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West Coast hit

That's "hit" in the journalistic sense, and a big one at that. Page one of the March 22 Los Angeles Times, the day after the Academy Awards (when tout LA buys the newspaper), carried a long feature article on the speaking programs at Mount Holyoke and Smith. The piece, which noted that our Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program is "believed to be the country's first combined speaking and writing program," quoted President Joanne Creighton calling the linking of these skills "revolutionary," and predicting that others will emulate MHC. "Already, that seems likely," the article continued. "MIT, Holy Cross College, and Wesleyan College this year began focusing on speaking skills." Officials at UPenn and Stanford also spoke with Lee Bowie about the MHC program.

The article also detailed how biology professor Rachel Fink and English professor William Oram added speaking components to their courses. (Fink staged a mock scientific convention, where students presented their research papers to their peers. Oram had students debate issues rising from Shakespeare's history plays.)

Looking at the camera that looked at science

The current Chronicle of Higher Education features two photos and text by Berenice Abbott, subject of the current MHC Art Museum exhibition Berenice Abbott: The Camera Looks at Science. (Hurry if you haven't seen it; the show's only up through April 4.) "Often when people speak of science and art, little or no mention is made of photography, the medium preeminently qualified to unite art and science," Abbott wrote. "Photography was born in the years which ushered in the scientific age, an offspring of both science and art.... My interest ...is to explore the possibility of this partnership.... Surely scientific truth and natural phenomena are as good subjects for art as are man and his emotions, in their infinite variety."

Education for life

In a letter to the editors of U.S. News & World Report, Peggy Reid Bauer '54 commented on an article noting that "young men may be skipping college for big bucks in the high-tech fields and surpassing young women who choose to go the long haul for a full education," in the words of another letter-writer. Bauer noted, "Nowhere in your article do I see mentioned the nonfinancial benefits of a college education. As a graduate of a liberal arts women's college, I find the omission of the importance of art, literature, architecture, and history strange. When the job is gone, life's love departed, and health depleted, appreciation of these values remains a 'gem in your apron pocket.'"

Break away

U.S. News & World Report's March 29 article about the growing popularity of alternative spring breaks prominently featured MHC's Leadership and Service Odyssey group. "Ah, the rituals of spring break: sun and six-packs, teeny-weeny bikini contests, and good old-fashioned ... back-breaking labor? Yep, that's right... In Birmingham, Ala., 13 women from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts rebuilt a church that had burned to the ground," the article noted.