Stories and updates from around campus

A Boy, a Textbook, and his Drought-Stricken Country

Photo by Paul Schnaittacher
Photo by Paul Schnaittacher

Currently a senior at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, William Kamkwamba, the co-author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope, took time between his final exams to speak at Williston Northampton as the fourth annual speaker in the Sara Wattles Perry ’77 lecture series.

Mr. Kamkwamba is a native of Malawi, a small African country bordered by Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, where electricity and running water are a luxury enjoyed by only two percent of the population. Mr. Kamkwamba’s family members make their living as farmers in a rural part of the country. As chronicled in The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, in 2001, a record drought led Mr. Kamkwamba to drop out of school and, using textbooks as his guide, build an electricity-generating windmill out of scrap metal.

Watch Mr. Kamkwamba’s TEDTalk about building the windmill.

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Dr. Judge to Offer Advice on Navigating Social Media

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Photo courtesy of www.abigailjudge.com

An expert in psychology will talk to Williston Northampton students and parents about social media use during special sessions on December 12 and 13.

Abigail Judge is an instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and practices clinical and child forensic psychology in Cambridge. Her work at Harvard examines adolescent sexual behavior and how it relates to social media, digital technologies, and the law. She has published articles on topics such as “sexting” and is the editor of a forthcoming book on the issue, Adolescent Sexual Behavior in the Digital Age: Considerations for Clinicians, Legal Professionals and Educators.

Dr. Judge said her approach was developed in response to “scared straight” stories she heard on the news. The reports were alarmist, she explained in a statement about her work, and caused anxiety among families rather than helping parents and teenagers talk about the issues.

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Faculty Show Puts Great Moments on Display

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Bud Vases by Natania Hume

From December to January, the Grubbs Gallery will display work by the Fine Arts faculty. Included in the exhibit are pieces by fine arts teachers Susanna White, Natania Hume, and Rachel Chambers; photography teacher Ed Hing ’77; costume designer, Ilene Goldstein; and art intern, Kate Verdickt ’05.

The exhibit features bud vases, in the style of contemporary ceramic artist Edmund de Waal, by Ms. Hume, who is also the gallery curator; costumes and jewelry designs by Ms. Goldstein; and landscapes and abstract paintings by Ms. White. Also featured are a selection of photographs from Mr. Hing’s Ten Years/Ten Countries, celestial paintings by Ms. Verdickt, and Ms. Chamber’s work, an installation made completely out of cardboard that covers part of the gallery in undulating 3D forms. Read statements from each artist here.

“It is a first for me, a genuine, humbling thrill. It is one of those great moments in my profession, when I literally see what it is that I love about my job,” Ms. White noted in her artist statement about the show. “Our gallery is an educational gallery and I think it will be interesting for my students to see the different types of work I enjoy doing most.”

The Visual Arts Faculty Show runs through January 6, 2014. There will be a reception with the artists on December 18 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in the Grubbs Gallery. Located at 40 Park Street, Easthampton, in the Reed Campus Center, the gallery is open on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and on Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

Cruz, Krol, and Ostberg Sign National Letters of Intent

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Mr. Cruz, Coach Sawyer, Mr. Krol, and Mr. Ostberg. Photo by Paul Rutherford.

On Thursday, November 14 and Monday, November 18, three members of the Williston Northampton varsity baseball team signed National Letters of Intent to play college baseball.

Erik Ostberg ’14 signed with the University of Hartford on Thursday. On Monday Anthony Cruz ’14 signed with Quinnipiac University and Adam Krol ’14 signed with St. Anslem College. By signing the letters, and agreeing to the respective scholarship agreements, the three students notified other schools that they may no longer be recruited.

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Sleep is Homework And Other Tips About the Brain

The special assembly with Andrew Watson, of Translate the Brain, began with a game. The Upper School students had 30 seconds to examine a chart and, using three simple conversion rules, figure out solutions to several strings of numbers.

But there was a trick to this game. After calling time, Mr. Watson asked if any of the students had picked up on it. The key, he said, was in the numbers: the first half of the answers mirrored the last. Those who recognized that could complete the task in half the time.

Why was this relevant to students on an early November morning? Mr. Watson promised his talk, entitled “How to Study Less and Learn More”—and bizarrely subtitled Import Anthill Wontons!—could give students half a dozen strategies for achieving higher grades while doing less work.

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Stories and updates from around campus