Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - 35

Alumnae/i News

The National
Endowment for the
Arts Award Goes to...

Top: Karl Rabe / Bottom: Courtesy of the subject / AP Photo-Eric Gay

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Ned
Balbo '81 a 2017 literature in Translation Fellowship.
The $12,500 award will support the retranslation of
the 512-line poem "The Young Fate" by French poet
Paul Valéry. Though many scholars consider the
poem one of the more important works in the last
100 years, it is little known in the U.S., in part because
the best existing English translation is difficult to
obtain, and the best American versions are outdated.
Originally published in 1917, it presents a young
woman standing outside on a starry night, overlooking the ocean, contemplating her connection to time,
death, and the natural world. The retranslation will
come in time to celebrate the poem's centennial, and
will include an introduction, notes, and a brief
biography of Valéry.
An English major at Vassar, Balbo is now an
adjunct associate professor in the MFA program in
Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State
University. His poetry collections include Galileo's
Banquet (1998); Lives of the Sleepers (2005); The Trials
of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (2010); and Upcycling
Paumanok (2016). His translations of Paul Valéry,
Georg Trakl, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Charles
Baudelaire have appeared in numerous journals.

Administering Justice
In August, Karen V. Clopton '80 P'19 received the 2017 Robert B. Yegge Award
for outstanding contributions in the field of judicial administration from
the Lawyers Conference of the American Bar Association, Judicial Division.
The group praised Clopton's "lifetime of tireless work ensuring the fair and
equitable administration of justice." Clopton is the first African American
to be appointed Chief Administrative Law Judge for the California Public
Utilities Commission (CPUC). In her role, she manages 40 judges and more
than 35 support staff, and oversees the commission's agenda. In a statement,
the ABA said that Clopton is not only an excellent role model for students and
attorneys of color, but "she has made the elimination of bias and outreach to
diverse backgrounds a cornerstone of her management of the division." Under
her leadership, the first Filipino judge, the first Native American judge, the
first Hispanic judge, the first Nigerian judge, and several LGBT and Asian and
African American judges have been hired and more African Americans have
been promoted to the role of assistant chief administrative law judge.
At Vassar, Clopton serves as Co-Chair of the African American Alumnae/i
of Vassar College (AAAVC) and as President of the class of 1980.
In July, President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Texas native Susan Combs '66 as the Department of the Interior's Assistant Secretary for Policy,
Management, and Budget. A rancher from Big Bend,
Combs previously served in two Texas statewide
offices as the state's first female agriculture commissioner and then as the Texas Comptroller of Public
Accounts/Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer. Combs's
role will encompass policy development, management
reforms to align efforts among the bureaus, and
stewardship of the department's fiscal resources.
VA S S A R Q U A R T E R lY

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017