Simonâ€™s Rock College of Bard establishes endowed chairs

12:00AM / Friday, November 19, 2004Print Story | Email Story

GREAT BARRINGTON â€“ Simonâ€™s Rock College of Bard has established four endowed faculty chairs, the result of a $5 million gift to the endowment from board chair Emily H. Fisher. The recipients of the awards were selected and announced by President Leon Botstein. They are: Emmanuel Dongala, faculty member in natural science; Patricia Sharpe, faculty member in literature and womenâ€™s studies and Dean of Academic Affairs; Laurence D. Wallach, faculty member in music; and Bernard F. Rodgers, Jr., faculty member in literature. Emmanuel Dongala is the Richard B. Fisher Chair in Natural Sciences. Dongala earned his B.A. in Chemistry from Oberlin College, a Doctorat de SpecialitÃ© from the UniversitÃ© of Strasbourg (France), and a Doctorat-es-Sciences, at the UniversitÃ© des Sciences et Techniques in Montpellier (France). He taught in France at the Institut de Chimie in Strasbourg and at Ecole Nationale SupÃ©rieure de Chimie of Montpellier. In 1981, he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at the UniversitÃ© de Brazzaville (Congo). His main research there was on devising a cheap, fast, and reliable method for the evaluation of toxic cyanogenic glucosides in cassava, the main food staple of the country. He was appointed Dean of Academic Affairs of the University in 1985. Dongala is also a writer of fiction and the former president of the Congolese chapter of PEN, the international writersâ€™ organization. His first novel Un fusil dans la main, un poeme dans la poche (A Gun in Hand, a Poem in the Pocket, 1973) won the Ladislas Domandi Prize for the best French novel by a non-resident of France. His short story collection Jazz et vin de palme (Jazz and Palm Wine, 1982) was banned in the Congo because it satirized those in power. His second novel, Le feu des origins (The Fire of Origins, 1987) won the Grand Prix Literaire dâ€™Afrique Noire and the Grand Prix de la Fondation de France. His latest novel, Les petits garÃ§ons naissent aussi des Ã©toiles (Boys Are Also Born From Stars, 1998) won the Radio France Internationalâ€™s Temoin du Monde award. It is published in English by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. He has been at Simonâ€™s Rock College since 1998. Patricia Sharpe is the Elizabeth Blodgett Hall Chair in Literature. She earned her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She has taught in India on a Fulbright grant and at the University of Michigan. She has been awarded a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies and stipends from the National Endowment for the Humanities to attend summer seminars at Harvard and Brown Universities and to offer seminars on women and fiction for teachers, held at Simonâ€™s Rock in the summers of 1988, 1990, and 1992. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including the Alternative Review, American Anthropologist, American Behavioral Scientist, American Literary History, the Christian Science Monitor, College English, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Critical Exchange, In Print, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society, Michigan Quarterly Review, Novel, Phoebe, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, and Signs. She has also contributed articles to the books New Research on Women and Sex Roles, Anthropology and Literature, Gender and Scientific Authority, Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality, International Studies: Meeting the Challenge of Globalization, and Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text, which she co edited with Frances E. Mascia-Lees. Their coauthored book, Taking a Stand in a Post Feminist World: Toward an Engaged Cultural Criticism, recently appeared. From 2001 to 2003, she served as Dean of Studies at Bard High School Early College, a collaboration between Bard and the New York City Board of Education designed to offer inner-city public school students an academic experience informed by Simonâ€™s Rockâ€™s vision and tradition. She has been at Simonâ€™s Rock College since 1983. Bernard F. Rodgers, Jr. is the Emily H. Fisher Chair in Literature. Rodgers received his B.S. degree in literature from Mount Saint Maryâ€™s College and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Dr. Rodgers served as a vice president of Bard College and the dean of Simonâ€™s Rock from 1987 to 2004; he came to Simonâ€™s Rock as Dean of Academic Affairs in 1985. Before coming to Simonâ€™s Rock, he was an administrator with the City Colleges of Chicago and the Commission of Institutions of Higher Education of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, and producer of the University of Chicagoâ€™s daily television program Perspectives. He was an assistant professor of English and Humanities and chair of the College Acceleration Program of City Colleges of Chicagoâ€”a program that offered courses for college credit to high school seniors. He was awarded a Ford Foundation dissertation fellowship while at the University of Chicago and spent 1979-1980 as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American Literature in Lublin, Poland. Rodgers is the author of Philip Roth, Philip Roth: A Biography, and Voices and Visions: Selected Essays. His essays and reviews on American literature and culture, as well as on writers such as Aharon Appelfeld, Milan Kundera, Czeslaw Milosz, and Salman Rushdie, have been published in the Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual, Magillâ€™s Literary Annual, Magillâ€™s Survey of World Literature, Masterplots II, Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, Chicago Review, The Chicago Tribune, Illinois Issues, and the World & I. He is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle and an advisory editor of the journal Philip Roth Studies. From 1989-1995 he was both a member and a chair of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, and he regularly serves as a visiting team chair for the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Laurence D. Wallach is the Livingston Hall Chair in Music. Wallach earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in music from Columbia University. A composer, pianist, and musicologist, Wallachâ€™s compositions have been performed in New York and Boston as well as in the Berkshires. He founded a baroque chamber ensemble, the Italian Connection, in which he performs on harpsichord. He is founding board member of the Berkshire Bach Society and performs with them regularly on harpsichord and organ. As a pianist, he collaborates on chamber music performances with numerous area musicians. He received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1977-78 to study performance practices of early piano music, particularly Mozart and Schubert, and in 1980 he participated in the Aston Magna Summer Academy on German Music and Culture. His composition, â€œEchoes from Barham Down,â€ won a competition sponsored by the New School of Music in Cambridge in 1985. Recent compositions include: â€œSo Much Depends Upon Distanceâ€ for solo piano; â€œCanzonaâ€for mixed chamber ensemble; â€œBerkshire Morris Madnessâ€ for woodwind quintet; â€œHexagram:Wind Over Waterâ€ for flute, harp, vibraphone and piano; and â€œPastorale Quartetâ€ for strings. His latest composition, for strings and chorus, was written to fulfill a commission from the Housatonic River Festival and the Berkshire Society for Theology and the Arts. Wallachâ€™s writings have appeared in Musical Quarterly and the Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Music, and he has written several entries for â€œThe Compleat Brahmsâ€ edited by Leon Botstein. Since 1995, he has been on the staffs of early music weeks at World Fellowship Center in New Hampshire, and Camp Pinewoods in Massachusetts. Wallach has also served as repertoire advisor and program annotator for the American Symphony Orchestra, and taught composition courses to Bard undergraduates as well as students in the Bard MFA Program for Conductors. In the summer of 2002, he participated in the International Baroque Institute at Longy School. He joined the faculty at Simonâ€™s Rock College in 1972.

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Lanesborough Fifth-Graders Win Snowplow Name Contest

02:13PM / Tuesday, December 23, 2025

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — One of the snowplows for Highway District 1 has a new name: "The Blizzard Boss."

The name comes from teacher Gina Wagner's fifth-grade class at Lanesborough Elementary School.

The state Department of Transportation announced the winners of the fourth annual "Name A Snowplow" contest on Monday.

The department received entries from public elementary and middle school classrooms across the commonwealth to name the 12 MassDOT snowplows that will be in service during the 2025/2026 winter season.

The purpose of the contest is to celebrate the snow and ice season and to recognize the hard work and dedication shown by public works employees and contractors during winter operations.

"Thank you to all of the students who participated. Your creativity allows us to highlight to all, the importance of the work performed by our workforce," said interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng.

"Our workforce takes pride as they clear snow and ice, keeping our roads safe during adverse weather events for all that need to travel. ?To our contest winners and participants, know that you have added some fun to the serious take of operating plows. ?I'm proud of the skill and dedication from our crews and thank the public of the shared responsibility to slow down, give plows space and put safety first every time there is a winter weather event."

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