U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan talks with KSC students on Monday night, Aug. 30. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was on campus on Monday night, August 30, and met with several teacher education students. KSC was the only institution of higher education that Sec. Duncan visited in the state, and several news outlets covered the event, including the New York Times,  the Keene Sentinel, the Nashua Telegraph, and the U.S. Department of Education.

If you missed his visit, we’ve posted a video that’s almost as good as being there.

Incoming students learn about the Green Bikes on campus from Peggy Richmond ‘93, Director of Admissions.

The Alumni Association helped host the first campus-wide Legacy Scavenger Hunt on Friday, August 27, as part of Orientation. This activity provided a fun, interactive way for students to learn about some of the important resources on campus, as well as some of Keene State’s history and traditions. Over 50 alumni, staff, and faculty members participated in a variety of ways: planning the activity, giving information to students at one of the 34 locations across campus, and providing information for alumni profiles that were set up in the Alumni Center. The event went really well and allowed us to bring over 1,100 first-year students into the Alumni Center to celebrate their first few days on campus and as part of the KSC community!

CANstruction is a design/build competition where groups compete to design and build giant structures made entirely out of canned foods. The results are displayed to the public as magnificent sculpture exhibits. Cans are then donated to local food pantries. Event sponsors will donate all cans needed for the sculpture. Teams DO NOT NEED TO SUPPLY THEIR OWN CANS. The CANstruction website displays photos and videos from other events around the country.

There are a few ways that you can participate:

Judge:
We are looking for an alumnus to serve as a judge for the event. You would need to be available in Keene during the day on Monday, November 1, 2010.

Form a Team:
If you are interested in getting a team together to compete, contact Sara Telfer at (603) 358-2425 or stelfer@keene.edu. We would love to have an alumni team involved!
Interest Deadline: September 10, 2010

The actual event will be Sunday, October 31, through Sunday, November 6, 2010.

• Team build date: October 31, 2010 @ 10 a.m. – Student Center Flag Room
• Judging: November 1, 2010 – Student Center Flag Room
• Awards will be given in the following categories: Best Meal, Best Use of Labels, Structural Ingenuity, and Jurors’ Favorite.
• Maximum size for a structure is 10′l x 10′w x 8′h.
• Display: November 1–6, 2010 – Student Center Flag Room
• DeCANstruction: November 7, 2010 – Student Center Flag Room

Donate Canned Food Items:
In addition to the sculpture competition, the public is invited to donate canned food items at the time of the exhibition and at the close of the competition. All of the canned food used in the structure is donated to local food pantries and soup kitchens.

This, and other images as we add them, are on display in our Where’d I See That? gallery. If you think you have the answer, write it in the margin of a $100 dollar bill and mail it to Newsline, Alumni Center, Keene State College, Keene, NH, 03435-1502, or use the “Comments” link below.

If you remember Patty, please drop us a comment.

The project team conducted interviews with key people on selected subjects and developed a series of documentaries based on the interviews, which Cheshire TV videotaped.  This resulted in five documentaries: The Hurricane of 1938, Rail Travel in the Monadnock Region, Pisgah: A Place Apart, The Cheshire County Complex, and Textile Mills in the Monadnock Region. Each premiered at the Colonial Theater and appeared on Cheshire TV.

Did you miss any? DVDs of the documentaries are on sale through the Historical Society of Cheshire County.

More information.

Camp Vision co-founder Marcus Soutra ’06

You’ve heard the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” KSC alum Marcus Soutra ’06 has certainly done just that, and his very special brand of lemonade is helping learning disabled (LD) students on campus and at local schools.

Diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) in third grade, Marcus had a tough time in school because he just couldn’t learn normally or meet the classroom expectations. “I just didn’t feel good about who I was, because, at a very young age, I’d been told I was disabled,” he remembered. “I looked normal, and felt intelligent, but once I got into the classroom, I felt disabled.”

Fortunately, Marcus had supportive parents and a few understanding teachers along the way, and he made it to Keene State, quite an accomplishment for a LD student. His first year here was rocky, though, because he was ashamed of his disability and didn’t want anyone to know about it. But then he met people such as Jane Warner, director of Disability Services, who helped him get the right accommodations for his needs. “I started to realize that my LD wasn’t such a terrible thing because I could get help with it and do fine in school. My grades started to rise and my self esteem did too.”

Marcus majored in secondary education and social studies. He attended a seminar while he was student teaching and ran into Steve Bigaj, the associate dean of Professional Studies, who told Marcus about Project Eye-to-Eye, an organization that uses college students with LD to mentor younger kids with LD. “I read Jonathan Mooney’s [the Eye-to-Eye cofounder’s] book, Learning Outside the Lines, and it was basically my story,” Marcus recalled. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to bring this to Keene, because students here need to know about it; people in the community need this kind of help.’ So after graduation, I started coming up here and running Eye-to-Eye once a week.”

Marcus went on to become the national program director of Project Eye-to-Eye, where he’s responsible for managing and cultivating chapters nationwide. There are now 30 chapters in 16 states, and Marcus manages half of those chapters. Locally, Eye-to-Eye works with kids at Franklin Elementary School and the Jonathan M. Daniels School.

In 2007, Marcus, along with Amber Bergeron ’07, founded Camp Vision here at KSC, a week-long summer camp where counselors and kids can come together to build self esteem, the most important foundation for successful learning. The Camp, built on proven Eye-to-Eye principles, benefits both counselors and kids. “We’re finding that the role of being a mentor is as transformative in a person’s life as being mentored,” Marcus said. Both parties are struggling, and both need help. The mentors get a big boost from helping someone navigate similar challenges, and the kids, who often feel like they are doomed to failure in the classroom, are delighted to meet a cool college student who’s overcome LD and achieved success.

Hank Knight

Our own Hank Knight, director of the Cohen Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, was the featured speaker at the Monadnock Summer Lyceum on Sunday, August 15. The Unitarian Church in Peterborough has hosted this lecture series, which “features prominent speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines who discuss topics of importance to our times,” since 1970.

Dr. Knight’s talk was entitled “Ties that Bind,” and focused on those attitudes and beliefs in our lives that bind us to life and shape our relationships with others. If you missed his insightful lecture, you can hear it on New Hampshire Public Radio’s website. It will probably be posted sometime after Aug. 22.

She will be honored at NHAWLT’s Fall Conference and Annual Meeting on Oct. 29–30 at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester.

Dr. Jerry Jasinski

Cambridge Who’s Who has recognized KSC chemistry professor Dr. Jerry P. Jasinski for demonstrating dedication, leadership, and excellence in chemistry and research management. His primary teaching interests include general chemistry, inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, X-ray crystallography, and biochemistry. The president of the American Institute of Chemists, Dr. Jasinski was honored with a Distinguished Scholarship and Research award in 2001.

More information.