Earlhamite Winter 2015

Earlhamite THE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE /WINTER 2015

MAKING CONNECTIONS

WINTER FEATURES2015

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12KINDLE A FIRE: MENTORING

AT EARLHAM COLLEGE BY AMANDA RICE ’10

Mentoring thrives here. You might say Earlham is built for it.

GETTING FACE TO FACEBY DENISE PURCELL

Anima LaVoy ’03 is co-founder of Connect, a successful tech startup that succeeds when people disconnect from their

devices and opt for face-to-face interactions.

A GIFT OF LIGHTBY DAN OETTING

Encouragement from Earlham students spurred Professor Michael Birkel’s to write about the Qur’an. But as an outsider

to the Muslim world and Islamic scholarship, how would he do the project justice?

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

46APTITUDE FOR PERSISTENCE

BY DENISE PURCELL

Who better than a farmer knows that you reap what you sow? Perhaps a farmer who is

also a statesman, like Morris Mills ’50.

50A MESSAGE IN

HER MUSICBY BRIAN ZIMMERMAN

For Sarah Abigail Griffiths ’00, teaching students begins with a lesson about the Earlham way.

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EditorDan Oetting

Class Notes EditorEllen Blevens

Art Director Susanna Tanner

Contributing EditorsDenise Purcell and Brian Zimmerman

Vice President for Enrollment and CommunicationsJonathan Stroud

Vice President for Institutional Advancement Jim McKey ’78

Academic Dean Greg Mahler

President John David Dawson

04 President’s Note05 New & Notable24 Lookback25 Classnotes and Obituaries45 Earlham Scene54 Earlham School of Religion56 Athletics Focus58 Faculty Activities62 Homecoming Photo Gallery

Read the latest alumni profiles, submit classnotes, check out upcoming events and more at earlham.edu/alumni.

EarlhamiteTHE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE

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twitter.com/earlham1847Earlhamite magazine is the oldest college alumni magazine in continuous publication in the United States. Today it is published twice a year, in January and July, 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 [email protected].

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.

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Earlhamite THE MAGAZINE OF EARLHAM COLLEGE /WINTER 2015

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Freelance illustrator Meg Hunt strives to tell stories in her work and offer sense of delight. “People and characters and worlds fascinate me — and I want to engage people to come visit my worlds for a little bit and make them happy,” says Hunt.

4 Earlhamite: The Magazine of Earlham College /WINTER 2015

AAdvisers, coaches, counselors, teachers, trusted friends, spiritual guides, weighty Friends — many terms come to mind when we think about mentors and mentorship at Earlham. My own training typically takes me back to the ancient world whenever I reflect on the peculiar history of many of our influential concepts and terms. The term “mentor” immediately returns me to the world of Homer’s Odyssey.

When Odysseus heads off to fight in the Trojan War, he entrusts his household and the raising of his son Telemachus to an elderly, long-time friend named Mentor. Later, the goddess Athena — having assumed the form and appearance of Mentor — encourages the grown Telemachus to search for his wandering father and

— David Dawson, President

accompanies him on his quest. With Athena’s ever-present guidance and assistance, Telemachus is eventually reunited with his father Odysseus.

It seems curiously fitting to me that the “very first mentor” is actually a goddess in the disguise of a trusted human friend and wise counselor. Mentors, we might be led to infer, typically appear as entirely ordinary persons we trust in unusually high degree, and whose counsel claims more of our attentiveness than usual. And yet the influence of mentors so often proves so uncannily “on point,” and so utterly consequential for the very direction of our lives, that we might conclude that, though ordinary in appearance, they were extraordinary in effect — that there “was that of God within them,” so

PRESIDENT’S NOTE

apt was their understanding of our innermost aims, so appropriately calibrated were their subtle “interventions.”

In the pages that follow, we are treated to accounts of a variety of personal connections at Earlham that proved educationally and personally consequential, and in many cases, utterly transformative. We see again that Earlham is a place where good mentorship continually emerges, where teachers and learners constantly assume one another’s places, and where a community of mutual support makes possible our individual quests for meaning.

on mentoring

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NEW and Notable

Governor bestows Sagamore of the Wabash award to Earlham VPA distinguished career defined by decades of service to Earlham and Wayne County has earned Vice President of Community Relations Avis Stewart ’74 the highest accolade Indiana bestows for exemplary public service.

Stewart was given the Sagamore of the Wabash Award by members of Earlham’s Class of 1974 during a surprise ceremony at his home following Homecoming Weekend festivities.

In the nomination materials he was lauded for being “a model and inspiration in the lives of countless leaders, including youth who will serve Earlham and the Richmond community for years to come.”

The Sagamore of the Wabash award was created during the term of Gov. Ralph Gates, who served from 1945 to 1949 and has been awarded at the discretion of every governor since then.

The Native American tribes of the northeastern United States use “Sagamore” as a term to describe someone the chief would look to for advice.

Past winners include astronauts, presidents, ambassadors, artists, musicians, politicians and others who have contributed to Hoosier heritage.

Stewart is a liaison between the campus and the communities of Wayne County and has served on the boards of more than 20 community organizations, including Townsend Community Center, Richmond Symphony

Orchestra, Boys & Girls Clubs of Wayne County, Birth-to-Five, Wernle Children’s Home, the United Way of Whitewater Valley and Mt. Olive Baptist Church.In a story by the Palladium-Item, he is credited for receiving the Townsend Community Center President’s Award, United Way of Whitewater Valley Volunteer of the Year and Wayne County Area Chamber of Commerce Appreciation of Service Award.

A native of Marion, Ind., Stewart came to Earlham in 1970 and was a four-year member of the Earlham basketball team and three-year member of the track team while earning his bachelor’s degree.

After earning a master’s degree from Ball State University in Muncie, Stewart returned to Earlham in 1980 and was the men’s basketball coach for five years. His other roles include English instructor, Director of Student Activities, Development Officer, Academic Adviser and faculty adviser for WECI and the Equestrian Program. He has served in his current role since 2002.

Earlhamites named to panel to standardize environmental practicesSteve Carpenter ’87 and Sue Hovorka ’74 have been appointed to serve on a national panel that will standardize processes used to mitigate emissions that are harmful to the environment.

They join 26 other experts in the areas of economics and engineering charged with arriving at the United States’ consensus position relative to proposals by the International Standard for Organization’s Technical Committee 265.

That includes standardization of design, construction, operation, environmental planning and management, risk management, quantification, monitoring and verification, and related activities in the field of Carbon Capture and Storage.


NEW and Notable

“We’re two years into a five-year process,” Carpenter says. “I was really proud to see two Earlham graduates serve on this panel and I thought, ‘That’s a big deal!’ Earlham doesn’t specialize in economics or engineering, but I think the College does a great job teaching the liberal arts in an interdisciplinary way,” he says. “That was the epitome of my Earlham education. I’m a physicist and Sue is a geologist and we are both capable of contributing to the team.”

The United States — the American National Standards Institute is the member body to the ISO — is one of 18 countries that have formed panels relative to TC 265. Nine other countries are observing the process.

“This process can provide an opportunity to move forward with the development of a standard for carbon capture and storage and reduce the nation’s carbon footprint,” Carpenter says. “The second thing it could allow us to do is create an internationally accepted document for developing nations to implement. They can take this document and say, ‘we’re going to do this.’

“It will include best practices, and because it will be up for international approval, it would be the gold standard for all participating institutions.”

Cyberinfrastructure upgrades will enhance scientific research, collaboration An upgraded cyber infrastructure at Earlham will enhance scientific research, faculty-student collaboration and hands-on learning.

The National Science Foundation awarded a $347,228 grant to Earlham that will increase the capacity of the College’s fiber optic network from 1 gigabyte per second to 10 gigabytes per second at its Science Complex. That includes Stanley and Dennis halls, Wildman Library and phase two of the Science Complex, now under construction.

Funding will also add a dedicated network for science research traffic while upgrading connectivity to I-Light, the regional optic network provider for higher education in Indiana, and Internet2, a national networking consortium.Earlham is one of six liberal arts colleges, and one of seven institutions nationwide, selected for these competitive grants. Funding comes from NSF’s Campus Cyberinfrastructure – Infrastructure, Innovation and Engineering program.

JMM grant will digitize vertebrate collectionsThe more than 12,000 specimens in the Joseph Moore’s vertebrate collections will soon be made available to scientists worldwide as a result of a $149,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Funding will allow for specimens to be digitized by library staff. JMM Director Heather Lerner has developed a “Care and Uses of Collections” course and a “Specimen Preparation Lab” to prepare students for the process.

Once students complete the courses, they may apply for jobs in one of the Museum’s student applied groups, including the Collections Applied Group, which inventories, organizes, maintains and documents the collections, and prepares specimens for loans.

The grant will more than double the existing student efforts.Digitizing the collection includes the process of correctly identifying and extracting data such as scientific names, collection dates and geographic locations and then correctly publishing that data to the web. Researchers will then

Heather Learner, Director of JMM

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NEW and Notable

have instant and easy access to the resources in the Joseph Moore Museum collections. Another benefit to the project is that the process also will document the history of the museum.

IMLS museum grants support a wide variety of projects that create learning experiences, strengthen communities, care for collections and provide broad public access. Included in the new round of IMLS grants are 211 museum projects totaling more than $25 million.

Decade-long relationship with Harvard affiliate yielding resultsBeginning in 2005 with Emily Whiston ’05, a steady stream of Earlham graduates have gained valuable experience at the Schepens Eye Research Institute/Massachusetts Eye and Ear Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School.

A major publication in a July issue of Nature magazine validated this research, which has the potential to reduce blindness caused by damaged or diseased corneal tissue. Listed as contributors are lead author Dr. Bruce Ksander, Associate Professor at Harvard, Sean McGuire ’12 and Will Vincent ’10.

One of the projects the Earlham graduates have worked on at Schepens is characterizing a population of stem cells that are responsible for regrowing the cornea.

Ksander says McGuire and Vincent were critical to the project.

“Sean worked for two solid years” Ksander says, “and he completed some of the most important experiments

involved in this project. Will worked one year, but he was able to get a lot of things done that others were having trouble with.”

Ksander says he returns to Earlham grads to fill posts in his lab because they are well-trained, responsible, well-balanced, conscientious, highly motivated and mature.

Vincent is in a Ph.D. microbiology program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and McGuire is a first-year medical student at the University of Chicago.

The following is a list of Earlham graduates who have worked at Schepens since the start of the partnership with the College in 2005: Emily Whiston ’05, Kushboo Goel ’07, Caroline Hackett ’07, Emma Abernathy ’08, Michelle Crane ’09, Will Vincent ’10, Sean McGuire ’12, Nick Pondelis ’13 and Ruth Lewis ’14.

Geothermal wells to power Phase II of Natural Science ComplexEarlham’s latest foray into alternative energy will use geothermal sources to power the second phase of the Natural Science Complex, now under construction.

Forty-five geothermal wells have been drilled into front campus creating four miles of well casing as far as 450 feet underground.

When heating is required, the wells will pull heat out of the ground. When cooling is required, it will push heat from the building down into the ground.

Phase II will be completed in May 2015 and is expected to achieve LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green

Sean McGuire ’12

Will Vincent ’10


NEW and Notable

Building Council. The 42,000-square-foot complex will house Physics, Math, Computer Sciences and the new Science Center for Integrated Learning.

The geothermal heating and cooling system is part of an overall building design that will use approximately half the total annual energy per square foot compared to existing, non-LEED certified buildings on campus.

Progress brings praise from Chamber of CommerceEarlham College has been recognized for enhancing the profile of Wayne County.

The College was the recipient of the Wayne County Area Chamber of Commerce’s Community Improvement and Exemplary awards last fall for the recent renovations to Stanley and Tyler halls, respectively.

The awards were given to the College during the Community Improvement Awards Luncheon at Forest Hills Country Club, an annual event attended by hundreds of community and business leaders.

Renovations to Stanley Hall were completed in August 2013. The $18 million project modernized and reconfigured labs for optimal collaboration between chemistry, biology and biochemistry.

The building’s 40-year-old façade was also restored.

Stanley Hall is believed to be the first building in the county to achieve certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. The building is expected to earn LEED Gold certification.

Renovations to Tyler Hall were also completed in August 2013. The $5.8 million project involved a complete renovation of the interior to house the campus’ Welcome

Center, and the Admissions, Financial Aid, and Marketing and Communication’s departments.

The project achieved basic LEED certification.

Originally built in 1907, Tyler Hall was one of two Carnegie Libraries in Indiana and had been without use since 2002.

Earlier this year, the Chamber recognized Earlham with the Bob Rosa “Buy Local Award.” About $18 million of the $34 million in direct-costs dollars associated with these projects, and also new construction of the Center for Visual and Performing Arts, were awarded to Wayne County businesses.

U.S. News ranks EC in Top 10 for commitment to undergraduate teachingEarlham College ranks among the top 10 national liberal arts colleges for the faculty’s “unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching,” according to the 2015 U.S. News and World Report rankings.

Also included in this select list are Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Carleton, Davidson and Vassar. Colleges are selected for this category based on peer institutions’ assessments.

In another category, U.S. News ranked Earlham No. 6 nationally for its percentage of international students on campus. International students make up 18 percent of the Earlham student body, representing students from nearly 80 countries.

Maxwell Paule, assistant professor of ancient and classical studies.

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NEW and Notable

Overall U.S. News ranked Earlham 73rd among all national liberal arts colleges. This ranking is based on several key measures of quality and assessments from peer institutions. Measures include graduation and retention rates (22.5 percent), assessment of excellence (22.5 percent), faculty resources (20 percent) student selectivity (12.5 percent), financial resources (10 percent), graduation rate performance (7.5 percent) and alumni giving (5 percent).

The rankings are available online at usnews.com.

Forbes names Earlham to Top 100 ‘best’ CollegesNational recognition of Earlham as a liberal arts college that successfully prepares students for the future continues to grow. In Forbes’ newest ranking of “America’s Best Colleges,” Earlham moved into the top 100 colleges and universities in the country.

The College ranks No. 92 among the 650 private and public colleges and universities ranked by Forbes, up 54 spots from last year. Earlham joins the University of Notre Dame and DePauw University as Indiana’s only three institutions in the top 100.

According to Forbes, postgraduate success is the most important measure of its seventh annual ranking. “Our sights are set directly on ROI: What are students getting out of college?” Accordingly, schools that demonstrate outstanding “outputs” rank well.

In all, the rankings are based on five general categories: postgraduate success (32.5 percent), which evaluates alumni pay and influence; student satisfaction (25 percent), which includes professor evaluations and freshman to sophomore year retention rates; debt (25 percent), which penalizes schools for high student debt loads and default rates; four-year graduation rate (7.5 percent); and academic success (11.25 percent), which rewards schools whose students win prestigious scholarships and fellowships like

the Fulbright and National Science Foundation or go on to earn a Ph.D.

Read more about outcomes of Earlham graduates at earlham.edu/outcomes.

Building dedication of Center for the Visual and Performing ArtsFor many alumni, Homecoming Weekend was their first chance to see the new Center for the Visual and Performing Arts.

A building dedication ceremony and open house featuring a showcase of more than 20 performances and demonstrations kicked off Homecoming festivities at the $22 million, 47,200-square-foot complex.

Highlights of the CVPA include the 250-seat Lingle Recital Hall; the 100-seat Ronald L. McDaniel Studio Theater, a black-box theater with flexible seating; and the Arts Plaza, which doubles as an outdoor performance space.

More than a dozen classrooms and laboratories have also been designed for instruction in ceramics, fiber art, photography, metals, Gamelan, jazz, percussion, painting and drawing. These rooms include the Bonita Washington-Lacey Classroom (music) and Gerald Clarence Cooper Arts Classroom.

Since opening in August, the CVPA has hosted four


Using the technology, Caktus Group registered nearly 1.5 million Libyans to vote.

Caktus Group employs 26. In addition to its work in Libya and corporate clients, the company has made web and mobile applications that prevent the spread of HIV and monitor the shipping of humanitarian aid in and out of conflict zones.

NEW and Notable

public events, including a solo piano recital by Visiting Artist Findlay Cockrell; a performance of Italian Renaissance and Baroque music by Armonia Celeste; a cultural performance by visiting Tibetan monks; and a play with seating “in the round” called the “The Laramie Project.”

Earlhamites develop technology to enhance access for voter registration in LibyaA web development firm founded by Earlhamites was instrumental in enhancing access and safety in advance of Libya’s recent elections, which were occasionally marred by violence.

Tobias McNulty ’06, Colin Copeland ’07, and Alexander Lemann ’06 founded Caktus Group in 2007 with a goal of creating digital

tools that could solve problems and improve lives across the globe.

The company’s SMS voter registration system is the first of its kind in the world. It uses RapidSMS, a popular SMS open-source programming framework dedicated to social good. UNICEF originally developed RapidSMS with core contributions by Caktus Group.

nominations please!for the

and the OUTSTANDING ALUMNI AWARD DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD

The Alumni Association seeks

nominees who demonstrate:

• EXCELLENCE in a chosen career

• SERVICE to Earlham College

• PARTICIPATION in service and volunteer organizations

• SERVICE to the Society of Friends

• ACHIEVEMENT which reflects an interest or influence developed at Earlham College

For criteria and nomination materials: earlham.edu/alumni 765-983-1313 [email protected] Nomination materials are due March 1. Awards are presented each year during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend.

OCTOBER 2015

Travel to South Africa with Bill Buskirk ’66Join Earlham Professor Emeritus of Biology Bill Buskirk ’66 on this unique Earlham alumni adventure.

To receive more information on this travel opportunity, contact Bill at: [email protected].


A FIREKindle

It was a modest question, a warm-up, that helped Micky Myers ’16, resolve one of the more profound decisions in her life: ‘What color do you associate with your decision?’

The question came from Dan Hoskins ’16. Hoskins, Myers, and the rest of Earlham’s Quaker Fellows were in a workshop on clearness committees.

Mentoring at Earlham College

BY AMANDA RICE ’10PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUSANNA TANNER

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A FIRE

authentic lives, including finding career paths that draw on who they are as people. She says that Quaker Fellows formalizes the kind of mentoring that occurs throughout the College.

“As mentors, we’re asking good questions and really listening to students, so we can reflect back to them what we’re hearing,” she says. “It can sound very high-minded or overly romantic, but this is about helping people get grounded in who they are. We are helping them develop from the inside out, so they’re in touch with their inner wisdom.”Eckert says it’s woven into Earlham’s culture that we don’t tell one another what to do. And we don’t reserve mentoring powers just for sage teaching advisers. We spread them out. Specifically, Earlham’s Principles and Practices — including respect for persons, integrity, and community — foster a community where Earlhamites can start to follow their individual paths, with friends and advisers helping them see the way. Sometimes this happens through open-ended dialogue, sometimes through collaborative projects. In every case, it happens in community.

Left-handed MentorBen Smith ’12 never took a class with Charlie Peck ’84, professor of computer science, but considers him as his mentor. Smith credits Peck with creating “unconventional but useful” opportunities for him to discover his abilities, interests, and capacity for dealing with the unexpected. Smith, an environmental science major, says he learned some of his most important lessons while building environmental interfaces, doing farm work and navigating life in a new country — all with Peck’s collaboration.

The workshop leader explained that, in Quaker tradition, a small group helped an individual to gain insight by asking her only open-ended questions. No leading questions. No advice. So, to practice, Hoskins asked Myers about colors. “I laughed at first, but I tried to give an honest response,” Myers remembers. She had recently declared her major in classical studies and was committed to getting that degree. But she had begun to think that a Master’s of Library Science degree might be more practical.

“The more I thought about it, I realized that when I thought about library school, everything looked gray and dull. And when I thought about other options, things looked much more vibrant,” she says. “That realization made a huge impact. The world needs more librarians who are energized by their work, not someone who is just OK with the work.”

In the year since then, Myers has been looking into graduate programs that are more closely related to her true interests — mythology, folklore, religious studies. She says that her experience at Earlham has helped her to value those interests. More importantly, the community has encouraged her to see her gifts as assets for a future career.

“It has been so important to have this community of people who know me, who have faith in me, and who say ‘yes, of course, you can do this,’” she says.

Trish Eckert, director of the Newlin Quaker Center and facilitator of the Quaker Fellows program, says this is exactly the program’s goal: to prepare students to live


The pair connected during Smith’s freshman year, when Smith heard that Peck was doing hands-on work related to environmentalism. Smith had little interest in computer science, but he did have some experience with construction and tractor repair, and Peck said that would be an asset for Earlham’s Hardware Interfacing Project.

Peck coordinates the group, in which students tackle practical problems on campus with technological solutions. While Peck serves as a resource, students do the bulk of the work.

In HIP, Smith and his team installed wind turbines on Dennis Hall, relocated the college’s solar panels, and created an energy-monitoring network for campus buildings. In every case, there were a number of hurdles. Peck says that’s exactly the value of this sort of mentoring.

“When we work on real-world problems, students see how you deal with failure,” he says. “You’re not in the formal classroom setting, so you’re modeling not just how you solve a particular problem — you’re modeling how a person lives.”

As Smith began to think more about his future as an upperclassman, he felt comfortable talking with Peck: “Should I go to graduate school? Should I join the Peace Corps?” With Peck’s input, he decided that the answers were “yes” and “yes.”

Peck says this is his goal as a mentor: Get close to students through projects and problems, so that they can talk easily when the conversation turns to less technical subjects.

Smith has begun studying energy policy through a Master’s of Public Administration program at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He’s also taking two years to work as an environmental volunteer in Nicaragua with the Peace Corps. Peck recommended doing both things now, while Smith is young, to build a foundation from which to grow.

Mentor Do-Si-DoJeremy Reed ’14 came to Earlham with confidence, passion, and a fledgling interest in Middle Eastern music. He says

that his academic adviser, Associate Professor of Music Bill Culverhouse, was critical in helping him turn that curiosity into a career path.

“I would absolutely attribute my success at Earlham to having Bill as an adviser and to the people I was able to interact with as a result,” Reed says.

After meeting Reed, Culverhouse invited him to join a faculty/student research project on music of the Arab world — an exceptional opportunity for a first-year student. There, Jeremy began to approach the sea of content that he would need to master in order to study the subject at a high level. He also began to connect with other experts in the field, including the man who would become his graduate adviser, Indiana University professor David McDonald. McDonald was coming to speak on campus, and Culverhouse arranged for Reed to have lunch with him.

The meeting motivated the rest of Reed’s studies at Earlham. As his interest solidified, Culverhouse helped him connect to others with more expertise in ethnomusicology. While Culverhouse speaks Arabic and has done research in Jordan, his primary academic specialty is choral conduct-ing. Rumya Putcha, then an assistant visiting professor of music at Earlham, taught Reed’s ethnomusicology class, took him to the Society for Ethnomusicology’s national conference, and served as a mentor in her own right. Reed says that meeting Putcha was another sign that he was on the right path.

In the spring of his junior year, Reed studied abroad in Jordan, where he was able to meet with several musicians that Culverhouse knew. Connections and concert invita-tions from those sources enriched his visit, and eventually formed the basis for Reed’s senior research project.

Culverhouse says that this networking is a key part of the one-on-one mentoring he gives to students.

“Part of the responsibility of being an educator is to put at students’ disposal all of the resources you have that can

so they’re in touch with their inner wisdom.” “We are helping them develop from the inside out, — Trish Eckert

possibly be helpful,” he explains. “I help students to assess what kinds of nourishment they need from what kinds of sources, so they can choose allies and make sure all of their needs are met.”

Now that Reed is in graduate school, he stays in touch with Culverhouse and also regularly talks shop with Putcha: everything from grading papers to popular music to scholarly articles. He says the connection has been an invaluable asset.

Pay it ForwardA year after graduation, Smith departed for his Peace Corps term in Nicaragua. Before he left, he and Peck discussed ways to get current Earlhamites involved in hands-on research in the area.

Smith soon contacted Peck about an opportunity: Hemileia vastatrix. The fungus was damaging local coffee crops, cutting Nicaragua’s coffee production sharply. Smith knew that Peck had begun a collaborative project analyzing soil microbes — first in Indiana, and then in Iceland. Smith asked Peck if he could apply those same techniques to study the leaves of infected plants and the soil the plants are growing in.

After months of weekly phone calls, the pair developed a plan for Peck to to lead a student-faculty research project in Nicaraugua in December 2014, over holiday break.

“Charlie’s had a huge impact on my career and my life,” Smith says. “Our work together inspired me to turn around and look for other similar opportunities for other students. Without my close personal and professional relationship with Charlie, this project probably wouldn’t have come to fruition.”

Peck, in turn, became the mentor he is because of his own mentors, previous generations of Earlham professors and alumni. Peck says that this is exactly the reason he loves mentoring students now: he benefits continue to accrue over time. Through careful mentorship, Earlham students grow into purposeful and engaged professionals — people with the commitment and capacity to develop yet another generation of authentic leaders.

— Trish Eckert

Greg Mahler, Earlham’s academic dean and vice president of academic affairs, describes mentoring at Earlham as “perhaps one

of the very best mentoring communities in the country, even among liberal arts

schools. It’s an important part of who we are.” What may not be well understood,

he says, are the benefits of that commitment:

· “Eighty-five percent of our faculty members do collaborative research with students. That’s an outstanding level and rare in higher education. As I interview faculty job candidates, I hear consistently that they are attracted to what we do with student- faculty research.

· “We’re in the top three percent in the nation in the proportion of our students who go on to get Ph.D.s. That puts us in the top 50 of the approximately 1,400 institutions of higher education in the U.S. Why are we there? It’s the mentoring.

· “Our study-abroad programs are organized so that faculty and staff travel and study together. That gives faculty another terrific opportunity to mentor.

· “One of the things that our Center for Integrated Learning is doing so well is to find hands-on experiences and internships that include mentoring. They are giving students tremendous value for the future.

· “Another area where mentoring pays off for students is the pursuit of Fulbright, Marshall, Watson and other types of fellowships and awards. A student can be really intelligent but not do well as they compete for these honors. Having mentors with relevant experience to share is powerful. It has certainly paid off for Earlham students.”

THE MENTORING

DIVIDEND


Transcribing a business card to your phone’s contact information is a distinctly modern-day chore. About as

glamorous as descuzzing your keyboard. A nuisance, really. And so twentieth century. But Anima Sarah LaVoy ’03 was

determined to keep track of the interesting people she was meeting in life — whether at dinner parties, bars, conferences —

so she set aside time one afternoon in her San Francisco Bay area apartment to plug away at it.

LaVoy was tediously adding her contacts to Facebook, LinkedIn, and notating their home city in Gmail, when one of her roommates

came through the door a with a man that she had to meet. “Anima, meet Ryan Allis,” the roommate said. “He’s trying to solve the same

problem you are.” Allis was an entrepreneur who had just moved from North Carolina, where he had sold the $170 million, 300-employee company iContact.

The two sat at her coffee table, comparing hacks and methods of keeping track of friends. Their enthusiasm centered around one straight-forward desire: all their people on a map.

Anima LaVoy ’03 is working to make social tech the servant of social life.

Getting 2 Face Face

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“Our friends are not digital — they are real people in the real world,” said LaVoy. “What use are all these posts and photos if I never see these people again? All I want to know is when I land in New York, who do I know there? This shouldn’t be so hard.”

LaVoy and Allis went on to co-found Connect, a successful tech startup that succeeds when people disconnect from their devices and opt for face-to-face interactions.

LaVoy is now Connect’s Chief Innovation Officer, a rarity in the male-dominated tech world.

“We’re out to help people deepen and maintain relationships over a lifetime,” LaVoy explains. “Right now we’re all surrounded by far more relationships — far more people — than we evolved to understand. Our social world is changing, and yet we still have the same hours in the day. With social media, it’s easy to get distracted by information and feel connected to 800 friends at the surface, but few in the heart.

“To be human is to be social,” she continues. “We’ve got roughly the same brains we’ve had for tens of thousands of years. What makes us happy today is the same thing that always has — it’s people, and you learn that in Psych 101.

It’s having strong, deep relationships that makes us the happiest.”Connect is a free app for iPhone and Android that maps a user’s connections across their phone, email and social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn. Successes are mounting, with a first place finish against 30 competitors at the 2014 Launch Festival and at SXSW, Connect made it to the Accelerator Competition finals and was named one of the top three social companies. The app gains nearly 10,000 new users each day.

LaVoy says Connect aggregates only the information that users provide, allowing them to quickly see who they know that lives in a city they might be visiting, or receive a notification when an out-of-town friend posts a photo in a park nearby.

This information encourages serendipitous face-to-face meetings and deeper relationships.

“People spend so much time in front of a screen,” explains LaVoy, who

studied psychology at Earlham. “With Connect, we’re out to bring social tech back into the service of social life. We want people to look up

and see and interact with the people around them.”

For LaVoy, the ideas began to take shape as she worked to keep track of all the people she had met in her hometown of D.C., Earlham, Seattle, and at Oxford, where she completed her MBA as a Skoll Scholar.

“If I’ve done one thing really well consistently, it’s to keep track of the people I’ve met,” she says.

“But it hasn’t been easy. People move all the time, and on the occasions when we’re in the same city, we rarely know it. We’ve been working on creating and improving this living map for two years. I am in charge basically of the future of the product, which means understanding humans just as much as understanding tech.”

LaVoy says she and Allis complement each other.

“He makes the problem smaller, whereas I make the problem bigger,”

she laughs. “Ryan’s great at orienting us toward deadlines and making things concrete and actionable. I’m good at questioning assumptions,

ANIMA (CENTER) USES HER OWN APP TO CONNECT WITH FRIENDS AND FOSTER FRIENDSHIPS.

!BY DENISE PURCELL

PHOTOGRAPHS SUPPLIED

I learned to do the deep research at Earlham to understand people and — at least in part — what drives them to behave as they do.

“”

recognizing patterns and bringing in unusual ingredients — like the social sciences. I think it’s our opposites that make us work.”

In November, Connect marked a significant milestone by closing $10 million in outside investment.

“Right now, San Francisco and the Bay Area are incredible for seeking financing,” she says. “In many cases, you can describe the features of an app, and it gets investment like it’s a product, or even a business. I really advise people NOT to commit to their first idea — we all have a ton of ideas. Spend more time with your idea; socialize it. See how your idea relates to others, where you can be part of a movement.”

LaVoy describes the ‘conscious tech’ movement as a wave that’s emerging right now: “People are becoming more aware of how we’re using our technology, how much time we’re spending in our heads and in front of screens. There’s a growing desire among

all of us — tech entrepreneurs included — to approach it more consciously.”

This desire to be in service to something bigger had taken hold at Earlham. “In truth, I see Earlham as the place where I got my ‘moral education,’” says LaVoy.

“At the time it was rooted more in American politics and organizing to get Bush out of office than anything related to business,” she explains. “But in terms of subject-matter, it was doing research in the psych department at Earlham — digging deep on questions of political ideologies and moral development frameworks — that gave me added layers of perspective on how humans work. That research was a turning point in how I saw the world.”

LaVoy admits that in some ways she was the worst kind of student at Earlham.

“Six weeks after we were to have developed our senior thesis topic, I walked in and told Kathy Milar, who is a true hero in my book, that I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do my research on,” she remembers.

“Of course, I didn’t want to do anything silly or small. I wanted to do research that mattered.”

Throughout their talks, the idea of studying political value systems emerged. “I was born in D.C., so I grew up in a political part of the world, and when I went to Earlham, it was almost a reverse immersion in politics,” she

explains. “I learned to do the deep research at Earlham to understand people and — at least in part — what drives them to behave as they do.”

After graduation, LaVoy and Michael H.B. Wood ’05 started Swing Semester, an immersive experience in progressive politics for undergraduates during U.S. presidential election cycles.

“I was living in Richmond in June 2004 when I discovered that, oh my God, my vote didn’t really matter in Indiana — but the entire universe was looking at what voters were doing five miles away in Ohio,” she explains. LaVoy and Wood encouraged students to move to Cincinnati for the fall, stay with host families and take jobs knocking door-to-door.

By 2008, LaVoy expanded Swing Semester to Denver and added an academic component.

“We had just over 40 students in the program, and we knocked on more than a quarter of a million doors,” she explains. “But we weren’t just looking for right and wrong answers, or trying to get someone elected. The point was to use the whole thing as an education about citizenship, the system, and about people — it helps to get curious rather than angry when a door is slammed in your face.”

Some of her favorite neuroscience studies demonstrate that people on both political extremes make decisions not from a rational place at all —

but from the emotional core of the brain, followed milliseconds later by supporting evidence conjured by areas capable of rational thought. “This is why it’s so important to understand humans,” she says.

Following the 2008 election, LaVoy lived in Seattle where she worked on climate change and civic engagement efforts. In 2010, she was selected as a Skoll Scholar at the University of Oxford’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship for her work with Swing Semester.

“More Earlhamites should be aware of this opportunity,” she says. “Every year, the Skoll Centre awards five social entrepreneurs a full scholarship to do their MBA at Oxford. The perspective of business is just so essential for scaling change, and I spent a long, long time not recognizing that — thinking my route was politics or activism alone.

“This was very transformative. I felt like there had been a little kids’ table, and now I was at the big kids’ table.”

The Oxford MBA is an intense, one-year program.

“I think I landed here in San Francisco by instinct,” she recalls. “I kept hearing about the things that were going on in San Francisco the entire time I was at Oxford. I went to Oxford because the world points there, but once I was there, it seemed like everyone at Oxford was pointing to the Bay Area.”

Upon arriving in San Francisco, she found a “swirling soup of opportunity” with three emerging trends. First, the area revealed the power of technology and its mind-boggling potential. She found also that a lot of people living in the Bay Area truly understood the need to address the crises that exist in the world today.

“Finally, there is a wave of interest and awareness around how human beings work,” she says. “People go on dates to hear talks by behavioral economists, neuroscientists and psychologists who study love and relationships. We’re geeking out over here!

“For the longest time, we’ve been building tech without a good view into all these parts of the Human Operating System, but now we have an

opportunity to build something wiser.”LaVoy credits Earlham with helping her cultivate a passion for understanding humans and how they work.

“Earlham gave me an incredible chance to understand human behavior,” she says. “It was a petri dish to study humans — myself and others. And what could prepare me better than that — politics, business or tech, it all comes down to people, right?”


It was a late August day when students filed into room 322 in Carpenter Hall for Earlham’s first class on Christian-Muslim dialogue. They were met by the ever-bearded, kindly face of Michael Birkel, professor of religion.

Unlike most classes, the students had been hand picked from those expressing an interest. Half women, half men. Half Muslim, half non-Muslim. The class was created through a Ford-Knight grant, Earlham’s fund for collaborative learning, so Birkel could select who took part.

“It was structured that way so no one was someone else’s guest,” explains Birkel. “The idea was to put everyone on equal footing.”

The class found its way in the readings and discussion — a bit of the Qur’an, a bit of Islamic theology, all grounding for the readings and discussion ahead. All well and good. And then came Sept. 11. That Sept. 11.

“This was in 2001. As a result of 9/11, you could see that our relationship with one another deepened in the course,” says Birkel. “It continued to be very positive, but somehow the weight of it increased. It felt like what we were doing was really important. It just felt very crucial to continue.”

lightA gift of

Top: Islamic Arabic calligraphy Al rizqu al Allah meaning “The Blessings from God”.

A range of voices from Muslims of North America are heard in Professor Michael Birkel’s latest book, Qur’an in Conversation.

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light BY DAN OETTINGPHOTOGRAPHED BY

DAN OETTING AND SUSANNA TANNER


Birkel, who is now in his 29th year at Earlham, found his way to studying Islam out of curiosity and what might be called an intellectual irritation.

“I teach at a Quaker school. I am a Quaker. I think teaching is about the pursuit of truth, the speaking of truth, and I think it’s about peacemaking. As someone who is in the religion department, that led me to think that we needed to teach more about Islam. Because the truth, the wider truth, is not being seen. We see, for example, a very narrow view of Islam in the media.”

Qur’an in Conversation, his latest book, grew from encouragement given by students over the years. These students often came to Earlham knowing what it was to be Muslim in their home and region, but they did not always have a wider sense of the Islamic faith.

Birkel describes a class he led several years ago as especially motivational. Among the class members were Muslims from Pakistan, Palestine, Tajikistan, Algeria, Morroco and Egypt. Several class members suggested he write something about Islam. Birkel counted the suggestion as students being generous and remained reluctant.

“I am not a trained scholar of Islam,” he remembers telling them. “How could I do that?” And they said, ‘But you explain us well to others, and we need non-Muslim voices that can do that.’ And so I sat with that. As I sat with that I concluded that while I am not a trained scholar of Islam, I can go meet the people who are.’”

And that’s what he did. He drew from his studies of Islam and sought out North American Muslim voices – from traditional to progressive, women, Shi‘a, Sunni and Sufi – and started a list of people he would ask to consider being a part of the project.

In the book, 25 North American Muslims answer the same question, “Would you choose a passage of the Koran that means something to you and talk to me about it?”

The number 25 wasn’t chosen because it was a special number. “Those are the ones who said yes,” explained Birkel. “I invited over 50.”

Eleven of the voices in the book are women. There are African American Muslims, white American converts, people of Middle Eastern heritage and people of south Asian background.

“There’s a wonderful array of voices,” says Birkel. “It’s a testament to the vitality and variety and diversity within the North American Muslim community.”

The very first conversation was with Ovamir Anjum, and his talk became the first chapter of the book. “It went wonderfully,” says Birkel.

“He mentioned the very first chapter of the Qur’an and that seemed like a wonderful place to begin because you’ve got so much there: ideas of sacred knowledge, humanity, divine character. And then there is mysticism kind of floating around the edge and also philosophy.”

After Anjum, a number of people agreed to meet with Birkel at a conference of the Islamic Society of North America. He met with four people there and made contact with several others who agreed to be a part of the project.

“At that point it all felt like it was coming together,” says Birkel.

Despite being someone outside the Islamic faith, Birkel relates that he did not have any encounters of distrust with those he spoke with.

“For some, we needed to have a meeting before we could have the conversation for the book, but that was perfectly understandable,” Birkel says. “Others, at the end, had second thoughts and withdrew. It can be a complicated time to go public as a voice within the Muslim community. Not everyone feels safe doing so when misunderstanding of Islam and outright Islamophobia are rampant.”

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Birkel describes the encounters as a rich exchange, intellectually and otherwise.

“A good number of them were also an exchange spiritually,” Birkel says. “Some of them also felt like they could be the start of a friendship. One person says to me, ‘I can see your Noor,’ which is an Arabic word for light. I was tempted to say, ‘Oh light, I can talk about light. Quakers do light,’ but I just received it as a generous recognition of a common kinship, a common care for the human condition, about the quest for goodness in this life.”

The book, which has been out since the summer of 2014, has had a positive reception and is now in its second printing. Birkel has done interviews by the LA Review of Books and CBS Radio. Reviews have been supportive, suggesting that it was a book ripe for this time, perhaps overdue. Publisher’s Weekly described it as “groundbreaking.”

Email from readers has come in saying that the book is being adopted for classes on Islam and courses on the Qur’an. Another correspondent generously described the book as “a gift of light in a time of darkness.”

I think teaching is about the pursuit of truth, the speaking of truth, and I think it’s about peacemaking. As someone who is in the religion department, that led me to think that we needed to teach more about Islam. Because the truth, the wider truth, is not being seen.

“

”Birkel sees the book as a natural fit with his work at Earlham. “Earlham is the kind of place where I began these sorts of conversations. And, while we are not the only place where that can happen, we are a community where people from different religious, political and cultural points of view can come together and have a fruitful conversation. We should celebrate that, and in a way the book is an extension of that.”

His hope is that the book offers readers, especially non-Muslims, a chance to see some of the ideas and people of this community, dimensions of a religion that they just wouldn’t have known before.

“I hope that it will inspire some people to go and have their own conversations,” says Birkel of his talks with Muslims in North America. “If this community can be so welcoming and had this kind of hospitality for a Quaker boy from Indiana, then surely others can go and talk to their Muslim classmate or neighbor. That would be a very wonderful outcome from the book.”

Professor Michael Birkel


LOOK BACK

From the scrapbook of Dr. Harold Armstrong Sanders, donated by Markaret Clarey in 2009. Courtesy of the Earlham Digital Archives.

PATHFINDER REMEMBERED: Clarence “Ted” Cunningham ’24 was Earlham College’s first African American graduate, with majors in religion and philosophy. The photo above was

published Nov. 12, 1974, in the Post, Earlham’s student newspaper and predecessor to the Word. The Cunningham Cultural Center was rededicated at a ceremony in October (see pages 64-65).

The article accompanying the photo describes the dedication scene: “Surrounded by his wife Elizabeth, a Richmond native whom he met while enrolled here and married in 1925, his daughter Barbara (his other daughter Grace, graduated from Earlham in the class of ’52), and a granddaughter Michelle, Mr. Cunningham offered brief remarks after cutting the ribbon marking the Center’s opening.”

Images courtesy of Earlham Word Archives and Earlham College Archives.


Marty McDaniel ’78 Memorial Chapel to be Built in Guatemala

A small Guatemalan village will soon have its own community chapel because, in a roundabout way, the late Marty McDaniel ’78 purposely failed his senior exam at Earlham.

The exam was in political science, and instead of giving the answers that his professors were looking for, McDaniel wrote the answers that came from his heart. You might say that McDaniel had a stubborn streak.

“He’s the type of person who refused to give them what they wanted,” says wife Anne Ebetino McDaniel ’79. “He wanted to give them what he wanted, so he flunked.”

While the exam doomed his political science studies, Marty had also taken enough religion courses at Earlham to put him within reach of completing a major in that field as well. He returned to Earlham the next semester and did just that. He went on to receive a master’s of divinity from Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in New Testament from Vanderbilt University.

Despite the degrees, “(Marty) didn’t put himself out there as an academic,” Anne remembers about her husband who died from a stroke in 2011. “He was a small town minister and couldn’t picture himself any other way.”

Marty traveled to El Cortijo, Guatemala, in 2010, on a mission trip and unbeknownst to family and friends back home, he spoke with Dr. Erick Estrada, who is also a pastor, about establishing a chapel near a clinic that Anne’s father helped

establish, Clínica Médica Salvatore, which is named after Anne’s great-grandfather. At the time of Marty’s visit, the clinic also housed Bible instruction courses and vocational training.

“He never mentioned anything about a chapel, but he was interested in helping out,” Anne explains. “He came back thinking he could send books to expand the library in a nearby seminary.”

After Marty’s death the following year, family and friends kept returning to the idea of building a chapel in the small village in honor of Marty.

“I was skeptical, and my dad was skeptical,” Anne remembers. They wanted to be sure that this was something that was desired locally in El Cortijo. Daughter Corrie accompanied her grandfather on one of his annual mission trips to the village to explore the chapel’s feasibilities.

Before Corrie had time to mention the subject, Estrada asked if the family might raise money to buy the land next to the clinic to build a chapel.

“It was amazing,” Anne declares. “That was exactly what we had hoped.” Estrada went on to tell how Marty had talked about establishing a chapel during his 2010 visit.

The family has raised $42,000 thus far in an ongoing fundraising campaign to support the construction and operation of the chapel. The Rev. Martin McDaniel Memorial Chapel is expected to be dedicated in late 2015.

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Jo “The Bouncer” Demao, 90, has worked in the dining hall for over 20 years at Earlham, asking students to show their school IDs as they arrive for meal times. Her favorite part of the job? Serving as a surrogate grandma to the many students who are far from their own. The nickname “Jo the Bouncer” was earned when former Earlham president Doug Bennett began his role and arrived at the dining hall for a meal. Demao, unfamiliar with the new president, asked him for an ID or a meal ticket and would not allow him to proceed without one. It’s been EC history ever since.

Earlham Scene


An Aptitude for

PERSIS TENCEZ

MORRIS MILLS ’50 ATTRIBUTES MUCH OF HIS SUCCESS IN STATE GOVERNMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION TO THE LESSONS HE LEARNED ON THE FARM.

47earlham.edu

BY DENISE PURCELLPHOTOGRAPHED BY SUSANNA TANNER

PERSIS TENCEZ

aA STETHOSCOPE KEPT MORRIS MILLS ’50 OFF THE PLAYING FIELDS DURING MUCH OF HIS ADOLESCENCE. HIS DOCTOR PRESCRIBED after-school relaxation to keep his rumbly heart murmur in check. But by the time Mills was ready for college in the fall of 1945, he was cleared to play sports. Eager to try after years of sitting out, he played football for the Quakers. To little avail.

“I was small and slow,” Mills says. “Even during practices the guy across from me would knock me down, we’d laugh, and he’d help me up,” says Mills.

He stuck it out, though, and proudly remembers being part of the team. He was finding his way at Earlham, making friends and adjusting to the rigors of the classroom.

“My biggest shock was coming from my little rural high school to Earlham,” Mills remembers. “We had Latin and biology, but none of the higher math at my high school.”Because of his family ties to Earlham, fitting in was probably never in doubt.

“Earlham is a family institution,” he explains. “I was fourth generation. My aunts, uncles, cousins, we all went to Earlham.” In fact Amos Mills, Morris’ great-grandfather, attended and later taught at Friends Boarding School, which eventually became Earlham College.

A DIFFERENT SORT OF MIDTERMDuring his first year at Earlham, Mills received his draft card, and after only one quarter at Earlham, Morris passed the Army’s physical exam.

Considering his Quaker roots, Mills sought guidance.“Dad told me to talk to Earlham’s president at the time, Dr. William Dennis,” Mills says. “I’ll never forget. I went in and told him, ‘Well, I think the war is over,’ and halfway


through my statement, he sternly told me ‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it.’”

Mills quickly signed on, and after six weeks of basic training and eight weeks in the Army engineering school, Mills traveled to Japan passing through Hiroshima to do topographical survey work in and around Tokyo as a member of the Corps of Engineers.

Discharged after serving 18 months, Mills returned to an Earlham that was dramatically different.

“Because of the war, when I enrolled in 1945 there were 70 boys and 300 girls at Earlham,” he says. “By the fall of 1947, there were 300 boys, and three-fourths of them were veterans. There was a bit of a push between the pacifists and those who had participated in the war.” The academic rigor, however, remained unchanged.

“At Earlham I found myself competing with kids from Westtown and other Eastern prep schools,” Mills says. “There was also the new math, and I wasn’t used to the amount of writing I was being asked to produce,” he exclaims. “It was a different rigor of study, but I righted the ship and graduated in economics with honors.”

During his last year at Earlham, a visiting professor took note of Mills’ interest and aptitude in finance and recommended he apply to Harvard.

“I hadn’t thought a whole lot about grad school, but he encouraged me to apply,” Mills says. “I had a year and a half left on the G.I. Bill, so I applied.”

FROM HARVARD TO THE STATEHOUSEHis Harvard classmates numbered 600 and included nearly 15 future Fortune 500 CEOs and one other farmer.“In that, I was unusual,” he says. “Most of the students there were entering the labor market or were returning to the family business. I had a few half-hearted interviews for jobs, but I had already decided to return home to the farm and other family businesses.”

After 10 years of full-time farming, he was approached during a Lions Club meeting to enter state politics by representing Marion County. The county was both urban and rural, and Mills was seen as someone who could bridge the two, communicating as naturally in the city as in the country.

“It was a bit of luck, I suppose,” he says. “I had the kind

“I don’t consider myself a politician, really,” Mills says. “I feel like I helped to get good things accomplished, and I enjoyed it. I have been lucky along the way. Truthfully, I could not have served in the legislature if my brother Murray ’56 hadn’t been keeping the ship afloat on the farm.”

Z

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of credentials a party could boast about, an undergraduate degree from Earlham, a graduate degree from Harvard, and I was a farmer.”

And his approach to politics was, well, farmer-like. Not much flash, but a lot of hours and a lot of hustle.

“I was never the golden orator,” says Mills. “I presented the facts, stated my opinion and hoped to build enough support to get things done.”

For 28 years Mills represented Indiana’s Senate District 35 and also served four years in the House of Representatives. Much of his legislative work focused on education finance, commerce and state finance.

Mills began serving in the Ways and Means Committee in his very first year and found that he enjoyed administrating state budgets and arranging finances. By the end of his career, he was the principal negotiator of 14 state budgets and had authored cross-county banking legislation and 14 school funding formulas.

“I always asked, ‘Should I take money from someone and give it to somebody else?’” he says. “Is it worth taxing you to give it to another person? Is the taxpayer getting a fair deal for what he is being asked to contribute?”

STEADY TO YOUR PURPOSESIn April, Mills will receive the 2015 Charles W.L. Foreman Award, a national honor awarded by the Council of Independent Colleges for the “game-changing impact” of his work as a trustee of the Independent Colleges of Indiana, according to the award nomination letter sent by Richard Ludwick, ICI president. The Foreman Award recognizes board members, trustees or college presidents who have demonstrated “truly exceptional commitment and leadership.”

“Throughout his tenure as an Indiana state senator and state representative, Senator Mills was known for his advocacy for education, particularly for his commitment to the belief that all students, regardless of family background, should have the opportunity to choose their best college fit, whether that be a public or private institution,” according to Ludwick.

In 1973 Mills sponsored legislation to create the Freedom of Choice grant for needy students attending independent colleges and universities in Indiana. This grant closely resembles the Higher Education Act for students attending public universities.

“The grant is worth $8,000 to $9,000 per year per student, and a total of between $40 and $50 million has been distributed annually since its inception,” he says.

Despite 32 years in state government, Mills considers himself a farmer, and whether farming or serving in the legislature, Mills maintained the attitude he learned as a young Quaker boy on the farm.

“We tried always to do the best we could in all that we did,” he says. “It’s the way we were raised.

“I wanted a government that worked as well as it could, and we wanted to be as productive in farming as we could.”

At 87, he still likes to amble around on a tractor. Standing and looking at his family’s grain operation in Ladoga, Indiana, Mills says he can only be amazed.

When asked to reveal his key to success, he replies, “Well, I would say perseverance. I also stayed connected to home. It is a very satisfying feeling to help harvest a field, and you feel better working for something that is good for people.”


A Message

“

”

When I meet with students for the first time, I say, “Listen! I’m going to explain the Quaker philosophy I had when I was an undergraduate at Earlham College.”

in her Music

— Sarah Abigail Griffiths ’00

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Sarah Abigail Griffiths ’00 begins every new semester with a message to her music students that has nothing to do with theory or technique.

“When I meet with students for the first time, I say, “Listen! I’m going to explain the Quaker philosophy I had when I was an undergraduate at Earlham College,’” Griffiths says. “I tell them my classroom is a community where we’re both learning and growing, that I respect them and they can call me by my first name.

“I really try to encourage that type of open community where we can continue to grow with each other,” she says.

Now an accomplished soprano and adjunct voice instructor at Ramapo College of New Jersey, Griffiths says mentorship and outreach to future generations of music students define her career.

“Outreach is so important to me,” she says. “I owe so much because I benefitted so much from the education I received at Earlham, and every institution where I’ve learned,” Griffiths says.

Griffiths reconnected with Earlham students in October during a performance with Armonia Celeste, the five-member ensemble she co-founded while earning her doctorate from the University of North Texas.

On stage, she showcased the “glowing tone, effortless facility and vivid expressivity,” that recently captivated a critic from the Dallas Morning News.

Off stage, she offered voice lessons to Earlhamites and participated in a group discussion at the Lingle Recital Hall.

BY BRIAN ZIMMERMANPHOTOGRAPHED BY SUSANNA TANNER


“So much learning and information is passed online and on social media so I think actively engaging an audience just becomes all the more important,” she says. “You learn in a different way and you understand music much more effectively when you get to engage in that setting.

“Being able to engage with the students and meet them where they are and finding ways to help them grow and learn, it’s huge.”

Griffiths’ early career has given her opportunities to appear regularly as soloist and chorister with many New York City and Dallas ensembles. They include Voices of Ascension, New York Virtuoso Singers and Fuma Sacra in New York, and the Orpheus Chamber Singers and Dallas Bach Society in Dallas. She made her solo debut on the main stage of Carnegie Hall in May 2014 as soprano soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra.

Griffiths sees no end to her busy performance schedule, but her dream is to work full-time as a college professor.

“I’m still searching for the perfect school,” Griffiths says. “Right now, I continue to live in New York City where there are lots of performance opportunities. The more you get to live in a world and do what you do, the better you can teach successfully.”

ALL IN THE FAMILYGriffiths comes from a family of Earlhamites.

Her brother, Christopher Griffiths ’94, and sister, Megan Griffiths ’97, both majored in science at Earlham. Her sister-in-law, Janie Nordstrom ’92, and cousin, Rebecca Griffiths ’08, are Earlhamites, too. (Janie and Jenny Nordstrom ’89 are the daughters of Lyle Nordstrom, the lutenist in Armonia Celeste.)

But despite the family history, Griffiths visited a number of liberal arts colleges before choosing Earlham. Even that choice came down to a coin flip to break the tie.

The coin toss indicated Carleton College. “My heart just sank and I said, ‘there’s my answer.’ If my heart is telling me to come to Earlham, then it must be right.”

Like her siblings, Griffiths was intent on pursuing a career in science and chose chemistry as her major.

“I chose chemistry under the idea that science would mean a job,” she says. “Everyone wants to make a living, and I was always good at math so it just made sense.”

A ‘WONDERFUL’ TRANSITIONChemistry became an afterthought by her junior year when her parents pointed out that she was taking more music than science classes.

“I was very engaged in the music program the minute I stepped on campus,” Griffiths says, remarking on her experiences in the Concert Choir, Madrigal and Acapella Singers and other ensembles that also allowed her to play trombone.

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“I got to do so much,” she says. “At Earlham, I got far more musical opportunities than I would have at other schools as a chemistry major. It was a wonderful transition.”

Her mentor was Dan Graves, who retired in 2012 as professor emeritus of music.

“As a choral person, you always hope to have a shimmer on the top of the sound of the 55 singers or so in your ensemble,” he says. “She contributed that for four years. She has just an incredible sense of pitch. She was a team player, yet a star.”

Her team-first mentality came to the forefront during a semester-long trip to Vienna where Earlham choral students studied and performed with other European singers.

“One group we sang with had a conductor who wanted to pick and choose some students from our group and not have others sing,” Graves says. “She was selected, but she said, ‘No. It’s

all of us, or none of us.’ I thought that was an example of her character.”

IMPRESSED BY NEW ARTS BUILDING AND STUDENTS Griffiths’ performance with Armonia Celeste was the first ticketed event at Lingle Recital Hall, one of the premier facilities in the new Center for the Visual and Performing Arts.

The College opened the $22 million, 47,200-square foot building in August as the central home of the art, music and theatre arts departments. When Griffiths was a student on campus, the arts were taught at various locations across campus making collaboration more difficult.

“This is an open and embracing space that is so beautiful,” she says.

In addition to the 250-seat recital hall, the CVPA boasts the 100-seat Ronald L. McDaniel Studio Theater, a black-box theater with flexible seating; and the Ronald L. McDaniel Arts

Plaza, which doubles as an outdoor performance space.

More than a dozen classrooms and laboratories have also been designed specifically for instruction in ceramics, fiber art, photography, metals, Gamelan, jazz, percussion, painting and drawing. These rooms include the Bonita Washington-Lacey Classroom (music) and Gerald Clarence Cooper Arts Classroom.

But more exciting than the bricks and mortar of the new building, Griffiths says, are signs that Earlham continues to embrace the core values that inspire her as a performer and teacher.

“The students seem to be actively engaged in their education the same way they did when I was a student here,” she says. “They continue to ask interesting and unexpected questions that help me think outside the box.

“That’s how learning should be. Always.”

“She just radiates her love for music, and is just a compelling and engaging performer and human being.” — Dan Graves, Professor Emeritus of Music


A faculty member travels to Tennessee to participate in the ordination of a former student. An alumna offers to mentor current students with similar vocational interests. A Facebook photo of a recent recording service shows no fewer than four ESR alumni/ae involved in the recognition of a 2014 grad’s gifts for ministry. Snapshots like these suggest that meaningful connections form during an ESR education and last for years to come. An ESR photo album could be filled with moments like these!

Someone once quipped to me that the ESR alumni/ae network was like a Quaker mafia — you had to know someone if you wanted to make progress in the Quaker world. That opinion was not meant as a compliment! While I think the sentiment was an exaggeration, ESR desires to create a vital network that connects and sustains the relationships and contributions of our multi-layered group. In some ways, that fits precisely with earlier Quaker practice. ESR noted as much in its now completed strategic plan from 2000:

“Quaker networks allowed Friends to succeed in business. They kept the Society of Friends connected; brought Friends of varying locations/persuasions into contact; and provided avenues of safety and trust for a variety of interactions. As a result, networks created opportunities to shape identities. Having a finger on the pulse in the outer reaches also allowed Friends to make adjustments to their affairs so that prosperity was preserved and danger was averted.”

Trust, opportunity, identity-shaping and adjusting. Each of these historic components of Quaker networks names a facet of the function and value of connections built today at ESR. Indeed, the school’s life force is carried within this kind of connection. These networks don’t develop purely by accident. We contend they are forged in the process of spiritual formation, wrestling with life’s complex questions and investing in the creation of deep friendships as individuals attempt to understand their call and gifts to ministry.

Trusting one’s self enough to risk new ventures can open doors to surprising possibilities and outcomes. Trusting the other enough to speak from the heart opens opportunity for dialog that expresses one’s honest assumptions and convictions. As those are examined, identities can shift as some things are released and new understandings are embraced. Adjustments are possible as new realities are encountered, making success more easily achievable.

A current example of intentional projects that nurture these emerging networks is the research of alternative movements where individuals seek spiritual engagement in non-traditional places. The project funds three-person research teams that include a faculty member, a current student and an alumnus/a or another external constituent. Time spent together in focused research but with flexibility of design will promote conversation, learning and, if history repeats itself, deepened relationships rooted in this experience. In a recent letter to a scholarship donor, one of our students wrote, “The professors . . . have gone above and beyond to assist students with academic challenges as well as those who may have other issues that interfere with the learning process. Every employee at this institution, from my perspective, lives out their vocation at ESR.”

It may well be that it is the sense of vocation that propels this work to a deep level of connectedness. For the employees, this work is about so much more than merely earning a paycheck. The work they contribute to the group is nothing less than the exercising of their own gifts and the fulfilling of their own call. For students, this educational experience leads them to examine their deeply held convictions and question where God, faith and opportunity intersect in ways that create a life of meaning with rewarding work that matters. ESR is creating lasting connections that matter to all involved!

Connections that Last by Jay Marshall, Ph.D.Dean of the Earlham School of Religion

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Explore-A-Collegesm programEXPLORE,

EXPERIENCE, ENGAGE!

A 13 day summer program is designed to be a “DRESS REHEARSAL” FOR COLLEGE.

COLLEGE-LEVEL CLASSES…

It’s rewarding. It’s fun. But it’s not camp!

“I would never have believed that a two-week program would have made such a difference in my daughter. This was an invaluable experience.” – PARENT FROM OHIO

APPLY ONLINE: earlham.edu/exploreacollege

FOR MORE INFORMATION:Susan Hillmann de Castañeda ’93 Director, Explore-A-CollegeSM Program 765-983-1330

Melissa Bickford, Program Assistant 765-983-1462

toll-free: 1-800-EARLHAM (1-800-327-5426)

Email: [email protected]

June 21-July 3, 2015

The program offers a 10% discount to participants who are Quaker, children or grandchildren of Earlham Alumni or siblings of an Earlham student.

A residental, college-level, summer program for high schoolstudents.

By taking a class taught by an Earlham professor students developdiscussion, research, and time management skills that better prepare themfor college work. Classes range in size from five to 18 and are for high schoolstudents who are currently sophomores and juniors.

Earn two semester hours of transferrable college creditin this fun and challenging two-week program.


“From the ages of 3 to 18, I was considered a ‘lifer’ at Friends Central School,” says Polykoff. At FCS in Wynnewood, Pa., his ideals were shaped around Quaker testimonies, culture and pedagogy.

Polykoff played on some outstanding teams at FCS. Two of his teammates played in the NBA. Hakim Warrick won a national championship with Syracuse University in 2003, and then was drafted by the Memphis Grizzlies in 2005. Mustafa Shakur was a first-team All-American and McDonald’s All American coming out of high school. He played collegiately at the University of Arizona, then professionally for the Washington Wizards and Charlotte Bobcats.

As a senior, Polykoff was FCS’s sixth man on a team that posted a 26-2 record and garnered a league championship.

Polykoff continued his studies at Haverford, the oldest college founded by Friends in North America. As a senior, he was a captain and the team’s most valuable player.

He returned to Friends Central School as the head coach, compiling a 113-28 record and winning four Pennsylvania Independent Schools titles from 2009-2012. The last two years he has mentored in the Ivy League as an assistant coach at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I chose to come to Earlham because I was comfortable with its community and culture,” says Polykoff. “I also believe Earlham wants to be successful in all facets, with athletics being an important part of that. And finally because of the people I met when I came to interview. From the students to David Dawson, everyone was welcoming.”

Polykoff’s coaching style emphasizes what he calls his team’s Pillars of Success: character, hard work, unity, discipline and enthusiasm. “Our bar for success is determined by how well we achieve these goals,” he says.

HIS BAR FOR SUCCESS

“I’m not a yeller or a screamer. I believe in

the power of being positive,

and I don’t talk about wins and losses.”

While men’s basketball coach Jason Polykoff is brand new to Earlham, he’s very familiar with the ethos of Quakerism.

-Jason Polykoff

BY DAVE KNIGHT

HIS BAR FOR SUCCESSThe team lineup will be new, as only three student-athletes return from last winter. “Our men will have their priorities in order: academics, basketball and then a social life,” says Polykoff.

The new coach hit the recruiting trail immediately upon arriving on campus last spring. Projected starters include transfers Taylen Alexander, a 6-5 junior from Champaign, Ill., and Parkland College; Deshar Wilson-Thomas, a 6-2 first-year student from Goldsboro, N.C., and Massanutten Military Academy in Va.; and Kamari Hunter, a 6-2 sophomore from Long Beach, Calif., from Cal State-Long Beach.

In a rebuilding year, this young team will have to find its strengths as the season develops, but the Quakers will likely be disciplined and aggressive on defense. “You can expect some full-court defensive pressure,” Polykoff says. The press was a signature of his successful programs at Friends Central.

-Jason Polykoff

More than 10 of Polykoff’s former players at Friends Central School moved on to play college basketball.

Polykoff was the Main Line Life Boys’ Basketball Coach of the Year in 2008 and the “Best High School Coach” for Main Line Magazine’s “2012 Best of the Main Line and Western Suburbs” edition.

Polykoff coached four McDonald’s All-America nominees, including Amile Jefferson who was a McDonald’s All-American and currently a junior at Duke.

Polykoff’s 2010-11 team at FCS was ranked as high as No. 21 nationally as well as No. 1 in Pennsylvania by MaxPreps and No. 1 in Southeastern Pennsylvania by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In addition to his coaching duties at FCS, Polykoff was a middle school math teacher. Algebra anyone?

Fun Facts


a poster “Determining the prokaryotic microbial distribution of geocoded soil samples from sites in Iceland by 16S rRNA metagenomic analysis using Mothur on XSEDE computational resources: Science in the Field.” In October, Peck and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Xunfei Jiang attended the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing with Muterspaw, Srinath and Sadie Coughlin-Prego ’16. More than 9,000 women and 483 men gathered in Phoenix to learn about all things computing but in particular how to improve the gender representation in technology fields.

Patty Lamson, director of International Programs, participated in the AAC&U Conference on Global Learning in College: Cross-Cutting Capacities for 21st Century College Students in October in Minneapolis, Minn. Lamson was a presenter on the session called Putting the Local in Global Education. Katie Sharar, Associate Director of the Border Studies Program, also attended the conference.

Walt Bistline, associate professor of art, has been appointed to the Advisory Board for the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indiana University East. This fall,

his photographs were accepted in juried competitions for the “Art About the Land” exhibition at Minnetrista Cultural Center

Julie Beier, assistant professor of mathematics, organized and hosted Earlham’s first Celebration of the Mind event at the Joseph Moore Museum. Celebration of

the Mind is an international event that honors Martin Gardner, a prolific writer in Scientific American who helped popularize mathematics and inspire future generations of mathematicians. The event featured a magician and the Earlham juggling club. More than 140 people attended. Activities included working with tessellations, seven-colored tori, minimal surface bubbles and flexagons.

During July, Associate Professor of Computer Science Charlie Peck ’84, Kristin Muterspaw ’15, Ruthie Youngerman ’14 and Anna

Plotkin-Swing ’14 returned to Iceland to do field science with two geologists from Pellissippi State University in Tennessee. The group sampled soil for metagenomic analysis from under the receding edge of a glacier, an archeological dig at a very early settlement, and a bird sanctuary. In addition, Peck and Skylar Thompson ’04, Mobeen Ludin ’13, Ivan Babic ’13, Aaron Weeden ’11, Muterspaw and Deeksha Srinath ’17 participated in the XSEDE conference this summer in Atlanta. The group collectively contributed a paper, “LittleFe as a successful on-ramp to HPC”, and

Faculty Activitiesin Muncie, the 116th Annual Exhibition at the Richmond Art Museum, and the annual Whitewater Valley exhibition at IUE, where he received a “Top 10” award.

Mark Van Buskirk, professor of art, won a major award at the Richmond Art Museum exhibition, and both Elena Dahl, visiting assistant professor of art, and Adetokunbo Adeshile, Bonner Scholars coordinator, had works accepted. In the Whitewater competition, Van

Buskirk and Joann Quiñones, associate professor of English, were also “Top 10” winners. The “Art About the Land” exhibit includes work by Assistant Professor of Art Sungyeoul Lee.

Associate Professor of Art Nancy Taylor had two works accepted into “Art About the Land” exhibition at Minnetrista Cultural Center, and

another piece was selected for Ebb and Flow: International Yardage Exhibit, Handweavers Guild of America Convergence in July in Rhode Island. All three of these pieces grew out of a student/faculty research project Taylor did last fall

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exploring the dyes available from plants growing wild on Earlham properties.

Associate Professor of Sociology Ted Thornhill recently had a chapter published in the book Getting Real About Race: Hoodies, Mascots, Model Minorities,

and Other Conversations edited by Stephanie M. McClure and Cherise A. Harris. Thornhill’s chapter is titled “‘If People Stopped Talking About Race, It Wouldn’t Be a Problem Anymore’: Silencing the Myth of a Color-Blind Society.”

Lynne Perkins Socey, assistant professor of theatre arts, performed as Golde in “Fiddler on the Roof” at Beef and Boards Dinner Theatre in Indianapolis from Oct. 9 – Nov. 23. Socey also participated in the Expressive Actor Teacher Certification Training held in Las Vegas in July, and she attended the Bonner High Impact Community Engagement Conference near Albany, New York, in July.

This fall, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Elizabeth Lindau served on the program committee for the 2015 conference of the International

Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. Branch. She reported on this experience as part of the panel “The State of Popular Music Studies through the Eyes of Conference Organizers” at the American Musicological Society’s annual meeting in Milwaukee, Wis. At that same conference, she gave a talk titled “‘Boring Things: Drone and Repetition in the Music of the Velvet Underground.”

In November, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Tom Horan’s play “Typhoid Mary” was presented in Sarasota, Fla., as part of the National New Play Network’s

showcase of new plays.

Jay Roberts, associate vice president for academic affairs, presented a professional development workshop on experiential education to the faculty of Maumee Valley School, in Toledo, Ohio, in August. And in October, Roberts presented “Critical Sustainability” at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, Portland, Ore. He also served on a panel during a session titled “Teaching Sustainability: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences.”

Becky Dimick Eastman, assistant director of graduate programs in education, presented “Teaching for Social

Justice: From Theory to Practice” at the Association of Teacher Educators, Indiana conference.

Assistant Professor of Physics Michael Lerner co-authored “Determination of Biomembrane Bending Moduli in Fully Atomistic Simulations” in

the Journal of the American Chemical Society and “Web-Based Computational Chemistry Education with CHARMMing II: Coarse-Grained Protein Folding” in PLoS Computational Biology, which was referenced in the PLoS editorial “Making Biomolecular Simulations Accessible in the Post-Nobel Era.”

Assistant Professor of History Betsy Schlabach presented a conference paper at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in Memphis, Tenn., in September. Schlabach also presented a paper, “The Policy Game: Women and Gambling on Chicago’s South Side, 1930s” at the Newberry Library’s Seminar on Women and Gender in October in Chicago.

Ali Edington, director of thematic studies abroad and international student advisor, co-led an all-day workshop called “Non-Resident Alien Tax: What International Educators Should Know” at the NAFSA Conference in May.


Tom Hamm, professor of history and curator of the Quaker Collection and director of special collections, serves on the advisory committee for the

new interpretive center at the Levi Coffin House State Historic Site in Fountain City, Ind. He contributed an essay, “George F. White and Hicksite Opposition to the Abolitionist Movement” to the volume Quakers & Abolition, published by University of Illinois Press.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Lori Watson published a paper titled “Functionalization of Complexed N2O in Bis(pentamethyl-cyclopentadienyl) Systems of Zirconium and Titanium” in the chemistry journal Organometallics. Watson also presented at the national Biennial Conference on Chemical Education in August entitled “Advanced IONiC/VIPEr: Using and Sharing Inorganic Chemistry Education Resources.”

Associate Professor of English Scott Hess’ essay “Nature and the Environment” is being printed as part of the volume, William Wordsworth in

Context, edited by Andrew Bennett and published through Cambridge University Press. Hess delivered a scholarly paper, “Wordsworthshire and Thoreau Country: Romantic Ecologies of Authorship,” at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference, in Washington D.C. His book review of Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World was published in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.

Neal Baker, library director, contributed a chapter, “Middle-earth and LEGO (Re)creation,” to a scholarly anthology published by Routledge, LEGO

Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon.

Faculty Activities

&friendGrab a

come back to Earlham.

2015Homecoming and Reunion Weekend

October 30-November 1

MORE THAN 1,000 EARLHAMITES and friends returned to campus for Homecoming and Reunion Weekend, Oct. 24-26. Highlights included the dedication of the Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, the African American Alumni Celebrations (see pages 64-65) and the annual Alumni Awards and Athletic Hall of Fame ceremonies.

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1. Mac Lemann ’04 with wife Gina Pea and son Teddy Pea-Lemann stroll across The Heart. 2. Charles Calhoun ’74 proudly wears his original number. 3. Molly Fallon ’11 reunites with a friend. 4. Class of 1964 alums Sandy Ermentrout Rotenberg, Penny Hartzell and Carolyn Bullock. 5. Micah (Sommer) Sommersmith ’11 takes a photo of wife Clairellyn (Smith) Sommersmith ’11 at the swing on The Heart. 6. Alumns take a look at old Sargasso yearbooks. 7. Alumni gather for the annual Picnic Lunch. 8. Jewell Spears ’11 catches up with old friends at the Picnic Lunch.

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Homecoming 2014

9. Lindsey Chappell Patti ’04, one of Earlham’s greatest basketball players, gives her acceptance comments after being inducted in the Athletics Hall of Fame.

10. A hearty Quaker passing game gave Quaker football fans plenty to cheer about as Earlham hosted Defiance.

11. No. 7, Marcaus Cooper ’18, celebrates his 8-yard touchdown catch with a teammate.

12. Students, alumni and faculty participated in Dennis Hinkle ’64 Memorial Alumni Run.

13. Kelsey Moore ’18 defends the goal during the women’s soccer game.

14. Big Earl pauses for an unblinking view of the football homecoming game. 15. Earlham President John David Dawson and Board of Trustees Chair Deborah Hull ’67 snip the ribbon to officially open the Center for the Visual and Performing Arts.

16. Concert Choir performs during the CVPA open house.

17. Percussion Director Keith Cozart reviews the selection “World Piece” with members of the Hand Drum Ensemble before playing at the CVPA ribbon cutting ceremony.

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Looking Back, Moving Forward

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1. Alums gather for a photo at the Cunningham Cultural Center rededication.

2. Marilyn Carter ’75, Kathy and Eugene Potter ’75, Melissa Cooper ’74 and Vernon Reed ’75.

3. President David Dawson congratulates Taylor Jones ’62. Jones is the namesake for the

Cunningham Cultural Center’s Gathering Commons.

4. Former African American Advisory Board chairs cut the ribbon at the rededication ceremony:

Taylor Jones ’62, Charles Calhoun ’74, Gregory Porter ’78, Robert Faulkens ’84.

5. Reactions during the rededication ceremony from Melissa Cooper ’74 (nearest) and Jennie

Bradley ’84.

6. Concert audience members, including Chris Thomas ’84 and Jazmine Capers ’16, rise to their

feet at the close of the Gospel Revelations 50th anniversary performance.

7. Karmell Brown ’13 (left) and fellow choir members.

8. TeSharra Thomas ’16 takes a turn as soloist. Jacob Washington-Lacey plays keyboards.

9. At the concert, Bonita Washington-Lacey (center) recognized AAAB Scholarship recipients.

EARLHAM WELCOMED MORE THAN 125 AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN ALUMNI to campus during Homecoming as part of the first All Black Alumni Celebration.

The celebration was highlighted by the 50th anniversary performance of Gospel Revelations and the rededication of the Cunningham Cultural Center, named after Clarence Cunningham ’24, the College’s first African American graduate. The ceremony coincided with the 90th anniversary of Cunningham’s graduation.

Looking Back, Moving Forward

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“The weekend was without doubt the most emotionally powerful experience I have ever had at Earlham,” says Fred McClure ’84. “I have no doubt that we have reconnected many African American alumni to the College and to one another.”

During the celebration, the College recognized five other African American alumni who have been major contributors to the College. They include:

BONITA WASHINGTON-LACEY ’78 Namesake of a classroom at the new Center for the Visual and Performing Arts.

ROBERT GUNN ’02Inducted into Earlham’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

TAYLOR JONES ’62Namesake for the Cunningham Cultural Center’s Gathering Commons.

JEWELL SPEARS ‘57Recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award.

Together we can provide a distinctively Earlham experience.

Go to earlham.edu/online-giving. For questions contact Danna O’Connell, Director of Annual Giving, 765-983-1779 or email [email protected].

Undergraduate research is a hallmark of the Earlham experience with 85% of professors reporting that they collaborate with students on research.

GENEVIEVE IS ONE OF FOUR EARLHAM STUDENTS contributing to research on how children resolve conflict and build stronger relationships. “Thoughtful Friends” is the study Visiting Professor of Psychology Rachael Reavis created to help find new ways to help children age 7 to 9 who are having social problems. Their research findings will be presented at the Society for Research in Child Development conference in April.

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