University Magazine Spring 2014 FIRST LOOK
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University Magazine Spring 2014 FIRST LOOK On the cover: ST. LAWRENCE There’s more than meets the eye when it University Magazine comes to stage productions. Look past the curtains and drapes and you find lights, and Vol. LXIII | Number 2 | Spring 2014 cables, and rigging, and people collaborat- ing to make everything work right. Life is like CONTENTS that – we don’t see most of what makes it tick. That’s why performance is an integral part of a 2 A Word from the President liberal arts education. For more about this, see 3 On Campus our story beginning on page 18. 10 Sports Photo: Tara Freeman 14 Philanthropy in Action 26 Laurentian Portrait: Yibei Chen ’16 Robert Thacker Ray Celeste Jr. ’81 29 From the Archives 30 Class Notes 34 Picture Perfect 65 Final Thought FEATURE Performing Life 18 Is performance a form of communication? Is communication a form of performance? How do the answers to those questions shape a life? FEATURE 24 NATURALISM ‘A peace treaty with time and the forces of Earth’: what Adirondack Semester land art teaches. To read this magazine online www.stlawu.edu/magazine As it has since 1931, Sykes Residence (“Men’s Rez” to older Laurentians) provides a backdrop to spring as the dominant color on campus turns from white to green and “Old Glory” on the Class of 1953 Flagpole ripples before mild breezes in place of bitter winds. All too St. Lawrence University has sustainability as a core value. This magazine soon, Moving-Up Day, Commencement and Reunion was printed regionally using soy-based inks, on 30% recycled, 30% Weekend will have passed, and the campus will settle post-consumer fiber paper, in an eco-friendly process that recycles virtually all chemical, paper and metal waste. It is printed on Forest Stewardship Council™ into its summer garb. certified paper (www.fsc.org) as a product of well-managed forests, controlled sources and recycled wood or fiber. A WORD from THE PRESIDENT ON CAMPUS ST. LAWRENCE More Bacheller Lyricism Vindicating the 'Useless' University Magazine Letters When the Winter 2014 edition of St. Lawrence arrived, I was immediately drawn to the image of the chapel bell on graduated from St. Lawrence with many holes the first couple of years out of St. Lawrence—any Vol. LXIII | Number 2 | 2014 the cover and its poetic inscription. My great-grandmother, in my education. My liberal arts pedigree premium for an economics major or disadvantage for St. Lawrence and Africa, Looking Forward Georgia Ettie Bacheller Hale, was a first cousin of Irving’s, and did not include courses in accounting, a visual arts major? None. In 2014, the Kenya Program celebrates its 40th year. We are finance,I public speaking, organizational theory or Ledyard Park Hale, my great-grandfather, was a lifelong friend. Nonetheless, why should we strongly encourage excited about the upcoming “Affinity Reunion,” May 29- developmental psychology. the study of arts and humanities, albeit rowing Vice President for Communications June 1 (for more, go to www.stlawu.edu/reunion). The final resting places of the Bacheller and Hale families Given my line of work, the irony gets worse. I against the shifting current? I have experienced and Tom Evelyn are in close proximity in Evergreen Cemetery (on the edge Over 40 years, St. Lawrence has established a relationship confess that I missed taking courses in economics, witnessed the American journey by living in great Editor-in-Chief of Canton). An equally poetic and heartfelt inscription on environmental studies and computer science. And cities and also small towns, by learning the habits of with Kenya that rivals any other university’s commitment Neal S. Burdick ’72 Irving Bacheller’s marker reads, “Here where the wood thrush yet, the only regret I truly hold about the negative large regions upon the continent, the two oceanic to East Africa. In thinking about the next 40 years, we are Assistant Editor sings I lie down with those I love.” space on my academic record is coasts and the two great river valleys, Meg Bernier ’07, M ’09 asking for your support in creating a permanent restricted that I did not find more time for the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. I appreciate receiving the St. Lawrence magazine and have News Editor endowment called Engaging Africa, which will allow us to art history or music appreciation. While I have benefitted from visiting been really impressed by its caliber and quality in recent years. Among thousands of Laurentian major museums and renowned art Ryan Deuel expand our impact and ensure that future generations of John N. Hale ’75 | Toms River, New Jersey alumni, successful across the galleries, one of the great lessons of my Class Notes Editor students share in the profound experience of off-campus study in Africa. spectrum of all career fields and life is to avoid underestimating what Sharon Henry Hijacked Science? in local community leadership, one can learn in the small places. And Photographer Your gift will help support summer programs in Africa, my strong intuition is that I am in those places, owing to the scale, I Regarding your “Car Charger” piece in the winter issue: It Tara Freeman scholarship support for African students to attend not alone in declaring that I suppose, what really matters to human seems like everyone is installing charging stations lately under Design & Art Direction St. Lawrence, a signature African studies lecture on graduated from college with a few beings, their minds, curiosities, values, the impression that the fuel is, as you write, “cheaper and “incompletes.” habits and wills, is deeply knowable Alex Rhea campus, and Kenya Program internships. For details, more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels….” Today, not only is there a whiff of and unhidden. You see their apparatus St. Lawrence University does not discriminate against students, please visit www.stlawu.edu/african-studies/engaging- for life in closer detail. faculty, staff or other beneficiaries on the basis of race, color, gender, At the risk of being a skunk at the garden party, I suggest dismissal in the air about the value religion, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or national africa-initiative. Gifts can be made by going to https:// of a broad liberal arts education, as One spring evening while living in or ethnic origin in admission to, or access to, or treatment, or alumni.stlawu.edu/givingoptions. that electric vehicles only move stinky environmental effects employment in its programs and activities. AA/EEO. For further measured by the immediacy of a vocational payoff, California, we were invited by a retired couple to information, contact the University’s Age Act, Title IX and Section 504 Matt Carotenuto KSP ’98 | Associate Professor of History | Coor- from streets and highways to stationary power plants some- but this view is also accompanied at times by a their modest home for dinner. It was a one-bedroom, coordinator, 315-229-5584. A complete policy listing is available at dinator of African Studies where else. Even if those plants do not burn coal, hydrocar- www.stlawu.edu/policies. touch of indifference, perhaps hostility, toward the one-floor house built on the grounds of an old Kathleen Colson ’79 | Co-Founder and CEO, The Boma Project bons or waste, they still impose externalized environmental study of arts and humanities. Students and their Published by St. Lawrence University four times yearly: January, April, orange grove. Among the framed family snapshots costs that may or may not be high. parents increasingly voice their worries about the displayed on the center wall was also, improbably, a July and October. Periodical postage is paid at Canton, NewYork Ken Okoth ’01 | Member, Parliament of Kenya | Founder, 13617 and at additional mailing offices. (ISSN 0745-3582) Printed in Children of Kibera risk of the wrong bet on an academic major, such picture by Marc Chagall, the 20th-century French U.S.A. All opinions expressed in signed articles are those of the I graduated with a B.S. in geophysics and then earned two as one in art, philosophy, literature or languages. modernist. I assumed it was a copy or a print. When author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors and/or St. John Linsley ’04 | Author, St. Lawrence magazine th Lawrence University. Editorial offices: Office of University “Habari Gani” column graduate degrees in geology. Now I’m in my 50 year of find- The hesitation is not surprising in light of agitated our hosts detected that we had noticed the art, they Communications, St.Lawrence University, 23 Romoda Drive, Canton, ing and developing mineral deposits worldwide. I have gotten public attitudes toward the importance of majoring winked at each other and then told us it was the real NY 13617, phone 315-229-5585, fax 315-229-7422, e-mail nburdick@ stlawu.edu, Web site www.stlawu.edu. Commencements Aren’t Always in May to know Mother Nature rather well. in something “practical.” Nationally, the number of thing, a Chagall painting, probably a study for a students majoring in the arts and humanities has larger work. Address changes: A change-of-address card to My mother, Elizabeth Joan O’Brien (later Sheard), entered Earth is loaded with gases and has been degassing carbon Office of Annual Giving and Laurentian Engagement, St.Lawrence been reduced to single-digit percentages. Fifty years They had once travelled on a dime to Europe, University, 23 Romoda Drive, Canton, NY 13617 (315-229-5904, St. Lawrence in the Class of 1943. With the onset of World dioxide, methane, hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide, sulphur ago, however, the comparative fraction at private sometime in the 1950s when, by some happenstance, email [email protected]) will enable you to receive St.