Astronomy Prof Helps Saturn Spacecraft Find Its Way

When the Cassini spacecraft launched in mid-October arrives at Saturn in 2004 and begins its studies of the ringed planet, Richard G. French, Class of '66 Professor of Astronomy, will be watching. French, who's spent his research career studying planetary atmospheres and rings, has been involved with the $3.5 billion international mission since its earliest planning phases in 1989.

His expertise has gone into Cassini's Radio Science program, which will study Saturn's rings, its atmosphere, and the atmosphere of its largest satellite, Titan, by sending radio signals through them to the Earth. The way the signals arrive will help researchers determine the composition and structure of the atmosphere and rings. This experiment will also serve as a test of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, French said, explaining that the spacecraft is "like a little cork bobbing on the surface of space-time" which will help researchers detect distant cataclysmic events in the early universe.

Cassini, the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, will do so from 2004 to 2007, going around the planet 50 to 60 times. Cassini, Saturn, its rings, and the Earth must all be properly aligned for the spacecraft's many experiments to work; many of the instruments cannot work at the same time. French and his colleagues have spent months plotting out detailed orbit shapes that will allow them to carry out their observations. They've worked through 40 or 50 complete sets of orbits and their pros and cons in order to find orbits allowing as many instruments as possible to carry out their tasks, he said.

In addition to his work with the Cassini project, French is also principal investigator of a program using the Hubble Space Telescope to study Saturn's rings. He received NASA's Group Achievement Award for his work helping to plan the Voyager spacecraft's scientific observations of Uranus and Neptune and was awarded a grant in 1993 from NASA's Ames Research Center to study "Earth-Based Ring Occultation." French, who teaches both beginning and advanced astronomy at Wellesley, often involves students in his research and has taken students with him to observatories in South Africa, Chile, Hawaii, and other spots around the world.

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Earl Lovelace, Visiting Professor in the Africana Studies Department, has been garnering extraordinary praise for his novel Salt (Persea Books, 1996). The story explores the clash between the indigenous values of Trinidad and the ideals and cultural assumptions of Europe in what the New York Times Book Review called "a generous, torrential prose that seems to hold every complexity–of history, of ethnicity, of reason and magic alike–within its rushing energy."

Salt is "a book of great beauty and force which is going to take its place as one of the classics of 20th century world literature," said the international judging panel which awarded it the Commonwealth Prize's Best Book Award for the Canada-Caribbean region and the overall Commonwealth Writers Prize for 1997. As part of the prize, Lovelace was presented to the Queen of England in a private audience at Buckingham Palace.

The Commonwealth Writers Prize, now in its tenth year, rewards works of "universal appeal and lasting significance" from a field of writers form 53 countries. Previous winners include Vikram Seth, David Malouf, and Mordecai Richler.

The novel has also been nominated for the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, second in monetary size only to the Nobel Prize in Literature. Established in 1996 by IMPAC, an association of libraries throughout the world, this award will be announced on May 18, 1998.

Lovelace writes plays and novels set in his native Trinidad. His first novel, While Gods Are Falling (1965), won the BP Independence Literary Award. His novels have been translated into German, Dutch, Hungarian, and French; his literary works have received numerous awards, including the Chaconia Medal of Trinidad and the Guggenheim. He has taught at the University of the District of Columbia, Johns Hopkins University, Hartwick College (New York), the University of the West Indies (Trinidad), the University of Miami Summer Institute in Caribbean Writing, and the London Arts Board.




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For more than 30 years, members of the Wellesley College community have been helping others through the annual charitable giving campaign. In each of those years, Wellesley's faculty and staff have raised more money than the year before, and last year Wellesley's Charitable Campaign collected $l0,000 more than the previous year's total–a testament to our generous spirits.

This year's Charitable Campaign for faculty and staff, which will run through Friday, December 5, started on November 4 with a kickoff luncheon. President Diana Chapman Walsh welcomed all department representatives and enthusiastically thanked participants who signed on to raise money for the four charities to which the College donates: Community Works, Oxfam America, Rosie's Place and the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. Campaign Committee Chair Lindy Williamson of the English Department also expressed her appreciation and introduced representatives from the charities, who conveyed their hope that we would continue to share our abundance.

Scientists, musicians, horticulturists, artists, athletes, and historians took part in the festival of music, dance, discussion, theater, and campus tours, held in the Academic Quadrangle just beyond the Davis Museum Plaza and other locations throughout the campus.

Community Works, founded in l982 in Boston, was added in l996 to the original list of three charities. Community Works is a cooperative fundraising effort involving thirty non-profit organizations working for social and economic justice and has assisted its members in seeking solutions to problems facing our families and our neighborhoods.

Oxfam America, part of the international Oxfam Family which started in l942 in England and in America in l970, has given more than $l00 million in grants and technical support to hundreds of community-based organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Oxfam's approach revolves around partnerships with grassroots organizations.

Rosie's Place, established in l974, provides shelter to poor and homeless women, helping them maintain their dignity, seek opportunity, and find security in their lives. Rosie's Place was the first "drop-in center" and emergency shelter for women in the United States.

The United Way of Massachusetts Bay, founded in l935, serves 123 cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts. Last year it invested more than $28 million in local communities, targeting prevention programs with an emphasis on giving children a healthy start in life.

The traditional charitable campaign raffle is scheduled for Thursday, December 11, at 4:30 p.m. in Molly's Pub, with food and drinks for all donors. Tickets for the raffle are included in the charitable campaign information packet distributed to all members of the faculty and staff.

Donations for the raffle include these terrific items:

a $25.00 gift certificate to Roche Bros.

a Raggedy Ann and Teddy Bear

dinner for 4 at the College Club

a copy of the Greater Boston Entertainment Book

gift certificates to the Cheese Shop

a bottle of red wine at least 25 years old

and many, many more. Hoping to carry on Wellesley's reputation as one of the top on-campus charitable fundraisers among Boston-area colleges is the following highly energized committee: Chair Lindy Williamson, English Department; Pat Bois, Greek and Latin; Nancy Grannan, Clapp Library; Marilyn Melville, Philosophy; Pat Paul, Japanese; Adele Rosenthal, Education; Tracy Sluicer, English; Ernestine Vaccaro, Religion; and many dedicated department representatives.




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Deborah Tolman, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Women, has received this year's Louise Kidder Early Career Award from the Society for the Study of Social Issues. The award recognizes researchers who have made significant contributions to the field of social issues early in their careers.

Tolman's work includes the reconceptualizing of female sexuality and reproductive health for adolescents. Her public policy advocacy has also focused on adolescent sexuality. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, Tolman has made significant contributions to theoretical and empirical findings that relate to female sexuality and adolescent reproductive health. Author of a number of peer reviewed journals, articles and book chapters, and coeditor of Women, Girls and Psychotherapy: Reframing Resistance, Tolman is currently under contract with Harvard University Press to author a new book entitled Dilemma of Desire: Adolescent Girls and Sexuality.

Nancy Emerson Lombardo, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Women, was honored on September 14 with an award from the Eastern Massachusetts chapter of the Alzheimer's Association citing her achievement and contribution to the fields of Alzheimer's research and education. Emerson Lombardo founded the organization's Chicago and Detroit chapters in 1980 and 1981, respectively, and served on the National Alzheimer's Association Board from 1981 through 1995. While on the National Board, she served as chair of Chapter Committees to help establish local Alzheimer's Association chapters and initiate the first set of policies and procedures for chapters.

Emerson Lombardo is the project director for the Center's Boston Minority Dementia Outreach and Education Program, which is designed to respond to the unmet needs of families in Boston as well as informal and paid caregivers of African-Americans with Alzheimer's Disease or other forms of dementia.

Susan McGee Bailey, Executive Director of the Centers for Women, has received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Merrimack College in Lawrence, Mass.

Judith Jordan, Janet Surrey, and Irene Stiver, relational theorists at the Stone Center, have received a Career Contribution Award from the Massachusetts Psychological Association.

Flirting or Hurting?, an educational video about teen sexual harassment, has been nominated for a regional Emmy award and has won a Silver Apple award from the National Media Network. It was produced by WGBY-TV, a PBS affiliate in Springfield, Mass., in cooperation with Nan Stein, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Women.

Michelle Seligson, Associate Director of the Center for Research on Women and founder and executive director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (formerly known as the School-Age Child Care Project) testified on the importance of accessible and quality school-age child care at the White House Conference on Child Care, hosted by President and Mrs. Clinton on October 23.

The Centers for Women hosted a book reception on November 19 celebrating two new Stone Center publications, The Healing Connection: How Women Form Relationships in Therapy and in Life, and Women's Growth in Diversity: More Writings from the Stone Center. Authors Jean Baker Miller, Irene Stiver, and Judy Jordan attended.

These two books mark a 20-year effort to lift the relational model of women's development into mainstream discourse on psychology and psychotherapy. Beginning in 1977 with a small Monday night group, Miller, Stiver, Jordan and colleague Jan Surrey met to discuss how as clinicians they could better serve their clients. All trained therapists formerly influenced by traditional psychoanalytic concepts, they believed that the goal of psychoanalytic thinking, with its focus on individual self-sufficiency as a goal of healthy development, obscured and neglected the unique needs of women in therapy. In response to this, they established the Stone Center relational model. Twenty years later, there are more than 80 Stone Centers Works In Progress Series and Project Reports, all reflecting the relational model.




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Paul Cohen's History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, published earlier this year by Columbia University Press, recently won the New England Historical Association's Best Book Award for 1997. It has also been chosen as an alternate selection by the History Book Club. Cohen, Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and History, illuminates the tensions among historical reconstruction, first-hand experience, and myth by juxtaposing historians', participants', and witnesses' accounts of China's Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1900 with myths about the uprising that have emerged in modern China.

High praise for Art Department chairman James F. O'Gorman, Grace Slack McNeil Professor of Art: on November 9, New York Times Book Review editor D. J. R. Bruckner dubbed O'Gorman's A B C of Architecture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) "a book that illuminates any writing on building ... a model of brevity and clarity [which] may be the best-written work on the subject in English for laypeople." Bruckner went on to praise O'Gorman's "crisp, amusing instruction" and concluded, "Lucky the students at Wellesley College, where O'Gorman teaches."

Please submit news of awards, books, and noteworthy happenings for inclusion in this column. We want to hear from you!




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by Susan VanGemert Pinto

The tranquil shores of Lake Waban can seem a long way from the towering skyscrapers of Hong Kong or the open-air cafes of Paris. But tucked at the end of Tupelo Lane overlooking the water is a house that has helped several generations of international students find a sense of home at Wellesley. Marking 25 years of building community and celebrating diversity, the College rededicated the Slater International Center with a weekend of festivities in November.

The centerpiece of the weekend, which included an international craft and food show, was a ceremony honoring the vision and generosity of Priscilla Allen Slater '16 and her husband, Ellis Dwinnel Slater, who first established a fund in the 1960s to bring European students to study at Wellesley. Later, in 1972, the Slater International Center was opened.

Allen Slater, son of Priscilla and Ellis Slater, was surrounded by a large contingent of family members, including his daughter, Diana Slater Roy '77, as he spoke on Nov. 9 to a crowd that included college administrators, faculty, and past and present members of the Slater Center community.

"Several concepts came together in the first creation of Slater International Center 25 years ago," he said. "First, a longstanding connection with Wellesley through three generations of women in my immediate family who have benefited from the choice of education at this great institution. [Katherine Ballord Allen, Priscilla's mother, attended the College from 1881 to 1884.] Secondly, a lifetime of interest in international cultures and the concept of friendship among peoples. And thirdly, the traditional appreciation and belief in, on the part of the College, the importance of sharing between cultures."

Lidwien Kapteijns, an associate professor of history who attended the celebration, praised the Slaters' foresight in establishing the center. "[They] undertook this endeavor of bringing international cultures together 25 years ago, when it was much less fashionable, much less politically correct to do so."
The original concept of Slater to encourage greater understanding among all cultures through personal association and cooperative endeavor appears to be not only surviving, but thriving today. The center has become a central part of international life on campus, with 250 students active in its programs and 25 organizations under its aegis. The center also provides scholarships for Wellesley students studying abroad.
Sylvia Hiestand, director of the center since 1977, emphasizes that Slater is "not just a place, but a feeling." It holds memories of orientations, tearful goodbyes to parents, monthly dinners with food and dancing from cultures around the world, and lectures and seminars on pressing political and social issues. Slater students on campus in the 1970s were the first to sponsor a seminar on underdeveloped countries at a time when many other undergraduates didn't know what these nations were, Hiestand says. She adds that today, students focus on issues such as how to best share the world's dwindling resources among the consumer and producing countries.
"[Slater] is a place where our minds and our hearts can grow more open and wiser," says Hiestand, " a place where we meet people and make friendships that will last through the years and [across] the continents."




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The College Democrats and College Republicans have joined forces to organize a bipartisan conference, "Women in American Activism," designed to help women make the transition from caring about political issues to actually becoming involved in politics. The conference will be held February 20&endash;22 at locations across campus, mostly in Jewett Auditorium, Alumnae Hall, and the science center.

"Our mission is to educate students on campus about how they can use their passion in politics and the political arena," said Jocelyn Benson '99, head of the College Democrats, who is working with Erin Santiago '98, head of the College Republicans, to put together panels and publicize the event on campuses throughout the state. Benson said they expect 500 to 700 participants to attend.

Keynote speakers are still being invited, but Benson said the following have already confirmed that they will participate: Susan Roosevelt Weld, diplomat and wife of former Governor William Weld; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, lieutenant governor of Maryland; and Anita Perez Ferguson, president of the National Women's Political Caucus.

Although First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will be out of the country during the conference, she has agreed to film a video greeting.

The conference will also feature panel discussions of running for office, women in the media, women in diplomacy and national security, and women and grass-roots activism. Panelists already confirmed include Amy Richards, a writer for Ms. magazine, and Gretchen Tucker Underwood, president of the Boston Chapter of the National Coalition for 100 Black Women. The organizers are also planning to invite a representative from the conservative group Concerned Women of America and the executive director of the Christian Coalition in New Hampshire, as well as someone involved in organizing the recent Million Woman March.

In addition, the Committee for Political and Legislative Awareness (CPLA), the established non-partisan campus group, will have a program on women and political parties, with representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties as well as the Green Party, the Socialist Party, and other smaller groups.

"We're trying to keep it bipartisan and as balanced as we can," Benson said, adding, "We want to ... tell women how to get involved in politics and why it's important, regardless of what they believe."




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1990 Commencement Address is Museum-Quality

Photo: John Mottern

Wellesley's 1990 Commencement is preserved for history at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, which opened to the public on November 7. The exhibit includes video footage of the Commencement Address delivered that year by former First Lady Barbara Bush and Raisa Gorbachev; the event was their first joint speaking appearance and Mrs. Gorbachev's first public talk in the United States.

In addition to archives documenting George Bush's public career, the library and museum on the campus of Texas A&M University also includes a permanent exhibit focusing on Mrs. Bush and her activities and interests, including the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.




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Native American storytellers Loril MoonDream and Peter White Fox came to Wellesley on November 25 in celebration of Native American Month. Blending acting, audience participation, and humor in a storytelling circle of natural materials and preserved animal artifacts, their hour-long performance in Green Hall's Faculty Common Room expressed traditional Native American values of balance and harmony with nature.

Ms. MoonDream and Mr. White Fox's performance was sponsored by the Administrative Council Committee for Diversity, Committee Against Racism and Discrimination, CPLA, American Indian Student Organization, and Mezcla.

The Committee for Diversity always welcomes comments and suggestions. Committee members include: co-chairs Lisa Priest, Alumnae Office, and Valerie Gaines, Human Resources; Barbara Colonna, Shiela Kiernan, and Alisa Mitchell, Resources; Ellen Schneider, Science Center; and Julie Lee, head of house in McAfee.




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Wellesley students and staff helped out during Pie in the Sky, the annual Thanksgiving pie sale organized by Community Servings, a local non-profit organization which provides free hot meals for individuals and families housebound with AIDS. This was the fifth annual Pie in the Sky fundraising program, traditionally held the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and the College donated the use of Alumnae Hall as a pie pick-up location. Several students were on hand to help distribute pies to local residents who purchased them.

Over 100 of Boston's best chefs, restaurants, caterers and hotels donate apple, pumpkin and sweet potato pies, which Community Servings then sells to the public to benefit their clients. In 1996, the organization sold more than 8,000 pies and raised in excess of $140,000, which in turn provided 35,000 hot meals. More than two dozen organizations and businesses in the greater Boston area, including The Four Seasons, L'Espalier, and Maison Robert, served as pick-up sites.

Community Servings began delivering meals in 1990 and today provides daily meals to more than 300 Boston-area individuals and families living with AIDS. Almost all of the promotional materials and packaging for the Pie in the Sky sale is being donated by area businesses, so all proceeds will go directly to feeding people with AIDS. Pies were sold for $20 each; for each one sold, Community Servings was able to serve Thanksgiving dinner to five people living with AIDS in Boston.




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Elizabeth Lawson elawson@wellesley.edu
Sasha Pfau apfau@wellesley.edu
Office for Public Information
Date created: 2/12/98
Last updated: 2/9/99
Page expires: 1/00