Megan Bloomer ’06 shares experience in sustainability career

When Megan Bloomer ’06 graduated from college, she got job offers for positions which required candidates to have a minimum of 10 years of experience. But because of her liberal arts background and the her experience in the environmental studies program at Randolph, she found that she was more than qualified, despite being right out of college.

“I was placed into jobs with no experience, 10 years ahead of where my career could be,” said Bloomer, who now is director of Village Green, the sustainability department for DaVita, a leading provider of dialysis and part of a Fortune 500 company. “That wouldn’t be possible without my Randolph education.”

Bloomer is on campus today to deliver a talk as part of the College’s Sustainability Speaker Series. She met with students at lunch to discuss careers. At 7 p.m., she will speak to a wider audience in a public talk in Nichols Theatre.

She has titled her presentation, “Moving Sustainability from the Trash Room to the Corner Office,” because she believes people will respect sustainability more if they recognize its potential. “When I explain my job, people say, ‘Oh you’re in charge of recycling,’” she said. “That’s still the first thing that people think. But last night I was on the phone executing a $20 million deal. Sustainability is a lot more than policing what people throw away.”

“I can tell you what goes into which recycling bin, but let’s go talk about how we can save $20 million on energy,” she added.

Bloomer hopes to help people recognize the positive impact of corporate sustainability, but she also wants to show students what their liberal arts education  will prepare them for. She recalls taking classes that had nothing to do with her personal and career interests, but that helped her build a foundation for making connections and finding solutions, which is a daily part of her job now. “It comes naturally to me because I was forced out of my comfort zone and forced to make those connections,” she said. “The platform that you're pushed to create here is the best platform for any field.”

Michael Kimmel to speak at Randolph April 2

Randolph College will host one of the nation’s leading scholars on men and masculinity for a discussion of the role gender plays on a college campus and how gender equality is a good thing for men.

Michael Kimmel will present “Mars, Venus, or Planet Earth: Men and Women on Campus in a New Millennium” on Wednesday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m. in Wimberly Recital Hall.

The presentation will survey the landscape of current controversies about gender and discuss ways in which men and women are much more similar than some imagine. Kimmel also will focus on ways men benefit from feminism and gender equality.

These are frequent topics addressed in his books, articles, and public appearances. “If the past few decades have made anything clear, it's been that we are neither Martians nor Venusians. And what's good for Earthlings—male and female—is good for all of us,” Kimmel wrote in a recent article for the Huffington Post. “If we want to help women achieve greater equality, we have to engage men.

Kimmel served as a consultant for the College when Randolph-Macon Woman’s College transitioned to coeducation and became Randolph College. Sociology professor Danielle Currier said Kimmel is interested in how the College has developed since then, and she believes the College community is interested in what he has to say. “His major topics of research and writing are gender, masculinity, and how women and men interact in social situations—particularly colleges,” Currier said. As a coed institution, “we need to have continuing conversations about how young women and men interact in a college setting.

“We are all affected by gender in all of our relationships and all our social interactions,” she said, adding that she hopes the talk helps people “think more critically and positively about how women and men can get along and have positive friendships and intimate relationships.”

Former astronaut encourages scientific exploration and persistance

Former astronaut Leland Melvin kicked off the Randolph College Science Festival with a lecture about his journey to becoming an astronaut. He advised students in the audience to explore science by experiencing it and never giving up.

Melvin explained how he gained experience in science while growing up in Lynchburg with parents who were teachers. Science was more than just book learning, he said. He learned about problem solving, creating, and experimenting through experiences such as helping his dad convert a bread delivery truck into an RV, building his own skateboard, and playing with a chemistry set.

“Science isn’t just about reading in a book,” he said. “Science is about making things.”

Melvin explained that he first learned about persistence during a high school football game when he dropped a touchdown pass, but the coach called the same play again. On the second try, he caught the pass, winning the game for Lynchburg’s Heritage High School and helping win him a college scholarship. He said the same kind of persistence is needed in science.

“If we had quit after the first five launches that failed, we never would have gone to the moon,” he said. He asked whether any students in the audience had ever failed a test, and he encouraged them to continue learning and trying to succeed. “You have to just keep moving,” he said.

After his talk, he answered questions from the audience and signed autographs and posed for photos with fans.

For photos from Melvin’s talk, check out the Science Festival 2014 Facebook album. Also, read this article in the News & Advance for more details about his talk.

American Culture Program studies in the Caribbean, delivers digitized historical documents

Students in Randolph College’s American Culture Program are spending the next several days in the U.S. Virgin Islands learning more about life in the Caribbean and how it relates to American immigration and identity.

While they are there, the students will deliver copies of historical archives that are currently unavailable on the islands.

Each year, the American Culture Program focuses on an aspect of American life and history. Lori Lee, the Ainsworth Visiting Professor of American Culture, proposed a look at the Caribbean, and particularly the U.S. Virgin Islands, as a way to explore issues of American identity. “I thought it would be great to look at that by learning about a place that has become American,” she said.

By studying American involvement in the Caribbean, the students are learning about migration, imperialism, environmental impacts, tourism, economic development, and the way that cultural identity is formed.

In February, the group traveled to the Washington, D.C., area to work on a project that seeks to give residents of the Virgin Islands access to historical documents that are currently only available in federal archives. They copied passport applications that island residents completed in the early years after the islands became U.S. territory.

For several years, Lee has participated in this project that delivers copies of passport applications to the Virgin Islands on Transfer Day—marking March 31, the day that the U.S. purchased the islands.

Randolph students work with passport documents in the National Archives.

Although “migration has been central to Caribbean life for centuries,” the requirement to have a passport to move to the mainland U.S. created a valuable historic archive, Lee said. “These are two-page documents that record who people are, where they’re going, what their jobs are. For a lot of people, this was their first time being photographed.”

Alex Fella ’15 enjoyed working with the passport applications, but he is especially looking forward to delivering them for Transfer Day because he knows how significant the documents will be for people who live there. “They will be able to see these family ties—they can see pictures from their ancestors who have emigrated from the islands,” he said.

The group also met with representatives from the Organization of American States and the Council for Puerto Rico Statehood. Then, they had lunch at a Caribbean restaurant and met its owner, a Jamaican immigrant. “We wanted to get a more personal understanding of what it is like to live in the Caribbean, leave, and become a pretty successful business owner,” Fella said.

In 2011, another group of Randolph students went to
the U.S. Virgin Islands to study water quality there.

Abigail Smith ’15, who is from Jamaica, was intrigued by the way the restaurant adapted recipes, and even omitted some Caribbean favorites. The restaurant owner explained the importance of being flexible as cultures integrate.

Smith signed up for the American Culture Program because she wanted to get an American perspective of the Caribbean to compare with the perspective she developed while growing up in a British territory. By learning more about the history and cultures of the Caribbean, she has developed ideas that she hopes to apply as an ambassador between Caribbean islands someday.

“We’ve had a history of dependency on first world countries. There have not been as great efforts to reach inside and partner with different islands. We see more differences than similarities,” she said. “But we really are so similar. If we regionalize the area, that’s one of the ways we can become more developed.”

Randolph professor publishes more books in EasyGuide series

A Randolph professor has published two more books in the EasyGuide series designed to help students grasp technical topics related to psychology and other social sciences research.

This month, SAGE Publications released An EasyGuide to Research Design and SPSS and An EasyGuide to Research Presentations, both co-authored by Beth Schwartz, the William E. and Catherine Ehrman Thoresen ’23 Chair in Social Sciences and assistant dean of the College.

Dennis Goff, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Psychology, was one of Schwartz’s co-authors for the book on research design.

These books follow An EasyGuide to APA Style, which Schwartz published in 2013. “It started as a single book, but when I talked with the publisher after the success of that first book, we decided it would be great to add some additional EasyGuides,” Schwartz said.

The EasyGuide books aim to make information more accessible to students by conveying technical information in a more conversational tone, as well as combining information from a variety of sources, Schwartz said.

“The books include step-by-step instructions, with screenshots when applicable, to help with the logistics of writing, conducting statistical analyses, and creating presentation slides,” Schwartz said. “The information is easy to read, includes some humor to make what can be dry material a bit easier to digest, and has easy-to-follow examples.”

Schwartz said she has already started discussing potential topics for more books in the EasyGuide series.

Poet Shara Lessley gives public Reading March 26

Shara Lessley, author of the poetry compilation Two-Headed Nightingale, will give a public reading at Randolph College on March 26th at 8 p.m. in the Alice Ashley Jack Room as part of the Visiting Writer Series.

Lessley, the Anne Spencer Poet in Residence, will be at Randolph for four weeks. In addition to giving the public reading this Wednesday, she will teach a class with a focus on writing and poetry.

Photo by Lisa Beth Anderson

Lessley is a poet and teacher with a bachelor’s degree in dance and English from the University of California, Irvine and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Maryland. She sees a connection between the two disciplines.

“My training as a dancer influences the way I see syntax and the line. Elongation, contraction. Rhythm. Musicality. I'm very interested in the sentence as a muscle the poet flexes and points, in order to control pacing and speed,” Lessley said.

Lessley has been drawn to poetry since she was nine. “When I was nine, I encountered Dickinson's ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,’ and was completely gobsmacked,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t understand the poem fully, but I was overwhelmed by its weirdness, its mystery and music. It made me want to parade and stomp around in Dickinson's ’Boots of Lead’—a high mark of praise for a third grader, I suppose.”

Lessley draws her current inspiration for her poetry from her experience living in Amman, Jordan the past three years, a region she describes as “complex and rich.”

Among her other accomplishments, Lessley is also a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University and the 2014 Mary Wood Fellow at Washington College.  Her work has been featured in The Rumpus Poetry Anthology and The Ecopoetry Anthology.

Lessley is Randolph College’s first Anne Spencer Poet in Residence. While the College has hosted poets and other writers for years, this position in the Visiting Writer Series was recently renamed to honor Anne Spencer, a Harlem Renaissance poet who lived not far from the College.

Honor societies hold 2014 induction ceremony

Several academic honor societies at Randolph College inducted new students to their ranks in a ceremony this week. Here is a list of students inducted in Wednesday’s ceremonies.

You can browse photos from the ceremony on the Randolph College Facebook page.

Psi Chi
Psychology
Jensen Hoover ’15
Lauren Mason ’16
Sandeep Poudyal ’16
Faith Stoneking ’16

Iota Sigma Pi
Women in Chemistry
Meron Demeke ’15
Alyssa Everett ’15

Alpha Kappa Delta
Sociology
Jensen Hoover ’15
Amy Jacobs ’14
Danielle Lewis ’15
Margaret (Maggie) Murray ’14
Abigail Smith ’15
Rachel A. Storey ’14
Robert Villaneuva ’14
Coulton Watson ’15
Brandi Witt ’14

Pi Delta Phi
French
Melissa Halka ’14
Huong Ngoc (Hin) Doan ’14
Diep Thi Linh (Penny) Trieu ’15

TriBeta
Biology
Auzeen Abbassi ’15
Kelia Cutkelvin ’16
Meron Demeke ’15
Seth Dorman ’15
Allison Druffel ’15
Cameron Garrison ’14
Lytease Industrious ’16
Cassandra Joe-Louis ’16
Marissa McClinton ’16
Averie Morgan ’15
Dara Niketic ’15
Riya Patel ’16
Olivia M. Reed ’16
Renee Russell ’16
Eun Joo Seo ’15
Blair George Steele ’15
Kyra Tucker ’15
Coulton Watson ’15
Haleigh Wilson ’15

Theta Alpha Kappa
Religious Studdies
Olivia I. Groff ’14

Pi Sigma Alpha
Political Science
Conner W. Dye ’15
Glenna M. Gray ’14
Katherine R.D. Lesnak ’15
Abigail J.N. Smith ’15
Sarah Terlizzi ’15
Tamara M. Trombetta ’14

Omicron Delta Epsilon
Economics
Mai Hoang Dam ’15
Connor W. Dye ’15
Hoa Hong Nguyen ’15
Huong Viet Nguyen ’15
Tu Anh Nguyen ’15
May Nwe Soe ’14
Ha Thanh Tong ’15
Stephany D. West ’15
Emma Williams ’16

Chi Alpha Sigma
Scholar Athletes
Emilee Dunton ’14
Connor Dye ’15
Alyssa Everett ’15
Katherine Lesnak ’15
Ryan Mahon ’15
Michael Ramsey ’15
Stephany West ’15
Colton Wood ’14

Sigma Pi Sigma
Physics
Alex Kwakye ’15
Pujan Shrestha ’15
Tung (Alex) Tran ’15
Colton Wood ’14

Phi Alpha Theta 
History
Auzeen J. Abbassi ’15
Igor D. Bayder ’14
Tierney C. Dickinson ’14
Megan K. Einhorn ’15
Maximilian N. Niketic ’14
Rachel A. Storey ’14
Katherine E. Vance ’14
Monica A. Varner ’14
Stephany D. West ’15
Emma A. Williams ’16

Sigma Xi
Research
Stephanie Barron ’14
Mimansha Joshi ’14
Kristina Marinak ’14
Kavya Pradhan ’14

Sigma Tau Delta
English
Mandy Boucher ’15
Savannah Edwards ’15
Grace Gardiner ’15
Ellen Meadows ’15
Nik Oliver ’15
Erin Vasta ’15
Christina Crouch ’15
Megan Einhorn ’15
Olivia Groff ’14
Ashley Peisher ’15

Lambda Pi Eta
Communication Studies
Phuong Tran ’15