Photo by Elena Seibert

Schiff’s career proves her point. Her first book Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Her second,Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. She is the author as well of the award winning A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. Her most recent book, Cleopatra: A Life, was published in 2010 to universal acclaim. The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani called it captivating, “…far more complex and compelling than any fictional creation.”

For these and many other accomplishments as a leading writer of her generation, Schiff will receive an honorary degree from her alma mater and deliver the baccalaureate at Williams’ 224th Commencement.

Learn more about Stacy Schiff and her fellow 2013 honorary degree recipients and find detailed Williams Commencement information here.

In much of basic science mice serve as important models of human conditions. Researchers can manipulate their genes, linking them with specific functions, and can translate the findings to humans. But the many ways in which mice differ from humans can present challenges to that research—and to the mice themselves.

“There was a pretty steep initial learning curve in taking care of the mice,” Maher says.

Schindler, Partap, and Maher in the Swoap lab.

For instance, lab mice are usually housed in temperatures of around 20ºC (68ºF), which is comfortable for humans but too cold for mice, causing them to suffer “cold stress.” Maher’s research examines ways to alleviate cold stress. Simply housing mice together or with nests could do the trick, she found after testing different conditions and monitoring the mice’s heart rates, blood pressure, and metabolic rates.

Maher and fellow classmates Partap and Schindler were honored recently for their research by the American Physiological Society. They won three out of 13 David S. Bruce Excellence in Undergraduate Research awards granted at the association’s Experimental Biology conference this spring.

Partap and Schindler worked together on two sides of an important finding related to the drug rapamycin, which has caught the attention of many researchers as a potential longevity drug. Partap and Schindler found that rapamycin can cause insulin resistance, pancreatic damage, and diabetes in mice. They also found that the effects of rapamycin were different for male and female mice and were, to varying degrees, reversible.

As impressive as their results were, Swoap says a thesis project is less about getting the right answers than it is about learning to design experiments and develop and test hypotheses. Even if students fail to get the results they initially expected, that doesn’t constitute a failed experiment, he says.

Schindler says the process was challenging but worthwhile. “Piecing together different aspects of the experiment—like the physiology, tissue structure, or insulin counts—to create a complete research project was very rewarding,” she says.

Both Partap and Maher have had previous research experience at Williams and elsewhere. Partap has worked with Swoap for two years and co-authored with David Hill ’73, director of Quinnipiac University’s Global Public Health Program, two papers on public health that grew out of a 2010 Winter Study course at Williams (the papers were published in the journals International Health and The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene).

Working on a thesis was a much different experience. “It allowed me to more independently think about, design, and work on a project that really interests me,” Partap says.

Maher agrees, reflecting on her previous experience as a research assistant at the Yale Cancer Center. At Williams, she could have complete control over her project and work closely and directly with professors instead of graduate students.

“Students at Williams own their projects, becoming intellectually engaged and invested in them,” Swoap explains. “They emotionally and intellectually understand the project; they know it in and out.”

Swoap’s students have won the David S. Bruce award in several previous years, but this is the first time three students from Williams have won in the same year. “We were nervous that we might end up in an awkward situation,” says Schindler. “It would have been fine if none of us got it but what if one of us didn’t get it?” Fortunately, none of them left with that awkward feeling.

Stop imagining.

“Long time absorption” is exactly what you will have the chance to experience starting next year. WCMA is launching a student art loan initiative as a key component of the Fulkerson Arts Leadership Program, with additional support from alumni who’ve given works of art and financial resources. Allan Fulkerson ’54, founder of the Arts Leadership Program, says its goal is to provide opportunities to help develop the next generation of Williams leaders in the arts. He sees the art loan initiative as one piece of that goal, “reaching and involving many students rather than just a few.” Fenner Milton ’62 agrees. Milton majored in physics at Williams but was deeply affected by the art history courses he took. “The important thing is to expose the non-art major to the concept of living with art,” he says.

Some of the art you could easily live with includes pieces by Cézanne, Jim Dine, Fred Wilson, Winslow Homer, Margaret Bourke-White, Marc Chagall, Alison Saar, Utamaro Kitagawa, and Williams’ own Ed Epping. “We want the art to reflect the diversity of our students, their backgrounds and interests,” says David Sledge, first-year student in Williams’ art history graduate program, curator of the student loan initiative, and member of the program’s selection committee. “We understand that all of our effort will be for naught if the art we select doesn’t engage or challenge the students.”

First-year student Madison Epsten is excited about the program because “it’s open to everyone living on campus, from the next Picasso to a future brain surgeon.” Epsten, who is thinking of majoring in either biology or psychology, is a student advisor on the selection committee. She says the program will transform dorm rooms into homes. “Students will get to experience a sense of possession over a piece of original art,” she says.

Milton hopes that feeling of possession will foster a lifelong appreciation for art, as his Williams education did for him. Sledge explains that the committee makes choices with the same goal in mind, “asking at every step: what works will engage students deeply and foster a lifelong dialogue with art?”

Students can see for themselves when WCMA puts on a salon-style exhibition, including an online module, in January 2014, to showcase the art before students select it. On the appointed day, there will be a first-come, first-served selection process. “We’d love to see students camping out overnight to get their first pick,” says Sledge.

WCMA director Olsen says the program embodies the philosophy that art is part of everyday life, giving students a way to connect to it differently from how they might in a museum. “This program allows people to attach to works of art, to absorb them on their own terms.”

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.”

That’s what it took to fuel 150 Williams students who fanned out across 14 nearby schools, churches, and nonprofit organizations for this year’s Great Day of Service in April.

The women’s soccer team headed up to Florida Mountain’s Manice Education Center to help clear winter trail debris, turn compost, and lay down wood chips in preparation for the center’s organic gardening program. First-year students from the Williams F. entry cleared fence lines, planted potatoes, and painted fences at Caretaker Farm.

Others judged middle-school projects at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts science fair, built an access ramp for a Habitat for Humanity project, helped the Adams Police Department collect unused prescription drugs, and cataloged items for a technology drive at St. John’s Episcopal Church. Still others did clean-up projects with students at Brayton Elementary School, high schoolers at Mount Greylock Regional, and at-risk youth at Berkshire Farm Center.

This is the 13th year that The Great Day of Service has been organized by students in Williams’ Lehman Council, who worked for weeks in advance—and from 7 a.m. on the day of—to make sure it all ran like clockwork. Lehman member Kairav Sinha ’15 surveyed Williams participants and found that 97 percent said the event exceeded their expectations, 100 percent said they felt their efforts were appreciated, and 100 percent said they’d volunteer again.

Williams students engage with the off-campus community throughout the year. Their efforts, along with curricular initiatives to link learning with experiences beyond the classroom, have recently come together in the new Center for Learning in Action.

“We hope to build on this momentum next year,” says Sinha, “not only on the Great Day of Service but throughout the year, continuing to support engagement experiences that enrich the lives of Williams students and community members.”

For anthropology professor Antonia Foias and junior Elizabeth Hart, a biology and anthropology double major, the mummy hand was a mystery to be solved. “When my students first encounter [it],” says Foias, “they are horrified.” The personal identity, the life that was connected to this human hand has been lost through the ages. There are no records of how it came into the museum’s collection, no background or date to place the hand in any specific time period.

Foias wanted to bring the humanity back to the mummy hand.

As part of Hart’s independent study on Egyptian religion, she and Foias proposed DNA and radiocarbon testing of the hand. To do those tests, however, a small sample of bone would need to be taken and sent to a lab. To determine if this would even be possible, they had the hand X-rayed at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.

“I placed my hand over the X-ray photograph,” says Foias, who found that the mummy hand was bigger than hers. “Was it a man? A tall woman?” According to Lori Wright, a professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University who analyzed the X-ray, it was definitely an adult. The X-ray also indicated that a bone sample could be removed for analysis.

The results squarely placed the hand between 70 and 230 A.D., which is the Roman period in Egypt. “During this time, mummification was on the decline,” explains Hart, “which leads me to believe that this individual lived in a small settlement that hadn’t undergone extensive Romanization.”

So the mummy hand now can be definitively sourced from ancient Egypt. “It’s no longer lost on the timeline of history,” says Hart. “It can be reclassified as a living reminder of an ancient civilization.”

For more details about Hart’s and Foias’s research, read the museum’s blog posts, The Mystery of the Mummy Hand, then view a selection of the Egyptian works in the museum’s collection.

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.”

From el campo…

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

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.”

Amidst preparing for my final six weeks as an undergraduate in the purple bubble, I wanted to take the time out to say thank you for all you have contributed to the education of Ephs like me. As I close out my senior year at Williams, I think back to how I stumbled upon Williams and how my subsequent place at Williams has shaped my future, a future that lies not too far ahead.

During my senior year of high school, I imagined myself as a first year at Brown University. But when that sentiment was not reciprocated in an acceptance letter, I decided to attend the Honors Program at Baruch College. I loved my fellow students and professors but after a few months, I realized I was eager to experience dorm life far away from New York City. I have lived in the Big Apple for my entire life and I saw college as a time for exploring the world. Baruch College is primarily a business school and after taking classes there, I recognized I was more interested in liberal arts. Once I mentioned to my friends that I was thinking of transferring to a liberal arts college, a plethora of suggestions flooded in. Williams was among those recommended to me and as I began to investigate which college would suit me best, repeatedly Williams reigned supreme.

I received my acceptance letter from Williams in a small, skinny envelope – the typical mark of a rejection letter. Dejected, I opened the letter and was at first, taken aback. Soon that surprise transformed into elation as I read “Congratulations.” I did not even finish the letter but instead ran and jumped all over the house screaming hysterically that I would be a newly born Eph in the Class of 2013.

I immediately accepted Williams’ offer, and then I decided to visit the campus. A bit backwards but I was so sure of my fit at Williams. Three academic years later, Williams has presented me with countless opportunities to both enrich my community and to self-reflect. As an Eph, I have been bitten with the travel bug as I strive to save the world one country at a time. I have had funded opportunities to travel to Guatemala, Spain (I also traveled to France, Italy, Prague, and Morocco), the Bahamas, Israel, Uganda and I am not done. I am currently working with various alumni and Asante Africa to set up a computer lab at Jeremy Academy, a school in Kenya founded by 2012 Bicentennial Medalist Charles Waigi ’72, and I am a finalist for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Spain. Once I return to the states, I will continue my passion of educational policy by teaching secondary math in Boston as a member of Teach for America’s Boston Corps and then by pursuing a dual degree in law and public policy at Duke University.

Pretty soon I will walk across the stage and receive my Williams diploma. As I reflect on my time at Williams, there are so many more clubs I want to join, classes I want to enroll in, and opportunities I want to benefit from. Nevertheless, my time at Williams has been amazing. When I am not travelling and saving the world, I can be found in a multitude of places: track practice either in the Towne Fieldhouse or at Weston Field; walking President Falk’s poodle, Casey; enjoying a conversation with a fellow Eph as we both walk to the library; participating in a meeting discussing how to make community service more visible on campus; working on the Habitat for Humanity house in Pittsfield; or even leading a college tour to middle school children, to name just a few. I am a member of a many clubs and I am the Treasurer of SOCA (Students of Caribbean Ancestry) and the Community Service Coordinator for Williams Catholic. This year I also served a term as a Career Center Fellow and I am the Head Baxter Fellow of Wood Neighborhood.

When June arrives, I know it will be a bittersweet parting but I will be able to visit Williamstown any time – it helps that my brother is a sophomore! Williams has definitely provided me with a home away from home and I am so grateful I am enjoying my college experience to the fullest. When I was thinking about transferring, I wanted to attend a liberal arts college with a really great track team in the middle of nowhere so I could volunteer and meet entirely new people I would have otherwise never have met. At Williams I found the perfect match for me. I can easily say Williams and I are one.

Thank you again for your amazing contributions to my education and that of my fellow Ephs. I plan to do my part to pay it forward once I graduate!

Sincerely yours,

Desirée Daring