Wednesday was a special day for me as President Hopkins hosted a reception welcoming me to Wright State. We celebrated the accomplishments of the college, showcased our excellent students, and acknowledged the CoLA Leadership Team. I have been so positively welcomed by the Wright State community. Thank you all! And thanks to the President for providing such proactive, visionary leadership and to Board of Trustees Chair Larry Klaben for providing a warm introduction. Wright State has such a bright future and I am truly happy to be a part of that. Below is something that most of us did not see - the full cake before it was devoured!
Congratulations to December Green for receiving Wright State's International Education Award for 2013. Congratulations also to the other excellent nominees who do so much to increase and help create a vibrant, global population on campus, including CoLA faculty Jeanette Horwitz, LEAP, and Kirsten Halling, French.
If you missed the good news, last Saturday's Raiderthon raised more than $50,000 for the Dayton Children's Hospital. Imagine more than 600 people dancing in the Apollo Room for 15 hours from 10 a.m. until 1 a.m., all to support sick children in need. What a great example of how our students engage and transform our community! Thanks to our leaders in Student Government and the Office of Student Affairs, Sukhman Singh and Kyle Powell, for overseeing such a successful, positive venture. And a BIG Thank You to Kate Hoover, a Mass Communication major, for donating $1,000! Check out the video announcing the amount raised. Great Job!
Last Friday I joined nearly 900 people from our community who attended the inaugural TEDxDayton at the Victoria Theatre downtown. This high-energy, action-packed day offered attendees a full schedule of amazing speakers who compelled us to think big, be innovative, and inspire others to make this world and our community a better place. I was excited to see Wright State so well represented at this event. We were in the audience and on stage! Just from CoLA alone we had presenters Judith Ezekiel, Women's Studies; pianist Steffin Johnson who obtained his bachelor's degree in Music from Wright State in 2008; and professor and poet Jeneen Furaha Henry-Jones who obtained her master's degree in English from Wright State. This event took hundreds of volunteers, but I'm proud to say that one of the people who spearheaded TedxDayton was Larry Klaben, Chair of the WSU Board of Trustees and alumnus of our very own Urban Affairs program, and Robert Sweeney, Executive Vice-President, was an integral organizer as well.
During a recent walk-about, I visited the Physical Anthropology Laboratory class overseen by Amelia Hubbard and Genevieve Ritchie-Ewing, Anthropology, where I saw some familiar sites of students analyzing, measuring, and discussing hominid skulls. Boy, did that bring me back! Back in the day I taught this subject and the faces are still the same, although some of the names have been changed, all for the advancement of science (and people's careers). It was great to hear that obscure scientific nomenclature again.
Did you see the large crane on the quad this week? I promised you something BIG and BOLD was coming! Millett Hall now proudly displays a large window graphic featuring four of our spectacular students, spread across 20 windows! The Faces of CoLA are Michael Tyler, Master of Humanities; Micah Zavacky, Art & Art History; Kseniya 'Kasie' Maksachova, Sociology; and Khadija Kirksey, Women's Studies and International Studies. Snippets from their videos, along with those of our other students, have been combined to provide an excellent marketing tool for CoLA that appears on the front page of our website. Thank you to Michael, Micah, Kasie, and Khadija!
For each of these four students there are countless others in CoLA, all with their own great story to share. Thank you for taking the time to get to know our students, hear their unique stories, and have a positive impact on their experiences at Wright State.
Next week we will take a break from CoLA News to celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends and family. I hope you enjoy the time off to relax and give thanks.
