"Educational inequality is a particularly serious issue for many developing nations, including my homeland, Jamaica," Wallace wrote in his personal statement to the scholarship committee. "The unequal distribution of economic opportunities is an all too easily accepted injustice. I continually ask myself why rural students in many parts of the world continue to learn under such poor conditions. And I wonder how inequalities in educational participation and outcomes can be addressed through effective teaching, creative programmatic initiatives and sound policy design and implementation."

Wallace hopes to help bridge achievement gaps and lessen geographical disparities by serving developing nations, especially in the Caribbean, as an educator and an education development strategist. 

The Bronx, N.Y., resident is one of only 40 students from U.S. colleges and universities who were awarded the prestigious scholarship, which supports two years of graduate studies in the United Kingdom. Marshall Scholars are chosen based on significant intellectual distinction, academic record, leadership potential, strong motivation and seriousness of purpose. They are eligible for up to two years of funding at a British university. Wallace plans to attend the University of Cambridge to read for a Masters of Philosophy in Education, Equality and Development in his first year, and the University of Bristol for a Master's in International and Comparative Educational Studies in his second year.

The Marshall Scholarship marks the fourth academic award Wallace has received since his graduation in 2007. As the winner of a Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace grant in 2007, Wallace implemented an intensive literacy program in rural Jamaica for 100 primary school students, provided school uniforms for children, and established small school libraries in Tanzania. As a 2007 Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellow, he traveled and studied the historical roots and current practice of the Pentecostal faith tradition among worshippers in Trinidad & Tobago, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, the United Kingdom and Guatemala. During his time in Rwanda, Wallace interned in the Ministry of Education. "In addition to working with a team to revise Rwanda's five-year strategic plan, I researched regional girls' education policies and helped create strategies for implementing changes throughout the country, particularly in rural communities," he said. 

This year, Wallace is teaching English and conducting research on education reform in Thailand as a Fulbright Scholar. He is interested in how Thailand, despite relatively recent natural disasters and economic setbacks, was able to fund and sustain its education reform. At Cambridge and Bristol, he will research financing arrangements and accountability mechanisms that allow for the sustainability of resources to fund education reform initiatives. "Even amidst the current economic downturn, it is critically important that developing nations support education, as it is necessary economic infrastructure for future growth and development."

Wallace, who was born in Jamaica, has been a natural teacher since childhood. His first official teaching assistantship occurred while he was in elementary school. Under the guidance of a teacher, he taught third grade students English for two consecutive summers. In high school, he taught English as a second language. 

At Wheaton that passion blossomed. And, noted Wallace, "my definition of teaching transformed from the mere transfer of knowledge to a means of redressing social inequality."

Wallace came to Wheaton as a Posse Scholar through the college's partnership with the Posse Foundation in New York. Posse connects urban public high school students who have exceptional leadership potential with highly selective colleges around the country.A major in sociology and African Diaspora studies, Wallace was inducted into the national honor society, Phi Beta Kappa, in the fall of 2006, and he earned the college's academic achievement award, Presidential Scholar, two consecutive years.

Wheaton's emphasis on global education matched Wallace's own interest in study abroad. He spent a semester in South Africa in 2005, and through the college's Davis International Fellows program, he worked with the Community Peace Program in South Africa and volunteered at Silverstream High School in Manenberg, Cape Town. In 2006, he traveled to Tanzania for research and community service through the Wheaton Fellows program.

President of the college's Student Government Association, Wallace was active in numerous campus organizations, from peer academic advisor and member of the Wheaton Chorale and Chamber Singers to a founding member of the Voices United to Jam gospel choir and chair and founder of the Disability Awareness Committee.

For his leadership and academic achievements, Wallace was awarded the Eunice Caldwell, Ruth Capers McKay, Intercultural Board and the Eliza Baylies Chapin Wheaton leadership awards, along with the Lucretia C. Mott Prize in Sociology. In addition, his academic work has been featured in Contemporary Justice Review and other social science journals. 

Wallace said he plans to teach in Jamaica and later pursue a doctorate in sociology and international education. "I am hopeful that the teaching and research experience I had over the years will prepare me to be an effective public servant and education strategist in Jamaica."

"A Fulbright Award can be a life-changing event. Giving young adults the opportunity to research, live and study abroad changes not only how they view the world, but builds the framework for international perspective and understanding," said Ronald A. Crutcher, president of Wheaton College who was himself a recipient of a Fulbright Award to Germany. "We are very proud of our students' exceptional leadership capabilities and their passion to make a difference."

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program equips future American leaders with the skills they need to thrive in an increasingly global environment by providing funding for one academic year of study, research or assistant teaching abroad.

Fellows undertake self-designed programs in disciplines ranging from the social sciences, business, communication and performing arts to physical sciences, engineering and education. Is the largest U.S. international exchange program offering opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide. About 1,500 students and 1,300 scholars from the United States and abroad are studying and working on Fulbrights this academic year.

Started in 1946, the international academic-exchange program offers grants that are awarded by binational Fulbright commissions and financed by the U.S. government and the government of each country in which the awards are available. This year the United States contributed nearly $221-million to the fellowships.

The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Financial support is provided by an annual appropriation from Congress to the Department of State, with significant contributions from participating governments and host institutions in the United States and abroad. The Presidentially appointed J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board formulates policy guidelines and makes the final selection of all grantees.

In the United States, the Institute of International Education administers and coordinates the activities relevant to the U.S. Student Program, including conducting an annual competition for the scholarships.

Lists of Fulbright recipients and information about the award are available at www.fulbrightonline.org/us.

Bloch's The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel, recently published by Oxford University Press, analyzes the mathematical ideas embedded within the author's story--from combinatorics to information theory. "The Library of Babel" is about a vast library comprising small, densely packed hexagons, much like a beehive. They contain an unimaginable number of books, which make up the story's universe--a chaotic and enigmatic universe.

Beyond being a challenging but entertaining read, Bloch's book also showcases the significance of Wheaton's "Connections" curriculum. In fact, the Connections curriculum, which requires students to study subjects across disciplines, inspired Bloch to write the book. The first year he was teaching "The Edge of Reason," which connects to "Science Fiction," a literature course taught by Professor of English Michael Drout, "The Library of Babel" was assigned.

"Borges [1899-1986] has been one of my favorite writers since the mid-1980s," said Bloch. "As it turns out, he was a lover of math. He was not a mathematician by any stretch; I don't even know if he could solve easy math problems! But he read and reread sophisticated works by the likes of Bertrand Russell on the philosophy and nature of the deep ideas and paradoxes of math. And those ideas and paradoxes emerge in his stories.

"Borges's 'Library of Babel' is one story in particular. It embodies some ideas of combinatorics, which is the branch of mathematics that studies combinations of finite collections of objects. Borges played with the notion that a library might consist of books containing all possible combinations of letters. What would it be like, to be surrounded by books, many of which were mainly nonsense? What could one infer about such a universe from the torrents of random letter combinations? For example, does, 'aqopvnqrohadf jjkkaen' have a hidden meaning to uncover in an unknown language?"

So the story provided a perfect platform for Drout to talk about literature and meaning, and for Bloch to develop a lecture on the combinatorics in the story. At some point, he was telling Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Hector Medina about his lecture. Bloch excitedly explained that he had talked to students about how he had calculated the number of distinct books in 'The Library of Babel,' which is an incomprehensibly large number. During the exchange with Medina, Bloch realized that it would be "fun" to write a short paper for literary people.

The paper grew into the book. Bloch, who has published many papers but never a book until now, credits Connections for the inspiration, "Although it's an amazing story--a scant seven pages packed with iconic imagery and imbued with a piercing and wistful sense of humanity--I never dreamt I'd write a book about it. The project began as a short paper aimed at professors of literature who wanted to understand a facet of the story, and it grew and grew and grew."

During a sabbatical, via the generosity of the Tricia Arnold Faculty Fellowship, Bloch spent 10 days doing research in Buenos Aires, the place of Borges's birth and where he served as head librarian at the National Library of Argentina. "I got to see Borges's original books, hold them, and look at his notations in them," said Bloch. When he returned to Massachusetts he spent the next 12 weeks writing the book, which is filled with intriguing illustrations, philosophic and literary insights, mathematical equations, a glossary of terms, and text that bares Bloch's characteristically quirky wit.

The book clearly shows his passion for math, which he became drawn to early in life. "I was taking Calculus--a very theoretical version--and found that hours had slipped by in a joyous frenzy as I tried to prove silly little things about operations on the real numbers. I knew then I was not like others.

"I believe that there's a logical underpinning to the universe and that to understand it, I need to understand mathematics. For example, it's philosophically interesting that 2 + 2 should always equal 4: Math thereby partakes of a kind of timelessness and universality. I find it remarkable that what was true for Plato, Euclid and Hypatia is equally true for me and my students. This last aspect helps makes mathematics a multi-thousand-year conversation, where the topic might change, but the words and their meanings of the words stay the same.

"It's easy to confuse mathematics with the dry mechanics of arithmetic, but at the college level and beyond, a mathematician acquires an aesthetic about the assemblage of ideas into logical proofs. A penetrating insight into the meaning of an idea, or the proof of a theorem, or the solution of problem is shot through with an almost palpable elegance. I suppose I'm saying that I'm a dilettante of a sort."

Right from start of The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel, Bloch lays out his goal of the book and the general audience for which it is intended: "I assume no special mathematical knowledge. I only ask that the reader trust that I am a tour guide through a labyrinth, like that marble pathway on the floor of the cathedral at Chartres, not the gatekeeper of a Stygian maze without center or exit. Beyond enhancing the story, the reader's reward will be an exposure to some intriguing and entrancing mathematical ideas."

The tenure of Professor of Chemistry Emerita Bojan Hamlin Jennings is legendary at Wheaton. She was instrumental in establishing a rigorous chemistry major here, and in the 1980s, she designed the major in biochemistry. On Thursday, Oct. 30, Wheaton will recognize her lifetime of achievements by presenting her with an honorary doctor of science at noon in Cole Memorial Chapel.

It is estimated that in her four decades at Wheaton Jennings encouraged more than 150 chemistry majors at the college, many of whom went on to doctoral work in the sciences, including Professors Suzanne Purrington '60, Donna S. Amenta '65 and Interim Provost Elita Pastra-Landis '69. In 2006, Jennings was honored with the distinguished American Chemical Society Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences.

The ACS award is a testament to the years of innovation and opportunity in research she brought to Wheaton and to the world of chemistry. In 1959, Jennings won Wheaton's first summer research grants, $2,190 to study the effects of ultrasound on carbon tetrachloride and chloroform. In addition to studying chemical reactions induced by ultrasound, Jennings has researched photochemical reactions of bases found in DNA and RNA and the synthesis of steroids related to estrogens. All of her research was done with students and supported by grants from the Research Corporation, the Petroleum Research Fund, The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Throughout her career, Jennings published 10 professional articles in scientific journals. All were co-authored with her students.

Jennings, who holds degrees from Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe and Harvard, where she earned her Ph.D., was chair of Wheaton's Department of Chemistry from 1978 until her retirement in 1985. From 1975 to 1978, she held the A. Howard Meneely Professorship for Excellence in Teaching.

She is now retired, but has not slowed down. A trustee of the Pilgrim Society in Plymouth, she has served on a variety of its committees. She is the author of four books, including Chemistry at Wheaton and Bathshua: The Most Extraordinary Crime Ever Perpetrated in New England. The latter is a fictionalized account of a very real murder that took place in Massachusetts during the American Revolution.

On Thursday, President Ronald A. Crutcher will lead the ceremony. Interim Provost Elita Pastra-Landis '69, chemistry professor and a former student of Jennings, will present the honorary degree. And the hooding will be done by Purrington '60.

The author of Twinkie, Deconstructed, Ettlinger will be on campus to talk about the ingredients of that iconic snack and the industrial processes used to make it. This event, which complements the First-Year Seminar summer reading, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, is open to the public and is free of charge.

The journey to uncover the complexity of modern, processed foods began when Ettlinger's daughter asked an innocent question about her afternoon snack: "Where does polysorbate 60 come from, Daddy?" The answer to that simple question forms Ettlinger's book and offers a startling look at the products on supermarket shelves.

Steve Ettlinger has been an author, editor, and book producer since 1985, and has helped produce over forty books. He helped create the bestselling series, Wine for Dummies. Ettlinger is an occasional contributor to The Huffington Post and has written op-ed articles for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Sun, among others.

Ettlinger has appeared on The Today Show, CBS This Morning, ABC Nightline, Good Morning America, Fox News, Montel, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, The Food Network, and dozens of other national, syndicated, and local television and radio shows.

During his visit, Wheaton will host several events:

3 to 4 p.m. Twinkie Taste Test. Compare the taste and texture of home-baked cakes to processed snack cakes, and see if you prefer to ''hold the polysorbate 60.'' Atrium, Balfour-Hood Campus Center. Free and open to the public.

7 to 8:30 p.m. Lecture/slide show. Ettlinger will present a slide show about his travels to see where these artificial ingredients come from. Hindle Auditorium, Science Center. A book signing in the lobby will follow the talk. Open to the campus community and the public.

For more information about the author and Twinkie, Deconstructed, visit www.twinkiedeconstructed.com

Wheaton students interested in answering that question have until Jan. 12, 2009, to develop a plan. That's the deadline for submitting a proposal for the Davis 100 Projects for Peace program. 

The Davis Projects for Peace program is made possible by Kathryn Wasserman Davis, an accomplished internationalist and philanthropist. Upon the occasion of her 100th birthday in February of 2007, Mrs. Davis, mother of Wheaton Trustee Emerita Diana Davis Spencer '60, chose to celebrate by committing $1 million for 100 Projects for Peace.  Because of the many marvelous achievements made by students in the summer of 2007, Mrs. Davis has continued the program.

In the past two years, a number of Wheaton students have won grants from the program. They include: 

• Ann Kwan '09, who established a handicrafts shop in Phnom Penh for a Cambodian non-profit,
• Kelly Maby '09, who took urban high school students on a week-long tour of the American South to learn from Civil Rights leaders.
• Derron J.R. Wallace '07, who focused on projects to benefit school children in Jamaica and Tanzania;
• Caitlin O'Connor '08 and Ashley Mott '08, who strengthened an after-school program in three Tanzanian villages.

The Davis Projects for Peace initiative is open to undergraduates at Wheaton and other American colleges  in the Davis United World College Scholars Program to design grassroots projects that they will implement during the summer of 2008.  The projects judged to be the most promising and do-able will be funded at $10,000 each.  The objective is to encourage and support today's motivated youth to create and tryout their own ideas for building peace.

The Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services will hold two information sessions to help students develop their plans. The sessions will be held on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 9 p.m. in the Ellison Lecture Hall at Watson and on Tuesday, Oct. 28 at 9 p.m. in the Media Room of the Balfour-Hood Campus Center.

For more information, contact Judi Razee, the Filene Center's scholar & fellowship stipend coordinator. 

The new series, Wheaton In Focus, gets started with the making of "Twisted Sisters," a sculpture created by internationally known artist Patrick Dougherty with the help of about 60 students. The artwork was created during a three-week residency at the start of the Fall 2008 semester. The Wheaton In Focus video team followed work on the sculpture and visited one of four courses in which students discussed their involvment in the project as part of their studies. 

The purpose of the online video series is to give viewers an upclose look at Wheaton students' experiences in the classroom and in the residence halls, on the athletic fields and off campus internships.

Wheaton In Focus is created by a team of four students--George Kunhardt '09, Ann Kwan '09, Angelina Gennis '10 and Elliott Mazzola '09--working in collaboration with independent filmmaker and photographer Tim Morse who serves as the project's director/editor. The college's Communications Office coordinates the project.

Each episode of Wheaton In Focus will be posted on YouTube, and it can be found on the Wheaton web site at www.wheatoncollege.edu/infocus.

To keep up on future episodes or to suggest story ideas, join the Wheaton In Focus team on Facebook, where you can suggest story ideas and subscribe to receive updates. 

The groundbreaking for Wheaton's largest project will be at the construction site, next to the current Science Center. Balloons will mark the way to the ceremony, where representatives of the faculty, student body, administration, and Board of Trustees will take shovels in hand to symbolically launch the building.

The ceremony will be followed by seasonal refreshments--hot chocolate, hot cider and hearty hors d'oeuvres--in the Science Center lobby.

Slated for completion in 2011, the 99,000-square-foot project, which includes the construction of a new, three-story building and the renovation of the first floor of the existing Science Center, seeks to create an expanded and improved science center that embodies the college's Connections curriculum.

The Board of Trustees voted to move forward with the project during its meeting in May. Funding for CSII, which is expected to cost approximately $50 million, will come primarily from gifts supplemented by financing. Already, more than $18 million has been raised for the project.

"The Center for Scientific Inquiry and Innovation will dramatically change the Wheaton campus," said Crutcher. "We are building a space that will serve all students, no matter their major. It will truly be a center for campus activity, and it will put the sciences more squarely at the center of a Wheaton education, which is fitting in our fast-moving, technological age."

The CSII project will help students make the most of the college's Connections curriculum by creating spaces that encourage collaboration among fellow students and faculty members and facilitate interdisciplinary learning and research. The design of the project--its use of open space and glass to create visual connection and its inclusion of numerous public spaces, for example--aims to embody the curriculum.

Among the laboratories that will be created will be multi-use labs uniquely suited to collaborative, interdisciplinary research among students and faculty, said Tommy Ratliff, associate professor of mathematics and the faculty coordinator for the project. In addition, the new building will include five classrooms outfitted for transformation into research labs, allowing the science program room to evolve as students' needs change. "When this project is complete, our students are going to have the space they deserve for the outstanding work they do," said Ratliff.

The project's design also reflects Wheaton's commitment to environmental sustainability. The new center will incorporate a host of features-including a "green" roof-that will enable the building to earn LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a nationally recognized benchmark for sustainable buildings established by the U.S. Green Building Council. The project's goal is to exceed base certification and attain the LEED's silver certification rating.

The new building will be located next to the Madeleine Clark Wallace '34 Library and the Balfour-Hood Campus Center and connected to the existing Science Center. In fact, an extensive renovation of the center's first floor is an integral part of the overall project. The location of CSII will provide a strong pedestrian link to the Haas Athletic Center as well as providing a new connection between the lower campus and the library. More information and regular updates on the project are available at http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/Science/CSII/.

Just ask Candy Yaghjian Waites '65. College students across the country are expected to play a major role in this year's presidential election. Forty-four years ago, Candy and a group of her friends and classmates helped draw attention to the ways in which some college students were left without a voice, and their efforts helped to change the law in at least one state. 

In the fall of 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson was running as the Democratic nominee against Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater. Johnson had ascended to the presidency less than a year earlier following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Candy Yaghjian was a senior at Wheaton College, old enough to vote but too far from her home in Columbia, South Carolina to get to the polls. And at that time, South Carolina was one of three states that issued absentee ballots only to military personnel. College students need not apply. (Today, college students can vote by absentee ballots in all states; information is available online from Wheaton's iVote web site.)

"My mother was a community activist and my father was head of the art department at the University of South Carolina," Waites says. "My mother was involved in the League of Women Voters and I grew up knowing that you were supposed to vote when the opportunity came." But the $100 plane fare to go home was beyond her budget.

Waites recalls telling her friendsBonnie Page Downing '65, Joan Makechnie Diver '65, Susan Taylor Smith, Sylvia Brewer Impert '65 and Catherine Newman Kornyei about her predicament while bicycling back from a nearby ice cream stand. They were horrified. In a flash, they hatched a plan to publicize the problem to raise the $100 for Candy's plane fare from their fellow Wheaton students and from any members of the public who felt like chipping in.

"One of our slogans was 'Give up a Coke for Candy!'," she says, noting that soft drinks cost a dime at the time and that collecting ten cents from every student at the college would have yielded just enough for a plane ticket from Boston to Columbia. The group decided on a day of action and demonstration, which the Wheaton College Bulletin described as follows: 

"On Oct. 26, the total college enrollment of 1073 [students], wearing red, white and blue, brought dimes to the Dimple to pay Candy's way home to vote. ... A delegate from the Norton Post of the American Legion came to campus with a cannon to signal the start of the demonstration; area residents circled the quadrangle in old cars to protest the antiquity of South Carolina's voting restrictions and a Norton fire engine stood by as Wheaton set South Carolina's customs on fire."

The public protest brought a full press entourage:  newspaper and wire service reporters, television crews and network announcers and radio journalists.   "It must have been a slow news day," she says now. The story was published and broadcast across the country and before long the students had raised far more than the $100 needed to fly home.

The Wheaton students bought one round-trip ticket to South Carolina and donated the rest to the state's League of Women Voters to help encourage other college students to contact their representatives about having the right to vote absentee. 

A crowd greeted Waites at the airport and newspaper reporters accompanied her to the polling station where she cast her vote. The publicity galvanized South Carolina's elected officials.

"That spring, I went home and paid a visit to the South Carolina legislature. They had introduced a bill that would broaden the right to an absentee ballot beyond members of the military," Waites says. "It didn't pass right away; I think it took them another year before it finally became the law."

The college's archives contain the copy of a telegram that Waites sent to the campus in May, 1965, informing students and faculty that South Carolina had changed the law so that college students could vote by absentee ballot.

The impact of Waites' campaign has continued on in unexpected ways. "In a way, that was the beginning of my political career, although I had no idea of that at the time. I was an English major," says Waites, who served on the (Columbia) County's governing body in the 70s and then served three terms as a South Carolina state legislator.

Today, she is the director of leadership programs the Women's Leadership Institute at Columbia College in Columbia and she teaches a course on the impact of women in South Carolina's political system and society.

"Periodically, someone will remember what happened to me in college and ask me to tell the story again, usually around election time," Waites says. "I always tell people that it just shows what one person can do, when you have the support of others as (the way) I did. Never underestimate the effect you can have."
   

The greenhouses, located at the rear of the Science Center, are open four times each academic year. Visitors are encouraged to bring a houseplant they wish to repot. Soil and pots will be available at the greenhouse.

The greenhouse staff will assist aspiring ''green thumbs'' as needed, and advise on proper plant care. Donations are accepted to cover the cost of soil and pots. In addition, a selection of plant specimens will be available for sale.

The Wheaton College greenhouses were built in the mid 1960s thanks to a grant by the Esso Education Foundation, and they comprise two houses side by side. The greenhouses are an important site for research conducted by faculty and students. Projects have included dormant seed germination from sand banks and wetlands, nutrient studies, and genetic inheritance in consecutive generations.

The greenhouses also serve to supply materials for experimentation during class laboratories. For example, students can use spines from cacti for micro-surgery, or search among the Polypodiums for prothallia and sporophytes.

Exhibition is a third function of the Wheaton greenhouses. A wide variety of plant life is maintained in a minimally controlled environment in order to allow the specimens to display their natural growth tendencies. Any needed pest control is accomplished with organic substances so as not to interfere any more than is necessary with the ecosphere. A program using predatory, beneficial insects has also been instituted. By keeping one house warm and fairly dry, and the other more humid, it is possible to display both desert and tropical species in a spatially limited facility. A newly installed garden pool allows for the inclusion of aquatic species. Plants are arranged by family, genus, and species and labeled as such along with a code to their care that is described at the entrance to each house.

During the 1994-95 academic year, a program of community outreach was instituted. Area garden clubs are contacted and invited to tour the greenhouses as a public service. Additionally, home school students visit along with public school classes. Liaison work with other colleges and local nurseries has also increased visibility and established a working relationship beyond the Wheaton campus. A small area holds duplicate specimens for purchase by visitors. Donations are welcome to help maintain, repair and renovate the greenhouses.

Please contact Jane Young, the greenhouse caretaker, at (508) 286-3943 or e-mail her at jyoung@wheatonma.edu to arrange for a greenhouse tour or to seek assistance for you or your organization. You can also visit the greenhouseonline to find out what's blooming now.