AC_1965_Web

9 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z B A L D W I N worked (this felt a lot like the field work experience I had had with the Luo) and, on the other, involved cre- ating a system of files, which struc- tured the distribution information and the programs to control, report and maintain the files. At the completion of the news- paper project, I began working at Wellesley College where I spent al- most twenty-five years in a series of evolving positions. I was hired to provide computer and statistical support to faculty and students.This was in 1986 when personal comput- ers had just appeared on campus and were about to replace the main frame computer. SPSS X was about to be released and there was great concern (if not terror) about the accommodations it would require. I became an in-house statistical consultant to faculty and research- ers and started to work with the deans answering policy motivated questions using the administrative data base which tracked registra- tions, course offerings, admissions and enrollments. When an Office of Institutional Research was cre- ated I became Director, a position I held until my retirement in 2009. I also taught introductory Computer Science for several years. Through consulting and institu- tional research I was brought into a diverse set of projects. I worked on two large longitudinal studies, each tracking a whole class from the time it was admitted to after its gradua- tion. The first, concerned with the few women in STEM professions, sought to trace the paths women followed to become science majors. We found that almost all students who graduated in science had been interested in science before they enrolled.Very few were recruited to science after arriving at college.The second was a consortial project with six other schools, both coed and women’s colleges, examining social and academic engagement. For me, the most interesting findings were that there were few big differences between the schools on most mea- sures, while individual students of- ten varied a great deal (both up and down) from one year to the next. Other projects included an online course evaluation for the college; creating surveys for new students, sophomores and juniors; providing data for reaccreditation reports; and designing an annual factbook of in- stitutional statistics. I collaborated with a French professor on a study of street names using USPS data. One of our more unexpected findings was that the most common street name in the U.S. was Third Street (the first and second streets often had non-numer- ical names such as Main, or Front). We also used databases to study punctuation in French classical po- etry and published a paper on the work in Poétique. I helped a biolo- gist analyze measurements of verte- brae of fossil whales which allowed her to infer how different animals propelled themselves through the water. It was a varied, challenging and often rewarding twenty-five years. Since retirement, I have con- tinued to do similar work as a con- sultant and have become an evalu- ator on three Computer Science NSF projects, examining the use of App Inventor (a block program- ming language for Android phones) to introduce students to the field of Computer Science. Leaving Ohio in 1979 also brought big changes in my personal life. I had married in the middle of my third year at Antioch. That mar- riage had struggled along and even- tually disintegrated in 1968 at the end of the year in Kenya. When I moved back to the Boston area for my job at Brown I met my second wife – Jane.We have now been mar- ried for over thirty years. She was a French teacher and actress at the time and had spent four years in Paris after theater school. It turned out that our paths had perhaps crossed before. She had been in Paris the year I was in France and I had seen her perform in Marat Sade in Boston while I was in graduate school. Although we did not have a lot in common on the face of it, we shared a lot of interests, among them food. She is an excellent cook and reads cookbooks for relaxation. I am an appreciative gourmand. Our dinners might best be described as a thirty-five year conversation. Among other things, these conversations have partially repaired the humani- ties gap in my education. I have watched her act and di- rect and we have discussed various aspect of theater for years. When we married in 1983, she went back to graduate school, got a Ph.D. in Theater from Tufts and became a theater historian. For her disser- tation she wrote on Michel Saint- Denis, the nephew and disciple of Jacques Copeau (a major figure in 20th Century FrenchTheatre). Saint- Denis went on to found two theater schools in England, one in France, and consulted on the Juilliard Drama Division and the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. Her dissertation research in- volved going to archives and inter- viewing his associates, students and family in four countries. After fin- ishing her Ph.D. she taught Theater, mostly at the Boston Conservatory, Jane—1981.