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Newsbriefs
Rally Day, the annual all-college gathering, will be held on
February 21. Five Smith alumnae have been selected as the recipients of the Smith
College Medal, to be awarded by President Carol T. Christ. They are:
Sarah Chasis ’69, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., a public
interest organization that specializes in environmental protection; Mary Ann Freedman Hoberman ’51,
author of children’s poetry books, winner of National Book Award for A House Is a House
for Me; Carolyn Scerbo Kaelin ’83, physician, director of the comprehensive breast health
center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Amy-Jill Levine ’78, chair of Vanderbilt
Divinity School’s Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender and Sexuality; and Trudy Rubin ’65,
foreign correspondent, finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for her commentary on the Middle
East.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is expected
to make a daylong visit to the Pioneer Valley on May 9 to speak with audiences from
Smith College, Hampshire College and members of the Tibetan Association of Western
Massachusetts. Respected worldwide as a spiritual leader and the leader of the Tibetan people,
the 14th Dalai Lama was the recipient of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.
Smith President Carol T.
Christ and Hampshire President Ralph J. Hexter will host the visit, which recognizes
the Five College Tibetan Studies in India Program—a thriving
exchange program with exiled Tibetan scholars at the Central Institute of Higher
Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India.
The Dalai Lama’s visit will feature an address to Smith
and Hampshire students, faculty and staff at Smith’s Indoor Track and Tennis facility and
a gathering for invited members from the local Tibetan community. Although attendance
will be restricted to those audiences, his talk to the college communities will be broadcast
live on local television.
Visit www.smith.edu/dalailama for more information about the May 9 visit.
About 150 people attended a memorial service this fall
to honor Walter Morris-Hale, professor emeritus of government and Afro-American studies,
who died at his home in Los Angeles in March 2006. His colleagues and former students remembered
him fondly. In a tribute shortly after his death, Kathryn Arnone ’85 wrote: “While
Professor Morris-Hale excelled at scholarship, his true forte was teaching, as evidenced by his
Smith College Medal for teaching. His style of teaching demanded the utmost from each student,
never yielding to mediocrity or relativism, always encouraging his students to challenge themselves
to achieve excellence, always providing the example of his own effort and excellence as a model.
And how his students achieved! They became museum directors, politicians, teachers, lawyers,
entrepreneurs, judges, artists, business executives, professors and writers. Each of his students
is his legacy.”
Smith’s soccer team, the Pioneers, defeated Springfield College in November
to capture the Eastern College Athletic Conference New England Women’s Soccer Championship
for the third time in the program’s history. The other two titles were won in 1985 and
1987. Coach Phil Nielsen was named Women’s Soccer Coach of the Year and received New England
Women’s
and Men’s Athletic Conference All Conference honors.
Smith College’s a capella group the Noteables
made a special trip in December to Middleboro, Massachusetts, to perform in concert for residents
and staff of the Middleboro Skilled Care Center, a health care home that specializes in head
injuries, where Margaret (Maggie) Worthen ’06 is hospitalized. They are among the many
Smith students, professors and friends who have made frequent visits to Maggie’s hospital
bedside since she suffered an apparent stroke in her room shortly before her Smith graduation.
During the Commencement ceremonies, students wore blue ribbons to honor Maggie at graduation.
Although she remains in a coma, her Smith friends have kept in touch, making visits and staying
involved through a Web site. |
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