Barnard Magazine Fall 2019

FALL 2019

Learning Lab The tiniest hands create a global impact at the Barnard Center for Toddler Development

FALL 2019

COVER STORY

10 Syllabus FACULTY PROFILE

Life Lessons

12 Serious About Play

Four decades after its launch, the Barnard Toddler Center plans the next phase of its groundbreaking work in child development

22 Sources Gala 2019 23 Alumnae Association

Q&A with Tovah Klein

by Gabrielle S. Balkan ’97

A Bold New Year Fellowships for Graduate

PRESIDENT’S REPORT NEWS & NOTES

Study Small Classroom, Big Reach A snapshot of the Toddler Center’s many achievements and spheres of influence

58 CAA MEDALISTS Columbia Honors Three Barnard Alumnae 25 Class Notes

DEPARTMENTS

Joyce Wan ’00 Lydia Hall Lenaghan ’54

ALUMNAE PROFILE OBITUARY

2 Letters

IN MEMORIAM

3 President’s Page

32 Barnard Memory

by Rena Bonne ’68

4 Through the Gates REUNION

60 Last Word

REUNION

by Halley Bondy ’06

Reconnecting at Reunion 2019 Alumnae Association Award Winners COMMENCEMENT And So the Adventure Begins

Title: Cover image, a.k.a. “The Big Picture” (2019) Artist: A budding Georgia O’Keeffe at the Barnard Center for Toddler Development Medium: Tempera paint on newsprint Dimensions: 279 cm x 432 cm (11 in x 17 in)

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LETTERS

EDITORIAL Liz Galst ART DIRECTOR David Hopson COPY EDITOR Molly Frances WRITER Veronica Suchodolski ’19 STUDENT INTERNS Asha Meagher ’21, Solby Lim ’22 EDITOR

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF BARNARD COLLEGE PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE Jyoti

Menon ’01

ALUMNAE RELATIONS Karen A. Sendler

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

COMMUNICATIONS Gabrielle Simpson ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT Jennifer Goddard VICE PRESIDENT

DEVELOPMENT

“Soul Providers” I truly enjoyed the article on the 50th anniversary of the Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters (BOSS) in the Winter 2019 issue. This is history that should not be forgotten.

I lived for a while on the seventh floor [of Brooks Hall, a dedicated space where black students could choose to live], and I can tell you that for me it felt like a safe haven in a somewhat intimidating environment. The women were so warm and supportive. I made a lot of friends and loved them all.

I must also applaud Barbara Florio Graham ’56 for her “Barnard Memory” regarding Margaret Mead.

—Yolanda Irizarry ’73

“Understanding the Present through the Past” As a Barnard history major and a lifelong reader of history, I was appalled by the article “Understanding the Present through the Past” in the Summer 2019 Barnard Magazine. History is a study of the past. But the projects described, however worthy they might be, all involved a study of the present. And it would seem from the description of “Seeking Asylum” (how U.S. involvement in Central America over time “helped produce the political and economic situation we find ourselves in today”) that the course violates a very basic norm of any academic discipline — it begins with a conclusion! And one imposed by the instructor no less!

—Carol Crystle ’62

From the Editor...

If you’re like me, you can’t get enough good news these days. So I’m excited to announce a new section in Barnard Magazine: “Accolades.” In it, we’ll feature short write-ups of your accomplishments. Whether you’ve coached your basketball team to the state championships, led a successful fundraising drive, or discovered a new molecule, the Magazine would love to celebrate your achievements. (We’ll continue to tout new, Barnard-related books in our Salon books section.)

Accolades isn’t just for alumnae, either. We also welcome submissions from faculty and staff.

If you’ve got triumphs to share, send it to us at accolades@barnard.edu. (A related, high-resolution photo is helpful, too.) Or contact us by postal mail, at Barnard Magazine, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027.

We look forward to sharing your good news. —Liz Galst 2

VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Lisa Yeh PRESIDENT, BARNARD COLLEGE Sian Leah Beilock Fall 2019, Vol. CVIII, No. 3 Barnard Magazine (USPS 875-280, ISSN 1071-6513) is published quarterly by the Communications Department of Barnard College.

Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send change of address form to: Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598

EDITORIAL OFFICE Vagelos Alumnae Center, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 212.854.0085 E-mail: magazine@barnard.edu Opinions expressed are those of contributors or the editor and do not represent official positions of Barnard College or the Alumnae Association of Barnard College. Letters to the editor (150 words maximum), submissions for Last Word (600 words maximum), and unsolicited articles and/or photographs will be published at the discretion of the editor and will be edited for length and clarity.

The contact information listed in Class Notes is for the exclusive purpose of providing information for the Magazine and may not be used for any other purpose.

For alumnae-related inquiries, call Alumnae Relations at 212.854.2005 or e-mail alumnaerelations@barnard.edu.

To change your address, write to: Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 646.745.8344 E-mail: alumrecords@barnard.edu

PRESIDENT’S PAGE

Portrait by Dorothy Hong

SIAN LEAH BEILOCK

The Beat Goes On In May, 678 members of the Class of 2019 (our largest ever) crossed the stage at Radio City Music Hall, posed for photos, and headed off to take on the world as newly minted Barnard alumnae. In many ways, that ceremony, coupled with the Columbia University commencement two days later, marked the culmination of their college years.

And if the shouts of “We did it!” are any indication, some graduates see graduation as an end point.

That sentiment is understandable. But I would argue, and time will show, that the learning that happens at Barnard has a long and lasting ripple effect.

We see it throughout our community.

Take Reunion, for example, which brought more than 1,200 alumnae to campus.

Over the course of the weekend, in panels and workshops, award presentations and casual conversations, stories were shared about life after Barnard. In so many cases, that life is a direct reflection of the learning that happened here.

The Class of 1937’s Shirley Adelson Siegel is a stunning example of the longevity of learning. The oldest alumna at Reunion, she received the Barnard Medal

of Distinction at Commencement and just celebrated her 101st birthday. During her junior year, Shirley took advantage of the National Youth Administration Program established under the New Deal. The New York Legislative Service applied to NYA workers, and Shirley landed a job there.

She worked on housing issues, and that experience helped set the course for her stellar career as a pioneering civil rights and fair housing attorney.

It happened then, and it happens even more vigorously now. Recent grads can benefit from the Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship program that we launched last fall through Beyond Barnard to help foster the development of academic and professional career skills and ongoing learning. Take, for example, Anna Carlson ’18, Post-Bac Fellow in the Empirical Reasoning Center (ERC), which teaches students and faculty how best to understand, visualize, and use data. Carlson first went to the ERC lab for help when she was a student and eventually became head fellow as a senior.

In May, she flew to a technology and data conference in Sydney, Australia, to present her paper “The First Five Years of the Barnard ERC.” She won second place and has since decided to pursue graduate studies. This past year, Beyond Barnard worked with hundreds of alumnae like Anna, from recent graduates to those who graduated decades before. (To learn more, please visit barnard.edu/ beyond-barnard.)

Our faculty are another huge part of this lifelong learning equation — putting research into practice and connecting learning at Barnard with life after Barnard — and they will have even more support for their efforts as a result of a recent grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Mellon has awarded the College $1

million to launch the Public Engagement Initiative (PEI), which, over the course of six years, will enable long-term collaborations between Barnard faculty and partner organizations in New York City. PEI collaborations, focused on immigration, poverty, and labor rights, will give Barnard students a chance to work with (and learn from) our neighbors on issues that impact all of our lives.

Finally, this issue of the Magazine highlights a prime example of putting research into practice, of learning by doing. Established in 1973, the Center for Toddler Development encapsulates what Barnard does best. It’s a place where ideas incubate and close interactions are seen as the surest way to learn. Our student researchers immerse themselves in a dynamic setting for children and parents and go on to expand our understanding of a critical developmental period that is often overlooked.

It’s exciting to lead this College at a time when the work we do echoes far beyond our gates. We will keep pushing the limits, and I hope you will continue to follow our progress and share your own inspiring stories of life after Barnard.

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The toddler years: President Beilock with her daughter, Sarah (at 18 mos.), attending a psychology conference

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 3

THROUGH THE GATES

by Lois Elfman ’80

Photos by Asiya Khaki ’09 and Brooke Slezak

REUNION

Reconnecting at Reunion 2019

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Alumnae return to campus to revel, remember, and reenergize More than 1,200 alumnae returned to

campus to celebrate Barnard Reunion 2019 over the May 30-June 2 weekend.

At the Alumnae of Color dinner on Thursday, graduates from the past five decades gathered to reconnect with friends, faculty, and current Barnard students. Featured speaker Paola Ramos ’09, who served in the Obama White House, and then on President Obama’s reelection campaign, and now hosts Vice’s series Latin-X, told the crowd, “It was here that, all of a sudden, that fear I had about speaking up was gone, where the words I was writing on paper found meaning, and where to the left and right there were women that looked like me, that spoke like me, that loved like me, and when I finally understood what it meant to be bold.”

On Friday morning, Reverend Anna (Keller) Pearson ’85 officiated at a multidenominational memorial service honoring alumnae who have passed away.

And that afternoon, AABC President Jyoti Menon ’01 shared updates about the Alumnae Association of Barnard College (AABC), followed by a presentation of the AABC awards. (For more about AABC’s 2019 awardees, see page 6.)

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers were the focus of a Saturday morning panel. Both Danielle Lahmani ’84, an engineering technical project manager at Bloomberg LP, and Nieca Goldberg ’79, a cardiologist and medical director at the NYU Langone Joan H. Tisch Center for Women’s Health, emphasized how important liberal arts are to a STEM career. Lahmani explained that diversity of thought is sought after in technology, and different points of view are essential.

Said Rosemary Bates ’04, director of design and construction at Rockefeller

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Group, “The more you talk, the more you share, the more you learn.”

The storytelling event Bring It Back to Barnard, produced by the Peabody Awardwinning organization The Moth, delighted a capacity audience on Saturday afternoon.

Hosted by writer-comedian JiJi Lee ’01, the event featured tales of how the College has affected alumnae’s lives, such as Bonnie Oh ’59, once an unsatisfied student at Seoul National University in her native South Korea, who arrived at Brooks Hall in the early morning hours of Feb. 14, 1956, after traveling for four days. “Barnard helped me live my life to the fullest,” said Oh, now a retired distinguished professor of Korean studies at Georgetown University.

And Shoshana Greenberg ’04, who along with her friends made the Big Apple their playground during their first year. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, in her sophomore year, changed all that. She and her friends struggled through the subsequent semesters, staying close to campus. But before they headed home in May 2002, they visited a psychic in Greenwich Village and felt renewed. “We realized we would never get this Barnard of the first year back, but we could have a new New York,” said Greenberg, now a freelance musical theater and opera lyricist/librettist and theater journalist.

At the closing dinner, alumnae danced to their favorite tunes and toasted one another. President Beilock announced “The Bold Standard: Raising the Bar” fundraising campaign, which will focus on four institutional priorities that align with her vision for the College: STEM at Barnard, Social Mobility, Beyond Barnard, and Health and Wellness.

“Our young women are strong and fearless,” she said, “and on their way to becoming visionaries and trailblazers. What better time to reach to new heights?”

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1 From left: Leila Bassi ’94, Alexis Pauline Gumbs ’04, and Linda Yellen ’69, who were honored by the AABC 2 Professor Quandra Prettyman (left) and Darcel Dillard-Suite ’83 3 Alumnae dancers perform works in progress 4 The Class of 1969 dances the Mami Bali, an Israeli folk dance, at their Class Dinner 5 President Sian Leah Beilock greets members of the Classes of 1934–1954 at the President’s Tea 6 Sherry Suttles ’69 discusses the importance of documenting the histories of black students and graduates 7 From left: Kim Hom ’74, Karen Hansen Melnick ’74, and Barbara St. Michel ’74 catch up by the Barnard gates 8 From left: Malvina Kefalas ’14, Alex Strycula ’14, Jennelle Fong ’14, Victoria Albert ’14, and Gloria Noel ’14 strike a Greek Games statue pose

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THROUGH THE GATES

Photos by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead

REUNION

Alumnae Association Award Winners Barnard recognized nine alumnae at Reunion for their career accomplishments and dedicated service to the College and its graduates Award for Service to Barnard LEILA BASSI ’94

Leila Bassi serves as an Alumnae Trustee, president of the Barnard College Club of London, a member of the AABC Board, and as a Barnard Alumnae Admissions Representative. She has hosted numerous London-based Barnard events and sponsored a 2017 reception for alumnae and parents at the Royal Institution in London, which featured Barnard adjunct associate professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar. Bassi began her career in the music industry, working in strategic planning for a major music company, as well as a startup online music retailer. After receiving her MBA from Columbia Business School, she held various positions in the financial services industry in both equity research and asset management.

Distinguished Alumna Award EDNA M. CONWAY ’79

A speaker at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit this year, Conway is the chief security officer for Cisco Systems’ global value chain. She has given testimony before the U.S. Presidential Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and drafted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s directive on cyber defense. She served on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Task Force. Conway’s insights are featured in reports, case studies, and publications such as Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, CIO magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.

She received the Federal 100 Award, the SC Media Reboot Leadership Award, and the New Hampshire TechProfessional of 2018 Award.

Young Alumna Award ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS ’04

Teen Vogue called her a black feminist hero, and BBC World News lauded her as “innovative” for co-founding the Black Feminist Bookmobile project. Gumbs describes herself as a “queer black troublemaker and black feminist love evangelist.” Currently the Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Theater Arts and Dance, Gumbs was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University (during her dissertation process). She co-founded the Mobile Homecoming project, an experiential archive amplifying generations of black LGBTQ brilliance, as well as Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, a transmedia-enabled community school.

Award for Service to Barnard LORI A. HOEPNER ’94

For the past 25 years, Hoepner has tirelessly promoted Barnard, while also pursuing two graduate degrees and embarking on a demanding career in public health. Since her graduation in 1994, Hoepner has served continuously as either class president, class vice president/Reunion chair, or nominating chair. She has participated in many AABC committees, volunteered as a Barnard Alumnae Admissions Representative, taken part in Beyond Barnard’s Mentoring Program, worked as a member on the board of the now-defunct Barnard Business and Professional Women, and held numerous leadership roles in the Barnard College Club of New York.

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Millicent Carey McIntosh Award for Feminism LESLIE M. KANTOR ’89

Kantor began work at the intersection of research, programs, policy, and advocacy when she founded the AIDS Peer Educators group at Barnard, a student-run HIV/AIDS education program geared toward women, which eventually expanded to all Columbia undergraduates. While an intern for Congressman Henry Waxman, she conducted critical work to defeat discriminatory amendments in early AIDS legislation. Kantor’s awards for her continued work in this field include the Carl S. Shultz Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Sexual and Reproductive Health Section of the American Public Health Association, and the Golden APPLE Award for Outstanding Leadership from the Association of Planned Parenthood Leaders in Education.

Award for Service to Barnard PAULINE PISKIN SHERMAN ’64

Sherman’s long-standing commitment to Barnard is most clearly demonstrated by her work on behalf of the Annual Fund. As a class fund chair and a regular participant in Barnard’s Annual Fund phone-a-thons, she’s utilitized her personal relationships with classmates to strengthen the College’s appeals for support. She has also served as class vice president and Reunion chair. A member of AABC’s Project Continuum and Fellowship Committees, she often attends College ceremonies and events. Sherman was the senior vice president, secretary, and associate general counsel of the financial services organization AXA Financial, Inc., AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company (now AXA), and certain of their affiliates.

Distinguished Alumna Award MARSHA E. SIMMS ’74

Simms has been involved with and honored by the Association of Black Women Attorneys, the New York City Bar Association, and the American Bar Association (ABA). At the ABA, she chaired the African Law Initiative Council and several committees of the Business Law Section, was a member of the Commission on Women in the Profession, and is currently a member of the Central and Eastern European Division of the Rule of Law Initiative. Simms has made it her mission to help others as she has been helped so many times.

Millicent Carey McIntosh Award for Feminism KRISTA SUH ’09

Suh is a screenwriter, novelist, “craftivist,” and artist whose mission is to make the world a safer place for women and help each one validate her own creativity, femininity, and intuition. In 2017, she shot to fame when she co-created the Pussyhat, the pink knit hat with cat ears that was worn as a symbol of resistance during the 2017 Women’s Marches around the globe. Leading up to the marches, the Pussyhat Project offered free Pussyhat patterns to knitters of all levels, drawing an extraordinary response. The hat continues to function as a symbol of contemporary feminism.

Woman of Achievement Award LINDA YELLEN ’69

Linda Yellen is a director, writer, and producer best known for her work in television and independent film. While still a student, she taught one of the first film courses at Barnard. Since then, she has made more than 25 films for both large and small screens, including two of television’s highest-rated movies.

Her productions have won two Peabody Awards, seven Emmys, one Luminas, one Silver Nymph, and two Christophers. Yellen was selected to be part of the Executive Council of the Writers Guild of America. She became the youngest woman director ever admitted to the Directors Guild of America and is currently serving a second term on its Executive Council.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 7

THROUGH THE GATES

Photos by Asiya Khaki ’09 and Skyler Reid

COMMENCEMENT

And So the Adventure Begins At its 127th Commencement, Barnard and its graduates celebrated the College’s largest class ever The Class of 2019 gathered on Monday, May 20, with distinguished leaders in entertainment, literature, and civil rights activism at Radio City Music Hall for the College’s 127th Commencement. Award-winning actress, producer, and humanitarian Viola Davis — the first African American actress to win an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy — delivered the keynote address to Barnard’s largest-ever graduating class. An outspoken advocate for human rights, Davis told the 678 new alumnae, “You are graduating from a school whose mission it is to not just hand you a diploma, but a sword.”

Davis received Barnard’s Medal of Distinction, as did pioneering civil rights and fair housing attorney Shirley Adelson Siegel ’37; Sana Amanat ’04, who co-created Marvel’s first Muslim superhero; and internationally recognized poet, essayist, and playwright Cherríe Moraga.

The Class of 2019 took its first step in giving back to the College, announcing a senior class gift of more than $20,000 to support low-income, first-generation, and refugee students.

Board of Trustees Chair Cheryl Glicker Milstein ’82, P’14 reminded the graduates, “You will always be tethered to the College because of the strong ties you made during your years here, the connections with faculty from whom you gained so much, the individual growth and change that inevitably happened. You get to keep and cherish all of it.”

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1 Barnard’s associate general counsel Virginia Ryan ’83 (right) presents pioneering civil rights attorney Shirley Adelson Siegel ’37 with the 2019 Barnard Medal of Distinction 2 President Beilock congratulates a new graduate 3 Professor Nancy Worman ’87 presents essayist and poet Cherríe Moraga with the 2019 Barnard Medal of Distinction 4 A tender moment of congratulations for a graduate 5 Celebrating in front of the Radio City Music Hall marquee 6 Actor, producer, human rights activist, and 2019 Barnard Medal of Distinction recipient Viola Davis delivering this year’s Commencement address 7 Commencement proceedings at Radio City 8 One of many decorated mortarboards on display 9 A celebratory selfie with family on Sixth Avenue 10 Graduating senior and Frank Gilbert Bryson Prize-winner Alicia Simba ’19 presenting Marvel Comics’ vice president of content & character development Sana Amanat ’04 with the 2019 Barnard Medal of Distinction

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BARNARD WELCOMES NEW TRUSTEES 3

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Barnard College recently announced the appointment of three new members to its Board of Trustees.

The new class includes Sherif Nadar P’21, P’23, Daphne Fodor Philipson ’69, and Ramona Emilia Romero ’85.

Nadar works as founder and CEO of Horizon Asset LLP, a Londonbased alternative asset management company.

Philipson is a retired private equity partner and board chair of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic who helped found both Barnard’s Project Continuum, which brings together alumnae who graduated at least 30 years ago, and the College’s Athena Center for Leadership Studies.

Romero currently works as Princeton University’s general counsel and was the general counsel at the U.S. Department of Agriculture under President Obama. As a Barnard senior, she served as president of the Student Government Association.

The Trustees of Barnard College are responsible for the overall governance of the College, including oversight of strategic direction and large-scale programmatic initiatives, approval of the budget, and stewardship of the endowment.

“My fellow Trustees and I are delighted to welcome Sherif, Daphne, and Ramona to the Board,” said Cheryl Milstein ’82, P’14, who was elected chair of the Board in June 2018. “Our incoming trustees will bring valuable new ideas and perspectives to the table as we engage in the ongoing work of guiding Barnard’s future.”

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 9

SYLLABUS

Photo by Jonathan King

FACULTY PROFILE

Life Lessons Sociologist Mignon Moore shares her path from Barnard to pioneering research on black lesbian lives

Mignon Moore ’92CC is keeping watch on the corner of a busy intersection, taking notes at the crossroads of gender, sexuality, race, and class, where the chair of Barnard’s Department of Sociology first became interested in the field as an academic career. But it wasn’t a class that brought her here — rather, it was a game of cards.

As an undergrad at Columbia College and then a grad student at the University of Chicago, the self-described “church girl” devoted all of her time to school; as a 30-year-old, openly gay Ford Fellow and tenure-track professor in Columbia’s Department of Sociology, though, she decided to make time for a social life, after meeting a black lesbian couple who had invited her to play spades. Over cards, Moore met their circle of friends, composed of other black lesbian couples from various socioeconomic backgrounds.

“Their money went to socializing and to having a good time in life. And I had 10

not had a good time in my life, other than as an academic. They introduced me to different components of black lesbian life in New York,” she explains. It was in this welcoming space that the now-tenured professor and award-winning author found her calling at the exact moment when her own career was at a crossroads.

Professionally, she was trying to figure out what her next project would be; personally, she had connected with friends she found “sociologically interesting.”

Ever the sociologist, Moore melded these professional and personal realities and spent the next eight months taking field notes on her new world. Her introduction via a card game to this social network of black lesbian friends from various classes inspired the research that would eventually turn her into a pioneer in academia for her studies of black lesbian families.

“I’ve always been interested in the intersections of race and gender,” Moore

says. “I had this path, I had [reached] this crossroads, and [then] I received a [Ford] fellowship to collect new data on new family forms. I was going to look at adolescent relationships that teens had with their parents in Harlem, a coming-ofage kind of thing, [but] I was like, ‘I really think I want to study these lesbian families through the lens of race and class.’ …

This was a time [in the early 2000s] when no one was looking at these things in the academy. Sexuality was very marginalized, so people were like, ‘You’re going to find they reproduce heterosexual norms.’ I would listen, but in my head I would say, ‘Well, that’s not true.’

“All of the literature that I could find on lesbian family formation was about white middle-class women who approached their sexuality as a politics. And that was not what I was finding. I was finding different kinds of black women and different kinds of family configurations, but [the researchers]

were leading with race, they weren’t leading with sexual orientation. Most of the time, they didn’t even think about [black lesbian] sexual orientation as a politics.”

At first, Moore worried there might be professional risks in pursuing the topic, but the result — her book Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women — went on to win a 2012 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association and was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems.

In 2011, Moore joined the sociology and African American studies faculty at UCLA. Switching coasts wasn’t the only major change in Moore’s life then. During her time in Los Angeles, she and her wife, Elaine, whom she met in 2002 at a family function, became the mothers of two children.

Four years later, Morningside Heights beckoned again. In 2015, Moore became an associate professor at Barnard and Columbia (moving to chair at Barnard in 2018 and a full professor this year).

The journey that took Moore throughout New York City and across the country to realize her calling resumes at Barnard, nearly 30 years after it began when Moore discovered a Columbia course on the sociology of education, followed by a popular Barnard course, Gender, Race & Class (which Moore has plans to revive) — she loved both.

At the same time, a religion professor named Judith Weisenfeld had arrived at Barnard. Many black students formed relationships with Weisenfeld, one of very few black women faculty members in those days. The professor met with Moore about papers and advised her as she prepared to attend graduate school. Weisenfeld’s willingness to mentor Moore affirmed what she and several of her Columbia peers felt.

“We understood Barnard to be a different place, a place where there was concrete mentoring and advising, and we felt that the Barnard women were getting more attention from their professors,” she says.

Being at Barnard has given Moore a chance to follow in Weisenfeld’s footsteps

“We understood Barnard to be a different place, a place where there was concrete mentoring and advising, and we felt that the Barnard women were getting more attention from their professors.” as a mentor. She hires Barnard students as research assistants and is an enthusiastic senior thesis adviser, encouraging her students to apply her own melding of personal experience with professional research.

“If you think that it matters if a girl is African American in determining which factors play a role in her success, then you must think … there are other combinations that would matter, [like] immigration status … or class status.

So I have worked closely with students, [including] white women from low-income backgrounds, to think about how class mattered for how they understood the world, the relationships with their parents....

I encourage students to think about those intersections.”

“She really encouraged me to do research that I was personally passionate about,” says former student/mentee Annaliese Grant ’17, now a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin– Madison, a top-10 sociology program.

Moore advised Grant’s thesis on mother/ daughter relationships among low-income white families.

“She was the person who told me

I could do things … based on my life experience,” Grant continues. “I’m from a low-income background. I don’t know I would have felt as strongly that the things I did were valid.… She has a really powerful way of making students feel that their life experience is valid and [that] they can do something about it by writing about it to change things.”

Moore herself is now writing a second book, In the Shadow of Sexuality: Social Histories of African American Lesbian and Gay Elders, 1950-1975, in the hopes of changing things. “I want to make a contribution to the field of studies on the Great Migration by looking sociologically at sexual minorities who were part of that experience,” she says.

This time in Morningside Heights finds Moore perfectly situated in both her professional and personal lives, still studious and observant of the social realities around her. At the busy intersection of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, Moore remains focused on her dual missions: to change the world through her work and to equip Barnard students with the knowledge and confidence to one day do the same.

—Staff reporting

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by Ayana Byrd ’95

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Photos by Asiya Khaki ’09

Lorenzo, age 2½

AFTER FOUR DECADES, THE BARNARD TODDLER CENTER PLANS THE NEXT PHASE OF ITS GROUNDBREAKING WORK ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT

An unexpected sound bubbles out from the fourth floor of Milbank Hall, spilling from a small classroom where groundbreaking research is taking place. Tiny peals of laughter echo through the tony marble halls of Barnard’s oldest building as its youngest students gather for snack time. For over 40 years, the Center for Toddler Development — the Toddler Center, for short — has occupied space on the fourth floor of Milbank Hall. Inside its doors, researchers are changing how the world understands very young children and how Barnard gives back to its community. Now, as the Center anticipates what might be its biggest change since opening in 1973 — a proposed relocation to a larger, improved space (also in Milbank Hall) — it continues to serve a trio of important functions: teaching undergrads; researching young children’s critical developmental changes; and working with educators and parents around the world to help them better understand how the smallest among us grow into people well prepared for a changing world.

“The Toddler Development Center at Barnard College is known far and wide as a model for how to learn from, play with, and support the development of 2-year-olds,” says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, an early childhood development expert in the psychology department at Temple University in Philadelphia. The Center’s world-renowned director, Tovah Klein, gets it, according to Hirsh-Pasek. “She deftly takes the latest research and lets it come alive for the children in her charge. I have been working with babies and toddlers for my whole career, and each time I visit the Center, I walk out with new insights.”

In that regard she is not alone. Says actor Sarah Jessica Parker, whose children attended the Center, “It was an amazing experience, especially for a first-time parent. It’s the first time you’re really engaging with people who have spent a huge amount of time studying children and early education and separation. What I got out of it was — on my best days as a parent — is tools: ‘How do I want to talk to my child? How do I want to be of comfort?

How do I want to be a disciplinarian? How do I want to be an authority? How do I want to shape my child? And when do I want to lay off and let them shape themselves?’ ” BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 13

(Left) Romina Tafreshi ’20 with Yuna, age 2½; (right) assistant teacher Kristen O’Reilly with 3-year-olds (L-R) Petra, Gabrielle, and Jeevan

HOW CHILDREN LEARN BEST

Two days a week, 2¼ hours a day, children ages 19 to 34 months gather with six teachers in the Center’s 700-square-foot playroom. It is equipped with everything you’d expect in a toddler space, from play kitchens to blocks to an art station.

There is an intentional order here — toys and furniture start each day in the same place, allowing the children the opportunity to feel ownership over a part of the world in which they know where everything can be found. If you give toddlers an environment where they can figure out life, the Toddler Center emphasizes, you help create a foundation that will enable them to become confident toddlers who can become confident adults.

At the Center, the children are given free rein to do what toddlers do naturally: explore the world around them. Though some nursery schools and day care programs focus much of their efforts on “pre-academics” — preparing for reading, writing, and learning additional languages — the Toddler Center continues its embrace of play. “The idea that toddlers spend their days playing says this must be a really important developmental mechanism for them,” observes Klein, whom Good Morning America once called 14

“the toddler whisperer.”

Though supervised by professional teachers and student assistants, the children are mostly free to decide how they want to play and with whom. The session closes with circle time between teachers and parents/caregivers to review what children did that day, followed by a debrief with undergrads after the children leave.

The Center adopted its philosophy from the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who believed children learn best when they can explore their environments free of adult intervention.

In Milbank 402, play is seen as a critical tool for emotional expression, exploration, and regulation. “If this is how they figure out the world, what is it that they’re doing?” Klein asks. She wrote the 2014 book How Toddlers Thrive in order to answer that question, and every day, through observing the toddlers and through research at the Center, she further refines her understanding.

(To learn more about toddlers and what’s going on in their heads, read our Q&A with Tovah Klein on page 18.)

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

When the Toddler Center opened in 1973, its staff probably couldn’t have imagined

that in 2019 the Center’s 50 slots would fill up in an instant and the waiting list would be equally long. Parents whose children have attended include many alumnae, New Yorkers from every borough, and even a few high-profile names, including not only Sarah Jessica Parker but also another New York fixture, Jerry Seinfeld.

Francis Schacter, an assistant psychology professor at the College who specialized in early childhood development, conceived of the Toddler Center as a “low-key play center” affiliated with the Psychology Department. Its purpose was to provide undergrads with a rare and invaluable experience: the opportunity to watch early development theories played out on real children in real time.

But before there could be play or observation, there needed to be toddlers. This wasn’t easy in 1973, when 2-year-olds rarely attended programs like the one Schacter proposed. “It was basically unheard of,” said the Center’s founding teacher, Patricia Henderson Shimm, in a 2013 interview.

(Shimm passed away last year.) So she headed outside Barnard’s gates to find mothers walking down Broadway who would sign up their toddlers. The inaugural class had seven children.

(Left) Three-year-old Romare with teacher Jenna Bloom (foreground) and assistant teacher Sophia Golden GS ’18; (right) Martha, age 3

What those seven children and their families received under Shimm’s care did not change as the program’s enrollment grew. As she wrote in her 1995 book, Parenting Your Toddler, Shimm’s philosophy centered on three basic themes: following a toddler’s lead with appropriate support; setting reasonable limits so the child feels safe; and helping them understand and articulate their feelings.

“It was wonderful to have support from people like Pat,” says Zuhirah Khaldun ’96, whose two daughters attended the Center.

“She was amazing, and so funny. There was such care for our children. You felt like you were getting advice from a professional, but a wise older relative at the same time.”

In the 45 years that Shimm was with the Center, buzz about the program grew. The Center is now considered a model for early childhood programs around the world, and Klein, who joined the Psychology Department as a professor in 1995, is sought after for lectures, conferences, and media interviews.

THEORY AND PRAXIS

As its global reputation continues to grow, the Center remains focused on its original mission: providing undergrads with firsthand access to toddlers. Students engage

with the Center in one of two ways. All students enrolled in Developmental Psychology Lab and in the Intro to Psych Lab — about 200 undergrads a year — spend time observing the toddlers, coding behavior (categorizing it for research purposes), and building observational studies.

Each year, an additional 16 students, primarily psychology majors, take a twosemester seminar Klein teaches on early development. “The students are reading research and theoretical perspectives, then they’re working one morning a week for the entire year with one group of children,” Klein explains.

This past spring semester, assistant professor of psychology Danielle Sussan ’04 spent time at the Toddler Center with her developmental psych students. Their assignment was to design an observational study in which they measured an observable behavior (like aggression, sharing, or toy preference) as a function of an independent variable (such as birth order, gender, or sibling status).

The students then observed toddlers on multiple occasions from behind the Center’s one-way mirror to record data on their assigned toddler. “It was so amazing,” Sussan says, “to have a discussion in class about a theory of child development and

then walk right down the hall and see what we just talked about in action.”

Klein considers these classes an exchange of knowledge. The students get a firsthand look at early childhood development while the Center staff gains something equally valuable. “It’s [the students’] new eyes,” says Klein. “They might be naive eyes, but they’re smart naive eyes — and just an infusion of energy that’s constantly pushing us to rethink what we’re doing.”

PROCESSING THROUGH PLAY

The simple idea of “play” and how it helps children develop is a deceptively rich vein of knowledge to mine. Klein and Hannah Dunn ’17, who served as the Center’s research coordinator before leaving in July for a doctoral program in psychology, recently completed a study that explores how children employ play to process separation, using “the leaving game.” “The child plays the ‘leaver,’ pretending to leave the teacher,” explains Dunn. “ ‘Bye, I’m going to the grocery store!’ or ‘I’m going to the office!’ they may say, while the teacher pretends they are being left: ‘See you later!’ The child moves back and forth, reuniting with the teacher and then moving away again. The importance is that children can control the BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 15

Assistant teacher Rachel Zukerman GS ’18 with Dylan, age 3, near the classroom’s one-way mirror, behind which parents, program providers, and researchers can observe

terms of leaving through play. And through a reversal of roles, the child can process what it means to be left when their parent goes to work or drops them off at school.”

Klein and Dunn found that this type of play encourages children to experience autonomy and power, as well as the understanding that they can move away, return, and not be alone.

Columbia psychology professor Nim Tottenham ’96, who studied with Klein as an undergrad (and was her first student), also focuses on how toddlers play. Tottenham heads the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Lab, which has been a research partner of the Center for the past six years. Her newest study with the Toddler Center is on toddler eavesdropping. In it, teachers showed 16

children two different toys that made noises, and while one adult played with one of the toys, another adult expressed great annoyance at that first adult. The children were then asked which toy they wanted.

“They quickly learn to avoid the toy that annoyed the other adult, even though they themselves didn’t experience any negative repercussions,” explains Tottenham.

“It’s testing their learning and their memory, but for things that they themselves haven’t experienced but that they’ve heard adults experiencing,” she says. “We commonly think of toddlers as not very emotionally regulated,” meaning they can and will go from perfectly calm to full meltdown in seconds. But, says Tottenham, “clearly they’re at the stage where they’re beginning to learn how to

[regulate those emotions] — learning, in this case, how to avoid difficult stimuli.

And so we’re interested in designing some experiments to get a better sense of how this learning occurs.”

The Center demonstrated the impact of new technologies in an April 2013 report by ABC News’ Nightline on iPads and smartphones, which have increasingly made their way into tiny hands. As cameras rolled behind the one-way mirror, researchers conducted an experiment in the classroom with tablets to test toddler “distractability.” Klein observed that children’s vocabulary and socializing improved when the tech was taken away and surmised that a reliance on devices could make it harder for children to learn the skills to self-soothe.

HED Barnard’s Big Picture REACHING OUT

The fruits of the Center’s research are shared first and foremost with parents, who can then implement strategies such as limiting screen time to help toddlers develop into confident and capable children. (Parents and caregivers are invited each day to observe their children from behind the oneway mirror and take part in discussions with the associate director as they learn to become more adept at being parents.)

While the Center’s impact begins with its young charges, its reach doesn’t end there.

Klein’s influence is felt in her mentoring of students, serving as a senior thesis adviser and helping guide them through applications to graduate school. “I see my role as not just teaching about early development,” she says, “but helping a student figure out what it is that they enjoy doing. What kind of questions are interesting to them, what kind of career path might work?”

Sabrina Huda ’02 worked directly with Klein when Huda was Center coordinator and an assistant teacher for four years after graduation. During that time, she was also enrolled at Teachers College in a master’s program in children’s education. “Being in the [playroom] opened my eyes to what toddlerhood looks like, really looking at [toddlers] as these amazing human beings growing and learning,” she says.

Huda is now a project director for Sesame Workshop, the global nonprofit behind Sesame Street. In her work creating and implementing the organization’s social impact initiatives, she holds to the Center’s philosophy, which, she says, is “very much hands off, let the children discover on their own. The Toddler Center emphasizes how every child should be treated, and I really want to bring this back to communities that do not have these resources.”

There’s more, too. As one of the world’s leading experts on the powerful implications of play, Klein is able to fulfill what she sees as the third mission of the Center, spreading the Toddler Center’s expertise to communities far and near.

This spring, she participated in the 1st International True Play Conference: Global Conversations on the Future of continued on page 59

Developmental psychology is thriving at Barnard, not only at the Toddler Center but also in the classrooms and laboratories of psychology professors Koleen McCrink and Ann Senghas, as well as through President Sian Leah Beilock’s research.

McCrink studies the development of children’s mathematical thinking and the impacts adults can have on it, while Senghas investigates the fundamentals of language acquisition in children and the ways children acquire, develop, and transmit the languages in which they communicate.

President Beilock explores child and adolescent development as well, with recently published research on interventions that help low-income high school students control their test-taking anxiety and improve test performance. “Your anxiety can affect how you demonstrate what you know when it matters most,” Beilock explains.

Both McCrink and Senghas teach developmental psychology courses in which learning how to generate and investigate research questions plays a central role. “Students design experiments and carry them out,” Senghas explains. “They make observations. They do studies and write them up.”

The professors’ efforts teach the scientific method and prepare students to conduct the kind of research undertaken by professional psychologists.

Indeed, developmental psychology at Barnard is no mere academic exercise but instead answers some of the most critical questions of our time, Senghas says: “How do kids learn and remember information? How do we want to parent? How do we teach people to be kind?”

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Room to Grow When Pat Shimm joined the Toddler Center as a founding teacher in 1973, Sesame Street was about the same age as her seven students. The idea of focused programming founded in developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity was radical but ready to grow — much like the Toddler Center, which now serves 52 toddlers per year in a world-renowned, play-based program where faculty and students alike research this critical phase. Classes are capped at 13 and inclusive with children from a diverse range of backgrounds and needs.

Today, over one-third of families receive a tuition discount, so that the Center remains accessible regardless of income.

As it approaches its sixth decade, the Center is looking to grow through a new kind of development: the building of state-of-the-art research and classroom facilities. The Patricia Shimm Fund for Childhood Development will honor the late associate director’s memory and recognize her years of dedication and innumerable contributions by supporting scholarships and vital funding for research, students, and teachers. Barnard is also working to establish an endowed fund in her name, the Patricia Shimm Parenting Program Fund, as well as individual naming opportunities, to support the continued work of the Center and its revitalization in Milbank Hall.

“With these funds in place, the Toddler Center will build on its outstanding services and reputation, while expanding its impact with research in the foundational emotional, social, and cognitive growth of children in their earliest years,” said Lisa Yeh, Barnard’s vice president of development. It’s a logical next step in the Toddler Center’s own healthy development.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 17

by Gabrielle S. Balkan ’97

WITH TOVAH KLEIN

Director, Barnard Center for Toddler Development When babies become toddlers, parents often discover they know as little about their children’s world as 2-year-olds know about grown-ups’. To help close that knowledge gap, the Barnard Toddler Center has conducted influential research on early childhood development for more than 40 years, helping adults understand toddlers’ worlds, as well as the ways young children think and act. The Center’s director, Tovah Klein, shares her expert advice about how best to navigate life with a toddler. Consider these pointers the ABCs of the 2s and 3s.

What do parents and caregivers need to know most about toddlers?

The first thing is that the toddler world is so different from the adult world.

Part of that is brain development. Part of it is language. And it works. So, they’re different from anything we’d consider adult or socialized.

Young children, by their nature, are selfcentered. Not selfish, but self-centered. A little child is thinking, “Hey, I’m me, and I’m going to celebrate that.” They don’t know their family’s rules and society’s rules, and we shouldn’t shame them for that. You really have to see the world from their point of view and appreciate that it’s so different than what we expect of adults.

The second thing adults should know is that development takes time. We adults always want to rush children to grow up. I try to get people to slow down and appreciate where a child is right now and see the beauty in that. The more we Tovah Klein with Dreyton, age 3; (opposite) Raquel, age 3 18

look at toddlers and want them to be like us, the more trouble we run into.

Tell us about little kids and shame.

Many cultures, religions, societies, and families use shame to keep people in line.

But if you shame a child — if you tell them or imply that they’re bad or wrong — you’re actually hurting their foundation. If they’re riddled with shame and insecurity, then it’s very hard to grow up. Instead, when we treat toddlers with empathy and kindness, they learn empathy and kindness.

That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t say no to them and you can’t put a limit on them. That’s where parents get confused. You can say, “I wish we could go out and play right now, but it’s bedtime.

Tomorrow we will.” That’s empathic while you’re saying, “I’m still putting you to bed.” Even when the child is in a phase of hitting — give them a place to hit. A pillow.

Stomp their feet. People get so nervous that kids are going to keep doing it. But it’s a phase. They think shaming is going to stop them, and it’s the opposite: “You think I’m bad? Let me show you how bad I am.”

What are some other ways toddlers are developmentally butting up against grown-ups?

There are two biggies: One is no sense of time. Whatever a toddler sees or can touch or can think about in this moment matters tremendously. The fact that you’re trying to get [them] out the door is completely irrelevant.

The second is something that I find very delightful, which is endless possibilities.

You give a young child something very simple, like buttons or a couple of boxes to play with, and they can come up with unbelievable possibilities.

Adults have very clear ideas about what objects are for. A spoon is for serving yourself food. Shoes are for putting on your feet and walking. Young children don’t see it that way. They approach everything with, “Hey, what’s that?

What can I do with it?” They could throw it. They could bite it. They could stack it. That’s a big clash with adults.

So what’s a parent or caregiver to do?

You have to be able to let go of your expectations. You think, “We’re going to get from point A to point B this way.” And your 2-year-old’s thinking, “Actually, I’m going to pick up every single pebble on my way.” It’s not going to go the way you want.

Adults need to let go of our own rigidity and try to figure out what are reasonable expectations. Is it reasonable to expect your 3-year-old to sit through dinner with the grandparents at 7 p.m. at a nice restaurant? Probably not.

One way to deal with this is with lightness and humor. Seeing their world makes it much more enjoyable. Be there with them, and don’t take things too seriously. We tend to take toddler behavior as if it’s the end of the world. A child hitting is a way of communicating.

Do you want them to hit all the time?

No. But give them a teddy bear to hit instead. Realize that this, too, shall pass.

Also, because toddlers have no sense of time, you have to have routines. Literally, toddlers’ brains and even young elementary school

kids aren’t good at it. Routines help them organize and be able to predict what comes next. If every day after dinner, you have your bath, then the child — they can protest it, but they know, “Oh, dinner’s done. I know what’s next.” Young children are basically in a disorganized state all the time, and it’s the adult’s job to say, “Oh, I’m going to help organize you.”

Toddlers also need to know that in their worst moments — when they’re throwing a tantrum, when they’re in a new place and clinging to a parent — the parent is there for them, is going to accept them and love them, no matter what. Their emotions are just huge at this age. They have big emotions with very little ability to manage them. It’s so scary! It’s scary to the children. It’s Where the Wild Things Are. That’s what that book is really about: “I get so upset, and are you still there for me if I show you my worst side?” And a toddler needs to know, no matter what behavior they show, and no matter what limits the parent puts on them, that they’re still loved. continued on page 59

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 19

Infographic by Haisam Hussein

SMALL CLASSROOM, BIG REACH

Photo of Sarah Jessica Parker, Tovah Klein, and President Beilock by Asiya Khaki ’09

The difference that Barnard’s Center for Toddler Development makes with parents and toddlers who experience it firsthand is immediate; however, the Center’s impact reaches far beyond its location on the fourth floor of Milbank Hall. From a small cluster of rooms, 46 years of careful research, practice, and teaching radiates out into New York City, across the country, and around the world, improving outcomes for thousands of kids through shared expertise with program providers and conference planners alike. Here’s a snapshot of this valued resource’s many achievements and spheres of influence.

NEW YORK CITY SYNERGY

NATIONAL PRESTIGE

• • • • • • • • • •

• American Institute of Architects • Arizona’s First Things First Early Childhood Summit • Early Head Start • Germantown Friends School • Global Summit on Childhood • House of Representatives Child Care Center • Morrisville State University • National Smart Start Conference • Navajo Nation Head Start • Ounce of Prevention Conference • Trauma Smart NYC Initiative

• • • • • • • • • • •

Bank Street Family Center / Infancy Institute Barrow Street Nursery School Brooklyn College Chelsea Day School Children’s Museum of Manhattan Columbia University Columbia University School of Law CUNY Graduate School The Episcopal School Hunts Point Alliance for Children Hudson River Park Mothers Group JCCA Foster Care Program Lifestart Early Intervention program Pace University Rockefeller University Child Center Rutgers Presbyterian Church Sesame Workshop Teachers College Temple Beth-El Early Childhood Education Center Tompkins Hall Nursery School United Federation of Teachers

GLOBAL OUTREACH • • • • • • • • •

Brazil Canada China Japan Rwanda South Africa South Korea Turkey U.K.

EXPERT ADVICE Media organizations routinely ask the Toddler Center to weigh in. Here’s a very short list of the many outlets that have featured the Center and its experts:

TV ABC NBC MSNBC Fox News

RADIO

SiriusXM National Public Radio

MAGAZINES Redbook New York Parents Wired

NEWSPAPERS The New York Times The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal The Sacramento Bee Chicago Tribune

WEBSITES Slate.com HuffPost.com Mother.ly PureWow.com Babycenter.com

STUDENTS, BY THE NUMBERS The Toddler Center offers students the opportunity to study toddlers in real time. In just the past decade, hundreds of college students, young children, and their families have reaped the benefits:

Toddlers have attended the Center Developmental Psychology students explored toddler development at the Center Introduction to Psychology students utilized the Center Graduate students visited the Center

76%

More than three-quarters of undergrads who participated in Toddler Center programs between 2011 and 2015 went on to pursue advanced degrees in:

PSYCHOLOGY EDUCATION

LAW

MEDICINE

PUBLIC HEALTH

at universities such as:

Toddlers enrolled in 4 classes *per year, with equal numbers of boys and girls from diverse backgrounds

RESOURCES The Toddler Center’s founding teacher and associate director, Pat Shimm, and its current director, Tovah Klein, have produced resources for parents and researchers alike.

Columbia • Harvard • NYU • Northwestern • University of California, Berkeley • University of California, Los Angeles • University of Pennsylvania

PARENTING YOUR TODDLER The Expert’s Guide to the Tough and Tender Years Patricia Henderson Shimm and Kate Ballen, 1995

HOW TODDLERS THRIVE What Parents Can Do Today for Children Ages 2–5 to Plant the Seeds of Lifelong Success Tovah P. Klein, Ph.D., 2014

ALL IN THE FAMILY Since its founding in 1973, the Center has welcomed all children, including some whose parents are boldface names (Sarah Jessica Parker, Jerry Seinfeld, Annie Leibovitz), as well as those who were once either toddlers in its care or college students doing research there. Nim Tottenham, an expert in developmental neuropsychology and Klein’s current research counterpart at Columbia, did her senior thesis in the Center during Klein’s first year at Barnard.

“Because it is a place of learning, because the adults in the room are in the process of learning more [through] the research, it just felt unusually saturated with possibility and safety and freedom. It was fasci-

SOURCES

Photos by Asiya Khaki ’09 and Samuel Stuart Hollenstead

GALA

Gala 2019

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Annual fete raises scholarship funds and celebrates honorees Barnard alumnae and friends gathered at the Plaza Hotel on April 30 for the College’s Annual Gala.

The event, co-chaired by Nina Rennert Davidson ’95 and Caroline Bliss Spencer ’09, honored Greta Gerwig ’06, Kathryn Kolbert, and Lois Champy ’67 (MArch ’71, MIT) and raised nearly $3 million to help underwrite student financial aid and sustain the College’s enduring commitment to empowering young women, regardless of financial means.

Melissa Silverstein, founder of the advocacy group and website Women and Hollywood, presented director, actor, and writer Greta Gerwig with the Joan Rivers ’54 Trailblazer Award.

The award’s honoree exemplifies the boldness, creativity, and courage that were integral to Rivers’ groundbreaking career.

Kathryn Kolbert, who argued the 1992 landmark case Planned Parenthood v. Casey before the Supreme Court, was honored with the Frederick A.P. Barnard Award. Kolbert served as the founding Constance Hess Williams ’66 Director of Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership Studies and is the producing director of the Athena Film Festival.

Lois Champy ’67 also received the Frederick A.P. Barnard Award for her contributions to both the world of architecture and to Barnard. She has served on the Barnard Board of Trustees since 2006 and was instrumental in the planning and design of the Milstein Center.

“We are grateful to have these exemplary women in our community,” President Sian Leah Beilock said. “They have opened doors for women everywhere.”

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1 Deputy Dean of Studies Natalie Friedman and Nicole Farchi-Segal ’18 2 Cheryl Glicker Milstein ’82, P’14, Chair of the Board of Trustees 3 Annual Gala co-chairs and members of the Board of Trustees Nina Rennert Davidson ’95 and Caroline Bliss Spencer ’09 4 Jennifer Davis ’91, AABC Director-at-Large Eunice Hong ’96, and AABC President Jyoti Menon ’01 5 President Sian Leah Beilock, Nell Bailey ’19, honorees Greta Gerwig ’06 and Kathryn Kolbert, Julia Delgado ’19, honoree Lois Champy ’67, Nehad Abdelgadir ’19

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ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT’S REPORT

A Bold New Year Our alumnae community got a little bigger and bolder with the graduation of the Class of 2019. These exceptional young women accomplished so much during their time as students, and I can’t wait to see all that they do as alumnae. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how this upcoming year will be my last as your AABC president. I want to tell you the three key items I will focus on: increasing our Barnard Annual Fund participation rate (donate online at barnard.edu/gift), growing alumnae engagement and volunteer opportunities, and continuing our work as ambassadors for Barnard. There are exciting initiatives in the pipeline, and I look forward to sharing them as they come to fruition. In the meantime, I hope to see many of you at Barnard events this fall. —Jyoti Menon ’01, President, Alumnae Association of Barnard College

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

The Alumnae Association of Barnard College was established in 1895 to further the interests of the College and connect alumnae worldwide. Learn more online at our.barnard.edu.

PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

Jyoti Menon ’01 VICE PRESIDENT

Merri Rosenberg ’78 TREASURER

Ellyn R. Artis ’98 ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

Leila Rafizadeh Bassi ’94 ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

Daphne Fodor Philipson ’69 ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

Philippa Feldman Portnoy ’86 ALMA MATERS COMMITTEE CHAIR

Amy Veltman ’89 ANNUAL GIVING COMMITTEE CHAIR

Wendy Kreinen Modlin ’95 AWARDS COMMITTEE CHAIR

Erin Fredrick ’01 BYLAWS CHAIR

Rachel Pauley ’95 DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE

Janet F. Alperstein ’92 DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE

Lauren Perrine Cecil ’12 DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE

Eunice E. Hong ’96 LEADERSHIP ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE CHAIR

Hilary Dayton Busch ’89 NOMINATING COMMITTEE CHAIR

Tracy Rodrigues ’11 PROFESSIONAL & LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE CHAIR

Reunion Videos You can watch videos of select Reunion 2019 programs, as well as other recent events, on the alumnae website.

These programs include the 2019 State of the College with President Beilock, AABC Awardee speeches, and more.

Watch at our.barnard.edu/eventarchive

Ambassador Programs Are you a social media superstar looking to increase your involvement with the College? The Office of Development and Alumnae Relations will roll out a social media ambassador program this year. Email development@barnard.edu for more information.

Julie Malyn Melwani ’09 PROJECT CONTINUUM COMMITTEE CHAIR

Ilene Rubin Fish ’67 REGIONAL NETWORKS CHAIR

PJ Douglas Sands ’98 REUNION COMMITTEE CHAIR

Rona Wilk ’91 YOUNG ALUMNAE COMMITTEE CHAIR

Alyss Vavricka ’12 SGA PRESIDENT

Kim Samala ’20

ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Alumnae Relations partners with students and alumnae to carry out engagement initiatives to further the mission of the College.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Karen Sendler DIRECTOR OF ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Patricia Carchi SENIOR ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ALUMNAE ENGAGEMENT

Kelly De Felice ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF REGIONAL & INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT

our.barnard.edu We may not be students anymore, but we still have an assignment from Barnard: Update your contact information on the alumnae website to ensure you don’t miss any College news or event invitations.

Visit our.barnard.edu/myprofile

The Moth Storytelling Archive We’re thrilled to announce the launch of The Moth at Barnard storytelling archive! Since 2006, generations of alumnae have shared Barnard memories live on stage during Reunion.

Watch at our.barnard.edu/motharchive (log-in required)

Lacey Beck ’14 ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF YOUNG ALUMNAE & STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Angela N. Lamon ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ALUMNAE ENGAGEMENT

Ann Goldberg ASSISTANT TO THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Julia Lubey ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

Georganna Poindexter BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 23

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION NEWS & NOTES

Fellowships for Graduate Study The AABC Fellowship for Graduate Study has been awarded annually to outstanding graduating seniors and alumnae by the Fellowship for Graduate Study Committee of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College.

This is the final year that the AABC Fellowship for Graduate Study will be offered. We are deeply grateful to the Edith and Frances Mulhall Achilles Memorial Fund for supporting this program. The family’s generosity has made it possible for many of our accomplished alumnae who show exceptional promise to pursue their selected course of study.

ANDREA Y. ADOMAKO ’15

Andrea Y. Adomako is a Ph.D. student in African American studies at Northwestern University. Her research examines how black children’s literature, both by and about black girls, is an ideological tool used to communicate black girls’ ideas about violence and intimacy. She is concerned with the ways in which black girls’ proximity to death is often overlooked in the popular cultural landscape.

Adomako received her M.A. in American studies from Purdue University and is currently a fellow in the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Northwestern. Her interdisciplinary scholarship spans the fields of black feminist theory, black girlhood studies, literary criticism, and black political thought. Through her scholarship and teaching, Adomako hopes to advocate for scholarship that critically engages with black childhood(s) as a site of theoretical influence.

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MARY McELROY ’15

Mary McElroy is a Ph.D. student in marine science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Her research combines simple seawater sampling with advanced DNA sequencing to study the impacts of stressors, including climate change, fishing, and pollution, on biodiversity in ecologically and economically important coastal ecosystems, such as kelp forests, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs. She hopes to develop more accessible, powerful tools for biological monitoring that can empower marine conservation and management, as well as science outreach and education.

McElroy shares her passion for marine ecology with her community as a teaching assistant and volunteer educator.

the media, and how this furnishes welldocumented and popular sites through which to examine issues of class and agency.

GABRIELLE ROBBINS ’16

Gabrielle Robbins is a Ph.D. student in MIT’s History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society program. She combines anthropology of the environment, science, and medicine in order to study pharmaceutical industries in Francophone Africa. Her current research focuses on agribusiness projects that grow raw materials for medicines. Robbins explores how local farming communities — many of which cannot access the pharmaceuticals derived from the raw materials they grow — creatively navigate and endure global industrial and extractive systems.

ADRIENNE GIBBONS OEHLERS ’94

Adrienne Gibbons Oehlers is a Ph.D. student in the theatre program at the Ohio State University (OSU). Her research and creative work intersect both dance and theatre, focusing on musical theatre, women’s roles on stage, and the evolution of the showgirl.

Oehlers received her M.A. at OSU, where she was a 2015-16 University Fellow. Her master’s thesis, “Spectacular Women: The Radio City Rockettes from 1925 to 1971,” traces the history and trajectory of the Rockettes as female dancers and uses them as a framework with which to investigate modes of modernity and nostalgia. Her Ph.D. scholarship will include further study of the Rockettes and focuses on how images of women are constructed and circulated through appearances on stage and in

ALEXANDRA SUKALO ’09

Alexandra Sukalo is a Ph.D. student at Stanford University. Her dissertation examines the institutionalization of the Soviet political police in Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine from 1918 to 1953 and explores the role of the political police in transforming these once-independent countries into Soviet Socialist Republics.

Sukalo aspires to teach history and to work to bridge the gap between policymakers and academics on the history of Eastern Europe and U.S.–Eastern European relations.

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THANK YOU, BARNARD DONORS! Thank you to all who empowered the next generation of women leaders by donating to Barnard in the 2018-19 academic year. Your gift provides vital resources and opportunities for Barnard students to be bold and break barriers, both inside and outside the classroom.

giving.barnard.edu

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

Photo by Eileen M. Barroso

NEWS & EVENTS

Columbia Honors Three Barnard Alumnae Columbia Alumni Association awards medalists for dedication to College and University Three Barnard alumnae — Brenda Aiken ’77, ’81PS, Maryam Banikarim ’89, ’93SIPA, ’93BUS, and Jolyne CarusoFitzGerald ’81 — were among 10 alumni honored with a 2019 Columbia Alumni Medal at the University Commencement on May 22. The medal is the highest honor bestowed by the Columbia Alumni Association (CAA).

BRENDA AIKEN, MD, ’77, ’81PS

Brenda Aiken’s long history of commitment to community began during the activism of the civil rights movement.

The first in her family to graduate from high school and attend college and an alumna of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Aiken hosts alumni gatherings during the American College of Physicians national meetings, chairs the Campaign for Diversity, and speaks to first-generation and female medical students. She served as president of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Alumni Association from 2014 to 2016 and was the 2018 P&S Gold Medalist for Meritorious Service to the Alumni Association.

For two decades, Aiken worked in community clinics and private practice in Harlem and the South Bronx. She is currently president of the Susan Smith McKinney Steward Medical Society.

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From left to right: Brenda Aiken, Maryam Banikarim, and Jolyne Caruso-FitzGerald with their Columbia Alumni Medals

MARYAM BANIKARIM ’89, ’93SIPA, ’93BUS

Maryam Banikarim is a professional change agent who teaches organizations how to build themselves through the lens of purpose. While at Barnard, the Iranianborn Banikarim took advantage of the many opportunities offered by the College and the City and won the prestigious Truman Scholarship. Barnard, she says, is where she really “came into myself.”

Banikarim earned a joint master’s degree in business and international affairs from Columbia and became a leader in marketing at corporate giants such as Hyatt and NBCUniversal. Currently, she is an executive adviser to Cove Hill Partners and was recently elected to chair the board of the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders USA. Banikarim remains active within the Barnard-Columbia community, having served two terms on the CAA Board.

“Barnard gave me the confidence to be bold, and chase my dreams and make a difference,” she says.

JOLYNE CARUSO-FITZGERALD ’81

At Barnard’s 2013 Commencement, Jolyne Caruso-FitzGerald asked the graduating class, “How can you, individually and as a group, reflect on the meaning of your Barnard education and help ensure that the College remains as influential and relevant as it is today?”

Since her own Commencement, Caruso-FitzGerald has championed Barnard’s legacy. The founder and CEO of the Alberleen Group, an investment firm, Caruso-FitzGerald has been a Barnard Trustee since 2000 and served as board chair from 2010 to 2018.

Caruso-FitzGerald oversaw both the landmark decision to admit transgender students to Barnard and the College’s first major capital campaign. At 2018’s Annual Gala, she received the Frederick A.P. Barnard Award for her work on the College’s behalf.

“From the moment I set foot on campus in 1977,” says Caruso-FitzGerald, “I have truly loved Barnard and have been a devoted supporter of the College.”

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SERIOUS ABOUT PLAY continued from page 17 Early Learning, in Anji, China, where she discussed how children’s mental health can be shaped by how they play and how adults support them.

This summer, she headed to Istanbul to contribute to an initiative to make cities more child friendly. She also works with Ubuntu Pathways in South Africa, helping the nonprofit organization develop a play-based early childhood program in a township in the country’s Eastern Cape. “Klein’s expertise is derived from a devoted study of how children actually learn, as opposed to how adults think about education,” says Jana Zindell, Ubuntu Pathways’ chief strategy officer. “She is generous with her knowledge, and that generosity allows other institutions, like Ubuntu, to thrive.”

Closer to home, Klein has worked on behalf of the Toddler Center with the Bronx’s Hunts Point Alliance for Children to build the group’s early childhood program. “It’s a way to take this incredible developmental knowledge that we have here at Barnard and take it literally into our backyard,” she says. Klein also recently advised the Bronx’s JCCA foster care agency on how to transform what was a barren room into a developmentally based play space. The agency says “it’s changed everything about how the parents and kids interact,” reports Klein. “These

are mothers, primarily, who want to get their children back [from foster care], and they’re doing visits there in this beautiful space. The room feels welcoming and warm, like a home. And so the children feel relaxed and freer to play. The mothers, as a result, can be with their children in a more loving environment, which supports their ability to relate positively to their children,” Klein explains.

“Their focus on cultivating strong connections between caregivers and toddlers and studying those connections is hugely beneficial to the field of early childhood development,” says Rahil Briggs, Psy.D., who participated as an undergraduate in a formative summer internship with Klein and now serves as National Director of HealthySteps, a pediatric primary care program offered

by Zero to Three, an early childhood development nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. “Their contributions to the evidence base stand to benefit all young children.”

Q&A WITH TOVAH KLEIN continued from page 19 Why is play so important?

Play is toddlers trying to figure things out. And it’s where they try on different identities: “I can be Mommy. I can be Daddy. I can be the dog.” They also work out emotions. They figure out what they can do. Let’s say they’re building or they’re squishing soapy bubbles in water — it becomes a science experiment.

They’re also figuring out what they can’t do. Maybe I’m able to build a tower this way, but not this other way that I envisioned. They’re facing their limits.

They’re facing frustration tolerance.

Play is also about ideas: “I have an idea, and I’m going to figure out how to do it. I want to make pancakes out of the Play-Doh; how am I going to do that?” There’s a lot of decision-making.

That’s the foundation of all learning.

A NEW HOME?

Despite the wide reach of the Center’s research and staff expertise, the Toddler Center has spent most of its 46 years in the Barnard community flying under the radar of those who don’t frequent the top floor of Milbank. That may all be about to change. The Center is hoping to secure enough funding to relocate to the first floor.

What do you think we need to do to facilitate toddler development?

We need to take a look at their environment and say, “What does this child need? What does the world look like from their point of view?” They need stability, security, safe places to play. Pretty simple, right? They need to be held when they’re upset. They

The reasons are both practical — easier stroller access — and research based. The new space will be designed with upgrades, including technology to better record children, an improved observation area, a parents’ room, and state-of-the-art research rooms that will facilitate collaborations with more investigators. Klein says that the Center is considering accepting 3- and 4-year-olds so that researchers can study children of these ages as well. The College’s current fundraising campaign for the Center is to support the work that is happening now as well as the costs associated with the proposed relocation.

Klein is exhilarated about the possibilities that a new space could bring to their work and to the lives of the children who play and are studied at the Toddler Center. She believes that wherever they are at Barnard, the Center will continue to thrive. “There’s always research going on, whether it’s research that I’m doing or another Barnard or Columbia researcher,” she says. “Could we still do this philosophy somewhere else? Yes, and certainly lots of our students or people who learn here take this with them, and that’s the goal.

But it wouldn’t be this place. It would be a lovely early childhood program in the community. The Toddler Center,” she says, “is something beyond that.”

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Ayana Byrd is an author and journalist based in Brooklyn.

need for us to know that this is the most important time in a person’s life. And every child needs to know that somebody is there appreciating them and enjoying them.

Need more help? Klein’s 2014 book, How Toddlers Thrive: What Parents Can Do Today for Children Ages 2-5 to Plant the Seeds of Lifelong Success, functions as a bible for parents and caregivers of all kinds. And to learn more about these young children and the research about them on campus, visit toddlers.barnard.edu.

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Gabrielle S. Balkan is the author of Book of Flight and other books for children.

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2019 59

LAST WORD

by Halley Bondy ’06

Illustration by Carlmelo Booc

What I Missed

See, I fancied myself a real champion of the underdog. At the time, Columbia was embroiled in eminent domain battles in Morningside Heights. Without doing any research, I put forth the following logic: My tiny dorm party was a dummy-dumb issue compared to what the University was doing to the neighborhood around it. I remember the final sentence nearly verbatim: “I’m very sorry that we were loud while the rich, white kids of Barnard were trying to sleep in their beds.”

On a macro level, maybe I had a point?

But in the reality of my small life, I was acting like a petulant child, and I knew it.

Where did all that anger come from? I was a good kid, and a rich (relatively), white one at that. Even my booze friends, who were politically convulsive at all times, thought I’d crossed a line.

I couldn’t see it at the time, but I was having a lot of issues at Barnard. It was academically challenging compared to my breezy public high school. The architecture was too gorgeous. The women too smart, passionate, and into stuff. They took themselves seriously. Barnard Magazine was always bedecked with suited women who were actually championing underdogs.

I scoffed and lashed out. In reality, I was frightened and hopelessly insecure every second I was there. I was a cynic with no center to speak of.

To fill the void, I became a fix-seeker.

My drinking was nigh a wee babe at just five years old when we got caught with beer in Sulz. But it would be in full force for

another 15 years before I called it quits. I’d yet to discover other party drugs, a way-tooold boyfriend, warehouse raves, risky travel.

I had so much denial ahead of me. In truth, fixes came in many forms: getting A’s and B’s in the face of hangovers; gaining other people’s approval while also raging against authority; writing constantly; working constantly. Jogging up and down Riverside Drive for miles and miles. It’s why my career is all over the map. It’s why I pitched this essay. It’s why I inhale my toddler’s hair every day. It’s why I yoga and work instead of drinking and drugs.

The Head of Residence made me rewrite the essay. I think I wrote about Hitler. She accepted it. She must have been tired of me.

Then I blinked, and suddenly I’d graduated. Everything was gone: the dorms, the passionate women, the architecture, the library, the brilliant professors, the clubs, the classes, the gym, the support. Gone.

I was just another lost kid in New York without health services or a dining hall. I certainly went to college, but somehow I’d missed it.

Many people regret that they didn’t have enough fun in college. Not me. I regret that I wasn’t present. I regret that I didn’t see that Barnard was giving me a thousand hugs. I regret that I fought off every one of them.

Writer Halley Bondy contemplates all she resisted during her time on campus This is only the second time in my life that I’ve ever written about my drinking problem. It’s hard to believe, since I’ve written about so very many things. Crime in East Orange, N.J. Eating disorders.

Escapades in Ecuador. Babysitting. Murder (unrelated to babysitting). Kim Kardashian.

Parenting. I’ve had an expansive and totally random career (#millennial).

The only other time I wrote about my alcohol problem, I was a first-year at Barnard. My friends and I had been caught drinking beer in my Sulzberger room. (“Guzzling” and “hoarding” are probably more accurate in my case.) We were informed that, as punishment, we each had to write an essay — or risk getting thrown out of the dorms. I groaned, as if this wasn’t a completely reasonable punishment for breaking dorm rules and the law, since we were underage.

For the essay, we were told to write about someone who had disturbed their community and discuss the consequences.

In a brazen move — or a cry for help — I decided to write about the mother ship itself: Columbia.

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Halley Bondy is a freelance writer, editor, author, playwright, and scriptwriter based in Brooklyn.

Bring It Back to Barnard.

And share your laughter!

BARNARD REUNION June 4–7, 2020

Save the date for lectures, storytelling, receptions, and more as you reconnect with your classmates and Barnard alumnae across generations!

For more information, please visit reunion.barnard.edu.

Cinneah El-Amin ’16