Leading scholar on gender issues delivers keynote

NORTON, MASS. — Giving the keynote address at Wheaton College's 173rd Commencement held on May 17, 2008, Wheaton alumna Katharine T. Bartlett marveled at the dramatic social, technological and scientific advances that have occurred over the past 40 years, and called attention to how far we still have to go.

"We could not know in 1968, even, that in our graduating class was the future governor of New Jersey, and future head of the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency that did not exist in 1968. We could not know that at another all women's college 35 miles away, was a student who would be running for the democratic nomination for president 40 years later. Nor that her primary opponent in the primary would be a then seven-year-old son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas," said Bartlett, the A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law at Duke University and a leading scholar on gender issues and social change, and an advocate for children's rights.

"Yet for all of our progress, we note the problem of prejudice based on race, gender, disability and age has not gone away. In its mutated forms, discrimination is more subtle, less intentional, and more unconscious than it was in 1968, and in an important sense, more resilient," said Bartlett, who graduated from Wheaton in 1968, and served as dean of Duke Law School from 2000-2007. Under her leadership, the law school strengthened its academic reputation, and seven new law clinics were established to enable law students to help low-income clients. She also teaches and publishes widely in the areas of family law, gender theory and employment law. One of her many articles, "Feminist Legal Methods," is among the most cited law review articles on any subject.

"The unintended forms of prejudice, unfortunately are not only learned, culturally re-enforced and complicated, motivated by complicated psychological needs, they are also built right into our normal processes of cognition," she went on to say. "Overcoming them will require an extraordinary combination of individual effort, optimism, self-criticism and knowledge."

Noting that the year she graduated no one had landed on moon, there were no computers, no cell phones and no heart transplants, she encouraged the 380 members of the Class of 2008 to imagine the next 40 years of possibilities and the important role that each of them must play in moving the world forward.

"Wheaton has given you many opportunities to prepare for these and other challenges. Here you have learned about leadership which will never be obsolete, no matter what lies ahead," she said. "Over the next 40 years, some of you will become public figures, some will work in the frontiers of science and technology, or be leaders in business and finance. In this class, there are future poets, playwrights and novelists. There are sensible, caring people who will know how to guide their families and their communities through times of joy and moments of crisis. There are dreamers and visionaries in this class and there are pragmatists.

"What do you want to be able to have said about you in five years, in 10 years, or 40 years from today when you return for your 40th Wheaton reunion? What do you want to have become, as evidenced not only by your tangible achievements, but how you respond to the bad moments, how you treat those who are not in a position to do anything for you, and what kind of commitments you keep?

"George Eliot told us, ‘It is never too late to be who you might have been.' I would add that it is also never too early. You are in one of the most exciting junctions of your lives, a time that invites special scrutiny into those ancient and enduring philosophical questions of identity and purpose that Wheaton has equipped you to ask and re-ask.

"You now enter the 40-year period during which you will live your answers to these questions. I will see you in 40 years for a full report."

[The transcript of Wheaton's Commencement address and high resolution photos are posted at http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/CR/cr2008/commencement/.]

More than 400 alumnae/i participated in Commencement/Reunion Weekend. Among them were Dorothy McQuilland Hanrahan and Helen Piper Roberts, from the Class of 1933, the oldest class represented. Alumnae/i came from as far away as Alaska, Aruba, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Bartlett was one of three honorary degree recipients, as well as: Louise Henn Feroe '68, president of Mercy College and winner of the Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison's Bill Webber Award for her work as an educator and supporter of prison education; and Kathryn Wasserman Davis, internationalist, philanthropist and mother of Wheaton board of trustee member Diana Davis Spencer, Class of 1960.

To celebrate her 100th birthday last year, Kathryn Wasserman Davis created the 100 Projects for Peace initiative to encourage students to come up with ideas aimed at building world peace. Last year, students from 65 colleges and universities benefited from her grants, including three Wheaton students. This year, two more Wheaton students won grants.

While accepting her honorary degree on Saturday, Davis told the class: "My many years have taught me there will always be conflicts. It's part of human nature. But I will remind you that love, kindness and support are also part of human nature. My challenge to all of you is to bring about a mindset of preparing for peace instead of preparing for war."

Sui On Kwan '09 and Kelly Maby '09 have each won $10,000 Projects for Peace grants for projects to be undertaken this summer. Kwan will establish a handicrafts shop for a Cambodian nonprofit, while Maby will take urban high school students on a tour of the American South to learn from Civil Rights leaders. Maby lives in Woodhaven (Queens), N.Y.; Kwan, who is a United World Scholar student at Wheaton, lives in Singapore.

Overall, Wheaton students and graduates won 11 prestigious national scholarship awards this academic year, including a total of six Fulbrights.

Seniors Jennifer Bombasaro-Brady of Hingham, Mass., and Ru-Shyan Yen of Pittsburgh are two of 50 college students nationwide selected to receive a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. The $25,000 award will support a year of travel and research for each student. Yen will explore varied artistic techniques for creating batik. The Thomas J. Watson Foundation awards 50 fellowships to college seniors of unusual promise for a year of independent exploration and travel outside the United States.

Five members of the Class of 2008 won Fulbright scholarships: Michael Freese of Newport, Maine, will teach English in Russia. Esther Jeong of Queens, N.Y., will research changes in traditional dance styles and the cultural shifts that have occurred as globalization has taken place in contemporary South Korea. Meghan Kenny of Taylorsville, Miss., will teach English in Malaysia. Ashlan Musante of Sunderland, Mass., will conduct research at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany. Ashley Smith of Madison, Maine, won a Fulbright to research Native American populations in Canada. Derron J.R. Wallace, a Bronx, N.Y., resident who graduated from Wheaton in May 2007, won a Fulbright to teach English and conduct research on education reform in Thailand. (Last year, he won a Projects for Peace grant, as well as a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.)

Blair Rossetti '09 of Plymouth, Mass., was named a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar for 2008. Awarded to outstanding college juniors and seniors in the fields of mathematics, science and engineering, the Goldwater Scholarship is the premier national award for undergraduates in these areas.

Senior Caroline Teague of Ipswich, Mass., won scholarships from the St. Andrews Society of New York to support her studies at the University of Edinburgh's School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Other major awards were won as well. Kara Schamell's senior thesis took the prize for the best undergraduate student paper at the 2008 Greater Boston Anthropology Consortium Student Conference, held at Brandeis University. She researched the meaning of a spiritual Zimbabwean music form played on an indigenous instrument and its transformation as a secular art form embraced in the World Music industry. The research grew out of ethnomusicology and anthropology courses Schamell took at Wheaton, starting with the class "Music and Worship in World Cultures" taught by Julie Searles, director of world dance and visiting instructor of music.

Also winning recognition at the conference were Ashley Smith '08, who won the prize for best student question, and Katherine Niemczyk '08, who won commendation for her entry in the new film category with her film trailer "Bearing Arms, Bearing Witness: Veterans Against the Iraq War."

Eight Wheaton voice students competed at the Song Festival of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing this spring, and five of them came away with honors, including Alexander Grover '09 and Elizabeth McKay '08, who each won a first prize in their divisions.

Wheaton students have won more than 50 prestigious academic awards since 2001, including three Rhodes Scholarships.

Located in Norton, Mass., Wheaton is a highly selective college of the liberal arts and sciences with a student body of 1,500. It is a member of the Twelve College Exchange, which also includes Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Trinity, Wellesley and Wesleyan.