New & Notable

Being frank about Francis, er, Frances--According to Kay Althoff, director of the Frances Perkins Program, the program's namesake has a bit of an identity crisis on campus. From prospective students to long-time members of the MHC community, many people have spelled the name as if she (Frances) were a he (Francis)! Her name has cropped up spelled incorrectly in newspaper articles, essays, memos, and envelopes, Althoff says.

For the record, Frances Perkins was not only a woman, but was also the first female cabinet member in the U.S. government. A 1902 MHC graduate, she served from 1933 to 1945 as secretary of labor in the "New Deal" administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Margaret Hunter Pierce '31, who worked with Perkins in the labor department during the 1940s, remembers her as a detail-minded, confident woman with an excellent memory, "a sense of humor that helped her deal with just about anyone," and "a good sense of herself." Pierce says, "You couldn't put anything over on her; she was so thorough in her research about any topic that she was presenting. This is what earned the respect of the men with whom she dealt."

Pierce doesn't recall Perkins ever being mis-addressed as "Francis"--even in the days when male executives were the norm--but then, she says Perkins "was always a lady."

MHC Employees Scholarship awarded--Sarah A. Higgins of South Hadley has been selected as the recipient of the MHC Employees Social Committee Scholarship for 1996. The $200 scholarship is awarded annually for academic achievement to qualified high school senior children of Mount Holyoke College staff, to be used at an accredited school for postsecondary education. Sarah is a student at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the daughter of John Higgins and Gayle Higgins, senior administrative assistant in the education division and secretary to the Department of Psychology and Education.

Wait 'til next year--Rosemary Metz expected to be among the new Frances Perkins scholars this fall. In fact, she was so excited about the prospect of attending MHC that she called National Public Radio's Alex Chadwick, who interviewed her on the air in June. There was even talk about Metz doing a series of NPR pieces during her first year at MHC. So where's "the NPR woman"? Unfortunately, Metz's employer said she had to work another year to qualify for retirement benefits. So Metz reluctantly deferred her admission until fall 1997.

However, Metz has continued her correspondence with Chadwick, and received email from him encouraging her to "try writing professionally or at least avocationally. It suits you. You have a voice others will hear and read and respond to." According to FP program director Kay Althoff, Metz is also planning to write an article for the "Lives" section of The New York Times about how she first heard of Mount Holyoke. Apparently, it was in the society columns of the Times during the 1950s. Metz also plans to visit MHC next month to "refill her memory banks" with enough College scenes to sustain her until next fall.

I, Claudia--Mount Holyoke alumna Susan B. Matheson '68 is one of two organizers of a groundbreaking exhibition exploring Roman women through Roman art and visual culture currently on view at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. The show, I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome, includes 170 of the finest works of Roman art in North America and presents objects ranging from marble statues and reliefs to coins and children's toys displayed in settings evoking the public, the domestic, and, alas, the funereal realms as experienced by Roman women. Matheson is curator of ancient art at the gallery. The show will be in New Haven through December 1; then it moves on to museums in San Antonio, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

High wattage for Watson--Earlier this month, at its annual meeting in Copenhagen, the International Institute for Conservation awarded its prestigious Keck Award for the most important contribution to public awareness of art conservation to ... drum roll please ... the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Williamstown Art Conservation Laboratory for the 1994 exhibition Altered States: Conservation, Analysis, and the Interpretation of Works of Art. The show, organized primarily by MHC Art Museum curator Wendy Watson, explored the intersection of art historical inquiry with conservation science. In winning recognition this year, Mount Holyoke beat stiff international competition, including the British Museum and the Mauritshuis, to get top honors. After premiering here, the show rolled on to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown and the National Academy of Design in New York City and was seen by thousands of viewers.

Project Kaleidoscope lauds professor--Associate professor of geology Steve Dunn was recently accepted into the "class of 1996" by the national Project Kaleidoscope. The "class" is comprised of faculty who are making a difference in the lives of undergraduate students through their leadership in science education. Dunn will join others in the project as a member of its Faculty for the Twenty-First Century Network. He has been invited to the network's October national assembly in Kansas City, Missouri, for dialogue on the challenges and passions of undergraduate science education. He will also be profiled on the group's World Wide Web page, and his individual statement for the project will be published this fall along with those of the classes of '94, '95, and '96.

Dunn's interest in undergraduate teaching spans the length of his career. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, he received letters of commendation and the Berg Award for his teaching. He turned down two prestigious postdoctoral awards and a research position to come to Mount Holyoke so that he could be both educator and research scientist. At MHC, he has been a lead member of the Unity of Science course and for five years the councilor of the Council on Undergraduate Research, a national organization that promotes and encourages research as an educational tool. He has also overseen nine senior theses and many additional independent studies, and served as co-organizer in 1994 for the Five College "Teaching Introductory Science" workshop held at Smith. This year he is working with Five College faculty to develop a series exploring innovative methods of teaching.

Super-NOVA on campus--On Thursday, September 26, the College hosted crew from the PBS science show NOVA for a day-long shoot. Held in the library, the national TV program interviewed professor of psychology and education Gail Hornstein for the series Century of Discovery, which will air in 1997. Consisting of five evening programs, each two hours in length, the week-long series will be heavily promoted by PBS through outreach to schools and museums. The program will cover the last one hundred years of scientific discovery through five different "lenses" and will devote one evening each to technology, earth and life sciences, physics and astronomy, medicine, and human behavior.

Professor Hornstein's interview will be a part of the human behavior show. Hornstein, who is also director of the Five College Women's Studies Research Center, discussed her decade-long research on psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, M.D. (1889-1957) and the latter's work at Chestnut Lodge Hospital. The hospital was an internationally recognized center for the study and treatment of severe mental disorders. (Caroline Bullard '99 is the great-granddaughter of the hospital's founder.) Fromm-Reichmann is popularly known as the fictional Dr. Fried in Joanne Greenberg's novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Within the field of psychiatry, she is widely recognized as a pioneer in using psychotherapy to treat severe mental disturbance.

What's new with you?--Send news for "New & Notable" to Emily Weir, Office of Communications, or email eweir@mtholyoke.edu.