From the Print – Page 9 – Save Antioch College

Leading the college to wellness

For the past six months there’s been a gaping hole at the back of Antioch College Curl Gym, where the pool used to be. But the renovation of the 85-year old building is closing in on a completion date sometime in July. And newly hired Wellness Center director Becky Harrison is keen to get the gym in its new digs operational. What the wellness center will become after that is open to everyone’s imagination, Harrison said in an interview earlier this month.

“Everything is possible — that’s why I love this project,” she said. “As I get into the personality of the facility and its users, it will grow — I’m open for it to change as the college grows.”

On a recent tour of the facility, still deep in rubble and dust, Harrison whirled about, chatting and joking with the construction crew and wending her way through the building like it was home already. Her excitement about creating what she sees as a place of wellness for the whole person was contagious.

“These types of facilities are so much more than just a gym … they’re almost like mini community centers,” Harrison said. “The possibilities are fascinatingly endless … when I get goose bumps, it’s a good day!”

She believes that everyone is on a personal journey to wellness of mind, body and spirit. The path includes taking care of the physical body, but also the social and emotional aspects of the individual.

“This center can talk to all those areas, including possibly massage and physical therapists and nurse consultants,” she said.

In overall terms, plans for the 44,000-square-foot Wellness Center have not changed significantly since the idea of a shared community-college fitness center was introduced more than a year ago. The official 25-yard pool (with ultraviolet disinfection system) and 10-person, handicapped accessible therapy pool with a patio extension are coming along. The basketball and racquetball courts are under way, as is “West Gym,” where the fitness and weight room with a track around the perimeter will be located. The central locker rooms will be completely refurbished, as will the restrooms and the warming kitchen in South Gym, a multipurpose performance space that can be turned into a theater or banquet hall. Two additional group fitness spaces are currently under construction, including a smaller room on the first floor for yoga or pilates, and a 3,500-square-foot room upstairs for larger activities, such as kickboxing, zumba or indoor soccer. An adjacent room on the second floor could be used for yoga, meditation or possibly as a child watch center. And still a third-floor loft that looks over the second floor could be used as a lounge and storage area.

But Harrison is keeping open as many options as possible to ensure that the Wellness Center develops organically as an extension of both the college and the Yellow Springs community members who will be using it.

“Nothing is set in stone yet — we’re examining the budget and asking what is this facility capable of? What activities will be happening in each room? … It’s going to come from our members, students, faculty, and the community.”

Harrison comes to the college with 15 years of experience as the assistant director of the recreation and wellness center at Vanderbilt University, her alma mater. After studying recreation and education at Ohio State University, she received a master’s in health promotion at Vanderbilt and went right to work helping to promote student wellness, and group fitness and running a personal training program at the school with 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students in Nashville, Tenn.

Though Antioch is leagues smaller than where she came from, Harrison was attracted to the opportunity to start something new and help design it from the ground up, she said.

“What really excites me about this job and the new facility is I get the chance to build and grow a program and make it sustainable,” she said.

And her return to Ohio mirrors somewhat the college’s own rebirth. Harrison grew up in Zanesville, left the state after college, and is now returning to her Midwest roots, newly married in October and currently living in Beavercreek.

“The welcome I’ve gotten at the college and in the community has been wonderful,” she said.

According to Dorothy Roosevelt, who assumed responsibility for the initial phase of design and construction for the Wellness Center, the $8 million project is still on budget and expected to achieve LEED certification. Roosevelt expects to step back once construction is completed to let Harrison take the lead.

“Dorothy has done a fantastic job — I want to say thank you to her,” Harrison said.

Harrison hopes to be able to hire either one full-time or two part-time staff members, as well as a host of part-time class instructors, a pool manager and guards, and welcome desk and janitorial personnel. A membership structure for the Wellness Center has yet to be decided, but Harrison said the goal is to get membership fees within range of area YMCAs. Community input is appreciated, and Harrison invites people to seek her out by emailing, calling or visiting her in her temporary office in South Hall. She also invites community members to check the college website in May for publicity about pricing and virtual tours of the new space. Public tours and open houses will be scheduled once the facility receives its occupancy permit, and Harrison moves to her office at the front of the new building. She is excited for a strong beginning, but wants to ensure its longevity.

“I believe in the concept of health at every size and health at every age, and we’re doing our best to make this facility long-term stable and fiscally responsible.”

SIDEBAR: Arts book fundraiser

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

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

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

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

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

A new face to tell the Antioch College story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Antioch College’s Miller Fellows boost local nonprofits

View the sidebar, “Arts book fundraiser”

For Antioch College student Megan Miller, a yearlong job at the Yellow Springs Arts Council sparked a love of art galleries that has since led her to co-ops at the Santa Fe Art Institute and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Fellow student Kijin Higashibaba turned a job last year at Antioch radio station WYSO-FM into an internship for a Sacramento television station, where she now covers the California state house.

The early careers of both students were launched by their Miller Fellowships, during which they worked at local nonprofit organizations. In the program’s third year, 16 Antioch students are working 10 hours per week at one of 11 nonprofits. Students are paid $10 per hour from a grant, while the cost to the nonprofit is minimal.

“It’s just been fantastic for us,” WYSO General Manager Neena Ellis said of the four Miller Fellows who have worked at the radio station. At WYSO, students have learned interviewing, recording and radio editing and have all been on the air, while WYSO has benefited from the technical skills of “digital natives” who have chipped in to create original content for its website, Ellis said.

“We’re a small radio station and we all wear many hats, so when someone walks in the door who has skills already, we give them responsibility and everyone steps up,” Ellis said.

The Antioch Miller Fellowships were created when longtime villagers and brothers Nolan and Richard Miller bequeathed $3 million to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation. Nolan, who died in 2006 and was an associate editor of The Antioch Review and a writing teacher at Antioch College, and Richard, an artist who died in 2009, asked that the endowment funds be used to strengthen the town-gown relationship. The foundation came up with the idea of using the money to pay Antioch students to work for local nonprofits. Fellowships began in 2011.

“It’s such a positive thing for our students, and I hope the community is benefiting from it,” said Beth Bridgeman, an Antioch instructor of cooperative education. “I think people love to see great Antioch students out in the community doing interesting things.”

This year students are working at WYSO, Glen Helen Ecology Institute, the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, the Tecumseh Land Trust, the Yellow Springs Senior Center, the Yellow Springs Arts Council, Yellow Springs Schools, Community Access Channel 5, the Antioch School, Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse and Home, Inc.

Nonprofits can become host organizations by applying to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation each summer. At a job fair on the Antioch campus in the fall, students and organizations interview each other to find the best fit. Students typically work for the organization for an entire year.

Jerome Borchers, president of the Arts Council, said Miller Fellows there have “multiplied the influence of the small staff” of the organization and students helped with public relations, gallery work, membership and youth outreach. Krista Magaw, executive director of the Tecumseh Land Trust, added that its Miller Fellows have energized her organization by thinking of new ways to reach people about conservation and increase membership.

“The [Miller Fellows] dream up ways to get people out on the land, or to experience nature or learn something about local food production,” Magaw said, adding that the students have contributed their technological savvy and “even tweet sometimes.”

Students said they have gained from the experience too.

An Antioch psychology major, Ryann Patrus of Cincinnati wants to someday work with people with disabilities. During a Miller Fellowship at the Mills Lawn Elementary School reading center, she said she has learned a lot about helping struggling students, among other career skills.

“I definitely learned a lot about working with kids and how to focus children,” Patrus said. “I’ve also learned how to be flexible and how to self-initiate — a good skill.”

First-year student Khalil Nasar, 18, of northern Virginia, has enjoyed working with his hands to clear invasive species and downed trees at the Glen Helen Nature Preserve. Working with land steward George Bieri, Nasar has wielded chainsaws and chippers, last week felling three trees killed by the Emerald Ash Borer.

“It’s very intellectual work in the classroom, so it’s nice to go out and apply it,” Nasar said, adding that he also has learned how to work under a boss and with a team to “get something done as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

Alex Klug, 26, of Cincinnati, is learning the “difficult” and “intense” work of grant writing at local nonprofit Home, Inc., which she sees as an important skill to have as she hopes to someday work in youth housing and education. She also finds the flexibility at a small community organization empowering.

“I enjoy how it’s really from the ground up and we learn as we go,” Klug said.

Jay Rudibaugh, 19, of East Liverpool, Ohio, is busy as a ”jack of all trades” at the Senior Center, where he is helping people figure out electronic devices of all kinds. With a flexible work schedule, he has learned a lot about the importance of time management during his fellowship, he said.

First-year student Evan Schieber, of Columbus, has learned how to talk about environmental issues at the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, where he is helping the organization make documentaries about energy topics. Schieber, who prefers cycling to driving, is exploring his own life philosophy while advancing his studies in human ecology through the fellowship, he said.

Kate Harrison, 20, of Hillsboro, Ohio, is also working on video production. The second-year student is documenting the transition to a problem-based learning curriculum at Yellow Springs Schools and will begin by producing a short 30-minute video using interviews with students, faculty and administrators.

And 19-year-old Alexandra Scott, of Columbus, in her second year at Antioch, is pursuing her lifelong dream to open a coffee shop “even though there’s no major for it” at Antioch, by working at the Arts Council, she said.

“One of the reasons I wanted to open a coffee shop is to bring arts to people, with open mics, poetry readings, music, art on the walls,” Scott said of the connection between her fellowship and career aspiration. The Miller Fellowship also gave her a chance to get more invovled in the Yellow Springs community, she said.

“I love Yellow Springs — it seems like a safe space, there’s a lot of art and wonderful people,” Scott said. As for her favorite local coffee shop inspiration: “I hang out at Spirited Goat Coffeehouse all the time.”

EnviroFlight, Antioch College seek partnership

Antioch College and the local sustainable animal feed business EnviroFlight are poised to collaborate in a way that leaders believe will benefit both entities.

“We believe this fits well with what you’re doing,” EnviroFlight founder Glen Courtright said to the Antioch College Board of Trustees at an open portion of the board’s meeting last Saturday at Herndon Gallery. “We want to collaborate to create a framework for affordable, sustainable socially responsible food production.”

Specifically, the college will offer EnviroFlight use of its former arts building, where the five-year-old animal feed company will conduct aquaculture research.

However, the collaboration is dependent on the college receiving a $600,000 state grant that will pay for refurbishing the building, according to College Vice President for Administration and Finance Andi Adkins. If the grant comes through, EnviroFlight will use the building, and if the college doesn’t win the grant, EnviroFlight will seek another venue for its aquaculture research, Courtright said in an interview this week.

“We want to establish a sustainable nutrient research facility at Antioch College using EnviroFlight technology and processes,” he said to the trustees on Saturday.

The arrangement would involve EnviroFlight using the 24,000 square foot building for its aquaculture research, in return for which the college will receive, according to Courtright’s presentation, “global visibility,” opportunities for student co-ops, a user for the building and free fish to feed the students. The college would provide building maintenance, and the two entities will negotiate on the issue of rent in the future, Courtright said this week.

The college would also receive a cost-free opportunity to refurbish the building, a project estimated to cost about $450,000 to $550,000, which would be covered by the $600,000 grant from the Ohio Capital Appropriations bill. The college will apply for the grant, with help from EnviroFlight and the Greene County Economic Development office, in February, and should learn the outcome in about six months, according to Courtright.

However, the main part of the EnviroFlight business, which includes the production of black soldier fly insect larvae, will remain at its current location at MillWorks, according to Courtright, who said the business, which currently employs 10 people, will soon need a larger facility in which to grow. In an interview this week, Courtright said he is exploring renting a larger space at the Creative Memories building, and his need to move fairly quickly precludes the option of building a new building.

Begun five years ago, EnviroFlight bills itself as a new technology to address the twin world problems of world hunger and sustainability. Specifically, the company uses waste products from breweries, ethanol production and pre-consumer food waste to feed black soldier fly larvae. The flies produce waste that is then turned into high-protein, low-fat food for fish and livestock, after which the larvae are cooked and dried to create a high-protein, high fat food for carniverous fish, according to the EnviroFlight Web site.

“We can create proteins and fats at a lower price than what’s on the market,” Courtright said to the Antioch College trustees on Saturday.

And while the company plans to keep its main operations at its current location at MillWorks for the short term, the high ceilings and extensive light of the atrium area of the former art building provide a perfect space to raise rainbow trout, which the company will use for research, and then give to the college.

“We have to do a lot of aquaculture research to prove that what we do is safe,” Courtright said.

The company did recently receive approval from the FDA “to market for human food use the edible tissues derived from experimental animals reared on insect meal and other ingredients that are acceptable for use in animal feed,” according to an email from Courtright this week.

In his presentation to the college trustees, Courtright said the company has been selected to join a global team of public and private organizations to develop sustainable tools for food and feed in Kenya. The project, funded by the Danish International Development Agency, or DANIDA, will involve bringing a Kenyan Ph.D. student to Yellow Springs to learn how to adapt the EnviroFlight process for Kenyan food needs, according to a company press release.

Courtright stated he wants to keep his company in Yellow Springs. “We want to keep things here,” he said. “It’s where the brain trust is.”

• Also at the board meeting, College Vice-President for Advancement Brian Williams, who heads the college fund-raising efforts, spoke of the financial challenges facing the college.

Specifically, the college’s $75 million capital campaign faces a significant shortfall due to a lack of very large gifts — those from $1 million to $15 million. College fund-raisers structured the campaign in the shape of a “pyramid” with a wide base of smaller donations at the bottom, but at the top a single gift of $15 million, one gift of $7.5 million, two gifts of $5 million, four of $2.5 million and eight of $1 million. And those more than $1 million gifts haven’t come in, according to Williams.

“We’re working hard to identify those people,” he said. “Those gifts take a while to mature.”

However, the campaign is doing well regarding gifts under $1 million, Williams said, stating that the college has received 328 gifts between $25,000 and $50,000. And more than 4,500 supporters have given donations under $25,000, he said.

“The challenge is identifying and securing the donors at the top of the gift pyramid,” he said.

No rest for the gritty

At the college’s State of the College speech the preceeding afternoon, College President Mark Roosevelt also emphasized the college’s fundraising challenge. While last year Antioch raised $19 to $20 million, the highest amount ever raised in college history, the need remains huge, since the estimated cost of renovating the college’s long neglected campus turned out to be only one-third of the actual costs, according to Roosevelt.

“We had substantial growth with fundraising, but we need to be doing this every year,” he said.

The planned campus renovation does not include “bells and whistles,” Roosevelt said, only a “decent, clean, functional” campus for students.

But Roosevelt had significant good news, as well. Currently, the college has enrolled 184 students, and 63 are on co-op placements.

“Don’t underestimate how hard it is to reestablish co-op in this economy,” he said, giving credit to the school’s co-op department.

The college currently offers 65 courses, with an average of 10 students per class. And the Antioch retention rate is about 88 to 89 percent annually, comparable to that of other Great Lakes Colleges Association schools, he said. Roosevelt also said that he feels hopeful about last fall’s on-site visit by a Higher Learning Commission accreditation team, although the official HLC announcement as to whether the college meets the requirements for accreditation candidacy won’t be made until June. Town/gown collaboration is also going well, he said, with the wellness center expected to open in June, and a theater building renovation in progress.

Overall, Roosevelt emphasized, the college has overcome huge obstacles and has much to celebrate.

“No one could have predicted three and a half years ago that the college would be on such sound footing as we are,” he said.

But the challenges remain, including the need to keep hard-working staff, faculty and students from burning out, according to Roosevelt, who said the name of his speech was, “No rest for the gritty.”

“We’ve done an incredible amount of work, and have asked a great deal of faculty and staff. You can see some wear and tear,” Roosevelt said, stating that “We have to learn to produce human sustainability alongside economic and environmental sustainability.”

MLK Day event at Antioch College— Panel looks at racism, inequality

Columbus resident Kwensi Kambon urged attendees at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day panel session this week at Antioch College to “deputize themselves” and fight against racial inequality and discrimination.

It starts with us, “it does not start with ‘them,’” Kambon said. “King’s approach was focusing on the talents, abilities and gifts that God gave him.”
The panel, whose topic was “Where Do We Go From Here?”, was one of several events on Sunday and Monday that Antioch and the Central Chapel AME Church organized to commemorate King’s birthday. Villagers and visitors also packed the Little Art Theatre for the screening of a rare documentary film on King’s life and the AME Church was overflowing with people during its annual celebration that included music, speeches and peacemaker awards.

“We came to Antioch because we wanted to be with a like-minded community where we could see a diversity in action,” said Kambon, who arrived from Columbus with his wife, Tomisena. Kambon said that they were especially encouraged by the participation of local seniors in MLK activities and the variety of ways the town honors King.

“In many places, there’s just a speech [for MLK day] but I’ve heard all the speeches,” Kambon later said. “When you see the community that has so many ways of remembering King, it jump-starts you.”

At Monday afternoon’s sparsely attended panel session, which drew mostly college staffers and local residents, four current and former Antioch students from the Class of 1949 to the Class of 2017 discussed King’s legacy in the context of the problems still facing racial minorities, woman and the poor on campus and in the country. Panelists agreed that while some progress has been made, there is a still a long way to go, and suggested primary education reform, addressing the underlying economic forces, teaching black history and sparking conversations about race and privilege.

“Change starts with two people in a conversation,” said Antioch first-year student Megan Howes, a panelist.

But panelist Maceo Cofield, a 1971 Antioch graduate, said that the “truth has been hijacked” and the language co-opted, making it more difficult to have meaningful conversations about oppression today. Cofield, who coordinates the University of Dayton’s minority leaders program in its school of engineering, added that more choice in primary education or better schools are also not sufficient to solve the problem. Instead, an economic system that exacerbates inequality needs to be transformed to alleviate poverty, since “it’s very hard to listen at school when you’re hungry,” he said.

“When we talk about what’s going on with African Americans, Latinos, and poor white young people, we have not discussed how we integrate them into our economy,” Cofield said, adding that if our economic system was a true “meritocracy” then the rich would lose their privilege as the poor would rise up with better education, which is not the case.

Panelist Richard Kaplan, an 89-year-old retired documentary filmmaker and Antioch alum, argued for teaching the history of the civil rights movement to children. To that end he is trying to get his 30-minute film about King, Legacy of a Dream, into every classroom in the country.

“There is a whole generation of kids out there that don’t know a damn thing about our history,” Kaplan said. “Hopefully using a film like Legacy of a Dream and all of the attendant discussion will be useful in giving them a better perspective on where we should go from here. Whether we will or not is another question.”

Local resident David Perry agreed from the audience, saying that more black history should be taught in schools and homes throughout the year, instead of just on MLK day and in February.

“So much black history has been lost,” Perry said. “There are so many other black leaders other than MLK — it’s about more than just MLK and his message and movement.”

Antioch third-year student Nargees Jumahan, a 21-year-old native of Afghanistan who emigrated to the U.S. when she was 11, said that Americans don’t like to talk about their history and that she has found it strange that the country “compartmentalizes” history into months and holidays. She pointed out that many Antioch students treated MLK Day as a day off, since the only students at the discussion were two panelists, three working the audiovisual system and a friend that came with her. Jumahan added that current Antioch students are “only open-minded to open-minded people” and that her generation tends to confront such issues from purely an intellectual perspective.

“Part of the problem I see is that there is a lot of reading happening, but there’s not a lot of emotional connection,” Jumahan said. “In Martin Luther King’s time there was a lot of emotional connection — they were moved.”

Antioch Dean of Community Life Louise Smith added from the audience that Antioch needs to do a better job of recognizing oppression among, and creating “safe spaces” for, those of different identities — gender, sexual orientation, race, class, religion — and that it starts with conversation.

“The idea of an honest conversation in [the Antioch] community is really important to counteract this idea we’re in a post-racial culture and that there aren’t any problems,” she said.