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January 27, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Five Accomplished Smith Alumnae To Be Recognized at Rally Day

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- For their extraordinary professional achievements and outstanding service to their communities, five Smith College alumnae will receive the Smith College Medal, an award presented each February on Rally Day.

The event, which honors distinguished alumnae, will take place at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 18, in John M. Greene Hall. It is free and open to the public.

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, an exemplary group of accomplished professionals, artists and public servants has been selected to receive the award. They are Carol Thompson Cole, Class of 1973; Rose Epstein Frisch, Class of 1939; Elizabeth Goldring, Class of 1967; Amy Kaiser, Class of 1965; and Anne Moore, M.D., Class of 1965.

Cole, former Washington, D.C., deputy mayor, will deliver the Rally Day address.

Carol Thompson Cole has had over 20 years of management experience in the private and public sectors, as well as a strong history of leadership in the nonprofit community and local government of Washington, D.C. During the 12 years she worked for the District of Columbia, she held major management and staff positions, most notably as the first woman to be appointed city administrator. After leaving the government, Cole served as vice president of government and environmental affairs for RJR Nabisco. In 1996, President Clinton appointed her executive director of the White House D.C. Inter-Agency Task Force, a new position designed to raise federal aid to the capital city. She is currently president of the Curtex Group, a consulting firm that focuses on project management, organizational development and community economic development.

Medical researcher Rose Epstein Frisch, a professor emerita at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, has pioneered research on the influence of body fat on female fertility and long-term health. Her most recent book "Female Fertility and the Body Fat Connection" has received much attention from the scientific and medical community. Frisch and her colleagues published studies of more than 5,000 female college alumnae, including Smith alumnae, showing that former college athletes had a lower incidence of breast cancer, cancers of the reproductive system and late onset diabetes than did the non-athletes in the study. From her research results, Frisch has become an advocate of athletics programs for teenaged girls to build self-esteem and enhance physical and emotional well-being. Now in her 80s, Frisch continues a program of active research.

While a student at Smith, poet and media artist Elizabeth Goldring temporarily lost her vision to diabetes. Now seeing with limited vision in one eye, she has turned her disability into an intellectual and artistic benefit by exploring the world of the visually impaired from the inside. A senior fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies, she has collaborated with scientist, engineers, physicians and students to turn the scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO), a diagnostic tool, into a "seeing machine," enabling the blind to see. In addition, Goldring has designed a "visual language" for the SLO consisting of words that incorporate graphics that illustrate the words' meanings, making them easier to see. She uses this language to write poetry and create "poem animations" that can be enjoyed by people who are visually challenged.

Conductor Amy Kaiser has spent the last 30 years inspiring singers to perform at the highest professional level. Currently director of the Saint Louis Symphony Chorus, she began her conducting career in New York City in the late 1970s as a freelancer, conducting dozens of performances at Lincoln Center as music director of the Dessoff Choirs and conductor of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. She has led over 25 operas, dozens of operatic and choral world premieres and prepared choruses for the New York Philharmonic, Mostly Mozart Festival and Ravinia Festival. She is also guest conductor with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Berkshire Choral Festival and the Santa Fe Symphony.

Oncologist Anne Moore is considered one of the leading authorities on breast cancer in the U.S. A professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center and an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital, she was one of the first to explain the complexities of breast cancer to the newly diagnosed patient in a monograph she co-authored, titled "Patients' Guide to Breast Cancer Treatment." She was elected president of the New York Metropolitan Breast Cancer Group and is a director of the National Association of Breast Cancer Organizations.

Rally Day began in 1876 as a celebration of George Washington's birthday. Since then, it has evolved from a social occasion into a daylong celebration, at which seniors are permitted to wear their caps and gowns for the first time. The Smith College Medal -- which was designed by art professor Elliot Offner and depicts the Grécourt Gates and the Smith College motto, "To Virtue, Knowledge" -- has been awarded at Rally Day since 1973.

Smith College is consistently ranked among the nation's foremost liberal arts colleges. Enrolling 2,800 students from every state and 60 other countries, Smith is the largest undergraduate women's college in the country.

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