Tag: antioch college

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.

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.

 

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.