Washington College

Virtual Exhibit by Jason Patterson: On the Black History of Kent County and Washington College

October 24, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

An important two-year long project will be officially unveiled with the virtual opening of On the Black History of Kent County and Washington College, an exhibition by Starr Center Frederick Douglas Visiting Fellow Jason Patterson that presents a curated chronology of African American experience locally from the 1780’s to the present.

The launch is scheduled for October 27 at 7 PM and features a talk by Patterson, who will guide attendees through the virtual gallery experience, speak about the history, figures, themes and artistic processes explored. The talk will be followed by a Q&A.

The exhibition is an art and history project that addresses the African American history, and the historical impact of white supremacy in Kent County, Maryland and at Washington College, and is the result of a year-long collaboration between Patterson, Kohl Gallery, and The Starr Center.

“I am very excited for people to see this two-year long project,” said Patterson. “I hope it will be an important contribution to the redemptive work the college has begun in addressing its past.”

Patterson’s body of work focuses on African American history and highlights the role the past has in cultivating our current political and social conditions in the United States. Patterson’s practice is research-based, with the majority of his studio time dedicated to that research to ensure that the historical and social narratives presented are well represented.

Patterson’s work is based on archived images and historical texts, emphasizing the original medium. The work investigates the different ways images, in varying forms, structure the way we visually comprehend our history and define our present.

The virtual exhibit will be featured on the Chesapeake Heartland website and will be unveiled at this event. Patterson’s artist talk is supported by a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Speaker grant. The exhibit, talk, and associated events are supported by a Chesapeake Heartland Fellowship and organized by Kohl Gallery.

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.

Washington College Announces Revision to Spring 2021 Semester Plan

October 19, 2020 by Washington College News Service 3 Comments

Washington College today announced that all students are invited to return to campus for the upcoming spring semester. This represents a change from the initial announcement, which capped the number of students at 450 and prioritized those limited spots for first-year students who had not yet experienced life on campus.

The revised housing model has one student per bedroom/per suite, along with a reserve of 10% of available beds for quarantine and isolation space. The single factor allowing for the increased capacity is the sharing of fixtures within suites. Previously, the plan accounted for one student per suite only, in order to fully eliminate sharing of bathroom fixtures in suites. By lifting that one restriction and instead proceeding with limited sharing — while still housing all students in single rooms – the College is able to invite back all students plus maintain the 10% reserves for quarantine.

In benchmarking other colleges’ efforts to return students to campus and following best practices as laid out by various departments of health, three conditions essential to safely reopening campus were identified. They are:

House every student in a single room
Have sufficient space available for quarantine and isolation
Have a robust testing plan, to include both gateway testing and regular surveillance testing throughout the entire semester

Even with this revised housing model, the Washington College spring plan accounts for all three of these conditions, in addition to a large number of other equally important safety measures and protocols. These include but are not limited to: Physical/social distancing measures, enhanced cleaning protocols campus-wide, required daily use of an app for symptom attestation, mandatory face coverings (indoors and outdoors) on campus, mandatory flu shots for all returning students and heavily restricted visitor and travel policies.

This decision was made in close consultation with the Kent County Health Department and in accordance with guidance issued recently by the Institutes of Higher Education (IHE) in Maryland Department of Health’s Guidance for Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs).

Decisions about many services and other campus operations will be announced much closer to the start of the spring semester. These decisions remain contingent upon where things fall within the Key Indicators Chart that is currently in development and the Alert Level at which the College is operating within at any given time.

Washington College 237th Commencement Exercises Set to Premier on October 17

October 17, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

The official premier of the College’s 237^th Commencement Exercises is set for Saturday, October 17 at 10:30 AM. This event marks the institution’s first-ever virtual Commencement ceremony, a response to COVID-19 and the pandemic that has left its mark on much of 2020.

The virtual ceremony link will be posted here.

Despite the virtual format, the elements included in the ceremony are in keeping with a traditional commencement. Among other things, there will be greetings from select speakers, such as Ryan Zwier, the 2020 senior class speaker, and Steve Golding, the Chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors.

Sylvia Acevedo, former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA delivers the keynote address and will be awarded with an honorary degree, Doctor of Public Service. Two Alumni Citations will be presented to Judith Lynn Brucker ’86 and John Dimsdale III ’73. Interim President, Dr. Wayne Powell, will preside over the ceremony. The new name of Harford Hall — which was selected by the 2020 graduates – will also be announced.

The highlight of the ceremony will be the public conferral of degrees. Dr. Powell will officially confer the degrees earned and Interim Provost and Dean Michael Harvey will individually present each graduate. The virtual ceremony showcases a slide that includes each graduate’s name, photo and key activities.

Official Program for the 237th Commencement Exercises

In an email address to the Class of 2020, Harvey had this to say about what it means to receive a college diploma: “…represents an incredible achievement on your part: You navigated four years of living on your own, meeting all kinds of people, building relationships and friendships, learning new skills, trying and sometimes failing, learning how to succeed, gaining confidence, finding your voice, and discovering your passion.”

The virtual format does also offer viewers who log into a YouTube account the opportunity to post comments as the Commencement proceeds, giving spectators the chance to virtually cheer and send support to the graduates. Comments will stay up on the page.

All of the graduate awards normally announced in the ceremony were previously presented in a virtual ceremony held in May, but the commencement awards will be highlighted again. One other change is that the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award was presented at First-Year Convocation in August, instead of during Commencement. Dr. Alisha Knight was the recipient of that award.

The ceremony is pre-recorded, which was an intentional decision made for a few key reasons, including eliminating any potential technical issues that might disrupt the ceremony. It will be posted on Saturday 10/17 at 10:30 AM and remain there for an extended time so families, friends and others may watch it at their convenience.

Over the past two weeks, the College has been running a countdown that included “20 Things to Love about the Class of 2020” and photos of a “Wild Gus Chase” around campus, as Gus failed to read his invitation and had to search high and low for the ceremony. The countdown and his adventures are featured on the graduation webpage as well (spoiler alert: he found it!).

Dr. Alisha Knight Earns Cromwell Award for Innovation in Teaching

October 15, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

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.

Dr. Scott Newstok Hosts “How to Think Like Shakespeare” Lecture

October 8, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Shakespeare expert and published author Dr. Scott Newstok – the 2020 Sophie Kerr Visiting Scholar – will deliver a live virtual lecture titled “How to Think Like Shakespeare” on Monday, October 19. The event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Newstok will be discussing his current book, How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education. The book distills vital habits of mind that can help you think more deeply, write more effectively and learn more joyfully – in school or beyond. Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, offers this praise, “Scott Newstok’s book, a playful delight, also delivers a serious pedagogical punch.”

The recently published work brings the topics of Shakespeare and the liberal arts education together, using concepts from Renaissance education. In addition to being considered an expert in Shakespeare, Newstok is also a liberal arts educator. He teaches literature of the English Renaissance as well as film, rhetoric, education, lyric poetry, and the humanities at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, where he is also the Founding Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment.

Attendees should register in advance using this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqc-igrDkvEtYZKJ3MPmq9vzrvFyJnSgTJ. The lecture is scheduled for Monday, October 15 at 5 PM.

This event is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Endowment and the English Department. Dr. Newstok is the 2020 Sophie Kerr Visiting Scholar.

In addition to this lecture, Newstok will also be meeting with Washington College English majors in the department’s Junior Seminar, team-taught by Dr. Alisha Knight and Dr. Sean Meehan, to continue the discussion and talk with students about current issues in Shakespeare scholarship.

Newstok is a graduate of Grinnell College and Harvard University. He has published books on Kenneth Burke’s Shakespeare criticism, early modern English epitaphs, a collection of essays on Macbeth and race (co-edited with Ayanna Thompson), and most recently, How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Princeton University Press, 2020).

Washington College Hosts Timely Panel Discussion

October 4, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Washington College is hosting a special online panel discussion titled “Taking Stock of the 2020 Election: How Gender, Race and Ethnicity Will Shape the Presidential Race”, and that looks ahead to next month’s Presidential election, with a special emphasis on how race, ethnicity and gender may shape the outcome. The highly anticipated discussion will be led by Drs. Melissa Deckman, Flavio Hickel and Eric McDaniel.

The 2016 Presidential Election was decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three critical states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Many analysts believe that crucial to that outcome was a lack of turnout by minority voters-and the surprising fact that a majority of white women voters backed Donald Trump.

Hosted by the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs, this webinar-style event will offer critical insights into this important and timely topic. The event is scheduled for 7-9 PM on October 15, and includes a panel discussion, followed by a Q&A session with the panelists. This discussion is open to the public, though registration is required. Interested attendees can register here.

About the Panelists

Melissa Deckman is the Louis L. Goldstein Professor of Public Affairs and Chair of the Political Science Department at Washington College. She also chairs the board of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Deckman recently shared her insights about the Republican and Democratic national conventions on Maryland Public Television’s “Direct Connection,” hosted by Jeff Salkin.

Dr. Flavio Hickel is a Professor of Political Science at Washington College. Hickel earned his Ph.D. in American Politics from Rutgers University in 2016. His research and teaching interests are in American Political Institutions and Development, Identity Politics, and Public Opinion. His current research explores the exclusionary and polarizing potential of national identity politics with a substantive focus on the Latinx community and Immigration policy.

Eric L. McDaniel is an associate professor in the Department of Government and a fellow of both the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis and the Population Research Center at the University of Texas. He is also an affiliated scholar with Public Religion Research Institute. He is the author of Politics in the Pews: The Political Mobilization of Black Churches (University of Michigan Press, 2008). He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

WC Rises in Ranks of Top Institutions on Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education and US News & World Report Lists

September 30, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Washington College has been ranked higher on both the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education’s Best Colleges in America list – coming in at No. 189 – and U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of National Liberal Arts Colleges, earning a spot in the top 100 with a tie for No. 96.

Released earlier this month, the WSJ/THE ranking marks a rise in score for Washington College, which was at No. 221 on the 2020 list. Among Maryland colleges, WC is 4^th overall, ranking only behind JHU when compared to other private institutions in the state. The WSJ/THE Best Colleges in America 2021 list ranks the top 800 institutions.

Previously at No. 105, Washington College jumped nine spots in being named No. 96 (tie) for National Liberal Arts Colleges as part of U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 education rankings. The college also earned a No. 60 ranking for Best Value Schools and a No. 173 ranking for Top Performers on Social Mobility, which recognizes success at advancing social mobility by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants.

One notable component within the WSJ/THE ranking are the survey results, which show that nearly 8/10 respondents feel that Washington College was the right choice, and that if given the opportunity to choose again, they would make the same decision. And 7.6/10 felt that Washington College provides an environment that is both inspiring and motivating.

This recognition follows the recent news that WC was once again named one of Princeton Review’s 386 Best Colleges, and its inclusion on their list of Great Schools for Psychology Majors.

The WSJ/THE rankings are based on 15 factors across four main categories: Forty percent of each school’s overall score comes from student outcomes, including graduates’ salaries and debt; 30% comes from academic resources, including how much the college spends on teaching; 20% from student engagement, including whether students feel prepared to use their education in the real world, and 10% from the learning environment, including the diversity of the student body and academic staff.

Some other college rankings focus on the quality of incoming students at a university, examining standardized-test scores and how students ranked in their high-school class. But the WSJ/THE College Rankings take a different approach, emphasizing the return on investment students see after they graduate. Schools that fare the best on this list have graduates who generally are satisfied with their educational experience and land relatively high-paying jobs that can help them pay down student loans.

U.S. News calculates its ranking based on six categories which are each weighted differently: student outcomes (40%), faculty resources (20%), expert opinion (20%), financial resources (10%), student excellence (7%) and alumni giving (3%).

For the first time, U.S. News considered student debt in their ranking. The student outcomes category now takes into account the average amount of accumulated federal loan debt among full-time undergraduate borrowers at graduation and the percentage of full-time undergraduates in a graduating class who borrowed federal loans.

Washington College continues to climb in the ranks of colleges and universities by providing a combination of academic quality and economic value, while embracing our vision of the transformative power of the liberal arts.

WC Hosts Book Talks with Roberto Lovato and Dr. Jennifer Rudolph in Celebration of Latinx Heritage Month

September 23, 2020 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Washington College will be hosting two virtual book talks in honor of Latinx Heritage Month. Featured speakers include Roberto Lovato, whose new memoir Unforgetting is hailed as an urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life; and Dr. Jennifer Domino Rudolph, whose study Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism and Performance of Identity, examines the perception by media and fans of Latino baseball players and the consumption of these athletes as both social and political stand-ins for an entire culture.

Dr. Rudolph’s talk entitled #PonleAcento: Major League Baseball and Latinx Identity will be held on September 30 at 7:00 PM on Zoom. To register, use this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqceCsrzstGNwG2WGclYQvBkQQKsfhQgvv

Her work considers the ambivalent and contradictory representations of Latino baseball players, seen both as a threat and as an example of the American Dream. Professor Rudolph sheds new light on the ambivalences of mainstream American media and fans towards Latinx culture.

Her book also analyzes the #PonleAcento (put an accent on it) campaign that was unveiled by Major League Baseball in response to LA Dodgers infielder Adrian Gonzalez’s push to properly display Latinx player’s names on their jerseys.

Dr. Rudolph will discuss her work and also participate in a Q&A.

Dr. Jennifer Domino Rudolph is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College.

Goldstein Lecture Series: Roberto Lovato, Unforgetting

On Wednesday, October 7 at 7 PM, the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs is hosting a book talk with Roberto Lovato for his new book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Grans, and Revolution in the Americas.

In Unforgetting, Roberto interweaves his father’s complicated history and his own with first-hand reportage on gang life, state violence, and the heart of the immigration crisis in both El Salvador and the United States. In doing so he makes the political personal, revealing the cyclical ways violence operates in our homes and our societies, as well as the ways hope and tenderness can rise up out of the darkness if we are courageous enough to unforget.

According to Kirkus Reviews, “Journalist and activist Lovato delivers a memorable indictment of the civil war in Central America that drove a wave of migration to the U.S.—and spawned gang warfare in the new country…A provocative, revealing work of journalism that explains gang behavior but does not idealize it.” Learn more about Unforgetting here.

Lovato will both discuss the book and read passages from it, followed by a Q&A.

About Roberto Lovato

Lovato is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on the drug war, violence, terrorism in Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Haiti, France and the United States.

Latinx Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15, and celebrates the multicultural and multiethnic nature of Latinx, Latino and Hispanic-identified communities.

George Deserves A Hand!

September 19, 2020 by Spy Desk 4 Comments

George who? George Washington. We should applaud him here in Chestertown because he had the foresight to found our own Washington College – the first college chartered after American independence – in 1782. Little did he know how important it would become to our community and the future of education. It serves as a foundation of our colonial heritage and history. Its students, faculty and staff support local businesses and community projects. Let us not forget the educational opportunities that are afforded to all of us — in the classroom, via field trips and other venues. As an agricultural and river town, it enhances our understanding of our unique natural environments and enables us to appreciate and care for them.

Not only can we applaud George, but we can lend a helping hand to enable his legacy – Washington College – to continue to attain its goals as a small liberal arts educational institution. It is not only small businesses that have suffered under our current unique financial challenges, colleges suffer the same constraints. Did you know, however, that there is an organization that was established 50 years ago by the wife of a Washington College President, Helen Gibson, whose mission was to foster closer relationships between the community and the college as well as work to benefit the college? The members of the WOMEN’S LEAGUE OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE have continued to raise funds to enable enhancements to the college’s Miller Library, endow the Helen Gibson Practice Room in the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts as well as numerous other projects. Perhaps the program that continues to excite its members the most, however, was the creation of — and continued contributions to — an endowment for the annual Helen Gibson Scholarship granted to a student from the Eastern Shore. That assistance has been critical in enabling its recipients to participate in the excellent education that Washington College offers.

In these times of masks, lines on the floor to define “social distancing,” off-site learning and other disruptions to our normal lives, perhaps it is time to do something that we can all feel good about that has a long-term impact. As a member of our lovely community, join the Women’s League and help sustain the cherished Helen Gibson Scholarships. The happy recipient could be your neighbor!

For more information, follow the League on www.Facebook.com/WLofWC or visit our website www.womensleagueofwashingtoncollege.com. Contact the League at womensleagueofwashingtoncollege@gmail.com.

WC-ALL Seeks Proposals for the Upcoming Spring Semester

September 7, 2020 by WC-ALL Leave a Comment

Planning for 2021 is already under discussion at WC-ALL. The WC-ALL Curriculum Committee, headed by Ed Minch, is now preparing the course lineup for the SPRING 2021 semester and seeking course proposals from the wider community as well as WC-ALL members. New ideas as well as old favorites are welcome!

WC-ALL instructors are volunteers who take pleasure in sharing their insights and knowledge with others. Some are retired teachers or professors, others have had interesting or unusual careers or life experiences outside the academic world. Lifelong hobbies and avocations also offer great backgrounds for developing a course that appeals to WC-ALL members committed to the joys of lifelong learning.

Spring semester 2021 will again run for two sessions, from January 31- March 12th, and from March 21- April 30^th. Classes generally meet once a week, for 60-75 minutes for four to six weeks. Courses are offered in both early and late blocks during the semester. Class structures range from lectures to moderated discussions to demonstrations, and even off-campus excursions. *NOTE: Although we hope Spring 2021 will progress with two full six-week sessions, please be aware that should circumstances change we stand ready to make adjustments to the course schedule as needed.

Please note that most in-person classes meet in William Smith Hall, Daly Hall and Goldstein Hall, with some off-campus locations for larger classes. All are accessible for the handicapped. Our virtual platform is Zoom, and instruction and training is available from the Curriculum Committee. WC-ALL has its own Zoom account, so you are not required to purchase any of that programming.

Course proposals should be submitted no later than Thursday, October 1, 2020. Turnaround time for catalog production is tight; we appreciate your prompt submissions. You may submit proposals in one of TWO ways: you can either scan and email your proposal to wc_all@washcoll.edu,OR you can print and mail hard copy proposals to Sue Calloway, PO Box 7885, Newark DE 19714 (due to campus closure). Do NOT use “WC-ALL” on the envelope please, just Sue’s name. We are not currently able to accept course proposal forms on our website. We hope to have this feature available again soon.

If you have any questions, please contact Ed by email at edminch3@gmail.com or at home at 410-778-0990. You can be in touch with Sue Calloway, Office Administrator, at wc_all@washcoll.edu, or during office hours (Monday/Tuesday/Thursday 9 -12) at 410-778-7221.

Sections

More