December 9, 2022 Expanding Our Worldviews - My Experience at the Border The sidewalks of Brownsville, Texas, were crowded as a group of students pulled wagons full of blankets, toiletries, and cooking ingredients toward the border checkpoint into Matamoros, Mexico. Once through, the sidewalk suddenly gave way to rocky dirt. They didn’t stop to buy candy from the children who ran up to them, because they had used their change to pay the border toll. Tents—dozens of them in every direction—made it clear they had reached their destination. This ‘tent city’ was flanked by a fence on one side and a river on the other; laundry strung along its bank. Residents used water to turn the dusty dirt into clay to make simple ovens. It was here where the students delivered their wagons, full of ingredients like salt, cooking oil, and flour to the 2,000 people who were living there indefinitely, waiting for information about their asylum status. December 9, 2022 Launching Generations of SMC Researchers In her lab at University of Colorado Denver, Mary Bevilacqua ’13 is facing a challenge.How can global-health engineering teams and industry personnel in low-resource environments effectively create biomedical devices to meet the specific needs of their communities? How can the available technology be adapted to work for them? The questions are not easy, but the answers are there—and Bevilacqua is poised to find them. December 9, 2022 Upon Reflection Each autumn, we wonder when the first leaf will turn: first one, then a few—and, overnight, a panorama of reds, yellows, and oranges! The campus canopy is constantly adapting. In my comings and goings along The Avenue, I note its enchanting display of the seasons, and I often imagine how our founders thought of this tree-lined Avenue as an example for our students. The word “resilience” feels appropriate: the trees bend (mostly) without breaking, and they experience change, rebirth, and loss every year. December 1, 2022 Madrigal Dinners: Celebrating 50 Years of Holiday Cheer For 50 years Saint Mary’s College has put on the Classic Christmas Madrigal Dinner. This cherished tradition never fails to put guests and performers in the holiday spirit. The Christmas Madrigal Dinner is an intimate dinner-theater event held in Rice Commons, where singers, dancers, actors, and musicians perform right in front of audiences. Rice Commons is transformed to a renaissance style banquet hall, complete with a roaring fire, candles, spruce, pine, wreaths, and holiday decor to whisk the community away into a story of the Christmastide. November 28, 2022 Saint Mary’s College Receives Physics Grant President Katie Conboy announced a five-year, $498,900 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to establish the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship in Physics. The grant will be used to hire an early-career female assistant professor in physics, adding a tenure track line that builds on the growing strength of STEM education at Saint Mary's. November 15, 2022 NPR Editor Courtney Jamieson Dorning ’90 Returns to SMC Saint Mary’s College welcomed alumna Courtney Jamieson Dorning ’90 back to campus as the 2022 Shannon Scholar. As the senior editor for NPR’s All Things Considered, Dorning is responsible for newsmaker interviews, but while on campus, she was on the other side of the interviews. November 8, 2022 Legally Blonde Opens at Saint Mary’s Legally Blonde The Musical hits the O’Laughlin Auditorium stage this November with a dedicated cast of 50 students. A musical of this size and caliber is a coordinated effort between the Music, Theater, and Dance programs at Saint Mary’s College under the direction of Mark Abram-Copenhaver, professor of Theatre. Putting a large-scale production together requires the creativity of dancers, singers, actors, set designers, and costume designers. Not only is this a learning opportunity for student performers, it is an exciting gift for the greater community to be entertained by this production. November 8, 2022 Strengthening Our Culture of Belonging In her monthly letter to the community, President Conboy reflects further on the word "belonging", and the ongoing commitment to it at SMC. "We need to acknowledge the strength of diverse ideas and the force of differences that are already inside the college... Whatever our differences, we have all chosen Saint Mary’s. We all belong under this roof." November 7, 2022 Celebrating First-Generation Students This week, Saint Mary’s celebrates its first-generation students, faculty, and staff through a series of events, timed to coincide with First Generation College Celebration Day on November 8. Christin Kloski ’15, assistant director of the Office for Student Equity, has helped coordinate the week, and plans to engage the more than 400 undergraduate students at the College.