January 14, 2022

New & Notable

New majors introduced in business, computer science

New majors in business and accounting and expanded course offerings in computer science will be available to students beginning in fall 2022.

A new business program that includes both a business major and an accounting major will replace the current global management program to better reflect the degree programs and coursework college-bound students are seeking in those disciplines. Students will also be able to major in four popular concentrations in computer science, including game design, cybersecurity, computing for the social good and systems engineering and administration.

Free tuition now available to income-eligible Indiana residents

Earlham College is offering free tuition to Indiana students whose families are Pell and State of Indiana grant-eligible and earn at or below the state’s median household income.

The INspire Earlham program is for students whose families have a household income of up to $60,000. The average Hoosier household earns about $56,000, according to 2020 Census figures.

Eligible students must be accepted to Earlham as part of the fall 2022 entering class; file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid by March 1, 2022; and apply for all state, federal and institutional aid in order to unlock the full benefit of this offer.

Students, faculty contribute to local dam removal project

A team from the Earth and Environmental Science Department is collaborating with the City of Richmond Sanitary District on a study to determine if there are potentially harmful levels of contamination present in the sediment trapped behind the Weir Dam in the Whitewater Gorge area. 

The City of Richmond has received grants from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the dam. 

Using high-tech satellite navigation equipment, students and faculty surveyed the river channel up and downstream of the century-old dam. The team also collected sediment cores to characterize the amount and nature of the material accumulated behind the dam. 

Sediment samples analyzed by an independent lab contained trace amounts of metals and hydrocarbons, but no pesticides or PCBs were detected.

Andy Moore, professor of earth and environmental science, and Shannon Hayes, an Indiana licensed professional geologist and geology curator at Earlham, began the project last summer with students Garris Radloff, Amelia Richardson and Katherine Liu. Their work was part of Earlham’s Summer Collaborative Research program and funded by an anonymous donor, the Earlham College Stephen and Sylvia Tregidga Burges Endowed Research Fund and the Borman Family Foundation.

Members of the research team plan to present their findings at the Geological Society of America’s upcoming conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, in April.

Grant-funded project to digitize collections at Joseph Moore Museum, Lilly Library

Earlham College has been awarded nearly $403,000 in American Rescue Plan grant funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The grant will help the College purchase instructional technology for teaching in the humanities, support operation costs and training and purchase equipment to digitize collections at Lilly Library and Joseph Moore Museum. The grant also will support three temporary positions to advance key humanities initiatives on campus.

With grant funding, the Joseph Moore Museum will hire a post-doctoral fellow to catalog, analyze, digitize and rehouse all of the materials in its Native American collection. This fellow will teach an undergraduate course in Native American archaeology and assist museum staff to establish a 3D scanning lab on campus.

A second position supported by the grant will be a digital archivist who will work at Earlham’s Lilly Library on key digitization projects. This position will help provide training and supervision to student workers, especially those learning and providing digitization assistance. The work will also include scanning and metadata tagging of key collections and modernizing the existing archives.

Key collections of focus will include the original collection records of museum founder and Earlham’s second president, Joseph Moore, and materials from the Friends United Meeting Collection.

A tertiary project is to begin digitization of the College’s permanent art collection, which includes over 3,000 paintings, prints and sculptures featuring Midwestern art and crafts, East Asian and Quaker art, plus objects of material culture from Africa, Asia and the South Pacific.

The salary for a temporary instructional designer will also be supported by the grant. This position will assist faculty with the creation of online and hybrid course content due to the COVID pandemic.


New faces on campus

Tara Natarajan

Tara Natarajan has been selected to become Earlham College’s next provost and vice president of academic affairs.

Natarajan is currently the dean of the faculty at St. Michael’s College outside Burlington, Vermont. Her first day at Earlham will be Feb. 1, 2022.

Natarajan began her career as an assistant professor of economics at St. Michael’s in 2001. She earned tenure in 2007 and chaired St. Michael’s economics department from 2016 to 2019.

At Earlham, Natarajan will become the first person of color to serve as an Earlham vice president for academic affairs, and its first international Cabinet member. She will be a member of one of the most diverse Cabinets in Earlham’s history and the first that has a majority of women.

She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 2001, her master’s in economics from the University of Bombay, India, and her bachelor’s from Sophia College in Bombay, India. Tara also spent time in an experiential program focused on global issues in Norway.

Tara Natarajan photo

Gariot P. Louima

Gariot P. Louima joined the College in October as the first associate vice president of diversity and strategic initiatives.

In this newly created role, Louima is advancing strategic initiatives that widen the path to an Earlham education and build upon the College’s longstanding commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, including the implementation of a comprehensive DEI action plan.

With decades of leadership experience in higher education, Louima brings added expertise to Earlham in the areas of fundraising, marketing and communications, enrollment management and teaching. Before being promoted into his current role, he served as Antioch College’s dean of admission and external relations, chief communications officer and was the founding coordinator of the College’s Writing Institute.

He also served in several leadership roles at Goddard College, was editorial director at Miami Dade College and was an editor at Nova Southeastern University.

Prior to working in higher education, he was a journalist at some of nation’s most respected newspapers, including The Palm Beach Post, Los Angeles TimesMiami Herald, and The Times-Picayune.

Gariot P. Louima photo


Frances Moore Lappé ’66 celebrated on 50th anniversary of groundbreaking book

Indiana University conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree to Earlham graduate Frances Moore Lappé in November. The ceremony preceded the 50th anniversary of her groundbreaking book, Diet for a Small Planet.

“Frances Moore Lappé’s work has had a profound impact on civic participation, democratic movements and social justice in the United States and across the globe,” IU said in a release.

Lappe is the author or co-author of 20 books and has educated the public on the global food supply and the role of democratic publics in addressing issues of hunger and environmental degradation.

In 2002, she co-founded the Small Planet Institute (with her daughter Anna Lappé), a collaborative network for research and popular education to bring democracy to life, as well as the Small Planet Fund to channel resources to democratic social movements worldwide.

You may watch the ceremony on Indiana University Broadcast.


Alicia Painter ’11 makes history with Wayne County non-profit

Alicia Painter ’11 has become the first female CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Wayne County.

As CEO, Painter will lead a team of more than 80 staff members and dozens of volunteers who provide programming for about 2,500 members at five locations across Wayne County.

“This was a long process, and we had over 100 candidates that we screened,” the Boys & Girls Clubs of Wayne County’s Board of Directors said in a statement. “We believe Alicia will make a great CEO for our organization and lead us into the next decade of youth development and after-school programming for the youth in Wayne County.”

The BGCWC is quickly expanding services across Wayne County and has opened two new locations in the last year in Richmond and Cambridge City.

At Earlham, Alicia was a Bonner Scholar, earned a degree in psychology and minored in education. She volunteered at the BGCWC for three years. She also met her husband, Alex Painter ’10, on campus.

ESR authors release books on a contentious decade for Quaker organizations

Authors from the Earlham School of Religion have contributed to a trilogy of books chronicling a tumultuous time in recent Quaker polity. Stephen Angell, Leatherock professor of Quaker studies at ESR; Jade Souza, an ESR student; and Chuck Fager, a retired peace activist and journalist, published the books within the last year.

The Separation Generation includes three volumes—Indiana TrainwreckMurder at Quaker Lake, and Shattered by the Light—and chronicle the stories of five yearly Quaker meetings. Four of them underwent separation into two or more new meetings or allowed Friends churches within their yearly meeting to go independent; a fifth yearly meeting, 320 years old, shut down completely. Between the years of 2009 and 2018, discord over the authority of scripture, church governance and debate over the welcoming and affirming of LGBTQ members, was a common thread in these conflicts.

Indiana Trainwreck reports on the formal separation of the Indiana Yearly Meeting in 2013 and numerous departures of Friends churches from the Western Yearly Meeting. The book focuses on the fallout related to a 2008 statement adopted by the West Richmond (Indiana) Friends Meeting affirming the presence and participation of LGBTQ persons in all aspects of its fellowship.

An event was held at ESR in November celebrating the release of the books. All three books are being sold online.  

In the trilogy’s second and third volumes, similar dramatic departures are accounted for from the North Carolina, Northwest and Wilmington (Ohio) yearly meetings that affected the heartland of pastoral Quakerism.


Tennis returning to Earlham in fall 2022

A major gift from Earlham College graduate Randal Sadler ’73 and his wife, Melissa, is serving up a return of men’s and women’s NCAA Division III tennis on campus.

The College will resurface its six varsity tennis courts and four recreational playing surfaces. The recreational courts will be optimized for dual use as tennis and pickleball courts, in response to student interest. The College has launched a search for coaching staff in anticipation of resuming competition in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference in fall 2022.

Randal Sadler, a celebrated pitcher on the Quakers’ baseball teams of the ’70s, and Melissa are among Earlham’s most ardent and generous advocates, especially in athletics. In 2012, the family made a major gift to the College in support of a new baseball facility on south campus. Randal R. Sadler Stadium was built during the summer of 2013 and hosted the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Baseball Tournament in 2017.

Their support for varsity tennis—which has the potential to attract current and prospective students to the teams—will allow Earlham to move forward with construction and renovation beginning next June. Courts will be usable by August 2022.


ESR dean among featured speakers at Faith and Science: Towards COP26

Gretchen Castle ’73, new dean of the Earlham School of Religion, joined faith leaders from around the world in calling on the United Nations to take bold action to address climate change.

For the last year, Castle has represented Quakers at an initiative sponsored by The Holy See and the Italian and British embassies. During a culminating event earlier this month at the Vatican, Castle shared her perspectives on climate justice before signing an appeal that will be presented in November during the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26.

“Quakers, known for our work in peace and justice, are guided by a spiritual imperative to respect all life,” Castle said in her statement at the Oct. 4 event which was translated into seven languages. “God has entrusted us with the beauty and miracle of creation, and as a human family, we have fallen short of caring for it.

“We must address our overconsumption and wasteful habits and learn to live in a collective, socially supportive world community, respectful of all life. We must address the unequal economic systems and the human impacts of climate change.”

The four-page appeal calls for global leaders to act with greater ambition to address threats to the environment. The group also pledged to work in partnership with the UN in taking urgent, radical and responsible action.

Castle has been representing Quakers on a global stage throughout her career. Prior to becoming dean at ESR, she served for nine years as general secretary of the Friends World Committee for Consultation in the Quaker World Office in London. She has also served at the Quaker United Nations Offices in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York City.

Castle recently finished her term as the first woman chair of the Christian World Communions Annual Meeting of the General Secretaries.


Earlham earns praise for legacy of outstanding teaching

In the 2022 edition of The Princeton Review’s Best 387 Colleges, Earlham is included on two “Great Lists”—Great Classroom Experience and Best Midwestern—compiled to celebrate the guide’s 30th anniversary. Institutions included in these lists have consistently appeared in previous editions.

These new accolades accompany Earlham’s traditional inclusion in The Princeton Review’s Best Value, Green Colleges, and Best Schools for Making an Impact rankings.

In a national survey conducted by The Princeton Review, Earlham students reported that they “have a strong and close connection with professors” and that Earlham faculty are “amazing to work with” and “extremely available.”

Robert Franek, the editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review, recently mentioned Earlham on a Cincinnati, Ohio, radio talk show about the rankings. 

“Earlham is such a fabulous school and we’ve been writing about them for my entire duration at The Princeton Review—a little over 20 years.

“Earlham … has such a compelling academic experience and the financial aid experience for students and parents that they should be considering them seriously on their list for the next academic year.”

U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” guidebook for 2022 has also once again recognized Earlham College for academic excellence, value, innovation, study abroad opportunities and a commitment to undergraduate teaching.

The popular resource for college-bound students consistently ranks Earlham among its top 100 National Liberal Arts Colleges. Among institutions in that prestigious category, Earlham has been ranked 16th for best value; 20th for study abroad; 42nd among most innovative schools; 48th for best undergraduate teaching; 4th for the percentage of international students; and 16th for A+ schools for B students. “A+ Schools for B Students” is a list for institutions with a comprehensive admissions philosophy that looks beyond students who earn straight As.


3 seniors selected for competitive Indiana post-graduate fellowship

Three Earlham College seniors have been selected as Orr Fellows and two of them have accepted salaried positions with high-growth companies in Indianapolis after graduation.

Tsitsi Makufa, Trevor Marimbire and Salma Khalaf are the first from Earlham to be selected for the competitive national program. The fellowship attracts 1,200 applicants each year and less than 8 percent earn offers from companies.

Orr Fellows submit personal statements and essays for consideration. Finalists interview with executives from multiple companies in a single day and rank their choices. The Orr Fellowship then works with employers to find finalists who are good matches for the companies.

Fellows also have access to special networking events and stipends that pay for continued learning opportunities.

Khalaf is graduating this fall and has accepted a position with Kiwanis International, a global organization of clubs, members and partners focused on improving the lives of children. Marimbire has accepted an offer from KAR Global, a company that provides remarketing solutions in the used vehicle industry. Makufa is pursuing other opportunities after graduation.

The Orr Fellowship was first awarded in 2001 and was named in honor of former Indiana Gov. Robert Orr.

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