Ask Big Questions, a new campus-wide initiative started by Provost Peter Uvin, began last Tuesday. This is the newest of Provost Uvin’s projects to foster as stronger sense of community and promote dialogue, exchange and reflection.
“The aim of Ask Big Question is to bring out campus together in a meaningful way,” said Tania Dias, strategic planning assistant to the provost. “By listening and sharing our stories, we form new friendships, we understand each other better and we grow into a stronger, tighter community.”
Assistant Professor of History Vanessa Walker received her B.A. from Whitman College. She got her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published work on 1970s human rights movements and is currently working on a book about human rights policies in the 1970s.
The tweed blazers and snow boots were out in full force at last night’s faculty meeting, the first of the spring semester and the first since the sudden departure of former Dean of Students Jim Larimore.
President Biddy Martin began her remarks to the faculty with an update on the forthcoming Humanities Center, to be constructed in Frost Library, and noted that she announced to the Board of Trustees that the College will support its construction.
Senior Christopher Finch has been named one of 14 American students to receive the Churchill Scholarship, which will allow him to spend next year pursuing research at the University of Cambridge. The biochemistry major plans to work at the lab of Cambridge Professor Alison Smith, where he hopes to learn more about the ways in which plants can be used as a source of bioenergy.
Finch found out that he had been selected as a finalist over Interterm, when he received an email inviting him to participate in an interview for the scholarship program.
When I read through my first draft of this article, incomplete, written over a month ago and forgotten in the crevices of one of my many draft article ideas folders, I nearly threw up my tea in my mouth. “On the dialectic of intellectual elitism and egalitarian accessibility” was my working title, and it just got worse from there on in. It was written in vague, hazy academese, with liberal arts college major words like “paradigmatic,” “praxis” and everyone’s favorite, “problematic”, cushioned in every single sentence.
There is always something a little magical about snow days. They are a serendipitous holiday — a fortuitous chance to enjoy the idyllic side of the winter season before the snow turns to grimy slush and ice — and for those of us who grew up in the northeast, evoke a certain nostalgia for grade school. Nonetheless, while many of us rejoiced at having our classes cancelled last week because of the snow, it is important to remember that not everyone got off so easy.
An especially creative portion of the first-year class has been recently consumed by a passionate interest in interior design. An unprecedented artistic development on the first-year quad, the foray into new and experimental methods of the art of turning spaces into practical, aesthetically-pleasing quarters is just now being recognized as a tangible venture. David Lander ’17 is largely credited within those circles most obsessed with the craft as spearheading the projects, most of which have been executed in North Dormitory.
