In the news | Wheaton College

Love of the game July 30, 2010 Michael Graca

Scholar-athlete talks about his passion for competition

Wheaton's intercollegiate athletics program takes great pride in the performance of its teams.

The college's athletics web site currently touts the fact that the program ranked 53rd in the country among NCAA Division III schools, according to the Learfield. The site also highlights Wheaton's eight NCAA national championships, 13, ECAC titles, and 84 NEWMAC regular season and tournament crowns.

All legitimate reasons for pride. Distance runner Sean Astle highlights another reason to boast about Wheaton's sports. The college fields scholar-athletes who take learning and school very seriously, he tells the Fairfield Citizen.

"We try, as a team, to become Academic All-Americans," Astle said. "We got that this year."

And by the way, he adds, "Some of my best friends are teammates and they're national champions."
Wheaton bound June 27, 2010 Michael Graca

The inspiring story of a first-year student

Summer brings with it small announcements from newspapers around the country about outstanding students headed to Wheaton in the fall.

This one from the New York Daily News caught our attention. Francine Camacho graduated from the Brooklyn Academy of Science and Engineering as its valedictorian, and the story of how she achieved her goals is inspiring, to say the least. (President Ronald Crutcher congratulated Francine personally and spoke at BASE's graduation ceremony.)

"I wanted to be different," the 17-year-old said yesterday. "I wanted to be the exception. School was my way out."
Commencement redux June 20, 2010 Michael Graca

Reflecting on Wheaton’s graduation ceremony

One month after Wheaton's commencement, the avalanche of commentary on Wheaton's commencement and Ann Curry's address has largely passed.

With the spotlight fading, the college's assistant vice president for communications, Michael Graca, offered a few closing thoughts on the viral nature of news today in a guest column published by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The essay offers a brief insight into just how much attention Wheaton received from the initial faux pas, not to mention Ann Curry's later appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

In today's online media environment, it's possible to know just how big a story has become even as it develops. Thanks to Web analytics, we knew that in the first 24 hours, visitors to WheatonCollege.edu increased more than tenfold from the daily average before the speech, and that more than 1.2 million people had read about our graduation and watched the video on the Internet.
Wheaton IQ May 28, 2010 Michael Graca

Ann Curry and Jimmy Fallon show off their Lyons’ knowledge

The blogosphere and Twitterverse had some fun at Ann Curry's expense this week, mocking her for the mistake she made at Wheaton's 175th comencement.

Ah, well, last night Ann joined Jimmy Fallon on Late Night to poke fun at herself and tell the world a little bit about what makes Wheaton College (in Norton, Mass.) special.

The early reviews from Twitter give Curry an A-plus for her sense of humor and a much-improved score on her knowledge of Wheaton.

Go Lyons!
Gone viral May 27, 2010 Michael Graca

Ann Curry, Wheaton’s 175th commencement and social media

College commencements yield a few big stories every year: the big-name speakers and their words of wisdom, student and faculty protests of aforementioned big-name speakers, the stories of amazing graduates and more.

Wheaton found itself at the center of one such story this year, after welcoming NBC news anchor Ann Curry to campus for the 175th commencement. At the start of her speech, the Emmy Award-winning journalist expressed her admiration for the college's distinguished graduates ... the other Wheaton College's graduates. She moved on, her audience recovered and she ended her speech to a standing ovation.

After she learned of her mistake, Curry apologized to the entire college community in an open letter. But that would not be the end of it.

The Boston Globe took note of the gaffe on the following Monday and the floodgates opened. Mainstream media outlets such as the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune covered the story. The standard bearers of the new media universe (Huffington Post, the Talking Points Memo blog, Gawker.com, the Daily Beast, etc.)

U.S. News & World Report wrote about the remarkable way in which the news spread through the social media.

Whew! All this attention doesn't even mention the 1.3 million times that the college's video of her speech has been loaded (as of May 27) or the hundreds of tweets on the subject.

Our favorite comment, though, was posted by a member of the Class of 2010 on boston.com.

At first, I just assumed Curry was making a joke... until she mentioned Lesley Stahl, who *did* graduate from our Wheaton. Then I thought to myself, "well, that's unfortunate..."

Regardless, Curry's speech was really very good, besides that blunder, and she delivered it with a lot of emotion. The two other honorary degree recipients (Dr. Gillian M. Shepherd '70 and Diana Davis Spencer '60) gave excellent speeches, too. Ms. Curry's apology, as others have said, was heartfelt and didn't pin responsibility on someone else. My class was lucky to have her speak at our commencement.
Memory song May 13, 2010 Michael Graca

World premiere of alum’s opera

When Gardner McFall '74 was 14, her Navy pilot father's plane went down in the Pacific. Albert Dodge McFall's body was never found.

The loss has had such a profound impact on her life that it inspired McFall to write a book of poetry about the experience called The Pilot's Daughter. Now that book is the inspiration for a libretto she has written for the Seattle Opera. The libretto (the text of an opera) is both based on her life and includes real elements taken directly from it.

The opera company, under general director Speight Jenkins, commissioned her to write the libretto for the two-hour American opera Amelia, which has flight as a theme and is believed to be the first opera to deal with the Vietnam War experience.

The opera, which premiered earlier this month, was highlighted by National Public Radio on its evening news program, All Things Considered.

For Gardner McFall, the opera Amelia is the goodbye she never got to say to her father.

"Although my book of poems was an elegy to him, it's still a book of poems," McFall says. "And this opera will potentially go out into the world. And anytime his name is sung, his name will be there on the air. And it will live."

The Wheaton Quarterly profiled McFall in its Fall 2009 issue. Along with the NPR story, the public radio website features the Wheaton alumna reading her poem, Missing.
New readers April 25, 2010 Michael Graca

Examining the intersection of children’s literature and technology

Technology and communications experts heralded the arrival of the iPad with predictions that it would change Americans' mobile computing and media habits.

One of the first things that senior Dana Payes noticed was its embrace of children's literature. (Every iPad comes pre-installed with a copy of A.A. Milne's kiddie classic, Winnie the Pooh.)

The English major, who is currently working on a senior seminar research project concerning the intersection of technology and books for kids, sees Apple's embrace of children as a clever marketing ploy, but she also believes that no e-reader, whatever its strengths, can replace a paper book.

Payes wrote a short essay on the subject with the help of her advisor, Professor of English Paula Krebs, and The Baltimore Sun published it on Friday, April 23. The pair lauded the iPad's promise as a means for encouraging reading activities between child and parent, but they wrote:

We can share technology with our kids. But let's not mistake reading a book on an iPad for reading a book. Reading an electronic version of "The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People" on a train is not the same thing as reading an iPad bedtime story with your kids.

Prior to the iPad's introduction, the senior from Rockville, Maryland, says that children's literature has been mostly unavailable in e-reader format.

"In my paper I am exploring the reasons why this market went neglected for so long. I am focusing on three contributing factors: inability for technology to accommodate illustrations, inability for new media to reproduce parental nostalgia, and the fear that children will be more media literate than their parents."

The research builds off Payes' lifetime fascination with the stories of childhood. "I have always been interested in children's literature and I wondered how or if e-readers would accommodate children's books," she said. "Even with iPad’s new, smart effort to reach out to parents, this paper aims to emphasize that new media experience is an exploration in new media that is unequivocally different than reading a physical book."
Matched set April 19, 2010 Michael Graca

Professor and his best friend share the spotlight

Meet Jay Goodman and Max Berson-Goodman.

Jay is a professor of political science now celebrating his 45th year of teaching at the college. Enrollment in his courses fill one of the college's largest lecture halls; alums recall his classes with delight.

Max has achieved his own measure of fame as a canine ambassador for Wheaton. (His name has been invoked by applicants for admission.)

Now the pair are receiving some well-deserved attention in their home city. Providence Journal columnist Mark Patinkin penned a wry piece about the ... ah ... similarities between Max and Jay for the Sunday edition of the newspaper.

Similarities, you ask? We'll let Mr. Patinkin explain:

They shared the same slow gait, relaxed air, and then there was the similarity in styling. Each had great clouds of white hair. When the wind blew, their manes ruffled the same way.

I have long felt that many dog owners look like their dogs, but I have seldom seen a better example than Jay and Max.

In any case, while we enjoyed the Journal's article, we couldn't help but notice that it was missing something that seems rather essential to appreciating how well the pair go together: a picture of the two.

We can fix that problem with a few images from the college's photo collection!

Photographer Nicki Pardo snapped these shots of the pair as they patrolled the campus during Wheaton's 2005 commencement.
Eloquent Oaks April 1, 2010 Michael Graca

New music recital features Wheaton grad

The hard work of building a blacksmith's hut served as the inspiration for new music that will be aired at a Wheaton recital this month.

Wheaton graduate Travis Worthley's new composition, Eloquent Oaks, will be one of a number of new pieces to be featured at a recital of new music on April 5th. The Boston Globe took note of the upcoming concert in the paper's April 1, edition.

“In a sense, this piece is about having an inner dialogue with your building materials, be they musical or otherwise,’’ he writes in the program notes.

In addition to Worthley's work, the recital will feature several songs by Professor of Music Ann Sears; two pieces by well-known Cambridge composer Howard Frazin; and work by Kota Nakamura, Vanessa Wheeler, Joshua Hahn, and Erin Huelskamp.

Eloquent Oaks will not be the first Worthley composition to be played at a Wheaton concert. The college's Great Woods Chamber Orchestra premiered his work Life in New England in 2007.
Video halo March 25, 2010 Michael Graca

Professor discusses the potential benefits of video-game playing

The idea that playing video games could actually be good for you excites people, particularly young men.

As a result, the research conducted by Assistant Professor of Psychology Rolf Nelson about the impact that video game playing has on gamers continues to attract attention.

Men's Health Today caught up with Professor Nelson recently to talk with him about the research. The result? A feature article on their web site, and on more than 150 news web sites across the United States, emphasizes the positive aspects of his studies. Here's how they introduced the subject:

Could there be benefits to playing “Halo” for hours on end … besides getting really good at “Halo”?

Over the past few years, research has shown that video games can give you an edge at some real-world skills. Actual, useful skills, stuff that will come in handy at times other than when you happen to come across an energy sword.

Professor Nelson's research findings, which have been published in the journal Perception, indicate that playing different kinds of video games changes the way people think and approach their surroundings. For example, people who play fast-paced "shooter" games tend to react more quickly immediately after playing those games. They will sacrifice accuracy for the sake of speed, Nelson says. Meanwhile, strategy games encourage greater reflection, encouraging slower response times but greater accuracy.

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