During Spring break, students and faculty from the 360° “China and the Environment” traveled to the world’s most populous nation to see firsthand how industry and government there are attempting to balance their rapidly developing economy and environmental concerns.

Among the places they visited was the Beijing Cement Plant.

Professor of Economics Michael Rock on the visit:

“Cement production is the most energy intensive and CO₂ emitting industry in China. The Bejing plant is among the most energy efficient and least polluting plants in China. It is also one of the few that uses alternative fuel and raw materials (AFR) in China.

Using AFR is one of the last additional things China’s cement industry can do to save energy and reduce CO₂ emissions.

China’s cement industry is as energy efficient as the U.S.’s, but it is less efficient than Germany’s and Japan’s. China produces 2.6 billion metric tons of cement which is more than 60 percent of total world cement production. By comparison the U.S. produces less than 200 million metric tons. In 2010, China’s cement industry saved almost 1 billion metric tons of CO₂ by modernizing the industry and closing thousands of small energy intensive and very polluting vertical shaft kiln plants and replacing them with large rotary kilns of the type we visited in Beijing.”

See the below slide show or visit this online gallery for photos from the visit to the plant as well as images taken at the Great Wall of China.

For more on Bryn Mawr’s 360° program, including a list of Fall 2014 courses, visit the 360° website. Applications are due April 9th at noon. Informational teas will be held Monday, march 31, 4-5:30 p.m., Quita Woodward Room; Tuesday, April 1, 4:30-6 p.m., Sharpless; and Wednesday, April 2, 3-5 p.m., London Room.

To mark Brn Mwr’s name change, lipogrammatic scholars from around the world will gather at the College on Thursday, April 17, for “The Hegemony of the Vowel: Incontinence and Lipogrammatics.”

Conference sessions will include:

• The Habermasian Response: Communicative Ir-Rationality?
• Beyond Ablautics: Whither Language in the Post-Voweletic Context
• Dsfnctnl Functions: It’s Still Math

There will also be several special interdisciplinary sessions such as:

• RuThLuUus Language: The Periodic Table Under Siege
• Vowel to Consonant Ratios: an International Comparative Analysis

For more information, or to register, email lipogrammatic@brnmwr.edu.

Just a few short weeks since being named Bryn Mawr’s President, Kim Cassidy has announced her first major initiative as leader of the prestigious women’s college.

Effective immediately, Bryn Mawr College will be known as “Brn Mwr,” dropping all the vowels from its name.

“This is the age of Twitter, every character counts,” said Cassidy in making the announcement. “And really, what’s the difference, no one can pronounce our name anyway.”

Reaction from faculty regarding the change was mixed.

“It’s about time the College catches on,” said Assistant Professor of Geology Pedro Marenco. “ Vowels are so overrated. Geologists have been getting rid of vowels for a very long time.”

Arguing against the change were English Associate Professors Kate Thomas and Bethany Schneider.

“We would be shortening classic works of literature in devastating ways,” warned Thomas, chair of the department.

“My job would be worth nothing,” added Schneider.

To see the faculty members’ full reactions, watch the video below.

However response from students has been overwhelmingly positive, said Cassidy.

“This is about embracing the language of today’s young people. So to test the idea out I sent texts to some of our most tech-savvy students,” says Cassidy. “There were a few who balked at the idea but most were incredibly enthusiastic. Several sent me texts saying ‘Wow, That’s Fantastic!’ At least I assume that’s what they meant. Like I said, every character counts and students tend to use a lot of acronyms when they text.”

February 28, 2014 quietly marked a milestone for sustainability at Bryn Mawr. The date was the College’s first day as an institution operating on 100 percent wind power, thanks to the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs).

RECs are sold by renewable energy generators who use the proceeds to fund industry operations and projects. A REC is calculated by considering the renewable fuel source (in the College’s case, wind power), facility emissions, location, and operation and the date the electricity that produced the REC was generated. So while traditional electricity still flows through campus lines, each megawatt hour (MWh) is offset by a REC.

“We are supporting a movement for our country to move away from fossil fuels and towards a more renewable energy source,” said Director of Facilities Services Glenn Smith. “We want to be able to say that we as an institution think this is the right thing to be doing: it’s right for our country, it’s right for our environment.”

Previously, the College purchased RECs on 50 percent of its energy usage as part of a commitment to reduce its carbon footprint by 10 percent stemming from both its status as a signatory to the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment signed by President Nancy Vickers in 2007 and the 2011 Bryn Mawr Climate Action Plan (PDF) signed by President Jane McAuliffe.

Five years ago, the College contracted with an environmental firm to calculate its carbon footprint and to identify areas where it could reduce and conserve resources. The results of that study found that 57 percent of the College’s carbon footprint was the result of its electricity purchase since Pennsylvania generates most of its power via coal. “To really get a meaningful reduction in our carbon footprint meant we had to do something in the area of how we purchase electricity,” Smith said.

According to Chief Administrative Officer and Interim Chief Financial Officer Jerry Berenson, several factors aligned to allow the move to 100 percent, including student activism. “We were affected by the students on the sustainability committee: they saw this as a real priority,” he said.

During a session on sustainability at the October Board of Trustees meeting, the prospect of switching to 100 percent renewable energy garnered positive support from board members, students, faculty, and staff present. Though the College was halfway through a three-year electricity contract, the administration agreed to seriously pursue the complete switch to renewable energy. “Through a lot of our conservation efforts, we had a little bit of money left in our budget for electricity so we decided we could afford to buy 100 percent wind power when we looked at it again,” Berenson said.

Mathematics Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies Victor Donnay, who serves as the chair of the College Sustainability Leadership Group believes Bryn Mawr can play a valuable role in the transition to a more sustainable energy system by strategically leveraging its resources. “A goal of our committee was for sustainability to become one of the factors that is considered in the College’s decision-making process. The decision to buy electricity from wind power is evidence that we are making good progress in this direction,” he said.

Along with the use of LED lighting throughout campus and continued efficiency evaluations of mechanical systems, Berenson says the College will continue to seek out sustainable opportunities. An energy study conducted last year found 30 percent of the College’s energy usage stemmed from the Park Science building. “We’re planning a renovation of the science building and with that renovation, we hope to implement many of the energy-saving items that were identified in the study,” he said.

Additionally, Smith says the College plans to conduct a follow-up carbon footprint study and has hired the same firm to do a re-measurement. “We’re very optimistic that we will have met our 10 percent goal and I’m hoping we will have met that easily and that it will be well over 10 percent.”

The theater program of Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges will present Carlo Gozzi’s play, The Serpent Woman, opening Friday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m. in Goodhart Hall.

In this funny, fast-paced play, fairy Cherestani and mortal king Farruscad fall in love, and when they wed, Cherestani makes Farruscad swear that he will never look into the box containing the secret of her fairy origins. When Farruscad eventually succumbs to his curiosity about the box, Cherestani and his life with her are ripped away from him, and her evil fairy sisters make him perform a torturous — but hilarious — series of tests to earn her back.

The play, which is freely adapted by James Dobner and directed by Lecturer in the Arts Program Aaron Cromie, is a rarely performed tragicomic fable originally written in 1762. It is part of the theatrical tradition of commedia dell’arte and is characterized by the use of masked, stock characters, and highly physical style of comic acting.

Ticket information, performance schedule, and cast list, can be found on the Bryn Mawr Theater website. See below for photos from on of the production’s rehearsals.

Starting in 1938 and continuing to this day, The Study of Adult Development is one of the longest-running and influential longitudinal studies of human development ever undertaken. For 76 years, two groups of men have been studied from adolescence into late life to identify the predictors of healthy aging.

For more than 12 years, Bryn Mawr Professor of Psychology Marc Schulz has been working closely with data from the study. This is the third major life span development study that Schulz has contributed to and he has become so adept at analyzing the reams of information gathered in these long-term studies that he’s now being called on by other researchers looking to create similar projects.

Schulz and Robert J. Waldinger, who heads the Laboratory of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital and directs the study, recently traveled to Chile where they gave a series of lectures at the University of Desarrollo’s campuses in Santiago and Concepcion and consulted with a group of researchers led by Dr. Ramon Florenzano hoping to launch a similar study in that country.

“I have been fortunate to be able to gain experience with statistical and methodological approaches that are particularly useful in longitudinal studies that follow people across time,” says Schulz.  “Helping researchers to fine-tune their own studies of development and adaptation across the lifespan is very exciting.  The group in Chile is going to conduct a study that I think will be a model for researchers in other countries to adopt.”

This was the third time in recent years that Schulz has been asked to do this sort of consultation. In 2012 he spent three months teaching and consulting with psychologists at the University of Porto in Portugal.  This work was supported by a Visiting Scientist Grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.  He also collaborated with researchers at the University of Fribourg during a 2009 sabbatical in Switzerland.

Schulz’s work with the Study of Adult Development, which focuses on connections over time among intimate relationships, emotion processes and health, has created a number of research opportunities for his students.

Students have worked with him to identify and code information from recently digitized files associated with the study that will provide researchers with even more relationship relevant data on the more than 700 participants in the study.

“There’s a lot of research that suggests that, particularly for men, being in a good relationship is protective of your health. Perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that the quality of the relationship is just as important as the mere existence of a relationship.  So any information we can gather that gives us a more nuanced understanding of the relationships these men had is extremely valuable,” says Schulz.

In one recent example of this work, Schulz and Sarah Buonanno ‘14, examined something he calls “quality adjusted relationship years”  or “QALYs.”

“QALYs are a way to take into account not just the length of a marriage but to also simultaneously account for the quality of that marriage when considering its impact on the health of family members,“ says Schulz.

Ph.D. candidate Sarah Scheckter, who Schulz advised, has also recently done work connected to the study.

For one of Schulz’s most recent projects, “What’s Love got to Do With It,” researchers  interviewed participants in the study for a few minutes each night over the course of several nights and asked them a host of questions, most of which had to do with their relationships.

Each night they also asked participants a different “life review” question like “Do you have any advice for the next generation?” or “Looking back, what role did your spiritual beliefs play in your life?”

Scheckter, who has successfully defended her dissertation and will speak at this year’s Commencement ceremony,  did a quantitative analysis of the words the study participants used to compare how the two different socioeconomic groups in the study talk about these issues and see how these styles of talking about one’s life might relate to well-being in late life. She also did a more qualitative study of the prominent themes in the responses provided by these men.

“The result was this really fine piece of scholarship that’s also an interesting narrative of what these men had to say about their lives,” says Schulz.

Next up for Schulz is a project that deals with the children of the participants of the original study. He and co-principal investigator Waldinger recently received a  five-year grant from the National Institute on Aging which will examine the effects of childhood adversity and parental models of aging on the health of the next generation of the original study men. This is the second major NIA grant that Waldinger and Schulz have secured to continue this research.

Bryn Mawr’s Psychology Department offers courses from among a wide variety of fields in psychology: clinical, cognitive, developmental, physiological and social. Majors can focus on more specialized areas through advanced coursework, seminars, and especially through supervised research. For more, visit the department website.

The April 1 news that Bryn Mawr was dropping the vowels in its name to be more “Twitter-friendly” was picked up by several media outlets including Inside Higher Ed, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and even the The Virginian-Pilot.

The Inside Higher Ed article got so much of a response that the editors posted followup article on April 2 assuring any nervous readers that Bryn Mawr, was, in fact, keeping its vowels.

From the article:
“We thought we dropped enough hints about Bryn Mawr College’s plan to drop vowels from its name (and perhaps literature). But we did hear from some readers who were concerned. So to be clear, the college is not eliminating vowels; it was just having fun on April Fools’ Day.”

Bryn Mawr students will be “eating fresh and eating local” on Thursday, April 10, as Dining Services and the Sustainable Food Committee present a “100-Mile Meal.”

As the name implies, the meal will be made up entirely of food produced within 100 miles of campus. Among the items on the menu are Colombian roasted chicken using birds from Eberly’s Farm in Stevens, Pa., to a Fudge Chocolate Triple Layer Cake baked at Pellman’s Bakery in Lancaster County.

In addition to the special dinner served from 4-8 p.m., there will also be a presentation about fair trade coffee by Keith Lemnios, CEO of Sun Coffee Roasters. Lemnios will be speaking in the London Room from 4:30-6 p.m.

“Institutions of Higher Education are becoming leaders in sustainability initiatives,” says Assistant Director of Dining Services Richard Clow. “Dining is often the area which can help the campus community accomplish its goals. By selecting the way our food is purchased, delivered, prepared, and disposed of we can reduce the impact on our environment.”

For the “100-Mile Meal,” Bryn Mawr cooks and managers look at what is available in the local market, often contacting the farms and distributors to ask questions about their foods.  From there, they develop recipes that best utilize the ingredients to provide an interesting and balanced menu for students.

“Not only is this great from an environmental standpoint but the food is absolutely fantastic,” says Clow.

In addition to winning numerous awards for the quality of its fare, Bryn Mawr’s Dining Services has long been at the forefront of environmentally sustainable food service practices.

The College composts all food waste from Dining Halls and the restaurant at the Wyndham Alumnae House and provides recycling in all areas. All on-campus retail food operations now use compostable disposables and provide ceramic service for “dining in.”  Dining Services purchases local foods wherever possible and offers locally sourced seasonal fruit; participates in the Meatless Monday national program, and limits take out availability to lower the carbon footprint of its operations.  All food service operations have been “tray-less” for several years, which helps cut food waste, conserve water, and reduce energy consumption.

Dining Services partners with student groups to help direct all of its sustainability efforts in a collaborative manner.

For more information about Bryn Mawr’s Dining Services, visit their website, or “like” them on Facebook.

At Bryn Mawr, we often talk about how a liberal arts education prepares students to tackle the complex, interdisciplinary questions of the world.

Anthropologist, sociologist, and physician Didier Fassin, who will give a lecture titled “The Moral World of the Police” at Bryn Mawr on Tuesday, April 22, at 4:15 p.m. in Dalton 300, provides a prime example of the sort of  broad-based, big-picture, thinkers needed now more than ever, says Sociology Chair David Karen, who helped arrange his visit.

Fassin’s research has spanned many fields as well as the globe.  He has done work in, among other places, Senegal, Ecuador, and South Africa and his scholarship has addressed topics as varied as AIDS, undocumented immigrants, policing, and the management of poor patients.  He is currently proposing a new field – critical moral anthropology –that, according to Karen,”is providing policy makers new insights as they debate issues of security, punishment, and inequality.”

“Using the insights from a number of disciplines allows Fassin to look at the world critically and to be innovative and creative in thinking about global social problems and their solutions,” adds Karen. “We see his visit as modeling and reinforcing what is at the heart of a Bryn Mawr education.”

Sociology majors have shown great interest in the topics that Fassin has researched, as they flock to courses on “Punishment and Social Order,” “Perspectives on Urban Poverty,” “Marginals and Outsiders,” and “Sociology of International Development.”

In addition to pursuing graduate studies in sociology, recent graduates of the program have gone on to careers in social work, public health, development, and education.

The Department of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College offers students particular opportunities to study societies of the Global North and South, the relation of individuals and groups to society and culture, and the contribution of sociological perspectives to formation of public opinion and debate. To find out more, visit the department website.

In addition to the Sociology Department, Fassin’s lectures is also being sponsored by the Bryn Mawr College 1902 Lecture Series, the Center for Social Sciences, and the Anthropology, Growth and Structure of Cities, French and Francophone, and History departments.

While there appears to be no evidence that the recent shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, had anything to do with combat-related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), some media reports have highlighted this diagnosis and reinforced the stereotype of the dangerous, war-scarred veteran.

“Military service is an inherently stressful occupation, and for those service members who have deployed to combat, some having served multiple deployments during the last 12 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are real challenges associated with their reintegration back into community and family life.” says Graduate School of Social Work Professor Jim Martin, a retired Army colonel whose scholarship, teaching, and public service focus on military and veteran behavioral health issues.

Martin goes on to say:

“Our society often stigmatizes the mentally ill as dangerous, in particular those members of our veteran population challenged by symptoms of post-traumatic stress and/or mild traumatic brain injury.  The facts are that mentally ill individuals are not inherently dangerous and neither are our ‘wounded-warriors’ who may be experiencing the invisible wounds of war.

We need to acknowledge that whether or not this particular incident at Fort Hood was associated with any mental health issues, the vast majority of our service members and Veterans, even those carrying the residue of war, have and will continue to lead productive and successful lives.  For those who need mental health assistance, it is critical that the door is always open and that appropriate services are available.”

Martin recently participated in the planning and delivery of a four-day clinical training titled “Helping Vets Get Help.” Sponsored by the Philadelphia Council for Relationships, the training brought together more than 80 mental health professionals from the Tri-State area.

Recent courses taught by Martin have included: Clinical Social Work Methods I & II; and Stress & Trauma.

Martin’s 26-year-career in the Army Medical Department included clinical and research as well as senior management (command) and policy assignments. Martin was the senior social-work officer in the Persian Gulf Theater of operations during the first Gulf War and edited The Gulf War and Mental Health: A Comprehensive Guide.

The GSSWSR is one of the nation’s oldest academic social-work programs. The school provides a learning environment that is supportive and intellectually rigorous, encouraging critical thinking and the expression of social-work values through classes, field-based training, research, and active civic engagement in collaboration with the College as a whole.

Angie Chen ’16 has developed a free Blue Bus app that is currently available for Android phones. The app provides users with access to each day’s updated Blue Bus schedule, as well as an option to search for a pick up at a specific time and date.

Angie, a computer science major who created the app independently of her classes, developed it as a substitute for the online transportation schedule, which can be difficult to use on a mobile device. It was at the Tri-Co Hackaton, where Angie was part of the first place team, that she was inspired to create an app that provided the up-to-date Blue Bus schedule. Another group created a server, where someone looking for the bus schedule could send a text and receive a list of the next series of Blue Bus times. After considering this idea, she decided that she could develop an app that served the same purpose. “It made me think, it’s not only me who wanted the app,” says Angie. “Other people might also benefit from having an easy way to check the schedule.”

In addition, Angie is in a fellowship with the Center for Science and Information, where she is developing a project evaluating the effectiveness of Google Glass. For the project, she needed to develop apps for Google Glass, which is based on an Android platform. “That was my motivation to learning Android development in the first place,” says Angie. “Otherwise, I probably would have started with an iPhone app, but since I’m in the program I have an incentive to learn Android.”

This is the first app that Angie has developed and according to her, an iPhone version of the Blue Bus app will become available during the summer. Android users can find the app by searching “Angie Yunqi Chen” or “Bryn Mawr College” in the Google Play Store, while simply searching for “Blue Bus” may result in dozens of irrelevant apps.

After a brutal, bone-chilling winter, Bryn Mawr’s campus has finally bloomed! Almost overnight, cherry blossoms have opened, the weather has warmed up, and students are getting to enjoy their Spring semester here on campus.

Each of these photos was taken by a member of the Bryn Mawr community and posted to Instagram with the #BMCbanter hashtag. Follow the College on Twitter and Instagram and use the #BMCbanter hashtag on your own Bryn Mawr-related photos and tweets!

Thirteen members of the Class of 2015 have been named Hanna Holborn Gray Research Fellows and will spend their summer on research interests spanning Medieval Iberia to 2020 Tokyo.

The Andrew J. Mellon Foundation has given Bryn Mawr College a grant in honor of Bryn Mawr alumna Hanna Holborn Gray, ’50 who served as chair of the foundation’s Board of Trustees. These funds are used to support undergraduate research in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.

Up to 15 students are selected each summer and have the opportunity to spend the summer conducting independent research. Students receive fellowships of $4,500 while they do research that can either be the beginning of the senior thesis or a project that stands alone, but is relevant to their intellectual interests.

Meet this year’s Hanna Holborn Gray Research Fellowship Recipients:

Tabatha Barton ’15

Research Project: The presence of minor agrarian divinities in the harvest festivals of Rome and their relationship to Saturn. A study of the literature and archaeological evidence from the Roman forum beginning with the archaic through the early empire.

Stephanie Bredbenner ’15

Research Project: A Cultural Crossroads:  Coexistence, Conflict, and Intellectual Exchange in Medieval Iberia

Maya Felman ’15

Research Project: St. Clare’s in the Colonies: Echoes of Enid Blyton

Sarah Ferrieri ’15

Research Project: Depictions of Disease and Medicine in the Art of Colonial Latin America

Sofia Javed ’15

Research Project: Hindu-Islamic Relations Post the Partition: The Conflict in the Population’s Collective Memory

Xue Jin ’15

Research Project: The Rhetoric of the 2020 Olympics and the Sustainable Tokyo Concept

Ailun (Ellen) Li ’15

Research Project:  Who is the Lawbreaker? Sino-Hong Kong Relationship under the One Country Two Systems Policy

Allegra Tomass  Massaro ’15

Research Project: Philanthropies in Philadelphia: Understanding Their Role in the Urban Agenda

Eileen Morgan ’15

Research Project: A Taste for the Past: Medieval Food and Modern Palates

Leigh Peterson ’15

Research Project: Appropriating Iconography: Roger II Use of Byzantine Imperial Iconography in Royal Norman-Sicilian Architecture

Angela  Rosenberg ’15

Research Project:  A Novel Reboot: Videogames as a Narrative Form

Pamudu Tennakoon ’15

Research Project: Postcolonial Elites and Colonial Architecture

Diana Corrado ’15

Research Project: Does Anything Lie Beneath Everything?:  Sincerity and Authenticity in the Age of Ideology

Professor of English and Director of Digital Research and Teaching Katherine Rowe discussed the connections between Shakespeare and Netflix drama House of Cards on a podcast for The Week. In the podcast, Rowe addresses the interactions between Claire and Frank Underwood, points our Shakespeare inspired inside jokes, and discusses Frank’s use of directly address the audience with privileged knowledge.

President Kim Cassidy and Jacqueline Handy ’14 of New York. Handy received the Dr. Hayley S. Thomas Prize in Diversity.

At a ceremony on Wednesday, April 23, President Kim Cassidy announced the winners of a host of awards given to Bryn Mawr students. The awards and scholarships cited include honors bestowed by Bryn Mawr as well as those given by outside organizations. Here is the complete list of awards and honorees:

National Awards

Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship
Chandrea Peng ’15 of Massachusetts
Midley Theork ’15 of Massachusetts

Davis Projects for Peace
Huong Giang Le ’15 of Vietnam

Fulbright Fellowship
Madiha Irfan ’14 of Pennsylvania
Katherine Marcoux ’14 of New York

St. Andrew’s Foundation Scholarship
Brittani Ivan ’16 of Oregon

Watson Fellowship
Ashley Hahn ’14 of New Jersey

Undergraduate Academic Prizes and Awards

Charles S. Hinchman Memorial Scholarship
Orsola Capovilla-Searle ’15 of Mexico
Vanessa Felso ’15 of Georgia

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
Kathiana Abraham ’16 of Massachusetts
Lucy Carreno-Roca ’16 of Texas
Maria Morrero (McBride) of Pennsylvania
Rochelle Waite ’16  of Massachusetts
Rachel Weissler ’16  of Pennsylvania

Elizabeth S. Shippen Scholarship in Foreign Language
Isabelle Wozniak ’15 of Pennsylvania

Elizabeth S. Shippen Scholarship in Science
Carolyne Face ’15 of Delaware

Undergraduate Co-Curricular Prizes and Awards

McPherson Undergraduate Award for Excellence
Amanda Beardall ’14 of Oregon
Esther Chiang ’14 of Massachusetts
Ashley Hahn ’14 of New Jersey

Dr. Hayley S. Thomas Prize in Diversity
Lauren Footman ’14 of Pennsylvania
Jacqueline Handy ’14 of New York
Ana Mejia ’15 of California

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Awards

Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (German Academic Exchange)
Katherine Rochester, Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art

Doris Sill Carland Excellence in Teaching Award
Kristen Recine, Ph.D. Candidate in Physics
Abbe Walker, Ph.D. Candidate in Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies
Michele Seiler, Ph.D. Candidate in Chemistry

Koç Fellowship 2014–2015
Emre Kuruçayirli, Ph.D. Candidate in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology

McPherson Award for Excellence
Ben Williams, Ph.D. Candidate in Chemistry
Emily Moore, Ph.D. Candidate in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology

Mrs. Giles Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities
Maeve Doyle, Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art
Johanna Best, Ph.D. Candidate in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research Awards

Shahbanu Goldberg, M.S.S. ’00, Award
Lauri Haines, M.S.S. ’14, of Pennsylvania
Lindsey Turr, M.S.S./M.L.S.P. ’14, of Pennsylvania

McPherson Award for Excellence
Sharon Kimber, M.S.S./M.L.S.P. ’14, of Pennsylvania
Shani Robin, M.S.S. ’15, of Pennsylvania

Kevin J. Robinson Award
Norman Saunders, M.S.S. ’14, of Pennsylvania
Marketta Kelly, M.S.S. ’14, of Pennsylvania

Departmental Awards

Berle Memorial Prize in German Literature
Zeina Husseini ’14 of Israel

Bolton Senior Award
Janine Holloway ’14 of D.C.
Amy Robles ’14 of California

Mary Louise Cookson Prize in Mathematics
Ivy Gluck ’14 of New York

Frederica de Laguna Award
Lucy Gleysteen ‘14 of Massachusetts

Elizabeth Duane Gillespie Fund for Scholarships in American History
Julianna Conlan ’15 of Maryland

Pauline Jones Prize in French
Isabelle Wozniak ’15 of Pennsylvania

Anna Lerah Keys Memorial Prize
Avary Taylor ’15 of Florida

Sheelah Kilroy Memorial Scholarship in English
Esteniolla Maitre ’15 of Massachusetts

MIT Lincoln Labs Research Award
Computer Science
Yijun Zhou ’15 of China

Math
Katherine Engelman ’14 of Colorado
Freda Li ’14 of New York

Physics
Estella Barbosa de Souza ’14 of Brazil

Elinor Nahm in Intermediate Italian
Stephanie Castro ’16 of Illinois

Elinor Nahm in Introductory Italian
Isabella Ballerini ’17 of New York
Isabelle Frosch ’17 of Massachusetts

Elinor Nahm in Italian Language & Literature
Cynthia Columbus ’14 of Massachusetts
Laura Silla ’14 of Colorado
Sofia-Bella Vitale-Gill ’14 of Minnesota

Elinor Nahm Prize in Russian Language and Linguistics
Gizem Aydin ’14 of Pennsylvania

Elinor Nahm Prize in Russian Literature and Culture
Bluma Millman ’14 of Maryland

Elisabeth Packard Fund
Tabatha Barton ’15 of Pennsylvania

Charlotte Angas Scott Prize in Mathematics
Emelie Curl ’14 of New Jersey
Jeanne Mirbey ’14 of France

Katherine Stains Prize Fund in Classical Literature
Zoe Fox ’14 of Maryland

Anna Pell Wheeler Prize in Mathematics
Zhuoman (Sophie) Zhao ’14 of China

Jane Wilkinson Arts Prize
Camilla Dely ’15 of South Africa

Literary Prizes

Academy of American Poets Prize
Hema Surendranathan ’14 of Malaysia
Honorable Mention
Martha (Mattie) Wechsler ’14 of Massachusetts

Seymour Adelman Poetry Award
Rachel Hampton ’16 of New York
Honorable Mention
Erin Saladin ’16 of Idaho

Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize
Hannah Henderson-Charnow ’17 of New York
Honorable Mention
Rachel Hampton ’16 of New York
Allison Rodgers ’15 of New Jersey

Katherine Fullerton Gerould Memorial Prize
Martha (Mattie) Wechsler ’14 of Massachusetts
Honorable Mention
Megan Thomson Connor ’14 of New York

Richmond Lattimore Prize for Poetic Translation
Sage Farha ’17 of Kansas

Alexandra Peschka Prize
Hannah Hynes-Mumford ’16 of Washington
Honorable Mention
Ava Hawkinson ’16 of California
Erica Rice ’17 of Pennsylvania

Anne Kirschbaum Winkelman Literary Prize
Neha Kamran ’15 of Pakistan
Honorable Mention
Erin Penney ’16 of Tennessee
Allison Rodgers ’15 of New Jersey

Other Bryn Mawr Awards

Seymour Adelman Book Collector’s Award
Karuna Doraiswamy ’14 of Pennsylvania
Sophie Mankins ’14 of Massachusetts

Hester Ann Corner Prize for Distinction in Literature
Katherine Littrell ’14 of Australia
Taylor Stone ’14 of Missouri

Hester Ann Corner Prize for Distinction in Literature—Foreign Language
Rayna Allonce ’15 of Pennsylvania
Laura Silla ’14 of Colorado

Judy Loomis Gould Scholarship
Claudia Keep ’15 of Pennsylvania
Hannah Nacheman ’15 of New Jersey

Maria L. Eastman Brooke Hall Memorial Scholarship
Kaitlin Nordhoff ’15 of Pennsylvania
Xiaomeng (Summer) Xia ’15 of China

The Georgette Chapman Phillips ’81 Scholarship
Lindsey Foster ’16 of Washington

Gail Ann Schweiter Prize
Qing Du ’15 of Pennsylvania
Eleanor Frye ’14 of Pennsylvania
Anne Grammer ’16 of Massachusetts

Thomas Raeburn White Scholarship
Lindsey Foster ’16 of Washington

Times Higher Education reporter Chris Parr recently sat down with Bryn Mawr President Kim Cassidy to talk about a range of issues including the College’s involvement with the recent White House summit on college access and its success at creating women scientists.

From the article:

“We don’t go around saying ‘you are a woman and you can be a scientist’, it’s in the water here. That’s the default. Who is going to be the leader in the lab, who is going to raise their hand, who’s going to talk? It’s women. There is no other option and so nobody makes a big deal of it because it is just the way it is.”

For Rachel Hager ’15, the effects of climate change aren’t just something she hears about on the news. Working with Assistant Professor Thomas Mozdzer, the junior biology major has been studying Phragmites australis—an invasive species that some have dubbed a Super Weed—to understand the impact of rising CO₂ in the air and nitrogen in the soil on the plant’s morphology and ability to invade under current and future conditions.

Rachel’s research has taken her to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, where Mozdzer initiated a long term global change experiment. She tracked the growth of Phragmites under several experimental conditions: some plots have elevated nitrogen, simulating nitrogen pollution (aka excessive fertilization), others simulate year 2100 levels of CO₂, and a third set simulate the combined effects of elevated CO₂and nitrogen pollution. Rachel’s findings showed that plant growth increased with either elevated CO₂ or simulated nitrogen pollution, but that a combination of CO₂ and nitrogen stimulated growth still more.

In March, when Rachel presented her findings at a meeting of the Atlantic Estuarine Research Society, she was given the Outstanding Undergraduate Student Oral Presentation award for her talk, “Phragmites australis functional traits and carbon fixation are affected by anthropogenic climate change.”

“This is a huge accomplishment for Rachel that speaks highly of her great work,” says Mozdzer. “There aren’t a lot of undergraduate students who receive these types of honors.”

At the same meeting, Caitlin Bauer ’16—another of Mozdzer’s undergraduate researchers—presented a poster on her research into the effects of chronic nutrient pollution on plants. She, too, received a nod as having the second-best poster presentation from an undergraduate student.

Joshua Caplan, a post-doctoral scholar who holds the Bucher-Jackson Fellowship in the Sciences at Bryn Mawr, also contributed to the above projects.  In addition, he presented research at the conference that another undergraduate researcher from Mozdzer’s lab, Christine Wheaton ’13, initiated as part of her senior thesis; it was an analysis of the energetic investment that  Phragmites makes as it builds biomass. The work was also recently accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, AoB Plants.

Bryn Mawr’s Biology Department encourages undergraduates to pursue on-campus research opportunities. The number of students conducting research varies from year to year. During the academic year, an average of 20 students conduct research in the Biology labs; during the summer, there are usually around eight to 12 students conducting biology research on campus.

Dozens of students and President Kim Cassidy gathered on campus on April 16 to celebrate the College’s generous alumnae, parents, and friends who have provided scholarship funding to Bryn Mawr.

See the below slideshow for images from the event or view the online gallery.

Students are facing down the last week of Spring semester classes and finals loom, but Mawrters will first seize a cherished opportunity for frolicking and celebration time at this year’s Grand May Day on Sunday, May 4.

As a Grand May Day, which occurs only once every four years, the celebration will include special attractions that will be revealed, along with the day’s theme, just before the event.

The celebration begins at 5:45 a.m., when sophomores awaken seniors with flower baskets and song. A mix of old and new traditions, the day includes a hoop race that predicts who will be the first to earn her doctorate. In addition to the traditional maypole event, students in the mid-1980s added a distinctly feminist May Hole Dance, celebrating the liberation of women from patriarchy through the symbolic releasing of thousands of flower petals into the air.

Many of the day’s events, including Maypole dancing, hoop race, concerts, plays and colorful Renaissance pageantry, are free and open to the public.

The schedule of the day’s activities, excerpted from the traditional May Day program (the abbreviation “RS” stands for “rain site”), is below. See the College’s online calendar for updates.

May Day highlights include:

9 a.m. Ye Morris Dancers, perform in front of Pembroke Arch RS=TGH.

9:15 a.m. Senior march to ye Senior Steps to watch the parade

9:30 a.m. Ye Grande Processional with the President of the College, the May Queen, Traditions Mistresses, Song Mistresses, Worthies, and May Pole Dances RS=TGH

9:45 a.m. May Pole Dancing on ye Merion Greene by the four classes, McBride Schollers and Graduate students. Ye President and ye May Queens deliver humorous speeches. RS=TGH

10:15 a.m. Senior May Roll Hoop Race down ye Senior Row.

11 a.m. May Hole Dancing on ye Denbigh Greene.

11:15 a.m.-1:30 p.m. A picnic lunch is served on ye Erdman Greene.

11:30 a.m. Scottish Country Dancing on ye Merion Greene. RS=Goodhart Music Room

The daylong re-enactment of the Elizabethan rite of spring ends with the final Step Sing of the year and the screening of The Philadelphia Story, starring Bryn Mawr’s most famous graduate, Katharine Hepburn ’28. The next morning, final exams begin.

For a complete listing of the afternoon’s activities and rain site locations, visit the Campus Calendar.

Professor Arlo Weil, chair of the Geology department, and long-time colleague Adolph Yonkee of Weber State University have received approximately $325,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation that will allow them to study the tectonic and deformation history of the portion of the Andes mountains found in Argentina.

Much of the funding from the three-year grant will go toward allowing Bryn Mawr students to work with Weil on the research both in the field and in the lab.

Approximately two students a year will travel to the Mendoza region of Argentina with Weil to collect oriented samples and make field measurements that will be brought back to the Bryn Mawr campus for analysis.  Students will learn advanced field techniques, collect and analyze multiple data sets, integrate their data with larger objectives, engage in international collaborative efforts, and communicate results at scientific meetings and through publications, thus learning a number of fundamental skills.

“This type of international field work will enhance the skills and learning of the involved Bryn Mawr student through the sharing of diverse geologic experiences and exposure to different cultural backgrounds,” says Weil

Geology major Christine Newville ’15 will accompany Weil and Yonkee in the field for three weeks in August of this summer.  Upon her return, Newville will processes and analyze the collected samples in the Bryn Mawr paleomagnetism lab.  This preliminary sampling trip will ultimately become the focus of her senior thesis project.

Weil and Yonkee have done similar research involving the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming.

The pair hopes their research will help improve the understanding of the seismic risks in the area.

Though the main focus of Weil’s research is to better understand the dynamic link between tectonic subduction and mountain building, some of the collected data will be used to enhance public awareness of the regional seismic hazards.

For example, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurred in 1861 on the La Cal fault, which destroyed the old city of Mendoza, Argentina and resulted in more than 6000 deaths, half the city’s population. Today more than a million people inhabit the new Mendoza, which was rebuilt over the still active La Cal fault.

Bryn Mawr’s Geology Department combines physics and biology, chemistry and math in the interdisciplinary study of the Earth and the environment. Emphasis is placed on the importance of field work in learning to understand and manage our physical environment. The department’s faculty members and several affiliates teach courses and conduct research in areas that include invertebrate paleontology, sedimentology, mineralogy and petrology, structural geology, tectonics, and geophysics.