Don’t miss these stories from 2023!
Welcome to 2024! To start the new year, take a look back at some stories you may have missed last year.
Creating community while cooking takoyaki
While classes provide cultural lessons, the language communities focus on experiential learning. In the Japanese corridor, for example, cultural events include movies, origami, cooking, tea time, Japanese drama, karaoke, and study nights. All the activities are open to the other students of the Freeman Hall East Asian language corridors and to those learning the language outside of the living community.
Zaria Bunn ’23 centers Black voices on stage
When the application to direct a production for Wellesley College’s student-run Upstage Theatre came out last year, Zaria Bunn ’23 realized she wanted to direct a play she had read in high school at the suggestion of her theatre director: Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West, the first play she read by a Black female playwright.
50 years of supporting Wellesley’s international community
“It is important that we talk about global factors that are impacting all of us, no matter what nation we are from, no matter what kind of a passport we carry,” Ruegamer said. “We know that (a passport) that’s often not really how people identify. It’s much more complicated than that.”
Mapping Out Connections: Wellesley’s Mentorship Affinity Pods
Interested students and alums start by filling out a detailed questionnaire about their academic interests and career experiences as well as their identities and backgrounds. Barletta and members of the Career Education team then sort the alums and students into affinity groups based on their shared identities and interests.
Growing Season: Summer interns tend to campus gardens
Reena Kim ’26 has even found a little piece of home in the garden, which has helped her with homesickness. “My favorite part is the Korean perillas,” she says, “because my grandma grew them ever since I was young.” She encourages all students to seek enjoyment in the landscape.
Linda Charmaraman has been studying the impact of social media on adolescents for nearly as long as it has been available to them. A senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) and director of its Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab (YMW lab), her research on the urgent need to understand how social media affects its youngest and most marginalized users has been getting national attention.
Wellesley students conduct research for the real world
This summer, 86 students stayed on campus to participate in the annual Summer Research Program, where they worked with faculty on a number of projects. Hear about the experience from some of this year's participants.
Erna Schneider Hoover ’48 made her mark as a computer technology pioneer, but her career wasn’t one she could have planned for while at Wellesley: The computer science department is only 40 years old, and Hoover just celebrated her 75th reunion.
Trash Talk: How ES 300 tackled Wellesley’s waste problem
The idea for this past year’s capstone came after Beth DeSombre served on the Academic Council’s Sustainability Committee with Dave Chakraborty, assistant vice president of facilities management and planning. DeSombre and Chakraborty thought that ES 300’s next project should be looking at the College’s current recycling rate and how it can reduce waste output.
Finding connections through student organizations
“I think student orgs on campus are a great way to meet people outside of academics, outside the pressure of classes, just to meet people who you have the same interests with and that can grow into something amazing, says Erika Guo ’23, who majored in women’s and gender studies major and was a member of the Guild of Carillonneurs.
