When Margaret Hamilton Duprey learned at the October 2019 Wilson College Board of Trustees meeting that the college hadn’t raised enough money through donations to cover the entire cost of the new veterinary education center, she stepped up.
Duprey─a Wilson Trustee who had already made a $1 million gift to the veterinary center─made another pledge: From then through December 2019, she would match every dollar contributed to the project to help close a $90,000 gap between what had already been raised and the new facility’s $3 million price tag.
“(Duprey) said she wanted to provide a matching gift scenario where she would match any gift that came in from that point forward,” said Vice President for Institutional Advancement Camilla Rawleigh.
Duprey announced the one-to-one match before the board meeting ended and the effect was almost immediate. Wilson Interim President A. Richard Kneedler and his wife, Suzette Gallagher Kneedler ’67, made the first gift to what was dubbed the VEC Duprey Challenge.
And in a serendipitous coincidence, another former Wilson president, Donald F. Bletz, made a gift around the Christmas holiday that pushed the veterinary center campaign to its goal in just two months, Rawleigh said.
“The Duprey Challenge was very successful in helping us reach our fundraising goal,” said Rawleigh. “We are enormously grateful to Margaret for her continued generosity─and to all who donated the project,” said Rawleigh.
In total, the college has raised $3,008,341 from 103 donors for the veterinary education center, according to Rawleigh.
The veterinary center is home to Wilson’s four-year veterinary medical technology program. VMT is the second-most popular major at the college, after nursing.
The new center opened just before the fall 2019 semester began, replacing the cramped and outdated Helen M. Beach ’24 veterinary facility, which has since been torn down. The college held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 19, 2019, to mark the opening of the building─named the Breakefield Veterinary Education Center in recognition of Susan Breakefield Fulton ’61, who contributed the lead gift and other gifts totaling $975,000.
Fulton and Hamilton both attended the ribbon-cutting for the center, where the clinical suites, animal facilities and onsite programs and courses are collectively known as the Margaret Hamilton Duprey Center for Veterinary Excellence.
A lifelong horsewoman and business owner, Duprey also contributed $500,000 to Wilson in 2015 to establish an innovative home healthcare nursing program for horses called Equi-Assist®. A focused concentration within the college’s VMT program, Equi-Assist® trains students to provide home healthcare to horses, under the guidance of a veterinarian.
Wilson College and Healthy Franklin County are co-sponsoring a free community garden workshop to be held Saturday, Feb. 1, in Warfield Hall's Allen Auditorium. The theme of the workshop‘s theme is permaculture, a design system for ecological and sustainable living that integrates plants, animals, buildings, people and community.
Lincoln Smith, founder of Forested LLC, will be the keynote speaker for the workshop, which will also feature a panel discussion on land restoration and breakout sessions on:
Healthy Franklin County started a Community Garden Work Group in 2016 to address nutrition, which is identified in the 2018-2019 Community Health Needs Assessment as a priority. The work group brings neighborhoods together to provide a sustainable food source for easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables, with the goal of expanding community engagement, strengthening economic development and using collective resources to help sustain existing community gardens and assess the potential to develop new gardens.
Smith teaches and trains people interested in forest-agriculture and permaculture, and creates and designs forest gardens for homes, commercial properties and public spaces. Smith, who started Forested to develop and share research in forest gardening, is a regular speaker on forest gardening at venues such as the University of Maryland, the U.S. Botanic Garden and the Maryland Master Gardeners’ Conference.
A team of 14 Wilson College students, faculty members and an alumna, accompanied by three local medical practitioners associated with Wellspan Health, traveled to the Dominican Republic Jan. 5 on a weeklong medical mission trip to help Haitian sugar cane cutters with healthcare needs. It was the second such Wilson-sponsored trip in the past two years─the first was held in 2018.
The students, Wilson nursing professor Julie Beck (who directs Wilson's nursing program) and Spanish professor Wendell Smith, along with retired physician George Baker, Dr. Sanjay Dhar and Wellspan Chambersburg Hospital Senior Vice President of Hospital Services Sherri Stahl provided medical services in remote villages called "bateyes," where Haitian "guest workers" who cut sugar cane make their homes during the cane harvest. Because of the company-owned villages' isolated locations and poverty, most families living in the bateyes have limited access to preventative healthcare and depend on volunteer teams that bring doctors, nurses and medicine to provide basic medical care for the workers and their families.
The local team coordinated its work through an agreement with El Buen Samaritano (the Good Samaritan) Hospital in the southeastern coastal city of La Romana, which runs medical trips to approximately 100 bateyes twice a year.
Medical missions are part of Wilson’s service-learning programs for students.
Wilson College will hold its annual Christmas vespers 2019 service at 6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, 2019 in Thomson Hall's Alumnae Chapel. The public is invited to attend.
The service will feature scripture readings by students, faculty and staff and a brief homily by Wilson's chaplain, the Rev. Derek Wadlington. The service will include scripture readings by students, faculty and staff; songs by the Wilson College Choir; and Christmas carols sung by all. Musical selections will include: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; In the Bleak Midwinter; What Child Is This?; Angels We Have Heard on High; Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!; Joy to the World and Night of Silence/Silent Night.
An offering collected during the service will go to the South Central Community Action Programs (SCCAP).
After the service, free refreshments will be served in Sarah’s Coffeehouse on the lower level of Lenfest Commons.
Area residents are invited to take part in Las Posadas-a Mexican Christmas tradition re-enacting the story of Christ's birth-being held Thursday, Dec. 5, on the campus of Wilson College. The celebration will run from 6 to 8 p.m., starting at the Brooks Science Center and ending with a meal in Laird Hall.
In the Mexican culture, Las Posadas re-enacts the Nativity story, following the journey Joseph and Mary made from Nazareth to Bethlehem in search of a refuge where Mary could give birth. When they were unable to find lodging in Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary sought shelter in a stable, where Jesus was born.
During the Wilson celebration, children will walk on luminary-lighted paths around the campus, seeking "shelter" for their group. They will visit three buildings on campus, with the Wilson College Choir leading the group in traditional Posadas songs as they walk. All participants are invited to take part in an interactive Christmas play that will take place along the walk. A bilingual script will be provided.
The group's search for shelter will end at Laird Hall, where a celebration with prayer, music and authentic Mexican pozole (a traditional pork stew served at Christmas), tamales and appetizers provided by Chambersburg's Veroni Cafe will conclude the celebration. Children will be treated to a piñata after dinner.
Learning Campus, Wilson’s after-school tutoring program for the children of migrant families, is hosting and co-sponsoring the celebration, along with the Wilson College Choir, Spanish Club, Muhibbah Club, Learning Campus Club, Office of Student Development, chaplain’s office and the Office of Marketing and Communications.
Learning Campus sponsored the first Las Posadas re-enactment on the Wilson campus in 2017.
Wilson College recently announced the winners of its 9th annual juried high school student art exhibition, which runs through Dec. 6 in the Bogigian Gallery in Wilson's Lortz Hall.
• First place - Vincent Castillo, a senior at Greencastle-Antrim Senior High School, won a $200 prize for his ceramic stoneware sculpture called Perception of Waste. • Second place – Maximiliano Raulli, a senior at Chambersburg Area Senior High School, won a $100 prize for his crushed paper sculpture, Cherry Blossom. • Third place - Madison Hongell, a senior at Washington County (Md.) Technical High School, won $50 for a digital photograph entitled Twisted Mind. • Honorable Mention – Carisma Dawson, a junior at Greencastle-Antrim High School, for her stoneware piece called Frog Mug. • Honorable Mention – Angel Walker, a senior at Shippensburg Area Senior High School, for her oil-on-canvas painting called Pneuma.
Wilson received 102 submissions of artwork from 43 students in Franklin, Fulton, Adams and Cumberland counties in Pennsylvania and Washington County, Md. Twenty-two entries were chosen for the exhibition.
The art show, which is free an open to the public, is on display from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday in Wilson’s Bogigian Gallery on the second floor of Lortz Hall.
The Wilson College Choir will hold its fall concert, which is free and open to the public, at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24, in the Thomson Hall chapel.
For the first time, the Wilson Choir will be joined by the Cumberland Valley School of Music's New Horizons Choir to perform sounds of the holiday season, including: a delightful choral arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Beautiful Star of Bethlehem by R. Fisher Boyce, Sweet Was the Song by Mark Sedio, John Tavener's breathtaking The Lamb and Molly Ijames' thoughtful arrangement of Christina Rossetti's poem, In the Bleak Midwinter. In addition, featuring student and staff soloists, Dan Forrest's stunning arrangement of The Huron Carol, Christmas Sanctus by Lee Dengler, The Manger Carol by Almon Bock and Auld Lang Syne.
The Wilson College Choir is directed by Elisabeth Turchi and accompanied by Myrna Gowing.
Students in Wilson College Prof. Thomas Armstrong's "Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management" class, as well as students from Penn State Mont Alto Adjunct Prof. Alan Rock's "Small Business Management" course, will pitch their ideas for business startups to a roomful of observers─including a panel of business experts─on Tuesday, Dec. 3. Presentations, which are open to the public and campus community, will be held on the Wilson campus in Laird Hall's Patterson's Board Room from 5 to 8 p.m.
Each student will have no more than three minutes to present their idea to the three-member panel, followed by a two-minute question-and-answer session. At that time, the panel will offer each student feedback on their presentation, minus the financing provided on the television series.
Student business startup ideas range from a Barkbox-style subscription service for owners of pocket pets, designer apparel business for music aficionados and a sports training service for young people to a luxury doggie day camp, a sports club for disabled teenagers and an animal therapy center for people in need.
It was Armstrong's idea to have students pitch their ideas in a low-stakes version of the popular ABC television show Shark Tank, in which financiers─real-life, self-made millionaires and billionaires─listen to and evaluate business startup pitches and then decide whether or not to bankroll the ventures. "This is experiential learning at its best," said Armstrong. "You come up with your idea, you own it and you present it."
Members of the panel who will listen to and evaluate students' business ideas are Kathryn Gratton, SCORE Four-State Chapter Chair; Robin Burtner, Shippensburg University Small Business Development Center interim director; and Malcolm Furman, an analyst with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.
A one-night exhibition of original works of art by seven Wilson College students will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 18, at SpringHill Suites Mariott, 451 Gateway Ave., Chambersburg. The event is part of a quarterly series by SpringHill Suites called the Art of Local, and is free and open to the public.
Wilson students whose artwork will be on display are: Luis Gonzales, Tracey Cavins, Kipp Villeneuve, Daizy Helman, Nicholas Beitzell, Adrianna Broome and Kim Phan.
The exhibiton will feature live local music by Greencastle pianist Rebekah Duvall, local food by The Family Table and local wine samples by Adams County Winery.
For more information, contact Amanda Haupt at 717-263-1300 or SHSDOS@areyamanagement.com, or Philip Lindsey at 717-264-2783 or philip.lindsey@wilson.edu.
Orchesis, the Wilson College dance company, will present its fall performance at 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Nov. 14, 15 and 16, with a Saturday matinee at 2 p.m.. The show, which is open to the public, will be held in the Appenzellar-Buchanan Dance Studio in Davison Hall.
The performance will feature original choreography by Wilson students, faculty and dance alumni in a spectrum of different dance styles─from jazz, tap and modern to lyrical and commercial pop dance. Tickets are available at the door and prices are $10 for general admission; senior citizens and Wilson students with I.D. get in free.
