Articles

As the College celebrates the opening of its new Science Complex, Wellesley magazine asked 15 alums in STEM fields about the pressing questions they hope to answer.

In January, Wellesley welcomed students, faculty, and staff into the transformed Science Complex, which encompasses more than 275,000 square feet of sustainably designed space and combines renovations to the College’s historic structures with new spaces for research, collaboration, and teaching. The students quickly made the space their own.

In a New York City neighborhood, Chinese, Greek, Korean, and Salvadoran families grow plants to get a little closer to the flavors of home. Even when surrounded by asphalt, concrete, and steel, the families continue to garden; they nurture local soil, and they build local culture—as does writer Esther Kim ’12, dreaming of Taiwan.

D. Scott Birney died on Aug. 15, 2021, at age 95. Scott joined the astronomy department in 1968, and throughout his 23 years at the College, his good cheer, wry wit, and self-effacing demeanor made the Whitin Observatory a congenial and supportive home to both students and faculty.

Miriam Butt ’87, a professor of general and computational linguistics at the University of Konstanz in Germany, chose to attend Wellesley in part because it was one of the only American colleges at the time where she could study both Latin and computer science.

In 2010, Anne Shen Chao ’74 founded the Houston Asian American Archive at Rice University, an oral history collection about the lives of Asian Americans living in the Houston area. “We want to make sure that Asian American contributions are included in the narrative of Texas history,” Anne says.

“We’re all in one big stream. Everyone is trying to find a way to be heard,” says Lois Roach, senior lecturer in theatre studies. In Roach’s course THST 106: Speaking Truth to Power, her students learn to speak up while hearing out other perspectives.

For the last year and a half, Christopher Arumainayagam, professor of chemistry, has sought to understand one of the most fundamental questions of all: How did life begin?

Last fall, empty red dresses swayed from tree limbs around campus. They were impossible to miss, or ignore. The installation, part of the REDress Project created by Jaime Black, a Canadian artist of mixed Anishinaabe and Finnish descent, was brought to campus by Wellesley’s Native American Student Association (NASA).