by Keene State Today Editor Jane Eklund

As a kid, Jake St. Pierre ’03 snuck out of his bedroom window and climbed the roof of the house. As a teenager, he took his first solo car trip to the White Mountains, where he climbed Mount Washington.  He’s still climbing the Whites, and in other parts of New Hampshire, but in recent years he’s expanded his mountaineering territory to the Himalayas.

At the end of March, he’s heading to Nepal for the third time in five years. But on this trip, he’ll have scientific instruments in addition to climbing gear in his backpack. St. Pierre has been invited to participate in the Lhotse Snow Science Expedition, a project of the American Climber Science Program and Black Ice Himalaya, a research organization associated with the University of Colorado, Boulder.

He’ll be joining a group of six to eight climbers, scientists, and Sherpas—all volunteers on an expedition to undertake climate change research on Lhotse, a mountain adjacent to Everest. “The science climb will be amazing,” says St. Pierre, who hopes to summit Everest on a future trip—perhaps one planned for 2016. This year’s trip will include a weather-permitting summit attempt of Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the world, in addition to gathering information and collecting samples of snow and ice at various elevations.

“We’ll be doing a lot of research on the glaciers—the melting rate of the ice, which could lead to flooding that will cause problems for the local population, and pollution levels at extreme altitude,” he says.

The expedition will take just under three months, including a 10-day trek into Everest Basecamp, a week of acclimatization and data collecting, then climbs to higher camps shuttling gear and collecting environmental data and snow samples. The researchers will be connected to each other via climbing ropes and connected to the world via iPhones and laptops. After their summit attempt, they’ll process samples at the base camp for a few days before trekking back to the town of Lukla, where they’ll catch a flight to Kathmandu.

What’s the appeal of mountaineering? “I love the challenge of it,” says St. Pierre. “It’s a personal quest that I find extremely endearing, and it’s just you and the mountain. I’ll be climbing as a member of a team—I’m excited about it, just the camaraderie amongst the climbers, and the trust factor. Knowing you’re watching their back and they’re watching your back, and your life is in their hands, basically. It’s a kind of camaraderie that you don’t find much.”

At Keene State, St. Pierre majored in psychology and took numerous science courses. He works as a police officer for the town of Bow, New Hampshire, and also runs a gym and personal trainer service, Juggernaut Summit Performance, in Bow. “I love helping people do things they never thought they could do,” he says.

For now, he’s preparing for his trip, visiting elementary and middle schools to talk to students about the upcoming journey (including the students of his fiancée, Sarah Pike ’04, a fourth-grade teacher in Concord). He’s working to find corporate sponsors and individual donors to help offset his costs of $10,000 for the expedition.

To learn more about the science climb, visit the Lhotse/Everest page at St. Pierre’s website.

Are you passionate about something you’d like to share with others? The Thorne Art Gallery is inviting Friends of the Thorne, KSC faculty, staff, alumni, and members of the Keene State community to submit items they’ve created or collected for its summer Passionate Pursuits exhibit. In the past, this non-juried show has included paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture, wooden objects, jewelry, quilts, and collectibles of all kinds.

Passionate Pursuits will open June 6–July 24 and reopen August 25–September 18. There will be a public reception to kick off the exhibit, but the date has not yet been chosen. Check the Thorne website for that info.

As space is limited, the Thorne welcomes participants on a first-come, first-served basis. In order to allow as many participants as possible, the gallery may limit the amount of work that can be accepted from each participant.

If you’d like to participate, please fill out our online form by Friday, April 18. For additional information on participating contact Maureen Ahern, director, 603-358-2721, or Paul Knowlton, exhibit technician, 603-358-2240.

The exhibit is not meant to promote a business or product, so nothing may be offered for sale. Everything must be ready to hang on the wall or display safely in an exhibit case at the time of drop off. Exhibitors will be asked to drop off their items on Thursday, May 15, or Friday, May 16, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and pick up their items on Friday, September 19, or Saturday, September 20, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Obviously, this has been on campus for a while:

If you think you know where this is, please stick your answer inside the hatband of a Stetson fedora hat, size 7 3/4, and send it to Newsline, 120 Alumni Center, 229 Main St., Keene, NH 03435. Or use the “comments” link, below.

The Keene State community, New England, and the contra dance world is saddened by the passing of NEA National Heritage Fellow Bob McQuillen ’59 on February 4. McQuillen, or “Mac” as he was affectionately known, was one of those larger-than-life characters who amassed a wealth of friends and delightful stories that stretch around the world. He served two tours of duty with the US Marines, first in the South Pacific during World War II and then in Korea, got a degree in industrial arts education from Keene, became a centerpiece in the contradance and folk music communities, had a profound influence on the students he taught at ConVal High School (Peterborough, NH) for 34 years, and composed an estimated 1,500 dance tunes.

Mac, 90 years old and hale and hearty till the very end, drove himself to a local restaurant on Feb. 2 and suffered a major stroke while he was there. He was rushed to the hospital and died two days later, 29 years to the day that his former wife, Priscilla Jean McQuillen, passed. According to those close to him, Mac was ready to go and had been putting his affairs in order for the past few months. His friends and admirers immediately launched a Facebook page, “Remembering Mac,” that quickly filled with wonderful anecdotes and testimonies to his life and influence.

They say you can tell a person’s character by the adjectives he or she uses. Watch this dialogue between Associate Professor of Architecture Peter Temple and Mac, where Mac discusses his time at what was then Keene Teachers College, and pay attention to the adjectives he uses:

In 2012, Mac joined a panel of luminaries in the contradance community at the 2012 Flurry Festival of traditional dance and music in Saratoga Springs, NY. If you’d like to know how Mac got into the world of contradancing, here’s his story:

And the Peterborough Ledger/Transcript did a great piece about him.

Since he graduated with a degree in Studio Art at KSC, Shawn Huckins ’07’s work has appeared in galleries around the country. He has won the Award for Excellence in the 2007 Ridgefield Guild of Artists 30th Annual Exhibition, the New Haven Paint and Clay Club Prize, and the Thorne-Sagendorph Student Exhibition People’s Choice Award, as well as the Thorne’s Biennial Regional Juror’s Choice Award. And his latest series, “The American ____tier,” was recently featured in the Huffington Post, and will be in a solo exhibition at Design Matters in LA in September.

For the series, Huckins accurately reproduced early American paintings and photographs, and then superimposed upon them the kind of slang, tweets, hashtags, and bad spelling and grammar modern Americans are likely to see on cell phones and social media. “Each work is meticulously replicated from the original painting,” Huckins explained. “The lettering on top is also hand painted. Nothing is photoshopped and/or digital.  All of my works are original acrylic on canvas paintings.”

Huckins, who graduated magna cum laude, credits KSC with creating many opportunities for him. “What’s great about Keene is that there isn’t one methodology to their teaching practices in the arts,” he recalled. “The faculty comes from a diverse background, which is great in showing students various perspectives on tackling a goal or vision. It allows the students, as cliché as it is, to think outside the box and to broaden their thought process.”

Four seniors and tutors at Keene State’s Center for Writing—Michael Kelly (architecture), Hillary Smith (secondary education), Jessica Pierce (psychology), and Alex Wolff (American studies)—will be presenting at the Northeast Writing Center Association’s annual conference at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, on March 1–2. This year’s conference theme is  “Difference & Inclusion: Writing Centers as Sites for Change,” and the students, in coordination with Dr. Phyllis Benay, the Center’s director, and Cyndi Glover, the Center’s assistant, will conduct a roundtable discussion entitled “It’s Beginning to Look Too Much Like Christmas: the Challenge of Teaching a Homogeneous Student Body.”

Whereas many of the conference participants come from very diverse campuses, KSC is still working to bring more diversity to its student body, so Keene’s approach to the conference theme is different than most. “Clearly, the problems we face around notions of inclusion are different than those that infiltrate a more diverse student body,” noted Prof. Benay. “Rather than helping our students adjust to a variety of dialects, we need to convince them that these dialects even exist. Rather than helping them accommodate diverse cultures, our challenge is finding ways to bring the rest of the world into their lives. …  From in-class workshops to one-on-one tutoring to assisting faculty as they design strategies and techniques, the Center for Writing tutors and director are committed to one overarching goal: moving students toward a more inclusive and complex world view.”

The Society of Physics Students (SPS) recently attained official status as a student organization. The club meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. in the Putnam Science Center’s room 375 and is open to anyone interested in any area of physics, including astronomy, meteorology, electronics, optics, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics. Uninteresting math will be kept to a minimum.*

Club president Jacob Cheverie stressed that the club is open to everyone, not just physics students. “You can learn about things you may be interested in, if you want to understand it on a deeper level. Ultimately, everything comes down to physics,” he said. The club’s discussions, field trips, and films are intended for the generally curious.

“This semester we’ve been inviting people to attend to watch videos such as those produced by Nova, that appeal to mass general audience, or to discuss concepts such as Stephen Hawking’s quantum cosmology that people are interested in, but might find a bit intimidating,” explained Physics Lab Assistant Thomas Maguire.

On Monday April 7th at 7pm in The Mabel Brown Room, SPS will cosponsor the first in a series of screenings called Science on Screen. An episode of the brand new series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey with Neil deGrasse Tyson will be shown with a discussion to follow.

*Really!

On Tuesday, February 18, Jim Roche, president of the Business and Industry Association of NH, along with Keene State College, the Greater Keene Chamber of Commerce, and the Regional Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing (RCAM), will present a strategic economic plan for the state at 8 p.m. in the Alumni Center’s Centennial Hall.

For the past year, the BIA has been engaged in developing a strategic economic plan for New Hampshire in response to continued and long-standing unease about the state’s direction. Jim Roche will present the results of that process to the Monadnock Region. The forum is free and open to the public, and coffee will be served. If you’d like to attend, please register by emailing the Chamber or phoning them at 603-352-1303.