Campus Drive became Campus Walk in 1986, so this snowy photo was probably shot between 1986 and 1990. We’d like to learn the name of this student. If you can help us identify him, please leave a comment below.

Give It Your Best Shot!

Betty Bartz Bradford ’54 of Downingtown, Pa., “almost fell off the chair” when she spotted herself in the last issue of University of Mary Washington Magazine.

“When I saw that picture, I just got so excited,” said Bradford (shown standing), who grew up on Long Island and came to Mary Washington from a two-year school in Pennsylvania.

She and the friend and fellow transfer student pictured with her, Patricia Shipley Hook ’54, who passed away in 2010, looked busy enough inside the school’s broadcasting studio. But Bradford couldn’t remember why they had been there. They were speech and dramatic arts majors, so maybe it had been required for one of their classes, she reasoned.

Hook transferred again after junior year, Bradford said, so the photo must have been taken in 1952 or ’53, while the studio still was housed in George Washington Hall.

While Bradford recalled little of the broadcasting studio, she did remember performing in plays, being in the Alpha Psi Omega society for outstanding theater students, and studying with drama professors Mark Sumner and Albert R. Klein. But her theatrical side took a detour when suitemate Vivian James ’53, who later was in Bradford’s wedding, piqued her curiosity about a special education graduate program at Columbia University. Bradford applied, earned a master’s degree on a full scholarship, and taught the deaf and hard of hearing for most of her career.

Last issue’s photo brought back memories of her brief interest in pursuing radio work, she said, and of strict Mary Washington rules and the measures she and her friends took to break them.

“Even though it was an all-girls school, we had a lot of fun,” she said.

Now 81 years old, with three children, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, Bradford keeps up with her evolving alma mater.

“When we went back to Mary Washington the first time, I almost had a heart attack” because of all the changes, she joked. “I love it. I’m so proud of the school.”

President Richard V. Hurley, chair of the Virginia Council of Presidents, has addressed the topic of STEM in combination with the liberal arts in a variety of settings recently. He wrote about it for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s

Parents sending their children off to college these days have a right to worry: Unemployment rates are intractably high, college costs are skyrocketing, and students are graduating with unprecedented debt. As the president of a public liberal arts institution, I am especially sensitive to the “return-on-investment” question. And so it is no surprise when high school students and their parents ask our admissions conselors, “Do you offer STEM?”

Without question, STEM is the new buzzword for those anxious about post-graduation employment. STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – all disciplines in which America must excel if it is to retain its industrial and economic strength.

The STEM job sector is growing at twice the rate of non-STEM occupations, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, but we should note some caveats. First, let’s remember that STEM workers, as identified by the Commerce Department, constitute only 5.5 percent of the workforce. Second, while STEM workers overall may earn 26 percent more than their counterparts, the greatest differential is seen in the lowest-level jobs; the higher the terminal degree, the smaller the earnings difference.

Moreover, it is not a given that the only path to STEM job success is the STEM degree: About one-third of college-educated workers in STEM professions do not hold degrees in STEM. Two-thirds of people holding STEM undergraduate degrees work in non-STEM jobs. One-fifth of math majors, for instance, end up working in education. Nearly 40 percent of STEM managers hold non-STEM degrees.

So to those high school students and parents who anxiously ask, “Do you offer STEM?” I have a couple of things to say: First, remember that we are a college of the liberal arts and sciences. Far too often in casual writing and conversation the “sciences” part is left off of that phrase. Yes, the University of Mary Washington teaches STEM. We offer degrees in math and science, including biology, chemistry, computer science, geographic information systems, environmental science, geology, physics, and the social sciences as well as business and education (teaching). We are pre-law, and we are pre-med.

But better yet, I tell them, “We offer STEM-plus.”

Our STEM education is built on a broad foundation that exposes students to arts, humanities, and social sciences. Our pure and applied science and math disciplines are all built upon our core liberal arts foundation. That’s the plus part.

We all know that the liberal arts and sciences prepare us to be better citizens, to help us understand ourselves and others. But they also prepare us for business and careers. And if our graduates pursue careers in science or technology, they will  possess the ability – and I am quoting from our academic catalog here – to “understand, evaluate, articulate, and advance their ideas and the ideas of others.”

The CEOs of Dell, JPMorgan Chase, Walt Disney, IBM, and FedEx all had liberal arts educations. English was the background for both Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Harold Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, author of The World Is Flat, recently updated his acclaimed book with a whole section on the importance of liberal arts. “It’s not that I don’t think math and science are important,” he said. “They still are. But more than ever our secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, science, music, and literature with the hard sciences. That’s what produces an iPod revolution or a Google.”

Friedman could have quoted the late Steve Jobs when he rolled out the iPad2: “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.”

So who brings together the scientists, the engineers, the designers, and humanists? I think you know by now what I believe. Not every one of our graduates will go on to be a Steve Jobs. But I hope they will be broad thinkers, big thinkers, creative and fearless thinkers.

And that thought makes my heart sing.

Apology: A Novel

When 9-year-old Tom Serafino’s twin sister suffers a debilitating brain injury, a police investigation implicates his playmate Mario’s uncle, an immigrant transient worker known as Shoe. Innocent of the crime but burdened by his own childhood tragedy, Shoe takes the blame for what is in fact an accident caused by his young nephew, ensuring Mario’s chance at a future publicly unscarred. Library Journal gave Apology a starred review, calling it a “hauntingly poetic first novel about mistakes, love, and sacrifice. …Reminiscent of Alessandro Baricco’s SILK, this novel will appeal to lovers of literary fiction.”

Milkweed Editions, June 2013

The Global President: International Media and the U.S. Government
By Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Stephen J. Farnsworth, S. Robert Lichter, and Roland Schatz

This student resource explores the evolving news coverage of the American government and the U.S. president, and its influential power over the political attitudes of an increasingly connected world.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, August 2013

Vectors: J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Years Before the Bomb

In her ninth chapbook – a precursor to a full-length book in progress – Cherry, former Virginia poet laureate, depicts the life of the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb, from childhood to his time as director of the Manhattan Project.

Parallel Press of University of Wisconsin Libraries, December 2012

The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off
By Mason Donovan ’91 and Mark Kaplan

The authors share their views on how to create a diverse workplace that includes those with cultural, racial, and other differences, and why doing so is a wise business move that leads to innovative collaboration and stronger relationships with clients.

Bibliomotion, May 2013

Reveal Your Detroit: An Intimate Look at a Great American City
By Bradford Frost ’05

The Detroit Institute of Arts and dozens of Detroit community organizations handed disposable cameras to 1,000 Motor City residents and asked them, “What does your Detroit look like? How do you want others to see it?” The result was Detroit Revealed: Photographs 2000-2010, the institute’s exhibition of more than 2,000 snapshots. Author Frost, director of Detroit’s Living Cities Integration Initiative, selected 192 of those images for print in Reveal Your Detroit. In the book of photo essays, he shows the people’s perspectives and places – from the gritty to the sublime.

Wayne State University Press, September 2013

Big 6, Large and in Charge: Project-Based Information Literacy Lessons
for Grades 3-6

By Annette C. Hibbert Nelson ’00 and Danielle N. DuPuis

Based on national content standards, this collection of unit plans for teachers, created by library media specialists, builds on a method of problem-solving and decision-making called “Big 6” by introducing a superhero-type character that helps children find answers through critical thinking.

Linworth, March 2013

The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

By Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda ’69

From the first time she saw the paintings of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at El Museo del Barrio in New York City, Kreiter-Foronda was inspired to write her impressions in poetry. This collection by Virginia’s former poet laureate reflects Rivera and Kahlo’s marital, physical, and artistic struggles during the early 20th century.

San Francisco Bay Press, March 2013

Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comic Books, 1920-1960
By Nathan Vernon Madison ’08

The author explores how Americans’ fear of outsiders and evolving nativist attitudes surrounding both world wars shaped the stories, villains, and heroes of four decades of comic books and other inexpensive literature.

McFarland, January 2013

Shin Fujiyama ’07 shares a moment with Abigail, 11, an orphanage resident undergoing treatment
for a rare cancer.

Twelve orphaned girls in Honduras now have a secure, stable home thanks to two organizations founded by Shin Fujiyama ’07.

The Villa Soleada Girls Home, which opened in August, provides young residents with housing, food, education, supervision, sports programs, and medical and psychological care – and someday, college. The orphanage is the culmination of a longtime dream for Fujiyama.

He first volunteered in Honduras as a UMW undergraduate, and the experience opened his eyes to “the state of children, especially girls, who struggle against poverty and unimaginable violence in the developing world,” he said in a video about his time there.

While still a UMW student, Fujiyama founded Students Helping Honduras, an organization that has since grown to encompass dozens of college and high school chapters. More recently, Fujiyama and SHH created Central American Children’s Institute, specifically to help Honduran children.

The home for girls cost $50,000 to build and furnish. It is in the community of Villa Soleada, which SHH helped develop in the past decade as a sustainable village for former residents of an urban shantytown.

Children of Villa Soleada gather with
some of their adult caregivers.

Besides establishing Villa Soleada and opening the orphanage, SHH and CACI have built a dozen schools in Honduras; eventually, the groups hope to build 1,000 schools. Volunteers come from around the world to work on the projects, and money comes from campus-chapter fundraising efforts and private donations large and small.

Susan Wagner Lacy ’70

After 27 years as creator and executive producer of the acclaimed PBS biography series American Masters, Susan Wagner Lacy ’70 has signed a deal to produce and direct documentaries for HBO.Lacy will create a biographical series for HBO. “This was a wonderful opportunity for me to continue to make films,” she told The New York Times.

Lacy created American Masters in 1986, and for the series’ first decade she produced the work of other documentarians. Eventually, she made films of her own, covering subjects including Paul Simon, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, John Lennon, Leonard Bernstein, and Joni Mitchell.

Successful as American Masters has been, Lacy faced a challenge getting it off the ground, she recalled in a 2010 interview with University of Mary Washington Magazine. “Everybody laughed at me when I had the idea for the series, and now I’m getting lifetime achievement awards.”

The series also has won numerous Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, and Grammys.

Natalie Joy Johnson

Natalie Joy Johnson ’00 shares some traits with her self-titled character in Natalie Joy Johnson: Full Bush, an adults-only show about a down-on-her-luck woman who is looking for love everywhere except where she’ll find it – deep within herself.

The performance, described as “riveting” and “heart-stopping,” earned a 2013 New York Musical Theatre Festival Award for Excellence for outstanding individual performance.

The character “is a bit more grand…boozy…and over the top than I am,” Johnson told Playbill.com. “That’s saying a lot.”

The Mary Washington theater major, one of Time Out New York’s Top-10 Downtown Divas, might be best known for her two roles in Legally Blonde – on Broadway as high-strung law student Enid Hoopes and on the national tour as divorced manicurist Paulette.

The Village Voice called her weekly performance at Brooklyn’s Therapy bar “zingy…and fun…Bette Midler meets Courtney Love.” Her first self-titled piece, Natalie Joy Johnson Is Relentless, was named a Top-10 cabaret. Her latest creation, Full Bush, mixes her own real-life moments with ones she completely made up, Johnson told Playbill.com.

“I’ll never tell which.”

In conjunction with the fall production of The Laramie Project at Ford’s Theatre, Shayla Roland helped create an exhibit of letters sent to the parents of Matthew Shepard after their son was murdered in 1998 because he was gay. Photo courtesy of Teresa Wood Photography.

When Roland was studying to be a stage manager at the University of Mary Washington, she couldn’t have imagined doing work like this to support a major stage production of The Laramie Project, which explores the aftermath of the Wyoming hate crime.

After graduation, Roland took parttime work at historic Ford’s Theatre. Last February, the Washington, D.C., theater − famous as the location of the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln − made Roland its full-time special programming manager.

What shows offstage is just as important as onstage at Ford’s, which aspires to honor the legacy of Lincoln by exploring the American experience through theater and education. Roland’s job is to help develop programs that supplement shows and create a dialogue about tolerance and social equality. In the case of The Laramie Project, Ford’s fall production by Moisés Kaufman, Roland helped put together a haunting exhibit that highlights the letters that arrived after the murder of the University of Wyoming student.

Photo courtesy of Teresa Wood Photography

Some of the most emotional letters Roland read in the Wyoming basement were written by children, she said, and by older gay people who’d been closeted their whole lives. She even found a letter from a Mary Washington student who’d sent $10, saying it was all she had. Roland’s favorite letter, printed on yellow paper, was striking in its simplicity: “I’m so sorry. I’m shocked. I wish I had something better to say.”

“I’m fortunate that my job allows me to do these things where I can be a part of something that brings these letters to Ford’s − to our exhibit space − that thousands of people will see,” the psychology and theater major said. Ford’s Theatre, a popular tourist destination, is well positioned to reach visitors from all over the world. “School groups, kids, people from all walks of life, can see and feel and learn, and it will hopefully urge them to do something wonderful.”

Ford’s partnered with other organizations to offer post-show discussions, a candlelight vigil on the 15th anniversary of the murder, and readings of companion plays through the show’s October run. “I think it’s important to get the community involved,” Roland said, “because if the community is not involved, I don’t think anything is going to change.”

Photo courtesy of Teresa Wood Photography

Roland’s letters exhibit was unaffected by this fall’s federal government shutdown.

The exhibit was displayed at the neighboring Center for Education and Leadership, run by an independent, not-for-profit society.

Though Ford’s Theatre itself was closed, performances of The Laramie Project were held at a nearby church.

Roland’s meaningful work didn’t come her way overnight. “It’s about connections,” she said. “It’s about getting that part-time job and being awesome and hopefully showing them that they need you.” UMW played its role in her career, too, Roland said. Mary Washington has “definitely given me a leg up in the world and pushed me to do what I love to do.”