For Sherry Jacobs Nemmers ’76 reconnecting with Vassar students is all in a day’s work . . .
The special exhibition A Life in Art and Letters: Priscilla Morgan [’41] runs through February 2008 at the Vassar library . . . 
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Learn More About Vassar’s Career Services for Alumnae/i and Students
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All in a Day's WorkIt's difficult to get an internship in advertising in New York. When I first graduated, I was offered jobs at publishing houses and law firms. Then, quite randomly, I ran into a lawyer who'd married a "Vassar girl." He suggested I consider advertising. I did. On July 6, 1976, I took a job as a writer, and have served as global creative director at three different big New York agencies for over 25 years. I've always looked for opportunities to help Vassar students start their careers. This summer I reached out to Vassar to find a student who could benefit from some real life, real advertising experience.
One time this summer, two hugely important prospective client meetings were accidentally scheduled not one week, not one day, but one hour, apart. Ours is a very small office, with one conference room, and in fact, one management team. One set of dishes. One coffee pot. One dessert plate. Chelsea and I put our heads together to "build" two different atmospheres, agendas, menus, and venues in the same room, with a mere hour in-between meetings. We had everything from soup to nuts that day, and I do mean literally. We changed flowers, presentations, signage, seating, props, food, beverages, washed dishes and started all over again. It was like a sped up old silent movie. Chelsea never let me down. Unexpected challenges, organizational skills, and quick thinking are all in a day's work. And when all else fails, we make it up. What I found in Chelsea was the same strong spirit and independent thinking that Vassar had helped develop in me, and in all of her children. The ability to blend creative ideas with practical executions. To be innovative, to speak up, to be heard, and to listen to what's really being said. To get things done. I encourage other alumnae/i to reach out to Vassar and offer a start for some smart student (just like you were, 'way back then). Make a connection, keep the Vassar ties strong, do good. And have some fun. — Sherry Jacobs Nemmers ’76 Photo: Chelsea Webber '08, left, and Sherry Jacobs Nemmers '76, right
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Molly Finkelstein ’08 Reports on the Ups and Downs of Senior Housing
After the honeymoon period (“Oh my God! You’re so close by! We have cable! We have our own bathroom! I’ll cook us all a four-course dinner!”), we began to experience what I imagine being married to four people might be like. Someone kept leaving dishes in the sink, someone kept forgetting to take her hair out of the shower drain, someone ate all the fruit snacks, everyone owed everyone money, no one remembered to take out the trash. Our house started to get dirty. Our house started to smell. We decided it was time to clean. Unlike some houses, we decided to forgo a chore chart and go for the “someone will freak out at the dirt and clean eventually” method. So far it seems to work pretty well. I clean a lot. After a little debacle involving someone eating all of someone else’s hummus, we decided to give up on the communist approach of grocery shopping and switch to the European Union approach. Each person is an independent nation and cooks for themselves, but we help each other out when someone runs out of cheddar or when someone’s omelette smells really, really good. This results in the fridge being crammed with five individual tubs of hummus and five gallons of orange juice, but it tends to reduce fighting. We still share ice cream. But, of course, the best part of senior housing is being able to live with my best friends in our own little pocket of the Vassar campus. And even if we fight, I always know that if someone eats all my hummus, I can always go borrow her favorite sweater without asking. Photo credit: Craig Burdett
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View the Matthew Vassar Channel
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Learn More about Daily Events on Campus
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Recent Speakers on CampusFormer NBA player John Amaechi (pictured right) visited campus on October 8 to talk about his life experiences and new autobiography, Man in the Middle. In February 2007, Amaechi was the first player in the NBA to come out as a gay man, and his visit was featured as part of the Coming Out Week at the college. He currently serves as an official spokesperson for the Human Dr. John Mather, who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with cosmologist George Smoot for their work on the Big Bang theory of creation, delivered the Matthew Vassar Lecture to a standing-room-only crowd on October 29. Mather, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and Smoot analyzed data from NASA’s Cosmic Background explorer that revealed primordial hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Their research and discovery helped popularize the Big Bang theory. In 2007, Mather was listed among Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, delivered the William F. Starr lecture on September 27 to a full audience in the Vassar Chapel. O’Brien’s 1995 novel, In the Lake of the Woods, was this year’s Freshman Course text and provided a context to discuss the role of the citizen and the writer during a time of war. O’Brien has received numerous awards for his books, including the National Book Award in Fiction, and The Things They Carried was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle. On Oct. 24, Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, delivered the annual William Gifford Lecture. The critically acclaimed author has published 13 books of poetry, a memoir of his Sri Lankan childhood and several award-winning novels. The English Patient (1992) received the Booker Prize for fiction and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1996. Terry Gross, the host and co-executive producer of National Public Radio’s Peabody Award-winning program “Fresh Air,” came to campus on October 4 to discuss her show and her journalistic style. NPR’s “Fresh Air,” a weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, has more than 4.7 million listeners on 450 public radio stations. In 2004, Gross published a collection of her favorite interviews, entitled All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy of John Amaechi
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Visit the Cognitive Science Webpage
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Department of Cognitive Science SymposiumIn honor of the 25th anniversary of Vassar offering cognitive science as a major, the program is hosting a two-day event for its current and former faculty and students. From November 16-17, faculty, alumnae/i, and students are invited to attend lectures that each focus on a different path of cognitive science, as well as panels that feature current faculty and past graduates of the major.
“We’re proud of the program and wanted to celebrate that it’s been here for 25 years,” said Professor of Psychology and Director of the Cognitive Science Program Gwen Broude. “We wanted to have an opportunity for people who were with the program from the start to come back and mingle.” Cognitive science at Vassar is a multidisciplinary program studying the mind. Professors from myriad departments, including psychology, English, biology, and dance, participate in the program, but Broude noted “we’re one organism.” Following a series of faculty conversations about a Cognitive Science Program beginning in 1978, in 1982 Vassar was the first institution in the world to offer an undergraduate degree in cognitive science.
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Visit the Library’s Website to Read More
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Priscilla Morgan ’41 Exhibition in Vassar's LibraryFew people could merit the kind of exhibit that currently honors Priscilla Morgan ’41 in the Thompson Memorial Library. A Life in Art and Letters: Priscilla Morgan tells the story of Morgan’s life and career through photographs, letters, and art, and tracks her numerous friendships with such icons as Willem de Kooning, Saul Steinberg, Ezra Pound, Philip Glass, and Isamu Noguchi.
Photo Credit: Daniel Brustlein, Portrait of Priscilla Morgan, oil on canvas, 1983
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Read about Kitzinger in the VQ
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Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger
The office also will be responsible for the general development of long-term academic planning and aspects of faculty compensation, housing, benefits, and educational equipment. With this reorganization, there will be new coordination and dedicated attention to these areas, some of which previously resided in the Dean of the Faculty Office and others in the Office of Finance and Administration. Tom Porcello, associate professor of anthropology, will join Kitzinger for a three-year term as the associate dean of planning and academic affairs, starting at the beginning of the 2008/9 academic year. Photo Credit: Dixie Sheridan
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This is Vassar... November 2007The eNewsletter for Vassar Alumnae/i |
LIVE WEBCASTS FROM VASSAR'S MUSIC DEPARTMENT |
Alumnae & Alumni of Vassar College
161 College Avenue
Poughkeepsie, NY 12603
845.437.5445
On the web: www.aavc.vassar.edu
Message from the Executive Director
Chelsea Webber ’08 was one of several students who applied for the internship. After Chelsea’s interview, I knew she was in every way my kind of Vassar person. She had initiative, a quiet but surprising sense of humor, and most importantly, a sense of urgency. At first blush, she didn't seem the "type" for an ad agency, but I knew from listening to her that she was exactly the person who would be a good fit. She would contribute more than just brainpower, I believed she'd find a way — do whatever it takes — to get the job done.
Senior year at Vassar started with a bang — literally. The biggest couch in the world, or at least on campus, got stuck in the doorway of my South Commons house. Assorted housemates and parents grunted and pushed the Green Monster, as the couch would come to be known, through the doorway, as I stood there and served as couch coxswain, shouting directions. After a few more minutes of finagling and very little help from me, the couch was in our house. Our very own house. This was the house my four friends and I had been waiting for, ever since we all first moved onto the third floor of Noyes in August 2004. All of us had been various combinations of hallmates and roommates and JYA-mates for the past three years and now it was finally time for my best friends and I to officially live together, in our own house. 
Rights Campaign’s Coming Out Project. Though he did not begin playing basketball until he was 17, Amaechi quickly rose to become a power forward and center for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Orlando Magic, and Utah Jazz from 1995 to 2003.
A onetime literary agent and lifetime devotee to the arts, Morgan has “become one of New York’s most formidable builders of human networks and spotters of artistic talent,” begins the brochure that accompanies the exhibit. Director Arthur Penn said, “I believe a number of artists would acknowledge that their lives would have been different if they had not had the good fortune to know Priscilla.” Born and raised in Poughkeepsie, Morgan and her family moved to New York City when she was twelve. She moved back to her hometown to attend Vassar, but left in her sophomore year to begin a career in radio. Before long, her influence extended to all reaches of the art world, and Morgan soon became the person who discovered scores of household names and served as an important contact for anyone pursuing a life in the arts in New York and beyond, all of which is brought to life in this new exhibit. A Life in Art and Letters: Priscilla Morgan contains the beginnings of a larger collection of Morgan’s papers that will enter the library’s manuscript archive after the exhibit closes in February 2008.
As of August 15 Rachel Kitzinger is Vassar’s first Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs. Under the new dean’s purview is oversight of the Office of Admissions, Office of Financial Aid, the College Libraries, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, the Department of Athletics and Physical Education, the Grants Office, the Wimpfheimer Nursery School, and the Infant and Toddler Center.