Transitions Spring 2013 # Join the 1966 SOCIETY Prescott College opened its doors in the fall of 1966. Cost to attend in the inaugural year was $2,500, including tuition, room and board, and various fees. When you give $2,500 or more each year to the Annual Fund for Academic Excellence, you join the 1966 Society—philanthropic leaders among Prescott College alumni and friends who value the institution and want to commemorate our founding. Page 16 of The Charter College, Catalog September of Prescott 1966 16 Page To give to the Annual Fund for Academic Excellence, visit AF.kintera.org or mail to Membership in Prescott College Advancement Office, the 1966 Society 220 Grove Ave., Prescott AZ 86301 is annual (July 1 through June 30) Connect with us There are more ways than ever to tell us what’s on your mind: Call us. We’d love to hear your feedback Email us at (928) 350-4506 [email protected] Transitions Magazine Twitter users can follow Join our Facebook Prescott College Prescott College at community. Log on to 220 Grove Ave. twitter.com/PrescottCollege facebook.com/PrescottCollege Prescott, AZ 86301 Cover photo: Wilderness Orientation Fall 2007, by Matthew Hart ’11 TransitionS Contents Publisher Marjory J. Sente 4 College News 7 Ratings and Rankings Editor Ashley Mains 8 Tucson’s 25th Anniversary Designer 10 Fires and Fantasies Miriam Glade 14 45 Years of Wilderness Orientation Contributing Writers Walt Anderson • Antony Brown • Danny Brown • Suzanne 18 Confluence: The Grand Canyon Dhruv • Matt Kwain • Erin Lotz • Ashley Mains • Lorayne Meltzer • Nathan Meltzer • James Moore • Kristine Preziosi 20 Jamie Horton: Capturing the Decisive Moment Brian Sajko • Yvette Schnoeker-Shorb • Marjory Sente Terril Shorb • Marie Smith • Kristin Woolever Staff Photographers Departments Robert Carnahan • Denise Elfenbein • Miriam Glade 22 Alumni Briefs Ashley Mains • Travis Patterson 23 Faculty & Staff Notes Photo Contributors Walt Anderson • Betsy Bolding • Anthony Brown • The 25 Class Notes Daily Climate • Suzanne Dhruv • Anita Fernández Christopher Glade • Jamie Horton • Chris Hout 28 In Memoriam Jay Hughes • Eric Lassahn • the family of Ruth Tankersley James Moore • Sean Morgan • Rachel Peters • Nicky Phear 29 The Last Word Kristin Preziosi • Tom Robinson • the family of Edward Sunshine • Bill Timmerman • Kino Bay Photo Archive Prescott College Photo Archive • Native West Press The Natural History Institute • Tandy Rackerby Art Gallery at Sam Hill Warehouse Vice President for Institutional Advancement SAVE THE DATE Marjory J. Sente (928) 350-4509 • [email protected] For Class Notes and address changes, contact Marie Smith • [email protected] Send correspondence, reprint requests, and submissions to: AlumniAlumni ReunionReunion Ashley Mains Prescott College 220 Grove Ave., Prescott, AZ 86301 (928) 350-4506 • [email protected] WeekendWeekend Transitions, a publication for the Prescott College community, is published two times a year by the Office of Institutional Advance- ment for alumni, parents, friends, students, faculty, and staff 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. October 10-12, 2014 All alumni and their families are invited to ©2013 Prescott College Reunion Weekend 2014 Prescott College reserves the right to reprint materials from • Campus Tours • President and Faculty Mixer • Special Transitions in other publications and online at its discretion. Prescott College is committed to equal opportunity for its Presentations • Recognition Dinner • Outdoor Adventures employees and applicants for employment, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, sex or sexual orientation, age, and more! disability, marital or parental status, status with respect to 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. Contact Admissions at (877) 350-2100 • [email protected] For the Liberal Arts, the Environment, and Social Justice WWW.PRESCOTT.EDU President’s Corner “PEACE AND PLACE. I have always sensed that these two words have a bit of the same ring to them in modern English, but had not thought much about their semantic overlap until recently. I hadn’t appreciated the simplest of facts: that anyone who feels secure, grateful, and satisfied in a particular place is likely to feel at peace.” —Gary Paul Nabhan ’73, “Listening to the Other,” Orion, May/June 2003 What causes a person to have a sense of place? What is it about an environment or a community that speaks to the heart and makes someone feel at home in ways that go beyond family origin or hometown? For many who attend Prescott College, that sense of place—that spirit of place—infuses the soul and creates an enduring connection to the Southwest. I recently had an email from a graduate who is having marvelous adventures while traveling the world, yet he says he “misses Prescott terribly.” Others have had similar reactions, longing to return to the hauntingly beautiful land that is physical home to the College and spiritual home to so many graduates. Many wanderers who have traveled from urban areas in the East—or even in California—have found in the Southwest the answer to what they have been searching for: a place to belong, a place that holds them close while giving them the open spaces so necessary for adventure and independence, a place resonating with flutes, drums, and revered narratives of the Southwest tribes. At Prescott College, we like to say that the Southwest is our classroom. And indeed, we subscribe to a form of place-based, experiential education that makes this statement a reality. Our field courses, with seemingly endless van trips to the Grand Canyon, Mogollon Rim, San Juan River, San Francisco Peaks, and so many other locations in Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Mexico, deepen the understanding of this country, giving students hands-on experience with the land and its people. Of course, Wilderness Orientation is the first phase of what often becomes a love affair with the Southwest for undergraduates. Students returning from this three-week immersion have already gained an appreciation for and a “connectedness” to the environment they will traverse and study during their ensuing years at the College. This land with its mountains, deserts, rivers, and chaparral, as well as its border with Mexico and its encompassing of Native American reservations, is the perfect landscape for our tripartite focus on the liberal arts, the environment, and social justice. Place-based education is often hands-on and project-based, and is always related to something in the real world. Where better to experience the complex social justice and human rights issues of immigration, the unequal treatment of U.S. citizens, and the continuing issues of environmental justice? Our emphasis on environmental sustainability is challenged by water scarcity, desert heat, and the need to carve green communities out of harsh conditions. Our poets, writers, photographers, dancers, and other artists thrive in a landscape that for Georgia O’Keeffe evoked the “wideness and wonder” of the world, a landscape rife with stark contrasts that bring the natural world into high relief. President Woolever speaks at Granite Mountain Hotshots Alligator Juniper Tree Dedication, 2013 Mountain at Granite Hotshots Alligator speaks Juniper Tree Woolever President 2 Transitions Fall 2013 Reaching beyond the Southwest, our limited-residency distance programs were developed in deference to the different “places” people find themselves—in physical locations or in their lifetimes. Students and graduates in these programs carry the knowledge and experience gained in their Prescott College studies to preserve and regenerate the good in their own environments, whether in the United States or around the world. Like the best of place-based learning, a Prescott College education understands students’ local community as one of the primary resources for learning and seeks to help communities through employing students and staff in solving community problems. Case in point: The recent loss of 19 firefighters who died battling the Yarnell Hill Fire, which has brought the Prescott-area community close together in grief and compassion. Prescott College played a vital role in housing the families and extended families of the fallen as well as emergency personnel throughout the week of memorials and funerals. Our hearts are still with those who lost brave men trying to contain such a natural disaster. Even so, living in the Southwest brings a keen awareness of its dangers, and the College’s courses in fire ecology and other environmental studies will play an extended part in managing the forests’ future and reclaiming the land so devastated by flames. This tragedy points to another factor of a Prescott College education, one that again emphasizes the importance of preserving place: regeneration. Change is inevitably part of any environment, whether via intention or accident. In students’ coursework at Prescott College, a continuing theme is understanding socioeconomic systems that integrate earth and community. This whole systems approach teaches us to how to manage change and develop the capability to regenerate the good that may have been lost, all while planting the seed for a positive future. Doing so requires integrating diverse human and natural needs and the dynamics of place into a coherent, harmonious, and evolving whole. It requires careful listening to the rhythms of place. Prescott College, with its holistic, experiential, and interdisciplinary approach to learning, is among the finest institutions teaching such systems regenera- tion, not only in the Southwest, but also in other places near to the hearts of our students. Peace and place. In his article for Orion (quoted above) alumnus Gary Paul Nabhan focuses on the vital importance of place and the terrible injustice when people lose that physical place. Wars are fought, nations conquered and divided, people outcast.