In the News

A pending presidency for one of our own?--The presidential search committee at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania has unanimously recommended to their board of trustees that Nancy Vickers, MHC class of '67, be the next president of that institution, according to the January 21 York (PA) Daily Record. Now dean of curriculum and instruction at the University of Southern California's College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, Vickers is a widely recognized scholar of Italian, French, and English Renaissance literature. Bryn Mawr's board of trustees is set to vote on the committee's recommendation on February 15.

A stitch in time--A January feature in Art & Antiques magazine takes a new look at the cultural effects of the rise of Mount Holyoke College and women's higher education. The production of American samplers--decorative needlework pieces that often contained letters, numerals, and pious homilies--arose, author Roberta Maneker notes in her piece "Every Schoolgirl's Story," from American grammar schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where schoolgirls were taught the art of needlework. It was the rise of new educational opportunities for young women, such as those offered at Mount Holyoke, that caused schoolgirls to put aside their samplers and turn to their books. "These larger victories for women effectively ended the long era of enchanting schoolgirl needlework," the article noted.

Web footnote--A presence on the Internet is becoming increasingly important to recruiting new students, according to a January 19 feature in The Boston Sunday Globe. Quoted in the story was our own Webmaster Dan Wilga, electronic media manager, talking about the genesis of and thinking behind the MHC Web pages.