CHASS Category
05.03.2013
The Alumni Association is honoring 21 NC State professors with the 2013 Faculty Awards for their outstanding work in the classroom, in the laboratory and in the field. We talked (via email) with some of the recipients about their work and the keys to being a successful professor.
Today we’re visiting with Chris Anson, University Distinguished Professor of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Anson, who is also director of the Campus Writing & Speaking Program, is one of two professors being recognized as Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professors.
What prompted you to become a professor? My fascination with writing — how it works, how it’s learned, how it varies across a vast array of disciplinary, professional, and social contexts — took me first into a master’s in creative writing and then into a doctoral program in the then-nascent field of writing studies. In both those programs, I also started teaching first-year students how to be stronger and more self-aware writers. Although I might have pursued a career in industry or publishing, it was these first experiences working closely with students that drew me into the professoriate, where I could continue my research on the nature and acquisition of writing while also contributing to the education of college students. Before long, I was working with graduate students as a mentor both in their research and in their own development as teachers.
What are the keys to being a successful teacher/professor? It’s tempting for us to focus our attention and energy inward, and to see ourselves and our knowledge as the key to students’ learning. Only when we start thinking about the students and what they bring into the classroom, and what they do to learn the complex and challenging skills and knowledge of our courses, do we begin to understand how to teach. This principle often gets translated into catchy phrases that characterize our role, such as “sage on the stage vs. guide by the side,” or “ref. vs. coach.” But these phrases do point to a deep ideological difference between assuming it’s completely up to the students to figure out how to learn the material, or putting in the energy to help them be successful learners, using a wide range of tools and methods. There’s deep value in being attentive to what best facilitates students’ learning, and to finding ways to get “windows” into their learning process (for example, through brief, low-stakes writing assignments designed more as a medium for learning than as a test of what’s already been learned).
What gives you the greatest satisfaction as a professor? Engagement. That is, when students become completely engaged in the material of my course and when their intellectual growth becomes visible as a result. I get great satisfaction from carefully working out a process or a set of activities or an assignment that yields visible student engagement and deep thinking. With graduate students, this often involves thinking or working together as co-researchers. I also love to see the transformative results of students’ learning, when they say or demonstrate that our work has changed them and caused them to see something differently and more deeply. Finally, teaching isn’t something one learns early on and then enacts the same way for an entire career. The conditions of teaching, the students we teach, our disciplines, and the social contexts of learning all continue to evolve, which makes teaching a lifelong, intellectually engaging challenge.
04.24.2013
The Alumni Association is honoring 21 NC State professors with the 2013 Faculty Awards for their outstanding work in the classroom, in the laboratory and in the field. We talked (via email) with some of the recipients about their work and the keys to being a successful professor.
Today we’re visiting with John Morillo, an associate professor of English literature in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Morillo is one of seven professors being recognized as Alumni Association Outstanding Teachers.
What prompted you to become a professor? Several things probably combined to guide me toward becoming a professor. First, both of my parents were professors (English and Philosophy), so you could say it was in my blood. Second, while I remember both of them sitting with stacks of bluebooks to grade, I also remember that they rarely complained about their jobs and how well they used the great degree of freedom both had in terms of scheduling their time, especially compared to my uncle who worked for a large corporation and was on always on the clock. I am grateful to them for always using their summers for family travel, a crucial kind of education itself. Third, I had enough outstanding teachers as part of my own student experience, and at every level from high school to graduate school, to cause me to admire their work and want to emulate them (thank you Diego Gonzales, Ed Segel and Michael Murrin). Fourth, when I finally started teaching as a doctoral graduate assistant, I really liked how it was as rewarding as it was difficult. That fourth stage also coincided with my realizing that I was much less of an introvert than I thought I was, that I liked talking with people, and how I liked the performance high of teaching as a kind of live theater.
What are the keys to being a successful teacher/professor? I think some keys to being successful at teaching are knowing how to listen, and knowing how and when to change. I think at the university level it also has a lot to do with what I absorbed from my parents, a lesson in using time: to be willing to spend time first on others, then yourself, and to find reward in that hierarchy of values.
What gives you the greatest satisfaction as a professor? My greatest satisfaction is in helping my students see that the interdependent skills of thinking, reading and writing well can help them not only to do good work, but also to live good lives.
04.16.2013
The Alumni Association and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences are hosting a book signing and reading to celebrate the release of novels by Jill McCorkle, professor of practice of creative writing at NC State, and Elaine Neil Orr, a professor of English at NC State, on Wednesday, April 24, at the University Club. The event includes a seated dinner with an opportunity to hear the authors read and answer questions during dinner. After dinner, the authors will be available to autograph their novels. Registration closes Wednesday, April 17.
McCorkle is the author of four collections of short stories and six novels, five of which have been named as New York Times Notable Books. Her most recent, Life After Life, published by Algonquin Books in March, centers on the lives of several residents and workers at the Pine Haven Retirement Community in the fictional Fulton, N.C.
Much of Orr’s debut novel, A Different Sun, is set in Nigeria, where she spent much of her childhood growing up as a child of missionaries. Her novel draws on the real-life 1853 diary of the wife of a missionary from Georgia who moved to Nigeria.
Look for interviews with McCorkle and Orr, as well as excerpts from their new novels, in the summer issue of NC State magazine, accompanied by an interview with NC State professor Wilton Barnhardt, whose novel, Lookaway, Lookaway, is due out in August.
McCorkle and Orr spoke with freelance writer and former NC State editor Cherry Crayton about their writing process, books that influenced them and their next projects. Today, we feature excerpts from the interview with McCorkle. Yesterday, we posted excerpts from the interview with Orr.
You’ve written about your father’s hospitalizations and the fact that he suffered from depression. Has that influenced your writing? I look back now and see that my childhood seems pretty easy and pampered compared to what I know so many go through, but I think I was really aware of the darker parts of adulthood when I was a child. I think I had worries that most 7- and 8-year-olds don’t have. I shouldn’t say most, but some. …It’s like everything else on the journey, you can’t regret anything out there or you wouldn’t be where you are now. You can’t start pulling threads away.
Where do your ideas for stories and novels come from? It is that combination of what you see blending with imagination. Imagination is a key part of our experience. We see something we don’t understand, but our brain is determined to make sense of it and to keep firing suggestions as to what might be the reason this is happening. I like to tell my students that it is your brain’s job to be a couple of steps ahead of you seeking reasons. So if you’re always walking around with your eyes and ears opens open you can’t help but see a whole lot of stories.
Just yesterday, I went online and there was a news story about a gym teacher stealing from students. Your first thought is, “Who is this person?” I found myself all day yesterday thinking of the message there and the implications. …There’s a story there, and if you follow that story, you will find something really human.
Life After Life is set in Fulton, which is also the setting in many of your other novels and which you’ve said is based on your hometown of Lumberton, N.C. Why do you keep going back there? For people who know my novel Ferris Beach, Abby [a 12-year-old in Life After Life] is living in the same house as Katie [one of the characters in Ferris Beach]. And the cemetery behind Pine Haven is in both books. You wouldn’t know it, but I know it. I’ve constructed this universe, and I guess it’s a lot easier to stay with that. It also looks a lot like Lumberton looked when I was about 8 or 10 years. I just scooted Lumberton about 30 minutes to the coast.
What’s challenging for you when you’re writing? It’s not enough to just accumulate parts on the page. You have to then really pick and choose and decide what deserves attention and why. To me that’s the real challenge of putting a novel together, and the real exciting part.
What were some early books you read that made a big impression on you? In sixth grade, the book I was asked to not check out anymore was Where the Red Ferns Grow. As a kid, I was much more drawn to biography, and the ones I read incessantly over and over again were those of Helen Keller, Marie Curie and Abraham Lincoln. And then I was pretty young in junior high when I read Diary of a Young Girl and Little Women. I think to be a young person who wants to write — the combination of Jo March, Anne Frank and Helen Keller — they are all so much about just trying to put life into perspective.
What are some recent books you read that you’d recommend to others? I will have to say Ron Rash’s book of short stories, Nothing Gold Can Stay. And Holly Goddard Jones’ The Next Time You See Me — that was one I could not put down.
What are you working on now? I’ve got a new novel started, and a whole batch of ideas for short stories for I’ve gotten while working on the novel and didn’t have time to work on. And there’s a play I really want to try. I’ve never done a play. I’m very interested in monologues and the power of a single voice telling a story.
04.15.2013
The Alumni Association and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences are hosting a book signing and reading to celebrate the release of novels by Jill McCorkle, professor of practice of creative writing at NC State, and Elaine Neil Orr, a professor of English at NC State, on Wednesday, April 24, at the University Club. The event includes a seated dinner with an opportunity to hear the authors read and answer questions during dinner. After dinner, the authors will be available to autograph their novels. Registration closes Wednesday, April 17.
McCorkle is the author of four collections of short stories and six novels, five of which have been named as New York Times Notable Books. Her most recent, Life After Life, published by Algonquin Books in March, centers on the lives of several residents and workers at the Pine Haven Retirement Community in the fictional Fulton, N.C.
Much of Orr’s debut novel, A Different Sun, is set in Nigeria, where she spent much of her childhood growing up as a child of missionaries. Her novel draws on the real-life 1853 diary of the wife of a missionary from Georgia who moved to Nigeria.
Look for interviews with McCorkle and Orr, as well as excerpts from their new novels, in the summer issue of NC State magazine, accompanied by an interview with NC State professor Wilton Barnhardt, whose novel, Lookaway, Lookaway, is due out in August.
McCorkle and Orr spoke with freelance writer and former NC State editor Cherry Crayton about their writing process, books that influenced them and their next projects. Today, we feature excerpts from the interview with Orr. Tomorrow, we will post excerpts from the interview with McCorkle.
You’ve written scholarly articles and books, poems, memoirs and now your first novel. How have you been able to transition across these various styles of writing? I’m definitely either a scholarly itinerant or itinerant in my writing. I link that to my growing up and living across two continents and various time zones at different times in my life. I naturally move about because of my life of moving about. I’m always curious about what another territory is like, whether it’s an actual territory or an intellectual territory or a creative territory. My sister and I have talked about how we feel about the need to move every three or four years, because that was the pace for us growing up. Every three or four years you need a new world or looking for a new world.
What was the biggest challenge for you while writing your first novel, A Different Sun? Pacing was a big challenge. I don’t know if I have any natural talent, but if I do have any, I think it’s more in poetry or memoir writing, where you’re focused on lyricism and the sound of language and evocation of place and sensibility. You’re not trying to keep a taut plot line. Memoir can be more meandering. Lyric poetry doesn’t even have to meander; it’s just a moment. It was a steep learning curve.
How did you learn to do it? I never took a fiction writing class, so I read and I read and studied exactly how a scene works. It’s like architecture and looking behind the sheetrock. What’s behind this? What’s really holding this up? Or you’re going under a house to look at the all groundwork that is holding up the structure. The edifice you see on the outside and the painted walls are what the readers see, but the writer has to be able to construct all that hidden architecture. And you have to do it in a way to make it seem natural.
What did you learn about writing while completing this novel? I have enormous new respect for novelists that I could have never grasped without writing this novel. Writing even a mediocre novel is an enormous achievement, because you have to do all this research, create a universe, create the histories of people and keep them all a float and moving. I used to think that literary theory was hard, but that was before I encountered novel writing.
Describe your writing process. I love every part it. I love to sit down and begin writing. I love to come back the next day and write. I love to come back on the third day and go through everything I wrote. I love to go take a walk and come back to it. On the walk I think, “Oh, now I know what to do.” I always have to carry something to write with so I don’t forget. When I get a draft, I love to read it aloud. And I love to revise it. I love to do the research. And I love to finish a manuscript and stay away from it for about three months and then go back to it. And I love when you get to the very end and you get to do embroidery. You’ve cut enough and tightened enough that you can put a little touch of beauty to one sentence. I really don’t find any part of it agonizing. I find all parts of somewhere on the scale from enlivening to thrilling.
In your memoir, Gods of Noonday, published in 2005, you not only wrote about being a child of Baptist missionaries who served in Nigeria but also having end-stage renal disease and needing a kidney transplant. How is your health these days? My health is really good. I haven’t felt this well since I was in my 30s. It has been 12 years since I had my transplants, and the window just keeps opening.
Has your health influenced your writing? It gave me a sense of urgency. When I was doing my M.A. at Louisville, I published a poem on the Ethiope River, and I did not come back to the Ethiope River until I wrote that memoir 22 years later. I had wanted to write about Nigeria for a long time, but I didn’t give myself permission. When I was ill, that was the time to write about Nigeria because I didn’t know if I would live. If I was going to have a limited amount of time, writing about Nigeria was the last thing I was going to do. And then I had time for another book and now another book.
What book are you writing now? I’ve started a novel that is set in North Carolina. I went to first grade in Winston-Salem. And in this novel, rather than the U.S. going to Africa, Africa comes to the U.S. It’s still transatlantic, but it’s more contemporary and set in the 1960s.
What have been some important books in your life? I was good in English, but my reading life wasn’t important to me in Nigeria. It didn’t begin until I came to the U.S.; because when I came to the U.S., I was completely lost and in culture shock. I began to read contemporary novels – the novels of the 1960s and 1970s. I was reading Saul Bellows’ Dangling Man and Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut and Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. From those novels, what I learned was that other people were confused and lost and searching, too. Literature became my home…… I really didn’t start reading African literature until I started writing my memoir in the 1990s. I realized that I couldn’t write my own book about West Africa until I read other books by West African writers.
What books by writers from Africa would you recommend? The Famished Road by Ben Okri, and Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee.
What’s a book you read recently that you’d recommend to others? Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, a fictionalized memoir of growing up in Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka.
03.26.2013
Brenna Eckerson has always had an eye for good stories.
Growing up in Manteo, N.C., Eckerson remembers her first high school job as an usher for Roanoke Island’s “Lost Colony” production and its influence on her passion for storytelling. “Honestly, I just told people where to sit, but I took the job because I’d be near the theater,” she says. After graduating from NC State in 2002 with a degree in mass communications, Eckerson learned to channel her creative energy into screen writing – a skill that’s made her invaluable in the television business.
Prior to joining the Distillery Pictures team as a writer, producer and developer in 2006, Eckerson had already earned post production credits on a number of Discovery Health programs, including “Surviving Sextuplets and Twins,” the show that first shed light on the infamous Gosselin family.
Eckerson says her current project, “Salvage Dawgs” – a documentary-style series starring Robert Kulp and Mike Whiteside, the charismatic co-owners of Virginia-based architectural antique shop Black Dog Salvage – is different than anything she’s ever produced. “In addition to character-based reel,” she says, “this show also falls into the category of object-based reality TV.”
“Salvage Dawgs” gives viewers a colorful glimpse into the business of antique reclamation, repurposing and resale. The show’s stars, Kulp and Whiteside, bid on condemned structures to recover architectural artifacts of America’s past – everything from doors and windows to light fixtures and garden statues. “I love the historical aspect of the homes and buildings,” Eckerson says. “If the guys weren’t doing this work, these pieces would end up in a dump somewhere.”
Eckerson laughs as she describes Kulp and Whiteside. “They’re polar opposites, but they balance each other out nicely,” she says. “Tons of fun, tons of personality.”
With a project like “Salvage Dawgs,” Eckerson’s work is a hybrid of several jobs, including field producer, series producer, and series creator and developer. How are the jobs different? “In some ways, I’m currently wrapped up in all those titles for the show,” she explains. “Field producers usually act – at least in the context of the docu-drama and docu-reality genres – as a director in addition to field producing.”
Eckerson (in yellow hat) at work on the show
“Series producers,” Eckerson continues, “oversee an entire series to ensure consistency of tone and character development.” Series creators and developers, by contrast, often work in a more collaborative capacity. “There’s usually a team of us figuring out what the format is going to be,” she says. “We assess each character’s strengths and weaknesses, focus on satisfying the client, and try to decide what the audience wants to see.”
A producer’s role in “Salvage Dawgs” also involves “lots of traveling back-and-forth” from Roanoke, Va., where the show is filmed, to Trailblazer Studios’ production facility in Raleigh, N.C. “I was on all six initial episodes,” Eckerson says. “As far as the information goes, I go out in the field and work with the story and stars, but we’re currently working on the development aspect here at the studio – conducting interviews, holding content meetings, etc.”
One of Eckerson’s favorite aspects of “Salvage Dawgs” is the versatility of its appeal. “The thing I particularly love about this show,” she says, “is that people of all ages and both genders gravitate towards it – some to the construction and deconstruction processes, and others to the creativity and artistry.”
Eckerson shares her pride in the show’s recent promotion to one of the Do-it-Yourself Network’s primetime spots. “We were also just green-lighted for several additional episodes,” she says, “so we we’re really excited.”
Ultimately, Eckerson’s passion for “Salvage Dawgs” derives from her original appreciation of storytelling and context – bridges built between past, present, and future. “It’s carrying on the workmanship of yesteryear into 2013 and beyond.”
—Lindsay Williams
03.04.2013
In the eastern reaches of North Carolina, where the coast weaves in and out to form secluded coves and communities, live the people of the Core Sound. These people, and their lives in commercial fishing, have been the subject of study by William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of English Walt Wolfram and video producer Neal Hutcheson, both of NC State.
Wolfram and Hutcheson, who have produced five documentaries showcasing the diversity of accents, dialect and culture of North Carolina communities across the state, have reunited to create their sixth documentary and the second one about the people of the Core Sound as part of The North Carolina Language and Life Project.
The new documentary, “Core.Sounders,” premieres March 14 at the N.C. Museum of History in downtown Raleigh. The film covers the economic struggles the fishing communities face. “There are lots of cultural issues (down east) and one of the important ones in this region is the commercial fishing,” says Wolfram. “It’s not only the language (or dialect) we’re interested in, but it’s also the traditions. The documentary will talk about culture, the challenges of development and also the fishing industry.”
People in the Core Sound have a long, rich history of fishing, and Wolfram and Hutcheson want this documentary to showcase that. “People have made a living for generations and now it’s changing and competing with (a lot of things),” says Wolfram. “The fishing industry is not nearly as viable, people can’t make a living. It’s not simply about fishing it’s an entire lifestyle.
Part of displaying that lifestyle for Wolfram and Hutcheson is through the events surrounding the premiere. “One of the things that will sort of show the community context is following the film, a panel of people from Core Sound will be there, including some of the people in the film,” says Wolfram. “We hope that the whole theme from hors d’oeuvres to panel to production will present community in a context that premieres usually don’t do.”
The premiere of this documentary marks the end of a lot of hard work and weeks spent working to put this film together. Hutcheson, a 1992 NC State grad, took several trips to the Core Sound and stayed with the people to get the story right and the full effect of what’s happening.
“One of the important dimensions of this film is the community has been involved in this, which is unusual,” says Hutcheson. “We have input from professionals and input from the community. We have spent years there … it’s a very vested project.”
The Core Sound people were the subject five years ago of Hutcheson and Wolfram’s documentary, “The Carolina Brogue.” That feature focused on the unique accents that have developed in the Core Sound because of its history of isolation from surrounding communities.
Hutcheson says his new film could influence North Carolina legislation in a positive way. “I think it has the potential to help,” says Hutcheson. “We’ve captured these people quite accurately and legislation is currently dealing with complicated issues: zoning, development, water quality and fishing regulation. It’s done in an abstract way without understanding who they are.”
Hutcheson knows how much it could mean to the Core Sound people to have their story told. “The people down there have been working to get attention and have a voice and have often been ignored,” says Hutcheson. “We want to help and contribute to the conversation. If this (documentary) helps get attention they need, then I’ll be very happy.”
—Molly Green
03.01.2013
The Center for Student Leadership Ethics & Public Service at NC State sends students who love to serve out into the world on what are known as Alternative Service Breaks. Students can choose between fall, winter or spring break and between programs that feature different countries or more locally-focused service projects. The stories in this series are just a few of many students who will be going out and developing leadership and service skills over spring break, which begins Monday.
E’lexis Brewer, Dominican Republic
Over spring break, E’lexis Brewer will lay aside her student role and don her teaching one.
Brewer, a senior from Powder Springs, Georgia, is traveling to the Dominican Republic for spring break with Outreach360, an organization that works to improve education in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic for first through eighth grade. This education can include English, literacy or health education.
Brewer receives a traditional headwrap in Guatemala
“This year, my group and I will be working with children in Monte Cristi helping to teach English and Spanish-based curriculum,” says Brewer. “We will engage with the children everyday: teaching, learning, and interacting outside of the school.”
Brewer was inspired to take on the Dominican Republic this year because of her trip to Guatemala last spring break.
“In Guatemala, I saw the thirst for education that many children have and wanted to foster that in the Dominican Republic as well,” says Brewer. “We do not only teach the children but they teach us as well.”
Brewer, a sociology major with a Spanish minor, is interested in furthering her understanding of Latin culture as well.
“I have always loved the culture and really loved the experience (in Guatemala),” says Brewer. “I wanted to have that same experience elsewhere so I chose the Dominican Republic. There exists strong pride in Latin culture and I was very intrigued by the customs and traditions which I also hope to learn this time.”
Brewer found out about CSLEPS because of work study. She was assigned to their office and found out about their alternative break program and immediately applied to take the trip to Guatemala..
“Honestly, I cannot describe in enough words how eye opening and wonderful that experience was,” says Brewer. “You go on this trip and you think it will be ‘fun’ but you don’t realize how extremely rewarding and fulfilling it is and you share that experience with people who understand and get that same feeling.”
Brewer doesn’t think the week is too short for life-changing experiences either.
“It sounds crazy to say I experienced so much in one week but it’s true,” says Brewer. “I still reflect on it today and created great friendships that I maintain today.”
She wants that same experience for herself and her team this spring break. That’s part of why she signed up to be a co-leader. Brewer hopes that her team takes away applicable experiences and leadership skills.
“I hope that my team and I come back with a better understanding of the Dominican culture and reflect that experience here in the United States in some way,” says Brewer. “The experience does not have to be profound but my hope and expectation is that everyone comes back with something to take away from the experience whether it is understanding privilege or customs and traditions. I want that experience to translate here and have some effect on how my team feels here.”
—Molly Green
02.27.2013
The Center for Student Leadership Ethics & Public Service at NC State sends students who love to serve out into the world on what are known as Alternative Service Breaks. Students can choose between fall, winter or spring break and between programs that feature different countries or more locally-focused service projects. The stories in this series are just a few of many students who will be going out and developing leadership and service skills over spring break, which begins Monday.
Brittney Garcia, Guatemala
Brittney Garcia’s spring break trip to Guatemala will be a personal and educational experience.
“As a Latina, I am very passionate about the Latino culture in general and being a part of this trip is another opportunity to become immersed into another lifestyle and adapt it as my own,” says Garcia.
Garcia, a senior majoring in international studies with a concentration in international relations, is a team leader for the alternative spring break trip to Guatemala. The team will mostly focus on gender issues in Guatemalan society.
Brittney Garcia, second from left, with host family from previous trip to Guatemala
“One of the reasons I am going is because this is a topic I am very passionate about,” says Garcia, who is from Rockingham, N.C. “I love listening to the different stories women have to share. I feel that personally listening to their stories and all they have gone through helps me understand them a bit more than if I were to read about it.”
On a previous trip to Guatemala, Garcia met many women and girls who changed her life through Starfish One by One, a group that helps girls continue education and find opportunities to use the skills they’ve developed. “One girl, about 15 years old, took care of the accounting for a local school!” she says.
Garcia saw the sorts of problems women and girls are dealing with in Guatemala, like the barriers blocking higher education. “Many of (the girls) had big dreams and aspirations but they knew they would not reach them due to several factors,” says Garcia. “Some of them did not have money, others had to stay home and help their families. It was heartbreaking.”
Garcia hopes to help these girls realize their dreams are achievable. “Here, we are taught to dream and it was difficult to see the faces of little girls who can’t really afford to dream sometimes,” says Garcia. “That is where the organizations we work with come in. They help them realize that their dreams are closer than they think. It is a great project to be a part of.”
The organizations the NC State students will be working with provide the girls with opportunity through internship or other options to achieve goals.
“It is amazing to see how their work really helps many of these girls,” says Garcia. “Mayra, the 15-year-old that manages the accounting for a school, has a big opportunity to help her family through this internship. I hope that in the coming years, more families realize that education would ultimately help them.”
This coming spring break may be Garcia’s second time to Guatemala, but it will be her first experience leading a trip. She was inspired by the leadership of the last trip to become as a leader herself.
“Besides the fact that I fell in love with Guatemala the first time I visited, my team leaders from last year’s trip played a major role in my life as I applied for the position,” she says. “Together, they led by example and exemplified what I believe a true service leader should be like. I think the most important part for me was also the fact that they believed in me enough to tell me to apply. That meant the world to me.”
Garcia hopes to gain a lot more personally on this second trip. “Last year, I went through a lot of personal growth throughout the trip,” she says. “I hope that this year brings the same not only for me, but for our team as well.”
Besides personal growth, Garcia sees her alternative spring break trip as an opportunity to spread education of gender issues and change lives. “I hope to learn more about the culture in Guatemala and share it with others here,” she says. “But, more than anything, I want to come back prepared to become more involved to work with gender issues here in the USA.”
–Molly Green
02.20.2013
Sarah Levitt got her start as an entrepreneur, building a greenhouse business from scratch to one that captured nearly half of the market share in North Carolina. But when she got out of that business four years ago, Levitt found something else that she that she was good at — coaching.
Levitt, a 1991 NC State grad, is a life and business coach based in Raleigh. She works with companies and individual clients to help executives and others become better leaders and find the proper balance between work and personal life. She also speaks at conferences and workshops, and is one of the speakers at the Career Services Webinar Series being held by the Alumni Association. Levitt will be the speaker at two online sessions, one on Feb. 26 on leadership and a second one, on July 9, on work-life balance.
Levitt says her goal is to help individuals realize “their specific dreams and journeys.” She does that, first, by helping them recognize or identify their own dreams, and then helps them find the tools to make those dreams a reality.
“I listen and I reflect and I ask questions to get to the nature of what people really want, what they yearn for,” Levitt says. “They might initially say they don’t know. It may be because they haven’t asked the question or have stuffed it down. Sometimes it’s a surprise, but often it’s not. It’s the kind of thing they’ve known but haven’t accessed in a while.”
Levitt will work with some clients on time management issues, but is mindful that some techniques can add stress rather than relieve it. “I help them find tools they can use to roll through their very busy life in a calm and centered way,” she says.
“As a coach, one of the fundamental messages is this concept of refueling themselves, thinking of their reserves as limited and that life draws down on them. When we are depleted, we don’t do well. I ask people what fuels their bank accounts. People often know, but they don’t give themselves permission to enjoy those things. I’ve had people say that exercise or playing music melts the stress away.”
Levitt says she enjoys working with larger groups, such as those in the Career Services Webinar Series, and one-on-one with individual clients. She says some national speaking events are on the horizon.
“I love what I do,” she says. “People just need a space to be heard, to process their hopes and dreams. We don’t really have a place for that in our society. Often times, life is so incredibly busy that it’s hard to find the time. Coaching is about helping them follow the trail of dreams.”
02.08.2013
Bryan Jones (left) and Hootie Bowman (right)
Bryan Jones never thought he would be a writer.
“I can’t even spell,” Jones says. “I’m atrocious at grammar.”
But 14 years after graduating NC State with a degree in political science, Jones finds himself creating children’s books with Hootie Bowman, who graduated from NC State with a textiles degree in 1997.
The die-hard Wolfpackers Jones and Bowman are the creators of Collegiate Kids Books, a company based in Hickory, N.C. It started with the idea that avid sports fans can be cultivated at a very early age.
The college-themed books are available at university bookstores and at on-campus sports venues. Lauren Jones holds one at the Carter-Finley Stadium store shown here.
Go … Wolfpack … Go! is just one book in the collection. Currently, there are five books in the collection, but Jones plans on expanding. The books are interactive, with scratch-and-sniff items and textures for children to feel. They are tailored to include the landmarks, mascots and well-known establishments of beloved ACC schools.
There’s even one for UNC-Chapel Hill, which wasn’t easy to write, Jones says, even though his mother and wife both went there.
“I still feel like I need to go wash my hands,” Jones says. “It was a little difficult. But really, I want Carolina kids to grow up to be passionate Carolina fans and hate State. I want them to be just as passionate about beating State as we are about beating Carolina.”
Jones was inspired with the idea for the books when his daughter Lauren was born. He was looking for good books to read her before bed. He read books like the N.C. State-centric Hello, Mr. Wuf, by Aimee Aryal and Pat the Bunny, a touch-and-feel book, and realized he could fuse the State themes of the one with the interactive qualities of the other to create his own concept.
“You want your child to love NC State,” says Jones. “I thought I could combine those ideas.”
So he did. Now, Jones and Bowman’s book collection is steadily growing to expand into other conferences besides the ACC.
“We’re coming out with South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn and Clemson maybe as early as March,” says Jones, who adds that the company will eventually produce books about professional teams and even smaller schools. “We’re also going to do the military and Harley-Davidson. We want to do it if there’s a passionate group of people that want to pass that on to a younger generation.”
Now the father of two girls and one boy on the way, Jones hopes to take advantage of his product to get his children invested in the Wolfpack. If they like any other school, he’ll attribute it to a job well done.
“If they like UNC better, maybe I did my job too well with the Tar Heel book,” says Jones. “But, having both of these books kind of negates for one of them to sway (my children) to the other side.”
–Molly Green
Subscribe