SPRING | SUMMER 2019 Volume 5, Issue No. 1 Volume 5, Issue No. 1 4 The Face of Writing 8 Finding Their Muse 12 Moving the Field Forward 2 | From the President 23 | Alumni Notes 16 | In Photographs 28 | Alumni Awards 20 | Campus News 30 | Alumni Weekend Editor Contact Us Robin Hicks Third & Broadway [email protected] Graphic Designer 859-233-8120 Stephen Russell Readers may send name/address Writers changes or corrections to: John Friedlein Alumni & Development Office Robin Hicks 415 North Broadway Megan Moloney Lexington, KY 40508 Tyler Young 800-487-2679 [email protected] Photographers Joseph Rey Au Transylvania University, located in the heart of downtown John Friedlein Lexington, Kentucky, is a top-ranked private liberal arts college Ron Garrison featuring a community-driven, personalized approach to a liberal Megan Moloney arts education through 46 majors. Founded in 1780, it is the Stephen Russell 16th oldest institution of higher learning in the country, with Tim Webb approximately 1,000 students. Production Manager Find more resources online at: Julie Martinez transy.edu FROM THE PRESIDENT ON WRITING Like most substantive human activities, our thoughts. Knowing grammar helps and deadlines close in, our thoughts and writing can be a metaphor for how we live. the writing process, but by itself knowing perceptions become restrictive. The only If we take writing seriously, we learn as grammar doesn’t lead to good writing, just creativity we seem to be able to muster is much about ourselves as we do about that as knowing the rules of a sport does not in in multiple forms of procrastination. To which we write. Writing gives voice to the itself make one a good athlete. overcome the restrictiveness that often murmurings of inchoate experience, and Practice and repetition help. Many accompanies stress, we can trust in the in developing a voice, we learn more about writers lament their early work. Over richness of the world. There is always a who we are and want to be. We deepen our time, as one’s experience becomes richer new story, a different angle, a revealing awareness of self. and thoughts become more complex, the metaphor to anchor an idea waiting to Like education, writing orients us toward persistent writer becomes more adept be noticed if we trust in our experience the future, even if we are writing about with language. The ability to express and in our ability to see it. William James’ the past. To set out on a writing project complexity with clarity increases. Nuance account of attention is helpful here: is to make a promise to oneself to bring settles into sentences and paragraphs, “Attention … is the taking by the mind, something into being that does not exist. layering meaning into words. James in clear and vivid form, of one out of what As we work toward keeping that promise, Baldwin ties together the importance of seem several simultaneously possible we increase our freedom by staking our experience with the agency of shaping objects or trains of thought. … It implies claim on the future. it with language when he observes, “It is withdrawal from some things in order to In “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” experience which shapes a language; and it deal effectively with others.” Soshana Zuboff presents an exquisite is language which controls an experience.” James is reminding us that we decide analysis of ways in which our ability Like grammar, experience is essential to what we pay attention to. And what we pay to stake a claim on the future is being a maturing writer, but by itself does not attention to not only influences how and undermined by the pervasive operations guarantee the proficiency we seek. what we write, it determines how we live. of big technology. In contrast, she sees the Imitation helps. In grammar school and Again, James: “Our lives are what we agree act of writing as an example of how we can my early years of high school, I traveled to attend to.” Through writing, which is a preserve our freedom by giving voice to our around New York City to watch the best process of upholding promises to which experience. She writes, “I made a promise high school basketball players in the area. we commit, we increase our claim on the to complete this work. … It represents my When I got home that evening or the next future tense. We expand our freedom. commitment to construct a future that day, I would try to imitate something they This is what liberal education does. It is cannot come into being should I abandon did, and I would repeat it until it could be well known that one of the most notable my promise. … I am an inchworm moving done with some fluency. Reading other qualities of Transylvania graduates is with determination and purpose across the writers is similar. In paying attention to their proficiency for writing. By extension, distance between now and later. … I can the way they develop a story, a character, Transylvania exemplifies the very best of promise to create a future, and I can keep an argument, or focusing on the style and liberal education by guiding the attention my promise. This act of will is my claim on efficiency of word use, we can identify and of students to the richness of the world the future tense.” adopt patterns of writing that help us say and encouraging them to stake their claim This act of will is an act of human what we want to say. But, like knowing on the future tense. It is no surprise that freedom. As Toni Morrison points out, grammar, imitation is an aid to finding so many Transylvania graduates assert “Word-work is sublime … because it is one’s voice. It is not the goal. their freedom by being attentive to the generative; it makes meaning that secures Good coaching helps. Constructive well-being of others and to improving our difference, our human difference — critiques of one’s writing from careful their communities. They understand that the way in which we are like no other life.” readers is invaluable. A good writing coach their lives are “equivalent to what they Word-work — writing — is an exercise in points out pitfalls to avoid and tips to attend to,” and their attention is devoted human freedom that enables us to stake a employ. While the words, sentences and to what is most important and, ultimately, claim on the future by giving distinctive ideas we generate can be hard to let go, the most rewarding. meaning to our lives. sooner we shun attachments of the ego, the There are technical elements to writing quicker we can advance. that help. Grammar is a powerful set of For some of us, the blank page is our organizational tools that direct the way biggest challenge. As hints of an idea slide we structure our sentences and hence around elusively beneath consciousness 2 THIRD & BROADWAY Carey stepping down as president, John Williams ’74 to serve as interim Transylvania’s 26th president, Seamus Carey, has announced he is stepping down to assume the presidency at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. “Serving this community as your president has been both an honor and a privilege. I am grateful for all of the support I received and for all of the friendships we developed,” Carey said. “The past five years have presented many challenges — some that we overcame and others that remain works in progress.” Dr. John Norton Williams Jr., a 1974 graduate of Transylvania and member of the university’s Board of Trustees since 2007, will serve as interim president beginning Aug. 15, 2019. “Transylvania is a vibrant academic community with outstanding students, faculty and staff,” said Williams. “It is an honor for me to serve the university as interim president and share its great tradition of liberal arts education with future generations, just as it has done so well for almost 240 years.” During an academic career that spans three decades, Williams has held provost and dean positions at Indiana University, the University of North Carolina and the University of Louisville. He holds a Doctor of Dental Medicine and a Master of Business Administration from Louisville, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Transylvania. He is nationally and internationally known for his work in accreditation, academic program development and assessment. the magazine of TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY 3 BY TYLER YOUNG TRANSY’S WRITING CENTER IS PUSHING CREATIVITY TO THE NEXT LEVEL “It was at this point our parents what we did that day, we’ve assignment, on supporting a thesis, on been telling stories, organizing our breaking rules and not being afraid to let that the transition thoughts in a way that communicates your personality shine in your piece. what it is we want to say. “This space is sort of a cross between a was first made to We’ve always been writers. It’s building recording studio and a personal trainer,” our toolkit — the research, the knowledge he says. the conception of literature, the tricks and turns of Wait — hear him out. In addition to his phrases — that gives us the confidence teaching, Whiddon has been a working that rhetoric was a to call ourselves that. Writing is a skill musician since he was 16 years old. teachable skill, that that we all have, but it’s a skill that can be “In a recording studio, you have to developed with intentional training and actively listen, collaborate, figure out it could … be passed learning from others. the end product and allow yourself the That’s what Aristotle was referring to benefit of surprise.