Smith Today

Audrey Banie ’27 won the Best Pitch prize in the 2024 Elevator Pitch Contest sponsored by Smith’s Conway Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center for her enterprise, “Grow.” Other contest winners were: Mary Clare Michael ’26 in the Out of the Box category for “The Policy Playhouse”; Olohi John ’27 and Mia Tran ’27 in the Conquering Injustice category for “Kuali Juvenile Education Foundation” and “Resilient Vietnam”; Ally Tutay ’25 and Faithrose Daniel ’27 in the Educational Dividends category for “Seedmatch” and “Mama Market”; and Diane Okong’o ’26 in the Finance Free category for “Thrive Together.” The Judges’ Choice prize went to Gabrielle Bennett ’27 for “Really Cool Rocket Boots.”

Carrie Baker, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Chair of American Studies and Professor of the Study of Women and Gender, is the author of Abortion Pills: U.S. History and Politics published by Amherst College Press. The book offers a comprehensive history of abortion pills in the U.S., including how activists waged a decade-long campaign to create and expand access to abortion medication.

Susan B. Levin, Roe/Straut Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, has published new research critiquing the zeal of some philosophers and tech billionaires for engineering agelessness. “The irrationality of human confidence that an ageless existence would be better,” published in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, and Levin’s response to comments about the article from advocates of agelessness explore why the quest for agelessness, driven by confidence that an ageless existence would be superior to our own, is irrational and detrimental to human flourishing.