Monthly Archives: February 2012

Theatre & Dance Students at Kennedy Center Festival

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Alexandra Vendt, awarded for excellence in design-technology

Four KSC Theatre and Dance Design students recently presented their work at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and received great feedback from a panel of professional experts, who praised their designs. Alexandra Vendt, lighting designer for Agnes of God; Gary Beisaw, props designer for The Rocky Horror Show; and Michael Portrie, sound designer for The Rocky Horror Show, were nominated as finalist.

Gary Beisaw won the S.P.A.M. Award for excellence in stage properties for his design for The Rocky Horror Show.

Alexandra Vendt won the Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas Award for excellence in design-technology for her lighting design for Agnes of God.

Riley Ahern is one of 36 semifinalists (out of 240 students) at the KCACTF.

Remember that Prof Who Changed Your Life?

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Help them get the recognition they deserve: Nominate them for the 2012 Distinguished Teacher Award.

Each year the KSC Alumni Association recognizes an outstanding faculty member, based upon the following criteria: excellence in classroom teaching, encouragement of independent thinking, rapport with students in and out of the classroom, and effective student advising. If you know a faculty member here who fits that bill, send in a nomination. For more information, and a nomination form, visit the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teacher page.

Hurry, the deadline is  4 p.m., March 9, 2012!

Paradise Lost Project Receives Humanities Council Grant

Mark Your Calendar

The New Hampshire Humanities Council has awarded a $1,870 grant to KSC journalism lecturer Roger Martin for his project,  “Adam’s Vision, Book XI, Paradise Lost.” To make John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, more accessible to the modern public, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 29, and on Thursday, April 5, Keene State College will host a dual event beginning with a panel discussion recorded live for broadcast and open to public discussion. Humanists Eugene McCarthy, Rodger Martin, and Michael Wakefield (also a lecturer in journalism and a composer/musician), will discuss with a Keene State Television host what makes Book XI of Paradise Lost meaningful for a contemporary audience and what makes this book different from the other eleven books in the epic.

The panel will be digitally recorded so that DVDs of the event can be distributed to public-access TV stations in N.H. and Mass.

Tracy Minard ’10: Serving the Peace Corps in Bulgaria

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"My third grade class of only six students with their pumpkins we carved. It was easy to have everyone bring a pumpkin to school because the whole village grows them in their gardens! (Typically to use to feed their animals.)" Photo courtesy of Tracy Minard

Most students look for a college that’s far enough away from home, but not too far away. It’s nice to be able to get home for long weekends, or when the laundry gets too piled up. But Tracy Minard ’10 sure isn’t most students. She grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and made her first long trip to Keene when she arrived as a freshman. She studied English and minored in writing, but even moving across a large continent didn’t assuage her wanderlust. She spent a semester abroad in Florence and did an internship with the Center for International Studies in Northampton, Mass.

But distant horizons still beckoned, and she joined the Peace Corps before she’d even graduated from KSC. It must not have been to out of character for her, though. When she told her friends what she’d done, they all responded, “Of course you’re joining the Peace Corps, Tracy!” Now she’s living in a small Muslim village in the Rhodopi Mountains in southern Bulgaria, teaching English to grades 2–8.
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