Honorary degree recipients at this year’s Commencement will include Kumail Nanjiani ’01, comedian and actor on Silicon Valley; Daniel Werner ’91, attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center; Emily Pfitsch, widow of the late, longtime...
Spring 2017
In this Issue
![Eliza works with student on the observatory telescope](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/20151023telescope047%20WEB.jpg?itok=LdKbjWzU)
Eliza Kempton, assistant professor of physics, recently received a Faculty Early Career Development grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
![Rebecca Wong ’17 canoeing](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/Rebecca%20Wong%20542665%20WEB.jpg?itok=ziO-5dJt)
In his 48 years of life, physics professor Sujeev Wickramasekara made an immeasurable impact on his peers and his students. When he died in December 2015 at the age of 48 of a sudden cardiac event, his wife Tammy Nyden, associate professor of philosophy, hoped...
![Peter Calvert ’79 and Linh Pham chat in the JRC Grill](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/Peter%20and%20Linh%20Pham%20WEB.jpg?itok=J4c8zqIZ)
In 2014, the Alumni Student Connections Committee of the College’s Alumni Council initiated a project to facilitate mentoring relationships between alumni and current students. After developing a mentoring handbook, six committee alumni volunteered to mentor six current students on the Student...
![Nick and Vinny Curta cheer from the bench](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/20170208.mbb_.knox0133%20WEB.jpg?itok=JUaIkVHy)
![Nick and Vinny Curta cheer from the bench](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/20170208.mbb_.knox0133%20WEB.jpg?itok=JUaIkVHy)
![Sociology class outside on central campus](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/20160413sociology04%20WEB.jpg?itok=y7M6neSm)
In 2015 President Raynard S. Kington presented to the community a road map for the College’s future. Called Vision 2030, it seeks to capitalize on the College’s strengths and build the programs that will make Grinnell distinct from its peers (see Kington’s “Strategy Session” on...
![Opening of Start by Asking Questions, drawn from the collections of Vernon ’61 and Amy Hamamoto Faulconer ’59 and Howard and Cindy Rachofsky](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/20150918faulconer226%20WEB.jpg?itok=-Veef7C-)
Art is a language. Artists communicate with us through color, form, subject, scale, texture, movement, and symbols. We all know how to “read” this language, if we stop and engage with the art. While many of us believe we can’t understand art, I’ve found that we are usually selling ourselves...
![Andrew Sherbourne '01 shown in the theater at Film Scene in Iowa City](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/AndrewSherbourne03%20WEB.jpg?itok=u7yE8iGb)
For many of us, convenience is a cornerstone of modern movie-watching. Plop down onto the couch, scavenge for the remote, and with one click of a button, vast libraries of cinema appear at our fingertips. On the rare occasions that we do venture out to the neighborhood multiplex, we’re likely to...
![Chase Strangio in his office in Brooklyn, N.Y.](https://magazine.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/300x200/public/20160623Chase%20Strangio027%20WEB.jpg?itok=XIQ5gGp5)
For Chase Strangio ’04, Grinnell was both personally and politically formative. “I knew I was queer; I knew that I had a critical political sensibility, but I didn’t have any real sense of who I was before Grinnell.”