Fall 2022

This year’s recipients are Lulu Chow Wang ’66, investment trailblazer and philanthropic leader; Laura Wheeler Murphy ’76, public servant and civil liberties and civil rights advocate; and Mara Prentiss ’80, physicist and environmental revolutionary.

The renovation of half of Severance Hall last summer marked the beginning of a $250 million plan to preserve Wellesley’s beloved residence halls and make them greener and more accessible.

The world needs researchers like Heather Mattila, professor of biological sciences at Wellesley, because bees, both domesticated and wild, are in danger.

Tributes to Wellesley alumnae by family and friends

Philip L. Kohl, professor of anthropology and Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Slavic Studies emeritus, served on the Wellesley faculty for 42 years before retiring in 2016. He was a founding member of the College’s anthropology department. Over his years of service, including for more than a decade as chair, Phil helped establish a vision of the anthropology department as the most broadly conceived of social sciences, stretching from the ancient past to our imagined collective future.

Rebecca Summerhays, lecturer in the College’s Writing Program, was funny, irreverent, brilliant, and beyond kind. She taught those she loved so many, many important lessons—about teaching, about living, about laughing, about caring, about yoga, about meditating, about walking, about searching, about decorating, about loving, and finally, about finding all that is good in this world and celebrating and cherishing it.

“Our bond with Janet McDonald Hill began 57 years ago when we arrived at Wellesley as members of the class of 1969. … Her voice is now stilled, and our own circle has lost a vital link that can never be replaced,” her classmates write.

Since starting her jewelry business, Porcelain and Stone, in 2012, Kimberly Huestis ’05 has made pieces for celebrities, big brands, and private customers. For Madeleine Korbel Albright ’59, she made a mint-colored, gold-speckled brooch based on her best-selling uni necklace—uni means sea urchin in Japanese, and sea urchins are adaptive, tough, and well-traveled—which the former secretary of state received at a Washington Wellesley Club event.

A personalized vaccine to fight cancer? It may sound like science fiction or wishful thinking, but it is an idea whose time may finally be coming thanks in part to the work of Nina Bhardwaj ’75, director of immunotherapy at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai in New York City.

Carol Sanger ’70, professor of law at Columbia and renowned scholar of reproductive rights, is the author of About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First Century America, which addresses new connections between abortion law and American culture and politics.

A few years into teaching her constantly oversubscribed course on culture and mental illness, Holly Walters, a visiting lecturer in anthropology, noticed something interesting about the students in the class. “I started to realize that the mix of the student body that I was getting was much more diverse than just anthropology majors,” she says.

Professor of American Studies Paul Fisher has spent the last decade in the company of artist John Singer Sargent and his circle. His new biography, The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World , was just published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

In May, the Wellesley College Board of Trustees allocated $125 million to address critical repairs in several academic and administrative buildings. Beginning in early 2023 and continuing through much of 2024, work will be done on more than 500,000 square feet of space across campus, including in Pendleton East, Simpson and Simpson Cottage (referred to as Stone-Simpson), Clapp Library, the Davis Museum, the KSC pool and offices, and Founders and Green halls.

Through the efforts of Brenna Greer, associate professor of history, and Ruth Rogers, curator of special collections, the College has acquired a significant collection of 1950s Jet magazines covering the murder of Emmett Till and its aftermath.

Multiple All-American honorees, holders of numerous Wellesley program records, an Olympic team qualifier, a pair of identical twins, and four “angels” (and their cox)—these are the 11 alumnae and a former coach who were celebrated at an induction ceremony on Oct. 22 for the Wellesley Athletics Hall of Fame.

In September, the Camilla Chandler Frost ’47 Center for the Environment hosted the 2022 Project Handprint Symposium, which focused on the theme of health and environmental justice.

Julz Vargas ’24 reports on her summer internship at the Museum of Everyday Life in Ísafjörður, Iceland.

In June, Wellesley sponsored a virtual event, “Building the new SHEconomy,” presented by Economist Impact.

When Theresa “Peaches” Valdes started her job as dean of admission and financial aid at Wellesley, one of the first items she put in her office was the owl lantern she received as a Bryn Mawr first-year.

“Wellesley College is proud of our record educating the highest numbers of women who go on to receive Ph.D.s in STEM fields among our liberal arts peers,” said President Paula A. Johnson at the official...

Recent publications by Wellesley authors

Jenna Yoon ’02 spoke about her path to writing the middle-grade fantasy Lia Park and the Missing Jewel and the importance of depicting courageous girls.

In Mother Daughter Traitor Spy , the first stand-alone novel from Susan Elia MacNeal ’91, author of the bestselling Maggie Hope series, readers get a cracking-good spy story told from a new perspective.

Anyone who has ever loved and lost a pet will find comfort in Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter by E.B. Bartels ’10.

Remembering Madeleine Meaningful read (“ The Negotiator ,” summer 2022). Secretary Albright was one of the most influential in our time. Thank you. Rosarie Jastrow Hartmeyer ’76, Moraga, Calif. Live Fearlessly Wonderful story on Madeleine...

The architect and industrial designer Charles Eames once said, “Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.” Now that we are emerging from the isolation imposed by COVID-19, what all of us seem to...

My friends and I lived in Stone-Davis our senior year. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t our first choice. Stone-Davis was so decrepit that the College planned a gut renovation of the building right after spring semester finals that year.

The 2022 recipients of Wellesley’s Sed Ministrare Volunteer Awards are Audrey Mandela ’80, Azizah Yasin ’94, and Anne Kelly Byerly ’82.

“She just was herself,” said 2022 Alumnae Achievement Award recipient Laura Wheeler Murphy ’76 of one of her early mentors, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress. Murphy joins a legacy...

A faded envelope in the College archives revealed unexpected connections to Instagrammer Margaux Delaney ’20.