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Like much of the world, Nina Tumarkin was unprepared for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. “My reaction at the time was utter shock,” says Tumarkin, the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Slavic Studies and the longtime director of Wellesley’s Russian Area Studies Program. “An actual full-scale invasion and war seemed so unlikely and impossible.”

When Daniel Sichel, professor of economics, isn’t doing research on economic growth, technology, and economic measurement, he enjoys woodworking—in particular making furniture. One day, while looking at a catalog of tools, he saw a listing for old-fashioned cut nails. He started wondering how much those nails would have cost in the 19th century, and he began looking at prices that economic historians had gathered.

At this year’s Ruhlman Conference, the first held in person since 2019, Deana-Rae Weatherly ’22 gave a presentation titled “Icon of a Nation: Black Womanhood in Jamaican Visual Culture,” based on her art history thesis.

Joy St. John, dean of admission and financial aid, is moving on. When announcing St. John’s decision to leave Wellesley this spring to serve as director of admission at Harvard College, President Paula Johnson said, “Under her leadership, Wellesley has recruited its most diverse classes, which has deeply enhanced the student experience.”

When Madeleine Korbel Albright ’59 created the Albright Institute at Wellesley, she hoped the fellows would support each other in the fight to establish women as leaders in the world. “The secretary really emphasized that you always leave the door behind you open for others to follow,” says Albright fellow Amal Cheema ’17.

Rodney J. Morrison, emeritus professor of economics at Wellesley College, passed away on Dec. 16, 2021, in Chicago at the age of 87. Throughout his career, Rod was a productive and internationally recognized scholar. He was a NATO Fellow in economics and published many articles in respected journals and several influential books, including Portugal: Revolutionary Change in an Open Economy (1981), a work that synthesized economics, international relations, and history.

With sadness, the Art Department announces the deaths of our beloved colleagues Lilian Armstrong ’58, Mildred Lane Kemper Professor of Art emerita, and Peter J. Fergusson, Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art emeritus. For more than 40 years, their gift for making others feel welcome made them the collegial center of the Art Department. But for generations of Wellesley students, they will be especially remembered as dedicated and inspiring teachers.

As a professor in the philosophy of education, Sheron Fraser-Burgess ’87 has spent the past 17 years as a “teacher of teachers,” training teachers, administrators, and doctoral candidates about the philosophical foundations of education.

One night in 2019, packing up to move out of Sage Hall before its demolition, John Cameron, now professor emeritus of biological sciences, found a box labeled as containing film, But it held something unique. And historic—15 cyanotype prints from some of the first X-ray experiments done in the U.S.