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Newsbriefs
The Dorius/Spofford Fund, which supported
the purchase of Untitled (One day this kid) by David Wojnarowicz,
was created in 2002 by Smith College to underwrite programs dealing with
issues of citizenship, censorship, creativity and contemporary social
and political repression associated with sexual identity and expression.
Wojnarowicz (1954–92) was a key figure of 1980s cultural and social
activism. Produced just two years before the artist’s death, Untitled
(One day this kid) is a summary of Wojnarowicz’s life and
experiences, both beautiful and ugly -- a multilayered portrait of the
artist in both visual and written terms. The Dorius/Spofford Fund is
named for Joel Dorius and Edward Spofford Jr., gay professors whose employment
at Smith was terminated in 1961 in the wake of the nationally publicized
scandal surrounding the forced retirement of fellow professor Newton
Arvin. Reexamination of these events also resulted in Smith sponsorship
of the conference “Homeland Insecurity: Civil Liberties, Repression
and Citizenship in the 1950s,” which was held at Smith in January.
The first-ever
TOYchallenge National Showcase, to be held at Smith on June
14, will feature of the best of a nationwide toy design competition
sponsored by Smith’s Picker Engineering Program in conjunction
with the Sally Ride Science Club and toymaker Hasbro. Designed to draw
girls into the
field of engineering, TOYchallenge is based on the first-year
engineering design course at Smith.
Starting last fall, teams of middle-schoolers
from across
the country were invited to submit their best ideas for toys
in a range of categories, including Games
for the Family, Get Out and Play, and Toys That Teach. From 155 entries, 10 teams
were selected to receive $250 awards to advance their designs from paper to prototype.
More than 150 contestants, their coaches and mentors, as well as teachers, toy
designers and local students, are expected to participate in the showcase. The
showcase will award grand prizes, with entries judged on originality, creativity,
engineering elegance, feasibility, communication and team participation. Special
awards will be presented to entries that advance technology and feature universal
appeal. Pioneering astronaut Sally Ride will give the showcase’s keynote
address.
In February, two Smith professors
deemed by student vote
to be this year’s most inspiring and dedicated, were presented with the
Rally Day Faculty Teaching Awards. Darcy Buerkle, assistant professor of history,
received the junior award. She joined the faculty last fall. The senior award
went to Dana Leibsohn, associate professor of art, who has taught at Smith for
nine years. Each received an engraved plaque and pen set and a check for $1,000
from the Smith College Board of Trustees.
The Student Government Association
gives the Faculty Teaching Award annually to one junior and one senior
faculty member.
Students submit their nominations
to the SGA curriculum committee. Lindsey Anne Watson, 2002–03 SGA president,
calls the award process “a wonderful opportunity for students to thank
and appreciate their professors while offering faculty praise for establishing
connections with students.” The awards have been presented since 1985.
The 2002 winners were Virginia Hayssen, professor of biological sciences, and
Floyd Cheung, assistant professor of English.
Andrew
Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith, may have scored
another home run with his latest book about the business
of baseball, May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy (Brookings Institute Press, 2003). The book is creating quite a buzz
among book reviewers
and sports page writers because he offers a critical analysis of the baseball
industry’s problems, pointing to the trend of running major league baseball
as a monopoly. He has written and edited numerous other books on the subject
including Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams
and Stadiums (with Roger Noll) and Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time
College Sports.
Staci Kman ’03 of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was one of 181 Smith
students who gave presentations on their research and special projects
during a daylong program, “Celebrating Collaborations: Students
and Faculty Working Together,” on April 12. More than 100 research
projects were presented to showcase the results of Smith student-faculty
research collaborations, with 78 faculty collaborators representing 27
departments or academic programs.
“Smith gives students the wonderful opportunity to have a close mentoring
relationship with faculty. You not only learn research methods, but also you
apply them,” said Kman who presented her thesis, “Generational Feminist
Identity,” which she researched with Lauren Duncan, assistant professor
of psychology. “My project was interesting because I started working with
my professor as a sophomore, entering data. I’ve seen it through the whole
process. I’ve put a lot of myself into the project. It was more effective
for me to do the research myself than to be told about it.”
The presentations,
which represented senior theses and independent study and research seminar
projects, consisted of individual talks, panels, poster sessions,
exhibits and performances. The presentations were grouped in three categories:
science and technology; performing arts; and social, cultural and literary
studies.
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The Pain of Financial
Loss: My wife is a Smith graduate and I am an honorific one
so I regularly encounter and read
Smith publications. Thus the Winter Edition of NewsSmith and a disturbing
economic reaction.
This otherwise elegant issue features an Investment Club
and presumes to a higher learning from investment knowledge. This, alas,
is one
of the accepted ways of losing money. No one can have reliable
knowledge of a standard investment prospect -- stock market, bonds, real
estate. The prospect of loss is ever as present as the prospect of gain.
And
for many, perhaps most, people, loss is more painful than
the joy of untoiled-for affluence. I speak on this out of some seventy years
of
study, instruction and experience. My qualifications extend,
Harvard professorship aside, to past presidency of the noted American Economic
Association. Although there is something to be known of
the financial
world, there is nothing reliable to be learned about making
money. If there were, study would be intense and everyone with a positive
I.Q. would be rich.
I write, to repeat, as a loving friend
of Smith. Also out of more experience with these matters than will ever
emerge from the
most diverse and spirited discussion
in Northampton.
Yours somberly, John Kenneth Galbraith
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