Sarah Hussain, president of the Class of 2013, delivered the student speech at Smith College’s 135th commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 19, 2013.

Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of the Pulitzer Prize-winning online news website that bears her name, was the speaker at Smith College’s 135th commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 19. View all commenencent coverage.

Shuyao Kong, a member of the Class of 2013, delivered the student speech at Smith College’s Ivy Day celebration on Saturday, May 18, 2013.

Sharmila “Mona” Ghosh Sinha ’88 delivered the 25th Reunion Address at Smith College’s Ivy Day celebration on Saturday, May 18, 2013.

With Commencement approaching, three graduating Smith seniors – Shuyao Kong '13, Luvana Chowdhury '13 and Jane Ramsey AC '13 – take stock of their time at the college and reflect on the value of their Smith education.

Artist Elizabeth Pols ’75 talks about her new exhibit, “At Water’s Edge,” which is now showing at the Alumnae House Gallery. Pols paints real and invented landscapes inspired by her native state of Maine and her formative years in Italy. Working with the techniques of classical Renaissance painting, she uses light, color and atmosphere to enhance reality with a touch of mystery. Recent sculptural pieces are housed in antique traveling desks and incorporate narrative panel paintings with found and altered objects, and, says the artist, are “part Renaissance devotional, part Joseph Cornell.” The exhibit runs through September 26, 2013.

More than 120 million people are afflicted with lymphatic filariasis, a disease that can cause a debilitating condition called elephantiasis. If a faculty-student team, led by Steve Williams, biological sciences, and Kevin Shea, chemistry, is successful in its investigation of medicinal plants that may kill the parasites that cause the disease, it could have far-reaching implications. The team will present as part of Celebrating Collaborations.

Every Friday, a group of students gets a taste of New England when they travel about 10 miles north to the MacLeish Field Station, a 200-acre wooded parcel in rural Whately, Mass., owned by Smith. There, they set to work, hauling buckets into the snow-covered woods and collecting sap from the maple trees, which is used by a neighboring maple syrup distillery to make one of New England's most emblematic products.