Clark Art Hosts Williams College Graduate Program Symposium

11:48AM / Friday, May 30, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. —On Friday, June 6, 2025, from 9:30 am to 5 pm, the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art hosts its annual symposium at which graduating Masters students make presentations on their individual research activities.

The symposium is presented in the auditorium of the Clark Art Institute's Manton Research Center.

The Graduate Program in the History of Art, operated jointly by Williams and the Clark, is one of the most respected programs in its field, stated a press release. Alumni have gone on to become influential scholars and leaders of renowned museums and arts institutions, among other organizations. The graduate program is housed at the Clark, providing student classrooms, administrative offices, and individual research carrels or offices for each graduate student.

This year's presentations, timed in conjunction with Williams College's 2025 Commencement weekend, address a variety of topics in the history of art, ranging from the sonic dimensions of the seventeenth-century Japanese Hikone screen and the ethics of eighteenth-century taxidermy under French colonialism to the perceptual challenges of nineteenth-century Arctic photography and the relationship between weaving and mapping in the work of contemporary Latinx artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood. All presentations are free and open to the public

Presentations will be approximately twenty minutes each, delivered in thematic panels of two or three speakers that are followed by a moderated discussion.

Presenters include:

Nora Høegh [London, England]
Sidra Grace Michael [St. Paul, Minnesota]
Julia Molin [Glen Ridge, New Jersey]
William Satloff [Chevy Chase, Maryland]
Eloise Cameron Schrier [San Francisco, California]
Matthew Shorten [Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia]
Maya Elisa Pérez Strohmeier [Berkeley, California]
Luke David Williamson [Cedar Park, Texas]
??Riley Wei-Tung Yuen [New York, New York]
Elia Longyu Zhang [Hefei, China]

At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 7, the Clark hosts the graduate program's annual hooding ceremony, honoring the students' accomplishments.

The symposium and hooding ceremony both take place in the auditorium at the Clark Art Institute's Manton Research Center, 225 South St., Williamstown, Massachusetts.

For more information, visit gradart.williams.edu.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Letter: Incomplete Picture from Greylock School Committee

Letter to the Editor06:30PM / Wednesday, October 28, 2026

To the Editor:

At the October Mount Greylock School Committee meeting, there was much celebration over the student growth percentiles (SGP) from last year's MCAS test data (Spring 2026). Growth is worth celebrating. But I worry the meeting, and the coverage of it, left families and our community with an incomplete picture of how our students are doing in math.

"Growth" sounds like it means scores went up, but that isn’t quite what SGP measures. SGP compares each student to students in the state who scored about the same the year before, then ranks how they did this year against that group. If a whole group of similar students decreases, the student who decreases the least can still earn a high growth percentile. A strong SGP tells us our students did better than their peers who scored similarly the year before. It doesn't tell us whether they are at grade level.

For example, the current 6th grade class at Williamstown Elementary School (WES) has decreased in their grade-level math proficiency every year since their 3rd grade MCAS. In 2024, 64 percent of the class was meeting expectations; in 2025 48 percent were at grade level, and in 2026 only 33 percent of their class met grade-level expectations. Our current WES 5th grade class follows a similar trend, with 48 percent meeting grade-level math expectations last year vs 56 percent meeting expectations in 2025 when they were in 3rd grade.

Not every class follows this pattern; our current 7th graders gained to 62 percent last year. But seeing entire classes decrease is something that deserves our attention.

Growth comparisons across the state provide useful information, but they do not tell the complete story. We also need to look at where our students are in terms of grade-level proficiency and how those numbers are changing from year to year within the Mt. Greylock school district. This will be our first year with the math interventionist role filled at WES and our second year with the new i-Ready curriculum.

As we watch whether these changes are working, I hope the School Committee will discuss proficiency alongside growth in its public meetings, so our community can see the full picture. Growth matters, but it isn’t enough if fewer of our kids are reaching grade level each year.

Sincerely,

Jenna Hasenkampf
Williamstown, Mass.

Hasenkampf is a parent of WES students in Grades 2 and 4.

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