In an Interview Recorded for StoryCorps, Martha Teichner ’69 and Milly Cooper Glimcher ’61 Reflect on How Wellesley Prepares Women to Take Risks and Enter the Public Sphere

StoryCorps is a national nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. This fall, the StoryCorps MobileBooth paid a visit to campus to record stories that explore Wellesley’s effect on the lives of its students and alumnae. The StoryCorps team also visited New York City—and is headed to Chicago in April—to capture the stories of even more Wellesley alumnae. Over the next several weeks, our Monday Daily Shot story will be devoted to sharing some of those stories with you.

The first in our series features an excerpt of a conversation between Martha Teichner ’69 and Milly Cooper Glimcher ’61 in which they reflected on how their Wellesley experiences fostered their interests and ambitions, sharing thoughts on how Wellesley prepares young women to take risks and enter the public sphere. 

Teichner, a correspondent with CBS Sunday Morning, and Glimcher, an art historian and curator, and leading figure in the art world, discussed the “reason why so many Wellesley Women have done public things.” They agreed, “Wellesley provides an arena...you can’t just be passive…things that happen in society get discussed…and you have to weigh in, it brings it out in you.”

In their conversation, Glimcher also encouraged Teichner, who had majored in economics, to think back to how her experience at Wellesley helped her fulfill her dreams of becoming a writer.

This conversation, and other stories representing a rich mix of anecdotes, insights and memories, will be preserved for future generations and will serve as a lasting record about the women of Wellesley. The stories will be posted to the Campaign microsite and added to Wellesley’s archives. StoryCorps, known as "America's oral history project," will also add these Wellesley stories to the national archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Alumnae are invited to record their own stories by using the StoryCorps app. Or, alumnae may add their voice by submitting their written stories directly to the Campaign website.