Framing America's landscapes

The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery has on exhibit Framing America's Landscapes: 19th- and 20th-Century Paintings from the Addison Gallery of American Art. The 30 paintings from the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, in Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, are among the gallery's most famous, including works by Winslow Homer, George Inness, Albert Bierstadt, and John Singer Sargent.

The paintings allow the visitor to examine artists' changing perceptions of the landscape and the way that view reflects shifting societal needs and attitudes, as well as the ways in which the hand of man has altered the natural landscape and the ways in which the agenda of the artist and his or her time have dictated different choices, perceptions, and results.



Reed wins top award at CASE regional conference

The college won a record six awards in this year’s Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District VIII juried recognition program, among them a gold in the periodicals category for the Reed magazine. "14 common rationalizations for not attending a Reed reunion," a brochure written by Matthew Burtch ’82, won a grand gold award in the promotional writing category. At the awards banquet on February 22, a standing ovation greeted the announcement that this piece also won the Virginia Carter Smith Grand Crystal award, given for the best example of work in communications submitted to the competition.


Essick book grows out of physics labs

John Essick, associate professor of physics, is the author of the newly released Advanced LabVIEW Labs (Prentice Hall, 1999). This advanced instructional laboratory text provides comprehensive training in computer-based experimental skills using LabVIEW, a graphical programming language. While teaching at Occidental College, Essick attempted to include computer-based experimentation in his courses and found that proficiency in a computer programming language was central to student success. He encountered LabVIEW at Reed when he joined the faculty in 1993 and realized that it was "the perfect environment in which to teach computer-based research skills."

The book contains the LabVIEW-based exercises that Essick has developed and used in his junior-level advanced physics laboratory courses at Reed. "Many Reed students have successfully utilized their LabVIEW programming expertise to execute sophisticated open-ended advanced laboratory experiments during the latter portion of the course," Essick wrote in the book's preface. "LabVIEW programming, because of its wide use in industrial and research labs, has also proved to be a marketable skill for students applying for summer internships, full-time jobs, and graduate schools." In the preface he also thanks his students Zach Nobel ’94 and Ben Palmer ’95, and his Reed colleagues David Griffiths, Richard Crandall, and Mark Beck, for their advice and assistance.

John Essick maintains an undergraduate research program in experimental solid state physics, investigating the optoelectronic properties of semiconducting materials used in photovoltaic devices. Recently, through his work in the development of upper-division instructional laboratories, he has also acquired an interest in the field of laser-based atom trapping. He will spend his sabbatical next year at the University of Colorado–Boulder working with one of the pioneering research groups in this exciting new field.



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