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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.

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.

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.

“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?

Macy Lipkin ’23 has been thinking about Wellesley for a long, long time. “My sixth grade science teacher went to Wellesley—Cindy Krol ’02—and I practically wanted to be her, so naturally I decided when I was 11 that I was going to come here, too,” she says.