On a rainy December afternoon, eight students heaved unwieldy 68-by-76-inch wood panels covered with cryptic 3-D shapes from Beardsley art studio to the lobby of the Eugene M. and Theresa Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC). Assistant Professor of Art Logan Grider, who last year had students create a life-size 3-D reproduction of Thomas Eakins’ “The [...]

Swarthmore athletics have been a big part of life for Annalise Penikis ’13 since long before she entered the college classroom. At age 8 she was an assistant water girl for the women’s basketball team, writing a note to then-coach Adrienne Shibles thanking her for the opportunity and for inspiration to play the game.
Her mother, [...]

Small Craft Warnings, Swarthmore College’s oldest literary magazine, just got a face-lift. The biannual publication, perhaps best known for former editor Jonathan Franzen ’81, was reissued earlier this spring with a whole new look and feel.
One of Franzen’s first editorial decisions during his own student days was to change the magazine’s name from the Null [...]

Jonathan Franzen ’81 returned to Swarthmore Feb. 14 with all the angst for which his fiction is known. “It makes me nervous to come back here,” confessed Franzen at the start of an afternoon question-and-answer period, before his reading in the Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC) later that evening. As the acclaimed author of The [...]

Swarthmore students displayed the full force of their passion to counter climate change and limit fossil-fuel extraction by participating in demonstrations this spring semester—on and off campus.
On Feb. 17, about 60 students boarded buses, paid for by the President’s Office, to attend a rally in Washington, D.C., against construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline [...]

The College made another huge “leap forward in the capital campaign that will support Strategic Directions [the strategic plan],” President Rebecca Chopp announced Feb. 23 during a morning meeting of the Board of Managers.
That leap came courtesy of Board Chairman Giles “Gil” Kemp ’72 and his wife Barbara Guss Kemp—who donated $20 million to the [...]

One trailblazing alumnus and a social activist/writer will receive honorary degrees at Swarthmore’s 141st Commencement ceremony June 2. Entrepreneur and humanitarian Tralance Addy ’69 will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree, and writer and social activist Lorene Cary will be awarded an honorary doctor of arts.
Throughout his career, Tralance Addy has found creative [...]

Standing in a meeting room 27 stories high overlooking Midtown Manhattan, surrounded by Swarthmore students and alumni, I began to revise my view of the College community—from one focused on campus life to a realization that opportunities after Swarthmore are endless, like the city lights fading into the distance.
This epiphany, at a reception for students and [...]