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Smith
Honors Five Alumnae Leaders
Five women who have risen to
the top of their fields while contributing their talent and
expertise to the improvement of others’ lives will be
honored with this year’s Smith College Medal, an award
presented each February on Rally Day.
The event, which honors distinguished
alumnae and gathers students in a celebratory, festive rally,
will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 1:30 p.m. in Sweeney
Concert Hall, Sage.
The Smith College Medal was established
in 1962 to recognize and honor alumnae “who, in the
judgment of the trustees, exemplify in their lives and work
the true purpose of a liberal arts education.”
This year’s Smith College
Medalists are Sarah Chasis ’69, Mary Ann Freedman
Hoberman ’51, Carolyn Scerbo Kaelin ’83, Amy-Jill
Levine ’78, and Trudy Rubin ’65.
The five medalists will participate
in a panel discussion, following the presentation of their
awards, at this year’s Rally Day convocation.
As a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council,
Inc. (NRDC), Sarah Chasis has become one of the nation’s
most influential leaders in marine conservation and advocacy.
Currently the director of the NRDC’s Ocean Initiative,
she has advocated to protect waters from damaging offshore
oil excavation and pollution, promote improved fisheries management
and preserve natural habitats. Chasis worked with the Pew
Oceans Commission, one of the world’s foremost groups
of ocean experts, and has testified before the U.S. Commission
on Ocean Policy. In 1992, Chasis was named the first Coastal
Steward of the Year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Meanwhile, Chasis continues her mentorship
of students of environmental law as an adjunct professor at
New York University School of Law.
The author of more than 40 books of poetry and stories for
children, Mary Ann Hoberman has won numerous awards for her
writing since the publication of her first book in 1957. In
1983, she received a National Book Award for A House is
a House for Me and in 2003, the Poetry for Children Award
from the National Council of Teachers of English. Her recent
book You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You: Very Short
Stories to Read Together was a New York Times
bestseller. During her writing career, Hoberman has volunteered
extensively in programs promoting literacy, and donates a
portion of her book royalties to Literacy Volunteers of America
(now ),
an international nonprofit organization that promotes family
literacy. Hoberman has taught writing and literature to students
from elementary to college level. She co-founded and performed
with The Pocket People, a children’s theater group,
and Women’s Voices, a dramatized poetry reading group.
When she became founding director of the Comprehensive Breast
Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1996, Carolyn
Kaelin was the youngest woman ever to direct such a program
at an academic hospital. A surgical oncologist at Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute, Kaelin also serves as a professor of surgery
at Harvard Medical School, where her research has centered
on quality of life
following breast cancer treatment. Three years ago, Kaelin
learned she herself had breast cancer. Already a persuasive,
eloquent speaker and a leader in breast cancer research and
treatment, this sea change in her own life encouraged her
to pursue survivorship initiatives that would benefit all
patients. She has received the Partners in Excellence Award
for her mentoring skill and the prestigious Mary Horrigan
Connor Award for Outstanding Contributions to Women's Health.
Newsweek singled her out as one of the women to watch
in the millennium. Kaelin is the author of an award-winning
book titled Living Through Breast Cancer. She also
wrote The Breast Cancer Survivor's Fitness Plan,
which focuses on recovery.
The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament
Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and Graduate
Department of Religion, Amy-Jill Levine is known for her ability
to create points of contact between Jewish and Christian faith
traditions. The founding director of the Carpenter Program
in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality, Levine’s numerous
publications address Christian origins, Second-Temple Judaism,
Jewish-Christian relations, and biblical women. Her most recent
book, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal
of the Jewish Jesus, is a best-seller. She is also the
editor of the 14-volume series Feminist Companions to
the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, and has
served on the boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature
and the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. A highly sought
speaker, Levine is known for her effective blend of historical
and literary criticism, inclusiveness of beliefs and backgrounds,
and timely humor in her presentations.
The "Worldview" columnist for The Philadelphia
Inquirer, Trudy Rubin is one of the nation's most distinguished
commentators on foreign affairs, with frequent appearances
on public television and radio. She has particular expertise
on the Middle East, about which she has written for 30 years,
and she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2001 for her columns
on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. An intrepid correspondent,
Rubin has focused her column on Iraq over the past four years,
and made seven lengthy trips to that country. In the last
few years, she has also visited other hot spots such as Iran,
Israel, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and others. She served as the
Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor,
as staff writer for the Economist in London, and
as a radio correspondent in Czechoslovakia during the 1968
Prague Spring. Rubin strives to educate her readers in her
columns, often incorporating history and sociology into her
analyses. Most recently, she is the author of Willful
Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq.
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Sarah
Chasis ’69, environmental lawyer
Mary
Ann Hoberman ’51, children’s author
Carolyn
Kaelin ’83, physician
Amy-Jill
Levine ’78, feminist biblical scholar
Trudy
Rubin ’65, journalist
