Class Note 1993

Anne Katherine Smith wrote that she spent a few days on campus in November, attending the inaugural Women of Dartmouth professional retreat. She said that 50 alumnae from the classes of 1974 through 2004 came to Hanover for the retreat. She roomed with Erika Beisler and Melissa Roche, friends since her freshman year in Richardson Hall, and reconnected with the five other ’93s who attended: Veree Hawkins Brown, Karen Febeo, Jalieh Bonar Shepard, Sabrina Pagani and Anne Whitman.

Anne wrote that she is in her fourth year working for South Shore Conservatory, a large community music school on the South Shore of Boston, where she serves as director of community partnerships, overseeing all off-campus access-based programming. In that role she makes connections with social service organizations, private and public schools and councils on aging and designs arts-based programming to fit their needs, hires faculty, writes grants and oversees marketing. With her three kids nearing the age of independence (they are 19, 18 and 13) she had time to join the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and sang in nine performances with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall in December.

By sheer coincidence, during the same weekend of the Women of Dartmouth retreat I happened to be on campus for a different event. My 10-year-old daughter led me through the halls of the Thayer School of Engineering, where I watched her participate in a regional robotics competition. Her team didn’t win in any of the categories, but the kids had fun and got extra excited about engineering thanks to a presentation from some students on Thayer’s Formula Racing team. Who knows, maybe it was really a Future Women of Dartmouth retreat in disguise?

—Suzanne Spencer Rendahl, 224 Route 120, Plainfield, NH 03781; suzandj@comcast.net