Inside Front Cover

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: Kathy Waters
Editor: Philip Johansson
Photo Editor: Ella McIntosh
Staff Photographers:  Clayton Clemetson ’18, Sam Harrison ‘20, and David Teter ’19
Staff Writer: Emmett Wood
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: Mushrooms growing on a mossy log are harbingers of forest health, being the fruiting bodies of long-lived and massive mycelia essential to soil structure and nutrient cycling. These mushrooms were found in what is now the Marlboro College Ecological Reserve, which promises to help protect the ecological functioning of this forest for decades to come. Read more. Photo by Pearse Pinch ’14.

“At Marlboro that tension is much more weighted in favor of democratic processes, which I think is distinctive,” says senior Helen Pinch, pictured right. “Especially right now, when people are trying to figure out how to do democracy better in this country.” Hear more of the former head selectperson’s thoughts on Town Meeting. Photo by David Teter

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.