Bryn Mawr College

By a unanimous vote, the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr College today appointed Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University and an internationally known scholar of Islamic studies, as its eighth president. She will succeed Nancy J. Vickers, Bryn Mawr’s current president, on July 1, 2008.

"The opportunity to lead a truly distinctive institution with such a vibrant intellectual spirit, and to join a community where faculty and students regard each other as colleagues, is a rare privilege. I look forward to getting to know the students, the faculty, and other members of the community, and to working with them to advance Bryn Mawr’s commitments to academic excellence, social responsibility, and expanded access," said McAuliffe.

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a leading figure in the study, performance, and renewal of the African-American traditions of music and activism, will deliver the keynote address in Bryn Mawr's celebration of Black History Month next Wednesday, Feb. 13,  at 7:30 p.m. in Thomas Great Hall. A reception and sales of Reagon's CDs will follow the lecture, which is free and open to the public.

"Notes from the Cultural Autobiography of a Freedom Singer" will draw on Reagon's extraordinary personal history of activism and education through musical performance and composition.

While the teenage years and early 20s may be a peak time for tennis players, gymnasts, and other athletes, it's rarely assumed that most people have reached their intellectual peaks—or even established their intellectual identities—at such an early age. Yet as a stream of Internet chatter about Hillary Clinton's "Hidden Thesis" from her senior year at Wellesley College shows, anything is fair game once a person comes under the harsh glare of the media spotlight. Several Bryn Mawr professors and a student who writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer discuss the pros and cons of making student work public on the World Wide Web.

Philadelphia's new mayor, Michael Nutter, has asked Lecturer in Growth and Structure of Cities Daniela Holt Voith '76 to join the city's brand-new Zoning Code Commission. Created last spring by a public referendum, the commission has a big, long-overdue job: to overhaul the city's ancient zoning code. The code hasn't been updated in nearly 50 years.

"It's been a long time since the code has been changed, and I think the city has become a very different place than it was in the sixties," says Voith, a partner with the Philadelphia firm Voith & Mactavish Architects.

The 2008 presidential primary elections have generated an unusual level of attention from both voters and the press. Changes in the traditional schedules have generated controversy—and fresh interest in the primary system itself. Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science Marissa Martino Golden offers a few thoughts on the process and the coverage of it by the news media.

Acclaimed performers Pandit Chitresh Das, a master of the Indian dance form kathak, and Jason Samuels Smith, who's been called "one of the brilliant young talents reanimating the art of tap dancing," will present their groundbreaking collaboration, India Jazz Suites, in Goodhart Theater next Friday, Feb. 15, at 8 p.m. The program is part of the College's Performing Arts Series.