College Road

Window on Wellesley,
Summer 2018
College Road

Benched!

The Paulson Ecology of Place Initiative, just concluding its inaugural year, seeks to use the beauty, diversity, and history of the College landscape to teach environmental literacy and inspire environmental action. It has also inspired some artistic action, resulting in new places to sit on Severance Green. Students in Andrew Mowbray’s Spatial Investigations art class took fallen hickory trees on campus and transformed them into the four benches using a circular saw, chisels, rasps, drills, and files. The benches symbolize the four seasons and the four years students spend at Wellesley; the different heights echo the stepped walls of the nearby Jewett Art Center.

Photo by Richard Howard

Coming Soon: ’22

Never underestimate the class of ’22. A record-breaking 6,670 students applied for a place in the class—a 17 percent increase over last year (which saw a 17 percent increase over the previous year). Only 19 percent of the applicants were admitted, the lowest admit rate in the College’s history. This purple class makes its debut at Wellesley late next month.

Eye on L.A.

Thanks to a group of California alumnae, Taylor Gunderson ’18 spent her spring break in Los Angeles meeting with screenwriters, agents, producers, and other people in the TV and movie industry—a trip that gave her a head start on what she hopes will be a career in screenwriting. Gunderson’s script for a TV pilot, Underneath the Ice, took the grand prize in the annual screenwriting contest for Wellesley seniors sponsored by Wellesley in Entertainment (WIE), a subgroup of the Wellesley Club of Los Angeles. The alumnae judges, who are industry professionals, called her dark fantasy “evocative and mature. … It feels like a fairy tale in all the best ways.” WIE put up Gunderson at an alumna’s home, arranged meetings for her, and paid for her airfare. Gunderson’s biggest lesson? “You have to be open to new opportunities and unusual experiences. Learn from each odd thing that happens to you, cherish the moment, and most of all, never give up, and never stop writing,” she says.

Click here to learn more about the WIE screenwriting contest.

Overheard

‘There’s a fine line between salsa and marinara sauce, and I do believe Wellesley Fresh crossed it for this breakfast burrito. #italiantexmex’

—Student tweet from a dining hall

By the Numbers /
The Paulson Ecology of Place Initiative
17

Faculty members who used landscape as a “living laboratory” for their classes in collaboration with the Paulson Initiative

169

Campus species identified using the iNaturalist app

25

Edible and medicinal plants described in a student guide (with recipes!)

16

Students who wrote about their relationship to the natural environment in a workshop with Terry Tempest Williams

55

Academic and administrative departments that collaborated this year with the Paulson Initiative

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