In 1994, she emigrated from the Dominican Republic to the United States. Initially she struggled to adapt and learn English. Her salvation came in the form of elementary school teachers who helped her.

"My third grade teacher was incredibly influential, reached out to my family, and used her bilingual skills to make me feel comfortable enough to want to learn," Estevez said.

Now Estevez is in the position to do the same. The Queens, N.Y., resident has been chosen to join Teach For America, which recruits outstanding recent college graduates and working professionals to teach in urban and rural public schools. This year the corps received a record 35,000 applications from graduating seniors, postgraduates and professionals.

The Teach For America corps trains and provides ongoing support to candidates from all backgrounds and career interests to help them successfully teach in low-income communities. Corps members commit to teach for at least two years. The goal, according to Teach for America Web site, is to eliminate educational equities by enlisting help of the nation's future leaders.

Estevez, a double major in international relations and Italian Studies, was a senior class officer and Posse Scholar. She will begin teaching third grade in September in a new elementary school in Newark, N.J.

Third grade continues to hold a special place in her heart because of the teachers. "By challenging me and caring about the progress I made, my teachers helped me build the confidence and academic skills that I desperately needed in order to move on from bilingual classes," she wrote in her Teach For America application essay. "To this day, I still very fondly remember the names of those teachers, and I am certain that this is the type of impact I would like to have on students in similar situations today."

Her time at Wheaton has taught her valuable lessons that she hopes to pass on. "At Wheaton, I was exposed to people who had very different experiences and because of it I have learned more about myself," she said. "I would like to share this with my students and create a classroom atmosphere that is welcoming and accepting of differences. I expect that most of my students will identify as either African American or Latino, many of whom have never left Newark. I will encourage them to explore outside of their boundaries but always bring their experiences and talent back home to a city that has been deprived for many decades."

This fall, about 4,100 new corps members will start teaching in schools across the nation. The other Wheaton students who will be among them are: Sarah Mielbye '09 of Attleboro, Mass., who will teach in Connecticut, and Kristine Vilagie '09 of Carver, Mass., who will head to Phoenix, Arizona.

"The overall thrust of this research is to get at some really fundamental issues about the limits of life. Is life limited to Earth? Is there a possibility that it could be elsewhere? If so, maybe these ice-covered oceans are one of the best places to look for it," said Goodman, whose research focuses broadly on fluid mechanics of atmospheres, oceans and ice.

The NASA award is part of a larger five-year grant given to a newly selected NAI team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The grant amount to Wheaton for the first year is $30,000. Goodman will be working in collaboration with Steve Vance, a planetary geophysicist at JPL.

Wheaton Associate Professor of Geology Geoff Collins, who has been researching Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, is co-investigator on the project. Wheaton students will be hired to work with Goodman in performing computer and laboratory simulations of the flow of heat and currents in the oceans of these distant worlds.

The NAI-JPL team consists of 47 researchers and education specialists representing 21 institutions. The team includes 17 universities, two non-profit research organizations, and two NASA centers spanning 11 states and four countries, according to Isik Kanik, NAI-JPL team leader. The team will research various aspects of the icy worlds of the outer planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

"These planets have a number of moons that are basically big balls of ice. It has become clear over the years that many of these balls may actually have liquid water underneath their surfaces," said Goodman. "That makes them really the only places in the universe in the solar system besides the Earth that have clearly substantial amounts of liquid water readily available. And since as far as we can tell liquid water is a prerequisite for life on Earth if you are interested in life elsewhere, these would be the places to check out."

Europa is one of the moons with the most obvious evidence of liquid water under its icy crust, he said. "There have been a lot of questions about the source of the heat that seems to be keeping the water layer liquid instead of freezing. And a lot of planetary geologists interested in the surface have been making descriptions about certain features on the surface-weird chunks of ice and evidence of it moving and breaking apart. The belief is that some sort of heating from the liquid below caused the ice to do that. But if you are going to make that kind of argument, you really need to know something about how the water is moving and transferring heat. Up until this point, really nobody had made a serious effort to understand that."

Over the years the professor, who calls his work planetary oceanography, has written about the flows of water beneath these icy worlds. Now, using a combination of laboratory, computational and theoretical approaches, he will investigate circulation within Europa's sub-ice ocean.

"The basic problem is that nobody has ever seen this ocean, nobody has ever taken a cup of water out of it. It's under several kilometers of a thick layer of ice," he said. "So it's really tough to get any real data about it. So in the absence of actually being able to measure things, we are working from first principles and trying to predict what we think it will be like and how it is likely to flow."

(Photo of Europa: courtesy of NASA/JPL)

Current Watson Fellow Rushyan Yen '08 is  criss-crossing the world to observe and work alongside batik artists in Europe and Asia to study how they transform the influences of culture and community into their own unique designs. And she is writing about the experience as it happens. 

The studio art major is documenting her trip on the blog, Paths of Molten Wax on Volatile Cloth. Her online diary offers a stream of impressions: images of the batiks she creates and how each country is influencing her work, thumbnail descriptions of the artists with whom she has studied and comments about living and creating art "on the road."

Most recently, Yen posted a string of articles about her experiences in The Gambia, an undeveloped country with very few modern amenities. The articles recount some of what she learned about the economy and culture in which the country's artists work, as well as the struggles of learning how to create batik without the tools and resources to which she is accustomed. 

In particular, she paid tribute to the artist with whom she worked: 

Buba Drammeh, took his role as my teacher very seriously and was adamant that there is only one way of producing a batik – his way. My sense of superiority made it difficult to take him seriously and I couldn't help but see how crude and "inferior"  his technique was to the others I have seen. These feeling quickly changed to amazement and admiration the day I tried to create my own batik.  After wasting an hour and an entire box of matches trying to melt my wax, lugging gallons of water over from the water pump half a mile away, working on a completely uneven table and standing under the hot sun, I am humbled by Buba's skill compared to my own incompetence.

Yen's yearlong study of batik artistry and the ways in which artists' practices are influenced by culture is not her first experience in working and learning abroad. As one of Wheaton's International Davis  Fellows, Yen worked in Beijing at the Art and Design Research Center for the 2008 Olympic Games (and she attended the games' opening ceremonies). The center was responsible for communicating the Olympic theme "One World, One Dream" through art.  

The 2008 Wheaton alumna, who graduated magna cum laude with a major in studio art, plans to continue her work and study in western Africa throughout July before returning home, and her blog will offer more impressions of an incredible trip in the weeks ahead. She has said that that her long-term goal is a career in art. "As long as my hands and my mind are engaged in the process of creation, I will be living my life goals," she said. 

 The Thomas J. Watson Foundation was created in 1961 as a charitable trust by Mrs. Thomas J. Watson, Sr., in honor of her late husband, the founder of International Business Machines Corp., widely known as IBM. The Watson Fellowship was established seven years later and has granted fellowships to more than 2,300 undergraduates, with stipends totaling more than $29 million.

The graduating class achieved 97 percent participation and more than $3,300 toward their class gift. The "big swim" took place on Thursday, May 14.

"Normally, I would not consider jumping into Peacock Pond; I prefer the pool," said President Crutcher. "However the Class of 2009 has done an outstanding job, pulling together to show their support for Wheaton. So I was more than willing to live up to my end of the bargain."

Lucia Rodezno, senior class president, worked on reaching this goal with class gift chairs Elsy Estevez and Sarah Mielbye, as part of the class council. They, along with a class council subcommittee of 12 students representing a cross-section of the student population, came up with the ways to reach out to the seniors and inform them about the class gift and the Peacock Pond challenge.

"It was a great incentive for seniors to give to the class gift," said Rodezno. "Not only did the president  jump into the pond, but he jumped with us in celebration of our success. It speaks of the way the administration at Wheaton is willing to work with students in reaching goals and how education is a joint effort of several teams."

Families are losing their homes. Millions have lost their jobs. Hearts are being broken, he told the 418 members of the Class of 2009.

"That is the world that all of you are about to inhabit. A society in many ways in anguish, and an economy in crisis. And I invite you to embrace it, because crisis is a platform for change."

"I ask you, from out of this crisis, to make a change," he said. "Make an economy that expands opportunity out to the marginalized, not just up to the well connected. Make schools that ignite a love of learning in every child and that honor and support teachers. Make accessible and affordable health care a public good. Make streets and homes free from violence and a community that helps feed, clothe and house our most fragile neighbors. Heal the planet. No challenge is beyond your capacity to care about or to solve, so long as you are pragmatic idealists, can imagine a better tomorrow, and then reach for it."

"What I am asking of you, what I am hoping for and counting on from you, is not easy. But it is simpler than you might think, because I believe that Americans are ready, even in the unexpected corners of our country, to serve and to sacrifice."

[The transcript of Wheaton's Commencement address and high resolution photos are posted at http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/CR/cr2009/commencement/.]

Governor Patrick made history as the Commonwealth's first African American Governor when he was elected in November of 2006. Prior to being governor, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, the nation's top civil rights post, in 1994.

At the U.S. Department of Justice, his work included the prosecution of hate crimes, abortion clinic violence, employment discrimination, and the enforcement of fair lending laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act. During his tenure, he led the largest criminal investigation prior to the September 11 terrorist bombings, coordinating state, local and federal agencies to investigate church burnings in the South.

Patrick also has worked as a lawyer and executive at Coca-Cola and Texaco and has served on numerous charitable and corporate boards, as well as the Federal Election Reform Commission under Presidents Carter and Ford.

In his address, Patrick said spoke of growing up on welfare on the south side of Chicago in his grandparents' two-bedroom tenement. He shared a room and set of bunk beds with his mother and his sister. Although he loved to read, he said he didn't own a book until he got a break and came to a Massachusetts boarding school on a scholarship. In contrast, his daughter always had her own room in a nice house outside of Boston. By the time she was in high school she had traveled to four continents and had shaken hands in the White House with the President of the United States.

"One generation. One generation. And the circumstances of my life and my family's have profoundly changed. Now, that story isn't told as often as we'd like in this country, but it is told more often in this country than any other place on earth. That is the American story. That is who we are: the simple idea that through hard work, tenacity, preparation and faith each of us has a chance at the American story."

That American story is at risk and needs to be renewed, he told the graduates.

"Here at Wheaton you have been intentionally exposed to differences in thought and culture, to new ideas and new ways of looking at old ones; to wise and maybe sometimes odd professors and classmates alike, whose wisdom and oddities you may only come to appreciate on the eve of this graduation. You have been trained to value honor and integrity in others and to maintain your own above all. You have been encouraged to imagine better tomorrows, and then to work for them, to become what I call pragmatic idealists.

"The world needs pragmatic idealists today, in spite of the crisis around us, and perhaps because of it... With your training and credentials you could, if you wanted to, spend your whole lives averting your eyes from the daily calamity of less fortunate souls and circumstances, focused exclusively on your own achievement or survival, or just lost, like so many impractical idealists that I have known, in that existential turmoil over why bad things happen to good people. Or, you could look clearly at what's wrong, as pragmatic idealists, and set yourselves to make it right."

The Governor already knows Wheaton well. He spoke in classes and participated in panel discussions as a Wheaton Distinguished Fellow in 1998. He also spoke here as a gubernatorial candidate in 2006.

During Commencement, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Honorary degrees also were presented to Donna Hurd Drohan'69, Sandra Ohrn Moose,'63 and Anne J. Neilson'49. Drohan is an independent consultant on defense transportation and logistics concepts. She has distinguished herself in the field of research and analysis applied to operations in the Federal government and private sector. Moose, a Wheaton Trustee, is a senior advisor to The Boston Consulting Group and president of Strategic Advisory Services LLC, an investment advisory and management consulting firm. Neilson, also a Wheaton Trustee emerita, has built a reputation in the field of taste chemistry. She worked for Arthur D. Little for more than 40 years, beginning as a taste tester, advancing to chemist and later, senior chemist. Currently she is an independent consultant to the company.

About 500 alumnae/i participated in Commencement/Reunion Weekend. Among them was Dorothy Dempsey Steele from the oldest class represented--1934. Four members from the Class of 1939 celebrated their 70th reunion--Mildred Poland Lewis, Muriel Garney Nash, Lois Leonard Ryder and Dorothy Green Smith.

This academic year Wheaton students and graduates won seven prestigious national scholarship, including a total of four Fulbrights, a Watson Fellowship and a Truman Scholarship.

Kelly Maby '09 of Woodhaven (Queens), N.Y., won a $28,000 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study the informal waste collection systems that have developed in Egypt, Australia, Guatemala, Ecuador and Brazil. Maby, a double major in Hispanic studies and sociology, is the fourth Wheaton student to win a Watson in the past two years. The Thomas J. Watson Foundation awards fellowships to college seniors of unusual promise for a year of independent exploration and travel outside the United States.

Four members of the Class of 2009 won Fulbright scholarships: Scott Clark, an English and Hispanic studies major from East Longmeadow, Mass., was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to be an English teaching assistant at a teacher-training college in Argentina. Physics major Megan O'Sadnick of Evergreen, Colo., will join a research team at the Norwegian Polar Institute. The team has been studying glaciers located on Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard. Biochemistry major Blair Rossetti of Plymouth, Mass., will go to the Netherlands to research the self-renewal of stem cells and their differentiation into progenitor cells at Utrecht University, under the guidance of Dr. Sander van den Heuvel, one of the world's premier scientists in the area of cell division research. Anthropology major Chelsey Taylor of Rockford, Ill., will teach English in South Korea and plans to explore ancient cultural sites throughout the country while investigating how Korean artifacts are displayed to convey the Korean past.

Gabriel Amo '10, of Pawtucket, R.I., was named a Truman Scholar. A political science major, he is one of 60 college students in the nation to win the prestigious 2009 Truman Scholarship in public service. Each Scholarship provides up to $30,000 for graduate study. Amo plans to use the scholarship to further his work in education policy.

Julia Bolt '08 of Cambridge, Mass., has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Sofia, Bulgaria. She plans to analyze the progress being made in the area of desegregation of the public school system in Bulgaria and explore how this has affected opportunities for Roma children to receive quality education.

Other major awards were won as well.

Matthew Kuch '11 and Caroline Cornwall '09 each won a Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace award. The award provides each with $10,000 to promote world peace through projects to be undertaken this summer. Kuch of Kampala, Uganda, plans to introduce a new type of cooking stove that he helped design to make life easier and healthier for families living in northern Uganda. Cornwall of Rahway, N.J., plans to start an after school program in Santiago, Chile where she spent her junior year abroad.

Lily Mulcahy '09, an anthropology major from Norwell, Mass., took first prize in the undergraduate student paper competition at the 6th Annual Greater Boston Anthropology Consortium Student Conference for her paper, "I'm Too Young for This: Multivocality in Young Cancer Advocacy.

After a rigorous admissions process, Sarah Mielbye '09 of Attleboro, Mass., and Kristine Vilagie '09 of Carver, Mass., have been chosen to participate in Teach for America, a select corps of college graduates who commit to teaching for two years in low-income communities across the nation. Mielbye, an international relations major, will teach in Connecticut, while Vilagie '09, a political science major, will head to Phoenix, Arizona. Both will teach in elementary schools.

Wheaton students have won more than 60 prestigious academic awards since 2001, including three Rhodes Scholarships.

Located in Norton, Mass., Wheaton is a highly selective college of the liberal arts and sciences with a student body of 1,500. It is a member of the Twelve College Exchange, which also includes Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Trinity, Wellesley and Wesleyan.

There are no reported or suspected cases of H1N1 influenza (swine flu) on the Wheaton College campus. Wheaton's administrators continue to monitor this situation closely.

Campus health and safety for Commencement/Reunion Weekend and beyond will be maintained using guidelines from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Everyone must do their part to guard against the flu and other communicable diseases.

The CDC offers these important protective steps:

• Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.
• Practice good "cough etiquette" by coughing or sneezing into a tissue, or into your elbow instead of into your hands.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
• If you get sick, stay home and limit contact with others to avoid infecting them.

Wheaton officials have taken additional preventative measures, including distributing hand sanitizer dispensers in academic and athletic facilities. Building Services will maintain these locations and will keep supplies in stock throughout the summer.

The events regarding this outbreak are evolving rapidly. We will keep the Wheaton community informed of important developments.

Massachusetts residents can now call (2-1-1) for basic information about swine flu. More information on swine flu can be found on the following Web links:

Swine Flu Fact Sheet
http://www.mass.gov/Eeohhs2/docs/dph/cdc/factsheets/swine_flu.pdf

Massachusetts Swine Flu Information:
http://mass.gov/dph

MDPH Blog (offers regular situation updates)
http://publichealth.blog.state.ma.us/

U.S. CDC Swine Influenza Website:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/swine/

WHO Swine Influenza information
http://www.who.int/en/

Celebrated mainly in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Suriname, Guyana, South Africa, Trinidad, the UK, Mauritius and Fiji, Holi takes place on the last full moon day of the lunar month of Phalguna. In its native countries, this event usually takes place in late February or March.

"It's the traditional Hindu spring festival, properly celebrated in March, which is entirely too cold in New England for the flinging of water and dye," said Vareene Parnell, associate dean of Service, Spirituality and Social Responsiblity (SSSR), "Still, it might be really fun to try it with snow some time!"

Wheaton's celebration of Holi was started by Hindu student Shanita Gopi '07 and was organized this year by Rekha Aidasana '10 and Jacquelyn Phillips '09, co-presidents of the Interfaith Alliance (IFA). Both Gopi and Phillips drew inspiration for Wheaton's Holi celebration from their junior semester abroad in India. The IFA students have incorporated a new twist into the color-throwing festival.

"In Hinduism, the throwing of the colors represents the colors of spring and the tossing away of any negative feelings and thoughts that have accumulated over the winter," Phillips said. "The IFA and SSSR also invite Holi participants to throw away their stereotypes and preconceptions about religion and spirituality and to learn more about different faith systems from the students, faculty and staff who practice them. What could be a better beginning to the season of renewal?"

Tyler Weir '10 and Fabiola Benedetti wrote the article after accompanying Visiting Associate Professor of German Reinhard Mayer to a NETA monthly meeting at which Haidar Muffaq Al-Sara spoke about his career as a translator in Iraq. The article recounts Al-Sara's lecture, which described how he became a translator and interpreter in Iraq and his experiences working for the U.S. Forces in Iraq.

Like many other translators, Al-Sara said that, because of his job as a translator, he was considered a traitor in his own country and that his life was endangered because of his work. In some situations, translators were even urged to wear masks so that they would not be recognized. As a result, the US government brought him along with hundreds of other US Army interpreters, to the U.S.

"Bringing students from the class along to this monthly meeting of the NETA was a form of ‘experiential learning' that put them in touch with professional translators," said Professor Mayer. Tyler and Fabiola also gave a report to the class and led a discussion about this event."

In their article, Weir and Benedetti wrote: "By the end of the conference," NETA members had already welcomed the man from the other side of the Atlantic into their family of translators." The winter issue of the newsletter also contains a report on an initiative undertaken by the organization to advocate for legislative help for Iraqi translators and interpreters who have been brought to the U.S. on special immigrant visas granted them by Congress because of the palpable danger in which they worked and lived in Iraq.

Weir, who is a German major and has completed pre-med requirements to pursue admission to dental school, spent the spring semester in Germany. He says the experience of talking with Al-Sara has influenced his studies in Germany.

"A lot of what Haidar had to say was quite philosophical and I have found that language has come alive in my life," he said. "I cannot get enough. Every chance I get, I try to observe other languages I am unable to speak and see how people are still able to communicate."

Fabiola Benedetti who is from Argentina, has worked this year at Wheaton as the Spanish Assistant and is in the process of applying to Graduate Schools in the US to get a PhD in Translation Studies.

Rossetti is particularly interested in stem cell research because of its potential to yield knowledge for cell-based therapies for such illnesses as diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, heart disease and cancer.

"The ability for stem cells to create any cell type makes them ideal targets for cell-based therapies for neurogenerative diseases and cancer," Rossetti said.

And there is still much to learn about stem cells, he added.

"One area of significant interest concerns the processes involved in the regeneration of new stem cells and creation of differentiated progenitor cells by asymmetric cell division," Rossetti said. "Research in this area will help elucidate the role of cell division machinery in the self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells, in turn unlocking opportunities for the use of stem cells in disease cures and prevention."

During his Fulbright year, Rossetti will focus on research aimed at understanding developmental gene activities during cell division in the roundworm C. elegans. The asymmetric division of human embryonic stem cells is similar to that which takes place in the early embryos of the roundworm, he said.

While in Holland, Rossetti will also take graduate courses and seminars through the university's Cancer Genomics and Developmental Biology program.

Rossetti, who hails from Plymouth, Mass., is a Charles C. Dana Scholar, a Presidential Scholar and a Trustee Scholar at Wheaton.  He has been a lead student researcher in Professor Robert Morris's lab, which focuses on the study of cell biology. In 2008, Rossetti received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the premier national award for undergraduates in the fields of mathematics, science and engineering.

Last summer, he worked as a technician in the microscope facilities at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., where he also assisted Morris with his research on cell division in sea urchins.

Rossetti plans to pursue doctoral studies in biology and hopes to teach cell and developmental biology at the university level while continuing his research activities.

During his year abroad, he looks forward to experiencing a European culture in depth as he studies and learns at a distinguished university that dates back to the Middle Ages. And although English is widely spoken in the Netherlands, he is looking forward to learning Dutch. 

"The prospect of living and working with others while communicating in their native language is particularly exciting," he said. "By removing this boundary, we will open new opportunities for learning and collaboration."

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers the following information and instructions:

* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.

* Practice good "cough etiquette" by coughing or sneezing into a tissue, or into your elbow instead of into your hands.

* Try to avoid close contact with sick people.

* If you get sick, stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to avoid infecting them.

Students experiencing flu like symptoms (such as fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue) should contact Norton Medical Center (NMC) at 508.286.5400 and ask to speak with the triage nurse.

Wheaton's Student Health Services Coordinate, Cynthia Maricle is available at NMC to help with any health services questions or concerns. She can be reached at 508.286.8210 or by email maricle_cynthia@wheatonma.edu.

The events regarding this outbreak are evolving rapidly. Wheaton's administrators will continue to watch this situation closely and keep the campus community informed of important developments.

Massachusetts residents can now call (2-1-1) for basic information about swine flu. More information on swine flu can be found on the following web site:

Swine Flu Fact Sheet
http://www.mass.gov/Eeohhs2/docs/dph/cdc/factsheets/swine_flu.pdf

Massachusetts Swine Flu Information:
http://mass.gov/dph

Massachusetts Department of Public Health Blog
http://publichealth.blog.state.ma.us/

U.S. CDC Swine Influenza Website:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/swine/

WHO Swine Influenza information
http://www.who.int/en/