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For 50 years, researchers at what is now the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) have conducted groundbreaking interdisciplinary studies on social issues such as the effects of placing children in child care, gender equity in education, and the role of social media in adolescents’ lives. From the beginning, its mission has been to deploy rigorous academic research to address real-world problems.

For almost a decade, Sara Simon ’13 built a career as a data journalist, with positions at the New York Times , Vermont Public Radio, and Spotlight PA, an investigate newsroom covering Pennsylvania. But this fall, she began a Ph.D. in history at Northwestern University.

Charlotte Ashamu ’01 began her career working in global economic development before moving into the cultural heritage realm. She is now the director of international programs at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University. Her big push in this new role has been to launch the Yale Directors Forum, a global fellowship that provides training for leaders at African cultural heritage institutions.

A distinguished professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Deborah Chung ’74 developed a building product called “smart concrete.”

At our 1973 commencement, 426 seniors listened as Shirley Chisholm wove her hard-fought “firsts” into a message for us about activism, laced with bold truths. That day, her powerful words propelled me into our generation’s revolutionary times. How would I live up to her charge?

Democracy in Retrograde by Emily Amick ’07 and Sami Sage is an unusually practical book based on a simple premise: Civics isn’t a theoretical idea. It pervades every aspect of our lives and can offer hope as well as frustration.

Leaders and activists from around the world gathered at Wellesley on April 6 to grapple with important global questions at the “Renewing Democracy: Women Leading the Way” summit.

Writer Bina Shah ’93 explores how Wellesley has been portrayed in literature—commercial, literary, genre, and the perennial favorite, the campus novel/coming-of-age story.

Do plants “belong” in a particular place? Why are some considered “native” and others “invasive”? Why do they have Latin names? Are they really “male” and “female”? These are some of the wide-ranging questions at the heart of the new book Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism by Banu Subramaniam, the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.