The Washington College SGA created a “Flock to the Polls” challenge in order to increase student participation in this year’s election season. To incentivize students to take the voter pledge, they convinced faculty and staff members to commit to various challenges and for every 50 students that took the “I Voted” Pledge, the next person on the list was called upon.

The culminating event once the challenge totaled 300 voters was a chilly jump into the Chester River –made good on this past weekend — by Interim Provost and Dean of the College, Michael Harvey.

“Thanks to the SGA for everything you did,” said Harvey during brief remarks from the dock just before taking the plunge, “and to everybody who encouraged massive turnout this year.  Voting is one of the most important things we can do as citizens and I’m proud to be a small, ridiculous part of that effort.”

The reward of seeing the Provost take the plunge seemed to be a big motivator to get the pledge count up to a total of 300.

The SGA wanted to thank all students, faculty, and staff that participated in these activities and voting,” said Maegan White ’23, Secretary of Service and Community Relations for the SGA. “Being completely virtual makes it hard for students to connect with professors and staff but the student’s excitement to share they voted and having so many faculty and staff enthusiastic to do crazy activities goes to show our community’s commitment to uniting and being citizen leaders.”

The “Flock to the Polls” campaign – a fitting moniker for a school that affectionately refers to the community as “Goose Nation” and boasts Gus the Goose as a mascot –  ran from October 28 – November 3, with SGA members taking to social media to encourage students to join the challenge. Prior to that, the SGA also solicited responses from faculty and staff for two separate “Why I Vote” video compilations that offered students reasons why voting is so important and encouraging voter registration.

Other challenges included faculty members who dyed their hair pink, wore Halloween costumes to class, created TikTok videos and got pie’d in the face, among others.

“I’ve gone pink to thank you for pledging to vote this election season,” said Professor James Windelborn, Assistant Professor of Biology, who dyed his beard pink for the cause. “Thank you for supporting democracy and our democratic institutions.”  Professor Jennifer Benson, Associate Professor of Philosophy, also dyed her hair pink.

Link to video of Provost Harvey’s Chester River plunge:  https://washcoll.sharepoint.com/:v:/s/NewsandNotesfromtheCPG/ERs3oPtSFudHg85AxYkh4esB5rN28uCevok2VdhFsESpgA?e=ovG5nR

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu. 

Dr. Alisha Knight has been awarded the Cromwell Award for Innovation in Teaching, an honor that is handed out each fall to an instructor for exceptional accomplishments in pedagogy, including using new instructional technologies, revamping traditional technologies in creative ways, applying novel approaches to instruction, innovating in curricular development and engaging students in the learning process in new ways.

Dr. Alisha Knight

This honor is awarded each fall to an instructor for exceptional accomplishments during the two previous academic years and includes a $1500 prize. The Advisory Board of the Cromwell Center for Teaching and Learning selected the winner.  Through this annual award, The Cromwell Center for Teaching and Learning seeks to sustain and encourage Washington College’s instructors to continuously rethink and redevelop their teaching and learning approach.

This is the second distinguished teaching award Knight has earned. In August, it was announced that she had been selected for the Alumni Association’s 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award.

“I consider myself very lucky to work with Dr. Knight, and I am thrilled to see her skills as a teacher recognized this year,” said Katherine Maynard, Director of the Cromwell Center for Teaching and Learning. “The Cromwell Award not only recognizes the great work of professors like Dr Knight, but also that it inspires the rest of us to think about ways we can improve our own teaching. Dr. Knight leads with her example, reminding us that we can always grow as teachers.”

Knight has been recognized for her innovative, interdisciplinary approach to two of her courses, her survey of African American literature (ENG 214) and her seminar on Black Men & Women: Images of Race and Gender in American Literature and Culture.

In the first, Knight uses the interplay between black music–the blues, jazz, and rap–and black literature to teach students how to conduct nuanced textual analysis. In the latter, she teaches students how to engage critically with stereotypical and offensive images of black men and women as an entryway to understanding the ways that black writers contest those images. The students in the class then use these skills to engage in a dialogue with the general public through their analyses of how contemporary African American images challenge or perpetuate racial stereotypes.

In both cases, Knight has fulfilled her own goal–to borrow both her words and those of Earl Lewis–“to challenge and empower students of all backgrounds to ‘contribute ideas, ask questions, contest assumptions, and revise points of view’.”

An official moment of recognition for Dr. Knight will take place during the February Convocation ceremony.

About Dr. Alisha Knight

As the Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Washington College, Knight specializes in African American literature and print culture at the turn of the twentieth century.  She teaches introductory and advanced literature and American Studies courses.  She strives to mentor students—majors and non-majors alike—to become careful, critical readers and astute, analytical writers.  Knight earned her undergraduate degree from Spelman College in 1993 and later went on to earn her doctorate from Drew University in 2004.

Dr. Knight’s service to WC has included serving as the founding program director for the Black Studies minor, chairing the Service & Scholarship committee, advising Cleopatra’s Sisters, and serving on the Tenure & Promotion committee, the Honor Board, Phi Beta Kappa’s Members in Course committee, as Faculty Secretary, and as Faculty Moderator.

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu. 

Assistant Professor Cole Jones

The treatment of prisoners of war during the American Revolution, and how issues surrounding that treatment helped escalate the conflict’s violence, is the topic of a talk on March 5 at Washington College. Cole Jones, assistant professor of history at Purdue University, will speak on “The Problem of Prisoners of War in the American Revolution.”

Sponsored by the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and Washington College’s Department of History, the event at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge is free and open to the public. Jones will be discussing the research that has gone into his new book, Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).

Jones will take listeners from the meeting rooms of the Continental Congress to the prison camps of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, revealing the factors that coalesced to transform the conflict into a war for vengeance and precipitously escalate its violence. During the eight-year conflict, American forces captured over 17,000 British and allied Germanic soldiers, as well as thousands more loyalist civilians and British mariners. The number of enemy prisoners in American custody often exceeded that of American soldiers in the Continental army. These prisoners proved increasingly burdensome for the new nation as the war progressed, creating a series of thorny political issues that compounded the logistical difficulties of confining, housing, feeding and caring for them.

A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the New York Historical Society in 2015-2016, Jones is also the author of Loyalist Rising: The Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge (under contract, Westholme Press), as well as “Violence and Trauma” in The Cambridge History of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2021), and “Citizen for Citizen: The Problem of Political Prisoners in the American Revolution” in From Colonial Encounters to the Iraq War: Prisoners of War and their Place in American History (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, forthcoming 2020).

About Washington College
Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

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David Finnegan-Hosey

The intersection of faith, mental illness, and healthcare will be the subject of a talk at Washington College on Feb. 19, when 2007 graduate David Finnegan-Hosey returns to his alma mater to speak about his latest book, Grace Is a Preexisting Condition: Faith, Systems, and Mental Healthcare. Emerging from his experience of living with a diagnosis deemed as a preexisting condition by insurance companies, the book explores the theological and spiritual dimensions of our public discourse around mental healthcare and mental illness.

The free public talk at 7 p.m. in Hynson Lounge is sponsored by the Goldstein Program’s Young Alumni series.

Finnegan-Hosey, who majored in international studies with a minor in philosophy, serves as the college chaplain and director of campus ministries at Barton College in Wilson, N.C., having previously worked with campus ministries at Georgetown University, American University, and the University of Hawaii. He holds a master’s in divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary and a unit of clinical pastoral education from the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. He is certified by Mental Health First Aid USA to provide initial help to people experiencing depression, anxiety, psychosis, and substance use disorders.

In 2011, Finnegan-Hosey was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a series of psychiatric hospitalizations. He now speaks and writes about the intersections among mental illness, mental health, and faith. He is the author of Christ on the Psych Ward (Church Publishing, 2018), and he blogs at Foolish Hosey. Profits from the pre-order of Grace is a Preexisting Condition will donated to RIP Medical Debt, which works to abolish unpaid medical debt.

About Washington College
Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Don’t miss the latest! You can subscribe to The Chestertown Spy‘s free Daily Intelligence Report here