MOUNT VERNON — The Cornell College fine arts renovation project of Armstrong Hall and Youngker Hall, including Kimmel Theatre, has received an honor award for design excellence for architecture from the Iowa chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

The project was designed by Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck (HLKB) Architecture of Des Moines. Armstrong Hall, built in 1938, was renovated in 2002-2003 for the music and theater departments. Youngker Hall opened in 2003 featuring a new 266-seat, state-of-the-art theater.

The jury’s comments on the project included the following:

- Clear expression of new versus old while responding to the historical character of the existing building (Armstrong).

- The setback of the new building (Youngker) respects siting of original building (Armstrong).

- Nice special joint between; clarifies circulation.

- Volumes read well beyond glass façade.

- Tells story of evolution of building through its architecture.

There were 60 entries vying for three honor awards, two merit awards and a special recognition award at the AIA chapter’s annual convention Oct. 15. HLKB received four of the total six awards presented, including all three honor awards.

Previous campus projects completed by HLKB are renovations to McWethy Hall, Law Hall and Cole Library, the new Marie Fletcher Carter Pedestrian Mall, improvements to Bowman-Carter residence hall, the new Meyer Strength Training Facility in the Richard and Norma Small Multi-Sport Center and renovations to the lower level of West Science Center.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College presents its biennial Shakespeare production by the English department when “The Tempest” opens Friday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. in the Plumb-Fleming Studio Theatre of Armstrong Hall.

Performances continue Oct. 30 at 2 and 8 p.m. and Oct. 31 at 2 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for students and seniors. Reserve tickets at (319) 895-4293.

The production’s guest director is Carey Upton, who helped found and was the resident director of The Shakespeare Project in Frederick, Md. He has directed professionally at Shakespeare & Company (Massachusetts), Actors Theatre of Louisville, Horse Cave Theatre (Kentucky) and the Richmond Shakespeare Festival (Virginia). He taught acting and directing for five years at the University of Maryland, College Park. Currently he is co-artistic director of Waging Theatre, a newly formed enterprise in Los Angeles.

Upton is actively involved in the Original Practices movement of producing Shakespeare. For Cornell’s production of “The Tempest,” the students examined how the play was originally performed in the early 17th century and how that practice can be used to bring the play to life for 21st-century audiences.

“The purpose of this exploration is not to create a museum reconstruction, but a piece that can breathe with new life in our time, in relationship with our community,” he says.

Most of the students involved in the production are enrolled in “Shakespeare I: Comedies and Romances” with Katy Stavreva, associate professor of English. Running the play in conjunction with a class was the idea of the late Stephen Lacey, an English professor who brought in as guest director Desmond Barrit, award-winning actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

“Stephen wanted to give his students the opportunity to study Shakespeare through the body as well as the mind,” Stavreva says.

Under Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time system, the class runs 3 1/2 weeks. The production cycle for “The Tempest,” largely overlapping with the class, is five weeks.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will celebrate its homecoming Saturday, Oct. 9, by honoring alumni along with authors who chronicled the college’s history for its sesquicentennial last year.

Cornell’s homecoming celebrates the reunion classes of 1954, 1959, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994 and 1999, plus the 50th anniversary of one of the college’s largest social groups for women, Kappa Theta. Events begin Friday, Oct. 8, and include a pep rally and fireworks in Ash Park, starting at 9:30 p.m.

Two alumni and four authors of books for Cornell’s sesquicentennial last year will be honored at a convocation in King Chapel at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 9. Michael Conklin, longtime Chicago Tribune writer and a 1969 graduate, will receive the Distinguished Achievement Award. The Young Alumni Achievement Award will be presented to Matt Weiss, a 1999 graduate. After an outstanding academic and athletic career at Cornell, Weiss completed medical school and is a general pediatric resident in Kansas City, with ambitions in international humanitarian medical work.

Alumni Leadership and Service Awards will be presented to Cornell historians and authors Charles Milhauser, William Heywood and Richard Thomas, as well as Vivian Heywood, who assisted in producing her husband’s scholarly history volume. Milhauser wrote “ Cornell College: 150 Years from A to Z.” Heywood and Thomas produced the two-volume “ Cornell College: A Sesquicentennial History.”

Following the convocation, Milhauser and Thomas will sign their books at the bookstore in The Commons from 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Also signing books will be Robert Dana, professor of English and poet-in-residence emeritus who was recently selected Iowa’s poet laureate. His newest book of poetry is “Morning of the Red Admiral.” The English department will host an open house for Dana from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in South Hall.

Also on Saturday is a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. for the current exhibition in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery of McWethy Hall. “Cornell Alumni Woodfire” features wood-fired ceramic works by five alumni: Gary Hootman, Leila Denecke, Barbara Reinhart, Takusuke Kawasaki and Joe Cole.

The Kappa Theta 50th-anniversary celebration includes a picnic luncheon and reunion dinner Friday, and then the annual reception at halftime of the football game Saturday. The group, whose founders will return for the homecoming celebration, is working to raise $25,000 to establish Cornell’s first social group-endowed scholarship.

Other special activities are the historic tours of campus, featuring reenactors representing characters from Cornell’s past, starting outside The Commons at 3 p.m. Friday and 1:30 p.m. Saturday; an exhibit of color landscapes of the upper Midwest and West by alumnus and professional photographer Jim Becia, who will attend a reception Saturday from 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in The Commons; and the homecoming football game against Simpson, kicking off at 1 p.m. in Ash Park.

MOUNT VERNON — A Philadelphia religion scholar and author who grew up in Mount Vernon will make two October appearances at Cornell College related to her book, which details her marriage to a man dying of AIDS. Read More…

MOUNT VERNON — New Testament scholar and Cornell College alumnus Victor Furnish will lecture on “Homosexuality and the Bible” on Thursday, Oct. 14, at 11 a.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons at Cornell. Admission is free.

Furnish is a 1952 graduate of Cornell, ordained United Methodist minister and University Distinguished Professor of New Testament emeritus at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology in Dallas.

From 1988 to 1992, Furnish was a member of the United Methodist Church’s Committee to Study Homosexuality, and he has spoken and written widely on the topic of scripture and homosexuality. He was one of the expert witnesses asked to prepare an affidavit for the Canadian appeals court whose 2003 decision led to the legitimizing of same-sex marriages in Ontario. He will serve as an expert witness in an upcoming church trial of a United Methodist minister for being a partnered lesbian.

A world authority on the Apostle Paul, his writings and theology, Furnish is teaching a course, “The Epistles of Paul,” during Cornell’s current term, which ends Oct. 20. On Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time academic calendar, students take a single course for 3 ½ weeks nine terms a year.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College’s steel drum band Pandemonium will perform a family-oriented concert at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 27, in King Chapel. The concert also will feature the Two-Can Pan Band. Admission is free.

The concert is sponsored by Cornell and the Mount Vernon Area Arts Council. The concert has been rescheduled from its original date, Oct. 14, and moved to an inside location.

In May, Pandemonium released its second CD, “Organized Chaos,” featuring 14 tracks arranged by music professor and director Martin Hearne, including his original “Ubeque Samba,” along with hits by Carlos Santana, Roy Orbison, Stevie Wonder and John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Pandemonium debuted in March 1997, released its first CD, “Six Layers of Shrimp,” in spring 1998 and has performed in France, along the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans, in Kansas City and at several area elementary schools. Current members of Pandemonium include Cornell students, alumni and geology professor Paul Garvin.

MOUNT VERNON - “Book of Days,” a tale of murder in small-town Missouri, opens Friday, Oct. 8, in Kimmel Theatre at Cornell College.

The production is directed by Cornell theater professor Mark Hunter, director of the Riverside Theatre Shakespeare Festival each summer in Iowa City.

Performances continue Oct. 9, 14, 15 and 16. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for students, seniors and youth. Reserve tickets at (319) 895-4293.

“Book of Days,” winner of the Best Play Award from the American Theater Critics Association, is set in writer Lanford Wilson’s home state. Fictional Dublin, Mo., is dominated by a cheese plant, a fundamentalist church and a community theater. When the owner of the cheese plant dies mysteriously in a hunting accident, his bookkeeper suspects murder. Cast as Joan of Arc in a local production of George Bernard Shaw’s “St. Joan,” bookkeeper Ruth takes on the attributes of her fictional character and launches a one-woman campaign to see justice done amid small-town jealousies, greed and lies.

“ ‘Book of Days’ manages to combine Wilson’s signature character-based whimsy with an atypically strong narrative book and politically charged underpinnings,” said Variety magazine. The Detroit Free Press calls “Book of Days” “lively storytelling by one of our best playwrights.”

MOUNT VERNON — Robert Dana, Cornell professor of English and poet-in-residence emeritus, has been selected Iowa’s new Poet Laureate.

During his two-year appointment he will serve as the state’s symbolic leader of poetry, reading poems at official Iowa public events at the invitation of the governor and developing a signature project to advance public appreciation for poetry.

Dana is scheduled to do a book signing during Cornell’s homecoming, on Saturday, Oct. 9, from 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the bookstore in The Commons. Also on hand will be Cornell authors Charles Milhauser and Richard Thomas. Following the book signing, the English department will host a reception for Dana from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in South Hall.

Dana taught at Cornell from 1954-94. He received $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships in 1985 and 1993; the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award for Poetry in 1989, given by New York University to honor a promising young poet or a gifted poet whose work has been largely unrecognized; and the Rainer Maria Rilke Prize for Poetry. His book, “Starting Out for the Difficult World,” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. He has written 13 books of poetry, the most recent, “The Morning of the Red Admirals,” published this year.

A Massachusetts native, Dana discovered his love for writing poetry during quiet stretches as a U.S. Navy radio operator during World War II. Back in Boston, he sold his watch and raincoat for one-way bus fare to Des Moines, where he became the first in his family to attend college. He enrolled at Drake University on the GI Bill and supported himself as a sportswriter for the Des Moines Register. Later, he honed his art at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, graduating with a master’s degree in 1954. When he joined Cornell, he was the youngest (age 25) tenure-track professor hired by the college at the time. He has served as distinguished guest at five American universities and Stockholm University.

MOUNT VERNON — Wood-fired ceramic works by five Cornell College alumni will be featured in an exhibit, “Cornell Alumni Woodfire,” Sept. 12 through Nov. 7 in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery of McWethy Hall on campus.

An artists’ reception will be held in the gallery Sept. 18 from 4 to 6 p.m., in conjunction with the International Woodfire Conference at Coe College, which is organized by Cornell graduate Gary Hootman from Sept. 15 to 18. A second reception will be held in the gallery during Cornell’s homecoming, Oct. 9 from 3 to 5 p.m.

The Peter Paul Luce Gallery is free and open to the public. Regular hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Besides Hootman, a 1986 Cornell graduate, other alumni exhibiting functional and sculptural works are Leila Denecke (1972), Barbara Reinhart (1976), Takusuke Kawasaki (1992) and Joe Cole (2000).

Hootman earned master’s degrees in ceramics from the University of Iowa and has a studio in Swisher. He works exclusively in stoneware, with forms that range from delicate tea bowls to large outdoor sculptures. He has exhibited in Australia, South Korea and Japan and throughout the United States.

Denecke has earned a number of honors, including a 1984 Rotary Foundation International Fellowship to study at the Tekisui Museum of Art, Ceramic Art Research Institute, in Ashiya, Japan; a 1991 commission to design a monument for a new municipal library in Ibaraki City, Japan; a McKnight Foundation Residency grant in 1998; a 2001 Artist-In-Residence award in Seto, Aichi-ken, Japan; and a 2004 McKnight Artist Fellowship. A former pottery instructor at the Minneapolis Museum of Art, she lives in Minnesota.

Reinhart has exhibited her work throughout the Midwest and in New Mexico, most recently in a two-person show at Minneapolis’ Northern Clay Center and a solo exhibit at the DeLuce Gallery of Northwest Missouri State University. She has earned the Frederick Layton Fellowship Award and the Frederick Layton Special Achievement Award, plus a Travel Fund Grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board. She is an assistant professor of art at the University of Wisconsin in Waukesha.

Kawasaki holds a master’s degree from the University of Iowa. He has worked closely with his father, Chitaro Kawasaki, chair of the ceramics department at Kyoto Seika University in Kyoto, Japan, and the venerated Japanese potter Shiho Kanzaki. Kawasaki has a studio in Shigaraki, one of the oldest pottery centers in Japan.

Cole spent two years as apprentice for Mark Hewitt in Pittsboro, N.C., and then helped construct a pottery and kiln with another former Hewitt apprentice. Cole lives in Seagrove, N.C., where he makes pots for various area potteries.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College plans to build a suite-style residence hall for 46 upperclass students that will be ready in fall 2005, relieving an on-campus housing crunch as enrollment continues to climb.

The new residence hall, projected to cost approximately $2 million, will be built near the college’s 10th Avenue apartments.

The proposed three-story building will feature six suites accommodating seven or eight students apiece. Each suite will have a kitchenette with a small refrigerator, sink, counter space and cupboards; students will take their regular meals in the campus dining halls. Each suite also will have three full bathrooms. The building will have a study room, a small office, a shared kitchen, a lounge, laundry facilities, an elevator and central air conditioning. A parking lot for 51 vehicles is planned nearby.

The facility was approved because of student demand for more personalized living spaces and their desire to abandon the traditional central-campus dorm for apartment-like quarters –- but without the responsibility of utility bills and garbage collection.

“It’s the way many colleges are going,” said John Harp, dean of students.

The new residence hall will be coed, but not within student rooms, and won’t be available to first-year students. Two resident assistants will live on site.

As a residential college, 93 percent of students live on campus in Cornell’s nine residence halls and two apartment complexes. During the 2003-2004 year, on-campus housing was at 98.5 percent capacity, which college officials feel restricts their ability to relocate students when, for example, renovations are needed. Cornell allows a percentage of upperclass students to live off-campus, but on-campus housing is considered more attractive, Harp notes, primarily because the college provides amenities such as convenient laundry and parking, and in the residence halls free cable television and Internet access through the campus network.

Cornell’s enrollment -– projected at 1,150 for classes beginning Aug. 30 –- has been climbing steadily over roughly the past five years and is the largest since fall 1995. Cornell’s last new residence hall construction was in 1966, when Rorem Hall was built.