Join us for Global Illumination Night 2021, a worldwide event to honor the class of 2021 and celebrate the deep connections all Smithies share. Find a lantern, lamp or candle and light it to honor the Smith seniors. Take a picture and upload it here, or post it on social media with the hashtag #smithilluminates. Together, let’s show the class of 2021 our 55,000 points of light shining brightly. Explore the Global Illumination Map.

Members Only Event: Film Screening & Discussion (Online)

Borderland: The Life & Times of Blanche Ames Ames is a 55-minute documentary that chronicles the life of a woman who was born in the 19th century, worked to change the 20th century, and whose wisdom still resonates in the 21st century. Read more about the film.

Members of the Smith College Club of the Peninsula are invited to an online screening of Borderland and a Q&A session with the filmmakers immediately following the film. This event will occur online. Members will receive an evite in June. Become a member.

An alumna of Smith College, class of 1899, Blanche Ames Ames (1878-1969) was an artist, an activist, a builder, an inventor, a birth control maverick, and a leader of the woman suffrage movement in Massachusetts. She was a woman of privilege who was not afraid to shock polite society. Her name doesn't appear in most American history books. This, too, is part of her story. Become a member to join us for this special event.

In June we are reading and discussing The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman; a quirky, unclassifiable, illustrated book that wanders from the dodo to hats to a trip to Israel to a plan for a party.

@ Camper in Menlo Park

You read that correctly: we're planning on an in-person event in June. We're taking our recurring opportunity for local Smith Alums to gather, network, get assistance on resume writing, and have a cocktail to the streets. Meet us at Camper in Menlo Park where there is plenty of outdoor seating and fresh air. Please continue to follow all county guidelines regarding masks and social distancing as we all carefully emerge from our respective cocoons. Just like our online gatherings, this event will be led by Donna Dong ‘13.

As opportunities to gather in person emerge, we're always looking for new ways to meet up and connect. If you have great ideas for group events, there's a new way to make those suggestions: Go to our website under the Events tab, or just click here, and you will be presented with a Google form to guide you through your event suggestion. Please complete the form, including as much information as you can. After you submit the form, someone from the club's events team will contact you.

With graduation upon us, our conversations this month began with a focus on how we can help our young alums get connected to our local network, but as ever, we went with the flow to address the needs and interests of everyone who attended. Next month we will have an online meeting on June 10 at 5:30 PM (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86115648148?pwd=eitCdCtPZFRXS0dpR1hxcHcxK2Fwdz09) and an in-person event on June 24 at 5:30 PM.

Dr. Malkowski, Smith College Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, presented No Such Thing as Neutral: Racism and Technology Design. The presentation focused on the racial biases built into technologies and inviting participants to consider the harms and inequities of design processes that consistently center on white technology users; co-sponsored by Smith Clubs in Colorado, Wyoming, Indianapolis, LA, New Jersey and our own Peninsula Bay Area.

Forty-three attendees learned about the misconception that digital tools are unbiased and equitable for all, when in reality software and user interface designers bake in their own biases. Dr. Malkowski then presented case studies illuminating the pervasive racial biases in online search engine results and in the evolution of photography and film equipment. Malkowski pointed out that our daily quests for knowledge rely mainly on search engines, versus our past knowledge repositories of libraries, teachers, and researchers, and challenged the audience with questions like: If the highest-ranked search engine results are the most “popular” how can a minority ever rewrite the stereotypes? and When click-throughs are monetized, does this make racism profitable?

During the Q&A portion of the presentation Dr. Malkowski fielded questions and concerns from attendees regarding social media, privacy, Google and other search engines, public policy, libraries, and alternative sources of information and research.

The college will make a recording of Dr. Malkowski's presentation available in June. We will provide that information when it becomes available.

If you are interested in attending our meetings or getting on the mailing list, please contact the Book Club Coordinator, Sally W. Smith '64, via email or by filling out the form on our website at https://www.peninsulasmithclubca.org/book-club.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

June 18: The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman

July 21: Traditionally we take the month of July off, and that tradition continues this year! There will be no book club meeting in July.

August 18: Another book club tradition continues in August. We will enjoy a movie based on a book: Nomadland based on the book by Jessica Bruder, directed by Academy Award winner and Mount Holyoke graduate Chloé Zhao. We're planning to make this an in-person event! Stay tuned as we cautiously move toward gathering together.

Remember that we get a discount at keplers.com. You can also order at bookshop.org, which supports local, independent bookstores. To join us, head over to our book club page on the website and sign up! We will send you the Zoom link proactively.

As announced in President Kathleen McCartney’s April 2 letter to students, the campus will welcome seniors back to campus for an in-person Commencement. Families, guests and friends are invited to watch the ceremony streaming online; no one will be allowed to attend the on-campus student event. Please visit https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/college-events/commencement to get all the details about Commencement Weekend.

As mentioned at the top of this newsletter, please consider taking part in Global Illumination Night by taking a picture of your bright light and uploading it here, or post it on social media with the hashtag #smithilluminates. Explore the Global Illumination Map as we show our support for this year's graduating class.

This month our member spotlight falls on Zoe Zandbergen, class of 2018! Zoe is a rare combination of artist and engineer, and shares some of their incredibly interesting projects with us.

Graduation Year: 2018

House: Lawrence House

Major: Engineering with a minor Studio Art

Fondest memories of Smith: It's hard to pinpoint a fondest memory, but what I will always cherish are the people—I met some really wonderful people that I'm still in touch with. One of the best things that I did at Smith was my Engineering capstone project. I was getting a Bachelor of Arts in Engineering, not a Bachelor of Science, so the capstone project was optional, but irresistible. I worked with a small team of fellow students to design dolls for a children's hospital. These dolls had to sensitively represent the congenital conditions and assistive devices of the kids, and the project was a great mix of art and engineering. My role was visual design lead. Along with a significant amount of research to meet our clients’ specifications, we did some weird stuff with 3D scanning, color matching, and casting in plastic. Our cubicle in the design clinic was actually incredibly creepy with all its disconnected doll parts lying around. The result was the development of three dolls that the hospital could use, and a 120-page final report. If you want to learn more about the project or see the resulting dolls, it’s up on my website.

Getting to Smith: I went to elementary school in Menlo Park. I had a classmate there whose moms both went to Smith and they scooped up a few of his friends and sold us on Smith in high school, convincing two of our little group to attend. While I was at Lincoln High School in San Jose, I waffled over going to art school, but it seemed like a very high pressure environment and potentially limiting. When Smith offered me a merit scholarship, I was ready to go.

Studying at Smith: Smith was a mind-expanding experience. I like art, I like math, and I wanted to study something that would be practical and transferable. I was considering industrial design and Smith's Design Clinic program with its applied design approach—working with real clients in industry and government—drew me in.

I also had the opportunity to study sculpture with Professor Lee Burns. He was a delightful teacher and became my advisor for my minor in Studio Art. I still think fondly of him describing the elaborate process of curing a maple burl. I also took courses in data visualization and landscape studies—the open curriculum system at Smith was fantastic for taking classes my high-school self never would have expected loving!

Post-Smith: After graduation I did some private math tutoring and worked as a counselor at a Lego engineering camp, but kept noodling along with my sculpture, illustration and 2D design. While I love the variety of being a freelance artist, I'm still building my business to a point where it might someday pay the bills. In early 2020 I started to apply for “office jobs", thinking that sculpture would have to wait for a while, and then Covid-19 hit the Bay Area. 

The silver lining for me was that quarantining at my mom's house in San Jose has been incredible for artistic output. I was able to sculpt for a year and the popularity of my work grew to the point where I can't keep art in stock on my website (new sculptures coming in June, but they’ll likely quickly leave again). 

The pandemic definitely glitched out the picture of my immediate plans, and even now I continue to recalibrate what my future looks like. If any Smithie reading this thinks wow, what an interesting and/or weird person with some career similarities to me, I would honestly love to chat and learn from anyone who’d like to chat with me. 

In the meantime I'm juggling my office job, sculpting, and the mindboggling new options of post-vaccination life. Have you heard about hanging out with your friends? In the same room? I really think this could be big. I’m excited to test it with some Smith friends visiting next month, personally!