This document provides a summary of several Vassar innovators and their accomplishments. It begins by mentioning that Matthew Vassar's original intention was to build a hospital, but it was Milo P. Jewett's wife who suggested establishing the first college for women instead, making her one of the earliest Vassar innovators. The summary then briefly describes several other notable Vassar alumni and their innovations, including discovering the gluon particle, establishing conservation fellowships, founding the Student Conservation Association, and using soccer to educate youth in Africa about HIV/AIDS. It concludes by highlighting Gotham Writers' Workshop, which was cofounded by a Vassar alum and has helped thousands learn writing skills.

1. Number133
Summer2005
VassarCollege
www.vassar.edu
VassarViewsispublishedby
theOfficeofCollegeRelations
Box9,VassarCollege
Poughkeepsie,NY12604
Vicepresidentforcollegerelations
SusanDeKrey
Editor/writer
JuliaVanDevelder
Editorialassistant
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RichardDeon
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VASSAR
VIEWS
Believing that art should stand “boldly forth
as an educational force,” Matthew Vassar
purchased the private collection and art
library of the Rev. Elias Lyman Magoon,
including 40 small landscape paintings by
Hudson River School artists, as his founding
gift to the college. Vassar thus became the
first college to open with an art museum
among its facilities. Vassar’s is one of the
oldest museums in the U.S., predating such
institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of
ArtinNewYorkCityandtheMuseumofFine
Arts in Boston.
It’s a famous photograph—57 jazz greats, posing on the stoop of a
Harlem brownstone in 1958. But why they were there and how they
came together was a mystery. Jazz aficionado Jean Enzinger Bach
’40 knew many of the musicians. Two of her closest friends were in the
photo.RoyEldridgeandLawrenceBrown.Whentheydiedin1989,Bach
decidedtotrackdownasmanyofthesurvivingmusiciansasshecould,
unravel the mystery of the photograph, and get the story on film. The
finalresult,adocumentarytitledAGreatDayinHarlem,wasnominated
for an Oscar in 1995. (VQ Winter 1997)
Woody and Buzz. Just hearing their names
is enough to provoke a smile. How did two
animated characters create such an indelible
impression on our collective psyche? Maybe
it’s because they seem almost human. They
have an extraordinary range of expression and
motion—thanks to an innovative animation
program developed by Eben Ostby ’77 and
his collaborators at Pixar (William Reeves, Sam
Leffler, and Tom Duff)—the Marionette Three-
Dimensional Computer Animation System.
The characters are modeled in 3-D directly
in the computer—at which point they look
like grid-creatures. Then “avars” (articulated
variables) are attached to the grid, like invisible
marionette strings. The avars can be activated
by keystrokes to control the characters’ move-
mentsandexpressions.Woody,forexample,was
designed with more than 700 control functions.
The animator’s job is to manipulate the controls
to breathe life into the character.
If you watch the movie carefully, you’ll
notice that Buzz and Woody move quite differ-
ently, because Buzz was made of plastic and
needed to move less flexibly than Woody.
Woodyhadover100avarsjustinhisface,which
allowed him to express an extraordinarily wide
range of emotions. Toy Story—the top grossing
filmof1995—madehistoryasthefirstfull-length
animated feature film created entirely on the
computer. Ostby and his collaborators won the
1997 Scientific and Engineering Award from the
AcademyofMotionPictureArtsandSciencesfor
the development of the Marionette animation
system. (ARS Electronica Archive, www.aec.at)
OneofthechallengesincompilingalistofVassar
innovatorsforthispublicationwasdecidingwhom
toinclude.Somanyworthycandidates,sofew
pages!Wereceivedmanysuggestionsandtracked
downnumerousleads.(Sorry,butfudgewasdefi-
nitelynottheinventionofaVassarstudent,nor
canwefindanyevidencetosupporttheclaim
thatMaryFisherLangmuir,headoftheChild
StudyDepartment,coinedtheterm“TLC.”)We
hopethatthisissueofVassarViewswillbethe
startofanongoingprojecttocollectthestories
ofVassarinnovatorsandtocelebrateVassar’s
pioneeringspirit.Ifyouwouldliketonominatean
innovator,pleasevisitthewebsite,www.vassar.
edu/innovators/,whereyoucaneithersubmit
anominationformonlineordownloadaPDF
versiontomailorfax.
InnovatorsVassar
SethAffoumado
NancyMillerElliott
NOMINATEAVASSARINNOVATOR!
FOUNDERSRESCUERS
REBELS
PIONEERSMOVERS & SHAKERS
Radicals AFICIONADOS
INVENTORSAR T I S T S
auteurs
ENTREPRENEURS
REFORMERSAdventurers
discoverers
Innovators
Discoverers
Number 133
Summer 2005
Vassar College
In the brief history of the college in the Vassar catalogue, the
word “pioneer” appears twice, “innovation” once, “experi-
ment” twice, “first” eight times, and “bold” twice.
Other colleges use other words to describe their own
cherished attributes. At Vassar, we like breaking new
ground. The pioneering gene, so to speak, is in the Vassar
DNA.
This issue of Vassar Views is a tribute to Vassar pioneers,
from the founding of the college to the present. In research-
ing this issue, we discovered a number of Vassar innovators
that we didn’t know existed, and we hope that you will bring
still others to our attention. If you know of a Vassar innova-
tor, please visit the website, www.vassar.edu/innovators/,
and submit a nomination.
To qualify, an innovation must meet these criteria:
1. It must be, or at least be the result of, a discrete and defined idea.
So, for example, advocating for women’s rights is not an innova-
tion. Organizing the First Feminist Congress is.
2. Whoever came up with the innovation must be connected to Vassar.
Substantially connected. Either an alum, student, faculty member,
administrator, or staff member.
3. It must be demonstrably innovative—new. Admittedly, this last
criterion is somewhat subjective, since there is “no new thing
under the sun.” Was Susan Wadsworth’s Young Concert Artists an
innovation? We argue that it was. Had she simply started another
talent management agency, it wouldn’t have been new. But YCA
champions promising young musicians, i.e., right out of conserva-
tory. That was new.
With all due respect to Matthew Vassar, the history of Vassar
innovators begins not with him, but with Mrs. Milo P. Jewett,
the wife of the first president of the college.
Matthew Vassar confided in his friend Milo P. Jewett, a Baptist minister
and an educator, his desire to do something worthwhile with his fortune,
something of lasting significance. He had been toying with the idea of build-
ing a hospital, which Jewett opposed. Finally, according to Jewett, Vassar
was “unhappy and confused with the whole issue” and exclaimed, “I wish
somebody would tell me what to do with my money.”
This was apparently music to Jewett’s
ears. According to his own account, he
replied, “Well, Mr. Vassar, for several
years past I have had a scheme in my
mind which I am unable to carry out,
but it is one which you are abundantly
able to execute and which I think will
meet all your wishes in the disposal of
your property….It is to build and endow a College for Young Women which
shall be to them, what Yale and Harvard are to young men. There is not
an endowed College for Young Women in the world. We have plenty of
Female Colleges (so called) in this country but they are Colleges only in
name—they have no funds, no libraries, cabinets, museums, or apparatus
worth mentioning. If you will establish a real College for girls and endow it,
you will build a monument to yourself more lasting than the Pyramids; you
will perpetuate your name to the latest generations; it will be the pride and
glory of Po’keepsie, an honor to the State and a blessing to the world.”
Thus Jewett wrote in Origin of Vassar College, dated 1879. However, in an
earlier version of the same document, dated 1862, Jewett described the same
incident but gave his wife the credit for the idea: “Discussion respecting the
hospital continued for some weeks…until I determined to make a suggestion
which, in justice to my dear wife, I will here record, originated with her—her
kind heart always beating with benevolent impulses.”
Mrs. Milo P. Jewett, you rock.
(TheRemarkableGrowthofaManandHisCollege, 1855-1865, Edward Linner)
InnovatorsVassar
FOUNDERSRESCUERS
REBELS
PIONEERSMOVERS & SHAKERS
Radicals AFICIONADOS
INVENTORSAR T I S T S
auteurs
ENTREPRENEURS
REFORMERSAdventurers
discoverers
Innovators
Discoverers
“From Vassar come the
young adventurers,
the pioneers in curious
fields, the radicals.”
—Woman’s Home Companion, 1920ArchivesandSpecialCollections
VASSARVIEWS
12

2. FOUNDERSRESCUERS
REBELS
PIONEERSMOVERS & SHAKERS
Radicals AFICIONADOS
INVENTORSAR T I S T S
auteurs
ENTREPRENEURS
REFORMERSAdventurers
discoverers
Innovators
Discoverers
In 1979, physicist Sau Lan Wu ‘63 and her collaborators
discovered gluon, the “glue that holds quarks together
toformparticlessuchasprotonsandneutrons.”Tofoster
a sense of citizenship in the world,
Helen Maguire Muller ’45-4
established the Vassar Maguire
Fellowships in 1968, giving 167
Vassargraduatesthusfartheoppor-
tunity to travel to all parts of the
globe and to pursue their studies.
In 1986, biology professors MRC Greenwood ’68
and Robert Suter launched URSI, the Undergraduate
Research Summer Institute, which has since given more than 600 Vassar students the
opportunity to immerse themselves in scientific research and
to work one-on-one with faculty mentors. Winner of the 1989
Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Higher
Education, Colton Johnson, dean of the college and profess-
sor of English, cofounded Exploring Transfer in 1985, a program
which has since given more than 600 community college
students an opportunity to experi-
ence the challenge of Vassar’s rigor-
ous academics and the excitement of
beingpartofaresidentialcommunity
of scholars.
Elizabeth Titus-Putnam ’55 founded
the Student Conservation Association
based on an idea she developed in her
senior thesis at Vassar. In its first year
of operation (1957), 54 high school,
college, and graduate students volun-
teered in Olympic and Grand Teton
national parks. Today, this international
organization has more than 20,000
alumni and offers interns hands-on
environmental opportunities at more
than250naturalresourcesiteseachyear.
(VQFall 1992)
GRASSROOT SOCCER
What would you do if you won a million dollars? Ethan
Zohn ’96, winner of “Survivor: Africa,” took his mom
on a vacation, bought each of his siblings a new car,
and plunked the rest down to jumpstart Grassroot
Soccer, a nonprofit organization that is fighting
the AIDS pandemic in Africa with an innova-
tive tool: African soccer superstars.
As per David Rosenberg, writing for Art
and Understanding magazine: “Because the
pandemic’s spread is worsened by cultural myths and misinformation, Ethan and Tommy [Clark, cofounder]
thought the best hope was creating a new generation of children who were educated about the disease. They
also knew their approach had to go far beyond the traditional techniques of disseminating health material.
“Soccer is such a central part of daily life in Southern Africa, so they decided to tap its power with a unique
proposal: What if they were to train superstar African athletes in the HIV/AIDS curriculum, and let them
become the teachers for middle school children?”
In 2003, its first year of operation, Grassroot Soccer trained 14 professional soccer players to be HIV/AIDS
educators, including Zimbabwe soccer hero Methembe Ndlovu, and conducted a series of two-week-long after-
school programs in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, reaching over 1,500 young people.
In an interview about the program with Campus Activities magazine, Zohn
said, “ In Africa, every kid wants to grow up and play professional soccer. It’s
the most popular sport, so you can imagine what happens when these heroes
come into their classroom and teach these kids about AIDS… These kids
are jumping up and down, laughing and talking and touching these soccer
players. These are their idols….They listen to it with open ears and they’re
more receptive to what they learn.”
Zohn credits his father, Aaron, who died of colon cancer when he was 14,
with teaching him that the greatest gift is “to make happiness real for others.”
He’s been actively involved in many causes over the years, including fundrais-
ing for colon cancer research and diabetes research and outreach to inner-city
kids through sports. He is now taking the Grassroot Soccer campaign to
college campuses across the country, where his fame as “Survivor” winner
is an instant draw. “I hear my father’s voice,” he told interviewer Rosenberg,
“and I know that as long as I’m in the limelight, I need to do whatever I can
to make the world a better place.” (www.grassrootsoccer.org./“Bend It Like Zohn,”
by David Rosenberg in Art and Understanding magazine, Dec. 1, 2003./“Campus Activities
Interview with Ethan Zohn,” CampusActivities magazine, Feb. 4, 2004.)
Barbara Barlow ’60, MD, founded
the Harlem Hospital Injury Prevention
Program to address the alarming
numbersofchildrensustainingprevent-
able injuries because they had no safe
place to play and no after-school activi-
ties. She undertook rebuilding Harlem’s
playgrounds, creating a dance program,
sponsoring Little League teams, and
otherprograms.HHIPPhasorchestrated
the building of 35 school playgrounds
(with plans for more on the drawing
board) and coordinates a district-wide
Bike Smart initiative, teaching all third
graders in the public school system
street and bike safety. The result has
been a 48 percent decrease in major
injury hospital visits by Harlem children.
Barlow’s program is so successful that
it has inspired a national coalition, the
Injury Free Coalition for Kids, funded by
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
WithHHIPPasthemodelandBarlowserv-
ingasexecutivedirectorforthenational
program, injury prevention programs
are now in place in 37 cities, including
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Los
Angeles,Philadelphia,Pittsburgh,andSt.
Louis. (VQ Spring 1993/www.injuryfree.org)
On practically every street corner in New
York, you can pick up the current flyer for
Gotham Writers’ Workshop, listing classes
in just about every form of writing you
can think of—fiction, poetry, the memoir,
screenplays, business reports, you name it.
Cofounded in 1993 by Jeff Fligelman ’85,
Gotham is New York City’s largest private
creative writing school, annually serving
over 6,000 students of all ages and walks of
life. And when we say all ages and walks of
life, we mean it. If you take a screenwriting
class, for example, your classmates will be
WallStreetbrokers,beauticians,secretaries,
English teachers, medical librarians, and
dentists, and they’ll range from 20 years of
age to 70. Furthermore, your teachers will
be professional writers, because it can be
a long time between royalty checks, and
teachingbeatswaitingtables.What’sinno-
vative about Gotham? They’ve demystified
thewritingprocessandopenedtheclub,sotospeak,toanyonewhowantstojoin.“Webelieveanyone
can write,” states the website. “At Gotham, we teach you how to use the elements of writing, such as
structure, character, description, and voice. We foster your creativity in a positive atmosphere and
show you how to free up your imagination. We respect your writing, we treat you like a professional,
and we get you writing.” (VQ Fall 2001/www.writingclasses.com)
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, and yet
somehow it does, that one can earn an
advanced degree in the field of work
and family. The discipline has emerged
in response to the societal changes
brought about by the dramatic influx of
women into the workforce beginning
around the time Ellen May Galinsky
graduated from Vassar in 1964. On
the faculty of Bank Street College of
Educationfor25years,Galinskywatched
those changes taking place with an eye
trained in the Child Study Department
at Vassar, and helped lay the founda-
tion for the new field, authoring over 25
books and reports and over 100 articles
in academic journals, books, and maga-
zines. In 1989, Galinsky cofounded the
Families and Work Institute,
the first research organiza-
tion devoted exclusively to
the study of these issues. An
influential nonprofit, FWI
provides data to inform deci-
sion-making on changes
in the workplace, family,
and community, including
The National Study of the
ChangingWorkforce,anation-
ally representative study,
updated every five years.
(VQWinter 2003/www.familiesandwork.org)
After graduating from Vassar, Susan Wadsworth ’58 studied piano at
theMannesCollegeofMusicwhereshemetanumberofmusiciansshe
thought were extraordinarily talented. “I was aware that they were at a
timeintheirliveswhennothingwashappeningforthem,andIthought
it would be fun to do something.”
Whatbeganasalark—arrangingconcertsforherfriends—became
a passion for identifying and shepherding young talent. Wadsworth
founded Young Concert Artists, a unique nonprofit that discovers and
launches the careers of promising young musicians. Among her proté-
gés: violinist Pinchas Zukerman; pianists Murray Perahia, Emanuel Ax,
and Ruth Laredo; soprano Dawn Upshaw. (VQ Summer 2000)
ROCKING THE BOAT
Junior year, Adam Green ’95 took a semester
offtoworkfortheHudsonRiversloopClearwater
and discovered that he was “a horrible sailor,
but loved to teach.” That’s where he met Paul
Pennoyer, a junior high school science teacher,
who asked Green to come and work with him on
a boat building project with his students at the
East Harlem Maritime School. Over
the course of the year, using salvaged
wood, they completed an eight-foot
dinghy, christened it the Dolphin,
and launched it in the pool in the
school basement. Lo and behold, it
floated!
After Green graduated from
Vassar, Pennoyer recommended
him for a similar project with high
school students under the auspices of Hostos
Community College. Over the course of seven
months, after school and on weekends, Green and his students built a 14-foot Whitehall, a replica of a tradi-
tional 19th-century New York harbor boat, from scratch. In the process the students learned to loft, lapstrake,
and spile a plank. They learned geometry, physics, teamwork, and pride. Of course, to liberate the
boat, they had to take down a wall, but so what? They launched it amid great fanfare at the Harlem
River Bronxfest that summer. Green arranged to bring in performers and musicians representing all
different ages and cultures, including traditional Latino musicians, a rap and R&B group, and folk
singer Pete Seeger. CNN and the New York Times covered the story. It was a huge success.
The only problem was figuring out how to keep it going. Over the next two years, Green searched
for a sponsor and in 1998 hooked up with New Settlement Apartments, which manages almost a
thousand apartments in the South Bronx and also provides social services, including programs for
young people. New Settlement offered him a basement workshop and a salary. That first year of
operation, Green’s program received five grants, includ-
ing one from the Echoing Green Foundation.
Two years later, Rocking the Boat moved out of the
basement to a storefront on 174th Street, which gave the organiza-
tion much greater visibility and curb appeal, both to participants
and donors. Today, Rocking the Boat is an independent, sustainable
not-for-profit, with four full-time and seven part-time staff, serving
over 100 youth each year, with free programs in boat-building and
environmental science. Who’s eligible? Anyone of high school age
(although you don’t have to be in school to be eligible) who fills out
an application and talks to Adam.
Rockingtheboat.org explains it best: “The purpose of the boat-
building program is not for kids to build boats,
but for boats to build kids. The boat builders apply math, carpentry, and organizational
skills, practice problem solving and teamwork, learning skills applicable to the working
world….Very few aspects of modern culture allow people to be part of such a concrete and
practical process.” (WHAV Winter 1997/TimeOutNewYork, April 22-29, 2004/rockingtheboat.org)
June Jackson Christmas ’45-4, MD,
founded the Harlem Rehabilitation
Center,aninnovativecommunity-based
psychiatric rehabilitation program that
hiredlocalresidentsaschangeagentsin
mental health roles. Many of them were
on welfare; some were ex-offenders.
HRC trained them to help discharged
patients maneuver the health-care and
welfare systems, advocate for patients,
provide mental health support and
counseling,conductrehabilitativegroup
activities and pre-vocational training,
and facilitate patients’ reentry into the
community.
Asthementalhealthworkershelped
these former in-patients, the workers
were themselves helped to function
successfully in the world of work, to
gain a greater sense of productivity and
commitment to their own communities
and families, and to move up a career
ladder as paraprofessionals or profes-
sionalsinhumanservices.From1964-72,
as principal investigator on research
projects totaling nearly $2 million with
lead funding by the National Institute of
Mental Health, Dr. Christmas proved the
effectiveness of this approach, which
hassincebeenreplicatedinmanyhealth
and human services organizations.
(VQ Winter 2002)
Elinor Coleman Guggenheimer ’33,
a lifelong activist, was a genius at coali-
tion building. A prominent New Yorker
and philanthropist, Guggenheimer was
also a working mother and a pragmatist
whounderstoodthatyoucanaccomplish
a lot more in less time with
fewer resources if you hook
up with other like-minded
people. Over the course of
70 years in public service,
Guggenheimer founded
the Day Care Council of New
York, the Day Care and Child
Development Council, the
Child Care Action Campaign,
the New York Women’s
Agenda, the International
Women’s Forum, and the
CouncilofSeniorCentersand
Services, and cofounded the
National Women’s Political
Caucus. Every one of these
organizations, with the exception of
the Child Care Action Campaign, is still
going strong, and every one, including
the CCAC, has made significant contri-
butions to public policy. The National
Women’s Political Caucus, for exam-
ple, was founded in 1971 to improve
the status of women by promoting
and supporting women candidates
and advocating for the appointment
of women to policy-making posts in
government. When the organization
began,therewereonly15womeninthe
92nd
Congress. In the 109th
, there are 82.
(VV June 1991)
“Neverbeforeinthehistoryofpublishing
has there been an author list as distin-
guished as that of Bollingen, nor has a
publishing program had a more telling
impactonthethoughtofitstime,”wrote
Jean Martin in the WilsonLibraryBulletin.
The Bollingen Series, named after C.G.
Jung’s rural retreat on the shores of Lake
Zurich,wasinauguratedin1943byMary
Conover Mellon ’26 and her husband,
Paul Mellon. The couple had traveled
to Switzerland in the summer of 1938 to
attend Jung’s seminar on Zarathustra.
There, Mary met and became close
friendswithanotherVassaralumna,Cary
Baynes ’06, a member of Jung’s inner
circle who had translated a number of
his works. Mary became so convinced
of the importance of Jung’s work that
sheresolvedtopublishallofhiswritings
in English. She and her husband estab-
lished the Bollingen Foundation for that
purpose, but soon expanded to include
other important works in the humani-
ties. Mary served as the president of the
foundation and the editor of the series
untilhersuddendeath,atage42,in1946.
(VQ Winter 1998)
MarkMann
VQ
CourtesyofGothamWriter'sWorkshop
AileneRogers
VQ
VQ
WillFaller
Vassarian
LarryFord/NYTPictures
MarkMann
NYWA
2 3

3. FOUNDERSRESCUERS
REBELS
PIONEERSMOVERS & SHAKERS
Radicals AFICIONADOS
INVENTORSAR T I S T S
auteurs
ENTREPRENEURS
REFORMERSAdventurers
discoverers
Innovators
Discoverers
Elizabeth A. Daniels ’41,collegehisto-
rian,rescuedadmissionfilesdatingback
to 1867, which were stored under less-
than-idealconditionsinthebasementof
Main Building. Daniels had come across
the files when she was the dean of stud-
ies and, recognizing their historic value,
decidedtoattendtothemassoonasshe
hadaminute,whichdidn’thappen
until she retired from the faculty in
1985. She went to then-president
Virginia Smith, suggested that the
collegecreateapostforahistorian,
andofferedtofillit.Shethenspent
the next 10 years rescuing those
files—inventorying every box and
getting the contents on microfilm.
For women’s studies scholars and
educational historians, not just
at Vassar, but throughout groves
of academe, it’s a treasure trove.
(VV Spring 2003)
SYLVIA SAVES
THE BAY
Sylvia Cranmer McLaughlin ’39
and two friends triple-handedly rescued
San Francisco Bay from the clutches of
real estate developers. It’s unthinkable
now, but in 1960, the powers that be
in the city of Berkeley were actually
considering filling in 70 percent of
the bay to “build” land for real estate
developers. After the Army Corps of
Engineers gave the project a thumbs up, a local newspaper did a story on it. McLaughlin read the story
and raised a ruckus. She “joined up with Catherine Kerr and Esther Gulick to do whatever they could
to protect the bay. From that simple motivation, the Save San Francisco Bay Association was born.”
According to VQ, Save the Bay is now “a landmark environmental association, and its early accomplish-
ments are regarded as legendary. McLaughlin and the others are highly respected as heroes of the conservation
movement, and for being among the first environmental activists in the nation.”
McLaughlin has been honored many times for her work on the bay and other environmental issues—most
recently by her alma mater, with the Spirit of Vassar Award—but remains inspiringly humble. “A lot of people
must be more worthy,” she told VQ. “I’ll try to live up to it.” (VQ Summer 2004)
THE “SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING”
Ellen Swallow Richards, Vassar class of 1870, didn’t actu-
ally coin the term “ecology,” but she might as well have. She
came across an article written by German biologist Ernst
Haekels in which he proposed terms for new scientific fields he
thought needed to be developed. His term ökologie described
exactly the kinds of questions that Richards was already inves-
tigating, questions about the relation between people and their
environment. She wrote to him and asked permission to use
the term and develop the science of ecology. He replied that
since he was busy developing zoology, she ought by all means
to go forward with ecology. So for all intents and purposes,
Richards is the founder of ecology.
Over the course of her career, Richards racked up an astonishing number of firsts.
She was the first woman admitted to study at MIT (even though she was required to
study separately from the male students and work in her own segregated laboratory), the first woman in the
U.S. to earn a BA in chemistry, and the first woman appointed to the faculty at MIT. She was the first scientist
to conduct water surveys in the U.S., which led to the first state water-quality standards in the nation and the
first modern municipal sewage treatment plant.
This remarkable woman created the Women’s Laboratory at MIT and talked wealthy Boston
society women into footing the bill for it so that other women, especially teachers, could study
science. Eventually, MIT caved to the pressure and began to admit women into its regular
programs. They never granted Richards the PhD, but they did finally officially hire her as their
first woman faculty member in 1882, and she helped develop a new curriculum in air, water, and
sewage chemistry.
The American Association of University Women? She co-founded it. Woods Hole?
Co-founder. The New England Kitchen, offering low-cost and nutritious food to working class
families as well as instruction in food preparation, opened in Boston under her direction, as did
the Rumford Kitchen at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Richards established the discipline of “home economics” as a field of study—organized a summer confer-
ence in Lake Placid, New York, to hammer out the standards for teacher training and to devise the curriculum,
cocreated the American Home Economics Association, and served as its first president.
Today, we tend to dismiss home economics as a serious discipline, but that’s partly because Richards was so
successful in accomplishing her goals of establishing widespread norms for health, nutrition, and sanitation. She
had “faith in science as a cure-all” and believed that the application of scientific principles to domestic life would
ameliorate living conditions, especially for the working class. “The quality of life,” wrote Richards, “depends
upon the ability of society to teach its members how to live in harmony with their environment—defined first
as family, then the community, then the world and its resources.” (www.chemheritage.org/www.distinguishedwomen.
com)
Constance Rourke, class of 1907 (and
English instructor at Vassar from 1910 to
1915), pioneered the study of American
culture, beginning with her first piece,
“Paul Bunyan,” published in
the New Republic in 1918. Her
subsequent research and
publications poured the
foundation on which the field
was built—TrumpetsofJubilee
(1927), a compilation of five
mid-19th century American
icons;TroopersoftheGoldCoast
(1928),astudyof19th-century
actors; American Humour: A
StudyoftheNationalCharacter
(1931); Davy Crockett (1934);
Audubon(1936);andherunfin-
ished manuscript, The Roots
of American Culture (1942), published
posthumously.Interestingly,aftergradu-
ating from Vassar, she spent a year at the
Sorbonne in Paris on a grant from the
BordenFundforForeignTravelandStudy.
Wasthistheexperiencethatgaveherthe
requisitedistancetoviewherownculture
as an object of study? In the American
Culture Program at Vassar today, “famil-
iaritywithacultureotherthanAmerican”
is one of the requirements of the major.
(www.michiganwomenshalloffame.org)
“WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO
GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS?"
Linda Nochlin ’51, now the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art
at New York University, pioneered the field of feminist art theory with the 1971
publication of her essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
Two years earlier, a friend had dumped on her “a heap of roughly printed,
crudely illustrated journals on coarse paper”—Redstockings Newsletter, Off
Our Backs, Everywoman—and told her to read them. “I started reading and I
couldn’t stop….That night, reading until 2 a.m., making discovery after discov-
ery, cartoonish lightbulbs going off in my head at a frantic pace, my conscious-
ness was indeed raised, as it was to be over and over again within the course of
the next year or so…. A few weeks later, after a certain amount of thought but
not much research outside
of a thorough rereading of
Simone de Beauvoir, I posted
the following notice on the
bulletin board in the art
history office at Vassar:
And the rest, as they say,
is art history. (VQ Spring 1994)
QUIK HOUSE
Radical architect Adam Kalkin ’84designed something called Quik House, a kit home
built around five recycled shipping containers—“the chicest weekend retreat one can
buy for $99,000,” according to Vogue magazine. Winner of the P/A Young Architects
Award in 1990, Kalkin created a customized version of the Quik House for an exhibi-
tion at Deitch Projects’ Wooster Street gallery in SoHo last year. “Suburban House Kit”
featured skylights, mahogany sliding doors, a stainless-steel kitchen, custom-designed
carpeting, and a stainless-steel hearth.
Quik House is all the rage among the design elite (fashion designer
Cynthia Rowley and interior designer Albert Hadley are among his
clients). But Kalkin envisions another use for his Quik House, as well.
He is currently collaborating with the Pingry School (Kalkin is an
alum) on a year-long project to build a disaster relief housing prototype
on the school’s Martinville, New Jersey, campus. “Our objective is to
create an inexpensive, quick, and environmentally sustainable archi-
tectural system that could be used by millions of inadequately housed
people around the world,” says Kalkin. Students will work with Kalkin
and faculty in the fine arts, computer science, and biology to address
economic, agricultural, energy, health, and social
issues relevant to disaster relief in addition to
participating in the construction of the prototype.
“This project will benefitthestudentcommunityat
Pingry,” Kalkin says, “but more importantly it will
contribute to the discourse surrounding the issue
of adequate housing throughout the world.” (Vogue
September 2004/www.architectureandhygiene.com)
In 2004, five Vassar faculty—John Long, biol-
ogy;KenLivingston,psychologyandcognitive
science; and Tom Ellman, Luke Hunsberger,
and Brad Richards, computer science—
launchedtheInterdisciplinaryRoboticsResearch
Laboratory,which,tothebestofourknowledge,
is the first such enterprise at an undergraduate
institution in the U.S. Funded by a $471,000
NationalScienceFoundationgrantand$120,000
in additional funding from the college, the IRRL
invites faculty and students to explore the tech-
nologyofautonomousmachines,thesimulation
of such systems, and the use of these technolo-
giesinstudiesoftelepresence,virtualreality,and
related phenomena. What is particularly innova-
tive, and also characteristically “Vassar,” about
I.R.R.L. is the I. The idea is not simply for faculty
and students in these disciplines to share space
andresources,buttocreateafertileenvironment
for cross-disciplinary connections.
Almost exactly a century
earlier, Rose Gruening,
class of 1895, had an idea
similar to Kalkin’s: “to
use as bunks for a camp
discarded trolley cars
once pulled by horses
but unneeded in an era
of electrification. Her
creation, Camp Moodna, also called the
car camp, in Mountainville, New York,
servedyoungworkingwomenfromNew
YorkCity.By1911,CampMoodnahadno
less than 20 trolleys. Most were used for
sleeping, one served as a kitchen, two
wereusedasdiningrooms,andonewas
alibrary.Thelibrarycarhadoncetraveled
on Avenue A and did not hide its past. A
sign reading, ‘Beware of pickpockets!’
hung on its window casing.”
Gruening went on to found the
Grand Street Settlement, a New York
City social services agency that is still
very much alive and well, serving “more
than 10,000 area residents, from Early
Head Start kids to senior citizens” annu-
ally. (New York Society for Ethical Culture newsletter, April 2004/
GomezMillHouse.org)
“THE ANGLO-SAXONS OF
THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS”
How Ellen Churchill Semple, class of 1882, became a geographer is an
interesting story. She earned both a BA and an MA in history at Vassar.
After graduating, on a family trip to London, she read Anthropogeographie by
German geographer Friedrich Ratzel and made up her mind to study with
him. Women were not permitted to matriculate at the University of Leipzig,
but she was allowed to sit outside in the hall and listen to his lectures.
Back in the U.S., “[w]hen Semple began her career, geography was a
young field…and early researchers, heavily influenced by the earth sciences,
emphasized physical geography in their work. Semple developed a new
program of research into the human aspects of geography, an innovative
orientation that spanned the disciplines of geography, history, and anthropology. ‘The Anglo-Saxons of the
Kentucky Mountains’ (1901) exemplified this new approach. To complete research for the article, Semple trav-
eled to the Kentucky mountains and recorded observations about aspects of mountain life, such as housing, food,
crafts, and religion. This trip was itself an innovation since fieldwork was an uncommon practice in geography
at the time. From her observations, Semple documented the importance of human-environment interactions
in the character of places and regions.”
Ratzel believed in environmental determinism—that the natural environment determines the character of
a society as well as the course of history—so it’s not surprising that Semple adopted his theoretical framework.
When later scholars rejected that framework, her influence diminished. “However, in recent years Semple has
been recognized as a pioneer in the study of human-environment interaction…. Her research also foreshadowed
contemporary concerns with cultural and political ecology in the social sciences.” (www.csiss.org)
A student and later a colleague of Franz
Boas, (“the father of American anthro-
pology”)RuthFultonBenedict,Vassar
class of 1909, was one of the principal
architects of modern cultural anthropol-
ogy, “known for her theory of culture-
and-personality,forherstudiesofPueblo
culture and Japanese culture, and her
concern with 'enlightened change’ in all
societies.” According to New York Times
reviewerGeorgeW.Stocking,Jr.,Benedict
“wasoneofthefewanthropologistswho
mattered outside the discipline.” Her
books, particularly Patterns of Culture
(1934), but also TheChrysanthemumand
the Sword (1946), were best sellers, writ-
ten with the intention of changing the
prevailing racist notions about hered-
ity and environment. “Her work as an
anthropologistwaspedagogical,”wrote
Judith Modell (Women Anthropologists,
1989). “[S]he taught her audience the
virtues of ‘seeing how other people
arranged their lives,’ the necessity of
toleratingindividualdifferencesifasoci-
etyistosurvive,thepowerofcultureover
nature. Human beings, she wrote, can
change the terms of their existence and,
with insight brought by anthropology,
can make these changes wisely.”
Interestingly, in 1943, Benedict
collaborated with a colleague, Gene
Weltfish, on a pamphlet, “The Races of
Mankind,” published by the U.S. Public
Affairs Committee and intended for use
in training U.S. soldiers who might find
themselves fighting alongside men of
other racial and cultural backgrounds.
The pamphlet “disputed such Nazi ideas
thatthereareJewishorAryanraces,that
superior character is inborn, and that
intelligence stems from race” and was
distributed widely—until 1944 when it
wasbannedfromthearmedforceslibrar-
ies because of “a dispute over whether
or not the pamphlet showed northern
blacks as smarter than southern whites.”
Benedict was right: human beings
can change. But apparently not that
fast.
(www.webster.edu/woolflm/ruthbenedict.html/Women
Anthropologists:SelectedBiographies,1989/“CharacterasCulture,”
NewYorkTimes, May 22, 1983)
After graduating from Vassar in 1887,
Belle Skinner spent a year in France
where she fell in love with the village of
Hattonchâtel because it reminded her
of the idyllic Connecticut Valley near her
homeinHolyoke,Massachusets.“During
thedarkdaysof1918,shesawitagain,this
time through field glasses from within
the French lines. It was in the hands of
the Germans. They had taken the village
withoutresistanceandhadhelditforfour
years….MissSkinnerdeclaredtoaFrench
officer that this was to be her village to
adopt.Whenheprotestedthattherewas
nothing left but the hill, she replied with
true American vision: ‘Then I will rebuild
what there is of it.’” After the war, in 1919,
she returned to Hattonchâtel to make
goodonherpromise.Shespentamillion
dollarsonthereconstruction—including
a new water system, electricity, a model
school house, and a town hall with a
libraryandacinemahall.“Inrecognition
ofherunselfishandwell-directedefforts
for the relief of suffering in France, the
French Government bestowed upon
Belle Skinner, in 1919, the Gold Medal of
the Reconnaissance Française, and, in
1920, the Cross of the Légion d’Honneur.”
(Biographical Cyclopedia of U.S. Women/search.ancenstry.com)
FOUNDERSRESCUERS
REBELS
PIONEERSMOVERS & SHAKERS
Radicals AFICIONADOS
INVENTORSAR T I S T S
auteurs
ENTREPRENEURS
REFORMERSAdventurers
discoverers
Innovators
Discoverers
WillFaller
GrandRapidsPublicLibrary
GeorgeLange
Now a cornerstone of the summer
arts scene in the Hudson Valley, the
Powerhouse Summer Theater Program
began in 1985 when Carol Ostrow
’71, who was teaching in the Drama
Department at the time, introduced the
principals of New York Stage and Film
(LeslieUrdang,MarkLinn-Baker,andMax
Mayer) to Evert Sprinchorn, then head
of the Drama Department. New York
Stage and Film was looking for a place
away from the NYC pressure-cooker
to develop new plays, and Sprinchorn
had wanted for a long time to create
a summer theater program for Vassar
students. What was, and still is, innova-
tive about the program that emerged
fromthatmeetingwasthecollaboration
between an academic institution and a
professional theater company. In the 20
years since, Powerhouse has produced
over 250 new works in theater and film
andhastrainedover800theaterappren-
tices from colleges and universities all
overthecountry.NumerousPowerhouse
productions have gone on to Broadway
andOff-Broadway,includingTonyAward
winners Sideman by Warren Leight and
Tru by Jay Presson Allen, the smash-hit
hip-hopera The Bomb-itty of Errors, and
most recently John Patrick Shanley's
Pulitzer Prize winner Doubt. (VVSpring2004)
DixieSheridan
Art 364b
November 25, 1969
I am changing the subject of the Art 364b seminar to:
The Image of Women in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
I have become more and more involved in the problem
of the position of women during the course of this year
and think it would make a most interesting and innova-
tive seminar topic, involving materials from a variety of
fields not generally included in art historical research.
This would be a pioneering study in an untouched field.”
VQ
WillFaller
ArchivesandSpecialCollections
CourtesyofHermanGalberd
CourtesyofAdamKalkin
AmyEckert
4 5

4. FOUNDERSRESCUERS
REBELS
PIONEERSMOVERS & SHAKERS
Radicals AFICIONADOS
INVENTORSAR T I S T S
auteurs
ENTREPRENEURS
REFORMERSAdventurers
discoverers
Innovators
Discoverers
One of the nation’s first gynecologists,
HelenC.Putnam,classof1878,planned
a conference on infant mortality in
1909, which lead to the founding of
the American Association for the Study
and Prevention of Infant
Mortality and, at the same
time, launched a reform
movement– increasing the
number of visiting nurses,
introducing prenatal care,
and establishing sanita-
tion standards for milk
collection. “At a meeting
of the American Medical
Association, a learned
doctorwhowastospeakon
social diseases declined to
do so 'because there were
ladiespresent.’Putnamrose
to her feet, declared that she was not so
squeamish,andproceededtodeliveran
addressonthesubject.Shewasmetwith
tumultuous applause, and her plea that
social diseases be treated as ordinary
contagious diseases, and be relieved of
the social stigma attached to them, had
muchtodowithfurtherdevelopmentsin
that field of medical treatment.”
(www.vassar.edu/SciWomen/)
Kindred spirit to Crystal Eastman—and
surely they must have known each
other, although it’d take a bit of “going
to the source” to find out if they were
friends—Inez Milholland ’09 was
also an athlete (broke the Vassar record
for shot put—31 feet, 8 7/8 inches)), an
attorney, a charismatic speaker, writer,
cofounder of the NAACP, and legendary
suffragette.In1908,afterthen-President
Taylor forbade two national speakers on
women’s suffrage to speak on campus,
she organized a suffrage rally in the
cemetery adjacent to campus. But she
is perhaps best known as “the Woman
on a Horse” who led a thousand women
underabannerthatread“IntotheLight,”
down Pennsylvania Avenue on the eve
of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration on
March 3, 1913. (The Great Experiment/VQ Spring 1999/
www.pressrepublican.com)
Almost a century later, two Vassar MDs,
Jonathan Bertman ’86 and Charles
Schachter’86, followed suit—creating
an un-squeamish website to address
“embarrassing” medical topics: www.
afraidtoask.com. “The site was born
back in 1996, when [Jon and I] looked
at the large well-known health sites
like WebMD and realized they lacked
pictures, graphics, or much detail, espe-
ciallyonsensitivetopics,”saysSchachter.
“One of the first topics we tackled was
STDs.” (VQ Summer 2002)
OLD FASHIONED
RADICAL FEMINIST
You hear about Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and Emma
Goldman and Jane Addams—but you don’t hear a whole lot
about Crystal Eastman, Vassar class of 1903. According to
Houghton Mifflin’s online Reader’s Companion to American
History, Eastman “disappeared from history for 50 years,”
despite the fact that she wrote pioneering legislation (the first
worker’s compensation law) and created enduring political
organizations.
The statuesque feminist graduated from Vassar in ’03, got
her MA in sociology from Columbia a year later, and gradu-
ated second in her class at New York University Law School in
1907. A socialist, antimilitarist, pacifist, and feminist, Eastman
cofounded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage,
which became the National Woman’s Party in 1913; organized the First Feminist Congress in 1919; coauthored
the Equal Rights Amendment introduced in 1923; founded the National Woman’s Peace Party
during World War I, which was renamed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
in 1921, and is the oldest women’s peace organization still in existence; worked with Emma Goldman
to promote birth control and legalize prostitution; was the executive director of the American
Union against Militarism; and cofounded the National Civil Liberties Bureau, the predecessor to
the American Civil Liberties Union, to protect conscientious objectors and “to maintain something
over here that will be worth coming back to when the weary war is over.”
Eastman died of nephritis at age 48. Her obituary in the Nation, written by Freda Kirchwey, said
that “when she spoke to people—whether it was to a small committee or a swarming crowd—hearts
beat faster….She was for thousands a symbol of what the free woman might be.”
(Houghton Mifflin, Reader’s Companion to American History, “Crystal Eastman,” by Blanche Wiesen Cook/National Women’s Hall of
Fame/www.aclu.org)
FROM SHAKESPEARE TO I.T.
The border between the U.S. and Mexico is 1,950 miles long; between the
U.S. and Canada, excluding Alaska, 3,990. The woman who’s responsible
for about 80 percent of the security and surveillance technology deployed
along those borders is a Vassar grad, class of 1979: Lurita Doan, the founder,
president and CEO of New Technology Management, Inc.—who, by the way, graduated with honors in English
from Vassar and holds an advanced degree in Renaissance lit. What NTMI apparently does better than just
about anybody else isn’t inventing new technologies, but integrating existing and new technologies—writing
programs to make these various technologies communicate and work together.
Border surveillance technologies include such components as remote video cameras, unmanned aerial
vehicles, digital video recorders at ports of entry, and regional and national databases from various state and
federal agencies. NTMI developed a “smart border,” integrating the various types and layers of surveillance.
“It’s all for the good,” said Kenneth Reid, a security industry analyst quoted in the VQ, “because it will take the
kind of technology integration her company does in order to prevent something like the next September 11th
from happening.”
According to an article in Black Enterprise, “Doan’s foray into entrepreneurship was sparked by frustration.
‘I had this great idea, and I’d gone to my boss. [My boss] thought it was a pretty stupid idea and told me to go
back to my cubicle and keep programming,’ says the computer programmer. ‘I was so stunned that I walked out
the door and went to lunch and never came back.’”
With an initial investment of $25 in business cards and stationery, Doan set up her own IT company and
began knocking on government doors in Washington, DC, where her husband, Doug, an army captain, was
stationed. A few years later, she got her first big break—an opportunity to come up with a programming solu-
tion for the U.S. Navy. Nine months pregnant at the time, she worked around the clock and finished the
job literally hours before her second child was born. “The next day, the Navy called
me up to congratulate me on the birth of my child and to say that they were really
impressed. They figured any woman who is willing to put off the birth of a child to
get the network up, they can count on.”
Today, Doan’s company handles over $212 million in contracts annually …operates
with seven offices, 150 employees, and government clients ranging from the IRS to the
INS to HUD… has received numerous awards for innovation and entrepreneurship…
and has been recognized among the top IT companies by Forbes and the Washington
Post, to name a few. (VQ Spring 2003/BlackEnterprise magazine, June 2004/www.ntmi.com)
In a world where the consensus seems to be that “no
one reads anymore,” Lori Granger Leveen ’79 and
Steve Leveen have created something of a mecca
for serious readers, selling “tools for serious readers”
atLevenger,theirstoreinDelray,Florida.TheLeveens
begantheirenterprisein1988withablack-and-white
brochure selling “Serious Lighting for Serious Readers”—
halogen lighting, an emerging technology at the time.
They expanded to include chairs and desks and other read-
ing-related products, many of which they design in-house.
By 1993, Inc. magazine ranked Levenger the eighth fastest-
growing privately held company in America, and the firm
also broke ground on the site of its current 220,000-square-
footstore.In1995thecompanyregistereditsone-millionth
order,andtodayLevengermailsannuallyapproximately26
million of its catalogs, and averages 225,000 visits a day to
its website. (www.levenger.com)
In 1996, former editors
of Games magazine
AmyGoldstein’82and
two friends launched
Puzzability, a company
that crafts custom brain-
benders for “websites,
ads, packaging and
promotions, game and
reality shows, special
events, contests, CD-
ROMs, magazines—yes, even diner
placemats.” This is no ordinary puzzle-
writingcompany.OnDecember31,2004,
Puzzability took over the op-ed page of
the New York Times with a full page of
interconnected puzzles, which qualifies
Goldstein et al. as marketing innova-
tors. Here’s the “Teaser of the Week”
from their website (February 6, 2005):
Think of a five-letter word that means “a
personofelevatedrank.”Writetheword
backwards, break it into two pieces, and
insert the same two-letter chunk after
thefirstletterineachpiece,andyou’llget
twowordseachofwhichisanexampleof
theoriginalword.Whatarethesewords?
(www.puzzability.com)
[noble,earl,andbaron]
LIKE BUTTAH… PEANUT BUTTAH…
When he was a student at Vassar, Lee Zalben ’95 always won the late-night
contests he held with friends to see who could come up with the craziest but tastiest
peanut butter sandwich. That’s when he first dreamed up Peanut Butter & Co., a
restaurant that sells nothing but unique peanut butter sandwich combos. Four years
after he graduated, he did the dream: opened what is now a very successful Greenwich
Village restaurant devoted entirely to PB.
Today, Peanut Butter & Co. also retails six varieties of peanut butter from its found-
ing store on Sullivan Street, from nearly 150 grocery stores in 16 states, and through
the company’s website and two affiliated sites. Zalben still manages day-to-day opera-
tions, including the manufacture of the company’s signature gourmet varieties, and he is also currently
working on a peanut butter pop-culture cookbook. “I don’t think I chose peanut butter,” Zalben told the
New York Times (Metro Section, June 20, 1999). “Peanut butter chose me.” (www.ilovepeanutbutter.com)
Henry Noble MacCracken, then Vassar president
andconcernedaboutthestateofaffairsinEuropean
universities after World War II, facilitated the
academicplacementofdisplacedscholarsatVassar
and colleges and universities throughout the U.S.
In1976,aftertirelessadvocacyonthepartofbiology
professorMargaretWright,250acresontheVassarFarmweredesignated
an ecological preserve. In 1982, biology professor Robert Suter and his
spouse, Valerie Suter, high school physics teacher, launched Exploring
Science at Vassar Farm,
which has since given
24,000elementaryschool
studentsinPoughkeepsie
schools an opportunity
to experience hands-on
science.
Donald Foster, professor of English,
developed a computer-aided system for
textual analysis that helped to identify
and convict Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
In 1989, a Vassar alumna who wishes to remain anonymous created
the Time-Out Grant, which has thus far given 16 Vassar alumnae/i, 40 or
older, an opportunity to explore a career change or pursue a dream. In
1949-50, Clarice Pennock initiated the Office of Field Work in the Social
Sciences,aprogramwhichnowgives500studentsayeartheopportunity
toapplywhatthey’relearninginthe
classroom to real-world situations.
Rebecca Odes ’90 and two friends
created gURL (www.gurl.com), an
award-winning webzine for teen-
agegirlsthatfostersself-esteemand
positive body image.
During the Cold War, Priscilla Bullitt Collins ‘42, then a
controlling shareholder at KING-TV, arranged the first “space
bridge”betweenPhilDonohuewithastudiofullofAmericans
in Seattle and host Vladimir Posner with a studio full of
Russians in Leningrad. Peter
IanCummings’83founded
XY Magazine to teach and promote gay pride and
openness. Jeff Horst, associate executive direc-
tor of Buildings and Grounds Services, “hired”
Ben The Dog, a highly
trained border collie,
todiscourageCanadian
geese from taking over
Sunset Lake and the
golf course.
In the early 1950s, a student asked math-
ematics professor Winifred Asprey
’38 a question that changed her life. “I
love math,” the student said, “but what
can a math major do after graduation
exceptteachorgetajobasastatistician?”
Aspreyreplied,“Haveyouthoughtabout
thenewfieldofcomputers?” Computers
were just beginning to emerge from
the shroud of wartime secrecy. Asprey
had never actually seen one, but she’d
beenreadingaboutthem,andsheknew
that her former teacher and very good
friend Grace Murray Hopper ’28 was a
member of a Naval research team work-
ing on computers. That night, she called
Hopperandasked,“Grace,shouldVassar
be getting into computing?” Hopper
replied, “Winnie, I have been waiting for
you to wake up. Why don’t you come
down to Philadelphia for the weekend
and watch me teach the monster how
to do calculus?” For the next decade,
buoyed by her students’ enthusiasm,
Asprey literally devoted her life to the
computer. She spent a year at the IBM
research center on a fellowship from
IBM, read everything she could get her
hands on, attended professional confer-
ences, used her sabbatical and summers
to study computer architecture, made
connections with the top researchers
at IBM and other research centers, and
constantly and with characteristic good
humor lobbied the Vassar faculty and
administrators to get with the program.
Under her leadership, Vassar became
one of the first liberal arts colleges in the
U.S. to establish a computer center and
tooffercoursesincomputerscience(the
first was given in 1963) and the second
college in the country to acquire an IBM
Systems/360. In a special VQ issue on
“Vassar’s Newest Jewel,” Asprey wrote,
“On January 11, 1967, Vassar became the
proud, though awed, owner of an IBM
Systems/360, Model 30E, a high-speed
electroniccomputer. Wearepioneering.”
(VQ Spring 1967)
When the genteel and soft-spoken
Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone ’25
launched SIECUS (Sex Information and
Education Council of the United States)
in 1964, the religious right marshaled
the opposition, forming groups like
MOMS (Mothers Organized for Moral
Stability), fabricating dark rumors about
the sexual exploits and communist lean-
ings of sex educators, digging up “dirt”
onCalderoneherself(anout-of-wedlock
pregnancy), and picketing her public
appearances.Dubbed“thegrandmother
of sex education” by Time magazine,
Calderone believed that “sex education
should not force sexual standards upon
anyone, but should make information
availableforyoungpeopleandadultsto
reach their own moral decisions.”
(VQ Winter 2000, from Jeffrey P. Moran’s essay, adapted from his
book TeachingSex:ShapingAdolescenceinthe20th
Century)
CourtesyofPuzzability
CourtesyofLevenger
ArchivesandSpecialCollections
AlNowak
PeanutButter&Co.
CameronDavidson
DIRTY LAUNDRY
One of Andy Jennings’s first innovations as athletic director at
Vassar was to hire a full-time laundry person.
That might not seem like a big innovation, but the ripple
effect was transformational. With someone in place to take
charge of collecting and distributing uniforms, the equipment
managers were suddenly free to do what they were supposed to
do—take care of the fields, prepare sites for upcoming competi-
tions, and maintain the equipment. And once the coaches no
longer had to worry about whether the field would be chalked,
they could focus on what they were supposed to do—coach.
“We have some excellent coaches, and they should be coaches,”
Jennings told the Quarterly (Winter 1990). “They shouldn’t
be laundry people, they shouldn’t be equipment men, they
shouldn’t be bus drivers. They should be coaches.”
At the end of 2003-2004, Jennings stepped down as AD and
is now back to his first love, coaching full time. But during his 14-
year tenure as AD, he oversaw an 18-million-dollar renovation
and expansion project, including the new Athletics and Fitness Center, the Weinberg Field Sports Pavilion,
six international standard squash courts, the acquisition of Hudson River shoreline property for the rowing
program, and field renovations. Operating with a budget that tripled under his tenure and with fundraising
support that has increased 15-fold, Jennings added five varsity sports, 10 full-time coaches, and 11 full-time
assistant coaches to a 25-sport program that has produced NCAA All-Americans, national qualifiers, state,
regional and conference champions, as well as many scholar-athlete award winners. (VQ Winter 1990/Poughkeepsie
Journal, May 31, 2004; VC press release, December 5, 2003)
WillFaller
DianeZucker
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5. FOUNDERSRESCUERS
REBELS
PIONEERSMOVERS & SHAKERS
Radicals AFICIONADOS
INVENTORSAR T I S T S
auteurs
ENTREPRENEURS
REFORMERSAdventurers
discoverers
Innovators
Discoverers
In 1963, Louise Larocque Serpa ’46
requested a press pass from the Rodeo
Cowboys Association and became the
first woman photographer ever allowed
inside a rodeo ring. Dubbed “the Ansel
Adams of rodeo,” the award-winning
photographer was inducted into the
Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1999. What
wisdom has she gained from 40 years
in the ring? As she wrote in her book,
Rodeo(Aperture,1994),“Neverdon’tpay
attention.”
LouiseLarocqueSerpa
In 1901, Vassar became the first college
in the U.S. to offer instruction in field
hockey. Director of the gymnasium
Harriet Ballintine met British educator
ConstanceM.K.ApplebeeatHarvardthat
summer at a seminar for physical educa-
tion teachers. Applebee demonstrated
the sport for the seminar participants,
and Ballintine invited her to come to
Vassar to teach. (TheGreatExperiment)
THEORY X, THEORY Y,
AND THEORY G:
FROM GAK TO
GET THE MONEY
Even if you’ve never heard of Douglas McGregor or taken a busi-
ness course, you’re probably familiar with his famous Theory
X and Theory Y business management models. But you’ve
probably never heard of Theory G, because we just made it up.
It’s the Geraldine Laybourne ’69 model, and it ought to
be taught in every business school. Theory G holds that if you
want to unleash the creativity of the people who work for you,
you have to create the conditions for it. Laybourne is famous
for doing things like bringing buckets of Gak to her staff meet-
ings…giving her people “recess”…putting five recent college
grads in a room with a bunch of computer gadgets and seeing
what they come up with. You want people to think playfully?
Encourage them to play.
It’s the model Laybourne used to develop Nickelodeon into
the most highly rated cable network in the country, and it’s
the strategy she’s using now to develop Oxygen Media into the
premier cable network for women, with a rep for the edgiest entertainment on the tube.
Two other Laybourne business trademarks: do your homework, and take risks. Well trained Vassar grad
that she is, Laybourne always goes to the source. According to Matt Stump, writing for Cable World online,
“Laybourne built Nickelodeon with a never-ending mantra of listening to children. She’s bringing the same
philosophy to Oxygen.” Wanna find out what kids like? Ask them. Better yet, bring them into the studio, give
them a bunch of awesome stuff to play with, and see what
they do with it.
“Ren and Stimpy” and “Rugrats” now seem like classics,
but at the time, they were risky. “The vogue at the time
was to create animation based on pre-existing, pre-sold
characters from toys or movies or books,” Laybourne said
in an interview with Penn Graduate School of Education
Magazine. “But we had this hunch that there were anima-
tors all around the world who had characters living inside
them the way Kermit the Frog lived inside Jim Henson
and Mickey lived inside Walt. Sure enough, we sent out
scouts who came back with eight groups of characters and
we green-lit three of them.”
And finally, create something of value. According to
the Penn magazine, Laybourne believes that the biggest
challenge for women entrepreneurs is believing that they
are capable of raising start-up funds. “So, the woman who
raised $600 million in start-up money to launch her dream
business has inaugurated a small business grant program
for women. ‘Oh! Get the Money!’ invites women to submit
business plans to a Build Your Own Business competition
in which the three finalists win $25,000 in start-up funds
and some advice from experts. Says Laybourne, ‘We train them, we give them computer equipment, we make
short movies about them and put it on the air and show other women.’”
Now that is a great idea. (PennGraduateSchoolofEducationMagazine, "A Breath of Fresh Air," by Nancy Brokaw, Spring 2004/
CableWorld February 2000)
IanGerard’90wasinhissecondyearat
NYULawSchool,andhisbrotherStefan
Gerard ’92 hadjustlandedhisfirst“real”
job at St. Martin’s Press when they had a
great idea. Find talented-but-starving
young artists and match them up with
sophisticated20-somethingtypes.Host
an event where young artists get expo-
sure and publicity, and young profes-
sionals see that they can actually afford
to buy original art. They got Gen Art off
the ground with a handful of volunteers
and their own very modest pile of cash.
Today, Gen Art has offices in New York,
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami,
and Chicago, and produces over 100
events a year, showcasing high-profile
art,film,fashion,music,andmultimedia.
(VassarViewbook/TimeOutNewYork, July 8–15, 2004)
THE LAURELS AND
THE ABENAKIS
Whatever became of Annie Glidden, Vassar student
in the spring of 1866, we’ll never know. But she was a
member of either the Laurels or the Abenakis, Vassar’s
first baseball teams, and she is famous for a letter she
wrote to her brother John that contains the first known reference to women playing baseball. “They are getting
up various clubs now for out-of-door exercise,” wrote Annie. “They have a floral society, boat clubs, and base-ball
clubs. I belong to one of the latter, and enjoy it hugely I can assure you.”
It’s pretty clear that baseball was not a sanctioned activity because then-President Raymond declined to
mention it in his first annual report to the trustees, although he mentioned several other “sports.” (Ummm—
gardening?) So the likelihood is that the radical idea of “getting up” a baseball club came from the girls them-
selves, in defiance of the societal norms that placed the sport firmly on male turf.
The tone of Annie’s often-quoted comment seems innocuous, but the rest of the letter, which isn’t often
quoted, suggests some attitude: “We think after we have practiced a little, we will let the Atlantic Club play a
match with us. Or, it may be, we will consent to play a match with the students from College Hill [a local boys’
preparatory school], but we have not decided yet.” (“Bats, Balls and Books: Baseball and Higher Education for Women at Three
Eastern Women’s Colleges, 1866-1891,” by Capt. Debra A. Shattuck, Department of History, USAF Academy, in the Journal of Sport History,
Summer 1992)
ECLIPSE CHASER
Scientists from all over the country as well as from England went West
to observe the Denver eclipse of July 29, 1878, some of them arriving
weeks in advance. Princeton sent an expedition to Denver, as did
the Chicago Astronomical Society, the Chicago Times, the Royal
Astronomical Society, and the University of Woodstock. Congress
funded five expeditions from the Naval Observatory, stationed at
various locations along the line of totality. There were, in addition,
several private expeditions. “Professor Henry Draper of New York
will view the eclipse from Rawlings, Wyoming,” reported the Daily
Globe from Boston. “His party consists of Professor and Mrs. Draper,
Professor Barker of the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Morton,
President of the Stevens Institute of Technology, and Mr. Edison, the
electrician.”
And finally, there was the Vassar expedition, “Miss Mitchell’s
Party.” All of the newspapers listed the names of the scientists in these
expeditions, and the only women, except for two professors’ wives,
were the Vassar women. Vassar’s first professor, Maria Mitchell, her
sister, and four Vassar graduates, journeyed over 2,000 miles by train
in the heat of July, wrangled with stationmasters over lost luggage, pitched their tents on a hill outside Denver,
and pointed their telescopes to the center of the solar system, acting all the while like it was no big deal.
(Vassar College Libraries, Special Collections)
FROM HELL GATE TO THE GOLDEN GATE
IN A MAXWELL 30
The first woman to cross the continent behind the wheel of a car was Alice Huyler Ramsey, Vassar class
of 1907. In the summer of 1909, the 21-year-old founder and president of the Women’s Motoring Club of New
Jersey left her baby with a nursemaid and set out on a rainy day in June with her two older sisters-in-law and a
friend—none of whom could drive—in a Maxwell 30. From New York City, they headed north to Poughkeepsie,
and then made their way west through Buffalo, Cleveland, and Chicago.
Heavy rains and floods washed out roads and bridges in Iowa, but Ramsey resisted suggestions to ship
her Maxwell to Omaha by train. Instead she drove to Sioux City, then continued into Nebraska, Wyoming,
Utah, and Nevada. Calling upon her skills as a mechanic as well as a driver, Ramsey coaxed her battered vehicle
across desert and over mountains. Weary but triumphant, the foursome motored into San Francisco on August
10. The journey of 3,800 miles had taken 41 days and 11 spare tires. (VV April 1994)
Now, virtually every major supermarket
has an organic foods section and sells
at least some whole foods. But in 1991,
whenMark Ordan ’79cofoundedFresh
Fields, a Maryland-based natural foods
supermarket chain, he was way ahead
of the curve, and right on the money.
In five years, Fresh Fields burgeoned
into a 22-store chain serving four major
metropolitan areas with $300 million
in annual sales. Fresh Fields received
both national and local acclaim and was
named Money magazine’s 1993 Store of
the Year. (VV June 1993)
Nurse practitioner, physician’s assis-
tant, lawyer, and executive director of
the Compassion in Dying Federation,
Barbara Coombs Lee ’69 is a chief
petitioner and coauthor of the Oregon
DeathwithDignityAct,theonlyexisting
aid-in-dying law in the U.S. The law was
passed by Oregon voters in 1994 and
hassurvivednumerouslegalchallenges,
including a Justice Department ruling
that barred Oregon doctors from using
the law. That ruling was overturned by
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but
Attorney General John
Ashcroft filed an appeal
to the Supreme Court,
arguing that assisted
suicide is not a “legiti-
mate medical purpose.”
The Supreme Court has
agreedtoreviewthecase,
but is not likely to rule
on the matter until next
year. (VQ Spring 2003/www.compas-
sionindying.org)
Paco Underhill ’75 can tell you what
percentage of the men who take jeans
into the fitting room in a department
store will actually buy them (65%), and
what percentage of the women will
(25%). He can tell you whether people
lookingtobuyacomputeraremorelikely
to make a purchase before noon or after
5p.m.(4%asopposedto21%).Andmost
important, he can tell you how to posi-
tion your displays to avoid the negative
impact of the “butt-brush factor.”
Founder and managing director
of Envirosell, Underhill has made an
exact science of shopping behavior.
Using an array of techniques and equip-
ment, including video cameras, qualita-
tive observation techniques, mapping
programs, and attitudinal interviews,
Envirosellanalyzesshoppingbehaviorfor
clients like Bloomingdales, MacDonalds,
Starbucks, and Estee Lauder. Underhill
hasbeenprofiledinFortune,Smithsonian
magazine, Fast Company, and the New
Yorker and featured on ABC’s “20/20”
and CBS’s “48 Hours.” He’s also written a
couple of very insightful and entertain-
ing books—Why We Buy (Simon and
Schuster,1999),whichbecameaninstant
bestseller (over 100,000 copies sold,
published in 25 languages), and in 2004,
Call of the Mall. If you want to find out
what the “butt-brush factor” is and how
to avoid it, read Why We Buy, “Chapter 1:
A Science Is Born.”
(www.envirosell.com)
In 2001, when the United Way of
Dutchess County accepted the decision
of the Boy Scouts of America, one of its
memberagencies,toretainitslegalright
to discriminate based on sexual orienta-
tion, Vassar, led by President Frances
Fergusson, decided to pull out of the
UnitedWaycampaignandsetupitsown
philanthropic campaign, Community
Works, with 100 percent of the funds
raised going to support local organiza-
tions and agencies. To date the campus
effort has raised more than $300,000
for 23 recipients. In 2004, Vassar raised
a record $88,500, with students contrib-
uting nearly $16,000—clear proof that
community does indeed work, and
perhaps works even better when its
members take a stand on their beliefs.
At 11:00 p.m. on February 21,
1901, Ida Watson, class of
1901, discovered a new star in
Perseus at the same time as Dr.
T.D. Anderson of Edinburgh.
(TheGreatExperiment)
A postdoctoral fellow at the time, Ellen Kovner Silbergeld ‘67
wanted to find out why a kid in his or her right mind would eat
paint, so she picked a piece off the windowsill and ate it. She found
out—it’s sweet. Eating paint is usually not a good idea, but in this
one instance, it was brilliant.
Named a MacArthur Fellow in 1993, Silbergeld was the first to
study the neurological problems caused by lead, and among the
first to advocate for lead-free gasoline and inte-
riorhousepaint.CurrentlyonthefacultyatJohns
HopkinsBloombergSchoolofPublicHealth,she
has held senior positions at the Environmental
Defense Fund and the University of Maryland
MedicalSchool,hasservedoncountlessfederal
advisory boards, and has been fired from a few
because of her unwavering stance on environ-
mental protection. Recently, for example, the
Bush White House fired her from the Centers for
Disease Control Advisory Board, but Silbergeld
says that’s one termination she wears like a
badge of honor. (VQ Spring 2004)
NO MORE
CAR CHASES
When Paula Madison ’74 took over as
president and general manager of KNBC-TV in
Los Angeles, she made a major policy decision:
no more car chases. KNBC would no longer
routinely scramble helicopters to cover highway
police pursuits, the junk-food staple of West
Coast news. Instead, Madison’s station would
begin covering more community interest stories,
from local political and environmental issues to
cultural events and health alerts.
It wasn’t Madison’s first controversial idea.
In her previous position as vice president and
news director for WNBC, NBC’s New York
flagship station, she asked questions like, “Why
don’t we do a story that’s more than a minute
and 30 seconds? Why don’t we, if the story
warrants it, do 20 minutes? Why do you only
cover politics when you’re in fact interested in
alternative treatments to cancer? I like looking
at the world from another angle—turning it upside down, inside out, asking why it has to be that way.”
Under Madison’s direction, WNBC became the number one television station in the highly competitive New
York Market. “News Channel 4” closed out the November 1999 ratings as the market’s news leader, finishing first
in all local newscasts for the first time in 16 years. With ratings like those, you can pretty much do anything….
even cut the chase, instead of cutting to the chase, in LA. (VQ Fall 2000, WHAV Fall 2001)
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