Category: news

College names Louise Smith new director of community life

On June 22, Antioch College announced that Louise Smith, former Antioch professor of theater, will be the college’s new director of community life, a position which is on the revived college’s  senior leadership team.

“This is a critical, central job for the college as we move forward. We found the right person with the right set of skills to do this work. I’m so pleased to be welcoming Louise back to Antioch College,” Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt stated in a press release.

The director of community life, a newly created position, will “lead the coordination of student life initiatives, student orientation, student leadership, outreach, residential life and efforts to see students through to graduation,” and the student life program she directs will “refine the Antioch College tradition of community governance” among other responsibilities, according to the press release.

Smith, an actress and performance artist as well as a licensed clinical therapist, earned a degree in theater from Antioch College in 1977, after which she moved to New York City and worked as a professional actor. In 1994 she joined the Antioch faculty as chair of the theater department, a job she held until the college closed in 2008. Along with her degree from the college, Smith holds a masters in community counseling, with licensure, from the University of Dayton. Since the college closed, she has been working as a mental health therapist.

This week, Antioch College also announced that it has filled the fourth out of six tenure-track faculty positions. Chicago artist Sara Black will assume the position as the college’s assistant professor of 3-D Art.

For the past five years, Black has taught in the performance and sculpture departments at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has had solo and collaborative exhibitions in a variety of places, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Craft, The Park Avenue Armory, The Betty Rymer Gallery and Gallery 400.

She and Smith will both begin their new positions in July.

For a more extended article, see the June 30 issue of the Yellow Springs News.

Louise Smith Returns to Antioch as Director of Community Life

UPDATE – June 29, 2011 – Louise Smith will serve as dean of community life at Antioch College.

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 22, 2011 – Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt has hired Louise Smith, former Antioch professor of theater and a licensed clinical therapist, as the director of community life. She begins her full-time role in early July.

Reporting to the president, Smith will serve on the College’s senior leadership team and lead the coordination of student life initiatives, student orientation, student leadership, outreach, residential life, and efforts to see students through to graduation. The student life program she directs will refine the Antioch College tradition of community governance, its commitment to diversity, and its unique program of local, national, and global cooperative education.

“This is a critical, central job for the College as we move forward. We found the right person with the right set of skills to do this work. I’m so pleased to be welcoming Louise back to Antioch College,” Roosevelt said.

For the past two and a half years, Smith has worked as a mental health counselor in community mental health settings. Her training encompassed working in substance addiction at Women’s Recovery Center, as well as at Wilmington College, where she started up an on-campus counseling center. After working for a time at the Dayton-based Assertive Community Treatment, she took her most recent post as a therapist for Wellspring and the Rocking Horse Adult Mental Clinic.

After earning a degree in theater from Antioch College in 1977, Smith moved to New York City, where she worked as a professional actor, touring nationally and internationally with Julie Taymor, Ping Chong and Company, Talking Band, Meredith Monk, and Illusion Theater, among others. She won an Obie Award in 2003 for her work in A Painted Snake in a Painted Chair and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 1988 for Best Female Lead in the film Working Girls.

Smith joined the Antioch faculty in 1994 as chair of the theater department, a position she held until the college closed in 2008. From 2000-2004, she also chaired the arts department. She served as the associate dean of faculty from 2005-2006. As associate dean, she implemented new curriculum, designed advising structures, chaired the Orientation and Commencement committees, and served as a liaison between students and the administration.

In addition to her degree from Antioch College, Smith holds an M.A. in playwriting from Antioch University and an M.S.Ed. in community counseling, with licensure, from the University of Dayton.

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

Louise Smith Returns to Antioch as Director of Community Life

UPDATE – June 29, 2011 – Louise Smith will serve as dean of community life at Antioch College.

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 22, 2011 – Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt has hired Louise Smith, former Antioch professor of theater and a licensed clinical therapist, as the director of community life. She begins her full-time role in early July.

Reporting to the president, Smith will serve on the College’s senior leadership team and lead the coordination of student life initiatives, student orientation, student leadership, outreach, residential life, and efforts to see students through to graduation. The student life program she directs will refine the Antioch College tradition of community governance, its commitment to diversity, and its unique program of local, national, and global cooperative education.

“This is a critical, central job for the College as we move forward. We found the right person with the right set of skills to do this work. I’m so pleased to be welcoming Louise back to Antioch College,” Roosevelt said.

For the past two and a half years, Smith has worked as a mental health counselor in community mental health settings. Her training encompassed working in substance addiction at Women’s Recovery Center, as well as at Wilmington College, where she started up an on-campus counseling center. After working for a time at the Dayton-based Assertive Community Treatment, she took her most recent post as a therapist for Wellspring and the Rocking Horse Adult Mental Clinic.

After earning a degree in theater from Antioch College in 1977, Smith moved to New York City, where she worked as a professional actor, touring nationally and internationally with Julie Taymor, Ping Chong and Company, Talking Band, Meredith Monk, and Illusion Theater, among others. She won an Obie Award in 2003 for her work in A Painted Snake in a Painted Chair and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 1988 for Best Female Lead in the film Working Girls.

Smith joined the Antioch faculty in 1994 as chair of the theater department, a position she held until the college closed in 2008. From 2000-2004, she also chaired the arts department. She served as the associate dean of faculty from 2005-2006. As associate dean, she implemented new curriculum, designed advising structures, chaired the Orientation and Commencement committees, and served as a liaison between students and the administration.

In addition to her degree from Antioch College, Smith holds an M.A. in playwriting from Antioch University and an M.S.Ed. in community counseling, with licensure, from the University of Dayton.

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

Chicago Artist Sara A. Black Joins the Antioch College Faculty

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 20, 2011 – Based on the recommendation of a search committee, President Mark Roosevelt hired Chicago-based artist Sara A. Black as Antioch College’s new assistant professor of 3-D art. Black joins the faculty on July 18.

“I was impressed by her enthusiasm for teaching and her pedagogical clarity, which is grounded firmly in the liberal arts. Her teaching interacts well with her activist artworks; her philosophy informs and interrogates her work, and vice versa,” Dr. Hassan Rahmanian, vice president for academic affairs, said. “Her activist and socially informed artwork will enrich community life at Antioch.”

Black is the fourth tenure-track professor hired to teach at the College. Earlier this year, Roosevelt hired professors of anthropology, chemistry, and philosophy 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.

For the last five years, Black has taught in the performance and sculpture departments at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In June, she traveled to Warsaw, Poland, as a study abroad program leader with the Jewish History Museum and Handshouse Studio. She has also been invited to Ox-Bow in Saugatuk, Michigan, as an artist in residence.

Previously, Black taught beginning, intermediate, and figure drawing at South Suburban College; coordinated and led an arts apprenticeship program at the nonprofit Street-Level Youth in Chicago; served as a member of the visual arts faculty at the Gary Comer Youth Center; and taught 3-D visual language and experimental design at the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology, respectively. She’s given talks and presented workshops at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Harvard University, DePaul University, and Columbia College.

Black’s performances, sculpture, installation, and collaborative works evolve around an interest in how materials move through the world and the shifting designation of values in American culture. With her long-time collaborator, independent graphic designer and carpenter John Preus, she has worked on a range of projects, including site-specific and process-based installations developed in relation to an available set of specific materials; performance installation; design-build projects enacted in collaboration with student communities; events organized around specific surplus materials or material parameters; and finally, designed-objects or spaces that function as a backdrop for events and activities.

Her solo and collaborative exhibitions have been featured in various spaces, including the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Smart Museum of Art, The Experimental Station, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Betty Rymer Gallery, Gallery 400, The Hyde Park Art Center, Threewalls, Eyebeam, The Park Avenue Armory, Portland State University, and The DeVos Art Museum.

She holds a Master of Fine Arts (with academic honors) in sculpture and installation from the University of Chicago, a Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies and art from the Evergreen State College, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (summa cum laude) in sculpture and painting from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.

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

Chicago Artist Sara A. Black Joins the Antioch College Faculty

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 20, 2011 – Based on the recommendation of a search committee, President Mark Roosevelt hired Chicago-based artist Sara A. Black as Antioch College’s new assistant professor of 3-D art. Black joins the faculty on July 18.

“I was impressed by her enthusiasm for teaching and her pedagogical clarity, which is grounded firmly in the liberal arts. Her teaching interacts well with her activist artworks; her philosophy informs and interrogates her work, and vice versa,” Dr. Hassan Rahmanian, vice president for academic affairs, said. “Her activist and socially informed artwork will enrich community life at Antioch.”

Black is the fourth tenure-track professor hired to teach at the College. Earlier this year, Roosevelt hired professors of anthropology, chemistry, and philosophy 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.

For the last five years, Black has taught in the performance and sculpture departments at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In June, she traveled to Warsaw, Poland, as a study abroad program leader with the Jewish History Museum and Handshouse Studio. She has also been invited to Ox-Bow in Saugatuk, Michigan, as an artist in residence.

Previously, Black taught beginning, intermediate, and figure drawing at South Suburban College; coordinated and led an arts apprenticeship program at the nonprofit Street-Level Youth in Chicago; served as a member of the visual arts faculty at the Gary Comer Youth Center; and taught 3-D visual language and experimental design at the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology, respectively. She’s given talks and presented workshops at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Harvard University, DePaul University, and Columbia College.

Black’s performances, sculpture, installation, and collaborative works evolve around an interest in how materials move through the world and the shifting designation of values in American culture. With her long-time collaborator, independent graphic designer and carpenter John Preus, she has worked on a range of projects, including site-specific and process-based installations developed in relation to an available set of specific materials; performance installation; design-build projects enacted in collaboration with student communities; events organized around specific surplus materials or material parameters; and finally, designed-objects or spaces that function as a backdrop for events and activities.

Her solo and collaborative exhibitions have been featured in various spaces, including the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Smart Museum of Art, The Experimental Station, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Betty Rymer Gallery, Gallery 400, The Hyde Park Art Center, Threewalls, Eyebeam, The Park Avenue Armory, Portland State University, and The DeVos Art Museum.

She holds a Master of Fine Arts (with academic honors) in sculpture and installation from the University of Chicago, a Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies and art from the Evergreen State College, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (summa cum laude) in sculpture and painting from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.

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

Roosevelt announces $9 million gift to college

The Antioch College board of trustees has pledged to donate $9 million to the revived college over the next three years, according to President Mark Roosevelt at the college’s annual alumni reunion Friday, June 17. The announcement came during Roosevelt’s State of the College address, which took place in 113 McGregor Hall.

“These are people digging very deeply because of how much they love this college,” Roosevelt said to an overflow crowd of several hundred people. “It’s a huge, huge step for the college.”

There are 14 members on the college’s board of trustees, formerly called the board pro tempore, so that the donation comes out to an average of $750,000 per trustee.

The donation will cover more than a third of the college’s three-year, $27 million operating budget, Roosevelt said. After money received from the college endowment and annual fund campaign, there was still a $17 million funding gap for those three years, and the board’s donation will cover more than half of that gap.

Roosevelt urged the alumni to help cover the rest.

“This is a great challenge to the rest of us,” he said. “That rest is do-able.”

The need for alumni support is critical because the college is not yet charging tuition. But even when tuition kicks in, liberal arts colleges are increasingly providing greater amounts of financial aid to students, and relying more on outside funding, Roosevelt said.

So in the future Antioch College will likely need to attract funding from outside sources such as foundations. However, he said, the college is not yet ready to apply for significant grants, and needs to focus on clarifying its mission in order to be an attractive applicant.

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

Roosevelt promised the Antioch alumni that he will focus on developing that mission in the college’s first years, with a focus on environmental sustainability. The revived college will also emphasize its historic three-pronged academic model of academic excellence, work experience and community governance, he said.

“My commitment to you is that, when you come back in several years, you will be on the campus of one of America’s great liberal arts colleges,” Roosevelt said.

See the June 24 News for a more detailed story.