Deepening
Ties to Swarthmore Through the Stage
Deepening Ties to Swarthmore Through the Stage
The troupe, founded by three Swarthmore alumni, was reintroducing Love Unpunished, a hypnotic dance-theater piece about the moments just before the collapse of the World Trade Center, which was presented on campus this fall as part of the Cooper Series.
A hypnotic dance-theater piece, Love Unpunished explores the moments just before the World Trade Center collapse.
“I think at first we each thought, ‘Uh oh — what if our pieces clash too much to live alongside each other?’” says Dan Rothenberg ’95, director of Love Unpunished and artistic director for Pig Iron. “But I’m happy to report that we ended up sharing common starting points and arriving at different endpoints, with both of us, artists of different generations, wanting to find a way to say things that aren’t said — to make room in the discourse for unexpected or even unnameable emotions.”
“Together, the two pieces manage to fill a few gaps in the conversations we have — or don’t have — about 9/11 and the wars and crimes that followed,” Dana says.
— RYAN DOUGHERTY
Aspire, Inspire
Phil Weiser ’90, Colorado’s attorney general, visited campus this fall to deliver the 2021 Constitution Day Lecture, “Our Aspirational Constitution.” The annual lecture, which features a prominent political scientist or legal scholar speaking about vital issues in American politics, is held in recognition of Sept. 17, 1787, the day when delegates signed the U.S. Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Campus Quickly
Influential Leader
laurence kesterson
The program recognizes women in the community who are blazing a trail in their respective businesses, are respected for accomplishments within their industries, give back to the community, and are sought out as respected advisers and mentors within their field of influence. Smith was one of the 30 honorees chosen from more than 160 nominations in the distinction’s 26th year.
“I am motivated by the desire to see students, staff, and faculty members flourish, and the opportunity to advance the mission of the College to provide an outstanding liberal arts education and prepare students to serve the common good,” Smith says. “As we undertake a College-wide strategic planning process to lay the groundwork for the next chapter in Swarthmore’s history, I’m excited to develop programs and initiatives which will allow us to have an even greater positive impact on our community.”
Laurence Kesterson
Committed to Diversity and Inclusion
“The HEED Award not only allows Swarthmore to celebrate the College’s achievements in diversity, equity, and inclusion, but it also reminds us that the work is never done,” says Tiffany Thompson, interim associate dean of inclusive excellence. “An inclusive community means ongoing self-evaluations and improvements to truly make change.”
INSIGHT recognized Swarthmore’s undocumented-student policy, need-blind admissions, enrollment-fee waivers, and partnerships as examples of admissions policies and programs designed to recruit first-generation and traditionally underrepresented students.
Courtesy of Kyra Hall ’22
From left: Olivia Stoetzer ’23, Tyler White ’22, and Kyra Hall ’22 at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Responding to Climate Change
The College first received NGO-observer status in 2013 and has sent a delegation to each summit since. The student delegation prepared throughout the fall semester by taking a course titled UNFCCC COP and the International Climate Regime, taught by Associate Professor of Political Science and Program Coordinator for Global Studies Ayse Kaya and Melissa Tier ’14, a Ph.D. candidate in environmental policy at the Princeton School of Public & International Affairs.
The UNFCCC is the U.N. entity tasked with coordinating the global response to climate change, with 197 member countries contributing to negotiations at the annual COP.
Comcast
David L. Cohen ’77 Appointed U.S. Ambassador to Canada
A political science, history, and economics major at Swarthmore, Cohen went on to attend law school at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating summa cum laude in 1981. He served as a partner and chairman at the law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll in Philadelphia and as chief of staff to former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell. In 2002, he joined the leadership team at Comcast, where he served as executive vice president and senior executive vice president. Cohen also served as Comcast’s first chief diversity officer. Since early 2020, he has been a senior adviser to Comcast’s CEO, Brian Roberts.
Cohen also maintains close ties to Swarthmore. He delivered the 2008 McCabe Lecture on “The Intersection of Politics, Business, and Public Policy,” and he was a featured speaker at the inauguration of former President Rebecca Chopp in 2009. Cohen’s wife, Rhonda Resnick Cohen ’76, is a retired partner with Ballard Spahr and has been a member of Swarthmore’s Board of Managers since 2010. A scholarship named for the couple was established in 2004 and is awarded annually to a Swarthmore student on the basis of academic merit and financial need.
“This is an extraordinary achievement for David, and a testament not only to his professional accomplishments, but also to his lifelong commitment to service,” said President Valerie Smith. “We are incredibly proud to count David and Rhonda among our alumni, and we wish them and their entire family the best in this exciting new journey.”
Thinking, Designing, and Building
Marianne McKenna ’72, a founding partner at KPMB Architects in Toronto, was presented this fall with the Design Futures Council Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes a design leader whose life and practice has meaningfully impacted the built environment. An art history major at Swarthmore with a master’s in architecture from Yale, McKenna is the first woman to receive the recognition.
The award was not the only honor recently bestowed upon McKenna: Toronto Life magazine also named McKenna to its list of 2021’s most influential Torontonians, highlighting her leadership in revitalizing the city’s oldest musical theater venue, Massey Hall.
At a crossroads
The first book in an expected trilogy, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. “It’s an electrifying examination of the irreducible complexities of an ethical life,” writes Washington Post book critic Ron Charles. “With his ever-parsing style and his relentless calculation of the fractals of consciousness, Franzen makes a good claim to being the 21st century’s Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
Bearing Water
“Initially, the problem we were trying to solve was preventing the spread of COVID by allowing people to wash their hands in major encampments for folks living on the streets in Oakland and Berkeley,” says Guerette.
“But I met up with activists who had been working on the more general problem of water access for folks living in encampments,” he says. “There were certain spots where people could get access to public spigots or water fountains, but in most of the larger encampments, there was nothing like that.”
Once more resources became available, they shifted from just providing handwashing to providing larger quantities of bulk water to be used for all purposes.
Guerette, who studied computer science and engineering at Swarthmore, quit his programming job in March 2020 with plans to take a part-time, minimum-wage job helping the Free Clinic catch up on maintenance projects while also working part time at a bakery.
The bakery shut down, and Guerette found himself free to volunteer his time to design and maintain the handwashing stations.
“I would start the day by getting the truck and going to the clinic and filling it up with water and adding chlorine, and then going around from one site to the next and refilling the handwashing stations and cleaning the dispensing end of the tube and the soap dispenser,” says Guerrette, who also did any needed repairs. “When I wasn’t actively out delivering, I was thinking about ongoing problems and how to solve them.”
Guerette said the 10 original handwashing stations were eventually replaced with five larger general-use water stations, and the project was taken up by a new nonprofit group. Guerette has resumed his career as a programmer.
“I’m really glad I was able to do this whole project because it addressed a need that had been there for a long time,” Guerette says. “I remain frustrated and angry about the broader context this work is being done in. I wish we lived in a more compassionate society.”
a vision for the future
Roderick Wolfson
Banding Together
Chilly temperatures and working at night were all part of an exciting volunteer experience just miles away from Swarthmore’s campus. Students and staff members helped to band and measure northern saw-whet owls in November as part of an ongoing conservation effort by the Willistown Conservation Trust in Chester County, Pa.
“It was amazing,” says Gwendolyn Lam ’24, president of Swarthmore’s Bird Club and a double major in biochemistry and applied math. Founded in 2015, the Bird Club is a student-run organization dedicated to the observation of birds both on and off campus. “We arrived as soon as they caught an owl, so we didn’t have to wait that long in the cold,” says Lam. “We learned a lot about the owls, local birds, bird-banding careers, banding process, and the volunteers and employees themselves. Owl banding is a super cool experience.”
Students also learned about how the owl data — including sex, weight, and age — are documented for research purposes. “The owls are given a unique identification band so that researchers will know who it is if it is ever caught again,” says Lizzy Atkinson ’24, a biology major and chemistry minor and vice president of the Bird Club. “This data gives researchers insight into how owl populations are doing in terms of health and size.”
— KATE CAMPBELL
laurence kesterson
Gwendolyn Lam ’24 (top) and other members of Swarthmore’s Bird Club helped band and measure northern saw-whet owls at the Willistown Conservation Trust in Chester County, Pa.
top teacher
Whitney Nekoba Aragaki ’08, a biology and environmental science teacher at Waiākea High School in Hilo, Hawaii, was named 2022 Hawai‘i State Teacher of the Year. The award, given annually to a classroom teacher selected from more than 13,000 educators, was presented to Aragaki by Gov. David Ige and Interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi.
“This award affirms that my efforts in the field of education are moving in a positive direction, by those who are knowledgeable about the profession,” Aragaki says.
A biology major at Swarthmore, Aragaki says she also found a home in educational studies with professors K. Ann Renninger and Lisa Smulyan ’76. “The opportunities to learn and problematize pedagogy deepened my advocacy for educational equity and joyful liberation,” she says. “I take the lessons learned from my time at Swarthmore and apply them to engage and challenge my students to achieve and reinvest in their communities.”