The below message was sent to faculty, staff, and students on April 2, 2025.
Dear Bryn Mawr Community,
It is spring on campus. The daffodils are blooming, picnic blankets are spread, and warm air and cool nights are becoming the norm. My daughter and I spent time on Saturday lying in the grass in the backyard, watching the clouds and listening to students sing a capella in an arch at Rhoads Hall across from the president’s house. I try to start each day conscious of this beauty and grateful — deeply grateful — for this place and for its mission, which binds and connects us all.
April brings many opportunities to celebrate the College’s values and the successes of our students and faculty. Senior Olivia Colace has been awarded a Watson Fellowship, which has not been awarded to a Bryn Mawr student since 2022. Sage Thomas '25 recently won a poster presentation award at the APS Global Summit, the world’s largest physics research conference. And Olivia Loudon '25 was just named the inaugural College winner of the Erinda Sheno Memorial Prize for an essay first appearing in The Philadelphia Citizen. Professor of Anthropology Amanda Weidman was awarded a Senior American Institute of Indian Studies Fellowship to support six months of research in India. Assistant Professor of Mathematics Selvi Kara will be visiting The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences for a special semester in Commutative Algebra, and Professor of History of Art Alicia Walker will be an invited speaker at an upcoming National Gallery of Art seminar, as will her former graduate student Shannon Steiner, Ph.D. '19.
We celebrated the community last Thursday in the College’s first “Bryn Mawr’s Got Talent” event. Thirty students joined staff and faculty participants whose talents ranged from Shakespeare to comedy acts, ballet, original music, and more. By night’s end, Hayden Dawes, assistant professor of social work, was declared the winner.
We look forward to honoring the College and its history on April 24 and 26 with a series of community events culminating the fourth year of our ARCH Project. Nekisha Durrett’s “Don’t Forget to Remember (Me)” is a commissioned monument at Bryn Mawr College that responds to the legacy of exclusionary practices on the campus. The artwork was installed in the Cloisters late last year and will be unveiled to the public for the first time on Thursday, April 24th. I hope to see you there.
You continue to teach and inspire me as I enter the last few months of my inaugural year. I will share what I learned from students in their start/stop/continue survey on April 22nd at 12:30 p.m. in the Great Hall. We continue our focus on campus planning, and have confirmed the spaces in the Schwartz Fitness Center and Campus Center that will be renovated this summer as part of the student space-planning collaboration. Later this month, we will announce the firm we will partner with on a comprehensive campus plan, as we physically dream forward for the campus.
We enact the College’s mission in our work together every day. In recent months, we have done so against considerable headwinds. Like the trees on Senior Row, our campus roots are deep, and we have stood here for generations. Our mission is clear, our commitments fierce, and our networks deep. Do not mistake silence for lack of attention to what is happening in higher education and the wider world. I know broader events make this time difficult for many, and I encourage you to go in person to the Dean’s Office (students), Provost’s Office (faculty), and Human Resources (staff) with your questions and concerns or if you need our help.
In this moment of spring awakening, I encourage you to hold on to beauty — the beauty of our campus, of meaningful work, of the opportunity to learn and grow together, and of goofy friends drinking bubble tea on a blanket under the cherry blossoms outside of Old Library. Breathe it in, and if you haven’t already, come by Lake Vickers, listen to the spring peepers, and read the words of the poet Mary Oliver with a friend.
April
I wanted to speak at length about
the happiness of my body and the
delight of my mind for it was
April, a night, a
full moon and –
but something in myself or maybe
from somewhere other said: not too
many words, please, in the
muddy shallows the
Frogs are singing.
As always,
Wendy
Wendy Cadge
President and Professor of Sociology
Bryn Mawr College
101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Pronouns: she/her
brynmawr.edu
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Spark Wisdom
--This message was updated on April 2 that in addition to the Schwartz Fitness Center, the Campus Center also will be renovated this summer as part of the student space-planning collaboration.
