Sophia Garcia ’15 claims victory at annual Hooprolling competition
Hundreds of students gathered near Lake Waban on Saturday, April 25 for one of Wellesley’s most prominent traditions, Hooprolling. For the past century, the graduating senior class has chosen an early morning toward the end of the academic year to race down Tupelo Lane in Commencement gowns and the class color, with this year’s being yellow. The winner is said to be the first to achieve success in the class, however the term may be defined. Garcia, an environmental studies major from California, won this year’s competition using a hoop she had inherited from her Wellesley big, Lina Torres ’13. After graduation, Garcia plans to work for Quad Knopf, an environmental consulting firm, where she will continue pursuing her interest in food justice.
Two Wellesley seniors named as Carnegie Junior Fellows
Wenyan Deng ’15 and Margaret McClure ’15 have both been named 2015-2016 Carnegie Junior Fellows. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offers approximately a dozen one-year fellowships for graduating seniors and recent graduates who are selected from a pool of nominees from around 400 participating colleges. For the first time in the program’s history, two Wellesley students have been selected as fellows in the same year. The selected fellows work as research assistants to the endowment’s senior members. Deng, an international relations and political science major, will focus on issues relating to China, while McClure, a Russian and political science double major, will concentrate on Russia. During their time at Wellesley, both students were Albright Fellows and were actively involved on campus.
College honors Earth Day by starting eco-friendly initiatives
Wellesley has implemented a series of changes to shrink the College’s environmental footprint just in time for this year’s Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22. These sustainability initiatives are meant to impact most aspects of campus life at Wellesley, including dining. In early April, the dining halls began serving seafood that has been collected through eco-friendly methods off the Gulf of Maine. The Office of Sustainability has been working diligently to promote green living on campus through initiatives such as the Sustainable Living Certification program, which rewards students for eco-friendly choices in dorms. The office, along with the Advisory Committee on Environmental Sustainability, has been making plans to cover all aspects of campus life that contribute to the carbon footprint. The committee hosted a Sustainability Ideafest earlier this year, taking all ideas into account, and hopes to release a drafted plan over the summer.
New Dean of Admission and Financial Aid selected
Joy St. John has been announced as the next Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, succeeding Jenn Desjarlais. St. John is very familiar with Wellesley, having served as Director of Admissions at the College for the past five years. Before coming Wellesley, she was the Associate Dean of Admissions at Amherst and participated in admissions at Tufts University and Occidental College. St. John, who hails from Oregon, studied political science at Stanford University and earned her J.D. from University of California Los Angeles School of Law. St. John was selected by a search committee, which consisted of a number of faculty and staff and was chaired by Dean of Faculty Affairs and English professor Kathryn Lynch. St. John is scheduled to begin her new role on May 25.
