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Senior named one of USA Today's best Senior ThaoMee Xiong is one of twenty college students from across the country chosen for USA Today's 1998 All-USA College Academic First Team. Selected from 1,194 nominees, Xiong was chosen on the basis of individual scholarship, intellectual endeavor, and leadership roles in activities on and off campus.

As well as being an excellent student, Xiong is also involved in an impressive number of activities. They include being an SGA representative for and 1996-97 cochair of Asian American Students in Action and facilitator, student organizer, and mentor at CIRCLE (Center for Immigrant and Refugees Communities in Leadership). Xiong was a facilitator for a cultural identity group project of the Coalition Against Racist Education. She organized the statewide Citizenship Day, the Cambodian New Year celebration with Amherst High School students, and a community photography project with Cambodian and Vietnamese youth. She was the education and community outreach assistant for New World Theatre, and the student organizer of community theatre with Vietnamese and Cambodian youth.

She received recognition at winter convocation with a Student Leadership Award and the Mount Holyoke College Community Service Award. She is also a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow. Last year Xiong won the Karen Snyder Sullivan Memorial Travel Award, which allowed her to research the lives of Hmong women in Southeast Asia. Xiong, who is herself Hmong, was born in Laos but has lived in America since she was three.

Xiong's photo and information about her accomplishments were to appear in the February 12 USA Today, and honorees were invited to attend an awards luncheon at USA Today headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, on February 13. Xiong also receives a $2,500 cash award.

Familiar faces in famous places Did you recognize the MHC alumna in the February 5 New York Times photo? Sitting between President Clinton and Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley is Fabiola Tafolla '97, described in the caption as an education advocate. The article dealt with a Clinton proposal to match mentors with low-income students to help guide them toward college. "Mr. Clinton said that within five years, more than one million students would have a 'guardian angel' to provide them with both information and inspiration to earn a college degree," according to the Times.

Summer Theatre says "the show must go on" According to an article in the February 5 Union-News, Summer Theatre at Mount Holyoke is planning a full, eight-week season this year. The group will, however, have another producing director. "Board members are interviewing for a successor to John Grassilli, the producing director, who resigned last week after a disagreement about how the financially troubled theatre should proceed next season," the article stated. Grassilli believed the theatre should take a year off, but the board of directors disagreed. He is expected to stay on to help with fund raising. Board members told the paper that money is still arriving from their January fund-raising drive, but did not announce a total amount raised.

Tatum gives local keynote speech Although still busy promoting her new book to media beyond the Pioneer Valley, psychology and education chair and professor Beverly Daniel Tatum will speak February 28 at Smith Vocational High School in Northampton at the Women & Power Conference on "Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression." Presented by the Zonta Club of the Northampton area, the conference is designed to explore the issues of women, power, and problem solving through a series of workshop sessions. Zonta, a worldwide service organization of executives and professionals working to advance women, is collaborating with Girls Inc. of Holyoke for this sixth annual conference. For a registration form, call Dodie Gaudet at 413-247-3119.

Tatum is also scheduled to appear locally during February on Channel 22 to discuss her book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race.

Terms of endearment Just in time for Valentine's Day, Channel 22 TV reporters spoke with Peter Carini, assistant director for archives and special collections, for the station's "Every Woman" segment. He told them about MHC's collection of antique valentine cards. Some of the first valentines produced in America were made by Mount Holyoke alumna Esther Howland (class of 1847), who turned her enchantment with a British valentine card into a thriving business for herself. Examples of Howland's valentines and other old-fashioned expressions of affection are part of the College archives' collection.

Our turf touted The January issue of Turf North magazine ran a big feature story studded with glamour-grass photos about MHC's designation as "America's most beautiful campus." The magazine quoted Dave Collette, director of physical facilities, as kidding good-naturedly with his English professor wife Carolyn, "You PhDs may teach these kids, but it's the grounds-keepers and the guys who mow the grass who bring you the students." He cites surveys of new college students who consistently rate "feeling comfortable on an attractive campus" as one of the major reasons for having selected their college. "I'm convinced buildings and grounds workers are the most important people on any college campus," Collette maintains. The article details the efforts of B&G workers that keep the campus worthy of its "most beautiful" moniker.

"Birdbrain" should be a compliment! An article titled "Total Recall" in the February-March issue of National Wildlife magazine is introduced this way: "Imagine a bird that grows a brand-new brain every fall so it can remember all the places where it will stash tens of thousands of insects and seeds. Imagine a bird that appears to make conscious decisions about when and where to store food ... Imagine a chickadee!" And the person the magazine calls "the doyenne of chickadee researchers" is none other than our own biological sciences professor Susan Smith. The article opens with Smith excitedly spotting a rare unbanded male chickadee, and goes on to discuss her 1991 book The Black-Capped Chickadee: Behavioral Ecology and Natural History, which is called "a notably readable summary of everything then known about the species. Which is a lot, considering that more papers have been written about its biology than perhaps any other native songbird." Smith has been studying the birds' social dynamics, including the discovery that "floater" birds move from flock to flock in the winter, waiting to take the place in the dominance hierarchy of any bird that dies. Before her research reaches the quarter-century mark, Smith is considering several research options. One is to "put up nest boxes so I can band the nestlings and see if the availability of artificial nest sites causes the population to fluctuate."