Inside and Out
Williams is forging connections with the criminal justice system and those living within it. Yazmine Nichols ’15 was just beginning her first year at Williams the day her mother called with news that would shape her time in college and beyond. One of Nichols’ childhood friends, Mateek, had been sentenced to prison. Her mother didn’t have…
A Marvelous Order
The opera A Marvelous Order, which had a sold-out “pre-premiere” at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance in March, brings together the creative talents of composer Judd Greenstein ’01, director/animator Joshua Frankel ’02 and choreographer Will Rawls ’00. With a libretto written by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, the opera weaves together the…
Looking at Yesterday, Today
What is it? That was the deceptively simple question guiding the Committee on Campus Space and Institutional History as it carried out its charge from President Adam Falk last spring to consider the fate of a newly controversial mural in the Black Room of the Log. Painted during World War II to adorn what was,…
Citizen of the World
Three years ago, documentary filmmaker Karin Muller ’87 was traveling solo through Egypt. With her Sony PMW- 200 camcorder in hand and 60 pounds of equipment and supplies on her back, she spent three months living among Nile fishermen, Bedouin nomads and garbage collectors, capturing their everyday lives. That summer she visited Cairo, where she…
What Can We Learn From Fly Brains?
Humans may not have much in common with fruit flies. But there’s one important similarity: Both have nervous systems that respond to dopamine, a neurotransmitter present in the brain that helps to regulate movement and emotion. Assistant biology professor Tim Lebestky has been studying dopamine in Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, since he was a…
On Sacred Ground
Marissa L. Shapiro ’18 felt a swelling in her heart as she listened to a sermon at the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Philadelphia, Pa. Though she’d read sermons and studied religion from an academic perspective, this experience was different. “It didn’t matter that it wasn’t my religious tradition,” says the history…
Baja California Sur: Up Close
Spending two weeks in Baja California Sur, Mexico, brought into focus many of the things Christina Seeger ’16 was learning about in a spring semester tutorial on coastal ecosystems. “I stood on a cliff and looked down at the island we’d spent the day exploring, and suddenly I could see everything we learned about so…
Stranger Than Fiction
For Alan Hirsch, a trained attorney who teaches law, moonlights as an expert witness on interrogations and false confessions and became an art historian in midlife, the mystery surrounding the 1961 theft of Francisco Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery seemed almost made to order. Hirsch, a lecturer in humanities,…
Behind the Supreme Court Standoff
The stalemate between the U.S. Senate and President Barack Obama over the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland is without precedent. And while the standoff dominated the news cycle in March, there’s much more to the story, says Justin Crowe ’03, associate professor of political science and author of Building the Judiciary: Law, Courts and…
A Path to Medical Ethics
When Ranana L. Dine ’16 arrives at the University of Cambridge in the fall to study Christian theology and the history and philosophy of science, she’ll continue an academic path that began in her first year at Williams. For the spring semester course American Medical History, Dine wrote a paper about abortion rights in colonial…
Casting a Life
A spring semester production of the play Waxworks, about the early life of wax sculptor Marie Tussaud, presented an opportunity for students taking Costume Design to learn the art of “life casting.” The play opens in 1789, just before the French Revolution, when a young Marie…
A Closer Look: The Log Lunch
The doors to the Log are flung open, and a line of people snakes onto the sidewalk. Inside, utensils scrape against metal pans as students and faculty dish up a vegan lunch of black bean burgers, sweet-potato fries and spinach salad. Amid the buzz of voices and obvious camaraderie, Sarah Gardner, associate director of the…
Echo of Williams
The college has a new song to be performed along with “The Mountains.“ “Echo of Williams,” by Kevin Weist ’81 and Bruce Leddy ’83, won the Williams Song Competition in the spring. The song was one of 20 submitted by alumni, and it was selected by the Williams community from three finalists. Eight of the…
In Memoriam
“ I am told she was the heart and soul of those labs, and while her no-nonsense approach made students think she was reverting back to her Army days, it also helped ensure their success.” —President Adam Falk, in a letter to the Williams community about the May 2 passing of Eleanor R. Brown, lecturer…
Ephs Win 19th Directors’ Cup
With women’s teams advancing to nine NCAA Div. III tournaments and men’s teams advancing to seven, Williams captured its fourth straight Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup. The Ephs have won the cup 19 times in the 21-year history of the award, presented by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) to the best all-around…
Barrett Wins Rea Award
Andrea Barrett, senior lecturer in English, has been named winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story for 2015. The $30,000 prize recognizes “a living U.S. or Canadian writer … who has made a significant contribution to the discipline of the short story as an art form.” Barrett’s most recent work, the short story…
By the Numbers
The Senior Survey, conducted by the provost’s office in the spring, offers a wealth of information about the graduating class.
Shifts in Senior Staff
Professor of Economics David Love has been named college provost, effective Sept. 1. Love, who is known to the Williams community as “Dukes,” joined the faculty in 2003. Since then he has served as chair of the Faculty Compensation Committee and as a member of the Faculty Steering Committee and Committee on Priorities and Resources,…
Convocation to Focus on Climate Change
During Convocation on Sept. 17, five alumni will receive Williams Bicentennial Medals. This year’s honorees were selected for distinguished achievement in fields relevant to the college’s yearlong program Confronting Climate Change. The medal recipients are: Eliot Coleman Jr. ’61, a pioneer in the organic farming movement whose innovative tool design and cold-weather growing techniques have enabled…
College Announces Changes to Board of Trustees
On July 1, the college welcomed Thomas M. Belk ’77, Noriko Honda Chen ’89, Cooper Campbell Jackson ’89, Jonathan D. Sokoloff ’79 and Mark R. Tercek ’79 to its Board of Trustees. Belk is the chairman and CEO of Belk, Inc., the largest family-owned department store business in the U.S. He’s served as president of…
Class of 2016: Do Something Uncomfortable
Though the skies threatened rain, the weather held out for Williams’ 227th Commencement on June 5. During the ceremony, President Adam Falk (top left, in purple) gave honorary degrees to (same photo, from left) Dean of the College Sarah Bolton, who on July 1 became president of the College of Wooster; author and illustrator Eric…
Space for Disagreement
If you’ve picked up a newspaper or read your Facebook feed recently, you’ve probably seen colleges maligned for being politically correct and for not preparing students for “the real world,” instead bending to pressures to create safe spaces, erase difficult history and shield students from opinions and perspectives that might offend them. But as Davis…
From Dream to Design
On behalf of the board of directors and advisory council of the Hoosic River Revival (HRR), I thank Williams Magazine for acknowledging the good work done by the students in Sarah Gardner’s fall 2015 Environmental Planning class (“Environmental Planning,” spring 2016). The students developed a most interesting, creative yet practical series of alternatives for the…
Van Rensselaer Remains
In his letter regarding the fall 2015 issue, my friend Dan Tritter ’54 correctly traces the checkered history of the Albany, N.Y., Van Rensselaer mansion, which was made into a fraternity house at Williams and then taken down to make room for the Sawyer Library. There is another chapter to the story. According to Warren Roberts,…
How The Real World Works
I read the essays by Mr. Lafargue in both Williams Magazine (“Welcome to the ‘Real’ World,” spring 2016) and, later, in the Washington Post (March 28, 2016). It was an interesting opinion of criticism to the “coddling” referred to by Mr. Lafargue. However, I think the author is misinterpreting the criticism. Mr. Lafargue states, “The…
Truths About Financial Aid
The article “Financial Aid at Williams” (spring 2016) states: “The sticker price of a Williams education has doubled in the last 30 years.” I am looking at my daughter’s tuition advice letter dated April 17,1997. Total charges for the 1997-1998 academic year were $29,350. Today, they are $63,290. The compound growth rate of total charges during that time was 4.4 percent, while…
Mapping a Territory
When psychology professor Mariko Moher wanted her students to consider how cognitive development influences the ways humans create and interpret art, she turned to the Williams College Museum of Art. With the help of Elizabeth Gallerani, curator of academic programs, Moher identified works that would speak to her class’s inquiry. One piece in particular, a…
The Jewelry Stand
By Evelyn Rojas ’16 Photo by Alyssa Alden-Smith ’16 The recipient of a 2006/2009 International Service Fellowship, Evelyn Rojas traveled on her own for the first time the summer after her sophomore year at Williams to Córdoba, Spain, as a volunteer for the Red Cross. The experience in part inspired her poem “The Jewelry Stand,”…
Megamenu Social