Category Archives: Special Programs

Photographers’ Lecture Series Presents Scott Barrow

Tanglewood Nation.  A view of the lawn at Tanglewood just before a concert. Scott Barrow
Tanglewood Nation. A view of the lawn at Tanglewood just before a concert. Scott Barrow

The first visitor in Williston Northampton School’s annual Photographer Lecture Series can trace his love of photography all the way back through his family tree—some 150 years.

Scott Barrow notes that his family began taking fun photos in the 1860s, when such a playful attitude toward the medium was still relatively rare. In his biography, Mr. Barrow adds that he spent childhood nights in the basement darkroom with his father and that those sessions sparked his own love of photography.

Scott Barrow
Scott Barrow

A decision to spend his last $150 on a Canon SLR and five rolls of Kodachrome in 1972 seems to have paid off handsomely: Mr. Barrow’s hundreds of assignments have been for clients across the range of advertising, travel, editorial, and corporate spheres. These include American Express, Charles Schwab, Citibank, Procter & Gamble, Tylenol, The Wall Street Journal, British Airways, Northwestern University, Williams College, Disney, National Geographic, NY Times Travel Publications, Scientific American, and U.S. News and World Report.

Mr. Barrow has been awarded the Communication Arts Photography Award of Excellence, Graphis Photography Annual Award, New York Art Director’s Club Award of Excellence, and PX3 Prix De La Photographie Paris, among other accolades.

Scott Barrow
Scott Barrow

“I take beautiful photographs for a living and I enjoy it,” Mr. Barrow notes in his bio. “The bigger challenge for me as an artist is to go beyond beauty and find my connection to the scene, to become part of it in the moment that I release the shutter. It is only then that I can truly share what I saw and felt with you, the viewer.”

Mr. Barrow will present the first in the 2015-16 Photographer Lecture Series on November 5 at 6:30 p.m. in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center. All lectures in the series are free and open to the public.

Writers’ Workshop Presents Debra Monroe

Debra Monroe
Debra Monroe

During her last visit to the Williston Northampton School in 2010, Debra Monroe talked about her moving memoir, On the Outskirts of Normal, the unsentimental story about a white woman who adopts a black baby in small town Texas.

Ms. Monroe’s latest memoir finds her reaching even farther back into her history for a tale that’s both arresting and full of wit and poise. On November 3, she returns to Williston for the 2015 Writers Workshop Series, where she will discuss My Unsentimental Education, the story of her journey from the working class in Spooner, Wisconsin to the professional class in Austin, Texas.

As with all lectures in the series, Ms. Monroe’s talk is free and open to the public and will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center.

Ms. Monroe, who teaches at Texas State University, has written The Source of Trouble, which won the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction; A Wild, Cold State, a book of stories; and the novels Newfangled and Shambles. In 2010, she published her first memoir, which focused on her experiences with her daughter in a small Texas town.

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Genetic Update Conference Returns to Williston

The topics this year are common genetic conditions and stem cell therapies

A speaker who takes the latest breakthroughs from the field of genetics and translates them into relatable presentations will return to the Williston Northampton School for a public presentation. Sam Rhine’s Genetic Update Conference (GUC) will take place in the Williston Theatre on Thursday, October 29 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and is open to the public.

Mr. Rhine has brought his engaging presentation to the Williston campus for the past three years and has been offering similar half-day conferences to high school students across the globe for the past 30 years. His presentations cover genetic advances, the latest research, and career opportunities.

According to his website, conference this year will include updates on such topics as Genome-Wide Association Studies and induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs).

“Sam will explain the strides made in understanding, treating, and possibly curing conditions, such as diabetes, Parkinsons, Huntingtons, autism, Lou Gehrig’s, multiple sclerosis and many others,” the website notes. “It is an exciting time to be studying human genetics!”

Mr. Rhine received a B.A. and an M.A. from Indiana University, was a doctoral candidate at Indiana University School of Medicine, and was a Lalor Foundation Fellow at Harvard Medical School. He received the Distinguished Hoosier Scholar Award, given to a native Hoosier for outstanding commitment to science education, by the Hoosier Association of Science Teachers (HASTI) in 2007.

Tickets for the conference are available at www.samrhine.com.

Friday’s Special Assembly to Focus on Difficult Issues

During advisor meetings on Wednesday morning, Williston Northampton students bent over their phones and Surfaces for a special school-wide quiz.

The quiz asked about such difficult topics as consent, sexual assault, and violence in relationships. Students had to decide whether statements such as “if someone keeps following someone else online without permission, that can be considered stalking,” were true, false, or somewhere in between. They were also asked how likely they were to stop violent behavior if they saw it happening and other questions about their own reactions.

Faculty member Adrienne Mantegna said that the quiz had both tough and thought provoking for her advisees.

“They struggled with terminology, worried about getting questions right or wrong, and talked about what the questions might be asking,” she said, adding that students slowly realized that some of the questions might not have a definitive answer.

The advisor meetings were part of a three-day series on healthy relationships this week that will culminate in a special assembly on Friday. First, though, faculty members will meet with two presenters from Campus Outreach Services on Thursday night as part of an advanced training session on relationships and how to facilitate discussions on sexual assault.

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Writers’ Workshop Presents Ian Cheney

Ian Cheney
Ian Cheney

A filmmaker whose work brings to light the hidden stories behind people, the world they inhabit, and their effect on that world, will present the second lecture in the four-part 2015 Writers’ Workshop Series on September 29.

Ian Cheney, an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker, has turned his lens on such topics as the link between corn and obesity, green buildings in Boston, and the history of Chinese-American food through one of the most popular dishes: General Tso’s chicken.

“Bluespace,” Mr. Cheney’s most recent work, bridges such seemingly distant topics as polluted waterways in New York City and the terraforming of Mars.

Mr. Cheney blogged about a trip he took to the Sargasso Sea for the film, and his subsequent horror upon discovering that what he imagined to be the “vast blue sea, still wild and unknown,” was actually littered with microplastic.

“’For God’s sake,’ I thought, ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere. This would be like landing on the moon and finding bits of Evian bottles and scraps of plastic bags. How did this get here?’”

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