More and more Bryn Mawr students are coming from overseas

By Amanda Kennedy

To enter Madhavika Bajoria’s room in the Rhoads North dorm at Bryn Mawr College, one must first walk through elephants-and parrots and fish, too.
These vibrant mobiles from her native country of India hang from the ceiling, a combination of jangling beads and embroidered animals in bright pinks, yellows and blues flecked with gold yarn. Bajoria, 20, a sophomore, got them last year at home in Calcutta over winter break to brighten her room during a bleak winter.
“I really need color,” she said.
Bajoria is used to “pleasant” winters in India that feel more like fall, she said. She especially misses home when the rain falls in Bryn Mawr because the showers remind her of the monsoons in India.
Bajoria has had to adjust to many other aspects of life at an American college: classes held in English, American food at the dining halls and being thousands of miles away from family, to name a few. But the lure of studying at a liberal arts college in the United States, where young women gain insight on independence and intellect, helped her to hop on a plane and never look back.
Bajoria is one of a growing faction of international students who choose to study at Bryn Mawr each year. In fact, the number of international students attending Bryn Mawr during the 2010-11 school year is the largest in history, with 18.9 percent of the student body from 62 countries represented, up from 17.4 percent last year.
Bryn Mawr is part of a national rise in bringing more international students to college campuses-the Chronicle of Higher Education reported in July that foreign enrollment increased by 2 percent in American colleges and universities to 586,000 students for fall 2009.
Each year the freshman class at Bryn Mawr includes more international students. While class size has remained the same-around 370 students-the percentage has risen, from 20 percent international for the Class of 2012 to 21 percent international for the Class of 2013, “the most international yet,” Bryn Mawr President Jane McAuliffe proclaimed in 2009 at convocation. The Class of 2014, however, trumped all previous years with 27 percent of entering freshmen coming from overseas.
The sudden increase in enrollment in the past two to three years is thanks to Bryn Mawr’s ability to provide financial aid to international students, as well as the development of the global economy, said Jenny Rickard, Chief Enrollment and Communications Officer.

The world is flat

“That I would attribute to the world is flat,” she said. “With the economy changing, now more students of those who don’t need financial aid or those who aren’t needing as much financial aid as before [can come to Bryn Mawr] just because of the economies in other countries have grown. It’s a situation we hadn’t seen before.”
Because of the large influx of international students in such a short period of time, Growth and Structure of Cities professor Gary McDonogh and other faculty members on the Diversity Council would like to gain more knowledge about the make-up of the student body.
“What I think has struck some of us is, that this is a serious change that demands some discussion,” he said. “It’s not to say that incoming students have caused problems. It’s more significant that it is a conscious shift.”
The Diversity Council is considering hiring people to work with the deans’ office to run focus groups and compile questionnaires for the student body to complete. Responses of international students would be compared to responses of domestic students to gauge how international students are fairing with the rest of the student body.

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For Ryan Henrici, his mother’s illness defined his goals

By Dana Eiselen

For one Conestoga High School senior, his defining educational experience did not happen at school, but closer to home. When Ryan Henrici’s mom, Carol, was struck with a mystery illness, he decided to pursue a career in science and medicine.
Ryan Henrici’s mother, Carol, was known in her Chester Count town of Chesterbrook as the modern day Wonder Mom. She managed a household of three children, a husband and cat with boundless energy.
“Every day before school she would ask the children if they needed anything pressed,” said Lucy Quigley, a family friend. “The house was spotless and she never missed one of the kids’ [athletic] games.”
In second grade, Ryan came home to find his mother passed out on the couch. The family called 9-1-1. Mrs. Henrici spent the next six months in the hospital, undiagnosed. While playing the waiting game, Ryan’s father, Mike, began managing Mrs. Henrici’s health care, and Mrs. Henrici’s parents moved in to help take care of the family.

‘It was really scary…’

Doctor consultations and hospital visits became routine. “At first it was really scary seeing her on a ventilator, but then I saw the doctors and nurses trying to help her, doing everything they could,” said Ryan.
The unpredictable course of the disease propelled an interest in medicine for Ryan and his sister. “When she got sick, that’s when Meaghan applied to medical school, and I thought maybe this is something I should do.” Ryan’s older sister, Meaghan, is now a second-year medical student at Drexel University.
Ryan has completed all of the Advanced Placement science and math courses his high school offers. The school helped tailor his needs by creating a multi-variable calculus class; he is also working one-on-one with a teacher to learn the basics of organic chemistry.
“Together, we work through a college organic chemistry textbook. The course is really by my design. I go at a relaxed pace, but by the end of the year I am planning to perform some experiements in the lab most don’t do until college.”
It is ten years since Mrs. Henrici first passed out, and Ryan is constantly reminded about the importance of medicine.
“Being put in this whole medicine situation, put on one side of it, across from the doctors, changed my perspective,” said Ryan. He thinks it’s “all about compassion.” “They’re healing patients physically, but they’re also emotionally healing the family.”
Mrs. Henrici lost the ability to walk and speak. She was first diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, but was re-diagnosed five years ago with Neuromyelitis optica, a rare syndrome of the central nervous system that affects the optic nerves and spinal cord. The original misdiagnosis was a substantial setback for recieveing effective treatment in the early stages of her disease. Continue reading →

How a Haverford College sophomore became a triathlete

By Hannah Turner

What began as a casual joke has, over the past three months, become a way of life for Haverford College sophomore Bekki Schwartz. Now, in addition to musician, sister, and friend, Schwartz can add triathlete to her resumé.
Schwartz decided that she needed to take her fitness more seriously over the summer. She began running daily, and “was feeling really good about myself and about my body, because I knew I was doing the right thing for it,” she said. Until this August though, Schwartz “would not have self-identified as an athlete…Not at all.”
When she told some friends about her new fitness kick, one facetiously suggested that she train for a triathlon. “But then,” Schwartz said, “we looked it up on Wikipedia and realized that this was something I could definitely do, and something that would fill a void in my life.”
This void, she explained, was two-pronged. First and foremost, she said, was the fact that she still had no specific goal to keep her motivated. The second, more general, issue was that “I’d kind of settled into a niche on campus…It had been a long time since I’d done something totally outside of my comfort zone…It was time for me to do something totally different, and to prove to myself that I could do it,” Schwartz said.

Getting a trainer

Schwartz first used the internet to implement her plan. She found several free triathlon training plans for beginners, picked one, and intended just to follow it. She realized quickly though that Google couldn’t provide her with the advice and feedback crucial to a successful training program. Schwartz decided that she needed a coach, and asked for funding as a birthday gift from her parents.
Again Google came in handy as Schwartz looked for triathlon trainers in the area. She called several and in a “purely fiscal decision” found Mary Sundy Kelley. Armed with a new trainer and plans to compete in a specific race (The Bassman Distance Sprint Triathlon in Tuckerton, N.J.), Schwartz began her seven-week training program.
Schwartz’s schedule included six workouts per week, with one off day. These workouts included one long bike, run, and swim each week. The other training days were comprised of interval workouts, combining varying intensity levels in one of the events with a short session of one of the others. By the end of her seven weeks, Schwartz’s workouts exceeded the duration of those in the actual race.
By the time race day arrived, Schwartz felt physically prepared. She had noticed the changes in her fitness over the past two months, and was proud to put her new strength to the test. Continue reading →

The former Bryn Mawr dean is back to devise a program of academic support for students

By Amanda Kennedy

Karen Tidmarsh thinks her new office at Bryn Mawr College is too quiet.
The silence is unfamiliar to her. When she was Dean of the College, the hustle and bustle of Taylor Hall was a part of daily life. Now, Tidmarsh, 61, of Haverford, is prepared for a new position the college has created for her-Director of Academic Enhancement Programs.
Tidmarsh is in the process of making her office her own. A bare wooden bookshelf covers an entire wall behind her. The only bright spot in the room is Tidmarsh’s raspberry-hued sweater, which she pulls snugly to her neck. Boxes with her name printed in blocky black letters cram the few windowsills she has in her room in Canaday, remnants from her previous office in Taylor Hall.
Tidmarsh has filled many roles during her time at Bryn Mawr-student, dean, associate director of admissions, and English professor. Now, as Director of Academic Enhancement Programs, she plans to focus on improving the availability of academic support for students. Other universities have such academic support systems in place, and Tidmarsh has been trying to determine what will work best at Bryn Mawr.
Tidmarsh realizes that some students have an easier time adapting to college than others. “If they’re good at it and figure it out quickly-great,” she said. “And if not they almost have to fall on their face before they can begin to be successful. And some of them are never as successful as they deserve to be because they don’t have the study skills that a place like this demands.”
She feels that Bryn Mawr has not been successful in reaching out to students who need academic support, especially international students and minority students.

A changing student body

“I think we can certainly do better,” she said.
The make-up of the student body has changed dramatically since Tidmarsh first became a student in 1967. “When I was there, diversity was really black and white,” she said, and international students made up about five percent of the student body. Last year, they comprised nearly 19 percent. This year, Bryn Mawr welcomed its largest number of international students into its freshman class-more than 25 percent. As the campus becomes more diverse, Tidmarsh realizes that academic support programs are becoming increasingly necessary.
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The new assistant athletic director wants to help Bryn Mawr students to get and stay fit

By Sarah Fischer

As visitors and students alike ooh and ah over the new renovations of the Schwartz Gymnasium at Bryn Mawr College, Stacy Adams sits in her office and smiles over the completed job — before getting back to work.

As the Assistant Athletic Director, Adams spends all her time in the clean, naturally lit gymnasium doing paperwork, teaching classes, or helping students train for their sports season.

Her office looks out onto cardio equipment and the women of Bryn Mawr College huffing and puffing with confidence. But these women can also peer into Adam’s workspace: bare and littered with papers. Behind her desk there is mini refrigerator with a jar of peanut butter and a bag of carrots sitting on top. No candy or Easy Mac in sight.

Adams is definitely a woman you would want on your side in a fight. Tall and built, her curly hair is usually tied behind her head in ponytail. Athletic clothes are her work attire.

She is what you would call a heavyweight. Pun intended.

Adams has coached at Drexel University, West Virginia University, University of Miami, and Villanova University, just to name a few. She has worked with six year-olds as well as NBA and NFL players.

Although Bryn Mawr College, a Division III, liberal arts, all-women’s college in the suburb of Philadelphia, is definitely a contrast from those larger schools, Adams says her position at Bryn Mawr is her favorite job so far.

Even though Adams does a considerate amount of administrative work such as designing the new gym layout and working game day operations, she enjoys her interactions with students and teams.

“[The students] have such different personalities. There are some characters,” she says with a smile, “but there are some really great people from all over the world”

And this is coming from a woman that used to train NBA and NFL stars.

‘Female friendly gym’

Adams herself came to Bryn Mawr with a very different college experience. Originally from upstate New York, Adams received a scholarship to West Virginia University (which enrolls an average of 29,000 students, opposed to Bryn Mawr’s 1,300) for soccer. She graduated from WVU in 1999 with a major in Sociology and a minor in Political Science.

At Bryn Mawr College, Adams has helped to construct “a state of the art facility to help women.” She says that the new Schwartz Gymnasium is a “female friendly gym” where women are “excited to come in and learn in things…the environment is such that it doesn’t feel intimidating.” Continue reading →

Haverford’s Andrew Bostick is the force behind the school’s new student-run garden.

By Carl Sigmond

“It’s really nice to get outside and to actually interact with the soil,” said Andrew Bostick, a junior at HaverfordCollege and one of the founders of its student-run garden.

Bostick, who is double majoring in English and Economics with a minor in French, is not the type of person you’d expect to be planting seeds in the middle of winter and harvesting fresh vegetables for a summer internship.

And yet, this tall, slim, 21-year-old from Bernardsville, N.J. has spent the past two summers gardening and researching the feasibility of sustainable agriculture.He has also spearheaded a successful effort to establish a student garden on Haverford’s campus.The garden is now entering its second season and there is talk of expansion.

Bostick said in an interview that he was never interested in sustainability or gardening before he came to Haverford.”I never really thought about environmentalism or anything like that,” he said.

Shortly after he arrived at Haverford, however, he read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” by Michael Pollen.”It strikes close to home,” Bostick said, referring to the book.”[Pollen] tells these stories about people eating meals at McDonald’s, something all of us do all the time.”

In the book, Pollen makes the case that the current way Americans eat and their reliance on fast food is unsustainable and is harming the environment.

Inspired by Pollen’s arguments, Bostick applied for a grant from HaverfordCollege‘s Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC).He got the grant and with it he went to France the summer after his freshman year to study the differences between organic gardening and farming in France and the United States.

He said in an interview that while he was in France, he learned from one of his host families that “when we’re buying food that’s been shipped from all over, we need to think about the overall cost that goes into that.” Continue reading →

For Inquirer columnist Rick Nichols,  food is just the beginning of writing about food

By Mallimalika Gupta

Rick Nichols starts his day with a bowl of freshly made Irish oatmeal. He grinds the oats, toasts some pecan and walnuts and adds them into the mix. Then, some maple syrup made by friends in Vermont, a dash of cinnamon from Vietnam (“It is the best cinnamon there is.”), and just a tiny bit of milk.
For lunch, Nichols will sample three different kinds of oysters – a Wellfleet, Chinqueteague and Penniquid, have a bowl of fish chowder, and a little toasty roll stuffed with fried Ipswich belly clams. Over the course of the day, Nichols will also eat Chaat at an Indian restaurant, sample spring rolls and nibble on grape leaf-covered beef, among other items on the BBQ platter at a Vietnamese restaurant.
At Sansom Street Oyster House in Philadelphia, Nichols tips open a deep-cut Wellfleet oyster from his plate. He takes the top off, cuts the muscle. Holding on to the bottom cup of the oyster ever so delicately, he tips it into his mouth, taking in the salty, protein-y liquid with a slight whoosh sound. “It’s like drinking the ocean”, he says.
Rick Nichols is food columnist for Philadelphia Inquirer and drinking the ocean is part of his job.
For someone who writes, talks, thinks and breathes in food, Nichols is not very interested in the actual “food” part of his job. “It’s not what’s on the table,” he explains, “It’s who’s around it.” For Nichols it’s the baker that kneads his dough, the soup maker who cuts the carrots for his soup, and the elementary school children who grow mint leaves for a chocolate shop. It is the people and issues connected to food that matter to him.
From Sansom Oyster House, Nichols walks to the Inquirer office on North Broad Street, the one that is, as he puts it, “white like a wedding cake”.

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Looking in the mirror was torture for Hannah Crawford

By Clare Mullaney
It wasn’t until Hannah was staring at a half-eaten Greek salad that she admitted she had a problem.
It was her first night in the outpatient program at the Renfrew Center in Philadelphia, the United States’ first residential facility for the treatment of eating disorders. Before coming to Renfrew, Hannah Crawford, whose real name she prefers not be used, had been following a strict diet of two apples and seven pretzel sticks a day. She was, in effect, starving herself.
Of the two meal options offered that night, Hannah, a sophomore at Bryn Mawr College at the time, chose the Greek salad, believing it to be the “safer choice” and healthier selection. But to make up for the minimal calories offered by the lettuce and raw vegetables, the salad contained a few extra ingredients.
Petrified, Hannah gazed down at a hard-boiled egg, a half a cup of cottage cheese, a tablespoon of nuts, and whole pita bread.
She had 45 minutes to finish the salad along with a bowl of ice cream that was quickly melting.
Hannah was so nervous that she couldn’t stop shaking. “I could barely hold my fork to put food in my mouth,” she recalled.
Hannah had the urge to separate each of the items in her salad and eat them one at a time, but at Renfrew, any abnormal food rituals were prohibited. She couldn’t cut up her lettuce into tiny pieces or dissect the salad’s contents to make sure they weren’t contaminated.
By the end of the meal, Hannah had only eaten some of the salad. Before coming to Renfrew, she thought she could finish a meal if she wanted and that turning off the fears surrounding food would be easy.
It was so much harder than she imagined. “I was so overwhelmed by all the food,” she said.
An estimated one-half to nearly four percent of American women suffer from anorexia nervosa in their lifetime. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, anorexia is characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss. Individuals with anorexia typically weigh no more than 85 percent of their expected body weight.
Hannah’s story describes the journey of many of these women.

The beginning
In fifth grade she began to monitor what she was eating, but by the beginning of middle school her anorexia took hold of her. To help her cope with the anxiety of starting at a new school, she became determined to lose weight.
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Three scientists struggle to reconcile science and belief in God

By Harper Hubbeling

“Fine. I quit,” said Judy Owen.
It was a brassy move. Graduate students don’t usually march into their advisors’ offices and threaten to resign.
But Owen was mad. Norman Kliman, Owen’s thesis advisor in the biology graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, had just threatened her belief system.
“He said he was deeply troubled by my being a churchgoer and – this is a direct quote – he said: ‘Your capacity to accept anything on faith is detrimental to your progress as a scientist,'” recalls Owen, in a heavy English accent.
“I told him that I felt my spiritual life was my guide,” she says, “it was my moral compass. It was a part of who I was and I could no more cleave that from myself than I could cut off a finger or an arm.”
As far as Owen was concerned, if Kliman felt she could not succeed as a spiritual scientist, she “needed to get out of science right then.”
But Kliman backed down. Owen did not quit.
Thirty-one years later, Owen, a professor and researcher of immunology at Haverford College, is still in science. And she is still spiritual.
Owen is not alone. According to a 2007 study from the University of Buffalo, 48% of U.S. scientists report a religious affiliation. Yes, this is less than the 76% of the general population that claims affiliation. But it still raises eyebrows.
Half of U.S. scientists don’t see a conflict between faith and science? Why not?
Kliman wasn’t just some crazy old spiteful professor. He’s hardly the first to suggest that science and the church might clash – the two don’t exactly have a history of getting along. Witness the long and continuing dispute among Creationists and scientists over when and how life began on earth.
But 48% of scientists have found a way to live in both worlds. Three Haverford scientists, Owen and her colleagues Jenni Punt and Fran Blase, are among those living with the tension between science and faith. Listening to their stories, how they’ve wrestled with being “believers” in science, we see that embracing both worlds is possible – but not always easy.
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Asian-American women must learn to deal with their dual identies

By Kaori Hatama
Clara Wang remembers dying the hair of her Barbie doll black with her mother’s mascara when she was young.
“Barbie dolls all come in blond and blue eyes and I really remember distinctively I took my mom’s mascara and dyed her hair black,” Wang laughs. “That was not a good idea. My mom was not all that happy either. She was like ‘my mascara, your Barbie -two things completely gone.'”
Wang’s experience is not an unusual one. Born as an Asian-American from immigrant parents, Wang – and other Asians – realize their bi-cultural identities while growing up. What is it like to be brought up in the United States, but born to immigrant parents? What kind of awareness does being brought up in two cultures bring? Four Bryn Mawr College undergraduates shared their experiences of growing up as Asian-Americans.
Wang’s parents, who were born in Hong Kong, came to the states for college in mid 1970’s. Wang was born in Philadelphia attended a Catholic elementary school on weekdays and Chinese school on weekends. Except Wang and one African-American girl, the rest of the students at her Catholic elementary school had brown hair, hazel
eyes or blond hair, blue eyes.
“In elementary school I wanted people to acknowledge me like a person. It was
more like ‘Can you stop looking at me like I’m Asian and look at me like an equal?'” said Wang. She felt she was not treated as normal by the others, which annoyed her.
“The fact that I have different cultural background should not affect how to interact with people but it did. That was kind of annoying” said Wang.
She and the only African-American girl were specifically called to have their photos in the front of the school’s pamphlet in the center.
“At that time I was like ‘that’s cool’ but when I look back at it I thought the school was promoting diversity even though we were the only two in the entire school,” said Wang.
Her family moved to California due to her father’s job. Her middle school and high school had 50 percent of Asian students. Because she looked similar and shared similar jokes, she felt comfortable hanging out with Asian-Americans.
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