Earlhamite - Winter 2020 - Love Takes Flight - The magazine of Earlham College

Earlhamite LOVE TAKES FLIGHT

THE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE/WINTER 2020

bearing tidings of prosperity and vicissitudes of Earlham to its friends and supporters ...

WINTER

2020 FEATURES

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IN SERVICE TO OTHERS Earlham students have long been known for helping others. EPIC is adding fuel to their creativity.

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WHAT LOVE REFUSES How to respond at a time when goodwill is scarce and fear and hatred are so abundant.

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EDDIE & RUTHANNA AT EARLHAM When Earlham accepted Americans of Japanese descent during WWII, Earlhamites were expected to be welcoming.

Interracial dating was another matter.

21 STEPPING FORWARD When helping others counts, David Grosso ’97 is determined to find a way.

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‘WAY WILL OPEN’ Amanda Mills Wilcox ’76 turned the death of her daughter into a project of love.

Earlhamite

DEPARTMENTS

THE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE

01 President’s Note 02 New & Notable 25 Earlham School of Religion 27 Sports Focus 35 Faculty Activities 41 Homecoming Photo Gallery 43 Look Back 44 Class Notes and Obituaries 60 Earlham Scene 61 Last Laugh

Editor Dan Oetting Class Notes Editor Ellen Blevens Art Director Susanna Tanner Contributing Editors Denise Purcell Brian Zimmerman Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jonathan Graham

Read the latest alumni profiles, submit class notes, check out upcoming events and more at earlham.edu/alumni.

Interim Vice President of Marketing and Communications Mary Atteberry

CONTRIBUTORS

Academic Dean Becky Thomas President Anne Houtman

Michael Birkel is a professor of Christian spirituality at the Earlham School of Religion.

He previously taught as a member of Earlham’s religion department for three decades. His essay appears on page 13.

Earlhamite magazine is the oldest college alumni magazine in continuous publication in the United States. Today it is published twice yearly and continues to follow the statement of purpose that has guided it since its 1873 founding: “a regular messenger going out and bearing tidings of prosperity and vicissitudes of Earlham to its friends and supporters, and bringing all associated here into communication with one another.”

Opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the signed contributors and do not necessarily represent the official position of Earlham College. Writers wishing to submit manuscripts to the magazine are encouraged to submit a query letter by email to the editor first, as space is limited and issues of the magazine are planned months in advance and according to selected themes. Address correspondence to earlhamite@earlham.edu.

Earlham College reaffirms its commitment, in all of its activities and processes, to treat all people equally, without concern for age, gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality or ethnic origin.

801 National Road West Richmond, Indiana 47374

Winter 2020 Cover.indd 1

Ruth Farlow Uyesugi ‘44 taught high school for 55 years in Paoli, Indiana, in addition to being a journalist and author. Her story, an adaptation from her book, appears on page 17.

Bill Engle is a writer with 26 years of experience as a reporter and editor at the Palladium-Item in Richmond, Indiana. His alumni profiles begin on page 21.

ABOUT THE COVER Curtis Parker paints with acrylics on gessoed canvas with underpaint and textures. His work has received honors from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts Illustration Annual, American Illustration Annual and 3 x 3 Magazine Annual Show.

Earlhamite LOVE TAKES FLIGHT

THE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE/WINTER 2020

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PRESIDENT’S NOTE Leading Impactful Lives It is fascinating to see how people find their paths in life. I began my professional life as an ornithologist, studying songbirds. My doctoral dissertation examined sexual selection in the zebra finch, and I went on to study sparrows, hummingbirds and other species. Honestly, I probably could have been quite happy teaching biology, working with my research students, studying birds forever. But ultimately, I felt a different calling. My interests and values drew me into leadership roles that have allowed a broader reach and deeper impact on higher education than I could have had within the parameters of my teaching and research. It was by following this path that I found my way to the Earlham presidency.

In a similar way, so many Earlhamites are seeking new paths, new opportunities to challenge themselves and improve the world. My interactions with alumni since I arrived at Earlham in July remind me of the power of this College to attract young people who want to make a positive impact, and to prepare them with the skills, experiences and confidence that will serve them throughout life, no matter where their career paths lead. Several are featured in this issue of the Earlhamite. There is no doubt in my mind that our remarkable alumni have been influenced by the Quaker values that shape the Earlham community — respect for persons, integrity, peace and justice, simplicity and sustainability, and community. These values underlie the collaborative and compassionate approach to education that Earlham is known for. Witnessing these aspects of Earlham every day makes me humbled and honored to lead and serve this College and community.

Just as birds flock together in the fall, Earlhamites flock toward other positive people. We seek collaborators who share our curiosity, our courage, our empathy and our steadfast belief in a positive future. We yearn for connections beyond ourselves, we adapt to change, and in the darkest hours, we imagine the dawn.

As has been well publicized, Earlham has been through a rough couple of years, but from my vantage point as president, I see a campus community that is realistic about the challenges it faces, yet bursting with positive energy. I see a faculty with an appetite for innovation. I see students who are optimistic that they can lead lives that will be both personally rewarding and of service to others. And I see a campus community absolutely committed to the shared goal of helping grow the next generation of Earlhamites that the world needs. Earlham will evolve and thrive. We will continue to look beyond our own narrow interests and needs, and we will remain committed to a greater good. That is the Earlham way.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

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NEW Notable Tora earns Rhodes scholarship Summia Tora ’20, an economics and peace & global studies double major, has been named Earlham’s latest recipient of the Rhodes scholarship.

She is the first person from Afghanistan and the first woman from Earlham to be awarded the scholarship.

“As soon as I learned that I was selected for this award, I messaged all of my professors and family because I truly believe that this has not just been awarded to me, but it’s been awarded to everyone who has supported me,” Tora said. “I don’t think I would have been able to do it if I didn’t get all of the support from my professors and my peers.

“I think what helped me stand out among other applicants is that we make time in the classroom to openly share what we are thinking about, but also critically think about a lot of issues we see in the world,” she said. “It really taught me the importance of listening, but also being able to talk about things from multiple perspectives without getting comfortable with any one way of thinking.”

The Rhodes will fund up to three years of graduate-level coursework at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

World College in Montezuma, New Mexico, for the final two years of high school. As a UWC student, she advocated for refugees seeking asylum in the United States by spreading awareness about the conditions of undocumented immigrants living in detention centers.

When she arrived at Earlham in 2016, her coursework and co-curricular pursuits helped her gain a more sophisticated understanding of the factors that contributed to forced migration in locations around the world.

In the summer of her first year, she earned funding from Earlham in support of an internship at Exodus Refugee Immigration in Indianapolis and worked closely with Congolese and Afghan refugees seeking a new life in Indiana. During her third year at Earlham, she spent a semester abroad in Athens, Greece, and gained further experience providing translation services for Doctors of the World, an international human rights organization that provides emergency and longterm medical care to refugees and other vulnerable populations. Tora and other Earlham students also conducted a fundraiser for refugee families that she had met at a solidarity shelter during her time in Greece.

Tora plans to pursue coursework in refugee studies, forced migration studies, and social entrepreneurship while in Oxford. Her focus will be on scholarship related to internally displaced people in Afghanistan but also refugees in Pakistan and different parts of the world.

“It was a form of reliving my own experience, but also realizing that I had some form of privilege in the way that I was living my life as a refugee,” Tora said of her internship and experiences in Greece. “I’ve wanted to give back, because I know what this hardship is like.”

Tora’s academic pursuits in Oxford will build upon her Earlham education and her own life experiences. As a child, she fled to Pakistan with her family to escape violence and other economic factors threatening their safety. Most of her formal education was in Pakistan, but she received a scholarship to study at the United

Hashem Abu Sham’a, a 2017 Earlham graduate and the College’s last Rhodes scholar was one of the first awardees from Palestine. George E. Hamilton, class of 1905, and Joseph Clyde Little, class of 1917, also were Rhodes scholars.

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NEW Notable Scholarship Day for serviceminded students

An EPIC summer

Earlham is actively seeking new ways to recruit even more service-minded students to campus. On Feb. 15, Earlham will invite selected accepted students to Scholarship Day, which is to be an annual celebration of community service, creative talent and diversity leadership.

The Earlham Program for an Integrated Curriculum, or EPIC, offered an unprecedented number of opportunities for students last summer to prepare exceptionally well for life after Earlham.

Students will interview and share their experiences in helping improve the lives of others for Community Service & Engagement. Scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $2,500. Others will be invited for auditions and portfolio reviews for talent-based scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 for art, music and theatre arts.

Students do not have to major in these academic areas to be considered for a scholarship.

Unlike the Bonner Scholars program, which supports underrepresented students, these scholarships will be available to any student who meets Earlham’s admissions criteria. All scholarships earned during Scholarship Day are renewable up to four years of study, provided students meet service or participation requirements set forth in each scholarship area.

Finally, three full-tuition Founders Scholarships will also be awarded to students from underrepresented groups who are consistently and measurably involved in efforts to bring issues of diversity, inclusion and equity to the forefront in their community, school, region or state, and who would otherwise not be able to attend Earlham College due to financial impediment.

“I am thrilled that we will be awarding additional scholarships to students who have demonstrated a genuine commitment to service and community engagement and want to continue these activities at Earlham,” says Jana Schroeder ’85, Earlham’s director of community engagement. “I have dreamed of offering this type of scholarship because each year I talk with serviceminded students who are not eligible for one of the 15 Bonner slots in each Earlham class, which are reserved for students with high financial need.”

Know a service-minded high school student?

Nominate a student for admission to Earlham who might value community service as part of their college experience by emailing admissions@earlham.edu.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

More than 300 student experiences were fully funded this past summer in locations all over the world. A sampling of those experiences included internships with the United Nations and Ernst & Young, an opportunity to perform a new play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, and research in Tanzania to study animal behavior and conservation.

The EPIC Advantage, an offer of up to $5,000 for every student to embark on these types of experiences, is a signature feature of EPIC and continues to provide a level of support that few institutions in the country can match.

In fact, the program was recognized earlier this summer

by Insider as an “out-of-the-ordinary” academic initiative for students across the nation.

The EPIC Advantage is powered by a $7.5 million leadership gift from Alan ’74 and Peg Kral Scantland ’74, of Columbus, Ohio.

One EPIC Advantage trip took students and faculty to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival.

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NEW Notable New look for athletics Earlham College celebrated the start of the 2019-20 intercollegiate athletics season with a new look for the Quakers.

The visual identity was inspired by the idea of inner light, the Quaker belief of spiritual truth residing in every person. The new identity emerged from a consultative process by which the Department of Athletics partnered with others on campus and the design firm Section 127 of Indianapolis.

The resulting package includes a new version of the block EC, a main logo, custom numerals, and sportspecific identity marks for each team.

The new main logo, which resembles a starburst, was intended as a more inclusive than pictorial representations of Quakers. The traditional block EC and the costumed “Big Earl” mascot will make occasional appearances on campus as part of the legacy of Earlham athletics, but going forward, the new visual identity will be used for official purposes like uniforms, print publications and in digital media.

Earlham makes “Most Innovative Schools” list U.S. News and World Report named Earlham one of the nation’s “Most Innovative Schools” as part of their 2020 Best Colleges guidebook.

The College was featured as one of 55 institutions taking a pioneering approach in the areas of academics, campus life, technology or facilities. The College also placed 25th on U.S. News’ lists for “Best Undergraduate Teaching,” 34th for “Best Value,” and 7th for the percentage of international students on campus.

For the second straight year, Earlham also was featured as one of the nation’s 20 best classroom experiences by Princeton Review.

Economic impact of Earlham noted Earlham College is a significant driver of economic growth across Indiana, according to a new study released by the Independent Colleges of Indiana.

With 400 employees and 1,100 students, the Earlham community contributed about $91 million to Indiana’s economy and attracted 29,000 visitors to the state during the 2017-18 academic year.

Gear up New apparel featuring the new visual identity is available at store.earlham.edu.

Downtown Richmond. (Photo by Jane Holman | HolmanPhotos.com.)

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NEW Notable HeartShake: A new tradition

Local impact competition announced

The 2019-2020 academic year began with the inaugural “HeartShake,” an event introduced by President Anne Houtman.

A new partnership with the Wayne County Foundation and Forward Wayne County will award $40,000 in start-up capital to students later this year in support of innovative plans that can transform the lives of 25,000 people.

On the Tuesday afternoon before the start of classes, students, faculty and staff greeted Houtman on The Heart, the social center of campus, before forming a giant chain of handshakers.

A brief downpour moved the ceremony inside to Runyan Center, but the participants’ enthusiasm wasn’t dampened.

“I wanted to start a tradition to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year,” Houtman said. “A handshake is a sign of recognition and respect, and aligns nicely with our Quaker values. By gathering at the social center of campus and greeting each other, The HeartShake is a great way to emphasize the importance of community at Earlham.”

The EPIC Grand Challenge is a competition that encourages social entrepreneurship and innovative coursework across the curriculum. It will showcase interdisciplinary teams of students with support from faculty, staff and community partners.

Participating students will develop social ventures that can help to address gaps in the county’s workforce, reverse downward trends in population and homeownership, or increase property values across Wayne County, by 2025.

“The EPIC Grand Challenge leverages the very best of Earlham’s curriculum, combined with support for new education and mentorship that will allow for transformative ideas or existing projects to become viable social ventures,” said Gene Hambrick ’73, director of Earlham’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “The Earlham community has a history of making meaningful change in communities all over the world. This major initiative promotes a greater focus on bringing innovation to our own backyard.”

Forward Wayne County is a county-wide initiative created to align community resources to tackle the county’s toughest challenges. It seeks to create a common vision for Wayne County, and promote a vibrant economy.

Quality of place and human capital development initiatives are critical to the effort, especially as they align with identified goals.

Additional funding for this competition is supported by an $18,500 grant from the Wayne County Foundation.

That grant will be used to award stipends ranging from $150 to $1,000 to faculty and staff who support students in the competition by infusing new coursework into the curriculum, offering workshops, developing key community partnerships, or mentoring student teams.

Photos by Will Prouty In recognition of the importance of community, the first HeartShake brought the campus together for a moment of neighborly welcome and respect as the school year began.

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NEW Notable Supply chain success

Global Climate Strike lands at Earlham

Global management majors Jared Birr ’20, Danny Dopp ’20 and Matthew Truex ’20 recently finished among the top competitors at the 2019 Conexus Indiana Case Competition in Indianapolis on October 24-25.

Hundreds of Earlham College students and faculty joined other activists around the world in a climate strike and teach-in on campus in September.

Teams at the competition were composed of members from different colleges and universities rather than having each school compete as a unit. Earlham, one of 22 colleges and universities at the event, had a student on each of the top three teams.

“Earlham is emerging as a top destination for students to explore and prepare for careers in the supply chain operations management industry,” said Seth Powless, Earlham assistant professor of global management.

“Now, for the second year in a row, our students have competed at the highest level of this growing industrysupported competition alongside students from some of the region’s best public and private colleges and universities.”

Conexus Indiana, a major initiative that promotes Indiana as a destination for manufacturing and logistics, partnered with executives from dozens of employers for this year’s competition, including Honda, Fiat, Cummins and the Indianapolis Airport Authority. Prizes of $5,000, $2,000 and $1,000 were awarded to the top-three finishing teams, respectively.

Jared Birr ‘20 was part of the winning four-person team of students from various schools who were given 24 hours to solve a business case study at the October Conexus competition in Indianapolis.

The events included student- and faculty-led demonstrations and lectures about Earlham’s energy systems, soils and sustainable agriculture, research and controversies in global climate change, and carbon footprints and circular economies.

“I thought it was really important to have a big event to coincide with this global movement and these events taking place around the world,” says Cynthia Fadem, associate professor of geology and one the organizers of the event. “When we think about the climate system and the everyday changes around the world, I want to make those connections clear for people closer to home.”

Earlham has always supported scientific inquiry, and current students have a particular interest in better understanding the causes of climate change, she notes.

Earlham community members were encouraged to participate in activities as their schedules allowed.

Classes were not canceled.

“Climate change is well documented by scientific research and is one of the gravest concerns facing the world today,” Earlham President Anne Houtman said. “I salute our students and faculty for organizing this climate strike to keep the issue at the forefront of public discussion. I am proud to join them in signing the Climate Commitment for Earlham College.”

Gisselle Lydia Salgado and Arlo Townsley, both seniors, were among the volunteers who helped prepare for the climate strike held on campus in September.

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NEW Notable Little prairie on the campus

Exhibit tells history of Japanese Americans at Earlham

A senior capstone project by three recent Earlham graduates aims to increase the biodiversity on campus and save the College thousands of dollars in annual maintenance costs.

The connection between Earlham College and Japanese Americans affected by internment during World War II is the subject of a new digital exhibit at Lilly Library.

Brenna Hellman, Evelyn Barragan and Lydia Evans graduated from Earlham in May 2019, but not before submitting a proposal to transform up to seven acres of campus-owned land into prairie. The land involved would include select areas of campus and back campus that currently have non-native grasses.

“We liked this project in particular because it met a number of different goals we had to increase both the biodiversity on campus and also the number of resources available for people to engage with the land,” said Evans, a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan. “We wanted a project where we could start from scratch.”

A key component of the team’s work was to draft applications to secure start-up funding from state and federal resources, but funding has yet to be secured for the project. The team also looked at a cost-share collaboration with the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and have received favorable feedback about their proposal.

Future environmental sustainability students are expected to carry the project to fruition.

The project is supported by a major gift from the family of Newton K. (Uyesugi) Wesley ’45. Wesley escaped confinement from the Minidoka Concentration Camp in Idaho as part of the Japanese American Student Relocation Council program.

“This project is a statement of Earlham’s commitment to peace and justice as a Quaker learning community,” said Library Director Neal Baker. “We are grateful for the wonderful generosity from the Wesley family that supported the creation of this valuable resource for our community. I’m at the same time grateful to the people in the library whose hard work created this resource, including Amy Bryant, Jenny Freed, Tom Hamm and several amazing student workers.”

During the war, Earlham worked in partnership with the American Friends Service Committee to enroll 24 students. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans living in the western interior of the United States were forcibly relocated by the United States government following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and other tensions resulting from the global conflict.

Many Americans of Japanese descent lost their jobs, businesses and property as a result of government policy. Earlham was one of only a handful of colleges and universities in the U.S. who agreed to enroll Japanese American students during the war.

The exhibit features decades of archival documents that have been digitized for this project. A corresponding website, which is the result of a collaboration between dozens of current students and faculty, is available for viewing at library.earlham.edu/ecja.

A story about Edward Uyesugi ’45, brother to Newton, and Ruth Farlow Uyesugi ’44 can be found on page 17 of this issue of Earlhamite magazine.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Sustainability Karen Mager, left, was the team’s faculty adviser for the prairie project. The student members were Evelyn Barragan, Brenna Hellman and Lydia Evans.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

Family Weekend

Reconnect • Reminisce • Rediscover Save the date for Homecoming & Family Weekend! Join us for homecoming festivities, reunions, family weekend and the Inauguration of Earlham’s 20th President, Anne Houtman. The schedule of events includes: Class Reunion Celebrations for Classes Ending in “0” and “5” Presidential Inauguration Classroom Experiences Sporting Events Family Weekend Programming

Save the Date

October 15 - 18 2020

RVICE TO E S N I

OTHERS Earlham students have long been known for helping others. EPIC is adding fuel to their creativity.

F

or at least a month during his sophomore year, Bineyam Tumbo ’21 looked like he was a candidate for the television show “Hoarders.”

“My whole car was full of shoes,” Tumbo explains. “I couldn’t store them anywhere else on campus.”

He couldn’t exactly get rid of them either.

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Tumbo had committed himself to organizing a shoe drive after interning at an orphanage in his native Ethiopia during the summer of 2018. A global management major, he designed the internship to gain experience working with an organization’s budget and supporting its marketing goals and objectives.

Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

But he got so much more out of the experience.

“Once they discovered my personality — they realized that I wasn’t afraid of someone telling me ‘no’ — we worked together to ask local businesses to make donations and showed them what they would be used for,” Tumbo says. “They had never really done that before. Some good things came out of that, and donations were used to pay for school fees and school supplies, like backpacks.”

The shoes, he collected about 300 pairs altogether, were supposed to be a parting gift. But the goodwill gesture quickly became entangled in a mess of red tape with customs in Ethiopia.

“I had to convince them that I was not going to sell and make a profit from the shoes,” he says. “I had to go to the city and county offices requesting

BY BRIAN ZIMMERMAN PHOTOGRAPHY SUSANNA TANNER

a letter saying they are aware of me helping the organization by bringing donated shoes.”

After completing paperwork and getting clearance to ship just a portion of the shoes, he learned that 200 pairs of shoes made it to the orphanage about a month later.

Tumbo’s internship was possible because of the EPIC Advantage, a program introduced in 2017 through a gift from Alan ‘74 and Peg Kral Scantland ‘74. The EPIC Advantage funds internships, research, leadership development, and off-campus study opportunities for every Earlham student. It’s been a boon to the service-minded students. Aided by EPIC, Earlham students like Tumbo are enhancing their efforts to help others while creatively preparing for careers. It’s been good for the College as well. By better equipping students, the value of an Earlham education grows.

“Service and community engagement have historically been embedded in a lot of areas of the curriculum, but I think you’re seeing a greater push for it,” says Michael Deibel, who oversees EPIC as an associate vice president of academic affairs. “If you look across the EPIC centers, one of the things we’re trying to make clear is that in addition to being cross-disciplinary, they all have a commitment to community engagement,” Deibel says. “We’re trying to live out our values and make sure our values aren’t just confined to the edges of the campus community.

“There’s no better way to demonstrate who we are than to put our values into practice in our local community or in communities around the world,” he says. “We’re not an isolated island.”

The communities that Earlhamites engage with, whether local, national or international “are part of us. This is what we do.”

EPIC ADVANTAGE TERMS Dozens of EPIC Advantage terms — three-week, off-campus programs usually taking place in May — have demonstrated capacity to support community engagement much further from campus. For example, students enrolled in pre-health programs now regularly contribute

to public health campaigns, either in neighborhoods near campus or in Latin American countries as part of a new Global Health EPIC Term. Similarly, student-athletes traveled to South Africa last May for a funded project that combined international competition and service to a local day care.

Student-athletes like John Sakaleros ’20, a biochemistry major from Crown Point, Indiana, made volunteer work an essential part of the South Africa trip. The group from Earlham worked with children from a rural area who had little in the way of toys or even comfort in their lives. It was jarring in some ways for Sakaleros.

Bineyam Tumbo ’21

“That experience honestly changed the way I viewed the world,” he says.

BETTER BONNER The College’s long-standing Bonner Scholars program, a four-year program for eligible students to serve, learn and reflect, is also benefiting from EPIC. In partnership with the College’s Center for Social Justice, current Bonners have had access to one-credit courses on food justice and social action, resulting in new engagement with the Congressional Hunger Center, a global nonprofit organization founded by the U.S. Congress to end hunger, and the creation of a regional food summit. The Center for Global Health is also adding new opportunities for service-minded students by expanding internships and externships (shorter experiential work opportunities) in medical settings.

“EPIC makes it possible for Bonner Scholars to have more experiences that allow them to explore how their service passions, academic pursuits and career aspirations intersect,” says Jana Schroder ’85, Earlham’s director of community engagement. “The EPIC centers all have options for Bonners and other students who want to make a real difference while learning from engaging with local, national and global communities. The EPIC guarantee of a funded internship, research or project gives Bonners the freedom to pursue earlham.edu

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life-changing opportunities that would otherwise be financially out of reach for them.”

Jerilyn Gillenwater ’20 is one such Bonner Scholar benefiting from EPIC. The neuroscience major has been actively serving the neighborhoods surrounding campus by volunteering with youthserving organizations like Head Start, Girls Inc. and the Townsend Center. After graduation, she aspires to become a midwife and make a difference in the lives of families in her hometown of St. Louis.

“My mom and my uncle work in critical care, and I grew up hearing stories of sick and dying people, stabbings, shootings, accidents,” Gillenwater says.

“I found these stories super interesting, but I knew I wanted something different.”

Her journey toward that goal has already begun. With funding from the EPIC Advantage, she landed an internship that quickly revealed one way to use her talents to benefit others.

Gillenwater interned last summer at the Jamaa Birthing Village, where she learned that the traditional hospital posture of giving birth on your back is one of the worst ways to give birth.

Jerilyn Gillenwater ’20

“At birthing centers or at home, mothers are on all fours, which is an easier way to give birth,” she says. “The U.S. has one of the highest C-section rates, which contributes to the U.S. having high rates of infant and maternal mortality, especially among women of color.”

Gillenwater was struck by the caring, humility and dedication of the midwives she worked with were.

She also appreciated how midwives and nurse midwives have a more personal and extended connection with the mothers and communities they serve. Gillenwater’s plan is to become a nurse midwife, a path that requires graduate study and nurse certification.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

RELENTLESSLY, CREATIVELY PRACTICAL For Gillenwater, health issues and social justice blend together naturally. Likewise for Tumbo’s hopes to improve lives not just through donations of shoes, but through entrepreneurship.

Tumbo is the founder of the Quralew Co-op, a fledgling social venture that aims to promote wellness and bring jobs to his hometown of Hosaena, Ethiopia. With support from EPIC, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and faculty from the department of Global Management, Tumbo and three other students built a business plan for offering financial incentives to Ethiopian families for trash and pre-sorted recyclable materials.

His team, which includes Irving Lopez ’20, Ian Shriner ’21 and Bibi Mohamed ’22, recently finished second at a 2019 regional competition sponsored by the Hult Prize, the world’s largest student competition for the social good. Winners of the Hult Prize earn $1 million in seed capital to bring their business plan to scale. (A team of Earlham students won the competition in 2016, using their prize money to start a bus ticketing agency in Kenya.)

Quralew is currently considering another run in the 2020 competition. Until then, Tumbo is still collecting shoes for the next shipment back home. He’s wondering how to convince leaders in Hosaena to open up the city’s first public library. And he remains concerned about the broader issues of pollution and poverty in Ethiopia, challenges he says are often ignored because of other critical needs.

“I feel like we only focus on securing food and shelter back home — and that’s it,” Tumbo says. “In Ethiopia, there is a sense that if we’re sustaining and living, that’s OK.” For Tumbo, the status quo is not OK, and like many other students at Earlham who aim to help others, you get the sense that he’s not done challenging it.

What recent ways are EPIC’s five academic centers, hubs for experiential learning, advancing the College’s commitment to the College’s commitment to service and community engagement?

The Center for Environmental Leadership is working with the city of Richmond to develop a resiliency plan to combat climate change, a continuation of the community-based capstone projects spearheaded by graduating seniors. Past projects included revitalization of public spaces in Richmond and a study that could result in an expansion of prairie lands on Earlham’s campus.

The Center for Global and Career Engagement is supporting an unprecedented number of funded internships, research and off-campus excursions.

These give students more autonomy in how they engage with the world and discern careers.

The Center for Social Justice supports students interested in international development fieldwork who are enrolled in the College’s new Peace Corps Prep program. The center also supports students pursuing funding for transforming communities and making the world a better place.

The Center for Global Health’s new community medicine program is training students to become in-home health coaches for chronically ill patients in Wayne County, Indiana. The coaching is intended to improve health outcomes and reduce costly emergency room visits. The program is the result of an expanded partnership with Reid Health in Richmond.

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is sponsoring the EPIC Grand Challenge, a business plan competition that will award $40,000 in start-up capital to students this spring in support of innovative plans that can transform the lives of 25,000 people neighboring campus. This major initiative, created to align community resources to tackle the county’s toughest challenges, is supported by an $18,500 grant from the Wayne County Foundation and a new partnership with Forward Wayne County.

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love WHAT

REFUSES

Michael Birkel, professor of Christian spirituality at Earlham School of Religion, was invited to write about goodwill at a time when it seems increasingly scarce.

We live in a moment of particular acrimony. Goodwill seems largely to have crumbled in the public square.

Genuinely respectful speech includes a willingness to listen to others, even when that listening may result in learning uncomfortable truths about ourselves. But the current climate of rancor and contempt does not promote this kind of exchange. As the U.S. approaches a national election, the temperature promises only to rise.

Society feels more divided than ever.

Ancient Hebrew wisdom from the Book of Proverbs alerts us that both death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Shaped by this wisdom tradition, the Letter of James describes the tongue as a small fire that can set a great forest ablaze. At the moment, to judge from public discourse, the woods are burning.

Sowing discord and feeding off anger and fear are, sadly, popular political tactics. And when public officials, who ought to have our collective best interest at heart, behave outrageously as a general habit, it is tempting to feel anger, sadness, even despair. I imagine that many graduates and friends of Earlham feel this sense of loss. It is a feeling worth resisting. We

do not have to sink to the level of our culture’s worst examples. Earlham, like its Quaker founders, has often resisted cultural tendencies, such as when the College welcomed students of Japanese heritage during the Second World War, when the wider society was suspicious and the government imprisoned them in concentration camps. Compassion is not always fashionable, but it always wears well at Earlham.

An advantage of being a teacher of the humanities is that one can befriend texts across the centuries. Likewise, a liberal arts education invites us both to see our own times clearly and to benefit from the insights of those who have gone before. A curious mixture of courage and humility is in order, however, to perceive beyond the limits of our own self-interest. Our own time, for all its progress, is not the first to struggle with the deep questions of what it means to be a human being and how we can get along. So, what guidance might the past offer?

Numerous voices call to me from my bookshelves: a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peacemaker, a Sufi poet and keen observer of inward states, a

BY MICHAEL BIRKEL ILLUSTRATION CURTIS PARKER

Catholic social activist, and more.

For the moment, I’ll focus on two sources of insight, one from the social unrest of the 17th century that gave rise to early Quakerism, and one from the African American community on the eve of the Civil Rights Movement.

In England, the early Friends faced a crushing sense of loss when the great opportunity for social and religious experimentation was over in the 1660s. The optimism of Quakers and other religious and social radicals for rebuilding society toward a more just social order had been dashed by the persecution of Dissenters under the restored monarchy and a vengeful Parliament. Friends suffered persecution under a series of laws enacted to stamp out nonconformity to the established state church.

Despite these distressing external conditions, Friends retained hope.

Rather than surrender to defeat, they undertook action. For one thing, they organized themselves to endure the time of trial. I find

Early Quakers held that deep within us, deeper than conscience itself, lies something that responds to truth, goodness and love. To act with integrity and compassion is to invite others to be moved and to be open to that interior voice that says, “This is true. There is something of value here, worth listening to.” this to be good counsel for our times as well. It is time to organize. It can feel lonely to be a voice for integrity and respect. We need to enliven and embolden one another. Second, they renewed and made public declaration of their commitment to nonviolence.

In the summer of 1660, the “mother of Quakerism,” Margaret Fell, wrote to the king: “We are a people that follow after

those things that make for peace, love and unity; it is our desire that others’ feet may walk in the same, and do deny and bear our testimony against all strife, and wars, and contentions … and love and desire the good of all.” Friends refused to compromise on these principles in a time when a conservative government sought to silence, intimidate and exterminate earlham.edu

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their religious convictions. Here I find a helpful word. Refuse to give up.

Continue to love and desire the good of all.

Early Quakers believed that by their words and example they could, as they put it, “appeal to the pure witness” in others. They held that deep within us, deeper than conscience itself, lies something that responds to truth, goodness and love. To act with integrity and compassion is to invite others to be moved and to be open to that interior voice that says, “This is true. There is something of value here, worth listening to.” Quakers were not alone in believing this. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, held to principles woven of the same fabric.

Such is what I gather from the early Quaker experience. As my eyes return to my bookshelves, another volume beckons my attention. It has been my privilege to teach Howard Thurman’s 1949 book, Jesus and the Disinherited, over the years. Howard Thurman was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, whom he visited in India. Ghandi, in turn, was an inspiration to Martin Luther King, who is said to have kept a well-worn copy of

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Jesus and the Disinherited in his pocket during the lengthy struggles of the Montgomery bus boycott. (Thurman also had strong connections with Quakers.

It is a small world, especially among social reformers.)

The way Jesus responded to Roman oppression, seen through the eyes of this African American mystic and minister, becomes a model of resistance for the disenfranchised. Thurman’s book focuses on how fear, deception and hate abound, but it is love that points the way forward. He says that fear can arise from a sense of violated dignity, but it offers no long-term solution or protection from threat. Instead, it leads to despising oneself and to the panic that can erupt in violence. He contrasts deception with what he calls “a complete and devastating sincerity” — and here he cites Mahatma Gandhi as an exemplar of “the confidence that the effect of truthfulness can be realized in the mind of the oppressor as well as the oppressed.” In other words, we can appeal to the pure witness in others.

Thurman diagnoses hatred as a form of self-validation for the excluded, but it creates a kind of energy that refuses to be confined only to some objects.

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Eventually it consumes one’s spirit, insulating oneself from a loss of moral self-respect even as one engages in acts that are patently inhumane.

Thurman’s words seem apt for our moment. “Fear, deception and hatred” could almost serve as a campaign motto for demagogues. We are being encouraged to fear citizens of other countries that arrive at our borders, to fear Muslims at home and abroad, to accept rising anti-Semitism as normal and to accept lying as a standard practice for denying inconvenient realities.

This is where love comes in, the kind of love that creates a sense of belonging, that refuses to be divided, that does not wallow in bitterness and that respects the personhood of others, including those with whom we deeply differ. This love is not sentimental but profoundly practical because it knows that promoting fear, falsehood and hatred will not produce a functioning social fabric. They will not take us to where we want to be. There must

be a better way, one that opens the possibility that we humans can find the freedom to choose goodness.

In graduate school, in a moment of weariness, I confessed to someone that sometimes it felt to me that the history of Christianity (my field of study) was the history of a noble ideal and of gross infidelity to that ideal. My conversation partner, a radical priest who was enough older than I to have protested often with his friends, the famous peace-activist Berrigan brothers, corrected me: It’s also the history of the resistance to that unfaithfulness. Decades later, that wisdom still rings true. Now is a season to resist by refusing to give in to divisiveness, by engaging with earnest and respectful dialogue with those with whom we disagree, and by loving our neighbor without exception.

The times are difficult, but we can be in good company.

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Eddie & Ruthanna

at Earlham

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dward Uyesugi ‘45 and Ruth Farlow Uyesugi ‘44 had been married for more than 30 years when, in 1977, Ruth published Don’t Cry, Chiisai, Don’t Cry, a book recounting the couple’s courtship at Earlham and early years of marriage.

The following story is adapted from that memoir, which was recently reprinted thanks to a gift from the Uyesugi family.

During World War II, Earlham was one of the few schools in the nation that agreed to accept American students of Japanese ancestry after the U.S. War Relocation Authority began removing Japanese Americans from the West Coast to internment camps.

Edward and his brother Newton arrived at Earlham in the fall of 1942. This was only months after Japanese

forces had attacked Pearl Harbor.

Anti-Japanese sentiment was widespread in the nation and had spilled over against Japanese Americans as well. As a Quaker school, Earlham understood its acceptance of these otherwise interned Japanese American students as a matter of principle. But it was not as simple as that.

Ruth and Edward’s story also points to the limits of Earlham’s values in practice, as life and love collided at a peace-oriented school in a time of war.

Visit earlham.edu/dontcry to find out more about the book and a digital exhibit that chronicles the enrollment of 24 Japanese American students at Earlham between 1942-45.

BY RUTH FARLOW UYESUGI ’44 PHOTOGRAPHY SARGASSO YEARBOOKS

“Phone for Ruthanna Farlow.

Phone for the RAF.” It was the six o’clock office girl in Earlham Hall. I hurled my ed psych book at the desk and two-stepped to the phone booth.

“Hullo — this is Ruthanna Farlow speaking.”

“This is Eddie . . .” I fought to remember. Eddie who?

“Are you doing anything tonight?”

“Well, not really.” Surely I’d find time to read 100 pages of ed psych before eight tomorrow morning.

“How about a Coke in the commons at 10 o’clock? We might talk vocabulary.”

“Wha-at?”

“Yeah, vocabulary. I noticed on Miss Davis’ door that we’re learning vocabulary.”

Epicurean: devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. Rationalize: to interpret from a rational viewpoint. Earlham Hall watched our frequent vocabulary sessions with much interest. After all, we were the campus experiment in interracial relations.

When I returned from date number six, Lotte was waiting on the rec room floor knitting a yellow and brown sock which had somehow developed an extra heel. Without looking up from her project, she lifted her left eyebrow just a fraction.

“You really don’t like me, do you?”

“Nope,” I sulked.

You’re right. I am afraid because when the war’s over your boyfriend in training as an officer and the captain in the big picture on your dresser will come back.”

Lotte struggled to her feet dragging after me with the yellow ball of yarn playing kitten behind her. “It’s no use, Lotte. The boy just doesn’t go for me. I’ve tried Listerine, Mum, and tonight I poured on half a bottle of your Evening in Paris.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to sneak up on him. When he turns his head, just have your head there waiting. What else can he do but kiss you?”

“Oh, Lotte, I could never do that.” Lotte was so exasperated she dropped a stitch and started a third heel.

Twenty-four hours later Eddie and I were lying on our stomachs in the George Fox Reading Room in the library. I was glad I couldn’t get my math because it gave me something to fill in the serenade. I interjected,

“I like you very much, Ruthanna.”

“Well, why are you so detached?

It’s like you’re afraid to give any of yourself.”

“Oh — someone told you.”

“They enjoyed telling me. They also liked telling me when your old boyfriends come home, your experiment in interracial relations will terminate very quickly.”

And without even having to consider, I blurted out, “Oh, no, Eddie. I’ll always want you.” And like he’d been planning it all the time, Eddie gave one yank on the green and brown rug I was camping on and caterpillared me right into his arms.

“What if the librarian comes up?” I managed to ask.

“I never did like librarians.”

“Me neither.”

“This isn’t biologically intelligent, you know.”

“I never liked biology either.”

And when the librarian called “lights out” from the second floor, we didn’t bother to hear. Twenty minutes later we realized that the only light in George’s Room was the moon grinning through the window. The blackout should have had a sobering effect on both of us, but instead we giggled shamelessly as we tripped from floor to floor trying halfheartedly to pry open a window with the overdue spike from the librarian’s desk. Finally, on the first floor we spotted a window that the painters had left unlocked. Eddie jumped to the ground, and I was in his arms again. Earlham Hall lights flashed for curfew. Wildly leaping over the tulips on the Heart, we boomed up the stairs, our laughter rumbling through open windows. I marched in the door under the disapproving eye of Miss Moore, the head resident, just as the 10:30 bell sounded.

Lotte and her argyle socks met me at the stairway. “I told you you could do it, Ruthanna. Now give me the details.”

And even though she knitted three toes and half a heel trying to sweat the truth from me, I just kept singing, “I want a paper doll that I can call my own . . .” *** We seemed the typical Earlham couple. There were walks in the cemetery where everyone looked for the glass trombone and never found it.

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There were those afternoons shivering in November cold as the crowd applauded Eddie when he charged the line of the opposing football team.

Everyone smiled at our little flirtation.

Earlham was the symbol of Quakerism, and this included love of all colors.

It was proper for a little Quaker girl like me to make this lonely boy feel at home. Yes, it was nice Eddie had found a friend — one as sensible as Ruthanna — who in the final analysis would choose her mate carefully and traditionally.

Then suddenly someone found time to really look at us, and our love had no place to hide. With truth came the clichés. From the dean of women — “What will your parents say?” From the head of the English department — “Your children, my dear, have you thought of them?” And my Eastern friends mothered — “But your backgrounds are so different.”

The president of the College had this to say to Eddie — “You have a governor on you as long as you are at Earlham.

What you do will affect the chances of all other Japanese Americans getting accepted to college. We have no objections to your dating ‘our girls,’ but don’t date a particular one. Date all of them. And when you get back to this one, be conspicuously inconspicuous.”

Our friends tried to help us carry out the charade. At dances the boys took turns jitterbugging me past the smiling chaperone line. And in the shadows of the gym bleachers, Eddie and I held hands between exhibition dances. One starry night we even climbed high up the poles of the football scoreboard to hide behind the results of the last game — 30-5 — we won, the numbers said. But more and more we were

beginning to have a loser complex.

Was there no place in the world for two people in love to be alone? *** The summons came from the high potentate of Earlham Hall, head resident Miss Moore. It ordered, “Ruthanna Farlow will please report to Miss Moore in her apartment at 7:30 p.m., April 23.” That was the end. I could take no more advice, especially not from Miss Moore. She and I enjoyed a tight-wire relationship.

A still beautiful spinster, she often was the subject of speculation at the dorm bull sessions — Someone must have left her at the altar. And who’d want to get married to a woman who’d always be smelling in the key hole to see if you’re smoking, right?

always secretly loved the lady. As a freshman, I found Sunday afternoon almost too lonely to bear. I knew that this was the time when Dad would pile the kids in the Plymouth and take off for the autumn-yellow hills. And here I was in such a foreign place. I was probably the most homesick freshman Earlham ever had. It became a campus project to try to console Ruthanna, and Miss Moore was always there for me.

“Yes, I know that you want to tell me that it’s unfair to my parents who love me, to my children who will look like God knows what, to the world that expects white to stay white and yellow to stay yellow. And I won’t listen to you or any of the rest of them.” I leaped to my feet and stumbled for the door.

“Sit down, Ruthanna.”

And I sat. “To say this is probably very But when the summons came to report unethical, but my Quaker conscience to that third-floor apartment, I felt my demands it. Although I’m sure there betrayal was complete. are many who would like to disbelieve it, I, too, am a human being. I used to hide in the shadows of the grandfather clock in the Earlham Hall parlor to say goodnight to my love just as I’ve seen you and Eddie do. There wasn’t anything exotic about my man. But he wasn’t ordinary “I don’t think she wanted — because I loved to get married. She’d him. The memories rather stay here and stage have been stored two o’clock fire drills to away for a long time catch people out on allnow and aren’t really nighters — ” this from important except Lotte, who had cause to Eddie Uyesugi ‘45 (top row, right) and Ruthanna Farlow Uyesugi for the fact that my be concerned about this ‘44 (bottom row, right) were part of the Earlham Post editorial parents said “no,” type of vigilance. staff, captured in this 1944 yearbook photo. and I closed the door.

“Ruthanna, don’t let A more romantic Peggy always insisted. “I’m sure her husband “Sit down, Ruthanna,” she ordered, anyone do that to you. Listen to your died in World War I, and she cries pushing a froggy footstool my way. heart, child.” herself to sleep every night in her Instead I crouched on the floor at her lonely room.” But the general opinion feet hugging my knees and waiting. Together we cried for her lost love and for the one she was giving me was that no one would marry someone who disapprovingly watched the “I’ve been wanting to talk with you,” the courage to fight for. passionate good-night kisses at the she said. door of Earlham Hall.

“Yes, I know.”

I never had much to say because I’d “Really?”

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BY BILL ENGLE PHOTOGRAPHY SUSANNA TANNER

z

STEPPING FORWARD When helping others counts, David Grosso ’97 is determined to find a way.

From tending bar to passing the bar to raising the bar for progressivism in Washington, D.C., it’s been quite a journey for David Grosso ’97, and Earlham played a crucial role.

An uninspired high school student in his native Washington, D.C., he fizzled in his first two tries at college, choosing to spend his time playing pinball and hanging out with friends.

After five years tending bar in D.C., he joined the Brethren Volunteer Services and worked at a homeless shelter in Texas.

That’s where he met his wife, Serra, who convinced him to give college another try.

Grosso’s older sister, Cathi Grosso ’90, had graduated from Earlham, and he knew of the school’s reputation for small classes and personalized liberal arts education.

He had previously applied unsuccessfully to Earlham. When he reapplied, more determination and life experience in hand, his application was accepted.

A philosophy major and legal studies minor, Grosso graduated from Earlham and went to Georgetown Law School, graduating in 2001. He worked on the staff of District of Columbia Councilwoman Sharon Ambrose and then as chief counsel for U.S. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s nonvoting congressional representative.

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During that time, Grosso was troubled by corruption he witnessed in D.C. politics and, upon Serra’s suggestion, he decided to run for Council. It was an uphill struggle but, waging a campaign of determination and community connection, he was elected.

“Everything I do is based in a human rights framework. I tend to think outside the box, trying to change the world to make it a better place. I truly believe that’s the Earlham influence. The Earlham way influenced the way I think about things.”

“It took 18 months and it was totally grassroots because we didn’t have any money,” he said. “Serra and I knocked on 17,000 plus doors, really connecting with people and engaging people.”

Grosso’s present term on the D.C. Council runs through 2020. He’s decided it will be his last.

Now he is an at-large councilman and chairman of Council’s education committee. In his second term, Grosso has led a progressive charge, writing and passing a law that allows up to eight weeks of paid family leave; championing legislation to legalize and tax marijuana; and proposing legislation for publicly funded elections.

He is proudest of passage of the Fair Access to School Act that bans suspensions and expulsions of students for minor violations like tardiness or uniform infractions. Black students in D.C. schools, he explained, are eight times more likely to be suspended than white students.

“I’m trying to put us on a trajectory that actually transforms educational opportunities for students in D.C., especially when you grow up as students of color in poverty,” he said.

Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

“I truly believe that eight years is enough,” he said. “I feel I’ve done a good job but I don’t feel that I’m the only one who can do this job. I’m taking the leadership stance to say that I am willing to step aside.”

Grosso said he will support former staffer Christina Henderson to take his seat. If elected, Henderson would be the second person of color on the 13-member Council in a city that is predominantly black.

As for his future, Grosso said he hasn’t set that course.

“The odds are good that I will do something that is mission-driven, something to make the world a better place, because that’s who I am and what I love to do,” he said.

“I’m energized because I’ve had a chance on Council to do some amazing things, to make change and make the city better.

And it’s inspiring to see that the priorities I’ve had have been taken on.”

BY BILL ENGLE PHOTOGRAPHY MELANIE MISHLER

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‘WAY WILL OPEN’ Amanda Mills Wilcox ’76 turned the loss of a loved one into a project of love.

Amanda Mills Wilcox ’76 remembers a moment in time when her 10-yearold daughter, Laura, was sitting in their California home by a kitchen window, eating an apple.

love of family, embarked on a journey for change. They worked tirelessly, studying mental illness, connecting with other mental health advocates and starting a community conversation for change.

“The light was shining through behind her and she was so beautiful. It literally took my breath away,” Wilcox said.

To protect others from a similar tragedy, they would work to make their community safer by changing California law regarding the treatment and care for the mentally ill.

They testified, advocated, raised money, and raised awareness and support. In the end, they championed California state law AB 1421, which became known as Laura’s Law. Passed in 2002, it allows courtordered assisted outpatient treatment for severely mentally ill patients. Until Laura’s Law, the only mechanism for courtordered treatment was full hospitalization for those who are a danger to themselves or others. Laura’s Law provides a way to help before that point.

The image is precious, frozen in memory.

On Jan. 10, 2001, Laura was murdered while working at a mental health clinic near Sacramento. She was 19 years old, a Haverford College sophomore at home on break.

A mentally ill man who had been in and out of treatment had walked into the facility, the same one where he had been treated, and started shooting. He killed two there and left two seriously wounded.

Later, he went to a nearby business and killed yet another.

Her daughter’s death made each awful day tumble into the next for Wilcox. Life became a blur, silhouetted by anger, sadness and grief.

“I was just functioning,” Wilcox said. “I felt I lost my future.”

But Wilcox and her husband, Nick, strengthened by Quaker principles and

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“Quakers talk about how ‘the way opens,’” Wilcox said. “The way opened for us, and we seized this path. We saw this gap in the law that needed to be fixed.”

She became a leader in the struggle to change laws regarding the mentally ill.

Of her work on Laura’s Law, she said: “That policy needed a face and a story, and that’s what we brought to it. Our job was to tell the story of what can happen

Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

with untreated mental illness and how it impacts your community.

“I wanted the world to know about Laura and how wonderful she was,” Wilcox said. “What’s the phrase: 500 tellings and 1,000 tears. Each telling for me was maybe a way of getting rid of the poison, the anger and the grief.”

Remarkably, Wilcox harbors no animosity toward her daughter’s killer.

“I never had any anger toward him,” she said. “He was a person with a severe mental illness. He didn’t hate Laura. He didn’t want to kill her. It’s just something that happened.”

Amanda and Nick also have become advocates for gun violence prevention.

Their work continues today. No matter how passionately her positions are held, Wilcox is careful to go about her work in a principled way, even when it comes to those who haven’t taken her side yet.

She’s built a reputation for being direct and determined, yet fair to and respectful of her opposition.

“It’s my Quaker background, learned in part at Earlham,” she said. “I have always been respectful. I do not demonize the opposition. I try to find ‘that of God’ in every person.”

“”

ESR

BRENT WALSH, DIRECTOR OF STUDENT & ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT, EARLHAM SCHOOL OF RELIGION

Our graduates are a melting pot of gifts and talents, finding diverse and creative ways to break through the noise of this world and reach people where they are.

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“Why would you want to go to seminary?” That is the question many people asked when they learned that I suddenly and unexpectedly enrolled in a Master of Divinity program at Earlham School of Religion. I didn’t want to be a pastor or a chaplain, so my reasons for going to seminary weren’t immediately obvious. A common misunderstanding about seminary is that it only prepares someone for traditional pastoral ministry, such as pastors, priests, chaplains and church planters. And to be sure, we do have some students who choose these important paths. But our graduates are a melting pot of gifts and talents, finding diverse and creative ways to break through the noise of this world and reach people where they are.

In my role as the director of student and alumni engagement, I’ve met and talked with alums who have crafted the legacy of ESR as a place of vision, calling and purpose. I have mapped out the cities and towns around the country where they live, then I’ve gone there to catch them in the act of changing the world.

Our graduates are writers, artists, musicians and storytellers who interpret the world around us and dwell in the spaces where the sacred and secular collide. They are spiritual directors, holistic practitioners, body healers who delve beneath the surface and release the pain that lurks in the shadows. They are school administrators, educators, deans and presidents who recognize, draw out and celebrate the potential in the people they serve. They are diversity educators, workshop presenters and retreat facilitators who challenge us to reach beyond ourselves and to do better.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

They are counselors, therapists and social workers who give us the perspective we need to grow in relationship with ourselves and the people we love. They are truckers, train operators, farmers and engineers who know how to get things done and who inspire people everywhere they go. They are business coaches, consultants, development specialists and trustees who don’t settle for the status quo, but push us to attain the highest standards in our professional lives. They are denominational, nondenominational and inter-denominational interim ministers who specialize in picking up the pieces of wounded congregations so that hope and healing can begin anew. And they are human rights advocates, lobbyists, immigration attorneys and social justice activists who link arms and take a fearless stand for those in our world who are the most vulnerable among us.

There’s no way to know the full extent of our collective impact on the world, but one thing is abundantly clear: The people who come to ESR do not depart unchanged, nor do they leave the world around them unchanged. Regardless of their religious affiliation, the Quaker testimonies provide a profound undercurrent of Love and Light in the ministries of our alumni. Just as I did, they chose ESR as a launchpad to live love more fully, and in the varied ministries in which they serve they demonstrate that love each and every day.

Earlham made a difference in your life, make a difference in his.

Support the future of Earlham with a gift in your will or by making the College a beneficiary of your retirement account. For more information about including Earlham in your estate plan, contact Kimberly Kelly Tanner ’90, associate vice president for institutional advancement at 765-983-1631.

PADGETT GUSTAVSON ’20 HOMETOWN: LAKE OSWEGO, OREGON GEOLOGY MAJOR AND STUDIO ART MINOR

LIVE NOW. GIVE LATER.

You Know Earlham If someone were to be a good fit for Earlham, you would know.

Help us reach the next generation of Earlhamites with remarkable learning opportunitites, to help address the world’s challenges.

Recommend high school students at earlham.edu/recommend.

Noah Scherf ’21, a history major from Michigan City, Indiana, runs in the 5,000-meter race in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at the World Para Athletics Championships.

BY DAN OETTING PHOTOGRAPHY BRYN LENNON

THE NEXT LEVEL Noah Scherf runs in the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships.

When Noah Scherf ’21 was called to the track for his race, his biggest ever, he was ready. And he was soaking it all in. Scherf was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at the World Para Athletics Championships, about to run in the 5,000-meter race against the highest level of para-athlete competitors.

“I remember we walked out and there were maybe five or so minutes before our race started, and we’re on the track,” says Scherf. “We could do run-outs and get warmed up. That was the moment for me when I was really thinking, ‘This is actually happening.’”

Scherf, who has a retinal condition that allows him only limited vision, was racing against fellow visually impaired men — some are completely blind and run with a guide on a tether, the rest, like Scherf, can make out just enough to run alone.

INTRODUCTIONS As the 12 runners are aligned and introduced over the PA, Scherf is not far from El Amin Chentouf, a two-time Summer Paralympics gold medalist. “He’s been winning medals since I was 10,” says Scherf with a

laugh. “He’s been around forever, and he’s been incredible.”

“I’ve watched most of the major races going back to 2013,” he says. Since running at a higher level himself, he’s even been able to get to meet some of the other runners. Scherf’s most recent international race was in August, where he ran in Lima, Peru, at the ParaPan American Games for Team USA. His fourth-place finish there would turn into a stepping stone for Dubai.

His friends and his team, Earlham cross country, are back home. Scherf had to take a break from the Earlham cross country season to be in Dubai. “I knew the guys on my team would be watching for sure,” he says. “They’re the most important people in my life, my teammates and family.”

ON YOUR MARK Scherf toes the starting line. He doesn’t have a set plan for the race, or for most of his races, for that matter. “You can’t control what the other people in the race are going to do. If you try to set a strict plan, they’ll blow it up in the first 30 seconds of the race.”

He has principles in mind: what to do if the race is slow, if a lead pack begins to break away, if he gets boxed in, and so on.

TWELVE-AND-A-HALF LAPS The race got off to a cagey start, with the pace not picking up until the fifth of 12.5 laps when the leaders chose to break away. Scherf ran with the pack for the first few laps and then settled in and finished at the ninth spot. His time of 15:33.31 was better than he ran in Peru but slower than his personal best.

Scherf wanted better, but he saw the upside of it all. “I was really grateful that I’d gotten into that race with those guys,” he says. “Running competitively is about getting to whatever the next level is and then setting new goals. I did that.”

One of his heroes in the race, Chentouf, did not peak as a runner until he was 31. Scherf knows that development as a runner is a longer process. He’s confident in his own progress: “These are the runners I look up to, and I had the chance to run with them. I’m grateful for the chance I got, and I’m motivated to take the next step.”

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Earlham volleyball sets another HCAC-era high point

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

BY DAN OETTING PHOTOGRAPHY DAN OETTING

The Quakers celebrate match point against Bluffton College in the opening round of the HCAC Volleyball Tournament. earlham.edu

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A

September tournament at Illinois Wesleyan set the tone for the Quakers’ 2019 volleyball season. All three of Earlham’s matches there went five sets, and each of them was a victory for the Quakers.

“Talk about gut-wrenching,” says Lauren Horton, fifth-year head coach, of the tournament. “But we learned we could be scrappy and could hang with teams that were taller, bigger and stronger.”

In all, seven of Earlham’s matches went to a fifth set this year, with the Quakers grinding out wins in all but one of them.

The team achieved a 20-win season for the second year in a row, winding up at 20-9. The Quakers also went deeper in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament than ever before, losing only to conference champs Transylvania University in the title match.

Last year, Horton could look to a powerful front row led by 2019 grad Ashleigh

Burton for an offensive edge. This year, there was no single go-to person. That also meant being ready for longer rallies and needing an even stronger defense.

Senior libero Sydney Ameluxen did her part for the defense, leading the team with 425 digs on the season. Offensive firepower this year was shared between sophomore Caroline Mulvihill with 345 kills, sophomore Sarah Dickman with 287, and junior Julia Stewart with 280.

Senior setter Lauren Jackson was the offensive linchpin, spreading the ball around to find the right hitter. Jackson finished first in career assists in Earlham history, with 4,113. She also ranked second in the conference this season, with a 9.64 assists-per-set average. Her efforts earned her First Team conference honors. She was joined on the HCAC First Team by Mulvihill. Stewart received Honorable Mention.

If their early-season wins showed team members that they would have to win with an all-around game, it was a crushing

Coach Lauren Horton

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

midseason loss to Hanover that reinforced the lesson. Quakers volleyball had never beaten Hanover before, so it wasn’t the loss itself that was disappointing. It was how the Quakers lost.

“We were awful,” says Horton. “It was easily our worst game of the season.”

Horton and assistant coach Annemarie Chin gathered the team members before their next practice. If they were going to rise from this, they needed to talk it through. The team sat in a circle on Schuckman Court and had what Horton calls a straight talk.

“Anybody at any point can respond or can talk, but it has to be about you,” she told the team. “We need to be open with each other.”

Resiliency came up. So did players meeting in the middle after every point.

As did being supportive whether on the court or on the bench.

Lauren Jackson, a senior from Tonganoxie, Kansas, finished her career with 4,113 assists, placing her at No. 1 on Earlham’s all-time leader board for assists.

“We talked about some important intangibles. Things you won’t find in the stats,” says Horton. “We talked about our mentality and how there needed to be a change in mindset. We needed all parts of our game to be good in order to win: defense, offense and support from the bench. It just literally takes every single one of us to win a match like that.”

The Quakers won the remaining three games of the regular season. When they met Hanover again, this time in the semifinals of the conference tournament, they knew they had to bring the intensity they had lacked in the teams’ previous meeting.

the court were looking at our bench,” says Horton. “Our bench was so loud and engaged. It was crazy the amount of positivity.”

Earlham won the first set and then traded sets with Hanover until the tie-breaking fifth. Instead of crumbling when Hanover did well, however, Earlham fought back.

And when the match went long into the fifth set, the Quakers stayed in the fight and came out the winner, 18-16.

The Quakers took their hard-earned confidence and a five-game winning streak into the championship game against No. 20 Transylvania, but the Quakers ran out of answers against the Pioneers, losing 3-0.

“Getting to 20 wins again this season was great,” says Horton, “but it’s just a number. What we learned was how to be tougher, play as a team, and regroup.

Our seniors, Sydney Ameluxen, Angelica Carpio and Lauren Jackson, did a lot to get us to this point. Their example gives us a lot to feel good about what we’re building for next year.”

“At the semifinal game, our bench was so loud that the Hanover players on

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Standout Field hockey rounded out its season with five Quakers earning All-North Coast Athletic Conference recognition.

Meg Murphy ’22 landed on the All-NCAC First Team finishing the 2019 season with 81 saves and a .750 save percentage for the season. Murphy also received NCAC player-of-the-week honors for her shutout performance against Wilson College. Sofia Salvatore ’21 also earned a spot on the All-NCAC First Team. Salvatore scored three goals and had six assists this season. Two players were Second Team All-NCAC selections: Denise Bergdolt ’22, who ended the season with nine goals; and Hannah Grushon ’23, who finished the season with five goals while shooting 41.7 percent for the year. Next Level. Olivia Layne ’22 received Honorable Mention for her three-goal, twoassist season. Murphy, Salvatore, Bergdolt and Grushon also were tabbed by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association for All-Region recognition.

Volleyball placed three on the All-Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference teams. Lauren Jackson ’20 and Caroline Mulvihill ’22, who also earned HCAC player-ofthe-week honors on September 23, secured a spot on the All-HCAC First Team. Jackson is set to graduate in May as a psychology major. Julia Stewart ’21 received Honorable Mention for the 2019 season. Read more about volleyball’s 2019 season on page 29.

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Garrett Schuler ’21 ’22 Meg Murphy Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

BY CAMRYN WHITE ’20

Quakers Three members of the Earlham women’s soccer team received All-HCAC honors for the 2019 season. Kailey Hall ’23 earned Second Team All-HCAC recognition for her defensive efforts, playing with a unit that allowed almost 20 fewer shots on goal in the 2019 season. Hannah Wallhausser ’22, who received HCAC player-of-the-week honors, also was tabbed for All-HCAC Second Team honors.

Wallhauser ended the season with three goals and seven assists. Tess Cunningham ’23 received Honorable Mention conference recognition after recording four goals in her rookie season.

Men’s soccer players Jeffrey Douyere ’21 and Andrew Belec ’22 received Honorable Mention conference recognition for their efforts this season.

Twenty-nine student-athletes from Earlham were named Tom Bohlsen Academic All-HCAC honorees. That’s the most for Earlham since the fall of 2016. All selections have at least a cumulative 3.5 GPA and are varsity athletes. Earlham’s women’s cross country and men’s soccer teams led the way for Earlham, both with six honorees. Volleyball, with five honorees, was close behind.

Andrew Belec ’22 earlham.edu

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Faculty Activities Roger Adkins, executive director of global and career education, co-authored “Toward Decolonizing Education Abroad: Moving Beyond the Self/Other Dichotomy,” which appears in Education Abroad and the Undergraduate Experience: Critical Perspectives and Approaches to Integration with Student Learning and Development. The chapter’s content was recently called out in the book’s entry in the Chronicle’s “Selected New Books on Higher Education” column.

Adkins also participated in a summer faculty/staff seminar, “Best Practices in Faculty-Led Study Abroad Programs,” in July in Lisbon, Portugal. The seminar was offered by the Council on International Education Exchange.

Classical Studies Maxwell Teitel Paule led a workshop in San Antonio at the American Association of Colleges and Universities conference titled “Teaching Border Studies on a Liberal Arts Campus.” Paule and Baker also led the EPIC Advantage program Hiking with Hadrian: Explorations of Border and Empire in Northern England.

Visiting Assistant Professor of 3D Fabrication/Metals Melis Agabigum participated in Athens Jewelry Week as an exhibiting artist in the Benaki Museum. Agabigum also represented the United States with her collective 6X (a group of U.S.based artists) in a curatorial endeavor, which was shown at both Athens Jewelry Week and at New York City Jewelry Week. Over the past year, she took part in 13 exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and Australia. Agabigum received Professional Development Grant to attend and present work at Athens Jewelry Week. Her publications include “In Conversation with Erato Kouloubi and Niki Stylianou” in Art Jewelry Forum; “Once Upon a...” in H21 iii: Handouts from the 21st Century (version 3).

In April, Professor of Music Marc Benamou and Paolo Rossi ’20 and Nathaniel McCrickard ’19 were invited to perform in the inaugural concert of the Kenyon College Javanese Gamelan Ensemble. In October, Benamou led the Earlham Gamelan Ensemble in a trip to Bloomington, Indiana, instruments in tow, where they performed on the opening concert for the Indonesia Focus national conference. In June, Benamou was invited to present a paper titled “Cakepan Srambahan (all-purpose gamelan lyrics) as Absolute Music: Listening to Poetry about Nothing” at the international symposium, Java in Jerusalem: New Directions in the Study of Javanese Literature and Culture, held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. On the same occasion, he also led a workshop in the “reading” (i.e., singing) of måcåpat (traditional Javanese poetry) and performed in a concert by the Jerusalem Gamelan.

Alongside Library Director Neal Baker and Professor of English Kari Kalve, Associate Professor of Ancient and

As part of the 2019 Tibetan Studies Semester abroad program, Professor of Biology Peter Blair was invited to

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give a presentation at Men-Tsee-Khang, the Tibetan Medical and Astro-Science Institute, in McLeod Ganj, India.

The title of the talk was “Malaria Vaccine Discovery in the Post-Genomics Era: A Sporozoite’s Journey.”

Two of Associate Professor of Art Walt Bistline’s photographs were included in the Richmond Art Museum’s juried competition, with one receiving a $500 Merit Award. Two other photos of his were included in the museum’s recent exhibition, “Selections from the Permanent Collection.” Two of Bistline’s photos were accepted for the “Art About the Land” exhibit, which began at the Minnetrista Cultural Center in Muncie this fall and has since traveled to the Anderson Center for the Arts.

One of his photos was included in the Richmond Columbian Properties Photography Competition last March.

Geoffrey Alan Boyce, academic director of the border studies program at Earlham, published “The Neoliberal Underpinnings of Prevention Through Deterrence and the United States Government’s Case Against Geographer Scott Warren” in the Journal of Latin American Geography; “Alter-Geopolitics and the Feminist Challenge to the Securitization of Climate Policy” in Gender, Place and Culture. Also in October he co-authored a research report: “The Immigration Dragnet and the Dispossession of Household and Community Wealth in the United States” in Binational Migration Institute and Border Studies Program.

Associate Library Director Amy Bryant presented “Improving Persistence Rates for First Generation Students” for the Oberlin Group Webinar on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ Lightning Round Presentation in August.

Emeritus Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies Stephen Butler gave a talk titled “The Professor’s Canary” in November at George Washington University.

During the fall semester, Fariba Khoshnasib, visiting assistant professor of mathematics, and Charles Ces ’21 worked on solving a special case of a system modeling the dynamics of a liposome with long-lived pore.

Khoshnasib led a group of students to undergraduate mathematics symposium at the University of Illinois at Chicago where Tinotenda Chigasa ’21, Gyeongeun Lee ’20 and Huong Phan ’21 presented their poster on predicting the risk of colleges shutting down. Khoshnasib also coordinated the mathematical modeling competition (SCUDEM IV) at Earlham.

ELL Instructors and International Student Advisers Safia Diarra and Candice Marshall presented about ELL placement methods at INTESOL in November.

Stephanie CrumleyEffinger, director of supervised ministry at Earlham School of Religion, contributed a chapter to Mentoring: A Toolkit for SupervisorMentors in Theological Field Education.

Professors of Chemistry Corinne and Mike Deibel gave a research presentation titled “The Mummy in Our Backyard” in the Adult Speaker Series at the Wayne County Historical Museum in August.

Cynthia M. Fadem, associate professor of geology, was recently profiled in Unique Scientists. Her publications include “Farming the Great Sage Plain: Experimental Agroarchaeology and the Basketmaker III Soil Record” in Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment; and “Geochemical and physical characterization of lithic raw materials in the Olduvai Basin, Tanzania” in Quaternary International.

Fadem’s conference presentations include “Site Preservation and Bone Taphonomy investigations in the Olduvai Gorge Area, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania” at LGBT+ STEMinar; and ”Ongoing TOPPP investigations in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania“ at the Geological Society of America Annual National Meeting. She had an invited lecture in April titled “Geoarchaeology of the Basketmaker Communities Project: Informing past & present agricultural sustainability” at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis Department

of Anthropology. Fadem also earned a place at the Earth Education for Sustainable Societies Workshop, Science Education Resource Center & National Association of Geoscience Teachers.

Academic Technologies and Seminaries Librarian Karla Fribley ’03 was accepted into an Open Education fellowship program thru SPARC, a professional development program for library professionals.

In October, Cammi Fulvi, assistant director of Graduate Programs in Education, and Becky Dimick Eastman, director of Graduate Programs in Education, presented “The Preservice Experience of Teachers Who Identify as LGBTQ+: Preliminary Results from an Ongoing Study” at the Association of Teacher Educators - Indiana Unit (ATE-I) conference. At the end of the conference, Eastman was installed as president of the organization for the next year.

Mari Galup, instructor in border studies, and Cristen Poynter, Spanish language curriculum coordinator for border studies, are members of the Tucson Language Justice Collective.

Through the LJC they provide interpretation services and language justice education in the community and occasional translation services, which border studies students have had the chance to be a part of over this past year.

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Faculty Activities Sascha Gerhards, visiting assistant professor of German, presented a paper titled ”Muslim Women, Patriarchy, and Male Violence in the Tatort Crime Television Series” in a panel series called “German #MeToo: Representations and Realities of Sexual Violence, Abuse, and Harassment” at the German Studies Association Conference in Portland, Oregon, in October.

In the summer and fall, Associate Vice President of Marketing and Communications Jonathan Graham’s play “Equinox” was produced in Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas.

In July and August, Rodolfo Guzmán, professor and convener of Spanish and Hispanic studies, was invited to serve as an NEH Grant Program panelist.

The appointment involved evaluating proposals for the 2020 Humanities Initiatives Grant Program. In July, at the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, Guzmán participated in the XXI Congress of the Asociación de Colombianistas, presenting “Terror, Science, and Pity in the Final Letters of Francisco Jose de Caldas (1768-1816).”

Tom Hamm, professor of history and curator of the Quaker Collections, did considerable speaking on Quaker historical subjects this fall. It began with a talk on Indiana Quaker history to Illinois Yearly Meeting of Friends in September.

Then he spoke at Fairfield Friends near Indianapolis in October. Two days later, he talked about Quaker women’s

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history as part of the Indiana women’s suffrage centennial observance in Dublin, Indiana. Also in October he did a presentation on the development of American Quaker diversity at Cincinnati Friends Meeting.

In October, Elizabeth (Betsy) Hawley, visiting assistant professor of art history, chaired a panel at the Southeast College Art Conference titled “‘Red Roots of White Feminism’: Indigenous Feminisms in Arts of the Americas.” She also recently published an essay, “Weaving the Way Toward Liberty: John Singleton Copley’s Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris),” in the anthology Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats, and wrote a book review appearing in Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture.

Shannon Hayes, geology department curator and Indiana Licensed Professional Geologist, published the article ”Disentangling Effects of Forest Harvest on Long-term Hydrologic and Sediment Dynamics, Western Cascades, Oregon” in the Journal of Hydrology.

Scott Hess, professor of English, published “The Romantic Work of Genius: Author, Nature, Nation and the ‘Genial Criticism’ of Samuel Taylor Coleridge” in Modern Language Quarterly and “Walden Pond as Thoreau’s Landscape of Genius” in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Hess also presented the scholarly papers at the North American Victorian Studies Association conference in Columbus,

Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

Ohio, in October; the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference at University of California at Davis in June; and the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference, at the University of Illinois at Chicago in August.

John Iverson, professor emeritus of biology, has published 10 peerreviewed papers on reptiles in journals including Ecology and Evolution, the Journal of Animal Ecology, Oecologia, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Functional Ecology, Journal of Herpetology, Herpetological Conservation and Biology, Chelonian Conservation and Biology, and Biological Conservation.

In November, Deborah Jackson, research professor of sociology/ anthropology, attended the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where she presented “Abstractions and Materialities of Pollution/Toxicity: The Political Ecology of a Cancer Cluster Along the U.S.-Canada Border.”

Becky Jestice ’97, associate professor of global management, received the best educator award from X-Culture for work done with senior capstone students in global management in spring 2019.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Xunfei Jiang’s presented at the 20th IEEE International

Conference on Mobile Data Management in Hong Kong, China, in June, and co-presented at the 35th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (IEEE ICDE 2019) held at Macau SAR, China, in April. She and Eli Ramthun ’18, Thuy Thai ’21 and Charlie Peck, professor of computer science, presented “Energy-aware Workload Management System on Cluster” at ACSIC Symposium on Frontiers in Computing in Chicago in June. Jiang co-published “An Overlapping Voronoi Diagrambased System for Multi-Criteria Optimal Location Queries” in Springer GeoInformatica in January 2019. In addition she took four female students to the Grace Hopper Conference, the world’s largest conference for women in computing. And she served as a committee member for the Open Source Day program for the conference.

In November, Jiang became faculty adviser to Girls Who Code at Earlham.

Joseph Moore Museum Director and Associate Professor of Biology and Museum Studies Heather Lerner is on sabbatical during the 2019-2020 academic year. During this time, Lerner is working as an NSF-funded Research Fellow with the NYC-based think tank, Knology (formerly New Knowledge).

Her research is part of a nationwide study of the role of informal STEM learning centers as information sources and agents of social change.

In June 2019, Pete Lefresne, director of athletics communications, received the 25-Year Service Award from the College Sports

Information Directors of America.

Lefresne came to Earlham in 2018 from Saint Leo University, where he was the assistant athletics director for communications, with previous work experience in the sports information offices at Virginia Military Institute, Old Dominion University, The University of Maine, Juniata College, and the University of Maine at Farmington.

Jennifer Lewis, director of off-campus programs, was elected president of the Morrison-Reeves Library Board of Trustees in July and has been a member of the Board since 2017. In June, Lewis participated in the Accelerated Residency Program for Professional Certification in Education Abroad at Dickinson University in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

James Logan, professor of religion and professor and director of African and African American studies, was a respondent at a forum titled “Incarceration, Christianity and Black Bodies” in September at Butler University.

Gregory Mahler, research professor of politics, will teach full-time in the politics department in the spring semester in a seven-week module.

In March of 2020 he will return to Sarah College, Dharamsala, India, to teach two courses dealing with civil society and social science research.

He is series editor for the Series in Comparative Politics, published by the State University of New York Press, and the first volume in that series, Anticorruption Efforts in Asia, has been published.

Professor of Geology Andy Moore was selected to participate in the NSF-funded UNAVCO Geodesy Tools for Societal Issues field cohort 1. The geology department looks forward to working with UNAVCO further and developing RTK dGPS modules for upcoming May term and fall classes.

Kate Morgan, instructor for the border studies program, worked on the steering committee for the Legal Defense Campaign of Scott Warren, a volunteer with No More Deaths and humanitarian aid worker who was arrested in January 2019. Morgan produced media calling attention to the crisis of deaths and disappearances on the US/Mexico border and helped craft organizing strategies for Warren’s public outreach campaign.

Ryan Murphy, associate professor history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, has a book manuscript in progress about the Labor Movement and made a conference presentation at the American Studies Association Annual Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, in November. His publications include “Keyword: Work,” in Routledge History of American Sexuality, and “Lifestyle: Dissident Sexualities, Urban Political Economy, and the Genealogy of a Contested Category” in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies in April.

Earlham’s Office of Institutional Advancement received a 2019 Case Educational Fundraising Award, which honors exemplary fundraising programs and activities.

In August, Lynne Perkins Socey, assistant professor of theatre arts, earlham.edu

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Faculty Activities co-led the first EPIC Advantage Edinburgh Festival Fringe company (with Visiting Assistant Professor in Design and Technology Sarah White), which performed her original stage adaptation of Kathryn Clare Glen’s “The Misadventures of Martin Hathaway.” In October she played Lillian Galletta for the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra’s performance of Ellis Island: The Dream of America. In November, Perkins Socey played Mrs. Fairfax and Hannah in a staged reading of Stacy Embry’s new adaptation of Jane Eyre at the Fonseca Theatre in Indianapolis.

Seth Powless, assistant professor of global management, and students Matthew Truex ’20 and Marc Gendreau ’21, presented at the Annual Decision Sciences Institute Meeting in New Orleans in November.

Powless was invited to give a workshop and Powless, Truex, and Gendreau presented a research paper titled “Applying Decision Sciences to the Paradigm Shift in Sports Management: Talent Pipeline Management and Sports Participation.” In October, Powless and a large group of Earlham global management students competed in the Conexus of Indiana Case Competition in Indianapolis. The top three winning teams all had Earlham global management students on them, with Jared Birr ’20, Truex, and Danny Dopp ’20 taking first, second, and third place respectively.

Professor of Psychology Vince Punzo has been invited by the editor

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of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly to contribute a regular column to the journal on current topics in biomedical ethics.

Associate Professor Rachael D. Reavis presented a poster at the Cognitive Development Society annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, in October. Reavis also participated in the Great Lakes Colleges Association Academic Leadership and Innovation Institute in November with Womai Song, assistant professor of history and African and African American studies, and Robert Couch, associate professor of global management.

Jim Rogers with Dakotah Lambert ’15 published “Some classes of sets of structures definable without quantifiers” in the proceedings of the 16th Meeting of the Association for Mathematics of Language. Their paper “Extracting Subregular constraints from Regular stringsets” appears in the Journal of Language Modeling.

Kimberly Reid ’07, director of outdoor education, was invited to serve as the closing discussant for the Outdoor Orientation Program Symposium at the combined Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education and Association of Experiential Education international pre-conference in Spokane, Washington, in November.

She was accompanied by Madeline Chomentowski ‘20 and Dorothy Weiss ‘21 who presented “‘What’s for

Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

Lunch?’ and Other Important Decisions: Consensus in the backcountry.” In April, Reid accepted the “2019 Best Dissertation Award” at the Comparative and International Education Society conference in San Francisco, California, presented by the Study Abroad and International Students Special Interest Group.

Professor of Education Jay Roberts led faculty workshops at the National Humanities Center and Guilford College this summer.

Roberts also served as a keynote speaker for a conference on learning transformation in British Columbia, and gave talks at St. Catherine University and Brigham Young University.

Research produced during Bob Rosenberg’s sabbatical at the Laboratory of Computational Biology (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD) is in press: “Protonation state of the selectivity filter of bacterial voltagegated sodium channels is modulated by ions” will appear in Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics.

Associate Professor of History and African and African American Studies Betsy Schlabach presented at South Side Modern: Illinois Institute of Technology and Chicago As Campus, a book workshop for the Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture in August. Schlabach presented a conference paper at the annual meeting for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

held in Charleston, South Carolina, in October, and gave a talk at Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois in October as part of the history department’s Armstrong Lecture Series.

Glass; “Jamais Vu” in Landlocked; “Yolk is only of value if you’re hungry” in McNeese; “Jargon” in McNeese, and “a prayer between mother and the moon” in Cosmonaut’s Avenue.

Associate Professor of Biology Chris Smith was elected treasurer of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects - North America.

He co-published “Osiris genes and insect adaptive evolution” in eLS. His presentations include “Putting the organs(ism)s in the superorganism - evolution and ecology of ant castes” at Indiana State University in Terre Haute and at the University of Central Florida in Orlando; “Optimal nutrition in ants” at the International Union for the Study of Social Insects - Andean and Bolivarian Section in Quito, Ecuador.

Professor of Music Forrest Tobey is developing interactive musical systems for live performance and composition. He is currently integrating older technologies such as the Theremin and the Moog class of synthesizers with new music controllers: the Ableton Push, the Roli Seaboard, and the newest version of the Kinect. In December 2019, a short composition called “Small Gestures, for orchestra and live electronics” was performed with the Earlham orchestra.

He is also finishing up a recording project with Lynnell Lewis, featuring her songs and chants and his piano, guitar and electronic support.

Emmett Smith, assistant professor of biology, and Charlie Peck, professor of computer science, received funding from the National Geographic Society to support the near-earth surveying work they do with their archaeologist colleagues in Iceland. The grant will support a season of fieldwork and analysis at two early settlement sites on the eastern coast of Iceland.

Writing Center Director Erika Schnepp published two book reviews in Adroit. Her poetry includes “You’re not supposed to pet the dogs of Chernobyl” in

Visiting Assistant Professor in Design and Technology Sarah White designed scenery for two plays outside Earlham, “Moon Over Buffalo” at Muncie Civic Theatre, and “Mary Jane” for Summit Performance Indianapolis.

Professors of Art Mark Van Buskirk and Nancy Taylor had works accepted into the 2019 Whitewater Valley Art Competition at Indiana University East. Taylor’s article “Shadow-Weave Circles” was published in Handwoven.

Professor of Chemistry Lori Watson presented “VIPEr: Community and content for the inorganic classroom’ at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego in August.

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2019 1. Professor Emeritus of Biology Brent Smith shows a group of alumni how to identify native trees of Indiana.

2. Mel Johnson ‘23 makes a save against Rose-Hulman.

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3. Leslie Estrada ‘19 puts together the pieces of a bowl in a pottery class by Judy Wojcik, associate professor of art.

4. Loring Prosser ‘67 and Beth Prosser ‘69 take a walk past The Heart.

5. Donnie Smith ‘11 and Martha Henn ‘84 at the Alumni-Student Connections Social.

6. President Anne Houtman gives a presidential update on the College.

7. Julia Stewart ‘21 and fellow volleyball team members celebrate a point versus Manchester.

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Research Professor of Classics Stephen Heiny listens prior to receiving a Distinguished Service Award at the Alumni Awards Ceremony.

9. Jeffrey Douyere ‘21 pushes the ball upfield against Rose-Hulman.

10. Bill Asch ‘93 meets President Anne Houtman in Lingle Hall.

11. Chris Meyer ‘69 speaks with a student at the Alumni-Student Connections Social.

12. Sally Greenebaum ‘84 greets a classmate near Runyan Center.

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13. Katherine Yamasaki ‘99 shares how she uses storytelling when leading large-scale participatory art projects.

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Back LOOK

DAY OF SERVICE: Maria Adamson ’13 is handed a bag from Yasumi Kuriya, associate professor of Japanese, as a group of students and faculty from Earlham picks up trash from Richmond’s Vaile neighborhood. The efforts were part of the 2010 Earlham-Richmond Community Day of Service. (Photo by Elsa Haag ’14 in the Earlham Word.)

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College

Earlham Scene All IS CALM, ALL IS BRIGHT: Yeheon Hong, senior English major, sings “Silent Night� along with others at the 2019 Candlelight Service of Carols and the Christmas Story. Hong also read Luke 2:1-7, the nativity story of Jesus, in Korean for those assembled.

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Liza Donnelly ’77, an art major at Earlham, went on to be a cartoonist for The New Yorker. She sold her first cartoon to the magazine in 1979 and has been a regular contributor ever since. An author of 16 books, she is also a public speaker and travels as a cultural envoy for the U.S. State Department and is director of the New York Office of Cartooning for Peace.

“I learned how to speak my mind and take more of a leadership role at Earlham.”

Brianna Miller ’21, a theatre arts major and a creative writing minor, says she has always been soft-spoken and afraid to share her thoughts in fear of facing rejection. Earlham helped her gain confidence through transformative experiences and a collaborative environment. Brianna was part of a group that spent months developing a theatre production through a faculty-student collaborative research course. They then took their show to Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival.

You can help students like Brianna discover the strengths within themselves in a community that is both affirming and challenging. Your gift to the Earlham Fund helps the next generation of Earlham students find success.

Visit earlham.edu/online-giving or call 765.983.1313.

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801 National Road West Richmond, Indiana 47374