Step into the office of Christopher Densmore, and you’ll encounter the sublime and the ridiculous. Sublime would be A Peaceable Kingdom, a painting by Edward Hicks that hangs across from Densmore’s desk in Friends Historical Library.
Ridiculous is the adjacent wax bust of Whittier Friends Church member Richard Nixon, acquired from a professor at the State [...]

Andrew Hauze ’04 is alarmingly still in his desk chair. Brow furrowed, finger to chin, his vibrant, chatty, and decidedly musical demeanor is reduced to pianissimo. He ponders, for a full 45 seconds, just who he can call his favorite composer. Somewhere outside, a truck is beeping, backing up. Finally he decides: Mozart.
He has much [...]

Patricia Reilly breezes into her cluttered Beardsley office one afternoon, gently cradling a steaming teacup. She apologizes for the piles of thick art books, stacked amid framed student artwork, explaining that her Parrish Hall office—where she’s spent the last two of her three-year appointment as associate provost for faculty development—is undergoing renovation.
She’s just returned from [...]

There are still hints of the South in Philip Weinstein—the slightly honeyed tone of his speech, his politeness and patience. Generations of seminar students have sat in his living room five minutes from campus listening to that voice—lifting up the lyrical words of William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, the nervy humor of Franz Kafka as [...]

Why is Aurora Camacho de Schmidt so tranquila?
Because she retired from Swarthmore this summer after more than 20 years of teaching Spanish language and Latin American literature.
Because she is as well-known for her activism and efforts on behalf of immigrants and indigenous peoples as she is for her love of testimonial literature and the [...]

Visitors to the Swarthmore campus often make the Welcome Center in the Benjamin West House their first stop. Helpful staff members, neat stacks of literature, and the faint hum of a police radio greet newcomers to campus. Often, they also encounter the Public Safety Department’s affable new director, Michael Hill.
An Army reservist for more than [...]

Still sparse enough that it echoes, Satya Nelms’ newly renovated office is the polar opposite of its inhabitant who is warm, inviting, and given to bubbly, infectious bursts of laughter. Nelms, the College’s first wellness coordinator, emits a glow from within that makes even the most hugging averse shrug and go with it when she [...]

Donna Jo Napoli leads a double life: as a college professor and an author of children’s fiction. Typically, her identities never intersect, but this summer, Napoli found them in perfect harmony when she was extended an invitation to Trinity College Dublin as a Long Room Hub Fellow. The fellowship is humanities based, and an invitation [...]

It’s hard to believe Randall Exon, professor of studio art, is approaching his 30th year of teaching at Swarthmore. His looks—especially his lush locks—his energy, and his forward momentum as a teacher and painter suggest it just couldn’t be so.
A proud product of the Great Midwest, Exon exhibits an unguarded nature that is typical of [...]

Karlene Burrell-McRae’s voice has a beguiling lilt that reveals her Jamaican origins, and her clothing displays boldness—in style and hue.
She became the director of the Black Cultural Center and dean of the junior class in July, after serving as the University of Pennsylvania’s Black Cultural Center director since 2000. She immersed herself in all things [...]