In her first public speech (listen: speech) of the new academic year—and her newborn presidency—President Rebecca Chopp asserted Swarthmore’s Quaker heritage and told members of the Class of 2013 at their First Collection that “Our founders believed that everyone should tend his/her own conscience, to ‘mind the light’ within oneself. Tonight, we induct you into [...]
At its Sept. 26 meeting, the College’s Board of Managers took new steps in an ongoing effort to bring Swarthmore’s future spending in line with expectations of future income. Although the College will still need to reduce its overall budget significantly, the message from the Board—shared with the campus community in an e-mail from President [...]
On Aug. 26, members of the Class of 2013 gathered at dusk in the Scott Amphitheater for an assembly that has become a rite of initiation for all Swarthmore freshmen for the past 15 years—the First Collection.
First Collection in its current form was introduced in 1994 by Andrew Feldman ’96, now senior policy adviser in [...]
Information supplied by the Office of Admissions on Sept. 17. Enrollment statistics became final on Oct. 1.
Tree swallows are not rare birds. In fact, they’re quite common across North America, reaching farther north than any other swallow to nest and breed in Alaska. That’s where two Swarthmore students studied them this summer, performing separate but overlapping research projects near Fairbanks with Assistant Professor of Biology Julie Hagelin.
Hagelin, an expert in avian [...]
We know from the old Beatles song that money can’t buy us love, but might it buy better attendance and grades in school? According to some school officials in cities such as Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and New York, paying students for higher performance motivates them to increase their effort and stay in school.
Not everyone agrees. [...]
“It’s been a big year for Darwin!” says Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology Scott Gilbert. And it hasn’t been too bad for Gilbert either. He has become a spokes-person for “evolutionary developmental biology,” a new discipline that studies how changes in embryonic development can create new anatomical structures that can be selected.
In March, in [...]
Swarthmore has received a welcome boost from the George I. Alden Trust in the form of a challenge grant to purchase state-of-the art equipment for the Department of Engineering’s instructional laboratories.
The Alden Trust will match every $2 raised by Swarthmore with $1 of its own up to $100,000. The terms of the challenge stipulate that [...]
Students returning to campus this fall found that the Foreign Study Office has undergone several changes. In addition to relocating to Cunningham House, the office has been renamed. Now known as the Off-Campus Study Office, it meets needs for all study opportunities abroad.
Patricia Martin became the new director of off-campus study in July. With 25 [...]
Jane Abell ’11 began learning ’ammiyah the moment she landed in Damascus. After all, it was one reason why she came.
“At Swarthmore, we learn fus’ha, or Modern Standard Arabic, the dialect most frequently used in literary texts, media, and academia,” Abell says. Colloquial’ Arabic—’ammiyah—refers to the many different dialects of spoken Arabic in the Middle [...]
