Convocation to Honor MacArthur Foundation President, Former Head of Maryland Schools

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College will honor the head of one of the nation’s most influential philanthropic foundations and Maryland’s recently retired superintendent of schools during Fall Convocation ceremonies Thursday, September 1, at 4 p.m. Gathering in Decker Theatre, in the Gibson Center for the Arts, the College community will confer honorary degrees on Robert Gallucci, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Nancy Grasmick, who led Maryland’s schools for two decades before stepping down June 30.

The Convocation audience also will honor alumna Rebecca Corbin Loree ’00 with the Alumni Horizon Ribbon, which recognizes graduates from the past 15 years who have demonstrated outstanding leadership, service or scholarship in their lives and/or professions. In addition, five students will be recognized for outstanding academic achievement during the previous school year.

Robert Gallucci, a leading expert in U.S. foreign policy and a key player in international efforts to stop weapons of mass destruction, became president of the MacArthur Foundation in July of 2009. He brought extensive experience in peacekeeping and negotiations to the Foundation, which supports initiatives in peace and security, human rights, international justice, conservation, sustainable development, education and international health.

Gallucci was Assistant Secretary of State for political and military affairs in 1992-93 and served as the nation’s chief negotiator during a nuclear crisis with North Korea in 1994. As special adviser for the implementation of the Dayton Accords, he helped negotiate the peace agreement that brought the war in Bosnia to a close. After the first Gulf War, he was part of the arms inspection effort known as the UN Special Commission on Iraq. A year later, he helped implement nonproliferation and nuclear safety initiatives in the former Soviet Union.

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Gallucci received his bachelor's degree at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his master's and doctorate at Brandeis University. After completing his post-graduate studies, he taught briefly at Swarthmore College, at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and at Georgetown University, where he returned in 1996 as Dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

He is the author of Neither Peace Nor Honor: The Politics of American Military Policy in Vietnam, and co-author of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis. The College will award Gallucci the honorary degree Doctor of Letters.

Nancy S. Grasmick served as Maryland State Superintendent of Schools for 20 years, earning a reputation as a tireless advocate for education with a strong focus on student achievement, teacher quality, parent involvement, school funding, and early childhood education. Under her leadership, Maryland received one of the federal government’s coveted Race to the Top education grants.

Dr. Grasmick began her career in education as a teacher of deaf children in Baltimore City. She subsequently served as a classroom and resource teacher, principal, supervisor, assistant superintendent, and associate superintendent in the Baltimore County Public Schools. In 1989, Governor William Donald Schaefer appointed her Special Secretary for Children, Youth, and Families and, in 1991, the Maryland State Board of Education appointed her State Superintendent of Schools.

Dr. Grasmick received her bachelor’s degree from Towson University, her master’s degree from Gallaudet University, and her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. Her many board and commission appointments include the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education and the National Academy of Sciences committee responsible for Rising Above the Gathering Storm, the landmark report on U.S. economic competitiveness. In 2008, she received the Civitas International Leader Award from the Center for Civic Education in recognition of her long-time commitment to expanding civic education in the United States and throughout the world. The College will award Grasmick the honorary degree Doctor of Public Service.

Honored alumna Rebecca Corbin Loree is the managing director of Corbin Perception Group, LLC, which she created in 2007 as a boutique advisory firm focusing on investor relations and strategic communications. She graduated cum laude and with Honors from Washington College with a B.A. in Business Administration in 2000. She also was the first recipient of the Schottland Business Leadership Award, which recognizes a senior who has demonstrated outstanding academic ability and potential for leadership in the business community. She began her career in New York City with Thomson Financial in the Corporate Advisory Services division, where she established and ran Thomson Financial Perception.

Following the Convocation program, the College will offer a reception in the Underwood Lobby of the Arts Center.

Award-Winning Writer Peter Manseau Is New Patrick Henry Fellow at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Peter Manseau, a historian, novelist, journalist and memoirist whose writing spans a remarkable range of genres, has been awarded the 2011-12 Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship at Washington College. He will spend the academic year finishing a major new narrative history of the United States, told through the prism of the diverse religious traditions that have shaped the nation.

The fellowship, provided by the College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America's founding era and its legacy. Manseau’s fellowship book, Twenty Gods or None: The Making of a Nation from the Margins of Faith, will be published by Little, Brown and Company in 2013.

Manseau’s sweeping portrayal of American religious diversity focuses on “minority religions,” ranging from the “secret Jews” who sailed with Columbus, to Muslim traditions among African Americans, to the Buddhism that Chinese railroad workers brought to the American West in the 19th century. Situating these faiths at the center, rather than the margins of American history, Manseau argues that minority faiths had (and still have) a disproportionate influence on debates over religious freedom and the role of faith in American public life.

As part of the fellowship, Manseau will live in a restored 1735 house in the heart of Chestertown’s colonial historic district and will teach a course at Washington College in the spring. He will give a public talk about his work on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 5 p.m. in the College’s Litrenta Lecture Hall, Toll Science Center.

“As both a historian and a novelist, I am excited to join a community that regards the writing of history at once as a literary pursuit and a key to understanding the present through the past,” Manseau says. “In keeping with the Starr Center’s mission, the book will show how the early history of the nation continues to shape the story we are all a part of today.”

Twenty Gods or None takes its title from one of Thomas Jefferson’s most robust defenses of religious liberty. The book will be the first history of the United States to explain the formation of American culture as a product of radical religious diversity, rooted in the founders’ commitment to protecting the free exercise of religion without favoring any individual faith or sect.

“Peter Manseau’s impressively diverse and prolific career sets him apart,” says Adam Goodheart, the Starr Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold Director. “He’s a young scholar whose versatile mind and free-ranging curiosity, whose dedication to both intellectual inquiry and literary craft, put him in the proud tradition of such writers as Henry Adams and Alfred Kazin.”

A 1996 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Manseau has published three books of his own, co-authored a fourth, and co-edited a fifth. His works focus on the history of religion and include the reliquary travelogue Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Henry Holt, 2009), which the St. Petersburg Times called an “eloquently crafted tribute to the ways in which life and death connect.”

Manseau’s widely-acclaimed memoir Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005) resonated with readers both inside and outside of the Catholic church and won him that most coveted of book-related interviews, a spot on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. A founding editor of the online magazine Killing the Buddha, Manseau is also the co-author (with Jeff Sharlet) of a companion book, Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2004), which was named one of the best religion books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly.

His first novel, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005), was internationally acclaimed as a “picaresque novel with an epic sweep” and was translated into Dutch, German, Hebrew, Italian, French and Spanish. The story of a fictional Yiddish poet in turn-of-the-century Russia, the book won the 2008 National Jewish Book Award and the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature, among other honors.

Manseau is completing a Ph.D. in Religion at Georgetown University, where his dissertation examines American Yiddish literature from the early 1900s. His essays and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications.

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship’s funding is permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through its nationwide “We the People” initiative for strengthening the teaching, study and understanding of American history and culture.

Launched by the Starr Center in 2008, the Patrick Henry Fellowship aims to encourage reflection on the links between American history and contemporary culture, and to foster the literary art of historical writing. It is co-sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House, Washington College's center for literature and the literary arts. The Henry Fellowship complements the George Washington Book Prize, which is also administered by the Starr Center and awarded annually to an author whose work advances public understanding of the Revolution and its legacy.

Washington College acquired the Patrick Henry Fellows’ Residence in January 2007 through a generous gift from the Barksdale-Dabney-Patrick Henry Family Foundation, which was established by the Nuttle family of Talbot County, direct descendants of the patriot Patrick Henry.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Based in the Custom House along the colonial waterfront, the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience fosters the art of written history and explores our nation’s past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways, through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information on the Center and the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

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College to Honor Former President John S. Toll with Memorial Service on Thursday, Sept. 15

CHESTERTOWN, MD—The Washington College community will gather on campus Thursday, September 15 at 4 p.m. to celebrate the life of former president John S. Toll, who passed away July 15, 2011 at the age of 87. The public is welcome to the memorial service, which will take place in the Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts. A reception will follow.

Former colleagues will pay tribute to a leader and friend known for his optimism, kindness and dedication to higher education. Those slated to speak include former Chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors Jay Griswold, former Board member John Moag, and former Dean and Provost of the College Joachim Scholz. A nephew, Stephen S. Dunham, who serves as Vice President and General Counsel at Johns Hopkins University, will speak on behalf of the family.

Dr. Toll came to Washington College after an already stellar career as a physicist and as a higher-education visionary. During his decade in Chestertown, he reinvigorated the College financially, academically and physically, bringing it into national prominence. For a full obituary, click here.

At the family’s request, gifts to Washington College in honor of Dr. Toll will fund a prize in physics to be awarded to a graduating senior. Memorial gifts can be sent to the Advancement Office, Washington College, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, MD 21620.

Those who wish to send condolences to the family may write to Deborah T. Toll, 6609 Boxford Way, Bethesda, MD, 20817.

Washington College Leaps Ahead 113 Spots In Forbes List of America's Top Colleges

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College climbed a remarkable 113 spots in the annual Forbes list of America’s Top Colleges. The nation’s tenth oldest college, WC was ranked #107 overall among the 650 colleges and universities surveyed, landing at #95 among private colleges and #24 among schools in the South.

The rankings are prepared by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a Washington, D.C. think tank founded by Ohio University economist Richard Vedder. In presenting the list, Forbes described its ranking criteria as “focused on the things that matter the most to students: quality of teaching, great career prospects, graduation rates and low levels of debt. … We try and evaluate the college purchase as a consumer would: Is it worth spending as much as a quarter of a million dollars for this degree?”

The data used for the list fall into five categories, the most influential (30 percent of the overall ranking) being “Post-Graduate Success.” Success is measured by how much alumni earn and how many are listed in “Who’s Who in America” and on the Forbes Corporate Officers list.

The category of “Student Satisfaction,” which accounts for 27.5 percent of a school’s overall score, considers evaluations from RateMyProfessors.com and the retention rate from freshman to sophomore year. Other categories are student debt, four-year graduation rates, and the number of nationally competitive awards such as Rhodes Scholarships, National Science Foundation Fellowships and Fulbright Awards a school’s alumni earn.

First on the Forbes list for the second year in a row is Williams, followed by Princeton, West Point, Amherst and Stanford. Among Maryland schools, Washington College ranked below only the Naval Academy (#17) and Johns Hopkins University (#101). For the full rankings list, visit: http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/

Panel of Top Counterterrorism Experts To Assess U.S. Security a Decade After the 9-11 Attacks

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Marking the 10-year anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, a panel of top counterterrorism experts will convene at Washington College on Thursday, September 8, for an important dialogue on the current state of national security. The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 5 p.m. in Decker Theatre on the Chestertown campus and will be simulcast through the College website, www.washcoll.edu.

Members of the Washington College community and the general public are encouraged to submit questions and comments for the panelists in advance by email to Matthew Icenroad, Assistant to the President, at micenroad2@washcoll.edu. The deadline for submitting questions is midnight, Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Washington College president Mitchell B. Reiss, author of Negotiating with Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists (2010, Open Road) and a leading expert on American foreign policy, will serve as moderator. The panelists will be CIA veteran Cofer Black, retired U.S. Navy Admiral Dennis Blair, George Mason University professor Audrey Cronin, and Harvard professor of international affairs Sarah Sewall. Each brings a unique perspective based on his or her experiences or research in the fields of warfare, intelligence and international security issues.

In a career with the CIA that spanned nearly three decades, Cofer Black completed six operational tours abroad before serving as director of the agency’s Counterterrorist Center. From 2002 to 2005, he helped develop, coordinate and implement U.S. counterterrorism policies in the office of the Secretary of State.

2008 profile in Men’s Journal described Black as “the foremost expert on counterterrorism in the world today.” He is credited with tracking and helping to capture noted terrorist Carlos the Jackal in Khartoum, Sudan in 1994 and was later targeted for assassination by Osama Bin Laden.

After leaving the CIA, he joined the private business sector, first as Vice Chairman of the controversial private-security firm Blackwater Worldwide and then as Chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions. Since 2009 Black has been Vice President for Global Operations at Virginia-based Blackbird Technologies, which provides technology solutions for clients in the defense, intelligence, and law enforcement communities.

Admiral Dennis Blair, U.S. Navy (Ret.), served 34 years in the Navy, retiring in 2002 as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command. He served as Director of National Intelligence from January 2009 to May 2010, leading 16 national intelligence agencies and administering a budget of $50 billion while providing integrated intelligence support to the President, Congress and operations in the field.

From 2003 to 2006, Blair was president and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).From 2006 to 2008 he held the John M. Shalikashvili chair in national security studies studies at the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Omar M. Bradley Chair at the Army War College and Dickinson College.

He has been awarded four Defense Distinguished Service medals and three National Intelligence Distinguished Service medals. In addition, he has received decorations from the governments of Japan, Thailand, Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Taiwan. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Blair earned a master’s degree in history and languages from Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar.

Audrey Cronin, the author of How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (2009, Princeton University Press), recently joined the faculty of George Mason University’s School of Public Policy in Arlington, Va. Prior to that, she was director of the core course on military strategy at the U.S. National War College, where she revised the curriculum for senior military officers to include the study of Thucydides and an emphasis upon classics in the history and theory of war.

Cronin joined the War College in 2007 after a two-year stint at Oxford University (Nuffield College) as Director of Studies for the Oxford/Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. Earlier in her career, she taught in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she created a renowned graduate course on political violence and terrorism. She also has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Maryland and Columbia University.

In addition to her 20-year career as a professor, Cronin, a graduate of Princeton University, holds extensive experience applying her research for government and military groups. She has served in various positions within the U.S. Navy and the Department of Defense. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, she advised members of Congress as a Specialist in Terrorism at the Congressional Research Service. Her previous books include Ending Terrorism: Lessons for Defeating al-Qaeda (Routledge, 2008) and Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (Georgetown University Press, 2004).

Sarah Sewall, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, has worked at the intersection of national security and humanitarianism throughout her career in government, academia, and non-governmental organizations. Her research focuses on U.S. national security strategy, civil-military relations, and the ethics of fighting insurgencies and terrorism.

Sewall is the founder and faculty director of the Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) program, which she created in 2007 while serving as director of the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. MARO’s mission is to create a military concept of operations for intervening to halt mass atrocities. Sewall subsequently co-wrote Mass Atrocity Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook. She is also the co-author of Parameters of Partnership: U.S. Civil-Military Relations in the 21st Century (2009, CreateSpace). She led a seminal study for the U.S. military on efforts to reduce civilian casualties in 2010, and in 2008 directed the Obama Transition’s National Security Agency Review process.

Sewall was the first U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance during the Clinton Administration and previously served for six years (1987-1993) as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. A graduate of Harvard College, she received her doctorate from Oxford University.

The “9/11 Now” panel is sponsored by the College’s Richard L. Harwood Colloquy and the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs. No tickets or reservations are required.

Washington College Is a National "Best" in Princeton Review's Newest Guides

CHESTERTOWN, MD — Washington College is one of the country’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company features the historic college, which was founded under the patronage of George Washington in 1782, in the new 2012 edition of its annual college guide, The Best 376 Colleges. About 15 percent of the nation’s four-year colleges are represented in the book.

The Princeton Review uses both institutional data and student input to create its profiles of selected colleges and universities. Students say Washington College is all about “gaining a distinctive and strong education in the liberal arts through personalized programs and hands-on experience.” A litany of praise for this small, tight-knit community included mention of its “beautiful campus,” “an intimate and personalized educational experience,” and personable, highly educated professors “who love to teach” and who are “willing to bend over backwards to ensure your education.” Students consider the English and creative writing programs among “the best in the country.” The school’s location scored big points, too. “The Eastern Shore is an incredible place to be.”

Robert Franek, Princeton Review's Senior Vice President for Publishing, commends Washington College for its “outstanding academics,” which is the primary criterion for selecting schools for the book. “Our choices are based on institutional data we collect about schools, our visits to schools over the years, feedback we gather from students attending the schools, and the opinions of our staff and our 28-member National College Counselor Advisory Board,” he explains. "We also work to keep a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character."

Princeton Review also recommends Washington College among its "Best in the Northeast" section of its website feature, "2012 Best Colleges: Region by Region," that posted August 1, 2011 on PrincetonReview.com.

The Princeton Review asks students to rate their own schools on several issues—from the accessibility of their professors to quality of the campus food—and answer questions about themselves, their fellow students, and their campus life. Washington College students were most recently surveyed in 2010-11, since the opening of the new Gibson Center for the Arts and a new dining hall/student center.

All evidence suggests students are happy with their college choice. “Washington College is a “melting pot of individuals from different backgrounds, but the typical student is open-minded, ambitious, and extremely innovative. Athletes and burgeoning writers alike “have strong pride and love for our school.”

College President Mitchell B. Reiss is not surprised at the outpouring of affection for Washington College. “This is a remarkable institution, steeped in tradition, nestled on the beautiful Eastern Shore and committed to the highest public good—preparing young men and women to become responsible citizens willing and able to assume positions of leadership. General Washington would be proud.”

Eminent Historian Richard Beeman Named a Senior Fellow at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD— Acclaimed historian Richard Beeman, winner of the 2010 George Washington Book Prize, has recently joined the Washington College community as a Senior Fellow of both the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and the Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture (IRPC). In his new role, Beeman will offer a special four-week series of public talks at the College this fall. The series, Inventing a Nation, will provide attendees a crash course in the dramatic highs and lows of America’s first 25 years.

One of the nation’s leading historians of America’s revolutionary and early national experience, Beeman has been a member of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania for 43 years and has served as Chair of the Department of History and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the scholarly advisory board of the American Revolution Center and is a Trustee of the National Constitution Center.

Beeman joins former Senator Birch Bayh as a Senior Fellow at the Starr Center. He will serve as a resource for the Washington College community, mentoring high-achieving students and leading public programs.

“Rick is a captivating lecturer, a brilliant scholar and a superb teacher,” says Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the Starr Center. “His two previous appearances here were among the best events we’ve ever hosted. He, in turn, has greatly enjoyed his visits to Chestertown. I was thrilled when he approached us about developing an ongoing relationship with Washington College.”

“Having a scholar of the international prominence of Richard Beeman as a Senior Fellow is a great honor and a tremendous addition to the Institute,” adds Joseph Prud’homme, Director of the IRPC. “Rick will be an invaluable resource for our students.”

Beeman, likewise, says he is “greatly honored” to be affiliated with the Starr Center and IRPC. “I have long been an admirer of their superb public programs. I look forward to my association with the students and faculty at Washington College,” he says, “and I hope that I will be able to contribute something useful to the intellectual life at the College.”

Beeman won the George Washington Book Prize in 2010 for Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House, 2009), which the jurors praised as “the fullest and most authentic account of the Constitutional Convention ever written.” He is also the author of five other books on revolutionary America, including The Penguin Guide to the American Constitution (Penguin, 2010) and Patrick Henry: A Biography (McGraw-Hill, 1974), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

He is currently at work on a “prequel” to Plain, Honest Men. Also set in Independence Hall, the new book focuses on the Continental Congress’s often acrimonious two-year debate over the question of independence. Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor: Americans Choose Independence is scheduled to be published by Random House in 2013.

Over the course of his career, Beeman has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Huntington Library. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in the United Kingdom and as Harmsworth Distinguished Professor of American History at Oxford University.

The four talks in Beeman’s Inventing a Nation series will take place in the College’s Decker Theatre at 7:30 p.m. on consecutive Tuesdays as follows:

October 18, “The Founders and the Myth of the ‘Original Meaning’ of the Constitution”

October 25, “The Founders, Religion, and Separation of Church and State”

November 1, “The Creation of the Bill of Rights”

November 8, “Sex, Lies, and the Founders: The American Presidency, Democracy, and the Media”

More details will be announced in September.