By David Volk

Noreen Hall Papatheodorou, M.S.S. ’58, doesn’t want you to have a nice day; she wants you to make one instead.

That may seem an odd sentiment for a social worker, but Papatheodorou isn’t your average social worker. As founder of Foundations of Wellness, an organization in Florida that’s teaching resiliency in children, she has long encouraged diabetes sufferers and people with chronic conditions to take charge of their own lives.

“I believe in empowering people, helping them find the power that is within themselves to make choices and decisions that can enhance the quality of their living,” Papatheodorou says.

Papatheodorou understands the issues involved because she’s had diabetes since the 1940s. In fact, she gave up her dream of becoming a pediatrician when her doctor, a woman, advised against it because she felt the stress of being one of the few women in medical school would affect her health.

Since she wanted to work with children, she chose clinical social work.

In keeping with her philosophy, she views unexpected curves in her career path as positive even though she doesn’t know where the turns are taking her.

“Wherever I am at a given time, the seeds are being planted even though I’m not aware of it. One of the things that has helped me on my yellow brick road is that I have always been willing to be open,” she said.

Indeed, her condition and interest in children led her to become an adjunct faculty member at the University of California-Los Angeles where she pushed for a more holistic team approach to managing diabetes.

Her openness got her involved in film projects, too. She went from unsuccessfully consulting with a pharmaceutical company that wanted to do a movie on children growing up with diabetes to consulting, facilitating and editing for the educational filmmaker Pyramid Films.

After years of focusing on chronic disease, she has turned to her current project at Foundations of Wellness. There’s been so much interest in the internet-based program that she’s already received requests to do it in other languages and may end up doing a book.

Papatheodorou credits Bryn Mawr for the flexibility that got her where she is.

“Getting the educational experience I got at Bryn Mawr enabled me to go with the flow, if you will, because I was willing to remain open and accepting. I was willing to be a risk taker.”

By David Volk

For JoAnne Fischer, M.S.S. ’73, it all started with the Girl Scouts.

While most girls enjoy their scouting experience and move on, the lessons Fischer learned in Girl Scouts not only stayed with her, they also are part of what eventually inspired her to become the executive director of the Maternity Care Coalition (MCC) in Philadelphia.

Even now, she still recalls a Girl Scout International Oppor­tunity in Mexico where she learned how different daily life was in other countries. What impressed her the most, though, was the need to improve the status of women.

“I think that I got early on that if I really wanted to make a difference in the world, impacting the lives of women was the key,” she says. “I realized that if girls were educated, that would be an important investment in the family and the world.”

She already considered herself a “very serious feminist” by the time she started at Bryn Mawr. Her internship with Pennsylvania health commissioner Walter Lear eventually led her to establish the women’s health movement in Philadelphia as the director of the Women’s Health Concerns Program in the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Along the way, having two children helped her to find her focus.

“Childbirth is one of the most memorable and cul­turally significant times in a person’s life,” Fischer says. “Unfor­tunately,” she adds, “we as a culture have not adequately supported women during this period.”

That’s where the Maternity Care Coalition comes in. The organization works to improve the health and well-being of mothers, infants and their families on many fronts. In addition to lobbying politicians on topics ranging from breastfeeding to health insurance, the MCC also provides a variety of services including a free, three times a week health text messaging program called Text4Baby.

MCC’s Riverside MOMobile works with expectant mothers at the Philadelphia County Jail. Since MOMobile staffers are trained doulas, they can stay with the women during labor. Before the program started, pregnant women were shackled during childbirth. Her agency also successfully pushed for legislation to end the practice.

“That’s a victory I’m particularly proud of.” She adds, “Every day I wake up and feel like I’m doing something important in the world, and that’s a wonderful feeling.”

Can sparks of motivation happen between chewing over the day’s events and passing the mashed potatoes? Chemistry Professor Bill Malachowski thinks so. He vividly recalls a tradition of evening meals during his boyhood, daily gatherings that nourished more than his body, nourishing his imagination and his character, as well.

Chemistry Professor Bill Malachowski mentors grad student Maria Winters in the lab.

At that dinner table it seemed natural that his mother, a registered nurse, and his father, a pharmacist/teacher, would talk about their daily experiences, and how the science they practiced improved the lives of ordinary people. Inspired by his parents’ enthusiasm and commitment to their work, young Bill decided to study chemistry, with a practical aim of doing research that might lead to the treatment of the diseases his parents saw every day. At the same time, the budding chemist developed a strong desire to teach and mentor those with similar aspirations.

Both of those endeavors, important research and opportunities for teaching, come together in the Bryn Mawr chemistry department chaired by Malachowski.

The highly respected department has received numerous grants. Several of these grants—like the current National Institutes of Health grant to pursue research with the enzyme IDO—could hold significant promise for future treatment of disease.

Some may be surprised that this cutting-edge research is taking place at Bryn Mawr rather than at a large university. Yet, smaller is sometimes better.

“Most small colleges don’t have these kinds of robust research activities,” says Malachowski. “The fact that we have a graduate program really helps a lot in terms of successfully applying for these grants, and it’s a dynamic that’s fairly unique to Bryn Mawr among the top liberal arts colleges.”

For the student enthused about the sciences, Bryn Mawr’s chemistry department provides not only a chance to be a part of important research, but also a supportive, encouraging environment not always found at universities.

About the opportunities for students, Malachowski continues, “Unlike large universities, we have a nurturing department that fosters close interactions between faculty and students. And unlike most small liberal arts colleges, we have a graduate department that gives us greater intellectual diversity and resources.”

The experience of Maria Winters, M.A. ’11, illustrates the combination of important research and a nurturing environment that makes Bryn Mawr’s chemistry program unique. Winters chose Bryn Mawr for her master’s degree because of the reception she received when she visited the department.

“I visited bigger schools, too,” Winters says, “but I felt really comfortable with the professors and grad students at Bryn Mawr. They were so welcoming. There were really good vibes.”

Now working on her Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry, and working on the IDO research, Winters is leaning toward a future of teaching and research. She is also getting the chance to mentor undergrads in the lab, working with them on all-important reaction-based experiments, and helping them feel grounded in new procedures.

In Bryn Mawr’s chemistry labs women can advance with confidence in a discipline that once belonged almost uniquely to men. Half of the faculty are women, demonstrating that it is possible to balance life goals and gain parity in the laboratory.

New path in cancer research

The Chemistry Department, funded by a recent National Institutes of Health grant, is designing and synthesizing compounds to inhibit a crucial enzyme that regulates the immune system in the hopes of developing a new strategy in cancer treatment.

The enzyme, called indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase—IDO, may play a role in preventing a pregnant woman’s immune system from attacking the fetus, according to previously published research. Medical scientists hypothesize that IDO might also be preventing the body’s immune system from recognizing invasive cancer cells. If the production of IDO could be blocked, the immune system might be able to recognize and react to the cancer cells.

The research is in its earliest stage. Hundreds of compounds have been synthesized and patented by department chair Bill Malachowski and a collaborator. They are being used in research by the pharmaceutical company NewLink Genetics to look for potential anti-cancer agents.

The five-year grant will bring nearly $425,000 in funding to the College, which will be used to support the salary of an undergraduate research assistant and a graduate student fellowship. Malachowski has brought nearly $1 million worth of grant funding in support of research and teaching to the College in the past two years.

Interviewed by Elizabeth Mosier ’84

Ashley Dartnell ’80 wrote her engrossing memoir, Farangi Girl: A Memoir of My Mother, Parties with Princes and Growing Up in Iran (Two Roads) to understand her unique parents, explore the chaotic circumstances of her childhood and make sense of Iran before and after the fall of the Shah, which occurred when she was at Bryn Mawr.

 EM: How much of the book began with stories you told to your bi-College classmates? I was amused to find my husband, Chris Mills (Haverford ’82), on p. 387 “playing the guitar in the corner” of Gummere at Haverford, where you lived your junior year.

AD: I have a blurry photo of Chris playing guitar! Except for my closest friends, very few people knew anything about my background. In my final year at Bryn Mawr, as the events of the Iranian Revolution weighed heavily on my family and me, I withdrew pretty dramatically into my cave in Erdman: studying, applying for jobs, trying to support my mother and brothers (who had relocated to Florida, while my father remained in Iran).

 EM: Your mother kept many secrets—about her parents, her religion, and her romantic past. Is your desire to write shaped by a need to unravel her mystery?

AD: My relationship with my mother was my defining relationship, and it has taken me a while to unravel it. For decades, when I thought about both my parents’ lives, particularly in the context of how I chose to live my own, I was stunned by the risks they took, the extraordinary lives they pursued, the merry chase they led their three children on. What I discovered after spending years poring through letters, scrutinizing photographs, interviewing friends and relatives, and dredging my own memories, is that although I now know better what they did, I have little better understanding of why they did it. It’s extraordinary how elusive human motivation is.

More Books by Alumnae

Atlas of Sleep Medicine

, Lois E. Krahn ’85 (coauthor), Informa Healthcare 2011. This book by researchers from the Mayo Clinic offers a history of sleep and sleep medicine, and examines the influence of healthy and disordered sleep on the human condition. Krahn is the Mayo Clinic chair of the department of psychiatry and psychology, and director for education at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.

Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places

, Jill B. Jones, Ph.D. ’93 (coauthor), Cornell University Press 2011. This book takes a look at female employees in the gaming industry and the harsh working conditions that led many to join the labor movement. Jones is an associate professor emeritus of social work at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The Highest Frontier

, Joan Slonczewski ’77, Tor Books 2011. In this science fiction novel, a woman from an influential family starts her freshman year at a college in orbit, while Earth, altered by climate change, is threatened by an alien species. Slonczewski is a professor of biology at Kenyon College and the author of several science fiction novels.

The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian

, Helen Kinsella ’89, Cornell University Press 2011. Since at least medieval times, the laws of war have distinguished between civilians and those engaged in combat, and Kinsella details the development of the concept of the civilian. Kinsella is an assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Numbers on the Move: 1 2 3 Dance and Count with Me

, Teresa Benzwie, M.S.S. ’94, Temple University Press 2011. This book engages children to move and dance while learning to count and play with numbers. Its pictures and activities encourage creative movement and learning. Benzwie is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice at the Center for Creative Change in New Jersey.

The Playgroup

, Elizabeth Mosier ’84, Gemma Open Door 2011. During her daughter’s first two years, Sarah Holloway fakes her way through motherhood with the help of women in her neighborhood playgroup. But when she becomes pregnant again and a radiologist detects a mass in her unborn baby’s abdomen, her fear that her children have inherited her damage awakens, and uncovers a secret that could end her marriage. Mosier is the author of the novel My Life as a Girl.

Pleading Your Case: Complaints and Responses

, Janet S. Kole ’68, American Bar Association 2011. Veteran litigator Kole offers advice on how to write a legal complaint or response that effectively tells a client’s story. Kole is a founding member of the Society for Women Environmental Professionals (SWEP) and has practiced law for 30 years. She was the editor and coeditor of Environmental Litigation and a coauthor of the book Post Mortem.

So Far Away: A Daughter’s Memoir of Life, Loss, and Love

, Christine W. Hartmann, M.S.W. ’98, Ph.D. ’04, Vanderbilt University Press 2011. Two decades in advance, the author’s mother determined the date when she would end her life. She shared her plans with Hartmann, who struggled with yet ultimately accepted the decision in order to stay in her mother’s life. Hartmann is a research assistant professor in health policy and management at Boston University.

The Volunteers’ Guide to Fundraising

, Ilona Bray ’84, NOLO 2011. Subtitled Raising Money for Your School, Team, Library, or Community Group, this guide offers practical advice on how to raise and handle money for a community or nonprofit organization without hiring a professional fundraiser. Bray’s previous books include Effective Fundraising for Nonprofits and Nolo’s Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home.

Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities

, Paula J. Birnbaum, Ph.D. ’96, Ashgate Publishing 2011. Birnbaum asserts the significance of the Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes and its members Suzanne Valadon, Marie Laurencin, and Tamara de Lempicka on modern art, detailing how they brought a new perspective to the self-portrait, the nude, and motherhood. Birnbaum is an associate professor in the department of art and architecture at the University of San Francisco.

If Not Now, When: Selected Poems

,

Robert E. Young, M.S.S. ’57,

poeticapublishing.com 2011.

Nimble Thinking

,

Louise Loomis ’50,

Thinkwell Center 2011.

Suggestion of Death

,

Janet S. Kole ’68,

amazon.com 2011.

Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of  the Borderlands

,

Ellen Kushner ’77 (coeditor),

Random House 2011.

Happy 40th (bricks-andmortar) Anniversary to the Bryn Mawr Book Store in Cambridge!

Addressing the underrepresentation of women in STEM—science, technology, engineering, mathematics —is a national priority. Most recently, the debate on STEM workforce issues has focused on

• Low female participation rates in STEM jobs, despite an increase in the numbers of women earning degrees in STEM disciplines. While women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of science, technology, engineering and math jobs, according to an August 2010 report, “Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation,” by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
• The insufficient number of college graduates, both male and female, with strong STEM competencies.

I have added my voice to those urging our country to close the gender gap in STEM. I have written columns in the online editions of Inside Higher Education and The New York Times, and spoke on the subject at a recent meeting of the National Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

As long as there is a gender gap in these fields, there will be an innovation gap. And in today’s global economy, nations that lead do so through fostering scientific and technological innovation.

From 2007–2010, more than 25 percent of Bryn Mawr’s graduates majored in science or math—3.4 times the national rate for women and 2.6 times the overall national rate. Bryn Mawr continues to be in the top 10 among all colleges and universities in the percentage of its female graduates pursuing doctorates in the STEM fields. Our students are six times more likely to graduate with a degree in chemistry than college students nationwide, and nine times more likely to do so in math. Bryn Mawr is second in the nation in the percentage of female students receiving degrees in math, and has 18 times the national average of female students graduating in physics.

How do we do it? Much credit should go to the College’s founders, who from the beginning offered women the chance to get an education that was equal to the finest available to men of the era. But our current success comes from more than just a history of access.

When we ask students what it is about Bryn Mawr that encourages them to pursue STEM majors we consistently hear two things: 1) exposure to role models in our faculty, alumnae, and in other students, and 2) being in a classroom in which they aren’t the lone woman.

Julia Ferraioli graduated in 2007 with a degree in computer science. In high school she had been steered away from some of the higher-level math courses. “Studying computer science at a women’s college meant that I could concentrate on learning instead of being the representative of a gender,” Julia told us via email. “Gender became irrelevant instead of being something that defined me.”

Encouraged by an alumna mentor and by her professors, Julia attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where she made the connection that led to a job at Microsoft after graduation. Julia has since earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Rochester and was recently featured as the “Geek of the Week” by the website GeekWire for her work as technical evangelist with DocuSign.

Undergraduate research opportunities and faculty mentoring are also critical. I recently heard from Wendy Butler, the mother of three Bryn Mawr daughters who have majored in chemistry. Annie is a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State, Kate is a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan and Ellen is a current junior. Each participated in College-sponsored summer science research in Professor Frank Mallory’s lab, and in Mrs. Butler’s words, “will forever owe a debt to the Mallorys for their tireless support.”

We want to engage all types of students in STEM coursework and we believe they all can succeed. Offering students a variety of entry points into the sciences allows those who arrive at the College with advanced preparation to enroll in higher-level courses that immediately challenge them, while students who have had negative prior experiences in STEM coursework or poor preparation can enjoy courses at various points in the introductory level.

Innovative pedagogy that teaches the applications of science can also attract more students to STEM subjects. For example, in introductory courses in computer science at Bryn Mawr, students apply CS principles to create graphic design projects.

Finally, family-friendly policies encourage faculty to find balance between work and personal life, enabling faculty of both genders to pursue the path to tenure. Ultimately this means more women in the tenured faculty ranks in STEM fields. In chemistry and math, for example, 50 percent of Bryn Mawr’s tenured faculty are women.

At a moment when many question the value of both liberal arts institutions and women’s colleges, Bryn Mawr has built a strong case for the effective power of a women’s college to create opportunity for our graduates in fields of great importance to the nation.

Sincerely,

Jane McAuliffe

Illustration by Jason Marz

“San Francisco is in ruins,” a voice on the radio reports breathlessly. “The whole West Coast is off.”

And those are only two of the disasters that befall our planet in the 2003 movie The Core. When the Earth’s core stops spinning, the electromagnetic shield begins to deteriorate, exposing the surface to the unfiltered solar radiation that will incinerate anything and anyone exposed to it.

But in the movies, there’s always a solution. In this movie, a team of the world’s most gifted and bravest—and best-looking—scientists travel to the Earth’s core in a subterranean craft to detonate a nuclear device that will, hopefully, start the core spinning again.

Possible? Absurd fantasy?

According to Assistant Professor Pedro Marenco, who teaches the course Geology in Film, The Core is the movie that has led to the liveliest classroom discussions.

“The film shows microwave radiation cooking the Golden Gate Bridge and lightning storms destroying the Coliseum,” says Marenco. “We do know that the magnetic field protects us from solar winds that contain charged particles and radiation. However, we are much less certain about the nature of the damage that would result.”

Geology in Film is designed to help students think critically about how science, particularly the Earth sciences, is depicted by Hollywood writers and directors, whose main objective is to entertain, not teach. Several Hollywood blockbuster disaster films are screened during the quarter, followed by in-depth discussions of how the Earth sciences are used to tell stories in popular films, how scientists are portrayed, and the misconceptions about science and scientists commonly represented in popular Hollywood fare.

Said freshman Jessica Shum, who has taken the course, “We have to view the movie differently than if we had watched it as the average audience. There are some really interesting concepts about geology and non-geology, so it’s very intellectually stimulating.”

The course has attracted students who are well read in the natural sciences, as well as students from the humanities and social sciences.

“They all have different ideas to contribute,” says Marenco, “but they all seem to enjoy talking about film.” Marenco obviously does, as well.

The films to be screened and discussed are Volcano, The Core, 10.5, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012.

“I think the biggest mistake many of these films make when representing Earth science is the anthropo­morphizing of natural phenomena,” says Marenco. “They actually turn Earth into a villain who is out to kill people. In 10.5, during an earthquake, a rupture forms and chases a train along its track, even around bends, until the train is swallowed. In Volcano, deadly sulfurous gases shoot out of the Earth to kill people and then are sucked back into the ground once the killing is done, as if the gases had a purpose. Giving natural phenomena human-like attributes leads to serious science issues.”

So is it possible that a volcano could erupt in the heart of Los Angeles, raining a storm of deadly firebombs and an endless river of white hot lava on the stunned city? Can brave and dedicated emergency management director Tommy Lee Jones, and plucky seismologist Anne Heche save the day?

“I actually like the way Dr. Amy Barnes (the Anne Heche character) is portrayed in Volcano,” says Marenco. “She is so normal that she could be your next-door neighbor, and yet she is intelligent, witty and successful.”

Marenco’s least favorite character is Dr. Ed “Braz” Brazzleton from The Core. Although Braz is portrayed as absurdly intelligent, the writers revive the old stereotype of the mad scientist.

“I think such portrayals do a public disservice in that they make it look as if to be a scientist you have to be a crazy loner,” says Marenco.

In 10.5, a chain of massive earthquakes threatens to wipe the West Coast off the map. In Deep Impact, a comet is on a collision course with Earth. In The Day After Tomorrow, abrupt global warming results in a new ice age.

But no disaster—volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, the polar ice caps melting, fire from the sky—can match the cataclysm of 2012, which actually leads to the end of the world, dooming the entire human race. If this narrative sounds strangely familiar, even Biblical, it will come as no surprise that the spaceships intended to save a few human survivors are called “arks.”

“In 2012, everything goes wrong—volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes—and nothing can save us,” says Marenco, which is why he chose 2012 for the final film the class sees. “I figured that is a good vehicle to summarize what we learned during the quarter.”

The gleditsia triacanthos var. “inermis” (honey locust) by Denbigh survived Hurricane Irene.

While downed power lines did lead to the closure of New Gulph Road, English House, and Russian House for more than a day following Hurricane Irene this September, only one of the 3,611 trees on Bryn Mawr’s campus—a honey locust in the wooded area near the president’s house—was lost.

Assistant Facilities Director Ed Harman credits the lack of downed trees on campus to careful pruning, which allows wind to flow through trees rather than get caught in the branches, and an effort in recent years to remove potentially dangerous trees.

Harman came to Bryn Mawr three years ago and instituted a five-year maintenance cycle for the care of the campus’s trees. In the past three years, 54 trees have been removed from campus for various reasons. This year, however, only six trees have been removed, and Harman has been able to shift his focus more to the maintenance of the current trees. That focus will continue over the next two years, along with a more aggressive effort to plant new trees.

Bryn Mawr has been named a Tree Campus USA by the Arbor Day Foundation and has six state-champion trees on its campus (state champion trees are the largest of their kind on record in the state).

For many years, the oldest tree on campus was a sycamore located between the Benham Gateway building and the Wyndham Alumnae House. That tree came down in 2009, and the oldest tree is now believed to be a mazzard cherry that stands between Rhoads and Canaday and is probably about 225 years old.

Swamplandia! on a Plate

The speaker series is linked to the Emily Balch Seminars, which are discussion-oriented, reading- and writing-intensive courses for first-year students. Russell, who had already been identified by The New Yorker as one of the nation’s top young writers when her first novel, Swamplandia!, was published last spring, is teaching in the Bryn Mawr College Creative Writing Program this fall.

Creative Writing Program Director Daniel Torday introduced Russell and served as an interviewer, asking her questions about passages from her work that were projected on a screen. Russell then took questions from the audience, which included members of the faculty, deans and first-year students.

Following the presentation, Russell joined her audience for dessert in Thomas Great Hall, which had been transformed by Bryn Mawr College Dining Services into a fanciful swamp, complete with stuffed alligators, in honor of Russell’s highly acclaimed novel. Swamplandia!-themed desserts included a Ouija-board cake and leviathan punch.

The Myopia: An Epic Burlesque of Tragic Proportions

Friday and Saturday, December 2–3, 8 p.m.,
Sunday, December 4, 2 p.m.
Hepburn Teaching Theater, Goodhart Hall

In this celebrated one-man show, Obie Award-winning actor and visionary Guggenheim-winning playwright David Greenspan creates a dazzling and disorienting work that, according to the New York Times, is “part splashy Disney musical crossed with a Greek tragedy and a kitchen-sink drama, or an evening of Samuel Beckett plays as staged by Florenz Ziegfeld.”

The Ying Quartet

Friday, January 20, 8 p.m.
Thomas Great Hall

These Eastman School of Music residents will take on Novacek, Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, and a newly-minted work from their LifeMusic commissioning project, for this one-night only performance. Lauded for their dazzling technique, pure tone, and intensity of expression, the Grammy-winning Ying Quartet promises a bracing musical evening.

Since 1984 the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series has presented great artists and performances to audiences in the Philadelphia area, creating an environment in which the value of the arts is recognized and celebrated. Talks and workshops provided free to the public help develop arts awareness and literacy. The series works to lower barriers to arts access through its partnership with Art-Reach, a nonprofit dedicated to improving arts accessibility for people of all ages and circumstances, in part through its low ticket prices. For tickets and more information, visit www.brynmawr.edu/arts/series.html or call 610.526.5210.

Boosting the Charm Factor

The campus has upped its charm factor: there’s a new student lounge in Merion, Erdman Dining Hall got a makeover, and an outdoor food cart now greets students at Canaday (left).

 By Marcia Y. Cantarella ’68

Marcia Y. Cantarella ’68 is the author of I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide. She has a Ph.D. from New York University.

In the current debates raging about the value of higher education, the liberal arts are being particularly savaged as impractical. The issue is about career preparation as a function of a college degree. In the Great Recession, the priority for graduates is jobs. What is the utility of courses that do not seem to relate to specific job tasks like data entry? Hence the question, “Why should I take philosophy?”

The question reveals the lack of understanding of the connection between what you get in an education and future work life. Learning data entry is a good skill for the short term in a particular job. But critical thinking—such as you would learn in a philosophy class—is a lifelong skill that could actually get you out of the data entry pool.

So what does a liberal arts degree prepare you for? It provides skills that can be used in many career paths. Graduate school is where students most likely will specialize in the arena where most of their work life will be.

Interestingly, many leaders in business have liberal arts degrees as undergraduates. Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express, was a history major at Bowdoin. I was a political science major at Bryn Mawr before becoming a corporate executive at Avon Products for 15 years. Genevieve Bell ’90, M.A. ’92—who helps Intel Labs develop new products in the company’s consumer electronics business—majored in anthropology.

What you need for a career are certain broad-based skills. Employers need evidence that you are intelligent and teachable. GPA or grades signal that you are eager to learn and can learn new things. We are in a fast-changing, information- and service-based environment. The field that is hot today may be gone tomorrow and replaced by something completely new. Think of social media’s impact on the advertising industry or iPods on the record industry.

Employers seek really solid communications skills. You have to be able to write: presentations, memos, reports, speeches. They have to be clear, logical, literate (good grammar and spelling) and persuasive. Courses like philosophy that require students to read lots and write longer papers are good practice for an executive career path.

At a recent career panel at Bryn Mawr, alumnae from diverse majors and now diverse careers reported that their communications skills had been of the utmost importance in their career success. For example, Christy Allen ’90, English major with a minor in women’s studies, is now the assistant commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Health. Sally Bachofer ’97, a double major in classical and Near Eastern archaeology and classical studies is now the assistant commissioner for the New York State Education Department. Their communication skills had a direct line to their liberal arts degrees.

Firms want people with good people skills. Those who majored in people-centered subjects like sociology, psychology or anthropology, to name a few, will know more about human behavior when they begin their careers. History, literature, economics and political science are also studies in human behavior. All can help build skills that are useful in understanding situations and colleagues in the workplace and the world in which we function.

Employers seek people who have critical thinking skills and can solve problems even before they happen. All learning is about finding new knowledge and solutions to hard questions. Discovering how things work, why they work and how they have worked in the past is the essence of a liberal arts education. Engaging in research, whether in the library or the lab, is where the critical thinking skills are developed. The questions that professors ask to get students to think are designed to build this capacity.

People must have some degree of quantitative aptitude. Interestingly, the field of logic, which is highly mathematical, is found in the philosophy department. Whether you are managing a budget or developing a media plan based on data or designing a house, you will need math in some form—and that is typically a requirement in a liberal arts degree program.

Over the course of my career as a dean and senior administrator in a variety of schools, I have heard the same question, usually in a plaintive voice: “Why should I take philosophy?” You can substitute any number of courses into that question: anthropology, history, art, literature. The assumption is that these are not practical courses. Having made the decision to go to college, presumably to become job-ready and more employable, students look for the practical. You don’t want to waste time or money with frivolity like philosophy.

But it may not be a waste at all.

The value of a liberal arts education is not in doubt. The problem lies in how well the nation’s colleges and universities are carrying out their mission. According to a Peter D. Hart survey released by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, more than two-thirds of employers believe that four-year institutions are not doing enough to prepare students to be successful in a global economy.

The skills needed, the study found, include written and oral communication, critical thinking and analytic reasoning, the application of knowledge in real-world settings, complex problem solving and analysis; ethical decision making, teamwork, innovation and creativity; and the basic concepts in science and technology. Those are exactly the skills we are talking about as being embedded in a liberal arts degree.

We must do better—for every student. The liberal arts degree, long the purview of the elite, remains the path to leadership success at the highest level. To deny it or denigrate it when it comes to the masses of students is not healthy in a democracy. We need to support the best broad-based learning we can for all.

By Elizabeth Held ’12

Why is my generation so quiet about war?

I get asked that, especially by alumnae from the 1960s and ’70s. Many of them had protested the Vietnam War.

I try to explain.

My generation has grown up with war. We invaded Afghanistan when I was 11. I remember being in the seventh grade, sitting on the couch with my parents, watching the beginning of the Iraq war.

For almost half my life, the U.S. has been at war. It’s incredibly sad, but I think for a lot of us, war has become back­ground noise. We know it’s there, and something occasionally breaks through the noise to enter our consciousness, but for the most part it’s in the background.

Part of it is that there isn’t a draft this time around. War is more abstract. We don’t all know someone serving in the Middle East.

I say this as someone who checks the news multiple times a day and writes for USA Today. I’m clued in to the world around me, but the wars just aren’t my focus.

At least they weren’t until that day in July this past summer when I watched a mother bury her son, who was my age, 21. I was attending the funeral of Lance Corporal Nic O’Brien, who died while serving in Afghanistan. I was reporting on the funeral for the Gastonia Gazette, the local newspaper in Gastonia, North Carolina.

The consequences of war were suddenly apparent to me. And I knew the people around me were feeling the same way. Everyone wore the same look of shock and genuine sadness.

For the first time, U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan felt real to me.

Since then, it’s not background noise.

Elizabeth Held is a history major from Niskayuna, New York. She is currently working as a collegiate correspondent for USA Today.

Rebranding Af-Pak in South Asia

By Lamees Tanveer ’12

The post 9/11 world has changed the political landscape of South Asia. For those growing up in Pakistan, the linguistic remapping of the region into “Af-Pak” has had a profound impact on the way the world perceives this nation of 170 million.

Since 1947, Pakistan and India, two giants born out of the same moment in history, created an equilibrium in the region. A bloody partition, three wars on the battle field, several on the cricket field and an arms race gone nuclear, the Indo-Pak brand represented the balance of power in South Asia.

As India strives for regional hegemony, the Af-Pak brand signifies a new order—one in which India remains unchallenged, the Kashmir dispute unresolved and the negotiation table empty. The rebranding of Pakistan, which the media now considers synonymous with Afghanistan, has jeopardized this balance, leaving Pakistan dangerously misunderstood.

This growing anxiety regarding the future of Pakistan ignores the inherent power and potential of its people. Few countries have given the world leaders like Benazir Bhutto, a woman who could convince the nation to vote her into office, twice.

Pakistani students have set new standards worldwide. In 2010, 250 Pakistani students were awarded the Outstanding Cambridge Learners award for exceptional performance in standardized British examinations (equivalent to high school in the U.S). Fifty-three of them had the highest scores in comparison to students from across the world.

This burgeoning Pakistani intelligentsia found in the coffee shops of Islamabad and Lahore represents the global citizen of our times who believes in the ideals of secular democracy, human rights and enlightened moderation.

Yet five letters on a policy memo can convince the world that the only difference between a war torn Afghanistan and Pakistan is a hyphen.

Lamees Tanveer is a political science major from Lahore, Pakistan.

Bryn Mawr Banter: Student Life at the College

What is it like to live in a Bryn Mawr dorm? What do you do on the weekends? How has Bryn Mawr changed you? These burning issues—and whatever else preoccupies Bryn Mawrters from day to day—are the primary subject matter of Bryn Mawr Banter, a webpage that offers a glimpse of everyday life at the College via a group of student bloggers. Diverse in terms of geography, academic interests, career aspirations, and other variables, the Banter bloggers all share a willingness to communicate the highlights and struggles of their daily lives with visitors. Readers are welcome to comment on blogs and follow Banter bloggers on Twitter and Flickr.

Join the conversation at the Bryn Mawr Banter website.