FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Dec. 5, 2016
Chambersburg, Pa. — An exhibition of artwork by Wilson College art students and their instructor, Professor of Fine Arts Philip Lindsey, will open at the Washington County Arts Council Gallery in Hagerstown, Md., on Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition will continue through Jan. 31.
The exhibition, located at the gallery at 34 S. Potomac St., Hagerstwon, is free and open to the public.
The exhibit, entitled Theory & Practice, showcases recent artwork created by Lindsey’s students in Drawing I and Drawing & Painting III classes. Theory & Practice refers to the link between ideas, history, contextualization and the making of artwork. Students in Lindsey’s classes deeply engage subject, form and content in their works, which are reflected in the exhibition title.
Participating student artists include: Justine Commero, Annika Dowd, Nicole Downey, Amanda Dunn, Lexy Enders, Elizabeth Hauck, Ben Luzier, Aurora Ortiz, Kiara Scarbrough, Allie Schall, and Donna Werling.
Lindsey teaches painting, drawing and graphic design at Wilson College, and directs/curates the college’s Bogigian and Cooley art galleries. He has received numerous awards for his work in national and international juried competitions and exhibitions. While at Wilson College, he has received the Donald F. Bletz Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Paul Swain Havens Research Scholars Award and the Drusilla Stevens Mazur Research Professorship.
For more information, contact Lindsey at philip.lindsey@wilson.edu or 717-264-4141, Ext. 3305.
MEDIA CONTACT: Philip Lindsey, Professor of Fine Arts Phone: 717-264-4141, Ext. 3305 Email: philip.lindsey@wilson.edu
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Founded in 1869, Wilson College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college offering bachelor’s degrees in 34 majors and master’s degrees in education, the humanities, accountancy, nursing, fine arts and healthcare management for sustainability. Wilson is committed to providing an affordable education that offers value to its students beyond graduation.
Located in Chambersburg, Pa., the college has a fall 2016 enrollment of 1,098, which includes students from 18 states and 16 countries. Visit www.wilson.edu for more information.
Chambersburg, Pa. — Choreographer, performer, dance historian and artistic director Joshua Legg, formerly of Winchester, Va., has been named the new director of the Wilson College Master of Fine Arts program, effective in January 2017.
Legg, who grew up in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, has managed the dance program at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, since 2015. For the past 11 years, he has served as artistic director of JoshuaLegg/Dance Projects, which is based in the Mid-Atlantic region and produces artistic and scholarly programs that span a variety of contemporary and historical dance genres, dance-theater and theater. Legg is also a dance historian.
Legg — whose work has spanned ballet, classic modern, post-Judson, street jazz, dance theater/performance art, opera and classical, contemporary and musical theater — has performed dance roles in masterworks by Balanchine, de Mille, Petipa and Robbins, as well as a diverse range of contemporary works. He is the author of Introduction to Modern Dance Techniques and he has taught in dance or theater programs at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Harvard University (where he received a certificate of distinction in teaching), Suffolk University in Boston, Shenandoah University and Lake Superior State University.
“Wilson is excited to welcome someone with Joshua’s depth of experience and breadth of knowledge,” said Elissa Heil, vice president for academic affairs. “We are confident that he will take our M.F.A. program to the next level.”
Wilson’s M.F.A. program is “prime for deep, creative investigation and for collaboration,” according to Legg, who has three degrees from Shenandoah University in Winchester, including a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) and a bachelor’s degree in dance performance and choreography from Shenandoah Conservatory.
The college has “the potential to develop an exciting laboratory that is flexible enough to meet the needs of our students while we practice highly contemporary approaches to artmaking.” Legg said. “It is exciting to see the potential for us to create artist collectives for the 21st century. I can’t wait to get started working with our graduate students and the Wilson community in general.”
Begun in 2015, Wilson’s M.F.A. is a low-residency program designed for working artists and others who have been away from academia and are now seeking an advanced degree. The program, which offers concentrations in visual art and choreography, is developing as an intimate and intense experience in which students and faculty explore making dance or visual art without the usual boundaries of media, according to Robert Dickson, chair of the college’s fine arts department.
The program offers a mentoring component to the curriculum that differentiates it from other low-residency M.F.A. programs. Wilson’s program is unique in providing a Wilson-approved faculty mentor near the student’s home, giving each student one-on-one personal contact with a professional who can offer ongoing advice and motivation, Dickson said.
Wilson’s M.F.A. program is designed to be completed in two years with 20 courses, including two required, four-week summer residency periods when students live, study and work on the Wilson campus.
During the non-residence periods, students will have regular contact with Wilson program faculty members and with their mentors. Each semester at home will include an online seminar with other members of the M.F.A. program learning community.
The M.F.A. program is supported in part through an endowment from Wilson College alumna Francis Farmer of the Class of 1950.
MEDIA CONTACT: Robert Dickson, Division of Arts and Letters Chair Phone: 717-264-4141, Ext. 3400 Email: robert.dickson@wilson.edu
Founded in 1869, Wilson College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college offering bachelor’s degrees in 34 majors and master’s degrees in education, the humanities, accountancy and nursing. Wilson is committed to providing an affordable education that offers value to its students beyond graduation.
Located in Chambersburg, Pa., the college had a fall 2016 enrollment of 1,098, which includes students from 18 states and 16 countries. Visit www.wilson.edu for more information.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Dec. 2, 2016
Chambersburg, Pa. — The Franklin County Foundation, a regional foundation of The Foundation for Enhancing Communities (TFEC), has awarded Wilson College a grant of $6,238 to provide transportation for up to 20 elementary school children to attend the college’s after-school tutoring program.
The tutoring program, called Learning Campus, is for the children of migrant farmworkers who live in the Chambersburg area. The program is run by Wilson student volunteers, in partnership with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit #12.
The grant would provide mini-bus transportation to the Wilson campus for eligible students in kindergarten through 5th-grade at Benjamin Chambers, Andrew Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens elementary schools in Chambersburg.
TFEC is an umbrella organization for several foundations and individual trusts. It has supported such programs as Parents and Partner, Women’s Fund and Arts for All Partnership. According to its website, the Franklin County Foundation’s mission is “to invest in innovative, collaborative approaches and solutions to community programs, and to support projects that demonstrate achievable outcomes …” The foundation’s overarching goal is to fund programs and services “that have the potential for the greatest impact on the quality of life and positive outcomes for individuals and families living in Franklin County.”
The goal of Wilson’s Learning Campus is that children in the program will not only gain the opportunity to be successful academically, but will also consider going on to attend college, which could help break the cycle of poverty among Chambersburg’s migrant families, according to Wilson officials.
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathy Mentzer, Manager of Media Relations Phone: 717-262-2604 Email: cathy.mentzer@wilson.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Nov. 22, 2016
Chambersburg, Pa. — Wilson College will host the 7th annual Handmade for the Holidays event from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 1, in Lenfest Commons. The event will feature handmade items from local craftspeople. This year’s items for sale include jewelry, handwovens, paintings, Shaker boxes and utensils, handmade books and dolls, ceramics, soaps, candles, ornaments, art quilts and photographs.
Shoppers will not only support local craftspeople, but also an area nonprofit organization – 10 percent of the proceeds will benefit the Over the Rainbow Children’s Advocacy Center of Franklin County, an organization that provides a safe, child-friendly place for children and their families to receive services that help to restore hope and provide healing from child abuse.
MEDIA CONTACT: Lorie Helman, Student Development Office Manager Phone: 717-264-4141, Ext. 3226 Email: lorie.helman@wilson.edu
Founded in 1869, Wilson College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college offering bachelor’s degrees in 34 majors and master’s degrees in education, the humanities, accountancy, management, nursing, fine arts and healthcare management for sustainability. Wilson is committed to providing an affordable education that offers value to its students beyond graduation.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Nov. 14, 2016
Chambersburg, Pa. — The Fulton Center for Sustainable Living at Wilson College has been renamed the Fulton Center for Sustainability Studies, a shift that reflects an effort to more purposefully integrate the center and its resources—including the certified-organic Fulton Farm—with the college’s academic curriculum.
Some of the steps toward making the FCSS an academic center include the development of a food studies minor and a restructuring of short-term internships to create a two-year apprenticeship program for those seriously exploring a career in sustainable agriculture.
The college is also considering offering a nine-credit certification program in sustainable food, according to FCSS Director Chris Mayer, who said the certification would include an internship, a course in agroecology and a course from a menu of other classes in areas such as nutrition, business or sociology.
“It could be tailored to students’ needs,” Mayer said, adding that the program could be a fit for students interested in business, sociology and global studies.
In addition, a soon-to-be-announced partnership between Wilson and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute will likely strengthen the link between academics and the stewardship values of FCSS, Mayer said. The partnership was brought about thanks to a gift from Wilson alumna Susan Breakefield Fulton, Class of 1961, who provided $1 million in 1999 to endow the Fulton Center in honor of her late husband, Richard Alsina Fulton.
The new direction of the FCSS reflects a longstanding goal of integrating the academic curriculum with the center and more closely connecting it to the campus community—a goal that has not yet been realized. The program additions and changes are aimed at helping the Fulton Center reach its full potential.
“It starts with perceptions,” said Mayer. “Just changing ‘living’ to ‘studies’ puts the center at the heart of academics in people’s minds.”
When the Fulton Center was founded in 1994 as the Center for Environmental Education and Sustainable Living, its creators envisioned its purpose as caring for the land, preserving history and natural resources, and pursuing the new movement of environmental sustainability.
In addition to promoting earth-friendly practices such as sustainable food and energy production, the FCSS provides oversight of Fulton Farm and its popular CSA (community-supported agriculture) subscription program, as well as the Robyn Van En Center, a CSA information resource. More recently, the center has hosted student research projects in food safety and water quality monitoring done in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The proposed food studies minor is on track to be offered next fall. It would include studies in the sciences and humanities and would require an internship at the farm. It could appeal to students interested in a variety of fields, from farming and food science to healthcare and social work, according to Mayer. “Our goal is to make it appealing across many disciplines.”
The FCSS has existed at Wilson in some form since 1994, when the Center for Environmental Education and Sustainable Living was launched on an 18th-century farmstead, known as the Lehman Farm, Wilson had purchased 20 years earlier. Over the years, the center has been involved with a number of demonstration projects to help promote and familiarize the community with environmentally friendly practices such as sustainable farming and CSA, biodiesel fuel production, solar energy use and recycling.
Wilson’s Fulton Farm, which received certified-organic status from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in late 2013, has been recognized over the past year as one of the best college farms in the country. CollegeRanker.com listed the farm 24th on its list of the 40 Best College Farms—ahead of both Penn State and Ohio State—and CollegeValuesOnline.com rated Wilson’s farm 19th on its list of the Top 30 Sustainable College-Run Farms. Last month, OnlineCollegePlan.com ranked Fulton Farm 14th on its list of 60 Blue Ribbon College Farms.
CONTACT: Cathy Mentzer, Manager of Media Relations Phone: 717-262-2604 Email: cathy.mentzer@wilson.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Nov. 2, 2016
Chambersburg, Pa. — The Wilson College 2016-17 World Travel Dinner and Film program series continues with a Cuban-themed dinner and film on Tuesday, Nov. 15. Dinner will be held in Laird Hall at 6 p.m., followed by the film, “Cuba’s Secret Side,” at 7 p.m. in the Thomson Hall’s Alumnae Chapel.
An authentic Cuba dinner prepared by SAGE Dining Services includes dishes such as ropa vieja (stewed beef and vegetables) arroz con maiz (rice and corn) frijole negros (black beans) and yuca con mojo (garlic and lime marinated yuca roots).
After dinner, documentary filmmaker Karin Muller will present “Cuba’s Secret Side,” which explores that fascinating nation’s dual personality: the side seen by the media and by tourists, contrasted with the everyday lives of its surprisingly diverse population.
Dinner tickets are $20 per person and film tickets are $7 for adults, $6 for seniors and $3 for children ages 10 to 18. To reserve tickets, call 717-262-2003.
MEDIA CONTACT: Joel Pagliaro, Director of Conferences and Special Events, Sage Dining Services Phone: 717-262-2003 Email: conferences@wilson.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Oct. 27, 2016
Chambersburg, Pa. — The Wilson College modern dance ensemble, Orchesis, will present its annual fall performance on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 11 and 12, in Wilson's Appenzellar-Buchanan Dance Studio in Davison Hall. Performances will be held at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with a Saturday matinee at 1 p.m., followed by a question-and-answer session.
The performance of “Dancers on the Edge” will include an array of duets, solos, trios and group dances choreographed by Wilson College faculty and students. Among the works making premieres are an interdisciplinary duet that explores color and emotion; a 14-person ensemble celebrating feminine beauty in stillness; and a fun-loving trio of ballerinas-turned-Shania Twain dancers.
The performances are open to the public. Tickets will be available at the door; however, seating is limited so reservations are encouraged. To reserve seats, contact Wilson Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance Megan Mizanty at megan.mizanty@wilson.edu.
Ticket prices are:
General admission — $10
Students with I.D. and children under 12 — $3
Veterans — Free
Orchesis was founded at Wilson in 1942 under the direction of Roberta Jones to further the liberal arts education and encourage young women to explore ideas through movement. The ensemble was led by Paula Kellinger, Wilson professor emerita of dance, from 1986 to 2015, and is now advised by Mizanty, a professional dancer and choreographer who has been performing on the East Coast for the past five years.
For more information about Orchesis, visit www.wilson.edu/orchesis.
MEDIA CONTACT: Megan Mizanty, Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance Phone: 570-851-7372 Email: megan.mizanty@wilson.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Oct. 26, 2016
Chambersburg, Pa. — Wilson College will hold a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 2, to mark the opening of an exhibition of art created by area high school students. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, will continue through Dec. 9 in the Bogigian Gallery located on the second floor of Lortz Hall.
The sixth juried high school art exhibition mounted by Wilson College, the show will include 27 works of art from more than 70 entries submitted from Franklin, Adams, Cumberland and Fulton counties in Pennsylvania and Washington County, Md.
The exhibition is an opportunity for area high school students to showcase their work and have it judged by the college art faculty, according to Wilson Professor of Fine Arts Philip Lindsey. Cash prizes of $200, $100 and $50 will be awarded for first, second and third places, respectively, and other works of note will receive honorable mention.
Students are encouraged to offer their works of art for sale during the exhibition, which is presented by Wilson’s Department of Fine Arts and Dance.
Bogigian Gallery, named in honor of Wilson College benefactor Hagop Bogigian, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is free. For more information, contact Lindsey at philip.lindsey@wilson.edu or 717-264-4141, Ext. 3305.
Chambersburg, Pa. — Wilson College again demonstrated its commitment to college affordability and value when the Wilson College Board of Trustees voted this past weekend to hold the line on tuition for traditional undergraduate students for an unprecedented seventh consecutive year.
On the recommendation of President Barbara K. Mistick, the board agreed to hold tuition at the 2016-17 rate of $23,745 for the next academic year.
“We are seeing a continuation of constrained income growth and families remain extremely price sensitive when it comes to choosing a college,” said Mistick. A recent paper called “An Examination of the ‘Crisis’ of College Costs” showed that average family incomes for those earning up to $82,032 have actually fallen over the past 10 years.
“By holding the tuition rate, we are responding to our families’ ability to pay, as well as helping keep our student debt levels down,” Mistick said, adding that she and the board of trustees are firmly committed to keeping a Wilson education affordable.
Along with the tuition freeze, the board held the housing fee steady while approving modest increases in fees for meal plans and technology of 3 and 5 percent, respectively, to cover direct increases in the college’s cost of providing the services. The overall result is that full-time, residential Wilson students will pay just $195 more – 0.54 percent – next year for tuition, room, board and fees, for a total of $35,815.
The college also held tuition at current levels for graduate students and students in the teacher intern program, while approving a 1 percent tuition increase for students enrolled in the adult degree program for fall 2017.
After three years with no tuition increases for traditional undergraduate students, the college reduced its tuition for those students by $5,000, or 17 percent, for the 2014-15 academic year as part of the Wilson Today plan, which also includes the creation of a student loan buyback program that became available to qualified first-year students who enrolled beginning in fall 2014. The tuition reduction was followed by a freeze for traditional undergraduates for 2015-16, 2016-17 and now, again for 2017-18.
Prospective students and their families are responding to Wilson’s “value plan” – tuition affordability and the loan buyback program – according to the college’s admissions office, a fact borne out by the increasing number of enrolled students. This fall, Wilson’s overall enrollment increased by nearly 19 percent over fall 2015, with a 7 percent increase in new students and the largest traditional undergraduate enrollment since 1973.
In addition, the Institute for College Access and Success study on the average debt level from student loans for the Class of 2015—which did not directly benefit from the 2014-15 tuition reduction—shows the debt level for Wilson graduates is $3,185 below the state average of $34,798.
Wilson’s commitment to affordability is being recognized in other ways: The college was ranked a leader among colleges offering quality academic programs at an affordable price, according to U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” rankings for 2017. U.S. News moved Wilson from fifth to fourth in the “best value” category for regional colleges in the North, listing the percent of Wilson students receiving need-based grants at 90 percent.
Wilson’s value ranking, along with recognition as a “Tuition Hero” for holding tuition without an increase over the past six years, affirms the school’s commitment to providing an affordable college education.
Wilson’s continued enrollment increase stands in contrast to national enrollment trends. Based on the most recent data available, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported a decline of 1.7 percent in higher education enrollment nationally for 2015, while showing a slight 0.3 percent decrease at four-year, nonprofit private colleges. Since 2013, Wilson has seen a 48.7 percent increase in traditional undergraduate enrollment, with a 65.8 percent increase overall.
In January 2013, the Board of Trustees approved the Wilson Today plan – a set of initiatives to ensure that the college remains a thriving institution well into the future. The five-part plan includes the 2014-15 tuition reduction and student loan buyback program, infrastructure improvements, coeducation, improved marketing and new academic programs. Undergraduate programs recently introduced at Wilson include nursing, animal studies, health sciences and special education.
MEDIA CONTACT: Cathy Mentzer, Manager of Media Relations
Phone: 717-262-2604 Email: cathy.mentzer@wilson.edu
Chambersburg, Pa. — Doomsday scenarios are the stuff of movies and television shows, but how likely are they really? Guest lecturer Cynthia Ayers will discuss a real-life potential doomsday scenario — an attack on electrical grid — in “National Security and the Electrical Grid” at Wilson College on Wednesday, Oct. 26. The lecture, which will be held at 6 p.m. in the Brooks Science Center, is free and open to the public. Ayers is a national security threat analyst currently working as an independent consultant within the Strategic Concepts and Doctrine Division of the Center for Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle. Also deputy to the executive director of the EMP (electromagnetic pulse) Task Force on National and Homeland Security, Ayers will talk about a variety of threats to our nation’s electric infrastructure, including an attack using a high-altitude nuclear blast that would cripple the North American Power Grid. She will also discuss ways to protect the grid. In his book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, journalist Ted Koppel says it’s not a matter of IF terrorists (state-sponsored or otherwise) will attack our electrical grid, but WHEN. “The U.S. Congressional EMP Commission estimated that a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill up to 9 of 10 Americans by starvation, disease and societal collapse,” Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, wrote in a recent published article. The article goes on to say that “virtually any nuclear weapon — even a primitive, low-yield atomic bomb such as terrorists might build — would suffice to make a catastrophic EMP attack. The electric grid and other civilian critical infrastructures have never been hardened to survive EMP.” After retiring from the National Security Agency (NSA) with over 38 years of government service, Ayers was appointed vice president of EMPact America. Her intelligence community career included a position as an NSA Representative to the Director of Central Intelligence’s Counterterrorism Center, where she worked throughout the attacks on the USS Cole and 9/11 (2000-2002).
Her service culminated in an eight-year assignment to the Center for Strategic Leadership as the NSA’s visiting professor to the Army War College, where she taught electives on contemporary threats to national security from an intelligence perspective and advised students on research concerning strategic intelligence, counterterrorism, cyberwarfare, the Middle East and critical infrastructure protection.
She has written several published articles on national security issues (including the threat of an EMP resulting from an attack using a high-altitude nuclear blast); given presentations to a variety of federal, state and local organizations; participated as guest and co-host in radio broadcasts; and assisted with the production of workshops on topics of national security interest (e.g., Iran, terrorism and catastrophic critical infrastructure events). Ayers’ lecture is being hosted by Professor Ed Wells’ “Science, Technology and Society” class and is being sponsored by Wilson’s Fulton Center for Sustainability Studies and the Margaret A. Cargill Endowment for Environmental Studies. CONTACT: Ed Wells, Professor of Environmental Studies Phone: 717-264-4141, Ext. 3413 Email: edward.wells@wilson.edu or Chris Mayer, Director of the Fulton Center for Sustainability Studies Phone: 717-264-4141, Ext. 3247 Email: christine.mayer@wilson.edu __________________________________ Founded in 1869, Wilson College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college offering bachelor’s degrees in 34 majors and master’s degrees in education, the humanities, accountancy, management, nursing, fine arts and healthcare management for sustainability. Wilson is committed to providing an affordable education that offers value to its students beyond graduation. Located in Chambersburg, Pa., the college has a fall 2016 enrollment of 1,098, which includes students from 18 states and 16 countries. Visit www.wilson.edu for more information.
