OK, this is personal, I know. But I’m pretty sure this story is typical of the indelible personal touch that most students here receive from faculty members, and that makes it worth telling. And let me add: I’m far beyond the age of a traditional college student.

Anyway,  it all started when my cousin gave me an old trombone last July. Being a big fan of such greats as Jack Teagarden and Kid Ory, I determined to learn how to play it. I began searching the web for instructional videos and books, and I contacted KSC Prof. Jim Chesebrough, who teaches music education and trombone, among other things, for his recommendations. “You can’t learn from books and videos,” he said. “Come over to my office and I’ll give you lessons.”

Continue reading My First Trombone Lesson →

When you’re on campus for Homecoming next month (Oct 1-2 – you are coming, right?), you’ll notice that Hale Building has a different look. Over the past couple of months, it’s undergone a landscape renovation project to meet current ADA requirements for handicapped accessibility, improve pedestrian routing to newly located city crosswalks on the Main and Winchester street roundabout, and strengthen links with the recently completed Alumni Center.

The project helps establish the first of seven campus portals (entryways) recommended by the Facility Planning Committee and designated to improve  public accessibility and unify the public streetscape appearance. The landscape is being updated and valuable plantings will be preserved, while some of the  overgrown shrubs will be removed and the planting beds re-worked. Here’s a drawing of what the Hale landscaping should look like when it’s all done.

Bottom line? It enhances the elegance of this historic building, even before the grass has come in.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was on campus on Monday night, August 30, and met with several teacher education students. KSC was the only institution of higher education that Sec. Duncan visited in the state, and several news outlets covered the event, including the New York Times,  the Keene Sentinel, the Nashua Telegraph, and the U.S. Department of Education.

If you missed his visit, we’ve posted a video that’s almost as good as being there.

The Alumni Association helped host the first campus-wide Legacy Scavenger Hunt on Friday, August 27, as part of Orientation. This activity provided a fun, interactive way for students to learn about some of the important resources on campus, as well as some of Keene State’s history and traditions. Over 50 alumni, staff, and faculty members participated in a variety of ways: planning the activity, giving information to students at one of the 34 locations across campus, and providing information for alumni profiles that were set up in the Alumni Center. The event went really well and allowed us to bring over 1,100 first-year students into the Alumni Center to celebrate their first few days on campus and as part of the KSC community!

A driving force for excellence in training mathematics teachers at Keene State and internationally for over 20 years, Dr. Beverly Ferrucci, professor of mathematics, received the Alumni Association’s 2010 Distinguished Teacher Award during New Student Convocation on August 26.

Read all about it on our news page. If you’ve had the honor of sitting in this excellent professor’s class, drop her a comment.

Talk about going forth to serve! Sadie Stone ’07, is in her second year with AmeriCorps NCCC and leading her own nine-member team, Wolf 3. So far, she’s trained as a woodland firefighter, worked on the Mississippi Gulf Coast with Habitat for Humanity, fought invasive species in the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve, rebuilt and finished homes for elderly/disabled families who were victims of contractor fraud in New Orleans, and moved President Calvin Coolidge’s personal artifacts from his attic to a new museum and cleared and weeded hedgerows at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site in Plymouth, Vt. – and that’s just a sampling.

As of her last report, she was in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, living at a church and working at the Bay Area Food Bank sorting and compiling 40-pound boxes of food for families living in 22 counties stretching across Alabama, Mississippi and the Florida panhandle.

Selfless service like hers deserves an encouraging word – drop her a line via the “comments” link, por favor.