Summer 2024

Who, in their postmenopausal right mind, would choose to serve once more in a role they had held fresh out of college? Especially when the position is located on the other side of the planet?

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.

Recent publications by Wellesley authors

Thumbnail reviews of new publications from the Wellesley community

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.

Introducing six new Wellesley College Alumnae Association Board Members.

The 2024 Sed Ministrare Volunteer Awards recipients are Sam Tackeff ’08, Gretchen Rous Besser ’49, and Jessica Urban ’06.

Given annually at reunion by the WCAA, the Syrena Stackpole Award honors dedicated service and exceptional commitment to Wellesley. The 2024 recipient is Debra DeVaughn ’74.

Stephanie Hsieh ’89, the new president of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, jokes that her path to the College was “the happiest accident of my life.”

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.

The Blue golf team ranked as high as eighth in the NCAA Division III national rankings during a record-setting spring. Bolstered by a talented class of first-years, including 2024 Wellesley Athletics Rookie of the Year Audrey Wang ’27 (above), the Blue earned team victories at the Jekyll Island Invitational, the two Vassar Invitationals, the Ann S. Batchelder Invitational at Nehoiden Golf Club, and the Jack Leaman Invitational. The Blue ended the year in a tie for second at the Liberty League Championships, narrowly missing this year’s NCAA championship.

The 571 members of the red class of 2024, most of whom arrived on campus as first-years during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, graduated on May 17. Student speaker Haley Lee-Burke ’24 delivered an address in the form of a letter to the College, inspired by the class’s first-year orientation theme, “Love, Wellesley.” “Thank you for giving me a space to learn, cry, and laugh my heart out,” Lee-Burke said.

In June, Andrew Shennan moved out of an office he had been occupying since 1999. During send-off events in the spring, colleagues remarked on Shennan’s brilliance, kindness, optimism, ability to see arguments from many angles, level-headedness, devotion to the College, and his continuing commitment to neckties in a business-casual era.

Emma Feldman ’24 (being carried, left) is this year’s Hooprolling champion. A neuroscience major and art history minor, after graduation she headed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital to do clinical research.

This spring, Wellesley College took a stand in support of democracy and of renewing the civic purpose of higher education.

Natalie Mendenhall ’17, an audio producer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, participated in the Wellesley in Washington program and credits that experience with preparing her to become the news producer she is today. “I feel really blessed to be working in journalism at this changing time … people will always need the news.”

Stephanie Kacoyanis ’05, with her commanding contralto voice, dramatic acting style, and striking bearing, has won Boston Globe accolades for “scorching the stage” in her operatic portrayals. Reviewers describe her powerful tone as “dark,” “majestic,”...

In November 2023, New York City officials erected a tent city at Floyd Bennett Field, an out-of-use airport facility in Brooklyn. Some 2,000 asylum seekers, all families with children, were settled there to face the winter ahead. “This is my backyard,” says Ariana Hellerman ’03. She decided to help.

In 1911, a fire broke out on an upper floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan, killing 146 workers, most of them immigrant women. It was one of the worst workplace disasters in United States history. More than 100 years later, Meg Browne ’79 helped establish a memorial to the victims.

Tributes to Wellesley alumnae by family and friends

At 24, it seems like a lot of overt “Picture Ahead!” signs are right behind me. Like a road trip, college has a beginning and a destination. After has a beginning, too. But then it’s a series of vaguely defined experiences that make me feel like a tourist taking a photo I could get a better version of on a postcard.

AI and Human Rights I was glad to read the recent article on AI (“ AI’s Unanswered Questions ,” winter 2024) and to know that students are gaining practical experience analyzing and building AI tools...

Since I graduated 25 years ago, some of the details of being a student have changed (cell phones instead of landlines, Sidechat instead of Public, Lulu instead of Schneider), but the intrinsic Wellesleyness of Wellesley has not changed.