Prescott College students working
to make life better in Africa
•Prescott College receives accreditation
for nation’s only Ph.D. in education,
with an emphasis in sustainability education
•Students learn while teaching
in the community
•Nonprofit promotes education
in the Dominican Republic
Editor
Ann Haver-Allen
Director of Public Relations
4
Dream of making wine from Verde Valley grapes
moves closer to reality
5
Ph.D. program accredited
Copy Editors
Alicia G. Brzycki, Linda Butterworth, and Leslie Laird
6
Art Director
Bridget Reynolds
9
College students learn while teaching
in the community
Nonprofit promotes education in the Dominican
Republic
Degree program created specifically for working
adults
Director of Development
Ralph Phillips
(928) 350-4501
rphillips@prescott.edu
Director of Alumni Relations
Terri Harris
(928) 350-4502
tharris@prescott.edu
Send correspondence and submissions to:
Ann Haver-Allen, editor
Prescott College
220 Grove Ave.
Prescott, AZ 86301
(928) 350-4503
ahaver-allen@prescott.edu
Transitions, a publication for the Prescott College
community, is published three times a year by the
Public Relations Office for faculty, staff, students,
parents, and friends of the College. Its purpose is to
keep readers informed, with news about Prescott
College faculty, staff, students, and fellow alumni.
Transitions is available online at: www.prescott.edu.
Prescott College is committed to equal opportunity for
its employees and applicants for employment, without
discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed,
national or ethnic origin, sex or sexual orientation, age,
religion, disability, marital or parental status, status with
respect for public assistance, or veteran’s status. This
policy applies to the administration of its employment
policies or any other programs generally accorded or
made available to employees.
For the Liberal Arts
and the Environment
www.prescott.edu
Admissions (877) 350-2100 • admissions@prescott.edu
14
15
Class watches Minutemen watching border
16
19
Faculty and staff enjoy San Juan River experience
P3 team learns from experience
20
Students celebrate completion
22
President challenges grads to make a difference
24
25
Visual arts graduates exhibit work
Work of photographer and teacher earns
national acclaim
26
Full-tuition scholarship to be provided
27
38
40
Prescott College students working to make life
better in Africa
Board of Trustees meet
News from the Kino Bay Center
42
Recognizing Crossroads Center donors
44
46
New space for archives
Media reform: A concern for all educated citizens
Departments
3
36
45
47
54
President’s Corner
Faculty News
Letters
Class Notes
Memorials
On the cover: Kaitlin Noss spent the night in the village of Daniel Olol Leturesh and
his wife Charity, (seen in the blue top). Photo illustration by Bridget Reynolds.
President’sCorner
A Prescott College education is about
making a difference in our world
O
ne of the things I’ve
learned about myself
as I’ve aged is that I
like to co-create with other
people. I don’t know if this
comes from my positive experiences playing team sports as a
younger man, or the fact that I
was raised in a family that tended to cooperate versus compete.
Regardless of the source, I
find myself enjoying and benefiting from involving others in
many of my tasks, including
what to write when authoring
these messages at the beginning of Transitions.
When I know that I will soon
be organizing my thoughts for
this piece, I tend to become a
nuisance to those around me. I
ask them what they think is
important and what new things
they’ve learned that might be
interesting to a broad and very
diverse group of readers. The
only unifying characteristic is
that each of you is somehow
considered to be a friend of the
College, and therefore, you are
on our list to receive Transitions.
During a recent flight I
began working on this piece,
and the person next to me
asked what I was writing. This,
of course, was a bad move on
his part because it gave me the
opportunity to ask him: “If you
had to write a message to my
audience, what would you say?”
After an initial and appropriate pause, he asked: “What’s
your angle?”
I don’t use the term angle
when I think of writing, but I
gathered he was asking, “What
do you want people to feel and
Daniel Garvey
do after they read your piece?”
Well, to be honest, I want
you to feel connected to the
College and I want you to find
ways you can contribute to our
continued success—but that’s
not sufficient as my intended
outcome.
What I really hope is that
you’ll read this magazine and
be reminded of the possibilities
that still exist to do positive
things that make a difference.
More than anything,
Transitions has become a collection of stories that should
give us confidence that each of
us can make a positive difference if we choose.
In this issue of Transitions,
you will find evidence of the
power of positive engagement
as you read about our efforts in
Kenya. I can claim some
knowledge of almost everyone
who will be written about in
Transitions, and I can testify
that each person is normal and
like the rest of us in every
aspect, including the success
they can achieve when they
attempt to make their dreams
become real.
As everyone reading this
knows—or will after they have
finished—one of the distinguishing characteristics of
Prescott College is that we
value and honor those who
apply their knowledge in the
service of great ideas. The
Kenya group is a demonstrative
affirmation of our school’s philosophy. We value those featured in Transitions because
they remind us of our own
potential.
Please enjoy the highlights of
commitment and action that
are detailed in this issue of
Transitions, and consider using
these stories as a springboard
for your personal involvement
in making the world a better
place. And by the way, if you
have any thoughts about working with me to co-create the
next piece for Transitions, just
let me know. I always enjoy the
company.
With gratitude for your care
and commitment to this great
institution, I remain appreciatively yours.
Summer 2005Transitions
3
Dream of making wine from Verde
Valley grapes moves closer to reality
by Denise Calhoun
ric Glomski ’92 owes
his livelihood to a bottle
of home-made apple
wine. Glomski, who graduated
from Prescott College with a
degree in environmental education, found a grove of heirloom
apple trees near White Spar
Road in Prescott and decided to
try making wine with them.
He was at a party, sampling
the fruits of his labor, when he
realized that wine was a liquid
landscape, an expression of the
apples and the environment
where they grew.
That discovery led to Page
Springs Cellars, a winery located
in Cornville, Ariz.
One might not think of the
dry Arizona climate and wine as
suitable partners, but Glomski,
who learned about winemaking
during a stint with a California
vintner, said the two are made
for each other.
“Originally, most wines came
from the Aegean and the Middle
East,” he said. “Most of the
grapes used to make wine today
originated in hot desert climates.
Page Springs, at 4,000 feet, is
actually cooler than where many
E
Above, Eric Glomski talks
about the winemaking at
Page Springs Cellars.
Photos by Linda Dove.
Bottom, Page Springs
Cellars offers tours seven
days a week.
Visiting Page
Springs Cellars
The tasting room is
open from 11 a.m. to 6
p.m., seven days a week.
Tours are available for
both members and nonmembers, although the
winery prefers that nonmember tours include
at least 10 people. Tours
must be scheduled in
advance.
The winery is located
at 1500 North Page
Springs Road in
Cornville, Ariz. The
phone number is (928)
639-3004. The fax line is
(866) 848-2192. Or you
may visit on the Web at
pagespringscellars.com.
4
TransitionsSummer 2005
of these grapes originated.”
In fact, he said 20 wineries in
the state grow their own grapes.
Only a handful, however, grow
grapes without the use of petrochemicals, and Page Springs
Cellars is one of them.
“We’re pretty green here,” he
said. “Our vineyard manager
grows cover crops that prevent
erosion, which are then tilled
into the soil for fertility. We aim
to foster a soil ecosystem that
provides nutrients for our vines.”
The grapes from Page
Springs Cellars vineyards are
still too young to be harvested
for wine. Currently, Glomski
brings in all of the winery’s
grapes from Wilcox, Ariz., and
parts of California.
By next summer, he plans to
be growing grapes on 22 acres.
Currently, five acres are planted.
The crops are irrigated with
water from Page Springs, which
meanders through the property.
Page Springs Cellars plans to
bottle 2,000 cases of wine this
year. That’s a 100 percent
increase from last year. The
wines include cabernet pfeffer,
pinot noir, syrah, and mouvedre.
But Glomski’s dream is larger
than just bottling wine. His
dream is rooted in the dirt of his
Verde Valley vineyard, and that
liquid landscape he tasted more
than a decade ago.
“My goal is to grow grapes in
our valley, and to produce wines
that express this place,” he said.
Setting such goals and persevering until they are reached is a
tool he developed while at
Prescott College.
“I learned how to problemsolve, how to set goals there,”
Glomski said. “I also learned
how to organize myself to meet
those goals.”
Page Springs Cellars is a
Prescott College stronghold.
Craig Martinsen ’98, is the
vineyard manager, and his wife,
Allison Scott-Martinsen ’98,
sometimes helps out. In midJune, the Martinsens welcomed
their son, Troen Lars, into the
family.
The Prescott College influence even extends to the walls of
the tasting room. Much of the
art was created by graduate
Raina Gentry ’94, who also
taught rock-climbing at the college from 1996 through 2000.
When he was an idealistic student, Glomski said, he had a
one-sided view of the business
world. Today, he tries to balance
the philosophy and ideas he
developed at Prescott College
with the winery’s bottom line.
“Balance, application, trying to
put myself in the other person’s
shoes,” he said. “It’s so easy to
just consume and profit.”
He said maintaining the balance between making a living
and his philosophy can be a
struggle, but it’s a worthy one.
“My family is dependent on
this piece of land. It affects my
kids, our future,” Glomski said.
“It all depends on how we treat
the land.”
Ph.D. program accredited
Inaugural cohort to begin studies this fall
eginning this fall,
Prescott College will be
the first education institution in the United States to
offer a Doctor of Philosophy in
education, with a focus in sustainability education.
The new Ph.D. program,
which is accredited by the
Higher Learning Commission, a
member of the North Central
Association, enlarges the
College’s mission to educate students of diverse ages and backgrounds to understand, thrive in,
and enhance the world community and the environment.
B
Ongoing process
At Prescott College learning is
considered a continuing
process, and educators strive to
provide an education that will
enable students to live productive lives while achieving a balance between self-fulfillment
and service to others.
Students are encouraged to
think critically and act ethically, with sensitivity to both the
human community and the
biosphere. The College’s philosophy stresses experiential
learning and self-direction,
within an interdisciplinary
curriculum.
The doctoral program in
education, concentrating in sustainability education, logically
derives from and brings together several current bachelor’s
degree and master’s degree
curricular specialties, including
education, environmental studies, and social sciences.
This new low-residency program uniquely combines
expansive, interdisciplinary
inquiry with intense, individualized research and practice.
Four years of concentrated
study and research culminate
in a dissertation or a project
that reflects the high academic
rigor expected of a doctoral dissertation, and also includes a
socially significant application.
Flexible design
The design of the program is
flexible enough to accommodate
many individual learning goals,
but is focused sufficiently
enough to generate collaborative
and challenging scholarly discourse within a solid, if relatively
new, academic concentration.
Breadth is achieved through
participation in a shared
sequence of foundational
courses, and a common area
of interdisciplinary inquiry—
that of sustainability education. Depth is achieved
through study of individual
focus areas and the dissertation and project process.
The Ph.D. program emphasizes rigorous scholarship, critical thinking, and action-oriented
research, and fosters open discourse through respect for
diverse perspectives and scholarly collaboration. Integrated,
interdisciplinary thinking pro-
motes the evolution of ecological
understanding, psychological
and philosophical consciousness,
and social learning for a humane
and sustainable future.
The greatest challenge facing
humankind in the 21st century
is to learn to live sustainably on
the earth. The increasing
emphasis on economic growth
and unsustainable production is
in direct conflict with promoting long-term human health
and prosperity, preserving the
richness of nature, and even
sustaining life on earth.
by Ann Haver-Allen
Key players
Educators can and should play
a key role in helping society
learn to meet the challenges
of globalization and achieve a
sustainable future. It is an
opportunity for educational
institutions to play a major
role in determining whether
the struggle to achieve a just,
livable, and sustainable world
will be won or lost. It is an
opportunity of which Prescott
College hopes to take full
advantage.
For admissions information,
contact the admissions office
toll free at (877) 350-2100, ext.
2100; e-mail: admissions@
prescott.edu; or visit the
Prescott College Website at
www.prescott.edu.
Program components
• Limited residency (35 to 40 days) over a four-year period
• Four-person doctoral committee
• Three required foundation courses
• Five to seven individually structured, independent studies courses
• Colloquium and symposium presentations
• Publishable qualifying paper and presentation
• Practicum(s)
• Dissertation or project, with an emphasis on scholar practitioners
Admission criteria
• Completion of an accredited master’s degree program
• Demonstration of significant, related life and work experience
• Evidence of self-direction and commitment to scholarly excellence and social change
• Ability to develop clearly articulated educational goals
• Willingness to participate in transformative learning, alternative education models, and an
innovative approach to doctoral education
Summer 2005Transitions
5
College students learn while
Service learning practicum sends writers forth
by Hilary Eller
Emergence: A Writers in the
Community Anthology is
available for purchase at
$7.50 per copy. To purchase
one, contact Melanie Bishop
at mbishop@prescott.edu.
Everyday Struggle was written
by Ryan, who was at the
Juvenile Detention Center.
6
hey learn by teaching,
and, in turn, others learn
as well.
The eight students who were
in Melanie Bishop’s Writers
in the Community class at
Prescott College paired up and
led creative writing workshops
at sites throughout the community. (See related story, on page
8.) The students were Iris
Cushing, Melisa Doran, Eric
Insel, Libby Jones, Sam
Reed, Heidi McKye, Lara
Ruggles, and Will
Waterman.
T
Prescott House
Sam Reed taught at Prescott
House for Men, a residential
treatment center.
In a Prescott College class,
Reed said he enjoyed the
diversity in how his students
expressed themselves and
their willingness to try any-
TransitionsSummer 2005
thing and everything.
During one of Reed’s workshops, he led 11 students
through an exercise in which
they each had five index cards,
and on each one wrote down a
different aspect of a short
story—two characters, a setting, a situation, and a conflict.
They shuffled the cards and
then redistributed them, causing chuckles and some outright
laughter, including conflicts
such as a dingo eats a character’s baby and the character
gets accused of the crime.
The cards included settings
such as Coney Island, trash on
the ground, sea gulls all over,
near the fairgrounds, winter
1983, and characters such as
Alan, a 33-year-old man from
Michigan, a forensic toxicologist with the county sheriff’s
department.
The Prescott House students
wrote a story, using one card
from each subject area.
“They’re definitely more
enthusiastic about it,” Reed
said of his students’ progress.
“Both with myself and with
everyone else, everyone’s getting more comfortable with the
idea of having the class, and
with my role of facilitating it,”
he added.
The director of the Prescott
House’s programs asked each
of Reed’s students to commit to
the entire 12-week class, but
some Prescott College students
didn’t have that luxury with the
classes they taught.
Juvenile Detention
For example, Iris Cushing and
Libby Jones, who taught at
the County Juvenile Detention Center, saw different students just about every time
they visited.
If anybody needs to write,
Jones said, these kids need to
write.
She said she enjoyed watch-
teaching in the community
to lead creative writing workshops at sites throughout town
ing the moment when each student’s protective wall dropped
away, and he became just a kid,
struggling with adolescence.
“He’s not a criminal or a drug
addict, he’s just a kid,” she said.
Cushing pointed out the difference between herself as a
writer and her writing students.
“I use writing to form linkages,” she said, when reading
from a weekly journal entry,
adding that for many of her
students, writing has caused
rifts between them and other
people.
Peppertree
Eric Insel taught at Peppertree
Square, an assisted living facility.
Many of the people he
worked with, he said, were difficult to teach because they
have so much knowledge
already.
He called one of his students
a poet/circus performer/lion
tamer and a kindergarten
through 12th-grade teacher.
Therefore, he’s tried to make
his workshops a cathartic writing group, where they could
rethink some of their selfimposed tyrannies.
with middle school.
Skyview School
Turning Point
Lara Ruggles taught with Eric
at Peppertree, and with Heidi
McKye at Skyview School.
Ruggles said she enjoyed the
dichotomy of teaching adults
one day, and middle school students the next.
“It’s neat to see how enthusiastic they are about creative
writing,” she said of the
Skyview students. “On the
other hand, with the Peppertree residents, with the creative writing exercises, you
have to drag it out of them.”
Lara was home-schooled
and this is her first experience
McKye spoke mostly about her
work at the Turning Point
Youth Crisis Shelter, a crisis
shelter for children and teenagers. Since her student population changed rapidly, she
often improvised lesson plans.
“I love that it can be that
flexible,” she said. “From what
see Writers on next page
Photo by Ann Haver-Allen
Members of the Writers in the Community class are Iris Cushing, Melisa Doran, Eric Insel, Libby Jones, Sam
Reed, Heidi McKye, Lara Ruggles, and Will Waterman. Teacher Melanie Bishop is sixth from the left.
My Favorite Time of Day was
written by Alice, a resident of the
Peppertree Square. At 97, Alice
was the oldest participant in the
Writers in the Community
workshops this spring.
Summer 2005Transitions
7
Ode to My Car was written by
Erik V., who was at the
Prescott House for Men.
Writers
continued from previous page
they responded to, I changed
the lesson plan as we went. It
blew me away to work with
these kids so closely in such a
short period of time. It made
my week, every week.”
Blue Hills
Will Waterman taught at Blue
Hills Academy, a residential
treatment center for teen boys.
He shared with the Prescott
College writing class his plans
to help his students start a
newspaper.
“They’re so involved,” he
said. “They love it.”
The challenge, he said,
was providing his students
with a way to use the tools
he’d given them during
the first part of his 12week course. The newspaper gives the students
that opportunity, while
allowing them to use
their interests, such as
writing, photography, and
book reviewing.
by Hilary Eller
Hilary Eller is a reporter for
the Daily Courier in Prescott.
8
Class reaches out to community
P
rescott College’s Writers
in the Community class
sends college students
out into the community to
teach creative writing to people
at the Prescott House for Men,
the Juvenile Detention Center,
Peppertree Assisted Living,
Skyview School, Blue Hills
Academy, and the Turning
Point Youth Crisis Shelter.
The class is structured to
meet three times per week.
The students teach at their
sites two of those classes, and
for the third class they get
together and discuss how their
weekly classes went.
Arts and Letters faculty
member Melanie Bishop ’86
designed the course. She
watches each student at their
TransitionsSummer 2005
sites one time. The students
submit weekly journal entries
to Bishop, chronicling their
experiences with their students
and with their teaching.
“My students are passionate
about writing,” Bishop said.
“This class allows them to minimize the focus on themselves as
writers and to get to know different populations, to intersect
with different parts of Prescott.”
In addition, she said, it
enlarges their life experience
and their experience with writing and teaching writing.
The Writers in the
Community class is a
practicum, which means students do what they’re learning.
When the quarter ended, the
class published a community
anthology, which included
poetry that community students wrote. The College then
sponsored a reading, where
every participant who was able
to attend came and read his or
her own poetry.
The goal is to serve a range
of ages and a cross section of
the community, Bishop said,
focusing on people who might
not have otherwise had a
chance to take a class like this.
While Bishop said college
often is a self-absorbed age,
she said the Writers in the
Community class gives Prescott
College students the opportunity to get outside themselves.
And, she said, it’s really fulfilling to watch students grapple with this.
Nonprofit promotes education
Alum founds organization committed to improving
opportunities for children in rural Dominican Republic
story by Erica Ryberg
photography by Silvan Wick
n Cabarete, on the remote north coast of the
Dominican Republic, the trade winds blow
year-round, carrying with them those interested in a little culture and adventure. This littleknown sport paradise hosts a multitude of kiteboarders and windsurfers bleached and tanned to
outdoor perfection, who take to the choppy bays
when the winds pick up in the afternoon.
It’s an adventurer’s dream, but the area also
faces deep social challenges. A Prescott College
graduate helped establish
the Dominican Republic
Education and Mentoring
(DREAM) Project, which
works to improve substandard rural education in
Cabarete.
When Judy Greenberg
’74 and her husband came
to Cabarete from Vermont
with their children in 1994,
Judy Greenberg ’74
they were in search of
recreation; he windsurfed
and she mountain biked through local outfitter
Iguana Mama. Tricia Suriel, Iguana Mama’s owner,
took her out on a couple of rides, and introduced
her to the difficulties faced by Cabarete’s children.
“She showed us the local elementary school,
and said she was trying to get a library started
there,” Greenberg said. “I was very inspired to
come back again the next year, and not just be a
tourist.”
I
Back to college roots
The decision brought her back to her Prescott
College roots. Greenberg, a psychologist, first
traveled in Latin America while still an undergrad. She toured South America with a roommate
and joined a study-abroad program.
“I joined an official cultural anthropology
semester program in Colombia as soon as I came
back from six months traveling around,” she said.
“And all of that went toward my degree.”
Greenberg earned her bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology and Latin American studies.
see DREAM Project on next page
Children of Batey Caraballo, a community of cane cutters, have no school to attend. The
DREAM Project is working to construct a schoolhouse and fund supplies. They also are in
need of volunteers to help in this mostly Haitian and Haitian-Dominican community.
Summer 2005Transitions
9
Dream Project
continued from previous page
“One of the really wonderful things about
Prescott College was that the instructors took
students’ passions and turned them into academic
pursuits,” Greenberg said.
Following her passions, she parlayed her cultural anthropology training into a psychology
career and visited Latin America frequently. It
was on the advice of friends that she and her
family found themselves in the Dominican
Republic, touring a local grade school.
According to Greenberg, in a school that had
no electricity or running water and only one outhouse, the biggest challenge was the lack of educational materials.
Books, books, books
“This elementary school had 600 students, and
there wasn’t one book in the school,” she said.
During the year following their first trip to
Cabarete, Greenberg and her children, Emma
and Jacob, collected $500 in school supplies and
books in Spanish. Since that first year, they have
returned faithfully, always with more books.
“Once, at the very end of their recess, we
brought the books into the little library building.
Kids were pouring in through the windows,
climbing in to get their hands on these books to
just look at them. They’d get a book, and sit on
the floor, and go immediately into a trance of
ecstasy, looking at these pictures and reading and
Public schools in the
Dominican Republic are
overcrowded, student-teacher
ratios are staggering by U.S.
standards, and basic materials
(paper, pencils, scissors, etc.)
are unavailable. In addition to
providing basic supplies and
desperately needed library
books, the DREAM Project also
funds building new
classrooms, bathrooms, and
libraries in the public schools.
10
TransitionsSummer 2005
just getting transported to another world,”
Greenberg said. “It was just so incredible.”
Greenberg’s 11-year-old daughter, Emma, was
no less touched by the incident.
“You get to see how really fortunate we have it,
and you see people who aren’t as fortunate as
you, and it’s really rewarding,” she said.
Greenberg wanted to include her children in
her interests, and teach them that people in other
parts of the world live differently.
“I just felt like, if we’re going to change this
world at all, that kids starting from a very young
age should see what they’ve got and what other
people don’t have, and what they need to do to
make the world better. Then it’s up to them to do
something about it,” she said.
Distributing the books was not easy. Suriel said
that when Greenberg brought the first batch
down, she had a hard time getting them out her
own front door.
“I wasn’t able to get the books from my house
to the school for a good two months because my
husband and his friends were so enthralled with
the Cat in the Hat and Huevo Verde con Jamón,”
she said.
After finally getting the books to the school,
she checked back to find that none had reached
the schoolchildren. The books had disappeared.
“I was so ignorant at the time that I actually
thought the teachers were going to read these
books to the children,” she said. “I realized that
we needed to make a library and have a librarian
to oversee the books.”
DREAM Project born
That first library touched off more than a
decade’s worth of work, which culminated in the
DREAM Project. Following their initial efforts,
Greenberg filed for nonprofit status and became
the first president of the board of directors.
“The day that we had our very first board
meeting, the only two people there were Judy
and me,” Suriel said.
As the project grew, Suriel, Greenberg, and others helped to build additional classrooms, bathrooms, and libraries in the local public schools.
“I think we have the only public school in all
the Dominican Republic that has computers
see DREAM Project on next page
Summer 2005Transitions
Early pregnancy, parental
attitudes, and family
obligations are partially to
blame for the poor state of
rural education in the
Dominican Republic.
Therefore, one of the primary
goals of the DREAM Project is
to help students finish school.
11
Dream Project
The Puerto Cabarete public
school is one of the only public
schools in the Dominican
Republic to have computers—
and a backup generator to
ensure power.
Photo at right, many rural
schools in the Dominican
Republic do not have
electricity or running water.
The DREAM Project funds the
building of new classrooms,
bathrooms, and libraries in the
public schools.
continued from previous page
available to students—and a backup generator,”
Greenberg said.
The challenges compelling the project have
their roots in government expansion of primary
education during the 1970s and 1980s. While
many schools opened, many were without teaching materials or trained instructors.
“The schools are pretty loose compared to what
we’re used to,” Greenberg said. “The teachers
hardly make any money. The electricity comes and
goes. They have these little desks with the arms
attached to them, and when they break it’s not like
they’re going to get a new one. Three kids are
going to end up sitting on another.”
Against a Shangri-La backdrop of giant mountains, remote beaches, deserts, and rain forest,
generations of rural Dominicans have lived without the benefit of adequate education. According
to a United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) analysis, early pregnancy,
parental attitudes, and family obligations are partially to blame for the poor state of rural education in the Dominican Republic.
Education is the answer
The answer, according to those at the DREAM
project, is to help students finish school.
Statistically, children of mothers who have completed high school have a 71-percent chance of
attending school vs. 28 percent for those who
haven’t. Since 85 percent of poor Dominican parents haven’t completed the compulsory sixth-grade
education, the project has its work cut out for it.
“You’re fighting against time, because the kids
have an expiration date,” Suriel said. “They’re 6
and then all of a sudden in 10 years they’re 16,
and then they’re pregnant and the cycle starts all
over again. So you have 10 years to get to them.”
The country of 8.6 million people has begun to
experience an economic renaissance, due in part
to increased interest in sports tourism, but the
growth and a burgeoning culture of expatriates is
not without difficulties.
12
TransitionsSummer 2005
“It’s changing rapidly—that’s what tourism
brings in. It’s not the eco-tourism that everyone
wants to believe: there’s sports tourism, which is
very different from eco-tourism, and should not
be confused,” Suriel said. “Some of the biggest
problems are that the tourists are not properly
educated before they come out, nor are the people who start businesses.”
Prescott College alumna Laurel Eastman ’98,
who opened a kiteboarding school in Cabarete in
2003, is an exception (see story below). Eastman,
who graduated with a degree in human ecology,
became involved with the DREAM Project from
almost the moment she arrived.
“Education here is so bad. I thought, ‘What can
we do about this?’ Then the DREAM Project
came into existence,” Eastman said. “They are
really on the forefront, the leading edge of
humanitarian work.”
At around the same time that Eastman arrived,
the DREAM Project began making giant strides
forward. Three years earlier, Suriel had sold
Iguana Mama to direct the project full-time.
“Now we have a full-time staff of five and have
hosted an additional 100 volunteers encompassing 50,000 hours of work in 17 classrooms,”
Suriel said, adding that local businesses help the
project through financial support and by promoting the DREAM Project to visitors.
“Laurel was one of our very first people to
come on as a partner, and she’s just been fabulous. Other businesses were hesitant because it’s
such a big responsibility, and Laurel didn’t even
blink,” Suriel said.
In addition to making socially just contributions
through her business, Eastman is recycling old
kites into beach bags.
“We’re trying to minimize the little bit of impact
that kite-boarding does have. I think it’s because of
my Prescott College education, the way that I
make decisions with my company, in what I come
up with to be treading lightly,” she said.
Prescott College grad enjoys life
as an adventure entrepreneur
S
tarting up and running my own businesses
has been one of the most satisfying
achievements in my life. The ability to
work doing what I love is more than the icing on
the cake; it’s the reason for being!
The beauty of being a Prescott College grad is
that self-direction is second nature—and that’s one
of the key qualities needed to be a successful
entrepreneur. It’s like a real-life senior project, and
while the rewards can be incredible, the focus is (as
always) on the journey, not the destination.
In more ways than one, I find my business path
integrated very much with my physical pursuits
of athletic excellence. Successes and opportunities are recognized and realized by listening to
my body. My heart shows me the path to follow,
and my gut instincts help guide me through
rough waters.
I find the same skills I use in extreme sports—
whether its kite-surfing, snowboarding, or rock,
climbing—also serve me in the work aspect of my
life. These include facing my fears of failure
head-on, analysis of what my actions in this
moment will cause in the future, and most of all,
calculated risk-taking.
People who succeed in adventure or extreme
sports possess the same qualities it takes to
become a good entrepreneur. So what are you
waiting for? Listen to your heart, make your
plan, and go for it! Good luck, and good winds to
you all.
Summer 2005Transitions
Erica Ryberg is a professional
writer. She can be found
online at: www.dream
factoryink.com.
Silvan Wick is a professional
photographer. To view more
of his photographs see
www.silvanwick.com.
For more information about
the Dominican Republic
Education and Mentoring
(DREAM) Project, see
www.dominicandream.org/
by Laurel Eastman ’98
Laurel Eastman ’98 owns
Laurel Eastman Kiteboarding
in Cabarete. For more info,
see www.laureleastman.com.
13
Degree program created
specifically for working adults
by Ann Haver-Allen
Students in the Adult Degree
Program attend an orientation
weekend that informs and
prepares students to begin
their program. Information
presented includes critical
thinking and the liberal arts,
academic processes, study
skills, and library resources.
Photos by Ann Haver-Allen
14
he Adult Degree
Program is one of two
venues through which a
student can earn a Bachelor of
Arts degree from Prescott
College. This community-based
undergraduate-degree completion program is accredited by
the Higher Learning
Commission, a member of the
North Central Association.
Degrees are offered in
adventure education, environmental studies, human poten-
T
TransitionsSummer 2005
tial (including counseling and
psychology), humanities, liberal
arts areas, management, sustainable community development, and teacher education.
The beginning
The Adult Degree Program was
founded in 1978, with the mission of helping students complete their college education
without sacrificing a personal or
professional life.
Most students hold full-time
jobs, and many have families.
The average age of students in
the Adult Degree Program is 37,
and the average enrollment for a
semester is 325.
“Typically, students come in
with at least two years of college,” said Jeanine Canty,
interim dean of the Adult
Degree Program. “We usually
recommend that they have at
least 70 quarter-hours of credit.”
Semester hours can be converted to quarter hours by multiplying by 1.5. For example, 3
semester hours equal 4.5 quarter credits.
“Students are required to
have a competence (major) and
two breadths (minors),” Canty
said. “The competence has to be
at least 90 quarter-hour credits,
and each breadth has about 40
quarter-hour credits. The student’s curriculum is approved by
the faculty, who also look at its
scope and breadth.”
The average time to degree
completion is two years.
Applicants must demonstrate
that they have mentors in
their community who have a
master’s degree or a Ph.D.
and are willing to work with
them in their study area.
“We are a community-based
program, and it’s really important that students have professional people with degrees who
are willing to serve as men-
tors,” Canty said.
Requirements
In addition to finding a community-based mentor, students
have three other requirements:
• attending an orientation
weekend in Prescott at the
beginning of enrollment;
• attending the Adult Liberal
Learning Course, which is an
extension of orientation and
helps students become familiar with Prescott College’s
philosophy and methods; and
• attending a liberal-arts seminar weekend.
The weekend orientation
informs and prepares students
to begin their program. Information presented includes academic processes, study skills,
and library resources.
Taking their first course with
their core faculty member, the
Liberal Learning course introduces students to particularly
effective tools and strategies of
learning that help them
achieve high levels of skill in
the liberal arts. This threequarter-credit course is taken
in the first quarter of the student’s program.
The liberal arts seminars
broaden students’ learning
about values and preconceived, commonly held
beliefs. Seminars focus on
topics such as environmental
issues and cross-cultural perspectives. The objective is to
develop intellectual skills in
the liberal arts.
New students are enrolled
four times a year in October,
January, April, and July. Tuition
for the Adult Degree Program
is $4,374 per enrollment period, which is six months, or 18
to 24 quarter credit hours.
For more information, see
www.prescott.edu/admissions/
apply_adp.html.
Class watches Minutemen
watching U.S./Mexico border
pril proved to be a good
month for students in
Randall Amster’s
Human Rights Seminar to gain
a firsthand educational experience. April is when more than
700 armed Minuteman volunteers converged on a 23-mile
stretch in Cochise County in an
attempt to stop what they
called the “Mexican invasion.”
Amster’s class assisted the
local chapter of the American
Civil Liberties Union as legal
observers to the Minuteman
Project. Their task was to
ensure that the Minutemen
were following the law.
“We were there as
observers,” Amster said. “We
didn’t go down to get in their
face and debate policy with
them. We wanted to ensure
that everyone’s rights were
being honored and respected.”
Melisa Doran was one of
the students who participated
as a legal observer.
“The most influential part of
this experience was learning
more about what the border is
really like through firsthand
experience,” she said. “Just sitting in the desert sun all day,
even with adequate food and
water and an easy way out,
made me appreciate what
migrants go through to walk for
days just to have a chance to
come here.”
In 2004 more than 200
migrants died while attempting
to cross the harsh desert terrain
of southern Arizona.
Amster is the first to say
that the Minutemen have a
right to demonstrate, but arming themselves, destroying
water stations, and using
searchlights across the desert
are all actions that move
beyond demonstration.
A
“An untrained armed civilian
militia is not well-regulated,”
he said. “The situation was like
a powder keg, and could have
set off an international crisis.”
He gives credit to the
Minutemen for drawing national attention to the human-relations crisis occurring along the
U.S.-Mexico border.
“They were very adept at
creating a media circus,”
Amster said of the Minuteman
Project. “In actuality, the exercise was about 25 percent border control, and 75 percent
dog- and-pony show.”
He said that although their
motivations were entirely different, his class and the
Minutemen did share some
bonds in political ideologies.
For instance, members of both
groups are against the war in
Iraq, agree that the North
American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) is a failure, and that a guest-worker
program is shortsighted, and
are increasingly frustrated with
the lack of action by the Bush
administration.
“This gave us a place to have
open dialogue because we
weren’t really that far apart on
some of the issues,” Amster said,
adding that the Minuteman
movement is enacting a
Manifest Destiny drama.
“The Minutemen tend to
believe that America belongs to
Americans by birthright, and
that illegals are crossing the
border to corrupt, rape, and
pillage,” he said. “Historically,
however, the people crossing
the border have a stronger
claim to this land. It was part of
Mexico before it was part of
the United States.”
Summer 2005Transitions
by Ann Haver-Allen
Randall Amster, wearing the
white T-shirt in the front row,
is pictured with students in
his Human Rights Seminar.
15
Faculty and staff enjoy San Juan River
F
Photo by Joel Barnes
From left, Jeanine Canty, Ralph and Darcy Phillips, Catherine Hutchins, Tom Thomasson, and Steve Munsell
take a break from the river.
aculty and staff members of
Prescott College were guests
of the summer block course
River Guides Training, with faculty
member Joel Barnes ‘81.
Co-instructors for the adventure
were faculty member Steve
Munsell (first segment only)
Robert McGillicuddy ’04, Colin
Wann ’00, and Greg Walters ’05
(second segment only). Guides in
training were Jenny Aranson,
Audrey Goldberg, Ryan
McDonald, and Catherine
Hutchings.
Students and instructors led 20
faculty and staff members down the
San Juan River in Utah in May. The
trip had two legs. The first segment
was three and one-half days, beginning at Sand Island and ending at
Mexican Hat. The second segment
Above, expeditioners stop to explore River House, an Ananazi ruin.
Photo by Joel Barnes
Left, faculty and staff members sing around the campfire
Photo by Cathy Boland
16
TransitionsSummer 2005
experience
was five and one-half days, beginning at Mexican Hat and ending at
Clay Hills.
Faculty and staff participants on
the first segment were Adrian
Adams, Eileen Chalfoun, Noel
Caniglia, Jeanine Canty, Jenn
Dinaburg, Ralph and Darcy
Phillips, Tom Thomasson, and
Alison Ruth Wiggers.
Those who participated in the second segment of the adventure were
Molly and Gary Beverly, Cathy
Boland, Jeanine Canty, Frank
Cardamone, Lyn Chenier, Joan
Clingan, Jamie and Brian
Mehalic, Pete Peters, and Mary
Trevor.
Above, faculty and staff members
who participated in the second
segment of the San Juan River trip
pose for a group photo.
Photo by Cathy Boland
Left, running the San Juan rapids.
Photo by Joel Barnes
Right, Navajo weavings displayed
by Steve Munsell. Photo by Joel
Barnes
Bottom, participants in the second
segment of the San Juan River trip
listen to a student’s presentation.
Photo by Joel Barnes
Summer 2005Transitions
17
Devin Carberry named finalist
evin Carberry was
chosen as one of 11
finalists for the 2005
Campus Compact’s Howard R.
Swearer Student Humanitarian
Award. Carberry was selected
from a field of 58 nominations
that came from colleges and
universities nationwide,
including Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton.
Carberry “represents a
model of humanitarian service
that we would all do well to
emulate,” said Elizabeth L.
Hollander, executive director
of Campus Compact, which is
a national coalition of more
than 950 college and university presidents who are committed to fulfilling the civic pur-
D
poses of higher education.
At Prescott College, Carberry
has a dual competence in education and social justice studies, a
major he has dubbed “education
for community development.”
Carberry, who will graduate in
December, grew up in Orange
County, Calif. His plans following graduation are still being
shaped, but he is thinking about
a number of possibilities, including leading a community-based
orientation, teaching English
and studying Capoeria and
Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro,
developing a Maasai language
module for the Kenya course
next year, finishing the book he’s
been writing for the last year,
and beginning his second, join-
ing Teach for America, and getting his Ph.D. in a program that
weds activism and education.
The Swearer Award, named
in honor of Brown University’s
15th president and one of the
founders of Campus Compact,
was created to bring national
attention and recognition to
the community work of college students.
Campus Compact promotes
public and community service
that develops students’ citizenship skills, helps campuses
forge effective community partnerships, and provides
resources and training for faculty seeking to integrate civic
and community-based learning
into the curriculum.
Bioneers set to beam into Prescott
F
or the fourth consecutive
year, Prescott College
will be hosting the annual Bioneers Conference via
satellite. The Bioneers
Conference will be held Oct. 14
to 16, 2005, at the Marin Center
in San Rafael, Calif., and the
plenary sessions will be broadcast live at Prescott College in
the Sam Hill Warehouse.
The Prescott College celebration surrounding the conference
will feature a local green-business consortium, solar, permaculture and biodiesel workshops,
and the creation of a Center for
Social Change in the Prescott
College community.
Other events will include a
film festival and partnership
with the Arts and Letters
Program in conjunction with
the annual art auction.
Rachael Gollub is an exciting addition to the planning of
this year’s local event. Gollub is
using Bioneers as her senior
project and is learning about
18
TransitionsSummer 2005
socially responsible marketing
and event planning.
The goal of the Bioneers
Conference is to stimulate local
dialogue and develop broader
alliances for positive change.
The satellite component,
dubbed Beaming Bioneers, connects the conference to 17 communities throughout the United
States who share a common
vision of ecological and social
restoration. Plenary speakers
and their topics include:
• Janine Benyus: “What Life
Knows: New Ideas from
Biology that Could Change
the World”
• Wil Bullock: “You Are Where
You Eat: Growing Urban
Food and Community”
• Vyacheslav Trigubovich:
“From Russia With Snow
Leopards: The Future of
Wilderness Protection”
• Bill McKibben: “Global
Warming: A Climate of
Fear and Opportunity”
• Diane Wilson: “An
UnReasonable Woman:
UnReasonableness and
Where It Gets You”
• Jeremy Narby: “Intelligence
in Nature: A Predator’s
Inquiry”
• Rha Goddess: “Who’s Got
Next? Cultivating FeminineCentered Leadership in a
Hip-Hop Era”
• Michael Ableman: “Field of
Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey
to the Frontiers of American
Agriculture”
• Ohki Simine Forest: “Return
of the Ancient Council Ways:
Indigenous Survival in
Chiapas”
• David Orr: “The Fifth
Revolution: The Evolution
of Ecological Design
Intelligence”
For the complete conference
schedule, see www.bioneers.
org/conference. For more information about Prescott College
activities, contact Heather
Houk at hhouk@prescott.edu or
(928) 350-1007.
P3 team learns from experience
he People, Prosperity,
and the Planet (P3) team
headed by Tischa
Muñoz-Erickson ’99 was one
of 65 teams to compete in the
Phase II grant competition in
Washington, D.C., that was
sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). They did not win that
round, but in the first round, the
team received $10,000.
P3, a student design competition for sustainability, is a collaboration between the EPA
and 35 partners from industry,
government agencies, and nongovernment organizations.
P3 emphasizes the interrelationship of economic prosperity,
the protection of productive
ecosystems, and efforts to provide people with a higher quality
of life, and provides grants to
student teams to design and
implement sustainable solutions
to environmental challenges.
“The feedback we got from
the judges, public, and agency
folks was very positive,” MuñozErickson said. “Our poster
setup, including brochures,
rocked. A professor from anoth-
T
er team exclaimed, ‘This is an
eye-catching poster!’ and to me
that is priceless.”
Muñoz-Erickson and
Mathew Loeser, a student at
Northern Arizona University
(NAU), in partnership with the
Diablo Trust and Prescott
College Professor Bernardo
Aguilar-González, designed a
monitoring tool to help achieve
sustainable management of
rangelands in northern Arizona.
The monitoring tool measures important ecological and
social aspects of rangeland
management such as soil quality, grassland and forest health,
wildlife viability, economic stability, community strength, and
public awareness.
“I think we all deserve a good
pat on the back for the work
we’ve done. I think the most
exciting times of the project are
ahead, so I’m personally looking
forward to the good things we
are going to achieve together.”
Other research team members include Prescott College
student Jeff Bayha, and Tom
Sisk, whose lab at NAU has
been researching grasslands and
Scholarships help with
summer study plans
ight Prescott College
students are benefitting
from the generosity of
two anonymous donors.
Each of the students received
$7,500 in summer scholarships
to help with the cost of their
summer course fees.
These are one-time scholarships and were awarded based
on a combination of need and
merit.
The recipients and their area
of competence are:
• Josephine Arader, envi-
E
ronmental studies
• Katelyn Cabot, integrative
studies
• Lisa Glaterio, adventure
education
• Catherine Hutchings,
adventure education
• Jessica Lichtig, adventure
education
• Ryan McDonald, adventure education
• Celeste Roberts, social
issues
• Paul Whitehead, adventure education
Tischa Muñoz-Erickson and Bernardo Aguilar-González in Washington,
D.C., for the Phase II grant competition of the EPA’s P3 team.
grazing since 1996.
For additional information,
contact Muñoz-Erickson at
Tischa.MunozErickson@nau.
edu. or Aguilar-González at
baguilar@prescott.edu.
Student co-investigators and
research associate selecting
monitoring site locations
across focal area of 400,000
acres of rangelands.
Student musician brings
performance to Crossroads
Paisley Yankolovich, a student in the Adult Degree
Program, will give a free concert at 7 p.m., Saturday,
Sept. 24, in the Crossroads Café. Yankolovich performs
to tracks from his records or accompanies himself on
acoustic guitar for smaller audiences. He has two compact discs out. His first, Not Unclean, was released in
August 2004. The second, Itch, was released in April
2005. For more information about Yankolovich and his
music, see www.paisleyyankolovich.com.
Summer 2005Transitions
19
Students celebrate completion
Baccalaureate and commencement held
resident Dan Garvey conferred 54 bachelor’s degrees at graduation ceremonies for
the Resident Degree Program on Saturday,
April 30, 2005. The graduates and their degree
competence and breadth are:
Kyra Aneil Alexander, adventure education,
with an emphasis in outdoor experiential education and environmental studies
Jill Anne Boyer, environmental studies, with an
emphasis in conservation biology and humanities
Paul Thomas Bryan, integrative studies: human
development, with an emphasis in ecopsychology
and adventure education
Joseph M. Carroll, peace studies and human
development
Katherine Holden Chance, human health and
development and human biology
Aaron Lee Cloninger, human ecology and visual arts
Carson Rose Conklin, environmental studies,
with an emphasis in agroecology and interdisciplinary arts and letters
Sara Nicole Cross, visual arts, with an emphasis in studio arts, and holistic health with an
emphasis in expressive arts
Imogen Daly, environmental studies and arts
and letters
Danielle Anna DeFiore, elementary education
and arts and letters
P
Jill Boyer, Ella Goodbrod,
Sean Roberts, and Elisa
Stodden celebrate graduation.
Photos by Rachel Yoder
20
TransitionsSummer 2005
Joseph Douglas Devine, experiential education and environmental science
David William Drever, writing and literature
and history and politics
Emily Ducat, environmental studies, with an
emphasis in environmental education and Latin
American culture and language
Foster Andrew Duval Jr., environmental studies, with an emphasis in environmental policy and
outdoor pursuits
Isaac Joseph Ellis, environmental studies, with
an emphasis in ecological design and peace studies
Samuel Luke Epperson, education, with an
emphasis in environmental education and adventure education
Kelly Evans, environmental studies, with an
emphasis in conservation biology, and cultural,
and regional studies, with an emphasis in Latin
American studies
Johnathan David Farley, political economy
and environmental studies
Travis Fortney, writing and literature, and philosophy and religion
Kate Fox, environmental studies, with an
emphasis in marine studies, cultural and regional
studies, and outdoor pursuits
Sam Fox, adventure education and environmental studies
Emily Sara Gable, environmental studies, with
an emphasis in marine studies and outdoor experiential education
Sam Reed, center, celebrates
graduation with poet Megan
Gannon and Miles Waggener,
instructor in the Arts and
Letters Program.
Photo by Rachel Yoder
Ella McKenzie Goodbrod, adventure education
and environmental studies
Beth Bernadette Hellenbrand, sustainable
development in Latin America and the human
potential of individuals and communities
Carl Jackson, adventure education, education,
and human development
Max Willis Kamen, environmental studies and
industrial arts and design
Christopher Michael Kopek, natural history
and ecology, cultural and regional studies and
outdoor pursuits
Robert LaBuda, environmental studies and
environmental education
Sonya Levy-Boyd, human development, with
an emphasis in gender studies and adventure
education
Carla Anne Long, psychology and adventure
education
Margaret Kathleen Olinda Madden, peace
studies, with an emphasis in Latin America and
environmental studies
Kathryn Ann McEwen, environmental studies,
with an emphasis in earth science and outdoor
education
Heidi McKye, creative writing, secondary education, and interdisciplinary arts and letters
Jamie Lloyd McSweeney, environmental studies, with an emphasis in agroecology and community health and sustainability
Leif Mjos, environmental studies, outdoor pursuits, and intercultural studies
Kaitlin Elizabeth Noss, education for community development and visual and expressive arts
Omar Dylan Pierce, ecological design and outdoor pursuits
Brent Pikolas, environmental education and
adventure education
Joshua Daniel Porter, adventure education and
human development
Sam Reed, creative writing and environmental
studies
Jennifer Riffle, visual arts, with an emphasis in
art education, math and science, and liberal arts
Sean Denali Roberts, psychology, education,
and theater
Zachariah William Schneider, adventure education and environmental studies
Sara Ruth Schuenemann, environmental studies, with an emphasis in ecotourism, and arts and
letters, with an emphasis in documenting the
existential wilderness experience
L.J. Schuessler, adventure education and holistic mind and body
Raymond Rabbiboy Sprague III, environmental studies, with an emphasis in agroecology and
adventure education
Elisa Cooper Stodden, environmental studies,
with an emphasis in environmental education and
arts and letters
Ellen Thomas, earth science, visual arts, and
music
Gabriel Abraham Wallace, adventure education, with an emphasis in outdoor experiential
education and environmental studies
Gregory John Walters, adventure education
and environmental studies
Jonathan Lyon Whitney, zoology and cultural
studies
Mark Brian Winterowd, environmental science
and creative writing
Marc Edward Wise, environmental studies,
with an emphasis in ecological sustainability and
human development
Jonathan Joseph Zucchi, political economy
and outdoor education
Summer 2005Transitions
21
President challenges graduates
by Ann Haver-Allen
Top photo, Kelly Ann
Brizendine of Tucson earned
her Bachelor of Arts degree in
elementary education through
the Adult Degree Program.
James D. Nez of Kayenta
earned his Master of Arts
degree in American Indian
Studies: Navajo Nation.
Photos by Ann Haver-Allen
22
raduation ceremonies for students earning a Master of
Arts degree, and those earning a Bachelor of Arts degree through
the Adult Degree and Graduate
Programs were held Saturday, June 4.
President Dan Garvey conferred 27
Master of Arts degrees and 68
Bachelor of Arts degrees.
“We acknowledge you, the graduates,” President Garvey said. “We
acknowledge the sacrifices, the hard
work, and that you had to do things
that other graduates may not have had
to do. This is no small feat. It is a
tremendous accomplishment.”
He challenged graduates to make a
difference in the world, and said that
Prescott College will not be content if graduates
from the institution do not make a difference.
“You understand that our goal is to help you
gather the information and skills needed for you
to make a difference in the lives of others,” he
said. “Have courage. It will take courage to
make a difference. Have the courage to do the
things that need to be done, when they need to
be done.”
President Garvey also encouraged the graduates to keep their sense of humor and surround
themselves with positive people.
“Define yourselves in terms of what you like,
not what you don’t like,” he said. “We don’t need
any more people identifying the weeds in our
lives. We need people who are willing to help
plant cover crops.”
The graduates earning a bachelor’s degree
through the Adult Degree Program and their
hometowns are:
Spencer Ames, Berlin, Vt.
Tiffany Aleice Amor, Tucson
Andrea Nicole Atencio, Tucson
Antonio Gallego Badilla, Tucson
Elva Maria Barrales, Tucson
Matilda S. Begay, Rock Point
Katherine Rebecca Brandy, Ashland, Ore.
Katie Elizabeth Brieschke, Erie, Mich.
Kelly Ann Brizendine, Tucson
Cheryl Lynne Campbell, Phoenix
Regina Anne Carpenter, Williams
Jeanna Louise Silkiss Carter, Lopez Island,
Wash.
T. Miki’ala Catalfano, Bella Vista, Calif.
Terry Faye Cavey, Cochise
Tammy Lea Cochrell, Pahrump, Nev.
Kelly A. Coffman, Prescott
G
TransitionsSummer 2005
Derek P. Collins, Prescott
Lee Comaduran, Benson
Joycelyn Ann Connet, Tucson
Ashley Magers Cornwell, Prescott
Eric Robert Cross, Tucson
Lincoln Andrew DeFer, Tucson
Kristen Densmore, Prescott
Nelson E. Dexter, Tucson
Matthew Robert Dusek, Ashland, Ore.
Lisette Anne Marie Eckman, Tucson
Margaret P. Elandt, Tucson
Jerry L. Ford, Socorro, N.M.
Amie L. Gillis, Tucson
Evelyn Gissendanner, Prescott
Jeffrey Robert Glaser Sr., Summerville, S.C.
Olga Gutierrez, Casa Grande
Brian James Hansen, Tucson
Pamela Paulette Houston, Arizona City
Melanie Michelle Ann Hurst, Tucson
to make a difference in the world
Erica Lynn Irby, Tucson
Sonja Mariea Karihuhta, Tucson
Bonnie Marie Kuch, Marana
Marylynn Kunkel, Prescott
Lisa Darlene Kynast-Pena, Reno, Nev.
Jennifer Larkin, Tucson
Amanda De-Anna McPherson, Marana
Janette Marie Brentlinger Miller, Jackson,
Wyom.
Amara Jade Mitchell, Tucson
Denise Marie Molina, Tucson
Danielle Carol Parnell, Chino Valley
Michael Payton, Tucson
Jared Gabriel Stewart Perkins, Tucson
Laura Colleen Pettit, Santa Ysabel, Calif.
Richard Trujillo Quiroz, Tucson
Wallace L. Ross, Long Beach, Calif.
Deborah Sue Rupp, Tucson
Lia Kathleen Sansom, Tucson
Joye Lynn Sass, Phoenix
Claire Elizabeth Scheuren, Tucson
Ryn Alan Shane-Armstrong, Tucson
Sharnell Antenette Sheffer, Tucson
Nelida Bertha Sprunt, Vail
Kayla Streifel, Gillette, Wyom.
Kelvin D. Strozier, Tucson
Mary Testa, Globe
Kimberly Vieu, Cochise
Sara Kathleen Voska, Delta, Ohio
Karen Ross Waterfall, Tucson
Deanie Lynn Wood, Tucson
Julie Ann Wulfekuhle, Ballantine, Mont.
Benjamin Harrison Wurzel, Franklin, Tenn.
Elizabeth A. Wurzlow, Tucson
Friends and family gather
prior to graduation
ceremonies to celebrate.
Photos by Ann Haver-Allen
Master’s Degree recipients
hose earning a Master of Arts degree
through the Adult Degree and Graduate
Program and their hometowns are:
Miriam L. Austin, Twin Falls, Idaho
Wallace Andrew Beckham, Denver, Colo.
Suzanne Patiño Dhruv, Tucson
Rhonda Downey, Hampton, NB, Canada
Diane Meyer Dunn, Plano, Texas
Anita M. Everett, Atlanta
Kelly Ferrell-Koren, Tucson
Linda Karyn Focht, Tucson
Lesly Jean Hess, West Covina, Calif.
Cindy D. Johnson, Reno, Nev.
Kathryn Kauppi, Durango, Colo.
Teresa A. Lazaro, Mesa
T
Shasta Renae McCoy, Gunnison, Colo.
Aimee S. Miller, Boulder, Colo.
Adrian Mintz, Sedro-Woolley, Wash.
James D. Nez, Kayenta
Stephen Powell, Truchas, N.M.
Shandra Keesecker de Rivero, Lukeville
Tracey Sanders, Loveland, Colo.
John Sheedy, Tucson
Barbara Ann Silversmith, Farmington, N.M.
Victoria Lynn Springgay, Gilbert
Cathy Sproul, Tucson
Toni Stafford, Cottonwood
Michael F. Strife, Fort Collins, Colo.
Tierna L. Unruh-Enos, Albuquerque
Mary Williams, Tucson
Summer 2005Transitions
23
Visual arts graduates exhibit work
hree graduates of
Prescott College’s Visual
Arts Program were featured in exhibits at the Sam
Hill Warehouse. The students
were Aaron Cloninger, Sara
Cross, and Jennifer Riffle.
Cross’s exhibit, titled
“Interconnection,” was a series
of paintings that expressed the
spiritual interconnection
amongst all life.
Riffle’s exhibit, titled
“Thumb and Cloud Theory,”
was a visual arts installation
displaying silk paintings. The
silk room installation and silk
T
paintings explored growing up
in Los Alamos, the history connected to the lab, and the
artist’s exposure to radiation.
Additionally, Riffle offered a
free silk painting workshop,
where she provided supplies,
space, and direction to learn
the French Serti technique of
silk painting. Participants
received two plank habotai silk
pieces, an assortment of dyes,
tools, and resist. The workshop
was so popular with Prescott
College students and members
of the Prescott community, that
Riffle had to turn people away.
Jennifer Riffle instructs participants in the free silk painting workshop
held in conjunction with her senior project.
At left is a photograph of Jennifer Riffle’s silk painting from her senior
exhibit “Thumb and Cloud Theory.”
Above is a painting from “Interconnection,” the senior exhibit of Prescott
College visual arts student Sara Cross.
24
TransitionsSummer 2005
Work of photographer and
teacher earns national acclaim
ndrew Beckham is one of 27 students
to receive his Master of Arts degree from
Prescott College this spring. Beckham
teaches photography, drawing, painting, and aesthetic theory at Saint Mary’s Academy in
Englewood, Colo. Additionally, he has a photography studio in Denver, Colo., where he makes
his home.
“I feel quite fortunate in that the work I do in
the studio and in the classroom really does
become the same stuff that I find fun to do,” said
Beckham, who earned his master’s degree in aesthetic theory.
“In a nutshell, aesthetics is that branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of beauty and
attempts to define what beauty might be,” he
said. “My work has addressed this question by
attempting to reconcile and integrate aesthetic
inquiry from a number of fields, including classical aesthetics (in a Platonic sense), theological
aesthetics (in the context of mystical Christian
teachings), ecology, and postmodern theory. My
aim has been to offer a holistic view of aesthetics,
a paradigm that acknowledges the metaphysical
as well as the subjective, the ethical as well as the
formal aspects of beauty.”
A
Featured work
Photographs from Beckham’s project “Questions
from the Whirlwind” was featured in the JuneJuly 2004 issue of LensWork, a journal of fine art
photography.
“Beckham’s finessing of light and shadow in
harsh conditions is exquisite, with a wonderful
eye for sacred simplicity,” wrote Brooks Jenson,
editor of LensWork.
“Questions from the Whirlwind,” which referenced text from the Book of Job as a foundation
for photographic exploration, is the product of a
Fulbright Fellowship in Photography, which he
was awarded in 1999. The fellowship provided
Beckham with funding for travel, studio and
darkroom facilities, and living expenses during his
year abroad as a visiting artist at the Bezalel
Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
“The LensWork project was a wonderful
opportunity, and I am so pleased with the quality of the publication,” Beckham said.
“LensWork is one of the best journals for fineart photography, and I was very excited to have
my work highlighted there.”
Beckham discovered his interest in fine-art
photography while
attending the High
School of the
Performing and Visual
Arts in Houston, where
he grew up. After high
school, he attended the
Pacific Northwest
College of Art, earning
a Bachelor of Fine Arts
degree in 1992.
Directly following
his undergraduate
work, Beckham held
an artist-in-residence
position at Rocky
Mountain National
Park, followed by a
second artist-in-residence at the Anderson
Ranch Arts Center in
Snowmass Village,
Colo. In 1996 he
received a National
Endowment for the
Humanities grant, followed by a Fulbright
fellowship. His work is represented in collections
nationally, including the Portland Art Museum
and the MacArthur Foundation Art Collection.
A matter of choice
He chose to attend Prescott College for his master’s degree because of the limited-residency
requirement and the quality education.
“I think the best thing about my graduate work
at Prescott was the unique opportunity the College
afforded me, and that is the ability to integrate
scholarly research with creative practice,” Beckham
said. “My studio work was an integral part of my
graduate study, yet the pursuit was markedly different than a Master of Fine Arts degree. At Prescott
the theoretical research informed and enriched the
studio work, just as the studio work brought up
new and exciting questions to be examined through
extensive literature reviews.
“I just don’t know of anywhere else that I could
pursue a graduate program such as this. And
what’s more, I was able to study across disciplines
in an effort to integrate aesthetics with theology
and ecology. This is a unique and rich opportunity that the College provides its students.”
Summer 2005Transitions
25
Full-tuition scholarship to be provided
for study toward master’s degree
by Ann Haver-Allen
new graduate scholarship sponsored in collaboration between
Prescott College and Prescott
Alternative Transportation
(PAT) provides full tuition for
full-time enrollment in the
Master of Arts Program (MAP)
at Prescott College. The recipient will develop the executive
director position at PAT, while
earning a master’s degree.
“I think this is an interesting
matchup,” said Sue Knaup,
executive director of
Thunderhead Alliance, the
umbrella organization under
which PAT operates. “PAT
needs someone to take a leadership role, and Prescott
College has MAP, which trains
leaders. This seems like the
perfect partnership.”
A
Leadership role
For more information, contact
the Adult Degree and
Graduate Program (ADGP)
admissions at
www.prescott.edu/
admissions/apply_map.html
26
Knaup said the chosen scholar
will not be put directly into the
executive director position, but
will be given reign to come up
with programs and plans to grow
PAT, a nonprofit organization
she founded in 1997.
PAT works with government
agencies, volunteers, and other
organizations to improve transportation conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians throughout Yavapai community.
“This is a real leadership role
from which to learn the organization and generate ideas for
growth,” Knaup said. “I have
never seen another master’s
program like the one offered at
Prescott College.”
Knaup said that the ideal
candidate would have a natural
inclination toward being a
leader—someone who can look
broadly and see the big picture.
“We are looking for someone
who has a vision, and knows
how to reach it,” she said, “but
someone who also understands
TransitionsSummer 2005
the organization and our teamwork approach. We really have
a think-tank atmosphere, and
we want someone who understands that, and can lead us
where we need to go.”
Responsibilities and opportunities include:
• coordination of an established
501(c)(3) organization, working toward a bicycle- and
pedestrian-friendly central
Yavapai community;
• program and organizational
development at PAT (with
supportive staff and board
members);
• direct connection to
Thunderhead Alliance, the
national bicycle-pedestrian
umbrella organization, which
offers the latest in best practices for bicycle and pedestrian advocacy;
• nourishment of existing programs under way that need
leadership, including Safe
Routes to Schools, Bike
Month in May, a Tri-City
bike map, and PAT’s quarterly newsletter;
• development of new programs that could include the
nationally recognized
“Complete the Streets”
campaign, specific street
projects such as Grove
Avenue development plans,
and long-term policy
changes for land-use and
transportation reform;
• presentation of proposals to
the PAT board for new programs, including work plans
with funding sources, time
frames, milestones, and other
important elements; and
• fundraising aligned with programs, board development,
volunteer development and
coordination, communication
to members, membership
development, and other promotional ideas and coalition
building to connect PAT to a
broader audience.
The scholarship is awarded
by semester, renewable upon
mutual satisfaction of the scholar, PAT, and the MAP at
Prescott College.
To apply
To be considered for the scholarship, interested applicants
should submit the following
materials:
• A completed application to
the Prescott College Master
of Arts Program and a $40
application fee.
• Letter of application for
scholarship.
• Two letters of recommendation of which at least one
must be job related. Copies
will be forwarded to PAT.
• A résumé, which will be forwarded to PAT.
• The personal statement, as
described in the Prescott
College MAP application.
This will be forwarded to
PAT. To meet the needs of
the PAT board in making
their decision, this essay
should demonstrate an
understanding and a commitment to sustainable community development and alternative transportation. This
essay should also show how
the applicant intends to integrate his or her academic
work with his or her engagement as a graduate scholar in
this area.
• The study plan, as described
in the Prescott College MAP
application.
A phone or an in-person
interview by PAT is required.
“The writing submissions
are so valuable,” Knaup said.
“The Prescott College
requirements really draw out
an individuals personal goals
and philosophies.”
Beyond borders
Prescott College students working
to make life better in Africa
by Denise Calhoun
ecades ago, Africa
ensnared the interest
of Paul Bowles, William
Burroughs, Isak Dinesen,
Graham Greene, and Ernest
Hemingway. Today, the continent has new conquests: the
hearts and minds of Prescott
College students and faculty.
Environmental Studies
Professor Walt Anderson,
who has taken six trips to
Africa for Prescott College, is
among the enamored.
“Anybody who has been to
Africa has been changed by
the experience,” Anderson
said. “The landscape speaks to
us in some way we can’t
understand.”
Prescott College alumna
Ann Radeloff’s work with
the TOPSY Project in 2003
inflamed her interest in Africa.
After participating in that
project, she wanted to keep
Prescott College students
involved.
“Africa opens so many possibilities for us to learn,”
Radeloff said in May, just days
before returning to Kenya as
part of a Prescott College class
she helped design. “I’m so
excited I can’t even think.”
D
Photo by Kaitlin Noss
Above, at the Community
Center in Ambosili, students
are undertaking a permaculture assessment. The
center will be used for
community activities such as
HIV/AIDS testing, adult
literacy classes, community
meetings, and Prescott
College classes. The center
will also house a library and
donated computer equipment.
Left, Kaitlin Noss spent the
night in the village of Daniel
Olol Leturesh and his wife
Charity (seen here in the
blue top).
Shared love
Cultural and Regional Studies
Professor Mary Poole developed a love for Africa at an
early age as well. She went to
Egypt as soon as she graduated from high school because
her parents had moved there.
“It was like coming home,”
she said. “I’m really hooked.”
Prescott College students
and faculty are not alone. In
1985, the percentage of U.S.
see Africa on next page
Summer 2005Transitions
27
Africa
continued from previous page
students studying abroad who
chose Africa as their destination was a mere 1.1 percent.
In 2001, 2.9 percent of U.S.
students studying abroad
Right, North Moench and
Daniel Olol Leturesh take a
break at camp.
Photo by Kaitlin Noss
Below, Mark Poole, in hat,
stands with members of the
Maasai Environmental
Resource Coalition (MERC).
Poole, now deceased, was
Prescott College Professor
Mary Poole’s dad. He had
dedicated the last 10 years of
his life to MERC, and passed
his passion on to his
daughter. MERC’s mission is
to protect the Maasai’s
culture and ecosystems.
28
picked Africa. That number
swelled by 4.2 percent in 200203, according to the Institute of
International Education.
Poole believes the surge can
be attributed to students’ interest in AIDS and race.
“They’ve grown up hearing
about AIDS, and AIDS is such
a problem in Africa,” Poole
said. “Students are also interested in race. They are trying
to understand race, and Africa
looms large in the mythology
of race. Also, as students
develop knowledge and a
social conscience, their minds
naturally go to Africa.”
Mutually beneficial
Radeloff, who is a teaching assistant for the class in Africa this
summer, certainly agrees. She,
Poole, and several students started planning the Kenya Project
last year (see page 29). Radeloff
wanted the class to be beneficial
to both students and the Maasai,
a pastoral and hunting people of
Kenya and Tanzania. So did
Poole.
After a one-month reconnaissance mission, which they
paid for themselves, they
designed a class to teach
Prescott College students
about Maasai worldviews and
offer their research skills to
Maasai community leaders.
They hope the research will
benefit the Maasai. Radeloff
believes the experience has
improved her life as well.
“I struggle with being a
teacher and communicator,”
she said. “I don’t have confidence in my ability. I hope this
helps me overcome that.”
One of the project’s goals is
to educate tourists, to teach
them to not only look at the
animals, but also to connect
with the people who live in
Africa.
“You really have to deal with
human issues if you deal with
animal issues,” Anderson said.
Poole agrees.
“You have a much more
rewarding experience if you collaborate with people, rather than
TransitionsSummer 2005
just making them objects of
study,” she said.
Anderson, who plans to teach
another Prescott College class in
Africa next year, hopes it will go
one step further.
He believes the Maasai,
whose traditional lands have
been illegally appropriated over
the years and devastated by
economic development, irresponsible tourism, and largescale farming, have been disenfranchised politically.
“We hope to help them find
their voice,” Anderson said.
Many links
There are many links between
Prescott College, its alumni, and
Africa. Among them:
• Friends of the Honde Valley:
This student project helps
children orphaned by AIDS in
the Honde Valley (page 32).
• St. Lucia Nursing Home:
This grass-roots effort, run by
Winfrida Mwashala, the wife
of Augustine Mwangotya
*01, helps victims of
HIV/AIDS who have been
rejected by their families.
• The Topsy Project: This student project supports the
Topsy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on children affected by
HIV/AIDS (fall 2003
Transitions).
• Documentary: T.A. Loeffler,
’88, recently traveled to
Zimbabwe to film a documentary on street children.
• Regarding Hwange and
Other Matters of Perception:
Joshua Caine Anchors
*98, wrote a book based on
his experiences as a Peace
Corps volunteer in
Zimbabwe (fall 2004
Transitions).
Radeloff wants these links to
become a strong, lengthy chain.
She hopes that Pan-African
studies will continue to expand
the horizons of Prescott
College students.
“It can only enhance the curriculum here,” she said.
Beyond borders
Students team with
Maasai on Kenya Project
by Hilary Eller
hile Kenya and
Prescott are thousands of miles apart,
the two are part of the same
global community, a connection students and faculty at
Prescott College are fostering
through The Kenya Project.
The project’s mission is to
create a program in East Africa
based on a mutually beneficial
approach to international study.
A community center and
field station in Amboseli,
Kenya, will house the programs. The Maasai people, an
East African tribe famous as
herders and warriors, agreed to
allow Prescott College to use a
building and land there if
College personnel fix it up.
Mary Poole, a Prescott
College faculty member in culsee Africa next page
W
The teaching team for the Kenya Project are, from left, Meitamei Olol
Dapash, Ann Radeloff, Kaitlin Noss, and Mary Poole.
Prescott College teaching assistant Ann Radeloff, third from left, and Gerry Garvey of the Yavapai County HIVAIDS task force, second from right, enjoy a moment with Maasai people last July. The two Americans
participated in a fact-finding mission to Africa.
Summer 2005Transitions
29
Africa
continued from previous page
tural and regional studies, has
worked for years with Meitamei
Olol Dapash, founder and director of the Maasai Environmental
Resource Coalition (MERC), an
organization meant to preserve
the Maasai culture and East
African ecosystems. Poole has
worked with him to that end.
The Kenya Project shares a
similar vision, and extends to
literacy, clean water, and AIDS
testing and awareness.
Photos by Kaitlin Noss
Above, Prescott College
students visit the office of
Keriako Olol Tobiko, newly
appointed public prosecutor,
also a Maasai lawyer working
on Kenya’s new Constitution
Committee.
Right, Devin Carberry (with
camera) rides in the
Amboseli National Park with
Mary Poole and Rob Nathan.
Hilary Eller is a reporter for
the Daily Courier in Prescott.
30
TransitionsSummer 2005
The community center and
field station in Amboseli sit on
the boundary of Amboseli
National Park, at the foot of
Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, and will provide
a space for Prescott College
students to study Africa and
complete service projects
there. It also will provide a
space for the Maasai people to
seek resources for education
and health.
“Our students will be totally
immersed in Maasai culture
and activities,” Poole said.
While Prescott College students learn from the Maasai,
they also will use their knowledge to help the Maasai people
learn, she said.
Kenya Project organizers
have hosted some fundraisers
to make the building usable
and are now seeking donations
to purchase a vehicle.
Ann Radeloff ’04 went to
Africa two years ago to work
with the TOPSY Foundation, a
home for children orphaned by
AIDS. She assisted Poole and
Meitamei in teaching a Prescott
College class in May at the
Amboseli community center.
In future years, it is hoped
that students will spend
between one and four months
in Amboseli, depending upon
their curriculum and interests,
Poole said. As an example, students may help the Maasai
people with research examining the effects of tourism on
the Massai community. She
gave the example of a paper,
studying the effect of the
tourism industry on Kenya’s
ecosystem.
“We’ll turn ourselves loose
on a question they design,” she
said.
Radeloff said that at the
same time students study with
the Maasai people, they will
help set up transportation systems for the Maasai to get to
the doctor.
Poole said she has traveled to
places where resources do not
exist, only to return to the
United States, where the
resources often are in excess.
“There is such a maldistribution of resources,” she said.
Radeloff added, “Once I
started traveling, I realized that
we’re all global citizens. The
boundaries of nations are not
important or pertinent.”
Prescott College students
learned about the political
economy of tourism and
trade by supporting Maasai
community-owned
businesses and cooperatives,
such as the Women’s
Beading Cooperative pictured
here. Students brought
products back to the United
States and sold them to raise
money that was then used to
make improvements to the
Community Center in
Amboseli.
A primer on the Kenya
Project at Prescott College
he Kenya Project was
created to build bridges
between Prescott
College and Maasai community
activists. Many universities
have field study programs in
East Africa, but this program
stands apart because it:
• is jointly created by the college and the Maasai people,
and led by the Maasai
Environmental Resource
Coalition (MERC);
• is designed as a laboratory for
learning about how to make
social change; and
• models an experiential
approach to learning about
and across cultural differences.
The Kenya Project was created to give American college
students the opportunity to
learn from MERC leadership
about its collaborative
approach to activism.
T
“Maasai culture has so much
of value to teach the world—
about sharing food and children, of peaceful co-existence
with wildlife—and this program strives to create for
American students the opportunity to experience that culture on its own terms,” said
Mary Poole, coordinator of
Prescott College’s Cultural
and Regional Studies
Program.
The collaboration kicked off in
May 2005, with a month-long
Prescott College class held in
Maasailand co-taught by Poole
and Meitamei Olol Dapash,
MERC executive director.
The course was titled
Maasai: Indigenous People in a
Global Context. Nine students,
two teaching assistants, and
dozens of MERC colleagues
participated. The course met
weekly throughout the 2004-05
academic year. Students prepared by studying Kenyan history, landscape, and wildlife,
and worked to identify the cultural lenses through which they
understood Africa and indigenous peoples.
Once in Kenya, students
met with Maasai people in
Nairobi and in towns and villages throughout Maasailand.
They learned about the issues
facing the Maasai people as
they encounter the forces of
globalization and the ways
they are working to maintain
their culture and ability to
direct their futures.
To strengthen this collaboration, Prescott College has invited Dapash to be a visiting faculty member during the spring
of 2006. He will teach, mentor
students, and participate in a
College seminar on social
change.
Summer 2005Transitions
31
Beyond borders
Friends of Honde Valley Project
and clothing to orphans of the
by Sten Carlson ’97
Prescott College student
Judd Schiffman (wearing the
blue hat in back) works to
provide school fees,
supplies, and uniforms,
food, clothing, and health
care to orphaned children in
the Gatsi community of the
Honde Valley in Zimbabwe.
32
he opening paragraph of
Judd Schiffman’s
thank-you letter to
donors to his organization
Friends of the Honde Valley
(FOTHV) reads, “Thank you
for choosing to support a
Zimbabwean child. Your contribution will dramatically change
the life of one person.”
The Talmud says that if you
save the life of one person, you
are saving the whole world.
This approach—to save the
world one person, one canyon,
one Ponderosa Pine at a
time—is central to the Prescott
College mission.
It is a difficult mission in any
situation to follow, but
T
TransitionsSummer 2005
Schiffman seems to have taken
the difficulty to a whole new
extreme.
The challenges
First, he has chosen to work in a
place that is as geographically
remote as one can get—the continent of Africa, in the eastern
highlands of Zimbabwe, in the
obscure Honde Valley, in a small
community of children
orphaned by AIDS.
Is it possible to imagine a
place more foreign than this—
the same place where the first
upright hominid established
themselves in the savannas
nearly four million years ago?
Second, the enormity of the
present AIDS situation in
Zimbabwe seems to belittle all
relief efforts.
Currently, 25 percent of the
population is infected with
AIDS. Two thousand
Zimbabweans die weekly from
HIV complications.
UNICEF has predicted that
the life expectancy in the country will drop 27 years in the
next 10 years, which means
that the average Zimbabwean
in 2014 will be expected to live
to the age of 17.
What hope, then, can one
person working in one small
community (population 43,
when the project began; now
it’s 25) bring to a country of
strive to provide food, healthcare,
Gatsi community in Zimbabwe
11.2 million, where the life
expectancy is dwindling into
the teens?
“It is hard,” said Schiffman,
who spent six months in Africa
three years ago, and founded
FOTHV as a result of that
extended visit.
Spark of hope
“When I was living in Africa,
there was a funeral every
week in my area,” he said.
And FOTHV affects only one
of the many villages in need in
Zimbabwe. But the most
important aspect of this project is something I feel in my
heart. We are doing something
positive, and sustaining a
spark of hope in people who
have undergone great losses in
their lives.”
Despite the frightening statistics there, Schiffman’s stories of
his time spent are full of beauty.
“Mountains are respected as
mystical and dangerous places
of unknown power,” he said.
“When you get up close to a
gomo (mountain), even pointing is prohibited because it
shows disrespect.
“When I was getting ready to
climb Eagle Mountain in
Zimbabwe, an ambuya (grandmother) told me that if I kept
quiet and listened, when I
arrived at the peak it might tell
me stories.”
Power imbalance
“Your contribution is doing a
lot of good for people who
need it,” reads the last paragraph of Schiffman’s letter to
donors. “And it is not only the
money, it’s the thought and the
feeling behind the giving that
are most important. It means a
lot to kids who have lost their
parents that someone, let alone
a person from the widely fabled
America, cares about them.”
The fact is, Schiffman said,
America—with its colossal concentration of power and
wealth—should bear much of
the responsibility for the problems in Zimbabwe. Globally, it
comes down to a basic imbalance of power.
“We have too much, and they
don’t have enough,” Schiffman
said. “And us having too much
kind of drives us crazy; we have
too much time and we waste it,
say, walking around the video
store looking for a movie.
There is a kind of mental illness in our country of having
too much and being overwhelmed by all the stimulation.
Whereas the sickness in
Zimbabwe is from being malnourished and not having
resources.”
Modest goal
When Schiffman started
FOTHV his goal was modest:
to meet the nutritional, medical, educational, and personal
needs of about 43 orphans. He
took photos of these children
and recorded their names, hobbies, dream careers, ages, dates
of their parents’ passing, and
present caregivers.
When he returned to the
United States, he found 43
sponsors for the children and
raised $2,500. By the time the
last check had been collected
and sent to Zimbabwe,
Schiffman was already working
on a new project to serve the
orphans in the Honde Valley: a
small-scale chicken project that
would allow the community to
become self-sustaining by selling produce and livestock.
Chickens arrive
He and fellow undergraduate
Jen Erickson went back to the
Honde Valley in January 2005
and brought chickens to establish a sustainable enterprise.
Now the orphanage raises
chickens, and the profits go to
fund school fees and basic living expenses.
“I don’t know how long
FOTHV will be able to sustain
itself, or if sending money is
the best way to help,” he said.
“But if we can help them to
start their own projects, that
will be something that will help
kids now, and in the future.”
Eager supporters
When Schiffman arrived at
Prescott College in the fall of
2003, he had no trouble finding
support for his project. Along
with Anastasia Millison, a
student in the Adult Degree
Program at the time, and fellow
undergraduate Libby
Rasmussen, he organized a
book drive and acquired four
crates of books to send to the
children. A laptop computer
was donated to send to the
FOTHV local volunteer in
Zimbabwe.
Derek Collins ’05 and the
technology department at the
College helped set up a
Website for the project.
In the spring of 2004, the
Student Union gave a $280
grant to ship the books and the
laptop overseas. FOTHV
became an official College
group, with seven committee
members, and it qualified to
see Africa on next page
Summer 2005Transitions
33
Africa
continued from previous page
Mission
Friends of the Honde
Valley (FOTHV) seeks to
empower women and
children in
Zimbabwe through sustainable solutions. With
local community members, we help to create
economic opportunities
that provide resources for
dealing with the effects of
HIV/AIDS. FOTHV provides school fees, supplies, uniforms, food,
clothing, and health care
to orphaned children in
the Gatsi community.
FOTHV educates orphans
in Gatsi to be self-reliant
through its gardening and
poultry projects. FOTHV
creates relationships
between the orphaned
children of Gatsi and their
penpals from the United
States, providing the children with friends abroad,
and helping them develop
their English language
skills. FOTHV provides a
community of peers and
elders for orphans in
Gatsi, through which they
gain strength and companionship in the midst of
growing poverty and the
HIV/AIDS pandemic in
Zimbabwe.
34
receive nonprofit status
through the College.
In fall 2004, FOTHV put
together a benefit and raised
over $700 dollars in the
Prescott community. The
Student Union also donated
about $680. Another $500 was
raised by selling paintings from
Zimbabwe through the
“Zimbabwe Artists Project,”
located in Oregon.
“We exhibited the art work at
Eye on the Mountain Gallery
in the McCormick Arts
District,” Schiffman said. “This
money went to pay for kids
school fees, to buy chickens,
and to pay the Zimbabweans
running the project in Africa.”
Schiffman said they took the
money over in January. In the
spring, they raised another
$700 by putting together a halfmarathon in conjunction with
Sacred Earth Gatherings,
which was primarily organized
by Erickson. Another crate of
books with a bit of the money
raised from this benefit has
been shipped.
“The FOTHV project has
truly been a blessing to me,”
Schiffman said. “I spent many
days in Zimbabwe wondering
how I could give back to the
people who gave so much to
me.”
The problems Zimbabwe
faces, he said, are not a result
of laziness or ignorance on the
part of the local people.
Inflation, a recent drought,
the AIDS pandemic, a corrupt
government system, and more
than a century of colonization
have left the country nearly
crippled.
“The people in Zimbabwe
are ready to work, ready to
learn, and ready to do whatever
it takes to survive and provide
for their children and coming
generations,” Schiffman said.
“This project demonstrates that
willingness.”
TransitionsSummer 2005
Photo by Judd Schiffman
Prescott College students Judd Schiffman and Jen Erickson visited the
Honde Valley in January 2005 and brought chickens to establish a
sustainable enterprise with income to provide for school fees and basic
living expenses for the orphanage. Ivy Pfumai, the chairperson of the
FOTHV Project in Zimbabwe, is pictured in front of the chicken coops.
10-year vision
“In 10 years,” he said, “I’d like
there to be a small-scale sustainable garden and livestock
project in the Honde Valley
where people are meeting each
other and working together and
sustaining themselves.
“As far as Prescott College
goes, I’d like this to be a place
where students can go and stay
in the community and perhaps
develop more projects,
depending on what the need is.
I see this as a place akin to
Kino Bay where students can
go and have amazing experiences,” Schiffman said.
He added that they also have
discussed the possibility of
doing wilderness therapy trips
for street children from the city
of Mutate, about 80 miles away
from the Honde Valley.
Another possibility is providing
mbira lessons (the classic
instrument of Zimbabwe) for
the children in the Honde
Valley.
“Of course, we are still working at getting the children’s
basic needs met first,”
Schiffman said.
When asked about the future
of the project, Schiffman said
he just intends to keep working
toward his goals: in part to
appeal to the people of this
country to use their time and
resources for a good cause; in
part to keep helping meet the
basic needs of the children of
the Honde Valley. Put simply,
Schiffman will keep working at
his goal of saving the world,
one person at a time.
For more information or to
make a donation to Friends of
the Honde Valley, visit websrv.prescott.edu/~hondevalley/, or send an e-mail to
fothv@yahoo.com.
Fleischner has new publication out
T
homas Fleischner, faculty member in the environmental studies program, has a new book in print.
Desert Wetlands features the
photography of Lucian
Niemeyer, and completes his
series of wetland studies of
North America, which he has
been working on for almost 20
years. Fleischner provided the
narrative.
Desert Wetlands documents
sites in the American
Southwest and Mexico that are
gauges to the environment.
The wetlands included are
Cuatro Cienegas Basin in
Coahuila, Mexico, the San
Pedro River in Arizona, the
Escalante River in Utah, the
Bosque del Apache National
Wildlife Refuge in New
Mexico, the Mohave Desert in
California, the Big Bend
National Park in Texas, and
other playas and wetlands in
Arizona.
Water plays different roles in
the desert. It appears when it is
least expected, and hides when
it is wanted most. Rain falls but
never reaches the ground, and
dry washes abruptly become
rivers. One constant holds true:
water enables life.
“Exploration of desert wetlands—whether on foot, with
photographs, or in words—
involves vacillating between
tremendous, uplifting beauty
and great, heartbreaking degradation,” Fleischner writes in
Desert Wetlands. “We offer the
images and words in your
hands that you might grasp the
beauty more readily, and join
the chorus of voices calling for
an end to despoiling of these
treasurelands.”
Niemeyer’s previous books
include Chesapeake Country,
Okefenokee, and Old Order
Amish. He lives in Santa Fe.
Fleischner is the author of
Singing Stone.
Desert Wetlands, published by
the University of New Mexico
Press, is available online at
www.unmpress.com.
Prescott College hosts consortium
T
he Navajo Nation
Teacher Education
Consortium (NNTEC)
held its quarterly meeting at
Prescott College in the new
Crossroads Center in April.
Vicky Young, core faculty
member in the Adult Degree
Program and coordinator for
Prescott College’s Native
American students, hosted the
meeting.
“I received so many compliments on behalf of the
NNTEC membership,” Young
said. “It made me proud of our
teamwork and our unity as a
learning community, and reinforced the fact that we are
unique in the academic world
in that we really ‘walk our
talk.’ The folks really enjoyed
their interactions with students, staff, and faculty.”
Participants of the NNTEC
include: NNTEC chair Harvey
Rude, University of Northern
Colorado at Greeley; Thomas
Benally, Diné College; Maxine
Roanhorse, Arizona State
University; Ferren and Troy
Webb, Fort Lewis College;
James Muneta, Office of
Navajo Nation Scholarship and
Financial Assistance; Bruce
Payette and Deoksoon Kim,
University of New Mexico at
Gallup; Gypsy Denzine,
Northern Arizona University;
and Vicky Ramakka, San Juan
College.
The NNTEC’s purpose is to
prepare teachers to teach the
Navajo language, which
requires fluency in the language, permission from the
tribe to teach it, and state
endorsement. It is not necessary to be Navajo to participate in the teacher education
programs.
Goals for the coming year
include outreach to Navajo
Nation high schools; creating a
new NNTEC brochure and
CD to inform counselors, parents, and students of the path
to teaching degrees; updating
the Websites to inform “hits”
of the NNTEC partnership
and mission; specific outreach
to school guidance counselors;
public service announcements
to target recruitment markets;
outreach efforts within each of
the learning communities; and
expansion of summer institutes to include professional
development opportunities for
current math and science
teachers.
For more information about
NNTEC, contact Vicky Young
at (928) 350-3200, or
vyoung@prescott.edu.
Summer 2005Transitions
35
FacultyNews
Bernardo AguilarGonzalez
Bernardo Aguilar-Gonzalez
Joel Barnes
Aguilar-Gonzalez, chair for the
Cultural and Regional Studies
Program, and his graduate student, Ligia Umaña-Ledezma,
had an article published in the
spring 2005 newsletter of the
U.S. Society for Ecological
Economics.
Titled CAFTA and
Ecological Economics in
Central America Today, the
article calls for broadening the
debate—from an economic
perspective—on the Central
American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA) in Costa
Rica. CAFTA is a free-trade
agreement that includes Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua, and the
United States. The Dominican
Republic may also be added.
CAFTA is modeled after the
North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA).
The article is available online
at www.ussee.org/newsletter.
Joel Barnes
Barnes, faculty member in the
environmental studies and
adventure education programs,
has received his doctorate
degree in environmental conservation and education from the
Union Institute and University.
His studies have focused on
river and watershed conservation in both wild-land and urban
settings, and his dissertation is
titled “Protecting Wild Waters in
a Dry World: the Role of Wild
and Scenic Rivers in the
Conservation of Arid Land River
Systems and Watersheds in the
American Southwest.”
His research project formed
the basis of a five-year research
partnership between Prescott
College and Grand Canyon
National Park. As the project
Melanie Bishop
Joan Clingan
36
TransitionsSummer 2005
leader from Prescott College,
Barnes coordinated a wild and
scenic river study for more
than 500 miles of rivers and
streams in the park.
Ultimately, this study could
result in one of the largest wild
and scenic river designations
ever passed by Congress, and
more than double the mileage
of wild and scenic rivers in the
Southwest. Barnes’ research
has advanced the College’s reputation as a leader in bioregional conservation, and has helped
set the stage for future collaborative research between
Prescott College and Grand
Canyon National Park.
Melanie Bishop
Bishop, faculty member in the
Arts and Letters Program, was
awarded a grant from the
Wendy Fort Foundation for
Dance, Literature, and Film to
write a screenplay about the
life and work of dancer and
choreographer, Wendy Fort,
the foundation’s namesake.
Additionally, the Eastern
Frontier Society awarded Bishop
a three-week writer’s residency
this summer on Norton Island,
off the coast of Maine. Six writers, two visual artists, and two
songwriters were selected for
this summer’s session.
The Arizona Commission on
the Arts provided a travel grant
for Bishop to attend the
Norton Island residency.
Joan Clingan
Clingan, humanities faculty
member in the Master of Arts
Program, presented a paper at
Youngstown State University’s
Conference of the Center for
Working Class Studies on May
20. This paper represents the
final section of one of her dissertation chapters and was
called “Without Reservation:
Exploring Alexie’s Toughest
Little Indians—Working-Class
or Just In-din?”
While in Youngstown,
Clingan also facilitated a daylong workshop for doctoral students of the Union Institute
and the university, called “A
Seat in the Steel Lifeboat: The
Working-Class Artist and Class
Fortitude.” This workshop is
the final program requirement—other than the dissertation—leaving her officially and
gratefully all-but-dissertation.
She anticipates having her dissertation complete and
approved this fall.
Clingan was the invited
keynote speaker at the
Northern Arizona Veteran’s
Administration’s Diversity Fair
on June 22. She spoke to
employees of the administration and medical center on the
topic “Diversity and the Arts.”
Clingan was also invited as an
Arizona Humanities Council
Scholar to be the moderator
and discussant for the July
2005 Hassayampa Institute for
Creative Writing.
She will interview authors
Simon Ortiz, William
Kittredge, Kim Addonizio,
and Melissa Pritchard on the
institute’s theme: “The Stories
We Tell Ourselves: Defining
Self, Defining Reality.”
Lisa Floyd-Hanna
and David Hanna
Floyd-Hanna and Hanna are
officially on sabbatical, but they
are working with students on
three research projects, which
include
• studying the fire history of the
Kaiparowits Plateau, Utah;
• determining the effects of the
beetle infestations on the
future of pinon-juniper
woodlands in the Four
FacultyNews
Corners area; and
• studying the vegetation pattern and mapping project at
Chaco Canyon National
Historic Park, N.M.
Additionally, Floyd-Hanna
presented a paper at the Forest
Resources Adaptive Modeling
of Ecosystems (FRAME) meeting in Cortez, Colo., May 28,
2005, and was co-author on
two papers presented by
William Romme at the
Pinon-Juniper Woodlands
Restoration meeting in
Montrose, Colo., May 25-27.
Floyd-Hanna is a faculty
member in the Environmental
Studies Program; Hanna is an
instructor in that program.
Lisa Floyd-Hanna
Erin Lotz and
Julie Munro
Lotz and Munro are teaming
up together to host this year’s
International Conference for
the Association for Experiential
Education. The conference,
titled Learning in Motion:
Immerse, Reflect, Act, will be
held in Tucson, Nov. 3-6.
Munro will be conference convener, and Lotz is the primary
liaison for the workshops.
There are six other host committee members from around
the state and the Southwest
region, bringing together diverse
perspectives on the field. More
than 1,000 conference participants from around the world are
expected to attend. The conference will offer more than 130
professional workshops.
A thematic flow will set the
conference tone. Participants
will enjoy a day focused on
immersion, followed by a day
of reflection, and finishing
with a themed day that
encourages participants to act
on their newfound insights on
experiential education.
David Hanna
Erin Lotz
Opera star
to perform
in Prescott
Native Prescottonian and
opera star Charles
Edwin Taylor will perform in his hometown on
Thursday, Aug. 18, and
again on Friday, Aug. 19,
at the Pine Cone Inn at
1245 White Spar Road.
Taylor is a baritone with
the Metropolitan Opera
and the Lindemann Young
Artists Development
Program. He will be in
concert with mezzosoprano Kelly Gebhardt
and pianist Glen Dennis.
Taylor’s performance
titled An Evening of
Vocal Treasures will begin
at 8:30 p.m. Cocktails will
be served from 6-7 p.m.,
with dinner at 7 p.m.
This black-tie optional
event is a fundraiser to
benefit the Ebarb and
Räikkönen Scholarship
Fund at Prescott College.
The gala evening is
made possible thanks to
the loyalty and generosity
of devoted alumni Tony
Ebarb ’84 and Liisa
Raikkonen ’84, who
earned their bachelor
degrees through the
Adult Degree Program in
accounting and language
studies, respectively.
Special thanks go to the
Gallo, Hayden, Makela,
Perry, Taylor, and Wood
families.
Tickets are $150 each
to attend An Evening of
Vocal Treasures, which
traditionally sells out. For
more information, contact the College’s development office at (928)
350-4501.
Julie Munro
Summer 2005Transitions
37
Taking care of business
Board of Trustees meet
hen the Prescott
College Board of
Trustees met in
June, three long-term members
of the board ended their service, two new members were
welcomed, and new officers
were elected.
W
Stepping down
Anne Dorman ’74, Sturgis
Robinson ’75, and Gerald
Secundy stepped down after
many years of service.
Dorman and Robinson began
serving on the Board in 1997,
and Secundy joined in 1998.
Secundy, who was chairman
of the board, passed the tootsie
pop (gavel) to Donald
Sweeney, who was elected the
new chairman.
The chair of the board of
trustees at Prescott College is
likely the only board president
who convenes meetings with a
giant tootsie pop. The customized gavel was made by
Dorman’s daughter, Elizabeth.
Outgoing Board of Trustees
President Gerald Secundy
passes the gavel (tootsie pop)
to incoming President Donald
Sweeney.
38
Stepping up
Dan Campbell was elected to
a three-year term, and Chris
Hout ’92 was elected to a
TransitionsSummer 2005
Prescott College President Dan Garvey presents outgoing Board of Trustees
President Gerald Secundy with a commemorative tootsie pop in
recognition of his service to Prescott College.
one-year term as the representative of Prescott College
employees.
Campbell is the Verde
Program Manager for the
Nature Conservancy. His task is
to direct the conservancy’s outreach and land protection activities within the 6,600 squaremile area that encompasses the
Verde River corridor and adjacent grasslands.
Campbell has more than 20
years of experience working for
the Nature Conservancy, with
communities in Arizona and
abroad. For the past eight years
he has served as country director in Belize, where he was
instrumental in bringing scientific information and funding
resources to community-based
conservation projects.
He also served as state
director of the Arizona chapter for 12 years, and was on
the board of Prescott College
from 1993 to 1996.
Campbell received his
Master of Education degree in
biology science education from
the University of Colorado in
1974, and his Bachelor of Arts
degree in sociology from
Oberlin College in 1969.
Hout, college career and
personal counselor, is the
Prescott College employee
representative to the board.
Hout holds a a Master of
Education in counseling, and
is a licensed counselor.
New officers
In addition to Sweeney being
elected the new chair, Fred
DuVal was elected vice-chair,
David Meeks was elected
treasurer, and Paul Sneed was
re-elected secretary.
Additional board members
include Betsy Bolding, Judy
Clapp, David McCarthy,
Karen McCreary, Jan
Nisbet, Alan Rubin,
Rebecca Ruffner, and
Suzanne Tito. Erica Ann
Flood is the student trustee.
Horsing around
Members of the Prescott
College Board of Trustees were
introduced to equine-assisted
learning when they came to
campus in June. As an
enrichment activity, board
members visited a ranch in
Williamson Valley. Paul Smith,
pictured above, is the director
of the new Centaur Leadership
Services (CLS) Program, which
provides equine experiential
learning opportunities for
Prescott College students.
Smith works with students and
horses to develop relational
leadership skills. Above left,
Gret Antilla, dean of the
Resident Degree Program,
bonds with Ginger. Pictured at
left are board members Jan
Nisbet, Donald Sweeney, and
Chris Hout. Their challenge
was to bridle a horse while
keeping their arms linked and
functioning as a unit. See
www.prescott.edu/cls for more
information about CLS.
Summer 2005Transitions
39
Kino Bay Center roundup
The Kino Bay Center for
Cultural and Ecological
Studies just completed 14
years of supporting field
research, marine
conservation, community
outreach, and Prescott
College field courses,
including marine
conservation, sea kayaking
and marine studies,
oceanography, coastal
ecology, SCUBA diving, and
marine biology.
he Kino Bay Center for
Cultural and Ecological
Studies, Prescott
College’s field station on the
Mexican coast of the Gulf of
California, just completed 14
years of supporting field
research, marine conservation,
community outreach, and
Prescott College field courses.
The 2004-05 academic year
included many new achievements at the station, in addition to the usual support of
T
Prescott College field courses
in marine conservation, sea
kayaking and marine studies,
oceanography, coastal ecology,
SCUBA diving, and marine
biology. More than 4,000 user
days were recorded at the station this year, the highest ever.
The new high school field
program—in its second year—
brought in groups from
Washington (Forest Ridge
School), Colorado (Pioneer
School and Colorado Rocky
Mountain School),
and Arizona (the
Orme School).
Another
birthday
The Conservation
Fellowship Program
completed six successful years. To date
10 fellows from
seven universities
and three countries
have participated in
the fellowship program, which provides
opportunities for
recent graduates to
contribute to ongoing
research and education projects.
This year’s fellow,
Virginia Jimenez of
Madrid, facilitated
another great year of
environmental education in the local primary and secondary
schools in Kino Bay.
Jimenez was also
the driving force in
completing a draft of
the Isla Alcatraz
Management Plan.
This plan, the culmination of five years
of research, will be
submitted to the
Mexican government
this summer.
Visiting researchers
40
TransitionsSummer 2005
continue to use the station for
projects centered on marine
biology and conservation, cultural studies, marine mammal
biology, coastal development,
herpetology, and even bat ecology and conservation.
This year, the Kino Bay
Center hosted researchers
from Arizona State University
in Tempe, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México
in Mexico City, Northern
Arizona University in
Flagstaff, University of
Madrid, University of
Netherlands, Universidad
Autónoma de Baja California
Sur in La Paz, and others.
Staff news
This was the final year of a
three-year National Science
Foundation grant. The grant,
administered by Ed Boyer, codirector, enabled the purchase
of state-of-the-art scientific
equipment, improvements to
the field station, and the upgrading of the boat and vehicle fleet.
Tad Pfister, our field coordinator since 1991, and his lovely
wife, Bete, became parents to
Kai Sebastian Pfister on May
2, 2005. Lorayne Meltzer, codirector, is preparing for her
sabbatical this fall. Her activities will include working on a
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marine
mammal ship and visiting field
stations in California, Hawaii,
and Mexico.
Maria Gaytan, administrative coordinator, is moving on to
graduate school. Her three years
in Kino have professionalized
our operations immensely, and
we wish her the best.
Alumni are encouraged to
stay in touch with the Kino Bay
Center, either by visiting the
Kino facility, or going online at:
www.prescott.edu/highlights/
kino/index.html.
Leave a legacy through your will
Parent recognizes life-changing
F
effect of Prescott College
ew legal instruments are
more valuable to the
people and causes you
care about than your will.
Along with other important
documents, such as insurance
or IRA beneficiary designations, your will ensures financial security for your family and
support for your favorite charitable causes.
A bequest may be large or
small, restricted or unrestricted. An unrestricted gift provides the College with flexibility to use the funds from
bequests where they are needed most.
A bequest to Prescott College
may memorialize a friend or relative, or carry in perpetuity the
name of the donor. Through
certain bequests, you may establish an undergraduate scholarship or a graduate fellowship,
add to the library collection,
expand program opportunities,
or increase the College’s general
endowment.
All noncash gifts in your will
are deductible at fair-market
value, without any reduction in
value, such as the reductions
often required on gifts of short-
“I have five children who went to five different colleges, and
Prescott College is the only one that I am remembering in
my will,” said Dr. Nancy W. Hendrie. “Prescott College
never lost faith in my daughter, and helped her grow at a
tough time in her life. Prescott College helped her find herself, and today she is a very successful adult.”
Dr. Hendrie said Prescott College was a “lifesaver” for
Katherine Hendrie ’94. “The College took her on at a vulnerable time in her life, and turned her into a functioning
adult,” she said. “I am sure they are taking on other students
who need help, and I want to support that.”
She recalled that when her daughter came home for
Christmas during her sophomore year, she asked for books
“and that had never happened before.”
“These are really Ivy League kids who don’t fit into the
round hole provided for them,” Dr. Hendrie said. “Prescott
College is a wonderful alternative.”
term property or the unrelated
use of property. The donated
gift receives a charitable deduction equal to its value for estate
tax purposes.
Additionally, the bequests
have no built-in limitations on
the size of the gift. They are
unlimited, and can be deducted
Alum wants to give back
“Prescott College provided me with the fundamental education needed to become self-sustaining,” said Mark N.
Goodman ’73. “Consequently, I have always felt indebted to
the College.”
Goodman, who is an attorney working in Prescott, said that
leaving a legacy for Prescott College is “relatively easy to do,
does not necessarily involve a present out-of-pocket expense,
and will have enough of an impact when it occurs so that
some real, tangible good will come of it.”
He hopes that his legacy will help the College develop student housing and increase salaries for faculty and staff. His
reward, he said, is “knowing that I have done something useful for the community that did something wonderful for me a
long, long time ago.”
dollar for dollar from the taxable estate.
Your bequest can have a
direct impact on Prescott
College’s future excellence,
while offering practical tax
advantages to you and your
heirs. There are a variety of
ways to make a bequest. This
method of giving to Prescott
College is quite simple, and it’s
also a wonderful way to ensure
that your support of the College
will continue after your lifetime.
Anyone who names Prescott
College in their estate plan in
any way automatically becomes
a member of the Charles
Franklin Parker Legacy Society.
This special designation is
named in honor of Prescott
College’s founding president,
and is intended to recognize
donors who support the
College in this very special way.
Inquiries about naming the
College in your will are welcomed. Call Ralph Phillips,
director of development, at
(877) 350-2100, ext. 4501.
Summer 2005Transitions
41
Recognizing those who helped realize
the dream of the Crossroads Center
he commemorative
plaque in the
Information Commons
reads: Providing a commons
for our learning community,
the Crossroads Center is an
environmentally and socially
responsible space in which to
address the challenges and
opportunities facing our local
and global communities.
Opened: September 27, 2004
Inaugurated: February 19, 2005
T
$500,000+
The Walton Family Foundation
$100,000-$499,999
Arizona Public Service*
Suzanne Tito
$50,000-$99,999
Anne and Simone Dorman
Don and Rebecca Routson*
$25,000-$49,999
Max and Bessie Bakal Foundation
Clark Granite and Marble*
Tony Ebarb and Liisa Raikkonen
Dan and Barbara Garvey
Margaret T. Morris Foundation
Frank and Linda Plaut
The Secundy Family
Donald and Barbara Sweeney
$15,000-$24,999
Jay Cowles and Page Knudsen
J.W. Kieckhefer Foundation
$10,000-$14,999
David and Marilyn McCarthy
Gail Partridge*
Robert Perry
Wells Fargo Bank Arizona
Karen Williams McCreary
and Kent Alderman
$5,000-$9,999
Richard Ach and Carey Behel
Betsy Bolding
Steven and Traci Corey
Reuben Ellis and Linda Dove
Keith and Jo Carol Harris
David Meeks
42
TransitionsSummer 2005
Alan and Elisabeth Rubin
Sabin Chiropractic
Carl and Maria Scotti
Peter, Margie, and Sarena Stern
Brad Tito
$2,500-$4,999
Dianne Albrecht
Margaret Antilla
Catherine Boland
Cathy and Ron Church
Judy Clapp
Fred DuVal
Nancy and Toby Ebarb
Elizabeth and H. Gerard Everall
Glen and Donna Gallo
Mark and Sarah Hayden
James and Myra Musgrove
Tom Robinson and Joan Wellman
Charles and Diana Taylor
$1,000-$2,499
Frank Cardamone and Joan Clingan
Claude and Barbara Christiano
Robert and Edith Edson
Richard and Sally Fleming
Four-Four Foundation, Inc.
Mark and Gwen Goodman
Joel and Debra Hiller
Lifeworks Foundation
Jan Nisbet and John Moeschler
Becky Ruffner
Charles Sydnor
Steve and Ann Walters
Nancy and Fulton Wright, Jr.
Nora Wood
Yavapai County Community Foundation
$500-$999
Fred Arndt and Bethany
Bradbury-Arndt
Peggy Bair
Doug and Ruth Blocker
John and Carol Cody
Anne and Walter Dellinger
David Drever
Sam Epperson
ER Taxes LC
Billy Hicks
Alison Holmes
Mary Jane and George Joyal
Layne Longfellow
Dorothy McKinney and
Shazad Contractor
Joseph McShane and Jan Marshall
Catherine Ollom-Toolan
Brian and Joann Peterson
Ralph and Darcy Phillips
Prescott College Library Staff
Karen Rizk
Bud and Velet Thomas
Carl and Joan Tomoff
Robert and Karen Wallace
Barbara Williams
$250-$499
American Insurance Agents
Rex and Arlyn Brewster
Floyd and Gayle Brown
Lyle and Ruth Brown
Keith and Alison Carvounis
Paul and Marylyn Clark
Marty and Diana Corkery
Pete and Christine Deyo
John and Nora Fairfield
Tracey Finch
Steve Finucane and Marjorie Bernardi
Michael and Nancy Fortney
Marlene Freedman and Susan Levin
Carolyn and Paul Harris
Michelle Hawkins
John High
Don and Elizabeth Hopper
Ken and Thelma Huff
E. Andrew and Pamela Kaskiw
Ainslie Kincross
Leah Lamb
Marion and Steve Lefkowitz
Ryan Levenick
Richard and Audrey Mandell
Matuschka
Doreen and Charles McDonald
Harry and Frances Miller
Jim and Sydney Mitchell
Donald Moore
Aaron and Page Newton
Robert and Barbara Nichols
Anna Parker
Claudine Perrault
Elisabeth Ruffner
Jeffrey Salz
Tom and Janet Taylor
Fred and Sally Veil
Rachel Yoder
Kathy Young
Up to $249
Ellen Abell
Gene and Elizabeth Allen
Esther and Oscar Almazon
Michael Anderson
Trudy Anderson
Alison Arthur and Arthur Charbonneau
Marianne Balfe
Joel Barnes and Lorayne Meltzer
Michael Belef
Molly and Gary Beverly
Melanie Bishop
Norman Bloom and Christina Johnston
Carlyn Brewster
Noel and Don Broadston
Natalie Canfield
Jeanine Canty
James and Ruth Carlin
John and Heather Carney
Jennifer Cerovski
Jim and Patsy Chamberlain
Lyn Chenier
Ford Church
Kenneth Cook and Charissa Menefee
Richard and Birgitta Dahl
Drew Dellinger
Cindy Dick and Cherie Howe
Brad Dimock
David and Martha Ellis
Judith and Peter Ellsworth
Connie and Ed Etzkin
George and Sherry Evans
Liz Faller
John Flax
David Hanna and Lisa Floyd-Hanna
Kathy Harting
Jane Follett Janson
Francis and F. Isabelle Fowler
Michael and Maryann Fox
Timothy Fraantz
Mark Friedley
Nelson and Marcia Goldberg
Joseph and Virginia Goldberger
Austin Goodman
M. Eileen Gorton
Gail Gorud
Doris and Peter Grey
Karlyn and Brian Haas
John Hamm
Ruby Harris
Jack Herring and Roxane Ronca
Jeanne Jones and William McCowan
Lewis and Patsy Kelley
Robert and Terry Kimbro
Dawn Knight
Janet and Michael Kothrade
Bob and Marilyn Kriegel
Jay Krienitz
Cynthia Kruse
Melanie Lefever
Gabrielle Liese
Bill Litzinger
David Lovejoy and Amparo Rifa
Pat and Ellen Lusk
Sue Maida Kirk
Bob and Eleanor Maas
Steven and Jeanne Matthews
Gail Mello
Shane Metcalf
Deb Morrison and John Huff
Steve Munsell
Peggy Natiello
Dee Navarro
Colleen Newhart
Nick and Penny Nickolas
Judy and Eddie Overholtzer
Thomas Potter
Steve Pace and Barbara Wood
Lark Paulson
Evelyn Peterson
Dorene and Eugene Pierce
Edward and June Poe
Diane Prescott
Kevin Rethman
Bridget Reynolds
Tiffany Rice
Ray and Darlene Ried
The Ripma Family
Robert and Christine Rosenberg
Margaret Rubel
David and Wanda Rummel
Kenneth and Karen Santos
Thomas Scavone
John Schmit and Laurie Dix
Christina and Kelly Sell
Michael Shay
Linda Smith and Joseph Bailey
Jen Steitz and Larry Landry
Sally ’dhruva Stephenson
Lee Stuart
Esther Summers
Howard and Barbara Summers
Harris Sussman
Lori Tella
Margaret Testarmata and
Wilfred Anowlic
Donald and Elizabeth Thompson
Stephen and Terri Titcomb
Jeanette Treuel
Mary Trevor and Toni Kaus
Julie VanSant
Lillian Wilcox
Carol Young
Vicky and Steven Young
Additional in-kind contributions
and acknowledgments
Steven Brock, Discovery Works Studios
and Gallery
Ruth Forman
Girl Scouts—Arizona Cactus-Pine
Council, Camp Maripai
George Goodman
Granite Mountain Materials
Doug Hulmes, in memory of
Ross Hulmes
Prescott College Work-Study Students
Wilson Automotive
* In-kind contributions
The names shown are as they appear in
our records, or as they have been requested by the donor. Anonymity is honored
upon request. Every effort has been made
to ensure that the above listing is accurate.
If your name is incorrect, please contact
the College’s Development Office, 220
Grove Ave., Prescott, AZ 86301 (877) 3502100, ext. 4505.
Summer 2005Transitions
43
New space for archives
Help compile College’s history
by Tom Brodersen
and Joel Hiller
44
s Prescott College
approaches its 40th
anniversary, the need to
preserve its history is becoming
apparent.
For the first time in the
College’s history, Prescott
College has created a space
designed to protect the old
photos, publications, and other
materials that document the
history of the institution and
the people who have made it
what it is.
The new library in the
Crossroads Center Information
Commons has an archives
room, with an independent
temperature and humidity control system to maintain the
optimum environment for
preservation.
The library’s special collection
is also housed in the archives.
This collection includes books
written by faculty and alumni,
and books published by the
Prescott College Press.
The archives collects materials that tell the story of the
College’s conception and development. These documents
include everything from photographs to magazine articles and
newspaper clippings.
One such article was located
during the past year that
acknowledged a generous gift
made to Prescott College by
Mr. and Mrs. John Hawley,
parents of Lisa Hawley ’74
and James Hawley ’71.
While researching the
College’s history in the
archives, Sam Henrie, cultural
and regional studies faculty
emeritus, found an article that
appeared in The Daily Courier
in October 1974.
The article quotes thenBoard Chair Hamilton
Wright as saying “he will leave
tomorrow for a fund-raising
A
TransitionsSummer 2005
Pictured in the front row, from left, is Lucia Hawley (daughter of James) Roz
Hawley (wife of James), James Hawley ’71, MacLane Hawley (son of
James), and Alana Hawley (daughter of James). In the back row, from left,
is Lane Hawley, McGill Hawley, Zita Wright (mother of Lisa and James),
Mac Hawley, Lisa Hawley ’74, and Corey Ryder.
luncheon in Minneapolis to be
led by Mr. and Mrs. John
Hawley, who donated $100,000
to the college during its financial crisis last spring.”
The College shared the article with Lisa and her family,
who expressed appreciation for
this acknowledgment.
“My family is deeply grateful
to receive the acknowledgment
of my father’s donation to
Prescott College, dating all the
way back to the ‘Stone Age’ in
1973,” Lisa said. “I hope that my
family’s recent recognition will
encourage other past, unacknowledged Prescott College
donors to come forward.”
“The past contributors serve
an important foundation that
needs to be preserved and honored in Prescott’s history and
archives,” she continued.
“Honoring the early supporters
of the College will help to give
it a stronger foundation for its
growth into the future. I am
very proud to have attended
one—if not the first—environmental college in this country.”
Faculty and students working
in the archives hope the Hawley
family’s recognition is one of
many wonderful stories of past
support that can be shared about
the College as students, faculty,
and alumni use the archives as a
valuable research tool.
If you have old Prescott
College memorabilia in your
attic, basement, or garage (or
maybe in your parent’s house)
we may have a new home for it.
The College is interested in the
ephemera of student life at
Prescott College—newsletters,
posters, and flyers that reflect
the changing interests of the
student body over time.
Give us a call, and see if we
can use what you have. Call
Tom Brodersen at (928)
778-2090 ext. 1300.
To the editor,
As I was reading through the
last edition of Transitions I was
just amazed at the building and
development progress at the
College. I am also astonished at
the overall evolution of the
College. The Prescott College
academic environment has
always been, and continues to
be, on an exceptional and experimental path. I am proud to
have been a part of Prescott
College as a resident student
back in 1994 and 1995. Even
after 10 years, I have such vivid
and fond memories of the courses, teachers, and fellow students
I was involved with, as well as
my work-study program in the
financial aid department and the
wonderful people there.
I felt like relaying some of
my highlights in this letter,
since several Prescott instructors made an unforgettable
impression on me.
Virginia Savage, who
entered into Prescott as an
instructor in 1994 and joined
our group for the Wilderness
Orientation, was a wonderful
mentor throughout my academic year, and so full of fascinating life stories.
Paul Sneed was my instructor for conservation biology in
the spring of 1995. I thoroughly
enjoyed his course, and I appreciated the wealth of knowledge
he brought to the class.
Bill Litzinger was my
instructor for concepts of ecology, and our class had several
memorable student-directed
roundtable discussions. Our
field excursions all over central
Arizona were great fun.
Lorayne Melzer was my
instructor for recreation management. This course brought
me to a wonderful student
project at Thumb Butte. I
worked with U.S. Forest
Service rangers, and developed
a draft trails-restoration plan
for the park. Mapping the
whole trail network north of
the Thumb Butte Recreation
Area was just a wonderful and
relaxing project. To this day,
Thumb Butte is still one of my
top favorite hiking places.
Wafula Okumu was my
instructor for a course called
Changing World Order during
spring 1995. I really enjoyed our
course dynamic, and Wafula was
a wonderful and challenging
instructor. His breadth of political knowledge was well suited
for this course work. I know the
year I left Prescott, Wafula also
was moving onto a professorship
at Mississippi University for
Women. I was sad to see him
leave the Prescott faculty, but I
knew he would have as great an
impact on a new set of students
in Mississippi.
I was quite fortunate to join a
block course with Walt
Anderson to the Sutter
Buttes, Calif., a place he
seemed to know like the back
of his hand. Observing and
studying the landscape at this
unique geographical feature
was a fabulous experience. The
field techniques that he
instilled in his students were
great preparation for any type
of field expedition, and the
wealth of knowledge and experience for unique ecosystems
that he shares with his students
is tremendous. I am so glad I
had the opportunity to take this
block course.
I took a course during the
fall of 1994 I believe was titled
Opening the Creative Mind,
which was just a fabulous outlet
for absorbing so many new elements around us. It was taught
at the wonderful open space at
Sam Hill. It was such a great
building, and very conducive to
Letters to the editor are welcome. Don’t
be shy. We would like to hear your opinion about Transitions, or any article
printed in this publication. To tell us
what you think, send your letter via
e-mail to: ahaver-allen@prescott.edu., or
via snail mail to: Ann Haver-Allen,
Prescott College, 220 Grove Ave.,
Prescott, AZ 86301. Letters must be
signed, and may be edited for clarity or
space. Letters will be printed as space
permits.
our course. I believe the inspirational Liz Faller was the
instructor for that term. During
and after the course, I really
found myself reaching out to
think and possibly react in different terms than my normal,
analytical self. I really enjoyed
trying out all the new, creative
outlets presented to us by Liz,
especially the rhythmic and
movement activities.
Although I am not a graduate
of Prescott College, the faculty
and school made an incredible
impression on the rest of my
academic pursuits. In 1999, I
graduated with an environmental studies degree from the
University of California at
Santa Barbara. For the past five
years, I have worked in the
New York City area with an
environmental consulting and
engineering firm as an environmental permitter. I am fortunate to say that my academic
degree is being put to use.
I thank you all for making
the Prescott College environment one of lifelong memories.
Being part of this school was a
genuine gift. Cheers to the
graduates of 2005, and the new
students of tomorrow.
Ingrid Young
Summer 2005Transitions
45
Media reform: A concern
for all educated citizens
by Jenn Weaver ’97
ast night, someone
burned three crosses in
Durham, N.C., eight
miles down the road from my
home in Chapel Hill. I wondered how the rest of the
nation would greet this news.
Would it make the national
news? Would it be chalked up
as a just another crazy
Southern episode?
My guard was up and righteous outrage at the ready, but I
never got the chance to delve
into the complexities of the
coverage, because no major
news source went beyond stating the basic fact that the event
had taken place.
In fact, anyone who thought
CNN might have something to
say about it would have found
that “the most trusted name in
news” thought the most important thing Americans needed to
know about this morning was
who won the American Idol
competition.
I’m sure there were other
things going on that day that
may have been more important
than the cross burnings, but I’m
certain the American Idol competition is not one of them.
That’s what’s so hard about staying informed about the news –
it’s not just interpreting the news
that you do get, but realizing all
the news you don’t get.
L
Media reform
For more information about
the National Conference on
Media Reform, or to read the
text of Bill Moyers’s keynote
address, see
www.freepress.net/conference/
46
The weekend of May 16, 2005,
more than 2,500 policymakers,
activists, students, scholars,
journalists, and odd and sundry
other concerned citizens gathered in St. Louis for the second
National Conference on Media
Reform. I even ran into fellow
Prescott College graduate
John Schmit ’97 at the top of
the escalator.
The conference created a
TransitionsSummer 2005
forum, discussing media reform
and other critical issues surrounding problems with the current state of the news media.
The conference was sponsored by Free Press, a national,
nonpartisan organization, working to increase informed public
participation in crucial media
policy debates, and to generate
policies that will produce a
more competitive and publicinterest-oriented media system,
with a strong nonprofit and
noncommercial sector.
Bill Moyers delivered the
keynote address. Additional
speakers and plenary presenters
included Al Franken, Jim
Hightower, Phil Donahue,
Robert McChesney, and Amy
Goodman.As Americans, and,
in fact, world citizens, we are
on the receiving end of increasingly homogenized and sometimes government-sponsored
information, owned by a handful of corporations.
Since 1983 the number of
corporations controlling the
majority of U.S. news media
has gone from 50 to just six. It
is increasingly impossible to
have informed debates about
the numerous decisions and
events happening every day
that affect all of our lives, especially as the line between news
and entertainment becomes
harder and harder to discern.
It matters to you
Hear this now: No matter what
“your issue” is, if you are not
thinking about how media
reform is necessary to the
cause’s success, you are totally
missing the boat.
Not only is support for and
knowledge of independent
media critical in disseminating
today’s news, but actively
demanding mainstream outlets
change their practices is critical
as well. To use the war
metaphor we Americans seem
so attached to—this is a battle
that must be fought on all fronts.
There are many well-intentioned journalists out there giving their best efforts, but the
evolution of running news outlets with the goal of making the
most money rather than the
goal of giving the public the
best information, prevents
many—if not most—of those
best intentions from being evidenced on our airways and in
our newspapers.
Just two things
There is not room here to do
justice to all the things I took
away from this conference,
but here are the two most
important ones.
First, media reform is crucial
for those of all ideological persuasions. The ideal of informed
political debate is that there is
a wide spectrum of ideas, and
with proper information, people can come together as a
community and make informed
decisions, as opposed to the
dominant model of one side
beating out (or beating down)
the other, with all-out winners
and all-out losers, that change
with the tides of power.
Second, on a practical note,
wireless internet is the last
information domain that is not
corporate-controlled … yet.
Nonprofit community wireless
networks offer an incredible
opportunity to offer free highspeed information access to
people from all walks of life.
There is still a huge information-access gap as costs continue
to rise, and community wireless
is a way to bypass all of this.
Feel free to contact me at
jeweave@email.unc.edu.
1970s
Robert Miller ’72. Countryman Press, a division of W.W.
Norton, has just released (May
3, 2005) my book, Kayaking
the Inside Passage: A Paddler’s
Guide from Olympia,
Washington to Muir Glacier,
Alaska, by Robert H. Miller,
$18.95, 460 pages. It is available from the publisher and
Amazon.com. It is being nominated for a National Outdoor
Book Award. “The Inside
Passage is something of a holy
grail for contemporary sea
kayakers,” the publisher wrote
in the book cover. “It is without
question the most scenic and
challenging paddling trip in
North America. Kayaking the
Inside Passage will aid kayakers
both in planning and in carrying out paddling trips on the
rugged Pacific artery that runs
along the western edge of
North America.” Miller grew
up in Cuba. He has taught
climbing and kayaking for 35
years and has published articles
and photos in Rock & Ice,
Canoe, River Runner, and
other publications. He lives in
Prescott. mrh10@qwest.net.
Bob Gouge ’73. Remember
the psychic woman out in Skull
Valley? She had a little place
built into the side of a rock
face, 1970 or so. I went out to
her one night to have her look
into my future. “I see you in a
red truck,” was all she said. I
felt kinda gypped by that. She
told some other folks about
see Class Notes next page
Erratum
Isabelle (Belle) Shook
’01 is pursuing her Master
of Arts degree in counseling at the University of
Phoenix, not Prescott
College as reported in the
spring issue of Transitions.
We regret any inconvenience this error may have
caused.
Alumnus receives national award for research
Dan Fagre ’75, a U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS)
biologist with the Northern
Rocky Mountain Science
Center at Glacier National
Park in Montana, received the
National Park Service (NPS)
Director’s Award for Natural
Resource Research on March
15, 2005, at the George Wright
Society biennial conference in
Philadelphia.
Fagre was selected for the
NPS honor because of his ability to perform excellent scientific studies, resulting in significant publications, his ability to
“outreach” to the park staff and
visitors, and his penchant for
collaboration with other
researchers and managers in
the Rocky Mountain region.
His research program is
focused on Glacier National
Park, but the scope of his
efforts extends beyond park
borders into western North
America and internationally.
An outstanding communicator,
Fagre has assisted with educating park staff, visitors, the local
community, and managers on
the importance of globalchange research and the implications for managing parks and
other protected areas. His work
is recognized internationally,
yet he is an important contributor to basic park management
and programs, including snow
and avalanche predictions for
opening the Going-to-the-Sun
Road, the Climate Friendly
Park Initiative, the Inventory
and Monitoring program, air
quality and UV-monitoring support, and supporting the
Crown of the Continent
Research Learning Center.
The USGS serves the nation
by providing reliable scientific
information to describe and
understand the earth; minimize
loss of life and property from
natural disasters; manage
water, biological, energy, and
mineral resources; and
enhance and protect our quality of life. See www.nrmsc.usgs.
gov/research/climate_changes.
htm to learn more about Fagre’s
research.
Summer 2005Transitions
47
Class Notes
continued from previous page
love affairs, adventures, and
disasters. All I got was a red
truck. Well, I’m driving a red
truck, have had her for years
now. Over 250,000 miles, and
going strong. Finally, I’m
beginning to see what that psychic meant. Living the mystery.
Anyway, I guess I’ve done a
few things. I spirited a cool,
Manhattan beauty away to the
desert. We’ve got an old house
down near the border, sturdy
thick walls, heavy beams, and
Mexican tile floors. Dogs and
cats sleep out back in the sun.
Our son is grown, and off on
his own adventures. I’ve wandered Paris streets at a misty
dawn, sat in smoky jazz in a
Florence cafe nestled in
Thieves’ Alley, watched the sky
burn, and once communed
with a wild, white mare back in
the red Jemez canyons. I’ve
known beauty and love, horror,
too. Life’s good, sweet. Like a
summer peach. My best to you
all. luckystrike36@yahoo.com
Douglas Hanson ’74. Since
graduating from Prescott, I’ve
worked at the Museum of
Northern Arizona, and then
went to graduate school at
Cornell University, where I
received a master’s degree and
Ph.D. in biological anthropology in 1988. I spent a good part
of my early career doing mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology in the Mariana
Islands. Much of this work
resulted in a collection of
papers published in the
American Journal of Physical
Anthropology back in ’97. In
1985 I began doing NIH
research in skeletal biology at
the Forsyth Institute in Boston.
My work has taken me as far
north as Iceland, and as far
south as Krueger National
Park. And I have managed to
make my way as far afield as
Angkor Wat in Cambodia (a
boyhood dream) and the glaciers
48
TransitionsSummer 2005
New book is a guide to
Prescott creeks
lumnae Lyn Chenier
’03 and Leigh
Aultman ’04 have a
new book in print. Titled
Emerald Veins: A Vegetative
Field Guide to the Creeks in
Prescott Arizona, the book
provides aid in the basic, nontechnical identification of the
more common riparian plants
in the Prescott area, including
trees, shrubs, and herbs of
native, nonnative, and naturalized species.
Although riparian ecosystems cover less than 1 percent
of Arizona’s land area, they are vital for flora and fauna safety
and development. Riparian areas provide habitat for birds,
amphibians, insects, and mammals. Larger animals—javelina,
coyote, and deer—use the riparian corridors as roadways.
“Despite their relative scarcity, riparian ecosystems host 75
percent of native wildlife species for some or all of their life
cycle,” the authors write. “Without a healthy stream to support riparian vegetation we would lose a diverse group of
plant species, and the wildlife they support would vanish from
the landscape.”
Chenier, who graduated with a competence in environmental studies with an emphasis in natural history and ecology,
handles interlibrary loans at the Prescott College Library.
Aultman, who is working on her master’s degree at Antioch,
earned her degree in environmental studies.
The objective for Emerald Veins is to increase public interest and awareness of Prescott’s unique and vital ecosystems. It
is the first of its kind for the Central Arizona Highlands
region. Funding was provided by the Arizona Native Plant
Society and Prescott College faculty member Doug Hulmes.
The book is available at the Prescott College Bookstore (928)
350-4307.
A
of South Island, New Zealand.
It has been an exciting and fulfilling career. I am still at
Forsyth, in my 20th year here,
but doing less research and
more administration, primarily
as chief technology officer and
head of the BioInformatics Core
at the Institute. I have been
married and divorced to a
woman who is now one of this
country’s leading number
crunchers (also an anthropologist) in human engineering at
the Department of Defense,
and with whom I share a spectacular daughter (Katherine,
“KT” to her friends). She is
now 15, with anthropological
leanings and is currently
preparing for a summer of
Spanish immersion in Segovia,
Spain. Right now I am enjoying
my life as a single male again.
As I look toward “retirement”
sometime in the next few
decades, I have my sights on a
little spread with Appaloosas,
somewhere near Sonoita,
Arizona. Although I love
Boston, I am anxious to get
back to my Southwestern roots
and closer to Mexico. Where is
Peter Sherman, Steve Sessions,
and the rest of my Center for
Man and Environment colleagues?
1980s
Kim Reynolds ’84 was featured in the January 2005 issue
of O, The Oprah Magazine.
Newsweek staff writer Peg Tyre
went on a spiritual retreat led by
Reynolds. She recounted her
experience of yoga, life-coaching, rock-climbing, and high-altitude hiking in the majestic San
Juan Mountains of Colorado in
O. Reynold’s company, Mind
Over Mountains, brings together
her love of the outdoors, her
belief in the power of life-changing experiences, and her passion
for working with women.
“Within this beautiful mountain
setting, we have designed a
series of one-of-a-kind retreats
that inspire positive change to
have a lasting impact on your
life,” Reynolds said. “The mountains are incredible teachers,
that reveal our strengths, limitations, and personal depth.They
grant us lessons we can apply to
every aspect of our lives.”
Reynolds earned her bachelor’s
degree in wilderness interpretation and outdoor education. The
story for O can be found at
www.mindovermountains.com/
mediaOprah.html.
1990s
Cody Lundin ’91 was featured in the April 11, 2005,
issue of the Arizona Republic,
offering safety and survival
skills for hikers, campers, bikers, and others who enjoy the
wilderness. Lundin provided
Alum wows critics
with one-woman show
Justine Moore ’94
received rave reviews from
theater critics at Variety, LA
Times, LA Weekly, and other
publications for her comical,
autobiographical, onewoman show titled “Ecstasy
and the Ice Queen.” The
show follows a pivotal day in
the lives of two rebellious
teenage girls, anglo daughters of hippie radicals growing up as racial and cultural
minorities in the 1980s in
Taos, N.M. The show,
named the LA Times Critic’s
Choice, ended its run at the
Promenade Playhouse in
Santa Monica, Calif., on
Sunday, July 17.
tips for creating a survival kit
designed to keep an individual
alive for at least 72 hours in the
backcountry. Lundin, who
earned his degree in depth psychology, is a survival expert.
Ann Gassaway ’96. A long,
joyous journey has culminated
in receiving my doctorate in
psychology this month. To
think, it started right there at
Prescott College with a B.A.
Upon my graduation from
Prescott College, I knew more
education was in store for me.
So with full intent I took that
desire seriously, and here I am,
nine years later, completely
nourished as a scholar. Thank
you, Prescott College, and
specifically Thank You Tim and
Terril for your kind, compassionate guidance and belief in
me. Nearing 68 years of age in
June, I have completed that
dream I talked so much about.
I have worked as a crisis therapist in mental health services at
a local hospital for seven years.
It is a great career fit. I started
teaching last year for CSUB in
their Alcohol and Drug Studies
For more information about
“Ecstasy and the Ice Queen” see
http://plays411.com.
Program, and, of course, that is
also a fit. More recently I have
involved myself with psychoneuroimmunology. Last
year I took courses at UCLA in
neuropsychology, and this year
I took workshops on “pain,”
and mind/body courses on line.
I’m not sure where this is leading me, but know it will have
relevance somewhere because
I enjoy it all so much.
Aaron P. Di Orio’s ’97 article
“Forty-eight year decline and
fragmentation of aspen
(Populus tremuloides) in the
South Warner Mountains of
California” was published Feb.
15, 2005, in Forest Ecology and
Management. In the article, Di
Orio and his colleagues Richard
Callas and Robert Schaefer
propose that new land-management strategies need to be
developed to reverse the
decline of aspen—and ensure
their persistence—in the South
Warner Mountains. Di Orio
earned his degree in environmental studies and field ecologies. The article can be accessed
see Class Notes on next page
Summer 2005Transitions
49
Class Notes
continued from previous page
at www.sciencedirect.com.
Denise Barr Washko *98.
I am enjoying life as a stay-athome mom, enjoying every
minute with my son. I am also
working part-time from home
for an environmental conservation organization, and am planning to develop a small business
based on sustainable-living techniques. dlwashko@yahoo.com
2000s
James Reinhold ’00. I have
found myself bouncing all over
the country, and think I have
found a landing zone. The last
couple of years I have been in
the beautiful Southern
California mountains as the
program director for a small
camp. I married an amazing
woman on the beautiful
Catalina Island, off the southern coast of California. But, the
Maine woods keep calling. I
have moved again, and accepted a job as the camp director
for a new summer residential
camp near Bar Harbor and
Acadia National Park. There is
a lot of work to do to get this
place up and running for 2006,
but it is a lot of fun! I highly
recommend anyone to come
and visit Acadia and the Down
East region, and stop on by the
camp. Canoe, kayak, or hike
around the area. You can find
us on the web at www.campperegrine.com, or give me a
call at (207) 565-2195. Take
care, and have an awesome
summer! reinhold_james@
yahoo.com
Heather Robertson ’01 was
featured in the winter/spring
issue of TellurideStyle
Magazine in a story about
Jagged Edge, a retailer of performance gear for mountain
lifestyles. Robertson, who graduated from Prescott College
with a bachelor’s degree in
environmental politics and cultural and regional studies, was
50
TransitionsSummer 2005
Doug Hulmes donated a gamble oak tree with four major branches to
the landscaping efforts for the Crossroads Center. The branches
represent his parents and brother Daniel, all deceased, and Doug
himself, the last surviving member of the family. He said he considers
the new stems as metaphors for the students that he and his parents,
who were both teachers, taught. His father Ross was principal at
Kimball Junior High School in Elgin, Ill., for many years. His mother
Sylvia was a physical education teacher at Teft Junior High School.
Pictured with Hulmes in front of the oak are Ceridwen Bloor and her
daughter Bryhen.
the manager of the Telluride
store. Robertson was described
as a “bit of a mountaineer, who
meditates, enjoys yoga, biking,
hiking, loves to read, and is a
passionate herbalist and nutritionist.” The article can be
accessed at www.tellurideofficialguide.com.
Jean-Francois Camson ’03’s
business, Technicians for
Sustainability LLC, was spotlighted in the March 28, 2005,
“Small Business Makeover” feature in the Arizona Daily Star
of Tucson. Camson is an electrical contractor, dedicated to
building energy systems that use
renewable sources of energy
and natural resources. He was
matched with an experienced
business counselor, who provided advice to help him take his
business to the next level. For
more information about
Technicians for Sustainability,
see www.techniciansforsustain-
ability.com.
Maryann Neubert *04. I
accepted a new museum position in El Paso, Texas, and
moved the 1,500 miles from
Tennessee. Upon arrival in
Texas, I also started a new
chapter in my goal to become a
working artist. I got confirmation of acceptance into the
Union Avenue Fiber and Art
Gallery to sell hand-dyed and
hand-spun yarn and jewelry.
aspens2004@yahoo.com
Bill Wesselink ’04. Tara
Powell and I are doing well.
Liam David was born June 3,
2004, and is adjusting to life in
his new environment. Tara was
accepted to graduate school at
Alliant University in San Diego,
and we will be moving there in
August. Always waiting for
news from our friends, so
please contact us at wwesselink@ prescott.edu. Thank
you all, and hope all is well.
Alumni river trip a time to reconnect
T
his year’s alumni river
trip was a four-night,
five-day float down the
San Juan River, from Mexican
Hat to Clay Hills Crossing.
The weather couldn’t have
been more perfect on this quintessential Southwest river: cool
evenings for great conversation
on shore, and blue skies and
sunny days, offering refreshing
dips in the San Juan’s waters
and side canyon pools.
The objective of this annual
trip is to provide the opportunity for Prescott College alumni
to reconnect with the institution and each other in a familiar setting—the outdoors.
To hear the stories and the
common threads of how people
found the College, and how
their experience at the College
inspired their lives is always
reinvigorating. The stories
seemed endless and the nights
long on this trip.
The group would arrive at
camp to bask on the shaded
beach we’d call home for the
night, while the last rays of sun
constantly changed the hue of
the canyon walls. The stars and
the Milky Way would slowly
emerge as the sun set, and
stimulating conversation permeated this intimate group all
the while.
The participation was amazing this year. Cory Burk and
Laura Salamone ’82 stepped
away from their love of hanggliding to join the trip for the
third year. Mike Townsend
’81 somehow talked his wife,
Laura, into running their
downtown Prescott business
Granite Mountain Outfitters so
he could get away.
Caroline (Wright)
Paseieo ’95 is a newlywed,
and even though her husband
couldn’t make it on this trip,
we hope Caroline’s experience
might be able to persuade him
to join us next year. Christina
’71 and Tom LaVella joined
us from Page. Christina was
Doug Hulmes’s ’74
Wilderness Orientation
instructor, which provided
many hours of storytelling.
Sharon Curtin ’79 canceled her summer teaching
schedule to participate in this
trip, and provided the great
service of foot massages.
Cindy Dick ’87 and Cherie
Howe were such a pleasure to
have on the trip. Their work,
passions, and interest in others provided very stimulating
conversation. Cindy hadn’t
kayaked since her kayaking
block course more than 15
years ago and hopped in one
for a full day, looking like she
had been kayaking for years.
Jeanine Canty *00 has
been drawn to the rivers this
summer. After just completing
the faculty and staff river trip
with Joel Barnes ’81 and
Robert McGillicuddy’s ’04
River Guides Training class
(see page 16), she joined us
for another float down the San
Juan.
This year’s crew was amazing!
McGillicuddy, Hulmes,
Stewart Lasseter, Brooke
Schickedanz, Gabe Wallace,
and myself pulled off a great
trip, and look forward to helping
out again next year.
by Rachel Peters ’04
Photo by Rachel Peters
Participation in this year’s
alumni river trip down the San
Juan was amazing.
Photo by Rachel Peters
This year’s alumni river trip
down the San Juan was well
attended.
Summer 2005Transitions
51
by Rachel Yoder
52
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen
I
’ve known all spring that I
needed to write my parting
words for this issue of
Transitions.
Oddly enough, I’ve always
been able to find something
else to do—an e-mail needed
to be answered, a gift entered,
a thank-you letter written.
Now, on the day after my
farewell is due to our very
patient Transitions editor, I am
finally sitting down to try and
capture what Prescott College
has meant to me, to adequately
thank the students, parents,
alumni, staff, faculty, and
friends for the community I
unwittingly found at this miraculous little college.
And as I force myself to
write, I realize that my procrastination is motivated by one
simple sentiment: Prescott
College, I don’t want to say
goodbye.
While I don’t have a degree
to show for it, I have spent the
last four years at Prescott
College getting an education.
In true PC-style, one final selfevaluation is in order, to “document my learning” (but this
one doesn’t go on my permanent record)…
If apathy and ignorance are
the plagues of modern
America, Prescott College is
the cure. Believe the hype: PC
students are the most ablebodied, inspired, intellectually
agile, open-minded, out-ofthe-box dreamers, thinkers,
and doers.
Prescott College students
carry full course loads, while
raising children and working
full-time. They imagine,
administer, and fundraise for
full-fledged conferences …
while barefoot.
They write soul-numbing
poetry while hiking through
Yosemite, and create evocative
sculpture from scraps found in
TransitionsSummer 2005
dumpsters. And ditto all that
for Prescott College alumni,
the people who have taught me
about far-reaching community
that stretches from the high
desert to urban asphalt, across
generations and all the iterations of Prescott College. You,
alumni, keep the spirit of
Prescott College alive in the
world, from Taiwan to the
Dominican Republic.
The Prescott College staff
are the collegiate equivalent of
James Brown; that is, the hardest working folks in higher ed.
From them I have learned
about tireless dedication and,
even more, about the restorative powers of a late afternoon
sugar fix.
Prescott College faculty
embody the word “yes”—Yes,
you can study this, go there,
climb that, be my friend, be
my critic, become your greatest dream, live out your highest ideals.
They have taught me that
humility equals teachability; I
can learn how to harness a
horse, run a river, or write a
story if I approach each new
challenge ready to look stupid
and learn a lesson. On that
note, cleaning out the groover
is exponentially grosser than I
ever imagined. And, yes, P
really is for the P in Prescott
College…
Thank you to the Prescott
College Alumni Association
Board for making my job fun
and challenging and meaningful, for being bold and brilliant.
Thank you to the Board of
Trustees for opening your
homes for Prescott College
gatherings, for providing
encouragement and advice, for
believing in this college, and
for being willing to invest in
our collective dream.
Thank you to President Dan
Garvey for your jokes and
Kleenex®, and, most importantly, your vision. Thank you to
the many friends who I’ve
made along the way, to all of
you who have written and
called with support, kind
words, and well-wishes.
While I am incredibly sad to
be leaving my friends and colleagues at Prescott College—
my friends and colleagues, my
PC tribe—I am also excited to
be on to the next part of my
journey that leads me to the
University of Arizona in Tucson
for graduate studies in creative
writing this fall.
I know that we hear it all the
time, but Prescott College really is an amazing, unique, and
magical place.
My parting wish is that you
reconnect with your love for
Prescott College by recalling
your time here as a student,
considering how this school
transformed your son or
daughter, or remembering
why you work or volunteer for
this college.
I’ll sure miss you, Prescott
College.
Big love,
Rachel Yoder
Alum kicks off fundraising events
to support conference for teens
Courtney Osterfelt ’04 was
so jazzed over the success of the
first Women’s Empowerment
Breakthrough Conference
(WEB!) last fall that she vowed
it would not be a one-time
occurrence.
Osterfelt is keeping that vow.
She has already begun fundraising for the second WEB conference, which is scheduled to
begin Friday, Sept. 16, and end
Sunday, Sept. 18.
“Young women ages 15 to 19
express challenges with body
image, eating disorders, sexuality, teen pregnancy, and educa-
tion,” Osterfelt said. “There is
an urgent responsibility we
have as members of their community to support them
through these life challenges.”
The WEB! Conference began
as Osterfelt’s senior project. She
said such educational programs
are needed because teenagers
are especially susceptible to
social marketing that frequently
represents women as provocative, brainless objects.
“We have a responsibility to
provide them with tools in facing these obstacles in order to
leave this period of their life a
successful, empowered, and
healthy individual,” she said.
Planned fundraisers include
a walk for women’s fitness;
Jazzin’ for Women, a dinner,
wine, and jazz event; and
Fabulous Females, a benefit
concert and silent auction.
Female performers and artists
from around the area are featured. Last year more than 300
people attended this event.
“We already have 10 bands
booked,” Osterfelt said.
For more information about
the conference, see websrv.
prescott.edu/~costerfelt.
Phonathon reaches new high
hank you to the 237
donors who contributed
through the Phonathon
that took place in March.
In total, $32,880 was
pledged. As of June 30, the end
of the fiscal year, only $3,720 in
pledges were still outstanding.
This year’s total represents a
27 percent increase in giving
T
through the Phonathon. The
2004 Phonathon raised $23,000
from 220 donors.
We deeply appreciate everyone who took the time to speak
with our student and alumni
callers, and all those who supported the College this year.
We also thank our incredible
callers for working long
evenings to get in touch with
our donors. They are: Tom
Barry ’92, Audrey Clark,
Krista Cole, Jon Demitrieus,
Erica Ann Flood, Ali
Graham, Connie Hockaday
’04, Kate Liedel, Grayson
Light-Lookner, Kate
McEwen, Heidi Normand,
and Hanna Soumerai.
FromtheArchives
Thank you to everyone who participated in this photo challenge—it was a good one. The last names of two individuals
remain a mystery. This is a photo of the first Kino Bay Marine
Biology study group for Invertebrate Zoology II, and it was
taken in January 1972.
Standing in the back on the left are Mexican fishermen and
guides. Zanahoria was the boat pilot. In the center back is
Jane Taylor, course instructor, Doug Hulmes, and Mark
Grinter. Seated in the back row are, from left, Marc Harvey,
Diane (last name unknown), Ann Killefer, John Blake, Jane’s
friend Betsy (last name unknown), and Marion Marlboro.
Seated in the front row, from left, are Paul Long, Martha
Meyer, Gary Nabhan, Deb Inch, Steven Trumbull, John
Schneider, and John Flax.
Thanks to Doug Hulmes, John Flax, Deb Inch, Marc Harvey,
Paul Long, Dan Young, and Tova “Toni” Sands for contributing
to finding the solution.
Summer 2005Transitions
53
Ronald C. Nairn, Prescott College’s
first president, passes away
Ronald C. Nairn, Prescott
College’s first president, passed
away on May 3, 2005, in
Chiang Mai, Thailand. Nairn
succeeded founding president
Charles Franklin Parker, and
was president of Prescott
College from 1965 to 1973.
Nairn helped build the original campus on a 220-acre site
outside town, now occupied by
Emery Riddle University. A
revolutionary curriculum and
tough admissions policy attracted the best students from all
over the world, and the college
was recognized in worldwide
press, while Nairn led aggressive fundraising efforts from
major benefactors.
Nairn was born in rural
Ireland on Nov. 15, 1922, to
William and Alice Nairn, and
from the age of 2 was raised in
the Hutt Valley in New
Zealand. At the age of 17, he
was selected as a fighter pilot
in the Royal New Zealand Air
Force (RNZAF). During World
War II as a young flying officer
in No. 14 Squadron, he flew P40s on 187 missions in the
Solomon Islands, walking away
from several disastrous
crash landings. After
being awarded the
Distinguished Flying
Medal and the Air
Force Cross during the
war, he returned to New
Zealand to earn his
Bachelor of Arts degree
with high honors from
the University of
Canterbury in
Christchurch.
In 1956 Nairn was
appointed as the first
New Zealand delegate
to the Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization’s
(SEATO) military planning division. As a
SEATO delegate, he was
introduced to the remote areas
of northern Thailand, studying
the then-nomadic hill-tribe
societies residing there.
Promoted to Wing
see Nairn on next page
Knaup Scholarship founder dies
Warren C. Knaup, founder of
the Knaup Family Scholarship
fund at Prescott College, died
May 28, 2005, at St. John’s
Mercy Medical Center in
Creve Coeur, Missouri. He suffered a stroke while gardening
at his home in Ladue,
Missouri, and never regained
consciousness. He was 84.
Knaup, a World War II veteran and chief financial officer
for Enterprise Rent-A-Car for
more than 30 years, was a
graduate of St. Louis
University, where he played ice
hockey and earned a bachelor’s
degree in finance.
He attended the Coast
Guard Academy’s officers’
54
TransitionsSummer 2005
training school in Connecticut
and served as a lieutenant during World War II. He survived
the D-Day landing on Utah
Beach in Normandy, and the
Anzio and Palermo landings in
North Africa.
Mr. Knaup was hired as the
chief financial officer of
Enterprise in 1964, a position
he held until he retired in 1995
with the additional title of senior vice president. He also
served as the treasurer for the
company’s board of directors.
Among the survivors are his
wife; two daughters, Missouri
Court of Appeals Judge
Kathianne Crane of Clayton
and Mary Jo Crosby of
Evanston, Ill.; two sons,
Stephen Knaup of Seattle
and James Knaup ’80 of
Prescott, Ariz.; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
The family requests that in
lieu of flowers, donations can
be sent to the Knaup Family
Scholarship Fund at Prescott
College, which provides support to students, who are planning a career in environmental
conservation or environmental
education, and who are U.S.
citizens with financial need.
To contribute to the Knaup
Family Scholarship Fund, contact Ralph Phillips, director of
development, at (928) 350-4501,
or rphillips@prescott.edu.
Alum remembers former president
I
was a freshman in 1969 on
a Prescott College campus
that was informed by the
spirited vision of one man: Ron
Nairn. To me, he was Prescott
College. He was our leader. I
remember his photo that year
in the college catalog looking
like Clark Gable in academic
robes, appearing larger than
life. A Royal New Zealand Air
Force fighter ace more than
once shot down at sea, always
surviving to thrive once more,
his air and energy personified
the swagger and hope of our
bold and fledgling institution.
Dr. Nairn’s job was not just
to inspire students to do their
best. It was also to convince
donors to give their most. I’m
afraid we didn’t make his job
very easy.
In fact, it was scruffy hippyfied me (I literally did not
brush my hair for one year)
who put his unwashed feet up
on a seat back next to a particularly valuable donor that Dr.
Nairn had been courting for
some time. The fellow was
apparently so put off by this
offense that he fled shortly
thereafter, leaving not a penny
behind. This event occasioned
a speech in which Dr. Nairn, in
measured and even tones,
implored us to voluntarily curtail our expressions of freedom
in order to support this school
that we all so loved because, in
his words, “liberal arts colleges
do not fall like the gentle rain
from heaven.”
In that moment, as in the
wilderness orientation that he
championed, Ron Nairn firmly
but fairly helped us all to see
that we were not just recipients,
but the co-creators of greatness.
In 1970 I went to New
Zealand, and for six months followed the Ron Nairn Tour, visiting and staying for extended
periods of time with his family
and friends, a loving network
that stretched the length of
both islands. That trip—a result
of Ron Nairn’s generosity—
changed my life.
In truth, it was Ron Nairn
himself who changed my life. I
was a wild vagrant and bushyheaded wilderness yippie. He
was a conservative academic
and war hero. In many ways we
could not have been further
apart. Yet despite our obvious
differences he treated me not
just as a student, but as an
equal and a friend. He seemed
to have some kind of crazy faith
in who I was. That faith—
reflected in his eyes—allowed
me to see who I might someday become.
Today I am that person …
president of the Prescott
College Alumni Association and
a successful corporate speaker,
a loving father, and a responsible “cultural revolutionary.” I
think Dr. Nairn would be proud
of me. I have for a lifetime
been proud that a man such as
Ronald Nairn considered me
his friend.
by Jeff Salz ’74
Nairn
continued from previous page
Commander, Nairn returned to
New Zealand in 1959 as the
Commandant of the Air
Officers Training School in
Wheneupai. At the age of 37
he retired from the RNZAF
and accepted a fellowship to
Yale University’s graduate program, where he completed
both his master’s degree and
his Ph.D.—both with high
honors—in only two and onehalf years. Upon graduation, he
joined the faculty of the
Political Science Department
at the University of California
at Santa Barbara, and served as
a consultant for RAND, the
Institute of Defense Analysis
and the Center for Research in
Social Systems at American
University.
In 1973 after fulfilling an
eight-year commitment to
Prescott College, Nairn moved
to Scottsdale, partnering in a
new company, which took him
back to his passion for Thailand
and its agriculture-based economy. As the business grew and
developed, Nairn and his wife,
Mona, moved to Bangkok and
eventually to Chiang Mai in
northern Thailand.
Nairn’s next venture was to
form a division of Known You
Seed, a Taiwan-based company
that grew seeds for export to
most of the major fruit and
vegetable growing companies
around the world. He brought
specialized seed-growing techniques to Thailand, and contracted with as many as 2,200
local Thai farmers to grow and
propagate the seeds to the
company’s specifications. After
selling his interest in the seed
company, Dr. Ron did not
enter retirement, but began a
project planting Neem trees in
northern Thailand.
Nairn was a prolific author,
publishing two books, contributing to two more books, and writing for many publications.
His wife of 56 years, Mona,
died in Chiang mai in 2000.
In 2003 he married a local
Thai woman, Arunee, and
adopted her son Nat. His surviving daughters, Sue Bray
and Belinda Nairn Wertman,
and his grandchildren, Ryan
and Erin Bray, reside in the
United States.
Summer 2005Transitions
55
FromtheArchives
“Those
were the
days, my
friend,...”
Who are these people, and
what are they doing? If you
can identify the folks in this
picture, the year it was
taken, and what brought
them together, please let us
know. Phone (877) 3502100, ext. 4502; e-mail:
tharris@prescott.edu; or
mail: Alumni Affairs, 220
Grove Ave., Prescott, AZ,
86301.
PrescottCollege
For the Liberal Arts and the Environment
Public Relations Office
220 Grove Ave.
Prescott, AZ 86301
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