Whitman Stories

When prospective students visit Whitman College, they often get the chance to meet with faculty, sit-in on classes, and get an up-close view of the academic excellence for which the college is known. But this spring, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered in-person classes, and forced the Admission Office to suspend its Spring Visitors Day and Admitted Students Day on-campus events.

Born in a new millennium, the students in Associate Professor Jim Russo’s infectious disease course have never known a time that HIV/AIDS wasn’t treatable. But Russo was a graduate student in the 1980s as the virus was first discovered

“Having a diverse media landscape in your house gives kids examples of lots of different, positive people who are from different racial and ethnic groups,” Pahlke says. “It also gives families an opening to have important conversations.”

Kaitlyn Patia brings her passion for community engaged learning to Whitman College, thanks to the Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership Program in the Humanities, a grant program run by nonprofit higher education consortium Project Pericles. It’s the first time a Whitman faculty member has received the $4,000 grant, which supports the development of a course dedicated to tackling the “grand challenges” of climate change, education access, immigration, mass incarceration, race and inequality or voter engagement.

She describes the new lecture series Whitman faculty developed for incoming students about COVID-19 through various academic lenses.

As COVID-19 reshapes life around the globe, the Whitman College and Northwest Archives at Penrose Library wants to document how those changes have affected our greater community.

Gabriel García Márquez's literary classic One Hundred Years of Solitude refers to a plauge of insomnia that descends on the fictional town of Macondo. Santana-Acuña compares the struggles characters in the novel face with the global fight against COVID-19.

Liam Dubay gained several new skills this spring. He learned to play the five-string Baroque cello, an instrument which Whitman College purchased last year. He also figured out how to splice together video so he could create a unique self-duet performance for his final project of the semester.

Xiaobo Yuan first worked as an anthropologist as an undergraduate student while studying at Johns Hopkins University. Yuan received a research grant to do field work in coastal Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. She was investigating how faith-based organizations, specifically Christian organizations, intervened in the aftermath of the hurricane.

For Black caregivers who work with white families, the topic of race and racism may come up with children and sometimes their parents. One of the biggest hurdles when talking to white parents about race, especially for a Black nanny or babysitter, is addressing the myth that race isn’t something they need to acknowledge with their children. “A lot of white parents are steeped in colorblind ideology, and they really think their kid doesn’t notice race,” Pahlke explains.

This spring, Suzanne Morrissey was one of a handful of faculty participating in the faculty-student consultant program, organized and offered through Whitman College’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). Now entering its second year, the program connects faculty members with a student who will spend the semester evaluating a chosen course and giving direct feedback.

When nurse practitioner Carolyn Korfiatis ’05 gets to work at her small rural hospital in Mammoth Lake, California, she goes through “the car wash.”