From the Print – Page 10 – Save Antioch College

Antioch College arts faculty exhibit— Creating art with time and spaces

A current of artistic energy is circulating on the Antioch College campus these days with spontaneous artwork from students and experimental art from faculty and resident scholars.

Students took over the Herndon Gallery recently for a one-night guerilla art show and are now passing around the student body a single piece of art to be constantly reinterpreted much like the childhood game of Telephone.

Meanwhile, art faculty and resident scholars are erecting an edgy show in the Herndon Gallery that pushes the boundaries of their disciplines while it engages the audience in the present.

The exhibit, running now through Feb. 14, is called “Currencies,” and in addition to being current work, reflects an experiential theme coursing through the work of the Antioch art faculty.

“It’s very experiential work and we’re at a very experiential college,” explained Sara Black, assistant professor of visual arts and the first member of Antioch’s new art department. “We’re taking what would be considered static forms and pushing them into motion….It’s all time-based.”

For example, Black will disassemble and reconstruct her sculpture through the duration of the exhibit in an exploration of the hidden places of the human mind and the gap between the conscious and unconscious. The scaffolding is literally part of the sculpture, called “Reconstructing the Fold,” and Black will work on it during gallery hours in full view of visitors.

“The live performance of building is really important to me, it’s a kind of choreography as every gesture is deliberate,” Black said.

Raewyn Martyn, a visiting assistant professor of visual arts, is pushing her work into time as well. Her floor-to-ceiling abstract painting will reconfigure itself as Martyn peels back layers of paint throughout the course of the exhibit to create dissonance for the viewer.

“Where it goes from a two-dimensional surface to three dimensional, it is somewhere between an image and an object, and that’s an important part of people’s experience,” Martyn said.

An opening reception for the exhibit is 7 to 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12. On Jan. 23 is “The Arts Presents,” an evening of presentations by the exhibitors on their arts practice, and a closing reception will be on Feb. 14.

As Antioch’s art faculty grew from one lone instructor to five in the last two years and the student body burgeoned to more than 200, an artistic vitality returned to campus, according to Herndon Gallery Creative Director Dennie Eagleson, who is also exhibiting new work. To Martyn, who was hired this fall, the Antioch community is still small enough for ideas and energy to spread quickly, while it is finally large enough for art to erupt naturally.

“It’s a critical mass in terms of community and as soon as you have a community of that size, art emerges,” Martyn said.

In her first college teaching position, Martyn, a former a high school art teacher in New Zealand, is excited about her students’ enthusiasm for art. She finds that the students she teaches in her painting and drawing classes are willing to take risks and are making political statements that are both subtle and complex.

New Associate Professor of Performance Gabrielle Civil is also impressed with her students, to whom she teaches performance and storytelling. Civil, originally from Detroit, Mich., said that Antioch students often arrive with a lot of talent and experience in music and theater and are interested in “self-actualization” by producing their own material, which Civil accommodates by teaching performance in a “more generative instead of interpretative way,” she said.

Civil’s installation, “Kinds of Performing Objects I’ve Been,” uses photography, paintings and keepsakes and live interaction to document some of the more than 40 original performance artworks she has created around the world in the last 13 years. As part of the exhibit, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 9, she will perform “Aide-Mémoire,” a new performance artwork that premiered in Zimbabwe last month.

Civil originally studied poetry, but felt that it was too rote and began exploring “how language moves,” ending up as a performance artist with a unique approach that is not theater or acting, but “creating an embodied artwork in space and time,” she said. Civil feels strongly that Antioch’s art faculty members demonstrate to students that they are working artists themselves. It’s a group Civil said she is honored to be a part of.

“We’re pretty awesome in the sense that we are interesting thinkers and makers, we’re fairly dynamic, interested in social questions and interested in working in multiple forms or playing with them,” Civil said. “We’re willing to make bold statements and try things, so it’s not a very staid group at all.”

As an example, Michael Casselli, Antioch’s instructor of media arts, is breaking from his typically abstract and conceptual installations in creating an emotionally-intense piece for the show. His installation is a reflection on caring for his mother as she was dying of lung cancer in 1996 at age 57 and is titled, “wishing we had talked, there’s so much left unsaid.” A loop of audio of Casselli talking to his mother will play, with his mother represented by a pot of miniature roses under a grow light and an empty armchair representing Casselli. Throughout the exhibit Casselli will continue to make and upload new recordings, and he will sometimes speak and read from the chair in person.

For Casselli, the installation is a tribute to his mother and an exploration of his conflicted feelings for her, which he did not express during her final days because of their somewhat strained relationship.

“It’s about how we can be more genuine with each other and embrace conflict,” Casselli said. “If you don’t deal with it, it will fester, and you will miss an opportunity.”

Charles Fairbanks, an assistant professor of media arts who was the second member of the arts faculty, will show two short films, The Men and Wrestling with my Father in a specially-built screening room in the gallery, along with photographs titled “Do you know the cause of your problems and suffering?” that he shot in rural Chiapas, Mexico.

Several former Antioch instructors, some of whom are now resident scholars, are also showing in the exhibit. This includes the gallery’s creative director Eagleson, a former Antioch photography professor, who will present a series of abstract photographs made from outdated Polaroid film of the bees she cares for on her land, along with a video she shot of the bees. Nevin Mercede, a former professor of painting and printmaking will show two triptychs from a series titled “Ovation,” which explores the interpretation of gestures. And additional events associated with the exhibition will showcase performances by Jill Becker, former dance professor and Louise Smith, a former theater professor and current dean of community life.

Black said the participation of former Antioch arts faculty reveals an artistic thread connecting the previous and the current incarnations of Antioch.

“They are foundational for our arts community,” Black said of the former faculty. “There is this intergenerational thing … along with the same thread that there is an invitation for participation by the viewer.”

Black will work on her piece in the gallery from 1 to 4 p.m. Jan. 9, 2 to 7 p.m. Jan. 23, and 1 to 4 p.m. Feb. 6. For more information, visit www.antiochcollege.org.

Antioch College physical plant — An ambitious geothermal dig

Antioch College will begin construction of its central geothermal system on Friday in what the college sees as a significant step to becoming carbon neutral.

The new $8.8 million closed-loop geothermal heating and cooling system will save Antioch $400,000 in annual energy costs, and, in conjunction with a planned solar photovoltaic array, would make Antioch the only college heated and cooled exclusively by geothermal and solar power, according to a college news release.

“The combination of the two [systems] are hugely important for us to reach this carbon neutrality,” Antioch Facilities Manager Reggie Stratton said this week. “We’re not there yet — it will take a few years — but both of those systems will take us a long way to getting there.”

During the first phase of construction, which will cost $4.7 million and be completed by next April, 150 geothermal wells will be installed 300 feet deep under about three acres of the Antioch College Farm, a 35-acre parcel on the southern edge of campus previously known as the golf course. The well field is just south of E. Herman Street on the western edge of the farm.

Well drilling begins on Nov. 1 and will take six to eight weeks to complete, according to Stratton. The college will drill from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays.
“Doing this work will be loud and messy,” according to Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt in a statement. “We will make every effort to contain both the noise and the mess … We respectfully ask our neighbors to bear with us for the next several weeks as we sink these wells.”

The first buildings heated and cooled by the geothermal system will be the Science Building, the renovated theater building and the new Wellness Center, projected to open in June. With a total capacity of 300 tons, the wells installed this year will allow South Hall and McGregor Hall to come online during the project’s second phase, which is contingent upon fundraising. A third phase, connecting Birch Hall, a new dormitory and additional buildings by 2017, would mean the installation of additional geothermal wells. The initial phase was financed through loans against the portion of the college’s $44-million endowment gained from a 2011 YSI, Inc. stock sale.

Construction has also begun on the central geothermal plant in the former maintenance building, located just south of the library, which will be refurbished with new windows, a new roof and stocked with the plant’s equipment, including heat pumps, chillers and heat exchangers.

A geothermal heating and cooling system works by using the constant 50 to 55 degree temperature of the earth to more efficiently heat or cool water. During the winter, the water flowing through the underground pipes absorbs the earth’s heat, while in the summer, the system is reversed and the water is cooled by the earth. After a heat exchanger extracts that energy, a heat pump or chiller delivers warm, or cold air into the buildings. Most of Antioch’s buildings now use gas-fired boilers and electric chillers, Stratton said.

Along with the geothermal well field and plant, the college hopes to erect a one-megawatt solar photovoltaic array on about five acres of the Antioch Farm next year through a power-purchasing agreement that has yet to be finalized.

“The reason that’s important is that the geothermal plant is all electric, so really the only way to offset that is by using solar,” Stratton explained.

Two smaller, stand-alone geothermal systems were installed at Antioch in recent years. During last year’s renovation of North Hall 30 vertical wells were buried underground in the “horseshoe” in front of Main Building to heat and cool that building. In 2011, 40 vertical wells were installed in the Corry Street parking lot of the Glen Helen Nature Preserve to heat and cool the Vernet Ecological Center and Trailside Museum.

According to Antioch Director of Communications Mark Blackmon, the college’s commitment to green energy focuses a national spotlight on Antioch and Yellow Springs and helps students learn about sustainability outside of the classroom.

“What we’re trying to say here at Antioch is we have to find new and better ways to live our lives because quite frankly the way most of us live is not sustainable,” Blackmon said. “And we can say it’s not just what you learn in the classroom, it’s how you interact with the world you live in.”

Impact on neighbors
An immediate neighbor of the project, Hilary Pierson, who lives at the end of E. Herman Street, supports Antioch’s intention to use green energy, but is concerned at the loss of a “treasured green space” and wished the college notified her sooner about the project, she said this week. Pierson said she was surprised last week to see bulldozers moving dirt to prepare the drill site, until receiving a letter from Antioch early this week explaining the college’s plans for geothermal, she said.
“I can support the college’s desire to be using alternative forms of energy, but at the same time the golf course has been a landmark of town for so long,” Pierson said. “I just want to feel like the village is aware that how the college is using the land is respectful of the neighbors and the community.”

In addition the college invited the project’s immediate neighbors of the farm to a private lunch meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 30.

Earlier this year, neighbors of the farm raised concerns when Antioch proposed a zoning change to allow more animals on its farm.

Blackmon said the college is taking steps to lessen the project’s impact on neighbors and that the disruption is only temporary. The college will complete drilling as quickly as possible, avoid drilling during evenings and weekends and replant grass in the area so that, come spring, the field will return to grass.

“We were very concerned that it wasn’t going to drag out forever, but digging 150 geothermal wells and sinking them is no small undertaking,” he said. “One of the beauties of this geothermal system is it’s all underground.”

The land atop the geothermal well field can be farmed but no buildings can be erected there once the wells are installed, Stratton added.

Stratton said that site engineering and test wells drilled on the site showed no problems, while the college received the necessary permits for the project, including Greene County building and health permits for the construction and plumbing work at the central geothermal plant and an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency storm water permit for runoff during construction.

No project approval or village permits were required for Antioch to install the geothermal system, according to Interim Village Manger Kent Bristol.

In addition, while some closed-loop geothermal systems circulate water that contains an anti-freeze agent like ethanol or ethylene glycol, Antioch’s system will only use water in order to avoid any environmental contamination, Stratton said.

Drilling will be completed by Crabtree Well Drilling & Pump of Springfield, which is a registered private water system contractor with the Ohio Department of Health. The project’s engineers were Schlagel Engineering of Springfield and the construction firm is Thomas Marker, of Bellefontaine.

No state permits are required for the installation of a closed-loop geothermal system, according to the Ohio Water Resources Council, though drillers must submit a well bore log to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources after drilling. In Ohio about 5,000 to 6,000 residential systems and more than 500 commercial systems are installed annually.

Buildings to come down
The college also announced this week that it will tear down two 1950s-era buildings on campus — Mills Hall and the Student Union. The Antioch Board of Trustees recently announced the move at the recommendation of its architectural firm, MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni, Inc., because the estimated cost to renovate the buildings is too high or the college doesn’t need the space.

Mills Hall, a former residence hall located off of President Street, will be razed in November after asbestos and other environmental hazards are removed from the structure. According to a college news release, Mills, built in 1959, has too much structural damage, would be difficult to convert to modern accessibility requirements and green building standards and doesn’t have a community or kitchen space.

“We expect that many alumni and friends will have a number of fond memories of these buildings,” according to Antioch President Mark Roosevelt in a statement. “However, as mindful as we are of our rich heritage, the new and better ways in which we are articulating the college experience at Antioch require us to make bold, informed decisions about our campus to make it both viable and sustainable in the 21st century.”

The Student Union, built in 1957 will also be torn down, though no date has been set for its demolition because of the high projected cost. In the mean time, the building’s interior will be altered to accommodate fire safety regulations. The damage caused by extensive mold and large roof leaks, along with high estimates for renovating the structure with new windows, roofing and HVAC systems and the lack of need for the space led to the decision to tear the building down, according to the news release.

Contact: mbachman {at} ysnews(.)com

First-year students settle in

The free tuition scholarship, the small town of Yellow Springs and the opportunity to help rebuild a college continue to be a draw for Antioch, new students said this week. Move-in day for the class of 2017 was Oct. 1.

Incoming first-year student Steph Harman of Columbus wants to help Antioch “revolutionize education” while she gains real-world experience through co-ops. She said she particularly resonates with Roosevelt’s advice that “it’s better to do big things at a small school than small things at a big school.” Harman thinks she’ll fit in best at Antioch, a one-of-a-kind institution.

“Antioch is as unique to other schools as we are to Antioch,” Harman said.
Mitch Goth, of Janesville, Wis., added that one characteristic of Antioch students seems to be their open-mindedness and embracing of differences.

“The only way you won’t fit in at Antioch is if you’re normal,” he joked. “This college appreciates the student that is different.”

Goth, an amateur paranormal investigator, got hooked on the small town of Yellow Springs once he visited and also saw that Antioch could give him the chance to be something bigger than himself.

According to Antioch dean of admissions Micah Canal, the new crop of students is noteworthy for many reasons. They boast an average unweighted high school GPA of 3.65 and an average ACT score of 26. Ohio, Texas, and California are the top feeder states, with 28 states and two countries represented. Eighteen percent of the students who applied to Antioch this school year were accepted, and 65 percent of those enrolled.
Canal added that the new class is a “gritty bunch” of thinkers and doers with experience working outside the classroom in their communities. Their future at Antioch looks bright.

“These students will, as Antiochians have for generations before, engage deeply in the rigorous undergraduate curriculum … have their knowledge and agency tested through four co-op placements over their four years of study, graduating with a healthy résumé, a fascinating story of adventure, and an ability to apply their classroom learning in a real-world context,” Canal wrote in an email.

Jane Foreman, of Houston, Texas found Antioch far more humble as a campus community than other schools she visited. Foreman plans to design an art history major while pursuing a love of puppetry. Octavio Escamilla, of Tampa Bay, Fla., wants to start running clubs and other athletic groups at Antioch while at other times traveling the country and world on co-op. Katie Olson, a visual arts major with plans of being a pastry chef, was enticed by the chance to be a part of Antioch’s rebirth.

Cherokee Hill-Read, of Waco, Texas, plans to study forensic pathology and wants to get experience in hospitals on co-op. She learned about Antioch from an article on Huffington Post. Meanwhile, Rian Laurence of Utah has long been aware of Antioch; her mom graduated from the college in 1992. But she wasn’t sure it was for her until going through the admission process, which was far different from other schools where she applied.

“I liked how they looked at me as a person, what I was doing and how I felt about issues,” Laurence said.

With plans to major in environmental science, Laurence was also attracted by the college’s sustainable food practices and commitment to renewable energy. Laurence, for one, is pleased with the college’s potential new vegetable mascot, which the dining hall serves in a variety of ways, from kale chips to kale smoothies.

“I love kale,” she said. “I’m trying to become a vegan.”

Contact: mbachman {at} ysnews(.)com

A promising road to accreditation

The size of the Antioch student body doubled last week when 97 new students from the class of 2017 arrived on campus. But that wasn’t the biggest news at the college’s fourth annual community potluck on the Antioch campus on Friday. Nor was it the introduction of 11 new faculty hires, or the announcement of a potential new mascot for the college, which students narrowed down to either “The Horace Manatees” or kale.
Instead, a site visit next month from representatives of the North Central Association Higher Learning Commission — who could recommend Antioch as a candidate for accreditation — was described by President Mark Roosevelt as “the biggest moment in the history of the college’s re-creation.”

“It will be a huge step for the college,” Roosevelt said of Antioch’s potential candidacy, which would enable the institution to get federal financial assistance and work-study monies and accept international students as it works towards accreditation.
If awarded candidacy, Antioch would have four years to meet accreditation requirements, according to the Higher Learning Commission’s website.

The four representatives will visit campus from Nov. 11–13 to evaluate the college’s progress since reopening in 2009. The group’s report is then presented to the Higher Learning Commission’s Institutional Actions Council, which recommends a candidacy to the Commission’s board of trustees, the group that renders the final decision. A decision is expected in June 2014.

At the potluck, Roosevelt said he is optimistic the site visitors will see Antioch’s uniqueness, as they hail from colleges similar to Antioch in philosophy and endowment size.

“We have a site team of people who I think will come to this campus, understand the constraints, but understand that we’ve made incredible progress,” Roosevelt said. “I think it’s reason for optimism.”

Ahead of the visit, the college submitted a 14-month self-study evaluation along with more than 2,000 pages of documentation to the Higher Learning Commission. An executive summary of the self-study report is available at the college’s website. In addition a public comment period on Antioch’s candidacy runs through Oct. 11.

Roosevelt added that he is grateful for past support from the Yellow Springs community and hopes that villagers support the college ahead of the site visit.

“You all have done so much to keep this small college with its outsized ambitions …. to continue to prepare students and their much needed voices — often somewhat out of the mainstream — to a national dialogue in this country that has grown smaller and smaller as our problems have grown larger and larger,” Roosevelt said.

While Antioch continues to figure out how to measure its educational outcomes, Roosevelt shared some recent positive benchmarks. Antioch students taking Spanish and French achieved higher levels of language proficiency after one year of classes than many colleges hope their students reach after two years. In a survey of the first two classes, more than four-fifths of students say they have a more global view than when they arrived, can see the world from someone else’s perspective better than most, and don’t fall asleep in class.

The survey also revealed that 92 percent of current students would recommend Antioch to others, according to Roosevelt.

“We’re hunting down the other eight percent and we’ll strike them with a wad of kale,” Roosevelt joked.

Other good news on campus: Wellness center construction is underway with a projected opening in June 2014, theater renovations are beginning in a campus-community partnership, work will begin soon on the central geothermal plant — as Antioch aims to be the first college campus in America heated and cooled entirely by geothermal and solar sources — and the college raised a record $19 million last year ($50 million since it became independent from Antioch University) as 27 percent of Antioch alums gave, a rate far higher than the national average.

As he does at each state of the college address, Roosevelt summed up Antioch’s present state: “We have a lot of wind at our back and a great deal of momentum. I’m not saying it’s easy because it isn’t, but it’s an easier form of hard.”
New faces on the faculty

In July, Antioch hired 11 new faculty, bringing the total full-time faculty to 29. Antioch now has a 1:10.3 faculty to student ratio and 11 majors available to students, in addition to self-designed majors.

Kevin Mulhall, who taught music at Antioch for seven years until the college closed, is the newest reference librarian. Yellow Springs resident Brooke Bryan joined the cooperative education faculty. New tenure-track faculty members are performance professor Dr. Gabrielle Civil, psychology professor Dr. Deanne Bell and literature professor Dr. Jennifer Branlat. Other new faculty are Spanish instructor Dr. Eugenia Charoni, mathematics professor Dr. Barbara Sanborn, history professor Dr. Rahul Nair, political economy professor Sean Payne, visual arts professor Raewyn Martyn and French instructor Cary Campbell.

At the potluck Roosevelt praised the faculty for its central role and beforehand he shared a few “fun facts” about faculty members, including that chemistry professor David Kammler collects cutting boards, Vice President for Academic Affairs Hassan Rahmanian was the back-up goalie for the Iranian national soccer team and cooperative education instructor Beth Bridgeman can do an imitation of a barnacle.

“All joking on the faculty, everything we do at Antioch is built upon what they do and the fact that they are delivering a rigorous, quality education to our students,” Roosevelt said. “That’s the central component of this enterprise and we’re lucky to have them.”

Meanwhile, Valerie Webster, Antioch’s vice president of administration and finance resigned last week for personal reasons relating to a family matter. Webster, who joined the staff in March, said the experience was “wonderful” and that Antioch’s finances are continuing to improve.

“They are making fabulous strides at the institution, and I will miss everyone incredibly,” Webster said. “They have a plan and a strategy and are looking forward to being reviewed by the [Higher Learning] Commission and I feel very confident they will move forward as they have for the last three years.”
Contact: mbachman {at} ysnews(.)com

Antioch College students stretch in co-op jobs

What do toilets and politics have in common? Potential metaphors aside, they both figured prominently in the recent co-op placements of Antioch’s first-year students, who returned just a few weeks ago from their first Antioch co-op experience.

Gabe Amrhein of Yellow Springs worked with the Rich Earth Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, researching the potential of human urine to work as fertilizer for agricultural purposes.

“A lot of people are rethinking how they look at food from the input side, but not many people are looking at the output,” he said of why he found his co-op topic compelling. “Our sewage systems are really wasteful and outdated. People don’t realize how much is wasted with toilets, both water and potential fertilizer.”

In order to address the issue of output, the Rich Earth Institute, a nonprofit research institution, collects human urine and designs and executes experiments to learn more about its potential use for large and small scale farmers. For his co-op, Amrhein participated in all aspects of the organization, from public relations and the “Urine Brigade” (which collects urine) to building and setting up equipment for experiments.

“While I was there, I learned a lot about chemistry and biology through field testing,” said Amrhein. “After high school, science was kind of dead to me but this really sparked an interest in science again.”

While Amrhein was building equipment to solar pasteurize urine, his classmate Eric Rhodes was teaching a course on U.S. politics at Caterham School, a boarding school in Great Britain. After studying there through a fellowship program in 2009, Rhodes returned to assist his former teachers in the politics department in exchange for room and board.

“One of the professors was getting ready to leave for another position, so he asked me to teach the Introduction to American Politics course,” said Rhodes. “I designed my own curriculum and was basically thrown into it. I had to stumble and find my way as the semester progressed.”

Although it was challenging at first, Rhodes feels that he learned a lot about what good teaching actually requires, from the extensive prep time to managing class time effectively.

“I was surprised by how thoroughly I had to prepare in order to teach something well,” he said. “I also learned about patience — it was okay if I didn’t make it all the way through my presentation because it was really about engaging their minds.”

A little closer to home, Cleo Van Der Veen spent her co-op in the heart of American politics, interning in D.C. for the Better World Campaign, an organization that advocates for U.S. funding for U.N. programs. Her responsibilities included making phone calls, helping to organize events, writing memos and updating Web pages.

“I read the Secretary General’s reports and was reading international news every day,” she said, in order to synthesize information for the Web pages. “It was a lot of learning in a short amount of time — just living in D.C. you have to learn a different language.”

Nonetheless, because the organization focuses particularly on U.N peacekeeping missions, by the end of her co-op she had developed something of an expertise in foreign affairs.

“There are certain subjects I’ll know a lot about for a while — I still follow the conflicts in Mali and Syria daily,” she said, and classmates have used her as a resource to explain the complexities of those issues.

This kind of connection between education and real world experience lies at the heart of the co-op experience, and indeed of Antioch itself. Created by Arthur Morgan, the co-op program is based on a philosophy of experiential education, in which more formal educational instruction is reinforced first through experience and then reflection on that experience.

In its current iteration, co-ops occur once an academic year and rotate through the quarters so that by the end of their education, each Antioch student will have had a minimum of four co-ops, each in a different season. According to Bridgeman, each co-op is accompanied by an online course designed to help students reflect on their experiences and followed up with a “co-op swap” in which students come together to share stories from their time away.

A few co-op placements, such as those at Tecumseh Land Trust or the Resource Center of Chicago, have been carried over from the former Antioch College, but many have not, according to Susan Eklund-Leen, dean of experiential education, and the lack of carry-over is mainly linked to the recession, which has made it difficult for many organizations to fund a co-op student. Some positions formerly held for an Antioch student are now filled by an employee or have been eliminated.

So the revived college is creating a new stable of co-op jobs, following leads provided by community members and college alums or researching potential sites online. According to Bridgeman, like the former co-op structure, the eventual goal is to create placements in organizations that are continually filled by an Antioch College student.

“We’re looking for experiences that will be educational and give exposure to an area where a student might not know anything,” said Richard Kraince, dean of cooperative education, about the criteria they use when vetting a potential position.

“It needs to be a safe environment, but also one where students are going to be stretched, and have a different or bigger view than they had before,” agreed Bridgeman.

The college is also trying to find placements that offer some form of compensation to the student — be it through a stipend, a small salary or room and board, so that all students, regardless of their financial circumstances, can have access to the life- and résumé-enriching opportunities that co-op presents.

First-year student Brittany Parlin’s résumé now includes ice cream and cheese making, which she learned during her co-op at Young’s Jersey Dairy.

“I realized there’s so much more to cheese making than I ever thought there could be,” said Parlin. “At first I thought, ‘I’m never going to learn how to do this.’”

However, over time, Parlin improved her skills and by the end her cheese rounds looked as neat as her employer’s.

“I learned a lot about myself,” she said of her time at Young’s. “I could do things that other people can’t — I’m the only girl there who can make cheese.”

The challenge of the unfamiliar was an important criteria for student Clara Strong, who spent her first co-op herding sheep and helping out a family on the Black Mesa Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona.

“I really wanted something that was very far from academia,” she said, “something entirely outside my comfort zone, surrounded by people who think in completely different ways than I do.”

Her work on the reservation, where she lived with two Navajo women — one of whom didn’t speak English — in a house with no running water and very limited electricity, definitely fulfilled that goal.

“It was really hard at first, and I definitely felt like an outsider coming in,” said Strong. “I was still an outsider when I left, but less so. There was definitely some trust there.”

Perri Freeman, a second year who finished her co-op in April, also confronted issues of difference and otherness during her time in Mexico, where she worked at a community center for street children in San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southern state of Chiapas.

Freeman helped develop and give workshops on issues such as domestic violence, sex education and immigration — topics that, while difficult, affect the children in their daily lives.

“It was emotionally very intense for me,” she said of the experience. “It was so hard to see kids who aren’t getting enough to eat, or 14-year-olds who come in hung over. Whatever systems that are in place to take care of them are completely failing them,” and many of the children knew people who had died because of lack of access to proper healthcare or clean water.

While profoundly difficult, Freeman’s time in Mexico has only served to deepen her interest in history and education, since history can help contextualize such situations and education has the potential to help people overcome the challenges of poverty.

“I’m even more aware of class and privilege,” she said. “Which is so important when looking at education. [My experience] made me even more motivated to help, but at the same time you’re like ‘Wow, this issue is immense.’”

Antioch College skill-sharing workshop — From herbal tea to art from trash

Everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to teach. That’s the idea behind skill-sharing, a type of education described as community-based, non-competitive and intergenerational.

At a skill-sharing workshop organized by Antioch College students from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 24, in McGregor Hall there will be sessions on making homemade laundry soap, 3–D printing, making herbal tea on the Antioch Farm, writing a business plan, comics for kids, population growth, fermenting sauerkraut and kombucha, zine-making, acorn harvesting and tree identification, knitting, ballroom swing dancing, poetry, African dance, making balloon animals, urine as an alternative fertilizer, crafts for kids, feminism and gender identity, sushi-making, breast-feeding advocacy and more.

The sessions, taught by students, faculty, alumni and local community members, are all free and open to the public. In fact, that’s the whole idea behind skill-share, according to Gabe Amrhein, one of the students putting on the event as a final project for the Global Seminar on Education.

“The idea behind it is that there is a lot of untapped knowledge and skills that don’t necessarily surface,” he said. “This is just to get that knowledge or skill circulating.”

As part of the skill-share workshop, Antioch’s artist-in-residence Curtis Goldstein will offer a session on plastic fusion, a process of ironing and layering recycled plastic bags and embedding trash objects into the layers. Participants will make their own individual pieces, which will later be joined together to create a plastic quilt to be displayed on campus and in the community. That workshop will be at the sculpture annex next to the Antioch Amphitheatre from 1 to 5 p.m., and participants should bring an iron and extra plastic bags if they can.

Organizer and Antioch first-year student Norah Mermis will teach how to make herbal tea from plants she grows at the Antioch Farm, including mint for digestion and headaches, echinacea for immune-building and catnip as a sedative. The self-described tea enthusiast harvests and dries the herbs on campus for the dining hall, and uses them for her own health and well-being, she said. Mermis looks forward to both teaching and learning at the workshop.

“I’m really excited to be a part of it,” Mermis said. “I’m amazed by people in the community of Yellow Springs. We have so many people with knowledge here. This brings us together to share things with people we normally wouldn’t.”

Global Seminar on Education instructor Geneva Gano said that the workshop is an opportunity for intergenerational and lifelong learning and fits the college’s vision of a strong town-gown relationship, known as “Antioch Village.”

The non-traditional model of education of a skill-share has had some history at Antioch, Gano added, including most recently in the period of the NonStop Liberal Arts Institute, a group of former Antioch faculty and staff that organized educational events in town when the college closed in 2008. Some former NonStop instructors will be teaching at the skill-share workshop, including Migiwa Orimo (sushi-making) and Michael Casselli (3–D printing).

The skill-share workshop is organized into four sessions, with four one-hour workshops during each session. Four of the workshops are specifically designed to accommodate children as young as seven. There will be free coffee and pastries in the morning and a free community pizza lunch at 11:30 a.m.

According to Amrhein, a first-year student from Yellow Springs, there was such an overwhelming demand to teach a session that organizers had to cut off requests. Amrhein himself is teaching a session on using human urine as a fertilizer from what he learned on co-op. He expects a good turnout from students, even though it’s not a class requirement that they attend. And Amrhein appreciates that students could organize the event as part of a class — otherwise students are too busy with classes and extracurricular activities to pull something like this together, he said.

The educational model of skill-sharing is one that Amrhein, for one, believes in.

“It’s really about sharing, about giving something and taking something in return,” he said. “It seems like such a basic concept to most people but it’s something we take for granted and it’s not how the world operates.”

For more information and the full schedule of workshops, visit https://www.facebook.com/ysskillshareworkshop .