YSNews – Page 24 – Save Antioch College

College global seminar projects go local— Students tackle town/gown health

A women’s support group, bicycle co-op and senior auditing program were a few of the ideas Antioch College students came up with to tackle campus and community health problems during last semester’s global seminar, which focused on health. And the students are going beyond the classroom to implement their ideas.

At a Dec. 20 public presentation of group projects, second-year student Nargees Jumahan talked about the need for female students, who make up 70 percent of the student body, to gather in a stress-free environment. In order to support women’s mental health, her group created an independent campus organization — the Antioch College Red Tent — which meets monthly and where students can voice personal issues or just relax together through dancing or henna painting.

“We wanted to provide a space for students on campus who are struggling,” Jumahan said. The campus group was modeled after the national Red Tent movement, with inspiration and input from the long-established Yellow Springs Red Tent. Along with the Antioch Red Tent, the group created a video featuring Antioch students entitled “Women Who Yell,” since releasing pent-up emotion can have a cathartic effect, according to group member Lillian Burke. They wanted to break the taboo by showing women getting angry, which is rarely portrayed in the media, Burke said.

Another student group decided to create a bicycle co-op after studying health benefits of cycling and learning about a bike-sharing program that once existed at the college.

“We are resurrecting the infrastructure with the hope the program will grow and build,” said group member Lucas Gottke of the co-op. Using some seed money from the college, donated bikes from the Yellow Springs Police and the skilled support of some local bicycle enthusiasts, group members learned how to fix and refurbish bicycles. Today eight shiny, newly painted red-and-black bicycles are ready for any student to rent, free of charge, from the co-op. Cycling, which is already popular at Antioch, is expected to become even more so.

“When a lot of kids came for orientation, they saw a huge bike rack filled with bikes,” Gottke said.” Many students already have bikes, and they’re popular here. But for those who don’t, they now have the co-op.”

Also going off-campus in search of information and support was the group that grappled with the issue of ageism. By talking with older adults at the Yellow Springs Senior Center, that group became aware of a kind of discrimination they never knew existed.

“We try to respect our elders but from talking to people [at the senior center], they don’t want to be looked at for their wisdom, they want to be active politically, in organizations,” group member Forrest Humphrey explained. “Ageism is not being respected for who you are and the value you bring.”

Group members found that local seniors felt marginalized and were offended by common phrases in a youth-oriented culture, such as “over the hill,” “you’re only as young as you feel,” and “60 is the new 40.” Though Antioch has invited seniors to dine with students, Humphrey said that gesture falls short. After hearing that local seniors were interested in continuing academics, the group designed a program where seniors can audit classes at the college. Group member Brittany Parlan thinks that step could help bridge the generation gap and heal rampant ageism, which she described as destructive to society.

“It’s destructive because they have a lot to say about political issues, healthcare reform, but their voices aren’t heard,” Parlan said. “We won’t talk to them except to get a cooking recipe.”

Other students delved into the Yellow Springs water fluoridation controversy of 2010 (conclusion: fluoride has problems but is more beneficial than harmful), evaluated Antioch’s ability to serve the deaf and other disabled students (conclusion: the college is not quite there yet) and explored the use of aromatherapy, music and human touch in end-of-life care, including by volunteering at Friends Care Center (conclusion: it can be helpful).

Members of another group took on what they said the school psychologist called a huge issue on the Antioch campus — negative body image among students. The administration has pledged support for a “body week” to raise awareness of the issue, while in the meantime, students are advised to “Thank your body for being perfect,” group members said.

In earlier global seminars -— interdisciplinary courses that are part of Antioch’s new curriculum — students also examined food, energy and water issues. Upcoming courses will cover governance and education.

The year in review 2012: Antioch College moves forward

College moves forward

Two years after gaining its independence and one year after welcoming its first class, the revived Antioch College seemed to be moving forward according to plan, as college leaders appeared to successfully meet the huge challenges inherent in launching a new liberal arts college.

Antioch goes viral

Antioch College faced a “happy crisis” in winter 2011 when news of its tuition-free Horace Mann fellowships went viral, several weeks after the college trustees agreed to extend the fellowships to its first four classes. Within hours the news spread on the Internet, and on Friday, January 27, the college Website had 53,000 visitors in a day, compared to its usual 500. Soon the college received more than 3,100 applications for the 75 spots available. College leaders and staff rose to the challenge of vetting the applications and in its second year, the revived college became the country’s most selective school in the nation, accepting just 5.2 percent of students who applied.

New faculty hired

The college also enjoyed a robust response to its second round of faculty hiring, receiving many applicants for its six tenure-track jobs. In the spring Antioch announced it had hired faculty in environmental science, biomedical sciences, psychology, history and co-op education, bringing its tenure-track faculty to 12.

In June Admissions Director Cesar Mesquita announced that he would be leaving his job for personal reasons. He had been in that position for a year.

At the end of the school year for the college’s first group of students, most gave the college high marks for their education. While many agreed that the combined workload of classes, co-op jobs and community meetings was huge, 31 of the first-year second semester group of 33 returned in the fall.

North Hall both old/new

During the summer, renovation continued for the $6 million refurbishing of North Hall, one of the college’s oldest buildings. The renovation, which aimed at making the building the oldest in the country to win a coveted LEED environmental certification, added a geothermal heating system and solar panels on the building’s roof facing south. The project was completed by the time new students arrived in the fall.

Second class arrives

The college met its goal of attracting 75 high-achieving students from diverse backgrounds for its second class. When the students arrived in October, they ranged in age from 17 to 25, and came from 31 states, with an average GPA of 3.69. With its 12 full-time faculty and additional adjunct faculty, the college was offering 44 courses.

College buys WYSO back

In December college leaders announced they had reached agreement with Antioch University to pay $8 million to regain WYSO Public Radio and to nullify the university’s remaining claims to the campus. The university had gained control over WYSO, begun by Antioch College students in the 1950s, in the 2009 agreement between the college and university that led to the college becoming independent.

In a public meeting, President Roosevelt explained the need for freeing the college from the “reversal clauses” in the 2009 agreement, which stated that if the college had not achieved accreditation by 2016, the campus would revert back to the university. While Roosevelt emphasized that the college is on track to achieve accreditation by that date, he said college leaders agreed that the reversal clauses had been inhibiting the college’s progress.

In March Antioch University named Felice Nudelman as its new chancellor, following Toni Murdock, who retired in July. (News archive photo by Lauren Heaton)

New university leadership

In March Antioch University announced that it would hire Felice Nudelman as its new chancellor. Nudelman would follow Toni Murdock, who retired in July.

Nudelman was most recently the executive director of education for the New York Times company, with responsibility for that company’s Knowledge Network. She had previously been the associate dean of academic affairs at Bloomfield College, and had received a master of fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute.

Nudelman said she accepted the job because she was attracted to the university’s mission and values.

In the fall the university announced that it would begin offering MOOCs, or massive open online courses, to broaden its educational offerings. The classes, taught by well-known professors at leading universities, are typically offered for free, but students at Antioch University will pay a fee and receive credit for them. University faculty will work with students taking the classes, acting as mentors and evaluating the students’ performance.

Ellen Hall, formerly provost at Antioch University Midwest, was named that school’s interim president in summer 2012. (Submitted photo)

Upheaval at AUM

Antioch University Midwest had a year of upheaval in 2012, beginning in February when President Michael Fishbein was. according to several AUM sources, told not to return to campus although he remains under contract until summer 2013. Former AUM provost Ellen Hall became the acting leader on campus.

At that time Antioch University announced to AUM staff that it had implemented “Project Turnaround” for the campus, aimed at fixing budget problems

In July Hall was named the interim president of AUM. In an interview she stated that enrollment at the campus had declined since the beginning of the recession, and before that had been flat for several years. Due to the enrollment decline, and growing debt linked to the new $15 million campus, the school was going through a difficult time.

In November, 12 AUM union employees brought in a mediator since they had gone without a contract for a year due to the school’s financial difficulties. At that time the school announced that it would cut about $208,000 in personnel costs.

In the fall AUM announced that it had hired a new enrollment director, and was planning to offer new courses.

State funds Antioch co-ops

Following through on its commitment to agricultural and environmental sustainability in both campus life and curriculum, Antioch College last week cemented a partnership with the state to establish several dozen cooperative job positions for students with sustainable agriculture and food processing businesses in Ohio. The college received a matching grant through Governor John Kasich’s office to support the business and academic partnership. Job placements will begin on Jan. 1.

As a private institution, the college partnered with Miami University to be eligible for the public grant, and the two schools will share a total of 52 cooperative positions for undergraduate students. Antioch, the lead recipient of the grant, and Miami received $140,600, and the matching amount will come from the co-op employers.

According to Richard Kraince, associate professor of cooperative education at Antioch, the support of Miami’s Thomas Crist, director of the Institute for the Environment & Sustainability at Miami University, was crucial to the opportunity, and the universities have worked together to forge relationships with area businesses.

“Miami University has [shown] real commitment to sustainability issues, and Tom’s institute has been developing all sorts of creative connections locally,” Kraince wrote in an email last week. “Working with them is a natural fit for us and we are excited about getting together and deepening relationships with Ohio employers.”

While the college received only half of the requested amount, according to Kraince, the bulk of the funds will be used to pay students for full-time work during their co-op terms. The OBR funds will cover a student’s salary for a 12-week term if the employer commits to paying another student out of their own budget concurrently or during a subsequent term.

“We see this as an opportunity to prove the value of co-op students, and so we are committed to figuring out how to prepare students adequately so that their contribution to an employer’s bottom line will be clear,” Kraince said.

The college will invest in the partnership as well, by hiring a part-time co-op faculty member to lead the project. The position will support the current co-op department of Kraince and cooperative education professor Susan Eklund-Leen.

Among the businesses considering the co-op partnership are Calala’s Water Haven, a fish and prawn nursery in New London; Bergefurd’s Farm Market in Wilmington; Madisono’s, a gelato producer in Cincinnati, The Ohio Grocers Association and EnviroFlight, a local feed production company. EnviroFlight owner Glen Courtright likes hiring students, especially those interested in the biological sciences or business, he said this week. He enjoys mentoring students and introducing them to the real world of work, where they can get a better idea of how the skills they learn at school might be applied. And because EnviroFlight is focused on developing sustainable feed for fish and animals, Antioch’s sustainability curriculum “could be a natural fit,” he said.

For the college, one of the goals of the partnership is to allow students to frame their education in the context of the needs of local, sustainable businesses, according to a college press release.

“We are a liberal arts college, so we’re all about the larger [perspective] and we do want students to have a lot of different educational experiences beyond the vocational track,” Kraince said. “But we do hope they will find jobs when they graduate. And just as the state would like to see a stronger economy and see colleges contribute to the effort to grow the economy, there is no reason a liberal arts college wouldn’t want to involve itself in that same effort— especially around the production of foods, which we’re already doing.”

To align part of its curriculum in that same context, the college plans to expand its global seminars, courses designed to allow students to analyze contemporary world problems through interdisciplinary study. The college has taught seminars on food, water and health, and is developing new seminars on energy, governance and education. Antioch also plans to deepen its relationship to its co-op employers by inviting them to campus for presentations and discussions directly related to those industries.

The partnership will familiarize students with the skills necessary for employment in the state’s food industry, and it could very well prepare some of them for careers in dairy product manufacturing, beverage production, confectionaries, fruit and vegetable preserving and specialty food manufacturing, seafood product preparation and other “value aggregation processes,” the release said.

To further its own role in educating about food system sustainability, the college is currently planning to expand the campus farm, adding some livestock to the vegetable and chicken-raising operation. A small part of the grant will also fund a feasibility study for the establishment of a community kitchen that could be used by both students and community members to develop food products and to process the food that’s raised locally. The college envisions the facility could become a business incubator for the region, according to Kraince.

As a pioneer of the cooperative education work-study program, the college has a long tradition of tying the liberal arts curriculum to the business needs of the time. As undergraduates, Antioch College students are required to spend four to six quarters on co-op before they graduate. The college also requires students to write and reflect on their cooperative experiences in the context of its effect on the wider world. In that way, the co-op program prepares students for concrete work in the service of ideals and values.

“The Ohio Agrarian Trade Partnership will help ensure that debates over food and agriculture policy will be informed by citizens with real-world experience and close associations with the producers of agrarian products throughout the state,” according to an Antioch College press release.

The co-op grants are part of the governor’s “workforce development strategies” established to align higher education with the skills that Ohio’s businesses need. According to a release from the University System of Ohio, the total $11 million in funds come from casino license fees and will benefit up to 3,500 Ohio colleges and universities, whose students are slated to be paired with companies such as Honda, Proctor & Gamble, Owens Corning and First Energy.

Three time’s a charm— Antioch celebrates with new tower

Even with all the construction going on these days at the Antioch College campus, it would be difficult to miss the capstone project of the institution’s rebirth and rebuilding: the addition of a third tower over the south wing of Main Building.

Taking advantage of spring break’s empty campus yesterday, Antioch College President Mock Rosyworld hosted a campus walk-through for community members and alumni, showcasing the many renovations of the physical plant.

The group paused in front of Main Building at the base of the “horseshoe” to marvel at the imposing 100-foot yellow crane and scaffolding assembly, and then moved around to the “old front”, or east face of the building, where the base of the new tower is visible.

The new “South Tower”, Rosyworld said, is meant to symbolically represent the third, and hopefully final time that Antioch College has been saved from imminent demise. “There is no stronger symbol than that of a proud spire reaching into a blue sky; a new construction, yet elegantly matching the previous structure, and built for the most part using reclaimed pieces of the old,” referring to the use of salvaged bricks from the North Hall renovation.

Rosyworld pointed out that the initial two towers did not represent the two previous closures of the college. He also noted that the resulting asymmetry from the addition of the third tower on one side of the building does not necessarily portend a fourth college closure and reopening, to balance out the structure. “Three time’s a charm,” he said, and added, “heh, heh…” uncomfortably.

As the group observed the bricklayers, crane operators and scaffolding, a question was raised about funding for the project. Rosyworld pointed out that the College had received a significant amount of money through the recent liquidation of YSIGH stock, as well as though the sale of very expensive organic sprouts, eggs and chicken parts from the Antioch Farm.

The College is also realizing further savings, as some students have chosen to do their co-op work on the construction. “It’s a dream come true,” said Dusty Maypole, a student who has been working on the renovation of North Hall. “First, a full scholarship, then a co-op job. It’s only a matter of time before I can climb up into that structure with pride and ownership and throw acorns down on passersby, unseen.”

Construction of the tower is slated for completion by the fall of 2012, in time for the arrival of the Class of 2016. The building, however, will not be open for use by that time because of the extensive interior renovations needed.

Artist Linda Stein at Antioch College — Sparking new thinking on gender

When Linda Stein was a girl growing up in the Bronx, her mother and older sister made sure she knew the rules: men always had to win, to be (or at least see themselves as) better than women. So they taught her how to hit into the net when she played tennis, to throw the bowling ball into the alley rather than make a strike.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Stein has spent much of her adult life as an artist and activist challenging gender stereotypes.

A sculptor and performance artist, Stein comes to Antioch College on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m.to speak on “Salander/Blomkvist: Challenging stereotypes in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — and beyond.” The talk will take place in McGregor Hall Room 113 on the college campus.

Stein’s art and activism “have been passionately engaged toward tearing down all forms of gender stereotypes and prejudices as she increasingly focuses on celebrating the fluidity of gender,” according to a college press release. She’s found the gender-bending in the recent best-selling Stieg Larsson novels, and the Swedish (but not American) film version of the book to be provocative and inspiring, she said in a phone interview last week.

“It’s very exciting that the director and author went out of their way to see the male and female characters express fluidity of gender,” she said. “Lisbeth is very much a symbol of protection and female empowerment.”

Her talk, which includes 17 minutes from the Swedish film, will also include Stein’s reflections on other gender-bending female media role models, including Lady Gaga and Wonder Woman, who she sees as “icons of assertiveness.”

While Stein’s art will not be at Antioch at this time, her exhibit, “The Fluidity of Gender,” is on display at the Burnell R. Roberts Triangle Gallery at Sinclair Community College in Dayton until March 7. The exhibit, which includes 13 sculptures of leather-clad figures that she hopes provoke discussions on what it means to be male or female, will travel to more than 19 museums and universities around the country through 2013.

While Stein has considered herself a feminist for decades, it’s taken a while for her to focus her art work on gender issues, she said in an interview in The Progressive magazine. She ran a successful calligraphy business in New York City, making art on the side, but had her world upended by 9/11, which forced Stein and her co-workers to flee her downtown studio. When after several months she began to make art again, Stein found that her art had changed: once purely abstract, she now was drawn to figurative sculptures. Her first post-9/11 group of sculpures were torsos of female knights, using fiber, leather, metal, bone, rope, paper, stone and wood.

“I realized that I wanted to create women who were symbols of strength and protection,” she said in the Progressive interview, stating her interest in constructng a new kind of female hero, one combining the attributes of the Buddhist goddess of kindness, Kwan Yin, with the physical strength and daring of Wonder Woman.

And after creating the female knights, Stein began making wearable sculpture in the form of armor.

“I’m interested in the transformation that occurs when someone puts a piece of sculpture on,” she said in the Progressive interview. “It began with me fortifying myself after 9/11, but I later wanted to give others the experience.”

Women who have worn her armor — sometimes called body swapping — have reported such changes as being more able to say no to a boyfriend, or feeling safer walking at night, Stein said.

In recent years, Stein began making torsos with more ambiguous gender associations, with the hope of sparking thought and conversation regarding what it means to be male or female.

She wants especially to provoke the thinking of young women and men.

“Gender is a very hot topic on campuses today,” she said last week. “As students feel freer to try on different identities, society still pushes back very hard. And students have conflict as well — they’re open to diversity but also aware that there’s so much bullying going on on campuses.” Young women who dare to take on male behavior or appearance have been targeted by cyberbullies, she said.

Things have changed since feminism’s second wave swept the country in the early 1970s, and in many ways women’s lives are better, such as their having more protection against sexual harassment at work, and making strides toward earning equal pay for equal work. But there is still much to do, Stein believes.

“So much has changed,” Stein said. “But not nearly enough.”

College in national spotlight

Over the last year, Antioch College’s endowment more than doubled and its annual fund grew by 70 percent, leading the college to extend its full tuition scholarships to the next three incoming classes. But the decision to continue the Horace Mann Scholarships had some unintended consequences. After an online article on the move was posted on Yahoo! News, one of the world’s most visited news sites, Antioch was flooded with thousands of applications and deluged with inquiries. With only 75 open spots for the incoming fall class, Antioch could be the most competitive college in the country in 2012.

“Any time you have an increase of applications, your selectivity increases,” said Cezar Mesquita, Antioch’s dean of admissions. “This has brought Antioch back into the national spotlight.”

The college’s annual fund rose to $1.2 million at the end of 2011 on what appears to be its largest one-month gain in school history. Nearly $700,000 was raised in December as the inaugural class of 34 students at the revived college finished their first semester. And a $35 million YSI Incorporated stock sale pushed up the endowment to $51.7 million by the end of 2011. The healthy state of Antioch’s finances gave its Board of Trustees confidence to offer the full-tuition scholarships, valued at $26,500 per year for each student, to the next three classes, according to President Mark Roosevelt.

“[The decision] was made possible because of the increase in giving and it was also very motivated by feeling we wanted to maintain the standards set by the class of 2015,” Roosevelt said. “We think it’s extremely important to maintain the academic standards and the diversity standards and the scholarship helps us to do so.”

As of last Friday morning Antioch had 100 applications on hand for its next class, which will start in the fall of 2012. The admissions department hoped to reach 180 applications by the Feb. 15 application deadline. But just 24 hours after the Yahoo! News article was released, Antioch had received 1,000 applications through its online submission form. By early this week 2,200 applications were in hand, with another 5,500 in progress. After receiving 100,000 unique visitors on Friday, Antioch’s Web site crashed.

Because of confusion over the Antioch name, Antioch University Midwest and its parent, Antioch University, also benefited from the national publicity. AUM received 10 times as many inquiries last week through its Web site, according to Communications Director Walt Ulbricht, and Antioch University Director of Communications Lynda Sirk spent all weekend responding to thousands of e-mails. Those institutions may see an uptick in admission, as many of the people who contacted them were interested in graduate or doctorate programs, Sirk said.

Even though Antioch College was “unprepared for the level of response,” Mesquita said, the college will hire temporary staff and use volunteers to reply to every e-mail and review each application to find the most academically prepared students with the right combination of grit and determination to thrive at Antioch.

“This is a competitive process where we will be scrutinizing each student on academic preparation, social fit and outlook towards their educational experience,” Mesquita said. “Antioch always prided itself on bringing in a special breed of students.” The first class had an unweighted average GPA of 3.56 and ACT score of 27.

By 2015 the college aims to have 300 students on campus, most paying an annual room and board fee that is currently $8,600 per year. Roosevelt said the tuition scholarships are not an out-flow of money, since they will be getting room and board fees, but are critical to helping Antioch compete with similar liberal arts colleges as Antioch gains momentum over the next few years.

The scholarship is also a financial incentive for the risk of attending a college that is not accredited, Mesquita said. The college is on-track to gain accreditation by 2016, having been authorized for accreditation through the Ohio Board of Regents’ next review in 2014, according to Antioch’s Web site.

The Antioch free-tuition story, originally published on the CBS Moneywatch Web site with the headline, “How to get a $106,000 college education for free,” went viral just as the high cost of college tuition was in the news. In his State of the Union speech last week, President Obama vowed to cut federal spending for colleges that don’t keep rising tuition in check. Next year there will be 200 schools in the US that cost more than $50,000 per year to attend, according to Mesquita. And for the first time, in 2011, the average US student had more than $25,000 in debt upon graduation. Mesquita said that Antioch needs to keep its costs low so it can compete once the tuition scholarships expire.

For at least the next three years, Antioch will remain dependent upon philanthropic donors to cover its operating expenses of about $8 million per year and continuing capital projects, such as renovations to North Hall, the gymnasium and the science labs. Because many foundations and individuals without ties to Antioch still may find a donation to the college too precarious, the college will continue to rely on its alumni, Roosevelt said.

Roosevelt attributes the recent uptick in giving to the demonstrated success of its first class and a fundraising office that continues to become more professional and focused. More Antiochians are giving, including some who have not donated in many years. Still, Roosevelt said, some prospective donors are waiting until they are more confident that the college can succeed in the long term, and it’s his goal to make sure it will. Though the first semester went well, Roosevelt wants to continue to make improvements.

“[Propsective donors] want to come to campus to see a respectful, attractive place with rigorous instruction in the classroom before they could contemplate giving at another level,” Roosevelt said.