In The Second City, Greatest Hits Vol. 59, today's audiences can watch the next generation of comedy superstars put its spin on the best of the legendary Chicago improv troupe's hits during a show at Wilson College at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, in Laird Hall.
From sketch comedy to original songs to world-famous improv, the show will leave audiences rolling in the aisles as The Second City celebrates nearly 60 years of cutting-edge satirical revues, rebooted and reimagined for today.
The Second City opened its doors in Chicago in 1959 and the small caberet theater grew to become the most influential improv comedy company in the world. It launched the careers of some of the biggest names in the genre-from John Belushi and Dan Akroyd to Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, Bill Murray and many, many more.
This show is rated PG-13. Tickets are $15 per person for general admission and can be purchased at the door or in advance at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-second-city-greatest-hits-vol-59-wilson-college-performing-arts-series-tickets-65559270543. Wilson College students, faculty and staff get in free with ID. For more information, contact Wilson Director of Conference and Special Events Kelsey Young at 717-262-2847 or kelsey.young@wilson.edu.
Wilson College will hold a reception from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 16, in Lortz Hall's Bogigian Gallery to mark the opening of a new exhibition featuring works made by artist members of The Foundry. The exhibition, which will run through Oct. 11, is free and open to the public.
The Foundry at Wilson will include a selction of paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture and more made by members of Chambersburg's artist co-operative based at 100 South Main St. Wilson College and The Foundry have partnered for a number of exhibition opportunities for Wilson students and Foundry members.
The Bogigian Gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and by appointment. For additional information or an appointment, contact Philip Lindsey at 717-264-2783 or philip.lindsey@wilson.edu.
In recognition of its 150th anniversary, Wilson College is expanding its Common Hour series of lectures this year to include three evening talks at the Coyle Free Library, 102 N. Main St. At 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 9, scholar and author Robert P. Jones will present Why Religion and Race are at the Heart of America’s Identity Crisis in Coyle’s new conservatory.
In the lecture, Jones will examine demographic and cultural changes taking place in America, notably that the United States is─for the first time in its history─no longer a nation where a majority of its citizens identify as white and Christian, and how the shift is affecting our politics and communities.
Jones also will speak at Wilson Monday, when he presents E Pluribus Duo? Partisanship, Polarization and Pluralism in America. The talk will be held at noon in the Stewart Library’s Lenfest Learning Commons.
Both talks are free and open to the public.
Jones, author of the book The End of White Christian America, is a leading scholar and commentator on religion and politics. He is the founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization that conducts public opinion polls on a variety of different topics, specializing in the quantitative and qualitative study of political issues as they relate to religious values.
Jones writes a column for The Atlantic online on politics and culture and appears regularly on Interfaith Voices, the nation’s leading religion news-magazine on public radio. He is frequently featured in major national media such as MSNBC, CNN, NPR, the New York Times and Washington Post.
Wilson’s Common Hour─a lecture series dedicated to fostering inquiry and conversation across the campus community on pressing issues and big questions─this year has the theme “Living Boldly” to mark the college’s Sesquicentennial. The 2019-20 series kicked off on campus on Sept. 2 and will feature a total of 11 talks and one dance performance.
The next lecture at Coyle Free Library will be held Oct. 7 with a talk by June Eric-Udorie, a journalist and feminist named “Female Activist of the Year” by Elle UK magazine in 2017. The last talk at Coyle will be held Nov. 4, featuring Kait Parker, host of the Weather Channel’s Warming Signs podcast. Topics will be announced later.
For more on the Common Hour, including a schedule and biographies of the speakers, visit wilson.edu/common-hour.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of nearly $1 million to Wilson College for a groundbreaking new program to recruit area students majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields and support them with everything from stress management techniques and wellness practices to academic assistance, mentoring and career development.
The prestigious NSF grant provides Wilson with $997,509 over five years, beginning in October, for the college’s unique Encompass: STEM for Lifelong Success program. The grant will establish a recruitment program to provide scholarships to academically talented students with financial need from eight school districts in rural southcentral Pennsylvania who are pursuing degrees in one of four targeted STEM majors: biology, chemistry, biochemistry or environmental science.
The grant, which will provide 21 students from eight local school districts with up to $9,500 a year in scholarship aid, is aimed at attracting more rural Pennsylvania students to the STEM fields and helping them stay in school, graduate and have successful careers. It is hoped that, as a side benefit, those graduates will return to rural parts of the state to work in STEM fields.
“STEM education is really the foundation of our future, and for our local and regional economy to keep pace, we need more STEM-engaged students,” said Mike Ross, president of the Franklin County Area Development Corp., who predicts Wilson’s Encompass program could have “significant implications” for the local economy. “Growing talent locally, I think, bodes well for our future. Pick an industry─transportation, healthcare, agriculture─STEM is going to be at the heart of its success.”
In addition to helping recruit and retain more STEM students from the area, another key objective of the innovative Encompass program is establish “an ecosystem of rural student support services” that will include academic support, research opportunities for students, alumni mentoring, experiential opportunities, faculty and peer-to-peer mentoring, job/career development, internships and wellness and stress-reduction activities.
“Our academics are very strong here, but how can we do better for these students? That really is what this program is about,” said Wilson Professor of Biology Dana Harriger, who is the grant director.
One especially unique component of the new program is its focus on helping reduce students’ stress and anxiety and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Wilson will collect and analyze data annually about the effectiveness of the Encompass program for the duration of the five-year plan as part of the NSF grant’s research component. That means components of the program can be fine-tuned to be more effective, according to Harriger.
An external evaluator will assess the program and an advisory board made up of community and business leaders, as well as alumni, will also assist in evaluating its progress. Research results will be shared with regional and national stakeholders and other educational institutions. “The knowledge gained from this grant could benefit other colleges similar to Wilson or bigger,” said Harriger.
Community partners have been notified about the NSF grant. As the principle liaison with the partnering school districts, Harriger is arranging visits in the coming weeks to discuss the parameters of the program and begin personally recruiting prospective students. The first group of students to be awarded scholarships through the Encompass program will enter Wilson in fall 2020.
Besides recruiting students and establishing strong connections with schools, businesses, mentors and prospective employers, Wilson will use the 2019-20 year to flesh out the details of all the support components of the program, which involve virtually every major administrative area of the college.
“One of our goals with the Encompass program is to create strong, local community partnerships that will transform the lives of student-scholars and have a positive impact on our community,” said Wilson Vice President for Academic Affairs Elissa Heil. “This project will advance understanding of how to better develop STEM undergraduate programs and generate highly trained STEM graduates who have an appreciation for work-life balance and are adept at managing stress throughout their lifetimes.”
Wilson officials are excited about the Encompass program, which has the potential to not only benefit students who are part of the program, but also all students at the college. “If Encompass works as we envision, we could be using the program broadly on campus,” Harriger said. “Wilson could be a college that is known for these types of support systems.”
Wilson College and Montgomery College have finalized an agreement guaranteeing qualified MC students admission to Wilson bachelor’s degree programs and allowing them to transfer all credits earned with a grade of C or better.
The articulation agreement, signed today by college officials at a ceremony at Montgomery College’s Central Services building in Rockville, Md., gives MC associate degree graduates with a grade-point average of at least 2.0 a number of advantages that will make continuing their education at Wilson as seamless as possible, including receiving full junior status at Wilson if they transfer 60 credits, as well as having Wilson’s admission fee waived. Qualified MC students will also receive coordinated academic advising by both colleges to ensure that they take courses that can be applied to their bachelor’s degree.
High-achieving students will also receive monetary benefits: MC graduates who are members of Phi Theta Kappa─the largest and most prestigious honor society for two-year college students─will be awarded a Wilson Presidential Scholarship of $12,000 if the student enrolls as a full-time residential student taking 15 credits or more per semester. Under the agreement, an additional $1,000 Montgomery Institutional Scholarship will be awarded to all students who successfully graduate from MC, again as long as they enroll as a full-time residential student at Wilson.
The articulation agreement grew from the institutions’ joint belief that cooperative programs benefit the community, employers and students in the colleges’ respective regions, and that such programs provide smooth transitions for students while maximizing the number of credits they can transfer, officials said.
“The principle beneficiaries are the students … (who are) provided the opportunity of planning a baccalaureate degree program at the outset of the college education,” according to the agreement.
“We are excited to partner with Montgomery College on this agreement because it breaks new ground for Wilson College by expanding our reach into the Washington, D.C. area, while giving MC students a clear, straightforward path to a Wilson bachelor’s degree,” said Wilson Vice President for Academic Affairs Elissa Heil. “And by advancing from an associate degree to a bachelor’s, MC students will have the tools to achieve greater success in their careers.”
As Maryland's premier community college, Montgomery College is dedicated to academic excellence and committed to student success. Dr. Sanjay Rai, senior vice president for academic affairs said, “We are constantly looking for transfer opportunities for our students where they will have outstanding student experience, they will not lose any credit and transfer with junior standing and with scholarship support. Wilson presents an ideal opportunity.”
The economic benefits of higher levels of education increase with each advancing degree, according to The College Payoff: Education, Occupations Lifetime Earnings, a report on lifetime earnings by level of education published by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. For example, over the course of a lifetime, an associate degree holder earns an average of $423,000 more than a person with only a high school diploma, and a bachelor’s degree holder earns an average of $541,000 more than someone with an associate degree.
About Wilson College Founded in 1869, Wilson College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in Chambersburg, Pa., offering bachelor’s degrees in 35 majors and graduate degrees in education, healthcare, nursing, business and the arts and humanities. Ranked as a top college and a "best value" in the region by U.S. News & World Report, Wilson is committed to providing an affordable education that offers value to its students beyond graduation. Wilson, located in Chambersburg, Pa., had a fall 2018 enrollment of 1,499. Visit www.wilson.edu for more information.
About Montgomery College Montgomery College is a public, fully accredited institution with campuses in Germantown, Rockville and Takoma Park/Silver Spring (Md.), plus training and community engagement centers, and off-site programs throughout the county. It also offers a variety of online programs, including fully online degrees. Led by President DeRionne P. Pollard, MC is dedicated to student success and widely recognized for the quality and scope of its academic programs. Established in 1946, Montgomery College has grown to serve nearly 55,000 students a year, through both credit and noncredit programs, in more than 130 areas of study.
An art exhibition celebrating the 150-year history of Wilson College–created by Baltimore artist Jim Condron using college relics and artifacts–opens Wednesday, Sept. 4, in the Wilson library's Sue Davison Cooley Gallery. The exhibition, You Never Wash it Off Completely, will run through Dec. 15.
Condron, an instructor in Wilson's Master of Fine Arts program, will discuss his inspiration for the exhibition as part of the Wilson College Common Hour series of lectures at noon on Monday, Sept. 16. Those attending will be invited to view the installations and then participate in a conversation with the artist moderated by M.F.A. Program Director Joshua Legg.
To mark the Sesquicentennial, Condron worked with Wilson archivists, professors and students to construct compelling art installations from historic artifacts. He chose objects such as residence hall and antique bed frames, including one that once belonged to Sarah Wilson, the college’s original benefactor and namesake, and one belonging to Col. Alexander McClure, on whose land Wilson College was built. The exhibition also incorporates a Wilson canoe and vintage bowling pins, as well as early school uniforms, blazers and banners from the college’s early years.
In Condron's works, nostalgia, stamina, repression, chance, expression and vitality are in visual dialogue with the ephemeral materials of life that people and institutions choose to preserve or collect to create a legacy. Each work is titled with a textual fragment from literature by an array of authors such as Toni Morrison and Ray Bradbury, with the intention of adding to the piece’s rhetoric rather than naming or defining it.
“A typical archives exhibit has a literal feeling with traditional objects arranged with descriptive labels, but in this art installation, Condron magnificently captures both the feeling of belongingness, as well as the fleeting nature of each individual’s experience," said Amy Ensley, director of Wilson's Hankey Center for the History of Women’s Education. "This is about shared memories across time and the celebration of a community that endures.”
Condron, originally from Long Island and Connecticut, earned his M.F.A. at the Maryland Institute College of Art's Leroy E. Hofffberger School of Painting. He has a bachelor's degree in art and English from Colby College in Maine and also studied at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. His work appears nationally and internationally in galleries and museums, as well as in corporate, university, public and private collections. Condron has been awarded artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Edward F. Albee Foundation and Heliker LaHotan Foundation. He is a 2017 recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, an Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant and a Maryland State Arts Council grant for sculpture. More information about the artist can be found at www.jcondron.com.
Admission to the Cooley Gallery (www.wilson.edu/cooley-gallery) is free and open to the public. Hours are 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 11 p.m. Sunday. For more information or an appointment, contact Joshua Legg at 717-264-2781 or joshua.legg@wilson.edu.
When the academic year came to a close in May, Wilson College began work on a number of construction projects, including replacement of a bridge leading to the western side of campus, as well as the creation of additional parking, residence hall improvements and updates to tennis courts.
The $1.8 million bridge, which spans the Conococheague Creek, will have two lanes and a pedestrian walkway, improving access to the college equestrian center, farm and athletics fields for emergency vehicles, sports team buses, horse vans and other vehicles.
Today, flaggers are directing traffic on U.S. 11 at South Penn Hall Drive while 11 72-foot-long concrete trusses are delivered, which is expected to take most of the day, college officials said. A large crane will be used to set the trusses in place.
Wilson students, employees and visitors are asked to avoid the north entrance to campus and South Penn Hall Drive today. The main entrance at Park Avenue and the south entrance at Sharpe House can be used to access the campus.
The bridge is expected to be completed no later than the middle of September, according to Brian Ecker, Wilson vice president for finance and administration.
Meanwhile, finishing touches are being put on a new, $2.8 million veterinary education center, which is already in limited use. “The center will be fully functional for our students when they get back for the fall semester,” Ecker said. An official opening of the new veterinary center will be held in September.
Demolition crews recently razed the former veterinary center along U.S. 11, as well as a building next to it used for art projects. After debris removal and grading is completed, the area will be paved, creating more than 60 new parking spaces. The work is planned to be completed sometime in early September.
Another project expected to get started in August will improve Wilson’s existing tennis courts, while adding parking, Ecker said. Crews will resurface two of the five courts and reconfigure them for multi-purpose recreational use, including tennis, pickleball and basketball. The other three tennis courts will be converted into approximately 42 additional parking spaces.
In addition to those projects, workers are modernizing second-floor bathrooms in Riddle Hall and giving a facelift to the patio outside of Sarah’s Coffeehouse, as well as the porch above. That work involved painting and some repairs to the building’s fascia and spouting.vThe same area is the site of a mural being painted by local artist Peter Mazzone, with the help of volunteers. The mural was commissioned as part of Wilson’s ongoing Sesquicentennial celebration and will be unveiled sometime this fall.
Wilson College today announced the appointment of A. Richard Kneedler as interim president. Kneedler was president of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., from 1988 to 2002 and served as interim president of Rockford (Ill.) College (now Rockford University) in 2006-07. He has also worked as an educational consultant.
Kneedler was named by Wilson’s Board of Trustees to temporarily oversee operations while the College conducts a comprehensive search for a permanent replacement for Barbara K. Mistick, who is leaving to take a new position as president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). Mistick joined Wilson as its 19th president in July 2011.
“The Board of Trustees is pleased to welcome Dr. Kneedler to campus. His familiarity with Wilson, as well as his experience leading Franklin & Marshall, make him an ideal candidate for this interim role,” said Dr. Barbara L. Tenney, chair of the Wilson College Board of Trustees and a member of the Class of 1967. “The Trustees have every confidence Dr. Kneedler will do an excellent job keeping the College on course and strategically focused.”
The College worked with the Registry for College and University Presidents to bring three candidates for the interim presidency to campus in late June for interviews. An ad hoc committee of the Board of Trustees recommended Kneedler for the position, which he will assume full time on Aug. 1. Representatives from faculty, staff and the senior administrative team also participated in the interview process.
Kneedler says he has followed Wilson’s recent progress under Mistick─whose leadership has doubled the College’s enrollment, added programs, expanded coeducation, improved facilities and lowered tuition. His plan is to help the College continue its impressive forward momentum, especially now, during the celebration of its 150th anniversary.
“Wilson College is bucking the trend in higher education with increased enrollment when many of its peer institutions are seeing their numbers shrink,” said Kneedler. “This success is due to the strong leadership of the Trustees, President Mistick and the tremendous support of faculty and staff. I am excited to join the College, even for a short while, and to be a part of championing Wilson toward its next 150 years.”
Kneedler, who was given the honor of president emeritus status by F&M on his departure from the liberal arts college in 2002, began his career there in 1968, serving on the faculty of F&M’s French Department before adding assistant to the college dean to his responsibilities. He also held the titles of vice president for administration and vice president for development, among others, before being appointed president of the institution in 1988.
As president, Kneedler is credited with positioning F&M as a national college by implementing successful strategies for academics, fundraising, campus development, finances and management. During his tenure, F&M completed two fundraising campaigns that raised $200 million as the school’s endowment tripled to more than $300 million.
After F&M, Kneedler served as Rockford’s interim president from May 2006 to November 2007, reversing budget deficits, reducing debt, restoring credit and increasing the visibility of the institution. Additionally, he has performed consulting services for the Council of Independent Colleges and several private consulting firms in higher education, most recently with Ann Duffield & Colleagues, a Philadelphia consulting company where he was the operating officer and a consultant on strategic planning, finance and operations from 2011 to 2016.
Kneedler has a doctorate and a master’s degree, both in French language and literature from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, he holds a certificate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business Administration’s Institute for Educational Management. His bachelor’s degree is from F&M.
Kneedler and his wife Suzette (Gallagher)─a 1967 Wilson graduate─live in Naples, Fla., and also have an apartment in Lancaster.
While Kneedler serves as interim president, Wilson is proceeding with a search for the 20th president of the College. The College has formed a presidential search committee including seven Trustees, with additional representation from faculty, staff and the student body. The committee is working with Academic Search Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based firm hired to conduct a national search for the next president of Wilson College.
There is no deadline in the search for Mistick’s replacement, but officials hope the new president will be appointed sometime before the end of the 2019-20 academic year.
As part of its ongoing Sesquicentennial celebration, Wilson College has commissioned Chambersburg artist Peter Mazzone to paint a mural on both sides of a concrete wall outside of Sarah's Coffeehouse at the rear of Lenfest Commons. Mazzone is seeking volunteers to help with the project, which is expected to get underway in earnest the week of June 24.
It may be adjusted but as of now, the schedule calls for interested volunteers age 18 and older to work in shifts Fridays through Sundays from now through September. Volunteers are needed to do everything from painting the mural, based on a design sketched onto the wall by Mazzone, to acting as painter's helpers, doing things like cleaning brushes.
Those who want to volunteer can register at here or contact Courtney Gotham, associate director of marketing and communications, at courtney.gotham@wilson.edu.
The mural will be a nature scene inspired by the Conococheague Creek and will continue from one side of the 30-foot-long wall to the other so that both sides will be painted.
After the success of the Stickworks sculpture installation by artist Patrick Doughtery in 2015, which many volunteers from the community helped to create, Wilson was looking for another art project that would serve the dual purpose of celebrating the college's 150th birthday and involving people from the broader community, according to Wilson Vice President for Institutional Advancement Camilla Rawleigh, who co-chairs the college's Sesquicentennial Committee.
Wilson found Mazzone, who has exhibited at the college, was interested in a mural project. "We are privileged to have him share his work with us at Wilson College," Rawleigh said of Mazzone, who does not actively pursue exhibition venues, but whose work is held in many private collections throughout North America. Mazzone, who has lived in a number of regions in the United States and spent much of his time in Elsah, Ill., has a bachelor's degree in studio art and art history from Principia College, a small liberal arts college similar to Wilson.
In addition to the mural, the area around it on the lower level of Lenfest Commons will get a facelift, including painting and refurbished outdoor furniture. "The idea is to make this a more inviting space where students will want to congregate outside when the weather is nice," said Rawleigh.
Priming of the wall got started June 21 week and the mural is expected to begin the last week of June.
The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation has awarded Wilson College a $25,000 grant to support students age 25 and older who are pursuing a bachelor’s degree and need financial assistance.
The Newcombe Foundation, a Princeton, N.J.-based charitable organization, has supported mature students at Wilson College since 1986. Wilson enrolls students eligible for the Newcombe Scholarships for Mature Students through two programs: the Single Parent Scholars Program and the Adult Degree Program.
The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation is an independent foundation that began in 1979 as the result of a bequest from its namesake, a Philadelphia philanthropist. The foundation continues Newcombe’s support of students as they pursue degrees in higher education through scholarships and fellowships.
