UPCOMING EVENTS

• LIVESTREAM the Women of Williams conference opening keynote by award-winning Frozen songwriter Kristen Anderson-Lopez '94 at 5:30 PM ET on Friday, May 19 (tomorrow!).  This is the only live-streamed event, but recordings of most of the other sessions will be available after the conference. 
• READ and discuss The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston. The Purple Prose Book Club runs from May 26 through July 28. Douglas Preston will join us for an author talk on July 20 at 2:00 PM ET. 
• REGISTER for reunion before May 28! Schedules and registration links for all 3s and 8s are available online. 
• MARK your calendar for Commencement live stream on Sunday, June 4. The principal speaker will be honorary degree recipient Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. Other honorary degrees will be awarded to Sara J. Bloomfield, who has led the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for more than two decades, and Dean of Faculty and John B. McCoy and John T. McCoy Professor of Psychology at Williams Safa Zaki, who will become the 16th president of Bowdoin College in July. 

ICYMI

• CATCH UP on the complete 2023 Faculty Lecture series, now available on YouTube 
• ENJOY this “meet cute” story that resulted in a startup (not a Williams wedding) as its cofounder Eben Pingree ’04 recounts in our latest Alumni Career Commentary.
• FLIP through the photo gallery of the generations of runners who gathered for the retirement celebration for Coach Pete Farwell ’73. 
  

Alumni in the News

• Kendra T. Field ’99 is co-curator of the exhibition “We Who Believe in Freedom: Black Feminist D.C.,” at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library, which features Black women at the epicenter of activism. “Think of it as the Hidden Figures of civil laws,” says The Washington Post.
• “Enforcers have the dual responsibility of watching out for the dangers posed by new A.I. technologies while promoting the fair competition needed to ensure the market for these technologies develops lawfully,” says Lina Khan ’10, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, in an op-ed for The New York Times.
• In a profile for UVA Today, Harry Marino ’12 details his plan for negotiating a collective bargaining agreement for Minor League Baseball players.
• Once a DJ at Williams’ WCFM, Patchen Mortimer ’00 has become a steady voice on the University of Maryland’s WMUC, sharing his love of indie rock and reviving interest in radio. 
• Arjun Narayan ’10 speaks with the podcast Datacast about his path from a student in Bangalore to the CEO and co-founder of streaming cloud database Materialize—and how influential Williams was to his course.
  

News from the college

A Festive Spring

Featured Speakers

Faculty in Focus

• James Carlton, Professor of Marine Sciences, Emeritus, along with a team of researchers, discovers coastal creatures thriving on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—which could lead to invasive species making their way to coastal habitats, according to The Washington Post.
• Kate Jensen, assistant professor of physics, wins the 2023 Adhesion Society Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award.
• Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Brittany Meché discusses her recent Environment and Society article on the impact of drought on the African continent with the Black Agenda Report’s Book Forum.
• Lara Shore-Sheppard, the Kimberly A. ’96 and Robert R. ’62 Henry Professor of Economics, has been named dean of the faculty. Her term begins July 1.
• A new Brookings Institution report by economics professor Tara Watson and Beyond (Jonathan) Deng ’21 considers how incomplete survey questions about sexual orientation and gender identity lead to underrepresentation in the LGBTQ+ community.
• In a new global studies and political science course taught by visiting professor Beth Wellman, students write and edit Wikipedia articles and contribute well-researched information to provide more coverage for sub-Saharan Africa.
• Heather Williams, the William Dwight Whitney Professor of Biology, shares her research on the cultural evolution of birdsong with her alma mater, Bowdoin.
  

• Tryphena Bossman ’26, Olivia Johnson ’26 and other students seek to preserve the memory of Williamstown resident Ishmael Titus, a Black soldier in the Revolutionary War.
• Weiran Jiang ’26, Diliara Sadykova ’26 and Caprice Turchiano ’25 are among 45 students nationwide selected through a highly competitive process to attend the Expanding Diversity in Economics Summer Institute, a University of Chicago program hosted by the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics. The institute’s goal is to support students from a broad array of backgrounds who are interested in pursuing a career in economics.
• Elsie Qiu’s ’25 essay on Japanese aesthetics took top prize at the Consulate General of Japan in Boston’s Japanese Language Essay Contest.
• Dubbed “the Greta Thunberg of AI” by Politico, Sneha Revanur ’26 urges White House leaders to include young people on AI oversight and advisory boards amid concerns about generative AI’s potential to manipulate people.

Also of Note

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

williams in photos