Reed College Magazine Fall 2025

Professor Juniper Harrower and her students want to save Joshua trees from extinction. Will the world join them? REED MAGAZINE

Thank you for supporting Reedies!

You gave Reed students an academic journey unlike any other this past year. By supporting the Annual Fund, you ensure a transformative experience that propels Reedies toward a lifetime of learning.

60% of Reed students received financial aid

253 student research and internship awards were funded

275 in-depth 1:1 research consultations were conducted with a librarian

363 Disability & Accessibility Resources appointments were made

157 faculty mentors led inspiring classes

400 theses were advised

2,521 tutoring sessions were provided

1,600 career advising appointments were held

Fall 2025 Volume 104, No. 2

EDITOR

Katie Pelletier ’03

ART DIRECTOR

Tom Humphrey

WRITERS/EDITORS

Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Cara Nixon

CLASS NOTES EDITOR

Joanne Hossack ’82

REEDIANA EDITOR

Robin Tovey ’97

GRAMMATICAL KAPELLMEISTER

Virginia O. Hancock ’62

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Lauren Rennan

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS

Sheena McFarland

Reed College is an institution of higher education in the liberal arts and sciences devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity.

Reed Magazine provides news of interest to the Reed community. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed.

Reed Magazine (ISSN 08958564) is published three times a year by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon.

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From the Editor

What Else is New?

The world is changing fast. A Reed Magazine issue, however, comes together slowly, through long reporting and deliberate production.

This tension between rapid change and thoughtful journalism shapes how we approach our coverage. This year we have often focused on how Reedies are adapting to, shaping, and creating new frontiers. This issue is no exception. In “A Beat of Their Own” Cara Nixon talks with reporters who persist in documenting stories of our times, despite unsettling shifts and collapses in the media industry.

For our cover feature, “Desert Dreams,” writer Ben Ferguson accompanies a group of Reed students, faculty, and staff led by Reed Professor Juniper Harrower to Lancaster, California. There they undertake scientific research that could help create protections for Joshua trees and ensure their survival. They are resisting the idea that the story of these trees’ demise is already determined. Harrower and her students are turning to art and artistic knowledge to connect and create the conditions for thriving ecosystems.

Reed Magazine ’s cadence is also changing. You will see us in your mailbox three times a year, rather than four, as we must adapt to the current postal and printing marketplace. In your surveys in October 2023, an overwhelming majority

expressed your preference for a paper copy, and we are committed to continuing. While this means longer lead times for your class notes and story ideas, I urge you to keep submitting. Class Notes is one of the most-read sections—your peers love to hear your news, perhaps especially now that many are using social media in different, less candid, or less personal ways. For more up-to-the minute news about Reed and Reedies, we have created a digital newsroom [reed.edu/newsroom] where we post weekly about awards, research, press releases, media mentions, and publications. We’ll run some teasers in our “Open Tabs” section to remind you to check it out.

Supporting slow news—and local news—is tremendously important. In-depth reporting, critical thinking, and more meaningful connections between ideas and people will better tether us to truth and one another. As always, stay connected—through class notes, professional networks, and lifelong friendships, even as the world evolves around them. And of course, news from Reed.

—Katie Pelletier ’03, Editor

REED MAGAZINE

Professor Juniper Harrower is exploring how art can save vulnerable Joshua tree lifeworlds.

Cover photo by Elizabeth Weinberg.

A Beat of Their Own

By Cara Nixon

Mailbox

Flow State

I am enjoying the article “Water’s Hand” in the Spring 2025 edition. I realized that as a modern person, I thought in terms of roads, but building and maintaining good roads requires a high level of organization, expertise, and resources. Water, on the other hand, has been the most efficient and readily available means of transport through much of human history, especially for large quantities of goods and people.

A minor correction: your article states that the remains of the Santo Cristo de Burgos shipwreck were found off the coast of Astoria. That’s fairly close, but they were actually found about 40 miles south, around Nehalem Spit and Nehalem Bay.

Thanks for this issue. It’s an inspiration.

MARGARET MURDOCK ’71 HOQUIAM, WASHINGTON

The Library as the Beating Heart of Reed

I just read, for the second time, the article about the Reed Library as the “beating heart” of Reed. During my student days at Reed, it certainly was my beating heart, and my time there has influenced my life in important ways.

that anyone who needed documents could show up or contact her with a topic, and find an overflowing shelf of documents ready for their visit to the documents reading room.

When people ask what my college major was, they are surprised to learn it was in German literature and that my thesis was about a document written in medieval German by an obscure nun. Even though that also is a valuable part of my education and my history, my library home in the basement, with Mrs. Pauline Howard as my teacher in the stacks of government documents she knew so well, was every bit as important, and has marked my life and career as its most important influence.

SHARON TOJI ’58

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA

Remembering Laurens Ruben

By Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Just like many other students, I spent many hours at one of the big tables in the main reading room. However, my real “library home” was the U.S. Documents Department that used to take up its own wing in the basement. The wonderful woman who was the documents librarian at Reed for the first three of my four years as a student, Pauline Howard, would go to any lengths to make sure

To add to the encomium for Prof. Laurens Ruben [biology 1955–92], I would add that he frequently had his pet dog—if I remember correctly, a golden retriever—devotedly at his feet in his office. Also, he had an amazing ability to draw illustrations of embryos with different-colored chalks in both hands working simultaneously. He refused to be a coauthor with me when my thesis, “Graft rejection on amphibia,” was published because “he hadn’t contributed any ideas to it,” but he had suggested the problem and helped with interpretation of the results (which probably contributed to his changed research direction from limb regeneration to comparative immunology). He had a life well lived!

BOB ERICKSON ’60

TUCSON, ARIZONA

The SU was the site of Reed’s Battle of the Bands in April. Glass Eyed Tiger, pictured here, performed along with Orange Cat IQ Test, Toothache, Kitty Galore, and others.

Naomi Smith ’25 and Maggie Miklas ’25 stand at the edge of the Doyle Owl scrum.

PHOTO OSCAR

New Film & Media Studies Major Unites Reed Cinephiles

Reports of cinema’s death at the hands of streaming have been greatly exaggerated—just ask Professor Mónica López Lerma [Spanish and humanities]. “We are having the same conversations, more or less, every time that a new technology emerges,” she says. “I don’t think [streaming] is the end of cinema.”

As the committee chair of Reed’s film and media studies program, López Lerma is building a curriculum as interdisciplinary as it is international— and showing how film studies can play an integral role in a liberal arts education.

“Mainstream cinema is shaping our ways of seeing, our ways

of feeling, our ways of thinking,” she says. “We need to understand how our ways of seeing are shaped—and that’s what film and media studies does.”

Launched in fall 2024, film and media studies was more than 10 years in the making at Reed. The program spotlights the history, theory, and criticism of film and other communications media, with emphasis on cinema as a global language.

That focus is reflected in specialized courses ranging from Hong Kong Cinema to Science Fiction in Soviet Literature and Film—and López Lerma hopes to expand the program’s scope. “It should

be more international, more diversified than it is,” she says.

While the study of film history and theory is the core of film and media studies, López Lerma intends for the program to benefit students who wish to make their own films with the help of courses like Digital Video and Coding Interactivity.

“So many faculty are involved,” López Lerma says. “People from the German department, French, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, from the arts. That says a lot about Reed, that we are able to collaborate, to work together to create something. That’s the beauty of it.”

—Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Mónica López Lerma during an Intro to Film Theory course.

Reed College Extends Tuition-Free Initiative

The Reed Promise increases access to higher education for students across the country.

Reed College announced this spring the expansion of its transformative commitment to access and affordability. Beginning in fall 2026, Reed will offer tuition-free education to newly admitted U.S. undergraduate students whose families earn less than $100,000.

This new initiative builds on Reed’s enduring promise to meet 100% of every student’s demonstrated financial need, reinforcing the col-

lege’s long-standing commitment to ensuring that a world-class education is within reach for qualified students from all financial backgrounds.

The Reed Promise initially launched in December 2024 with a focus on students from Oregon and Washington, and transfer students from across the United States.

This expansion of the initiative reaffirms Reed College’s dedication to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and intellectually rigorous community by eliminating financial barriers that may have previously hindered talented students from pursuing their dreams at one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges.

Key features of the Reed Promise include tuition-free education for families earning under $100,000; continued commitment to meeting 100% of demonstrated need; and a long-term commitment to affordability.

“At Reed, we believe in the power of higher education to change lives,” said Reed College President Audrey Bilger. “We like to say, ‘the world needs more Reedies.’ By expanding the Reed Promise nationwide, we will be able to transform even more lives and provide greater access to our vibrant academic program and to our intellectually curious and creative community.”

Reedies Recognized by Pulitzer

Tessa Hulls ’07 won in the memoir category, and Amy Reading ’98 was a finalist in the biography category.

Tessa Hulls ’07 spent nearly a decade tracking her Chinese heritage through her mother and grandmother, creating a genre-bending graphic memoir about family, love, grief, and exile. This year, that work paid off: the book won a Pulitzer Prize.

Judges called Feeding Ghosts, which won in the memoir category, “an affecting work

of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women—the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.”

Amy Reading ’98 was also a finalist in the biography category. She wrote The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at “The New Yorker.” Tessa joins Reedies Edward Cony ’48 and Gary Snyder ’51, who won Pulitzers for national reporting and poetry, respectively, but she is the first to win in the memoir category.

—Cara Nixon

Reed Signs On to Amicus Brief

The brief underscores how efforts targeting international students have created a climate of uncertainty on U.S. campuses.

This spring, Reed College joined 86 institutions and associations in supporting the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration to take action against the administration’s revocation of visas and detentions of noncitizen students and scholars.

The amicus brief, submitted in AAUP v. Rubio , supports the American Association of University Professors’ motion for a preliminary injunction to safeguard academic freedom and halt large-scale arrests,

detentions, and deportations of students and faculty engaged in constitutionally protected activities.

Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance, said: “In submitting this brief, higher education leaders are coming together to amplify the contributions of noncitizen students and scholars, whose ideas and breakthroughs fuel our economy and uphold the collaborative spirit that defines American education.”

This past academic year, almost one out of every seven students was enrolled in the music department’s performance program—18.66% of all Reedies Reedies are singing everything from Shruthi Rajasekar’s Whose Names Are Unknown (based on and named after the Dust Bowl novel by Sanora Babb) to Margaret Bonds’s Credo (a setting of W. E. B. Du Bois’s proclamation of racial equality).

In March, the Sustainability Team staged a puppet show by Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey ’24 and Mud Bentley ’25 to start a conversation about the Harborton Reliability Project, which would be destructive to five acres of Forest Park. All puppets were crafted using materials from the Recycling Center, and Alister Orozco ’25 created a zine to dig deeper into the project’s impact.

You’re going to need a bigger pool! Reedies gathered for a swimmingpool screening of Jaws, floating on inner tubes and paddleboards as they watched Bruce the shark snack on tasty humans. Luckily, the only shark found in the Aubrey Watzek Sports Center was the one on the big screen.

Tessa Hulls ’07 stamps a copy of her memoir after an artist talk on the Reed campus in fall 2024.

A Student of Student Life

Chris Toutain is happy to talk, whether you’re asking him about defusing roommate conflicts or which coffee shops near Reed are the most hospitable for caffeine purists (his pick is Heart Coffee on Southeast Woodstock).

Yet as Reed’s dean of students, Chris prefers to listen—especially when a student seeks his counsel and shares their experience. “There were never one-size-fits-all answers for those situations,” Chris says. “And I think that’s something that I’ve found to be really crucial for me in my current role.”

Chris arrived at Reed in 2020, becoming Title IX & 504 coordinator as the pandemic transformed the demands of the job in real time. In 2023, he became the Martha A. Darling Dean of Students, shouldering responsibilities that he says are often defined by the needs of individual students.

“It’s crucial for me to listen carefully to what a student is sharing and to be thoughtful in my listening,” he says. “I’m not picking from a predetermined set of options based on what most students have needed in the past.”

Now in his second year as dean, Chris spoke to Reed Magazine about not only what it means to be a dean of students, but what it means to be a dean of Reedies. —BCF

Typically, the dean of students oversees the nonacademic aspects of student life. But is it more nuanced at Reed? Our students don’t take the academic hat off as they exit class and then leave it aside while they’re in the residence halls. That hat’s always on, whether they’re in the dining hall, the Old Dorm Block, or in the sports center. Student life operates largely in the out-of-classroom space, but the work that we do definitely intersects with what is happening in the classroom or the lab or another academic space.

How have student services evolved under your leadership and more broadly at Reed?

I don’t have a pre-COVID experience of campus, which I think impacts my answer to that question. When I first arrived in 2020, the office of student life was focused heavily on responding to student needs. During my time here, we’ve worked to shift from being mostly reactive to becoming more proactive in how we support students. We’ve also built on some of the tools developed during the pandemic, like virtual appointments through Zoom. Disability & Accessibility Resources can now offer

flexible, private options for students who may prefer to meet from the comfort and privacy of their dorm room.

Can you talk about aspects of your work that are specific to the needs of this community?

Our students tend to be incredibly engaged, and thoughtful in their engagement. When we ask students for feedback on ideas around initiatives, we get it, in excellent volume. Having been at other campuses where that wasn’t the case, that’s not something that I take for granted.

What do you want to achieve in the future?

Continue to ask how we can support students in ways outside of the classroom that scaffold their in-classroom experiences—all in service of their having successful academic careers that culminate with walking across the stage at graduation, having written a thesis that they’re excited about and having gained all that they can from the time that they’re here with us.

PHOTO

Chris Toutain at Orientation.

More Worlds Than We Know

Mohamed Jassim Munavar Hussain ’25 discovered eight exoplanets through an internship with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“There are more worlds out there than we know,” Mohamed Jassim Munavar Hussain ’25 says. He’s a trusted source on that—he’s found some himself. In January, a paper he coauthored was published in The Astronomical Journal , exploring his team’s discovery of eight new, never-been-recorded exoplanet candidates in our galaxy.

As part of an internship with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Jassim worked with astronomer Michelle Kunimoto to use data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for exoplanet discovery. This satellite records dips in light around stars too far for us to see, and those dips in light can indicate a planet orbiting the star, momentarily blocking the light. NASA uploads these thousands of data points to a publicly available site, and Jassim coded a program that pulls data from this system to analyze small dips in light that may have been missed. Using MIT’s supercomputer, he and his team discovered a high possibility that eight of those dips of light could be planets.

The planets Jassim and his mentor discovered are the second ones in eight multiplanet systems. In one of those systems, another researcher found three more planets, which means if their findings are confirmed, it will be the 29th five-planet system found in our galaxy. Another one of Jassim and Kunimoto’s findings may mark the first known system harboring a giant hot Jupiter companion—something thought to be extremely rare.

The Center for Life Beyond Reed helped fund Jassim for this work, including a twoweek trip to Boston to work with Kunimoto, through the Climate Change Research and Education Fund. Jassim credits Shania Siron and Marwa Al Khamees from CLBR in particular for their knowledge of networking, which he says helped him secure the internship. He is grateful to Reed in general for instilling in him a work ethic that he consistently applies outside of the classroom.

Having graduated this last May, Jassim next plans to attend graduate school for engineering, with the ultimate goal of becoming an astronaut.

For Jassim, everything starts with one word in Arabic: alhamdulillah, or “All praise to God.” “It is at the core of the work I do as a physicist and astronomer,” Jassim says. “All of this is a blessing that I get from God, and I can’t do anything without that.” —CN

FIND THESE STORIES AT: reed.edu/newsroom

Commencement speakers Gary Snyder ’51, Kathleen Saadat ’74, Barbara Ehrenreich ’63, and others have offered their wisdom to graduating students over the years. This year’s speaker, Advait Jukar ’11, recounted his nonlinear path to paleontology and urged the class of 2025 to embrace uncertainty. Cara Nixon shares gems from these inspiring speeches.

“Because of climate change, your groceries are costing more,” says Prof. Noelwah Netusil [economics]. She is a member of the Forum on Oregon Climate Economics (FORCE), a nonpartisan group of economists and policy experts. Their recent report on flood insurance highlights economic risks related to climate change.

Prestigious academic chairs were awarded to professors Katja Garloff [German], Adam Groce [computer science], Angélica Osorno [math], Jennifer Corpus [psychology], Anna Ritz [biology], Margaret Scharle [philosophy], and Kristin Scheible [religion]. These appointments reflect their outstanding contributions as both scholars and teachers.

A grant from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation will provide funding for Reed students to conduct mentored STEM research. The winning grant proposal was led by Prof. Kara Cerveny [biology], who notes that the funding expands opportunities for low SES and first-generation college students.

Mohamed Jassim Munavar Hussain ’25 with the Reed Telescope on the roof of the physics building.

Beyond the Great Lawn

Paying It Forward with Professional Networks

How professional career networks are helping foster community for Reedies in every stage, location, and industry.

In the summer of 1994, Dylan Rivera ’95 was approaching his senior year at Reed. While interning in Washington, D.C., he began thinking of what might be next for him come graduation the following spring. It was a fellow Reedie, an alum, who encouraged him to attend an alumni picnic that August and make connections with attendees in the journalism industry. Dylan eventually went on to work as a reporter for over a decade, becoming a prolific writer for The Oregonian. “Those key contacts helped me in crucial ways over the years,” Dylan says.

Now, part of Dylan’s life’s work, when he isn’t working as public information officer for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, involves passing on the wisdom he received from his own alumni network to his peers and the next generation of Reedies. As chair of the new Reedies in Government & Politics professional network, Dylan leads a group of alumni working to foster community at a tenuous time in the industry. That includes hosting panels and networking events, providing online spaces through LinkedIn and listservs, and offering support for Reedies at every career stage. “The value of these professional networks is that we are Reedies helping Reedies,” Dylan says. “We as alumni are uniquely able to help students and other alumni on their career journey, whether it’s at the beginning as a student or as a midcareer professional.”

Professional networks are communities that connect alumni across shared career interests and provide a space for mentorship, networking, and professional growth. Associate Director of Alumni Relations Amy Hesse ’03 understood their value

From left to right, Hannah Love ’12, Dylan Rivera ’95, Sandeep Kaushik ’89, and Flavia Bortoleto ’17 at a panel discussion regarding the second Trump administration and the future of the American Republic at Reunions 2025.

early on in her career at Reed. By the time she arrived in 2018, the foundation for professional networks had already been established. The Reed Legal Network, founded in 2018 and long chaired by Andrew Schpak ’01, offers a mutual support network for alumni in developing or already established legal careers. The alumni-facing aspect includes socials and happy hours, as well as more specialized get-togethers, like a watch party of the Oregon Court of Appeals oral arguments led by Laura Graser ’73 this last spring.

But the RLN has a key student-facing element, too, and meets with students annually to provide support to those interested in legal careers. That support can also be monetary—the RLN set up the Legal Education Access Fund, or LEAF, in 2019 to assist students interested in pursuing law careers by offsetting the costs of LSAT registration fees and prep courses as well as law school application fees. Now nearing a decade of the RLN, Andrew says, “My hope is that it continues to build on itself and becomes of increasing value to both current students and alumni.”

When she began in her role, Amy thought, why not apply the RLN model to other industries, too? For her, the work is personal. As a recent graduate of Reed, she herself wished for a sense of community and camaraderie with her fellow Reedies as they navigated a changing job market. In early 2024, Amy began the process of applying the RLN idea to other career-based communities, starting with Reedies in Sustainability. Chaired by Tina Bardot ’23 and Kerry Skemp ’05, the network has promoted Sustainability & Environmental Justice (SEJ) events, as well as hosted their own.

More recently, Amy helped jumpstart Reedies in Tech and Reedies in Government & Politics. “I don’t know that it could have been a better time,” she says, given the layoffs and tumult both industries are

currently experiencing. Matt Giger ’89, who leads Reedies in Tech, says the network has created “a sense of community and a sense of belonging.” The networks host events for their members throughout the year—a panel on AI hosted by Reedies in Tech and a postelection analysis event hosted by Reedies in Government & Politics are just two examples—but they also provide an online space for connection that hundreds of Reedies have joined. “This is not just a way that they’re helping other Reedies by building the broader network,” Amy says of the digital platforms, “but it’s also potentially going to help them with their own personal professional network.”

This last summer, Amy launched Reedies in Healthcare & Medicine and Reedies in Business, Entrepreneurship, & Finance. Next, she plans to establish Reedies in Art & Expression and Reedies in Education to support even more students and alumni as they navigate their careers. “I want them to gain a sense of solidarity,” she says. “I want them to reconnect with one another, or connect for the first time.”

The Reed Alumni Méntōr Program, or RAMP, is another new addition—an initiative combining two existing programs: Alumni Career Coaches and Communities of Purpose Pathfinders. The program involves Reedie volunteer mentors supporting fellow alumni across class year and career stage in their professional lives.

Dylan sees the benefits of the professional networks as twofold—he hopes they can help alumni on their career paths, but he hopes they inspire alumni to support current students, too: “I hope that as alumni learn about these career networks, they think, ‘Hey, this is an opportunity for me to be available to current students and to alumni, to share what I’ve learned, and to hopefully make career development easier for the next generation.’”

—Cara Nixon

PHOTO BY LEAH NASH / NASHCO

The Reed Canyon: A Living Classroom

President Bilger discusses the canyon’s contributions to sustainability, learning, and community.

By Cara Nixon

President Audrey Bilger had never heard a barred owl before she came to Reed. When she began her tenure in 2019, she and her wife, Cheryl Pawelski, walked down through the canyon and listened to the birds call to one another for the first time.

“From my first arrival at Reed, I took in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and real-

ized that encounters with the natural world, with the sublimity of these ginormous trees and vistas—it’s a kind of magic,” Bilger told Professor Gerri Ondrizek [art] and Facilities Operations Manager Zac Perry in a conversation in February.

The canyon, as the centerfold of campus, provides relief and respite from busy city life. Beyond that, it’s become a haven for diverse plants and wildlife. A decade

ago, Perry said, a barred owl used to perch in a maple tree by the Blue Bridge. “Hundreds of people would walk by and never see it because it blended in with the tree. It just sat there and watched the world go by,” he explained. “The wildlife, it moves around us, and if we don’t slow down and appreciate it, then it just doesn’t exist.”

That has been the center of Perry’s work in his 25 years at Reed, as he’s spearheaded the canyon restoration movement. Made possible by a generous gift from Laurel Wilkening ’66, the restoration has focused on not only enhancing the can-

yon for human enjoyment, but protecting the space, too. When the invasive species were removed, the water flow unblocked, a trail system created, and the fish ladder added, the canyon became a nature reserve full of Douglas firs, western red cedars, Oregon grape, ducks, salmon, and even the occasional otter, just to name a few. But humans have long benefited from it, too. For faculty and students, it has become not only a natural refuge, but a laboratory, an art studio, and a living classroom.

Perry has acted intentionally to ensure the canyon delivers on those fronts. “As

Facilities Operations

Manager Zac Perry talks with student volunteers on Canyon Day, one of Reed’s oldest traditions.

much as facilities makes sure that the classrooms’ chairs are functioning, the projector works—I have the same expectation for the canyon and its accessibility to our community and the students that want to use that space for research,” he said.

At any given time, Professor Sam Fey [biology] said, the canyon acts as a laboratory for a variety of projects. This spring, as he was retrieving temperature logs for a class project, he accidentally found one that belonged to Professor Aaron Ramirez [biology & environmental studies]—a marker of how often the space is used for scientific research. “From our first-semester Biology 101 course to senior theses, the canyon offers an amazing resource for students to actively learn research skills,” Fey said. “Beyond the direct benefits to students, these projects help contribute to a shared understanding of how this ecosystem functions.”

Over the years, Reed’s science students have studied biology in the canyon by tracking salmon population increases, the diversity and distribution of mammals, old growth lichen, and more. Perry said student work has contributed to his own knowledge of the canyon and helped him adapt as its manager. Much of his formal research and work prior to arriving at Reed was focused on plant science. “I look at everything through a plant lens,” he explained. “I don’t know anything about salamanders, but based on all the theses that have occurred over time, I am now aware of the migration of the salamanders in the canyon, and we can better manage the canyon because of that research.”

The canyon’s offerings extend past science, too. Ondrizek, who arrived at Reed in 1994, witnessed the transformation of the area in the ’90s and ’00s from her view in the art building, which faces north into the canyon. She said that from the beginning, the art department would teach from the canyon. “It’s been an asset all along,” Ondrizek said, “and also helped me understand how you might teach, not by using or invading, but by gently referencing or learning from.” Senior art theses

have frequently used the canyon as their muse—exploring human/nature duality via drawings and installations, or taking an interdisciplinary approach to investigate representation in biology and the use of aesthetics as a form of activism in ecology-based art.

Much like the barred owl Bilger heard in her first days at Reed, the canyon offers a multitude of unknowns to explore, making the possibilities for discovery and study endless. “The library is the beating heart of campus,” Bilger said. “And to me, the canyon is the artery.”

When she parks in the north lot, Bilger said, she has a better day because she walks over the canyon to get to work. And in Reed’s academically rigorous environment, she hopes everyone takes advantage of that: “My hope is that for everyone who spends time here at Reed, they find a moment to stop on one of those bridges and look up or down and just pause, take it in, and breathe.”

The canyon, as a space for respite, learning, and community gathering, continues to be an area protected and improved by the college, not only on Canyon Day, but every day of the year. Much of that work is continued by Perry, and supported by student, faculty, and community involvement for the benefit of all. “The impact to our students and our alumni is immense,” Perry said. “The impact the canyon has had in the studies of this college, and the way that it changes over time and changes people over time, I think, is amazing.”

PHOTO BY DANIEL CRONIN

PHOTO BY LAUREN LABARRE

BY

A Beat of Their Own

The news industry faces a challenging moment. These journalists are rising to meet it.

By Cara Nixon

Rachael Bale ’10 on evening patrol with the Somaliland coast guard on the Gulf of Aden in 2020. She conducted intense field reporting for a National Geographic story about cheetah trafficking.

PHOTO

NICHOLE SOBECKI

A Beat of Their Own

Turning Loss into Opportunity

Rachael Bale ’10 was in her element. For months, she’d been investigating the trafficking of cheetah cubs across the Horn of Africa, reporting out of Somaliland for National Geographic. Her life was a whirlwind of wildlife law and field expeditions and records requests—just the way she liked it. The work culminated in a longform investigation about criminal networks smuggling cubs out of Africa to wealthy buyers. When Rachael looks back, she remembers it as her favorite story she ever reported. It was also one of her last for the publication she’d called home for just over seven years.

Not long later, in the fall of 2022, at seven months pregnant, she was laid off from her position as executive editor of the Animals Desk at Nat Geo. The layoff, which resulted from the company’s realignment after being bought by Disney, was difficult for Rachael. Her identity had become wrapped up in her job, and losing it sort of felt like losing herself.

But Rachael, who for years investigated wildlife crime all over the world—from Zimbabwe and Uganda to Vietnam and the Philippines—is not easily thwarted. The layoff, as badly timed as it was, had a silver lining, she says: It gave her time to spend with her newborn, and space to reevaluate her career. After the birth of her son, on walks in her Denver, Colorado, neighborhood with her infant strapped to her chest, a leash leading her rescue corgi in one hand and her phone in the other, Rachael and her former colleagues brainstormed about how they could use their now-dormant wildlife investigation skills.

On one of those days, the idea for an independent nonprofit organization, Wildlife Investigative Reporters & Editors, or WIRE, was born. In August 2024, the nonprofit officially launched. “It’s simple,” Rachael says. “There’s a great need for these stories. These stories aren’t being told, and we figured we know how to do them well, so why don’t we keep doing it?”

WIRE, which Rachael cofounded with former Nat Geo editor Oliver Payne and freelancer Rene Ebersole, manages investigations from conception to publication. Rachael and her colleagues want WIRE stories to reach audiences who aren’t already thinking about environmental crime, which

is why they copublish with major media outlets like Rolling Stone. “We don’t want to target people who are already interested in conservation and wildlife,” Rachael says. “We want to find the people who aren’t and hook them.”

A Troubled Landscape

Though Rachael’s response to losing her job may have been unique, the layoff itself was not. Many journalists have had their career paths diverted—often not by choice—as the industry continues to face great financial hardship and growing public apathy and mistrust.

Changes to the journalism industry are not new, and in fact, experts say the industry has been suffering for at least two decades, if not longer. The biggest challenges began with the rise of the internet, when many newspapers lost advertising to the online world, and the inception of Craigslist removed the need for the classified section in print media. Adam Penenberg ’86 remembers that time well. When he was an up-and-coming journalist in the ’90s, Adam was both an observer and a player in the transformation of the news landscape. While working for Forbes Digital Tool, he uncovered that journalist

Jen Byers ’13 considers their work a hybrid of traditional journalism and mobile reporting, with their tools ranging from documentary cameras to their smartphone.

PHOTO BY DAN FEIDT

University, he spends much of his time considering the direction of the industry. And he worries a lot about the sustainability of journalism’s current business model.

When Adam was starting out, profit margins for newspapers could rise to around 30%. Now, even The New York Times, long considered the pinnacle of journalism, has a margin of around 10%. Some of its success comes from digital subscriptions— the publication was up to over 11 million subscribers as of early 2025—but other big revenue streams are non–news related. “The New York Times is actually a games company that does news,” is the way Adam puts it (ever heard of Wordle, Connections, or Spelling Bee?).

The internet and other technological advances have continued to hurt the news industry. Newspapers once competed only with one another for readers’ attention, Adam explains. Now, with the access smartphones provide, news publishers must compete with other content streams—Instagram, TikTok, and Netflix, to name just a few—for a moment of focus. They often lose those battles. Digital traffic to news sites has continued to decline in recent years, and when people do read the news, they increasingly turn to social media rather than traditional news streams to get it.

traditional journalism, and they’re hanging on by a thread,” they say of the current environment. “But then we’re also seeing this massive rise of renegade independent media.” Jen has been on the front lines of that rise since the mid-2010s, when they left a career in Hollywood for on-theground reporting. In 2015, they began taking photos at protests and rallies in the lead-up to the presidential election. “I just saw this gulf between what I was seeing with my own two eyes and then what made it into the report,” Jen says. They wanted to bridge that gap and create work that was representative of the state of the world.

“On one hand, we’re seeing the decline of newsrooms and traditional journalism. But then we’re also seeing this massive rise of renegade independent media.”

Stephen Glass was fabricating his stories for The New Republic, an incident that shook up the industry and later was turned into a movie, Shattered Glass (Steve Zahn portrayed Adam in the film).

Though Adam is modest about this accomplishment (“Look, Spotlight—they took down the Catholic Church,” he says. “All we did was take down a liar.”), an unexpected benefit, he admits, was that his investigative work made online news more credible at a time when it was considered just a fad. Now an associate professor and the director of the online master’s in journalism program at New York

Not only is the population less interested in traditional news, but many often mistrust it. According to a Gallup poll from 2022, 38% of Americans reported having no confidence at all in newspapers, TV, and radio, marking the first time the percentage with no trust at all in the media was higher than the percentage with a great deal or a fair amount combined. A loss of revenue, interest, and trust in news media has culminated in thousands of layoffs in the industry, condensed especially in the last few years. And in the U.S. in 2025, the news industry faces attacks from a presidential administration targeting outlets it disagrees with, creating a new set of even bigger problems.

Creating Space

Journalists, new, experienced, and in between, are trying to find their roles in an ever-changing news landscape. Jen Byers ’13 is one of them. “On one hand, we’re seeing the decline of newsrooms and

That work seemed even more necessary when they spent two months at the Standing Rock protests. On the night they arrived, Jen watched as police sprayed water protectors with freezing water. Their faces became covered in icicles as they stood there shivering—it was “the biggest and most extreme act of violence I’d ever seen in my life,” Jen says. Feeling at a loss and wanting to help, they volunteered in the media tent for much of their time there. Their job included signing in media workers, but it also involved fielding complaints from water protectors about journalists’ behavior.

“When I was in the tent, I really saw that difference between Indigenous values and Western values, and between Indigenous protocols and objective journalism protocols,” Jen recalls. They began to wonder: “How can I create more space for Indigenous methods and communitycentered reporters? How can I help bring

A Beat of Their Own

these stories, practices, and storytellers into visibility?”

Jen has sought to answer those questions as they’ve worked with Indigenous-led documentary crews, specialized in social justice reporting for outlets like Al Jazeera, and founded the Activism Desk at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Their journalism has covered many corners of U.S. domestic conflict, often achieved via mobile reporting, a type of multimedia journalism in which a story is independently reported using only portable devices—sometimes just a smartphone.

Though traditional journalists have begun using mobile reporting, independent reporters and people of color have long spearheaded this form of journalism. Mobile reporters are a vital part of the news ecosystem, Jen says, despite the way they’ve often been invalidated by more traditional news streams. In recent years, mobile reporting has commonly acted as the first line of information when key events occur—the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020, which was filmed on a cell phone, is just one example. “So many of the most important and crucial issues of our generation were told through mobile journalism,” Jen says.

Currently, Jen is the cofounder and security advisor for Aegis Safety Alliance, which teaches marginalized journalists how to protect themselves. Recently, they received a fellowship to turn their book, Turncoat, about practically applying alternative methods to journalism, into an episodic documentary. Still, like many journalists, they’re trying to find their own role in the industry. “What do we do? Do we try to found our own companies and build things out of the rubble? Should I just start a YouTube channel? Do I keep freelancing for $12 a year?”—Jen jokes—“I don’t know, but I can’t stop reporting,” they say. “And I think that perseverance, because so many people go into the business out of passion and necessity, that’s one of the things that’s going to keep it afloat.”

The Path Forward

Perseverance is only one piece of the puzzle, though, as the future of the industry remains unclear. Adam, knowing the current business model isn’t sustainable,

thinks artificial intelligence will play a big role in the path forward—something that both frightens and excites him. Rather than people consuming their news in the traditional way, via reading, listening, or watching full stories, he believes AI will transform news into a conversational interface, where readers can use a chatbot to summarize articles. Adam has been playing with this idea himself to create YouTube videos for his channel, The PostModern Times, which uses AI and parody to inform audiences about political news.

Others have taken different paths. When the online news outlet where Emilie Raguso ’03 worked began pulling back on its daily crime and public safety coverage, she saw a “beautiful opportunity” to leave her position there and fill the gap on her own. With all her years of traditional newsroom experience, she created an independent news site focused completely on informing the community about local crime and safety.

The East Bay is not quite a news desert. But the area has experienced an extreme consolidation of its news sources, like many regions across the country. As the industry struggles financially, it is local news outlets that suffer the most. A decline in such sources is accelerating despite efforts to keep them afloat—in 2024, 127 local newspapers shuttered, leaving 55 million Americans with limited or no access to local news, a Medill report found. The same study also discovered, however, that local digital news sites have been on the rise, filling some necessary gaps in growing news deserts. The Berkeley Scanner is one of them.

When there are few news organizations left to cover an area, especially one as highly populated as the East Bay, important stories can get missed. Emilie is ensuring some of the most vital ones don’t fade into obscurity, something she sees as a community service: “People just want the answers, and we can do that for them,” she says.

Emilie, despite working mostly on her own, doesn’t just provide answers. With her efforts, she maps key data, memorializes the victims of crimes, and ensures officials are held accountable. She spent the last couple of years reporting tirelessly on former Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who was eventually recalled after facing criticism for mishandling highprofile cases and mistreating veteran staff.

BY

Emilie Raguso ’03 at a Board of Supervisors meeting in Oakland, California. As founder of The Berkeley Scanner, she often finds herself reporting in meetings, courtrooms, and on the street.

PHOTO

RAY CHAVEZ

A Beat of Their Own

In late 2023, Emilie was the only journalist turned away from a press conference with Price, despite having official press credentials. That was an instance where being a one-woman show was difficult, she says, because she had no editor or team to fall back on. But readers and First Amendment groups came to her aid. Shortly after the incident, the First Amendment Coalition, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and SPJ NorCal, the Bay Area chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, wrote a letter to Price describing how her office had violated Emilie’s First Amendment rights. A few days later, Emilie’s press access was restored.

In 2024, The Scanner was lauded for Emilie’s work, winning a National Headliner Award for local news and four California Journalism Awards for news coverage as well as sustainability, a nod to the site’s innovative business model. Just like that beautiful opportunity she saw when she first began The Scanner, Emilie sees a path forward, despite struggles in the industry, for independent news to become more common, and more sustainable.

Not Dying, Only Changing

Sustainability is on the minds of most journalists and news companies these days. The saying in the media business usually goes, “The industry is not dying, it’s only changing.” But how exactly will the industry change? There are guesses, but no one has one exact answer. Knowing the current business model is unsustainable, the only comfort, for now, may be that something will change, because at this point, it has to.

Rachael finds herself both scared and hopeful for the future. “You talk to any real journalist, any true, ethical journalist, and they’ll tell you that their career is built on a desire to serve the public. That’s what journalism is,” she says. “To see people reenergized and rededicated to the mission of investigative reporting, accountability reporting, even just the day-to-day, ‘here’s what’s happening in the world,’ reporting— that’s inspiring.”

Luckily, there are journalists out there like her, founding nonprofits, teaching the next generation, employing alternative strategies, and starting their own news sources from the ground up, ensuring that as the industry changes, it does so for the better.

State of the Press

Amidst financial troubles, platform changes, and distrust from the public, Reedie reporters provide insights into this tumultuous moment in journalism history.

Michelle Nijhuis ’96

WHITE SALMON, WA

POSITION: High Country News Contributing Editor, Author of Beloved Beasts | BEAT: Humans and other species

“News is something we need, but it’s not always something that makes money. . . . I hope that people, philanthropy, community, and our federal and state governments see journalism as a public good and a public need, and continue to support it, and then I hope journalists themselves and institutions themselves continue to get creative about how we can support our institutions the rest of the way.”

Scott Pham ’08

NEW YORK CITY, NY

POSITION: CBS, Investigative Data Reporter BEAT : Investigative data reporting

“There’s the state of journalism as a field and a practice, and then there’s the state of journalism as a business. My feelings about the state of journalism as a field are a lot better than my feelings about it as a business. Journalism has a lot of the same qualities that drew me to it to begin with; the audience is really different and the platforms are really different, but at the heart of it, I think a lot more about reporting than I do about the outlet. The stories are what’s important to me.”

Sterry Butcher ’90

MARFA, TX

POSITION: Texas Monthly Writer-at-Large | BEAT: Rural life

“People think nothing ever happens in a small town, but actually, everything happens in a small town. You just might have to wait longer for it to happen. It was immediately clear, in this underrepresented place, how critical the role of journalism was, and in this town that I grew to love, and this whole region that I grew to love, I knew people were deserving of having the information. . . . Now, there are so many different ways of gaining information, and it’s super exciting, but not all of them are as good.”

Farida Jhabvala Romero ’00

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

POSITION: KQED Public Radio Labor Correspondent | BEAT: Labor

“Without being able to tell the truth, social institutions suffer—the government and citizens as well. A free news media landscape is really important for democracy, especially now with an administration that has been so hostile to news media.”

Robert Smith ’89

NEW YORK CITY, NY

POSITION: NPR Contributing Host of Planet Money, Professor at Columbia Journalism School | BEAT: Economics

“This is my 40th year in radio, and the funny thing, especially being in audio, is that I’ve felt my entire career that it’s over, from the very beginning. I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs, and then things just change. Things are tough right now, but I’ve seen tough times before. The difference is during the good times, you can basically just wander in and get a well-paying job, and learn the business that way. During the bad times, it’s the people who really love it who stick around.”

Peter S. Goodman ’89

NEW YORK CITY, NY

POSITION: The New York Times Global Economic Correspondent | BEAT: Global economics

“How hasn’t the industry changed? The news deserts out there are really disturbing. I got dayto-day journalism training. Frankly, that’s my biggest worry. It’s very difficult to learn to develop news judgment outside of the traditional beat system. I worry about that a lot for young journalists. . . . But I think it’s fair to say that the best journalism now is better than journalism has ever been, and that’s a really exciting thing.”

DeSert DreamS

Professor Juniper Harrower and her students want to save Joshua trees from extinction. Will the world join them?

By Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Photos by Elizabeth Weinberg

marvIn the Joshua tree

looks like every other Joshua tree in the Mojave Desert: tall, spiky, and twisted toward the sun. The only difference is the gaping trench exposing his roots and the fact that he’s named after Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“I name almost everything that has a relationship to me Marvin—Marvin the wheelchair, Marvin the computer,” says art major Alanna Zheng ’25, who sits in the shade of a parked car, assembling patches for the Department of Floristic Welfare (more on that later).

To Alanna, Marvin is emblematic of the struggles all Joshua trees face. “He’s sad, his species is dying,” she says. “He’s grumpy. If you ever watch the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie, this tree really has the vibe.”

Alanna is one of 14 Reed students who last October traveled to Prime Desert Woodland Preserve in Lancaster, California, with Professor Juniper Harrower [art]. Their mission: to fuse quantitative biology with visual and performance art, all in service of saving Joshua trees from extinction.

Few humans have worked harder to protect Joshua trees than Harrower, an artist with a PhD in plant ecology who has dedicated years of her life to Joshua tree lifeworlds, explaining the threats the trees face in language that can be understood by people who can’t differentiate a Joshua tree from a palm tree (the two share a common evolutionary history).

“My main interest is highlighting that Joshua trees are threatened by climate change and by industry,” Harrower says. “I’m really not interested in a sanctimonious, environmentalist approach, though. It didn’t work. Look where we’re at.”

Even if the climate crisis weren’t suffocating the lower elevations where Joshua trees thrive, they would be in a fragile state. Their survival depends on the pollination of yucca moths, which collect pollen while laying eggs inside Joshua tree flowers, locking the two life forms together in a Romeo and Juliet–like symbiosis.

Harrower intimately understands the environmental dangers that have all but doomed Joshua trees. According to a study

she conducted with Gregory S. Gilbert, the average temperature at Joshua Tree National Park has increased by 3 ° F (2 °C) because of greenhouse gas emissions, while annual precipitation dropped by 39% from 1895 to 2016.

These dire conditions raise the possibility that the park’s Joshua tree habitat will be almost entirely gone by 2100, but surrender is anathema to Harrower. “They’re ideas, they’re not truths,” she says of the most pessimistic predictions for Joshua trees. “So you have to be out there and see what’s actually happening.”

That’s why Harrower is out here, excavating Joshua tree roots with her students. Kneeling in the desert, they painstakingly but gently brush dust and dirt from the roots of Marvin and other trees—work Harrower hopes will have an impact on environmental policy.

work of artists who seek to convey a Joshua tree’s fragile beauty with each exquisite brushstroke.

“Trees are dying,” Harrower says. “How do people consider living in kinship with nonhuman entities—as opposed to a western ideation that has come with colonialism, which is that everything is a resource?”

The Roots

Prime Desert Woodland Preserve is a 120acre expanse of arid land that lies just beyond downtown Lancaster. For a nonlocal, it can be a forbidding frontier, eerily detached from the surrounding suburbs.

For Harrower, the preserve was familiar ground. “I love the desert,” she says. “I feel really safe out there alone.”

When Harrower is asked where she’s from, she usually says Joshua Tree,

“It ’S really Important to Have an emboDIeD experIence anD meet the tree aS anotHer lIvIng beIng.”

In 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act, which has provided environmental protections both significant and inadequate. The legislation has forced developers to pay handsomely for transplanting trees, but also allows them to build within 10 feet of a Joshua tree, which can be fatal to those with longer roots.

When Harrower arrived in Lancaster, she hoped to influence policy recommendations by uncovering roots exceeding 10 feet, even as she recognized that focusing on policy alone risks courting the “sanctimonious environmentalism” that she dreads.

“It’s really important to have an embodied experience and meet the tree as another living being,” Harrower says. “I encourage students to go and spend time with a particular tree, and also to take their shoes off.”

An embodied experience can mean measuring the reach of a Joshua tree’s roots. It can mean reverently kneeling in the desert while a shaman speaks in somber tones. It can mean wandering through the corridors of a museum, marveling at the

California, since few people have heard of Morongo Valley, the microscopic Mojave town (current population: 3,387) where she was raised and first fell in love with Joshua trees.

Growing up, Harrower was mesmerized by one particular Joshua tree in her parents’ back yard, which was a final resting place for family dogs, surrounded by rock piles to deter coyotes. “The Joshua tree kind of had its own metaphors because of its being a place for death,” she says.

Harrower’s curiosity about the world around her—and her reticence toward formally studying art—led her to the plant ecology program at UC Santa Cruz, where she graduated in 2019. “The thought of going to school and studying art was extremely terrifying for myself and my parents,” she says. “To me, it seemed like art was something that people with money got to study.”

While completing her PhD, Harrower found herself spending more and more time in the art department. She knew science could be visualized through art—no high

school biology textbook is complete without candy-colored illustrations of nucleic acid structure—but what about artists who wanted their work to be an integral part of science, not a stapled-on supplement?

“It’s like being a hired illustrator,” Harrower says. “The real research is what the scientists are doing, and then the artists show up and make pretty pictures about it or a film about it. This approach diminishes the depth of contributions and understanding that can be made through artistic research.” She refused to be stranded within a single discipline; she could be both a scientist published in National Geographic and an artist published in Kunstforum International

Neither science nor art fully satisfied Harrower’s academic and spiritual ambitions, so she pursued an eclectic mix of professions: painting in Argentina, working as a research assistant in Costa Rica, and teaching middle school science in East Oakland. Her versatility earned her a reputation as an academic with the ability to unite disparate worlds.

“One of my advisers told me that once: ‘I think your calling in life is you’re a bridge builder,’” Harrower says. “I’ll take that. All these different roles I’ve tried—it took me a long time to fully accept that I’m an artist. I had to take a long way around, but it’s just the path.”

After earning an MFA in art practice at UC Berkeley in 2023 and founding the art+science initiative at UC Santa Cruz, Harrower applied for a studio art assistant professorship at Reed in 2023. “Juniper came for a job talk,” says Harper Lethin ’24, who later became Harrower’s lab manager. “My mind was totally blown. I sent a really long email to the chair of the art department being like, ‘You better hire her!’”

When Harrower started work at Reed in 2024, descending on Prime Desert Woodland Preserve with a team of Reedies wasn’t at the top of her to-do list. “I’ve been trying less and less to be a quantitative biologist,” she says. “It feels like a job to me. It’s counting and measuring, counting and measuring.”

In the end, she wound up doing both.

The

Trunk

Harrower was swayed toward undertaking a desert trek with her students by the mounting sense of urgency she had felt since reading a 2009 National Geographic article about the climate crisis’s effects on Joshua trees. “It was really shocking,” she says. “The more I thought about [working with Joshua trees in the desert] and became kind of obsessed with it, the more it seemed like a really obvious decision.”

In 2018, Harrower completed her dissertation, “Joshua Tree Mutualisms in a Changing Climate.” It was a familial endeavor: Harrower was pregnant with her son, so her mother helped, packing her lunches and holding the ladder steady as Harrower clambered through the tree canopies of Joshua Tree National Park.

“It felt very grounded in family and community,” Harrower says. “Growing up in that area, I had a deep connection and a lot of care for that environment.”

A new kind of community formed in 2024 as Harrower assembled a cadre of

Before the trip to Lancaster, Harrower’s students were instructed on how to expose Joshua tree roots without damaging them.

Measuring the photosynthesis of Joshua trees is crucial to monitoring their health, but watch out for spiky leaves.

DeSert DreamS

On their final day at Prime

Desert Woodland Preserve, Harrower and the students imitated the unique shape of Joshua trees for a surreal music video.

DeSert DreamS

scientific and artistic seekers for the root excavation: plant physiologist Daniel Hastings, Reed sustainability coordinator Rachel Willis, Professor Gerri Ondrizek [art], Professor Michael Stevenson Jr. [art], and the 14 students, all of whom were majoring in either art or biology.

“Knowing how far those roots go is actually really critical to know how close you can build to the tree without impacting on it,” Harrower says. “And even just what the roots are doing—we don’t have that information.”

The expedition began with an invitation to think critically about ecological art, supported by the Getty Foundation as part of PST ART: Art+Science Collide. Harrower had recently conducted a review of Joshua trees’ endangered species status for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, identified some of the top issues, and received a permit from the department to lead a root excavation and bioart experiment to address the limitations of the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act.

Preparations for the team’s desert odyssey—which was funded in part with an endowment from Reed’s art department— encompassed both intellectual and physical training.

“There was a lot of research before the excavation!” Harper recalls. Students read The Root Habits of Desert Plants, by William Austin Cannon, and The Supporting Roots of Trees and Woody Plants, edited by Alexia Stokes, while training with trowels so their digging prowess would be deft enough to expose the roots without damaging them.

While the students prepped, Harrower applied for permits and took numerous scouting trips to Lancaster. She spent 14-hour days surveying Prime Desert Woodland Preserve, eventually picking a spot for the excavation with enough room to park a truck filled with pressurized air for an air spader that would be used to accelerate the digging (without the air spader, Harrower estimates, the process would have taken upwards of six months).

“It was kind of the perfect scenario to do that work with the trees,” Harrower says. “There were different ages of trees, and there was this big open spot, so we could pull a truck right in and not feel like we were destroying the desert.”

The Branches

Working in the desert was not the only facet of the journey to Lancaster. Reed students also provided on-site assistance for Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees, a Getty-funded exhibition at Lancaster’s Museum of Art and History (MOAH) curated by Sant Khalsa and Harrower. To augment the exhibit, the pair assembled a companion book, featuring art by everyone from David Hockney to Harrower herself.

profile reads, “Don’t let my size fool you, i’ve been here for awhile. I’m still waiting for my growth spurt, but I come from a family of short trees, so we will see”).

“It can open up emotional spaces in a different way than if we’re going to sit down at a town center meeting and talk about Joshua tree species regulations,” Harrower says of her work. “Some people love the paintings or the stitching or the printmaking, or pull out their cell phone and send a love letter to a Joshua tree.”

Finding creative ways to connect with nonhuman species is a crucial tenet of Harrower’s work. Where sympathy falls short, empathy may lay a foundation for lasting change—or, as it turns out, the most unusual music video ever to emerge from the Mojave.

The Blossoms

“Okay, moonwalk!” Harrower’s voice echoes across Prime Desert Woodland Preserve. On cue, her students begin taking slow, exaggerated steps, looking like astronauts struggling to adapt to the terrain of an alien world.

It’s October 26, the third day that Harrower and her team have spent in the desert. The students are wearing white jumpsuits for their roles in a Joshua tree–themed music video, which celebrates an imagined organization called the Department of Floristic Welfare that Harrower concocted with a utopian flourish.

Among the most striking paintings in the book is Harrower’s Disrupted Symbiosis, a quasi-psychedelic image of interconnected Joshua trees that mixes ink and recycled acrylic with Joshua tree seed oil and fibers. Therein lies the essence of Harrower’s work: the tangible merging with the abstract.

“I feel like, sometimes, you can go into work that is too smart, too conceptual,” Harrower said shortly after the Desert Forest exhibition opened. “Anybody going to [the exhibition] is going to have a connection to the work and be able to form their own relationship and experience.”

Joshua tree–adjacent art is nothing new to Harrower, who founded heyjtree. com, an artistic research project featuring “dating profiles” for Joshua trees (one

At the museum, the department became an exercise in whimsical bureaucracy, complete with a desk made from a functioning upcycled solar panel and covered in blue Post-it notes bearing messages both practical (“Drive safe!”) and personal (“Josh was here”). In the desert, however, Harrower’s visions enjoyed a more expansive canvas.

“I’m going to have us hide in the desert and pop up,” she tells the students. “And the other thing I want us to do is lean like Joshua trees, how they grow toward the sun. We’ll do the lean. The lean and the pop.”

For the students, filming the video is a playful reprieve after two days of root excavation. Here, the temperature is a mere 82 degrees Fahrenheit, but absent shade, it feels like 100. Sweat is inevitable, but because of the desert’s bristly shrubs, short pants are inadvisable.

As students brush desert dirt from Marvin’s roots, they look like archeologists tending to dinosaur bones. Their work

The Desert Forest companion book, edited by Sant Khalsa and Harrower.

Opposite page: Harrower’s painting, Climate changing tree systems, 2022, ink, recycled acrylic, Joshua tree seed oil, string, wood from salvaged Jackrabbit homesteads.

DeSert DreamS

is careful and precise, but exposing roots to the blazing Mojave sun is still dangerous, so Daniel Hastings is on hand to measure the photosynthesis of the trees (at one point, he slices his hand open on a bladelike leaf, an ordeal he endures with gravelly-voiced good humor).

“I would assume years would pass before we would have any sense [of the effects on the trees],” Harrower says. These musings reveal Harrower’s biology training—she’s blunt, pragmatic, and aware that no breakthroughs come without sacrifices, either for researchers or the world around them.

Studio art major Nar JohnsonHarmansah ’27 describes the artistic components of the expedition as a source of reflection, forcing the students to absorb the significance of their intrusion in the desert, even as they collected crucial data.

“The science part of the project is very much like, ‘We need to do this to protect the trees,’” Nar says. “But then the art side is like, ‘We’re doing that, but we are also causing damage to these living beings who have a life and a community.’” (The ongoing health of the trees will be monitored by a local research group at Antelope Valley College.)

Forgiveness is sought and forgiveness is asked. To express their gratitude to Marvin and the other trees whose roots have been exposed by the excavation, Harrower and the team gather on their last day in the desert for a blessing ceremony led by Edgar Fabián Frías, an Indigenous artist and shaman from Los Angeles.

“Take a moment to really feel the connections that are both visible and invisible here,” Fabián Frías says. “And if you feel comfortable doing so, I want to invite you to place your hands or to really feel your feet touching the earth beneath us—knowing that there is a vast web that exists here.”

The embodiment of mystical mentorship and Technicolor vibrance, Fabián Frías wears a pink headdress and a pale green robe, orating softly but clearly as the students gather around Marvin. As Fabián Frías speaks about yucca moths— whose life-giving pollination allows Joshua trees to survive—Harrower removes her straw hat and presses her forehead directly against the scorching desert sand.

“Before we return, I want to invite us to bring this one tree we’re connecting with into our hearts, into our gratitude,” Fabián

Frías says. Harrower raises her head from the sand, but her eyes remain closed as she kneels on the ground, as if in prayer.

While addressing a crowd of admirers at the museum before boarding a plane back to Portland, Harrower reflected on her childhood days of wonder, when she was transfixed by the Joshua tree in her parents’ backyard.

“It was a special place for us,” she told the audience, which included her mother and her fourth-grade teacher. “Sometimes,

I would sit and I would imagine and think about what was happening with those roots…this underground world.”

Now, Harrower no longer has to wonder: She and her team excavated the roots of six trees at Prime Desert Woodland Preserve, the longest of which were 45 feet long. It’s a discovery that could be a step toward preventing suburban development, industrial solar projects, and Amazon infill warehouses from encroaching within 10 feet of Joshua trees, condemning them to a long, dry death.

Harrower and team gather around Marvin the Joshua tree for a blessing ceremony.

BY

That discovery is neither the beginning nor the end—it’s the middle of a long battle Harrower has waged against dazed apathy and outright antipathy toward Joshua trees. “I think there’s lots of different ways people need invitations to connect,” she says. “As you’ve probably noticed, I’m trying all of them.”

The Seeds

The dangers to Joshua trees remain deadly, and the distance between today

and the trees’ predicted extinction is closing fast. Yet to stand in the presence of a Joshua tree is to behold something stronger and mightier than yourself: a species that, at its zenith, can reach 40 feet into an endless sky, sometimes over the course of 150 years.

Like Harrower, the students have come to understand that the existence of a Joshua tree, in and of itself, is cause for awe. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how love is a really central issue when it comes to the relationship between humans and their nonhuman environments,” Harper says. “You are acknowledging the agency of some other being without the idea that you can possess total knowledge of that being.”

Despite Harrower’s reluctance to conduct quantitative research, the success of her work is quantifiable: Her revelations about root length could lead to tangible policy changes. She does not, however, want to be hailed solely for her scientific achievements, noting how artistic accomplishments are too often dismissed as “feminine” or “softer” in academic spheres where patriarchy and elitism intersect.

“Basically, because I have these multiple degrees, I get to code switch,” Harrower says. “I don’t like the PhD, heavyweight name dropping. I don’t walk around calling myself ‘doctor.’ I’m a first-generation college student from a small rural town.”

That perspective defines Harrower’s work. “I can talk the language of different

spaces,” she says. “I can go hang out in rural culture—deep truck driving, beer drinking, way out in the sticks. I’m culture shifting, constantly, and I’m reading the room to see what’s the best way to pull someone into an interesting dialogue.”

It remains to be seen how that dialogue might transform stagnant environmental discourse. Sanctimonious environmentalism didn’t work, but how much more effective will Harrower’s approach be?

Reflecting on Fabián Frías’s tree blessing, Harrower says, “If you’re not used to that or comfortable with it or if you don’t come from a culture that does that, it can feel really odd and hard to relax into, especially with all the neopaganism that happens in Los Angeles.” Some of those struggles may be mirrored in reactions to Harrower’s own work, though she continues to have faith in the multipronged power of her creative process.

“I think that we don’t touch the ground enough as human beings anymore,” Harrower says. “We wear shoes all the time, we wear clothing. There is something that’s really amazing that happens when you actually put your physical body onto the ground and feel it—feeling it with your feet, feeling it with your hands, feeling it with your forehead.”

That, of course, is what Harrower did in the desert as Fabián Frías blessed Marvin the Joshua tree. Now, she needs the world to join her.

Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History.

PHOTO

MOAH / LANCASTER

Reediana BOOKSHELF

Edited by Robin Tovey ’97

Form and Function

How Lydia Mead ’22 and Professor Barbara Tetentaum built a book from a “long poem in prose.”

“Show your work,” instructors of all stripes have appealed to students of math since the advent of the pencil. This is certainly what Lydia Mead ’22 and Professor Barbara Tetenbaum [studio art] did with their approach to bookmaking.

In their postgraduation collaboration, Lydia (a creative writing major) and Tetenbaum (a letterpress/printmaking instructor) combined talents to turn Lydia’s thesis, [some sentences & phrases I wrote once], into a delicate work of book art that gladly reveals its underpinnings.

Professor Peter Rock [creative writing] who advised the thesis says, “I keep this little book on my writing desk to pick up and read a sentence when I’m feeling discouraged.”

“This project moves beyond a mere housing of words to something that honors the experience of the reader: how they first encounter the book, the weight of it in their hands, the layout and design of the text and the shift in materials at key moments in the text,” Tetenbaum says.

Working with Rock, Lydia penned a collection of prose poems about dreams of the beach, conversations with a lover, and memories of another. Over a summer spent working on a farm, the narrative swirls with introspective thoughts on the act of selfexpression—writing as well as speaking.

“To my mind, writing can even out the reality or intensity between waking experiences and dreams,” Lydia says. As a writer, she seeks to create dreams that feel “just as ‘real,’ or just as expressive, or just as affecting, as waking experiences within the world of the writing.”

In the midst of her collaboration with Rock, Lydia began to understand that this thesis was a “long poem in prose,” conceiving of the sentence or phrase as a unit, and the page break as a line break— which informed how the physical book was designed, printed, and hand bound by Tetenbaum.

Tetenbaum hand stitched the six sections onto cloth-textured paper “tapes” and wove the tape ends into the book’s white wrapper, a pebbly cover that contrasts with the slick sheen of divider pages. The dove-gray tapes suggest the lacings of a corset, or, thinking of the book’s content, an echo of Lydia’s writing that likens dreams to “strips of silk.”

“The final format came from a completely personal, unscientific response to what felt good in the hand,” Tetenbaum says. “I decided to let Lydia be a part of

these decisions as it is her voice that needs to be heard the most clearly through these essential elements.”

Without a hard spine, the book flops open, beckoning the reader into its folds. A hidden invocation of “for you” appears on the underside of the introductory tag. It is an invitation to enter an emotional landscape that fulfills Lydia’s belief that “waking experiences and dreams contextualize and reciprocally accumulate meaning [and] interact meaningfully with each other.” —Robin Tovey ’97

[some sentences & phrases I wrote once], a book arts edition of Lydia Mead’s thesis hand bound by Professor Barbara Tetenbaum [studio art].

PHOTO BY TOM HUMPHREY

Still on Earth

The latest by David Romtvedt ’72, Still on Earth, (pictured) shares original poems about the “wacky crossings experienced by figures identified as the person, the poet, and the angel.” In 2024, he co-edited a book of translations of Basque poems and songs, Forest of Ash, fragments of both from the 15th century. (Louisiana State University Press, 2025 / Center for Basque Studies Press, 2024)

Graduate Admissions Essays

The fifth edition of this bestselling guide to graduate admissions by Don Asher ’83 , career and highereducation consultant, has been released. The handbook deconstructs and demystifies the application process through expert advice based on thousands of interviews with successful grad students and admissions officers. (Ten Speed Press, 2024)

Other Media

Rhianon Jones ’97 had two film premieres at Sundance earlier this year, Dead Lover and Bunnylovr (“the two movies couldn’t be more different,” she says). Also, she wrote and produced a relationship comedy set in the present-day Portland music scene; titled Cora Bora, the movie stars Megan Stalter ( Hacks ) and Manny Jacinto (The Good Place).

Amy Foote ’00 edited a documentary, Girls State , that premiered at Sundance last year. The film is described as “A look at what American democracy would look like in the hands of teenage girls.”

1. Cora Bora, written and produced by Rhianon Jones ’97.

2. Girls State, a documentary edited by Amy Foote ’00.

How I Got Here

In this new poetry chapbook, Eve Lyons ’95 embarks on what she calls “a project to write about the other historical events of my lifetime” in place of the seemingly impossible task of writing poems about “the unprecedented time” of the first Trump presidency. (Bottlecap Press, 2024)

Global Voices from the Women’s Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition

Sarah Wadsworth ’86 coedited this collection of essays about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (World’s Columbian Exposition) as site of the first large-scale international library of writings by women. This volume explores their contribution to global print culture and the extension of women’s rights up to that time. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

Class Notes

Edited by Joanne Hossack ’82

Then and now: Students enjoying the Great Lawn beside a Hilda Morris sculpture. Can you guess the year? (Answer is in a class note.)

These Class Notes reflect information we received by March 27. The deadline for our next issue is August 27.

Class Notes are the heart of Reed Magazine—send us your news! Email reed.magazine@reed.edu or find our form at https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/.

3

1952

John Boswell Hudson and his wife Sandra celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary on March 16, 2025. The pair met on a blind double date in 1956 at a roadhouse on Sandy Creek outside Portland. “We danced on that date, and have been dancing ever since, although a bit slower than before.” Since 1998, they have been living in Iowa City, Iowa, the first city in the United States to be designated a UNESCO City of Literature and have founded two writers’ groups in the area. The Gray Hawk Writers, founded in Iowa City in 1999, have self-published two anthologies on Amazon; the most recent is Fortnightly. In 2014, at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids (Sandra is half-Czech), they founded the Guild Writers; that group has self-published five books on Amazon, including one anthology of 17 writers, titled Kaleidoscope, and four memoirs by individual members. Any other members of the Class of ’52 out there? John would like to know.

1955 70TH REUNION

World welcomes polio vaccine and microwave oven.

1956–59

And birth control pill.

1960

John Graef writes, “Retired for 10 years as a pediatrician. Still doing music. Still on Harvard faculty. Grieve for Marsh Cronyn [chemistry 1952–89], Larry Ruben [biology 1955–92], Herb Gladstone [music 1946–80],

Fortnightly is the most recent anthology from the

Gray Hawk Writers, founded by John Boswell Hudson ’52 and wife Sandra.

Rex Arragon [history 1923–74], Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history 1934–84]. Curious about Jerry Millstein ’61 and Mark Ptashne ’61.”

1961–62

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s the world’s first communications satellite!

1963

After a wonderful five years in a village in southern France, Stanley Levine has returned to the United States, where he is temporarily staying in South Carolina with his son and family while trying to find a compatible place to live for the long haul. He writes, “I have achieved one of my life goals: being functional in writing or orally in a number of languages, but I am still frustrated in one. I started to study Japanese alongside Irene Namkung ’65 at Reed a lifetime ago, and after over half a century of study I am still stuck at a beginner’s level. It’s been fun, but oy vey!”

Phil Bender ’91, Eric Lemelson ’81, Ted Kaplan, Larry Rinder ’83, and Marc Visnick ’91 attended the Wangduechhoeling Palace consecration in Bumthang, Bhutan, in October 2024. Ted and Eric serve on the board of the Bhutan Foundation.

1964

Last November, Edward Waage was reelected as mayor of the City of Pismo Beach, California, for a fifth term! Prior to that, Ed served as a city council member for 8 years.

1965 60TH REUNION

ChemGrass patented; renamed next year to AstroTurf.

1966

While still a junior at Reed, Norman Prinsky was part of a rock group, the Rumors, who made a 45 rpm record released by Gemcor Records, and publicized (with two television appearances lip-synching the A side, “Hold Me Now”) over much of Southern California. Norman

was the drummer and wrote the music and lyrics for the B side, “Without Her.” The record was subsequently included, over a period of two decades, on four music anthology CDs; since then, unknown fans (possibly in violation of copyright) have continually posted the A or B sides on YouTube. While pursuing his PhD, Norman taught at Golden West College (Huntington Beach, California), where his origination and teaching of the course Humor in America elicited an article in the Los Angeles Times. After completing his PhD from UC Irvine, Norman taught at Augusta University, in Augusta, Georgia, from 1979 to 2011, retiring as emeritus faculty member. In addition to coauthoring and coediting the college textbook The World of Work: Readings for Writers (PrenticeHall, 1986), Norman has contributed dozens of signed articles for various literary reference sets about important authors and their work—which he attributes, at least in part, to the Reed humanities program.

1967

Body of American psychologist Dr. James Bedford becomes the first to undergo cryopreservation with the intent of future resuscitation.

1968

Some posters from Peter Langston ’s band, Portland Zoo Electric Band, are being featured in an exhibit of 1960s/1970s psychedelic art currently (until June 15) at the Portland Art Museum.

1969

I’m walking here! I’m walking here!

1970 55TH REUNION

Janet Oliver writes, “I’ve appreciated Reed and everyone in our MAT class for launching me on a life of pleasure in working, in climbing, in rowing, in learning, and in loving. Thanks!”

1971

In late November and early December, 2024, Doug Fenner

visited Tonga in the South Pacific for two weeks. He taught coral identification to a class at the fisheries department in the capital, Nuku’alofa, at the south end of the archipelago, for a week in November, and then in Vavau, at the north end, for a week in December. Some of Tonga’s reefs were damaged in the tsunami from the explosion of the Hunga volcano, but the capital had recovered well. Judith Lipton, MD, has three children, five grandchildren, and one on the way. She’s coauthored 9 books, and her husband has written 41 books. You can look them up on Amazon. They specialize in sociobiology, sex, and nuclear war.

1972

In the last week of January, Robert McCullough appeared three times in The New York Times concerning his research on the LA wildfires. He was also in The Oregonian on the PNW impact of the Trump tariffs.

1973

Steve Burks completed phased retirement in May 2024, after 25 years as professor of economics and management at UMN Morris, a small residential undergrad-only campus of the University of Minnesota. Steve taught and did research with students in experimental/behavioral economics and on the U.S. trucking industry. Trucking was a focus because Steve dropped out of grad school in 1976 to drive tractor-trailers for a living—which he did for 10

Phil Bender ’91, Eric Lemelson ’81, Ted Kaplan ’63, Larry Rinder ’83, and Marc Visnick ’91 attended the Wangduechhoeling Palace consecration in Bumthang, Bhutan, in October 2024.

years, learning on the job (in part by discovering the hard way what not to do), and meeting his future wife and life partner while making a freight delivery in 1982. Experiencing the economic deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980 as a driver convinced Steve to retool as an economist at UMass-Amherst, which took another decade. More recently, Steve enjoyed attending Alumni Westwind in 2024 with his daughter, his classmate Doug Allen, and Doug’s wife Maye Thompson, and talking about his research work with Prof. Lindsey Novak’s economics students at Reed the following week. Steve will continue research work with Morris students as a volunteer principal investigator for at least another year or two.

Maurice Isserman mentions his Reed years (including being “part of a flood of new recruits to SDS” his freshman year and writing a thesis on the history of Communist-organized literary groups in the Depression decade) in the article “Egalitarian Idealists and Authoritarian Zealots: A Cautionary Memoir,” in the Winter 2025 issue of Liberties

David Perry had a busy December, receiving his Master Gardener certificate, visiting with JR Russell ’74 and her husband Chet Hiatt in North Bonneville, Washington, and then seeing Sheldon Hochheiser and Laura Leviton after Christmas back home in Chicago.

1974

A 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum makes history at

Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, in June, when its UPC code is scanned.

1975 50TH REUNION

Willa Goodfellow writes, “It was nine years in the planning—Helen and I have moved to Ireland, to a village in County Kerry, thanks to employment with the Church of Ireland. I preach, do home visits, meet the neighbors, chat in the pub, and work in the local coffee shop on my next book. Find me on Substack.”

We appreciated hearing from Deborah Schoch: “Four Reed women gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, hosted by Linda Berson Murphy ’76 and her family in Piedmont, California. They included Molly MacGregor, a 1975 graduate, as well as Monica Sena and myself. We met almost 55 years ago, in 1971, when all four of us lived on the third floor of the Foster dorm. We came from New York, New Mexico, California and Minnesota. During our Thanksgiving stay, we discovered that time and distance are no match for friendship and deep connections. And we celebrated our gratitude for our friendship.”

1976–79

The years that brought us the first supercomputer and the first personal computer, while you were grinding your thesis out on the PDP 11/70 in Eliot, or maybe on a manual Smith-Corona, or on college-ruled notebook paper, or on the backs of calligraphed flyers. . . .

1980 45TH REUNION

Ann Cvetkovich is now professor emerita at Carleton University in Ottawa, after serving as director of the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation, and has returned to the University of Texas at Austin to take up a position as professor in the new Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

1981

If you guessed our Then & Now photo was from 1981, you are correct!

Mary Jean Vickers writes, “Jerry Marshall ’82 and I recently had the pleasure of a visit from Lowell Weitkamp ’58 and Sally Weitkamp in our home outside Canberra, Australia. Lowell worked at the Australia National University in Canberra 50 years ago and they came back for a visit via a 40-day cruise from New York to Sydney. One of the visit highlights was an evening cooking in our wood-fired pizza oven. (We had the good fortune to meet Sally and Lowell on the 2018 alumni cruise to Antarctica.)”

1982

Willa Casstevens is fully retired as of last fall! In November, Willa and her sister took a two-week trip to Italy, which was amazing. Willa recently had an article published in the British journal Groupwork

Chris Ruf is still on the faculty at the University of Michigan, now as a named professor of climate and space science, and was recently

4.

1. Janet Oliver MAT ‘70 is still rowing.

2. Doug Fenner ’71 with a host in Tonga.

3. Steve Burks ’73 brought his daughter Jessica to Alumni Westwind 2024.

Edward Waage ’64 was elected to a fifth term as mayor of Pismo Beach, California.

appointed director of U-M’s Space Institute. With his grad students, postdocs, and colleagues, Chris recently developed a new app for tracking hurricane development from space using their weather satellites, and also helped build a new circulation model to figure out where all the ocean microplastics are going.

1983

William Ansell has “nothing interesting” to report: “Just getting older and realizing maybe I wasn’t the smartest person in the world right after Orientation.”

Monica Irons is living in Seattle after 30 years in Alaska, working for King County Regional Homeless Authority as the planning and special projects director.

1984

Alexandra (King) Adams was a Fulbright Scholar in Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the spring semester of 2024. Alexandra worked with several Māori colleagues and held the first Climate Change, Indigenous Knowledge, and Planetary Health Summit in March in Rotorua. “It was an amazing time, and very nice to leave winter behind for a year. My recent climate change and health work in Montana is our Montana Climate Change and Human Health report and four corresponding short films. These can be accessed at www.c2h2.org.”

1985 40TH REUNION

At age 61, Nancy Gormley Bevilaqua finally started taking drum lessons, which she had wanted to do since first hearing Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” when she was about 12. It’s as much fun as she’d dreamed it would be. She’s been writing poems intermittently (many, since 2014, have been about Gaza), but for the time being is for the most part in a holding pattern until she no longer feels that she’s said everything she has to say through her work. Her son,

Sandro Bevilaqua, graduated from Berklee College of Music (majoring in composition and film scoring), and is now living eight blocks from her in Hoboken, New Jersey. He released his first album, Lila, in December 2023, and often plays in clubs (they still exist!) in downtown NYC. Having a son who grew up to be a very talented musician (and a very good person) is a gift beyond anything she could have imagined. In other words, life is good. Nancy only wishes that people who are suffering around the world under unthinkable conditions these days could feel so blessed and secure.

Beth (Enari) Eshel writes, “After 30 years in Tzfat, I have relocated to Netanya in order to open and manage the new clinical flow cytometry lab at Laniado Medical Center. One offspring still lives with me, one is in Jerusalem, and one is married and living with Israeli spouse in Thailand. The apartment I’m renting has guest space, and the sea is a quick 17-minute walk away.”

Amy Gilbert retired in June 2024 as a family practice physician. “I worked in a variety of settings, including sliding-scale community reproductive health center, private family practice clinic, trade union clinic, and primary care for older women. These days my focus is mostly on climate, especially focused on converting energy use in St. Paul from fossil fuels to thermal energy networks like geothermal. I’m using my medical profession to leverage that work as much as I can. I’m married and have two adult daughters. I’m taking dance classes, and figuring out what retired life means for me. I hope to see lots of classmates at the 40th reunion this summer!”

1986

Steve Luck has been awarded the UC Davis Prize in Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement—the university’s way of acknowledging faculty who are excellent researchers but also

put considerable time and effort into undergraduate teaching. A story at lettersandsciencemag. ucdavis.edu/ describes how Steve’s devotion to both research and undergraduate education were inspired by Prof. Allen Neuringer [psychology 1970–2008], whose “authentic excitement and enthusiasm” Steve tries to channel into teaching his 810 Intro Psych students every fall. Steve adds that “what this story is missing is that my entire career’s research direction was a result of the late Dell Rhodes [psychology 1975–2006].”

When Steve was a junior, Dell had just come back from a sabbatical where she had learned the event-related potential (ERP) technique, which involves recording

Lowell Weitkamp ’58 and Sally Weitkamp enjoy the view at the home of Jerry Marshall ’82 and Mary Jean Vickers ’81 outside Canberra.

2. Nancy Gormley Bevilaqua ‘85 enjoys playing drums with a local jam group.

1.

the brain’s electrical activity from electrodes placed on the scalp (the EEG) and extracting tiny voltages triggered by events such as the presentation of a word on a computer screen. Dell hired Steve to help build an ERP lab at Reed, and since then Steve has essentially built an “ERP empire,” including textbooks, workshops, and a data analysis software package that has been used in more than 3500 published papers.

Adam Whiting is “still living/ working in Oakland but always happy to return to Southeast Portland and revisit with Bruce Talmadge ’88 the 1984–87 glory days of the Dead Possum House (long ago scraped away from 4015 SE 26th).”

1987

Dr. Bedford is still frozen.

1988

As the director of planning, development, and research at Metro, the Portland area’s regional government, Catherine Ciarlo finds herself at the intersection of Portland’s past, present and future. When the politics of urban growth boundaries and regional planning get especially intense, she finds inspiration in Gen Z: “Our 22-year old daughter Siri and 19-year old son Sten and their friends give me and Erik Brakstad ’89 hope for the coming decades.”

1989

Lance Christian retired from his role as executive director of ALS Northwest (formerly The ALS Association Oregon) on January 31, 2025. Over 22 years of dedicated leadership, Lance was pivotal in building powerful programs and supports for people with ALS while advancing critical research efforts. Lance says, “When I first joined ALS Northwest, there were very few resources in our community for people with ALS and their families. Together our community and staff have rallied to create a comprehensive web of support for

people with ALS in Oregon and SW Washington.” Lance’s legacy includes the creation of six ALS multidisciplinary clinics in Oregon, a comprehensive suite of support programs for families living with ALS across the Northwest, and funding over $3 million in ALS research over the last several years.

Bill Trost was awarded patent 12,206,876, “Vectorized Random Forest Search.” The USPTO published it on January 21, 2025. By January 29, he had already received mail with a limited-time offer for a variety of patent plaques, “to assist in showcasing [his] patent.”

1990 35TH REUNION

First known use of the word “microplastics.”

1991

First “For Dummies” book published. Not that you would need to know anything about that.

1992

Jenni Green reports: “This wasn’t a year of big change. I joined my condo association board, enjoyed a wonderful trip to France and Denmark (including visiting friends I met on my junior year

study abroad), and continue to appreciate all PDX has to offer.”

1993

Melanie Konradi was featured in Lane County Medical Society’s monthly magazine!

1994

Brittney Corrigan received a 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowship from Literary Arts.

1995 30TH REUNION

Popular movies include Oy Story, Atman Forever, and Pollo 13. Yes, I know those are all missing a first letter. They look better that way.

1996

Forest Atkinson retired from the U.S. State Department Foreign Service after 20 years working on economic issues, trade policy, human rights and democracy in assignments in seven countries and Washington, D.C. Forest has moved with his family back to the mountains in Idaho to take a job as a city manager.

Geoff Frasier earned a National Certificate in Scottish Gaelic Language and Music, Benbecula College (Colaisde Beinn na Faoghla), Isle of Benbecula, Scotland, in 2001.

Adam Whiting ’86 sent in this photo of the Dead Possum House ca. June 1986.

1997

Iceland Phallological Museum founded to enable “individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion.”

1998

On January 2, 2025, Andrea Lambert married Casey Fritz. Andrea’s name is now Andrea Lambert Fritz.

The White House Office of Science and Technology announced the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching on January 13, 2025. Ranjani Krishnan, who teaches math in the Portland Public School District, was recognized as a 2023 mathematics awardee from Oregon.

1999

First device using technology named after 10th-century Danish king Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson revealed at computer trade show.

2000

25TH REUNION

Measles declared eliminated in United States. Ah, the good old days.

2001

About a year ago, Michael Weinberg took a new role as head of engineering productivity at Benchling. “Jen and I (still) live in Oakland with our 8-year-old twins Margot and Maxine. I’ve been making it to Reunions consistently the last few years, and hope to see old friends this summer!”

2002

Marian Macindoe, Claire McCabe, Camas Goble, Melissa (Feineman) Suzuno , Lindsey Selden ’03, Renaud des Rosiers ’99 , Beth (Bridges) des Rosiers, and associates ate cookies together in Berkeley at the sensational holiday blowout of the year, “2024 Cookie Day.” Van Butsic ’03 went fishing instead.

2003

Edward Liljeholm writes: “I returned to school, passed the NCLEX, and am now an RN in the State of Oregon. I am seeking a position at OHSU, where I have been working as a CNA since 2017. I hope to get into the acute cardiac unit, but still haven’t secured a position.” Good luck, Edward!

2004 20TH REUNION

No joke! Google launches Gmail on April Fools’ Day.

2005 20TH REUNION

LJ Pemberton’s novel Still Alive (Malarkey Books; see Reediana, Summer 2024) was longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award. Honoring excellence in world literature since 1996, the Dublin Literary Award is one of the largest literary prizes offered for a single work of fiction published in English, worth €100,000. Nominations for the prize came from 83 libraries in 34 countries, across Africa, Europe, Asia, the US,

Canada, South America, Australia, and New Zealand; this year’s longlist featured work from celebrated authors including Percival Everett, Colm Tóibín, Hilary Leichter, Justin Torres, and others, alongside 16 debuts and 26 novels in translation.

2006–07

Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search finds 44th Mersenne prime.

2008

Eavan Moore transferred to the Saint Paul, Minnesota, office of SRF Consulting Group in September 2024. Eavan is very happy to be working in an office with nine other transit planners, getting to know the Metro Transit system, and taking advantage of all the cultural opportunities the Twin Cities have to offer. Erin Weber was recently awarded an NSF–Building Research Capacity grant to support her work (“Development of Two Biochemical Tools to Study Potato Virus Y Infection in Plants”). This will allow Erin to provide research experiences like she received at Reed to her students at Carthage College.

2009

Pyrenean ibex becomes the first animal brought back from extinction through cloning, and first to become extinct twice.

2010 15TH REUNION

Catherine Hinchliff got married last year to partner Ian Richter (not

1. Lance Christian ’89, recently retired executive director of ALS Northwest, stands by members of the ALS Northwest community.

2. Andrea Lambert ’98 weds Casey Fritz.

3. Eavan Moore ’08 survived her first Minnesotan winter.

a Reedie)! The couple had a wedding ceremony with immediate family on July 12, 2024, and had a small reception the next day in Seattle. A significant portion of the reception attendees were Reedies.

2011

Anna De Filippi and her husband Georgios Kazilas joyfully married November 16th, 2024, in Houston, surrounded by their friends and family from around the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Greece. Originally high school friends, they reconnected in 2016 and began their relationship in 2018. The ceremony was held at Annunciation Orthodox Cathedral, followed by a reception at the Julia Ideson Library downtown (with lots of Greek dancing!). Anna is a psychotherapist at a group practice and Georgios owns a live music café-bar called Echoes. Georgios has never been to the Pacific Northwest they’re looking forward to passing through Portland on their honeymoon road trip this summer!

In August 2024, Jessica Gerhardt (she/her) started a full-time teaching position in theology at Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles. The same month she also released her debut full-length album Alight Beyond the Sea and celebrated an LA album release show. Summer tour pending (hopefully!) In February of 2025, she and her spouse Arend (they/them) celebrated their queer, Catholic, COVID-conscious wedding at St. Bede Church, and they are both now the Gerhardt Jessuruns! Reedies in attendance included Salim Moore , Trevor Ruiz , and David Wills-Ehlers ’13. The Modern Language Association of America awarded its 32nd annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies to Charlie D. Hankin , assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Davis, for his book Break and Flow: Hip Hop Poetics in the Americas, published by the University of Virginia Press.

The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly work that is written by a member of the association and that involves at least two literatures. The selection committee described Charlie’s book as “a perfect illustration of how theory and practice can coalesce to produce an organically interdisciplinary, transcultural, and transnational study.”

2012

Alex Walker has joined Farella Braun + Martel LLP in San Francisco as a senior associate. Alex represents owners, developers, and real estate investors in complex real estate transactions, including acquisitions and dispositions, joint venture agreements, financing, and leasing of multifamily,

office, retail, and mixed-use properties throughout California and the United States.

2013–14

The pastry you were all waiting for . . . Cronut!

2015 10TH REUNION

Did we ever figure out what color that dress was?

2016–19

And can we call it Dressy McDressface?

2020 5TH REUNION

World welcomes “hug curtain.” And, oh yeah, COVID-19 vaccine!

2021–25

Dr. Bedford remains frozen.

4. At the wedding of Catherine Hinchliff ’10 and Ian Richter, left to right: Christian Anayas ’10, Cori Savaiano ’11, Kristina Hinchliff ’94, Emily Youatt ’10, Emmeline Friedman ’11, Audrey Hinchliff ’23, Ida Peric ’10, Ian Richter in back, Catherine Hinchliff ’10, Rose Hinchliff ’26, Eleni Skaperdas ’11, Imogen Hinchliff ’26, Devon Porter ’11, Liz Strong (Monsen) ’10, Eric Brattain ’08, Natalie Sheehan ’10, Nick Insalata ’09, Mark Hinchliff ’81, Meg Huntington ’09, Diana Van Wagner ’10, Homer Strong ’10, Will Brown ’08, Jenny Gadda [admission 1994–2016], Aaron Mendelson ’10, Dean Gadda MALS ’14.

5. Anna De Filippi ’11 and Georgios Kazilas are married!

6. Jessica Gerhardt ’11 and Arend Jessuruns become the Gerhardt Jessuruns!

In Memoriam

Edited by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

A Top Portland Lawyer and Trusted Reed Trustee

Morris J. Galen

December 4, 2024, in Portland, Oregon. A Reed trustee who served on the board for over 30 years, Morrie Galen possessed dedication to education and equal opportunity that made him an esteemed member of the Reed community.

“Reed was always very important to him,” says Galen’s daughter, Candi Galen ’78, who recalls that her father valued not only the quality of a Reed education, but “the warmth and friendship that characterized the Reed community.”

Galen was born to Harry and Ruth Galen in 1927 in Portland, Oregon. Driven by curiosity and quick wit, he graduated from Lincoln High School at age 16 and enrolled at the University of Oregon.

In 1950, Morrie graduated Phi Beta Kappa and received his J.D. with honors (Order of the Coif), having earned the

highest GPA in the law school’s history. He also married Evelyn “Evie” Brounstein, with whom he had two children, Candi and Solana.

Despite Galen’s credentials, the most prestigious firms in Portland would not hire him because of his Jewish faith.

This experience ignited Galen’s lifelong commitment to inclusivity, advocating for open doors to anyone with a passion for excellence.

Galen found his professional home in 1960 with Moe Tonkon ’26, whose mentorship proved invaluable. In 1974, they joined Fred Torp, Brian Booth, and others to form the law firm of Tonkon, Torp, and Galen (now known as Tonkon Torp LLP).

The demands of a burgeoning law practice were balanced by weekends on the Oregon coast, where Galen’s family had

A President in a Pinch

William R. Haden

a home within about a mile of James Beard ’24’s childhood beach house. James would often visit, eager to cook in Galen’s kitchen, which he seemed to prefer to his own (or maybe it was the company).

Galen was defined by his integrity and his faith. As a lawyer, he put his motto (“You never lose by doing the right thing”) into action for almost 70 years, guiding Portland’s business community. He also established the Galen Endowment for the Advancement of Legal Writing at UO Law School.

While Galen spent much of his time on the coast, he was devoted to Reed during his tenure on the board. “The only things that would keep him in town were weddings, funerals, and Reed board meetings,” Candi says.

Galen is survived by his son, Solana, and his daughter, Candi.

March 15, 2025, in Newberg, Oregon. As acting president of Reed from 1991 to 1992, William “Bill” R. Haden worked to strengthen Reed’s finances and improve alumni relations—while presiding over transformative additions to campus like the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery.

Raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Haden earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from West Virginia University, a master’s degree in government from the George Washington University, and an honorary doctor of law degree from the University of Charleston.

Following graduate school, Haden served in the U.S. Army as a military intelligence officer in Portland and left the army as a first lieutenant. In 1967, he returned to West Virginia to begin his career in educational fundraising and higher education administration.

After President James L. Powell left Reed to become chief executive officer of the Franklin Institute, the board of trustees named Haden as his successor. He had previously served as the vice president of public affairs at Reed, beginning in 1987.

With gifts given to the college by John and Betty Gray and Ed and Sue Cooley, Haden helped to establish the Cooley Gallery. During his tenure, Reed also broke ground on the chemistry building and the cross-canyon bridge (aka the blue bridge).

Haden left in 1995 and went on to become the second-longest-serving president of West Virginia Wesleyan College. He kept a memento of his Reed years: a gigantic sculpture that he and his wife, Elizabeth Flanagan, purchased at a Reed exhibition of student art and prominently displayed in their living room.

In October 2006, Haden was elected to the board of directors of Chamber Music Northwest, where he eventually served as president of the board, which was a fitting post given his love of classical music until the end of his life.

Haden was always willing to share his extensive leadership skills throughout his retirement. In July 2007, he was elected to the board of directors of the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, and in 2011 he became a board member of Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette.

Haden is survived by the children from his first marriage, Laura McKinney and Douglas Haden, and his long-time partner, Doris Huff. He was preceded in death by his wife of 30 years, Elizabeth.

Caroline Mervyn ’51 November 1, 2024.

Caroline Renee Black was born in Boston in 1929 and lived there in her early childhood while her father taught at Harvard.

While attending Reed and the University of Oregon, Caroline

cemented her lifelong love of poetry and literature. At age 25, she married her high school sweetheart, John “Jack” Mervyn.

Moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1974, Caroline obtained her bachelor’s and then her master’s degree in social work. She frequently volunteered, especially at Brock House and with the Hospice Society in Vancouver and with the Westside Anglican Homeless Ministry.

Caroline was predeceased by her son, John, and is survived by her daughters, Laura, Emily, and Anne.

Kathleen Beaufait ’52

March 11, 2025, in Salem, Oregon.

Kathleen Glory Beaufait, the first female attorney in the Oregon Office of the Legislative Counsel, was born in 1928 in Portland, Oregon. Her passion for law was rooted in her grandmother’s friendship with Mary Jane Spurlin, Oregon’s first female judge.

Both Spurlin’s profession and her striking red car intrigued Kathleen. “My father always claimed that it was the car that attracted me to the study of law more than it was anything else, but that was a family joke, although I did own a couple of red cars in my lifetime,” Kathleen recalled in a 2017 interview.

At Reed, Kathleen became an active participant in campus life. She managed the coffee shop in Commons and served as a dormitory advisor—and even found time to be a production assistant for a Reed College Players performance of Pygmalion.

With advising from Professor Charles McKinley [political science 1918–60], Kathleen wrote her thesis on Fred M. Vinson, the 13th chief justice of the United States. McKinley

nurtured Kathleen’s interest in constitutionalism and state and local government, leading her to serve more than 30 years in the Office of the Legislative Council.

Despite the speedy and stressful working conditions of the capitol, Kathleen rel ished her work as a bill drafter and strove to remain nonpar tisan. “It’s not up to me to say whether [a bill is] good or bad,” she later reflected.

In addition to her work at the Office of the Legislative Coun sel, Kathleen was an adjunct professor at the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College and did pro bono work with Marion-Polk Legal Aid. After her death, a state ment from the Oregon State Capitol praised her ability to craft bills and earn legisla tors’ trust. She had made her mark on the capitol, a place she once called “more than just a building.”

Katharine Woodwell ’52 April 11, 2025, in Arlington, Massachusetts. Katharine was a musician, a reader, and an active com munity volunteer. She had a 25-year career as administra tor of the Woods Hole Research Center (renamed the Woodwell Climate Research Center) in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Born in 1929 in Winston-Sa lem, North Carolina, Katharine grew up steeped in the soaring music and the traditions of the Moravian Church. At Reed, she studied biology, completing a thesis on the flowering plants of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, where her parents had a simple wooden home, which Katharine kept for the rest of her life.

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As a masters candidate in biology at Duke University, Katharine met and married fellow student George

In Memoriam

M. Woodwell. They moved to Orono, Maine, and then to Brookhaven, New York, where Katharine served as president of the Suffolk County League of Women Voters and as an active member of the Old South Haven Presbyterian Church, bringing politics and religion together to protest the Vietnam War. She also acted in the Poet’s Repertory Theater, sang in a choir, and played autoharp and dulcimer.

In 1975, Katharine and her husband moved to Woods Hole, where she joined the Woods Hole Folk Orchestra as pianist and served as treasurer and secretary of the Woods Hole Community Association. Her children played musical instruments and she loved nothing more than organizing family music afternoons, where everyone played together around the piano.

In 1985, when George had an idea for an independent ecological research institute, Katharine joined him as administrator. They spent 25 years in a partnership of ideas and logistics, building both a program in ecology and a fossil-free office building in Falmouth.

A quiet but ardent donor, Katharine supported organizations working for equality, education, democracy, the environment, and the arts. She was preceded in death by George, her husband of 69 years, and is survived by their four children: Caroline Alice Woodwell, Marjorie Virginia Woodwell, Jane Katharine Woodwell, and John Christopher Woodwell.

Katherine R. Cameron ’53

September 26, 2024, in Portland, Oregon. A renowned artist and teacher, Kathie was born in Portland in 1929. After graduating from Grant High School,

she enrolled in a joint BA/BFA program with Reed and the Museum Art School, which later became Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA).

Kathie’s mentors included Portland Art Museum curator and art instructor Rachael Griffin ’33, as well as legendary Oregon artists Louis Bunce, William H. Givler, and Jack McLarty. She wrote her thesis on lithography and earned a bachelor of arts in painting. Her passion for art extended to her annual screenprinted Christmas cards, usually featuring her cat’s adventures.

Kathie taught art for a year at Shriners Hospital in Portland before moving to Grant High School. Her Grant students included the artist Sherrie Wolf and the actress Sally Struthers ( All in the Family , Gilmore Girls).

In January 2019, PNCA hosted a retrospective exhibition of Kathie’s works. It was the first time they had been shown together in an academic gallery.

Yvonne Phillips Hajda ’55

October 4, 2024, in Portland, Oregon.

Yvonne was born in 1930 in Chicago to Sidney Phillips, an immigrant from Wales, and Hazel Putman Phillips. The family moved to the Portland-Vancouver area, where her father found work teaching French.

In 1955, Yvonne graduated from Reed with a BA in anthr opology and literature, writing a thesis titled “Regional Social Organization in the Greater Lower Columbia, 1792–1830.” She formed close friendships with Professor

David French ’39 [anthropology 1947–88] and his wife, Kathrine (Kay), as well as Dell Hymes ’50 and Michael Mahar ’53

After graduating from Reed, Yvonne began graduate work in anthropology at the University of Chicago and met Jan Hajda, who was completing a graduate program in sociology and had come to the United States after WWII as a refugee from occupied Czechoslovakia. The couple married in 1956.

In 1974, Yvonne entered the anthropology program at Portland State University. Her MA thesis, “Marys River Kalapuya: A Descriptive Phonology,” studied field transcriptions of the linguist Leo J. Frachtenberg, who documented the Marys River dialect of the Central Kalapuya language.

Yvonne’s developing research was enhanced by her friendship with David and Kathrine French. The couple organized the Warm Springs Project, a research program that brought a series of Reed students to live and work on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation—and between 1977 and 1980, Yvonne interviewed Grand Ronde elder Elmer Tom and preserved many reminiscences of reservation life both at Grand Ronde and at Warm Springs.

Yvonne also collaborated with Kay on an examination of “social ceremonials” at Warm Springs. In the mid-1980s, the pair researched how community observances of birth, marriage, and death had evolved in the 30 years since Kay began her research.

After graduation from the University of Washington in 1984, Yvonne continued to conduct research and write well into her 80s. Notable publications include a 1987 article

(with Robert Boyd) in American Ethnologist on Native American fishing season migration to the banks of the Columbia.

Yvonne was predeceased by Jan, her husband of 62 years.

Hardy Hargreaves ’57

January 18, 2025, in Reston, Virginia.

Born in 1935, Hardy was an undergraduate student at Sophia University of Tokyo, Japan, and later Reed, where he studied political science. He wrote his thesis on the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with advising from Professor Frank Munk [political science 1939–65].

As part of his graduate studies, Hardy was one of the first Americans to visit the Soviet Union after Khrushchev became premier. He lived several times in Japan, once as a teenager and twice as a diplomat, and retired in the 1990s after working for the CIA.

Hardy is survived by his wife of 62 years, Waltraut “Walle” Hargreaves, and his children, Stephen Hargreaves, Erik Hargreaves, and Kirk Hargreaves.

Miles Jordan ’57

August 24, 2024, in Chico, California.

Miles Jordan was known as one of the great characters of Chico, California. Born in 1934, in Clinton, Iowa, he came out West as a teen, first to Seattle. He subsequently served as a company clerk in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, then moved to Portland to attend Reed.

At Reed, Miles attracted attention for his singular sense of style. When Stephen Adams

’61 arrived at Reed, one of the first students he spotted was Miles, striding across campus dressed in a flowing red toga. Miles eventually landed in San Francisco, where he met his future wife, Marilee. They lived in Mill Valley until 1978, when they moved to Chico on a whim.

In Chico, Miles established himself as a local musical taste maker, producing the Blues People radio show, cofounding the Chico Jazz Society and Chico Blues Society, and writing album and concert reviews for Chico News & Review and JazzTimes magazine.

He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Marilee Jordan.

Robert Helliwell ’58

August 7, 2016, in Morgan Hill, California.

Robert Wesley Helliwell was born in 1930 in Minot, North Dakota. He wrote his Reed thesis, “A Photographic Method for Determining Shock Wave Variables,” under Professor William Parker [physics 1948–79], and paid his tuition by working in the summers as a surveyor.

Prior to attending Reed, Robert served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Hawaii. He later told Peter Renz ’59 a harrowing story about confronting and disarming a soldier who went rogue in the middle of the night. “He led his life with great courage and absolute integrity,” Peter says.

After leaving Reed, Robert graduated with a degree in materials science and engineering from Stanford and worked at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for 25 years before moving to Thailand in 1992. He is survived by his wife, Somjit, and his sons, Martin and Brian.

Christina Kardon ’58

February 5, 2025, in Naples, Florida. Anna Christina (“Chris”) Smith was born in the Philippines in 1937, while her father served there with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. She attended Reed despite the initial misgivings of her father, who explored Reed with the help of an editor from The Oregonian and was won over by Dean of Students Ann Shepard ’23

After receiving her BA degree in psychology, Chris attended Columbia University School of Social Work. During the summer, Chris worked at a camp in New Jersey for orthopedically handicapped children, where she met her future husband, Paul Kardon, then a medical student.

Paul’s training career took the couple to Brooklyn, Chicago, Manhattan, and Fort Campbell, Kentucky. At each location, Chris worked as a clinical psychiatric social worker.

In 1971, Chris and Paul settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Chris continued her practice and worked and taught at the Adelphi University School of Social Work. She and Paul retired to Naples in 2000.

Chris was predeceased by her son, Craig. In addition to her husband, survivors include her daughter, Gabrielle Kardon.

Tilly Gaillard ’59

May 10, 2024, in Saint-Cloud, France.

Born in 1937, Tilly grew up in San Francisco and identified as “a true-hearted San Franciscan.” She started interpreting at age three for her grandparents, who only spoke Dutch.

After attending Reed, Tilly studied at UC Berkeley, where

she graduated with a bachelor of arts, and earned a diploma in social welfare policy in developing countries at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands.

In 1963, Tilly started working as a professional interpreter and translator at a journalism center in Strasbourg. She was an interpreter for over 25 years at the FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights), OSS (Sahara and Sahel Observatory), Crisis Action, and CIFOR (Center for International Forestry Research).

Tilly was a talented writer, penning many articles for the Democrats Abroad Military and Veterans Caucus. She was predeceased by her husband of years, Philippe Gaillard, and is survived by two daughters.

Patricia Rose Matisse ’59

November 15, 2024, in Spokane, Washington. Born in 1929 in Oklahoma, Patricia Rose Matisse grew up during the Great Depression. Her mother was often unable to care for her, so Rose spent her childhood in and out of a Catholic orphanage and on the farm of her aunt.

Rose’s intrepid spirit took her to California, where she graduated from Berkeley. Later, she studied general literature at Reed, then went on to teach English at Spokane Falls Community College, where she worked for 25 years.

A passionate environmentalist, Rose committed every facet of her life to conservation. She wore snowsuits in her house to avoid using gas for heat, watered her plants with dishwater, and biked to work even when it snowed.

Rose was preceded in death by her former husbands, Theodore and Orville.

James Willard Moore

’59

October 15, 2024, in Portland, Oregon.

As the son of a career army officer, James (Bill) Willar d Moore experienced a wide variety of cultures, growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico; postwar Germany; France; Japan; Kentucky; Virginia; California; and Missouri.

Bill enrolled at Washington and Lee University, but transferred to Reed, where he found a home among like-minded people. He majored in history, participated in left-wing political activities, became a lifelong advocate for labor, and enjoyed folk dancing and songs.

At UC Berkeley, Bill pursued a PhD in German history, but his studies were interrupted by three years in the U.S. Army. He served in the Army Security Agency in Germany and became fluent in German, completing his PhD after his discharge.

Bill went to Hastings for a law degree, then practiced law for many years in the Bay Area. His greatest joy as a lawyer was working on antitrust suits and similar business misbehaviors. After retirement, he returned to Portland to live with his brother Charles and his wife.

Bill is survived by his brother, his sister Roberta, and the many singing companions and friends he found in Portland.

Gayel Knott

December 16, 2024.

’62

Gayel earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in archaeology from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Though she left Reed in 1961, she attended reunions, and said that “Reed was like coming home when I had never even known I was missing anything.” She is survived by her son, Andy Horsfall.

In Memoriam

David Lawrence Ragozin ’62

October 25, 2024, in Seattle, Washington.

David was born in the shadow of Ebbets Field and raised in Manhattan. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Reed, writing his thesis on structure theory for semiprime rings under Professor John Leadley [mathematics 1956–93].

David earned his doctorate from Harvard, and later became a professor emeritus in mathematics at the University of Washington. A passionate learner and storyteller, he loved singing Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and quoting William Butler Yeats.

David is survived by his beloved partner Marilyn Charlat Dix. He also leaves behind his children, Michael and Dylan.

William Ronald Frazier Jr. ’63

March 30, 2025.

Ron was born in 1941 in Portland, Oregon, to Lacey Smith Allen and William Ronald Frazier ’25 . He earned his bachelor of arts in philosophy at Reed, writing his thesis on literary genres under Professor Edwin Garlan [philosophy 1946–73].

At the Sorbonne University in Paris, Ron studied French and literature, then went into the Peace Corps and spent two years in Niger. He met his wife in France and later returned to the United States, teaching French at Estacada High School.

Ron’s pastimes included playing bridge, hiking with a group called the Day Trippers, and fly fishing with his brother, Preston Frazier. He is survived by a son.

Naome Dragstedt MAT ’66

June 18, 2024.

A prolific educator, Naome Dragstedt earned her bachelor’s degree in English and history from Mills College and her master’s in teaching from Reed. She went on to found a Montessori preschool in her home in Lafayette, California, eventually expanding it to include two preschools, an afternoon kindergarten, and a toddler program.

Naome eventually closed the school to work on her PhD in psychology through the Wright Institute. During that time, she acted as a psychotherapist for children, adolescents, and adults at the Ann Martin Children’s Center. After earning her PhD, Naome founded another Montessori preschool in 1983.

She was predeceased by her husband, John Dragstedt, and is survived by their son, Anatol Dragstedt.

Gail Porter-Beckley ’74

March 4, 2025, in Rutland, Vermont, of early onset Alzheimer’s.

Gail was born in 1952 in Waltham, Massachusetts. She worked in counseling for her professional life, while developing a wide circle of friends through her interests in alternative therapies, drumming, and any craft that gave her a chance to create something beautiful.

In 1982, Gail graduated with a bachelor of science in psychology from Portland State University. She subsequently earned a master of arts in dance at Antioch University in 1988, then attended Lesley University and studied counseling psychology—a field that would benefit from her desire to help others during her years

working as a clinician and a psychotherapist.

An inveterate collector, Gail scoured her surroundings for interesting stones, shells, or branches. Her excitement about life and her resilience and determination in the face of adversity inspired her loved ones and friends, holding her extended family together.

Gail passed away after a long and courageous battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her life was marked by her unwavering strength, compassion, and the countless moments of joy she shared with those around her.

Nancy Tivenan ’75

June 25, 2024, in Worcester, Massachusetts, of cancer.

Nancy was born in 1952 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Reed, where she wrote her thesis, “Anarchical Government? A Form of Uncentralized Government Practiced by the Berber Tribes of the High Atlas of Morocco,” advised by Professor Claude A. Vaucher [anthropology 1963–94].

Nancy attended the Worcester Art Museum School and moved to Boston for two years before returning to Worcester, where she worked as a graphic artist at Woodbury & Co. She later worked at E.F. Hutton, spent more than a decade in the development department of the American Antiquarian Society, and served 24 years as a senior administrative assistant at Hanover Insurance, retiring in 2016.

In 2001, Nancy married Eric D. Wells, who survives her. She died in the arms of her husband after a six-month battle with cancer.

Douglas Grotjahn

’80

October 26, 2023.

Douglas B. Grotjahn, chemistry professor emeritus at San Diego State University, was one of the department’s most prolific researchers in organic and organometallic chemistry. He was director of the department’s joint doctoral program for almost 20 years.

Douglas received a BA in chemistry at Reed, then studied at UC Berkeley, where he earned his doctorate. Before coming to SDSU, he worked at Arizona State University, where he served as an assistant professor of chemistry.

In 2002, Douglas became a professor at SDSU, working on novel catalysis and organic synthesis, with his latest research focusing on challenging problems in green chemistry and clean energy. Over 25 years, he positively affected many lives as a leader, mentor, and friend to all in the chemistry department.

Gordon D. Malarkey ’84

September 28, 2024, while vacationing in Frenchglen, Oregon, of a heart event.

Born in Eugene, Oregon, Gordon studied French at Reed, writing a thesis titled “Michel Butor, Theory and Fiction: Personal Association and Historical Resonance.” He then attended graduate school at Oregon State University.

After college, Gordon entered the agricultural commodities trading business in Minneapolis and Chicago. He and his business partner created a specialized commodities consulting group. This became the basis of an international consultancy and training group that continues today.

Gordon retired at age 48 and moved his life to Port Angeles. He is survived by his wife, Lynn Malarkey.

Edward (Ted) McGonagle ’84

December 22, 2024, in Granada Hills, California, of colon cancer.

Ted was born in 1958 in Pittsburgh. Most of his childhood was spent in Pelham, New York, but he moved across the country to attend Reed, where he studied economics. In 2015, Ted was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, but he far exceeded expectations by living for almost 10 more years. He was the husband of Mary Ellen (Dougherty) and father of Christina, Patrick, and Catherine (Catie).

Kurt Blair ’91

December 1, 2024, in New Zealand. Born in 1968 in Great Lakes, Illinois, Kurt Roberts MacLeod Blair was an internationally certified mountain guide. His grandfather, Robert W. Blair Sr., and father, Robert W. Blair Jr., both have significant first ascents in their name, and Kurt followed eagerly in their footsteps, climbing peaks all around the American West and across the globe.

Raised in Durango, Colorado, Kurt studied physics at Reed. He subsequently attended the Colorado School of Mines, and worked in information technology until 2015 before beginning his guiding career. In his last seven years, he earned his International Federation of Mountain Guides certification, which is held by fewer than 200 guides in America.

At 56, Kurt died in a climbing accident while ascending Mount Cook in New Zealand. “He was living his dream,”

his sister, Katrina, told The Durango Herald. “Mount Cook was one of those incredible dream-come-true mountains.”

Kurt is survived by his two sons, Dylan and Galen Blair.

Edward Martin Lightfoot ’96

October 20, 2024, in Olympia, Washington.

Edward Martin Lightfoot arrived at Reed in 1991 and majored in biology. While in college, he struggled with then-undiagnosed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, which prompted him to request a year’s leave from the studies he loved.

While living in Seattle, Edward made and sold pottery, specializing in affordable plates, bowls, and cups. After a period of homelessness, he lived in Olympia for 17 years, all the while refusing to take antipsychotic meds because their side effects included serious brain fog that left him unable to think.

Edward practiced Zen medi tation and other rituals, which gave him some structure for his existence through worsening

psychotic episodes. He strove to live as a bodhisattva, dedicated to relieving the suffering of oth ers, and was often spotted giv ing coins from his scant SSDI income to people on the street.

Folks in Olympia remembered Edward’s loving spirit, including the manager of Mailbox of Olympia, where Edward got his mail because he was paranoid about the letter carrier who delivered to his building. The manager choked up when speaking about “Marty,” the name Edward went by because he thought a version of his middle name would appeal to a possible girlfriend more than “Edward” or “Ed.”

Edward’s family scattered his ashes 49 days after the date of his death (as specified in Buddhist doctrine), in a place he loved and wrote about, Seattle’s Ravenna Park ravine, across from the house where he was born and grew up.

Forthcoming obituaries: Nancy Stewart Green ‘50, Robert Richter ‘51,

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Kurt Blair ’91

Object of Study

Auteure

d’une Inversion Politique

Alice Guy’s 1906 short film Les Résultats du féminisme [The Consequences of Feminism], which we watch in LIT 302: French Connections: The Intertwined Histories of French and American Cinema, imagines a world in which the gender roles of her time—a period in France known as la Belle Époque—have been inverted. A sense of tenderness and possibility dominates the film, not ridicule. Yet the few film historians who have paid attention to this work have tended to dismiss it as a shallow and ultimately conservative parody of what French society might look like if the suffrag-

ettes had their way. Such a reading improbably assumes that Alice Guy—an unmarried stenographer turned self-made film director— lacked political consciousness.

The mise-en-scène in this frame captures something of the understated and highly relatable humor with which Alice Guy questioned contemporary gender norms. The action takes place in a typical turn-of-the-century French salon, a space that exudes a strong sense of ownership and propriety. The fact that everything looks in its place signals to the viewer that everything has a place.

Les Résultats du féminisme is perhaps one of the first filmic attempts to depict sexual difference in terms of gender—that is, as a social and cultural construct entailing modes of self-expression, kinds of sociability, and power dynamics. Although Alice Guy does not evaluate the masculine–feminine binary contained in this frame, the film taken as a whole hints at the possibility of breaking down gendered divides and reconciling the idea of social order with that of care.

—Catherine Witt, professor of French/film and media studies

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Your dedication, advocacy, and leadership create a dynamic alumni community. You are true champions of Reed, and we are grateful for your service.

Alumni Board

alea adigweme ’06, ALUMNI TRUSTEE

Michael Axley ’89, ALUMNI TRUSTEE

Carla Beam ’76, ALUMNI TRUSTEE

Grant Burgess ’13

Patrick Burkart ’91

Maya Campbell ’15

Jennifer Delfino ’05

Claire Dennerlein Manson ’02

Sofiya Deva ’13

Matt Giger ’89

Kip Guy ’90

Valentina Jin-Trowbridge ’11

Caitlin McKenna ’08

Bronwyn North-Reist ’07

Katie Rempe ’05, VICE PRESIDENT

Dylan Rivera ’95, PAST PRESIDENT

Vasiliy Safin ’07

Angelique Thomas ’09

Thomas Weber ’83

Laramie Silber ’13 SECRETARY

Tina Sohaili-Korbonits ’07, ALUMNI TRUSTEE

Andrei Stephens ’08, PRESIDENT

Alumni Fundraising for Reed Steering Committee

Keith Allen ’83

David Buckler ’85

Sam Elgin ’11

Doug Fenner ’71

Jay Hubert ’66

Advait Jukar ’11, CO-CHAIR

Kyndra Homuth Kennedy ’04

Katherine Lefever ’07, CO-CHAIR

Christine Lewis ’07

Jan Liss ’74

Kathryn Mapps ’86

Dylan Rivera ’95

Andrew Schpak ’01

Lara Simonetti ’20

Anne Steele ’70

Andrei Stephens ’08

Ray Wells ’94

Janet Youngblood ’68

Diversity and Inclusion Committee Chair

Lilia Raquel Rosas ’94

Foster-Scholz Club Chair

Barbara Stross '64

Chapter Leadership Council

Johanna Colgrove ’92

Justin Corban ’04

Will Huiras ’14

Gray Karpel ’08, CHAIR

Andrew Korson ’04

Su Liu ’13

Eve Lyons ’95

Peter Miller ’06

Ashley Stripling Potter ’07

Jim Quinn ’83

Nico Terry ’17

Amanda Waldroupe ’07

Reed Career Alliance Chair

Matt Giger ’89

Griffins of the Last Decade (GOLD) Committee Chair

Laramie Silber ’13

CALLIGRAPHY BY JAKI SVAREN (MOORE) ’50

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Anahi Sanchez Marcial ’25 celebrates receiving her diploma at Reed's 111th Commencement ceremony.

PHOTO BY LAUREN LABARRE