Now in its sixth year, the Institute has gained an international reputation and continues to grow. Numbers of students are returning for their second and third summers, and several have signed up for a full year's program. One example is Aiman Sappayeva, 30, from Moscow, who came last summer, stayed for the entire academic year, continued her stay for this summer's program, and will return to Russia in August.

"This has been the best experience of my life," Sappayeva emphasized. "I want my younger brother to come and study here, and I have been making regular contact with my parents urging them to encourage him to come. I want him to experience the great teachers, the friendly atmosphere, and the enjoyable life that you have here. I made a lot of great friends, learned so much English, had a wonderful time, and I am sad to have to go."

Isaac Cohen, 20, of Mexico City, first came to ELI's summer programs in 1998 when he was 16. He returned for the next two summers and this year he served as a counselor for the younger students. Over the years, he also recruited more than fifteen of his friends from Mexico City to attend the program with him at PMC. He is trilingual, speaking Spanish, English, and Hebrew.

"I am glad I had an opportunity to be a counselor this summer," Isaac said. "Because I'm the same age as many of the other students, I think I can relate to them better. I want to make them happy and I want to help them have a great experience both here at ELI and in Boston."

"I believe that American Universities are the best in the world," Isaac stated, "and eventually I want to spend a year or two either as an undergraduate or as a graduate student in the United States taking business, management, and marketing courses. To do this, I knew that I would have to perfect my English and that's why I have been coming to ELI for the past few years. The courses offered are just what I need, and the instructors go out of their way to make learning exciting. I feel very much at home at Pine Manor."

"As a result of coming to these courses, I have also had a fantastic opportunity to meet people my own age from all over the world,"Isaac continued. "I have been exposed to different cultures, different philosophies, and different ways of doing things. As a result, I had to do a lot of thinking and I've also done a lot of growing up."

"Last year, I met Majed Almashhadi from Medina, Saudi Arabia and we just clicked. He has become my best friend," Isaac said, "and in many ways, he is even closer to me than my brother. I've learned some Arabic from him and I've taught him some Hebrew."

"We both know about the problems in the Middle East and we are painfully aware of the clash between our two cultures and faiths but we are determined not to let that come between us," Isaac emphasized. "I can't explain why, but I know we will always be friends."

"I also love ELI because it is located in Boston and there are so many things here for me to do and see. I've already spent time on the campuses of most of the major universities in the area and I've even taken a course in Business English at Boston University," Isaac concluded. "I have met a lot of local students and I've had a great time visiting the downtown and Quincy Market. I especially like the student clubs and discos on Lansdowne Street and Embassy and Pravda are two of the best in the world."

Isaac comes from a dynamic family. His father is an importer and retailer of high fashion clothing and his mother is an art dealer carrying the works of some of the most famous contemporary Mexican artists. His sister Lilly, 28, is an economist. Ceci, 27, is a homemaker, and his brother Alberto, 24, is a technical engineer for a cellular telephone company.

This past year, Isaac graduated from Maguen David (Star of David) High School, a private high school in Mexico City, and then spent four months backpacking across Europe with ten of his friends. He also spent two weeks in Israel.

Upon completion of his duties with ELI, Isaac returned to Mexico City where he began his studies as an international business major at Anahuac University. He also had plans to work part time either with his father or his brother in order to get real world experience.

Majed Almashhadi, 19, came to ELI last summer for a two week course in English. He had just graduated from high school in Medina, Saudi Arabia and had spent some time studying English at the Bell School in Saffron Walden near Cambridge, England. With the help of his older brother Hani, he surfed the net looking for English language schools in the United States.

"I picked ELI because I was looking for a small school with a campus and because I wanted to be in Boston," Majed said. "I knew nothing about PMC or ELI but I always wanted to come the America and I am going to complete my university studies here. It made sense to me to try a school in an academic city."

Majed was so pleased with his experience that he extended his stay for the entire summer and then decided to stay at ELI for a full year. During the course of the year he perfected his English and is now bi-lingual in English and Arabic. He also took the Kaplan preparatory courses for the SAT's and then took his college boards in the late spring.

Majed also spent a lot of time with his guitar and plays songs in English, Arabic, and Spanish. He has become an aficionado of latin music and reports that people don't believe that he can't speak Spanish after they have heard him sing.

"During the course of the year, I was completely immersed in my English studies and I didn't speak Arabic with anyone. In October, I met Isaac and we began studying together and then spending a lot of free time together as well. We both have the same tastes and we both like a lot of the same things. We even like the same night clubs in Boston, Embassy and Pravda, and we both love Lansdowne Street," Majed said. "Isaac had to leave a little early to begin university and I miss him already. When ELI ends at the end of August, I'm going to take a break and spend some time with him in Mexico City. After that I will go home for a month or so and then I will come back to Boston to find an apartment and begin getting ready for school."

"When I had a chance to become an activities counselor at ELI this summer, I changed all my plans so I could stay. When I came to Boston last year, I didn't know anyone and I didn't know the city. I thought if I could help some of the students coming this year, it would be great." Majed continued. "I have had a great time working with all the students this summer, helping them get adjusted to Boston and to America, helping them with their studies, and helping them fill their free time."

"At the same time I decided to take three courses at Boston University because I got word in late June that I had been accepted for the spring semester. I'm planning on majoring in Business Administration and so I took courses in management, economics, and psychology." Majed said. "And even though I was working full time at ELI, I managed to get an A-, a B+, and a B.

Majed's father, Taleb, is a civil engineer and the retired director of roads for the Medina area. Since retirement, he has become a developer and has built major complexes in Medina, Jeddah, and Riyadh. His mother, Suad, keeps the home. He has two brother's, Hani, 29, who earned his doctorate in economics from the European University in Montreux, Switzerland, and who is now working in the stock market there, and Hatem, 27, who is completing his PhD in economics, also at the European University in Montreux.
"I love PMC and I love ELI," Majed concluded. "If I could matriculate here, I would do it immediately."

In addition to the core courses in Reading and Writing English, Integrated Grammar, and Listening to and Speaking English, students in the program can take electives in Pronunciation, Business English, preparation for the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL), and studies in American and Boston culture.

Participants in the programs also have a wide range of extracurricular activities to enjoy. These include: trips to the Cape and Provincetown, the Berkshires, Newport, Rhode Island, the malls at Kittery and York Beach in Maine, and Six Flags in Westfield; overnight trips to New York City, Washington, DC, Niagara Falls, and Toronto; field trips to the Museum of Fine Arts, the New England Aquarium, the Museum of Science, Harvard University, the Boston Pops Orchestra on the Esplanade, the Boston Red Sox, the Blue Man Group, Chinatown, and Quincy Market. Students also had the opportunity of taking the Duck Tour of Boston, the Tour of Boston by Foot, and of going on a whale watch, a sunset cruise, and several organized trips to the beach, as well as visiting several college-aged discos. Activities on campus included a number of barbecues, coffee houses, ice cream socials, dances, and movies.

For the fall semester, ELI will host a group of 11 students from Kinjo College, which is located in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan, in collaboration with the Japan Education Advancement Association. The students from Kinjo College are very interested in exploring the principles of inclusive leadership, social responsibility, and the Pine Manor community values of respect, trust, individual worth, equality, and openness. The goal of this program is to foster mutual cultural understanding, independence, and growth, and ELI will be working closely with PMC administrators and staff to encourage interaction with PMC degree students and to ensure that all students benefit academically, socially, and personally.

For the past year ELI has been partnered with the Monterrey, Mexico, Institute of Technology (ITESM), and that relationship continues to develop. The number of students coming in January, 2002, for the spring semester will be more than twice as large as the group that came last year. To accommodate the needs of these students, ELI staff have been working with PMC's Management and Business faculty, and will offer a number of seminars in international finance, human resources and human resources management, and e-commerce

"The Sports Management Program will help our graduates enter one of today's newest career fields," explains Nia Lane Chester, Dean of the College. The Sports Management program offers courses in Sports Management, Sports Marketing, Economics of Sport, Sports Law, as well as Sociology of Sport and Sports Psychology. In this program, students will prepare for a variety of sports-related career fields, including health and fitness, print or broadcast sports media, athletic facility management, sports information or sales, youth sports and recreation, and sporting goods and apparel. "The job market in the sports industry is booming," says PMC Athletics Director Bill Boffi, "and sports management is becoming enormously popular as a field of study."

Internships being developed for the program will augment the more than 1,000 internships available at PMC, which was one of the first institutions to require every student to complete at least one internship.

The help commemorate the occasion and address the graduates, Pine Manor invited four pro9mienant and professionally diverse women who uniquely reflect PMC's mission. the main speaker was Catherine Bertini, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, the world's largest food aid agency. Honorary degrees were also awarded to Deborah Prothrow-Stith, associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health; Karen Smyers, 1999 U.S. Triathlete of the Year; and Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio. "All these women are true role models of perseverance, caring and responsibility," said President Nemerowicz. "Each one of them personifies inclusive leadership and social responsibility in a way that is reflective of their own individual personalities."

The first woman to ever head a UN organization, Catherine Bertini oversees an organization with seemingly impossible goal of feeding 830 million starving people worldwide. The World Food Programme aims to avert starvation in humanitarian crises through emergency operations, as well as to promote long-term development projects to break the hunger-poverty cycle.

In her Commencement address, Bertini told PMC graduates that they, "like every woman on this earth, are catalysts for change." She reminded them that they are part of the College because of the profound impact of Helen Temple Cooke and the sixteen high school senior who began the Pine Manor tradition 89 years ago.

"We are here today the direct descendants of those seventeen women, who, by their actions, created Pine Manor College," Bertini said. "Do you think that they ever imagined that almost a century later, the impact of their actions would still be molding the lives of young women today?"

Bertini continued, "Every woman molds live - starting with her own - but touching hundreds more more in her lifetime - her children, her parents, her family, her community... There is one constant - a woman. She might be the mother, the grandmother, the sister, the aunt. But it is almost as if there is no family without a woman, and there never a community with mostly women sustaining it."

After receiving her PMC honorary degree, NPR's Nina Totenberg also emphasized to the graduates their potential lifelong Pine Manor bond. Totenberg began with a light-hearted "ditty" she composed about the aspirations of a PMC graduate as she ventured out into the world. Upon concluding, Totenberg added, "I wish I could tell you that life will be as much as my ditty suggests. In truth, it is sometimes ever better, and sometimes a good deal worse. But you will have an enormous advantage in the good times and the bad...that advantage is the young women seated all around today."

Totenberg shared her own difficult story about her husband who died after a tragic fall on a patch of ice several years ago. "Take it from me, your female friends will be your life lines in ways nobody else can be and in circumstances you never imagined.. There is something very special about women friends...an identity, a connection, even a salvation."

Ironman triathlon champion Karen Smyers addressed the Class of 2000 about important life lessons as well. Smyers has an impressive record of athletic achievements, which include three World Championship triathlon titles and the Professional National Champion title for sex consecutive years. She also competed last spring in the Olympic trials for the triathlon's debut in Sydney this fall. From the outset, she seems tough as nails, but in reality, she's as vulnerable as anyone else.

Like Totenberg, Smyers has learned her lessons the hard way. "Some of life's hurdles that I have encountered in the last three years are a severed hamstring from a broken window, a 48-hour labor and Cesarean section during the birth of my daughter, a run-in with an 18-wheeler while cycling, a broken collarbone suffered just months before the biggest race of my career, and to top it off, a recent diagnosis of thyroid cancer."

Despite these potentially career-ending crises, Smyers has never quit, choosing to focus on the positive side. "What sometimes appears to be bad luck is actually good luck in disguise," insisted Smyers. "My severed hamstring presented me with the perfect opportunity to take maternity leave, the childbirth raised my pain threshold for future races, my truck accident allowed me extra time at home my infant daughter, and the broken left collarbone evened out my swim stroke from the separated right shoulder I suffered in the truck accident!"

Although Smyers' athletic career is, by nature, very results-oriented, she told the graduates that the pursuit of a goal is the important part. In looking ahead to the Olympic trials, Smyers explained that she was prepared for both success and failure. "If you are pursuing a goal that is truly worthy of your efforts," she added, "you must encounter failure or your probably are not challenging yourself enough."

Smyers concluded by advising the graduates, "to choose goals which are worthy of your efforts and which you are passionate about, pursue these goals with all the gusto you can muster, and take care to enjoy the journey, as it is often as important and enriching as the destination,"

Indeed, May 14th was an exciting and uplifting day as the Pine Manor community gave a royal sendoff to the Class of 2000. When Deborah Prothrow-Stith, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, received her honorary degree, she summed up the day as she addressed the graduates: "We look forward to your careers, and we look forward to each of you helping us in the world. To Pine Manor College, the Trustees, your President, and the people who are really making the dreams of young women come true, I thank you."

In 1998 PMC used an alumna's unrestricted $4 million bequest to establish the Fund for Affordable Education and implement a 34 percent reduction in tuition, saving each student $5,700 per year and providing one of the lowest tuition rates among private, nonsectarian, four-year women's colleges in the country. Dr. Maconda Brown O'Connor, president of the Houston-based Brown Foundation and a PMC alumna, said the grant "recognizes Pine Manor's outstanding leadership in reaching out to families who are struggling to pay for a college education for their daughters. The grant is an investment in the future for women."

The College will designate part of the award to the memory of Margaret Wiess Elkins '42. A life-long Houston resident, Ms. Elkins was actively involved in numerous cultural and civic organizations, and was a generous benefactor of Pine Manor College. Each year, several Pine Manor students will be selected for Margaret Elkins Leadership Scholarships in recognition of their significant contributions to community service.

In addition to the tuition cut, PMC's mission of inclusive leadership and social responsibility has been enhanced by several other new initiatives in the past three years. The College has increased efforts to recruit more students from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds -- one third of the currently enrolled students are women of color‹and has refocused its liberal arts curriculum around portfolio assessment and specific learning outcomes. PMC has also developed partnerships with local agencies and public schools to address youth development issues, health care delivery to underserved populations and entrepreneurship opportunities for women.

For the second, consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges ranked Pine Manor College among the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the North with the most diverse student populations.

• Kathy Checchi: attorney and President of the Trusteeship; Board member of LA's Best (after school enrichment program), HOPE (Hispanas Organized for Political Equality), Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the Latinos Children's Fund.
• Alison Winter: Chair of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, President and CEO of Northern Trust of California and Executive Vice President of Midwest Personal Financial Services of Northern Trust Corporation, Chicago; Board member of California Healthcare Foundation and of the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles. 
• Jeanne Wolf: TV and print journalist, Editor-at-Large, Redbook magazine; featured reporter for ABC's "Nightline" and "Good Morning, America" and her own PBS interview series; President of her own production company, "Pentacom Productions." The award recipients will discuss women and leadership with PMC President Gloria Nemerowicz, co-author of Education for Leadership and Social Responsibility.

According to Wallis Annenberg, a Pine Manor College trustee emerita and Co-chair with Wendi Woods Chandler of the Honorary Committee for this event, "We are proud to honor three women who personify the ideals of socially responsible leadership and have made profound contributions in their workplaces and their communities‹and to do so in Southern California, where PMC has nearly 400 alumnae."

Sponsored by the Center for Inclusive Leadership and Social Responsibility at Pine Manor College, the Leadership Awards are designed to honor women who have demonstrated collaboration, innovative thinking, and a commitment to social responsibility in their workplaces and communities. According to President Nemerowicz, "These are qualities emphasized throughout the liberal arts curriculum offered at the College."

Ms. Checchi, Ms. Winter and Ms. Wolf are among several recent recipients of the Leadership Award, including The Honorable Juliette Clagett McClennan, former U.S. Representative to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women; Lynn M. Martin, former Secretary of the Department of Labor and former Congresswoman from Illinois; and Shelley Looney, U.S. Olympic Women's Ice Hockey Gold Medalist.