Earlhamite Winter 2017 issuu

Earlhamite EPIC Unveiled

THE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE / WINTER 2017

BEARING TIDINGS OF PROSPERITY AND VICISSITUDES OF EARLHAM TO ITS FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS ...

WINTER

2017

FEATURES

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THIS IS EPIC

BY JONATHAN GRAHAM

The Earlham Plan for Integrative Collaboration, EPIC, is designed to take the best of Earlham and create an experience that is better than ever.

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14 ALL ABOARD MAGIC BUS

BY DAN OETTING

Four Earlhamites had a great idea to improve transportation for crowded urban spaces, and they didn’t take no for an answer.

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LIVING LITTLE

BY DENISE PURCELL

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Two Earlham seniors wanted to try a simpler life — so they built one.

44 HOW ARE YOU FEELING?

BY ROSEMARY CAMOZZI

Studying T-cells helped Elizabeth Richards ’14 find her path to becoming a physician.

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LEARNING BY TEACHING

BY BRIAN ZIMMERMAN

Earlham’s Joseph Moore Museum has become one of the best sites for collaboration on campus.

Earlhamite

THE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE Editor Dan Oetting Class Notes Editor Ellen Blevens Art Director Susanna Tanner Contributing Editors Denise Purcell and Brian Zimmerman Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jonathan Graham Vice President for Enrollment and Communications Jonathan Stroud

DEPARTMENTS 02 President’s Note 03 New & Notable 22 Look Back 23 Class Notes and Obituaries 43 Earlham Scene 52 Earlham School of Religion 54 Sports Focus 58 Faculty Activities 62 Homecoming Photo Collage 64 Last Laugh Read the latest alumni profiles, submit class notes, check out upcoming events and more at earlham.edu/alumni.

Vice President for Institutional Advancement Avis Stewart ’74 Academic Dean Greg Mahler President John David Dawson

BE SOCIAL instagram.com/earlhamcollege1847 facebook.com/earlhamcollege

Earlhamite magazine is the oldest college alumni magazine in continuous publication in the United States.

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

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

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

twitter.com/earlham1847 linkedin.com/earlham

ABOUT THE COVER Lynette K. Waters-Whitesell is an award-winning artist from Hartford City, Indiana.

She incorporated photos from the Earlham Digital Archives when creating the cover for this issue and the interior artwork (pages 8 and 9) for the “This is EPIC” story.

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PRESIDENT’S NOTE

This issue of the Earlhamite introduces EPIC, “The Earlham Plan for Integrative Collaboration.”

EPIC means that we work together (collaborate) and bring together (integrate) our different perspectives.

This should sound familiar because this is what we’ve long done at Earlham. So as I visit with alumni around the country, I’m not surprised there’s so much resonance among Earlhamites as they reflect on their own earlier EPIC-like experiences at Earlham.

Our real surprise may come when we realize that an EPIC education, though familiar to us, nonetheless represents a paradigm shift for 21st century liberal arts education.

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c i p e

How could this be so?

The 21st century has fundamentally altered the motivations of college-going students, who are now frequently driven more by “questions posed by the world” than by questions generated by academic fields.

Students now arrive eager to address big, complex questions: “How can I help forestall devastating climate change?”

“How can I help meet the world’s refugee problem?” And many others.

Such big questions are far too large for any one person to solve, and way too complex for any single perspective to address.

To make progress on them, we have to learn to work together even more collaboratively, and we have to integrate our different perspectives toward highly nuanced solutions. These big questions are indeed epic in their

scope and complexity, and making real progress on them poses a truly EPIC challenge.

We are rising to that challenge by intentionally integrating traditional work in academic disciplines with new modes of experiential education through internships, service-learning, off-campus travel and other immersive co-curricular opportunities.

Through our new EPIC initiative, we are now drawing even more deeply on Earlham’s history of interpersonal collaboration and integrative learning to empower 21st century Earlham students to grapple productively with daunting and critically important 21st century challenges. In the pages that follow, you will encounter energizing stories of Earlhamites past and present, whose former achievements have been — and new prospects promise to be — truly EPIC. David Dawson, President

Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

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NEW Notable Hashem Abu Sham’a ’17 becomes College’s 3rd Rhodes Scholar In November, Hashem Abu Sham’a ’17 was selected as a Rhodes Scholar. Recipients are chosen on the basis of exceptional intellect, character, leadership and commitment to service. The scholarship will support his admission to the University of Oxford where he plans to pursue two master’s degrees: one in Global Governance and Diplomacy, and the second in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.

“When I told my parents that I might have a chance to go to Oxford, they were almost in tears,” says Abu Sham’a, who grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Arroub.

Abu Sham’a is the third Earlhamite to receive the prestigious scholarship and one of two of the first Palestinian students. George E. Hamilton, class of 1905, and Joseph Clyde Little, class of 1917, also received the scholarship.

A peace and global studies major and economics minor at Earlham, Abu Sham’a has devoted his early adult life spreading awareness about the struggles of Palestinians. His dream is to establish community outreach centers whose focus is on political education at refugee camps like the one in which he grew up.

Margaret Hamilton ’58 receives Presidential Medal of Freedom Margaret H. Hamilton ’58 — a computer scientist who helped create the on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle — has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Hamilton was one of 21 distinguished Americans who received the award from President Barack Obama during a ceremony at the White House on November 22, 2016. Other recipients this year include KareemAbdul Jabbar, Ellen DeGeneres and Bruce Springsteen.

At Earlham, Hamilton majored in mathematics and philosophy. She deferred entry into a doctoral program in abstract mathematics in order to work on the fledging space program. She directed the software engineering division of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She became a pioneer in the systems engineering and software development industry. Later, she helped define system software requirements for the Space Shuttle program. Hamilton is founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc., which designs systems and develops software based on a paradigm known as “Development Before the Fact.”

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NEW Notable Gift bolsters support for first-generation students

Dawson joins other presidents in signing open letter to Trump

A degree-completion program that builds on Earlham’s commitment to college access and post-graduate success is expanding this fall to meet the needs of more students.

Formerly known as the Library Immersion Fellowship Team, Earlham expanded programming this fall for even more first-generation students to erase the challenges in earning a degree. More than 30 students signed up for the program this fall and received a laptop computer, access to mentorship and scholarships that fund off-campus study.

In November, President David Dawson joined more than 100 college presidents from the Annapolis Group in signing an open letter to President-Elect Donald Trump.

“For the past three years, it’s been an innovative library program which matches a small cohort group of firstgeneration students with a personal librarian for seven weeks of first semester,” says Neal Baker, director of Earlham’s libraries. “Now, we’re intentional in our effort to have LIFT students introduced to the very best of an Earlham education and resources to encourage and support their degree completion.”

Increased support for this program comes from a $250,000 gift from Catherine Lemann and the Academic Dean’s office. Three of Lemann’s children attended Earlham.

The letter urged Trump to “condemn and work to prevent harassment, hate and acts of violence” — forcefully and unequivocally. The Annapolis Group includes about 130 leading national independent liberal arts colleges.

Center recognized for environmental design Earlham’s Center for Science and Technology has received Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

The CST is heated and cooled by a closed-loop, ground-source geothermal system, the first on campus and the largest in Wayne County.

The CST is the fourth LEED-certified building to be built or renovated on Earlham’s campus since 2012, and is the second Gold level structure including the Center for Visual and Performing Arts.

The CST was also recognized as the 2016 winner of the Exemplary Award at the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce’s annual Community Improvement Awards Luncheon in Richmond.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

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NEW Notable Back Campus once again a haven for stargazing Earlham College’s observatory is back to bringing the astronomical wonders of the sky into focus.

Anna Schonwald ’16 and members of the College’s Observatory Club organized several nights of stargazing for the public last fall, marking the first time the observatory has been in use since 2012. The observatory was built in 2002. The College’s first observatory, located on front campus and no longer in use, was built in 1861.

EC joins consortium for research in neuroscience Earlham College is among four leading liberal arts institutions in Indiana and Ohio pioneering a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates in neuroscience.

The College is sharing in a three-year, $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to host this REU on campus during the summers of 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Other participating institutions include the College of Wooster, Ohio Wesleyan University and Kenyon College.

“This may be the first time that a small college consortium REU has formed in any academic discipline,” Earlham Professor of Biology and Neuroscience Bob Rosenberg says. “It’s certainly the first time in neuroscience, and may be the first in any biological science.

“Part of the reason I came to Earlham was because of the observatory,” Schonwald says. “Space has always been a part of my life, but after coming here it became something I wanted to spend my life studying,” she says.

Schonwald credits her passion for space to her father, a physicist who studied at the University of New Hampshire and worked on a NASA project with a part of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory called COMPTEL. Schonwald herself has completed a National Science Foundation internship at the National Radio Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico.

“My dad would take my sister and me out and we would talk about constellations and point out planets,” she says. “Now when I look up at the sky, I feel like I am part of something bigger.”

“The REU experience that undergraduate students typically get at larger research institutions are very good, but sometimes they fall flat because personal attention isn’t always available to them,” he says. “That’s not the case here.”

Rosenberg and Beth Mechlin, assistant professor in psychology, will mentor students during the nine-week summer experiences.

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Alan has proven himself as a visionary leader with a unique ability to make good organizations even better.

—Deborah Hull ’67, chair of the Earlham board

ALAN C. PRICE NAMED EARLHAM’S 18TH PRESIDENT The Earlham College Board of Trustees has named Alan C. Price ’88 the College’s 18th president. Price most recently was the Associate Director of Management for the Peace Corps and Acting Chief of Staff for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in Washington, D.C. An expert in change management and leadership development, Price also has served on Earlham’s Board of Trustees since July 2016.

He will take office July 1, 2017.

“The Board of Trustees is absolutely thrilled to welcome Alan Price as Earlham’s next president,” said Deborah Hull ’67, chair of the Earlham board. “Throughout his career, Alan has proven himself as a visionary leader with a unique ability to make good organizations even better.”

Price majored in economics at Earlham and earned his J.D. at Harvard Law School in 1992. In a varied career, he has worked as a consultant to major corporations, but also displayed a passion for education, including serving as an elected member of the Cambridge School Board from 2002-04. He also has a long history of public service, serving in the U.S. Army National Guard from 1983-89 and on the Cambridge, Massachusetts. Police Review and Advisory Board from 1996-2002, in addition to leadership roles in federal government to which he was appointed by President Barack Obama.

The presidential search attracted more than 50 candidates, and culminated with open on-campus interviews with four finalists. Price was the consensus choice of the College’s trustees.

Price will be joined in Richmond by his wife of 24 years, Gina LaRoche, a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Business School, and co-founder of Seven Stones Leadership Group. They have two adult sons, Jackson and Griffin.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

Nominations please

for the Outstanding Alumni Award the Distinguised Service Award Presented during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend.

CRITERIA INCLUDE: • Excellence in a chosen career • Service to the College • Participation in service and volunteer organizations • Service to the Society of Friends • Achievement which reflects an interest or influence developed at Earlham

For more information and nomination materials, contact earlham.edu/alumni, 765-983-1313 alums@earlham.edu Nomination materials are due March 1.

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

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

LIVE NOW. GIVE LATER.

This is

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

BY JONATHAN GRAHAM ARTWORK BY LYNETTE K. WATERS-WHITESEL

The Earlham Plan for Integrative Collaboration, EPIC, is designed to take the best of Earlham and create an experience that is better than ever.

The College’s long commitment to integrative and collaborative learning in the liberal arts and sciences has led to a new initiative to ensure that all students get the most out of the College’s distinctive approach to education.

The Earlham Plan for Integrative Collaboration, or EPIC, is the result of several years of discussion and planning led by the faculty. It is designed to help students examine the world’s most complex problems, knowing that solutions will not be found within a single academic department. EPIC offers increased coordination among various offices and programs on campus. The plan also seeks to create an environment in which students benefit from connections between what happens inside and outside the classroom.

“EPIC is an expression of the things that Earlham has always done well, but it also marks our commitment to offering students a fuller and more rewarding experience in the future,” says President David Dawson. “This initiative is about the College living fully into its mission, and we are very excited about its potential.”

EPIC intentionally leverages some of the institution’s greatest assets, offering students multidisciplinary experiences that combine guided research opportunities, international education, internships and a range of curricular offerings. EPIC is also designed to help students connect disparate experiences — like an internship, a summer research experience, an off-campus program, traditional coursework, and even extracurricular activities — into a comprehensive experience.

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The program encourages students to make connections between what they experience inside and outside the classroom in ways that, according to Jay Roberts, makes the Earlham experience “uncommonly coherent and cohesive.” Roberts is the associate vice president for academic affairs and leads the coordination team for EPIC. “Our faculty really are interested in helping students integrate the various parts of their lives and plan for the future. EPIC offers us a great structure in which to do so.”

Part of that structure also includes three new centers that provide significant opportunities for students to engage challenges that face the world: the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Center for Global Health, and the Center for Social Justice. These centers have their offices in the College’s CoLab (formerly Wildman Library) — a space designed to facilitate collaborative inquiry on challenges of the 21st century.

To help students connect off-campus learning opportunities with their traditional academic

coursework, the Center for Global Education (formerly know as the International Programs Office), the Center for Career and Community Engagement (which helps students explore career and internship possibilities) and the Environmental Leadership Program are part of the EPIC experience.

The integrative nature of EPIC draws on the College’s core components: its grounding in the liberal arts and sciences, the international character of its curriculum and student body, and its emphasis on experiential learning, all of which are rooted in Quaker values.

“EPIC brings together the very best of Earlham,” says Marya Bower, professor of philosophy and senior adviser for integrative education.

“And it offers students a level of integration and collaboration that most other colleges do not.

When we give presentations to families who are considering Earlham, parents and students can see the value of what we offer and how it differs from what’s available at other schools.”

epic examples Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Integrated Pathways

Last August, students interested in learning the basics of starting a business attended a “Business Boot Camp” hosted by this center. Led by Fullbridge, an internationally acclaimed organization that aims to integrate business and the liberal arts, students learned about creating business plans, navigating legal and logistical challenges, and basics of bringing products and services to market. The center is directed by Gene Hambrick ’73, executive in residence at Earlham.

Around the time students choose majors, Earlhamites will pick integrated pathways (IPs).

Made up of 4-6 thematic related courses, these pathways will help students make intentional connections between their academic interests and possible careers. By focusing on leading edge interdisciplinary academic areas, these IPs bring out the best in the liberal arts, helping students integrate across disciplines and ways of knowing.

Center for Social Justice

Learning everywhere

This spring, a group of Earlham students secured funding for a project co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security to counter violent extremism using social media. That project is led by Center Director Welling Hall, Plowshares Professor of Peace Studies and Politics and professor of international studies.

Opportunities for off-campus learning — from semester-long study abroad programs, to May Terms, to internships, to faculty-led collaborative research trips, to pre-term experiences like August Wilderness — are a normal part of the Earlham experience. Through EPIC, nearly every student will participate in at least one of these. Through the generosity of the alumni and friends, the College now offers financial support to help students complete unpaid internships. And Earlham faculty continue to create off-campus learning opportunities in response to their own research interests and student passions.

Center for Global Health This spring, the College will offer a May Term in Peru that will focus on global health issues. Students will provide non-medical support to local clinics, shadow medical professionals, observe surgeries and engage in volunteer activities. The program will be led by Peter Blair, associate professor of biology and co-director of the center, and Jose-Ignacio Pereja, director of the science and technology learning commons and a native of Peru. Associate Professor of Chemistry Michael Deibel is co-director of the center.

Forward-looking liberal arts Beginning in the first year, students will participate in Local-Global seminars that combine the type of intensive reading, writing and discussion that alumni remember from the Humanities Program and Earlham Seminars with experiences that connect students with the surrounding community. These courses are intended to provide the sort of high-impact experiences that help students to connect important issues facing the world with their personal experiences.

Diversity in context Every Earlham student completes a two course focus on diversity that requires study of both U.S. and international contexts. The College also requires students to demonstrate competency in a second language as part of the EPIC experience.

EPIC events The EPIC experience also includes some high-profile, all-campus events: a fall symposium on a pressing global issue, a spring research conference and celebration of student and faculty accomplishments, know as EPIC Expo, which will showcase recent work by students and faculty. A fall internship fair offers students the opportunity to share their experiences with the rest of the community.

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

PHOTO SUSANNA TANNER

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EPIC is not some add-on program. It is the very heart of Earlham, and it’s an expression of where we believe liberal arts education needs to go in the decades ahead. This approach is rooted in the things that have always made Earlham a special place like interdisciplinary learning and close collaboration between students and faculty. But now the focus is on the fact that the greatest challenges facing the world are not going to be solved by a single academic discipline, so we are preparing our students to use multiple perspectives and lenses to find solutions to real problems.

— David Dawson

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BY DAN OETTING

All Aboard

Magic Bus Four Earlhamites had a great idea to improve transportation for crowded urban spaces, and they didn’t take no for an answer.

“I know you want to hear the winner,” said the 42nd president of the United States.

a set of judges and a ballroom full of competitors, wellwishers and important-for-one-reason-or-another people.

It was time for the 2016 Hult Prize winning team to be announced, but not quite yet. William Jefferson Clinton had a proper preamble ready, and he was going to give it.

Their remaining competition also had made presentations, all choosing starkly different areas of focus: street vendors, biometrics, clothing industry workers, recycling. Team Magic Bus’s aim was to help commuters and improve the ad hoc bus systems of many crowded cities in Africa and elsewhere.

Members of the Magic Bus team, Iman Cooper ’15, Sonia Kabra ’16, Leslie Ossete ’16 and Wyclife Omondi ’17, sat at their table in a Times Square hotel ballroom trying their best to be patient. They had spent a year working on their project, an answer to the Hult Prize’s “crowded urban spaces” challenge of doubling the income of 10 million people by 2022. The Magic Bus team members had honed and rehearsed their pitch thousands of times over the past year, and on this night they had given it one last time to

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

“For those living at the bottom of the economic pyramid,” Clinton continued in his remarks, “there are any number of obstacles to prevent one from earning a good living, including access to transportation, capital, trading and markets.”

Ears perked at the Magic Bus table. Clinton used the T-word, transportation.

“My heart skipped a beat,” said Kabra. “I looked at Leslie, and I think she had the same reaction too.”

Only team Magic Bus had presented on transportation.

Kabra silently chanted a prayer her mother taught her for such moments and reminded herself she should not get her hopes too high.

Clinton finally released the suspense: “The winner is — Magic Bus.” Hugs around the table. Applause. Fellow attendees came to their feet. Clinton beckoned the team to the stage as the chorus of an electronic house music song flooded the room: “Who’s going to save the world tonight?”

That night it was Magic Bus.

Besides the trophy handed to them by Clinton, as winners they were now in line for $1 million in seed capital for their fledgling business. In what is billed as the largest student competition for social good, the Nobel Prize for college students, they had been selected as the best. They did not start as the best.

Team Magic Bus began its Hult Prize climb in Earlham’s dining hall in the fall of 2015. As they finished their dinners, they discussed the newly announced “crowded urban spaces” challenge. Their first goal was to find an idea worthy of winning the local Hult Prize competition to be held at Earlham. The winners of a local round like Earlham’s would fast-track into a regional final. For Earlham, it was the one held at San Francisco.

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The team’s interdisciplinary

Leslie Ossete ’16, Wyclife Omondi ’17, former President Bill Clinton, Iman Cooper ’15 and Sonia Kabra ’16. (Photo courtesy of Hult Prize.)

Looking at their team, they felt that their worldspanning life experiences could be an advantage. Kabra is from India, Cooper from the United States, Ossete from the Republic of Congo, and Omondi from Kenya.

While other teams could imagine the difficulties of crowded urban spaces, they had lived those difficulties.

Their experiences kept pointing them to one of the fundamental issues of life in densely populated poor areas: getting from one place to another.

care if you said no. We will find a way.’”

“So we all narrated different experiences and challenges that we’ve faced,” recalls Omondi. “We asked ourselves, ‘What unites all of the problems and solves this year’s challenge?’”

Just sitting there

Better buses, they initially concluded. Modern buses.

Many of their experiences had to do with bad bus rides and wasting time with poor transportation options.

At the Earlham round of competition, they felt their presentation went well enough, but the judges had questions about the impact and practicality of their solution. Their idea of improving the availability of buses didn’t make the cut. Another team, Spriland, from Earlham was selected as the winner.

“At that point a lot of teams would just say, ‘Oh, we didn’t win, and move on’” says Becky Jestice ’97, assistant professor of business and nonprofit management. “But they are determined. The entrepreneurial spirit does not take no for an answer. Team Magic Bus said, ‘We don’t

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Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

Losing at home meant they would need to reapply to the competition and try to land a spot at a different regional Hult Prize competition. Instead of San Francisco, they could try for Boston.

Shifting their application to another regional was simple enough. They knew it was their idea they needed to improve.

To determine their way forward, the team took another deep look at transportation problems, again with the first-hand experience of living in places like Nairobi.

As with many crowded cities in Africa, Nairobi doesn’t have a robust centralized system of public transportation. Instead its residents rely heavily on a system of private buses, known as matatus.

Matatus are a godsend, but they are also notoriously inefficient. When they arrive at a pick-up point, a matatu driver will wait until the bus is full before leaving. For commuters along the route, the wait could be an hour or more. Drivers are also victims of this inefficiency because all the waiting means they can make fewer trips in a day. Drivers pay a flat daily rental fee for their buses.

Any downtime for them means less earning power.

Another complicating factor are matatu fares. They are not standardized.

character was a benefit for the team.

Between the lost wages due to waiting and the varying prices, commuters can lose as much as half of their daily income.

on-campus advisers, he knew it was his job not to dictate, but to facilitate.

Understanding this particular problem – the unpredictability and inconvenience of a common transportation solution – became the new focus of Magic Bus. Their solution was to attack the problem with a mobile phone-based ticketing service. They would be something like Uber, but for private buses.

“What faculty advisers at their best principally do, is to be the guardrails,” he says. “The student team chooses the roads, so to speak, they choose the lane. They sometimes get into the rough on the sides, and all of that is good, but we can provide guardrails and provide some ideas when they ask us questions — or we can ask them questions that spark ideas about how this in particular should be done.”

“They had a brilliant idea,” says Jestice, who remembers walking down the hall after listening to a pre-Boston pitch from Magic Bus with Mark Gaines ’94, major gifts officer; Gene Hambrick ’73, director of the Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and executive in residence; and Jonathan Diskin, professor of economics. “Their pitch was still rough. We were asking them questions, but I remember walking down the hall and saying to Gene, ‘I think we have a shot this year.’”

Rajaram Krishnan, professor of economics, and Charlie Peck, professor of computer science, were enlisted as oncampus advisers as well. Omondi praised Krishnan and other mentors for their untiring helpfulness.

“They gave us motivation,” he says, “They explained how we needed to think, how to move forward and how life is when you have a project like this.”

Besides his knowledge of programming, Peck also has experience working with startups. Like Magic Bus’ other

The guardrails must have worked. Magic Bus went to the Boston regional and won.

“We were going up against teams from Harvard and Yale,” says Cooper. The Magic Bus team was also among the few undergraduate teams at their regional. “Most people are in graduate programs. So when we were talking to people, they were really surprised that we were undergraduates from a liberal arts school.”

Cooper remembers meeting someone from another team and mentioning she was from Earlham College. The name rang a bell for the new acquaintance. “Oh, I had friends that went there to study peace.” Cooper laughed and explained that she herself was a peace and global studies major — with minor in biology as well. “She was kind of silent for a moment,” says Cooper, who got the impression that her majors might not have been very impressive to the acquaintance.

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PHOTO SUSANNA TANNER

Jestice, to the contrary, believes that the team’s interdisciplinary character was a benefit. Kabra was a biochemistry major, Ossete double majored in economics and business and nonprofit management, and Omondi is studying economics.

“Bringing all of those different lenses together and being able to listen well and talk through things from different perspectives was important,” says Jestice. “That’s also how we do things here at Earlham in general, of course.

The way we question things, the way we encourage students to try things.”

Accelerators and stakeholders After the regional, the team members took turns traveling to Nairobi to begin a pilot operation while Stateside members participated in the Hult Prize accelerator, a rigorous program for improving the business plans and presentations for all regional Hult Prize winners.

Magic Bus’ plan was to use SMS, text messaging, to make their system work for commuters and drivers. Mobile

phones have penetrated 80 percent of the market and, while smartphone use and wifi aren’t ubiquitous, texting and mobile coverage are adequate and improving. Mobile phone payment via text is also an established technology.

Commuters using Magic Bus would text to find a bus, text to pay and text to book their bus ticket. This information would then be relayed to the bus driver, better connecting the buses and commuters. Magic Bus would make their money by taking a small cut of the transaction.

It was simple and reasonable enough. Brilliant even. But they had no connections with matatus and the commuters of Nairobi had used nothing like this. Even more fundamental, they had no app yet. They were a technology-based company without technology.

But they understood the problem and they were persistent.

They found a programmer in Kenya, they hired people to get the word out to commuters and, after numerous failed meetings with matatu cooperatives, about a hundred buses in each, they finally found one to give them a try. The pilot results were positive.

“Commuters love Magic Bus,” says Cooper. “The results of the pilot have far exceeded our wildest expectations. We were most excited to discover that Magic Bus enables the bus crews, teams of drivers and conductors, to double their income.”

What is good for both the commuter and the drivers would presumably also be good for a nation. “Every day in Nairobi lost productivity equals $5.4 million,” says Cooper. “Certainty in transportation is a huge opportunity to increase GDP as well wwas facilitate access.”

That’s the spirit

Above and facing page: Magic Bus team members work with their employees during the pilot phase in Kenya. To help educate potentional customers, Magic Bus used fliers, audiovisuals in buses and demonstratrations at bus stops. (Photos courtesy Magic Bus.)

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Jestice recalls attending meetings with the team before they left for Kenya. The team was raising money to fund the pilot programs they wanted to operate, including basic things like money for team meals and lodging. The Magic Bus team let their advisers know they had their budget figured out and were ready to go, but they also let on that they might not be able to buy food for the last two

AFTER THE HULT PRIZE It’s a good time to be a social entrepreneur at Earlham.

Within a single year, Earlham has added several new faculty members in the business and nonprofit management program, organized the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and had a team of students win the biggest prize for collegiate social entrepreneurs.

weeks. Fundraising could still come through, they assured her. Jestice smiles at the memory now.

“That is what successful entrepreneurs do,” Jestice says.

“They’re willing to say, ‘I’m going to go and I’ll find food, because this is more important than having every meal assured ahead of time.’ And rest assured, they ate. They were fine.”

The Magic Bus team has returned to Nairobi to begin their business. All except Omondi, that is. The senior is completing his final semester at Earlham. Thanks to Skype, he is staying in regular contact with the rest of the team.

Magic Bus is working to establish itself — incorporation, contracts, hiring staff — in Nairobi first and they have also mapped out possible areas for growth in other subSaharan cities.

“The excitement level is over the top,” says Gene Hambrick ’73, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

“We’re on a great path.” Hambrick credits the EPIC initiative for better integrating the curricular and co-curricular work of students and notes, in particular, Business and Nonprofit Management Department Convener Becky Jestice ’97 for her work to strengthen the academic offerings of the department.

Two years ago Hambrick and Jestice helped bring to Earlham Net Impact, a student business club focused on social and environmental change. Net Impact sponsors the Hult Prize competition in its chapter schools.

In an effort to further support and encourage social entrepreneurship on campus, Earlham has added its own competition as well. The Earlham Prize for Creative Capitalism is a business plan competition for social entrepreneurship that will be held each spring.

The fact that there are so many paths for growth is a mixed blessing. In November Omondi gave a talk at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., about Magic Bus and met experts in both African and South American transportation. Growth in the U.S. is yet another possibility.

“We called it creative capitalism because it focuses on people, planet and profit. All three,” says Hambrick. “We want participants to create plans to do well by doing good.”

As wide as their horizons may be, however, they’ve been careful to concentrate on their goals at hand. It was a balance of passion and cool practicality that brought Magic Bus this far. They plan to keep the same approach going forward.

The impact of competitions and new activities related to the center is broader than just thoughtful business plans, he says. The larger goal is to equip participants in a special way no matter what their career paths turn out to be.

“The key for us right now is structure,” says Omondi. “We have weekly goals and we are working carefully together.

First things first.”

“Part of the Earlham mission is to prepare ‘morally sensitive leaders,’ he says, “and this is helping us to reinforce that mission of training for that special kind of leader of future generations. The world can use a lot of them.” earlham.edu

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Two Earlham seniors wanted to try a simpler life — so they built one.

Lily Fishleder ’17 and Abby McCullough ’17 continue to add functionality and comfort to their home, including the welcome addition of solar electricity and more plumbing. The 8-foot by 20-foot house can be towed as needed and their plans are to continue living in the home after graduation.

BY DENISE PURCELL PHOTOGRAPHED BY SUSANNA TANNER

LITTLE While new single-family homes in America are nearing an average of 2500-square feet, the home of Lily Fishleder ’17 and Abby McCullough ’17 is one tenth of that and nevertheless feels, well, surprisingly spacious.

The pair, who had no prior construction experience, designed and built their home during the summer after deciding to trade dorm life for an off-grid experience a few miles from campus for their senior year.

Their tiny house features dark bamboo flooring, beetle kill pine, solar panels, a shed-style roof, a rainwater collection system and a composting toilet. Whatever it lacks in amenities and space, it fits the bill perfectly for it what was intended, namely, to give them the sustainable and simple lifestyle they craved.

“Part of what Earlham teaches you is that you can learn things and apply yourself, and then figure things out as you go,” Fishleder, a human development and social relations major, says, referring to the process of learning about framing, rafters, hurricane ties, metal strapping, siding, insulation, wiring, window and door installation, nail guns and all types of saws. “Building your own tiny house, you know how your water system works and what an electrical circuit looks like.

It helps me to be very mindful of my electrical usage. It adds to my experience and knowledge and forthcoming actions.”

“One of our goals was to shed light on mindful living and individual impact,” says McCullough, who earned a self-designed internship mentored through Live Simply Colorado during the summer build. “I’ve always had an interest in environmental studies and developing a minimalist lifestyle. This project was the beginning of me seeing a concrete vision for developing that lifestyle. As an art major, this project solidified the need for creating with my hands and the pleasure of making.”

One of the surprising dividends of the project for the seniors is the feeling that comes with creating something with their own hands.

“I have a connection to this space that I will never have with a dorm room,” McCullough says. “I know every inch of it, and we understand every aspect. Having our basic needs met in a space of only 250-square feet that we built is incredibly humbling.”

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Back LOOK

At the mastodon’s feet: The Randolph Mastodon is shown here in Lindley Hall, its home prior to the 1924 fire in Lindley that destroyed about a quarter of what would become known as the Joseph Moore Museum collection. Caswell Grave, an 1895 Earlham graduate, helped assemble the skeleton. He stands to the left in the photograph and Joseph Moore himself is seated.

Between 1924 and the building of a new museum space in 1952, the bones sat in storage. According to a time capsule discovered this fall when the mastodon was shifted during facility updates, the bones were

reassembled between 1953-55 by Jim Cope, former curator of the museum; Gertrude “Lucky” Ward, museum assistant; and students Mary Bloemker Brown ’55, Cameron Gifford ’55 and Robert Warner ’53. The 1955 time capsule was returned to its home underneath the platform for the mastodon and another time capsule was added by Heather Lerner, director of the Joseph Moore Museum, with signatures from Ann-Eliza Lewis, collections manager and the facilities staff who assisted with the move. (Photo courtesy Earlham Digital Archives.)

A good day to ride: Shiloh and Julia Freeman ’17 helped welcome a large group of visitors on an especially warm November day for Back Campus trail rides.

Multiple trail ride events are held each semester at the Suzanne Hoerner Jackson Equestrian Center, also home to the only collegiate equestrian program in the country that is entirely student-run.

Earlham Scene

How are You It’s a balmy Sunday morning in a quiet neighborhood near downtown Seattle, with bright leaves slowly drifting down from the trees. At home in her apartment, Elizabeth Richards ’14 is studying the urea cycle — learning how our bodies get rid of toxic nitrogen. After that, she’ll move on to studying the spine, and then how the brain signals the body to act.

“It’s fun,” she says about her day. “I love it.”

As a first-year student at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Richards has often heard the metaphor of “drinking from the fire hose,” but she’s far more excited than she is overwhelmed, enjoying the chance to learn with those with similar interests.

She’s even added volunteer work to her week.

Richards is co-chair of the medical school’s Tar Wars program, a national program that brings med students into elementary schools to teach an antitobacco curriculum. She also volunteers with the Student National Medical Association, a group that provides mentorship to undergraduates of color who are interested in medicine.

Her fascination with human health started when she was a child in the small town of Stanwood, Washington, where she shadowed her physical therapist mom, Maggie Strazzo, at work and accompanied her brother, who has mild epilepsy, to the hospital for neurological trials. “That sparked my interest,” she says. “I distinctly remember the one where they had to shave his head and put stickers on it, and I thought that was pretty entertaining. And seeing his brain activity on the screen was really interesting.”

As she approached college, her dad, Chris Richards ’75, encouraged her to consider his alma mater.

“He loved it there,” she says. “He wanted me to experience what it would be like to be surrounded

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by progressive, socially conscious, aware thinkers. He didn’t pressure me, but he was really excited when I made the decision to go.” The younger Richards found Earlham to be an excellent choice, and she enjoyed the opportunity to play soccer even as she pursued her academic interests.

Once she got to Earlham, her interest in medicine accelerated. “The professors in the science program really stimulated my mind and my interest in science,” she says, “and I also realized I was good at it.”

Freshman year, she took an introductory biology class from professors Bob Rosenberg and Peter Blair. “They are super enthusiastic about what they teach,” she says, “and that made me super excited to learn. They were always making sure we were engaged, not just lecturing at us.”

The admiration is mutual. “After many classes,” Rosenberg says, “Elizabeth would come to my office and ask a really upper-level question, and I’d make it clear that, ‘You know, that’s going beyond what you need to know,’ and she’d be like, ‘Yeah, but still — ’ She was a very top performer in the classroom, and then she asked for more. You just don’t get that very often.

“She is a role model,” he adds, “a student who just knocks the socks off everybody she meets. She sets herself a goal and achieves it, but never in an arrogant way. She’s such a joy. ” In her sophomore year, Richards took Blair’s immunology class, where she was introduced to medical research. Then Blair helped her find and apply to a summer research program at a Seattle hospital, where she studied the immune systems of mice. “It was basic science,” she says, “pretty much as far from human as you can get.”

When she got back to Earlham, she teamed up with Rosenberg on a research project with lamprey, a type of fish that can regenerate its spinal cord after

Feeling?

BY ROSEMARY CAMOZZI PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANITA NOWAKA

Studying T-cells helped Elizabeth Richards ’14 find her path to becoming a physician.

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“She is a role

model, a student who just knocks the socks off everybody she meets.

She sets herself a goal and achieves it, but never in an arrogant way. She’s such a joy.

”

—Bob Rosenberg, professor of biology

46

experiencing a debilitating injury.

“They have the facility to regenerate and reconnect their circuits in their motor pathway — to heal themselves and live normally again,” Rosenberg says. “Whereas for you and me, we’d be paralyzed below the injury more or less permanently.”

Rosenberg had begun the research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and then decided to replicate the experiments in his lab at Earlham. Richards was one of six students who helped him implement the study. They first had to construct an aquarium for the lamprey, then develop the skill to do surgery on the fish, and then create techniques for dissecting the spinal cords and collecting microscopically thin crosssections. They used antibodies to label certain proteins in the neurons.

“This was an amazing experience for me as a professor,” Rosenberg says. “I was building a research program from scratch here on the Earlham campus. I had a stellar team of top biochemistry and neuroscience majors. We divided into smaller groups and they worked spectacularly together.”

Rosenberg’s research is ongoing, but he’s still grateful to the students who helped him set it up. “It’s all a result of these students helping me build the program,” he says. “They were independent, they solved problems, and they worked incredibly hard. It was so satisfying.”

During the spring semester of her junior year, Richards went to India to study public health at Manipal University. She took six courses,

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including Ayurvedic medicine, maternal and child health, and surveillance of infectious disease. “It was awesome,” she says. “I noticed their emphasis on community health, and how physicians make home visits.

I like the idea of incorporating health care into everyday life. I don’t know how to incorporate these ideas into my future, but I’d like to.”

After graduating, she was awarded a two-year research training fellowship with the National Institutes of Health. After interviewing with seven principal investigators who were accepting students, she decided to work with Dr. Irini Sereti, a lead doctor in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an HIV research lab populated entirely by female PhDs and MDs. “I wanted to see what being a woman in science is like,” she says.

Building professional and personal relationships with her coworkers there helped her feel “comfortable, confident and supported,” she explains. “Many of our collaborating labs were led by men, so it was truly inspiring to see Dr. Irini’s confidence in the interactions that took place.”

Her mentor at the lab, Dr. Maura Manion, was studying a type of T cell that is involved in immune response and that is generally present during bacterial infection. Since HIV patients typically have suppressed immune systems, the researchers were trying to figure out how the body can fight off opportunistic infections in the presence of HIV. “I shadowed Dr. Manion as she saw patients, and we explained our research to them as they were providing us with samples,” Richards says. “And

then I would go to the lab and work with the samples. It was really awesome to see the connection between health care and research.”

Although the experience was fascinating, it made her realize that she didn’t want to be a researcher, but rather a doctor who works with patients on a daily basis. “I get a lot of joy from talking to people,” she says.

“The patients we were working with, and the samples we were working on, had a story connected to them, but I didn’t get to see that connection.”

Richards did succeed in making connections between her various educational experiences as an Earlham student — both on campus and off — so that they came together as a cohesive whole. With the help of Earlham’s Pre-Health Advising Program, she joined the more than 95% of applicants from Earlham who are accepted to medical school. Earlham has recently redoubled its efforts to help students who are interested in health careers by launching the Center for Global Health which helps students like Richards make connections between academic interests, research opportunities, offcampus study and career goals.

Meanwhile, she and 99 other first-year students attend lectures four days a week, and on Wednesdays they head to the hospital for on-the-job learning.

“The medical school has redesigned the curriculum so that it’s more clinical right off the bat,” Richards says. “We went to the hospital the first week of orientation and started interviewing patients. It was scary, but now I’m glad they just threw us in, because I feel pretty confident. I’m a lot more calm.”

The students interview patients and practice their physical exam skills. “We dig into the history and treatment of their present illness, and ask them how they’re feeling,” she says. “We dig deep into their social history too, because that’s a very important aspect of medicine. We just let them talk to us, and teach us. That’s why we’re here — for the people.”

After she completes medical school and a residency in internal medicine, Richards plans to specialize either in oncology or cardiology. “I don’t have to decide for two more years,” she says, “but I’m really interested in health care disparities, particularly in African American women. Cardiovascular disease is higher, and breast cancer is a huge burden on the African American female community.”

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Earlham’s Joseph Moore Museum has become one of the best sites for collaboration on campus.

Learning

by Teaching

For decades, a mummy and giant mastodon bones have welcomed visitors to Earlham’s Joseph Moore Museum.

Tierra Binder ’17 demonstrates the pollution resulting from burning gasoline compared to cleaner burning corn ethanol.

BUT AS MUSEUMS AROUND THE WORLD SHIFT away from simply preserving the past, the Joseph Moore Museum is adapting by strengthening its connection to the College’s core values of collaborative academic inquiry, integrative learning and community engagement.

“Traditional museums have always been about taking their information and sharing it with the visitor,” says Heather Lerner, an assistant professor of biology and the director of Earlham’s Joseph Moore Museum. “That’s not really the direction museums are going anymore. It’s more about engagement with the community. We wanted to have a participatory exhibit where the contributions came from both the campus and Richmond communities.”

BY BRIAN ZIMMERMAN PHOTOGRAPHED BY DAN OETTING

Four years ago, when the museum participated in the Museum Assessment Program sponsored by the American Association of Museums, conversations began about how the museum could become more collaborative and relevant to visitors and students alike. One answer sprung, in part, from a class taught by Jamey Pavey, director of integrated programs in sustainability, and the College’s Environment Leadership Program.

“Jamey wanted her students to interact with a broad audience to talk about the connection between society and science, and I was thinking about an exhibit that connected society and science so it all kind of came together,” Lerner says.

This fall, a group of 60 students, some who work for the museum, and others representing majors from across the curriculum, organized an open house called “Climate Games and Models of Change.” The event welcomed hundreds of guests to the museum for an interactive open house built around research and conversations already taking place on campus.

The open house was tailored for guests of all ages, and for the youngest of the museum’s guests, child-size laboratory coats were made available to make them feel even closer to the activities.

“I think something that will be surprising for a lot of people who haven’t been to our events before is the interactive nature of the exhibits,” says

Lydia Evans ’19, an environmental studies major who was enrolled in Pavey’s 2015 class and works at the Joseph Moore Museum. “These aren’t exhibits that you read and pass by.

There are people staffing them, they will engage with you in conversations, and all of the stations have an interactive component. It’s not a normal experience.”

The event speaks to Earlham’s distinctive approach to the liberal arts, which is amplified by EPIC, the Earlham Program for Integrative Collaboration, and three new interdisciplinary centers in social justice, entrepreneurship and innovation, and global health. This Earlham-wide approach encourages students from backgrounds in business, public policy, even the visual and performing arts, to help create opportunities for engagement at the museum that are centered around some of the world’s biggest challenges.

For the student presenters, the experience requires them to adapt to the different visitors.

“For each station we had to be prepared to present to both adults, children as well as Earlham students,” says Malia Staab ’18, a biology and environmental studies major. “We had to keep the children engaged, so we would use a drawing station and ask them, ‘where do you see climate around you?’ And for the adults, they would look at our posters, ask questions, or read some of the articles we had compiled.”

Mussa Ibrahim ’17 (right) explains how increasing temperatures can lead to the expansion of host ranges for insects that transmit disease.

Staab’s group presented on the effects of climate change and used a magnetic pictures game on a world map to help make their point.

“With the global temperature change, we’re experiencing more precipitation, there’s more flooding, there’s more storms and a there’s higher chance of disease,” she says.

“We kind of explain all of that and we have an activity that goes with it where we have pictures of some of the things that are happening around the world and you can place them on a world map or the U.S. It was to get people thinking about climate change and how it affects where you live and the world around you.”

That’s the case, even if you live hundreds of miles away from coastlines where the effects of climate change are more pronounced.

“We are talking about coral bleaching and why it’s relevant to people in Indiana because there’s no ocean or coral around,” says Mayeesha Ahmed ’17, a biochemistry major who is also the museum’s scientific illustrator. She explains that algae in the coral produce 75 percent of the oxygen that we breathe. “So it basically affects everyone.”

understanding of the aspect of climate change their station is focused on,” she says. Pavey also helps presenters think through how they will adapt their presentation to the variety of ages of the visitors and how to improve understanding overall. “Through the development of their stations they do a lot with visual communications and develop stronger skills.”

Chehena Samarawickreme ’17, a business and nonprofit management major who works with the museum’s marketing group, says another strength of the event is showcasing the strength of a liberal arts education, no matter what you study.

“”

For many years, the museum was thought of as a spinoff of the biology or geology department, but what we’re seeing now is that students and faculty from across the curriculum see this as their place.

“I think this event is a really good collaboration between the museum and Earlham’s different classes because they really showcase student work and how relevant it is to major —Heather Lerner, assistant professor topics today,” Samarawickreme says. of biology and the director of Earlham’s “I’m not a science person, so I definitely Joseph Moore Museum felt like this wasn’t really a space that I could take up at Earlham, but I was says. “We had no idea that there would wrong. be so many spin-offs with students “I’ve learned a lot about this space, and organizing ‘Meatless Mondays’ or biketo-school weeks. the people involved in it,” she says. “I hope people also take away that the museum is a place where you can come to and learn about a lot of things, be engaged, learn and have fun.”

The experiences of the student presenters are rewarding, even transformative, Pavey says.

While climate change-themed events have been popular at the museum, so have others like a neurosciencethemed “Brain Explorers” event that took place last year.

“The students do real research as part of the coursework and get a much greater in-depth

“We are bringing people together around a topic and making a space for conversations to happen,” Lerner

“The number of applicants from students asking to work in the museum has skyrocketed as well, in part because of events like this because we are welcoming a group of people and showing how everyone has a role to play here. For many years, the museum was thought of as a spinoff of the biology or geology department, but what we’re seeing now is that students and faculty from across the curriculum see this as their place.”

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R S E

BY JAY MARSHALL, DEAN, EARLHAM SCHOOL OF RELIGION AND VICE PRESIDENT OF EARLHAM

New Wrinkles to a Longtime Objective My predecessors at ESR were wise. In its early years, the school recognized that teaching adult learners required an appropriate educational philosophy and pedagogy.

The faculty in those days committed itself to a model of holistic education that engaged the total person. Holistic education demanded an integration of learning that involved intellectual, emotional, and spiritual self in the learning process. Students were not passive vessels who merely received and regurgitated information passed along by professors.

In those early years, this commitment was particularly on display in an action/reflection model most easily seen in a Supervised Ministry (Field Education) experience where students implemented what they were learning in a live setting, then reflected together on the experience in a classroom setting. Such reflection provided an opportunity for critique, affirmation, or revision.

More recently, thanks to a curriculum review, feedback from our graduates, and program assessment activities, the commitment to integration is more deeply woven into the educational process. For instance, becoming more cognizant of multiple perspectives and overlooked voices led to new additions to the Biblical Studies curriculum. A course on “The Bible in a Global Context” helps students expand their view beyond their personal, denominational or North American viewpoint. Another new addition is “The Bible and Pastoral Care,” actually team-taught with the pastoral care faculty member. Courses like these combat the silo effect, bringing together important disciplines that form our graduates while thinking intentionally about how the integration of the two perspectives strengthens a practitioner’s effectiveness The Master of Divinity degree program concludes with three capstone courses: the aforementioned Supervised

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Ministry, Constructive Theology, and Comprehensive Seminar. Each demands evidence of integrated learning.

In particular, Comprehensive Seminar is designed so that students answer questions or respond to incidents, addressing the matter from multiple perspectives and disciplines. These start with a personal perspective because knowing our assumptions and biases is important. Articulating a biblical response to the question is also important, but not the final word!

What does history teach about the issue? Or how does a theological perspective influence one’s answer? How does one’s ethical position contribute to the answer one gives?

In total, eight different lenses must be applied toward completing these assignments.

This commitment to integrative learning at ESR is tried and true. There is a new wrinkle emerging, however.

Can preparation for ministry be incorporated in an entrepreneurial mindset that looks for ways to bring these gifts into unusual settings? This wrinkle has at least two distinct sources. First is a steady stream of graduates that choose something other than traditional ministry outlets and who recognize the value of the theological and ethical framework acquired through their studies here. The words of one alumna who is adamant that the ethical framework she received here is the kind of foundation that would have been beneficial when she was earning her law degree, continue to echo in my memory.

Second are the changing realities of church, student interest, and employment options. The opportunities and challenges facing our graduates are changing! The need for bi-vocational ministry or the desire to launch a service-oriented nonprofit are becoming more common.

Integrating a mindset for ministry in nontraditional and entrepreneurial settings may well be the best emerging argument for an integrative approach to theological education.

A MATCH TO

Take advantage of a unique dollar-for-dollar match to create an annual scholarship with a gift of $2,500 or more.

Intrigued?

Visit earlham.edu/annualscholarships

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WOMEN;S & MEN’S

EARLHAM COLLEGE

BY MITCH BLANKESPOOR

takes to the links

PHOTOGRAPHED BY MITCH BLANKESPOOR

THE INAUGURAL WOMEN’S GOLF TEAM for Earlham competed this fall. First-year Hannah Toresdahl led the way for the Quakers, finishing the season with an 88.48 strokes per round average and notching a program-low round of 84 at the Hanover Invitational.

“Golf is a great addition to our campus and a sign of our ongoing commitment to investing in the student-athlete experience,” says Director of Athletics Mike Bergum. Besides fielding its first women’s team, Earlham has also brought back men’s golf, absent since 1993.

Practice and home tournaments take place four miles southeast of campus at Forest Hills Country Club, a two-time host of the Indiana Open.

Earlham’s golf teams both play each semester, with the women’s conference championship tournament taking place in the fall and the men’s in the spring.

Earlham played in its first Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conferenc Women’s Golf Championships program history in October. Toresdahl finished in 20th individually and teammate Aaron Monroe placed 22nd.

Graham Sherard ’20

In addition to traveling to tournaments throughout the fall, the Quaker hosted the Earlham Invitational at Forest Hills in October. The one-day tournament featured five men’s teams and three women’s teams. Earlham finished third on the men’s side, with firstyear Graham Sherard earning medalist honors for his low round of 73.

Earlham begins spring play at the Mount St. Joseph University Invitational held in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 25-26.

Hannah Toresdahl ’20

BY MITCH BLANKESPOOR

Standou t Quakers

PHOTOGRAPHED BY DAN OETTING

Several Earlham College student-athletes earned fall postseason honors: Senior field hockey player Megan Hut was named First Team All-Great Lakes Region by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association for the second consecutive season along with garnering First Team All-North Coast Athletic Conference honors. Hut, who finished the season with six goals and five assists, led the Quakers to six wins in 2016, the highest total for the program since the 2008 season.

Sophomore Maite Turlings, Hut’s cousin, earned Second Team All-Great Lakes Region from the NFHCA and Second Team All-NCAC. She scored four goals and assisted on three others.

Sophomore volleyball middle hitter Ashleigh Burton earned First Team AllHeartland Collegiate Athletic Conference.

Burton finished second in the conference in kills (374) and kills per set (3.63).

Senior football linebacker Lajay Kelly was named First Team All-HCAC in 2016 after garnering Second Team AllHCAC honors the previous three seasons.

Kelly led the squad in tackles with 80. He finished his senior season with one forced fumble, one sack, and one interception that was returned 99 yards for a touchdown.

Kelly ended his Earlham career with 300 tackles.

Megan Hut ’17

Cross country senior Gabriel Penk and sophomore Rachel Wilkins earned All-HCAC honors for their finishes at the HCAC Championships in November. Penk finished fifth in the eight-kilometer race while Wilkins placed sixth in the sixkilometer run.

Gladys Bassett is appointed the first coach and director of women’s athletics. Athletic colors changed from yellow and white to maroon and white. The former color scheme “dirtied too easily.”

The school’s athletic colors changed from yellow and white to yellow and cream. (The next year, the administration reversed this decision.)

Earlham fields its first intercollegiate football team. Players ride to their away games in horse-drawn wagons, a tradition that would last nearly 25 years. Lack of eligibility rules permitted professors A.T. Murray and E. P. Trueblood to play on the student team.

Football is played circa 1898. Horses and carriages can be seen to the right of the image. (Photo courtesy Earlham Digital Archives.)

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1946 1915-1949

Clara Comstock arrives in 1915 to serve as the professor of physical education for women. She organizes the Women’s Athletic Association in her first year at Earlham, introducing women’s field hockey to the college’s athletics program. From 1930-46 Comstock served at the dean of women, later taking the role of dean of personnel from 194649. She was also instrumental in starting horseback riding on campus.

1913-1914

Turning back the pages of Earlham athletic history reveals everything from an Olympic athlete to faculty members playing on the football team. View the rest of the Earlham athletics timeline at goearlham.com.

1907-1908

Hustlin’ through History

Former football end and quarterback Wendell Stanley ’26 is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1968, the Wendell M. Stanley Senior Athlete-Scholar Award would be established in his honor.

1889-90

BY JEREMY BLEH ’17

BY MITCH BLANKESPOOR

Under Construction:

Matlack-Messer Soccer Stadium

The Earlham College women’s and men’s soccer programs will play home games on a familiar pitch in 2017, but with significantly upgraded surroundings. Next fall will mark the first time in Earlham soccer history that the programs will have a home field facility that includes a clubhouse, locker rooms, media room, team room, training room and coaches’ offices.

Fans will still be able to cheer on the Quakers from an eastern fence line, but will also enjoy newly built amenities, including closer parking, bleachers, public restrooms, scoreboard and sound system.

“The rich history of soccer at Earlham College will be enhanced by the competition of the Matlack-Messer Soccer Stadium,” Director of Athletics Mike Bergum says.

The Matlack-Messer Soccer Stadium will be dedicated during the 2017 homecoming weekend. Construction has been ongoing since June 2016.

The new facility takes its name from Earlham’s most distinguished coaches for soccer, Charlie Matlack and Roy Messer. Matlack began his coaching career at Earlham in 1954 and guided the Earlham men’s soccer program for 25 years. Messer, who retired as head coach for the men’s team in 2015, led the Quakers for 34 years.

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Faculty Activities In October, HongHong Tinn, assistant professor of history, was elected to serve as an executive council member of the Society for the History of Technology for a three-year term, 2017-2019. SHOT was formed in 1958 to encourage the study of the development of technology and its relations with society and culture.

During 2016 Nate Eastman, associate professor of English, became vice president of the Richmond Shakespeare Festival and served as Earlham’s institutional representative for the Rhodes Scholarship. He also consulted on the redesign of the rhetoric program at Hampden-Sidney College, and received grants from the foundations for Mellon, Stamm Koechlein Family and Wayne County.

Library Director Neal Baker published “Secondary World Infrastructures and Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Games” in Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf (Routledge, 2016).

Social Change in the United States: Badiou’s Apostle and the Post-Factual Moment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Inspired by the questions being asked by peace and global studies students during the past decade, the book tackles the question of why the United States is so resistant to radical change toward economic justice and peace.

Professor of Chemistry Michael A. Deibel, codirector of the Center for Global Health and the Integrated Program in Health Sciences, was reappointed to serve as the treasurer for the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions. He has served on the NAAHP board of directors for the past five years.

Professor of Psychology Nelson Bingham continues his role as a peer reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission. Nelson has been in this role for 25 years, visiting one to three institutions per year. In the past year, he has served as team chair for two visits to liberal arts institutions.

Associate Professor and Director of Peace and Global Studies Joanna Swanger, has published a book, Radical

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Becky Jestice ’97, assistant professor of business and nonprofit management, presented “Walking in Someone’s

Virtual Shoes: Virtual Worlds as a Tool for Developing Empathy,” at the 22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems in San Diego, Calif., in August.

Welling Hall, Plowshares Professor of Peace Studies, Jana Schroeder ’85/’12, director of community engagement, and Jim Cason ’79 presented a workshop, “From Service Learning to Advocacy” at the Global Liberal Arts Alliance Institute at Kalamazoo College in October. The workshop described cooperation between Earlham and the Friends Committee on National Legislation as a practice for enriching civic engagement.

Professor of Chemistry Corinne Deibel gave an invited talk at the Early Stone-Walled Fortification and Process of Chinese Civilization International Conference on the Shimao Site in Shenmu, China, in August. The only other occidental schools represented were Stanford University, UCLA, Cambridge University and Oxford University. Her talk was based on research conducted in China with Jiqiao Shi ’14, Yazan Deek ’14, Jonathon Hornak ’17 and Hannah Munro ’17, in collaboration with Michael Deibel and Sun Zhouyong of the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Institute.

Seth Powless, assistant professor of business and nonprofit management, presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute in Austin, Texas, in November. He also published, “Eroding Business Communication Skills Among B-Students: Causes, Effects, and Suggestions to Consider,” in the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, also in November.

Powless also was selected to be on a panel of “experts” for WalletHub. Assistant Professor of Ancient and Classical Studies Max Paule presented, “Heracles Goes to Washington: The Apotheosis of an American Patriot in Olympus Has Fallen (2013)” at Gods and Heretics: The 2016 Film and History Conference, held in October in Milwaukee.

Associate Professor Betsy Schlabach presented “Black Chicago and Influenza, 1918-1921” at the American Studies Association Conference in November in Denver, and she presented “Mapping the Gendered Geographies of Bronzeville’s Underground Economy” at the Urban History Association Conference in October in Chicago.

The Border Studies Program was awarded a $57,000 Expanding Collaboration Initiative grant from the Great Lakes Colleges Association. Patty Lamson, director of the Center for Global Education, served as the co-leader along with colleague Glen Kuecker from DePauw University. Faculty from Kalamazoo, DePauw, Hope, Kenyon and Earlham participated. Jonathan Diskin, professor of economics, and Juan Caballero, assistant professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies, participated from Earlham.

Jonathan Diskin, professor of economics, and Patty Lamson, director of the Center for Global Education, participated in the With/Out Borders: Post-Oppression Imaginaries and Decolonized Futures conference hosted by the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College in October.

Gene Hambrick ’73, director of the Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and executive in residence, and Howard Lamson, director of Amigos Latino Center and professor emeritus of Spanish,

were presented the first annual Brad Holmes Award by the Central Indiana Tennis Association.

Library Director and Coordinator of Information Services Emeritus Tom Kirk co-authored, with Mignon Adams and Larry Hardesty, “Mentoring a Generation of College Library Directors: The College Library Directors’ Mentor Program” which will be published in portal: Libraries and the Academy in 2017.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Lori Watson presented “Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource (VIPEr): A Community for Teachers and Students of Inorganic Chemistry” and a day-long workshop “Expanding the Frontiers of Inorganic Chemistry,” at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education in August of 2016. She also is part of the inaugural class of the GLCA Academic Leadership Institute for Mid-Career Faculty.

Max CrumleyEffinger, international student adviser, had three presentations, The Benefits of Online Forms for Small International Education Offices, Keeping the ‘Up’ in Upgrade: Coordinating Positive Technology Change in the International Education Office and a poster titled Proposal for a GPI-Based Assessment of Education earlham.edu

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Abroad Learning Goal Fulfillment at the 2016 NAFSA State Conference in Indianapolis.

Symphony Orchestra’s “Enormous Room” music and photography project in September.

In November, Assistant Professor of Biology Emi Smith received a grant from the Indiana Academy of Science for a collaborative research project involving a colleague at Lycoming College and undergraduate students at Earlham.

Jennifer Lewis was the lead trainer for a pre-conference training workshop called “Intercultural Communication in Practice” and also presented “It Changed My Life!: Methods of Assessing Outcomes in Education Abroad.” Both presentations took place at the Region VI NAFSA Conference in Indianapolis.

Karim Sagna, professor of French and Francophone Studies, presented his paper on “Reincarnation and Memory in Le lieutenant de Kouta” at the 59th annual meeting of the African Studies Association in Washington DC, in December.

Associate Professor of Art F. Walt Bistline Jr. published his first book of photography in March, “South Padre Island – The Bird Blind Series” available at Blurb. com. Two of his photographs were accepted for the 2016 Whitewater Valley Juried Exhibition in October; one received the 3rd Place award.

One of his photographs was accepted for the 2016 Richmond Art Museum Juried Exhibition in October. Several of Bistline’s photos and those of his students were used in the Richmond

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Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Katie Kameen’s artwork has been accepted into exhibitions in the Netherlands, Chicago, California and the prestigious art jewelry exhibition, Talente Competition 2017 in Munich, Germany.

Laura Leavitt, director of the Writing Center, presented at the International Writing Centers Association conference in Denver and the Watson Conference at the University of Louisville.

Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College / WINTER 2017

Chris Smith, associate professor of biology, gave an invited talk at the International Congress of Entomology in Orlando in

September. Also, Smith, Professor of Computer Science Charlie Peck, Associate Professor of Biology Peter Blair and eight Earlham alums — Charlie Boyd ’14, Brianne Cody ’16, Alexander Hazel ’14, Ashley Hedrick ’15, Brent Kramer ’15, Kristin Muterspaw ’15, Emily Sells ’15 and Zoe Wolfe ’15 — were listed as authors on the paper accepted for publication in Ecology and Evolution.

The other authors are faculty and students from Indiana University East.

Professor Emeritus of Computer Science Jim Rogers gave two talks, “Subregular but not Star-Free” (on models of undergraduate research) and “Cognitive Complexity of Patterns of Phonological Stress” in October at Haverford College.

Professor Emeritus of Biology John Iverson was senior editor on a monograph with 18 chapters on the biology of iguanas published in June. He was first author on two of the chapters and a coauthor on three others.

Visiting Assistant Professor Kelly Szott had a book chapter published in Critical Approaches to Harm Reduction: Conflict, Institutionalization, (De-)Politicization, and Direct Action, edited by C. Smith and Z. Marshall (Nova Science Publishers, 2016).

Professor Emeritus of History Randall Shrock published “Robert Dinwiddie (1692–1770)” in the Encyclopedia Virginia in March.

Jamey Pavey, director of Integrated Programs in Sustainability, presented a paper at the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences Annual Conference in June in Washington, DC. Pavey and Abigail R. McCullough ’17 presented at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education Annual Conference, in October in Baltimore.

T. Weston Miller, retired director of Instructional Technology and Media, continues to serve as treasurer of the ECT Foundation, which supports the Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Education Jay Roberts was invited to speak at the “Future of Learning” symposium sponsored by Gensler Architects, in August in San Francisco. He is working with Evansville Day School on a yearlong faculty development

program on experiential education.

In September he worked with the University of Alabama and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness on their Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) centered on experiential learning.

He also gave a public lecture titled “Wicked Problems, Real Work, and Experiential Learning: A Process for High-Impact Engagement.” Roberts was invited to serve on the editorial board of the Journal for Outdoor and Environmental Education.

Jonathan Graham, associate vice president for Marketing and Communications, had a workshop production performed of his new play, A Squirrel Boy, A Robot Cat, but Also Parents, at Theatre 33 in Salem, Oregon.

Professor Emeritus of Chemistry Paul Ogren presented “O. Theodore Benfey: A Vital Spirit and Intellect” in August as part of a symposium: “A Salute to Ted Benfey at 90: Science, History, Culture & a Commitment to Humanism” at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Philadelphia. Many will remember that Ted was in the Earlham Chemistry Department in the 1960s and 1970s.

Fadem gave presentations with students on current work on Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Geological Society of America annual national meeting in Denver this fall. She was an invited panelist for a Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College webinar on developing students’ data skills. Fadem is chair of the Archaeological Geology Division of the Geological Society of America. She also took her spring Geochemistry class to the Levi Coffin House to test the well water in the historic well uncovered adjacent to the kitchen. They found that the water is “incredibly clean and safe” and she is currently preparing a full report for the museum.

Professor of English Scott Hess published two essays, “Wordsworthshire and Thoreau Country: Transatlantic Landscapes of Genius” in Transatlantic Literature and Author Love in the Nineteenth Century and, for Modern Language Quarterly, “Posthuman Ecologies and the MoreThan-Human World.”

Associate Professor of Geology Cynthia Fadem and colleagues have an article forthcoming in Archaeological Research in Asia. earlham.edu

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1 - Tailgaters Anglos Rainer ’98 and Gerry Keesling ’82.

coming 2016

2 - Nancy Wagner Sinex ’76 collects a hug from Big Earl.

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3 - Newly inducted members of the Earlham Athletics Hall of Fame are recognized at halftime.

4 - Victor Zuniga, junior midfielder, pushes the ball upfield against Anderson.

5 - Jessica Johnson Krickenbarger ’08 and daughter Kaiya are ready for an afternoon of homecoming activities.

6 - Shannon Pittman ’20 cheers on the Quakers.

7- No marshmallow is safe at the homecoming bonfire.

8- Lynn Schafer Regan ’66 (wearing purple) and Marty Murdock ’66 (orange) catch up with friends on The Heart.

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9 - Members of the class of 1986, Renata Ewing, Karen Tripp, Tricia Lister and Leigh Mamlin.

10 - Erekle Tsamalashvili ’17 (center) meets Mark Rebstock ’91 (left) and Kirk Bixler ’89 at the Alumni Connections Social.

11 - Coach Nick Johnson ’01 leads a pre-game ritual before taking on Mt. St. Joseph.

12- Gwen Weaver ’71 and “Shorty” Birenbaum ’61.

13- First-year defender Sydney Barnes celebrates a 2-1 victory over Oberlin.

14 - Junior midfielder Kelsey Moore looks for an opening against Anderson.

15- Bria Robinson ’17 dances with the Earthquakers at halftime of the football game.

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

Earlham FUND Building Capacity to Inspire

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Your generosity Z

James Johnson ’17 has found many ways to challenge himself at Earlham. An African and African American Studies major and a starting linebacker on the football team, James has also been an important voice in campus conversations about diversity issues.

“I am an activist, and I made myself vulnerable by engaging with others and connecting with people’s struggles on campus, in our country and in the world at large. I found that without a spiritual connection, it is impossible to do this hard work.

It wasn’t until I made myself vulnerable that I found success.”

Passionate and engaged alumni can support the transformative work that students like James are undertaking to challenge this community and imagine a more inclusive Earlham. Make a gift to the Earlham Fund and help the next generation of Earlham students find success.

earlham.edu Make your gift online at earlham.edu/online-giving.

For questions contact the Office of Institutional Advancement, 765-983-1313 or earlhamfund@earlham.edu.

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801 National Road West Richmond, Indiana 47374-4095