People News, March 2024

The Smith College Museum of Art has been awarded a $280,000 grant from the Art Bridges for the museum’s “Access for All” program.

Ten students have been named new Smith Alliance for Justice and Equity Fellows by the Jandon Center for Community Engagement: Josephine Neumann ’26, Kerry LaRose ’26, Morgan Fizer ’25, Mya Wilson ’24, Nicole Bamberger Segura ’26, Shariqa Shaila ’24, Vanessa Nicole ’24, Veta Duncan ’25, Yena Perice ’26J, and Ruby Masters ’26. The fellowships are one-year experiential learning opportunities for students and community organizers to promote justice and equity in their communities.

Dance artist Talya Epstein ’25 is the recipient of a $10,000 Alex Dubé Scholarship from The Entertainment Community Fund, which supports dancers in building their professional platforms. Epstein is studying for her social work degree at Smith.

John Berryhill, interim director of the Botanic Garden of Smith College, has been awarded an $18,000 grant from the Atlanta Botanical Garden and Institute of Museum and Library Services for “Growing Metacollections and Strengthening Gardens for a Conservation Consortia Future.”

The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture by Brigitte Buettner, Louise Ines Doyle ’34 Professor of Art, has been awarded the International Center of Medieval Art’s 2023 Book Prize.

Robert Dorit, professor of biological sciences, spoke in January on “Promise and Peril in the Age of Genomics” in Paris at an event sponsored by Columbia University’s Global Centers/Paris.

Paula Giddings, Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor Emerita of Africana Studies, has been named as a member of the Committee of Scholars for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in Washington, D.C.

Suzanne Gottschang, professor of anthropology and East Asian studies, and Kathleen Pierce, visiting assistant professor of art, have been awarded a $4,977 grant from the New England Humanities Consortium for “New England Science and Society Network.” The seed grant from the NEHC will build a network connecting science and society programs and their faculty to foster curricular collaborations and opportunities for mentoring.

Nicholas Howe, professor of computer science, is technical lead on a project funded with a $75,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. “Developing OCR for Squeezes: Unlocking the Text of Greek Inscriptions Using the Krateros Database,” a project with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, is an exploratory effort to apply optical character recognition to a large collection of digitized paper negatives taken from stone inscriptions collected at archaeological sites associated with Greek antiquity.

Daphne Lamothe, professor of Africana studies, is the author of Black Time and the Aesthetic Possibility of Objects (University of North Carolina Press).

Naila Moreira, lecturer in English language and literature and director of Smith’s journalism concentration, is the author of The Monarchs of Winghaven, a children’s book about an aspiring young naturalist.

Sara Newland, assistant professor of government, is a visiting senior fellow at the Truman Center for National Policy in Washington, D.C. Newland will lead the center’s new project examining local views about the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China.

Ruth Ozeki ’80, professor emerita of English language and literature and Grace Jarcho Ross ’33 Professor of Humanities, is a featured speaker in April at the University of Rhode Island’s annual Spring Humanities Festival.

Julie Lapping Rivera, lecturer in art, curated “A Sense of Place,” an exhibit of works by printmakers participating in residencies in distant locales that marked the reopening in January of the Northampton Community Arts Trust Building.

e.j. seibert, Smith’s director of accessibility, is the author of “Glimmering Waves Toward Change,” about the disability rights movement, published by the National Teaching and Learning Forum.

A book co-edited by Hélène Visentin, associate dean of the faculty, dean for academic development and professor of French studies, received the Scholarly Edition in Translation Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender. La Princesse de Clèves by Lafayette: A New Translation and Bilingual Pedagogical Edition for the Digital Age  was published in 2022 by Lever Press.

Kimberly Ward-Duong, assistant professor of astronomy, is the recipient of a $95,649 grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA for “Calibrating STIS Coronagraphic Spectroscopy for High Contrast Observations.”

Carol Zaleski, professor of world religions, was interviewed in December on The Learning Curve podcast about a book she co-authored, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, about J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis.

Freelance journalist and author Alexandra Bregman ’10 gave a lecture on March 1 on “The Gollum Effect: Antiquities Acquisition at Yale and Beyond,” sponsored by Yale University’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. Bregman, who majored in English language and literature at Smith, earned a master’s degree from the Columbia Journalism School. She is currently a Yale Global Justice Fellow.

Wealth manager Ka’Neda Bullock ’06 has been appointed as a trustee of the Princeton Area Community Foundation. Bullock, a former trustee of Smith and a current member of the board of the Smith College Business Network, earned her Smith degree in government and an M.B.A. from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Jennifer Tarazon ’03 is the new director of multicultural engagement for the Mountain America Credit Union in Sandy, Utah. Tarazon, who majored in government at Smith, earned a master of laws degree from Brigham Young University.

Brooke Teller ’94 is the author of “Bringing science to our youngest students” in the December 2023 issue of Women in Engineering Magazine. Teller, a former teacher of the year for Maine’s Cumberland County, majored in biological sciences at Smith and earned a master of science degree in biology from Central Connecticut State University.

Kristin Rosi ’92 was honored recently by the National Judicial College for her work as chief administrative law judge of the California Department of Insurance. Rosi, who majored in psychology and women’s studies at Smith, received her law degree from the University of California College of Law.

Robin Hojnoski ’91, a professor of school psychology and associate dean for graduate studies at Lehigh University’s College of Education, testified in January at a Pennsylvania House Education Committee hearing on mental health in schools. In her testimony, Hojnoski—who majored in English language and literature at Smith and earned a master’s degree in developmental child psychology at Tufts—emphasized the shortage of mental health professionals for youth in Pennsylvania.

Valerie Lambert ’87 has been awarded the National Book Award by Arizona State University’s Labriola National American Indian Data Center for her 2022 work, Native Agency: Indians in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Lambert, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University.

Cathy Mulrow-Peattie ’83 is a new partner in the New York law office of Hinshaw & Culbertson. Mulrow-Peattie, who majored in government at Smith and earned a law degree at American University, was previously at Loeb & Loeb and has served as in-house and general counsel for several companies.

Rebecca Read Medrano ’70 is the recipient of Theatre Washington’s Victor Shargai Leadership Award for her work as co-founder and executive director of GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, D.C. Medrano majored in Hispanic studies at Smith.

Polly Cunningham ’66 has been elected to the city council in Choteau, Montana. Cunningham, who majored in history at Smith, earned a master of liberal arts degree at the University of Washington and a doctorate in education at the University of California San Francisco.

Journalist Trudy Rubin ’65 is a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House Center, which focuses on international policy engagement and public outreach on global issues. Rubin, who majored in government at Smith, earned a master of science degree in sociology at the London School of Economics.