The Best College Graduation Ever - My Daughter's

Last Thursday, I flew from London Heathrow to Newark to attend my daughter's college graduation and today I returned back to Oxford, England, where I am a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College for the trinity term.

This was a whirlwind trip but truly special - your child graduates college only once (although she may acquire additional degrees).

I have blogged about my daughter's graduation from Deerfield Academy as well as from The Bement School and, since many of my colleagues from around the world know Alexandra and are asking for highlights of her college graduation, I am writing this blogpost. She went to her first INFORMS conference in Boston when she was only 3 months old and one of her favorite conferences was when we were in Iceland. She has followed me on various academic appointments whether in Austria or in Sweden and soon will be joining me in England.

Her now alma mater is Lafayette College, which has a beautiful campus, very successful graduates,  and is one hour away from NYC; about an hour from Philadelphia, and about 2 hours from DC. Hence, there are many opportunities for great educational class field trips as well as internships.

The college was named after General Lafayette.

Although the graduation ceremony from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, was on Saturday, May 21, 2016, already on Friday, May 20, we had many events to attend, beginning with a very special ceremony in the Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, from which Alexandra received a BS summa cum laude and graduated with honors in geology and environmental geosciences.

 The faculty that Alexandra has had at Lafayette College were mentors, supporters, and some, I believe, also became friends. She traveled with geology faculty to Hawaii, did a field trip to Wyoming and many more local ones to her college, and was a TA on the second Wyoming field trip. She also had an externship in Oklahoma. Her honors thesis was on Iceland and I Skyped in recently from England for her oral defense.

At the geology ceremony, each senior major received a gift and also a professor or two spoke about what made the student unique. This was very moving event and took place in the beautiful geology building. Dr. Kira Lawrence, the Chair of the Department, who received her PhD from Brown University, was the officiator.

Professor Larry Malinconico, Alexandra's advisor, and Professor Tamara Carley, her honors thesis supervisor, both spoke about Alexandra. I personally had to thank Professor Hovis, a Harvard PhD for his mentorship of Alexandra as well. Dr. Malinconico is a Dartmouth PhD and also a former member of the crew team there.

My husband and I are very grateful for the nurturing that Lafayette College provided in terms of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education within a liberal arts college education. Her faculty also supported her when she submitted applications to various summer programs and graduate school. After her sophomore year, Alexandra did summer research on the environmental impact of fracking at the University of Colorado Boulder under an NSF REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates)  program, and, after her junior year, she was a summer intern at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, working on moon rocks in a very competitive international program.


In August,  she will begin a PhD program in geology.

On Friday, there was also an honors convocation in which the first page of each thesis presentation was displayed in a slide show and each student recognized. My cousin, Andrew Yarosh, a fellow Brown University grad, traveled from Colorado to join us in the celebrations.

There were numerous receptions to attend, which were very festive and, luckily, the rain held off, so the graduation ceremony could take place outdoors.

It was great to see a fellow Deerfield Academy graduate, class of 2012, Brad Marshall, who also hails from western Massachusetts, receive a degree in engineering from Lafayette College.

After graduation, it was time for the Lafayette College crew barbecue which the senior crew team members organized for the families. Alexandra has been both a VP and President of the crew team and, together this amazing group of student athletes,  journeyed together to competitions in the Northeast, including the Head of the Charles regatta in Cambridge and the Dad Vails in Philadelphia, trained during every spring break in Florida, and numerous mornings on the river around 6AM.  My daughter was the cox for the men's 4s and 8s boats and the camaraderie of this team is extraordinary. Special thanks to the coach, Rick Kelliher. They even planned and organized a banquet each year, which President Alison Byerly attended once, raised lots of money for the team, and even hosted an Olympian gold medalist at one of the banquets. President Byerly has been an outstanding President of Lafayette College.

Thanks to Lafayette College for providing my daughter with both transformative educational experiences (even a trip to Costa Rica), nurturing her love of science and research, her love of history and art history, with great classes in environmental sciences, advanced calculus, economics, and statistics.

As an academic, I have been to many wonderful college and graduation ceremonies, not only in the US, such as at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I teach, at Brown University and at Harvard University, but also abroad in Sweden, but when your daughter graduates, that will always be a very special one!

More photos from Lafayette's 181st commencement are available on the college's website. And, by the way, my husband, Alexandra's father, is also a Lafayette College grad and a very loyal alum. He still stays in touch with one of his former physics professors. Those are the special ties that bind.

Congratulations to the Class of 2016!

Dinner with a 1964 Olympic Gold Medalist on a Beautiful College Campus

I have met my share of Olympians, primarily, figure skaters, since that was one of my daughter's passions before college and she even skated in a performance with Johnny Weir at Lake Placid and we met Sarah Hughes and Todd Eldredge at the Mullins Center at UMass and Paul Wylie at a skating performance at Harvard when I was a Radcliffe Fellow.

Last weekend, I had a new experience - having dinner with an Olympic gold medalist, courtesy of my daughter, who has switched from figure skating to crew. Coincidentally, my Brown University room-mate for two years, Teresa Davila, had switched from being a ballerina in Chile to being  a member of the Brown University women's crew team when she matriculated there. I guess it is all about the muscle and the discipline!

The Olympian is Emory Clark, the author of  Olympic Odyssey.

The event was the Lafayette College crew banquet, which took place last Saturday. My daughter, as President of the Crew Club, got to officiate the lovely evening and we sat at the head table with the Olympian.

The beautiful campus was resplendent with blooming flowers (something not yet happening much in Massachusetts).

Now, how did an Olympian get to give the main speech? It's all because of those great school ties. The father of one of the rowers is Mr. Robert Hanke and he sent us the following explanatory message:

"Emory and I were fraternity brothers and classmates at Yale in 1960.  Emory was Captain of Yale’s Varsity Crew that year.  Following Yale, both Emory and I went on to serve as officers in the Marine Corps.  Emory then began rowing for Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia, where he went on to win the 1964 National Championship in the coxed pair.  After that, rowing in the Vesper Eight, he went on to win the U.S. Olympic trials, beating heavily favored Harvard, Yale and a number of other top collage crews.  That marked the first time a non-collegiate eight-oar, or club boat, ever represented the United States in the Olympics.  In 1964, Emory and the Vesper Boat Club went on to the Tokyo Olympics, winning the Gold Medal and becoming Olympic Champions.  Emory continued competitive rowing most of his life, winning many more races, right up to his early 70s.  He book, Olympic Odyssey, has just been published."

See you at the races,

Robert Hanke

Col. USMC (Ret.)

The evening was magical and below are a few photos from the great event.  The Olympic gold medal is also featured below. I especially enjoyed hearing Mr. Emory Clark speak about his Olympic gold medal team-mates, who ranged in ages from 20 to 34, and the cox was a 46 year old Hungarian who had become a US citizen. He also spoke about Mr. John Kelly, the brother of the Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly, who was affiliated with the Vesper Club. He emphasized how the team to beat at these Olympics (and many other races in that era) was the German team.

And, yes, both my daughter and Mr. Hanke's son were recognized for their leadership on the crew team. My daughter is the cox for two men's boats and if you can get a group of men to row fast as a team together, you are a born leader! The medals and trophies that they have been garnering this crew season plus the fun that they have been having, even with pre 6AM rowing practices, say it all.

Head of the Charles Regatta -- The Largest Regatta in the World

Boston is a great sports town and yesterday was an amazing day for sports fans -- not only did the Red Sox win their baseball game and made it into the World Series, so many of my students will be very happy this week, but it was also the first day of the two-day Head of the Charles Regatta, which brought an estimated 300,000 rowers, friends, and spectators to the Cambridge/Boston area.

Competitors came from 19 different countries and there were so many colleges and universities represented. This was my second Head of the Charles regatta -- when I was on sabbatical at Harvard in 2005-2006 as a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, I watched from the Cambridge side.

But, yesterday, we watched from the Allston bank of the Charles River and the competitors ranged in age from 14 - 85 years of age. Interestingly, at the INFORMS Conference in Minneapolis, October 6-9, 2013, I attended many business meetings and other events and at a Fora breakfast meeting, a faculty member from Drexel University sat next to me. I took one look at him and asked him whether he had been a rower. Amazingly, he had started rowing while in high school, and had gone to the Head of The Charles -- his boat beat Princeton and Harvard and everyone in his boat got recruited by the Ivy League. He rowed for Princeton and majored in architecture -- so he was learning about operations research and analytics.

My college room-mate at Brown University was on the women's crew (and an Applied Math major, no less) and now my daughter is on a crew team so that was why we were in Cambridge yesterday,

It was fabulous to see so many competitors and colleges represented from across the US!

I even saw several members of the UMass Amherst women's crew team and several of my daughter's friends from her elementary school, The Bement School, and high school, Deerfield Academy, who are on various college crew teams, were also there. Other friends came to watch from various vantage points.

Given what happened at our Boston Marathon  last April 15, there was a lot of police presence and I spoke to several officials about the heightened security.

We even saw the men's Olympic Gold medalist from Auckland, New Zealand, in an event after the Women's Collegiate 4s zip by several boats.

I love the team aspect of this sport from the rowers working in unison to the  coxswains, who are the "persons in charge of the boat, particularly its navigation and steering." They are those with the loud voices and more compact sizes. It is great to see female coxswains directing males in boats. Future, CEOs. I suspect.

We stood with fans supporting many different colleges and universities and saw boats from Bowdoin, Trinity, West Point, Clemson University, the Coast Guard Academy, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, University of Florida, Bryant University, Lafayette College, Vanderbilt, Washington University, Texas A&M, University of Chicago, Vassar, McGill University, Wheaton College, Hamilton College, Wesleyan University, Amherst College, Barry University (which won), and many other schools compete. Several course records were broken.

It was great to see the smiles on the rowers' faces after they competed in a truly special sporting event.

The logistics behind the organization of this event were incredible and the rowers had to row about 3 miles from their launches before starting their 3 mile races. Crew members are super physically fit.

The souvenir stands were fun, too.

Congrats to the organizers of The Head of the Charles for a great event and to all the competitors and coaches, of course!

All the results can be found here.

And for those who were selected to be volunteers (it seems that IT skills were in demand), for 3 hours of work, you got the gorgeous Brooks Brothers jacket, valued at $250 (one of my daughter's friends received one).

 

What a Difference a Day Makes -- from the Schuykill Regatta to College and University Closings Because of Hurricane Sandy

Being a professor one has colleagues and friends in many colleges and universities around the globe -- so when an event happens somewhere, chances are high that you may know someone there.

Now with Hurricane Sandy expected to affect over 60 million people with its fury in the Northeast many of us are getting prepared.

However, only yesterday, we were in Philadelphia at the Head of the Schuykill Regatta watching so many rowers from the Northeast (men and women of all ages, including numerous college and university teams) compete in an atmosphere of warm weather, numerous spectators, and beautiful Fall foliage. We saw friends from many colleges that we had gotten to know through our daughter's elementary school and high school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. I was amazed at the boathouses that line the river and the beauty of Fairmont Park.My college roomate at Brown University was on the crew team so I have come to appreciate the sport.

And today, driving back from eastern Pennsylvania back to western Massachusetts, we saw state of emergency signs in New Jersey, in Connecticut, and we heard Governor Andrew Cuomo of NY announce that the subways were shutting down in NYC tonight at 7PM. Now Governor Deval Patrick has declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts. We also saw electric power company trucks from Georgia and Tennessee  in caravans as we were driving north.

Crew teams were rowing yesterday for colleges from UPenn to Lafayette College, among others, which are now closing for tomorrow because of Hurricane Sandy.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is closed tomorrow (Monday) and my husband's university in Connecticut has cancelled classes for the next three days.

What a difference a day makes!

What will await us as when we wake up tomorrow and on Tuesday?!