mount holyoke alumnae quarterly summer 2014

SUMMER 2014

Mount HolyokeAlumnae Quarterly

A RECORD-BREAKING REUNION 2014

INVESTING IN OPPORTUNITIES FOR REINVENTION

INSIDE THE GETTELL AMPHITHEATER

ESTABLISHING A DAILY WRITING PRACTICE

IN THIS ISSUE

Madeleine Stout ’13 lends a face and a voice to newborn screening

Life Blood

MHC_Sum14_CoversFinal.indd 2 7/1/14 4:27 PM

John

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t’s hard-wired into me. There comes a moment in late July when I begin

thinking about the start of school. The days grow a bit shorter. I start counting pre-

cious summer weekends. And then there are all those back-to-school television commercials that still make me want to buy new notebooks.

Like many of you, I have always enjoyed school. When I was a girl, I adored my teachers. I remem-ber being a second grader in Miss O’Neil’s class and shyly handing her an invitation to dinner. I don’t remember the exact language in my note, but I do recall the postscript.

“Could you let me know right away?” I asked. “I don’t want my mother to clean the house for nothing.”

I still love the classroom, and that’s why I always make a point to teach one course each year. I’ve co-taught Critical Race Theory with Lucas Wilson, Bio-

Ethics with Rachel Fink, and two courses with Richard Moran: Sociology of Prisons and Sociology of Medicine.

When philosophy professor Tom Wartenberg walked into my office and said, “It’s about time you co-taught something in your home department,” I couldn’t resist.

Tom teaches Philosophy for Children, a stellar course that shows students how to explore philosoph-ical questions with children using picture books such

as Frog and Toad and The Bear That Wasn’t. Our students work with sec-ond graders at the Martin Luther King Jr. School of Excellence in nearby Springfield. We teach them to teach youngsters how to ponder weighty questions such as, “When you act bravely, can you be scared?”

I was honored when Tom asked me to partic-ipate, and I enjoy every-thing about the course, even riding the bus with our students down to Springfield. That’s when I get to hear what’s on their minds: what they worry about, what engag-es them, and why some feel compelled to spend end-less hours in the library—a campus preoccupation that’s been around since I was a student.

For everyone involved in the course, the payoff comes at the end. Then it’s the second graders’ turn to board buses and spend the day on campus with us. Few things are more important, we believe, than showing children that college can be in their future. Other professors lend a hand in underscoring the point: Larry Schipull demonstrates the college organ and Rachel Fink shows the kids sea urchins in her lab, after which the kids take a trip to the art muse-um. The day is capped off with an awards ceremony where each child graduates from the course and receives an “I am a Philosopher” button.

The experience of teaching Philosophy for Children reinforces for me the transformative power of education. Mount Holyoke students love what they do, and I love helping them open doors.

And, speaking of opening doors, one day as our group arrived at the MLK School, a fourth grader and graduate of the course saw us coming through the door. “Those are the philosophers,” he enthusi-astically yelled to the second graders waiting for us. “They’re going to change your life!”

iPresident’s Pen

The experience

of teaching

Philosophy for

Children reinforces

for me the

transformative

power of education.

— LYNN PASQUERELLA ’80

“

”Second-grade philosophers at the Martin Luther King Jr. School of Excellence

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2 LYONS SHARERemembering Talcott Greenhouse and WMHC, responses to faith, a winning haiku, and a look back at #MHCReunion

7 UNCOMMON GROUND Alumnae Association welcomes new president, College celebrates 177th commencement, Women in Public Service Institute

Ten Minutes With: Athletic Trainer Ellen Perrella

Insider’s View: Richard Glenn Gettell Amphitheater

Go Figure: Commencement by the Numbers

The Maven: Beth Dunn ’93 on writing

The Female Gaze: Painter Jude Harzer ’87; filmmaker Bess O’Brien ’81; authors Maria Chaudhuri ’99, Corinne Demas, Violet Kupersmith ’11, and Marjory Wentworth ’80

34 MoHOME MEMORIES The Beer Explosion of 1972

On Display: The Megatherium of Clapp Lab

Then and Now: Canoe Sing

37 CONNECTIONS Pancake study break, grandmother tea, alumnae promoting peace

A Place of Our Own

40 CLASS NOTES

80 MY VOICEJudy Stein ’56 on “Where are the Women’s Voices?”

ContentsS U M M E R 2014 // VO LU M E 98 // N U M B ER 3

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FE ATU R E S

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ON THE COVERIllustration by Alex Nabaum

18 Life Blood Madeleine Stout ’13 lends a face and a voice to newborn screening

24 Scoring Infants for Survival The lasting impact of Virginia Apgar ’29

26 Changemakers ReuniteA recap of reunion 2014 in words and pictures

28 Investing in Opportunities for ReinventionMount Holyoke’s Frances Perkins Program continues to pave the way for nontraditional students


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LET TE RS | E MAI L | FACE BOO K | T WIT TE R | I N STAG R AM | LI N KE D I N

alumnae.mtholyoke.edu2

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Lyons Share

Delegates

hugging the one

million dollar tree

at #mtholyoke

#wpsp #some leaders

#Simmons

MARIA JOSE ’17 @MAJOCORREA ARG

@aamhc To tell you the truth, I CHOSE the

college by accident. I STAYED because it offered

a stimulating yet nurturing environment.

TINKY WEISBLAT ’76 @LATINQUE

INSIDER’S VIEWThoughts of the Talcott Greenhouse (“Inside the Greenhouse,” spring 2014, p. 10) bring back many happy memories from childhood as well as the College years. So glad to hear it is going strong and even expanding to share with celebrations in Holyoke.

—Amy Faivre ’92 Allentown, Pennsylvania

I loved working [at the greenhouse] from 1980 to 1983 with Mr. Walker, a very fine man who always had the best interests of the students at heart. He began the sick ward to re-make plants healthy for them, and he always was willing to give a plant away. He kept the jungle room going, and he was a great inspiration to me!

—Laura Hawkins ’83 via Facebook

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

Uncommon Women

Fearlessly changing the world

With passion and love.

—Joanne Dalpe ’88

For National Poetry Month in April, we held a haiku contest on Facebook. Alumnae submitted haikus in the comments section of the post, and the one with the most likes won. Congratulations, Joanne Dalpe ’88!

Mary-Alice Austin’s ’82 daughter, Helen, told her mother that she had decided to attend Mount Holyoke as part of the class of 2018 by presenting her with this T-shirt.

We will have six daughters and one niece on campus next year! Go, class of ’82!—Maria Sherry Murphy ’82

It’s my dream that my daughter would want to go. She’s only 10. I have a few more years of gentle urging (reverse psychology . . . )

—Natalie McNelis ’90

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I told the girls that I’ve had this

@mtholyoke shirt for 12 years and they just

stared at me, mouths agape. #old

K AT CALVIN ’05 @AGINDC

“Robert Frost gave a lecture in 1937 for only 35 cents! Who was the most interesting or inspiring guest lecturer that you saw while at Mount Holyoke?”

fWE ASKED

Gloria Steinem, 1994—my first year. . . . At reunion this past year, I stood in that room and told my unborn daughter (in utero at the time) and husband about that evening!—Mary Haddad ’98

Maya Angelou, who talked to me about her work ethic when it comes to writing. I was shaking!

—Jean Mills ’83

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I just read “Building Foundations in Faith” (spring 2014, p. 16) and was dismayed to find that nowhere in the article or its graphic illustrations was any representation of the earth-based Pagan and Wiccan faiths. (Although the on-campus Pagan faith group was briefly mentioned in the sidebar, no Pagan women were quoted and no symbols of our faith were shown.) When I attended Mount Holyoke the Pagan & Wiccan Collective was one of the most active faith groups on cam-pus, and it would be no exaggeration to say that that group had a bigger impact on my development as a community leader than any of my other experi-ences at MHC. That group was where I first formulated and practiced the val-ues of non-hierarchical leadership and faith-based community service. Sever-al of the women I met there have gone on to become High Priestesses and community leaders after graduation, and I myself take roles of teaching and service in several Pagan gatherings each year. Paganism and Wicca are fairly unique among modern religions by virtue of having the female goddess archetype be central to most people’s practice and having the majority of leaders in the community be women. The inclusion of a Pagan perspective in this article would have added an instructive contrast to the religious communities mentioned, which were mostly historically patriarchal reli-gions in which female leaders have had to struggle to break through barriers to leadership. In modern American Paganism women have always led, and in many Pagan traditions the concept of hierarchical leadership is done away with altogether as we strive for equality and empowerment for practitioners of all genders.

—Mary Murphy ’05 Worcester, Vermont

FROM AM TO FMI’d like to add a bit of history to the “Then and Now” article in the spring 2014 Quarterly (“WMHC Radio,” p. 36). In 1955-56 WMHC was an AM station, using the high voltage wires of South Hadley as an antenna. (Yale radio used the water pipes.) That year the FCC issued a ruling that all AM stations had to go commercial, with professional employees, licensing fees, etc., and no more broadcasting on the town’s wires. We made a decision to go off the air for a year, broadcasting only over the speakers in Wilbur Hall (Mary Woolley basement), and saving that year’s SGA dues so that in fall of 1956 the station could afford a new transmitter and go FM. The comments at the time included, “Who would ever buy an FM radio?”

—Ellie Rogowski Landowne ’56, WMHC station manager 1955-56 Westport, Connecticut

ON FAITHThe quality of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly has improved so much over the years. Thank you for all your efforts and those of your staff to make that happen.

I was so pleased to read the article “Building Foundations in Faith” (spring 2014, p. 16) and see how many students and graduates have reached across religious boundaries to learn about other faiths. Under-standing how our alumnae sisters think and what they value most can build bridges to friendships.

During my four years at Mount Holyoke I don’t recall any discussions of faith or belief systems among the students that I knew. . . . I applaud the rich discussions that students are having now.

—Janet Field Kyne ’54 Cupertino, California


alumnae.mtholyoke.edu4 alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

Lyons Share: ReunionMount Holyoke alumnae from across generations and around the world came back to campus for Reunion in May, sharing memories, discoveries, and selfies along the way. We’ve compiled a sampling of alumnae experiences over the two weekends. For a look at more social media coverage of Reunion 2014, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/MHCReunion.

In the weeks prior to reunion, alumnae from our oldest classes are given the opportunity to share personal histories as well as their most cherished Mount Holyoke memories. The Alumnae Association compiles these submissions into Loyalty Books and distributes them to alumnae in each class. Here’s a glimpse of what two alumnae wrote:

Reunions have always been special times for reconnecting and appreciating our college years. I remember vividly standing by Upper Lake with Hank during the canoe sing and his turning to me and saying, “I can understand why you loved your years here, Gail.” Indeed, how fortunate we were.

GAIL SULLIVAN SEE ’49

WAYZATA , MINNESOTA

Mount Holyoke was all things good as I

arrived in 1940, but it takes the perspective

of a seventieth reunion to understand how

good. Most rewarding were the lifelong

friendships with Jean Klinck Fancourt,

Marge Halbleib O’Connor, Marcia Colley

Melton, Priscilla Russ Shanon, Austin

Hooey, Inga Woodwell Ball, and others.

SUZANNE SMITH TYNER ’44

TOLEDO, OHIO

70 R e u n ion M ay 1 5 –18 , 2014

65 R e u n ion M ay 23 – 25 , 2014

Loved my 30th reunion at #mhcreunion.

Didn’t miss the beds though!

MARGARET BUENNEKE ’84 @MBUENNEKE

POPULAR POST

Lois Stebbins and Thelma Bruesch, class of 1939, were roommates in South Mandelle their freshman year. They were thrilled to be seated next to each other at their 75th reunion luncheon. #MHCReunion

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Of course we’d

hire the Hu Ke Lau

to perform at our

class dinner, we’re 99!

#mhc1999

#MHCreunion

MHC CLASS OF 1999 @MHC1999

1 Post #laurelparade nap @aamhc @mhcalums LEILA QUINN ’12

@LEILARQUINN

2 Our future’s so bright we gotta wear shades #mhcreunionANNA BENNETT ’04

@ANNAPBENNETT

3 Selfie overload at #mhcreunion #mhc04, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.MARY YANG ’04

@MARYCY

4 #mtholyokereunion #classof74 having a wonderful time. Older and smarter than we look.ELLEN GOLDSTEIN ’74

@LEGEE18

When people ask me about my @mtholyoke reunion weekend,

I smile and say: “it was beautiful.” What I mean is: “you wouldn’t understand.”

ANNIE BUTTS ’12 @AEBUTTS14

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“Officer Kevin has been officially adopted by the class of 1999. Here they laugh as they recall shenanigans from back in the day, including a WMHC DJ coordinating an all-male streaking event. #MHCReunion

WE SHARED

Aww Kevin! He gave me M&Ms at 1am at the library during finals.—Jacqueline Heller ’05

Oh, Officer Kevin! My hero on so many occasions.

—Natalia Sadaniantz ’09

Aww! Love Officer Kevin so much! I still remember being so upset when he fell off the Segway and broke his arm!

—Antima Chakraborty ’07

MOUNT HOLYOKE ALUMNAE QUARTERLYSummer 2014 Volume 98 Number 3

EDITORIAL AND DESIGN TEAM

Carly Kite Senior Director of Marketing and Communications

Jennifer Grow ’94 Editor, Alumnae Quarterly Millie Rossman Creative Director

Taylor Scott Associate Director of Digital Communications

Lauren Kodiak Marketing and Communications Assistant

CONTRIBUTORS

Kimberlyn B. Fong ’15 Olivia S. Lammel ’14 Camille C. Malonzo ’16

QUARTERLY COMMITTEE

Susan R. Bushey Manning ’96, chair Amy L. Cavanaugh ’06 Beth Mulligan Dunn ’93 Shawn Hartley Hancock ’80 Lauren D. Klein ’03

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

PresidentMarcia Brumit Kropf ’67Vice PresidentJulianne Trabucchi Puckett ’91

Treasurer and Chair, Finance CommitteeLynda Dean Alexander ’80

ClerkAshanta Evans-Blackwell ’95

Chair, Classes and Reunion Committee Danielle M. Germain ’93

Alumnae TrusteeAnn Blake ’85

Chair, Nominating Committee Radley Emes ’00

Director-at-Large Emily E. Renard ’02

Chair, Communications Committee Shannon Dalton Giordano ’91

Young Alumnae RepresentativeElaine C. Cheung ’09

Chair, Clubs CommitteeElizabeth Redmond VanWinkle ’82

Chair, Volunteer Stewardship Committee Ellen L. Leggett ’75

Executive Director Jane E. Zachary ex officio without vote

Ideas expressed in the Alumnae Quarterly do not necessarily reflect the views of Mount Holyoke College or the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College.

To update your information, contact Alumnae Information Services at [email protected] or 413-538-2303.

POSTMASTER (ISSN 0027-2493; USPS 365-280) Please send form 3579 to Alumnae Information Services Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association 50 College Street South Hadley, MA 01075-1486

The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. 50 College Street South Hadley, MA 01075-1486 413-538-2300 [email protected]

@aamhc #MHCReunion Reaffirming

the advancement of women’s education

MARIA BOTTA ’84 @MARIABOTTA

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N EWS | TE N M I N UTE S WITH | I N S I D E R ’ S VI EW | G O FI G U R E | TH E MAVE N | TH E FE MALE GA Z E

Uncommon Ground

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Association Welcomes New President“When I speak to younger people about careers,” says new Alumnae Association President Marcia Brumit Kropf ’67, “I always bring up the fact that you don’t even know what jobs are going to exist in ten years.”

A lifetime educator whose own career has included jobs as classroom teacher, reading specialist, video-game designer, curriculum developer, researcher, and nonprofit executive, Kropf brings to her post not only her professional experience but a curiosity and the eager intent to listen to what her fellow alumnae have to say. A French major at Mount Holyoke, Kropf didn’t anticipate that her career path would take so many turns, but when she became chief operating officer of Girls Inc., she says, her every job choice “suddenly all made sense.” Whether working directly with children in the classroom, as vice president of research and information services at Catalyst, or as COO, Kropf, who holds a doctorate in educational communications and technology, realized the steady thread of her career had always been about advancing opportunities for women and girls.

Before assuming her new role, Kropf met with staff at the Alumnae Association and Mount Holyoke as well as College trustees and members of the Association Board of Directors, taking part in, she says, a “fabulous onboarding program” designed by outgoing president Cynthia Reed ’80 and Association Executive Director Jane Zachary.

A former member of the Alumnae Association’s External Achievement Awards Committee and the committee’s out-going chair, Kropf says the timing of her new appointment couldn’t have been better. Semi-retired, she has more time now to devote to new responsibilities. As she takes the helm, one of her primary objectives is promotion and support of The Lynk, the College’s career network program. “The Lynk is an incredible opportunity for alumnae, students, and the College,” she says. “It’s a perfect initiative.” — B Y J E N N I F E R G R O W ’ 9 4


Learn more about how alumnae are contributing to The Lynk at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/alumnaelynk.

Each year the Women in Public Service Project (WPSP)—founded in 2011 by Hillary Clinton to increase women’s participation in leadership positions in public service to 50 percent by 2050—partners with women’s colleges to host a two-week institute that provides a forum for shared learning and dialogue among women leaders from around the world.

This past May, Mount Holyoke College—along with sister schools Simmons and Smith—was the site of the third annual institute, titled “Reconstructing Societies in the Wake of Conflict: Transitional Justice and Economic Development.”

Selected from a pool of 600 applicants, fifty delegates

from societies in Asia, Africa, and South America arrived in Massachusetts prior to the opening ceremony on May 26. These delegates are working to rebuild their communities and promote sustainable economic opportunities following peri-ods of political violence and human rights violations.

Institute highlights includ-ed a visit to the State House in Boston and meetings with legislative leaders; address-es and presentations by Gloria Steinem (Smith ’56), Congresswoman Nita Lowey ’59, and Congresswoman Niki Tsongas (Smith ’68); and a trip to meet with leaders of community-based organiza-tions in Holyoke.

Mount Holyoke German studies professor and director

of the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, Karen Remmler, was instru-mental in developing the conference curriculum, while Kate Wasserman, associate dean of the College/dean of students, was the lead on administrative matters and logistics. In addition, numer-ous MHC faculty, staff, and alumnae participated as pan-elists and presenters, includ-ing Eva Paus, professor of eco-nomics, Alan Bloomgarden,

Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Simmons Host Women in Public Service Institute

ON THE ROAD

With support from the Weissman Center for Leadership, two dozen students traveled to Washington, DC, in March to learn about careers in public service. The two-day trip featured a keynote address by Naomi Barry-Peréz ’96, director of Civil Rights for the US Department of Labor, followed by a networking reception.

Students also attended panel discussions, where alumnae shared their experiences in the field and offered advice on career preparation and exploration. The first panel was hosted by Suzanne George ’90,

principal for Albright-Stonebridge Group, and moderated by Stephanie Liotta Atkinson ’03, legislative and communications director for the Council of the District of Columbia. The second panel—held at the Pentagon—was hosted by Jessie Babcock ’03, country director for Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, the Office of Defense, and moderated by Claire Boyd ’12, executive assistant in the Bureau of Public Affairs. Participants also went on a tour of the Pentagon and attended a World Bank briefing.

MHC Lynk: On the Road—which is part of the College’s Lynk initiative to connect curriculum to career—provides students with opportunities to network with successful professionals in their areas of interest. Previous trips included visits to the State House in Albany, New York, and Harvard Law School. More events are planned for the 2014–2015 academic year. — B Y L A U R E N K O D I A K

MHC Lynk: On the Road Heads to Washington, DC

Ben

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director of community engagement, and filmmaker Sonali Gulati ’96.

“We were honored to have the opportunity to bring together emerging and estab-lished leaders in politics and public service from around the world,” said Mount Holyoke President Lynn Pasquerella ’80. “The insights, experience, and wisdom that delegates brought to our campus will inform our thinking for years to come.” — B Y TAY L O R S C O T T

Delagates to Women in Public Service Project Institute


From Vet Tech to ScientistLorelle Pye FP’13 Awarded NSF Grant

At Lorelle Pye’s FP’13 high school in central Florida, students were rarely encouraged to pursue higher education. So upon graduation, Pye began working full time as a veterinary technician. Eventually, though, she saved enough money to move and attend community college in Massachusetts, where she excelled. In 2011, Pye graduated with honors from Holyoke Community College and transferred to Mount Holyoke through the National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which grants money to students with financial need to pur-sue the STEM sciences. Like many Frances Perkins scholars, she continued to work nearly full time throughout her undergraduate studies. Using the same skills that had helped fund her education from the beginning, she worked as a vet tech at the South Hadley Animal Hospital.

After graduating summa cum laude with a major in physics from MHC, Pye entered the University of Central Florida as a PhD candidate in optics. She has received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation for her work helping to advance the development of small-scale integrated photonic devices (used in optical communications) with great-er bandwidth and higher functionality as well as lower cost and power consumption.

“I am passionate about scientific research,” Pye says. “I’m equally passionate about encouraging young women to enter and stay in the STEM fields. I plan to make outreach part of my mission as a scientist.”

Pye is only one of many recent Mount Holyoke alumnae to have received prestigious awards and fel-lowships, including Fulbright and Gates Cambridge Scholarships. To learn more about individual awardees, visit mtholyoke.edu. — B Y TAY L O R S C O T T

Starting in September, all Mount Holyoke students will fulfill revised requirements for gradu-ation. The requirements, which were approved by the faculty last spring after two years of consideration by the Academic Priorities Committee—com-prised of faculty, administrators, and students—were carefully designed to provide more oppor-tunities for students to discover new academic areas of interest.

Intended to help establish a formation upon which students can build their own academic careers, the new requirements also support The Lynk, the College’s curriculum-to-career initiative, which aims to connect academic work with practical experience and career exploration. The new guidelines also will enable students to add a credential, such as a second major, a minor, a Nexus, or a Five College certificate.

Professor Tim Farnham, director of the Center for the Environment and one of the five faculty members on the committee, says the new crite-ria will appeal to prospective students as well. “The stu-dents now considering Mount Holyoke are subject to increas-ing requirements and testing in high school, and many are looking for freedom of choice in their college experience,” he says. “Moving to the [new requirements] . . . is a call to the student and her advisor to consider carefully the liberal arts pathway that best suits the student’s intellectual goals.”

For more information on the College’s new graduation require-ments, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/gradrequirements.

New Graduation Requirements Start Fall 2014

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Eleanor Maynard ’14 Receives Laurie Priest Alumnae Scholar Athlete AwardOn April 29 the Laurie Priest Alumnae Scholar Athlete Award was presented to Eleanor (Nell) Maynard ’14 at the Department of Athletics annual awards celebration in Chapin Auditorium. The award is given to an exceptional student athlete who displays exemplary leadership, character, and scholarship.

Riding since she was six years old, Maynard’s skill on horseback played an instrumental role in the Mount Holyoke equestrian team’s success over the last four years. Among her many achievements, Maynard placed eighth in Individual Intermediate Equitation Over Fences at the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association National Championships in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in May.

A biological sciences major, Maynard has received a number of academic awards, including the Sarah Williston Scholar for academic achieve-ment, and, most recently, the American Chemical Society, Connecticut Valley Section Student Award. During her junior year she volunteered at a medical clinic and private school for girls in Guaimaca, Honduras, with the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts.

Maynard’s post-graduation plans include work-ing as a medical scribe at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and applying to medi-cal school, which she hopes to attend in fall 2015.

“MHC enabled me to excel in my sport by providing unbelievable training and beautiful facilities,” she says. “To get to leave class and go have a lesson before lab is a complete treasure, and one that I will miss.” — BY L A U R E N KO D I A K

Delagates to Women in Public Service Project Institute


Listen to best friends Hannah Barg ’14 and Leah Hammond ’14 talk about their time together at Mount Holyoke at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/2014memories.

College Welcomes New Senior Staff MembersThis past semester, Mount Holyoke welcomed three new staff members —Christine Hutchins, Liz Lierman, and Marcella Runell Hall. Each brings extensive knowledge, expe-rience, and commitment to liberal arts education.

Hutchins was appointed vice president of marketing and com-munications in February. Most recently she was senior associate athletics director of external rela-tions at Stanford University. With more than sixteen years of expe-rience in marketing, communica-tions, and development, Hutchins will focus her efforts on strength-ening the College’s impact, reach, and reputation.

Lierman joined the Career Development Center as director in May. She holds a master’s in non-profit management and social work and comes to the College from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where she was director of career services. She brings to the CDC expertise in the changing landscape of the work-place and in connecting students to meaningful careers.

Runell Hall joined the Mount Holyoke community as dean of students in June. Prior to arriving on campus, she was at New York University, where most recently she founded the Of Many Institute for Multifaith Leadership. She also served NYU as diversity educator at the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs and as coordinator of social justice pro-grams in student activities. She earned her doctorate at UMass-Amherst. — B Y L A U R E N K O D I A K

In a successful year that sent athletes to national compe-tition across all three com-petitive seasons, the Mount Holyoke athletics program ended the year with a nation-al equestrian champion in Felicia Harrsch ’14, who came in first in her class at the 2014 Intercollegiate Horse Show Association National Championships in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in May. In the field of fifteen competitors,

Harrsch won in the Individual Open Equitation Over Fences event. A standout beyond the equestrian team, Harrsch, a neuroscience and behavior major at Mount Holyoke, is the recipient of several academ-ic scholarships and awards, including the 2012 Abby Howe Turner Award for outstanding research in biological sciences.

Camille Coklow ’16 also competed at the national level last spring when she repre-

sented Mount Holyoke in the 100-meter dash at the 2014 NCAA Division III Women’s Outdoor Track and Field Championships for the second consecutive year. Coklow, a co-captain of the track team, traveled to Ohio Wesleyan University with coach Tina Lee, placing ninth out of twenty-two, after being seeded thirty-fifth in the country only a few weeks earlier.— B Y J E N N I F E R G R O W ’ 9 4

On Sunday, May 18 the senior class, graduate students, and their friends and family gathered at Richard Glenn Gettell Amphitheater for the College’s 177th commencement. Deborah Bial, founder and president of the Posse Foundation, gave the 2014 commencement address. For twenty-five years the Posse Foundation has sent teams of students with extraordinary academic potential from diverse backgrounds to selective colleges and universities on full-tuition scholar-ships. The first cohort of Mount Holyoke Posse students graduated this year.

President Lynn Pasquerella ’80 awarded honorary degrees to Bial, bestselling author and

history professor Deborah Harkness ’86, President of the Chicago Teachers Union Karen G. Jennings Lewis ’74, and physician and pioneer in the field of lesbian healthcare Dr. Patricia A. Robertson ’72.

The student address was given by Iman Abdulwassi Abubaker ’14, who shared, “We are transformed young women with a strong voice to express our identity and our beliefs. Here we come, real world; here come the women of change.” — B Y L A U R E N K O D I A K

Equestrian, Track Athletes Compete at Nationals

Congratulations, Class of 2014!

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F R O M L E F T: Mount Holyoke’s first “Posse” graduates; 2014 Commencement Speaker Deborah Bial; and Iman Abdulwassi Abubaker ’14, who was elected by her peers to give the student address.


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For thirty years E L L E N P E R R E L L A has been head athletic trainer and lecturer in physical education and athletics at Mount Holyoke. With more than 300 varsity athletes at the College, it’s not unusual for up to fifty students a day to seek treatment in Kendall Hall’s training room. A certified strength and conditioning specialist, Perrella also works with teams to institute specialized strength programs, and she lectures around the Northeast on the relationship between obesity, body image, and health—at any age.

All About StrengthCERTIFIED ATHLETIC TRAINER

On exercise:I like to use the term “FUNctional Strength Training.” It’s a course I’ve taught at Mount Holyoke for years. Exercise isn’t just about cardiovascular health and shouldn’t just be goal dependent—reaching a certain weight, for example. We need to separate weight loss from the value of exercise, because exercise is not actually a great way to lose weight. But exercise will make you healthier.

On body image: As an athletic trainer working with only female athletes at a women’s institution, I have an acute awareness of how central and how damaging body image can be to a woman, to a female athlete. I have a real concern for the well-being of athletes, who need to be strong to be fit. It’s such a struggle for so many women, who turn to restrictive eating—or obsessive or compulsive behaviors—to try to control their weight, because they are not happy with the way their bodies look. I teach intuitive eating, which means that I counsel students to make healthful choices and to eat according to their bodies’ signals of hunger and fullness. Being healthy is independent of weight. I’m particularly proud that there are no scales in Kendall. No weigh-ins for any sport. There is no body fat testing, and our coaches never encourage athletes to diet.

On strength: Whether you’re an athlete or not, life requires strength. With each decade—starting as early as age twenty-five— we all lose muscle mass. And weight training is the only intervention that is effective in preserving that muscle mass. In a perfect world, weight-training rooms would be filled with women in their fifties and sixties. But whether you are male or female, young or old, your muscle cells will respond to strength training, and you will get stronger.

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Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly ||| S U M M E R 2 0 1 4 11Paul

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View a list of all past Mount Holyoke commencement speakers at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/amphitheater.


Inside the AmphitheaterIn 1961 the amphitheater was constructed as just one part of an ambitious campus improvement plan implemented by Richard Glenn Gettell, the College’s thirteenth president.

n In its earliest years Pageant Green was a popular spot for professors to hold class on a nice day. In 1912, benches were installed on the green as part of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Mount Holyoke. By 1948 the benches were removed, due to material restrictions during the war years that prevented further upkeep.

n The class of 1961 was the first to process across the amphitheater stage to receive their diplomas. Nine years later the structure was officially named for Gettell, who received an honorary degree at the College’s 133rd commencement, at which the Honorary Edward M. Kennedy was the speaker.

n Perhaps the most famous person to have addressed the community from the amphitheater stage was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who came to campus in fall 1963.

n Today in addition to being the location of commencement and convocation, the amphitheater is also host to Pangy Day festivities, the occasional movie night, and even a meeting place for Mount Holyoke’s student Lunar Howling Society. And it’s not unusual to see a professor leading a class meeting on the shady grass steps.


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Commencement by the Numbers

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10:30Start time of

class of 2014 processional

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Highest temperature during the ceremony

Percentage of BA students who graduated with honors

Number of miles Iman Abdulwassi Abubaker ’14, who gave the student address, traveled from her home city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to attend Mount Holyoke College in 2010

6,854 66

Number of hydration

stations set up as an alternative to distributing

bottled water

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For more on how to create a daily writing practice, watch Beth’s talk “How To Be A Writing God” at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/writingmaven.

to do is focus on keeping the streak alive. Get a wall calendar and a red marker and make a big fat “X” over every day that you manage to get the job done. Don’t worry about whether or not you’ve written anything good or anything that will ever see the light of day. If you hit your target for the day, you win. You’re done for the day. You can have a cookie. No really, go get a cookie. You’re looking kind of frail.

4. Keep it up Don’t stop. Good habits are hard to break once you have them. But maybe you’re already some kind of amazing rock star writer and you don’t actually need a daily practice. Maybe your job, your life, your secret desires and noblest dreams don’t require you to use words and use them well. But I doubt it. Maybe you just like to bleed. But I kind of doubt that, too. — B Y B E T H D U N N ’ 9 3

Pitch us your area of expertise

at [email protected].

ARE YOU A MAVEN?

BETH DUNN ’93 is a writer and editor at HubSpot, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based, marketing software company, where she manages the voice and tone of the HubSpot product, user experience, and customer communications, and coaches other folks who want to find their own voices. She lives on Cape Cod in a very small house, writes at bethdunn.com, and spends an absurd amount of time on Twitter (@bethdunn) with people like you.

Establishing a Daily PracticeTHE WRITING MAVEN

It’s been said that writing is easy; you just sit down at your typewriter and bleed. Sounds pretty untidy, fairly painful, and frankly more than a little unsanitary to me. But writing—whether you’re working on a novel or polishing an email to your boss—is an increasingly important skill in today’s hyperconnected world. We all need to write and write well.

Even Mount Holyoke women—who are arguably as well versed as anyone in the fine art of cranking out sparkling prose—can struggle when it comes to putting pen to paper. Or fingertips to keyboard. Whatever. Writing is hard. It just is.

The secret to successful writing isn’t knowing every grammatical rule or flinging out a bunch of five-dollar words. What it all comes down to is carefully crafting a solid, daily practice. You just need to write. A little bit. Every day.

1. Keep it simpleMake a plan to sit down and write for just a few minutes a day. Schedule it on your calendar, block the time off as “busy,” shut the door, and turn off the phone. Start small; just fifteen minutes a day will do. Now is not the time to trot out your inner overachiever. Simply make a plan to sit down and write for a few minutes every day, come what may.

2. Keep it shortYou’re not setting out to write the Great American Novel here. Well, maybe you are. But even if that is your dream, try to leave those big-project goals at the door when you sit down for your daily writing practice. In the immortal words of pro-basketball player Allen Iverson, this is practice—not the game. Your tiny daily writing sessions are simply designed to limber you up and get your writing muscles all supple and lean. So set yourself a very modest daily word count goal—something utterly attainable, even on a bad day—and crush it.

3. Keep the streak aliveNow that you’ve established a dedicated time of day and a modest daily word count to strive for, all you need

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Oil on Canvas VISUAL ARTS

BOOKS

The children in Jude Harzer’s ’87 paintings seem to stare boldly from the canvas, as if refusing to be objects of a viewer’s gaze. Through depictions of mothers, daughters, and sisters, Harzer explores the familial relationships that shape children. “I like the idea of children being strong and not vulnerable,” she says.

Raised by a single mother who was legally blind, Harzer was forced to grow up fast. She attended Mount Holyoke on a scholarship, and though she was a traditional student, she found she had a lot in common with the Frances Perkins scholars. She was inspired by many FP students. “I witnessed women my mom’s age who came back to [school] later in life,” she says. “I believe I sort of shelved that idea. . . . It’s never too late.”

After graduating from Mount Holyoke with a degree in art, Harzer devoted her time to raising her son, Robert, and daughter, Christina. She also worked as a high school art teacher in Brick, New Jersey, and didn’t seriously consider any other path. But in 2008, a few years after she had picked up her paintbrush again for the first time since leaving Mount Holyoke, her daughter inspired her to apply for a fellowship from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

Harzer won the foundation’s Visual Art Educator Fellowship, which allowed her to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York City for the summer of 2009 as an artist in residence. The residency marked the start of her new career as an independent artist. Since then, she has received other fellowships, and her work has been exhibited in several shows. Last November, at age fifty, she received a master’s degree in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). She spent the spring in

residencies in Colorado and South Carolina before returning to SCAD to teach mixed-media art for the summer.

Reflecting on her journey, Harzer is brought back to the College and the Frances Perkins students who intrigued her. “It’s almost like this whole world opened up,” she says. “This is where I was when I left Mount Holyoke.” — B Y O L I V I A L A M M E L ’ 1 4

New and Selected PoemsMarjory Wentworth UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS

This “best of” volume features more than fifty poems from three previous collections as well as twenty-eight new poems. In prose, poetry, sonnets, and elegies Wentworth explores themes including turning to nature as a site of reflection and healing and the power of familial bonds.

M A R JORY W E N T WORT H ’8 0,South Carolina poet laureate and five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, teaches at the Art Institute of Charleston and is the president and cofounder of the Lowcountry Initiative for the Literary Arts.

Email your submission

to [email protected].

ARE YOU AN ARTIST?

Entwined, 2014. Oil on cradled panel. 40 in x 60 in.


See more recent alumnae books at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/summer2014books.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly ||| S U M M E R 2 0 1 4 17Film

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Sharing Stories on ScreenFILMBOOKS

An accomplished director and producer, Elizabeth (Bess) O’Brien ’81 has created award-winning documentaries, live musicals, and feature films through Kingdom County Productions—a nonprofit arts organization she founded with her husband, Jay Craven, in 1991. O’Brien’s works are deeply rooted in New England, but the issues covered—domestic violence, murder, foster care, and addiction—are universal. Her latest documentary, The Hungry Heart, provides an intimate look at the lives of people struggling with prescription pill addiction in a close-knit Vermont town. Touring hospitals, theaters, community centers, and correctional facilities along the East Coast, and garnering recognition in Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin’s 2014 State of the State address, the film has increased visibility of, and prompted thoughtful discussion about, opiate addiction.

O’Brien takes a flexible, open-minded approach to documentary filmmaking, allowing people’s stories to dictate the direction and mood of her films. “I go into these interviews knowing a little about the subject but don’t want to know too much because I want the people I’m filming to reveal it to me,” she says. “Much of my job is just being a good listener.” During the editing process, she constructs a narrative that allows room for viewers to formulate their own opinions, as her aim is to facilitate an open dialogue on tough subjects.

An acting major at Mount Holyoke, O’Brien’s ties to the College are still strong. Last year, she and Craven invited three MHC film students —Alison Pugh ’15, Elodie Munezero ’15, and Lizzie Whitaker ’15—to work as crew members on the Nantucket set of their most recent feature film, Peter and John. The opportunity was part of O’Brien and Craven’s Movies from Marlboro project, a semester-long immersion program where students from ten colleges, including Wellesley, Dartmouth, Smith, and Sarah Lawrence, earn college credit, gain hands-on experience, and learn from film professionals and mentors. The second film produced by Movies from Marlboro, Peter and John, also features costumes donated by the MHC costume collection.

Fresh off the heels of The Hungry Heart, O’Brien is already thinking about her next documentary, which will explore Vermont women’s experiences with eating disorders. For more about O’Brien’s work, visit kingdomcounty.org/about_us/bess_obrien.php. — B Y L A U R E N K O D I A K

Beloved StrangersMaria Chaudhuri

BLOOMSBURY

A memoir of carving out one’s place in the world, Beloved Strangers is Chaudhuri’s account of growing up in Dhaka, Bangladesh—where home was not an especially happy place—and then moving to the United States to attend Mount Holyoke at the age of eighteen. A meditation on why people leave their homes and why they sometimes find it difficult to return, Chaudhuri tells her story of straddling two cultures while trying to find a place to belong.

MARIA CHAUDHURI ’99 holds an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Her essays and short stories have been published in various collections, journals, and literary magazines. She lives in Hong Kong. This is her first book.

Returning to ShoreCorinne DemasLERNER

In this young-adult novel, fifteen-year-old Clare is forced to spend the summer with her father—a man she hasn’t seen since she was three and whom she soon learns is known as the town crazy person. As her father opens up to her and she spends more time in his small town on Cape Cod, Clare’s summer becomes less of an exile and more of a return.

C OR I N N E DE M A S is the award-winning author of more than thirty books, including five novels, two story collections, a memoir, a poetry collection, and numerous books for children. She is an English professor at Mount Holyoke and fiction editor at The Massachusetts Review.

The Frangipani HotelViolet KupersmithSPIEGEL & GRAU

In nine thematically linked stories—some written during her time as an undergraduate— Kupersmith expands on traditional Vietnamese ghost stories, updating them to reflect the contemporary ghosts of the Vietnam War.

VIOLET KUPERSMITH ’11 received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach and research in the Mekong Delta. She grew up outside of Philadelphia, the daughter of an American father and Vietnamese mother. A recent MacDowell Colony fellow, she is working on her first novel.



Madeleine Stout ’13 lends a face and

a voice to newborn screening, the program

that changed the course of her life when

she was only a few days old.

LIFEBLOOD

BY ERIC GOLDSCHEIDER ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEX NABAUM

MHQ_Summer14_NewbornFinal.indd 18 7/1/14 4:19 PM


DR. MARVIN MITCHELL

actually met Madeleine Stout ’13 in person last fall, but he first encountered her twenty-three years ago in the form of one of the thousands of

blood droplets that pass each week through the Boston laboratory at the New England Newborn Screening Program, which he directed at the time. The program screens for diseases not readily apparent to a parent’s or a physician’s gaze that can do great harm if not found and treated within the first days of life. Though the technical challenges in processing and analyzing approximately 150,000 specimens a year can be daunting, “one has to always be aware that each one of these little blood spots is a baby,” says Mitchell.

Just hours after her birth, Stout’s blood was taken from a pinprick on her heel per laboratory protocol. The sample was deposited on a piece of filter paper, dried, and sent to Mitchell’s lab. Stout was then identified as among the approximately one in 2,000 infants flagged in New England each year for congenital hypothyroidism, a very serious disorder that stems from a malfunctioning, or, in Stout’s case, absent thyroid gland. If untreated the condition can lead to physical malformations and severe brain damage. “The severest form of the disorder,” says Mitchell, “results in irreversible neurological disease with IQs well below eighty-five.” But if the infant is immediately administered the vital hormones her body is not producing on its own, the damage can be averted and she can grow up symptom free.

The occasion of Mitchell and Stout’s meeting was a celebration at the Massachusetts State House for the fiftieth anniversary of mandatory newborn screening for phenylketonuria, or PKU, a deficiency in the body’s ability to metabolize certain foods. If not addressed quickly, PKU can result in stunted growth, microcephaly, and brain damage. In the early 1970s Mitchell was at the New England Newborn Screening Program when Jean Dussault, a Canadian physician who became a close personal friend, realized that the approach to early detection of PKU could be applied to congenital hypothyroidism. The disease had frustrated doctors for years because of the knowledge that early detection and treatment could head off symptoms before, to use Mitchell’s word, they “blossomed.” Congenital hypothyroidism was added to the screening protocol later that decade.

In the early days of testing in Quebec, around 1972, says Mitchell, “when Dussault would get a low value or an abnormal value, they didn’t have a network established to identify who these families were, so they had to send nurses out into the field to find them.” Computerization was limited to data entry on punch cards. Part of what Mitchell did in Massachusetts was to establish systems for collecting, analyzing, and following up on blood samples. “We would notify the pediatricians, saying, ‘You’ve got an infant who has congenital hypothyroidism, so get on the ball and get her in,’” he recalls. Originally the incidence of the disease was thought to be about one in 4,000, but as testing has become more regular researchers are finding that it is more common.



The phone call to Stout’s parents in 1991 is now part of Stout family lore. Her pediatrician, alerted by Mitchell’s lab, conveyed the diagnosis to Stout’s parents just a few days after they took her home.

“My mom was freaking out all weekend; she had no way to look up all the stuff you can get off the Internet nowadays,” says Stout. There was some comfort in the doctor’s words. “He kind of explained what it was and that as long as I got to an endocrinologist right away on Monday everything would be fine.”

Stout’s family followed doctor’s orders. And she got her first dose of a hormone that she has been taking every day since. Now it is in the form of “a little pink pill, and it actually tastes pretty good,” Stout says. Her treatment hasn’t changed since she was a baby other than that her dosage went up as she grew. Her long-term prognosis is good as long as she keeps taking the medicine.

Growing up in Westborough, Massachusetts, Stout was captain of the ski team in high school. She was an avid racer and went to the state championships. Music has always been a big part of her life. She plays the violin and the viola and was a music minor and biology major in college. During her time at Mount Holyoke she also was president of Best Buddies, a group that put her in direct contact with developmentally and cognitively impaired students at the Berkshire Hills Music Academy in South Hadley. She also joined the Medical Emergency Response Team on campus and was trained as an emergency medical technician.

Today Stout works as a research assistant in gastrointestinal immunology at the Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) and has her sights set on medical school. She developed an interest in pediatric endocrinology during high school when she and her mother were on a panel, organized by the BCH, aimed at teaching parents of younger

children with hypothyroidism what it is like to grow up with the condition.

“It’s kind of amazing to think of what they can do and a little scary to think of what would have happened if they didn’t do it,” Stout says.

Mitchell contacted Stout early last year to see if she would give a short speech, sharing personal testimony on the benefits of newborn screening. She agreed. “Madeleine was obviously ideal. A college graduate, she was now working in the medical field and she is articulate,” said Mitchell.

Stout said that speaking at the State House was “a little intimidating” because of the cameras and the high-level officials who followed her at the podium. “They kept telling me I was pretty much the most important person there because I gave a face to newborn screening; instead of just telling what a great thing it is, I was living proof that it changes lives.”

TODAY, UPS TRUCKS VISIT every hospital and birthing center in New England every afternoon to collect dried drops of blood from babies born in the region, which can number from a few hundred to more than a thousand, explains Roger Eaton, the current director of the newborn screening lab. The samples arrive at the lab the next day, and technicians perform tests that screen for thirty-one different conditions. The advent of tandem mass spectrometry in the 1990s expanded the number of detectable congenital metabolic diseases. “The next morning the computer will give us a list of the specimens that we should be concerned about,” said Eaton. Then the work of contacting physicians and possibly doing follow-up tests begins.

“Thankfully, almost every baby born is in fact fine, and they never hear from us,” says



Eaton. There are also those that have obvious “clinical manifestations” of disease. The cases that interest him most are those where, “Even an astute physician would say, ‘Congratulations you have a beautiful baby with ten fingers and ten toes,’” he says. “The condition Madeleine has is a very good example of that.”

Dr. Richard Olney, a medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who tracks newborn screening programs around the country, says the number of tests conducted during the first hours and days of life “has exploded in the last ten years.” The approximately four million babies born in the United States each year are tested for maladies that fall into several broad categories such as metabolic conditions (PKU and galactosemia), endocrine conditions (congenital hypothyroidism and adrenal hyperplasia), and blood conditions (sickle cell disease) as well as other congenital conditions such as cystic fibrosis.

“Hospitals have always done things with newborns to keep them healthy, like giving them vitamin K and putting drops in their eyes so they don’t get infections,” says Olney. “There has been a push in the last ten years to try to make screening more uniform across the country.”

These so-called “point of care” screenings go back to the Apgar score developed in 1952 by Virginia Apgar, a 1929 graduate of Mount Holyoke who blazed trails in medicine. The Apgar score is a visual assessment of a newborn’s well-being that rates a baby on the basis of its complexion, pulse, reflexes, activity, and respiratory effort.

The Apgar score is a prime example of a practice that, Olney says, has become a “standard of care,” which is his goal for newer screenings that test hearing and look for heart defects (using pulse oximetry). Of the thirty-one tests currently

recommended as part of newborn screening, twenty-nine are blood-based, he says.

The State House’s recent recognition of fifty years of newborn screening was a welcome celebration of progress and achievement for those in the field. “It was nice to have a spotlight on the work we do day after day behind the scenes,” said Eaton.

But speeches and political proclamations aside, the most gratifying recognition for the technicians and medical professionals who devote their lives to the task of faithfully processing and screening millions of tiny blood droplets is to see the human impact.

When he was director, says Mitchell, “occasionally we had a grateful mother come through with her baby and go through the lab showing everyone what they had done. . . . You can talk about monetary rewards, but it doesn’t compare with this, it really doesn’t.”

Meeting Stout last November was special. Mitchell says, “We don’t get to see the live baby in the lab. So here, suddenly appearing in front of us, was this mature young girl, articulate, lovely, bright, and you say to yourself, ‘Oh my Lord,’ I looked at her lab values, and she would have been brain damaged if her blood spot hadn’t gone through our laboratory. . . . Now here she is. Just the personification of a young woman you would love to have as your daughter. You can’t help but be thrilled; it’s marvelous.”

Stout doesn’t feel like her disease defines her, but she is glad to lend her face and her voice to efforts to explain and promote the benefits of newborn screening for conditions like hers. “If they ask me again, I’ll of course say yes,” she says.

Eric Goldscheider ([email protected]) is a freelance writer based in Massachusetts.



View archival photos and learn more about Virginia Apgar ’29 at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/apgar.

When, in response to a medical student’s casual question, Professor Virginia Apgar ’29 jotted down five key indicators of wellness to look for in a newborn within a minute of birth, she laid the foundation for neonatology. That was in 1949, the year Apgar was appointed full professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, making her the first woman to hold that rank at the institution.

Today, most babies in the world are assessed at birth on a scale from zero to ten on the Apgar score, an evaluation of well-being based on heartbeat, respiratory effort, muscle tone, reflex-es, and color. Each of the five criteria is recorded as a zero, one, or two. A low score indicates a need for immediate medical intervention.

The Apgar score first grew out of Apgar’s work in anesthesiology, where the criteria she so quickly rattled off that day during class were the same indicators used to evaluate the well-being of patients as they were coming out of sedation. Apgar’s simple method rapidly start-ed gaining acceptance after she presented the results of a trial using her scoring scale on 1,021

infants at the Twenty-Seventh Annual Congress of Anesthetists in September 1952. Her data showed correlations between infants’ scores and the method of delivery used as well as presence of and method of anesthesia administered.

By the end of the decade Apgar had collected data on 17,000 births and was able to correlate low Apgar scores with variables such as exposure to certain drugs during gestation and birth. Apgar noted that “while the score could not be used to predict the survival of individual babies, it could be shown that in general, full-term newborns with good scores (seven to ten) had a significantly better chance of surviving their first month of life.”

Four years after graduating with a degree in zoology from Mount Holyoke, where she wrote for the Mount Holyoke News, competed on seven sports teams, played the violin in the orchestra, and held down several part-time jobs including catching cats for use in the zoology lab, Apgar graduated fourth in her class from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She went on to be the fifth woman to hold a surgical internship at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital, fully intend-ing to become a practicing surgeon. As her internship came to an end she changed course at the suggestion of her advisor, Dr. Allen Whipple, who had not witnessed success by any of his previous surgical female residents. Whipple, who himself later became famous due to the development of a surgical proce-dure that bears his name, encouraged Apgar to pursue training in anesthesiology, suggest-ing that advances in surgery would be stalled without improved anesthesia treatments. Apgar trained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the country’s first recognized anes-thesiology program, and continued her train-ing at Bellevue Hospital in New York before becoming only the fiftieth doctor certified in anesthesiology in the United States. In 1938

Scoring Infants for SurvivalBirth is the most hazardous time of life.” VIRGINIA APGAR ’29

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Apgar, second from right, with sister Mount Holyoke Alumnae Council Members on campus in October 1968

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she was appointed director of the Division of Anesthesiology within the Department of Surgery at Presbyterian Hospital—the hospi-tal’s first female division head.

In 1958 Apgar went back to school to pursue a master’s degree in public health at Johns Hopkins University. Then, armed with a deeper under-standing of statistics, she launched a second

career with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (better known then as The March of Dimes), heading the newly formed Division of Congenital Malformations. Thalidomide, a tranquilizer prescribed in Europe for pregnant women experiencing severe nausea, had recently been shown to have caused severe birth defects in thousands of babies, bringing heightened pub-lic attention to the issue. Apgar worked to demy-stify birth defects and to fight the stigma they carried with a scientific understanding of their causes and with recommendations for their pre-vention. Her book, Is My Baby All Right? A Guide to Birth Defects, published in 1973, just a year before her death, was one of the first resources of its kind for expectant mothers and includes chapters on PKU and other conditions for which newborns are now regularly screened. Apgar traveled widely to speak on the importance of identifying birth defects early and to raise money for research, and her work led to advancement of the field of perinatology.


Apgar has the distinction of having her name turned into two so-called “backcronyms,” which come from working backward to create an acronym or mnemonic device. The scoring system that she developed is often referred to as the “American Pediatric Gross Assessment Record,” and the criteria that make up the evaluation are: A – Appearance (color)P – Pulse (heart rate)G – Grimace (reflex irritability)A – Activity (muscle tone)R – Respiration

Scoring Infants for Survival

ON A SCALE OF ONE TO TEN

Late in her life, while serving as vice president for medical affairs at the National Foundation, Apgar was the first person to hold a faculty position in the field of teratology (the study of birth defects) at the Cornell University School of Medicine. In 1973, the Ladies Home Journal named Apgar “Woman of the Year in Science.” Her posthumous honors include being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995, a year after the US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp with her portrait.

Apgar earned her place in medical history by carving out a new area of inquiry and breaking ground for women in the field of medicine. In doing so she ensured that her name would enter the medical lexicon and that the study and prevention of birth defects would be her legacy. — E R I C G O L D S C H E I D E R

Apgar examines a newborn in 1958.



Changemakers ReuniteMore than 1,200 alumnae made the trip home to Mount Holyoke from around the country and the world this year. Five classes welcomed back more than 100 alumnae each—an attendance achievement that hasn’t happened in a decade.

Classes ending in fours and nines and Frances Perkins alumnae all celebrated connections with one another and the beautiful campus that unites them over the course of two reunion weekends organized by the Alumnae Association. Attendees ranged from alumnae who haven’t been back to campus since graduation to those who have attended every five-year reunion for decades.

Both weekends featured Back-to-Class sessions, where alumnae participated in thought-provoking discussions led by faculty, staff, and sister alumnae on the theme of transformation. The parade during each reunion weekend was also a highlight, with alumnae dressed in white and carrying signs in their class colors to show off their distinct history and personality.

Following the parade, classes gathered in Chapin Auditorium (3) to celebrate by reading their class histories, recognizing alumnae award winners, and announcing fundraising goals.

1 Members of the 5oth reunion class presented scarves to graduating seniors in the Welcome Ceremony for New Alumnae, held at the amphitheater the Thursday before commencement.

2 Lady Borton ’64 came to Reunion from Vietnam and shared her nearly fifty years of work with all sides during the war in a Back-to-Class session, “Not What We Thought: Transforming our View of the ‘Vietnam War.’”

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5 Dita Runkle ’74 attended Reunion for the first time, helping break the previous 40th reunion attendance record. Runkle reconnected with her class as part of the “74 turns 60” campaign, a series of mini-reunions held around the country leading up to Reunion.

6 The class of 1979 was one of nine classes to return to campus for the second weekend of Reunion. As always the parade featured bold signs, some reminding us what a difference thirty-five years makes.

4 Members of the class of 1989 returning to campus for their 25th reunion included, from left, head class agent Lynn Snopek Mercier, cochairs Erika O’Brien Mason and Wendy Weiss, and class scribe Janet Buhlmann. These four friends have attended every reunion and already are looking forward to their 30th.

7 Amber Smith (left) and Tamar Westphal, members of the class of 2012, were just two of the more than 125 alumnae who returned to campus for their two-year reunion. Though it rained early into Saturday morning, the skies cleared in time for the laurel parade, the weekend’s most anticipated event. Later that night members of the class gathered with the class of 2014 for a Big Sister-Little Sister party in Blanchard.

View photos and watch a video of Reunion 2014 at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/reunion2014.

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INVESTING IN

OPPORTUNITIES FOR

REINVENTION

BY M A U R A K I N G S C U L LY

Mount Holyoke’s Frances Perkins Program continues to pave the way for nontraditional students



WHEN KAY A LTHOFF FP’84 ARRIVED at Mount Holyoke in 1982, she was forty-one and the mother of three school-age children. She had started college after high school in Ohio but never graduated and had landed in western Massachusetts when her husband’s career path brought the family there. On the surface, she was as conventional as conventional could be.

And yet, in coming to Mount Holyoke, Althoff dove into the unconventional as one of the first older, or “nontraditional,” students officially welcomed to campus in the nascent years of the Frances Perkins Program. Althoff also went on to lead the program after working in both the admission and development offices. Honored at this year’s reunion with the Elizabeth Topham Kennan Award, given to an alumna for outstanding achievement in, and contributions to, the field of education, Althoff, always modest, immediately credited the College with giving her life “a sense of purpose.”

One of the first of its kind when it was founded more than thirty years ago, the Frances Perkins (FP) Program is designed for women of nontraditional age—twenty-five or older—to earn a degree that meets all the requirements of the undergraduate program and at the same time offers the option of selecting either a full- or part-time schedule. Perkins, a 1902 graduate, was the first woman to hold a US cabinet post; she served as secretary of labor for the twelve years of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. A champion of economic justice and security for all Americans, she profoundly influenced the political agenda of her day. Though Perkins was a traditional age student, “when it came time to name the program, they looked around at our illustrious grads, and she was a champion of women and issues of labor,” says Althoff. “She really understood the population that comes back to school.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than a third of students enrolled in college in 2011 were over twenty-five, and by 2019 the percentage of those over twenty-five is expected

TOP In 1962 Frances Perkins, second from right, returned to campus for her sixtieth reunion. Her work as US Secretary of Labor was celebrated with a laurel parade sign; BOTTOM Frances Perkins Scholar alumnae from the classes of 1984 to 2012 celebrated at Reunion in May.

Watch videos about the Frances Perkins student experience at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/francesperkins.

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Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly ||| S U M M E R 2 0 1 4 31alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

to increase by more than 20 percent. Most FP students matriculate with between thirty and sixty-four transfer credits, typically earned at community colleges. They often bring expansive work and life experience to campus.

“When I first came to Mount Holyoke, most of the women in the program were around forty, and many were faculty wives,” says Althoff, who attended Holyoke Community College prior to matriculating at Mount Holyoke. “Today, the women are mostly younger, and many have explored and traveled. But almost all of them are interested in education and social services, much like those of us who graduated in the eighties. In the FP group, there is a theme to go out and do good.”

Marcella Jayne FP’13 is a recent graduate who personifies the program’s commitment to service.

Born into what she describes as “abject poverty,” Jayne came to Mount Holyoke as a single mother after living in a homeless shelter and then subsidized housing with her family. With support from the FP Program and faculty, she found an internship in a legal office, helping families facing foreclosure. She will start law school this fall. “After law school I plan to use my JD to practice housing law and to fight issues such as public housing demolition, displacement, gentrification, foreclosure, poor housing conditions, and eviction,” says Jayne. “These are all issues that disproportionately affect women, as we are often thrust into sole care-giving positions by societal default.”

With students like Jayne in mind, President Lynn Pasquerella ’80 announced earlier this year that Mount Holyoke will give full-tuition scholarships to all new Frances Perkins Scholars beginning in fall 2014. Much of the funding for this scholarship program comes from the anonymous donation of an alumna who attended Mount Holyoke prior to the FP Program’s launch and appreciates its value.

“This financial support reinforces the College’s commitment to accessibility and makes a bold statement about the value of the voices and perspectives of nontraditional students on our campus,” says Carolyn Dietel, the longtime associate director of the FP Program who took the helm in 2010 when Althoff cut back her hours. (She officially retired in 2013.) “This new program will unravel the complications and uncertainties of applying for financial aid. We also plan to boost both our mentoring and advising programs.”

Additionally, the FP Program will gain a new home for its students this fall when it takes over Dickinson Hall. In general, about one third of the

“In the FP group, there is a theme to go out and do good.”

—Kay Althoff FP’84

TO P Marcella Jayne FP’13 plans to attend law school and use her degrees to fight issues that disproportionately affect women.

LE F T, TO P Kay Althoff FP’84, one of the College’s first Frances Perkins graduates, attended Reunion in May; BOTTOM At the Alumnae Association’s Annual Meeting, Althoff received an Elizabeth T. Kennan Award for her leadership of the Frances Perkins Program. To

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approximately ninety FP students live on campus, and commuters will also use Dickinson as a campus home base. “Many of our FP students felt there had been a loss of connection when our former FP house was taken off line,” says Dietel. “When we make this transition, it will be nice for the students to all live together, and those who don’t live on campus will have better opportunities to connect with those who live on campus in this new space.”

The bonds among FP students run deep. The student-organized Frances Perkins Scholars Association works with the FP administrators and the College on a variety of programs, including Making the Connection events, which are designed to introduce new and current FPs to the multitude of resources that are available on campus: the FP Senior Breakfast, held the morning of graduation; the Spring BBQ; and the FP Winter Formal party, among others.

While building relationships within their own cohort, FP students are quick to point out the many friendships they forge with traditional students. “I’ve always felt integrated and welcomed by traditional students,” says Isolde Maher FP’14, who came to Mount Holyoke to study biology after working as a professional artist and graphic designer. “I have felt completely embraced by everybody.”

That’s high praise given that Maher, forty, commuted three times a week, for almost two hours each way from Warwick, Rhode Island, to Mount Holyoke, until her graduation in May. The

mother of three children under eleven, Maher says her biggest challenge was “keeping at it,” but she drew great support from her family and the Mount Holyoke community. In January, she will take the MCAT as she prepares to pursue an advanced degree in medicine, with the goal of serving women and children in a clinical setting.

During Reunion, the FP sense of community was evident. Frances Perkins reunions are held every five years, and this year’s events included a class dinner, potluck, and literary tea. Dietel, who came to Mount Holyoke in 1976, beams with pride when recounting the successes of FP alumnae. “In last year’s FP class of forty-three, we had twenty students who graduated with Latin honors, and three were elected to Phi Beta Kappa,” she says. In addition, two of those students were selected for National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.

“In doing this job, I’ve realized that every individual has a story and a journey and that life can present many challenges, but the resilience of these women, their passion for learning, and [their] commitment to social justice is so consistent with the mission of the College,” says Dietel. “Every year when Kay and I would finish the admission cycle, we would say, ‘this is such an amazing group.’ It’s a privilege to be a witness to their journeys.”

Althoff echoes Dietel’s sentiments, saying, “It was hard to retire at age seventy-two because the FP Program gave my life a real sense of purpose: to encourage women to realize their dreams and not give up. The reason I was drawn to Mount Holyoke was because it felt authentic. There was no hard sell. It was, ‘This is who we are. This is what we offer.’ That is what continues to draw such impressive and interesting women to the program.”

“In my FP welcome packet, the words ‘remember the big picture’ were in big, bold type,” recalls Maher. “Even when I felt like things weren’t going well or I was completely overwhelmed by the material, I felt supported by . . . other students, every day striving and staying motivated. It helped me keep going, keep moving. The FP Program taught me to not get bogged down in the details, to see the big picture.”

Maura King Scully is a freelance writer based in Greater Boston.

After years of commuting to Mount Holyoke from her home in Rhode Island, Isolde Maher FP’14 graduated in May and plans to pursue an advanced degree in medicine.


Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly ||| S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 33

KAY ALTHOFF FP’84For tireless championing of nontraditional

students as former director of the Frances Perkins Program.

ELIZABETH W. BAUER ’59For changing the lives of thousands of people

with disabilities through advocacy for legal and human rights, access to education, and

protection from abuse and neglect.

MARGUERITE L. BROOKS ’69For founding the Yale Camerata at the

Institute of Sacred Music, known worldwide for its bold and challenging repertoire.

GAIL SIMONS HUMPHREYS ’64HEATHER S. WILCAUSKAS ’64

JANE HOMAN ANTIN ’74DEBORAH J. HALL ’74

KATHERINE G. RODI ’94 GWENETH A. CHENEY ’49

HELENE PHILLIPS HERZIG ’49SUSAN FULMER RITCHIE ’49ELLEN TAYLOR BACON ’54

MARGARET SLAYBAUGH LARSON ’54CHUCKIE RAYE BLANEY ’59

NORENE DUTHIE COLLER ’59

MARILYN COBURN KINCAID ’69MARTHA E. LANE ’79C DALE GADSDEN ’84

NAOMI FRIEDMAN LINDOWER ’84LISA MCCONNELL ’84

DEIRDRE MCKIBBIN-VAUGHAN ’84

ALUMNAE ACHIEVEMENT AWARDAwarded for outstanding achievements that exemplify the ideals of a liberal-arts education

through salaried or volunteer fields of endeavor

JOANNA MENDL-SHAW ’69 For reinventing how audiences and dancers conceive movement through The Equus Projects/Dancing With Horses,

a dance company that develops site-specific works with local horses.

LOYALTY AWARDAwarded for consistent and active involvement in one area of service over an extended period of time

YOUNG ALUMNA VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP AWARDAwarded to young alumnae for strong leadership and active involvement in the Association or College

DR. (EKMINI) ANUJA DE SILVA ’04 ANNA BENNETT ROBERTSON ’04 CARRIE C. RUZICKA ’99

MEDAL OF HONORAwarded for long-term service and leadership in promoting the effectiveness of multiple areas

of the Alumnae Association and/or College

JANE A. ZIMMY ’74Zimmy has devoted many years of loyal service to her class, club, and

the College. Her service includes head class agent, cornerstone representative, and Mount Holyoke Club of New York City membership chair, among others.

ELIZABETH T. KENNAN AWARDAwarded for outstanding achievement in the field of education, given in honor of the service

of former president Elizabeth Topham Kennan ’60

Congratulations Reunion 2014 Awardees

Read more about the award winners at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/awards2014.


A Brewery Blowup In the spring of 1972, students in Microbiology 301 were studying the process of fermentation when their professor was struck with an idea: Why not make beer to get a better understanding of the process in action? Although Mount Holyoke resided in a dry county and most in the class were under the legal drinking age of twenty-one, the professor placed orders for hops, malt, and other necessary ingredients.

Glass quart Coca-Cola bottles with screw tops had just been released onto the market, and students were asked to bring in two per person. The class properly cleaned and sterilized the bottles before inserting tube goosenecks into the top of each. Students were then partnered off, and each team was responsible for a different part of the process.

Nancy Drake ’73 and her partner were in charge of decanting the beer, leaving the sludge behind, and then adding a little more sugar. After performing their duties they capped the bottles and left them under a bench in the Clapp lab, where they were to stay for a week before being moved by the last two lab partners to a cold, dark room.

A little over a week later, about a dozen professors were assembled in Hooker Auditorium for a faculty meeting, when forty-eight bottles of home-brewed beer

exploded, blowing out seven windows and resulting in a visit from the South Hadley Bomb Squad.

Drake and her classmates didn’t hear about the incident until the next morning, when they walked into what smelled like a “bad frat party” and saw their professor with a long look on her face. Drake, who had given her father two bottles of the beer to take home the previous week, sat through class anxiously before rushing back to her dorm to make a collect phone call to her father. Luckily, he had refrigerated the bottles, but years later he confessed the beer was the worst he’d ever had.— B Y TAY L O R S C O T T

The Beer Explosion of 1972


MoHome MemoriesO N D I S PL AY | TH E N AN D N OW


Slothing AroundARTIFACT

Climb to the fourth floor of Clapp Laboratory, and you’ll be confronted by a skeleton made up of what many initially mistake to be dinosaur bones. Look a little closer and you may begin to recog-nize the rounded snout or the long claws that tightly grip the branch of a tree. The Megatherium was a genus of ele-phant-sized ground sloths (related to the modern sloth) that existed during the Pleistocene epoch, 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago. Weighing up to four tons and measuring twenty feet in length from

head to tail, the giant sloths were native to Central and South America.

In 1875 Mount Holyoke sought to fur-nish the newly completed Williston Hall with a “Geological Cabinet.” Alumnae raised $1,800 for the purchase of the Megatherium skeleton from Henry Augustus Ward, a professor at the University of Rochester who founded Ward’s Natural Science, an enterprise that collected specimens from all parts of the world. For several decades, Williston Hall contained one of the

largest natural history collections of any college in the country. Three days before Christmas in the winter of 1917, Williston burned to the ground, and the skeleton was one of only a handful of the specimens that survived.

It wasn’t until 1974 that two students found the bones of the Megatherium in a closet in Safford Hall, where someone had stored them for safe keeping after the fire and presumably forgotten about them. As a Winter Term Project in 1975, under the supervision of biology pro-fessor Curtis Smith, the skeleton was repaired and reassembled and has been on display in Clapp ever since. Today, professors use the Megatherium and other specimens from the College’s collection to teach about mammalian evolution. — B Y TAY L O R S C O T T

The Megatherium of Clapp Lab

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View a slideshow of images from the original Williston Hall building, including the Geological Cabinet, at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/willistonhall.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly ||| S U M M E R 2 0 1 4 35Ben

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alumnae.mtholyoke.edu36 1911

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2014Today Canoe Sing takes place on Lower Lake, a tradition that started in 1940 and features singing and elaborate canoe choreography. In the days leading up to the event, seniors submit three songs

they feel are representative of their time at MHC, and the Senior Class Senior Week Committee votes to compile the final list.

On the Thursday afternoon before commencement, seniors gather on Prospect Hall patio to rehearse the songs and, in some cases, learn how to paddle a canoe for the first time. Because there are so few slots in the boats, interested seniors are selected by a random drawing.

At 10:30 p.m. on Saturday evening the senior class and their guests gather at Lower Lake as the dozen canoes launch. With only moonlight and the lanterns that adorn the boats to light the way, paddlers move through changing formations, at times linking the canoes together. Seniors on shore lead the group in song. This year the class of 2014 sang “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper, “Happy” by Pharrell, and “In My Life” by The Beatles. The ceremony concludes with the canoeists returning to shore, where they are met by family, friends, and alumnae who’ve returned to campus for Reunion. — BY TAY LO R S COT T

Canoe Sing

In 1902 the Mount Holyoke College senior class spontaneously held an impromptu serenade as a tribute to the sophomore class, their “Little Sisters.” The event was so fondly remembered by the lowerclasswomen that the next year’s seniors followed their example. “Senior Serenade” was officially listed in the “Programme for Commencement Week” in June 1911.

Wearing caps and gowns and carrying Japanese lanterns, the seniors marched two-by-two, starting from the newly built Pratt Hall and proceeding to the various residence halls, singing two or three songs at each. They ended at the piazza surrounding the south campus, near Upper Lake, where an audience of family, friends, and lowerclasswomen waited.

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The seniors then formed a single line in preparation for a serpentine dance, which progressed to a formation of their class numerals. The ceremony concluded with the class of 1911 singing its class song—written and composed by senior Doris Melchert—as well as College favorites such as “Holyoke,” “Sister Class Song,” and “Down in Mobile.”


We invite you to continue your lifelong journey of learning

in the company of sister alumnae by joining one or more of the travel opportunities this year.

Visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/travel.

U PCO M I N G TR I PSMusical Cruise on the Danube

September 13–25, 2014

Coastal Iberia October 3–11, 2014

Travel Abroad with Sister Alumnae

Tanya Wallace ’94, left, and Maggie Webb ’16 relax together

Carly Bidner ’17 and Barb Hartman ’17

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ConnectionsClass and club contacts are available online at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/classes or alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/clubs.

Classes ’67 and ’17 Talk Tea

F R O M L E F T, ( F R O N T )

Peppe Kuhavuori ’99, Anneliese Lilienthal ’05, Alexandra D’Urso ’03;

( B A C K ) Sara Hendey ’85, Nisha Nilsson ’91, Lena Landstedt-Hallin CG’76.

Promoting Peace with Green Scarves

After a long winter, alumnae from Stockholm, Sweden, met in early spring for a “green scarf party,” a social gathering designed to support peace

and change worldwide.

Late on May 1—the first day of final exams—a line of hungry Mount Holyoke students assembled at the All Saints’ Episcopal Church in South Hadley for a late-night breakfast, a cheerful respite from studying. From 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., volunteers from the parish served pancakes, sausage, fruit, coffee, and juice.

Reverend Tanya Wallace ’94 began organizing these breakfasts in December 2011 as a way to inspire meaningful connections between her alma mater and her church. “We wanted to reach out and show hospitality and care to our neighbors during a stressful time,” she says.

Since the initial breakfast, Wallace has hosted a breakfast at the church at the end of every semester. Last semester more than a quarter of the entire student body—597 undergraduates—participated, enjoying not only a meal but also taking the time to relax and connect with members of the greater campus community. — B Y L A U R E N K O D I A K

Pancake Study Break

CL A SS AN D CLU B I N FO J U ST KE YSTRO KE S AWAY |

In early April, eight alumnae from the class of 1967 and more than fifty students from the class of 2017 gathered in Willits-Hallowell for tea and discussion. Organized by 1967 classmates Joyce Kling and Joanna MacWilliams Jones and first-year Juliet Martone, the event was the first of several get-togethers the two classes hope to enjoy over the next few years.

Offering the current students a peek into the past, the class of 1967 gave a formal tea service—including a full demonstration of the etiquette and steps for properly serving and stirring tea—a common tradition from their time at the College. As they enjoyed their tea, students—eager to learn more about the political and social environment of the College during the sixties—asked about the Civil Rights Movement and the sexual revolution as well as the role of Mount Holyoke’s house mothers and favorite buildings on campus. As the afternoon drew to a close, the class of 1967 gifted the first years with their own tea set, perhaps something to pass on to their own granddaughter class, fifty years from now. — BY L AU R E N KO D I A K


alumnae.mtholyoke.edu38”“I spent two summers working on campus and

loved it. I felt like I had the whole, beautiful

campus to myself and didn’t have to study,

take exams, or write papers!

—JANE CLUNIE ’73


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Where are the Women’s Voices?

IN 197 7, WHEN I WAS the only woman teaching full time at the newly formed Yale School of Management, I attended a community meeting of students, faculty, and staff that addressed a range of topics. There were about forty people in the room. The men, and a smattering of women—all graduates of women’s colleges—sat in the front. Most of the women sat in the back. All of the discussion emanated from the front. Finally one young woman in the back blurted out, “You aren’t listening to us,” and one of the young men in the front said, “You can’t sit back there and tentatively put your hands up. Lean in, and speak up.”

When I tell this story today, more than thirty-five years later, some women insist, “That was then, this is now.” I wish I could agree. Until I retired recently, I was a founding partner in a boutique management communications consultancy with a worldwide practice, and I can tell you: that was then and still is. A female executive, second in command at a major company run predominantly by women, told me not long ago that at a meeting of about twenty corporate leaders of socially progressive companies, only one woman participated in

the day-and-a-half-long discussion. The others sat silent, including the woman who shared the story. A third of the attendees were women, and they spoke among them-selves outside the meeting but not during the discussion, because, I was told, “They wouldn’t stop so we could talk.”

One of the men commented on their silence, but the women still did not participate.

Another story: A journalist in her thirties who writes for a regional newspaper told me that she had been a broadcast communications major in college and switched her focus to writing, saying, “My voice is soft, and I couldn’t be heard.”

My most recent discouraging experience occurred at a religious service during which five women were readers. Not one could be heard beyond the third row of a sanctuary that held fewer than 100 people; not one looked up from the page. Even when they had the stage, these women made no effort to be heard.

In more than thirty years of working with executives, male and female, to address com-munications issues, I repeatedly heard from women that men “don’t listen,” “interrupt,” or “talk too fast.” Numer-ous women told me, “I am uncomfortable breaking into a conversation,” “My voice is soft,” and “We have a different style; men need to take that into account.”

Most of the reasons women give for why they don’t speak up relate to what men do or don’t do. If women want change, we will have to speak up. Men will listen when we speak with authority; men won’t interrupt when we stop the interrupter. We don’t need to yell; we need only be forceful enough to get attention. Yes, many of us have a different style, but we need to get into the conver-sation. And as for our “soft voices,” we need to speak to the imaginary person standing against the back wall.

If we do not take responsibility for being heard, if we do not model this for our daughters and granddaughters, I am fearful that thirty years from now a young woman in the back row will finally blurt out, “You aren’t listening,” and a young man in the front will say, “You have to speak up.”

By JU DY STE IN ’56

Pitch your topic at

[email protected].

HAVE AN OPINION TO

SHARE?

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“ ”

ESSAY

Mount Holyoke women look forward. And give back.

The Mount Holyoke Fund

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Mount Holyoke women look forward. And give back.

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mount holyoke alumnae quarterly summer 2014

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