John Boccio
Professor of Physics
Year he came to Swarthmore: 1967
Area of expertise: aspects of fundamental quantum theory, computational simulation of galaxy-galaxy collisions
In 46 years at the College, John Boccio has taught courses on, among other topics, quantum theory and chaos, fractals, complexity, self-organization, and emergence. His spring 2013 semester course, In Search of Reality, examined the [...]

Seventeen years after capping one of the most remarkable careers in Swarthmore athletics history, Skye Fulkerson Tarr ’96 is still making waves—this time in the art studio, not the swimming pool.
While on the Swarthmore swim team, Tarr, who specialized in the breast stroke, became one of the College’s most decorated female student-athletes, earning six All-America [...]

In 1863, the founders felt they needed a name for the proposed institution. They were uncertain about where to build the school, although they knew they wanted a rural setting. One of several possible sites was Westdale, a train station on the Philadelphia and West Chester Railroad named after the artist Benjamin West whose childhood [...]

On a rainy December afternoon, eight students heaved unwieldy 68-by-76-inch wood panels covered with cryptic 3-D shapes from Beardsley art studio to the lobby of the Eugene M. and Theresa Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC). Assistant Professor of Art Logan Grider, who last year had students create a life-size 3-D reproduction of Thomas Eakins’ “The [...]

Swarthmore athletics have been a big part of life for Annalise Penikis ’13 since long before she entered the college classroom. At age 8 she was an assistant water girl for the women’s basketball team, writing a note to then-coach Adrienne Shibles thanking her for the opportunity and for inspiration to play the game.
Her mother, [...]

Small Craft Warnings, Swarthmore College’s oldest literary magazine, just got a face-lift. The biannual publication, perhaps best known for former editor Jonathan Franzen ’81, was reissued earlier this spring with a whole new look and feel.
One of Franzen’s first editorial decisions during his own student days was to change the magazine’s name from the Null [...]

Jonathan Franzen ’81 returned to Swarthmore Feb. 14 with all the angst for which his fiction is known. “It makes me nervous to come back here,” confessed Franzen at the start of an afternoon question-and-answer period, before his reading in the Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC) later that evening. As the acclaimed author of The [...]

Swarthmore students displayed the full force of their passion to counter climate change and limit fossil-fuel extraction by participating in demonstrations this spring semester—on and off campus.
On Feb. 17, about 60 students boarded buses, paid for by the President’s Office, to attend a rally in Washington, D.C., against construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline [...]

The College made another huge “leap forward in the capital campaign that will support Strategic Directions [the strategic plan],” President Rebecca Chopp announced Feb. 23 during a morning meeting of the Board of Managers.
That leap came courtesy of Board Chairman Giles “Gil” Kemp ’72 and his wife Barbara Guss Kemp—who donated $20 million to the [...]

One trailblazing alumnus and a social activist/writer will receive honorary degrees at Swarthmore’s 141st Commencement ceremony June 2. Entrepreneur and humanitarian Tralance Addy ’69 will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree, and writer and social activist Lorene Cary will be awarded an honorary doctor of arts.
Throughout his career, Tralance Addy has found creative [...]