Author Archives | Grace Pecci

YMCA and KSC students come together

On March 6, 2018, The Keene Family YMCA will be hosting an event that will give free advocacy training for those who are interested. Advocacy experts from New Futures Kids Count and N.H. Children’s Trust will be conducting the training. Former New Hampshire Senator Molly Kelly will also be speaking.

Colton McCracken / Senior Photographer

Colton McCracken / Senior Photographer

According to new-futures.org/kidscount, New Futures Kids Count “undertakes data projects to ensure that New Hampshire-based data is collected and put to use for Granite State children and families.” New Futures Kids Count uses the data found to advocate for strong policies that will benefit the children of New Hampshire.

N.H. Children’s Trust is an organization that also advocates for children. According to the organization’s “About Us” page, it ensures “safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments for children by educating, advocating, and collaborating.”

This training isn’t the first to come to the YMCA. Development and Community Impact Director Marj Droppa said, in September of 2017, the YMCA offered its first advocacy training as part of a community impact event series that was put on.

“We did what we call an advocacy 101 training,” Droppa said. “Part of the mission of the [YMCA] is to help to develop a civic engagement and advocacy skills in the lives of the people who live in our community… It’s part of our work to advocate to help make the lives of our community’s residents better.”

Droppa said the training that will be taking place on March 6 will be a “level two” type of training, as it dives into a deeper set of skills.

Droppa began working at the YMCA in 2010 as a group fitness instructor. By 2015 she became a board member, but it wasn’t until May of 2017 that she became the development and community impact director.

Working for an organization whose mission values mirror her own is something that Droppa said is very important.

“There’s so many ways the [YMCA] works to strengthen the Monadnock region and help the people who live here and that really resonates with me because I have a passion for doing that exact thing,” Droppa said.

Droppa also said one thing that is wanted at the YMCA is the voice of college students.

“We really want that voice at the [YMCA] and at this event because we think it is so important to have your voice embraced,” Droppa said. One way the YMCA represents the voices of college students is through their interns.

Droppa said the YMCA has Keene State College interns in their Healthy Lifestyles department, Marketing department and Development and Community Impact department.

KSC seniors and communication majors Taylor Handy and Sarah Hart both work with Droppa in the Community Impact Department.

Handy and Hart said they are promoting, advertising and communicating about the advocacy event.

“We’ve emailed legislators, faculty, staff, student organizations some other local nonprofits, and schools districts in the area, so basically just trying to get the word out about this event and how important it is and just trying to see how many people that we can get there,” Handy said.

Hart added, “And really we’re just trying to get Keene State [students] to come to the event because our supervisor really wants us to and we think it’s such a great idea too… it’s really like about bringing the community together.”

Hart said it is also an important event because it discusses life skills that KSC students, as future employees, are going to be able to use.

Handy then said, “We’re going to be graduating soon. We are going to have to advocate ourselves with jobs raises, with apartments and cars and everything like that so that’s just a small idea of it, but you’re always going to be advocating for yourself so this is a really great tool.”

This event will be held from 6-8 p.m.. For more information, visit keeneymca.org.

Grace Pecci can be contacted at gpecci@kscequinox.com

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Where passion meets talent

Keene State College’s current Interim Dean of Arts and Humanities and Professor of English Kirsti Sandy has recently been awarded the 2017 Monadnock Essay Collection Prize from Bauhan Publishing. The prize includes publishing the winner’s book, an additional free, 50 copies and a financial prize.

Sandy’s essay collection titled, “She Lived and Others Girls Died” reads like a memoir and, starts off in the 1970s, following her life from age three to 21.

Sandy has been writing since she was young. She said she used to steal stories, such as Cinderella, and make up her own story to it. Although she has been writing for years, Sandy said there was a time she didn’t want to write after having a bad experience with an unsupportive creative writing professor in college. However, when Sandy went back to graduate school, she said she took a lot of classes that focused on creative nonfiction and essay. She said those genres really spoke to her.

Ethan Platt / Senior Multimedia Staff

Ethan Platt / Senior Multimedia Staff

A good way to talk about why she loves the genre, she said, is a quote from her eight-year-old daughter – that “it’s a true story, so it can be about what you want it to be.”

“That’s what I like about writing true stories,” Sandy explained, “because it gives you, in a sense, the power to decide what it means, you know, things that happen to you. Rather than really accepting other people’s versions of that, you get to work that out for yourself and say, ‘Here’s what this means and here’s what sense I make of it,’ and it’s a really empowering thing to be able to do.”

Sandy considers her writing voice in the piece she submitted to be very casual and conversational. She said she thinks it’s going to be interesting if her colleagues and students read it because it’s not a super, “Oh here’s my great story of all my lovely things I did,” type of story.

“I’m writing about adolescents in college, my college years. I can’t sanitize those stories, they won’t have the same impact at all,” Sandy said. Rather than portraying her college experience as something it wasn’t, Sandy put in everything she dealt with, including times where she felt she messed up.

“You know, probably the worst villain in the book is me,” Sandy laughed. “We all do things for attention or because we get swept up and we do these things, but it’s important to own that and to say, ‘Look I’m really sorry that I did this and it was horrible.’”

Sandy’s essay collection has a lot of emphasis on her college years and what it was like to grow up in the 70s and 80s. She said she didn’t think the 80s was a great time to grow up and she wasn’t nostalgic for it.

“It was kind of like the trickle down economics, like you have to succeed and then if you succeed other people can’t, so you kind of have to push people out of the way,” Sandy said. “One of the things that, when I started writing these essays, I thought about was, ‘How does that impact people’s personal relationships? How do they deal with each other?’”

Sandy submitted her essay collection in October. She had over 20 years of work all together and said she didn’t have to scramble. She submitted it basically two weeks before the deadline. This wasn’t the first time she had submitted work to be looked over.

Sandy said she had some near misses with agents last year. Every time, she said she would hear the same thing, to rewrite her piece as a full-on memoir and they’d take another look.

“So I had to think at that point, did I want it as a full-on memoir? And frankly, I didn’t. It would mean adding filler and I just don’t think it would work… now I don’t have to do that, I can publish it as a collection as it is meant to be read,” Sandy said.

Sandy however, has not been in this process alone. She has had the support of her students and her colleagues.

Sandy said in her classes, she would occasionally read them a piece of hers and they would give her very honest feedback. She also had her colleagues, Jeff Friedman and Kathleen Fagley, look over her work.

KSC senior and english major with a concentration in literature and writing Adam Filkins took the Autobiography Workshop course with Sandy a few years ago. He said he was bummed that he hasn’t seen her in a teaching setting in so long since she has changed her position. In his course with her, Filkins said Sandy “very much let you explore yourself in [the] memoir class.” Filkins said he really liked having her as a professor.

Professor of English Kathleen Fagley said she’s known Sandy since she worked at the Child Development Center in August of 2009, and Sandy asked her if she would be interested in being an adjunct in the English Department. Eventually, Fagley said yes.

Fagley has read Sandy’s work before and even read an early draft of her essay collection.

“She’s a very authentic writer and she’s not afraid to expose some things about herself,” Fagley said of Sandy.

Fagley described Sandy to be a “modern-day Charles Dickens” in her writing because she     brings in a lot of cultural artifacts from the 70s and 80s.

“I think what happens when I read her work, what resonates with me, is what cultural artifacts of 2018 will people 20 years from now be picking up on and writing about? She does such a good job, and when she is writing, I start to remember these things,” Fagley said.

In regards to Sandy’s style, she said, “She’s very quirky, very interesting, she’s got very interesting aspects and expands on them.”

Grace Pecci can be contacted at gpecci@kscequinox.com

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‘Open College’ attracts community members

On Wednesday, Oct.18, Keene State College held its first ever “Open College” event, where students and members of the community were allowed to sit in and listen to various KSC faculty teach a lesson from one of their classes for 90 minutes.

History Professor Dr. Nick Germana came up with the idea, suggesting it to KSC Interim President Melinda Treadwell, KSC Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs William Seigh and a couple of people in the Continuing Education Program, and from there, the idea took off.

Angelique Inchierca / Photo Editor

Angelique Inchierca / Photo Editor

Continuing Education Program Coordinator Lorie Rogers stated in an e-mail that when Germana shared his idea for the new program, they loved the concept. “Continuing Education’s role was to support Professor Germana and the other professors, bring awareness to the new program, advertise the presentations and help in any way possible,” Rogers stated.

To reach out to the community, Rogers stated that the office did much of it electronically, as they coordinate with many programs and were able to reach out to a number of audiences. She stated they e-mailed local business people, area teachers, the Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning (CALL) program, students and the campus community.

“Our electronic messages had a very high open rate, with more than 3,300 clicks,” Rogers stated prior to the event. “This is very encouraging, so I’m anticipating a well-attended, interesting and educational evening for students, staff and community members.”

After the event, Rogers stated she was “pleased with the turnout and pleased to see a high level of audience engagement.”

According to Rogers, they welcomed about 60 people, including about nine KSC students and many CALL members.

When explaining what his purpose was for the Open College program, Germana said, “I thought it would be nice to do something that would bring people in from the community to see what we do and, in particular, to see what faculty here at Keene State do.”

Germana said he feels there are a lot of people outside of the campus community who really don’t know what goes on in college classrooms and that some try to create a certain image of college students and professors. He wanted to bring people in and “invite them to participate in the conversation, rather than it being sort of this inside versus outside kind of mentality.”

Germana not only came up with the idea of the Open College program, he also gave the first presentation for this event titled, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler: Nazi Electoral Successes, 1923-1932. When it came down to what Germana wanted to teach, Germana picked his topic because he said he thought it is particularly relevant right now.

“What I’m going to talk about is kind of the rise of the Nazi’s in the 1920s [and] second half of the 20s,” Germana explained. “…They were an alternative radical group to the established Conservative political parties, and so I think at this moment in the United States and Europe as well, we see the emergence of these ultra-nationalists and so called ‘alt-right’ political movements.”

Germana also took parts of his presentation from of his classes that he teaches at KSC. This was the idea behind the event– Germana wanted faculty to use materials they already had prepared so it would not be a lot of extra work. This way, community members would have a real experience of a class the way faculty teach it at KSC on a normal school day.

KSC sophomore and Holocaust and genocide studies major Kalia Matthews was among the audience on Wednesday night.

Matthews attended the event out of pure interest and said she wanted to hear what Germana had to say, as well as see if she could base it off of anything she had learned in class. She said his presentation took on a political viewpoint, rather focusing simply on the history of the Holocaust.

Matthews said, “He brought up a lot of different viewpoints about the Holocaust, whether it could happen again or not, which is definitely scary.”

When asked whether she would attend another Open College event, Matthews said she would be willing to go again.

“It’s cool to see students interacting with people in the community, especially older adults because they bring different opinions versus what we’re learning now,” Matthews said.

The next presentation entitled Air Quality in Keene by Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Nora Traviss will be taking place in Rhodes Hall, Room S203 on Wednesday, Nov. 15 from 6:00-7:30 p.m..

Grace Pecci can be contacted at gpecci@kscequinox.com

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Professor publishes seventh book

It’s a Wednesday afternoon around 5:45 p.m.. Keene State College English Lecturer Jeff Friedman is packing up his materials as he gets ready for his long car ride home. Among the books he’s packed away is his newest publication, “Floating Tales”- a collection of what he says is “umbrella-ed under prose poetry.” Floating Tales is Friedman’s seventh book he’s published, and when explaining what his book is comprised of, he said you’d have to go back to where he started.

Angelique Inchierca / Equinox Staff

Angelique Inchierca / Equinox Staff

Friedman was born in Chicago and grew up working in the Garment District in St. Louis, Missouri.

“I was really probably a poet of place,” Friedman said. “When I was much younger, like a kid, I was kind of writing these little funny tales and making up stories about my schoolmates in sixth grade, like someone kissing somebody who wasn’t actually doing it, getting people in trouble.”

From there, Friedman said his writing evolved over the years as he began to write family work poems. As he got older, he went through a point where his poetry was very morbid.

“Growing up, I was very funny and, you know, class clown early on in my poetry career,” Friedman said. “I wanted to be taken seriously, and I know when you’re being funny, you’re not taken seriously, so I kind of made sure everything was morbid and ended in death.”

But as time went on, Friedman’s humor couldn’t help but show through his writing again. He worked on more improvisational pieces and said he began getting up on stage with his friend in New York.

“I started really getting into letting my real personality come out too much,” Friedman explained. After this, he began working towards satire, which eventually turned into what he considers mini tales, fables, comic sketches, micro stories and even jokes.

Friedman said he was influenced by many Jewish comedians. He described the humor a lot of times as “these funny things, but sort of wipe the smile off your face by the end.”

At some point, Friedman said he decided, “There’s nothing wrong with entertaining people, making them laugh or making them interesting.”

In terms of his work recently, he said he is trying to get back into writing poetry in lines, but that most of his work is turning into fables.

“Over the years I’ve learned how to do different things with them…I’ve been able to apply them to situations in the world, being able to comment on political things and sort of make like a metaphor for [people] to talk about it,” Friedman explained about his recent works.

When asked what advice he would give to aspiring writers and poets, Friedman said to stay persistent and find your own voice through reading. He said it’s been fun teaching at KSC and getting his students to a place where they can let go and write interesting things.

“We’re all expressive animals; that’s why humanities is so important,” Friedman explained. “Because the greatest thing is we have this above everything else, we can express ourselves.”

KSC English Department Chair Brinda Charry has worked closely with Friedman for the 12 years she’s been at the college.

“We sometimes collaborate, we teach classes together,” Charry explained. “He’s been here much longer than me and he would always give me tips and ideas.”

Charry said she has read his newest publication and thinks he is a fantastic poet. She describes him as being lyrical, clever and funny.

“This is a very unusual piece of work in that it is prose poetry, so he combines the kinds of techniques and skills of writing of poetry and it’s got an ear for sound and image along with narrative along with storytelling, so I think he’s an exceptional poet,” she commented.

Charry also said she feels that Friedman has an ability to tell a good story even as he’s writing.

KSC senior and elementary education with an English writing option Ariel Freedman has taken four classes with Friedman. The classes included Creative Writing, Prose Poetry and Micro Fiction, Writing Funny and Writing Portfolio. While she hasn’t read his newest publication “Floating Tales,” she said she has read different pieces of his in her classes.

As a professor, Freedman said she feels that he gives good feedback.

“I feel like when I’m looking at his writing, I’m looking at an example of something that’s what I’m trying to write like,” she said. “He has a really bold style, a really provocative style and… it’s worded really well.”

Freedman also said she’s learned a lot from him having him as a professor.

“I learned what microfiction is and what flash fiction is. He’s also a good resource for if you want to get your work published,” she said.

Freedman continued, “He’s opened my eyes to different kinds of poetry that I didn’t know existed.”

Grace Pecci can be contacted at gpecci@kscequinox.com

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KSC faculty members present Gravitación

On Wednesday, April 5, Gravitación, an early music ensemble comprised of Keene State College (KSC) faculty, presented Le Stagioni (The Seasons).

The performance was split into four sections based on each season of the year and all of the songs were sung in Italian.

The night began with La Primavera (spring) and ended with L’inverno (winter).

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Gravitación consists of five faculty members, including Sherezade Panthaki and Molly Netter singing soprano, Jay Carter on countertenor, Daniel Carberg on tenor, Matthew Leese on baritone and Nathanial Cox playing the theorbo.

The performance started with all six performers out on the stage for the first song. There were three other songs performed during La Primavera as well.

For the second song, Carberg and Leese sang while Cox strummed the theorbo.

The third song had the entire group performing again and the final song of La Primavera was a solo from the theorbo.

Those who weren’t performing sat on the side of the stage silently and listened.

After each song, the group fell silent for a couple extra seconds, letting the music sink in and signaling that they were moving on to their next song.

When the songs from La Primavera were finished, Cox came out and introduced himself and his instrument.

He explained that a lute, similar to a theorbo, was most commonly used during the Renaissance times.

According to Cox, the theorbo became popular in the 17th century.

When explaining why he was using a theorbo, he joked and said it was the answer for how to make a lute sound louder.

After this introduction, the group went on to perform the second group of songs for L’Estate (summer).

The group performed four songs here and then there was a brief 10 minute intermission for the audience.

The group then began singing songs from L’autunno (fall).

They performed five more songs before moving on to the final section, L’inverno (winter) where they performed the final three songs of the show.

When they ended their last song, almost everyone in the crowd stood up for a standing ovation.

Among standing audience members was KSC first-year Laurel Mendelsohn.

Mendelsohn said she attended the performance to see her voice teacher Dr. Carberg.

She said she saw the group perform earlier in her workshop and she was interested.

Mendelsohn praised the performance after she watched it.

“I thought it was amazing and I am astonished by their voices,” Mendelsohn said.

“I haven’t heard Dr. Carberg or Dr. Leese actually perform before today.”

She said the emotions and communication between singers was phenomenal and the transitions between all the seasons and the feelings that accompanied them was amazing.

Overall, she said she thought it was a phenomenal concert.

In terms of learning from the performers, Mendelsohn said, “I try to take away something from every performance I watch and I will definitely take away the fact that they were so just in tune with each other… I have trouble as a soloist a lot of the time tuning into a group or tuning into whenever I’ve been doing something with other people, which I’ve been learning about a lot more this semester.”

KSC first-year music major Sarah Ames accompanied Mendelsohn to the show. She said she also attended to see Carberg perform.

Ames said, “Early music has always been an interest of mine and I saw them perform as well and it was amazing.”

After the show, Ames said she liked everything she saw.

“It was absolutely breathtaking. Like Laurel said, there’s so much emotion being conveyed, you could feel it, the differences from spring into summer and then into fall and into winter. It was phenomenal, I just don’t know how to describe it. It was amazing.”

KSC first-year and double major in music performance and music composition Tyler Martin also attended the show with Mendelsohn and Ames.

Martin explained that they were all in the same studio for private voice lessons and wanted to see their professors perform.

When Martin was asked what he thought of the performance, he pointed to Mendelsohn and Ames and said, “What they said.”

Martin joked, “I mean [Laurel] didn’t leave anything for me to say, it was amazing.”

Grace Pecci can be contacted at gpecci@kscequinox.com

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Students receive grants for summer research

Three Keene State College students of 11 applicants have been awarded grants to fund their research projects from the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF).

Interested students were asked to submit an application, a recommendation and a timeline of their project, according to the Center of Creative Inquiry (CCI) Coordinator and History Professor Nick Germana.

The CCI is co-run by Germana, who represents the the School of Arts and Humanities, and Margaret Smith, who represents the School of Professional and Graduate Studies.

What SURF does

As a coordinator for the CCI, Germana said he oversees all of the different funding programs geared towards undergraduate research.

The idea of the SURF program is to have “a stipend for students so that for the summer, [they] can engage in some kind of a project or creative endeavor,” Germana said.

Students who win the fellowship are paid $4,000 through the summer, “kind of in installments,” Germana described.

He said the money is given so that students can primarily focus on their research projects for the duration of the summer, rather than having to work a job simultaneously.

After the summer is over, the student then has to provide a report for the following year to explain what they’ve done.

When asked what the board of the SURF program looks for, Germana said, “One thing we do ask in the application is to let us know what they expect to come out of this.”

He continued, “We really do want some product, we don’t tell them what it has to be. They need to tell us in the end what they are going to have.”

Germana said that they also require the winners to present in the Academic Excellence Conference (AEC), taking place in April, and winners are also required to submit a proposal to present at the Council of Liberal Arts Colleges (COLAC).

Germana said this is a great opportunity for students because if their proposals are accepted, they get to travel in the Northeast region for conferences.

The awards for the SURF program are the same for each winner.

Germana said the amount of awards varies from year to year, depending on “how much money is in the Provost’s office.”

For this year’s fellowship, two of the awards are funded by the Provost’s office and one is funded from outside donors, according to Germana.

Germana also discussed the rewarding experiences that come out of the SURF program.

“I think this gives students the opportunity to engage in high level research that they don’t have the opportunity to otherwise… Students, especially students who are very interested in graduate school of some kind, this gives them an opportunity to take.”

He said that the student research is “largely independent work that [they] would be doing in graduate school and it is so much more in depth of what [they] could do in class. [They] are pursuing an interest of [their] own… [and] it’s giving them an intense research experience that they really can’t get any other way…the point is for them to have some sort of project at the end.”

Nick Germana’s colleague, health science professor Margaret Smith, also is a coordinator for the CCI.

In an e-mail, Smith stated her role as a CCI coordinator as being “responsible for working together with [her] advisory board to advocate for and advance undergraduate scholarship at Keene State College, to coordinate and integrate the various programs currently supporting undergraduate scholarship and to expand these opportunities for faculty and students.”

She also stated that “each coordinator serves both as an ambassador and a faculty development leader within his/her respective school.”

Smith stated that she believes, “CCI, with the purpose of promoting undergraduate research and creative endeavors, is very beneficial to students.”

Recipient Jessica Vandevord

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Chemistry and Biology

One student who is getting ready to experience that “beneficial” undergraduate research process is KSC junior Jessica Vandevord.

Vandevord is majoring in chemistry and minoring in biology.

She said she is very excited to have the opportunity to work on her research and knew it was a great opportunity to do a research project “over the summer as opposed to having four plus classes and having too much work to do [to get it complete].”

Vandevord’s mentor for her research is Professor Brian Anderson.

She said she picked him because he is her inorganic chemistry professor, her advisor and because she has been doing research with him since the spring of her first year.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to do an extensive research project,” Vandevord said, “because during the semester, I dont have the time to put in eight plus hours of research a week, so we had discussed some of my research options and the SURF [program] came up and it was like, ‘Oh hey would you be interested in helping me with my SURF project,’… [Choosing my mentor] was kind of an easy pick.”

Vandevord said she has already started her preliminary research, but the start of her research is for the AEC in April. For the application, she said it was 12 pages written out with an abstract of what she was going to do, the project goals, background and references.

“I have four or five goals that I would like to get done over the summer through the course of my project,” Vandevord said.

She described her application as an extensive, “‘Here’s what I want to do, this is why I want to do it and this is why it is beneficial to you.’”

Vandevord’s project is focused on optimizing reactions.

“I have a synthesis that I’m doing. I’m trying to make a specific product and I’m trying to make the reaction of product the best that it can be, so I’m trying to get the highest yield with the shortest amount of time. I’m going to apply that to an array of different products, because each product has different biological activities and those biological activities will be tested at the end of my summer project,” Vandevord said.

She said that she will be utilizing a “professor’s” lab in the science center where no other classes are taught.

Vandevord noted that she does plan on going to graduate school for chemistry.

She said she is a little nervous to present at the AEC conference, but is also excited.

“This is the same research I’ve been doing since my [first] year, so my classes in chemistry are starting to meet with the research I am doing, so I’m learning more about it and I’m really excited to have the opportunity to put it into words so that my family can understand it and my friends that aren’t in science understand it and I’m so excited to bring it to other people.”

Recipient Geoffrey Edwards

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Music Technology and Composition

KSC sophomore and double major in music technology and music composition Geoffrey Edwards is another student who won the 2017 fellowship, but his project focuses on music theory.

Edwards said he first learned about the SURF program when he was in a music workshop class last year.

He said he was interested after his teacher described what the program was about, but he missed last year’s application deadline.

He decided to learn more about the program and started planning his project ideas last summer.

His mentor for his research is Dr. Heather Gilligan.

Edwards said Dr. Gilligan gave him “a really good layout and idea about how [he] should be going about the SURF program, ways in which [he] should be organizing [his] time and what [he] should be studying in order to get the exact goal of what [he] want[s] for this.”

Edwards said they felt that they had a perfect lineup and could make a really great project together.

His project will be the analyzation of a few piano sonatas that he has picked out, “written by earlier composers in the late romantic, classical period, which is roughly around the late 18th [and] early 19th century music,” Edwards said.

He will also be analyzing the modulation and chromatic techniques that these artists use.

“Using what I learned in music theory in school and with the musical seminars I’ve been taking, I’ll be using that to analyze the pieces and I’ll be writing a paper on each one,” Edwards said.

“So after I’ve studied all the pieces that I want to and written about each one, theoretically, I will then be writing my own composition. [It will] probably be a piano sonata and I’m going to…use a little bit of [the 18th and 19th centruy composer’s] approaches to how they piece together their music.”

Edwards said he would like to perform his compositions when he has his composition recital by his final year, but he will also be performing it at academic conferences.

He said he is a little nervous to present and that even as a performer and a music major, he still has anxiety.

The piano is not Edwards’ main instrument; he said his main instrument is first the cello, then piano and he also knows certain chords on the guitar.

Edwards said he will be working on his project from June 1 until the first few weeks of August and then may go home to work, but he plans on spending a majority of his summer in Keene to work on putting his project together.

When asked how he felt about being one of three out of 11 applicants who was chosen for the fellowship, he said he felt very lucky.

“I felt really honored in a sense, the fact that my project was seen as wanted and recommended by professionals to go about and take part in, and it gives me more of a drive now to make it as good as I want it to be, so I’m excited,” Edwards said.

Recipient Lisa Donnelly

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Tim Smith / Photo Editor

Geography

The final student who received the 2017 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship is Lisa Donnelly, a 38-year-old KSC student majoring in geography with specialization in Geography Information Systems (GIS).

Donnelly’s mentor is Dr. Christopher Brehme, who was the one who brought the idea of participating in the SURF program to her attention.

“I had seen [the SURF program] on the [KSC] website, but I didn’t really give it much thought,” Donnelly said.

“Then we got together after he got back from the UK for [another scholarship]. When he got back, we talked about different policies. It’s kind of an extension of what he was doing over there.”

Dr. Brehme is her advisor and helped her with a GIS project that she did last semester, and he is working with her to find her an internship.

For her GIS project, she took the database of old guests from where she works (at the Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont), from a period of about three years and put it all into a table based on zip code and used that to map where all of her guests were coming from.

For her SURF project, she said she is focusing on Landscapes Value Mapping.

She described this as almost “community service because we are going to be serving people at Ashuelot River Park and Greater Goose Pond Forest, mapping where people value different areas of the park.”

After this, Donnelly said, “We’re going to take this data, analyze it and map it, and that’s data that town planners can use to kind of decide where certain places need attention or where improvements need to be made…in general what areas need change… and what parts of each park the people really enjoy.”

Donnelly laughed when asked if she was nervous to present at the AEC conference and said yes, though it is something she has gotten used to.

She said that she presents often in the geography department, and for her senior seminar, she has to present with a group at the Annual Meeting of the Association of the American Geographers (AAG).

She said it felt awesome and kind of unexpected when she found out that she was awarded one of the three fellowships for this summer.

“It’s one of those things you kind of hope for, but you know it’s competitive so [receiving the fellowship] was a nice surprise,” Donnelly said.

Grace Pecci can be contacted at gpecci@kscequinox.com

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Faculty and staff host learning sessions for students based on their concerns

On Wednesday, Feb. 1, Keene State held its first Teach In, which consisted of sessions taught by KSC faculty and staff addressing current issues including immigration, transgender rights, environmental issues, fake news and much more. Those interested gathered in the Mabel Brown Room at 9:30 a.m. for the opening ceremony to listen to various speakers, including President Anne Huot and Provost William Seigh.

“What we’re doing today comes out of your concerns,” Huot began. She went on to discuss the importance of reflecting on values, listening to multiple perspectives and unifying the campus. She said that the point of the teach-in was to “renew what we believe- we value all of our community.”

KSC’s provost spoke along similar lines as Huot.

Samantha Moore / Art Director

Samantha Moore / Art Director

“We are here to deepen our knowledge…we are here to support our community,” Seigh said.

At 10:00 a.m., the sessions began. One of the first sessions dealt with issues surrounding immigration. Karen Balnis, Jessica Gagne Cloutier and Kim Schmidl-Gagne presented their session titled, “Immigration in America: How Do We Fix a System in Crisis?” From the beginning, each presenter pointed out that they were not experts on the situation, but they were open to discussion.

After breaking up students, staff and other faculty members who were able to attend into three groups, Cloutier explained how they wanted the session to run.

“Because this can be a pretty difficult conversation, we want to set up ground rules. We are going to set up into groups,” Cloutier said. “Everyone has a space at the table and everyone can speak…[and] we’re going to be open and maintain a respective atmosphere.”

Each group discussed the pros and cons of different issues that come with immigration, including protecting the borders, promoting economic prosperity in the U.S. and greeting new immigrants arriving.

Sophomore Alexis Stoner was one among many students who attended the session. Though she originally came to the session as a requirement for one of her classes, she expressed interest in the issue. Before the session, she discussed her thoughts on President Trump’s recent immigration ban.

“I don’t think I necessarily agree with it,” Stoner began. “I think there are a lot of good people in bad areas and we should let them in… there are bad people too, but I don’t think he needs to keep everyone out.”

After the session, Stoner said that she was glad she attended.

“I think that was very helpful to me in understanding what’s going on. I mean, I wasn’t very educated when I first came into this, so it definitely helped me see the pros and cons of everything. It was helpful how they went over every issue.”

Senior communication major Lauren Taddei was another KSC student who attended the teach-in. She attended “Kick-Ass Journalists: Speaking Truth to Power,” taught by Dr. Marianne Salcetti and Dr. Rose Kundanis, as a class requirement.

During this teach-in, Salcetti and Kundanis took turns discussing different influential journalists and their importance to the subject itself.

“When you’re called a ‘kick-ass journalist,’ it is a very good compliment,” Salcetti said to begin the session.

Taddei said she enjoyed hearing about the different journalists whom Salcetti and Kundanis presented the works off.

“Sometimes when you go to events like this, they aren’t interesting and don’t hold your attention, but this had my attention the whole time and left me wanting to know more and more about each topic. I think that this was a really good event to be held, especially with everything going on in our country right now,” Taddei said.

Taddei found this session to be rewarding and said she was glad she went. She said, “I 100 percent think that there should be a teach-in held once a semester. It was extremely informative, and even though I had to go for a class, it wasn’t something that I was dreading.”

The teach-in allowed the KSC community to come together and discuss important issues that are relevant to what is currently going on in the world.

Grace Pecci can be contacted at gpecci@kscequinox.com

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