This year, the alumnae/i association, AAVC, turns 150. Throughout 2021, the College will be celebrating this anniversary by highlighting a few of Vassar’s most notable alumnae/i in architecture, arts, business, education, entertainment, healthcare, humanitarian efforts, law, social justice, and technology. This month, we focus on two alumnae/i attorneys who are working to create a more just society.

Last summer, as people took to the streets to protest racism in the United States, Bishop Joseph Tolton ’89 saw an opportunity to unite people across continents. People in the U.S. had come together to tell their story in the hopes of changing policy on the domestic front. He thought: What if members of the African diaspora around the world united to do the same on the global front?

Like many other creatures, some tadpoles are able to alter their appearance, a phenomenon called plasticity, to avoid predators. But do these tadpoles also alter their behavior depending on which predators are threatening them? That was a question Vassar Assistant Professor of Biology Justin Touchon and one of his students, Phoebe Reuben ’17, set out to answer when they conducted a study in the summer 2016 at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Their research was published April 14 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.