Best of Florida Schools 2003
General Categories—Page 19 (Web-Only)

1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12
13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22

Previous                                   Next

Best Theater Training
Rollins’ Theater Training
This is a true story. Seven Rollins College students spent a weekend in a dingy, dimly lit concrete basement and were deprived of any modern luxuries. Though this may sound like the pretense for yet another reality TV series or a low-budget version MTV’s The Real World, this time there were no cameras or TV crews around.

Last fall, seven cast members from the theater department’s production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” spent 36 hours in “The Trap” under the Annie Russell Theater at Rollins College. “The idea was generated by students, and to me, that’s what made it most interesting,” says Thomas Ouellette, associate professor of theater art. “They came up with this idea of isolating themselves in a little, dark room under the stage to, in some small way, recreate [Anne Frank’s] experience.”

Frank, her family, and another family feared for their lives for the two years during World War II that they spent hidden away in an attic to escape being captured by the Nazis. The young Frank kept a diary that’s the basis of the play. As the Jewish families hid in their secret annex upstairs, workers occupied the building downstairs, so the families had to be silent during the day.

Just like the hardships Frank and company endured, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. cast members stayed silent in “The Trap” and couldn’t run water or flush the toilet. The actors brought with them only books and toiletries, no cell phones or laptops. Their only contact came from Whitney Morse, a junior who plays Miep, the character who aided the hidden Jews. When Morse came down to bring them food on Saturday evening, the students gathered around and asked about the outside world.

Even though they stayed in “The Trap” for less than two days, the students realized how difficult it would be to survive what Anne and the others went through for two years. But they hoped to emulate a fraction of what their characters went through and gain an understanding that would come out in their performances on the stage.

At first, Ouellette was skeptical that the experiment was gimmicky or cheapened the real Holocaust experience. “But after seeing how interested they were I decided to go forward with it,” Ouellette says. “Now, having said that—I think it succeeded beyond anything I or they imagined.” —RGM

Contact Thomas Ouellette at touellette@rollins.edu

Best Service Participation
Roll Out of Bed and “Reach Out”
Last August, Rollins College freshmen broke a record. Was it the most freshmen to wake up for a first-period class? Or was it the fewest freshmen to fall asleep in class? Actually, neither. Thanks to the “Reach Out” program, for the first time ever, all 525 freshmen helped out in 14 renovation and clean-up projects around Central Florida.

The community- service outreach program, coordinated by Rollins’ office of community engagement, was part of freshmen orientation. “Reach Out was unique because the entire first-year class did it as a group,” says Lauren Smith, community engagement coordinator. “What better way to get to know your advisor, your peer mentor, and your peers than to step down from the traditional roles to where everyone is on an equal level.”

Students worked with Green-Up Orlando to landscape an area that will be provided as public housing and also volunteered at the Ronald McDonald House, the Second Harvest Food Bank, and two Habitat for Humanity houses.

Smith says Rollins wants new students to connect with the community and learn early on that they can make a difference. She plans to make “Reach Out” an annual event. “It gave the first-year students something they could all identify with,” Smith says. “This will carry further than one day of service participation.” —RGM

Contact Smith at lasmith@rollins.edu.

Best Retreat
R.A. Training is Groovy Baby
At Saint Leo University, resident assistants yell "Shag Me!" No, they aren't screaming for dates. It's all part of their RA training. In addition to lectures, paperwork, and trust activities, St. Leo's RAs spiced up their three-day weekend by adding a theme: Austin Powers, Goldmember.

RAs wore t-shirts with the school mascot, a lion, holding a card reading "Residence Life Goldmember".  Like Dr. Evil, the Lion was holding his pinky finger up to his mouth. When groups needed to quiet down and come together, someone yelled "SHAG" and everyone else yelled "ME".

Every morning, RA staff woke up to Austin Powers theme music instead of the beeping of an alarm. Then, the RA staff broke up into their meal preparation teams to cook breakfast, naming teams after different characters, including Mini Me's Crew, The Number Two's, and Mr. Bigglesworth's Crew.

"Our goal this year was to build a foundation for a strong RA team, and that began with forming friendships and bonds of respect," says Catherine Hopkins, Student Government Union president and a third-year RA. The RAs ended their training with a trip to MGM studios. —LE

Contact Hopkin at catherine.hopkins@saintleo.edu.

Best Fall Festival
Cowboys in St. Leo Country
Round 'em up, partner—it's time for the annual Fall Festival. At Saint Leo University, students and staff whooped it up as cowboys and cowgirls down in "Saint Leo territory, the most beautiful frontier east of Texas."

The Festival featured horses, barbeque, live rodeo, line dancing, and live entertainment. The festival’s western theme goes along with the annual Rattlesnake Festival, which is literally just down the road from St. Leo in San Antonio. Shuttles made it easy to travel between the two festivals throughout the weekend.

A live band, Nashville Express, got the students' feet moving. "They played all different kinds of music," says Catherine Hopkins, Student Government Union president. Students who didn’t want to dance could yodel their way to the exhibition rodeo or sing their way back to the Wild Wild West with the cowboy karoake.

The festival lasted all weekend, with free golf provided by the Abbey Course on campus. The whole weekend traditionally lets parents, alumni, friends, and family visit. The whole shindig was free for students, while parents and visitors paid for tickets to the Western weekend but enjoyed free meals such as Chuck Wagon lunches.

"It truly felt like we had traveled back in time to the Wild Wild West," says Ana Didonato, assistant director of student involvement and activities. —LE

Contact Hopkins at catherine.hopkins@saintleo.edu.

Best Student Life Events
Never a Dull Moment at Southeastern
What do Saturday Night Live, film festivals, rock concerts and sky diving have in common? If you’re a Southeastern University student, they’re what’s on the agenda for the semester.

For the past two years, Southeastern’s Student Body Leadership Council has organized student life events ranging from art museum field trips to an October Masquerade where costumed students ate by a bonfire and drank from a keg—of root beer. SBCC hosts the activities and promotes them through flyers, the school newsletter, and announcements at in tri-weekly chapel meetings.

At a school where 85 percernt of students live on campus, the events bring the student body together and offer students a life-changing college experience, says Duane Aagaard, activities director. “Our environment is more intimate than other schools,” Aagaard says. “Our campus is a place of spirituality. We get students involved in organizations that fulfill their passions for life and leadership.”

Some events are geared toward special interests, such as coffeehouse band performances and art forums, while other events raise money for the Junior/Senior Banquet. This year, “Got Date,” an auction where girls anonymously submitted their favorite movie and baked their favorite dessert as personal profiles, were auctioned off as a fundraiser. —CA

Contact Duane Aagaard at daagaard@secollege.edu.

Best Computer Program
Make Like a Vulcan
Star Trek’s Mr. Spock would be proud. Despite his assertions that humans are not often logical, philosophy professors Rob Brady and Ron Hall from Stetson University seem to have taken a page from the Vulcan handbook in creating their upgraded computer program, LogicWorks: The Next Generation.

Through the program, teachers help students find the right answers. LogicWorks gives feedback to students responding to study questions wrong by telling students why they've picked the wrong answer.

It’s designed to help students work at their own pace so teachers can use class time for questions. "Students need help when they make a mistake," Brady says. "I really put things in the control of the students."

Hall and Brady created the first version of the program 10 years ago with the goal to create a fully adapted logic course with all multimedia.  Two hundred colleges and universities use the first version of the program.  The latest came out in December 2002 and has already been adopted by seven universities.

Students first install it on their own computers then read the text on-line, have it read to them, or print it out. The program also allows students to highlight and bookmark pages, and make margin notes in the text.

The use of interactive assignments outside of the classroom enriches teaching because students who have done the outside work can get more out of the classroom experience. "The classroom becomes more like a workshop," Brady says. He says he’d like to cut class time back to once a week so that students can take control of their own learning.

Plans for the future include another upgraded version that includes video clips of real-life logical situations. —LE

Contact Brady at rbrady@stetson.edu or visit www.logicnext.com

Best Advising
The Business of Orienting Freshman
You’re a freshman. You have no idea what to do with your life. You don’t know what classes to take. You don’t know anyone on campus. You don’t even know where the cafeteria is.  What do you do? Who will save you from the perils of your first year at school?

If you’re a student at the University of Miami School of Business, then you’re in luck. Every year 70 peer counselors are assigned 7 freshmen each to take under their wings.

The counseling begins the summer before fall classes start. While future freshmen spend their last days of freedom at the beach, the peer counselors are busy contacting each of their mentees by phone or e-mail.

During orientation, incoming freshmen meet their counselors face to face and pick their brains about the ins-and-outs of university life. The relationship continues through the rest of the year with regular meetings and phone calls. The counselors make sure each freshman is adapting well to college life, help them pick out classes for the upcoming semesters, and even aid them with major and career decisions.

“The program makes things go a lot smoother for freshmen,” says Karen Donno, an undergraduate academic advisor and director of peer counseling. “Freshmen aren’t lost trying to figure everything out for themselves.”

The program also is a great experience for the peer counselors, adding to their resumes and helping develop mentoring and leadership skills. The best counselors get awarded at an end-of-the-year banquet. And, of course, everybody appreciates their efforts at reducing the amount of freshman walking around looking confused and scratching their heads. —AR

Contact  Donno at 305-284-6806 or kdonno@miami.edu.

Best First Amendment Fight
The Right of the Press
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that  “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” But what happens when a fraternity wants to infringe on this vital right? For Jordan Rodack, editor-in-chief of the University of Miami newspaper, The Hurricane, the answer was to fight harder.

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, pledges of the Lambda Deuteron chapter of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity took their video camera around campus and asked students the question, “What would you do about these goddamn Arabs?” A Hurricane reporter wrote an article denouncing the fraternity’s action, but before the article could be distributed, three fraternity brothers stole the 9,000 copies of the newspaper from the racks.

As an Alpha Epsilon Pi brother, Rodack was in a difficult situation. So, he removed himself from the conflict and let his newspaper staff handle the issue. His fraternity brothers weren’t satisfied. “They threatened me and said that if the article was published there would be hell to pay,” Rodack says.

Following the publication of the article on the next issue of The Hurricane, fraternity members ransacked Rodack’s room in the fraternity house. He also got threatening e-mails and phone calls and was harassed constantly by his brothers. “There was a period when I would stay in my room for fear that something bad would happen to me if I entered the rest of the house,” Rodack says.

Rodack resigned the fraternity and continues to fight for the cause he believes is in the heart of America’s ideals. “The fraternity still continues to mess with me and the newspaper,” Rodack says. “It’s time to put an end to it once and for all.” Rodack has the support of his favorite media—newspapers—and his issue has been featured in The Miami Herald and in college campus newspapers across the state.

After a year of fighting Rodack wants the university to make an example of the fraternity to ensure that the freedom of the press will be guaranteed on campus for generations to come.  “No one should tamper with the freedom of the press,” he says. “We have soldiers overseas fighting for our freedoms, and there are students on this campus trying to take them away.” —AR

Contact Rodack at JordanR08@aol.com or view The Hurricane web site at thehurricaneonline.com.

Best Pep Rally
Got your #2 Pencils ready? O-K!
Gimme an “F.” Gimme a “C.” Gimme an “A.” Gimme a “T.”
What does it spell? To Sandhill Elementary fourth-graders, it spells the dreaded f-word. At least they can get out of class for 30 minutes for the FCAT pep rally.

The Warner Southern College cheerleading squad hosts the event for the local elementary school students  to get the children pumped up for the standardized test. Last spring, 20 cheerleaders performed in front of a crowd of 200 and made up cheers with words involving tests and their mascots. Charlene Haynes, a grad of Warner Southern and assistant principal of Sandhill, asked the cheerleaders to come and put on the pep rally.

“At first, we were all timid about how the students would react to us, but then after we got started, they loved it,” says Sarah McCutcheon, a Warner Southern cheerleader.

“We had a lot of fun with it,” says Heather Snively, Warner Southern cheerleading coach. “Although cheerleading has become very athletic, it’s rooted in service, and appearances like this are very important to both Warner and its community.” —AS

Contact Snively at j.snively@att.net.

Previous                                   Next

1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12
13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22

Copyright © 2006 Oxendine Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved