With the recent approval of the Board of Trustees, Pendleton East will undergo a $15.5 million transformation next year to become a social science research center with state-of-the-art classrooms, space for collaborative research, and new departmental offices. "This project is much more than a renovation," noted Dean of the College Lee Cuba, who is helping to coordinate the project. "We will completely redesign the building's interior to create a vibrant learning, teaching, and research facility while we preserve its beautiful and historic exterior."

Cuba has been meeting with a Renovations Planning Committee, a team of staff and faculty from the departments to be housed in Pendleton East, to develop plans for the new space. "Our goal has been to create spaces that will integrate the learning, teaching, and research that will take place in the building," he said. As part of the collaborative planning process, the Committee held its first open meeting with interested students, faculty, and staff on November 8.

Cuba said the changes from the current building will be striking. The current amphitheater in Pendleton East 112 will be converted into a dramatic entry to the building with a research center, media and computer labs located above an open gathering space where "conversations and learning can spill over from the classroom."

Improved technology will be incorporated throughout the building, from classroom computers to the College's first video conferencing facility. Classrooms will be varied in design and layout to include amphitheaters, seminar room, flexible seating classrooms, and case-study classrooms with U-shaped seating to promote interaction among students. The building will be accessible, in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Summer and fall construction

The respected architectural firm of Childs Bertman Tseckares, the firm that designed the recent Stone-Davis renovation, has been selected to design the new space. Under the current construction schedule, the occupants of the building will move out after the end of classes next May. Demolition of the building's interior will begin in June and last for six to eight weeks. Construction will continue through the summer and fall semester, with an estimated move-in date of January 2001. "We would like to move all the occupants back into the building during Wintersession, so that they will have time to settle in and learn how to use the new facilities before the spring semester begins," explained Cuba.

Classrooms will be varied in design and layout to include amphitheaters, seminar rooms, flexible seating classrooms, and case-study classrooms with U-shaped seating to promote interaction among students.

Part of the planning process for the renovation is the consideration and evaluation of options for relocating the building's current occupants (academic departments, classrooms, and bookstore) during construction. At the trustees' meeting last month, architect Chip Sloan presented the Board with an overview of two of the options under consideration: building a temporary structure somewhere on campus (a high-tech "tent" complete with electricity, heat, and windows) or using trailers for on-campus classrooms and office space.

In addition to housing the occupants of Pendleton East during its renovation, the temporary space also will be used to house the administrative departments in Green Hall on a rotating basis when that building undergoes a planned renovation in the next few years. A planning committee to discuss the temporary space options will be formed later this fall.

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Trustee William J. Mitchell

The Board of Trustees has elected William J. Mitchell, Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT and Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences, as its newest member. In a unanimous vote at their October board meeting, the trustees approved Mitchell for a six-year term, beginning November 1. "Dean Mitchell's creativity and scholarship, particularly in the area of technology and how it is fundamentally changing our society and higher education, are welcome additions to our Board," stated Wellesley College President Diana Chapman Walsh. "His role as a trustee will further strengthen the Wellesley-MIT exchange, which was established more than 30 years ago." Before coming to MIT in 1992, Mitchell was Professor of Architecture and Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He previously served as head of the Architecture/Urban Design Program at UCLA's Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning and has taught at Yale, Carnegie-Mellon, and Cambridge Universities. Mitchell earned a B.Arch. at the University of Melbourne, a M.E.D. at Yale, and a M.A. at Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His most recent book,E-Topia: Urban Life, Jim &emdash; But Not As We Know It, explores the new forms and functions of cities in the digital electronic era. Mitchell also is the author of City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn; The Reconfigured Eye; and The Logic of Architecture and co-author of The Poetics of Gardens.

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Bricks and Mortar By Pam Gentile Project Manager Galen Stone Tower Workers will be completing work on the tower in late November, and the scaffolding will be taken down. Work will resume in the late spring on the lower portions of the masonry structure since the deterioration to the corners was more substantial than expected. In late June, workers will begin the needed repairs which will take approximately six to eight weeks to complete. Temporary Structures Beginning next spring with the renovations to Pendleton Hall East, the College will need to move the College Bookstore to a temporary location until its final home is determined. Because space is at a premium in all of our buildings, several options are under consideration for temporary structures. These include different types of trailers and tent-like structures like the one used in Boston City Hall Plaza for the Enchanted Village. Placement of such a structure must be coordinated with other building projects on campus. Our plan is to present a preferred structure and siting option to the Board of Trustees in January, with installation planned in late April. Wintersession Projects Wintersession presents an opportunity to complete small projects throughout campus. In the Schneider Center, workers will build an office for the Student Activities Coordinator and complete construction of an ADA-compliant restroom adjacent to the dining area. In the residence halls, crews will be improving storage rooms for students in Lake House and Claflin Hall, and in Tower Court, a new recreation room will be constructed on the ground floor near the dining hall.

-compiled by Sue Chan '02

Art Department members Judy Black, Sheila Gallagher, Phyllis McGibbon, and Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz were among 50 of the area's most talented women artists invited to participate in 'The Cardigan Project.' Melissa Katz, Davis Museum and Cultural Center, was a member of the planning committee. Each participant was given a sweater to transform into a work of art. The items were auctioned Nov. 10 at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. This auction raised money for the Women's Supported Housing & Empowerment, Inc., the project's sponsor.

In a packed lecture hall last month at Princeton, Adrienne Asch, Reproductive Issues, debated Peter Singer, a bioethicist who has received considerable media attention recently because of his controversial views about the sanctity of human life. While critiquing Singer's intellectual views, Asch defended his right to teach at the university.

Patricia Berman, Art History, was one of 38 women appointed to be the 1999-2000 fellows of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe. She concentrates on Edvard Munch and the national politics of public art.

The Greenwich (Conn.) Antiques Society invited Eleanor DeLorme, Art, to deliver the opening lecture for the group's 1999-2000 season. DeLorme spoke about the instrumental role the Empress Josephine of France played in making the transition from the delicate neo-classical style of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI to the bolder, more assertive neo-classicism of the Empire period.

Media critic and Wellesley visiting scholar Jean Kilbourne spoke at "Body & Soul," a film and discussion on Oct. 7 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Mass. Kilbourne presented a slide show describing effects of advertising on women's perceptions of their bodies.

Heping Liu, Art History, served on the international faculty of the Salzburg Seminar on the Arts, Religion, and the Shaping of Culture held at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria, Sept. 4-11. She presented a paper presentation on the accommodation of Buddhist andChristian art in China.

Jean McCormick, former ESPN producer and now visiting scholar at Wellesley, has released her book, Talk Sports like a Pro: 99 Secrets to Becoming a Sports Goddess.

Rike Smith McNally, Davis Museum and Cultural Center, recently assisted Brownie Girl Scout Troop 2112 of Framingham in the restoration of an outdoor sculpture of a Civil War soldier from 1872. McNally's recommendations will help the Troop be the first in the nation to make use of the Save Outdoor Sculpture (SOS) program sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and the Girls Scouts.

Susan Skeath, Economics, and a visiting scholar at Boston University, recently delivered a lecture titled "Antidumping Law and Vertically Related Industries: Strategic Behavior and Market Outcomes." Also a visiting fellow at the University of Otago, New Zealand, Skeath gave the lecture, "Games of Strategy and the New Zealand and US Airwave Auction Experiences."

Filomena Steady, Africana Studies, presented prizes to seven rural women 'laureates' from Burkina Faso, Honduras, Bolivia, Latvia, Albania, Ireland, and China for their creativity in rural life on Rural Women's Day, Oct. 15, in Geneva. Steady is president of the Women's World Summit Foundation, a Geneva-based international non-governmental organization.

This fall, Suzanne Stumpf, Music, began her 11th season as a member of "Musicians of the Old Post Road," a chamber music ensemble that focuses on music of the 17th through 19th centuries. The group is performing a series of concerts in New York, Boston, and Worcester and will be releasing its third album in the spring.

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Special to the Illuminator
Excerpted from the Friends of the Library Newsletter

Petrarch, I Trionfi. Manuscript on vellum, 2nd half of the 15th century. Gift of George Arthur Plimpton in memory of his wife, Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton, class of 1884.

In conjunction with the recently completed renovation of Special Collections and the entire fourth floor of the Margaret Clapp Library, a new exhibition has been mounted featuring selected gifts to the Library throughout its history. On display are books and manuscripts dating from the founding of Wellesley College, such as the first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass with the famous engraved portrait of the young poet, published in 1855. The book is an inscribed presentation copy from Whitman to George Herbert Palmer (husband of Wellesley's second president, Alice Palmer), whose English poetry collection forms one of the largest gifts to the Library, according to Ruth Rogers, Special Collections Librarian. Two other early gifts on display, Rogers noted, are De Laudibus Mariae, a fourteenth century illuminated manuscript on vellum given by President Caroline Hazard (who also gave the Browning love letters), and selections from the Elbert Collection on slavery, emancipation and Reconstruction, given by Ella Smith Elbert '88, Wellesley's second black graduate. In addition to alumnae donors, fathers and husbands of Wellesley women have been equally generous through the years, Rogers said. She noted that in 1920 renowned antiquarian bookseller Charles Eliot Goodspeed, whose two daughters were alumnae, gave his comprehensive collection of John Ruskin's major works, containing limited edition books, autographed letters, watercolors, and drawings. This collection contains the unpublished sketchbook of Roadside Songs of Tuscany by Francesca Alexander, an American artist from a prominent Boston family whom Ruskin befriended and assisted.

In honor of his wife, Jane Murray Beck '30, Dr. William C. Beck gave Wellesley one of the most important books in the history of science, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1568), by Andreas Vesalius. Vesalius was the first physician to systematically describe the anatomy of the human body, based on his own dissections, with detailed woodcuts of the muscular, circulatory, and skeletal structures.

In memory of his wife, Mary Eddy Klein '42, and in honor of his daughter, Margaret Kennedy Klein '72, Walter C. Klein endowed Special Collections in 1993 with a substantial preservation fund which provides an annual income to repair fragile books and documents. The De Laudibus manuscript mentioned earlier was treated by a rare books conservator with this much-needed gift, Rogers said.

While it is not possible to acknowledge in one exhibition the hundreds of donors whose gifts to Special Collections have contributed to its present riches in the humanities and the sciences, Rogers hopes those items on exhibit will "tempt the reader to visit and see a selection of them."

The exhibition is located both in the display cases on the fourth floor outside the entrance to Special Collections and inside as well and is open during regular library hours. For more information, call x3592.

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The first recipients of the Susan Rappaport Knafel '52 Scholarship for Foreign Study and the Susan Rappaport Knafel '52 Traveling Fellowship shared their adventures to a roomful of faculty, students and staff who came to celebrate their accomplishments and to meet Sidney R. Knafel who endowed the two awards as a lasting gift to his wife and to generations of Wellesley women.

The Susan Rappaport Knafel '52 Scholarship for Foreign Study is awarded to members of the graduating class who display a desire for learning and an ability to impart knowledge and judgment to others. Sarah Doyle CE '96 and Sarah Wall '97 each received the $25,000 scholarship to fund a year of study in a foreign institution to pursue a specific subject that requires contact with foreign scholars, libraries, or other resources.

Doyle attended the Central European University in Budapest where she earned a M.A. in Gender Studies. She now works as a consultant for the Cambridge Public Schools. Wall studied Renaissance Drama at Oxford University and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Harvard University.

The Susan Rappaport Knafel '52 Traveling Fellowship is awarded to members of the graduating class who display an interest in and an acceptance of others, and who display the ethos of a Wellesley education. The $22,000 fellowship funds a year of travel abroad with the requirement that that recipient not remain in the same area for more than two months.

Marian Leonardo '96 chose to retrace the journey Che Guevara took through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. Leonardo now is serving as a legislative assistant to Rep. Ed Pastor (D-AZ). Leslie Karasin '97 opted to hike and volunteer with a variety of environmental organizations throughout New Zealand, Australia, Nepal, East Africa, Scotland, Belgium, and Spain. She now is working as a backcountry environmental educator in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York.

Students interested in applying for either the Susan Rappaport Knafel '52 Scholarship for Foreign Study or the Susan Rappaport Knafel '52 Traveling Fellowship should contact the Center for Work and Service.

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About The Wellesley College Illuminator

Editor-in-Chief: Mary Ann Hill, mhill@wellesley.edu

Managing Editor: Betsy Lawson, elawson@wellesley.edu

Editorial Staff: Eileen Devine

The Illuminator is the published monthly during the academic year by Wellesley College's Office for Public Information, a division of Resources and Public Affairs, 230 Green Hall, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Issues are published the first week of every month during the academic year, except for combined issues in September/October and January/February. Special Family Editions are also published.

Please submit editorial content to the above listed mailing address or e-mail: elawson@wellesley.edu

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Betsy Lawson elawson@wellesley.edu
Office for Public Information
Date created: November 15, 1999
Last updated: November 16, 1999
Page expires: August, 2000