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Campus Responds to Katrina
“Swarthmore’s response to Hurricane Katrina was reflective of the spirit of this place, both in the concerned enthusiasm of the immediate response and the patience with which we have tried to put together the most responsible plan possible,” said Maurice Eldridge ’61, vice president for College and community relations.
The College community's response included the following:
• The College agreed to accept up to 15 students from the devastated region whose universities were closed by the destruction. Two students from New Orleans accepted the offer: Glenavin White from Loyola and Nikhil Sharma from Tulane.
• The President's Office enabled employees to volunteer with relief agencies in the disaster area by allowing half of their salary to be paid as administrative leave time and the other half covered as vacation time for a maximum of 3 weeks. Patti Shields, director of environmental services, spent 17 days in Louisiana with the Red Cross. While in New Orleans, she ensured that emergency response vehicles were outfitted with the appropriate equipment and that it was functioning properly. Later, in Slidell, La., she served as a client shelter manager at the Oak Harbor Convention Center.
• The Student Athlete Advisory Committee sold T-shirts, designed by Heidi Fieselmann ’06, Zach Moody ’07, and Chloe Lewis ’06, and has raised $3,260 so far; the Swarthmore African-American Student Society in conjunction with the Black Cultural Center, the President's Office, and the Admissions Office, held a casino night and raised $180 and more than $200 in clothing, shoes, and books; MULTI, an organization for people of multiple heritages, held a week of study breaks to discuss the issues of poverty and race surrounding Katrina. It ended the week with a party that raised $572.68 in donations.
• Yerbabuena, a Puerto Rican folklore music group that had performed at the College on Sept. 9, gave a benefit performance in Philadelphia that evening as a collaborative fund-raiser sponsored by Swarthmore's Intercultural Center, and Taller Puertorriqueño. The event raised $625. Five hundred dollars went to the College's Hurricane Katrina fund and $125 to the Red Cross.
The students had requested that funds raised go to an entity where they could make a direct impact instead of to a large charitable organization. To date, all money collected is being held by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. Pat James, associate director of the Lang Center, said, “The College is examining opportunities to collaborate with Periclean colleges to do relief work at Dillard University [in New Orleans], another Periclean school.” (Project Pericles is a national initiative of 20 private institutions funded by the Eugene M. Lang Foundation. Its overall mission is to provide a response to the growing sense of political alienation and apathy that many young people feel and to create an educational agenda that integrates education for socially responsible citizenship into institutional cultures.)
Other campus community members went to the area on their own.
• For three days, Laura Talbot, director of financial aid, helped in Meridian, Miss., a community that had absorbed many Gulf evacuee families and 200 more students into its already overcrowded school district. “I approached a middle school to see what it needed and how I might help. They accepted my offer to work with their after-school program,” she said. “Mancala, an ancient African stone game, was my focus with the children—its history, playing strategies, possibilities of tournament play, making your own game. Other volunteers to the area were helping with food and shelter, but I found a way to bring a bit of fun—and learning—to the school children who had suffered terrible tragedies."
• David Qasem '09, a member of the campus division of the Rotary Club, went to Mississippi for 6 days, sponsored by the town of Swarthmore's Rotary Club. Qasem, with five others representing the club, found shelter in a school and a church. The group delivered a 24-foot truck filled to capacity with supplies, food, and clothing and gave out a total of $5,000 in cash to needy people they met. The campus division helped pack the items Rotary had collected.
To learn more about the trip, read Qasem's blog at http://swatkatrina.blogspot.com. One of his entries reads, in part: “We saw some unbelievable things. FEMA signs left by search and rescue detailed when the ruins were searched, how many bodies were found, how many were alive, and how many dead. Often, residents scrawled the name of their insurance companies with a number at which they could be reached.
“Families left messages for each other, detailing that ‘all are alive and well,' or that they were rebuilding.”
—Audree Penner
Fostering Career Imagination
Located in a warmly decorated suite on the first floor of Parrish Hall, Swarthmore's Career Services Office is one of the most inviting places on campus. “Our goal is to be a friendly and welcoming office that engages the students,” says Director of Career Services Nancy Burkett. “Sometimes, they drop by for no particular reason. It might be simply because we're popping popcorn, and they smell it in the hallway. Sometimes, parents, faculty, or peers encourage them to come to talk with a counselor about their interests. Some are trying to choose a major and are uncertain, and, although we aren't academic advisers, we do talk about the way their courses can influence their career decisions.”
In the 2 1/2 years since Burkett came to Swarthmore, she has focused on outreach strategies to both students and alumni, all of whom may use the office's resources for the duration of their college and professional lives. Existing programs have been expanded, and new ones are continually being initiated.
Burkett stresses the importance of students becoming familiar with the concept of career development as early as possible. Until recently, she says, the office's resources were directed mainly toward seniors and involved helping them with job searches. “That's sending the wrong message—that you can delay thinking about your future until your senior year,” she says. “Our emphasis has been to connect with them as soon as they get on campus—or even before that. We work closely with the Admissions Office and with prospective students and parents.”
During the past year, the Career Services Office, comprising four full-time staff members, one shared position, and career peer advisers and student assistants, have helped hundreds of students—20 percent of whom were freshmen.
“I like to foster career imagination,” Burkett says. Through career counseling, students identify, explore, and evaluate their interests, skills, values, and experiences. An extensive library provides resources such as job listings, internship directories, graduate school guides, and job-search and career development literature. Workshops assist students in preparing to write cover letters, attend interviews, and learn job-search strategies. Seniors are encouraged to attend information and interview sessions with the more than 75 employers who visit campus each year. Letters of recommendation from professors and employers may be stored in the office's database and sent out upon written request.
A wealth of opportunities exists for networking with alumni, such as career dinners, coffee hours, and conferences as well as on-site internship and externship possibilities. More recent initiatives include on-line chats with alumni and on-line alumni profiles offering students insight into potential careers. This year, Burkett has worked collaboratively with the faculty to invite alumni to campus to participate in panel discussions about specific professional fields. Alumni career panels were initiated by the Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, and Math departments as well as a performing arts symposium on careers in music, dance, and theater.
“We're so grateful to our alumni,” Burkett says. “The College is so fortunate to have alumni who have done such amazing things in their lives.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
Bloom Contract Extended to '09
At its September meeting, the Board of Managers unanimously endorsed a further extension of President Alfred H. Bloom's contract through Aug. 31, 2009.
“The Board and I believe that Al has been an able and inspiring leader for this institution during the 14 years of his presidency,” said Board Chair Barbara Weber Mather '65. “He has strengthened and secured Swarthmore's position as the American college that best combines academic excellence and social responsibility. Al has led Swarthmore's development as a distinctive college that offers a model of the finest undergraduate education to the nation and the world. We are excited about what the Swarthmore community will accomplish under Al's continuing leadership.”
Dean Bob Gross Set to Retire
Dean of the College Robert Gross ’62 will retire at the end of the current academic year. Gross, 65, has been Dean of the College for 8 years. He previously served as dean of academic affairs and as a faculty member in the Department of Educational Studies.
A search committee chaired by Provost Connie Hungerford is working to fill the vacancy. President Alfred H. Bloom said that Gross’ “talent for balancing challenge and affirmation, his skill at transforming anxiety into clearer perspective, and his gift for building human connections have provided the foundation for a student-life environment that, at once, offers comfort and confidence and inspires independence and responsible commitment.”
The Economist as Biologist
That feeling of being inauthentic hit me in the small hours of the night, early this year. It comes on me every now and then, when the gap between what I truly know and what I teach gets too large. Redesigning my econometrics course to incorporate experimental concepts and methods had pushed me over the precipice this time.
I knew I could read more about how to interpret particular social events as quasi-experiments. There are hundreds of papers in economics on that. But further scholastic scrutiny was not the remedy to what ailed me. The problem, although not deep, was fundamental: The precise understanding of what an experiment is had faded from my mind. How was I to get out of that bind?
The answer to my problem came at a faculty lunch in March, when Professor of Biology Amy Cheng Vollmer discussed her concern about the balkanization of disciplines that often occurs at colleges and universities. She felt that at our institution, Swarthmore College, the natural sciences were seen as somehow different from the humanities or social sciences. She worried that faculty members outside of the natural sciences believed that almost all natural-science majors were headed for medical or graduate school and thus humanists and social scientists might be advising some students not to take natural-science courses. How could the faculty eliminate the incorrect perceptions that could limit the range of students' intellectual experience at Swarthmore?
Amy concluded her talk with a startling proposal. She would open her microbiology laboratory to any faculty member outside the natural sciences who was willing to spend some time over the summer actually doing biology. The idea was to break down a perceived barrier by having nonscientists do what they would normally keep at a distance.
My first thought upon hearing Amy's proposal was that she was way off the farm. It was easy to understand her concern, but academics are who we are: specialists. We can and probably do read across disciplines, but why would we want to work across disciplines?
But after ruminating on my own conundrum for a couple of days, I thought of Amy and her daring idea. Perhaps working in her microbiology lab was a way to close my authenticity gap.
I met her for lunch, and we clarified our objectives, defined parameters, and set timelines. Luckily for me, another colleague, Cheryl Grood of the Mathematics Department, was already working in the lab. Cheryl was refreshing her knowledge of biology from courses taken long ago. She and I would form a mini-team.
A great advantage of having a mathematician as a partner is that all of your measurements and calculations are likely to be precise—even if the conclusions are precisely wrong! I could not have wished for a better partner.
Amy explained that our project was to use established methods of genetic engineering to see if we could make bacteria that were sensitive to ampicillin, an antibiotic, resistant to it instead. We would isolate a plasmid—a small, self-reproducing element containing DNA but outside the chromosome—from ampicillin-resistant bacteria. Subsequently, we would manipulate an ampicillin-sensitive strain of the same bacteria so that it would absorb the plasmid. The hope was that the plasmid would transform the recipient's DNA so the bacteria would exhibit resistance to ampicillin.
Was she serious? First, how do you pronounce DNA's full name, deoxyribonucleic acid? Second, what is to prevent me from combining the DNA of the ampicillin-resistant bacteria with my own DNA, thereby rendering me resistant to antibiotics—and likely to catch all kinds of ailments from my students, who sometimes come into class coughing and wheezing? Third, given that the plasmids, cytoplasm, chromosomes, genes, and all the other stuff inside the bacteria cells are too small for me to see with the naked eye, how will I know if any transformation has occurred? And fourth, don't you need some kind of license to engage in genetic engineering?
I had some reservations about actually doing microbiology. But it took me only 3 days of continuous practice to solve the pronunciation problem: dee-ox-ee-RYE-bo-new-clay-ick (the “acid” part was easier).
Because no known pathogens are handled in Amy's lab, the odds of contamination are extremely low. My qualms about absorbing bacterial DNA were thus unwarranted.
Although the transformation we were trying to accomplish could not be seen by the naked eye, the result—the expression of a gene or trait—can be confirmed by experimentation. And as a novice, I needed only a mentor, not a license, to make sure that my work in the lab was well within ethical bounds.
The return from doing science hands-on is high. The experiments required care and precision. How do you set up a control? Are you sure that the background conditions—the medium used to suspend the plasmids, the settings on the spectrophotometer, the size of the pipettes, the agar, and so on—are exactly the same for the control and the experimental specimens? How do you measure, assess, and interpret your results?
Can an amateur possibly get all that right? More important, can an amateur steeped in a foreign intellectual tradition—in my case, social science—possibly comprehend or appreciate the elegance and power of the scientific methods employed?
Amy made everything possible. Taking more time than I could have imagined, explaining every concept, showing how every piece of equipment worked, answering every question (many of them more than once), enduring every mistake, she led Cheryl and me through the processes of plasmid isolation and gel electrophoresis. Not only did we succeed in those feats of genetic engineering, but we also confirmed that the ampicillin-resistant trait was due to the presence of the added plasmid DNA, given that we were able to re-isolate the plasmid from the newly transformed bacteria.
My econometrics course will be different from now on. Not because the material or the text or the statistical software will be new but because my understanding of one small slice of applied science has been refreshed. I now have new comparisons, examples, interpretations, exercises, and thought experiments to use with my students in the social sciences.
Experiments in the social sciences will never be as clean as they are in the natural sciences. But I feel much better about teaching quasi-experimental concepts now that I have worked in a real laboratory.
If my professional life allowed it, I would like to spend more time in a lab. That may sound strange coming from a social scientist, and I realize that many faculty members in the humanities and social sciences would not agree with me. Before the desire to refresh my memory of what an experiment was became a pressing matter for me, I thought the idea of my doing science was impractical.
Now, however, I have joined Amy off the farm on the issue of communication and collaboration among the disciplines. You know, the air out here is fresh, the sky is clear, and the company is very good.
—Philip Jefferson Associate Professor of Economics
Philip Jefferson joined the faculty in 1997 and is an expert on monetary policy. This essay appeared in the Oct. 7 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education and was adapted with permission.
A Life of Social Activism
On Sept. 21, Molly Yard ’33, a tireless liberal activist since her college days and president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1987 to 1991, died in Pittsburgh at age 93. She was married to her Swarthmore classmate, the late Sylvester Garrett, a prestigious labor arbitrator who had taught at Stanford.
Active in student and civil rights movements since the 1930s, Yard joined NOW in the early 1970s in Pittsburgh and became a member of its national staff in 1978. As its president, she led the organization in support of issues including abortion, gay and lesbian rights, and the election of women to public office. She vigorously opposed the nomination to the Supreme Court of Judge Robert Bork, whom she labeled “a Neanderthal,” and called for the impeachment of President Ronald Reagan over the Iran-Contra affair. During Yard's presidency, NOW’s membership increased by 110,000.
Earlier, Yard had worked for several Democratic candidates, including California Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, John F. Kennedy, and George McGovern. After her family moved to Pittsburgh in the 1950s, she worked in the civil rights movement and was a local organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. As an officer of the left-wing American Student Union, she became a longtime friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, whom she claimed as an important influence in her life.—Carol Brévart-Demm
Scholarship, Teaching, and Collegiality
The College community was saddened to learn of the Aug. 25 death of 92-year-old Professor Emeritus of English Literature Derek Traversi, a distinguished Shakespearean scholar and Swarthmore faculty member from 1970 to 1983. According to Professor of Art History and Provost Connie Hungerford, Traversi is remembered for his “scholarship, teaching, and warm collegiality.” His death, says Centennial Professor of English Literature Tom Blackburn, a close friend and colleague, “severed the last living link with that group of critics who, in the years just before and through World War II and into the 1950s, founded and popularized what has since become known as ‘New Criticism.'”
A native of Wales, Traversi retired in the early 1980s to Richmond-on-Thames, England, where he remained until his death.—Carol Brévart-Demm
A Celebration of Girls
In 1995, when Reshma Pattni '06 was 11 years old, she visited Beijing—she has photos of herself beside the Great Wall of China to prove it. What was unusual about her visit, though, is that she was not there primarily as a tourist but as a member of a 13-strong girls' delegation to the United Nations World Conference on Women. Even more remarkable is that the organization she belonged to—the nonprofit Girls International Forum (GIF)—had been founded in Duluth, Minn., a year earlier by a group of girls, including Pattni, ages 10 to 17. At the time, she was a member of the editorial board of New Moon, a magazine created for and by girls, whose mandate is to celebrate girls, explore the passage from girl to womanhood, and build healthy resistance to gender inequities. Through the magazine, they learned of the conference.
“We thought it sounded really cool, so we got together to bring a delegation of girls, to let their voices be heard,” says Pattni, now 21 and a psychology major.
They created GIF, networking with other girls' organizations nationwide to establish a forum for sharing ideas and experiences and work to advance girls' rights throughout the world. “We called groups in different areas, approaching girls from diverse racial and socioeconomic environments to seek suggestions.” With input from thousands of girls around the country, they compiled a list of questions asking for possible discussion topics at the conference. Using New Moon, the Internet, and word of mouth, they collected answers from girls around the world.
In September 1995, Pattni and 12 other girls, the largest all-girl delegation, accompanied by 7 chaperones, presented “Listen to Girls: A Girls Agenda” at the conference. Topics included violence against women, economic empowerment, and improved health information.
“We got into lots of different speak-outs and were involved in many different lectures and panels, and we made a very positive impression there,” Pattni says.
A Platform for Action document was compiled at the Beijing conference, with 153 countries signing on. One of its sections deals with the specific needs of girls.
In 1998, Pattni attended the 150th Anniversary Celebration of the First National Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where she was one of 15 girls from 13 states to present a Girls' Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the original Declaration of Sentiments developed in Seneca Falls by the suffragists 150 years earlier.
In 2000 and 2005 at the U.N. Beijing + Five and Beijing + 10 conferences, she was encouraged by reports of progress from around the world. “When we were in Beijing, in 1995,” she says, “one of the most common things we heard was 'what a great idea, we never even thought of including girls,' and, by 2000, we could see that girls were being included in government and NGO delegations in much larger numbers. That's when we got the idea to create a Platform for Action for girls.”
Currently, she is serving as a woman mentor, guiding girls as she was guided, in preparation for GIF's International Girls Summit, which is scheduled for July 2006 in St. Paul, Minn., and funded, in part, by a $200,000 Congressional Challenge Grant from the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The GIF will host 20 U.S. and other international teams to promote leadership, advocacy, and mentoring skills across cultures. Focusing on education, health, human rights, violence, and economic empowerment, they plan to develop a “Girls' Platform for Action” including the implementation of projects to further the goals of the platform and improve girls' lives in their communities.
Thanks to a Summer Social Action Award from the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Pattni devoted the summer of 2005 to GIF, among other things traveling to South Africa to help prepare girls there for the summit. Piloting the survey that GIF will use to gather girls' opinions worldwide, she met with groups throughout the country, collecting their thoughts and assessing their leadership training needs.
“What's been really rewarding for me is how much I've learned, how much more confident I've become, and the skills I've gained,” Pattni says. “I've also gained a larger world perspective. Seeing the other girls get that, too, has been great—now I'm on the other side, acting as a mentor for these girls who you know are going to go on and do amazing things. Just to be a part of that process is so rewarding.”—Carol Brévart-Demm
Documenting Lives
Growing up in Burlington, VT., a refugee resettlement center, Bree Bang-Jensen attended school with children from countries such as the former Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and the Sudan. Currently, the refugee populations are mainly Somali Bantu, Meshketian Turk, Sudanese, or natives of central African countries. Bang-Jensen is fascinated by their stories.
During an internship with the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program (VRRP) last summer, she transformed her interest into action, working with a family recently arrived from Burundi. “I fell in love with them,” she says.
She tells the story of 8-year-old Oscar, born in a refugee camp in Burundi. “He had never used running water or electricity before,” she says, “but like most children, he was fascinated by anything with wheels or a motor. On the trip to the States, the Swahili-speaking pilot allowed Oscar into the cockpit to ‘fly’ the plane. It was a high point in his life. He narrates the whole thing with lots of sound effects.”
In the fall, Bang-Jensen received a Swarthmore Foundation grant of $1,920, to fund a book documenting refugee children's trips to America as well as their earlier lives. “My mother is a children's literacy professor, and making books and telling stories was an important part of my childhood,” she says.
Assisted by the director of the VRRP and local educators, Bang-Jensen is creating multilingual permission slips to be signed by the children's parents. “Some of the parents are non-literate, so I hope to find translators who will read the permission slip text onto tapes, she says.” Much of her grant money will pay for translation and copying costs.
During the winter and spring breaks, Bang-Jensen will work with children between the ages 6 to 10. “I want to empower refugee children to tell their stories and have a souvenir of their trips,” she says. The book should also provide a tool for American teachers of refugee children, help prepare the children for their long trip to the United States, and offer their American classmates insight into their experiences. “There's not much age-appropriate material on refugee resettlement,” she says.
The book is scheduled for publication next summer.—Carol Brévart-Demm
Totemo:
A Silent Computer Wins a Design Award
In November, Joey Roth '06 flew to Singapore to receive the Red Dot Award for his conceptual design of a computer chassis he named Totemo.
Since 1955, the award has been given by the firm Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, based in Germany. Roth's submission won for “high design quality” from among 638 entrants from 24 countries in 11 design categories.
Totemo means “very” in Japanese. “The chassis, made of aluminum and copper, is very restrained, very subtle,” Roth says. “It is a completely silent picoBTX computer.”
He says the silence is achieved through a passive cooling system that uses heat pipes of copper to channel heat from the CPU, video card, and power supply to a large external heatsink.
“The bamboo base is less expensive to produce than using other woods and, more important, environmentally sustainable,” Roth says. “Totemo is a reaction to the candy-color-looking cases made of extruded plastic. They make for a loud design. I wanted Totemo to be a more thoughtful, quiet design.”
Roth created his own major: Industrial Design Theory. “It combines psychology and engineering classes with a focus on object design,” he says.
—Audree Penner
How They See Us:
College Guidebooks Weigh in on Swarthmore
College and university rankings. Lists of “hottest colleges”; “colleges with a conscience”; and, simply, “best” colleges. “Insider” guides. Student-written guides. Guides for conservative students. Guides for quirky students. Guides for students keen on the “best values.”
Proliferating college guidebooks and rankings can easily fill a large shelf—in fact, do fill a large shelf in the College’s News and Information Office—and they generally (although not always) portray Swarthmore in a favorable light.
To give readers a sense of the industry take on Swarthmore, the Bulletin presents the following from some of the more prominent guidebooks:
Fiske Guide to Colleges, 2006 edition
“Swarthmore College’s leafy green campus may be just 11 miles from Philadelphia, but students don’t always have either the time or the inclination to make the jaunt. That’s because they have opted for one of the country’s most self-consciously intellectual undergraduate environments. Swatties are bright, hard-working, and eclectic in their interests, and campus life is fabled for its intensity. But it’s not the intensity that comes from huge amounts of course work (à la Yale) so much as the self-imposed drive of talented students who want to do lots of things simultaneously—from academics to social protest to rugby—and to do so at a high level.”
Princeton Review, The Best 361 Colleges, 2006 edition
“‘A Swarthmore day is a 28-hour day,’ notes one student, reflecting on the notoriously heavy workload at this elite liberal arts school. Don’t let the reputation scare you off, though; as one student explained: ‘Academics at Swat are hard; everyone knows that coming in. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t enjoyable.’ Furthermore, ‘Swarthmore has a tremendous support network anchored by the professors and administration (as well as other students). When help is needed, there is always someone to turn to.’ The support is essential, since ‘the overall stress level here is high from balancing classes, activities, and social life.’
“Swarthmore is as good as they come; among liberal arts colleges there is none better.”
Kaplan/Newsweek America’s Hottest Colleges, 2006 edition—Hottest College for Intellectuals: Swarthmore
“Swarthmore nurtures ‘the sort of all-encompassing inquisitiveness about the world that people here tend to have,’ says junior Samantha Graffeo. Some 600 courses are offered, a large number for a campus with only 1,500 students. The Honors Program allows undergraduates to do graduate-level work. Swatties, as they call themselves, can also enroll in engineering, a subject not often found on small liberal-arts campuses.”
Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America’s Top Schools (published by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2004)
“Despite its vast wealth and sterling academic reputation, whether Swarthmore ... is still an elite institution depends on one’s point of view. The numbers and rankings are fantastic, of course.... Its students’ SAT scores are dazzling. Then again, like most institutions, the curriculum ain’t what it used to be. More importantly, Swarthmore has traveled even further down the road of politicization and radicalization than most other Eastern liberal arts schools—and that’s a long journey, indeed.”
The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, 2006 edition, by the staff of the Yale Daily News
“[Swarthmore’s] size enables students to develop closer relationships with their schoolmates. Though small in size, the campus is fairly diverse. Said one student about the diversity of the campus: ‘What I love about campus life is how intimate and close-knit a community we have. You meet interesting people from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, etc. And since there are only about 1,400 students, and about 350 new faces every year, you get to meet a lot of people.’”
Princeton Review’s Colleges With a Conscience: 81 Great Schools With Outstanding Community Involvement (2005)
“Swarthmore College’s ‘commitment to education for social responsibility is rooted in its Quaker Heritage,’ and the Eugene M. Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, which connects Swarthmore College to nearby communities (both literally and symbolically), is ‘the campus hub’ for activities [that] support Swarthmore’s mission to ‘help students realize their fullest intellectual and personal potential combined with a deep sense of ethical and social concern.’
“Civic engagement at Swarthmore is strong, because people are really passionate about learning and working, and people care,” students tell us.… Political activism is alive at Swarthmore on both the local and global level.”
Soccer Is Hot
Men's soccer (12-6-2, 6-2-1) For the second consecutive season, the Garnet made the Centennial Conference (CC) playoffs and the Eastern College Athletic Conference Tournament. Defender Alex Elkins '06, forward Andrew Terker '06, and midfielder Patrick Christmas ’08 were named All-Conference. Elkins, a defender and team captain, is the first Swarthmore male soccer player to be selected for the All-CC first team, after spearheading a defensive unit that posted eight shutouts. Terker, named to the second-team, scored 12 points (five goals, two assists), tying for the team lead with forward Stu Leon '09. Christmas, a team captain, received honorable mention. Goalkeeper Reuben Heyman-Kantor '06 was named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America first-team (College Division) after a vote by the District II College Sports Information Directors of America. The Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware Intercollegiate Soccer Officials Association awarded its 2005 Men's Team Sportsmanship Award to the soccer team.
Women's Soccer (3-11-3, 1-7-2) Defender Caitlin Mullarkey '09 and forward Danielle Tocchet '08 were named All-CC. Mullarkey, a defender, became the first freshman defender ever to earn first-team honors in the CC and just the 14th first-year student overall to receive the distinction. Tocchet, an honorable mention selection, led the team with eight goals and 16 points. This year also marked the 10th consecutive time, since 1996, that the Garnet defeated its opponent in the home opener.
Men’s cross-country (third at CC Championship) The Garnet harriers ran to seventh place at the 2005 NCAA Mideast Regional Cross-Country Championships in November, led by All-Mideast Region selection Vernon Chaplin '07, who finished 26th of 280 runners, in a time of 26:49.6. Just missing a national-qualifier spot in his first collegiate cross-country season, Chaplin also earned All-CC second-team honors at the CC Championships, helping the Garnet to a third-place finish. On Oct. 7, Chaplin and Ross Weller '08 led the Garnet to victory at the Blue Jay Invitational in Oregon Ridge Park, Md., where they bested 14 other teams.
Women’s cross-country (third at CC Championship) Carrie Ritter '06 and Emma Stanley '09 led the Garnet to a fifth-place finish at the November NCAA Mideast Regional. The two runners earned All-Mideast Region status by finishing in the top 35. Ritter and Stanley also led Swarthmore to a third-place finish at the CC Championships. Both runners made the All-Centennial second team with top-10 performances.
Field hockey (8-9, 4-6) Defender Chloe Lewis ’06, midfielder Summer Spicer '07, and goalie Karen Lorang ’07 were selected to the All-CC second team. Forward Heidi Fieselmann '06 led the Garnet with 13 goals and six assists for 32 points. Spicer was second with a career high of 11 goals and six assists. Lorang finished fifth in the conference with 6.23 saves per game and ranked fourth with 86 saves, earning her second All-CC selection. The Garnet made the championship game of the Seven Sisters Tournament on Sept. 17 by downing top-seeded Mount Holyoke, 4-2. Lewis, Spicer, and midfielder Neema Patel '07 were named All-Tournament for their efforts.
Volleyball (13-15, 6-4) Outside hitters Erica George ’07 and Jennifer Wang ’09 were selected All-CC for leading Swarthmore to the conference playoffs for the first time in school history. The team started off its season with a bang, winning the Greyhound Premiere Invitational at Moravian College on Sept. 3, with George and Wang receiving All-Tournament honors. George, a tricaptain, led the Garnet with an average of 3.12 kills per game and was second in digs with 3.81 per game. On Sept. 20 at Franklin & Marshall, George broke the school record of 755 for career kills, set by Natalie Dunphy '05. Wang, an honorable-mention selection, led the team with an average of 3.92 digs per match and tallied a team-high 14 double-doubles during the season. Setter Emily Conlon ’06 completed her Garnet career with 3,199 assists, 1,066 digs, and 204 service aces, holding school records for career assists and service aces.—Kyle Leach |
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“Karen from Mississippi” holds a sign thanking (from left) John King, David Evanson (kneeling), Jeff Rossley, John Kirby, David Qasem '06, and trip organizer Jay King, who removed approximately 40 downed trees that were blocking access to her home. (Photo courtesy of David Qasem)</size>
The busy Career Services Office occupies the former
Alumni Relations and Publications offices on the renovated first floor of Parrish Hall. (Photo by Eleftherios Kostans)</size>
PHILIP JEFFERSON
Associate Professor of Economics
(Photo by Amy Cheng Vollmer)</size>
DEREK TRAVERSI
Professor Emeritus of
English Literature
(Photo by Martin Natvig)</size>
Eleven-year-old Pattni (front) enjoyed the Great Wall while in China in 1995.
(Photo courtesy of Reshma Pattni)</size>
Pattni today. For more information on the Girls' International Forum, visit the Web site www.girlsforum.org. (Photo courtesy of Reshma Pattni)</size>
Senior Joey Roth created this concept for a computer that is “more thoughtful” in design and partly made of bamboo. See more of his work at www.joeyroth.com.
Bree Bang-Jensen (left, in Battery Park, Burlington, Vt.) is creating a book of children’s experiences as refugees. (Photo courtesy of Bree Bang-Jensen)</size>
For the second consecutive season, forward Brandon
Washington ’08 (above) led the men’s soccer team in assists,
sharing the team lead (4) with midfielder Ladule Lako Lo Sarah ’09. The unselfish Garnet team had at total of 30 assists, the second-most in the conference. (Photo by Eleftherios Kostans)</size>
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