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WC to Host Meet and Greet Event Featuring Justice Leo Strine, Jr.

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Washington College is hosting a meet and greet event featuring Justice Leo Strine, Jr. on Saturday, April 27th at 4pm in Hynson Lounge. It truly is a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme court. He will be making some remarks and there will be a networking opportunity afterwards.

There will also be 25 special law affiliated alumni, faculty members and Board members scheduled to attend including Joe Getty, who is a judge on the Maryland Court of Appeals. Getty was appointed to that court in 2016, by Governor Larry Hogan. He is a former state senator and delegate, where he represented Maryland’s 5th district.

Here is the event invitation on the WC site:

https://www.washcoll.edu/live/events/21584-meet-and-greet-the-honorable-leo-strine-jr

And more information about Leo Strine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_E._Strine_Jr.

This event is free and open to the public. We hope you can join us!

Exploration of the History of the African America Church

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On Monday, April 15th the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College will host the latest installment in its Program on the African America Church and American Ideals. Join us at 6pm in the Hynson Lounge of Hodson Hall on the campus of Washington College for a presentation on the history of the African American church by Reverend Dr. Leroy Fitts. Rev. Fitts was for many years the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in East Baltimore, one of the area’s largest and most dynamic historically African American congregations. Rev. Fitts is the author of the new book titled The History of the African American Church as well as numerous other works on African American church history. His latest book will be available for sale at the event at the reduced price of $25 (payable by check). Rev. Fitts has been a Visiting Fellow at Princeton and has taught for many years at St. Mary’s Seminary in its Ecumenical Institute. Please consider joining the Institute for this important and engaging event. The event is free and open to all.

The Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College explores the historic and continuing contributions of religion to political and cultural life. For more information, contact Director Joseph Prud’homme at jprudhomme2@washcoll.edu.

Visiting Scholar Professor James Stoner to Speak at WC April 17

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On Wednesday, April 17th the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College will host a conversation on freedom of speech. Examining the current debates surrounding free speech, and exploring their relationship to the work of the famous 19th century thinker John Stuart Mill, Institute Visiting Scholar James Stoner, Director of the Voegelin Institute at LSU, will conduct a community conversation open to all.  This important event will take place at 7pm in the Hynson Lounge of Hodson Hall at the heart of the Washington College campus.

James R. Stoner Jr. (Ph.D., Harvard University) is the Herman Moyse Jr Professor of Political Science at LSU and a prolific scholar and speaker. He is the author of such works as Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism, and The Social Costs of Pornography.

The Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College explores the historic and continuing contributions of religion to political and cultural life as well as a range of pressing contemporary issues and the enduring value of America’s founding principles. For more information,please contact Director Joseph Prud’homme at jprudhomme2@washcoll.edu.

Acclaimed Environmental Journalist Tom Pelton at Washington College March 27

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Tom Pelton, an award-winning environmental journalist and author of The Chesapeake in Focus: Transforming the Natural World, will give a talk at Washington College on March 27 called “Myths and Truths of the Chesapeake Bay Cleanup.”

The event, which is free and open to the public, starts at 5:30 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall of the Toll Science Center and is sponsored by the McClain Program for Environmental Studies. A book signing will follow.

Pelton has hosted the public radio program “The Environment in Focus” since 2007. He also works as Director of Communications for the Environmental Integrity Project, a non-profit organization that publishes investigative reports about environmental issues and works to hold polluters and governments accountable to protect public health.

From 1997 until 2008, Tom was a journalist for The Baltimore Sun, where he was twice named one of the best environmental reporters in America by the Society of Environmental Journalists. He has also published in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Harvard Magazine, Yankee magazine, and several other publications. Pelton earned his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and his graduate degree from the University of Chicago.

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Stanley Black & Decker CEO Jim Loree at WC on March 25

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Jim Loree, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stanley Black & Decker, will be the speaker for Washington College’s spring 2019 James C. Jones Seminar in American Business on March 25.

Loree will give a talk entitled “Purpose-Driven Performance: Staying Relevant for 175 Years and Beyond.” The event, sponsored by the Department of Business Management, takes place in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts at 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow in the Underwood Lobby.

Stanley Black & Decker operates the world’s largest tool and storage company featuring iconic brands such as Craftsman, DeWalt, Porter-Cable, Stanley, and Bostitch. Loree joined the company, then Stanley Works, as CFO in 1999 when the company generated just over $2 billion in revenue, according to the company’s website.

“In that role, he led a massive restructuring of the business and began a re-architecting of the company’s portfolio,” the website states. “Since that time, he was promoted to COO, President and then CEO in 2016, as the company generated significant growth both organically and through acquisitions to stand at $13 billion in annual revenue (more than 5x growth since 1999), with more than 58,000 employees across 60 countries.”

Loree is also the husband of Rebecca Corbin Loree ’00, a member of the College’s Board of Visitors and Governors, and the namesake of the Rebecca Corbin Loree Center, which houses the College’s Center for Career Development.

The James C. Jones, Jr. Seminar in American Business was endowed in 1978 by the George W. King Printing Company of Baltimore in memory of its former company president. Jimmy Jones, a 1947 graduate of Washington College, served on the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1974 until his death in 1978. Previous speakers include College President Kurt Landgraf; Paul Reed Smith, founder of PRS Guitars; Michael Bloomberg; and ABC News business correspondent Betsy Stark.

Watch the livestream www.washcoll.edu/offices/digital-media-services/live/

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Joseph Prud’homme to Speak at Talbot County Event March 21

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Joseph Prud’homme, Director of Washington College’s Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture (IRPC), will discuss religious liberty in the United States at a presentation March 21 at the Talbot Country Club in Easton.

Prud’homme will present “The Foundations of Religious Freedom” at the event, which is open to the public for a fee of $15 and includes a reception that begins at 5:30 p.m. He will explore how religious freedom is characterized in the media and in policy and legal debates; whether this central liberty is under threat; what challenges individuals and organizations of faith face in contemporary society; and whether current laws adequately defend the freedom of religious belief and practice. Prud’homme will examine these issues from a political, legal and philosophical perspective.

Prud’homme is associate professor of political science at Washington College and The Burton Family Chair in Religion, Politics and Culture. He has been director of the IRPC since its founding. Prud’homme received his doctoral degree from Princeton University and two bachelor’s degrees—majoring in political science, history, and philosophy and minoring in religious studies—from Texas A&M University. He was awarded a fellowship at Harvard University, where he studied at the Harvard Law School and served as a member of the faculty of Arts and Sciences. Prud’homme’s expertise is in the areas of political philosophy, legal theory, intellectual history, and conceptual and historical approaches to the study of religion and political and cultural affairs.

Washington College and Talbot Country Club are co-sponsoring the presentation at 6142 Country Club Drive, Easton, Maryland. The $15 fee pays for the reception and admittance, and is payable by credit card or check to Talbot Country Club at the event. Washington College is not accepting payments. Please RSVP by March 14 to Victoria Corcoran at 410-778-7805 or vcorcoran2@washcoll.edu.

Washington College Partners with Innovative FESCO Energy

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Washington College has joined forces with FESCO Energy to help the College reduce carbon emissions while improving energy efficiency and resilience, a major step toward implementing a vigorous and sustainable College-wide energy policy. The College has signed a Master Energy Services Agreement with the Frederick, Maryland company to develop and implement methods that will help the College reduce its energy demand, costs, and carbon footprint. By analyzing and implementing low- and no-emissions energy generation, storage technologies, and energy conservation solutions, the partnership will provide the College increased energy security and limit its dependence on the power grid.

“The agreement secures a long-term approach to reduce our energy consumption and expenses by upgrading our infrastructure and our processes, and we plan to proceed using a shared-savings approach wherever possible,” says Greg Farley, the College’s Director of Sustainability. “All of this will result in a robust energy strategy and policy, which we will use to drive innovation and enact energy security. I think institutions generally in the higher-ed sector haven’t had to think about comprehensive energy strategy from anything but a price perspective, and this gives us a chance to take at strategic look at energy use, procurement, security,and waste in a strategic way.”

FESCO, which in its first six months of operation earned a 2018 Innovator of the Year award from the Maryland Clean Energy Center, was formed to change the way customers manage and optimize their energy use, maximize energy efficiency, and employ the latest technology to manage and produce clean, secure, and grid-independent energy. In the process, FESCO’s customers will become more resilient to volatility in electricity supply and pricing, reduce their energy expenses, and minimize their site-specific impact to climate change. The company’s work with Washington College will pursue all of these goals.

“We are thrilled to help Washington College revolutionize the energy value stream,” says John Dukes, FESCO’s president. “This commitment is a revolutionary leap forward in securing energy resiliency and budget control by implementing energy-related projects that are sustainable, durable, and cost effective. By fully leveraging its annual energy expenses and committing those dollars to acquiring the energy services to meet their clearly defined goals, the College has set the template for others to follow. These services will ensure the College can withstand long-term power outages without additional expense, replace inefficient equipment with the newest equipment to enhance student and faculty comfort and controllability, and reduce overall site air emissions simply by changing what they expect from an energy provider.”

FESCO and Washington College are performing energy and infrastructure audits to identify opportunities for demand reduction and energy security. This work has already begun with examination of the electrical and thermal infrastructure, HVAC, and building control systems in several target buildings.

Early projects being examined include a combined heat and power energy generation plant; privatizating electrical and thermal infrastructure; modernizing HVAC systems and campus wide controls; adding motion-activated set back controls to ensure that demand consumption like HVAC and lights go off when no one is present in an area; and repairing and improving building automation systems so that energy use can be automatically adjusted for more efficient use.

Over the long term, Washington College aspires to cut its energy use significantly by upgrading infrastructure and building a culture of conservation, so that faculty, staff, and students make a conscious effort to turn off lights when they leave a room, unplug computer chargers that are not in use, or adjust the thermostat to use less energy when no one is occupying a room or building—to name just a few examples. Significant reduction in energy use, and the potential installation of cyber-secure, grid-independent electricity generation on campus, will work towards a goal of campus carbon neutrality and greater resilience for the campus and the surrounding community.

These goals coincide with the College’s new emphasis on environmental practices, and with improvements to waste-stream management, water efficiency, and remediation of stormwater runoff for the Chestertown campus. Improvements and upgrades will also serve to make the campus into a “learning laboratory” for students who are focusing on the study of the environment, and will help prepare all Washington College graduates for success in the climate-changed future they will inherit upon graduation.

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

About FESCO Energy

FESCO Energy provides complete turnkey energy supply, demand and resiliency projects managed by an executive team with over 80 combined years of proven experience. Based in Frederick, Maryland, FESCO develops and implements energy efficiency, distributed generation, renewable energy, water conservation, operations and maintenance, and provides electricity and natural gas commodity contracts nationally for educational, public sector, commercial, and industrial customers. It helps customers develop electricity and natural gas cost-of-service analysis and advises on rate designs using a cloud-based analytics platform that ensures the right rate based on customer usage patterns.

David Blight to Speak at Washington College on February 7

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Eminent Yale historian David W. Blight’s new book Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom is the first full biography in decades of the most famous African American of the 19th century. Born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Frederick Douglass escaped north, and went on to become a celebrated orator, leading abolitionist, brilliant statesman and one of the most significant writers in American history. As Blight demonstrates, throughout his long life Douglass never stopped ferociously fighting with his “voice, pen, and vote” for civil and political rights.

Blight will speak at Washington College on Thursday, February 7. The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 5:30 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts. Books will be for sale, and a book signing will follow the talk. The program is sponsored by the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Department of History, and the American Studies Program.

A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Time top 10 book of the year, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom captures the complexity of Douglass’s public and personal life with detail and insight. In a recent Washington Post review, Starr Center Director Adam Goodheart wrote that the book “is not just a deeply researched birth-to-death chronology but also an extended meditation on what it means to be a prophet. … In Blight’s pages, [Douglass’s] voice again rings out loud and clear, melancholy and triumphant — still prophesying, still agitating, still calling us to action.”

The author of several other acclaimed works on slavery, race and the Civil War era, David W. Blight is Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.  His books include American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, among other awards. Last February, Blight received Washington College’s Award for Excellence in recognition of his scholarly work and his work in the world of public history in furthering research and conversation on slavery and its legacy.

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations.With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Communications and Media Studies Speaker Series Feb. 4 and Mar. 25

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Washington College’s Communication and Media Studies (CMS) Speaker Series resumes this semester with Allison Page, Assistant Professor of Communication and Theatre Arts at Old Dominion University, and Stephanie Brown, visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at St. Louis University, speaking on the issues of race and gender, respectively.

Page’s talk, “ ‘Meet, Help, Become a Slave…to Better Understand History’: Race and Agency in Educational Videogames” is set for Feb. 4, and Brown’s presentation “Open Mic?: Gender, Labor, and Gatekeeping in Stand-up Comedy,” will be March 25. Both events, held at Litrenta Lecture Hall in the Toll Science Center, are free and open to the public. Page’s talk begins at 4:30 p.m. and Brown’s begins at 5:30.

Page, who holds a joint appointment in Old Dominion’s Humanities Institute, focuses on critical cultural studies of race and mediated technologies. Her presentation will examine the educational role-playing videogame Flight to Freedom, part of the Mission U.S. series of games designed to teach middle school students about the history of slavery in the United States. Through an analysis of the game as well as the broader educational agenda and policy discourse in which Flight to Freedom is situated, Page argues that the game is a technology of racialized citizenship, part of a longer legacy of public media works that govern race.

Allison Page and Stephanie Brown

Brown, whose research looks at the intersections of gender, comedy, and popular culture, will discuss how stand-up comedy tends to produce and exacerbate gendered and racial inequality, especially at the local, least formalized levels. Like other cultural industries, stand-up is marked by short-term precarious employment, informal networks of entry, and a lack of managerial structure or formal policies on diversity and inclusion. Brown’s presentation will also touch on the ways in which women, especially queer women and women of color, are treated within the stand-up industry—locally, nationally, and in digital spaces—as outsiders who must constantly prove their worth through a shifting and slippery set of aesthetic and cultural norms that reinforce masculine dominance both on and offstage.

The CMS Speaker Series is dedicated to advancing discourse and learning around contemporary issues in communication and media studies across disciplines.For more information on the CMS program, please visit https://www.washcoll.edu/departments/communication-and-media-studies/ or contact Prof. Alicia Kozma at akozma2@washcoll.edu

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations.With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Nationally Renowned Fiction Writers Coming to Rose O’ Neill Literary House

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The Washington College Department of English and Rose O’ Neill Literary House are teaming up this spring to bring four of the country’s most compelling fiction writers to the College and the Chestertown community as part of the Literary House & Sophie Kerr Reading Series.

Starting on Feb. 5, the semester features readings by acclaimed authors Lucy Corin, Edward P. Jones, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Rion Amilcar Scott. All readings, which are free and open to the public, will be held at the Lit House and begin at 4:30 p.m.

Feb. 5, Lucy Corin. Corin is the author of the short story collections One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses (McSweeney’s Books, 2013) and The Entire Predicament (Tin House Books, 2007), as well as the novel Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls (FC2, 2004). Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Harper’s Magazine, Ploughshares, Tin House, and the New American Stories anthology (Vintage Contemporaries, 2015). She was an American Academy of Arts and Letters Rome Prize winner and an NEA fellow in literature in 2016. Currently at work on a novel, The Swank Hotel, Corin has a BA from Duke University and an MFA from Brown University. A professor at the University of California, Davis, Corin teaches in the English department and creative writing program.

February 28, Edward P. Jones. Jones is the author of two collections of short stories: Lost in the City (Amistad Press, 1992), winner of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and All Aunt Hagar’s Children (Amistad Press, 2006). Jones’s novel The Known World (Amistad Press, 2003) won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Lannan Literary Award, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In addition to winning the PEN/Malamud Award in 2010, Jones has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Jones currently teaches fiction writing at George Washington University and lives in Washington, D.C.

Top – Lucy Corin, Edward P. Jones. Bottom – Lidia Yuknavitch, Rion Amilcar Scott

On March 19, Lidia Yuknavitch. Yuknavitch is the author of national bestselling novels The Book of Joan (Harper, 2017) and The Small Backs of Children (Harper, 2015), winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award’s Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader’s Choice Award, the novel Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books, 2012), and a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence (Routledge, 2000). Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water (Hawthorne Books, 2011) was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader’s Choice. A book based on her recent TED Talk, The Misfit’s Manifesto (Simon & Schuster/TED Books), was released in October 2017. Her writing has also appeared in Guernica Magazine, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Another Chicago Magazine, The Sun,Exquisite Corpse, TANK, and in the anthologies Life As We Show It: Writing on Film (City Lights Publishers, 2009), Wreckage of Reason: XXperimental Prose by Contemporary Women Writers (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008), Forms at War (FC2, 2009), Feminaissance (Les Figues Press, 2010), and RePresenting Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire (SUNY, 1996), as well as online at The Rumpus. She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches both in person and online. She received her doctorate in Literature from the University of Oregon.

On April 11, Rion Amilcar Scott. Scott’s short story collection, Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016) was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Rumpus, among others. The World Doesn’t Require You, his sophomore story collection, is forthcoming from Liveright.

Each event will be followed by a book sale and signing. For more information, see our Literary Events Brochure here: www.washcoll.edu/live/files/8293-2018-19-literary-events-brochure, or visit the Literary House website at www.washcoll.edu/centers/lithouse. More information about the Sophie Kerr Department can be found here: www.washcoll.edu/departments/english/sophie-kerr-legacy/

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

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