Fall 2002

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Contents

Features

Observations

Letters

On campus

Faculty focus

Sports

Arts on view

Alumni affairs
and development

Class notes

Connections
Skidmore coast to coast

by Beverly Harrison Miller ’67, Alumni Association President

As I stood among my classmates after Commencement, I knew that this was not only a beginning but an ending of my life at Skidmore as I had known it. Almost immediately after graduation, I missed all of my Skidmore connections: my friends, my professors, Saratoga itself.
     And so the next year when I learned that Professor James Kettlewell was speaking to the Skidmore club in Hartford, I put it on my calendar right away. I was not disappointed, and since then I have gone to many Skidmore club events to hear professors. This year, for example, we alums have had the opportunity to attend lectures by Professors Phyllis Roth (English), Mary Stange (women’s studies), and Regis Brodie (art), among others. On the docket for the 2003 circuit are Professors Sheldon Solomon (psychology), Una Bray (mathematics), Steve Hoffman (government), and John Anzalone (French).
     Club events go well beyond faculty talks, too. Recently the calendar included Skidmore holiday parties in Hartford, Cleveland, D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, and Saratoga. These and other Skidmore club gatherings—for career networking, museum tours, opera and ballet performances, sporting events, and other activities—give us all a chance to connect with our local Skidmore communities.
     A highlight this spring will be the long weekend of April 3–6, when alumni will convene in Sonoma, Calif., for an event focusing on community, camaraderie, faculty, and good times. Regis Brodie will conduct a hands-on ceramics workshop; Sheldon Solomon will discuss the emotions of despair, fear, and anger that arose after 9/11; and Una Bray will explore the history of food at Napa’s Center for Wine, Food and the Arts. There will of course be a wine tour, as well as a cooking class, a tour of the di Rosa Art Preserve, and a cocktail party hosted by Joan Royter Walsh ’61. Most of all, “Skidmore in Sonoma” will give alums from all over the country a chance to connect.
     So on that June day in 1967 as I stood outside SPAC, I really was just commencing. My Skidmore community at that moment widened beyond Saratoga to encompass the entire country.