLong to figure it out as he goes, and find opportunities along the way. Last summer, when Harun-DeLong knew that he wanted to work with some of the top cancer researchers in the world, he cold-called them. He showed up in Spain and ended up working as a research assistant for Maria Blasco, director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center. 

Linh Hoang ’26 of Hanoi, Vietnam was traveling in Svalbard, Norway, when she met a stranger who changed her life. In a shared kitchen, over instant ramen, Hoang struck up a conversation with a man who explained his own big questions. He had spent the past two decades in constant motion, always striving through work to reach the next rung on the ladder. He suddenly stopped and asked himself: “What do I actually want?â€� That reflection struck Hoang as she was busy working toward her own future. Why wait for a mid-life break to ask this question? Talking to friends across the globe who are building lives in a time of uncertainty, Hoang believes that it is worth pausing to notice how various cultures respond to and help shape relationships to work. 

Hoang’s Watson project emphasizes existential questions and places her generation in a broader context of work culture. “From my Watson, I will learn how people across cultures navigate the same tensions I’ve felt: between ambition and meaning, belonging and freedom, expectation and reality. I will return with a deeper understanding of how systems and emotions intertwine, and with the humility to know that both matter.â€� 

Those who know Hoang as a double major in math and economics might be surprised that she is focusing on philosophical questions. Hoang’s understanding of economics will certainly impact the questions that she asks, but she really is interested in a more personal approach in her travels. Hoang’s proposal lays out a plan to visit nine countries in the coming year. 

Hoang is already making plans to pursue graduate work that bridges math and finance. She isn’t on the fence about her next steps, and she does not see the Watson as “opting out.â€� Instead, she is remembering the stranger in Norway reflecting on his life and his choices. And in framing these questions comparatively in cultures both known for their high-pressure or their laid-back approaches to work, Hoang is certain to move toward her next phase with more understanding. “What I’ve found,â€� Hoang says, â€�is that when I talk to more people, I learn more about myself.“ 

Brett Karpf ’26 of Ridgewood, N.J. spends a lot of time walking. Whether covering hundreds of miles along trails in Italy on his Otis Fellowship, wandering through urban Morocco during study abroad or simply moving from place to place in Maine, walking gives meaning to his life. As he has grown and reflected more on the role of motion in his own life, he has begun asking more questions about walking and movement, such as “Why is it that moving, walking especially, can enable us to gain a better sense of faith or understanding or contentedness?â€� 

An English major, Karpf is deeply engaged in analyzing words; his two-semester thesis project explores sublimity in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! But Karpf has also served as an assistant to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ horticulturalist Jeremy Lavertu and worked as a gardener for Sanford Freedman, associate professor of English. His proposal for the Watson allows him to combine his love of the natural world with his analytical skills as he works to understand what happens for people who spend time walking outside. 

Though Karpf’s experiences walking have been selective and intentional, he is drawn to nomadic cultures whose very existence is tied to movement. “I’m looking for similarities and oppositions between different groups. You can find so much cultural similarity between places that are thousands of miles apart, if not tens of thousands of miles apart, and who are using motion to sort of reach similar ends.â€�

Karpf will explore people who walk for various reasons, including religious pilgrims. He hopes to learn “by interacting with people who are walking as a means of religious observance or as a way to become closer with what they deem to be divine.� The project will also explore “cultures where motion and movement are prioritized — herders, semi-nomadic peoples, including people that used to be nomadic and no longer are,� in order to understand the drive to hold to traditions that are increasingly threatened.

Karpf hopes to find meaningful answers — and at minimum, answers that help him understand himself more. “I am seeking how others experience purpose and understanding when it feels deeply entangled with movement: Can their experience help me understand my own?�

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has welcomed a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors joined the college during the 2025-2026 academic year. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News has been introducing them in groups over this semester. This fifth and final installment introduces you to the last of our new faculty hires at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this year. 

Wesley Gillis, assistant professor of physics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

Collaboration is at the heart of both my teaching and my scholarship. In the classroom, I am focused on implementing team-based learning across the physics curriculum. This approach helps students build effective team dynamics, develop collaborative problem-solving skills, and engage deeply with complex, real-world problems through shared inquiry and discussion.

My research similarly centers on collaborative engagement within a large, international scientific community. As a member of the nEXO collaboration — comprising approximately 200 scientists worldwide — I contribute to the research and development of a next-generation, underground experiment designed to investigate the fundamental nature of the neutrino. Specifically, my lab studies the detection mechanisms, hardware design, and data analysis of vacuum ultraviolet light in liquid xenon. Together, our work aims to answer one of physics’ most profound questions: Is the neutrino its own antiparticle?

What is most exciting in your first year at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½? 

I was excited to play Dvorak’s 9th symphony, the New World Symphony, with the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Orchestra in November.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

When a class full of teams has been given a challenging problem, the volume ramps from a dull rumble to a clamorous cacophony of engagement. This is when I know good learning is happening.

Eugene Choo, professor of economics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I specialize in empirical industrial organization and econometrics, with a research focus on marriage matching and the economics of household formation. My work combines structural modeling and econometric identification to study matching markets. Before joining ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, I taught econometrics, industrial organization, mathematical economics, and intermediate microeconomics. 

What is most exciting in your first year at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½? 

I am excited about joining the vibrant liberal arts community and engaging with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students. I am also looking forward to exploring the beautiful state of Maine.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students discover economics and how it is used to look at everyday life.

Charlotte Connop, assistant professor of earth and climate sciences

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I’m a metamorphic petrologist and geochronologist. These are fancy words to say that I date the formation of (usually pretty old) metamorphic rocks and try to figure out how these rocks formed. These rocks can help us figure out the driving mechanisms behind processes that happen deep within the Earth that we are unable to directly observe. I’m especially interested in investigating processes that lead to the movement of elements within the Earth, including things like partial melting — where temperatures increase enough to melt rock, with the molten rock able to migrate through the Earth, leading to the transportation of material to a new location.

My teaching focuses reflect these research interests — in my classes, students learn about the rocks that make up our planet and the land we live on, and the different processes that formed and modified these rocks over time. Students learn how elements join together on the atomic scale to make minerals and how those minerals are combined in different proportions to produce different rocks. We focus on connecting these different rocks to tectonic environments to disentangle Earth processes that we are unable to observe ourselves. 

What is most exciting in your first year at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½? 

I’m most excited about getting to know everyone in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community! Whether it’s students in class, swinging by office hours or completing a senior thesis with me, or seeing my fellow faculty and staff around campus or in the Den grabbing lunch, everyone has been so welcoming so far. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone more and becoming part of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students pull together information from across the semester (and across their courses) to grapple with complex scientific questions. We think about a lot of different time and length scales in earth and climate sciences and to have students be able to think from the nano scale to the macro scale and beyond requires integrating a lot of different concepts, which can be hard to grapple with at times, but so rewarding when put together correctly. 

“Okay. I am going to just say it: I’d like to see a woman ask a question,â€� economist Cecilia Rouse said to her ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ audience. 

“A student,� she clarified, and a laugh rippled among the students, faculty, and staff who were asking some Q’s during a lively Q&A session after Rouse’s talk in a Pettengill Hall classroom back in April.

Rouse is no stranger to commanding a room: She chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisors. And as a professor of economics at Princeton, she’s certainly no stranger to speaking with students. 

She’s also a woman, and thus no stranger to the fact that economics is infamously dominated by men, a fact that “is not a trend, but always the case in economics — everywhere,â€� says Lynne Lewis, Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. With colleague Nivedhitha Subramanian, an assistant professor of economics, Lewis welcomed Rouse to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ on behalf of the student club Women in Economics, the Department of Economics, and the President’s Office.

Nicknamed WE@ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the economics club was founded by Lewis and a colleague in 2018 following high-profile national media accounts of discrimination against women in economics.

The discrimination was “nothing new,â€� as Lewis said in 2018 but “at the same time it was great to see the topic getting attention.â€�  how “gender and racial gaps in economics are wider, and have narrowed less over time, than in many other fields.”

Among economics majors at U.S. colleges, it’s understood that about 70 percent are men and 30 percent women. At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, 74 percent of the economics majors this year were male. That’s within a senior class that is fairly gender balanced at approximately 46 percent male, 52 percent female, and 2 percent transgender and/or gender non-conforming.

Open to all students, Women in Economics focuses on supporting female-identifying students who wish to study and explore economics, finance, consulting, and related fields through various efforts, including invited guest speakers like Rouse, who can expand the notion of who can both major and thrive in economics.

Jane Dodge ’24 of Winchester, Mass., is the community liaison for WE@ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. She’s not an economics major — English is her choice — but knows that economics at the college level ,” a culture that make it hard for female students to see themselves thrive in the field of study.

Students often have a preconceived notion that studying economics is “all about [going into] finance and making money,� says Dodge. But it can be other things. “It’s about looking at how people make choices and ways wealth can be distributed� — which has value that spans most academic majors, she says.

As part of her visit, Rouse spent informal time talking with students, including a gathering in the Fireplace Lounge in Commons, where she offered direct encouragement and advice. At her evening talk, she was introduced by President Clayton Spencer and interviewed by Lewis and Subramanian.

An example of economics’ multidisciplinary reach came during Rouse’s talk when she addressed economics and energy in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Even though the the invasion has “raised the issueâ€� — mostly due to soaring gas prices — so that “as we make this transition to clean energy, we need to be independent there too, because we don’t want to find ourselves at the mercy of another country,â€� says Rouse. “We need some energy independence.â€�

Rouse suggested looking at politics as a component of economics, rather than an opponent.

For Caitie McGlashan ’22 of Hopkinton, N.H., Rouse’s insights into how politics, policy, and economics can inform and benefit each other were eye-opening. 

It’s tempting to think of politics as “this nuisance that prevents beneficial economic policy from getting through,â€� says McGlashan, vice president of WE@ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. But Rouse suggested looking at politics as a component of economics, rather than an opponent.

“When we have some sort of constraint in economics, we incorporate it into our modeling and use it to make the model more realistic. We don’t just ignore it,” McGlashan explains. “So Rouse framed politics as a constraint that can be modeled into the likelihood of a particular piece of economic legislation being effective.”

The trifecta of politics, public policy, and economics are also all components of a slightly older — but ongoing — issue a little closer to home: COVID. Lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic have had lasting effects on the economy, and it’s only made it more clear that a single decision can have widespread consequences.

COVID variants keep appearing, but no nationwide lockdown has been announced since the first one in March of 2020. Cases are still high, even with vaccination rates, so why hasn’t the economy been hit as hard as that first time?

“Two years ago we knew nothing about this virus,â€� says Rouse. Information battled with disinformation. “Remember, people were wiping down their groceries — and being told they didn’t have to wear masks, [that COVID] was overblown. Shutting down the economy was what we just needed to do. It was a very extreme policy simply because we didn’t have the tools.â€�

But now we have those tools, says Rouse. We know what upticks in cases look like, we know ways to react and mitigate exposure, and more importantly, we have vaccines; all tools that affect the way an economist calculates what actions to take.

And for economics students and those considering studying economics, the job market for economists is “red-hot� right now, says Rouse.

Economics doesn’t afford a single path or a single tool for its majors. “It’s a fantastic toolkit to help understand so much of the world around us,” says Subramanian.

“You’re able to ask important questions and use data to answer them,” says Lewis. True, it can be a means to a specific career goal, as are many academic majors, but it’s also about “finding ways to make people better off, and crafting policies that address poverty, discrimination, environmental pollution, and inequality.”

The midcoast Maine town of Damariscotta, a popular destination for both tourists and retirees looking to resettle, was also a field-trip destination for a new Short Term course this year.

The downtown is a little gem whose charms include quirky-but-useful amenities and architecture dating back to the 1840s. Water views abound, as the densely built-up downtown is bordered on three sides by the Damariscotta River.

An especially striking view is from a parking lot sandwiched between the river and the downtown. Just steps from the main street, this spacious riverfront lot has been an essential asset to the town for more than 50 years.

But if no action is taken — perhaps even if action is taken — that parking lot could morph from essential asset to fatal weak point before another 50 years have passed.

Students, faculty, and guests of the course “In Search of Higher Ground” pose with the Damariscotta River in the background on May 1, 2019. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The Damariscotta is a tidal river. As climate change drives up sea levels, high tides are getting higher. And when the river rises enough to flood downtown, it will come right across that parking lot.

So if you’re going to discuss a town’s response to sea level rise, what better place to do it than the local ground zero? That’s why, for their Short Term course “In Search of Higher Ground: Sea Level Rise, Flooding, and the Future of the Eastern Seaboard,â€� ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors Lynne Lewis and Francis Eanes got their students together with local officials at the parking lot to discuss the town’s flood-response strategy.

Damariscotta, whose parking lot is already subject to flooding during extremes of tide and weather, was one of a few Maine destinations for the class. (The local authorities, by the way, plan to raise the lot by three feet and edge it with a new seawall. A second seawall will protect the north side of downtown. The total cost would have run about $1.8 million according to a estimate from 2015, when construction was considerably cheaper.)

Following the local excursions, the centerpiece of the course was a 10-day trip to the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina, where the battle with high water is much further along. The class visited research centers, took tours on land and sea, and met with experts in diverse disciplines. They learned the dichotomy between “green� adaptations to rising water that mimic and support natural systems, and “gray� adaptations like seawalls and bulkheads.

A member of the “In Search of Higher Groundâ€� class, Henry Colt ’19 poses at the wastewater treatment plant by the sea in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Six feet tall, Colt marks the level sea water could reach during a northeaster in the year 2060 according to one scenario. (Lynne Lewis for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The class saw the double-deck piers that the U.S. Navy is building at its base in Norfolk, Va., a city especially hard-hit by rising seas. And they visited Nags Head, a town on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where authorities are spending $43 million to “renourish� the beloved-but-eroding beach with a layer of sand, four and a half feet thick, pumped in from the sea floor a mile or more off the coast.

Focusing on economic and social vulnerabilities to sea level rise, “In Search of Higher Ground� was explicitly an experiential course, designed to put the students where the action is and then inform their responses to it.

Though coastal flooding is just one subset of the problems caused by climate change, its ramifications are mind-numbingly complex — including the loss of critical wildlife habitat, the loss of homes, businesses, and public infrastructure, and the monetary and social costs of relocating communities.

Francis Eanes and Lynne Lewis pose in Damariscotta, Maine, during the May 1 visit by their “In Search of Higher Ground” class. Eanes is a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies and Lewis is the Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

So maybe the best thing you can say about sea level rise is that it’s an educational cornucopia. The road trips included visits with environmental economists, engineers, biologists, oceanographers, physicists, government officials, and more. With each new conversation, “I would see different students light up like, ‘Oh, like that’s what I’m really interested in,’â€� says Eanes, himself a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies who studies urban issues and food systems.

“The experiential piece is the springboard to taking a deeper dive into the more technical stuff,� he explains. “The topic is interesting to everybody, but different people will gravitate toward different methods� for coming to grips with it. The class, Eanes notes, was mostly underclass students, and more than half of the group were ES majors.

The trips were as educational for the two ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors as for their dozen students. “We could help students process and answer some questions, but most of the time I didn’t know the answer,â€� says Lewis, herself an environmental economist and the Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics. “We were learning right along with them.â€�

Inevitably, some members of the class approached the field trip ready to offer ideas. But that changed as they encountered the facts and the people on the scene. One student told Lewis, “I went in with my preconceived ‘You need to do this and that.’ And I realized that that’s not right.â€�

Bulldozers spread sand near a beach house at Nags Head, N.C., part of a $43 million beach “renourishmentâ€� project. Sand is dredged from the ocean floor and pumped more than a mile from an offshore “borrowâ€� site to the beach. (Lynne Lewis for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“You can watch the PowerPoint and think you understand,� says Koharu Aoki, a first-year student from Tokyo. “And then you get to see the real thing and it is totally different.�

Still, the impulse to march in brandishing advice is understandable when you consider the political, social, and cultural gridlock that humanity has imposed on this self-inflicted crisis. “We can’t fight each other and the rising ocean� too, says Kassie Wilson ’21 of Westford, Mass., a newly declared environmental studies major who took the course.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ group heard from several sources that in negotiating response strategies with certain stakeholders, they often had to avoid the words “climate changeâ€� in favor of less politically polarized language, such as “recurrent flooding.â€�

Bob Faunce, the now-retired county planner who helped Damariscotta design its response strategy, mentioned the impact of Republican Paul LePage, Maine’s governor from 2011 till this year, who halted state climate-change adaptation plans soon after taking office.

“Not being able to discuss [climate change] at the state level has been very difficult,� Faunce said. “The next dollar I get from the state [for adaptation] will be the first dollar I’ve gotten from them.� (Funding for the Damariscotta project has come from federal and private sources.)

The Navy has added a second deck to some piers at Naval Base Norfolk to accommodate higher water levels and expedite the handling of cargo. (Lynne Lewis for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Still, the field trips afforded examples of ingenuity and realism that gave the visitors from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ some cause for optimism. Norfolk, facing one of the fastest rates of sea level rise in the nation, displayed a matter-of-fact effectiveness that was particularly admirable.

Deputy Resilience Officer Kyle Spencer told the class about the system of sensors around the city that, through the street navigation app Waze, show drivers which streets are flooded and impassable.

“He makes things happen,â€� says Lewis — “basically saying, ‘Well, here’s what I need. Nobody’s giving it to me, so I’m going to figure out how to do it, and I’m bringing people together to talk about it.’ It was pretty impressive.â€�

Norfolk also exemplified a principle common to many of the most effective approaches to the problem. “There’s this paradigm shift of, ‘We’re going to live with water, not try to keep the water away,’â€� says Eanes. “Trying to wall ourselves off from the water is not actually the most effective strategy, from a geophysical standpoint or from a psychological community standpoint.â€�

A “living shorelineâ€� in rural Mathews County, Va. A rock sill, center, dissipates wave energy coming from the left while allowing water through to support marine plant and animal life. (Lynne Lewis for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Instead, there’s increasing emphasis on infrastructure like flood parks, recreation areas that can also be used to contain floodwaters; and “living shorelines,� features like artificial reefs, wetlands, and dunes. These are “human constructions, and often will involve some sort of gray or hard infrastructure,� says Eanes. “But they’re using natural processes to absorb some of the increasing intensity of storm events.�

The measures that people like Spencer are “doing and thinking about are very creative,â€� Lewis says. “People are very aware that these might be Band-Aids, temporary solutions, but it’s what we’ve got right now.â€�

Offering some generational context, Eanes points out that the daily news hasn’t given college-age students much reason to expect creative solutions to large-scale problems, especially involving climate change. “The baseline that they are working from is that institutions and approaches that we’ve had for decades are not commensurate with the scale of the problem,â€� he suggests.

“People are very aware that these might be Band-Aids, but it’s what we’ve got right now.â€�

“And then to see that, ‘Oh, actually communities all over the place are working on this’ is a relief,� he says, even if the focus is on accommodating high water in the short term, and not mitigating climate change in the long term.

People leading the response to water that threatens their communities are “making decisions in political, social, and economic situations that we can’t know just from being at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and learning about it,â€� Dianna Georges ’22 of Clifton, N.J., said during a class meeting after the trip.

“Some people the class encountered are used to living with water, while for others it’s a new experience,� Lewis points out. “Adaptation is very localized and very context- and geography-specific.�

She adds, “No one is really talking about managed retreat. At least not yet.�

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students hear about flood response planning from Damariscotta Town Manager Matt Lutkus, center left, and former county planner Bob Faunce, center right, during their May 1 visit. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

It’s obvious that Professor of Economics Lynne Lewis is a dog lover.

Her second-floor Pettengill office contains a large dog crate and framed photographs of various dogs that have been a part of her life, including the two she has now. “I absolutely love them,� she says.

One dog that’s very meaningful to her, Spike Jr., is inanimate:  a metal figurine bedecked with colorful ribbons that she keeps close at hand. “I mean, look at this guy,� she says of the gritty junkyard figure. “He’s so quirky. It’s ridiculous.�

Lynne Lewis and Spike Jr. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Spike belonged to Lewis’s late friend and colleague David Aschauer, who died in 2011 while swimming in a summer triathlon off the coast of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He was 58 years old. “He died as he lived — doing something he loved and doing it with intention and passion,â€� said Lewis in a memorial tribute she presented at the first faculty meeting following Aschauer’s death.

During campus memorial preparations, Lewis got to know Aschauer’s family well, and they, her. His daughter, Erika, gave Spike  — who had resided in Aschauer’s Pettengill office — to Lewis. “She thought he would have wanted me to have it, which made it very special,” she says.

“David and I were friends, but we were really different, worlds apart sometimes in what we worked on and in our politics,� she remembers. He was a macroeconomist, she a microeconomist. He was, she says, “one of our politically conservative colleagues who was always arguing with us about absolutely everything and of course was usually right.�

But this dog, she says, “reminds me of David and his contributions to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and it reminds me of what I like about this place.â€� Spike isn’t the only thing that Lewis inherited from Aschauer. She holds the same chair, the Elmer W. Campbell Professorship of Economics, that Aschauer held.

David A. Aschauer, photographed in his Pettengill Hall office in 2009. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Known nationally for research illustrating the economic stimulus created by government spending on public infrastructure, Aschauer left really big shoes to fill, says Lewis, noting that his famous 1988 paper on the importance of spending on core infrastructure, published in the Journal of Monetary Economics, has been cited close to 3,500 times.  “He was very focused on making positive change.�

In that sense, economics is a behavioral science, she says. “We teach about human behavior, how markets work, and how economies function, but we also teach about decision-making and evaluating policies that change behavior.�

Lewis is proud of the work being done by her economics colleagues to carry Aschauer’s legacy forward. “They are doing really good things to make the world and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ a better place. They’re offering their students the education they need to go into the world to accomplish the same.â€�

That’s what she thinks when she sees Spike Jr.

Spike Jr. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

When tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon arrived in New York City after 14 years in Europe, he wasn’t just an American jazzman visiting home.

It was 1976 and the city was a mess: municipal coffers depleted, public services in disarray, crime on the rise, outrage near the boiling point. Films like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Death Wish showed America an apocalyptic reflection of its iconic metropolis.

As a bebop pioneer, a hero in a mainstream jazz tradition, Gordon’s return symbolized hope for jazz conservatives who felt betrayed by the music’s progressive wing. The saxophonist received a hero’s welcome at homecoming gigs at the Village Vanguard and elsewhere, a tidal wave of love and relief that didn’t go unnoticed by the mainstream press. (Not to mention the record labels: Gordon netted a contract with Columbia in short order and decided to move back to the U.S. for good.)

Dale Chapman, associate professor of music and author of The Jazz Bubble, leads a MLK Day workshop on the song “May We Forever Stand” in January 2019. Chapman co-led the session with professor Charles Nero. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For old-school jazzers, Gordon’s triumphant return felt like some kind of a musical-moral victory. But it could also be read more sweepingly as a hopeful symbol of the ailing city’s redemption, argues a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ music historian — albeit a misleading symbol that looked at fundamental problems of governance and finance and responded, “There’s hope for your culture.”

The Dexter Gordon episode sets up the themes that drive Associate Professor of Music Dale Chapman’s The Jazz Bubble: Neoclassical Jazz in Neoliberal Culture (University of California Press, 2018). One theme is the emergence of the neoclassical jazz movement of the 1980s and ’90s. The other is the advent of political and economic neoliberalism.

And Chapman makes a surprising yet convincing argument for certain parallels — if not actual symbiosis — between that celebrated conservative style of jazz, on the one hand, and the overwhelming financialization of the global economy on the other.

Ranging across political, social, and economic history as well as the music stories dear to Chapman’s heart, the book makes its point through examples as diverse as the use of polyrhythms in Miles Davis’ music vs. Wynton Marsalis’; the vilification of disco as a proxy for black and LGBT culture in New York; the assimilation of a landmark jazz label by a multinational corporation; and urban renewal in San Francisco.

What does Dexter Gordon’s triumphant homecoming have to do with neoclassical jazz?

Dale Chapman listens to a 2018 lecture by his partner, John E. Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience Nancy Koven. (Rene Roy for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Gordon was recruited by Bruce Lundvall at Columbia Records, the very label that would also be aggressive in recruiting artists like Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, and Harry Connick Jr. to the label in the early 1980s. And it was the label that really began to ramp up this idea of investing in a more traditional and straight-ahead notion of what jazz was about.

So what does “neoclassical� mean in the context of The Jazz Bubble?

As a particular stylistic development, neoclassical jazz espouses a certain idea of what the jazz tradition should do: It should turn back to the past and recuperate earlier musical styles, and at the same time, it should distance itself from tributaries of jazz like jazz-rock fusion or the avant-garde or the so-called New Thing, free jazz, from the 1960s. And it involves a group of predominantly young African American musicians, many of whom were among the first generation to draw explicitly upon formal jazz training in the conservatories.

But neoclassicism was also a particular marketing push in the 1980s. [In contrast to its early years,] jazz has become an idea that is safe for public consumption. It pays lip service to African American legacies of cultural contribution, but at the same time, it’s not particularly threatening to entities like corporations or government or philanthropists.

That’s important because then, they can look at it as a site where all sorts of playful and improvisatory and experimental things can happen. So it becomes a powerful metaphor for the way that things are going on in the free market itself.

And “neoliberalism,� in essence, refers to unbridled capitalism as we’ve come to know it since the Reagan and Thatcher years.

It’s the celebration of free markets, the idea of getting government out of the way — or harnessing government to turbocharge the possibilities of particular private entities. It focuses on the lone individual, and on their individual economic performance as the kind of metric by which everything should be judged.

One of your examples of the thematic ties between institutional interests and jazz takes place in San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood. The urban renewal authority first erased a robust, ethnically diverse community and its thriving grassroots jazz scene. And then, ironically enough, the authority partnered with big financial players to resurrect a “community� jazz identity there.

Dale Chapman, at right, performs with the Three Point Trio during ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance. The guitarist is John Smedley, professor of physics and astronomy, and the bassist is Tim Clough. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In an earlier moment, urban redevelopment in San Francisco was an aggressive government intervention using practices like eminent domain to displace thousands of small businesses and families to make way for bigger business. But since the 1980s, urban renewal is now intimately connected to the performance of bonds on the global financial markets.

So it’s interesting that the public face that the redevelopment agency has used to redeem itself, to make the system more amenable to the financial markets, and to build economic possibility in the city, is jazz — to build this mixed-use development with a jazz club in the basement and jazz-themed heritage entities off to the side.

In the 1980s, when neoclassical was on the ascendant, it was good timing for jazz commercially.

Jazz as a function of record sales had been dwindling for many years. So at the very moment that jazz had become less popular, it was nevertheless also becoming a kind of pop symbol of municipal or governmental or corporate initiatives that would draw upon the symbolism of jazz, its references of multiculturalism, and a whole number of other things.

Including improvisation, which reaches its apogee in jazz. But, as you point out, an improvisational stance that’s, arguably, worth celebrating in business is far removed from the origins of jazz improvisation.

In the financial industry, even if a situation is radically uncertain, people tend to believe optimistically that there are particular risk models that allow them to navigate it. In a similar manner, jazz is latched onto as this very positive, very playful site where risk unfolds.

Jazz has become an idea that is safe for public consumption.

People aren’t necessarily reflecting on the broader meaning of what it means to talk about risk in jazz, which is a tradition rooted in the traumatic legacy of black cultural production.

From slavery through to the present, African American peoples have been thrown, deliberately as a matter of policy or structure, into conditions of uncertainty. So to think about what jazz means against that — there’s this playful corporate idea that polishes things up and makes them attractive, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the full nature of what is morally and ethically and politically at stake in those conditions of uncertainty.

A tax on over-the-counter diet pills could be an effective public-health strategy to discourage teenagers from purchasing the dangerous and “useless junk,� according to a first-of-its-kind study coauthored by economics professor Nathan Tefft.

The $66 billion diet industry faces few regulations, explain Tefft and co-author S. Bryn Austin in their blog post for . Yet “what the diet industry does not want you to know…is that most of what they sell is at best useless junk — and that could not be truer than for diet pills,â€� say the researchers.

Nathan Tefft, associate professor of economics. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Weight-loss products are particularly dangerous, with 23,000 annual emergency room visits . Among girls and women, fully a third of these ER visits are caused by weight-loss supplements — yet teenagers, especially, should.

So what measures can policymakers take to keep diet pills out of the hands of teens? Based on the fact that taxes on cigarettes have been “one of the most effective strategies to date to drive down teen smoking,� the researchers looked at whether “taxing diet pills might be a solution.�

The answer is a resounding “yes.� A 20 percent tax on diet pills could lead to a 5.2 percent decrease in overall purchases — and, importantly, a 17.5 percent decrease among households with teenagers.

“That may not sound like a lot,� wrote Austin and Tefft, “but there are over 126 million households in the U.S., and roughly one in five of them purchase these products, so a 5 percent decrease across millions of American households is a lot of diet pills not finding their way into the medicine cabinets in people’s homes.�

Associate Professor of Economics Nathan Tefft leads a class. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The study will be published in a

Tefft, who studies the economics of public health issues and has examined the effects of taxation on other products, conducted the study in collaboration with Austin, director of the Strategic Training Initiative to Prevent Eating Disorders at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston Children’s Hospital; and with Selena Hua Liu of the Department of Nutrition at Simmons College.

With Theodore Walther’s appointment to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ economics faculty in 1958, the department exploded in size — from two professors to three.

For Walther, a professor emeritus of economics who died on June 2 at age 88, that was the beginning of vast changes in the college during his 43 years on the faculty. He traversed his long tenure with a New Yorker’s wry bemusement, leavened with a Navy sailor’s equanimity and undergirded by great devotion to teaching and his students.

A native of Atlantic City, N.J., Ted grew up in New York City and served in the U.S. Navy from 1948 to 1952, primarily aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kula Gulf. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Mexico City College in 1955, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research.

In 1998, 40 years after his appointment to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty, Walther retired. Even in retirement, he taught ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ courses until 2002. His textbook on international economics, The World Economy (Wiley), was published in 1996.

Professor Emeritus of Economics Theodore Walther, who died June 2 at age 88, served on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty from 1958 to 1998. In retirement, he taught a course each fall until 2001.

When Walther arrived, the college was half its current size, 875 students. Male and female students ate separately, in Rand Hall and Memorial Commons, and followed different social rules — the men’s more lax than the women’s. Teaching four courses each semester, twice the current standard, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors tended to be, and were expected to be, generalists with little time for research.

Indeed, the in loco parentis model was firmly in place at schools of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ ilk, and the faculty were expected to be highly attentive parentes. “I think there were a lot of people who were attempting to tell the young people what to do,â€� he recalled for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Oral History Project in 1998. On move-in day, for example, professors would greet arriving freshmen at their residences and help carry in their belongings.

Ted Walther’s arrival in 1958 expanded the economics faculty from two to three. From left, David Williams, Walther, and Ralph Chances pose in 1964. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mirror)

In his oral history interview, he said that his initial ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ courses 40 years earlier, including principles of economics and comparative economic systems, were “bombs. I was teaching a lot of courses, and they were pretty sad.â€� He and all the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty would get much better.

Late in the 1960s, younger faculty were growing in number and beginning to find their voice. In 1967, Ted joined a handful of faculty members, including Carl Straub and John Cole, in signing an open letter of protest against the Vietnam War, which they called “immoral, illegal, and ultimately futile.�

Under Hedley Reynolds, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ president from 1967 to 1989, faculty expansion really got going, as did growth in student enrollment. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professoriate became “sharper,â€� said Ted in 1998, in the sense that “they [could] now concentrate on certain areas in economics rather than covering a broad spectrum. This is very good.â€�

Likely watching a football game, Ted Walther watches from the Garcelon Field grandstands circa 1968. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mirror)

With Title IX regulations coming into full force in the 1970s, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ moved toward greater equity in athletics, and in 1980 Ted became the first chair of the faculty’s newly constituted Committee on Athletics. Though he abhorred the bureaucracy of faculty committee work, he was proud of what the Athletics committee accomplished.

When students dubbed him “Terrible Ted,â€� it really meant that “he wasn’t.â€�

“We made a serious effort to make sure that the number of intercollegiate [sports] offered for women were equal to the number offered for men,” he said. “For a while, with the NESCAC, I think that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was the only school that had more intercollegiate [sports] open for women than it did for men.â€�

What did not change during Walther’s time, nor thereafter, is how college students rely on irony to communicate affection, so that when students dubbed him “Terrible Ted,â€� it really meant that “he wasn’t,â€� says his colleague Michael Murray, Charles Phillips Professor of Economics. A second-floor classroom in Pettengill Hall is dedicated to Walther, and the plaque’s few words testify to the fondness and respect accorded him: “in honor of a professor and a friend.â€�

Self-effacing and with a dry wit made spicy from years in the Navy, Ted was “not a show-off, and was always incredibly polite and thankful for small favors,� says his colleague Anne Williams, professor emerita of economics.

A Pettengill Hall classroom is named for Ted Walther. The plaque reads, “Gift of a student in honor of a friend and a professor.” (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The dry wit shows throughout his oral history interview. Asked if living on Frye Street bothered him, his home being near many student residences and concommitant noise, he said, “Let me put it this way: I’m used to it. And I think a few years from now I’m going to have all the silence I’m going to need.�

The spiciness was evident when, in one of his classes in 1983, he called then-Sen. Ted Kennedy “the Massachusetts Marathon Swimmer,â€� a reference to the Chappaquiddick incident. A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student columnist objected to the jab, then two of Walther’s students responded with a letter to the editor, saying professors should be allowed — through humor or not — “to challenge our perspectives and prejudices.â€�

In 1992, Ted Walther (standing, right) poses with his economics colleagues. From left, Cynthia Browning, Carl Schwinn, Anne Williams, the late David Aschauer, Walther, Maryke Dessing, and Michael Murray. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mirror)

An international economist, Walther said that his favorite course was “The World Economy,� which he continued to teach each fall for three years after retiring (by which time, the economics faculty numbered a dozen members). “For many years, Ted gave students their only exposure to international trade and international finance,� says Murray.

When asked how he regarded a fellow swimmer, age 92, who seemed to defy Father Time, Walther smiled and said, “With jealousy.�

“Ted always claimed he chose to go Mexico City for his B.A. degree because the favorable exchange rate would stretch his GI Bill dollars,� Williams says. “I suspect this was an early signal that he would develop into an international economist.� He also taught statistics, international macroeconomics, and monetary policy, and served as department chair. “He had an inimitable form of written expression,� she adds. “His administrative memos were never dull.�

He was an avid swimmer who worked out at Tarbell Pool. Asked in 2009 how he regarded a fellow swimmer, age 92, who seemed to defy Father Time, Walther smiled and said, “With jealousy.�

Friends and colleagues remark on his attentiveness and interest. “He always, always, asked about your family,� said Paul Menice, assistant director of security and campus safety.

When Lynne Lewis, now the Elmer Campbell Professor of Economics, arrived at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Walther was teaching just his one course “but he always stopped by my office when he was here,â€� she recalls.

Having learned that Lewis earned a doctorate at the University of Colorado, Walther wanted to know about Ralphie the Buffalo — the live mascot that runs into the stadium ahead of the team at football games. “He was especially fond of Ralphie and very surprised to hear that Ralphie was actually a female.�

Walther’s survivors include daughters Pamela Walther Felber and Susan Walther; six grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; sister Gretchen Walther Dumler and brother Chris Walther; and a niece and nephew. He was predeceased in 2013 by his wife, Joan Mirandon Walther, who worked as a registered nurse in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Health Center from 1974 to 1993. Almost always when he spoke of her, Ted Walther referred to her as “my bride.”

A framed black-and-white photograph hangs in the Pettengill Hall office of Associate Professor of African American Studies Sue Houchins, a reminder of family and the power of education.

Taken 80 years ago this month, on March 15, 1938, it depicts 20 African American leaders who comprised President Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called : some of the country’s finest minds and specialists in a variety of fields, including Houchins’ father, economist Joseph Roosevelt Houchins.

He’s in the second row at far right in the photo, taken by photographer Addison Scurlock, famous for documenting black Washingtonians. All 20 people in the photo are men, except the legendary educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune, known as “the First Lady of the Struggle.�

Associate Professor of African American Studies Sue Houchins. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Growing up, Sue Houchins knew of the photo because her father kept it rolled tightly in his top dresser drawer. “Every now and then we would unroll it, although it stayed rolled up for too long.�

A Cornell University–trained attorney and labor economist, Joseph Houchins led Roosevelt’s Division of Negro Affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce until 1953. He later joined the president’s Committee on Government Contracts, where he used his skills as a lawyer and economist to address discrimination by federal contractors, including the denial of jobs to blacks at shipyards in Mississippi and Alabama.

“He was a troublemaker, and he knew what people needed,� says his proud daughter. It’s what she learned from him, she says.

In 1950, Houchins prepared an influential analysis of the African American population based on the U.S. Census, work that was featured in Ebony magazine, providing census data to a popular audience.

In 1961, he joined the economics department at Howard University, where he served as chair and mentored younger scholars. Sue Houchins occasionally meets one of those now-elderly scholars, and they sing his praises as “the father of black economics� or as the source of important economic data that strengthened the NAACP’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954.

To raise awareness of her father’s contributions to American society and to academe, Sue Houchins and Howard economist Rodney Green recently co-authored a scholarly , including publication of two Commerce reports he authored in the 1930s.

One analyzed the high failure rate of black-owned insurance companies, and the second reported on a national survey Houchins conducted to create a complete listing of black chambers of commerce that could be used for intra-racial communication and support.

Joseph Roosevelt Houchins at Cornell University, circa 1930.

Sue Houchins also remembers the kind of father he was — one who instilled a love of learning. “On Saturdays, he would take me to a second-hand book store, put some money in my hands, and send me to where I wanted to go. He would go where he wanted to go, and then we’d have an ice cream sundae afterward.�

Born in the South in 1900, Joseph Houchins grew up in the Ithaca, N.Y., home of an uncle who was a janitor. He earned four Cornell degrees: two bachelor’s, plus a master’s and a doctorate of the science of law.

Sue Houchins says that her firebrand mother, Frankie V. Lea Houchins, a physicist and photographer, engineered her father’s Commerce job by applying for it in his name without his knowledge. They hadn’t yet wed, and he was teaching at a small historically black college in Texas at the time.

According to family lore, Frankie seemed much more interested in marrying him if she could arrange a move up North. And she succeeded.

It’s one of the oldest football truisms, and it’s being heard this week as the Patriots and Eagles prepare for the Super Bowl: You’ve got to “establish the run� to win.

Associate Professor of Economics Paul Shea. (Mike Bradley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

But it might be a false-ism, according to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ economist Paul Shea and his former student Jared Quenzel ’13.

“I had often heard football commentators talk about how important it is to run the ball, even when it does not appear to have any success,� says Shea, an associate professor of economics. “So we decided to take the question to the data.�

The result is their paper, “� published in the Journal of Sports Economics in 2014.

Jared Quenzel ’13.

Constructing a dataset of 429 NFL games between 1994 and 2012 that were tied at halftime, Shea and Quenzel looked at the myriad variables that led to the tie — such as rushing yards and attempts, passing attempts and yards, turnovers, sacks, red-zone efficiency, and third-down efficiency.

Of all those variables in play during the first half, did any predict the eventual winner? Yes, but not the ones you might think. Trying to “establish the run for its own sake,� the researchers found, “does not maximize a team’s chances of winning the game.�

Here’s what Shea and Quenzel found:

•      There is “no evidence that running the football provides a team with a latent advantage that pays off late in a close game.â€�
•      If teams choose to run the football, “they should thus do so on the basis of the expected yards gained and the risk involved. ‘Establishing the run’ for its own sake does not maximize a team’s chances of winning the game.â€�
•      There is some, albeit weak, evidence that allowing sacks reduces a team’s chances of winning.
•      An optimal strategy is to try to attain as large a halftime lead as possible. At first glance, “this may seem obvious,â€� yet teams sometimes insist on pounding the running game; they are guilty of “overthinking the game.â€�
•      As expected, there’s a high level of confidence that the favored team, in terms of point spread, is more likely to win a tied game.
•      Surprisingly, “the team receiving the first possession of the second halfâ€� — a favorite Patriots strategy, when they have the choice — does not have a statistically significant effect on a team’s chances of winning.â€�

As for Sunday’s game, Shea is rooting for the Eagles. He says he’s no fan of the Patriots’ history of bending the rules.