Clark Whelton ’59

Say Your Prayers and Take Your Chances — City Journal

Clark Whelton ’59 compared his recollections of the 1957–58 global influenza pandemic — which he experienced at �ֲ���ý firsthand — to what’s transpiring now. 

“Today, I look back and wonder if an oblivious America faced the 1957 plague with a kind of clueless folly,” writes Whelton, a former speechwriter for New York City mayors Edward Koch and Rudolph Giuliani.

“Why weren’t we more active in fighting this contagion? Could stricter quarantine procedures have reduced the rate of infection and lowered the death toll? In short, why weren’t we more afraid?”

Read the story:

• “” City Journal, March 13, 2020

Jenna Armstrong ’15

Duke medical student Jenna Armstrong named Gates-Cambridge scholar — Duke Today 

Duke University announced that Jenna Armstrong, �ֲ���ý ’15, won a Gates-Cambridge Scholarship, a prestigious award that funds the full cost of a degree at Cambridge University. 

Starting in October 2020, Armstrong will earn a doctorate in physiology, development, and neuroscience. She plans to study “human metabolic resilience in older individuals through the lens of mitochondrial function and malleability,” according to Duke — in other words, she’ll study aging, and how to ease its effects, at the cellular level. 

Armstrong majored in biological chemistry and mathematics at �ֲ���ý and was a rower all four years. 

Read the story:

• “,” Duke Today, Feb. 17, 2020

Mike Nelson ’06

Nelson eager to be another kid’s lighthouse — The Wanderer 

Southeastern Massachusetts’ The Wanderer reported that Mike Nelson ’06 was appointed superintendent of the Old Rochester Regional School District. When he takes the job on June 30, he will be the youngest superintendent in the state. 

Nelson, who studied politics at �ֲ���ý, always knew he wanted to work in public education, he told reporter Mick Colageo. He has served as director of student services and assistant superintendent in the same school district. 

“I really thought about ‘Why am I applying for this position?’” said Nelson, who is currently developing remote learning opportunities for the students who are staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic. During his interview for the post, “I shared comments about the analogy that educators can be lighthouses for children.

“I thought about how fortunate I was not only to have one lighthouse but many different lighthouses who were educators throughout my life. And I said, ‘That’s the reason why I believe I ended up interviewing for this position,’ because in some ways it helps me come full circle in terms of what people gave to me.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” The Wanderer, March 12, 2020

Katie Dobkowski 

Parasitic sushi worms have quietly been on the rise, study says — New York Post 

Hannah Frishberg of The New York Post covered a new study, co-authored by Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Katie Dobkowski, which found that the number of parasitic worms humans can ingest by eating raw or undercooked seafood is on the rise. 

Dobkowski worked on the paper, which studied the prevalence of Anisakis, or “herring worm,” as a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington. 

While herring worms — which also infect other species — pose more of a danger for marine mammals, the parasites can cause symptoms of food poisoning for humans who eat contaminated sushi. 

People up and down the supply chain do their best to remove the worms before they make it to a diner’s plate, but the researchers recommend that, to be extra sure their roll doesn’t contain a little something extra, sushi lovers should inspect every bite for worms before chowing down. 

Read the story: 

• “,” New York Post, March 20, 2020

Rakey Drammeh ’14

‘Squash gave me the tools to pick and choose my way to exist in the world at large,’ says StreetSquash graduate Rakey — Squash Mad

Squash news site Squash Mad editor Alan Thatcher covered a dinner celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Squash and Education Alliance, a network that combines squash, academics, and college preparation for underresourced communities. 

During the event, Rakey Drammeh ’14 gave a “show-stopping speech” about her experience with the affiliated program StreetSquash. An environmental studies major, she was captain of the women’s squash team at �ֲ���ý and is now a software developer at Citibank. 

“SEA introduced me to a world that I never imagined knowing or being part of,” Drammeh said in her speech. “But more than that, it gave me the tools to pick and choose my way to exist in that world at large.”

Read the story: 

• “�Ę,” Squash Mad, Jan. 26, 2020

�ֲ���ý College

�ֲ���ý College breaks record for Fulbright award winners — Sun Journal 

The Lewiston Sun Journal shared the college’s February announcement of a historic year for the college’s Fulbright Student Award program.

With 24 young alumni receiving Fulbright-sponsored awards for teaching and research worldwide in 2019–20, �ֲ���ý is the No. 1 producer of Fulbright Student awards among U.S. liberal arts colleges. The college’s two dozen awards are the most ever going to a U.S. liberal arts college.

(Subsequent to this article, in March, the U.S. State Department due to the COVID-19 public health crisis.)

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, Feb. 10, 2020

Clifton Daggett Gray 

Insight: When Clarence Darrow came to Maine — Portland Press Herald 

For the Portland Press Herald, U.S. District Court Senior Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote about a curious episode for �ֲ���ý, Maine, and legal history: the time �ֲ���ý President Clifton Daggett Gray, after boasting that college debaters could best legendary attorney and orator Clarence Darrow, had to put his money where his mouth was. 

In 1927, Darrow, known as the fierce defense lawyer who litigated the “Scopes monkey trial,” came to Maine to debate Gray on the question, “What and why is man?” The debate would be a friendly clash of worldviews: Gray, who held a doctorate from the University of Chicago, was an ordained Baptist minister; Darrow was thoroughly agnostic. 

The two debated first in Boston and again two days later in Portland. Of the Boston contest, The New York Times wrote, “If the scholarly shield of Dr. Gray shone with a higher polish, the ironic lance of Mr. Darrow smote with a sharper point.”

And the Press Herald, on the debate in Portland: “The contest of wit and logic rested at the conclusion without decision.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Feb. 9, 2020

William Worthy ’42

William Worthy — a radical, intrepid journalist and activist — Amsterdam News 

Herb Boyd of Amsterdam News profiled William Worthy ’42, a journalist and activist whose dedication to his work led him to flout U.S. travel restrictions during the Cold War. 

Defying a U.S. ban on travel to China, Worthy made a reporting trip there in the late 1950s, after which the State Department declined to renew his passport. He later traveled to Cuba without a passport, was convicted for returning to the United States without one, and had the conviction overturned. His trip to Cuba was the subject of “The Ballad of William Worthy” by folksinger Phil Ochs. 

Boyd praised Worthy’s courage and ability to stand up against injustice no matter who perpetuated it, whether on the political right or left. “Worthy not only courageously lifted his voice for the oppressed, he did it no matter where he ventured — China, Cuba, Russia, or the four corners of the world,” he wrote. 

Read the story: 

• “,” Amsterdam News, Feb. 6, 2020

Francesco Duina 

Flyover 2020: What does patriotism mean? — MPR 

Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina joined Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild and Kerri Miller of Minnesota Public Radio for a discussion about what patriotism means and how it will affect voters’ decisions in the next presidential election. 

Duina’s 2017 book, Broke and Patriotic, explores why the poorest Americans are the most patriotic. The radio discussion turned to a meaty question: whether patriotism requires an uncritical, love-it-or-leave-it attitude, or if a self-defined patriot can still be critical of U.S. policies.

Duina said many Americans’ ideas of patriotism combine contribution to the nation, whether through military or another type of service, with a sense of hope for the future.

“Those are essential elements of American patriotism,” he said during the discussion, an entry in Miller’s call-in “Flyover” program. But “some people feel that the ability to live up to the notion of giving back with hope is vanishing because of a confluence of various long-term racial trends, economic trends, political trends.” 

“Some people feel that you can be patriotic — but you’re up against insurmountable challenges.” 

Listen to the interview:

• “” MPR, Feb. 5, 2020��

Nathan Tefft 

New study suggests raising taxes on e-cigarettes could encourage traditional smoking — Forbes 

Kelly Phillips Erb of Forbes reported on a new study, co-authored by Associate Professor of Economics Nathan Tefft and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, that found raising taxes on e-cigarettes can lead to a corresponding rise in consumption of traditional tobacco products. 

That’s a problem — when it comes to so-called sin taxes, which prices are raised in a bid to discourage bad behavior, you don’t want people to swap one behavior for another. 

“Because smoking is known to have substantial negative health impacts,” Tefft said in an interview with �ֲ���ýNews, “policymakers should be aware of this potential tradeoff when contemplating e-cigarette control policies.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” Forbes, Feb. 10, 2020

Cameron Hamilton ’12

Lessons from ‘Love Is Blind’ for socially distanced daters — NPR

Cameron Hamilton ’12 and wife Lauren Speed — who met on the breakout Netflix hit Love is Blind — spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about their unique perspective on social distancing. 

The premise of Love is Blind is that contestants date without ever seeing each other’s faces, at least until they become engaged. Fan favorites Hamilton and Speed have been married for more than a year. 

The pair spoke with Martin about their own relationship and how to date at a distance — but some of Hamilton’s advice can apply to relationships more broadly, romantic or not. 

“I think the power of communication is key here and truly listening to what the other person has to say,” he said. “I mean, it’s easy to hear them, but to really focus in and take a beat and try to process what they’re saying and respond to that.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” NPR, March 22, 2020

See also: 

• “,” Bangor Daily News, Feb. 26, 2020

Jessica Anthony ’96

Political satire Enter the Aardvark is wonderfully weird — Time 

For Time, Annabel Gutterman reviewed Enter the Aardvark, a new novel by Jessica Anthony ’96, a lecturer in English at �ֲ���ý.

The novel starts with Alexander Paine Wilson, a young Republican politician, receiving a taxidermied aardvark on his doorstep. The story follows the politician as well as two friends in 19th-century England, all of whom have to hide the fact that they are gay.  

“T��dzܲ��� Enter the Aardvark is certainly satire, Anthony’s depiction of Wilson’s repressed sexuality cuts beneath the surface,” Gutterman wrote. 

“Her dissection of Wilson’s political beliefs, particularly his anti-abortion stance, isn’t just sharp commentary on polarization, identity, and power in the U.S. It’s also a poignant examination of what happens when we deny ourselves the ability to love and be loved.” 

Read the review: 

• “,” Time, March 18, 2020

Amy Bradfield Douglass

Questions loom over the future of police lineups — Phys.org 

Australia’s Flinders University announced that a review of studies on eyewitness identification in criminal cases resulted in revised and new recommendations for setting up identifications, in the hope of avoiding false or faulty evidence. 

Professor of Psychology Amy Bradfield Douglass was part of the team that modified four existing recommendations and created five more, including recording lineups on video and having police put in writing the reasons behind suspecting someone of a crime. 

The review led one of the co-authors, Flinders’ Neil Brewer, to write a paper advocating for getting rid of traditional lineups altogether. 

Read the story:

• “,” Phys.org, Feb. 25, 2020

Emily Kane

How to raise feminist boys — The Week

For The Week, Claire Gillespie wrote about her own, often-difficult, efforts to raise her two boys to accept and promote gender equality. 

Gillespie wrote that she makes a wide variety of toys, colors, and opportunities available to her children; with her husband, tries to model equality — and worries that sexism and gender roles are so entrenched in the world around her that harmful patterns will prevail anyway. 

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane had some words of wisdom for Gillespie. “When parents enforce gendered expectations, it is often out of fear their children (especially their sons) will be teased, ostracized, or otherwise excluded if they don’t fall into line with those expectations,” she said. 

“We can all help by avoiding judgment, and those small, everyday assumptions about what a kid will enjoy or be good at based on their gender.”

Read the story:

• “,” The Week, Feb. 27, 2020

Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, Class of 1869

The ‘unconquerable’ Mary Wheelwright Mitchell — Sun Journal 

Steve Collins of the Sun Journal profiled Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, �ֲ���ý’ first female graduate, whose refusal to leave the college helped keep it true to its founding commitment to coeducation. 

�ֲ���ý was the first Northeastern college to admit women, and for that reason surrounding colleges looked down on it. This kind of pressure and others caused the first female �ֲ���ý students to withdraw without degrees. Mitchell was the first to stay the course. 

�ֲ���ý founder and president Oren Cheney secured Mitchell a scholarship from the state of Maine to help her through her studies. Reflecting both her independent spirit and, perhaps, how dramatically a college education’s price point has changed in the ensuing 150 years, Mitchell famously refused to take the help. 

“I cannot take that, Mr. Cheney,” Mitchell said. “Give it to the brethren. I can take care of myself.”

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, March 1, 2020

Matt Charest ’20

After thousands of miles in the same pool, this Maine swimmer is moving on — 207, WCSH-TV

News Center Maine’s show 207 featured the uplifting story of Matt Charest ’20 of Lewiston, Maine, whose entire swimming career has been based in �ֲ���ý’ Tarbell pool. 

Head swim coach Peter Casares started giving Charest private lessons when Charest was 8 years old, and when he was old enough, he started attending swim camps at Tarbell. When it came time to go to college, it was only natural for Charest to keep swimming, and to swim for �ֲ���ý. 

“While no one keeps track of such things, it’s possible that in his 13 years of swimming in Lewiston he has spent more time in the college pool than any other human being,” reporter Rob Caldwell pointed out. 

“It’s definitely a home,” Charest told the news program. “I feel at home when I’m in the water.”

Read the story: 

• “,” 207, March 5, 2020

Rebecca Herzig 

Why women feel pressured to shave — CNN 

Rebecca Herzig, professor of gender and sexuality studies, talked to CNN style reporter Marianna Cerini for an in-depth piece about how hairlessness in women came to be a beauty ideal in the United States, and how society’s views of body hair vary by time period and geography. 

Herzig said that an early example of the United States’ current ideal of hairlessness is none other than Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, which associates body hair with primitivity and regards hairlessness as “more evolved.” 

Now, American culture considers body hair, at least for women, “abject,” or worthy of disgust and shame. “It’s worth noting that those are ideas about cleanliness, contingent social norms, rather than about actually removing ‘dirt,’�ĝ Herzig told CNN. “Most hair removal practices tend to introduce new opportunities for abrasion and infection.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” CNN, March 3, 2020

Krista Aronson

�ֲ���ý College program encourages diverse picture books for children — Sun Journal

Steve Collins of the Lewiston Sun Journal spoke with Professor of Psychology Krista Aronson, the creator of the Diverse BookFinder.

Now in its third year, DBF’s online database and physical picture-book collection makes diverse children’s books more accessible, Aronson told Collins. Since its launch, the physical collection has grown, and the DBF has helped dozens of libraries analyze diversity in their own collections.

Associate Professor of Psychology Krista Aronson reads in Ladd Library with her daughter Hope in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Aronson also spoke with Meghan Mangrum of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, who wrote about teachers in the Tennessee city who are trying to diversify their own book collections.

“We live right now in segregated societies, and we think of school or work as places where we come in contact with people who are different from ourselves,” Aronson said. “That’s going to be increasingly common, and we need to prepare our children to be successful in those environments.”

Read the stories:��

• “,” Sun Journal, Dec. 12, 2019��
• “,” Chatanooga Times Free Press, Nov. 23, 2019��

Matt Tavares ’97

Children’s book about Santa’s reindeer lands �ֲ���ý grad on bestseller list — Multiple outlets

Portland Press Herald reporter Ray Routhier interviewed Matt Tavares ’97, a noted children’s book author and illustrator whose latest picture book, Dasher, made The New York Times bestseller list, as well as numerous online lists of holiday-themed children’s books.

Dasher, Matt Tavares’ latest children’s book, is his first to hit The New York Times bestseller list. (Courtesy of Matt Tavares)

Tavares wrote and illustrated his first picture book for his senior thesis at �ֲ���ý, under Robert Feintuch. Dasher, his 20th book and the first to make the bestseller list, is a kind of origin story for Santa’s reindeer.

Tavares lives with his family in Ogunquit, Maine, where, as he told Routhier, the beautiful Maine winters are inspiring.

“I do a lot of my writing during the winter,” he said. “I find winter in Maine is a good time to clear your mind and really focus on your story.”

Read the stories:��

• “,” Sun Journal, Nov. 28, 2019
• “,” Portland Press Herald, Dec. 15, 2019��
• “,” Today, Nov. 21, 2019��
• “,” The Washington Post, Dec. 2, 2019

Francesco Duina

Why are poor Americans more patriotic than their wealthier counterparts? — The Guardian

Writing for The Guardian, Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina pointed out that the poorest Americans are the ones who love their country the most. One hundred percent of the lowest-income Americans are proud of their country — more than Americans with higher incomes, and certainly more than citizens of other nations love their countries.

Most of the financially disadvantaged people that Francesco Duina interviewed for Broke and Patriotic, he says, “take ownership of their life histories.” They don’t blame the system. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Duina is the author of the book Broke and Patriotic: Why Poor Americans Love Their Country. By interviewing residents of Montana and Alabama, Duina learned that some of those with the lowest incomes saw the United States as a place of dignity, abundance, and freedom.

“As long as they remain deeply patriotic, America’s poor won’t rise up,” Duina wrote. “Indeed, they’ll continue to fill the ranks of the military, strive and sacrifice to help America assert itself in the world, and even feed into and support the slogans and successes of the country’s political leaders.”

Read the story:��

• “” The Guardian, Nov. 20, 2019��

Katherine Frank ’94

New chancellor named for UW–Stout — Wisconsin Public Radio

Rich Kramer of Wisconsin Public Radio interviewed Katherine Frank ’94, who will be the next chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Stout, the state’s polytechnic university. She will take the post in March.

Katherine Frank ’94 is the new chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Stout. (UW-Stout Communications)

Frank studied English at �ֲ���ý and holds a doctorate in English from the University of Washington. She has held a range of administrative positions, most recently as vice president of academic innovation and professor of English at Central Washington University.

Frank told �ֲ���ýNews that Professor of English Steven Dillon and Professor Emerita of English Carole Anne Taylor, who died in 2015, were instrumental during her time at �ֲ���ý. “They are/were remarkable scholars, teachers, and mentors, and I feel very lucky to have worked with them and many others in the English department at �ֲ���ý.”

Read the story:��

• “,” Wisconsin Public Radio, Nov. 26, 2019

Amy Bass ’92

Mike McGraw has been ‘everyone’s father figure, brother, friend and mentor’ — Sun Journal

When Mike McGraw announced his retirement, historian and author Amy Bass ’92 wrote a heartfelt tribute to the longtime Lewiston High School boys soccer coach.

Bass is the author of One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together, which chronicles how the soccer team, largely made up of African immigrants and reflecting the changing demographics of Lewiston, won its first state championship in decades in 2015.

Amy Bass ’92 (right) poses with Mike McGraw (center) and Kim Wettlaufer ’80 during a reception at the Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services offices in Lewiston during her visit to the city and �ֲ���ý to promote her book One Goal in March 2018. (H. Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

Bass got to know McGraw, the rest of the coaching staff, and current and former players deeply. Quoting many of those players, she wrote that Lewiston was better for McGraw’s leadership.

“Whether on the soccer pitch, in a classroom, or at a local watering hole, that is who Mike McGraw is — someone who can talk to anyone from the moment he looks at them with his twinkling blue eyes,” Bass wrote.

Read the story:��

• “,’�ĝ Sun Journal, Dec. 3, 2019��

Ben Cline ’94

One year on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Ben Cline has been effective even while in the minority — The Roanoke Times

U.S. Rep. Ben Cline ’94 was recently the subject of a lengthy profile in The Roanoke Times. A first-term Republican representing Virginia’s 6th District, he’s aligned himself with the GOP and President Trump, while simultaneously reaching across the aisle, wrote reporter Amy Friedenberger.

U.S. Rep. Ben Cline ’94. left, poses with Rep. Jared Golden ’11 during a summer 2019 �ֲ���ý Magazine��photo shoot in Washington, D.C. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Cline succeeded longtime Rep. Bob Goodlatte ’74, who retired in 2019.��Now a member of the Judiciary Committee, Cline is part of important decision-making around issues like gun control and immigration — all overshadowed, of course, by the fall’s impeachment hearings.

On Dec. 13, Cline voted “no” on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, though the Judiciary Committee as a whole voted to send the articles to the full House for a vote.

Still, in one of the most partisan environments imaginable, Cline tries to work with Democrats. “You need to understand where the other person is coming from in their position and recognize that they come at it from a position of morality as well,” Cline told Friedenberger.

Read the story:��

• “,” The Roanoke Times, Nov. 30, 2019��

Rebecca Herzig

When deadly X-rays were used for hair removal — OZY

At the turn of the 20th century, using X-ray treatments to remove body hair came into vogue, wrote Virat Markandeya of the digital magazine OZY. Doctors and scientists didn’t know how dangerous high doses of X-rays were, and deadly cancers later afflicted many women who had undergone the treatments.

Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Rebecca Herzig works with a student in 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

To explain the appeal of X-ray hair removal, Markandeya turned to Rebecca Herzig, a professor of gender and sexuality studies at �ֲ���ý and an expert on the politics of body hair.

Some women turned to X-rays because they “bypassed the inescapable physicality of all other hair-removal technologies” like shaving and waxing, Herzig wrote in a 1999 article in the journal Technology and Culture.

Read the story:��

• “,” OZY, Nov. 26, 2019��

�ֲ���ý Museum of Art

Art exhibits ‘Abound’ on campus — Portland Press Herald

In the space of a week, the Portland Press Herald covered both of the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art’s current exhibitions, placing them at the forefront of a strong showing of art at Maine colleges.

�ֲ���ý Museum of Art attendant Louise Ouillette and Tony Leavitt, a science teacher at Tripp Middle School, take a closer look at Vanessa German’s artwork. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Bob Keyes reviewed Vanessa German’s Miracles and Glory Abound, which explores the stories societies tell themselves and who gets left out of those stories. One piece reimagines Emanuel Leutze’s famous 1851 painting, “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”

“German aims to add depth to those stories by fleshing them out and starting a conversation about public memory,” Keyes wrote.

Elsewhere in the museum, Daniel Kany took a look at Stages for Being, an exhibition of photography by Ralph Eugene Meatyard, who took surreal photos featuring his family, and props like masks and dolls, in abandoned places.

Additionally, the museum collaborated with the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts on another photography exhibition, Jack Montgomery & Ralph Gibson: Appearances, at the University of Southern Maine.

Read the stories:����

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Dec. 2, 2019
• “,’�ĝ Portland Press Herald, Dec. 8, 2019
• “,” Maine Arts Scene, Nov. 30, 2019��

Commons

�ֲ���ý College offers high-end cuisine to students and public — Sun Journal

Lindsay Tice of the Lewiston Sun Journal grabbed lunch at the �ֲ���ý dining hall, interviewing President Clayton Spencer, Assistant Vice President for Dining, Conferences and Campus Events Christine Schwartz, and several students about what makes a Commons lunch so good.

Commons, as seen from the second floor balcony. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Tice marveled at the cereal wall, the thinly cut French fries, and especially at the beef panang curry on offer, which, she said, made her a “curry fan” for the first time.

“So why does the �ֲ���ý dining hall win so many awards?” she wrote. “Part of it is the sheer amount of choice. Part of it is the focus on sustainability. And part of it is that the food is really that good.”

Read the story:��

• “,” Sun Journal, Nov. 24, 2019��

Jeffrey Lynn ’30

Remember Jeffrey Lynn? — ClassicMovieChat.com

The blog , which shares photos and stories from the Golden Age of Hollywood, posted about Jeffrey Lynn ’30, an actor who made a name for himself in film during the 1940s.

Jeffrey Lynn ’30 (right) sits with Grosvenor Robinson, professor of elocution at �ֲ���ý, in 1941.

Lynn’s notable roles include My Love Came Back, opposite Olivia De Havilland, and A Letter to Three Wives, with Kirk Douglas and Jeanne Crain. He also famously screen-tested for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind. (The part ultimately went to British actor Leslie Howard.)

“The blandly handsome actor was most often cast as a young husband, a young recruit, or an interesting boyfriend,” wrote Joe Morella and Frank Segers.

Lynn also fought in World War II, for which he received a Bronze Star, and later worked as a film and theater producer.

Read the story:��

• “” ClassicMovieChat.com, Nov. 21, 2019��

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��

Elizabeth Rynecki ’91

A crusade to recover Jewish art lost during the Holocaust — Haaretz

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz interviewed Elizabeth Rynecki ’91 ahead of the premiere in Jerusalem of a documentary about Rynecki’s quest to track down the many lost paintings of her great-grandfather, a Polish artist who died in the Holocaust.

“My great-grandfather’s paintings were survivors…with no voice,” she said.

Moshe Rynecki, who lived in Warsaw, was able to hide some 800 of his paintings before the war. Though members of his family survived, including his wife, only a fraction of his paintings have been recovered.

Elizabeth Rynecki ’91 holds her great-grandfather’s self-portrait at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. (Photograph by Sławomir Grünberg)

Attracting widespread media attention, Elizabeth’s efforts to recover more of her great-grandfather’s paintings include a database of his works and the book Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter’s Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy.

The paintings “are a powerful reflection of life in Poland before the war that not many people are aware of,” she said. “I felt that I could rescue that legacy and share it with the world.”

• Read the story: “,”����Haaretz, Nov. 25, 2018
  
• Related: “,”��New York Times, Aug. 18, 2016

Edmund Muskie ’36

Muskie’s 1968 vice presidential campaign recalled at �ֲ���ý College forum — Sun Journal

Steve Collins of the Lewiston Sun Journal covered a �ֲ���ý panel celebrating the 1968 vice presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie ’36, featuring experts and people who had worked with Muskie on the campaign trail.

Edmund Muskie ’36 and supporters at a 1968 campaign event. The location is perhaps New York City; third from left is perhaps Shirley Chisholm, then running for her first term as a Congresswoman. (Burton Burinsky / Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

The panelists described a politician who worked to bridge divides and calm clashes, “reaching out to both sides,” said Charles Micoleau, a campaign staffer and later Muskie’s chief of staff.

Hubert Humphrey and Muskie lost the ’68 race to Richard Nixon by less than 1 percent, and Muskie lost his own bid for the presidency in the 1972 Democratic primary. But his high profile and prestige was “a real driving force, a hammer pounding the Clean Air Act through the committee and the Senate” in 1970, said Eliot Cutler, who was Muskie’s assistant press secretary.

“We are the lucky ones who are still here,” Cutler said. Muskie’s role in the history of the 20th century “shaped all of us.”

• Read the story: “,” Lewiston Sun Journal, Nov. 29, 2018.
• Related: “8 reasons why Edmund Muskie ’36 was an amazing political candidate in 1968,” �ֲ���ý News, Dec. 5, 2018

Rebecca Herzig

To shave, or not to shave? How a new generation of women are embracing body hair — Vogue

Women are taking an increasingly laissez-faire approach to body hair, wrote Maya Singer of Vogue. For a historical perspective on women and shaving, she turned to Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Rebecca Herzig, author of Plucked: A History of Hair Removal.

Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Rebecca Herzig discusses a field project with a student in 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Hairlessness didn’t become a beauty standard until after WWII, Herzig wrote in Plucked. Some second-wave feminists in the 1970s revolted against this standard by condemning shaving entirely, whereas the early 2000s were given to the “Brazilian wax tyranny,” Singer wrote.

Singer characterizes the present age as one of, “I’ll shave if I want to,” and razor companies are taking notice.

“One way to characterize what we’re seeing may be that women are now encouraged to ask—and increasingly expect—brands to fulfill their needs,” Herzig said.

• Read the story: “,”��Vogue,��Dec. 10, 2018
• Related: “‘Plucked’: Race, gender, science, medicine converge in history of hair removal,” �ֲ���ý News, Feb. 4, 2015

Rebecca Fraser-Thill

Should you go back to work for your old company? — MarketWatch

For a list of factors to keep in mind if you’re thinking about returning to a previous workplace, MarketWatch writer Meera Jagannathan turned to Lecturer in Psychology Rebecca Fraser-Thill, a Pivot career coach.

Lecturer in Psychology Rebecca Fraser-Thill speaks about �ֲ���ý’ Purposeful Work initiative at the 2016 new student Orientation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Fraser-Thill recommended asking friends and family what you were like at your old job, thinking about the relationship you had with your old boss, comparing your current workplace to your old workplace, and — if you decide to make the move back — framing the decision positively.

“You’ve taken a moment to really consider your path, and you are intentionally and actively choosing this former employer,” she told Jagannathan.

• Read the story: “”��MarketWatch, Oct. 15, 2018

Nathan Tefft

‘It’s Just Math’ — Mainers recreate ranked-choice voting results to test the process — Maine Public

When some argued that Maine’s new ranked-choice voting process is an inaccessable “black box,” Associate Professor of Economics Nathan Tefft replicated the election results on his own and sent his calculations to Maine Public.

Associate Professor of Economics Nathan Tefft teaches a class in 2016. (Josh Kucken/�ֲ���ý College)

Using publicly available voting data and a common open-source programming language, Tefft exactly replicated the results of the election, which used the innovative ranked-choice format for the first time to proclaim Jared Golden ’11 the winner. (Another Mainer did the same using Microsoft Excel.)

“It’s an important idea for me to support trust and confidence in the vote counting process,” Tefft told reporter Steve Mistler. “So I certainly wanted it to be as transparent as possible.”

• Read the story: “” Maine Public, Dec. 2, 2018

Vicki Losick ’01

MDI researcher will use fruit flies to study macular degeneration — Bangor Daily News

The Bangor Daily News covered Vicki Losick ’01, a researcher at the MDI Biological Institute who received a $50,000 grant to use fruit flies to study age-related eye diseases.

Vicki Losick ’01

The grant, awarded by the William Procter Scientific Innovation Fund, will allow Losick to model the “cellular dysfunction” that occurs in age-related macular degeneration, among other causes of blindness. She’ll use fruit flies in her work, since macular degeneration takes hold more quickly due to the creatures’ shorter lifespans.

“With the aging of the population, age-related macular degeneration is increasingly being viewed as an impending epidemic,” Losick said in a press release. “I am deeply grateful to the Procter Fund for supporting research that could lead to the identification of the genetic and cellular causes underlying retinal dysfunction.”

• Read the story: “,”��Bangor Daily News, Nov. 30, 2018

Lisa Utzschneider ’90

Lisa Utzschneider becomes CEO of ad-verification firm — Variety

�ֲ���ý alumna and trustee Lisa Utzschneider ’90 has been named CEO of Integral Ad Science, a company that measures the value of digital advertisements and helps prevent fraud, the entertainment trade magazine Variety reported.

Lisa Utzschneider ’90 speaks during a �ֲ���ý Boston Business Network panel on women in leadership in 2017. (Paige Brown ’96 for �ֲ���ý College)

Utzschneider was most recently chief revenue officer at Yahoo and has held executive roles at Microsoft and Amazon. Last year, she was on a �ֲ���ý panel about women and leadership.

“As CEO, Utzschneider will focus on expanding IAS into new global markets and pushing into new ad formats, including over-the-top video and audio,” according to Variety.

• Read the story: “,”��Variety,��Dec. 12, 2018
• Related: “To be an effective leader, be prepared, speak up, and aim big, �ֲ���ý panelists say,” �ֲ���ý News, Oct. 5, 2017

Martin Benes ’07

Wednesday Workout: hitting the trails with U.S. Para-Nordic and Head Coach Martin Benes — FasterSkier

Writer Gabby Naranja reached out to Martin Benes ’07, who recently joined the coaching staff of U.S. Paralympics Nordic skiing. U.S. Paralympics is a division of the U.S. Olympic Committee

An assistant ski coach at �ֲ���ý from 2009 to 2011 and most recently the Nordic ski director at Sugar Bowl Academy, Benes��told Naranja that the coaching philosophy for a para-athlete is the same as for a non-disabled athlete.

“The training principles don’t really change,” Benes said. “Yes, there are things to be aware of physiologically, but in terms of the core principles, it’s not that different.”

“With this level of athlete,” he added, “you’re helping guide them and giving them the framework to be successful and helping them be their own best coaches.”

• Read the story: “,” FasterSkier, Dec. 5, 2018

Larry DiGiammarino ’82

Catching up with…Larry DiGiammarino — The Boston Globe

The Globe’s Marvin Pave chatted with Larry DiGiammarino ’82, who holds or shares �ֲ���ý football records for career and single-game receptions, as well as career and single-game touchdown receptions. He was named a Kodak Little All-American, the ECAC and New England Football Writers Player of the Year, and a Scholar Athlete of the Year by the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.

Now, DiGiammarino is a real-estate attorney in Marblehead, Mass., where he’s on the school committee and the youth football and softball boards.

“I learned through sports to never give up and stay as positive as I can,’’ he told Pave. “If things don’t work out today, there’s always tomorrow.”

• Read the story: “,”��The Boston Globe,��Nov. 29, 2018

Kristy Andrews ’12

Young camp professionals: choosing careers in Maine, fulfilling commitments to kids — Bangor Daily News

In the Bangor Daily News blog Summer in Maine, Kristine Millard talked to Kristy Andrews ’12, assistant director of Camp Wawenock in Raymond, Maine.

Andrews spent her childhood summers at Camp Wawenock and later became a counselor, working there before and after a stint as an English teacher in Chile. Now, she’s one of a few year-round employees at the camp.

Andrews spoke to the community the camp offers girls, allowing them to “be their true selves.”

“There’s a whole group of people who love you and support you,” she said.

• Read the story: “,”��Bangor Daily News, Nov. 13, 2018

Paul Erickson ’74

Don’t Mess With Me: The Strange Lives of Venomous Sea Creatures — Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus reviewed the latest book for middle grades by Paul Erickson ’74: Don’t Mess With Me, which catalogs 28 venomous sea creatures from the deadly blue-ringed octopus to sea jellies.

“He goes on, now following the phylum order, to introduce a variety of other sea creatures including bloodworms, the blind remipede (the first known venomous crustacean), the crown of thorns sea star, the bluespotted stingray, the reef stonefish, and the lionfish,” the review says.

“T��dzܲ��� the text in this entry in an admirable series may be challenging for young readers, the subject has guaranteed kid appeal,” it added.

• Read the review: “,”��Kirkus Reviews,��Dec. 4, 2018

The new Digital and Computational Studies Program will teach students to have a broad, critical, and thoughtful approach to problem solving in a digital age. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Technology is instantaneous, global, and ever-changing.

And it’s placing unprecedented pressures on colleges like �ֲ���ý to expand how they define and deliver a liberal arts education.

�ֲ���ý, for one, has a robust curricular response: With recent gifts of $19 million from seven �ֲ���ý families, the college will build and launch a new Program in Digital and Computational Studies (DCS).

“The capacity to claim the world.”

The program will comprise three new professorships, a range of new academic courses, and eager involvement from �ֲ���ý faculty in many disciplines.

Ultimately, the program’s goal is squarely in the liberal arts wheelhouse: To give �ֲ���ý graduates “the capacity to claim the world,” in the words of classics professor Margaret Imber.

In this Q&A, 11 members of the �ֲ���ý faculty talk about the work of building an innovative and distinctive DCS Program.

+As chair, what do you hope to bring to the development of the �ֲ���ý DCS Program? Expert: Lauren Ashwell

Expert: Lauren Ashwell, associate professor of philosophy and chair of the Program in Digital and Computational Studies

Much of my teaching in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology touches on the limits of computation. I also teach feminist philosophy, which includes the kind of social critique that I think will be important to the DCS Program.

While it is easy to hear that �ֲ���ý is creating an interdisciplinary program and then think that the focus will be on computers merely as tools and instruments for work in other disciplines, it is important to note that the program will go beyond this. The DCS Program won’t just equip students with the ability to use computational methods, but will also include awareness of the limits and the social impact of technology.

Associate Professor of Philosophy Lauren Ashwell is chair of the Program in Digital and Computational Studies. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

That’s the great thing about the group of faculty working on the program – I don’t think anyone sees DCS as merely a set of tools for other disciplines, but as something that will complement the existing �ֲ���ý curriculum in a robust kind of way. Computation can extend possibilities within other disciplines, but other disciplines can also bring their own tools to bear on questions about the digital world.

As builders of the DCS Program, we can instill the idea that learning about the tools of technology is not only about all the wonderful things that you can do with them, but also about what you can’t do. Students need not just awareness of the theoretical limits of computation but also the skill and ability to think critically about the limits of technology’s ability to solve problems.

In my classroom, when we talk about critical thinking, I use the word “careful” to describe an important skill that I want my students to take away from their coursework. You are careful in the sense that you do not just accept what people tell you: You reflect on it with time and care. You are not just being fed information — instead, you’re engaging with information in a reflective way. These are the characteristics of a future �ֲ���ý DCS student.

+How will the �ֲ���ý DCS Program be distinctive and make �ֲ���ý a leader in this realm? Expert: Jason Castro

Expert: Jason Castro, assistant professor of psychology

The way DCS is conceived at �ֲ���ý is unique because, for one, it will be more than just a computer science program with add-ons and peripherals.

It was conceived as a communal enterprise; the decisions about how DCS will be formed and deployed, and conversations about its intellectual makeup, involved the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.

Jason Castro teaches computational neuroscience during Short Term 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Having that cross-disciplinary conversation, that set of ideas built into the launch of the program, is exciting. It will make for flexible curricular programming and vivid awareness of the roles that digital media have in our lives.

+What would you tell a colleague at another institution about why you are keen to teach in the �ֲ���ý DCS Program? Expert: Nathan Tefft

Expert: Nathan Tefft, assistant professor of economics

Because the �ֲ���ý program will be inter- and cross-disciplinary, I would tell a colleague that I am in the right place and time, in terms of my research.

Nathan Tefft is an assistant professor of economics. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

In my work, I seek to answer important questions using data in novel ways.

The �ֲ���ý DCS Program will support my research in part by bringing me into closer contact with new methods and tools from computer science and statistics, tools that are associated with the Big Data phenomenon and are fast being adopted by economists.

The DCS Program is also a crucial development in our historical liberal arts mission.

If a liberal arts education means giving graduates a deep understanding of the various ways that people interact with the world, and if people interact with the world through technology, then I believe a �ֲ���ý education that includes DCS will be much more effective.

+What are the implications for the college's information and library services operation when we add DCS to the curriculum? Expert: Katie Vale

The Expert: Katie Vale, vice president for information and library services and librarian

One of the things that’s particularly novel is that this is not just a straight computer science program. While students can certainly learn to code, the �ֲ���ý DCS Program will give students experience with a variety of technological tools and the curricular work will have ties to many different subjects and topics.

What ILS excels at is helping people make connections.

Technology plays a central role in myriad forms of inquiry and expression, and students will learn and apply skills that will help them at �ֲ���ý and well beyond. That excites us a lot.

What ILS excels at, especially on the library side, is helping people make connections, find information, and learn to use technologies to ask questions and solve problems. Our librarians and academic technologists assist faculty in thinking about new types of assignments that will increase students’ understanding of the world.

Katie Vale is the college’s librarian and vice president for information and library services. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

For example, they can locate actual government data sets that can be analyzed to understand a range of political, social, and economic issues in a particular country or group of nations. Or they might help with GIS mapping technologies to identify population changes or environmental resource constraints. Students can report their findings via research papers, multimedia assignments, or even 3D-printed items.

Digital and information literacy skills are necessary for life in the 21st century, and we in ILS look forward to supporting the DCS Program.

+What is the value of bringing interdisciplinary thought to the �ֲ���ý DCS Program? Expert: Rebecca Herzig

The Expert: Rebecca Herzig, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and chair of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies

In my view, an interdisciplinary perspective is really about perceiving and understanding relationships, and that’s a long-standing theme at �ֲ���ý, something �ֲ���ý students do unusually well. And what does a networked world demand but the ability to see and frame and transform relationships in new ways?

I like to imagine that our graduates will help build a different kind of digital infrastructure and, in so doing, build a different kind of world: more inclusive, more sustainable, more democratic.

And they’ll be able to do that not only because they have the requisite technical skills in coding and analysis and so on, but also, more importantly, because those skills emerge within the context of a broader liberal arts education.

An interdisciplinary education can encourage students to explore the social underpinnings of technical skills, and the limitations of those skills, as well as their most potent applications.

Rebecca Herzig is the college’s Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and chair of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Why might a DCS-minded student — or young scholar, for that matter — go to a liberal arts college like �ֲ���ý instead of a school known for computer science? Expert: Nathan Lundblad

The Expert: Nathan Lundblad, associate professor of physics

Launching the DCS Program underscores the college’s strong support of faculty who have a commitment to both teaching and research.

At top liberal arts colleges, cutting-edge research in the natural sciences is attracting federal dollars, being published in top journals, and sending students to top graduate programs.

Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

For example, I have a federal grant from NASA to study the physics of ultracold atomic systems aboard the International Space Station, and as part of this I’ll be one of a few remote users of a facility orbiting the Earth performing precision tests in quantum mechanics.

I’m excited to bring DCS students aboard as interns for computational aspects of my project.

This project involves extensive computer modeling and programming to guide and design various experimental processes, and, as happens at a liberal arts college, �ֲ���ý students have been working directly with me on crucial aspects of the project.

I’m excited to bring DCS students aboard as interns for computational aspects of my project, and I’m looking forward to having my physics students take DCS classes to better prepare them for research where computational skills are increasingly indispensable.

Coming to �ֲ���ý to work in digital and computational studies gives students the opportunity to work on projects like this while benefiting from the close teacher-student interactions that are the central pillar of the liberal arts experience.

+How will the �ֲ���ý DCS Program support what the mission statement calls the 'emancipating potential' of the liberal arts? Expert: Margaret Imber

The Expert: Margaret Imber, associate professor of classical and medieval studies

DCS is going to allow students to ask the critical question of the liberal arts: Why do I know what I know? Why do I believe this? How do I know it?

You have the capacity to claim the world.

In pursuing those questions, you have the capacity to liberate yourself. You have the capacity to claim the world.

I have a senior doing an honors thesis on the political topography of violence in ancient Rome. He made for himself a data set of every reference to political violence in Rome in the last century of the republic. He used software to recreate images in 3D to better understand, for example, Livy’s and other written descriptions of riots down the streets of the Via Sacra.

Associate Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies Margaret Imber is co-director of the Faculty Commons for Teaching and Learning. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

By using these tools — more often associated with the natural sciences or graphic design rather than classics — he got a much better sense, almost tactile, of what the words were describing. More important, he gained the ability to ask questions about the accuracy or distortions of the historical texts.

That’s why DCS is perfect for �ֲ���ý and the liberal arts. It will help emancipate students from presumptions, sloppy thinking, and living in a world that other people give to you.

+How might DCS contribute to citizenry that is more numerate, and why does that matter? Expert: Adriana Salerno

The Expert: Adriana Salerno, associate professor of mathematics

For me, numeracy and computer literacy are human rights, like reading. We believe people have a right to learn how to read because it gives you opportunities. I believe the same should be true for being numerate.

Nobody every says you have to compete in the Tour de France in order to be considered a bicycle rider. It should be the same for learning math and computer science. You don’t have to be the best person at this. But you can still do it.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Adriana Salerno. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Yet in computer science and STEM fields there is often that attitude that says, “This is only for a certain elite.” But we have a problem if only certain groups of people have the skills to have those jobs, and we especially have a problem if those elite just happen to all look very similar in terms of their race and gender.

We have a clean slate. We can decide what this major is going to be.

At �ֲ���ý, we have the power to create a program that doesn’t have the baggage and vices of some of the established programs, where people say, “Computer science is taught this way.” We have a clean slate. We can decide what this major is going to be and who it is going to attract, whether it’s a student who likes math, or is a dancer, or takes a lot of philosophy courses.

We will create all sorts of routes for students to get a technology- and computer-science-based education.

+What value might an art and visual culture major find in the DCS curriculum? Expert: Rebecca Corrie

The Expert: Rebecca Corrie, Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture

DCS gives us a chance to equip our already great students with the skills they increasingly need.

When technology arrived in our fields, you could say, “Let’s bring someone in who knows how to do that.” Today, you cannot outsource technology tasks. You have to embody them. You need to have the skills.

Rebecca Corrie is the college’s Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

For example, if you are an architectural historian who needs to create a digital reconstruction, you should not only know the art history and the architectural history but also be capable of working with or even developing the programs yourself.

Fields that hire art history majors, such as museums and auction houses, for example, want hires who know how to code and who are skilled at different technologies.

+What do you see as the unifying themes of the �ֲ���ý DCS Program? Expert: Pallavi Jayawant

The Expert: Pallavi Jayawant, associate professor and chair of mathematics

What the �ֲ���ý DCS Program will support and recognize — whether the ultimate goal is theorizing and applying principles of computation, exploring philosophical boundaries of artificial intelligence, modeling queries using complex data sets, or designing three-dimensional digital maps using layers of coded data — is creativity and rigor in defining and answering questions.

Importantly, DCS at �ֲ���ý will support collaboration across the entire faculty, inside and outside of the program, to develop new elective courses and/or enhance their existing courses with digital and computational abilities.

Pallavi Jayawant is an associate professor of mathematics and department chair. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

DCS will teach students how to get inside of and learn their way around computers rather than simply be proficient at using them. This will be especially liberating because it will help them develop and apply new knowledge and improve their understanding of the world around us.

Ultimately, an education that involves the �ֲ���ý DCS curriculum can serve as a bulwark against unreflective, biased, or limited understandings of computer technologies in our lives.

+How might the �ֲ���ý DCS Program help faculty and students find new connections across disciplines? Expert: Eden Osucha

The Expert: Eden Osucha, assistant professor of English

Technology is transforming, in a real sense, the very objects of study that are at the heart of the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.

As we develop the program, we will recognize that in teaching students about technology, we need to be teaching students to have a critical understanding of technology’s many impacts on language, community, identity, culture, and our notions of the human. Technology is transforming all of these things, which are, in turn, also shaping technological change and practices.

Assistant Professor of English Eden Osucha teaches a class in Pettigrew Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

When students do technologically driven assignments in an English classroom alongside more traditional writing assignments, an interesting thing happens: They begin to recognize something new about their academic disciplines, whether they are humanities majors or not.

A senior physics major or a math major who takes their first English class and does a digital textual mapping project, for example, might realize that, while they are adept at thinking about knowledge in terms of data, or thinking in terms of structures and relations, they now can deploy those abilities to achieve a critical engagement with a literary or other cultural text.

In so doing, they expand their own understanding of the value and purpose of those skills.

Gifts of $19 million to create six new endowed professorships, including three for the DCS Program

Last May, at the last faculty meeting of the 2015 academic year, the �ֲ���ý faculty approved a new Program in Digital and Computational Studies,��with one major condition: that �ֲ���ý would secure millions in funding to establish up to three endowed new professorships within the new program.

Meeting that condition took just half a year. On Feb. 5, �ֲ���ý announced gifts of $19 million to create six new endowed professorships, including three for the DCS Program, plus endowed program support.

Funding in place, the program has a fall 2018 slated start date as a major.

Demand for the program is high. Survey results suggest that 94 percent of students believe that �ֲ���ý should have a DCS major. Fourteen percent of students say they would “definitely major” in DCS. And 69 percent indicate they would take courses in the program.

Interest among professors is great, too, as are the preceding ideas and insights about why the �ֲ���ý program can be among the best in the country.

Professors are also eager to explain why the program will be quintessentially �ֲ���ý — how it will support key parts of the �ֲ���ý mission statement, such as:

• dedication to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts;
• educating the whole person; engaging in the transformative power of our differences;
• cultivating intellectual discovery and informed civic action;
• and preparing leaders sustained by a love of learning and a commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world.

Rebecca Herzig

In a year of and , Plucked, by Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies Rebecca Herzig, has hit at least one end-of-year list, The Economist‘s best books of 2015.

The book, by The Economist last February, is a “curious account of hair-erasing, and why people have tried clamshell razors, lasers, lye depilatories, tweezers, waxes, threading and electrolysis to try and free themselves from hairiness.”

has praised Herzig for this “smart and engaging” social history that examines the “insidious repercussions and political currency” of all those hair-removal practices, “which reverberate as loudly now” as when those practices began in the West 200 years ago.

Plucked has had a remarkable 2015 run. It’s been reviewed some 20 times in the mainstream media, and Herzig herself has been interviewed, has written articles on the topic, or had the book excerpted in nearly two dozen media outlets.

Ben Ayers ’99

A feature story in Bloomberg Business spotlights the work that Ben Ayers ’99 is doing as the Nepal director of the nonprofit dZi Foundation, a development group focused on rural communities.

Titled “,” the story by Abe Streep focuses on Ayers and dZi as a way to contrast sustainable vs. short-term relief efforts in Nepal after the April 2015 earthquake.

Ayers and dZi focus on helping communities by, for example, rebuilding schools to “develop the kind of prosperity that can make a community more resilient when it’s confronted by natural disaster.”

Ayers, a magna cum laude English major at �ֲ���ý who has worked in Nepal for much of his post-graduate life, tells Street that it’s “easy to drop off some tarps and call it good. I think this is more effective.”

Ben Chin ’07

National and local media offered to the Lewiston mayoral race, in which Ben Chin ’07 lost a Dec. 8 runoff election to incumbent Robert Macdonald.

The New York Times said the race was a “,” describing Chin as a well-organized and well-funded “activist with the liberal Maine People’s Alliance” and noting that the conservative Macdonald was a “Vietnam veteran and former police detective, who did little campaigning.”

The Bangor Daily News noted that it’s “,” where a large population of immigrants from African countries has made the city, according to the Times, “younger and more racially diverse than the rest of Maine” while noting that these new citizens’ political leanings are left-leaning compared to the aging population of longtime residents.

Amy Bass ’92

Another manifestation of Lewiston’s diverse racial makeup (and, some would say, a true harbinger of the city’s future) came last month when the Lewiston High School boys soccer team won the state title.

Amy Bass ’92, a professor of history at the College of New Rochelle and a frequent media contributor on issues around race and sport in U.S. society, noting that the Lewiston team has players from Congo, Kenya, Turkey, Germany, and Somalia, reflecting the influx of immigrants over the last 15 years, playing alongside teammates whose families have much longer roots in Lewiston.

“Seven members of the championship team came from the same refugee camp,” she writes. “They knew each other before becoming classmates and teammates.”

In recent years, Lewiston has “grappled with its identities,” Bass writes. “It has not, by any means, been a painless transition.” Youth soccer, she writes, “has been a microcosm of that process.” In fact, “it would be tough to overstate the importance of soccer in these community relations.”

A film about the Lewiston soccer team’s triumph by Ian Clough, a 2001 Lewiston graduate and former soccer player:

Lisa Simpson (�ֲ���ý ’20?)

It’s a communications strategy that you learn in kindergarten: When teased, respond with humor.

In the Dec. 6 episode of The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson’s solar-powered car stalls during an alternative-energy car competition. She gets teased with, as said, “strangely specific insults” that suggest that she’s doomed to, in order, �ֲ���ý, Maine winters, and Division III basketball.

“But rather than lick its wounds over the slight, the college decided to own the joke,” .

The college and Facebook channels along with an invitation to Lisa to apply to �ֲ���ý.

“Cute gesture,” the Chronicle said, “and a fun use of the college’s social-media platforms.”

John Tooker ’92

When bugs don’t eat slugs, there’s a problem afoot

A Newsweek story cites research by insect ecologist John Tooker ’92 to explain why slugs have become a big problem on soybean farms.

Tooker has co-authored a study that has found a reason. An insecticide intended to kill seed-eating bugs is getting into the food chain and killing the predatory beetles that eat slugs.

Thus uneaten and thus unchecked, slugs are tearing into soybean crops.

A slug munches on a soybean seedling. (Nick Sloff/Penn State)

A focuses on Tooker’s research, which was published in the

The insecticides are neonicotinoids (they’ve also been linked to the die-offs of honeybees). Newsweek says that so-called neonics are used on “about half of America’s soybean seeds and 95 percent of corn seeds, the two biggest cash crops for commercial farms in the country.”

Turns out that slugs can consume neonics and survive. The poison remains in the slugs’ system, which kills or poisons the ground beetles that would eat them.

And here’s an irony: There’s evidence that neonics aren’t even needed. The EPA said last year that neonics provide “little or no overall benefits” and Tooker told Newsweek that “one of my main concerns with neonics is that they’ve been used regardless of need.”

From the scholarly article:

[T]his indiscriminate use can have unintended consequences, with measurable costs for farmers. Using neonicotinoids only when and where they are needed, guided by a strong understanding of the underlying ecology, provides potential to harness their strengths and limit their weaknesses to achieve more sustainable pest control.

An associate professor of entomology at the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, Tooker was a biology major at �ֲ���ý.

His adviser, Sharon Kinsman, “gave me a start in plant-based research,” he says. (Plant-based research also helped Tooker meet his future wife,��Megan Weaver ’92, as they did research together, looking at burrs and��cockleburs, at �ֲ���ý-Morse Mountain. “We actually got together after the project was done,” John says, “but spending all that time together did not hurt!”)

Rebecca Herzig

The race to remove hair

�ֲ���ý faculty member Rebecca Herzig is getting media attention for her new book exploring our complicated relationship with hair removal.

Herzig’s book is Plucked: A History of Hair Removal (New York University Press, 2015). She is the college’s Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies.

The Times of London, , and have published reviews, and she’s been interviewed by , and, on Feb. 10, by

During the SCPR radio interview, a listener posted a comment on the show’s Facebook page, saying that a local middle school science teacher told her students that Asians “are a more evolved race, as evidenced by their reduced amount of body hair.”

Host Larry Mantle asked Herzig to comment on that anecdote, and she noted that skewed ideas about race, evolution and hair may have begun as a reaction to Charles Darwin. She said:

Darwin changed the way people thought about the human relationship to animals. When they saw that there was a continuum, rather than a bright line separating humans and animals, it became more culturally important to maintain that boundary, and hair was a perfect way to do it: You can literally shave off your animalness to help maintain that boundary.

And if hair removal became a way to affirm our human identity, it’s not hard to imagine how hairlessness might become linked, in some minds, with ideas about human evolution or racial superiority.

Elise Kornack ’09

Take Root grabs hold of New York City diners

An art and visual culture major before she became a chef, Elise Kornack exhibited “Head to Toe,” wire and graphite on paper, during the 2009 Senior Exhibition.

New York City food writers are taking note of Take Root, the Brooklyn restaurant run by Elise Kornack ’09 and her wife, Anna Hieronimus.

The restaurant has received a great , and last fall got a “best new restaurant” nod from Esquire.

Kornack herself was featured recently by , a profile that traces her career from �ֲ���ý art major to Brooklyn restaurateur.

A tiny place in Carroll Gardens, Take Root is as intimate as a �ֲ���ý first-year seminar. It seats just 12 and offers one seating per night, Thursday through Saturday.

Food Republic writer Richard Martin says that his meal at Take Root “was not the precious market-driven set menu place I was expecting.”

He continues: “For all the accolades and chatter, Kornack’s cooking is ultimately personal and thoughtful rather than flashy or stylized. It’s a refreshing approach, and one that puts her at odds with the wizards of the city’s other heralded tasting menus, where foams, trompe l’oeil and technique are part of the show.”

Rebecca Herzig is the author of Plucked: A History of Hair Removal in America and is the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at �ֲ���ý.

According to some estimates, virtually all American women have tried facial and bodily hair removal. Most remove some hair regularly, if not daily. And for the majority of men, despite the fad for the full “lumbersexual” beard, a clean shave is still the look.

If hair removal is common, though, that doesn’t make it trivial. Ever since Europeans arrived on these shores, what Americans have done with their hair has signaled racial and social status, political and cultural orientation, and even our views on freedom��— all the while giving medicine, science and industry lucrative new markets.

Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, a new social history from New York University Press, weaves together for the first time Americans’ shifting beliefs about facial and body hair with the technology and business of body modification.

“You might be surprised what the history of hair removal can tell us,” says Plucked author Rebecca M. Herzig, professor of women and gender studies at �ֲ���ý. “I know I was surprised when I learned that millions of Americans once used X-rays to get rid of unwanted facial hair.

“I was more surprised to discover that, even when X-ray hair removal was banned because the radiation was so harmful, many women continued to seek it out because the stigma of facial hair seemed worse than the threat of cancer.”

Those are among the discoveries that led Herzig, a historian of science, to write Plucked. The book describes some of the dozens of methods Americans have used to try to remove body hair, from razors to harsh chemicals to lasers and even to genetic engineering.

Herzig also explores society’s evolving views of “normal” hair growth and what deviations from the norm might signify.

Until the mid-19th century, Americans of European descent looked askance at the meticulous hair removal practices of Native Americans. Yet in subsequent decades, hairiness��— especially on women’s faces��— was variously interpreted as a sign of racial inferiority, criminality, sexual perversion or political radicalism. Feminists in the 1960s and ’70s challenged some of those associations, transforming body hair into a symbol of self-determination.

“I use the history of hair removal to explore Americans’ changing ideas about what’s necessary, what’s natural and what’s good,” Herzig says.

Driving Plucked is its depiction of the elaborate dance between, on the one hand, those changing ideas, and on the other, the changing scientific and industrial practices that both accommodate and shape cultural perspectives.

For example, Herzig details how a clean shave became a norm for men only after World War I. During that conflict, a smooth skin was deemed necessary to ensure a properly fitting gas mask, and razor manufacturer Gillette laid the groundwork for a postwar market by supplying the U.S. military with safety razors.

Titled “Genpuku yoshi” (“It’s good to become an adult”), this 19th-century woodcut print by Hokkei Totoya shows a woman on a lucky day for shaving her eyebrows. (Library of Congress)

As Herzig points out, “individual choice” in the realm of personal body care is a fallacy. “When we talk about ‘freedom’ in the U.S. and other advanced industrial societies, we often assume that the choices we make about our bodies are only about our bodies. But they never are, and never have been.

“Big forces are at work here. The wax that has made ‘Brazilian’ a household word is a byproduct of global petroleum production. All the depilatories we manufacture and consume end up in our waterways and landfills,” she says.

“Our choosing selves are never free of larger social and ecological entanglements.”

Herzig’s previous books include Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (Rutgers University Press, 2005), which explores the rise of an ethic of “self-sacrifice” in American science; and, with Evelynn M. Hammonds, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (MIT Press, 2009), a history of scientific studies of human variation.

Herzig is chair of the Program in Women and Gender Studies at �ֲ���ý, where she has taught for more than 15 years. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, and currently holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies. Read about Herzig’s lecture marking her appointment to the Johnson Chair.

The Johnson Professorship, supported by an endowment established by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, recognizes a faculty member who has made transformative contributions to interdisciplinary studies.

Herzig received her doctorate in the history and social study of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her bachelor’s degree in American cultural and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Rebecca Herzig presents her professorship lecture on Dec. 2 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Rebecca Herzig marks her appointment to an endowed professorship at �ֲ���ý with a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 2, in the Keck Classroom, Room G52 of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

The Christian A. Johnson Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies, Herzig offers a talk titled��Knowledge Incarnate: Feminism, Science and the Problem of Suffering.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. A reception follows immediately in Pettengill’s Perry Atrium. For more information, please call 207-786-8371.

Herzig is a historian of science whose research focuses on the relationships between technology, race and gender in the United States.

Her book Plucked: A History of Hair Removal in America, to be published by NYU Press in January 2015, examines techniques that Americans have used to remove their own hair, and the array of social forces — including beliefs about beauty and self-determination��— that create expectations about hair and hair removal.

Herzig received a National Science Foundation grant in 2008 to support her research into cosmetic applications of studies of the human genome, including gene-based hair retardation.

In 2005, Herzig published Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (Rutgers University Press), exploring the rise of an ethic of “self-sacrifice” in American science. The book describes how supposedly rational scientists came to embrace a culture of toil, danger and even lethal dismemberment.

Co-edited with Evelynn M. Hammonds, Herzig’s second book was The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (The MIT Press, 2009). This collection addresses changing scientific studies of human variation.

Herzig is chair of the Program in Women and Gender Studies at �ֲ���ý, where she has taught for more than 15 years. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Herzig received her doctorate in the history and social study of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her bachelor’s degree in American cultural and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The Johnson Professorship, supported by an endowment established by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, recognizes a faculty member who has made transformative contributions to interdisciplinary studies.

And Benjamin Mays ’20 was one of them. When the statement declares that �ֲ���ý has always “been dedicated to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts,” it’s a tribute to the great civil rights leader and educator. Mays wrote in his autobiography that �ֲ���ý “did not ‘emancipate’ me; it did the far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself.”

The mission statement was produced in conjunction with the College’s process of reaccreditation. While not every contributor owns a word in the final language, its creation was an open, overtly collaborative five-month effort that drew hundreds of suggestions and comments from the College community.

The result, in turn, will tickle the �ֲ���ý-sense of nearly any member of that community.

“We were trying to get at why difference matters.”

The mission statement, for instance, affirms that �ֲ���ý people “engage the transformative power of our differences.” Students on the mission statement committee put forth the concept of “transformative” early on, says committee chair Rebecca Herzig, professor of women and gender studies. Alums later confirmed the rightness of that word as a �ֲ���ý descriptor.

The �ֲ���ý mission statement, says Rebecca Herzig, gets at “why difference matters.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In juxtaposing “transformative” and “differences,” Herzig continues, “we were trying to get at why difference matters. We realized that the transformative effect of the College happens most often when people bump up against people who are quite different from them.”

Ending the mission statement is a phrase that, in a sense, began the whole �ֲ���ý enterprise: “�ֲ���ý is a college for coming times.”

These words are adapted from founder and first president Oren Cheney’s pitch to Lewiston residents for the proposed school. He proposed establishing an institution for “coming time” — no “s.”

The mission statement committee “realized that people would think we just forgot the ‘s’” if they used Cheney’s exact text, Herzig explains. There was some concern, she adds, that the original reflected a denominational orientation.

“So we altered it slightly to evoke Cheney — but to also look more explicitly to the plurality of possible futures that lie ahead.” — DLH