Red brick buildings Clark hall and West College on a blue sky, snowy day.

Cast your Ballot for Alumni Trustee

You should have received your digital ballot for alumni trustee on Monday, Feb. 13. Please check your spam folder if you have not seen it or email hello.alumni@williams.edu. The Williams Office of Alumni Engagement is using a service called ElectionBuddy for the online voting process and you may be asked to link to their web page during the voting process. You can do so with confidence. Voting closes on April 2, 2023.

Join the Club

CONNECT and discuss the bestselling novel Trust in the Purple Prose Book Club forum beginning March 17. Trust, Hernan Diaz's second novel, was the winner of the Kirkus Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize. Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by both The New York Times and The Washington Post, it is currently being developed as a limited series for HBO. You can register now for a virtual talk with the author on Wed. May 10, at 2 p.m. ET.

Catch Up on what you might have missed

FIND the three bite-size versions of Williams Winter Study Courses online:

“Secrecy & Democracy” with journalist Ted Gup
“Food Justice and the Righteous Entrepreneur” with Mike Curtin ’86
“Constructing Gender and Body in the Gym” with Holly Crane ’12

LEARN about protecting reputation in a complex ESG landscape in this Alumni Career Commentary by Edelman Smithfield EVP Jamaal Mobley ’04.

Together, between Jan. 11 and Jan. 25, more than 300 Williams alumni (100 more than last year!) provided 4,234 hours of service to 546 community organizations, charities, and neighbors-in-need.

During the same window, thanks to you and to our generous challenge donors, we raised $533,046 to support the incredibly important part of the community we all share—current Williams students. We’re so grateful to you and to our challenge donors: Joyce Noonan Andersen '88 and James Andersen, Richard Georgi ’87 and Sanae Ishikawa, Mitchell Green ’03 and Lisa Green, Gay Mayer ’64, David Sorkin ’81, Peter Wege ’71 and Kathy Wege, and anonymous members of the Williams Community.

stripes above a series of four B&W photos of a young woman posing in a hat.

Alumnae: The full conference is filling up quickly but there's plenty of room for Saturday only at the Women of Williams Conference and Celebration of 50+ Years of Coeducation in Williamstown May 19-21, 2023.

Don't forget to share a memory of your time at Williams in our "50 Words for 50 Years" section of the website. Memories and photos are welcome and very much appreciated!

Alumni in the News

“This is my happy place,” says newly appointed Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao ’95 in an interview with WAMC while visiting the Berkshires. “I think there’s just so much momentum here.” She talks further about specific goals for the Berkshires with The Berkshire Eagle.
Mary Dana Hinton ’92, president of Hollins University, says college rankings “would be much more helpful if they prioritized how institutions effectively and ethically utilize [their] resources” in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.
In a Winter Study course taught by Gavin McCormick ’05, students used big data to develop solutions to climate problems and pitch them to industry professionals, ranging from ways to optimize energy use in aluminum plants to improvements in landfill building methods.
Dan Seaton ’01 and Kevin Reardon ’92 complete an article for Physics Today about sunspot cycles begun by the late astronomy professor Jay Pasachoff. As Seaton tweets, “I’m not sure any article ever meant more to me than this one.”
Look for Courtney Smith ’11 on Netflix’s Next in Fashion Season 2 beginning in March as she competes for a chance to showcase her design skills and win $200,000. Her clothing line, Courtney Noelle, offers high-end fashion for women sizes 10 to 32.

Read the Latest Williams People

Catch up with fellow alumni in the January 2023 edition of Williams People, now available online.

Students in winter coats walking in front of Stetson on a snowy day.

News from the college

A New Semester

As the spring semester kicked off, President Maud S. Mandel welcomed everyone back for the start of the spring semester with a news-filled letter. Among the highlights, the Dining Team earned a major new certification for its allergen-friendly kitchen, the Rice Center for Teaching announced new programming, and varsity teams finished their seasons strong. President Mandel also highlighted Claiming Williams on Feb. 2 when the Williams community paused to participate in thoughtful discussions and activities centered on this year’s theme of Justice and Institutional Power. Award-winning author and rower Arshay Cooper and interdisciplinary scholar Imani Perry were the keynote speakers for the day’s events. Although two days of record-breaking low temperatures hit the Berkshires, students still ventured out on Feb. 5 to choose from more than 120 artworks to decorate their living spaces through the Williams College Museum of Art’s WALLS program. Check out a video from the day.

Africana Studies and Asian American Studies News

Starting in fall 2023, Williams will offer a new major in Africana studies and a concentration in Asian American studies. Both developments are the culmination of extensive advocacy, research and planning and were approved by faculty votes in the fall.

Newly Tenured Faculty

At its January meeting, the Board of Trustees voted to approve tenure for 11 faculty members beginning in July: Alexander Bevilacqua, history; Nicole Brown, classics; Pei-Wen Chen, biology; Brahim El Guabli, Arabic studies; Man He, Asian languages, literatures and cultures; Bill Jannen '09, computer science; Laura Martin, environmental studies; Sarah Olsen, classics; Ben Snyder, sociology; Mason Williams, leadership studies; and Ricardo A. Wilson, English. Read more about the promotions.

Faculty and Staff Focus

Magnús Bernhardsson, the Brown Professor of History, has won a prestigious grant from the Icelandic Research Fund to study how 40 families from Iraq and Syria have fared in Iceland since arriving as refugees in 2014.
Geosciences professor Alice Bradley and her students use centuries-old source material from Williams Archives and Special Collections to study the effect of volcanic eruptions in Indonesia and South Asia on New England’s climate.
Rónadh Cox, the Edward Brust Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, is named a lifetime fellow of the 2022 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows.
Physics professor Graham Giovanetti receives a 2023 Cottrell Scholar Award of $100,000 to support his research and efforts to help prepare prospective physics majors at Williams.
Students in the new course Cuba, U.S., Africa and Resistance to Black Enslavement, taught by Joy James, the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities, have created a podcast interviewing alums working in civil and human rights.
The Robert F. White Class of 1952 Professor of Economics Kenneth Kuttner suggests that the Fed needs to engineer an economic slowdown in an NPR interview about the latest interest rate hike.
Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Gregory Mitchell speaks with WAMC about his book Panics Without Borders: How Global Sporting Events Drive Myths About Sex Trafficking.
In Inside Higher Ed, Director of the Writing Center Julia Munemo pens a message to students who might be tempted to use artificial intelligence in their writing.

For more news about the Williams Community, visit Williams Today.

williams in photos

Birds eye view of construction site in winter

Watch progress on the new Davis Center on Ephalum

See how students used big data during WS on Facebook

Students walking outside on a cloudy day

Enjoy WALLS pick up day on I nstagram

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