Reunion 2003 Will Recognize Seven for Achievement and Service

During the Reunion 2003 festivities in June, the College will acknowledge seven alumnae/i through the awarding of its annual Alumnae/i Citations. Merle Rosenblatt Goldman ’53, Allan Gurganus ’71, Janie C. Lee ’59 and Carolyn Moore Newberger ’63 will be honored with Alumnae/i Citations for Achievement; Mary Griggs Burke ’38 and Enid Silver Ship ’56 will receive the Alumnae/i Citation for Service; and Madeline L. Goldfischer ’89 will be given the Young Alumnae/i Committee Award for Service.

Merle Goldman is a professor of Chinese history at Boston University and a former Sarah Lawrence trustee. She is the author of a number of scholarly texts, including China: A New History, and articles on China’s intellectual and social history that have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times and New Republic. Goldman has been awarded numerous grants and awards, including the Radcliffe Graduate Medal for Distinguished Achievement. She serves on the editorial board of The China Quarterly and is a past member of the US Delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Works by novelist and essayist Allan Gurganus include the best-selling Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Plays Well with Others and White People. His latest work is a volume of four novellas, The Practical Heart. Gurganus has taught at Stanford University, Duke University, the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa and Sarah Lawrence College. Gurganus has won numerous awards for his work, including the National Magazine Prize, and his stories have been widely anthologized. He was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is currently at work on his next novel, An Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church.

Janie C. Lee, a prominent collector and curator of contemporary art, started out as a theatre producer in New York in 1959, then moved to Dallas and opened a gallery in the late 1960s. Her discerning eye transformed the gallery into one of the most important outside of New York and Los Angeles. She accumulated one of the finest collections of postwar art drawings (de Kooning, Jasper Johns) in the country, while serving as mentor to both Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly. Lee also served as an adviser to Jane Alexander ’61 during Alexander’s tenure as chair of the National Endowment of the Arts and, in 1997, became curator of drawings at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan.

Carolyn Moore Newberger is an assistant clinical professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and staff psychologist at the Judge Baker Children’s Center and Children’s Hospital in Boston. A passionate advocate for children, Newberger takes a multi-faceted approach to children’s issues through individual therapy, articles in both popular and scholarly journals, public advocacy in the media, and court testimony. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Emotional Abuse and is a nationally recognized expert on the topics of child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and community outreach.

Mary Griggs Burke, a current Honorary Trustee, has been a fervent supporter of the College for more than 50 years. She served as Trustee from 1968–76 and was president of the Alumnae Association from 1947–50. A former clinical psychologist, Burke has made the College a philanthropic priority, providing generous contributions for faculty support and the Campbell Sports Center, and she has endowed a scholarship for students with newly revealed financial need. Burke is also an important collector of Japanese art in all of its forms. The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest private collection of Japanese art outside Japan.

Enid Silver Ship has served the College for two decades in several capacities. She was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1977–88, chairman of the board from 1981–87 and remains an Honorary Trustee. She has also been president of the Alumnae/i Association, a member of the Steering Committee for the College’s Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration, and a member of the 1980–81 Presidential Search Committee. Ship is, in the words of President Emeritus Charles DeCarlo, “a strong and deeply committed woman who cares deeply about Sarah Lawrence and has always translated her concern into helpful and decisive action.”

Madeline L Goldfischer is a member of the Alumnae/i Association Board and was the 2001–02 co-chair of the Young Alumnae/i Committee (YAC). Under her vigorous leadership, YAC put together 20 events, with an emphasis on community building, community service, and networking. Goldfischer, currently a graduate student at New School University and an intern for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has been lauded by many at the College and among her peers for her hard work and integrity.