In a nod to its 150th anniversary and a fresh start under new leadership, Wilson College has launched the Boldly Believe fundraising campaign emphasizing three key areas: endowment, estate planning and every day. The effort, known as a “flash campaign,” will run during the last 150 days of the college’s Sesquicentennial celebration─from Feb. 1 through June 30.
The campaign’s main objective is making sure that the “every day” category, which refers to the college’s Wilson Fund, meets its $1 million goal, according to Camilla Rawleigh, Wilson vice president for institutional advancement. “It touches everything,” she said of the Wilson Fund, a multipurpose, unrestricted general fund that can be used for everything from student financial aid to operational needs.
The Wilson Fund fundraising effort has received a boost from Wilson Trustee Margaret Hamilton Duprey, who has offered to match all donations one a one-to-one basis, up to $150,000.
“Margaret recognizes the critical importance of unrestricted annual support,” Rawleigh said. “Through her generous, forward-thinking $150,000 Wilson Fund match to kick off the Sesquicentennial Boldly Believe campaign, she will incentivize others to give, as well.”
Duprey, a resident of Wellington, Fla., has supported Wilson both before and since joining the Board of Trustees in 2017. She said her latest gift reflects the excitement on the Wilson campus, which has been growing in recent years and is entering a new phase in leadership under its energetic new president, Wesley R. Fugate, who joined the college in January.
She added that her matching gift focuses on Wilson’s annual fund because she has witnessed the difference it makes in the life of the college. “During my three years on the Board of Trustees, I have seen first-hand how important the unrestricted Wilson Fund is to the success of Wilson’s students and campus as a whole,” Duprey said. “It is my pleasure to offer this match and I hope that others will step up to be a part of the Boldly Believe campaign.”
During the campaign, Wilson will also seek to raise money for the college’s endowment. “We hope to find some people who have an interest in helping grow the unrestricted endowment, which the college can use for whatever necessary,” Rawleigh said. “We also have an interest in others who are interested in establishing endowed scholarships, which fall into the restricted category.”
The third leg of the fundraising campaign involves estate planning. Wilson alumni, their families and friends, and others can make provisions in their wills to support the college.
Wilson plan to promote the campaign over the next months in various ways, including through social media, email and personal contacts. Anyone interested in making a gift now should contact Rawleigh in Wilson’s Office of Institutional Advancement at 717-264-2061 or camilla.rawleigh@wilson.edu.
For more information, visit https://www.wilson.edu/boldlybelieve.
Wilson's Orr Forum on Religion, which had been scheduled for March 26, has been postponed until September as part of the College’s response to coronavirus concerns.
On the advice of health officials to avoid large gatherings, Wilson has canceled all on-campus events which might be attended by 75 people or more, with plans to revisit the policy in late March.
The Orr Forum, which will feature guest speaker Amy-Jill Levine, author and Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, has been rescheduled for Friday, Sept. 25.
For more information about the forum, visit https://www.wilson.edu/orr-forum.
The Wilson College Veterinary Medical Technology Club dog wash that had been scheduled for April 4 and 5 has been postponed indefinitely because of concerns and directives regarding the coronavirus.
WITF’s Smart Talk Road Trip, which was scheduled to be broadcast this evening from Wilson College, has been postponed because of concerns about coronavirus. The Harrisburg-based public radio station plans to reschedule the program, which had been set to air from the Wilson campus at 7 p.m.
"Being part of large gatherings is among the things to avoid during the outbreak, so we want to do our part to ensure the safety and well-being of our listeners," WITF Senior Vice President and Chief Content Officer Cara Williams-Fry said in an email.
The program, Smart Talk Road Trip: Celebrating Women’s History and the Right to Vote, had been planned to mark Women’s History Month and the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. A live audience had been invited to attend the broadcast from Wilson's Harry R. Brooks Complex for Science, Mathematics and Technology auditorium.
The Foundry, a Chambersburg art cooperative located at 100 N. Main St., will host Wilson Students at The Foundry, an exhibition of artwork by Wilson College studio art students, from Feb. 28 to March 15. The Foundry will host a "meet the artists" event from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, March 6. The exhibit and the March 6 reception are free and open to the public.
Participating students, who range from freshmen to seniors, will exhibit works in a variety of mediums, including drawings, paintings and photographs.
The exhibition is the fourth in a partnership between The Foundry and Wilson College. The partnership provides opportunities for exhibition exchanges and possible studio/workshop opportunities. Foundry artists will have the opportunity to exhibit their artwork at Wilson College in the fall.
For more information, contact Wilson Professor of Fine Arts Philip Lindsey at 717-264-2783 or philip.lindsey@wilson.edu or The Foundry at 717-261-0706 or info@foundryartscoop.com.
The Muhibbah Club, Wilson's international student organization, will host a dinner featuring dishes from around the world on Saturday, March 7, in Jensen Dining Hall in Lenfest Commons. Doors open and appetizers will be served starting at 5 p.m., dinner will begin around 5:30 p.m. and entertainment presented by students will follow at 7 p.m. The event is open to the public.
The dinner will feature a variety of international foods, including:
• Appetizers - Poutine, Gimbap, Tajadas de Plátano, Bak Wan • Entrées - Chicken Tikka Masala with basmati rice, Tave Kosi, Byrek me Spinaq • Side Dishes - East African Pilau, potato bake, Dolma with cabbage • Soups - Miso and cheddar cheese • Desserts - Macaroons, Nazook, beaver tails, rice pudding • Beverages - Matcha, spa water, lassi, coffee/tea
After dinner, members of the Muhibbah cCub will entertain the audience with traditional dances, poems and other performances.
Dinner tickets are available for $10 each. Reservations are required for the dinner only (the performance is free) and must be made by Friday, Feb. 28. To reserve dinner tickets, contact club adviser Crystal Lantz at iss@wilson.edu and provide your name and number of tickets needed. Payment (cash or check) for tickets will be collected at the door.
The Muhibbah Club will also accept donations at the performance. All donations, as well as a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales, will go to Project Big Love, a Franklin County nonprofit organization that helps families with back-to-school needs such as backpacks, school supplies, shoes, haircuts and groceries.
The word "Muhibbah" means unity among nations. This year's Muhibbah Club president is Alyssa Fell and Wilson's international students this semester come from over 15 different countries, including Albania, Canada, Nepal, Vietnam, Armenia, Australia, South Korea, Pakistan and Uganda.
Nearly 1,700 issues of the Wilson College student newspaper are now online and searchable, thanks to a grant that allowed the college to digitize the papers and make them available to researchers on and off campus. The print editions of The Billboard, which date to 1921, can be accessed by going online to www.wilson.edu/billboard-archive, where icons representing the newspaper's front pages are displayed. To search them, users should click on "Search within results" next to the search bar, where a topic can be entered. On the left, to search a range of years, users should click on "CE" when entering both the start and end dates.
Digitizing the collection of student newspapers enhances its value as a historical record by making it searchable, which means the information contained within the papers is easier to tap by anyone researching a variety of topics─from gender and social issues to national and world affairs. Wilson was able to digitize its archived collection of Billboards using a $6,000 grant from the Council of Independent Colleges. The CIC grant was made possible by a contribution from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The newspapers provide a valuable record of not only student life at Wilson over the years, but also of popular culture and the events of the time in general─all as seen through the lens of the former women's college's students, according to Amy Ensley, director of Wilson’s Hankey Center, which houses and manages the college’s C. Elizabeth Boyd ’33 Archives.
“The public may not think of Wilson as the center of discourse on world affairs, but it was very much at the center of national and political debate on very important women’s issues, including reproductive rights, sex discrimination and the equal rights movement, as well as the role of women in the workforce, the armed services and government,” Ensley said. The process of scanning and digitizing the Billboards, then making them searchable and publishing them, took months and began in early 2019 when Wilson hired an outside firm to scan the college's collection of printed student newspapers, said Wilson Archivist Kieran McGhee, who oversaw the project. After the newspapers were scanned, they had to be catalogued, which was the most time-consuming part of the project. Now that the Billboards are online and available for research, Ensley and McGhee expect them to be used by Wilson students for research assignments, alumni who may want to research topics or revisit their time at the college, and others who want to research a wide range of topics, such as local history, women's issues, popular culture and a variety of historical events.
Once published weekly, The Billboard today is published every three weeks.
On Jan. 31, Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-33, presented Wilson College President Wesley R. Fugate with a citation─passed by the state Senate last month─congratulating the college on its 150th anniversary. Wilson, which was chartered in 1869 and opened the following year, is celebrating its Sesquicentennial over a 15-month period.
“Since its inception, Wilson has striven to provide excellent educational, social and civic opportunities to its students and to keep its curriculum vital and current with the rapidly changing intellectual world,” the citation states in part. “Dedicated faculty members and strong support from the community have built a foundation for the college’s tradition of academic excellence and have prepared it for success in the future.”
Mastriano presented Fugate with the citation at the senator’s downtown Chambersburg office.
Wilson College will hold a reception from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 5, to mark the opening of a new at exhibition, Selections from the Collection: “Who are we?” The exhibition, featuring works of art from Wilson's teaching collection, will continue through March 6 in the Bogigian Gallery in Lortz Hall. It is free and open to the public.
The exhibition includes artwork given to Wilson by alumni, patrons, former students, faculty and other artists who have been associated with the college as artists-in-residence or visiting artists. The title of the exhibition─Who are we?─begs the question, "Who are the subjects in the work, who are the artists and who are we as viewers?" In a number of works in the exhibition, the artist is unknown, leaving the artwork open to interpretation.
The exhibition is presented by Wilson’s Department of Fine Arts and Dance.
The Bogigian Gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information or an appointment, contact Professor of Fine Arts Philip Lindsey at 717-264-2783, or philip.lindsey@wilson.edu.
As part of an ongoing celebration of its 150th anniversary, Wilson College will host a performance by the Taylor 2 Dance Company at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, at the Capitol Theatre. Tickets are on sale now for the performance, which is open to the community.
The six-member Taylor 2 Dance Company is one of two dance companies formed by legendary American choreographer Paul Taylor, who is regarded as a modern dance visionary. Taylor died in 2018. Taylor 2 and the larger Paul Taylor Dance Company, based in New York, perform Taylor’s masterworks and offer dance concerts, master classes and lectures/demonstrations all over the world. Taylor 2’s performance at the Capitol is part of Paul Taylor: The Celebration Tour, which pays tribute to its founder. The Company will perform three masterworks from his collection: Airs, set to music by Handel, calls to mind the wind with movement reminiscent of gusts and eddies. In Company B, Taylor created a quintessential piece of Americana as he explored the turbulent era of the 1940s. Set to music performed by the Andrews Sisters, the dance incorporates elements of familiar social dances (the lindy, jitterbug and polka) in a work exploring the realities of relationships during World War II. Finally, Esplanade is an exuberant piece set to music from J.S. Bach, incorporating everyday movement in a visually exhilarating tour-de-force After the performance, Wilson College Master of Fine Arts Program Director Joshua Legg will lead a question-and-answer session with Taylor 2 Director Cathy McCann and the dancers. Tickets are $30 for adults, $18 for students and $12 for children under 12. Group rates are also available. Tickets can be purchased now by calling the theater box office at 717-263-0202 or visiting its website: www.thecapitoltheatre.org. Depending on availability, tickets will also be available at the door the evening of the performance.
The Taylor 2 company was established to ensure that performances could be seen all over the world, regardless of economic considerations and the logistical limitations of non-traditional venues, according to Legg.
“Paul Taylor, who helped forge modern dance during his 64- year career, was one of the greatest American dancemakers and his works encompass an unparalleled range of content, style and dynamics,” Legg said.
The Celebration Tour─a multi-year, global celebration featuring more than 20 masterpieces spanning seven decades─was developed by Paul Taylor Dance Company Artistic Director Michael Novak as a way to pay tribute to Taylor, who he describes as “the last pantheon of choreographers who defined the distinctly American art of modern dance” over the course of his life.
“Taylor was hailed as ‘the master of light and dark’ for good reason: his repertoire of 147 dances covered an unprecedented range. There were dances that took an unflinching look at war, depravity and death. Other dances were very funny. And many reminded us of the poignancy of uninhibited love and hope,” said Novak. “The Celebration Tour is an unprecedented opportunity for audiences and students to connect with Paul Taylor’s history like never before.”
For more information about the Taylor 2 performance, contact Joshua Legg at 717-264-2781.
