Author: YSNews

Antioch College’s Miller Fellows boost local nonprofits

 

View the sidebar, “Arts book fundraiser”

For Antioch College student Megan Miller, a yearlong job at the Yellow Springs Arts Council sparked a love of art galleries that has since led her to co-ops at the Santa Fe Art Institute and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Fellow student Kijin Higashibaba turned a job last year at Antioch radio station WYSO-FM into an internship for a Sacramento television station, where she now covers the California state house.

The early careers of both students were launched by their Miller Fellowships, during which they worked at local nonprofit organizations. In the program’s third year, 16 Antioch students are working 10 hours per week at one of 11 nonprofits. Students are paid $10 per hour from a grant, while the cost to the nonprofit is minimal.

“It’s just been fantastic for us,” WYSO General Manager Neena Ellis said of the four Miller Fellows who have worked at the radio station. At WYSO, students have learned interviewing, recording and radio editing and have all been on the air, while WYSO has benefited from the technical skills of “digital natives” who have chipped in to create original content for its website, Ellis said.

“We’re a small radio station and we all wear many hats, so when someone walks in the door who has skills already, we give them responsibility and everyone steps up,” Ellis said.

The Antioch Miller Fellowships were created when longtime villagers and brothers Nolan and Richard Miller bequeathed $3 million to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation. Nolan, who died in 2006 and was an associate editor of The Antioch Review and a writing teacher at Antioch College, and Richard, an artist who died in 2009, asked that the endowment funds be used to strengthen the town-gown relationship. The foundation came up with the idea of using the money to pay Antioch students to work for local nonprofits. Fellowships began in 2011.

“It’s such a positive thing for our students, and I hope the community is benefiting from it,” said Beth Bridgeman, an Antioch instructor of cooperative education. “I think people love to see great Antioch students out in the community doing interesting things.”

This year students are working at WYSO, Glen Helen Ecology Institute, the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, the Tecumseh Land Trust, the Yellow Springs Senior Center, the Yellow Springs Arts Council, Yellow Springs Schools, Community Access Channel 5, the Antioch School, Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse and Home, Inc.

Nonprofits can become host organizations by applying to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation each summer. At a job fair on the Antioch campus in the fall, students and organizations interview each other to find the best fit. Students typically work for the organization for an entire year.

Jerome Borchers, president of the Arts Council, said Miller Fellows there have “multiplied the influence of the small staff” of the organization and students helped with public relations, gallery work, membership and youth outreach. Krista Magaw, executive director of the Tecumseh Land Trust, added that its Miller Fellows have energized her organization by thinking of new ways to reach people about conservation and increase membership.

“The [Miller Fellows] dream up ways to get people out on the land, or to experience nature or learn something about local food production,” Magaw said, adding that the students have contributed their technological savvy and “even tweet sometimes.”

Students said they have gained from the experience too.

An Antioch psychology major, Ryann Patrus of Cincinnati wants to someday work with people with disabilities. During a Miller Fellowship at the Mills Lawn Elementary School reading center, she said she has learned a lot about helping struggling students, among other career skills.

“I definitely learned a lot about working with kids and how to focus children,” Patrus said. “I’ve also learned how to be flexible and how to self-initiate — a good skill.”

First-year student Khalil Nasar, 18, of northern Virginia, has enjoyed working with his hands to clear invasive species and downed trees at the Glen Helen Nature Preserve. Working with land steward George Bieri, Nasar has wielded chainsaws and chippers, last week felling three trees killed by the Emerald Ash Borer.

“It’s very intellectual work in the classroom, so it’s nice to go out and apply it,” Nasar said, adding that he also has learned how to work under a boss and with a team to “get something done as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

Alex Klug, 26, of Cincinnati, is learning the “difficult” and “intense” work of grant writing at local nonprofit Home, Inc., which she sees as an important skill to have as she hopes to someday work in youth housing and education. She also finds the flexibility at a small community organization empowering.

“I enjoy how it’s really from the ground up and we learn as we go,” Klug said.

Jay Rudibaugh, 19, of East Liverpool, Ohio, is busy as a ”jack of all trades” at the Senior Center, where he is helping people figure out electronic devices of all kinds. With a flexible work schedule, he has learned a lot about the importance of time management during his fellowship, he said.

First-year student Evan Schieber, of Columbus, has learned how to talk about environmental issues at the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, where he is helping the organization make documentaries about energy topics. Schieber, who prefers cycling to driving, is exploring his own life philosophy while advancing his studies in human ecology through the fellowship, he said.

Kate Harrison, 20, of Hillsboro, Ohio, is also working on video production. The second-year student is documenting the transition to a problem-based learning curriculum at Yellow Springs Schools and will begin by producing a short 30-minute video using interviews with students, faculty and administrators.

And 19-year-old Alexandra Scott, of Columbus, in her second year at Antioch, is pursuing her lifelong dream to open a coffee shop “even though there’s no major for it” at Antioch, by working at the Arts Council, she said.

“One of the reasons I wanted to open a coffee shop is to bring arts to people, with open mics, poetry readings, music, art on the walls,” Scott said of the connection between her fellowship and career aspiration. The Miller Fellowship also gave her a chance to get more invovled in the Yellow Springs community, she said.

“I love Yellow Springs — it seems like a safe space, there’s a lot of art and wonderful people,” Scott said. As for her favorite local coffee shop inspiration: “I hang out at Spirited Goat Coffeehouse all the time.”

EnviroFlight, Antioch College seek partnership

Antioch College and the local sustainable animal feed business EnviroFlight are poised to collaborate in a way that leaders believe will benefit both entities.

“We believe this fits well with what you’re doing,” EnviroFlight founder Glen Court­right said to the Antioch College Board of Trustees at an open portion of the board’s meeting last Saturday at Herndon Gallery. “We want to collaborate to create a framework for affordable, sustainable socially responsible food production.”

Specifically, the college will offer EnviroFlight use of its former arts building, where the five-year-old animal feed company will conduct aquaculture research.

However, the collaboration is dependent on the college receiving a $600,000 state grant that will pay for refurbishing the building, according to College Vice President for Administration and Finance Andi Adkins. If the grant comes through, Enviro­Flight will use the building, and if the college doesn’t win the grant, EnviroFlight will seek another venue for its aquaculture research, Courtright said in an interview this week.

“We want to establish a sustainable nutrient research facility at Antioch College using EnviroFlight technology and processes,” he said to the trustees on Saturday.

The arrangement would involve EnviroFlight using the 24,000 square foot building for its aquaculture research, in return for which the college will receive, according to Courtright’s presentation, “global visibility,” opportunities for student co-ops, a user for the building and free fish to feed the students. The college would provide building maintenance, and the two entities will negotiate on the issue of rent in the future, Courtright said this week.

The college would also receive a cost-free opportunity to refurbish the building, a project estimated to cost about $450,000 to $550,000, which would be covered by the $600,000 grant from the Ohio Capital Appropriations bill. The college will apply for the grant, with help from EnviroFlight and the Greene County Economic Development office, in February, and should learn the outcome in about six months, according to Courtright.

However, the main part of the Enviro­Flight business, which includes the production of black soldier fly insect larvae, will remain at its current location at MillWorks, according to Courtright, who said the business, which currently employs 10 people, will soon need a larger facility in which to grow. In an interview this week, Courtright said he is exploring renting a larger space at the Creative Memories building, and his need to move fairly quickly precludes the option of building a new building.

Begun five years ago, EnviroFlight bills itself as a new technology to address the twin world problems of world hunger and sustainability. Specifically, the company uses waste products from breweries, ethanol production and pre-consumer food waste to feed black soldier fly larvae. The flies produce waste that is then turned into high-protein, low-fat food for fish and livestock, after which the larvae are cooked and dried to create a high-protein, high fat food for carniverous fish, according to the EnviroFlight Web site.

“We can create proteins and fats at a lower price than what’s on the market,” Courtright said to the Antioch College trustees on Saturday.

And while the company plans to keep its main operations at its current location at MillWorks for the short term, the high ceilings and extensive light of the atrium area of the former art building provide a perfect space to raise rainbow trout, which the company will use for research, and then give to the college.

“We have to do a lot of aquaculture research to prove that what we do is safe,” Courtright said.

The company did recently receive approval from the FDA “to market for human food use the edible tissues derived from experimental animals reared on insect meal and other ingredients that are acceptable for use in animal feed,” according to an email from Courtright this week.

In his presentation to the college trustees, Courtright said the company has been selected to join a global team of public and private organizations to develop sustainable tools for food and feed in Kenya. The project, funded by the Danish International Development Agency, or DANIDA, will involve bringing a Kenyan Ph.D. student to Yellow Springs to learn how to adapt the EnviroFlight process for Kenyan food needs, according to a company press release.

Courtright stated he wants to keep his company in Yellow Springs. “We want to keep things here,” he said. “It’s where the brain trust is.”

• Also at the board meeting, College Vice-President for Advancement Brian Williams, who heads the college fund-raising efforts, spoke of the financial challenges facing the college.

Specifically, the college’s $75 million capital campaign faces a significant shortfall due to a lack of very large gifts — those from $1 million to $15 million. College fund-raisers structured the campaign in the shape of a “pyramid” with a wide base of smaller donations at the bottom, but at the top a single gift of $15 million, one gift of $7.5 million, two gifts of $5 million, four of $2.5 million and eight of $1 million. And those more than $1 million gifts haven’t come in, according to Williams.

“We’re working hard to identify those people,” he said. “Those gifts take a while to mature.”

However, the campaign is doing well regarding gifts under $1 million, Williams said, stating that the college has received 328 gifts between $25,000 and $50,000. And more than 4,500 supporters have given donations under $25,000, he said.

“The challenge is identifying and securing the donors at the top of the gift pyramid,” he said.

No rest for the gritty

At the college’s State of the College speech the preceeding afternoon, College President Mark Roosevelt also emphasized the college’s fundraising challenge. While last year Antioch raised $19 to $20 million, the highest amount ever raised in college history, the need remains huge, since the estimated cost of renovating the college’s long neglected campus turned out to be only one-third of the actual costs, according to Roosevelt.

“We had substantial growth with fundraising, but we need to be doing this every year,” he said.

The planned campus renovation does not include “bells and whistles,” Roosevelt said, only a “decent, clean, functional” campus for students.

But Roosevelt had significant good news, as well. Currently, the college has enrolled 184 students, and 63 are on co-op placements.

“Don’t underestimate how hard it is to reestablish co-op in this economy,” he said, giving credit to the school’s co-op department.

The college currently offers 65 courses, with an average of 10 students per class. And the Antioch retention rate is about 88 to 89 percent annually, comparable to that of other Great Lakes Colleges Association schools, he said. Roosevelt also said that he feels hopeful about last fall’s on-site visit by a Higher Learning Commission accreditation team, although the official HLC announcement as to whether the college meets the requirements for accreditation candidacy won’t be made until June. Town/gown collaboration is also going well, he said, with the wellness center expected to open in June, and a theater building renovation in progress.

Overall, Roosevelt emphasized, the college has overcome huge obstacles and has much to celebrate.

“No one could have predicted three and a half years ago that the college would be on such sound footing as we are,” he said.

But the challenges remain, including the need to keep hard-working staff, faculty and students from burning out, according to Roosevelt, who said the name of his speech was, “No rest for the gritty.”

“We’ve done an incredible amount of work, and have asked a great deal of faculty and staff. You can see some wear and tear,” Roosevelt said, stating that “We have to learn to produce human sustainability alongside economic and environmental sustainability.”

MLK Day event at Antioch College­— Panel looks at racism, inequality

Columbus resident Kwensi Kambon urged attendees at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day panel session this week at Antioch College to “deputize themselves” and fight against racial inequality and discrimination.

It starts with us, “it does not start with ‘them,’” Kambon said. “King’s approach was focusing on the talents, abilities and gifts that God gave him.”
The panel, whose topic was “Where Do We Go From Here?”, was one of several events on Sunday and Monday that Antioch and the Central Chapel AME Church organized to commemorate King’s birthday. Villagers and visitors also packed the Little Art Theatre for the screening of a rare documentary film on King’s life and the AME Church was overflowing with people during its annual celebration that included music, speeches and peacemaker awards.

“We came to Antioch because we wanted to be with a like-minded community where we could see a diversity in action,” said Kambon, who arrived from Columbus with his wife, Tomisena. Kambon said that they were especially encouraged by the participation of local seniors in MLK activities and the variety of ways the town honors King.

“In many places, there’s just a speech [for MLK day] but I’ve heard all the speeches,” Kambon later said. “When you see the community that has so many ways of remembering King, it jump-starts you.”

At Monday afternoon’s sparsely attended panel session, which drew mostly college staffers and local residents, four current and former Antioch students from the Class of 1949 to the Class of 2017 discussed King’s legacy in the context of the problems still facing racial minorities, woman and the poor on campus and in the country. Panelists agreed that while some progress has been made, there is a still a long way to go, and suggested primary education reform, addressing the underlying economic forces, teaching black history and sparking conversations about race and privilege.

“Change starts with two people in a conversation,” said Antioch first-year student Megan Howes, a panelist.

But panelist Maceo Cofield, a 1971 Antioch graduate, said that the “truth has been hijacked” and the language co-opted, making it more difficult to have meaningful conversations about oppression today. Cofield, who coordinates the University of Dayton’s minority leaders program in its school of engineering, added that more choice in primary education or better schools are also not sufficient to solve the problem. Instead, an economic system that exacerbates inequality needs to be transformed to alleviate poverty, since “it’s very hard to listen at school when you’re hungry,” he said.

“When we talk about what’s going on with African Americans, Latinos, and poor white young people, we have not discussed how we integrate them into our economy,” Cofield said, adding that if our economic system was a true “meritocracy” then the rich would lose their privilege as the poor would rise up with better education, which is not the case.

Panelist Richard Kaplan, an 89-year-old retired documentary filmmaker and Antioch alum, argued for teaching the history of the civil rights movement to children. To that end he is trying to get his 30-minute film about King, Legacy of a Dream, into every classroom in the country.

“There is a whole generation of kids out there that don’t know a damn thing about our history,” Kaplan said. “Hopefully using a film like Legacy of a Dream and all of the attendant discussion will be useful in giving them a better perspective on where we should go from here. Whether we will or not is another question.”

Local resident David Perry agreed from the audience, saying that more black history should be taught in schools and homes throughout the year, instead of just on MLK day and in February.

“So much black history has been lost,” Perry said. “There are so many other black leaders other than MLK — it’s about more than just MLK and his message and movement.”

Antioch third-year student Nargees Jumahan, a 21-year-old native of Afghanistan who emigrated to the U.S. when she was 11, said that Americans don’t like to talk about their history and that she has found it strange that the country “compartmentalizes” history into months and holidays. She pointed out that many Antioch students treated MLK Day as a day off, since the only students at the discussion were two panelists, three working the audiovisual system and a friend that came with her. Jumahan added that current Antioch students are “only open-minded to open-minded people” and that her generation tends to confront such issues from purely an intellectual perspective.

“Part of the problem I see is that there is a lot of reading happening, but there’s not a lot of emotional connection,” Jumahan said. “In Martin Luther King’s time there was a lot of emotional connection — they were moved.”

Antioch Dean of Community Life Louise Smith added from the audience that Antioch needs to do a better job of recognizing oppression among, and creating “safe spaces” for, those of different identities — gender, sexual orientation, race, class, religion — and that it starts with conversation.

“The idea of an honest conversation in [the Antioch] community is really important to counteract this idea we’re in a post-racial culture and that there aren’t any problems,” she said.

Antioch College welcomes board of trustees this weekend

The Antioch College Board of Trustees come to Yellow Springs this weekend, when the community is invited to several public events to hear about how the college is doing half way through its third year of academic operation.  

Today, Jan. 24, at 4:30 p.m., Antioch President Mark Roosevelt will talk about the state of the college in the Herndon Gallery. The presentation will be followed at 5:15 p.m. with a book presentation by aluma, author and Antioch trustee, Barbara Winslow, who will speak about her book, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change, about the author, congresswoman and first major-party African American to run for U.S. president.

The Antioch College Board of Trustees will meet in open session on Saturday, Jan. 25, from 10 a.m. to noon. They will cover topics such as Glen Helen easements, the college’s collaboration with local sustainable business Enviroflight, international co-op education needs, Giving Tuesday and the status of campaign fundraising. That event will also take place at Herndon Gallery.

 

Antioch students donate water to West Virginians

In the wake of a chemical spill in W.Va., Antioch College students organized a water drive on campus last week.

Maya Nye, a class of ’99 Antioch alumna who works for the college, organized the drive for her home state, where nearly 300,000 residents were left without water when 7,500 gallons of the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol seeped into the region’s main water source. A chemical containment unit holding the material, used to process coal, broke along the shores of the Elk River, leading to a ban on water for drinking, bathing and washing.

Though most residents in the affected areas have now been told the water is safe to drink, some are still concerned. The water collected on the Antioch campus will be delivered to Nellis Elementary School in Nellis, W.Va. to be distributed to the community.

Antioch College arts faculty exhibit— Creating art with time and spaces

A current of artistic energy is circulating on the Antioch College campus these days with spontaneous artwork from students and experimental art from faculty and resident scholars.

Students took over the Herndon Gallery recently for a one-night guerilla art show and are now passing around the student body a single piece of art to be constantly reinterpreted much like the childhood game of Telephone.

Meanwhile, art faculty and resident scholars are erecting an edgy show in the Herndon Gallery that pushes the boundaries of their disciplines while it engages the audience in the present.

The exhibit, running now through Feb. 14, is called “Currencies,” and in addition to being current work, reflects an experiential theme coursing through the work of the Antioch art faculty.

“It’s very experiential work and we’re at a very experiential college,” explained Sara Black, assistant professor of visual arts and the first member of Antioch’s new art department. “We’re taking what would be considered static forms and pushing them into motion….It’s all time-based.”

For example, Black will disassemble and reconstruct her sculpture through the duration of the exhibit in an exploration of the hidden places of the human mind and the gap between the conscious and unconscious. The scaffolding is literally part of the sculpture, called “Reconstructing the Fold,” and Black will work on it during gallery hours in full view of visitors.

“The live performance of building is really important to me, it’s a kind of choreography as every gesture is deliberate,” Black said.

Raewyn Martyn, a visiting assistant professor of visual arts, is pushing her work into time as well. Her floor-to-ceiling abstract painting will reconfigure itself as Martyn peels back layers of paint throughout the course of the exhibit to create dissonance for the viewer.

“Where it goes from a two-dimensional surface to three dimensional, it is somewhere between an image and an object, and that’s an important part of people’s experience,” Martyn said.

An opening reception for the exhibit is 7 to 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12. On Jan. 23 is “The Arts Presents,” an evening of presentations by the exhibitors on their arts practice, and a closing reception will be on Feb. 14.

As Antioch’s art faculty grew from one lone instructor to five in the last two years and the student body burgeoned to more than 200, an artistic vitality returned to campus, according to Herndon Gallery Creative Director Dennie Eagleson, who is also exhibiting new work. To Martyn, who was hired this fall, the Antioch community is still small enough for ideas and energy to spread quickly, while it is finally large enough for art to erupt naturally.

“It’s a critical mass in terms of community and as soon as you have a community of that size, art emerges,” Martyn said.

In her first college teaching position, Martyn, a former a high school art teacher in New Zealand, is excited about her students’ enthusiasm for art. She finds that the students she teaches in her painting and drawing classes are willing to take risks and are making political statements that are both subtle and complex.

New Associate Professor of Performance Gabrielle Civil is also impressed with her students, to whom she teaches performance and storytelling. Civil, originally from Detroit, Mich., said that Antioch students often arrive with a lot of talent and experience in music and theater and are interested in “self-actualization” by producing their own material, which Civil accommodates by teaching performance in a “more generative instead of interpretative way,” she said.

Civil’s installation, “Kinds of Performing Objects I’ve Been,” uses photography, paintings and keepsakes and live interaction to document some of the more than 40 original performance artworks she has created around the world in the last 13 years. As part of the exhibit, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 9, she will perform “Aide-Mémoire,” a new performance artwork that premiered in Zimbabwe last month.

Civil originally studied poetry, but felt that it was too rote and began exploring “how language moves,” ending up as a performance artist with a unique approach that is not theater or acting, but “creating an embodied artwork in space and time,” she said. Civil feels strongly that Antioch’s art faculty members demonstrate to students that they are working artists themselves. It’s a group Civil said she is honored to be a part of.

“We’re pretty awesome in the sense that we are interesting thinkers and makers, we’re fairly dynamic, interested in social questions and interested in working in multiple forms or playing with them,” Civil said. “We’re willing to make bold statements and try things, so it’s not a very staid group at all.”

As an example, Michael Casselli, Antioch’s instructor of media arts, is breaking from his typically abstract and conceptual installations in creating an emotionally-intense piece for the show. His installation is a reflection on caring for his mother as she was dying of lung cancer in 1996 at age 57 and is titled, “wishing we had talked, there’s so much left unsaid.” A loop of audio of Casselli talking to his mother will play, with his mother represented by a pot of miniature roses under a grow light and an empty armchair representing Casselli. Throughout the exhibit Casselli will continue to make and upload new recordings, and he will sometimes speak and read from the chair in person.

For Casselli, the installation is a tribute to his mother and an exploration of his conflicted feelings for her, which he did not express during her final days because of their somewhat strained relationship.

“It’s about how we can be more genuine with each other and embrace conflict,” Casselli said. “If you don’t deal with it, it will fester, and you will miss an opportunity.”

Charles Fairbanks, an assistant professor of media arts who was the second member of the arts faculty, will show two short films, The Men and Wrestling with my Father in a specially-built screening room in the gallery, along with photographs titled “Do you know the cause of your problems and suffering?” that he shot in rural Chiapas, Mexico.

Several former Antioch instructors, some of whom are now resident scholars, are also showing in the exhibit. This includes the gallery’s creative director Eagleson, a former Antioch photography professor, who will present a series of abstract photographs made from outdated Polaroid film of the bees she cares for on her land, along with a video she shot of the bees. Nevin Mercede, a former professor of painting and printmaking will show two triptychs from a series titled “Ovation,” which explores the interpretation of gestures. And additional events associated with the exhibition will showcase performances by Jill Becker, former dance professor and Louise Smith, a former theater professor and current dean of community life.

Black said the participation of former Antioch arts faculty reveals an artistic thread connecting the previous and the current incarnations of Antioch.

“They are foundational for our arts community,” Black said of the former faculty. “There is this intergenerational thing … along with the same thread that there is an invitation for participation by the viewer.”

Black will work on her piece in the gallery from 1 to 4 p.m. Jan. 9, 2 to 7 p.m. Jan. 23, and 1 to 4 p.m. Feb. 6. For more information, visit www.antiochcollege.org.