Potash Hill
Published twice every year, Potash Hill shares highlights of what Marlboro College community members, in both undergraduate and graduate programs, are doing, creating, and thinking. The publication is named after the hill in Marlboro, Vermont, where the college was founded in 1946. “Potash,” or potassium carbonate, was a locally important industry in the 18th and 19th centuries, obtained by leaching wood ash and evaporating the result in large iron pots. Students and faculty at Marlboro no longer make potash, but they are very industrious in their own way, as this publication amply demonstrates.
Alumni Director: Maia Segura ’91
Editor: Philip Johansson
Photo Editor: Richard Smith
Staff Photographers: Clayton Clemetson ’18, Sam Harrison ’20, and David Teter ’19
Design: New Ground Creative
Potash Hill welcomes letters to the editor. Mail them to: Editor, Potash Hill, Marlboro College, P.O. Box A, Marlboro, VT 05344, or send email to pjohansson@marlboro.edu. The editor reserves the right to edit for length letters that appear in Potash Hill.
Front Cover: Blue Clouds, by Cathy Osman. One of several works by retired visual arts faculty Cathy Osman and Tim Segar that were reproduced and inserted in each diploma handed out to graduates at commencement 2018. Learn more about commencement.
About Marlboro College
Marlboro College provides independent thinkers with exceptional opportunities to broaden their intellectual horizons, benefit from a small and close-knit learning community, establish a strong foundation for personal and career fulfillment, and make a positive difference in the world. At our campus in the town of Marlboro, Vermont, students engage in deep exploration of their interests— and discover new avenues for using their skills to improve their lives and benefit others—in an atmosphere that emphasizes critical and creative thinking, independence, an egalitarian spirit, and community.
“This formative experience of leaving family and coming into a new community is something that I think we miss a lot in our Western culture,” says former Outdoor Program director Randy Knaggs ’94. “I think it’s important to pause and ponder what those transitions mean, and be thoughtful about it.” Of course Randy’s referring to Marlboro’s stellar Bridges orientation program, which puts new students together with experienced student leaders to learn about community before they come to campus. We know it’s “so 2017,” but it’s worth sharing the video about last year’s Bridges trips filmed and edited by Patrick Kennedy ’09 (pictured, second from right).
