Randolph to host Relay for Life community fundraiser

Randolph College students, faculty, and staff are coming together for an inspirational Relay for Life on campus this Sunday.

Randolph College will host Relay for Life from noon until 9 p.m. April 7.
Donate or get involved at RelayForLife.org/RandolphVA

The American Cancer Society Fundraiser allows the community to come together with cancer patients, survivors, and their friends to walk laps around the track and sell items to raise money for cancer research and assistance programs. The event will include fun activities including music performances, yoga, corn hole, scavenger hunts, dance contests, and more throughout the day.

“The festivities and true meaning of the event will inspire and energize the most sedentary of individuals to find strength they never knew they had in them,” said Carolyn Sarson, a physical education professor at Randolph. Sarson, a Relay for Life veteran, is leading in the fundraising efforts for Randolph’s Relay. “Coming together for such a great cause will remain as one of the most heartwarming and fulfilling experiences in my life,” she said.

“I wanted to give our community our own chance to change the world.”

–Sally Taylor ’15

Hosting a Relay for Life event at Randolph is a tedious process that has been almost a year in the making. Sally Taylor ‘15 attended another Relay for Life event in Lynchburg about a year ago, and that made her want to bring the event to Randolph. “While we do a lot of things together, I feel that we could do more in the Randolph community to support a higher cause,” said Taylor. “I wanted to give our community our own chance to change the world.”

She organized the program with faculty sponsor Kim Sheldon, Meredith Doughtery ‘15, and several other students. Other students have been forming teams and raising money for the American Cancer Society.

Some Relay for Life participants at Randolph have a very personal connection to cancer. Sarson said she lost her father to multiple myeloma just six months after her first Relay for Life in 2001. “Seeing my best friend and most important person in my life struggle bravely and with quiet strength empowered me to do something more so that others did not have to struggle through such a horrible disease,” said Sarson.

Marisa Mendez ’13, a member of the “Glitter Queens” team who leads the student body in fundraising, had a cousin who died after a battle with colon cancer last year. “I want to honor her memory and help raise money for research,” Mendez said. “I like the community that these kinds of events bring because many people there have experienced what you have and understand what you, or your family, has gone through. It's comforting.”

Sarson and Mendez are just two of the many participants who have direct ties with the mission of the American Cancer Society. Special recognition including a survivor lap and a luminaria ceremony will be held throughout the event to commemorate those who have fought the battle with cancer.

“This is something we would love to keep going, so we need the support of everyone in our Randolph community,” Taylor said.

Randolph’s relay for life will begin Sunday, April 7th, at the Randolph College track from noon until 9:00 p.m. To join or donate, visit RelayForLife.org/RandolphVA. Any questions can be directed to Taylor at srtaylor@randolphcollege.edu.

Model U.N. team wins awards at national conference

Randolph College’s Model United Nations team brought home honors from the national conference in New York last week.

Tahan Menon ’16 and Sarah Terlizzi ’15 represent Portugal
on the Security Council during the Model U.N. Conference.

Sarah Terlizzi ’15 and Tahan Menon ’16 were named the best delegation to the Security Council at the conference, and Nabeel Mahmood ’15 and Penny Trieu ’15 received the award for the best position paper on the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

The honor surprised Menon, but it added a great finish to an already-great conference. “I didn't even really know there were awards until the last few days, so I wasn't thinking about it,” he said. “I thought it was going to be fun, but I didn't know we were going to win.”

The national conference allows students from about 400 colleges to role play as United Nations delegates from various countries. After spending months researching the culture, politics, and positions of their assigned country, they attend meetings, give speeches, and vote on actual issues facing the world.

Randolph’s students represented Portugal this year. Terlizzi said that it was hard to get attention as Portugal on the Security Council, but she and Menon managed to stay “in character,” representing the views that Portugal would take on the issues presented to them.

Jennifer Dugan, a political science professor who advises the Model U.N. team, said the Security Council dealt with difficult topics this year, but it did not surprise her that Terlizzi and Menon were named best delegates. “They were firm and creative diplomats who navigated tough issues and entrenched positions with great finesse,” she said.

Dugan said that Mahmood and Trieu earned their honor of best position paper by crafting a paper that communicated their knowledge and proposed solutions with clarity.

Trieu said that winning the award added a lot to her first experience at Model U.N. “It made me want to do it again.”

“This year’s team worked hard and pulled in the same direction during the entire conference,” Dugan said. “We had the right balance of veteran and first time delegates as well as exceptional leadership in our two head delegates; everyone helped each other.”

Menon said that Dugan was instrumental in the success students had at the conference. “She drilled us really well for that conference,” he said. “She deserves most of the credit or recognition.”

Student travel and participation in the Model U.N. program is made possible through a generous gift from Marilyn Hicks Fitzgerald ’68 and Michael P. Fitzgerald and through the support of the Gravely-Hampson Global Studies Fund.

Bill Dunlap presents “Confessions of an Itinerant Painter” at Randolph College

Renowned artist Bill Dunlap shared a different approach toward making and experiencing art while visiting Randolph College recently. In a lecture punctuated with humor, he also shared a unique definition of art.

“It’s doing the difficult and making it look easy,” Dunlap told Randolph faculty and students gathered for his lecture. “There’s an art to everything. There’s an art to war. There’s an art to cooking.”

Bill Dunlap, second from the left, visits with Randolph community members.

Dunlap visited Randolph on March 19 to participate in art classes and tell students about his artistic career, which has spanned more than four decades. He toured the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, spoke to a class on post-war art at the Maier, visited students as they drew animals at a local animal shelter, and delivered a public talk titled “Confessions of an Itinerant Painter.”

Alumnae Susan Braselton Fant ‘84 and Katharine “Kitty” Stark Caldwell ‘74, who are friends of Dunlap, attended the lecture. Fant and her husband, Ruff, funded Dunlap’s visit and lecture.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Dunlap said. “I wanted to be an artist before I knew what one was.” When he was young, he began sketching family photographs. Later, while teaching art, he used his time on sabbatical to rent a studio and start making art. He so enjoyed the experience enough that he decided to pursue art full time.

He showed the audience many of his works of art and explained the ideas they represent. “I like to think that I paint pictures about things, not of things,” he said.

Ruff Fant, Susan Braselton Fant ’84, Bill Dunlap, Susan Klein, Randolph
College President John E. Klein, and Katherine Kitty Stark Caldwell ’74

Many of his paintings portray landscapes inspired by scenes along U.S. 29, a highway that runs through rural Virginia and connects several cities, including Lynchburg. He referred to these paintings as “hypothetical realism.” “These things aren’t real, but they could be,” he said.

The Blue Ridge Mountains, visible from the Randolph College campus, also find their way into many of his paintings—even when he paints scenes set in other countries. “It’s my world; I’ll do what I want with it,” he said.

Other recurring themes are his relatives, dogs, and stylistic renderings of a Rembrandt self-portrait. Dunlap said this variety of content sometimes leads to faulty interpretations of meanings behind his work. “I’m not complaining that I’m misunderstood, but they miss me all the time,” he said. “A lot of people these days write a thesis and then go find art that illustrates the thesis. I think they ought to look at the art and see what it’s trying to say.”

Honor societies induct new members

More than 50 Randolph students were inducted into 11 honor societies at a recent ceremony. Membership in these prestigious organizations recognizes these students for academic accomplishments in their fields of study.

The honor societies and inducted students include:

Psi Chi — Psychology
Ryan Blackwell ’13
John Croney III  ’13
Lauren King ’15
Elizabeth van Noppen ’14
Emily Rist  ’14
Diep Trieu ’15
Brittney Via  ’14
Tsubasa Watanabe  ’14

Iota Sigma Pi  — Women in Chemistry
Laura Word ’13

Sigma Tau Delta — English
Emma Bartholomew ’14
Katherine Bickley ’14
Melissa Halka ’14
Mahareen Khalid ’14
Thomas Whitehead ’13

Eta Sigma Phi — Latin
Katy Boyer ’16
Natalia Froberg ’13
Hart Gillespie  ’15

Sigma Pi Sigma — Physics
Hart Gillespie ’15
Nam Hoang ’15
Chris Hollingsworth ’15
Tu Nguyen ’15

Alpha Kappa Delta — Sociology
Christina Noelle Budd ’13
Rachel Ann Cox ’13
Millie Symns ’13
Samantha Brooke Thacker ’13
Brittney Marie Via ’14
Tsubasa Watanabe ’14
Thomas J. Whitehead ’13


Chi Alpha Sigma — Scholar Athletes
John Croney ’13
John Grundy ’14
Amy Jacobs ’14
Brianne Roth ’13
Brittney Via ’14
Samim Yaquby ’13

Omicron Delta Epsilon — Economics
Huong Ngoc Doan ’14
Tung Thanh Ha  ’14
Amy Jacobs ’14
Jonghui Kim ’14
Nhung Hong Nguyen ’15
Binh Thanh Nguyen ’14
Lauren Stevenson ’13
Salina Tulachan ’15

Phi Alpha Theta — History
Christina Budd ’13
Rachel Ann Cox ’13
William B. Dede ’14
Lauren Dowdle ’13
Lauren A. King ’15
Samantha Maggard ’14
Marisa Lyn Mendez ’13
Teague C. Nelson ’14
Ryan D. Purrington ’14
Karen Rose ’13

TriBeta — Biology
Elizabeth Delery ’14
Kristen Hutchinson ’14
Lauren Liming ’14
Ellen Meadows ’15
Sara Ann Reed ’15
Katherine Riedel ’14
Anne Tran ’15
Jorge Vargas ’14

Pi Sigma Alpha — Political Science
Tra My Dinh Doan ’14
Ashley D. Edwards ’14
Risa T. König ’13
Samim Yaquby ’13

Science Festival grows thanks to gift

The legacy of Lynn Hume Stuart ’60 continues with the 2013 Science Festival, which begins Thursday.

Lynn Hume Stuart ’60 made a gift to support the
Randolph College Science Festival for five years.

Lynn was a long-time supporter of the College and many of its programs. Last fall, she and her husband, Bill Stuart, made a gift to Randolph College to support the annual Science Festival for five years. Lynn passed away a few weeks later, on Nov. 2. Their gift has been instrumental in growing the Science Festival, which continues to offer more events involving more people each year.

The Stuarts’ gift is also supporting the Randolph Innovative Student Experience (RISE), a program that allows students to apply for grants to pay for research, artistic pursuits, travel study, and other experiential learning endeavors. Read more about their gift in this recent article in the Bulletin.
The Science Festival will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday with a keynote address by Don Lincoln, a physicist involved last year in the discovery of the Higgs boson, which was one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs in recent history. Science Festival continues with events each day through Sunday. Get the full schedule here.

Acclaimed poet Ira Sadoff set for reading at Randolph

This Wednesday, the Randolph community will be treated to a reading by poet Ira Sadoff. The author of eight poetry collections, Sadoff has published poetry in works such as the Harper Anthology of American Literature and Great American Prose Poems. He has received the Creative Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts as well as a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Most recently though, Sadoff has been serving as Randolph’s Writer in Residence as a part of the English Department’s Visiting Writers Series. During his stay at Randolph, he is teaching a one credit, special topics English class that is open to Randolph students. He will also make appearances in several other classes.

“It is an advantage for Randolph students to be exposed to a wide range of authors,” said Laura-Gray Street, an English professor at Randolph. Street is responsible for bringing Sadoff, who served as her thesis advisor, to campus. “He was a role model for me. He has such warmth, energy, and generosity as well as a remarkable presence,” Street said.

The poetry reading will start at 8pm in the Alice Ashley Jack Room. Refreshments will be served. This is also a Passport program event for First Year students. Any questions about the event can be sent to Street lstreet@randolphcollege.edu.

Later in the semester, be on the lookout for one more reading by author Allison Hedge Coke.

Alumna honored as CNN Hero

We knew Kakenya Ntaiya ’04 was a hero. Now CNN agrees.

The broadcasting network has named this alumna one the CNN Heroes of 2013, and she was the headline story on the CNN Heroes page this week.

Ntaiya was the first woman to convince leaders in her home village to allow her to attend college in the United States. After attending here for undergraduate school and proceeding to earn a Ph.D., she returned to her home village in hopes of providing education and brighter futures for girls there.

Last week, we shared Ntaiya’s TED Talk about her journey. Today, we are proud to present another telling of her courageous story. Read her story, “Woman challenges tradition, brings change to her Kenyan village,” and watch her video here: