People News, December 2018

Five students won awards at the annual Elevator Pitch Contest hosted last month by the Jill Ker Conway Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center: Isabelle Hodge ’20, Best Ask for “MarketSpace”; Madeline Turner ’21 and Phoebe Little ’20, Best Green World Ideas for “Sprout” and “Ugly Smoothies”; Zoleka Mosiah ’20, Biggest Impact Idea for “Afrobiotics”; and Kelly Pien ’20 for “Safety Sister.” Pien will represent Smith at a regional collegiate pitch competition in April. Judges for this year’s Elevator Pitch were Susannah Howe, director of the Engineering Design Clinic and Smith’s Draper faculty mentor coordinator; Deborah Wijnhoven, associate director at the Lazarus Center for Career Development; and Richard Plaut, entrepreneur-in-residence at the Conway Center.

Artworks by Sarah White ’20 and Arianna Gutierrez ’20 were on display earlier this month in “It’s not about space, it’s about space,” a Hampshire College Art Gallery exhibition of works by students enrolled in the Five College Advanced Studio Seminar.

Julie Graves ’21 is the author of “The many problems with the Department of Education’s new proposed Title IX regulations,” a Women’s Media Center blog.

Camryn McCarthy ’20 and Sophia Stouse ’20 are spending their semester sailing the waters of New Zealand as participants in the Sea Education Association’s The Global Ocean: New Zealand study abroad program. The students are blogging about their six-week voyage through December 20.

Jessica Bacal, director of the Narratives Project at Smith’s Wurtele Center for Leadership, and Marge Litchford, assistant dean of students, presented “It Made My Story Feel Important: Digital Storytelling as a Resilience-Building Intervention” at the inaugural Symposium on Academic Resilience in Higher Education held in November at the University of Pennsylvania. Additional conference sponsors were Harvard, Stanford and Princeton universities.

Rick Fantasia, Barbara Richmond 1940 Professor in the Social Sciences and professor of sociology, is the author of French Gastronomy and the Magic of Americanism, published by Temple University Press.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2: 1956-1963, co-edited by Karen Kukil, associate curator of special collections at Smith, was serialized on BBC Radio 4’s “Book of the Week” in November.

Vis Taraz, assistant professor of economics, published “Can farmers adapt to higher temperatures? Evidence from India” in the December issue of World Development. Taraz presented her research in October at the North East Universities Development Consortium Conference at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business.

Steve Waksman, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies and professor of music, gave an October talk on “Sounds That Matter: Black Pop and the Electric Guitar in the 21^st Century,” at the Electric Guitar in American Culture Conference hosted by the Vernacular Music Center at Texas Tech University.

Professor of Psychology Byron Zamboanga is the author of “A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis of the Associations Between Acculturation and Alcohol Use Outcomes Among Hispanic Americans,” published in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

The Rev. John Reardon, M.S.W. ’11, was installed in October as the vicar of St. James Episcopal Church in Providence, R.I. In addition to his degree from Smith, Reardon earned a doctorate in theology from Fordham University.

Performance artist Diana Oh ’08  is in  residency at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where she premiered a multi-part work, “Clairvoyance” earlier this fall. Oh, who majored in theatre at Smith, is the creator of the performance installation “{my lingerie play}.”

Maria Moscoso ’15 has been awarded a prestigious 2019 Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship funded by the U.S. State Department to support a two-year graduate program and two U.S. State Department internships—one in Washington, D.C., and one abroad.  Moscoso, who is currently a program specialist with the international development agency Creative Associates International, plans to pursue a master’s degree in international development and become a U.S. foreign service officer. She graduated cum laude from Smith with a degree in economics and recently served as a public policy fellow with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

Amanda Edelhart ’01 has been appointed director of college counseling for the Harley School in Rochester, N.Y. Edelhart—who majored in government at Smith and earned a law degree from BPP University Law School in the U.K.—previously served as director of college counseling at Dulwich College Seoul in South Korea.

Catalina Arrubla, M.A. ’94, is the recipient of a Community Service Award from the Amherst Chamber of Commerce for her work as executive director of Multi-Arts, a non-profit arts program for children. Arrubla, who earned a master of arts degree from Smith, also earned a master’s degree in music from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Amy-Jill Levine ’78, a member of the faculty at Vanderbilt Divinity School, gave a talk in November on “What’s Jesus Got to Do With It?” for Nashville Public Radio’s “Movers & Thinkers” series. Levine, who majored in English language and literature and religion and Biblical literature at Smith, earned a master’s and a doctorate in religion from Duke University.