Winter 2013 – Wheaton Quarterly

Nothing but the best will do

Winter 2013 by Sandra Coleman-Editor

“Don’t you want to find out how good you can be?”

The question was posed this semester in the final seconds of a class taught by Professor Andrew Howard—the First-Year Seminar course “The Quality of the Mark: A Journey towards Self-awareness through Drawing.” I’m an artist and a constant seeker of “self,” so I took the course alongside the students this semester.

The class had just finished a critique of assigned homework, and a couple of students had asked him point-blank whether they should redo their drawings for the final portfolios that would be turned in at the end of the semester.

His initial answer: “I don’t know, what do you think?” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Between the Lines

Next: A call for story ideas

Winter 2013 by Quarterly

**We’re always looking for great story ideas for the Wheaton Quarterly. You could be in our next one.**

Send us your ideas about interesting alums to profile or subjects to write about. Here’s what we’re planning to write about sometime soon:

Extreme alums: You know who you are. You can’t just walk; you must run—five marathons a year. You can’t just sit down and relax; you have to climb mountains, or rocks, or whatever—without ropes. You aren’t content with just your first and last name; you need to have “Iron Man” or “Iron Woman” inserted as a nickname. Email us. Tell us your story, toot your own horn, so we can impress, and perhaps, inspire our readers.

Second acts: Have you totally reinvented your career because of the economy or because of a shift in your personal goals? We want to know who you are, what you did, why you did it, and how.

Email us at quarterly@wheatoncollege.edu

Filed Under: Between the Lines

Work it

Winter 2013 by Ronald A. Crutcher

One Saturday this fall, students filled every seat in the Filene Center. What drew them away from homework and free time? The opportunity to chat with alumnae and alumni about how to navigate the path from college to careers in finance, health care, education, computer programming, publishing and more.

Career conversations such as the one held during the Alumnae/i Leadership Conference have become a regular feature of campus events. In many ways, these mentoring discussions between students and graduates are not so different from the lecture series that Catherine Filene Shouse ’18 convened at Wheaton in 1917. Her Intercollegiate Vocational Conference for Women represented a first for the college and for the entire United States. The purpose was to make jobs more accessible to women, and the conference she established continued at Wheaton into the 1950s.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Convergence

Eat, sleep, art, music

Winter 2013 by Quarterly

Students draw inspiration from Ireland

Professor Andrew Howard has always believed that the ideal way to teach an art course would be to do it through solid blocks of sustained time without distractions. For three summers since 2006, he has taken students as close to that ideal as possible outside of the classroom during the “Arts in Ireland” course he created.

The group: Lauren Andres ’14, Christina Cannon ’13, Andrew Cavacco ’13, Lyndsay Cooke ’14, Sedra Davis ’14, Stephanie Hoomis ’13, Nathaniel Hunt ’13, Hilary Lahan ’13, Amy Magaletti ’13, Tyler Matayoshi ’13, Amira Pualwan ’13, Gilda Rodrigues ’14, Alexandra Strawbridge ’14, Rachel Vergara ’13 and Professor Andrew Howard in Ireland. Photo taken by Professor Matthew Allen.

“The idea is to take a select group of Wheaton students who have demonstrated a commitment to art and/or music, and provide them with a very intensive three-week experience creating original artwork and music compositions based on their impressions of the west coast of Ireland,” he says.

Last summer, 10 studio artists and four musicians took the trip, accompanied by Howard and Professor of Music Matthew Allen. The intensive course was taught in association with the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, County Clare, Ireland. Students were immersed in the culture through tours and lectures and then developed concepts that served as the basis for a body of work, which was exhibited on campus in the fall. They spent 10 to 12 hours a day in their own spaces creating. “They ate, slept, and created art and music,” says Howard. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Around the Dimple