“ T H E G R E AT E ST GIFT”
Trailblazer
As Director of Development Alison Kothe prepared to retire last December, she recalled the way she came to Wabash 12 years ago. She said Alison Kothe Wabash Professor of Classics John Fischer gave her “the greatest gift” of her working life: Alison had just left an unsatisfying job with a bank in 1999 when she sat down with Fischer, who had been her brother Jim’s faculty advisor at Wabash and had become a family friend. Students and faculty paid tribute to Professor Butler after Fischer told her about an opening in development at Wabash. she finished teaching her final class in Baxter Hall. Melissa Butler He suggested she “try something completely new.” “John said with a sweep of the arm, ‘Child, come to Students, faculty, and staff crowded into the Rogge Lounge in December Wabash,’” Alison recalled. “So I did.” to offer their best wishes to Professor Melissa Butler, the first woman to And for 11 years as a major gifts officer then director earn tenure at the College, who retired last winter after 37 years serving of development, Alison, as Director of Alumni Affairs Tom the Wabash community. Runge said, “modeled dedicated, over-the-top performance. “I knew we had the right candidate for the job; she had the moxie it was “It was Alison’s vision, leadership, drive, and personal going to take for a woman to join a faculty that had infinitely more Davids dedication that motivated the staff to achieve.” on the faculty than it did women.”—Professor Emeritus of Political Science She doesn’t like public attention. Alison didn’t want a fuss David Hadley, recalling Melissa Butler’s job interview at Wabash made about her retirement, doesn’t trust gushing sentimen“I can’t say enough about her way with students, her ability to make every tality, so she slyly dodged any efforts at a reception. kind of experience into a learning experience for the students, and her abilAnd that’s fitting, as her best work was always behind ity to cope with just about anything.”—Professor of Economics Kay Widdows the scenes. It came alive in hundreds of face-to-face converRead more on page sations and emails and phone calls with alumni, students, and faculty; in unexpected kindnesses; in the creative ways she found to connect alumni with the College; in being an advocate for what alumni cared about and finding who at today’s Wabash they would benefit from knowing; in mending fences and listening when alumni were disappointed with their alma mater, then finding a way to begin healing that relationship. John Fischer gave Alison Kothe the greatest gift of her professional life, but Alison’s insight, lived out in her 11 years at Wabash, is a greater gift to us: a deep understanding that advancement work is ultimately about honoring relationships—honest, heartfelt, mutually beneficial relationships. That’s a legacy that will continue long past her Bonnie Jo Campbell tenure here.—Steve Charles
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You try to trust that you have an impact, whether they learn everything, or just some things. —Daniel Ranschaert ’12, quoted in “Brothers and Sisters of the 21st Century,” an article in the New York Times about Ranschaert’s teaching with the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE). The Times continues: “Devoting themselves to society’s overlooked and left-behind, voluntarily accepting a wage of $1,000 a month, the teachers…have formed the 21st-century equivalent of the sisters and brothers of the Catholic religious orders whose sacrifices sustained the American parochial school system.” Sam Glowinski ’12 also teaches in the program. Read the article at WM Online.
Writing fiction and doing higher-level mathematics are not completely different. In mathematics, you prove theorems using absolutely rigorous mathematical logic. In a story you move through a situation with a sort of emotional logic. In mathematics it has to be logical, and fiction needs to be plausible, and interesting enough that people won’t put it down.
—Visiting writer Bonnie Jo Campbell (who has a master’s in mathematics), during a questionand-answer session following a reading from her best-selling novel, Once Upon a River.
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