Elsewhere – News – Carleton College

John Bardes ’08 earns Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History

Erica Helgerud — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 16:28:17 +0000

The Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC) and the Louisiana Historical Association (LHA) announced in March that John Bardes ’08, assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University, won the 2024 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History for his book, The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803–1930 (University of North Carolina Press, 2024).

Mustering tens of thousands of previously overlooked arrest and prison records, John K. Bardes demonstrates that, contrary to common opinion, enslaved and free people were jailed at astronomical rates in parts of the South. With powerful and evocative prose, Bardes boldly reinterprets relations between slavery and prison development in American history. Racialized policing and mass incarceration are among the gravest moral crises of our age, but they are not new: slavery, the prison, and race are deeply interwoven into the history of American governance.

The Kemper and Leila Williams Prize, named for the founders of the Historic New Orleans Collection, is offered annually by HNOC and the LHA. Since its inception in 1974, the prize has recognized excellence in research and writing on Louisiana history. Recipients receive a cash award of $1,500 and a plaque, and are announced at the LHA’s annual meeting each year. The organization held its 67th annual meeting March 13–15, 2025 in Baton Rouge.

Read the full announcement.

President Alison Byerly quoted in Fox 9 and New York Times pieces concerning political issues for higher education

Erica Helgerud — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:30:41 +0000

Carleton President Alison Byerly was quoted in two pieces concerning recent political issues for higher education — a Fox 9 Investigators piece, “How the Trump Administration targeted international students…and lost,” and a New York Times piece, “Can Donors Fill the Major Budget Holes That Colleges Face Under Trump?”

Ethan Struby publishes Star Tribune opinion piece on national debt

Erica Helgerud — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:28:36 +0000

Ethan Struby, assistant professor of economics, published an opinion piece in The Minnesota Star Tribune titled, “Debt and its consequences must be front of mind amid swirl over reconciliation bill.”

Read the full piece.

Sarah Meerts publishes paper with three Carleton alumni

Erica Helgerud — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 22:05:07 +0000

Sarah Meerts, professor of neuroscience and psychology, published a paper with Alexa Kong ’23, Tyler Beasley ’24, and Jing Jing Munson ’25, in the journal Hormones and Behavior titled, “Apomorphine-induced disruption of paced mating behavior in female rats is attenuated by eticlopride, a D2 receptor antagonist, but not SCH 23390, a D1 receptor antagonist.”

Read the full paper.

Nathan Grawe gives talk on student demographic changes at NASFAA 2025 National Conference

Erica Helgerud — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 17:12:29 +0000

Nathan Grawe, Lloyd P. Johnson-Norwest Professor of Economics and the Liberal Arts, gave a talk at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) 2025 National Conference, where he explored different demographic trends in the U.S. and discussed how those trends intersect with evolving federal and state policies that ultimately impact higher education.

Read on the NASFAA news website.

Ryan Dawkins quoted in Star Tribune piece on latest approval poll from Minnesota voters

Erica Helgerud — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 16:41:43 +0000

Ryan Dawkins, assistant professor of political science, was quoted in a Star Tribune piece titled, “Minnesota Poll: Congressional Democrats get low marks from suburban voters,” which covers how more than half of Minnesota voters “disapprove of how both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are doing their jobs.”

Read the full piece.

President Alison Byerly talks higher education challenges on WCCO Morning News

Erica Helgerud — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 16:27:59 +0000

Carleton President Alison Byerly called in as a guest on The WCCO Morning News with Vineeta Sawkar on June 3, 2025. Her segment is titled, “Harvard isn’t the only prestigious University that is navigating difficult waters with the current administration.”

Listen to the full segment.

Razib Mohammad ’28 publishes personal essay on Medium

Erica Helgerud — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:50:27 +0000

Razib Mohammad ’28 published a personal essay titled, “Stateless, Not Silent: My Journey from the Margins to Meaning” on Medium.

Read the full piece.

David Watts ’89 appointed director of Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Colby College

Erica Helgerud — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:36:57 +0000

David Watts ’89, a senior executive at IBM and a nationally recognized leader in emerging technology and artificial intelligence, has been appointed the new director of the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Colby College. He will begin his role in August.

Read the full announcement.

Anita Chikkatur publishes article in Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning

Erica Helgerud — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:33:04 +0000

Anita Chikkatur, professor of educational studies, co-authored an article with Abigail Rombalski titled, “Kinship and being together ‘otherwise’ in community-university partnerships.” Published in the open-access Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, the article is about a partnership between Carleton’s educational studies senior seminar and a local youth research team.

Read the full article.

Flora Ellen Harpham, Carleton Class of 1888, featured as Columbia University’s first female academic

Erica Helgerud — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:24:10 +0000

Florence “Flora” Ellen Harpham, Carleton Class of 1888, was featured by Columbia University in a Columbia College Today piece titled, “Columbia’s First Female Academic Was an Astronomer.”

Read the full piece.

Emanuel Anastos ’21 announces run for 8th Congressional District seat in Minnesota

Erica Helgerud — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 20:45:00 +0000

Emanuel Anastos ’21 announced that he is running for the 8th Congressional District seat in Minnesota. Since 2022, Anastos has lived on the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa’s Vermilion Reservation near Tower, where he works as an Indian child welfare case manager for the Bois Forte Band.

Read the full announcement from the Duluth News Tribune.

Ryan Dawkins quoted in New York Times piece on character of state politics in Minnesota

Erica Helgerud — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 20:40:09 +0000

Ryan Dawkins, assistant professor of political science, is quoted in a New York Times piece titled, “Minnesota, Known for Political Civility, Reels After Shooting.” Dawkins says he no longer sees Minnesota as unique in the U.S. and argues that the “unique character of state politics is not gone” but “it has become much more muted as polarization has increased.”

Read the full piece.

Nathan Grawe appears on EconoFact podcast

Erica Helgerud — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 20:34:40 +0000

Nathan Grawe, Lloyd P. Johnson-Norwest Professor of Economics and the Liberal Arts, joined an EconoFact podcast episode to talk about foreign students in U.S. higher education.

Listen to the full episode.

Carleton featured in food literacy issue of Bravo newsletter from Bon Appétit

Erica Helgerud — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:24:22 +0000

Carleton is featured multiple times in the Spring 2025 food literacy issue of Bravo, the quarterly newsletter from Bon Appétit Management Company. This issue celebrates the work of Bon Appétit teams bringing staff and guests alike on the “full journey of food.”

Carleton is featured in the “From the Field” section on pages 6–7, for a joint tour of Ferndale Market that was organized with St. Olaf; a longstanding partnership between Bon Appétit and Carleton’s classics department is featured on page 13; and on page 23, Bon Appétit’s work with Carleton’s sustainability team is featured in a story titled, “A Superpower Hiding in Plain Sight.”

Read the full Spring 2025 newsletter.

Carleton professor Amanda Hund ’10 publishes paper in Journal of Biogeography

Erica Helgerud — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 15:18:39 +0000

Amanda Hund ’10, assistant professor of biology, published a paper with collaborators in the Journal of Biogeography titled, “Long‐Term Human Land‐Use Change Throughout Southeast Asia Reshapes the Distribution of Suitable Habitat for a Human‐Commensal Bird Species.”

Read the full paper.

Josh Sampson ’26, Amanda Hund ’10, John Berini publish paper in Molecular Ecology Resources journal

Erica Helgerud — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 15:15:52 +0000

Josh Sampson ’26; Amanda Hund ’10, assistant professor of biology; and John Berini, postdoctoral fellow in ecology and evolution, published a paper in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources titled, “Needle in a haystack: A droplet digital polymerase chain reaction assay to detect rare helminth parasites infecting natural host populations.”

Read the full paper.

Ben Ansbacher ’26 and Arjendu Pattanayak publish paper in Physical Review journal

Erica Helgerud — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:36:11 +0000

Ben Ansbacher ’26 and Arjendu Pattanayak, professor of physics, published their paper titled, “Geometrical representation of dynamical symmetries in ordinal pattern analysis of time series” with their collaborator Andres Aragoneses in the journal, Physical Review.

Read the full abstract.

Claire Kelloway ’16 nominated for 2025 James Beard Media Award

Erica Helgerud — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 19:55:24 +0000

Claire Kelloway ’16 has been nominated for a 2025 James Beard Media Award for her work reporting on the farm bill with a team of writers from Food & Environment Reporting Network and Mother Jones.

Learn more from The Minnesota Star Tribune in their piece, “5 Minnesotans nominated for James Beard media awards.”

Pamela Bacon ’93 named provost at Luther College

Erica Helgerud — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 18:09:50 +0000

Pamela Bacon ’93 has been appointed as the new provost of Luther College.

Bacon joins Luther after a distinguished career as a professor and administrator at the College of Saint Benedict (CSB) and Saint John’s University (SJU) in Saint Joseph, Minnesota. For the past five years, she has helped lead academic affairs and later the division of student success at CSB and SJU. From 2020 to 2022, she was the dean of faculty before adding the duties of associate provost in 2022.

“Luther’s reputation as a selective liberal arts college that is known for its involved students, committed faculty and staff, and a strong sense of community inspired me to apply, and I am delighted to accept President Chamberlain’s offer,” Bacon said. “Given my experience at a faith-based residential liberal arts college and my own life-changing experiences attending a residential liberal arts college, I am excited to engage with the challenges and opportunities that are ahead for Luther College.”

“Dr. Bacon brings to Luther College a passion for supporting the holistic development that students should experience, inside and outside of the classroom, at residential, liberal arts colleges,” Chamberlain said. “Informed by her academic training as a social psychologist and her progressive experience as an academic administrator, Dr. Bacon’s empathetic, relational and collaborative approach emphasizes engaging stakeholders, considering alternative perspectives, and using data to inform decision-making processes.”

Read the full announcement.

Brian Fox ’81 featured for surprise scientific discovery made possible by long-term federal investment in research

Erica Helgerud — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 18:02:46 +0000

Brian Fox ’81 was featured by the University of Wisconsin–Madison in a piece titled, “UW biochemists engineered a poplar tree that produces a high-demand industrial chemical. It was a surprise discovery only made possible by sustained investment in research.”

Brian Fox, the Marvin J. Johnson Professor in Fermentation Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, tinkers with the way living things use chemistry to turn their own blueprints, DNA, into the processes that make a healthy organism go.

Over more than three decades, federal agencies including the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation have supported his efforts to study that basic biological chemistry — and to engineer changes to organisms that can benefit humanity.

Fox’s current research focuses on a genetic alteration to poplar trees, equipping them to produce an industrial chemical. It was a surprise discovery that was years in the making and only made possible by long-term investment in his line of research.

“I had no idea we were going to find a gene that would do such a specific and useful thing,” he told UW News in a recent interview. “But here we are, having turned basic research on some gene families into three patents and a process that makes an industrial chemical in a tree.”

Read the full piece.

Meghan Thurlow ’05 appointed commissioner for San Francisco Public Utilities Commission

Erica Helgerud — Fri, 30 May 2025 15:53:10 +0000

Meghan Thurlow ’05 has been appointed as a commissioner at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).

Thurlow is a lecturer at the University of California–Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where she teaches business and public policy. She also leads the technical advisory arm of Carbon Reduction Consulting in San Francisco, helping companies reduce pollution and manage environmental risk.

Read the full announcement.

Memoir from Jonathan Capehart ’89 makes New York Times Best Sellers list

Erica Helgerud — Thu, 29 May 2025 16:53:41 +0000

The new memoir from Jonathan Capehart ’89, Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home, has made the New York Times‘ Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction Best Sellers list, entering at number 15.

Check out the latest NYT Best Sellers.

Conor McGrann concludes residency at Highpoint Center for Printmaking with exhibition

Erica Helgerud — Thu, 29 May 2025 16:35:28 +0000

Conor McGrann, digital studio arts technician, will conclude his nine-month residency at Highpoint Center for Printmaking with an exhibition, on view from June 13 through August 2, 2025. The residency was part of the Jerome Foundation Early Career Printmakers program.

Learn more about the exhibition.