Now in his second year at KRNL-FM – the student-run radio station at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa – this graduate of Niles West High School has been busy reforming, reshaping, and, he hopes, rejuvenating the lost art of the college radio station.

Shimanovsky never particularly intended to be part of Cornell’s own radio renaissance.

“Basically, I walked into The Commons at the right time,” he says. A baseball teammate was taking applications for the 2008-09 KRNL executive board, and Shimanovsky was hired as program director, a position he said involved “a lot of grunt work.”

But his efforts as a liaison between the executive board and the DJs, coordinating shows and training activities, prepared him for a larger role with the station.

This year, as the general manager of KRNL, Shimanovsky is shaking things up and working to create a station that’s not the same old song and dance.

Shimanovsky said his primary goal for KRNL is the expansion of its listener base. “We need to be constantly expanding, not just cater to the same, small group,” he said.

In years prior, KRNL had languished under the weight of  technology that lagged behind the curve and a lack of mainstream interest from the student population.

To help combat those issues, KRNL has increased and expanded its coverage of Cornell sporting events. The combination of sports programming and online broadcasting has allowed the station – which, prior to about 6 years ago, was music only with a broadcast range not much larger than the booth – to reach parents and alumni interested in live broadcasts of Cornell sports, an audience the station had never previously captured.

And on campus, KRNL has increased its visibility by sponsoring concerts, inviting professional DJs, and hosting dance parties.

“If we want to be successful,” said Shimanovsky of the new endeavors, “we need to restructure the way the station is run.”

This restructuring would involve turning the entire station on its head, making it “more like a real station and less like an extracurricular activity.” DJs would have to apply for shows, and would be on-air three to five days a week, as opposed to the one day they are currently.

According to Shimanovsky, the station’s biggest challenge is overcoming itself. Under his guidance, KRNL is working to “rebrand” its image, though he admits there are often disagreements among his staff about who the station should cater to on and off campus.

“Through these competing ideas, good things come out of it,” Shimanovsky said, adding that the wide range of viewpoints among the staff allow creative solutions.

As much as he does for the radio station, Shimanovsky’s non-radio plate is pretty full too. In addition to playing baseball, he is a double major in politics and philosophy, referees intramural sports, and is applying to law school.

As Shimanovsky’s college career draws to a close, he is preparing himself for life after KRNL and starting to make plans. He hopes law school is in his future, although he is still figuring out where he would like to attend next fall. His dream job would be to secure a position as in-house council for a professional sports team, but he is also interested in a governmental appointment.

His back-up plan? Shimanovsky thinks tackling other mediums as a professional philosopher has a certain sort of appeal for a former radio man.

“I would write a book,” he said, “and get Oprah to sell it.”

His lecture, “Why War Will Fail in Afghanistan and Why We Need a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” is free and open to the public.

Volk is executive secretary for Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), and has more than three decades of experience working for peace and social justice. He has lobbied Congress to support peaceful prevention of deadly conflict, nuclear disarmament, peace in Iraq, and many other issues.

Volk is past chair and current member of the Steering Committee of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL). He is a board member of Africa Action and The Justice Project (a veterans’ organization), and also serves on the Corporation Committee of Haverford College and on the Wilmington College Board of Trustees.

Prior to joining FCNL in 1990, Volk worked 18 years for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and served as its National Secretary for Peace Education from 1982 to 1990.

Volk’s lecture is sponsored by the Cornell Democrats and the Cornell College Chaplain.

Corbett is a vice president at CRST, a Cedar Rapids trucking company owned by fellow Cornellian John Smith ’71. He was elected to the Iowa House in 1986 and served seven terms before stepping down to take the job of president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. While serving in the House he was speaker for five years. Corbett has never lost an election for public office.

Corbett defeated City Council incumbent Brian Fagan. With 90 percent of precincts reporting as of Tuesday night, Corbett had 13,418 votes to Fagan’s 7,742.

Gazette election coverage

Gazette profile on Corbett

Gazette story on football careers of the three mayoral candidates

Now an attorney living in Seattle, Weston alerted the college in an understated e-mail that said, “I graduated from Cornell in 1978. During my life there, I shot a lot of photographs. Over the past several years, I have scanned and digitized those negatives. Over the past month, I’ve been building a Web site for those and other photos. You might be interested in taking a look at the Cornell College set.”

Communications Director Dee Ann Rexroat ’82 received the e-mail and claims not to have completed work for a chunk of that afternoon while viewing the images online. She contacted college historian the Rev. Richard Thomas, who had interviewed Weston while researching and writing Cornell’s scholarly history book.

“It’s a very valuable collection. It has the integrity of a defined period and reflects that time in a fascinating way,” Thomas said. “It’s a documentation of student life at Cornell and perhaps of the larger world of student life in that period. I was enthusiastic about his art while he was making it. He has a gift for composition.”

To view the photos, go to www.ericwestonphoto.net/cornellgallery.html. But first, set aside plenty of time.

In addition to Darity, a number of Cornell students will perform at the event. Freeman and the Staceys (Zach Freeman, and Jordan and Julian Stacey), Ariel Harris and Neisha Croffitt, Heather Pavlu, and Julio “Kid Supreme” Miramontes will offer artistic performances ranging from musical selections to poetry to installation graffiti.

Non-Cornellian acts will include The Original Man, Young Ezzy, and DJ ISE.

A dance party hosted by DJ ISE will take place after the show. “Rock the Box” is sponsored by Intercultural Life and KRNL.

Growing up as the oldest of seven children in a family that homeschooled until she reached high school, Schneider was raised by her father to “question everything.” The result is a keen interest in social justice and a decidedly eclectic extracurricular list.

“Even when I was little I was always interested in justice and questioning why things are the way they are,” said Schneider.

That interest developed fully when a summer studying in England opened her eyes to the differences that can exist between the haves and the have-nots even in a fully industrialized society. Having lived in Colorado Springs her whole life, Schneider was suddenly confronted with people from all over the world who had also come to England to study. “I had never met people so different,” she said.

When she returned to the states, Schneider began to take her father’s advice to heart and questioned anything and everything around her, even her teachers. Which, she said, she was sure “annoyed everyone around me.”

But, she added, “I wanted to know on my own.”

That desire to know led her to enroll at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, a school that, like Colorado College, runs on the One Course At A Time course schedule. It was there that she found her calling in women’s studies and began to probe deeper into questions of injustice, especially focusing on South Africa.

“When I came to campus, people started talking, people argued and shared ideas,” she said. “That’s why I love Cornell. I’m not the only person saying ‘why?’.”

To that end she began to intern at institutions concerned with social justice in and around Colorado Springs, including service-oriented Northern Churches Care – which she called “pretty formative” – and the Boulder County AIDS Project in order to prepare for a possible semester in South Africa in 2010.

Along the way she’s become active in a number of social justice-centered groups, including attending the White Privilege Conference (an anti-racism conference), the Interfaith Spirituality Group, the Multicultural Counsel, and the Third Wave Resource Group (a feminist collective). Two years ago she also participated in an Alternative Spring Break trip to New York City where she spent her week off volunteering at homeless shelters.

Though much is banking on her semester studying in South Africa, Schneider says her post-graduate plans involve “some combination” of the Peace Corps and graduate school, likely overseas. But mostly, she just wants to do one thing when all is said and done.

“Keep learning.”

Music Mondays concerts are at 7:30 p.m. in King Chapel on the Cornell campus. General admission is $10 at the door and $5 for students. Admission is free to Cornell students, faculty, staff, emeriti faculty, and retired staff, and to Purple Pass holders.

A preview of the kind of high-energy Latin jazz Tiempo Libre will bring to King Chapel can be seen on “Dancing with the Stars” on Tuesday, Oct. 27, where the band will perform “Tu Conga Bach” from their latest album “Bach in Havana,” a fusion of Bach and Afro-Cuban rhythms.

The Miami-based Tiempo Libre hails originally from Cuba, where they were classically trained at La ENA, Cuba’s premiere conservatory. Twice-nominated for a Grammy, Tiempo Libre mixes jazz, classical works, and the musical traditions of Cuba to create a group that was named “Best Latin Band 2008” by the Miami New Times.

For more information on Tiempo Libre, visit their Web site.

The rest of the 2009-10 Music Mondays schedule is:

Monday, Feb.  8, 2010
Quink, five-member Dutch a cappella vocal ensemble

Monday, March 8, 2010
The all-female Moscow String Quartet

Admission is free and open to the public.

Phil and Jan Sultz live and work in Dennysville, Maine. They moved to Maine in 1990 after raising two daughters and teaching studio art at Webster University, St. Louis, from 1966 to 1989.

Phil Sultz studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Albright Art School in Buffalo, N.Y., where he studied with Charles Burchfield. In 1958 he began teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design before taking leave to enroll in the Accademia De Bella Arte in Rome. In the following decades he taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Webster University, St. Louis, where he is professor emeritus. He received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in painting in 1975, and in 1976, was included in a bicentennial exhibition in New York titled “Forty Years of American Collage” at Buecker and Harpsichords Gallery.  He has exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally and is represented in New York by the Allan Stone Gallery.

Jan Sultz initiated and developed the ceramics program at the Kansas City Art Institute in the late 1950s, and later at Webster University, St. Louis, where she taught for 24 years. Since leaving teaching she has continued to make stoneware ceramics at her studio in Maine.

She began her career in art under the tutelage of Warren Robinson at Wagner College, Staten Island, N.Y., culminating in an early exhibit of paintings at Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York City. Her direction toward clay forms developed later as a graduate student at Cranbrook Academy of Art, under the influence of Maija Grotell. Jan’s work has been shown in numerous venues including A. J. Bueche Fine Art, Northeast Harbor; Bates College, Lewiston, Maine; Allan Stone Gallery, New York City; and Lill Street Gallery, Chicago.

Jeff Lewis serves as professor of painting and drawing at Auburn University. He received his master of fine arts and master of arts at the University of Iowa and his bachelor of arts at SUNY Brockport, N.Y. Other teaching experience includes positions at Dartmouth College and Cornell University, as well as guest lecturing/workshops at Robert Wesleyan College, American University, Mississippi State University, The American School, Surrey, England, and The University of Iowa. His encaustic paintings and silverpoint drawings have been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, in public and corporate collections, as well as private collections in Great Britain, Italy, Scandinavia, and the United States.

This exhibition is made possible through a generous endowment from the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. Gallery hours are Monday–Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m., and Sundays 2-4 p.m.

For more information contact: scoleman@cornellcollege.edu or call 319-895-4491.

Saar will deliver the lecture “Whither, Hither and Yon” in the Keyes Art History Classroom, room 222. The lecture is free and open to the public.

This distinguished artist lecture is made possible through the generosity of the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.  Admission is free and open to the public.

Saar’s sculptures, mostly carved of wood and covered with copper, make use of found materials from the street. At first this was all she could afford, but now she does it as a way of recycling, as well as for the history it brings.

“One piece (of ceiling tin) I really adored came out of a phone booth across from Madison Square Garden,” she told artworsmagazine.com. “There were layers and layers of paint, and where some had chipped off you could see phone numbers–really cryptic because they didn’t look like contemporary phone numbers. I love to think about the conversations that were had in that phone booth.”

Her work combines artistic skill with multicultural references, revealing empathy for the harshness of life and a passion for the mythic.

Saar was born in 1956 and grew up in Laurel Canyon, Ca. She sees her upbringing as rural and her understanding and love of nature are rooted in that experience. At Scripps College, she studied with Dr. Samella Lewis, a noted scholar in the field of African and Caribbean Art. Having taken more art history courses than studio classes, she graduated with a thesis on Southern African American Folk Art. Saar did graduate work at Otis-Parsons Institute.

The reading will be held in Hedges Conference Room in The Commons. It is free and open to the public.

Prineas is an Iowa City-based writer whose Magic Thief young adult novels have been nominated for numerous awards. Recently, The Magic Thief was named an E.B. White honor book. A third book in the critically-acclaimed trilogy is in the works.

Prineas is visiting Cornell as a Distinguished Visiting Fiction Writer teaching a seminar titled “The Protagonist Must Protag: The Intersection of Plot and Character in Children’s Literature.”

For more information on Prineas, visit her Web site or the Official Magic Thief Web page.

“Country club universities.”

That’s how one Iowa newspaper described the state’s Regent institutions in a piece about how our state performs when it comes to higher education for the most needy.

We don’t go that far with such a moniker, but are disappointed that our state seems to have strayed from the point of taxpayer-supported higher education – education for all. At the same time, we’re thankful that institutions like our own Cornell College have been continuing to meet the needs of all students.

The issue, as reported in a recent edition of the Des Moines Register: Iowa is the fourth worst place in the country when it comes to the number of needy students in state universities. Specifically, the story told of a study based on Iowa’s share of Pell Grant recipients. Federal Pell Grants are for “low-income undergraduate” students to “promote access to post-secondary education.”

Data from the study shows that fewer students are using Pell Grants at state universities, while more and more are using the federal dollars at community and private colleges. Twenty-six percent of Pell Grant recipients in Iowa used the funds at public universities in 2007-08, down from 33 percent 10 years before then. By comparison, Pell Grant recipients using the funds at private colleges has held steady at 29 percent. In other words: Private colleges have consistently educated 29 percent of Iowa’s lower-income students, compared to 26 percent being educated by public universities.

We taxpayers spend oodles on the Regent institutions in Iowa – about $500 million a year. Sure, part of that is a worthwhile investment in research, job creation, economic development, etc. But the heart of the investment is in public education. Each of our students should have a shot at that.

But not as many are getting that shot.

Instead, they’re turning to places that receive little, or no, state funding.

That’s where Cornell enters the picture.

Jonathan Stroud, Cornell’s vice president for enrollment and dean of admission, said the college is “need blind” when it comes to admissions. It’s not focused on families’ abilities to write a check for tuition.

“We have enough faith that we can make it financially feasible for all,” Stroud said.

That’s because of a solid endowment and strong financial support of the college by alumni and friends. The result: Most students pay the same out of pocket as they would at a state school.

“Our student body is as socioeconomically diverse as any public institution,” Stroud said.

We’re grateful for those who donate to Cornell to make sure students have access to a high quality education – including low-income students.

Even though we frown at the numbers – Iowa’s low ranking in our public universities’ service to low-income families – we grin at places like Cornell.

After all, it should be clear that private places like Cornell aren’t “too expensive” or “unaffordable.” We’re not talking about a country club.

“This gift represents the class’s commitment not only to the ongoing budget of the college, but to King Chapel and its importance to our class,” said class gift chair and long-time college trustee Jerry Ringer.

“I was more than willing to lead this effort knowing that my class would come through,” added Ringer, a Mount Vernon native.

The bulk of the gift will help fund the planned renovation of the exterior of King Chapel, the 127-year-old centerpiece of Cornell’s historic campus. The renovation of the chapel will include the shoring up of the walls, replacement of the roof, repairs to the clock and clock tower, and the addition of an elevator. The remaining portion of the Class of 1959 reunion gift will go toward the annual fund to directly support the student experience.

“King Chapel is the very heart of our campus. It has served as a gathering place for students, faculty, and community members for over 125 years, and has played host to historic speeches ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. and Frank Lloyd Wright and memorable performances by the likes of the Chicago Symphony and others,” said Peter Wilch, vice president for alumni and college advancement. “The Class of 1959 gift will help to ensure that students for generations to come will have the same experiences, and we are grateful for their tremendous generosity during an important milestone in their lives.”

The Class of 1959 gift is part of Cornell College’s comprehensive campaign Extraordinary Opportunities: The Campaign for Cornell College which will continue through December 2009. The campaign will enhance the Cornell experience by increasing the college’s endowment, upgrading its facilities, and enhancing the academic program.

For more information about the campaign or making a gift, visit www.cornellcollege.edu/campaign or contact Peter Wilch, Vice President for Alumni and College Advancement at 319-895-4315 or pwilch@cornellcollege.edu.

By motorcycle.

Winokur, who has been a motorcycle safety instructor for almost 20 years, drove over 17 hours from his home in Bethesda, Md., to Mount Vernon by way of Iowa City in just two days.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I was afraid if I waited for my next reunion, it wouldn’t happen,” said Winokur.

He also said he’s traveled quite a bit on his motorcycle – a BMW R1200RT –  lately, passing through nearly every state between New York and Georgia and as far west as Iowa. He said this drive was particularly nippy, as temperatures dropped as low as the 40s through river valleys in the Appalachian Mountains. Nothing a full set of heated gloves, a heated jacket, and heated seats couldn’t take care of.

Winokur is in town for the 2009 Cornell College Homecoming: Welcome to the Hilltop.

Bynum is the author of Madeleine is Sleeping, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego. Her newest novel, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Bynum’s visit to Cornell is part of the Visiting Writer Series sponsored by Cornell’s English department.

For more information on Bynum, visit her Web site.

Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel named Mount Vernon one of “America’s Coolest Small Towns” for its artistic community, culture, and food.

The magazine complimented Mount Vernon’s artistic community, cited the “Chalk the Walk” festival and, of course, cited the Lincoln cafe, and called Fuel “The unofficial clubhouse for Mount Vernon’s creative types.”

Photos for the article were also taken by Cornell art professor Sandy Dyas.

Mount Vernon’s ascension up the ladder of cool was also documented by the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

That’s the question Whitewell, Tenn., students featured in the documentary Paper Clips set out to answer during a classroom project that started in 1998 as a way to show the immensity of life lost during the Holocaust.

Linda Hooper, principal of Whitewell Middle School, and two of her students will visit Cornell College on Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. in Kimmel theatre. They will present the results of the project, talk about the documentary, and speak on the impact this Holocaust project had on their school, their town, and others.

The event is free and open to the public.

Hooper created the project 11 years ago out of her desire to help students open their eyes to the diversity of the world beyond their insulated valley. The project grew as more and more paper clips were sent in until, eventually, 11 million paper clips were collected and housed in a donated World War II railcar that still sits at the school

Paper Clips documented not only the project, but the impact it had on the students’ understandings of diversity and on survivors who visited the memorial and told their stories. The documentary will be shown in the Ratt on Oct. 26, 27, and 28, at a time to be determined.

The Paper Clip Project presentation is part of an annual series of performances and lectures funded by a gift from alumnus Richard Williams ’63 and his wife, Marlene. The series typically sponsors one lecture and one performance each year.

For more information, visit paperclipsmovie.com.

Cornell’s homecoming celebrates the reunion classes of 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, and 2004. Events begin Friday, Oct. 9, and include a pep rally and fireworks in Ash Park, starting at 9 p.m.

Three alumni will be honored at convocation in King Chapel at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 10. Stephen Grummon, a 1969 graduate, will receive the Distinguished Achievement Award for his notable career  in foreign affairs. Jerry Ringer, class of 1959 and trustee, and Elizabeth Hoyer Beeman, class agent for the class of 1969, will receive the Leadership and Service Award for their many years of service to the college.

Also being recognized during Homecoming is Dyan Smith, wife of John Smith, Class of 1971 and chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees, who will receive Honorary Alumni status Friday during the Alumni Board Luncheon.

New to the slate of events this year is a 5k run Saturday morning beginning at Ash Park at 8 a.m. Registration starts at 7 a.m.

Following the convocation, there will be an open house at the Paul K. Scott Alumni Center at Rood House from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Also on Saturday, Cornell Professor Emeritus of English and Poet-in-Residence Robert Dana will hold a book signing on the Orange Carpet in The Commons from 11 a.m.-noon.  There will be a Homecoming Studio Art Faculty Show reception from 3-5 p.m. in Peter Paul Luce Gallery, McWethy Hall on Saturday. At 2:30 p.m. on Saturday the Faculty Blockbuster Lecture for the One Book, One Campus, One Community Book The Zookeeper’s Wife will be held in Hedges Lounge in the Commons.

Other special activities include the Cornell Athletics Hall of Fame  Induction Ceremony Saturday at 8 a.m.; a memorial for Ed Rogers Saturday at 9 a.m. in Allee Chapel; historic campus tours with student re-enactors at 3:30 p.m. Friday and 1:30 p.m. Saturday, and the homecoming football game against Luther, kicking off at 1 p.m. in Ash Park.

Hemelt was named the winner of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Dissertation Award for his thesis “Essays in Education Policy: Accountability, Achievement, and Access.”

He will be flown to the APPAM conference in Washington, D.C., this November to accept his award and present his thesis. Furthermore, an abstract of his thesis will be published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

“A national award is not what you expect when you start your new job,” said Hemelt, who is in his first year teaching after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, last spring. “It’s really humbling.”

“This is beyond anything I might have expected,” he added. “Past winners are people whose papers I read all the time.”

Hemelt graduated last spring with a Ph.D. in public policy. His masters and undergraduate degrees were also from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Cornell College is his first full-time college-level teaching appointment.

Universities and colleges are allowed to nominate only one paper for the APPAM award, and Hemelt was nominated a few months ago by his alma mater. Just being nominated, he said, “was an honor in and of itself.”

APPAM is the premiere professional organization for those with Ph.D.s in public policy, economics, and other applied social science disciplines.

Music Mondays concerts are at 7:30 p.m. in King Chapel on the Cornell campus. General admission is $10 at the door and $5 for students. Admission is free to Cornell students, faculty, staff, emeriti faculty, and retired staff, and to Purple Pass holders.

The program at Cornell includes more traditional works by Praetorius, Scarlatti, Chopin, Villa-Lobos, Prokofiev,  and Grieg, as well as “Linus and Lucy” by Vince Guaraldi, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” by Radiohead, and the traditional Irish piece “The Road to Lisdoonvarna.”

Borrowing from both the past and present, the Georgia Guitar Quartet draws inspiration from a wide variety of influences, from classical masters to experimentalists to contemporary rock icons. The Quartet has been featured on American Public Media’s “Performance Today” and has released four critically acclaimed recordings, the most recent consisting exclusively of music composed by the Georgia Guitar Quartet.

The rest of the 2009-10 Music Mondays schedule is:

Monday, Nov.  2, 2009
Tiempo Libre, a Cubin-Latin group

Monday, Feb.  8, 2010
Quink, five-member Dutch a cappella vocal ensemble

Monday, March 8, 2010
The all-female Moscow String Quartet

Sophomore Chase Nowak of Colorado Springs, Colo., was walking between Tarr Hall and The Commons when he noticed a copper coin that he recognized was not a Lincoln head penny.

“I saw that it was stuck in the mud. I had to pry it out with a stick, so it had to have been there for a long time,” said Nowak, a geology and economics and business major and a resident assistant in Tarr. Nowak, a coin collector, gave away the penny that is now worth about $1.

When the penny was minted, the college was just 36 years old, William Fletcher King was president, and there were 190 students and four buildings (Old Sem, College Hall, South Hall, and Bowman Hall). The Rock was delivered by sled to campus that year by members of the senior class who found it at what would become Palisades-Kepler State Park.

1889 was also a banner year for physical education on the Hilltop. Professor and preceptress Harriette J. Cooke pressed for equal physical fitness activities for female students, and a “ladies battalion”—complete with uniforms and, for senior women, rifles—began that year. The student Cornell Athletic Association funded and built a small, barnlike gymnasium in 1889 (it burned down 15 months later). Also that year, representatives of Cornell, Grinnell, the University of Iowa, and Iowa State College at Ames met at Cornell and formed the Inter-Collegiate Baseball League.

Cornell College’s campus is one of just two campuses listed in their entirety in the National Register of Historic Places.

The following are among the world events that also occurred in 1889:

• The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, was incorporated in Atlanta, Ga.
• Columbia Phonograph was formed in Washington, DC.
• Grover Cleveland was succeeded as U.S. president by Benjamin Harrison.
• The Eiffel Tower opened.
• The first Wall Street Journal was published.
• Vincent van Gogh painted “Starry Night.”
• The Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company) was founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market Hanafuda playing cards.
• North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were admitted to the United States.
• Musician Leadbelly, painter Thomas Hart Benton, actor/director Charlie Chaplin, and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein were born.

Listening to this energetic Randolph High School graduate leaves one with the impression that her goals are awfully lofty for someone who hasn’t quite graduated from college. She talks readily about working with others to make collective changes, about the injustices of position and privilege, about racism and the power of language, and helping the forgotten sections of society.

Think Paul Wellstone if he was a senior woman at Cornell College in Iowa. But with a fuller schedule.

Atchison’s aptitude for humanitarianism started early, just after she graduated from high school. During the summer she traveled, by herself, to Honduras for five weeks, teaching English and volunteering at a number of locations. The trip, she said, was eye opening.

“I was pretty naïve. I didn’t understand how the world worked,” she said. “It put things in perspective and made me realize that it can be pretty easy to forget people.”

Since then, she’s spent time in internally displaced persons camps in Kenya, investigated food distribution in Bolivia with the United Nations World Food Programme, interned for  Sen. Tom Harkin in Washington, D.C., and involved herself in nearly a dozen student organizations at Cornell College. All of it, she said, in an effort to learn from and work with as many people as she can.

“I love the power of people coming together,” she said. “That excites me more than anything else.”

One such experience was through the National Coalition for the Homeless, where Atchison spent two days without food, shelter, or the means to support herself on the streets of Washington, D.C. She panhandled, slept on the streets, ate at food kitchens, and, most importantly, spoke with the homeless about what it really means to live life on the streets.

“It was a life changing experience for me,” she said. “It opened my eyes to things that I being on the outside didn’t understand”

Atchison said she still keeps her panhandling sign in her room as a daily reminder of those people who couldn’t go home after two days. It reads: “Mom died. Need food. Please help.”

When she is not volunteering at African orphanages or building bunk beds on reservations (both of which she has done) she stays busy back in Iowa keeping the issues she’s passionate about on everyone else’s radar.

At Cornell, she founded the organization STEP – Students Together Eradicating Poverty and spent three years on Student Senate, most recently as Student Body Vice President.  She’s also involved in campus Mortar Board, has been recognized for her diversity programming on campus, led voter registration efforts during the 2008 election cycle, and is a Peer Advocate for incoming student. She’s involved in so many campus activities that this article could be just as long by simply listing her resume.

“I am trying to devote more time for hobbies,” she said, after listing off a litany of committees, activities, and leadership projects.

Her passions, she said, are driven by a love of learning and bringing people together.

“Life is bigger and there’s more to people than meets the eye. It’s the iceberg analogy. Only 10 percent is above the surface, and the rest is below,” said Atchison.

That 90 percent is key to her most recent pet project, Sustained Dialogue. Sustained Dialogue is an international conflict resolution program that supports a college network aimed at solving campus diversity issues. Atchison is the president and its lead moderator and hopes to use the program as a way to produce stimulate conversations and dialogue.

“I don’t think people talk about diversity enough,” she said. “Events don’t really change lives. They do and can, but it’s the personal conversations that really change lives.”

After graduation, Atchison plans to join Teach for America, and eventually pursue graduate studies in Public Policy, which she sees not only as a way to give back, but as an opportunity to learn more about the world and how collective change is possible.

“I’m learning all the time. I’ve never arrived and I never want to arrive. I want to learn for the rest of my life.”

Miller and the three other contest winners will read their poems on Sept. 29 at the “Crossroads of the World” together with readings by other poets and literary luminaries.

The prize-winning pieces, selected from nearly 500 entries, represent different Times Square experiences and impressions – from a family of sparrows nesting in an unlikely urban environment to a meditation on intimacy and estrangement inspired by the famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square at the end of World War II.

Miller’s writing has appeared in outlets such as Best American Essays, The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, Salmagundi, Raritan, AGNI, One Story and An Introduction to the Prose Poem. He is also the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Miller, a native of Davenport who has lived in New York since graduating from Cornell, has remained close to his mentor, Cornell Professor Emeritus of English and Poet-in-Residence Robert Dana.

As part of his prize, Miller received $750 and accommodations at the Millennium Broadway Hotel.

For more information, visit timessquarenyc.org/about_us/brightpoetry.html.

Read the L.A. Times story on the event.

Pipe Birds

Sparrows fly in and out a cove atop the corner pole.
Feather ruffle unscrolled, beaks chirping, stitching…

The family stuck like a burr on 43rd and Broadway.
No home-style fantasy like my restaurant. Each week

an at-risk heritage–Moldavian, Iowan, Senegalese–
invited to bake and cook in the kitchen of 35 stoves.

The reality of where a nest can fit, what lineage abide
without falling apart into old recipes needing saving.

Curl of metal curtains. Hidden weave of twigs, wire.
Truck traffic–how does it resound in their little hole?

More vibration than noise? A massage or a message?
Pipe birds exit like bumbling bullets, enter like moles.

The awards are given annually to recognize and thank leaders under the age of 40 who have made a significant impact in their business or community or both early in their careers.

“Seeing the outcome of my work and volunteer efforts to enhance our community’s vitality is truly its own reward,” said Lyons. “However, I am deeply honored to have been named to the list of Forty Under 40 by the Corridor Business Journal.”

Lyons is involved all over the Cedar Valley. She was president of Access Iowa, and then later a founding co-chair of its successor ImpactCR, of which she is also a current board member. She is on the Grant Wood Chapter of the American Red Cross board of directors, a parish guild member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, a committee member of Monticello Relay For Life, and a volunteer for numerous political campaigns.

Peter Wilch ‘94, vice president for alumni and college advancement, was a previous winner in 2007. RJ Holmes ‘99, director of career engagement programs, was a winner in 2006.

Denniston joined UCS lobbyists and science experts, religious leaders, and social activists to discuss the results of new computer models which suggest that the business-as-usual emissions of carbon dioxide will result in dire consequences for Iowa and the upper Midwest by the end of the century.

According to the report, which was funded and published by the UCS, by the year 2070, severe heat waves such as that experienced in 1995 will occur multiple times per decade in Iowa, and spring flooding will be more severe and more frequent.  However, the model also suggests that if significant steps are taken to reduce carbon dioxide outputs, Iowa may avoid much of this damage.

Denniston and the UCS delegation met with staffers from the offices of Congressmen (and Cornell professor emeritus) David Loebsack (D –Iowa 2nd District), Bruce Braley (D – Iowa 1st District), Leonard Boswell (D – Iowa 3rd District), Senator Grassley (R) and Senator Harkin (D).

The UCS is a highly respected independent scientific research and citizen action group dedicated toward developing solutions for environmental issues via government policy and corporate policy.  Denniston is chair of the Cornell College geology department and director of the environmental studies program.

“In recognition of her life-long illustrious and exceptional contributions,” read the citation, “to the psychology of women and feminist scholarship, leadership, pedagogy, teaching, and practice.”

The citation further exalts her theoretical contributions to the field and her work as co-chair of the task force that drafted the APA’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Girls and Women.

Professor Enns’ primary interests are in feminist and multicultural pedagogy and feminist psychotherapy. She has taught at Cornell College since earning her Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1987.

“I was surprised and honored to nominated for and selected to receive the Distinguished Leadership Award,” said Enns.

“The work that we do as teachers at Cornell requires us to point to interconnections and links between our ‘home’ disciplines and other areas of study,” she added. “I owe Cornell College a great deal for emphasizing the importance of this type of ‘border crossing’ activity and for valuing diverse forms of scholarship and research.”