Retirement from the
Skidmore College Faculty
Spring 2014

Faculty Meeting
April the Twenty-Fifth
Two Thousand and Fourteen

Be It Resolved:
The faculty of Skidmore College expresses
its profound appreciation and admiration for
the following members of the Skidmore
faculty who have this year expressed theirdetermination to retire. The faculty further
resolves that the following biographicalhighlights be included in the minutes of thefaculty meeting of April 25, 2014 inrecognition and celebration of their
distinguished service and achievement.

W

ith the retirement of Victor L. Cahn, the English department
loses an inspiring Shakespearean, a prolific playwright, anovelist, an actor, and a violinist. Victor was born in New
York City in 1948, and received his A.B. from Columbia College and his
M.A. and Ph.D. in English from New York University. He taught at
Mercersburg Academy, Pomfret School, Phillips Exeter Academy,
Bowdoin College, and for thirty-two years at Skidmore College, where hespecialized in Shakespeare, modern drama, the history of drama, andexpository writing. He was profiled in 300 Best Professors (edited by The
Princeton Review and published by Random House).

Victor’s success on the stage makes it no surprise that he is a star in theclassroom. As one student writes, “Professor Victor Cahn’s Shakespeare
course was one of the most thrilling English courses I’ve taken at
Skidmore.” Adds another, “his knowledge is endless; his enthusiasm iscontagious. ... He is easily one of the best professors I have ever had.” A
student with the goal of becoming a teacher sums things up this way: “Ifound myself not only taking notes about Shakespeare, but about how toteach Shakespeare. The department is so lucky to have him, as I havebeen for the last four years. He is kind and compassionate and dedicatedand firm and so so so intelligent. I will miss learning from him.”

Victor has written more than a dozen non-fiction books, including
Shakespeare the Playwright: A Companion to the Complete Tragedies,
Histories, Comedies, and Romances (named an Outstanding Academic
Book by Choice); The Plays of Shakespeare: A Thematic Guide; Political
Animal: An Essay on Shakespeare’s Henry V; Bard Games: The
Shakespeare Quiz Book; Beyond Absurdity: The Plays of Tom Stoppard;
Gender and Power in the Plays of Harold Pinter; Conquering College: A
Guide for Undergraduates; Classroom Virtuoso: Recollections of a Lifein Learning; Polishing Your Prose: How to Turn First Drafts into
Finished Work (with Steven M. Cahn); and Walking Distance:
Remembering Classic Episodes from Classic Television. He has also
written two novels, Romantic Trapezoid and Sound Bites, and his articles
and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as Modern
Drama, The Literary Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The
New York Times, and Variety.

One of the experiences students remember most from Victor’s classes isthe quaintly titled, yet utterly inspirational, “Culture Day.” Discovering,some years back, that his students didn’t know many of the things he felt
they should know, Victor instituted the now-famous Culture Day, an
opportunity to expose his students to popular cultures other than theirown. Victor begins by playing selections from Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas
on his violin, and then segues to a video of a performance by Itzhak
Perlman, or perhaps Vladimer Horowitz. If the students seem particularly
game, he might throw some Wagner at them. He shows clips from Paul
Robeson, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra, and then he shakes things up
with Abbott and Costello (“Who’s On First?”) and Danny Kaye (“thevessel with the pestle”). Then it’s a quick romp through Garbo andChaplin, with Fred Astaire closing things out. That Victor’s students not
only tolerate, but love, this boot camp of the imagination is ample
testimony not merely to his skill as a teacher, but to his sense that theliberal arts are a place of omnivorous possibility, where we sing, and wedance, and we act, and we play the violin, and we study, and we think,
and we learn. Always we learn.

Victor is the author of numerous plays, many of which have been
produced off-Broadway and in regional theater: Roses in December,
Embraceable Me, Fit to Kill (all published by Samuel French), Dally With
the Devil (Steele Spring Stage Rights), A Dish for the Gods, Getting theBusiness, Sheepskin/Bottom of the Ninth, and Sherlock Solo, a one-manshow that he performed. Other scripts have been presented throughout the
Capital Region of New York, where he has taken leading roles with Home
Made Theater, Schenectady Civic Players, Albany Civic Theater, Curtain
Call Theatre, Hubbard Hall, Cohoes Music Hall, and Theater Voices, andin works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Pinter, Ayckbourn, Coward, Simon,
Gurney, and Knott.

Victor’s colleagues in the English department thank him for his many
years of service, and we wish him all the best when the curtain goes up on
his next act.

Alice Dean did her graduate work in mathematics at the Universityof Massachusetts, earning her M.A. in 1976 and her Ph.D. in 1979.
After teaching at Smith College and Bates College, Alice started

in the Mathematics and Computer Science department at Skidmore in ashared position with her husband, Gove Effinger, in 1986. Just prior tocoming to Skidmore, she participated in the Institute for Retraining in
Computer Science (IFRICS) at Clarkson University. She later spent a
year as a visiting scholar at Coventry University in Coventry, England, in
1999-2000, where she was appointed as an “Associate of the School ofMathematics and Information Sciences.”
Alice’s Ph.D. dissertation was in topology, but she soon branched out into
other areas of expertise, including computational complexity theory andgraph theory. These specialties placed Alice’s work at the juncture ofmathematics and computer science, which, along with her participation in
IFRICS, made her particularly well-suited for Skidmore, whose computerscience program within the mathematics department was in its infancy.
Alice’s expertise in computer science greatly facilitated the nascentcomputer science program by helping the computer science faculty
deliver a more complete set of courses.
Alice has made many significant contributions to the College through herteaching over the years, including participation in the original LiberalStudies curriculum as a lecturer in the team-taught LSI course, where she
was also the author of two articles used in the 10th edition of LiberalStudies I: The Human Experience. Alice’s contributions to this course
helped students and faculty colleagues alike appreciate and understandmathematics as a human endeavor.
Alice is consistently interested in developing as a teacher and maintaining
openness to new ideas in pedagogy. In addition to her participation in
IFRICS, Alice attended several workshops on teaching mathematics withcomputer technology (UNC, Chapel Hill in 1990; RPI in 1994) as well asworkshops on pedagogy in computer science (one on the ‘closed
laboratory model’ at UVA and one on ‘Robotic Explorations in a Liberal
Arts Setting’; both in 1997). She also participated in the Partnerships
Workshop on Art-Humanities-Mathematics (Dartmouth, 1998.)
Additionally, she has attended many workshops in various aspects ofgraph theory, often being awarded grants to participate in theseworkshops. Her interest in faculty development is also reflected in her
service in the Faculty Development Committee here on campus.

One of Alice’s long-term goals was to widen the department’s offeringsin discrete mathematics, as this would help the department in at least two
ways. First, it would help support the computer science side of thedepartment as computer science is a major client of discrete mathematics;
second, it would also give students another entry into the study ofmathematics in lieu of the standard calculus track. One very importantachievement in this endeavor was Alice’s development of thedepartment’s upper-level course in graph theory, her own area ofscholarly work. This course, popular among both students of mathematics
and computer science, became the springboard of many student research
projects which, in turn, led to independent studies, senior honors theses,
and participation in the summer collaborative research program. The
graph theory course is expected to be a centerpiece in the department’s
long-term plans to expand its offerings in applied and discrete
mathematics.
As a scholar, Alice Dean is one of the most active members of theMathematics and Computer Science department. As of last year, she had
nearly thirty scholarly publications, the majority of which are research
articles in Graph Theory. Her publications also deal with her interests in
aspects of Computer Science, ranging from research articles on
computational complexity to the elementary programming textbook
Common Sense BASIC: Structured Programming with Microsoft
QuickBASIC, which she co-authored with her husband, Gove Effinger.
Alice collaborates with a number of colleagues and several of her research
papers are co-authored with Skidmore students whose research she
directed. Alice has studied and published articles in a wide variety of
topics within the theory of Graphs, including embedding parameters,
crossing numbers, visibility representations, computational geometry, andgraph drawing. The quality of Alice’s work is widely recognized; indeed,
she was selected in 2011 to deliver the Moseley Faculty Research Lecture.
To date, Alice is the only member of the department to be so honored.
In addition to her stellar research and teaching, Alice has served theCollege in other ways, including membership on numerous departmental
and college committees. Alice’s long-standing interest in diversity issues
is reflected in her service on the Affirmative Action Committee in theearly 1990s, her position as Assistant to the Dean of the Faculty forDiversity from 1993 to 1995, and her service on the Middle States
subcommittee for Diversity in 1995.

and he has been an especially valuable asset to the department for his workat the introductory level.

Her service was never far away from her scholarly work. Alice organizeddepartmental seminars on Graph Theory and on Surreal Numbers; sheorganized the department’s speaker program for many years; and brought
three professional conferences to the Skidmore campus: the Fifth
Northeast Symposium on Graph Theory and Combinatorics (1990), theFall Meeting of the Seaway Section of the Mathematical Association ofAmerica (1995), and Discrete Mathematics Day (2006).

In the early stages of his career, Gove contributed to the newly-formed
computer science program within the department by teaching introductory
structured BASIC programming courses, and also by contributing a
Liberal Studies course on Computers, Ethics, & Society. Another aspectof Gove's monumental contributions at the introductory level is his longterm work with the Quantitative Reasoning program. Gove started as the
QR liaison to the faculty in the early 1990s and eventually became
intimately involved when the college revamped the QR requirement. In
recent years, Gove has been the QR Director, which entails muchcoordination work in administering the QR1 exams and making sure all
students satisfy the requirements on time. Going beyond the call of duty,
Gove has personally spent countless hours helping individual students
overcome their difficulties with quantitative reasoning so they can pass
the exam. He has done this for the past several years while simultaneously
serving as department chair, an astounding feat, given the timerequirements for each job. Gove is well-known for giving his personal
time to students, even when other options for the student exist. For Gove,the student comes first, which characterizes his entire approach toteaching.

Alice Dean will be remembered as a professional mathematician withhigh standards and a prolific record of scholarly work. She will also be
remembered as an inspiring teacher of graph theory, discrete mathematics,
and the mathematics of theoretical computer science, and as a mentor androle model for all her students and junior colleagues. Congratulations,
Alice, on your retirement from 28 years of service to Skidmore College,
and good luck in your new shared position with your husband, Gove
Effinger, as Skidmore Retiree!

Gove earned his Master's Degree from University of Oregon in1969 (where he was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson
Fellowship and the N.D.E.A. National Fellowship), and his Ph.D.
from the University of Massachusetts (where he was the recipient of a
UMASS Fellowship) in 1981. Gove taught for six years in two private
high schools before enrolling at UMASS. After teaching at UMASS(where he won an award for outstanding teaching) and at Bates College,
Gove started in the Mathematics and Computer Science department at
Skidmore in a shared position with his wife, Alice Dean, in 1986.
Gove's scholarly interests lie in number theory, especially additive
number theory, and polynomials over finite fields, and he has been thedepartment's expert in this area for almost three decades. In addition toteaching number theory courses, Gove has been an influential teacher indepartment courses at all levels. He has delivered excellent courses at theupper level in topics such as real analysis, Galois Theory, and numericalanalysis, at the mid-level including calculus and differential equations,This primary concern for the well-being of the student extends to Gove's
other work, for example as department chair. Gove has a laser focus onenrollment numbers with each registration period, and because he neverwanted to turn a student away, he would cajole his colleagues into raising
their course caps, and when the enrollment figures were too high to makethat solution a practical one, he would argue deftly and ultimately,
successfully, to open new sections of the courses, even if that meant a lastminute scramble to find an instructor for the course.
At all levels, Gove's scholarship intertwines with his teaching. Afterteaching the BASIC programming courses several times, Gove coauthored a textbook Common Sense BASIC: Structured Programmingwith Microsoft QuickBASIC with his wife, Alice Dean, on this subject.
Gove's work on problems in additive number theory and related ideas,such as elliptic curve cryptography, became the basis of a number of
independent studies by mathematics majors, and the Senior Seminar, thedepartment’s capstone course for the major. Some of these collaborations
with students led to conference presentations or posters by the students,
or deeper work as part of the summer collaborative research program.
Much of Gove's work in number theory centered on taking questions
about integers and re-interpreting them in terms of polynomials over finite
fields, which are commutative rings that share many properties of theintegers. For example, Gove published several papers on the Goldbachtheorem for polynomials, and the so-called '3-primes problem'. His
paper, The Polynomial 3-Primes Conjecture, was notable because it used
the IBM 3090, a "supercomputer," to model and analyze his data. This
paper earned Gove an honorable mention in the 1989 IBM 3090
Supercomputing Competition. Some of his work was collaborative withDavid Hayes at UMASS, with whom Gove published not only research
articles, such as A Complete Solution to the Polynomial 3-Primes
problem, but also in 1991 an advanced book on the subject entitledAdditive Number Theory of Polynomials over a Finite Field. Afterdispensing with the polynomial 3-primes problem, Gove has taken up
work on the harder, polynomial twin primes problem and has publishedseveral papers on this problem as well.
Gove expects to continue to work on his interests in number theory andfinite fields after his retirement. In fact, he has already agreed to host a
conference at Skidmore College next year: the 12th International
Conference on Finite Fields and their Applications (“Fq12”) in July, 2015.
In addition to his unwavering dedication to the student and his scholarly
pursuits, Gove has served the College in many other ways. In addition tohis service as department chair and QR Director, he has refereed papers
for the American Mathematical Society; he has served on the steeringcommittee for the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference
twice--in 1995 and again as co-chair of the committee in 2011 when theconference last took place at Skidmore. He has served on numerous
college committees and task forces and has headed several recent searchcommittees.
Gove has also served the college in more intangible ways. Many of hiscolleagues within and outside of the department are appreciative of his
contributions to the community of Skidmore runners, most visibly hisleadership in organizing the annual Celebration weekend 5k race (which

has raised significant charitable donations over the years) and the annual
Corporate Challenge race in Albany. Another member of the department
notes how Gove, together with his wife, Alice Dean, went out of their way
to make visitors (such as job candidates) to campus feel especiallywelcome and at ease, by taking their own time to give them tours of thecollege campus and the Saratoga area, to welcome them into their home,or to join them at a restaurant for a shared meal. That some of these job
candidates are now our colleagues speaks well for the ways in which Gove
and Alice have reached out to them as visitors. In fact, Gove is noted for
his efforts to build collegiality through socializing. Gove has always
supported department gatherings in a social context, such as going out todinner after departmental meetings several times per year. Furthermore,
Gove and Alice generously open their home every year for the annual
departmental Christmas party.
Gove Effinger will be remembered as an accomplished teacher-scholar, agenerous and collegial colleague, and as someone who is highly focusedon the common good, be it through his dedication to community service,or through his utmost concern for the well-being of our students.
Congratulations, Gove, on your retirement from 28 years of service at
Skidmore College, and good luck on your new shared position with yourwife, Alice Dean, as Skidmore Retiree!

M

ary Ann Foley’s achievements across thirty years of teaching,scholarship and service are, in a word, astonishing. Mary Ann
so thoroughly exemplifies the Skidmore model ofteacher/scholar that it is impossible to distinguish her teaching from her
research. When she arrived in 1984, the Skidmore News reported, “In thenear future[,] Dr. Foley would like to form a lab group.” That evidently
was a gross understatement; thirty years later Mary Ann's record ofscholarship, carried out with Skidmore undergraduates, would be highly
distinguished for a professor at a research university. Her contributions tocognitive psychology are widely recognized in the scientific community,
as evidenced by her stellar scholarly record, the immense number ofreviews she has conducted for journals and external funding agencies, andthe external grant funding that she has received. Mary Ann has over 50
publications, including more than 40 peer-reviewed articles, many

appearing in the most prestigious empirical psychology journals. She has
supervised 71 senior thesis projects, presented at professional conferenceswith an even larger, uncountable number of students, and has 40 Skidmore
undergraduate co-authors on her published articles. Mary Ann hasreceived funding for highly competitive grants, including two from the
Spencer Foundation and seven from the National Science Foundation(NSF). Indeed, Mary Ann's external funding has continued across thirty
years; her NSF funding began in 1984, the year she arrived at Skidmore,
and will end in 2014, the year that she claims that she will retire. We are
not certain that Mary Ann will retire as threatened because she has threemanuscripts under review and two in preparation. Moreover, on her
manuscripts that are underway, there are four additional undergraduate
coauthors, so she is continuing to work with Skidmore students.
The path to Mary Ann's distinguished career began with her childhood
fascination with imagination, and with her amazement at her younger
sister's whole-hearted belief in companions not seen by anyone else. Mary
Ann realized that, in many situations, the so-called real and the so-called
imagined are not so distinct, and that this applies to the cognition of bothchildren and adults. There is wide agreement among psychologists thatmemory is constructed, such that initial information and subsequent
inferences are woven together, which makes information and inferences
imperceptible and indistinguishable. Therefore, how do we differentiate
what actually occurred from what we added to create a coherent
understanding of an event? Mary Ann translated her early curiosity about
real versus imagined into a systematic scientific investigation of memory
and learning in children. Her work challenged a long-standing
assumption, shared by prominent thinkers such as Freud and Piaget, thatchildren are more confusable than adults, and less able to separate factfrom fiction than adults are. Mary Ann's research establishes that the
memory of 3- to 7-year-olds is not adversely influenced by imagination,and indeed, make-believe activities promote children's learning andreasoning. She extended her interest in the real versus imagined toinvestigate adults' ability to monitor the source of information and to
distinguish fact from fiction. Amazingly, as she conducted her systematicscientific investigation, Mary Ann never lost her own sense of wonder at
the world, or her deep appreciation and respect for the wonder of others,
and especially, that of her students.

Thus, the wonder that underlies Mary Ann's scholarship also is integral to
her teaching. Many of her syllabi begin with a quote from Haldane, “Theworld shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder.” And
Mary Ann's curiosity is contagious. She has infected generations ofSkidmore students with wonderment, and they are deeply grateful for her
generosity. Students' comments reflect the consistent and strong message
that Mary Ann's teaching is transformative for them. They often thank her
for helping them to see new perspectives, make new connections, work
harder and better, and to think creatively, in different ways. One student
wrote that Mary Ann's course renewed her faith in professors and classes!
Another composed a verse rhyming 'Foley' with 'holy,' conveying a poetic
sense of halo hovering over Professor Foley's head.
Mary Ann works her magic in ways that extend beyond the Psychology
Department. Consistent with her curiosity and exploration, Mary Ann has
taught interdisciplinary seminars and programs, individually and incollaboration with Skidmore faculty from other disciplines. In the Springof 2007, Mary Ann taught a 1-credit interdisciplinary seminar entitled
Imagine That! to first-year students. The students became a close andtightly-knit community, and subsequently requested that Mary Ann teacha follow-up seminar to explore imagination further during their lastsemester. Everyone knows that Mary Ann could never refuse that
invitation, so three years later she taught the group again, exploring
imagination with them again in the spring of their senior year. In typical
Mary Ann exploratory fashion, she offered a brand new course in her lastsemester of teaching, to make sure that she used every possible momentwith Skidmore students to explore new territory. Mary Ann has touched
and enriched the minds and lives of many generations of Skidmore
students, young adults who understood and gladly accepted her invitation
to wonder.
Not surprisingly, many people have celebrated Mary Ann over the years,
and she has received numerous awards for her accomplishments. In 2001,
in recognition of her scholarship, Mary Ann delivered the Edwin Moseley
Faculty Lecture, the highest honor bestowed by the Skidmore faculty on
one of its own. From 2004 to 2009, in honor of her teaching, Mary Ann
held the Class of 1948 Professorship for Excellence in Teaching, which
recognizes and celebrates a Skidmore faculty member with an eminentteaching record. In characteristic manner, Mary Ann used the stipend

from the endowed chair to support at least a dozen additional students in
her lab, again integrating research and teaching in a way that flows
naturally for her. Somehow, in the midst of her outstanding achievements
as a scholar and teacher, Mary Ann managed to provide enormous service
to the Psychology Department and to Skidmore. She served on theCommittee for Academic Freedom and Rights, Curriculum Committee,
Faculty Development Committee, and Admissions Committee, and far
too many more committees, subcommittees and task forces to list. She has
participated in more searches than anyone can recall, and served as thedepartment chair for ten years, a record that few faculty members share.
In these roles, Mary Ann's remarkable sense of the "big picture" hashelped many of us see our way more clearly through challenges big andsmall.
After thirty years, Mary Ann's intellectual family tree, as she refers to it,
is very large and deeply rooted, and has many seedlings. Those who arepart of that tree, and most of all, her beloved Skidmore alums, have beenrichly nurtured by Mary Ann's special talent for wondering and inviting
others to wonder with her. We are recognizing and honoring Mary Ann
today as she retires, but the effects of her teaching will never retire. They
will reverberate through the years in the hearts and minds of hundreds orperhaps thousands of Skidmore alums, colleagues, and friends. We canaccept Mary Ann Foley's retirement from Skidmore only because weknow that she will imagine new adventures, will translate thoseadventures from imagination to reality, and that she will continue tospread "wonder" to those with the good fortune to cross her path.

Susan Lehr is the only tenured member of the Education Studies
department and with her retirement, a big chapter of thedepartment's history will retire with her. But, not to worry. Reliable
sources in the department give assurances of her legacy. Susan played an
important role in reshaping the content and pedagogy of the major in
Elementary Education, from its origins in 1960-61 to the constructivist
philosophy adopted in 2000-01. Constructivism has informed her
approach to teaching, building “upon the knowledge base and coreabilities gained from studies in the liberal arts and sciences.” Emphasis ison creating “learning environments that invite students to be partners in
the construction of knowledge.” Susan conveyed to students the essential

link between theoretical and applied learning, a connection longassociated with Skidmore and embraced by President Keyes who came to
the College in 1922 with a Ph.D. from Columbia University and an Ed.D.
from Columbia's affiliated Teachers College.
Current Education Studies faculty are the beneficiaries of Susan'scommitment to having made Skidmore her academic home, a liberal arts
environment “just the place for her scholarship and teaching ...
highlighting issues of gender and multiculturalism in children's literature”
and engaging “the issues and controversies of the field over time.” Susan“modeled the style of active, engaged, and constructivist teaching that”
graduates will model in their elementary school classrooms. It is thoseelementary school students that were in the back of her mind as she has
worked to shape and maintain "an exceptional elementary teachingcertification (program) .... And perhaps underlying it all is her respect forher students and in turn their respect for her.” She “encouraged her
students to be 'movers and shakers,' to be comfortable with questioning
and taking risks.”
Student evaluations of Susan's courses--Children's literature, Emergent
literacy, Teaching Reading in the Elementary School--reveal assessmentsof Susan as “thorough and passionate” and having brought “a degree ofengagement that is immeasurable,” from a recent evaluation; high praise
for an educator completing almost thirty years at Skidmore. In addition to
the passion Susan conveyed to students, her knowledge impressed them:“Professor Lehr knows just about every children's book ever written ....
(she) knows everything in this subject area.” As one of her colleagues
notes, “I do think her forte at Skidmore was working with her students,
and after all that is what is important. Yes?” Indeed.
Susan headed the Education Studies department on several occasions
since 1993, during many changes and transitions within the department
and many externally mandated and ongoing national and state regulations
for teacher training education programs. She has overseen essential
restructuring by department initiative and mandated requirements,
sometimes with workforce reductions, and always with care as the inchesthick yearly reports for the New York State Education Department attest
and new accreditation policies unfold. Chairing a department is often acomplex, time-demanding task, but chairing a pre-professionaldepartment that is bound to honor externally-imposed requirements in anever-changing state and national education context involves dexterity. As
she has always encouraged students to develop habits of creativity,
whether for careers as classroom educators or as education policy
professionals, while always mindful of constraints, Susan, too, hasdemonstrated her ability to juggle both, creativity within constraints.
Susan has achieved national recognition for her literacy education work,
serving as president of the Children's Literature Assembly of the National
Council of Teachers of English, working with cutting-edge educators anddrawing upon her contacts with Newberry and Caldecott prize-winning
authors of children's books to shape her scholarship. Of Susan's fourbooks, the three she edited “explore the diverse voices of authors,illustrators, educators, book sellers, and librarians on topics that...have
been historically avoided and politically controversial.” Portrayals ofgender in children's literature, Native American perspectives not typicallytaught, LGBT voices--a range of perspectives that question “authentic
voice,” and “who can tell whose story?” The names of Susan's edited
collections indicate her research and teaching interests: Shattering the
Looking Glass: Challenge, Risk, and Controversy in Children's
Literature; Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The Construction of Gender inChildren's Literature; and Battling Dragons: Issues and Controversy inChildren's Literature. Scores of published articles, lectures, andworkshop materials in the United States and abroad attest to Susan's
cutting-edge scholarship. And a recent journal article, “Literacy,
Literature, and Censorship: The High Cost of No Child left Behind,”suggests her attentiveness to potential effects that national education
policies may have on what classroom teachers actually teach.
Students in hundreds of education department graduate courses have used
Susan's books, book chapters, keynote addresses, all deliberately
intended, according to Susan, “to shake things up, to get teachers arguing
about their assumptions.” For years, she has claimed that “the battle tocontrol information and to deny teachers the ability to present ideas in theclassroom is the most dangerous battle we face as educators.” Hercommitment to Education Studies students, always, has been to provide
them with the “ability and tools to
weave diverse perspectives into their future classrooms.” Thoughteaching “children to read and write is central... teaching them how totransform those literacy skills to become actively engaged and thoughtful
citizens is the ultimate goal.”Susan's scholarship and teaching reveal a consistency of “inclusion” thatincorporates multicultural perspectives. For example, she invited aleading educator, Beverley Naidon from South Africa, to make apresentation at an International Reading Association conference in Prague
on the topic of “the challenge and complexity of writing about social
justice, honestly, even while facing censorship in her own country” (fromwhich she eventually moved). This invitation underscores hercommitment to the goals of social justice and equity for all students, ahigh priority “at the core” of her local, national, and international work inchildren's literature. This commitment informs, too, her advocacy of study
abroad experiences, sometimes a difficult option for Education Studies
students with several course sequence requirements, including “handson” Junior Block elementary school classroom observations and senioryear student teaching. She and her colleagues devised policies to convey
to potential Education Studies students the importance of carefulplanning. Susan herself has worked on a study abroad option in the United
Kingdom and twice co-directed the program in Capetown, South Africa.
And Susan shared some of her study abroad research on 17th, 18th, and19th century children's books and manuscripts in the Rare Book Room of
the British library, with particular focus on radical 18th century British
women authors, in her Moseley Lecture in 2000.
In retirement, Susan plans to continue her passion for children's literature,making the transition from teaching topics about which students claim,“she knows everything .... just about every children's book ever written,”
to writing children's books, complete with water color illustrations. One
of Susan's department colleagues sums up Susan’s plans: “We hope thatthe next projects in which Susan is engaged will end up in the hands ofmany children and bring to life the profiles of women in history throughher own words and art.” An engaged and engaging retirement indeed.

W

illiam Michael Mudrovic joined the Foreign Languages andLiteratures department at Skidmore College in 1998 as an
Assistant Professor of Spanish. He was promoted to Associate
Professor the following year and to Full Professor in 2008. Mike came tous after an illustrious career at Washington University and the Central
Institute for the Deaf in Saint Louis, Missouri. He traveled a great
distance to get where he is today. Not only from Missouri to New Yorkand over to Spain, but also from humble roots. His father was a wood
pattern maker and his mother grew up in a small town of 300 in the midWest. Although Mike is reserved and completely unpretentious, he has
admitted that for him, rising from such a modest upbringing to become aprofessor is one of the greatest achievements in his life.
Despite his distinguished accomplishments as a teacher, scholar, andcommunity leader, Mike has never forgotten where he began. That small
town boy who learned the values of privacy, humility, honesty, and selfreliance is a gentle man with an enduring capacity for empathy. Mikehas always had an abiding interest and respect for people on the margins,
whether it was working as a teacher of the deaf for eight years or writing
about contemporary women poets who have been largely ignored bymainstream criticism.

Almodóvar’s films, and a MALS seminar on The Many Faces of Carmen,
which examines the representation of Carmen in the genres of novel,
opera, and film. In addition, he taught two graduate seminars at SUNY
Albany: one on post-Franco Spanish poetry and another on the long poemin recent Spanish literature. In the classroom Mike is a skillful,enthusiastic, and engaged teacher. Students routinely praise hiscommitment to their learning, his kindness, and wit as well as his constantencouragement. Both rigorous and patient, he challenges students,
arouses their curiosity, and inspires them to do their best.

When you ask someone to describe Mike, the one word that appears over
and over is generous. As Viviana Rangil notes: “Mike is a generous
person with a refreshing sense of solidarity and community involvement.”Indeed, he displays a constant willingness to share his expertise. He is
always eager to help students hone their skills, to discuss his researchfindings with fellow scholars, to participate in the governance of thedepartment and college, and to volunteer in his church. Mike is a man offaith, a cantor and choir member at Corpus Christi Catholic Church where
his bass voice resounds. He is also a man of conviction. Trying toconvince Mike to change his mind is not an easy task, perhaps even futile,
but you can be assured that he has thought things out and that his
convictions are rational and sincere.

A prolific and consummate writer, Mike is sagacious, meticulous, anderudite. A cursory look at his resume will reveal that in the last 15 years
alone, he has published two books, 26 articles, 13 book reviews, and has
given 40 lectures throughout the United States and Europe. His first book,
Breaking New Ground: The Transgressive Poetics of Claudio Rodrîguez,
published by Lehigh University Press in 1999, is a comprehensive studyof one of Spain’s most eminent, subjective, and enigmatic poets of the20th century. This monumental study examines Rodrîguez’s endeavor to
uncover the problematic nature of language and its unstable relationshipto identity. Mike argues that Rodrîguez’s poetics are transgressive andcharacterized by their agenda “of pushing beyond language throughlanguage, of recognizing on a personal level the difficulties anduncertainties involved in the poetic act and yet surrendering himself tothem, making as it were a leap of faith.”. This book is widely considered
the definitive work on Rodrîguez. In 2012 it was translated into Spanishand published by the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain. The act oftranslation is a cultural exchange that has the potential to change the way
people think and act. For someone like Mike who has spent his career asa cultural translator and bridge between two cultures, there can be nohigher honor than having his own research translated into Spanish.

As a specialist in modern Spanish Peninsular literature, Mike teaches, as
Grace Burton likes to point out, “post-gravity courses.” Along with
Spanish language at all levels, Mike has taught the survey of Spanish
literature as well as 19th and 20th century Spanish literature. He enrichedthe curriculum by developing courses in Spanish cinema, contemporary
Spanish culture, a senior seminar on Generation X, another senior seminarcalled Rock and Reel on contemporary Spanish music and film, a Scribner
Seminar entitled Gender Benders on García Lorca’s poetry andHis second book, Mirror, Mirror on the Page: Identity and Subjectivity in
Spanish Women’s Poetry, also published by Lehigh University Press,
explores the themes of identity and subjectivity in contemporary Spanish
women’s poetry. While some of the authors he examines are celebrated
canonical writers, others are relatively unknown and working on the
periphery. He has spent years getting to know these writers, interviewing
them, collecting their work from often obscure publication venues, and isrecognized as an expert in the field.
Mike maintains that manycontemporary Spanish women writers share an interest in poetry as morethan just a vehicle to self-awareness and empowerment; they also see it as
a way to express their desire to know and communicate with others.
Focusing on the prominent image of the mirror in their writings, he makes
the case that “mirroring depends on constantly renegotiating self and otherto expose connections between them.” Rather than threatening, the Otheris deemed essential to self-realization.
Mike has published articles on a wide variety of topics in some of the mostprestigious refereed journals in Spanish literature: Letras Peninsulares,
Hispanic Poetry Review, Explicación de Textos Literarios, and Revista
Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. He has also dedicated his time andexacting linguistic acumen to editorial work as manuscript evaluator andeditorial board member for countless journals. Most importantly, from1991 to 2005, he served as Business and Publications Editor of Revista deEstudios Hispánicos, one of the premiere academic journals in Hispanic
Studies in the United States. In the department we shamelessly tap into
Mike’s expertise. Whenever we need an editor, someone who will
meticulously comb the texts for errors and critically analyze phrasing for
efficacy, we run to Mike. He graciously takes on the task, in great part
because he is fascinated with words, what they mean and how they havethe power to unlock mysteries. It probably comes as no surprise that Mike
can’t imagine a morning without his daily crossword puzzle.
For Mike, service is simple: do whatever is needed. His focus is always
on students, the curriculum, and what is best for the College as a whole.
He has served as Coordinator of the Self-Instructional Languages
Program and as a member of the Curriculum Committee, Committee on
Educational Policies and Planning, University without Walls Committee,
and of course, the Masters of Liberal Arts Committee. As Director of the
MALS Program from 2009-2013, Mike made an indelible mark on liberalarts education at Skidmore. Sandy Welter summarizes his contributions
during his four years as MALS Director: “Mike brought a deep
understanding and passion for liberal arts learning and interdisciplinary
studies. He advised MALS students thoughtfully, encouraging students
to reach to greater intellectual heights while providing care and support in
the process. He constantly worked to raise the quality of instruction, madesignificant strides in the areas of faculty engagement and programassessment, and shepherded a substantial self-study of MALS. In short,

Mike built a stronger and more relevant MALS program during his
tenure.”In retirement, Mike plans to stay in the area, become more involved in his
church, and work on two book projects: a nearly completed manuscripton the long poem in recent Spanish poetry and a new project on visual art
and history in the poetry of Luis Javier Moreno. We will miss Mike
Mudrovic and wish him all the best in the next phase of his life.

A

nne Zwick Turner joined the Music department in 1988 after
receiving her Bachelor's Degree in Music from the University ofRochester’s Eastman School of Music and her Masters Degree in
Opera Performance from California State University at Northridge. She
had already been teaching voice since 1976 when she became one of thefirst four Artists-in-Residence at Skidmore.

Always looking to develop as a teacher and as a performer, Annecontinued her long-standing study of the voice by pursuing work with therenowned vocal scholar and teacher Cornelius Reid in 1997, studying withhim for over ten years. Anne immediately applied the lessons of Reid’s
writings and research on the bel canto style of singing in her own teaching
and today her students carry on that tradition.
As an Artist-in-Residence, Anne helped to shape the nature of that
position, balancing performance with teaching and inspiring students by
example. In particular, her career has featured performances of works byliving American composers, some of whom she helped to bring to the
Skidmore campus, including Judith Lang Zaimont and the celebrated
George Crumb, whose Ancient Voices of Children she has performed
several times. Reviews of her performances have broadly praised hersinging, with the New York Times describing her voice as “inspiring.”
Skidmore has had the great fortune to hear her perform on a number ofoccasions.
Nevertheless, much of Anne’s attention has been devoted to being a greatteacher, with a particular adeptness at helping adolescent voices transition
into adulthood. Teachers of musical instruments, such as the violin, canpoint to and demonstrate finger positions and sequences and can visually

cue a student on how to articulate a particular sound. The vocal teacher
needs to guide each student in the production of unseen internal
vibrations, such that every individual learns how to develop a unique
voice.
Consequently, Anne has been sought after as a vocal clinician atinstitutions such as Oakland University and Washburn University. She
has also worked with singers from the Albany Symphony, the Seagle
Music Colony, Union College, and the Lake George Opera. Indeed, herdevotion to this process contributed to her role as one of the co-foundersof the Eastern New York State Chapter of the National Association ofTeachers of Singing.
Characteristically, Anne has been most proud of her students, some ofthem going on to professional careers after graduate studies at institutions
such as the University of Michigan, Indiana University, the New EnglandConservatory, Ithaca College, the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Conservatory, the University of Kansas, the University of Texas, and theEastman School of Music. In this spirit, she has recently established the“Anne M. Zwick Eastman Pathways Pre-Collegiate Discretionary Fund”
at the Eastman School of Music to offer scholarships to talented inner-city
Rochester students from elementary through high school.
Her colleagues have the highest opinions of her. Pola Baytelman
describes her as a “true gem,” a “superb musician and artist” with whom
she has enjoyed playing many times. She describes Anne’s singing as“poetic, intense, and dramatic,” and particularly excelling at difficultcontemporary music (such as Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunair”). Moreover,she notes that Anne has been a splendid lecturer before performances of
the Lake George Opera. John Nazarenko has fond memories of his first
concert at Skidmore for which he accompanied Anne, and Jan Vinci
similarly reflects on their performance of Albert Roussel’s challenging“Deux Poèmes.” Jan particularly notes Anne’s work with singers who
have damaged their voices, helping them to recover their abilities and toregain careers.
The Music Department wishes Anne well as she moves on to the nextstage in her career. We know that her “retirement” will be busy.