Category: news

Return to the main article, “Antioch College’s Miller Fellows boost local nonprofits”

Yellow Springs Arts Council has represented artists in the village for many decades. But who exactly are these artists and how many of them are there? That’s the mission of Antioch College Miller Fellow Alexandra Scott, who joined the organization this winter to create the first official directory of the village artists.

“The purpose is to help uphold the reputation of Yellow Springs as an arts community, for publicity for the artists and to help connect them to buyers,” Scott said last week.

The Arts Council is distributing surveys this week asking local artists to submit information about themselves and their work. The questionaires are due back to Arts Council by the end of February, for inclusion in this year’s book.
To raise funds to produce the directory, the Arts Council will host an Arts Alive fundraiser on Saturday, Feb. 8, 6:30–9:30 p.m. The event at the YSAC gallery on Corry Street will feature live folk music by Cedar Waxwing (Ben Hemmendinger and Perin Elsworth-Heller) as well as a raffle with artsy prizes. Admission is a suggested donation of $5.

Questionaires are also available at the Chamber of Commerce or online at ysarts council.com.

When a Dayton Daily News videographer focused his camera last week on Todd Sanders, an Antioch College student, Sanders spoke eloquently about a college drive organized to send potable water to West Virginians whose drinking water was recently contaminated by a chemical spill.

“This is very much in the spirit of why I came here,” said Sanders, a first-year student.

Meanwhile, new Antioch Director of Communications Dan Doron was beaming. In his first few weeks on the job, Doron has been impressed with the quality of students at Antioch, whom he plans to help with media training. Sanders, however, didn’t need much help that day.

“I’ve been here less than two weeks and I think this place is fantastic,” Doron said. “The students are self-motivated, they want to make the world a better place and I just want to help them.”

Earlier this month, Doron replaced Mark Blackmon as the head of the Antioch communications department, who was only on the job for a few months. Former communications director Gariot Louima, who came to Antioch soon after its 2009 revival, left over the summer.

Doron said he sees his role as helping students, faculty and the administration to get the word out about what they’re doing.

“They want to accomplish things and I want to help them,” Doron said. Doron helped coach Sanders to face the camera and also assisted recently when a faculty member invited a Dayton psychologist to give a talk on “The New Neuroscience of Mind Control.”

Doron also plans to create a central channel for sharing information about campus events and he looks forward to reaching prospective students and their parents with the benefits of an Antioch education.

“This school does things that no one else does,” Doron said. “The real difference is, for parents, you want your child to get a good education and while you want them to become a better person and to change the world, you also want to justify the money you spend on college — you want them to have the skills to get a job.”

Doron is a Columbus native who still resides there with his wife, Jennifer, and their two young children, though he lives on the Antioch campus during the week. But Doron, 41, also has lived all over the country, and he comes to Antioch with an eclectic background in writing and media.

Doron, who got his bachelor’s degree in English writing from Otterbein College outside Columbus, has been a reporter and editor at Columbus Suburban News Publications, the New Haven (Conn.) Register and the San Francisco Independent. He worked in the Yale University development office, an Internet startup that bought and sold textbooks to college students, a financial publishing company, and the Cleveland Clinic public and media relations department. He was also a speechwriter for the City of Chicago and had his own communications consulting firm.

Though Doron has worked for for-profit companies, he gets the most satisfaction in helping nonprofits and educational and healthcare institutions to fulfill their missions, he said. He applied for the position at Antioch because he said he “loves a challenge,” and bringing the college back from closure sounded like a big one. But amidst the challenges, the college has a unique opportunity to leverage its history while changing to meet the needs of the 21st century, Doron said.

“If you’re starting anew you can see what was great about it and make it work for today,” Doron said. “Some of these kids on campus are phenomenal and they might not have come here in 2006.”

Better communication with the Yellow Springs community and the college’s neighbors is also a Doron goal. As a member of the newly formed Golf Course Advisory Committee, Doron pledged to local neighbors at a recent meeting that the college will do a better job of communicating its plans and listening to neighbor concerns.

“It sounds like there were communication issues and that the majority of [the problem] was coming from the college,” Doron said. He also feels strongly that Yellow Springs has a stake in Antioch’s success.

“We are neighbors and community members together; we have to start working together,” Doron said. “Antioch is here, they’re not going anywhere. Let’s work together to make them both as prosperous as possible. … A financially stable and successful Antioch College is only good for Yellow Springs.”

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.”