Fall 2013

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Minted

Internet entrepreneur Mariam Naficy ’91 doesn’t consider herself to be a risk taker. The trajectory of her incredible career says otherwise. Mariam Naficy ’91 was weeks away from pulling the plug on her Internet startup company, Minted. The business, launched in April 2008 to sell paper goods from major designers, had made just one sale…

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Fire and Light

For James MacGregor Burns ’39, a lifelong student of the relationship among leadership, ideas and change, the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment has been an irresistible fascination. In fact, the origins of his new book, Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World, date to 1949, when Burns was in London studying the British…

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Kellogg drawing

Living Laboratory

  A newly renovated and expanded Kellogg House is set to open in the fall. In addition to providing classroom, meeting and study spaces, a reading room, a kitchen and gardens, the building will be home to the Center for Environmental Studies and the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives. In short, it will be a…

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A Monumental Achievement

Two Williams legends helped to recover and return some of Europe’s greatest art treasures plundered by the Nazis. “I was heading for a remote castle in some woods, but I couldn’t get to it with the Jeep because it was perched high on a rock. So I got out and started walking through the forest….

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Behind the Butterfly

A chance encounter with a nearly 140-year-old Swiss music box has led professor of music W. Anthony Sheppard to a major discovery about two of the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s most well-known operas. While visiting the Morris Museum in New Jersey with his family in early 2012, Sheppard was drawn to a display of music…

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John Brown Song!

For years art professor Laylah Ali ’91 has been captivated by the history of John Brown, the white abolitionist who took up arms to end slavery and was hanged in 1859 for crimes including treason and inciting slaves to rebel. But it wasn’t until the Dia Art Foundation commissioned Ali to do a web-based project…

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The Art of Astrophysics

Muzhou Lu ’13 dedicated three summers and his senior thesis to tracking total solar eclipses in an effort to study the sun’s corona. His work was recognized in July at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Bozeman, Mont., where his presentation “Observations and Modeling of Solar Coronal Structures Using High-Resolution Eclipse Images and Space-based Telescopes…

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New Science, Fiction

The characters in the five stories that make up Andrea Barrett’s latest book, Archangel, live at the junction of history and science in the early 20th century. Minor players in one story become major players in another. All are members of the scientific community trying to make sense of what in hindsight we know will…

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Scholar’s Rock

A recent gift to the college of a Zhan Wang sculpture will bring the ancient Chinese tradition of “scholar’s rocks” to the 21st century—and to Williams’ new library. Confucian scholars began as early as the 8th century to place the ugliest, strangest-looking rocks they could find in their gardens to gaze upon in contemplation, says…

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Studying Study Habits

Nate Kornell, assistant professor of psychology, has received a $600,000 grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to conduct research on students’ study habits. With the grant, Kornell, along with a postdoctoral fellow and an associate researcher, will be conducting dozens of online and laboratory studies to examine the kinds of decisions students make while…

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A New Approach to Neuroscience

A mouse is hungry, so it eats. If it’s thirsty, it drinks. If it’s tired, it sleeps. And while these behaviors appear to be carried out with very little thought on the mouse’s part, a complex process is taking place in its brain, telling it what to do. Assistant professor of biology Matt Carter is…

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First-year Entry Snacks

About 23 first-year students pile into a common room stuffed with couches, chairs, tables and a TV. Laughter and spirited discussion quickly fill the air as food is passed around. “Welcome to Snacks,” says one of the two junior advisors (JAs) who live with them in a residential grouping called an entry. “How was your…

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How Williams Works, Financially

The price of a Williams education is what you can afford to pay. Amid the national conversation about college affordability, Williams explains its (somewhat surprising) financial model in a new video, “The Money, The Math, The Mission.”

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Williams to Host TEDx Event

Galaxy collisions, the philosophy of the mind and pop Orientalism are among the topics that will be explored during the college’s first-ever TEDx event, to take place Jan. 25, 2014. Six Williams faculty members and three students will present nine short talks, many of which have been inspired by or developed from ideas explored in…

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Frozen Fenway

The men’s hockey team will face off against Trinity College at Fenway Park on Jan. 7 as part of the 17-day Citi Frozen Fenway event for 2014. The Ephs and Bantams will be the second Div. III matchup that day, following U-Mass Boston vs. Salem State. “We couldn’t be more excited for this unique opportunity…

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By the Numbers: Alumni Values

An extensive survey of 4,113 Williams alumni last spring asked, among other things, how satisfied they are with their lives and what they value most. Some 1,840 Ephs responded, representing 10 classes spanning 1968 to 2008. Their answers indicate alumni are doing what they want to, and liking what they do. See the results »

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#askaneph

Some questions from high schoolers during an Oct. 2 Twitter Q&A with current students, faculty, staff and alumni: Why would you choose Williams over a larger university? What’s the strength of the alumni network for internships in DC? What is college life like in small-town MA? What’s a particular scene that made you stop and…

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Eisenson to Succeed Avis as Board Chair

Michael Eisenson ’77 has been named chair of the Williams College Board of Trustees, effective July 1. He will succeed Greg Avis ’80, whose 12-year term on the board—including six years as chair—ends on June 30. Eisenson came to Williams as a first-generation student and earned both a J.D. and M.B.A. at Yale. He is…

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Field Day

Not long after the Homecoming game against Amherst on Nov. 9, Williams began a $22 million project to renovate and re-invent the Weston Field Athletic Complex in time for the start of the fall 2014 season. The renovation will provide much-needed new facilities for participants in varsity field hockey, football, lacrosse and track and field,…

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What We Value

“Williams exists primarily to expand the public good through the impacts that our graduates have on the world…” Fall brings each year an odd juxtaposition. It’s the season of college rankings, in the middle of which we honor members of the Williams family with Bicentennial Medals. Both say something about the value of a Williams…

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From Facebook

For the start of first-year student orientation in August, we asked what advice you had to offer our newest Ephs. Among your pearls of wisdom: Take advantage of the opportunity the purple bubble gives you to fall flat on your face and stand back up again. —Tosin Adeyanju ’08 Eph it ain’t broke, don’t try…

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More on the Breman Collection

While I was pleased to see the article in the fall 2012 magazine about my late husband’s collection of black poetry and related material coming to the Chapin Library of Rare Books (“Beyond Words”), I am puzzled that there is no mention of how the acquisition was made. One assumes that the books were bought…

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Iron Hand, Velvet Glove

The article “What Sawyer Said” in the spring 2013 issue brought back fond memories of President Jack Sawyer ’39, including his “iron hand in a velvet glove” way of working. During a Winter Study oral history course on the Baxter and Sawyer administrations that I took in my junior year, I interviewed Professor Dudley Bahlman,…

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Snowy Silence

“Ephropology,” the illustrated bucket list that appeared in the spring 2013 issue, suggests that students “stand outside late at night and listen to the silence as it snows.” I was a junior advisor at Lehman Hall and remember standing in front of the entry late at night when it was snowing. The light was on…

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Living With Art

The student art loan initiative (“Living with Art,” summer 2013), where students may have original works of art by Cézanne, Winslow Homer, Marc Chagall and others hung up on their walls, struck me as an excess. The cost of elite and other universities has skyrocketed. I would love to see Williams be a leader in…

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Coincidence Captured

How ironic, in the summer 2013 issue, to read letters responding to Bob Seidman’s ’63 article on fraternities (“Band of Brothers”) at the front of the magazine and to see photographs from the college museum’s collection by Edweard Muybridge (“Ears of a Deer”) at the back. In 2012 Bob published the novel Moments Captured, whose…

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Classic Excellence

The great article “Three Conversations from 2013” (summer 2013) captured so many of the things that I find incredible about Williams and why I stay engaged as a devoted alum. I’ve had the opportunity to meet alumni of all ages who experienced a Williams very different from the one I did from 1987 to 1991….

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Father and Son

John Walker is a painter and printmaker born in England in 1939. His father and 10 family members fought in World War I, and Walker’s father was the only one to survive the ordeal. Growing up, Walker listened to stories of his father’s experiences that later shaped his own identity and, a decade after his…

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Never Just —

“I carry my father in my last name and my mother in my middle name; the first name is mine to accent, at my privilege.”  — Monica Torres ’13 When I sign my name, it’s Monica, not Mónica. When I order pupusas at my favorite restaurant, the waiter will give my accent an approving nod,…

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