Articles by Amy Lovett

Elementary Physics

May 7, 2013

Physicist David Tucker-Smith welcomed local fourth-graders to his lab.

Local fourth-graders were wowed by physics demonstrations in Professor David Tucker-Smith’s lab on campus.

Students and faculty members walking through Thompson Physics on Monday afternoon found themselves peeking into a classroom full of 60 fourth-graders from Williamstown Elementary School eagerly watching a demonstration by David Tucker-Smith, associate professor of physics.

Frani Micelli, a teacher at Williamstown Elementary, said the annual demonstrations by the physics department are always a highlight of the fourth-grade science curriculum. “The benefit is they get to see cool contraptions and get to hear it from real scientists, not just their teachers,” she said. “It’s more reinforcement.”

The students were wowed from the beginning, when they filed into the classroom to see multiple demonstrations set up. Tucker-Smith covered concepts of basic machines and Newton’s laws of motion, information that the fourth-graders had already been introduced to. The students eagerly anticipated Tucker-Smith’s questions, offering examples from their own lives to supplement his demonstrations and suggesting other experiments they could try as a group.

Highlights included Tucker-Smith rubbing a balloon on his hair to generate static electricity, which garnered a chorus of laughter from the room. One student suggested he stick it to the wall, where it remained for most of the lecture. Nearly the entire room jumped at the chance to help with a later demonstration of acceleration and how we understand motion, and students peppered him with questions throughout.

For his final demonstration, Tucker-Smith used a strobe light to make falling drops of liquid appear frozen in space, demonstrating the effect of gravitational pull on the acceleration of objects as they fall.

Tucker-Smith is the latest of several physics professors who have played a role in a longstanding relationship between the department and the elementary school. “We all want to help out,” he said. “The kids are so curious and enthusiastic.”

Computer Science 25th Anniversary

April 19, 2013

When Andrea Danyluk joined the computer science faculty in 1993, the college asked what equipment she would need for her work. Her request of a SPARCstation 20, with four 50MHz processors, 512 MB of memory, and 1.05 GB of disk space and a separate 10 GB external hard drive was unprecedented, and extraordinarily expensive—the computer alone cost $18,000. Today, most inexpensive laptops have almost as much memory as her external hard drive did 20 years ago.

While it may seem as if so much about the field of computer science has changed in the last quarter-century, longtime computer science professor Duane Bailey says the changes are on the surface. “They seem dramatic if you think about what a computer is today,” he says. “Yet, computer scientists are less concerned with the details of the technology du jour and more with the core questions we’ve been asking for years.”

They’re questions that Williams faculty have been asking since the mid-1970s, when introductory computer science, algorithms, and programming languages courses were taught by faculty in mathematics. Twenty-five years ago, computer science was becoming distinct as its own discipline, and these questions—what is a computer, what is information, and how can we structure information efficiently?—were increasingly demanding a faculty that could ask and answer them through research and in the classroom. There was a friendly parting of the ways—indeed the departments still share many students—and the computer science department was born. “The split was natural,” remembers Kim Bruce, the department’s first chair.

Some might wonder if it was appropriate for a liberal arts institution to train computer scientists—why not leave it to the computer engineering departments at larger universities? “Our faculty believe in the liberal arts, enjoy teaching, and actively involve students in research,” explains Bailey. “While few students come here thinking of themselves as computer scientists, 15 to 20 graduate each year sharing our passion.”

Danyluk adds, “Like other disciplines in the sciences, computer science has a strong theoretical foundation, it can be investigated experimentally, and it has practical applications.” And, more and more, computer science reaches into nearly every discipline.

Bill Lenhart, who had to choose between computer science and math when the departments split, explains the thinking behind the development of the discipline. “We wanted our graduates to be well educated in the fundamental ideas of computer science, so they would be prepared for jobs in technology, for graduate school in computer science, for whatever field they chose,” he says. To that end, Williams faculty have been involved with the national conversation about computer science curriculum development for the last 25 years.

Reflecting on her experience on the Association for Computing Machinery’s CS2013 Curriculum Steering Committee, the national committee charged with designing computer science curriculum, Danyluk notes that the three core courses Williams offered in the ’70s and ’80s are still fundamental to the major today. “Over the years, we have built up an onion of skills that our students are exposed to,” she says. “But the core remains the same.”

And because many Williams students double major, their understanding of that core—and everything that grows out of it—is that much broader. Bailey calls it “the softer sensibility” that Williams alumni bring to the careers they choose. “It’s hard to imagine what a computer will look like in another 25 years, but our students will be able to contribute in meaningful ways when that time comes.”

Case in point: A.J. Brush ’96, a senior researcher at Microsoft who describes her work in home automation systems as “trying to imagine the future and getting as close to it as possible,” has had to be an adaptable thinker throughout her career. “At Williams,” she reflects, “I learned not to be scared of the unfamiliar. I learned how to learn.”

Spring Break: Broadening Horizons

April 18, 2013

During spring break, Williams students scatter to the four winds. Some train with their teams or tour with performance groups. Others pursue academic research. But for a large number of students, spring break is a time to learn about and serve in communities as diverse as New Orleans, Nicaragua, and even a Navajo reservation.

From el campo…

Williams students spent spring break working in clinics in Nicaragua.

Fifteen Williams students spent six days working directly with medical patients in clinics all over Nicaragua.

Tre’dez Colbert and Patrick Joslin, both Class of ’14, say their spring break experience will stay with them for the rest of their lives. The pair led a group of pre-med students from Williams, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke Colleges to Nicaragua, where they spent six days working directly with patients in medical clinics all over the country.

Each day the group drove to a different temporary clinic set up in a church or a school by Global Medical Training (GMT), a humanitarian organization that gives undergraduates the opportunity for hands-on medical training in the developing world. Colbert and Joslin also traveled with GMT to the Dominican Republic during spring break 2012.

Working together in small teams and with an interpreter, students met with one patient at a time, using body language as well as the spoken word to determine what was wrong. Then the students consulted with a doctor, who would agree (or disagree) with their diagnosis and help determine the best treatment.

“We saw a lot of high blood pressure,” Colbert says. “Cowboys working in el campo all day, drinking a lot of coffee, probably not drinking enough water, would come in complaining of fatigue, dizziness, shortness of breath. We knew that probably meant hypertension.”

Joslin recalls a woman who came in with flu-like symptoms, her healthy daughter in tow. The team of students gave the mother a prescription and smiled at the little girl. That’s when the mother told the students that her daughter’s heart is on the right side of her body. Joslin knew situs inversus to be a condition a doctor might see once in a career, and asked if he could listen to her heartbeat. “It was incredible,” he says, “to see that her body works just fine this way.”

Both Joslin and Colbert say they are committed to working in developing nations or with patients living in poverty in the U.S. after they graduate. Adds Colbert: “It solidified my resolve to work in communities that don’t have enough resources.”

…To a reservation

Nine Williams students helped out on a Navajo reservation during spring break.

Eight students helped out in the classroom and community center on a Navajo reservation.

This was the fifth spring break Williams students spent on the Navajo reservation in Window Rock, Ariz., but the first time they volunteered at the local public schools there. Seth Tobolsky ’13 and Amanda Washington ’14—who have both spent each of their spring breaks on the reservation—led a group of nine Ephs to the region this year.

“In the past, the Williams group has gone to one of two private schools in the area,” explains Tobolsky. “In the public school system, I learned a great deal about the government’s relationship with the Navajo Nation and how underfunded schools truly suffer under legislation such as the sequester.”

The group helped out in classrooms, dug garden plots at the community center, and made connections they hope last a lifetime.

Washington—who plans to lead the trip again next year—spent mornings in a fifth-grade class at the public elementary school, helping out as a teacher’s assistant. She spent afternoons at the community center, which is open from 4 to 9:30 p.m.—“and later,” she says, “if the kids don’t have anywhere to go. There’s not much to do on the reservation, so what do teenagers get up to? The community center is a safe place, and their parents know where they are.”

The group also spent time at the Navajo Immersion School—where classes were conducted entirely in Navajo—ate traditional Navajo meals, including mutton and fried bread, and talked with high school students about the future. “The percentage of Navajo kids going on to college is low,” Washington says. “We helped in programs geared toward getting kids to think about higher education.”

Adds Tobolsky, “We helped get kids excited about learning. It’s amazing to make even a small difference in their lives.”

Taking the Long View

February 27, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI, courtesy of AP/Alexandre Meneghini

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on Feb. 28 was a dramatic moment in the history of the Roman Catholic Church and of the papacy, and few people know that history more deeply than does Williams President Emeritus Francis Oakley. An esteemed scholar of medieval political thinking and church history, Oakley shares his views on the current news as seen through a historical lens.

Oakley on precedence… The real precedent, which seems quite analogous to Benedict’s resignation as pope, is that of Celestine V in 1294. He was a hermit, lived all his life in a cave. At the time of a protracted papal vacancy—the church was having a great difficulty in making an appointment—the cardinals dug him out and appointed him. Though a rather saintly figure, he was utterly unprepared for the task and overwhelmed by it. As a result, he resigned after about three months amid mounting chaos. In resigning, the statement he made was not dissimilar to that of Benedict XVI—in effect, he acknowledged that he was in over his head. He couldn’t discharge the heavy responsibilities thrust upon him. Interestingly, Benedict has some sort of veneration for him. Apparently he has visited Celestine’s tomb three times. It seems reasonable to think that resignation may have been on his mind for some time.

On rewriting history… The Catholic Church has an ancient tradition, but it is, oddly, a remarkably presentist institution, and that preoccupation with the present casts a long shadow over the past. As a result, its history tends to be rewritten to bolster present-day policies and beliefs. The official list of popes is a good example of that process. As a precedent for Benedict’s resignation, commentators have pointed to that of Gregory XII in 1415, but in Gregory’s case there was a very complicated micro-politics involved. As far as I’m concerned, he was simply a claimant to the papacy at a time when there were three lines of claimants. He happened to be the Roman claimant, but it is only since around the time of the French Revolution that the Vatican has moved consistently to rehabilitate the Roman line and to claim retroactively that it had been the true line all along. Insofar as historical evidence counts, that is simply not correct. At the time of the disputed election of 1378, no one knew who the real pope was; that is why there was a crisis. Moreover, Gregory XII and his opposite number in Avignon were both deposed in 1409 by the Council of Pisa, which then elected Alexander V. For a while it looked as if that would succeed in ending the schism. Then Alexander, who was well respected, died suddenly and was succeeded by John XXIII, who was not. He turned out, in fact, to be a somewhat corrupt figure. In 1415, as a result, and even though it viewed him as the true pope, the Council of Constance deposed him as a criminal. Though it viewed neither Gregory XII nor his Avignonese rival as legitimate pope, in order to clear the decks it offered both of them a chance to resign. The Avignonese claimant declined the offer and, as a result, was deposed. Gregory XII went along with it and by doing so saved himself from a similar fate. There’s a sort of Orwellian aspect to the way in which this whole confused piece of history has been handled in the official histories ever since the First Vatican Council in 1870. Even the currently official list of popes (which dates only to 1947) is in some degree an ideological statement. It lists both the Avignonese and Pisan lines as antipopes, a judgment historians have been unable to make. But outside sources such as the Encyclopedia Britannica have bought into it.

On demystifying the papacy… So far as Benedict is concerned, I take his statement about why he is resigning at face value. He’s old, clearly not well, and, after all, he watched his predecessor hang on disastrously when he couldn’t do the job out of some sort of misplaced mystification of the papal office. This led to factions, chaos, all the rest. So I think it does Benedict credit to make this move, and I think it will have a demystifying effect on what is, after all, an administrative job. That would be healthy. The pope is not a super-priest. He’s just a bishop like other bishops. What distinguishes him is simply the preeminence of his administrative and teaching role.

A Grounded Identidad

February 20, 2013

Oscar Rios (left) and his brother William are dressed to the nines in this 1956 photograph. Puerto Ricans often confounded the rigid black-white-only racial order of Chicago. Members of the Rios family shared stories of how each negotiated conceptions of race and space, citizenship and belonging.

As a young girl in Chicago’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods, Professor Merida Rua took “field trips” every Sunday after church to study her family’s history. Her father steered their Buick through the struggling neighborhoods of his 1950s childhood to the “places of his aspirations”—the skyline of Lake Shore Drive and the imposing walls of the University of Chicago. Rua and her mother, two sisters and grandmother listened, rapt, to his stories, which spoke to the larger Puerto Rican experience in Chicago.

Rua, associate professor of Latina/o studies and chair of American studies, returned to her home city as an academic researcher to explore the impact of Puerto Rican migration on Chicago and the communities in which they lived and worked. In her book A Grounded Identidad: Making New Lives in Chicago’s Puerto Rican Neighborhoods (Oxford University Press, 2012) Rua blends history and ethnography to tell the story of how a post-war migration of a small number of recruited household workers and laborers grew into the third-largest Puerto Rican population in the continental U.S. Along the way they built strong communities that were challenged by economic struggle, job discrimination, and the upheaval of urban renewal and the tumultuous 1960s. “My work,” she says, “focuses on neighborhoods people have lost.”

Her search to reclaim their stories took Rua to Chicago’s first Puerto Rican-owned funeral home, which she lived above in an apartment while conducting her research. Listening to family and friends of the deceased tell stories at wakes and services, she discovered a novel lens through which to view the history of Puerto Ricans in Chicago and the neighborhoods they remembered. The first wave of Puerto Rican migrants to the city found themselves in a unique position as outsiders in the country of their citizenship and struggling for fair treatment in employment, housing, and education. But the stories Rua heard in the funeral home were a testament to the pride in what Puerto Ricans had achieved in Chicago and a deep attachment to the neighborhoods that sustained them over the decades.

“They were hopeful stories of resiliency and strong connection to community despite obstacles and struggles” Rua says.

Rua is sharing her research as part of the weekly Faculty Lecture Series, which continues through March 14. See the complete schedule here.

What Sawyer Said

February 13, 2013

When CBS News rolled into Williamstown in February 1964 for an interview with President John E. Sawyer ’39 and University of Texas Chancellor Harry Ransom, the college was on the cusp of a decade of transformation.

Some elements of Sawyer’s vision for Williams, such as the phasing out of fraternities, were already being implemented. Other changes were yet to come. But throughout the hour-long interview, led by which aired that March on the weekly public service program One of a Kind, Sawyer offered his insights into the challenges facing society, higher education, and Williams, in particular. His ideas and ideals—and the eloquent case he made for the liberal arts—were remarkably prescient and continue to resonate today.

We asked members of the Williams faculty to lend their voices to the conversation that Sawyer began all those years ago. Their essays accompany the video clips below. Plus, read A Legend Brought to Life, a short commentary on watching the video by Jim Kolesar ’72, Assistant to the President in Public Affairs. To see the entire broadcast, contact communications@williams.edu.

K. Scott Wong, James Phinney Baxter III Professor of History and Public Affairs: “It is remarkable that this conversation took place right before a watershed period in American history that would bring significant changes to our society, changes that are still unfolding today.” More →

Will Dudley ’89, Provost, Professor of Philosophy: “Jack Sawyer remains exactly right about the purpose of a liberal arts education: We’re concerned with the growth of young men and women.” More →

Denise Buell, Chair and Professor of Religion: “Being stretched to engage a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives enables liberal arts graduates to become more nuanced and effective in any profession they ultimately pursue.” More →

Satyan Devadoss, Associate Professor of Mathematics: “A true liberal arts education equips us not only to understand mathematical form and structure but also to craft a thoughtful essay, to appreciate a performance or painting, to juggle molecules and matter and, dare I say, to compete on the athletic field.” More →

William R. Darrow, Cluett Professor of Religion: “Today the curriculum has been thoroughly internationalized, almost 50 percent of undergraduates study abroad, international presence in the faculty has grown, and this year the international student population is 144.” More →

Sarah R. Bolton, Dean of the College, Professor of Physics: “Williams holds a particular, privileged place in higher education. We must constantly improve equity of opportunity on three fronts—access, support for our students and engagement with the national context.” More →

Winter Study: Reading for Life

January 22, 2013

“Books possess a magical, elusive quality that we often overlook when we read as scholars,” says Rudi Yniguez ’16. “In a typical class, our time is spent screening sentences for symbolism or analyzing syntax, instead of allowing the natural rhythm of the book to pull or push us along as it’s intended to do.”

After a snowy sleigh ride to a cabin in the woods, Cassandra Cleghorn and her students read War and Peace during Winter Study.

So when the opportunity presented itself to read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace—all 1,296 pages of it—during Winter Study in January, Yniguez jumped at the chance.

She and 14 other students are taking part in the class “War and Peace,” led by Cassandra Cleghorn, senior lecturer in English and American studies. The class meets for three hours each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with optional, all-day “drop in and read” sessions on Mondays.

Winter Study is “the perfect occasion to lose and then find oneself in the enormous world of a book many people consider the greatest novel of all time,” says Cleghorn, who, herself, had never read War and Peace. “I’m reading the novel not as an expert but as a liberal arts student, as a lover of literature.

“This class,” she adds, “is about learning how to read for life.”

Cleghorn had her students sign a contract agreeing to complete the novel by the end of Winter Study, all the while marking off their progress on posters hanging on their classroom wall. And they’re reading in all sorts of ways—individually and as a group, with guest lecturers providing context on Russian pronunciation and military strategy, and in different settings.

One recent afternoon, the class took a sleigh ride to a forest cabin, where they lit a fire and read aloud from the novel. “To feel the sensation of being pulled on a 19th century wooden sleigh through snowy fields and forests, and then to read aloud Tolstoy’s account of a horse-drawn sleigh ride, helps us become more active and imaginative readers,” Cleghorn says.

For theater and comparative literature major Sarah Sanders ’14, the class “has reminded me how much I love books. It had been a long time since I’d stayed still for more than two hours at a time, reading a novel.”

Says Yniguez, the only first-year student in a class of juniors and seniors who are majoring in Arabic studies, art history, math, political economy, and psychology (to name a few), “I had no choice but to allow each page to wash over me. War and Peace has reminded me of the immense power of literature to not only introduce me to a world that I would not otherwise have been able to experience, but also to provide an escape from the one in which I reside.”

Click here to see a full list of courses being offered during Winter Study.

Gangster Squad, Based on the Book By Paul Lieberman ’71, Now In Theaters

January 11, 2013

Movie poster of Gangster Squad, based on the book by Paul Lieberman, Williams Class of 1971

The movie Gangster Squad, based on a nonfiction book of the same name by Paul Lieberman ’71, is now playing in theaters across the country. The movie and book tell the story of a real-life, covert unit of the Los Angeles Police Department created after World War II to crack down on Mickey Cohen and other “undesirables” in L.A.

Gangster Squad traces its roots back to a seven-part series Lieberman, a longtime newspaperman, wrote for the L.A. Times in 2008. “On the job a decade before J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI acknowledged the existence of the Mafia,” Lieberman wrote of the gangster squad, “they took an anything-goes approach to making life hell for Mickey Cohen and driving other such characters from the Southern California sunshine.”

The movie features Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen and stars Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, and Emma Stone. Lieberman is an executive producer, and fellow Eph Peter Nelson ’76 served as his lawyer for the movie project. You can view the trailer here. (Gangster Squad is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for strong violence and language.)

Chris Murphy ’96 Sworn in as U.S. Senator

January 4, 2013

Congratulations to Chris Murphy ’96, who on Jan. 3 took the oath of office to become Connecticut’s newest U.S. senator. Murphy, 39, is the youngest member of the Senate and replaces Joe Lieberman, who retired at the end of last year. Murphy joins fellow Eph and Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall ’72 of Colorado, who also took the oath of office as a member of the 113th Congress.

Learn more about Murphy and Udall at their Senate web sites.

Climate Change on a Geologic Scale

December 20, 2012

A 750-million-year-old fossil discovered by geoscientist Phoebe Cohen may hold clues to how life has changed the earth—and vice versa.

Following up on work done by scientists in the 1970s, Cohen and a fellow Harvard University graduate school student traveled to the Yukon in 2007 to study rock formations and found a veritable goldmine of fossil-containing rock. Advancements in scientific tools and instruments in the last 40 years allowed Cohen to examine the fossils in a new way, by dissolving the carbonate rock in acetic acid rather than looking at a sliver or cross-section of the rock, as had been done in the past.

“After the carbonate dissolves away, what’s left is organic matter,” says Cohen, now an assistant professor in the Geosciences Department. And what she was able to see in the organic matter amazed her: three-dimensional “bones” of what might be one of the earth’s first eukaryotic single-celled organisms to make hard parts.

Eukaryotic cells have a nucleus and organelles, like animal and plant cells but unlike bacteria cells. The fossil Cohen discovered, which she named Quadrireticulum palmaspinosum (loosely translating to “four-sided net with palm tree spine”), measures about one-tenth the width of a human hair.

Why did a creature so tiny need bones? Cohen’s theory is that at a certain point in history, single-celled organisms needed to “biomineralize”—or create a type of exoskeleton—in order to protect themselves from being eaten by other single-celled organisms. Later, these biomineralized organisms, weighed down by their hard parts, sank to the bottom of the ocean.

As the organisms became buried in sediment, the carbon they contained was locked away with them, reducing the levels of carbon in the ocean and the atmosphere. Over the next 750 million years they developed into the giant rock in the Yukon that Cohen studied. The process may have caused the earth to cool, perhaps eventually contributing to what Cohen and other scientists call “a snowball earth event,” when ice covered the entire planet for millions of years.

With the help of research assistants Nakita VanBiene ’15, who is a geoscienes major, and Kim Kiplagat ’16, Cohen is now studying snowball earth events. She’s in the process of writing a grant proposal to research the time periods before, during, and just after the two major snowball earth events in our planet’s history, which took place 717 million and 635 million years ago, to better understand the relationships between evolutionary events such as biomineralization and events in the earth system such as climate change.

“This work helps us understand how life has evolved through time, in response to both other living things and to the environment,” Cohen says. “We are working toward a better understanding of the dynamics between evolution and changes in the earth’s climate over geologic time scales.”

Click the image above to see a larger version.

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