All in Swarthmore College
When COVID-19 prematurely ended the residential semester at Swarthmore College in March, some students were left without clear alternatives. Since the crisis began, the college has raised more than $150,000 in emergency funds, using the money to help students with immediate needs caused by the pandemic. Dean of Students Jim Terhune is proud of the college’s response to this crisis, “particularly with respect to our commitment to low-income/high-need students,” he wrote in an email. However, some students still found their needs unmet.
Swarthmore College President Valerie Smith has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining the illustrious ranks of one of the nation’s oldest scholarly societies.
In response to the disruption brought about by the COVID-19 public health crisis, Swarthmore College is suspending its requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT test scores for the next two years. The policy will affect student applicants seeking to be admitted for any term from fall 2020 through spring 2022.
Head coach Landry Kosmalski of Swarthmore College number one-ranked men’s basketball team has been named the 2019-20 National Coach of the Year, the National Association of Basketball Coaches announced on March 20.
Swarthmore College President Valerie Smith contacted faculty, staff, students, and families on March 17 to announce that the college would continue educating its students remotely, through online classes, through the end of the semester. Commencement, too, will be affected. “All of us were looking forward to gathering together under the canopy of tulip and white oak trees,” Smith wrote. A planning committee will develop a “creative virtual alternative” to be held, in all likelihood, on the already scheduled date of Sunday, May 24. All campus activities will be canceled through at least May 31.
Swarthmore College was defeated by Johns Hopkins 73-71 on Saturday, February 29, in a game that proved all the basketball-isms true: it’s hard to beat a team three times in a row; Sports Illustrated feature stories are always followed by bad luck; three-pointers are worth more than two-pointers; UCLA’s 88-game win streak will never be shattered; and, basketball games become way more interesting with four minutes left to play.
Swarthmore Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of a land development plan from Swarthmore College for the construction of a new dining and student center. Representatives from the college and their design team presented preliminary plans for the project. They asked for waivers of four borough ordinances, answered questions, and clarified issues of concern.
Swarthmore College President Valerie Smith will award honorary degrees to neuroscientist Adele Diamond ’74, African American cultural historian Saidiya Hartman, and media executive David T. Linde ’82, at Swarthmore College’s 148th Commencement on May 24.
The nation’s number one team in Division 3 basketball put on a shooting clinic Saturday, February 8, as they trounced Franklin & Marshall 85 - 68. It was a tough game, though. For 35 minutes of the 40-minute contest, it wasn’t as lopsided as the final score suggests.
Granular materials — like sand, rice, or powdered pharmaceuticals — are everywhere, yet their behavior is poorly understood. In some ways behaving like liquids, in other ways behaving like solids, such materials have unique properties and pose unique questions to answer. Swarthmore College physics professors Cacey Bester and Amy Graves received an NSF grant to study granular materials.
September through May, the List Gallery’s 1,200-foot space presents about a dozen exhibitions, featuring the college’s alumni (such as MacArthur Fellowship recipient Njideka Akunyili Crosby ‘04), emerging talents, and some of the leading artists of our time.
The new building, a 158,000-square-foot home for Swarthmore’s biology, engineering, and psychology departments, was first conceived in 2011 as part of an institutional strategic plan. In December 2012, the college announced a $50 million gift to be used toward the project. This, the largest gift in the school’s history, came from alumnus and philanthropist Eugene Lang ‘38, who died in 2017.
How to inventory a whole year? What to remind you of, and what to skip? What would you rather forget, but maybe shouldn’t? What have you already forgotten that might interest you to recall? Collecting (recollecting) these happenings and lives and milestones is a way to consider what we have accomplished and aspired to and worried about as a community, as we take the first steps into 2020. To think about where we have succeeded, where we have more work to do, and where we might want to start all over again.
When the British Consulate in New York called Emma Morgan-Bennett, Swarthmore College class of 2020, to congratulate her on becoming a Marshall Scholar, she started shaking. It was partly in response to the news, partly because she was taking an ice bath. “I was in a bit of shock until my [volleyball] teammates and I jumped out of the bath and started screaming together,” says the Honors medical anthropology special major from New York, N.Y. “And then, of course, I couldn’t stop smiling.”
Opening next Thursday at the List Gallery of Swarthmore College will be two exhibitions running concurrently through December 15: “Jan Baltzell: Drawings” and “Sue Hettmansperger: Iterations: Painting and Collage.” Both artists will lecture about their work and engage in discussion on Thursday, November 7, at 4:30 p.m. in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema. A List Gallery reception will follow: 5:30–7:00 p.m. These events are free and open to the public.
The coming week brings a rich array of musical performances to Swarthmore College and its community, beginning Friday, September 20, with the chamber ensemble Music from China. It all wraps up on Thursday September 26, when former Russian political prisoner Nadya Tolokonnikova brings the feminist punk collective and rock band Pussy Riot to Swarthmore.
Candice Signor-Brown has been named head coach of the Swarthmore College women’s basketball program, replacing Renee DeVarney, who stepped down as coach after 14 seasons. Signor-Brown comes to Swarthmore after coaching at Vassar College for the past 10 seasons and amassing a 159-106 record there.
For Mark Wallace, Swarthmore College professor of religion, teaching continues in the summer, with a new set of students in attendance at a different venue for his lectures on July 8 and 16.
Perhaps parents were a bit misty, but the weather was as brilliant as the future for the 395 graduates of the class of 2019 at Swarthmore College’s 147th commencement last Sunday, May 26.
Prior to Tuesday’s announcement of the disbanding of Swarthmore College’s two fraternities, the college’s campus and town center were buzzing this week with microwaves beaming live feeds to TV stations, and reporters for local and national media recording interviews with students at the college.
