Winners of Bushnell Faculty Award in teaching and writing announced

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WILLIAMSTOWN - Williams College has announced the recipients of the college's Nelson S. Bushnell '20 Faculty Awards. Since 1995, the annual award has honored faculty members whose practice in writing and in teaching conforms notably to standards of good usage. The recipients are Michael J. Lewis (art), Laurie Heatherington (psychology), and David Richardson (chemistry).

Lewis is the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art History. He specializes in American art as well as European architectural history.

He is the author of "American Art and Architecture" (Thames & Hudson, 2006), "Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind" (W. W. Norton, 2001), and "August Reichensperger: The Politics of the German Gothic Revival" (Architectural History Foundation, 1993), which won the Society of Architectural Historians' Alice Davis Hitchcock Prize for book of the year. His essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal, and Commentary.

Recently awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship grant, he will spend next year at work on "Cities of Refuge: The Pietist Tradition in Town Planning."

Before joining the Williams faculty in 1993, Lewis taught at Bryn Mawr College and McGill University. He received his B.A. in economics from Haverford College and his Ph.D. in architectural history from the University of Pennsylvania. He also studied at the University of Hanover, Germany.

Heatherington is chair and the Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of Psychology. Her work focuses on family therapy change processes, the therapeutic alliance, cognition in family relationships, and gender and social relationships.

She serves on the editorial boards of Psychotherapy Research, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, and Psychotherapy Theory, Research, Practice, Training and has published numerous empirical and theoretical articles in these and other scholarly journals. She is co-author of "Therapeutic Alliances in Couple and Family Therapy" (American Psychological Association, 2006) and "The Psychology of Adjustment" (Allyn & Bacon, 1998).


Her series of studies in the 1990s on gender differences among first-year college students in forecasting their GPAs, received attention from mainstream media, including Redbook Magazine and NPR. She has held grants from NIMH, NSF-ILIP program, and the Radcliffe College Research Support Program.

Heatherington taught at the University of Scranton before joining the Williams faculty in 1984. Among the courses she teaches at Williams are "Clinical and Community Psychology" and "Psychotherapy: Theory and Research."

She received her B.A. from Miami University and her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.

Richardson is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry. His research interests include the isolation, characterization, and synthesis of natural products. His studies have spanned toxic compounds in tree resins used on poison-tipped darts, the chemical ecology of a plant growing in Hopkins Forest, and PCB pollution in the Hoosic River watershed. His research has appeared in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including Tetrahedron, Journal of Chemical Ecology, Journal of Magnetic Resonance, and Journal of Chemical Education.

Richardson teaches a number of organic chemistry courses and a course titled "Toxicology and Cancer." He has won numerous grants from the National Science Foundation, and with support from the Ford Foundation, developed an advanced research-oriented lab course for students in intermediate-level organic chemistry.

He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined Williams College in 1986, after completing postdoctoral studies at Cornell University.
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Prospect Meadow Farm Opens New Vocational Barn

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff

A charcuterie board at the event displays fare from some of the regional producers.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Prospect Meadow Farm last week officially opened a new barn to sell plants and other goods it produces.

Prospect Meadow Farm Berkshires is an expansion of ServiceNet's first farm in Hatfield that has provided meaningful agricultural work, fair wages, and personal and professional growth to hundreds of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities since opening in 2011. 

The Berkshires farm opened on Crane Avenue two years ago and has now introduced a new vocational and unwinding space for the more than 25 farmhands who get paid a minimum wage.

"This is a facility for our folks who work on the farm to learn additional skills and do additional work," said Vice President of Vocational Services Shawn Robinson at the Friday event. "So we have a food packaging space, we've got a walk-in cooler space, we've got a floral design space, we've got a farm store room for staff, lunch room, and then a meditation room that we're standing in now, which is when you're having those hard moments and you need to get away from everything.

"This is going to be a peaceful place you can find and sort of find some comfort, and then hopefully get back to work."

The barn was built by funds from the state Executive Office of Economic Development and the state Department of Agricultural Resources that equated to around $600,000, with ServiceNet contributing around the same amount. The structure took over a year to build.

The state's Department of Developmental Services Commissioner Sarah Peterson spoke on how meaningful this farm and ServiceNet is to her and that this place is important to those who need it.

"Places like this are so crucial because they create opportunities for people living with disabilities that aren't plentiful," she said. "People living with developmental and intellectual disabilities have an unemployment rate over 25 percent five times the rate for people without disabilities, even more jarring is under appointment, which is at 80 percent. That means that four out of every five people with disabilities earn below market rate wages and have limited upward mobility.

"The building itself is really impressive, but what you're really seeing here is the result of vision. It's about opportunity, it's about community, and it's founded in the belief that every person deserves the chance to learn and work and contribute to thrive under the leadership of ServiceNet."

One aspect of the barn will be the market where produce from the farm and other local growers will be sold as well as keeping the tradition of Jodi's Seasonal, which previously occupied the location, alive with plant sales. The market will be open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

"Everything you see in terms of the tomatoes, the fresh produce, that's all done with the hands of our farm hands here, individuals with disabilities who get out every single morning, get in those greenhouses, put their hands in the dirt, and make all of this happen, and this is just the start," said Robinson. "This farm is a little over a year old at this point, but give it another two years, and we hope to be growing enough food to share throughout the Berkshires."

Robinson said the farm is focused on local food security, recently partnering with the Hatfield Council on Aging and planning to work toward making enough food to partner with places in the Berkshires.

He said the barn serves the Hatfield farm and what the employees here needed.

"We've been able to learn the needs of the farm hands who work there and so we have learned that they need a comfortable break space for those times where it's hard to be out in the fields, we've learned that a quiet space for when you're going through something you need to be away from people are key, and then also we have a small farm store in Hatfield, but we've seen increasing interest in retail work from our participants, so we thought it was time for a larger-scale farm store," he said.

Robinson noted that Prospect Meadow Farm has helped the individuals working there feel valued and head.

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