"I predict a woman of your generation -- specifically a member of the Mount Holyoke class of 1996 -- will win the presidency," forecasted U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala during her commencement address.		College founder Mary Lyon urged her seminary students to go where no one else will go, and her decree is still timely today. But go to outer space? Yes, in a sense. In January, a replica of the key to the original Seminary Building, where Lyon lived and taught, blasted off in the NASA space shuttle Endeavour. The key was carried by mission specialist Dan Barry, husband of biological sciences professor Susan Barry. Dan Barry will present the well-traveled key to the College this fall. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala was the featured speaker at the May 26 commencement. Bachelor's degrees were awarded to seniors, and honorary doctorates were presented to Shalala; Marjorie Benedict Cohn '60, a leading art curator, conservator, art historian, writer, and teacher; Margaret W. Conkey '65, an anthropologist and authority on the Upper Paleolithic Period of European prehistory; Mary Maples Dunn, director of the Pforzheimer Foundation at Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library and former president of Smith College; and Mary (Polly) Luckett Murray '54, an artist who became an authority on, and advocate for, victims of Lyme disease. Eighteen years ago, music professor Allen Bonde heralded Elizabeth T. Kennan's presidency with the resounding "Fanfare for Elizabeth for Six Trumpets." This May, Bonde greeted Joanne V. Creighton with "Celebration" for brass quintet, an original composition written at the request of the Inauguration Committee. Bonde said his piece, which debuted at the inauguration, aimed to "capture the energy and excitement, the color and joy, and also the nobility of the moment." Money magazine has named South Hadley one of the nation's one hundred top residential communities. Like all the honored towns and cities, South Hadley was lauded for its affordable housing and high-quality school system.
The College mourns the passing of Professor Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Laureate and acclaimed poet.		Joseph Brodsky, Andrew Mellon Professor of Literature, died January 28 in New York of a heart attack. The renowned poet, Nobel Prize winner, and former U.S. poet laureate was fifty-five years old. Brodsky, a Russian expatriate, taught English and Russian literature at Mount Holyoke from 1981 until his death. Hailed as one of the greatest poets of his generation, Brodsky also published essays, plays, and other prose works in English and Russian. Joseph Ellis, Ford Foundation Professor of History, said of Brodsky, "I shall always remember him in full flight. He taught that way, asking students to sail with him inside the language, where he believed the gods and the truths live forever." The College boasts two Fulbright winners this year: Megan Otermat '96, who will study German and American national security at the University of Munich, and Anna Morawiec '96, who will study politics and economic development at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
Excavations began this spring to expand and renovate the Career Development Center, and the project should be completed by early fall.		Career development is becoming a bigger part of life at Mount Holyoke; even the building is growing. In March, ground was broken for a 4,200-square-foot addition to the Everett Wing of Groves Health Center, which houses the Career Development Center (CDC). Expansion will help staff meet the needs of increasing numbers of students (use has doubled in the past two years) and relieve congestion created when three offices merged last year to form the CDC. South Hadley boasts what was, in 1795, the first navigational canal built in the United States. The Art Museum celebrated the bicentennial of this engineering marvel with an exhibit, Locks, Stocks, and Barrels. In addition to maps, photos, and other period artifacts, the exhibit also included a twenty-six-foot, 310-pound oar once used to steer a river flatboat on the canal.
Our award-winning "viewbox" whets prospective students' interest in Mount Holyoke College.		Mount Holyoke's "viewbox"--a package of student recruitment materials created by the Offices of Admissions and Communications for prospective students--and its companion "search piece" have won several regional and national awards for excellence. These include gold and bronze medals in national competition from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, and an Excellence Award from the University and College Designers Association. Mount Holyoke offers grads many advantages, but longevity? The February 5 New Haven Register reports that Dellar Louise Crumrine '13 of Hampden, Connecticut, is still going strong at 105. Her longevity tips include a glass of ice water every morning.
The MHC Concert Choir with Billy Joel		Singer Billy Joel answered questions from a standing-room-only crowd in March, ranging from whether he considers himself primarily a rock star or a songwriter (the latter) to how his daughter has affected his music (profoundly). The "Piano Man" illustrated his candid, and often humorous, answers with musical clips on piano and synthesizer. The MHC Concert Choir sang Joel's "And So It Goes" a cappella. At their March meeting, the trustees approved a $1,400 increase in tuition, room, and board fees for the 1996-97 academic year. Tuition will rise to $21,250, room charges to $3,070, and board fees to $3,180, for a total of $27,500. The trustees also promoted seventeen professors and granted tenure to Aaron Ellison, biological sciences; Claude Fennema, mathematics, statistics, and computer science; Kavita Khory, politics; Karen Remmler, German; Christopher Rivers, French; Lauret Savoy, geology and geography; and Kenneth Tucker, sociology and anthropology.
Instead of languishing on a beach for spring break, Jill Golembewski '98, Emily Graves '99, and Jessica Dial '96 (left to right) helped Habitat for Humanity construct and rehabilitate housing in York, Pennsylvania. Here they're fireproofing a wall by covering it with mortar.		While other students were hitting the beaches during spring break, nine MHC women were hitting nails instead. The Alternative Breaks Committee organized a trip to help Habitat for Humanity build and renovate houses in Pennsylvania. Mount Holyoke has been on the World Wide Web since fall 1993, and the site is continually expanding and improving. The home page (http://www.mtholyoke.edu) serves as a gateway to information centers tailored to the needs of off-campus visitors, prospective students, and the campus community. New material appears constantly; to see the latest, choose the "Campus Information Center" icon on the home page, then select the "Check It Out" image. [Note: This information is now outdated]. World Wide Web users from Mary Lyon Hall to New Zealand have looked at the College's site lately; there were 34,988 pages viewed during April alone! And the Online Information System has had more than one million "hits" since it debuted late last year. Just after children at the MHC Day Care Center took a field trip to Clapp Laboratory, where a stone with a dinosaur footprint is displayed, a sharp-eyed youngster spotted what seems to be a similar footprint in the schoolyard. The pee-wee paleontologist's find is being examined by older experts.
		Campus Achievers: Four MHC students are among the 264 chosen nationally as Goldwater Scholars, the premier award for students interested in careers in math, science, and engineering. Scholarships went to Tara Kirkpatrick '97, Sally McFarlane '97, Sarah Principato '97, and Katey Walter '98. Poet and lecturer in English Mary Jo Salter is featured in The Best American Poetry 1995, represented by her poem, "The Age of Reason." If you saw the film Mary Reilly--the tale of a maid who worked for scientist Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego, Mr. Hyde --you saw the work of former faculty member Valerie Martin. A lecturer in English from 1986 to 1988, Martin wrote the novel on which the screenplay is based. Computer science major Preethi Ramani '97 has received the MHC Microsoft Women's Technical Scholarship Award from the Microsoft Corporation. It covers one year of tuition and offers a summer internship at Microsoft. The College recognized the faculty's scholarly accomplishments in March with a library exhibition of recent faculty books, musical compositions, articles, performances on video, photographs of paintings, an article in an electronic journal, and other academic work. About seventy items are included in a bibliography of faculty work that is available on the World Wide Web at this location. The translations and original poetry of Russian professor Peter Viereck will be featured in the forthcoming (1997) World Treasury of Poetry, a gigantic tome containing more than 2,000 poems and representing every major poetic tradition. Physical education department chair Laurie Priest and Sarita Gupta '96 were among the 3,000 women at the first Feminist Expo in Washington, DC, in February. The group organized against efforts to roll back affirmative-action programs and sexual-discrimination laws.