Category: news

Antioch College alumni reunion— $9 million gift announced

The revived Antioch College needs to articulate a powerful sense of mission, both to attract students and to attract major funding sources, according to President Mark Roosevelt at last Friday’s State of the College address, which took place during the annual college alumni reunion. And for the next several years, he sees developing that mission as his priority.

“What I owe you is to use the next three years to create that compelling story,” Roosevelt said to an overflow crowd of several hundred people at McGregor 113 on campus.

The college is not yet ready to apply for grants from major foundations, Roosevelt said, stating it will take more time for the college to identify and define its unique purpose.

“We have to know who we are deeply,” he said. “It’s the mission that will drive the dollars.”

In the meantime, he said, the alumni need to financially support the college. And he announced that the college’s 14-member board of trustees — formerly called the board pro tempore — has pledged $9 million to Antioch College over the next three years.

“These are people digging very deeply because of how much they love this college,” he said. “It’s a huge, huge step for the college.”

The $9 million is a significant step toward filling the college’s budget gap of $17 million over the next three years, Roosevelt said. Overall, in that time the college projects $27 million in expenses, with revenues of about $4.5 million from endowment income and $5.4 million from the annual fund, for a total of about $10 million in revenues.

Donations must provide the remaining $8 million, Roosevelt said.

“This is a great challenge to the rest of us,” he said of the board’s pledge. “The rest is doable. This task is daunting but doable.”

Sustainability focus

Environmental sustainability will be a focus of the revived college, Roosevelt said, stating that sustainability resonates with the college’s historic emphasis on social justice because the world’s poor are those suffering most from the environmental crisis.

“We older folks have to be sensitive because believe me, young people see a commitment to sustainability as a profound social justice issue,” he said, citing the large percentage of new Antioch College students who have already worked on organic farms or had other relevant experience.

Because the college is located in the Midwestern farmbelt, food will be one area of emphasis, he said, citing statistics that place the United States among third-world countries in terms of life expectancy of the poor, who have less access to healthy food.

“We begin with this premise: The way we live in America today is not sustainable. Antioch College must become a laboratory to discover better ways of living,” Roosevelt said.

The college also “needs to be much tougher on ourselves regarding living sustainably here,” Roosevelt said, stating that the college will be in a position to address this need within four to six months.

Along with a focus on sustainability, the new college will include a required core curriculum, individualized majors, global seminars that focus on issues related to food, water, energy and public policy, and an emphasis on language acquisition and competence in writing. The college’s historic three-pronged educational model of academics, work experience and community governance will be the structure that will hold these components, he said.

Against the grain

Fundamental to defining the college’s mission is answering the questions, “Who are we? Why is this worth doing?” Roosevelt said, stating that, “We’re going against the grain of almost everything in this country today.”

Most liberal arts colleges are struggling, and many have closed in recent decades.

“Nobody is starting a liberal arts college,” he said.

But the world’s problems are huge and complex, and solving them will require the sort of creative and critical thinking that students learn best in liberal arts colleges, he said.

“Liberal arts colleges produce a phenomenal number of leaders,” according to Roosevelt.

These colleges are expensive to maintain because they’re based on a model of intimacy, including small classes with high quality teaching, he said. And in recent years, leading liberal arts colleges have begun offering substantially more financial aid to students, a trend that Roosevelt believes will only increase, so that a tuition-based model of financial stability will become obsolete. Rather, he said, the colleges that will prosper will be those with the largest endowments.

“The rich are getting richer and everyone else is struggling,” he said, comparing the landscape in higher education with other aspects of American life.

Regarding economic stability at Antioch College, which has a small endowment compared to most colleges, “We have to be extremely creative,” he said. “Even if we decided to do business the way we’ve always done it, that’s not an option.”

Thus, he said, it’s critical that the college articulate a vision that both draws students and financial support from donors and large funding sources, such as foundations.

“My commitment to you,” Roosevelt said to the alumni, is when they return to campus in three to five years, “you will be on the campus of one of America’s great liberal arts colleges.”

Alumni questions

Following Roosevelt’s presentation, alumni asked questions regarding the revived college’s relationship to the arts, community governance, and its relationship with former tenured faculty, among other topics.

Regarding the role of the arts in the new college, Roosevelt said, “The arts is a significant part of the equation.” One of the first six tenure-track positions will be in the arts, and while a choice on the recipient of that position has been made, the name of the new faculty member had not yet been made public. This week, the college announced that sculpture and performance artist Sara Black of Chicago will fill the position.

Alum Mark Greenfield of New York City expressed his disappointment that the college has not rehired former faculty, and that several former Nonstop students who applied were not accepted for the college’s first class next fall. Regarding Roosevelt’s statement that the college needs to do a better job retaining students than in the past, “When you talk about retention and don’t retain the faculty that’s already here and the students that are already here, it’s hard to trust,” Greenfield said.

Regarding the situation with former faculty, “One of the most difficult things has been balancing multiple points of view,” Roosevelt said. “There have been some incredibly difficult decisions,” including the decision to conduct national searches for its first tenure-track faculty members. None of the tenure-track faculty members hired have been former Antioch tenured faculty.

But some former faculty, such as new Vice President for Academic Affairs Hassan Rahmanian and Director of Work Susan Ecklund-Leen, have been hired in new positions. Regarding the balance of new hires and former faculty overall, “It’s a balance we’ve tried to do with respect,” Roosevelt said.

Roosevelt announced that Reggie Stratton, formerly facilities director at Creative Memories in Yellow Springs, has been named the college’s new facilities manager. The college will soon announce its remaining two tenure-track faculty members, he said, and searches for a dean of community life and director of admissions are ongoing.

 

Cezar Mesquita Named New Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Antioch College

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 29, 2011 – President Mark Roosevelt has named Cezar O. Mesquita, director of admissions at The College of Wooster, as Antioch’s new dean of admissions and financial aid.

Mesquita’s appointment is the result of an intense nationwide search
that began in the spring. To date, Antioch’s admission office has been
led by alumna Kristen Pett ’90, who serves as special assistant to
the president for enrollment.

At Wooster since 2009, Mesquita developed, deployed and managed an
operating budget of $1.4 million, supervised admission counselors and
administrative staff, and coordinated elements of an integrated
marketing, recruitment and enrollment plan.

Mesquita has also served as director of admission at Doane College
(2006-2009), and held several positions at the University of Denver
(2000-2006), including director of diversity enrollment, interim
director of admission, and assistant director of admission.

He was the interim executive director and an assistant director of the
Latin American Educational Foundation (1998-2000), a 60-year-old
Denver-based nonprofit that provides Hispanics in Colorado with access
to higher education.

Mesquita earned a B.A. in Spanish, with minors in French,
international affairs and Portuguese, at the University of Nebraska.
He earned an M.A. in Latin American studies at the University of
Alabama.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

Cezar Mesquita Named New Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Antioch College

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 29, 2011 – President Mark Roosevelt has named Cezar O. Mesquita, director of admissions at The College of Wooster, as Antioch’s new dean of admissions and financial aid.

Mesquita’s appointment is the result of an intense nationwide search
that began in the spring. To date, Antioch’s admission office has been
led by alumna Kristen Pett ’90, who serves as special assistant to
the president for enrollment.

At Wooster since 2009, Mesquita developed, deployed and managed an
operating budget of $1.4 million, supervised admission counselors and
administrative staff, and coordinated elements of an integrated
marketing, recruitment and enrollment plan.

Mesquita has also served as director of admission at Doane College
(2006-2009), and held several positions at the University of Denver
(2000-2006), including director of diversity enrollment, interim
director of admission, and assistant director of admission.

He was the interim executive director and an assistant director of the
Latin American Educational Foundation (1998-2000), a 60-year-old
Denver-based nonprofit that provides Hispanics in Colorado with access
to higher education.

Mesquita earned a B.A. in Spanish, with minors in French,
international affairs and Portuguese, at the University of Nebraska.
He earned an M.A. in Latin American studies at the University of
Alabama.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

Cezar Mesquita Named New Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Antioch College

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 29, 2011 – President Mark Roosevelt has named Cezar O. Mesquita, director of admissions at The College of Wooster, as Antioch’s new dean of admissions and financial aid.

Mesquita’s appointment is the result of an intense nationwide search
that began in the spring. To date, Antioch’s admission office has been
led by alumna Kristen Pett ’90, who serves as special assistant to
the president for enrollment.

At Wooster since 2009, Mesquita developed, deployed and managed an
operating budget of $1.4 million, supervised admission counselors and
administrative staff, and coordinated elements of an integrated
marketing, recruitment and enrollment plan.

Mesquita has also served as director of admission at Doane College
(2006-2009), and held several positions at the University of Denver
(2000-2006), including director of diversity enrollment, interim
director of admission, and assistant director of admission.

He was the interim executive director and an assistant director of the
Latin American Educational Foundation (1998-2000), a 60-year-old
Denver-based nonprofit that provides Hispanics in Colorado with access
to higher education.

Mesquita earned a B.A. in Spanish, with minors in French,
international affairs and Portuguese, at the University of Nebraska.
He earned an M.A. in Latin American studies at the University of
Alabama.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

Literature Professor Geneva M. Gano Joins Antioch College Faculty

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 27, 2011 – Based on the recommendation of a search committee, President Mark Roosevelt hired Geneva M. Gano, an expert in comparative American literatures and cultures, as an assistant professor of literature. Gano joins the faculty on July 18.

“Geneva is a great addition to our faculty. She brings a solid educational background and a lot of energy and enthusiasm for teaching,” said Hassan Rahmanian, vice president for academic affairs. “I particularly appreciate her pedagogical style – opening space for critical debate – and her interdisciplinary orientation.”

Gano is the fifth tenure-track professor hired to teach at the College. Earlier this year, Roosevelt hired professors of anthropology, chemistry, philosophy, and 3-D art based on the recommendation of search committees, which are comprised of former faculty, emeriti faculty, and alumni and friends of the college who are subject-matter experts or serve as members of faculty at other liberal arts colleges.

Most recently a visiting assistant professor of American studies and Latino studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, Gano focuses her teaching and research in the areas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture; Chicana/o literature and film; the races, places and spaces of literary form; regionalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism; and GLBTQ and gender studies.

At Indiana University, she taught courses in twentieth-century U.S., Mexican, and Chicano literature, film, and culture. Prior to that appointment, she developed courses in hemispheric American literary studies at UCLA, where she was a lecturer in the Department of English, and at Stanford University, where she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow.

Gano is currently expanding and revising her dissertation (filed in 2007) for publication as Un-American Places: Geography, Race, and Nationalism in Modern Literature. Drawing from social network analysis, postcolonial studies, and narrative theory, she shows how the writing of and through particular places – including the wild Pacific coastline of Robinson Jeffers' narrative poems, Lynn Riggs' haunted Indian mounds, Willa Cather's mystical Blue Mesa, Zora Neale Hurston's migrant camps on the Florida muck, and the contested borderlands of Americo Paredes – acquires anti-nationalist meaning.

As a collection, Gano asserts, these readings prompt a reassessment of the teaching and study of literature that reflects a world – and field of study – that has come to conceive of itself as post-national and multilingual. By thinking through and beyond local communities, she argues that literature need not be taught and studied through a narrow, nationally circumscribed lens.

Gano's peer-reviewed publications include essays in Modern Fiction Studies and American Transcendental Quarterly, among others.

She earned a B.A. in English, with departmental honors, at Stanford University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Candidates for faculty positions are assessed on their subject matter expertise; ability to teach their subjects; ability to interact with students, faculty colleagues and community members; ability to collaborate effectively; knowledge of and comfort with the three C's of classroom, co-op and community; and their interpersonal style and ability to engage in effective discussion. All finalists for faculty positions visit the campus in Yellow Springs for a day of interviews and meetings with college personnel.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

Literature Professor Geneva M. Gano Joins Antioch College Faculty

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 27, 2011 – Based on the recommendation of a search committee, President Mark Roosevelt hired Geneva M. Gano, an expert in comparative American literatures and cultures, as an assistant professor of literature. Gano joins the faculty on July 18.

“Geneva is a great addition to our faculty. She brings a solid educational background and a lot of energy and enthusiasm for teaching,” said Hassan Rahmanian, vice president for academic affairs. “I particularly appreciate her pedagogical style – opening space for critical debate – and her interdisciplinary orientation.”

Gano is the fifth tenure-track professor hired to teach at the College. Earlier this year, Roosevelt hired professors of anthropology, chemistry, philosophy, and 3-D art based on the recommendation of search committees, which are comprised of former faculty, emeriti faculty, and alumni and friends of the college who are subject-matter experts or serve as members of faculty at other liberal arts colleges.

Most recently a visiting assistant professor of American studies and Latino studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, Gano focuses her teaching and research in the areas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture; Chicana/o literature and film; the races, places and spaces of literary form; regionalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism; and GLBTQ and gender studies.

At Indiana University, she taught courses in twentieth-century U.S., Mexican, and Chicano literature, film, and culture. Prior to that appointment, she developed courses in hemispheric American literary studies at UCLA, where she was a lecturer in the Department of English, and at Stanford University, where she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow.

Gano is currently expanding and revising her dissertation (filed in 2007) for publication as Un-American Places: Geography, Race, and Nationalism in Modern Literature. Drawing from social network analysis, postcolonial studies, and narrative theory, she shows how the writing of and through particular places – including the wild Pacific coastline of Robinson Jeffers' narrative poems, Lynn Riggs' haunted Indian mounds, Willa Cather's mystical Blue Mesa, Zora Neale Hurston's migrant camps on the Florida muck, and the contested borderlands of Americo Paredes – acquires anti-nationalist meaning.

As a collection, Gano asserts, these readings prompt a reassessment of the teaching and study of literature that reflects a world – and field of study – that has come to conceive of itself as post-national and multilingual. By thinking through and beyond local communities, she argues that literature need not be taught and studied through a narrow, nationally circumscribed lens.

Gano's peer-reviewed publications include essays in Modern Fiction Studies and American Transcendental Quarterly, among others.

She earned a B.A. in English, with departmental honors, at Stanford University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Candidates for faculty positions are assessed on their subject matter expertise; ability to teach their subjects; ability to interact with students, faculty colleagues and community members; ability to collaborate effectively; knowledge of and comfort with the three C's of classroom, co-op and community; and their interpersonal style and ability to engage in effective discussion. All finalists for faculty positions visit the campus in Yellow Springs for a day of interviews and meetings with college personnel.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org