Three years after a global pandemic interrupted their normal college experience, members of Vassar’s Class of 2023 were lauded for their remarkable resiliency at the College’s 159th Commencement exercises on Sunday, May 21.
Assistant Professors Tamyka Jordon-Conlin, Deon Knights, Ashanti Shih, and Payton Small are members of a cohort of tenure-track Vassar faculty members who will be working together to take some aspects of the College curriculum in a new, multidisciplinary direction.
Twenty students in Assistant Professor Joshua deLeeuw’s Cognitive Science 320 class designed and built their own autonomous robots. Emmett, a robot that wasn’t working until the very end of the semester, rose to the occasion at Vassar’s annual Autonomous Robot Design Competition.
Vassar College recently hosted a three-part webinar titled “Innovation in Higher Education: Building Capacity for Inclusive Leadership” that featured conversations with people in the academic and business worlds. All agreed that transforming global society into a more equitable one will require today’s students to engage in a broad, liberal arts education.
Vassar President Elizabeth H. Bradley furthered the College’s partnership with the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) during a week-long visit in January to the Rwandan university.
Students, administrators, alums, and others in the Vassar community enjoyed a plethora of events in observation of Black History Month, included exhibitions, a panel on STEM-related fields, a dinner, and an update of the Buildings and Belonging project, focused on the history of African Americans on campus.
A gift from Patrick and Tamar Smith Pichette ’86 will support a new conservation fellowship for a Vassar alum who will work at a Canadian wilderness preserve and then return to The Preserve at Vassar to assist with research, environmental monitoring and land management.
Vassar drama major Becca Chin ’23 broke new ground this fall in addressing the College’s accessibility issues by convincing the Drama Department to engage a Disabled director for their senior project production.
