Fall 2015

Act II

Young alumni making careers in the performing arts share the lessons they learned on the stages and in the spaces of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, which is now entering its second decade. Lauren Hester ’07 still recalls the intense process of developing and staging four original plays the fall of her senior…

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Teaching It Forward

“Williams is a place where we’re engaged in a million conversations and one grand conversation all at once. And it’s a conversation that goes on forever.” So said Professor of Classics Edan Dekel during a panel discussion hosted by President Adam Falk during the Oct. 3 campus launch of Teach It Forward: The Campaign for…

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A Weekend For Williams

The Oct. 3 campus launch of Teach It Forward: The Campaign for Williams was a festive affair, featuring more than 250 student performers, food tents and a giant LED screen displaying social media mentions—all sprinkled across Paresky Lawn and the new library quad. Hundreds of students, faculty, staff and alumni gathered for the formal announcement,…

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Sustainable Williams

One small college’s role in addressing climate change The helicopter swung low over the hills on a crisp November evening, veering over the top of Lasell Gymnasium on its way to trace a path across campus. Suspended beneath it, an infrared camera took images of each building as it passed. Looking at the rainbow-colored images…

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Mis/Communication

Imagine you run into your boss at the farmers market on a Saturday morning. She asks, “What are you up to?” and you assume she knows that you haven’t finished a report due Monday. You launch into an explanation about how you just left your desk for a minute to grab some groceries. She interrupts…

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The staff of Ila Mata, including Sumaya Awad ’16 (front row, second from right), in Amman, Jordan, last summer.

Until When

From July 2012 to 2013, its first year of operation, the Zaatari refugee camp drew more than 3,600 journalists seeking stories of Syrians who fled to Jordan after their lives were ravaged by war. Sumaya Awad ’16 worked in the camp that first year, the summer before her sophomore year at Williams, and witnessed how…

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Linking Brahms and Whitman

On Nov. 15, the Choral Arts Society of Washington performed a composition by assistant professor of music Zachary Wadsworth at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In a review of the performance, the Washington Post called Wadsworth “someone to keep an eye on,” saying his composition, Battle-Flags, is “fresh,…

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A Boy’s Perspective on the Holocaust

Jim Shepard’s latest novel, The Book of Aron (Knopf, 2015), has been called “a masterpiece” by the Washington Post; and the New York Times calls him “a master of the verbal fingerprint.” The college’s J. Leland Miller Professor of American History, Literature and Eloquence tells Aron’s story from the boy’s perspective in simple language that…

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Unlocking Classical Chinese

Chinese professor Christopher Nugent is helping to publish a groundbreaking series of English translation volumes that will bring never-before-available Chinese texts to future generations of students. Called the Library of Chinese Humanities and published in dozens of volumes over the next several decades by De Gruyter, the series will provide facing-page translations of important Classical Chinese texts…

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New Course Explores Town and Gown

Anthropology professor David Edwards and journalist Christopher Marcisz have teamed up this semester to teach a course about different ways of understanding the relationship between Williams College and Williamstown. Called Town and Gown: Investigating the Relationship of College and Community, the course starts out with a few short assignments. For one, students observe a local…

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Object Lab: Encounters With Art

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) has transformed the Blashfield Gallery into the Object Lab, a space where students can have close encounters with artworks to deepen their understanding of the subjects covered in classes across the curriculum. Ten faculty members teaching courses including Africana studies, biology, math and theater are taking part this…

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In Memoriam

“Hank was a real Yankee gentleman: reserved but gracious, polite but playful, humble but widely effective. His almost 40-year tenure in our financial aid office…has helped make possible the education of countless students, here and elsewhere.” —President Adam Falk in a letter to the campus community about the death of Henry “Hank” Flynt ’44 on…

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By the Numbers

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Starting the Clock

On Nov. 10, the Class of 1966 Environmental Center officially began its pursuit of Living Building Challenge status, the highest standard for environmental performance for a building. To meet the challenge, the center will need to operate for 12 consecutive months using only the power and water produced and collected onsite, among other rigorous measures….

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Circle of 6 Changing Campus Culture

A mobile app called Circle of 6 is helping change the way Williams students think about sexual assault prevention. The app allows users to create a list of six friends they can call or text easily, whether it’s to seek assistance in an uncomfortable situation, ask a friend to talk, find help getting home or connect with…

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Augenbraun ’15 Wins Apker Award

Benjamin Augenbraun ’15 has received the nation’s highest honor for undergraduate physics research, becoming the fifth Williams alumnus in recent years to win the Leroy Apker Award from the American Physical Society. The award is presented to two undergraduates each year—one from a Ph.D.-granting institution and one from a non-Ph.D.-granting institution. Over the past 20…

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Reading Enrique’s Journey

Sonia Nazario ’82 spoke about her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother, at the ’62 Center in September as part of the Williams Reads program. Hers is the first Williams Reads book written by an Eph. You can listen to a podcast about her…

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Williams Adopts Quick Cost Calculator

To help prospective students and their families more easily see what college will cost them, Williams, along with the University of Virginia, is now using My inTuition, the quickest calculator available to the public. Developed by Wellesley College, the calculator asks six basic financial questions before providing a personalized estimate of what it would cost…

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A Closer Look: Faculty Science Lunches

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in the fall, and a room in the Thompson Biology Lab is abuzz with activity. In between bites of sandwiches and sips of soup, some 50 science and math faculty follow along as Leo Goldmakher, assistant professor of mathematics, instructs them on paper folding. Goldmakher draws an asterisk on the top…

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Convocation Features Bicentennial Medalists

Williams marked the start of the academic year and the accomplishments of the senior class at Convocation on Sept. 19. During the ceremony, five alumni received Bicentennial Medals: (clockwise from left) Michael F. Curtin ’86 (pictured with President Adam Falk), CEO of DC Central Kitchen, who gave the Convocation Address; Jonathan Fielding ’64, former director/health…

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Summer Kudos (And a Complaint)

The summer 2015 issue is, as always, top notch: layout, white space, expansive articles, great photos, things that make me smile. And a logical use of serif and sans-serif typefaces. When is the last time a reader gave you an “atta gal, editor” for type? However, the array of six photos on p. 8 (“Bon…

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Building Hope

Bright in color and sharp in structure, many of Jacob Lawrence’s works also have a dark edge. Some of the subjects in his paintings depicting black life are jagged across the canvases, seemingly sliding off the page into uncertain futures. Other pieces show people working, calm, contemplative and grounded. Radio Repairs (1946), part of Lawrence’s…

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Around the Kitchen Table

I arrived at Williams as a pre-med student. Then I took Math 107—or, more accurately, it took me. So sophomore year, as I was desperately searching for classes to direct me on a new career path, a friend recommended Professor Peter Frost’s class, Modern Japan. My first experience with Professor Frost was during a visit…

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