INSIDE this issue
Math Center alleviates anxiety....................................... 2 Instructor teaches wilderness medicine in Haiti.............. 4 Staff challenge raises cash for Annual Fund.................... 6 Theater promises fun with Shakespeare play................... 7 Couple creates everlasting fund..................................... 8 Speech team off to good start..................................... 11 Photography students share talents............................. 12
Fall 2011
Volume 5, Number 3
Math education personalized to student’s strengths, weaknesses
MATH CENTER
Math Professor Valerie Harris (teaching above) implemented the new Math Center at CWC with help from instructor Mike Bostick. Central Wyoming College is employing an innovative method for teaching pre-college math courses that gives students instant feedback and instructors the ability to monitor their progress. By utilizing specialized software, students in developmental math courses can use a self-paced
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learning program that is personalized to the individual’s strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to learn more and experience success in ways previously unattainable. “It’s a really robust system,” explained CWC math instructor Mike Bostick, who along with
Professor Val Harris researched the implementation of the software at other institutions and designed a program tailored for CWC students. Harris said that students learn in a masterybased system in the new Math Center which was constructed during the remodel of CWC’s Class(continued on page 3)
Math
software. The student can click on “Help me solve this,” and the program takes the student through it. (continued from page 2) “It is an indispensible tool,” Bostick room Wing last summer. The center said, noting, however, the computer has 34 computer stations and is isn’t always a replacement for the inopen from 8 a.m. until the college structor. closes in the evenings. Walk-ins are Bostick and Harris made sure not to allowed to use the system though eliminate the need for pencil and paper students enrolled in developmental in figuring out math concepts and that math courses have first preference. is the way the classes take quizzes. Each For the student who has been student is also required to keep a noteout of school for some time, the book of their work, which Harris said pre-college math courses give them is a “huge factor” in their success as it the necessary refresher. For the large helps students develop organizational population of students who have skills. math anxiety, the system gives them Math instructor Mike Bostick with Kristina Immenschuh. “I’ve had so many students who say step-by-step instruction to a problem which they do everything in their head,” Bostick said. go through STEM courses, like algebra,” she said. includes both videos and animation. “By forcing them to write it down, we are catch The students are required to be in the Math The center is more informal than the normal ing their mistakes.” Center a minimum of four hours each week and classroom setting, which Bostick said is espe Some of the motivated students in prethen spend an additional eight to 12 hours workcially important for the student to master those college math can get through the class quickly ing on the program on their own, either at home skills so they can move on to college level work. and immediately enroll in a college-level course, or in the lab. “The greatest feature is that it gives you MATH 1000. Those who struggle with certain Harris said the instructors have a rich and instant feedback,” Bostick said, explaining that math concepts can concentrate on learning to flexible set of course materials and tools that he’s had students who make one mistake while overcome them, he said, adding the center “takes offer students a personalized interactive learning completing a problem making the entire problem the stress out of taking math.” environment where they can learn at their own wrong. “This system can find those problems and The Math Center is still a work in progress. “I pace. help the student to fix them immediately,” he think we’ve done a lot of things the right way,” The math instructors are not lecturing to the said. Bostick said. With the remodeling of the Classstudents and therefore can give the students in The purpose of the Math Center is to get room Wing, both Harris’ and Bostick’s office were the center individual attention. the students prepared to take college level scimoved adjacent to the facility so they are always “If they get a problem wrong, it gives them ence, technology, engineering and math (STEM) available to assist students. hints on what they did wrong,” Harris said of the courses, Harris explained. “We’d like for them to
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Instructor offers medicine skills to impoverished Haitian villagers Central Wyoming College English instructor Buck Tilton put his skills in wilderness medicine to work caring for impoverished and sick people in a remote village in Haiti this past summer. Tilton, the founder of the Wilderness Medicine Institute, which is now operated by the National Outdoor Leadership School, taught eager Haitians how to assess illness as well as the basics of splinting and bandaging. Tilton joined a group of first year medical school students on a mission in May to Verrettes, a remote village high in the Haitian mountains about a four-hour drive from the capital of Port-au-Prince. Verrettes was not affected by the 2010 earthquake, though the village has been ravaged by cholera and other water-borne illnesses, HIV and poverty and very limited access to health care. Dr. William Forgey, an instructor at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, asked his old friend Buck, who has published 43 books and thousands of articles on wilderness medicine, to join the mission. Shortly after CWC’s spring commencement, Tilton met with the students in Miami for the trip to the Caribbean island that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. Dr. Forgey founded a program called Medical Student Missions to promote volunteer medical service, and asked Tilton to train students in wilderness medicine as well as the locals. Utilizing the services of a local translator, Tilton demonstrated first aid lessons with his interpreter translating the instruction into Haitian Creole. He focused on assessments of the patients, teaching his students how to ask the right questions to determine ailments and conditions patients might be experiencing. His Haitian students have a history of volunteering and that is how they were selected to receive his instruction. These villagers would walk up the mountain for hours to carry an old woman on a door down to the clinic, Tilton recalled. The medical mission left the volunteers with a litter for their subsequent missions to aid the sick and injured.
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(continued on page 5)
Buck Tilton, right, is pictured with his Haitian interpreter Jean Eric Croyance, who translated Tilton’s instruction into Haitian Creole. Below is a group of medical students volunteering for Medical Student Missions in Haiti. Tilton trained locals, as well as the students, in wilderness medicine last summer.
Haitian villagers (continued from page 4)
Tilton also helped out at the village’s clinic. “Every day a hundred, or two or three hundred, line up and wait with torpid patience to be examined and given a packet of Advil or an anti-diarrheal or a vitamin,” he said. “The ones who test positive for HIV are told, sorry, there’s nothing we can do, but we recommend you visit the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at the other end of the valley…where it is most likely you will be told there’s nothing we can do. I don’t say that last part out loud, but I know it’s true,” Tilton wrote of his summer visit. Verrettes is the epicenter of the cholera epidemic though many of the patients had a variety of illnesses that could be treated by Tilton’s brand of outdoor medicine. “That’s the kind of medicine they have,” he said. “It’s quite a ways to a hospital.” There is no running water in the village so the children, who called Tilton “Blanc” because of his white skin, bring plastic jugs to a spring that offers the only source of cholera-free water in the area. Hunger and the illnesses that follow on extreme poverty are prevalent, which gave Buck a feeling of total hopelessness for his short-term Haitian home. The mountain people of Verrettes are relatively fortunate over their neighbors in Port-auPrince where more than a million people are still living in tents or under tattered tarps. “At least
those one million people are alive,” Tilton wrote, “not the nearly quarter million that died within hours of the start of the earthquake of January 2010.” His mountain community that once had a carpet of green and flowering trees is now barren and rocky. “Trees make coals, coals cook goat, and 9.75 million people, the current population of Haiti, gotta eat,” he wrote. The earthquake and its aftermath is what brought Tilton to Haiti in the first place. The Every day, up to 300 villagers would come to the country is slightly smaller than Maryland with clinic in Verrettes, the epicenter of the cholera double the number of residents . . .”a nation epidemic in Haiti. with all its arable land planted yet unable to produce enough food to feed half its 9.75 million inhabitants. The nation feeds the other half with imported food given to them by fatter nations.” “There is no food…no jobs, and they can’t afford to leave the country because they don’t have any money,” he added. Yes, Haiti is a thin nation. The people are thin, the goats are thin, the few trees are thin, the soil is thin – and hope is thin. I have handed out a few tablets of amoxicillin, spoken encouragement through an interpreter, spoken doom to others, eaten their goat and their papaya – I will go home, I decide, taking more than I leave behind. I smile and wave to the smiling children, calling out “Oui, blanc. Mersi, mersi.”
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CWC
Cha
llen
ge
Finish
College groups rise to challenge in fund raising event The employees at Central Wyoming College have challenged one another to a “Race to the Finish”. The faculty, classified and professional employee associations along with student organizations, administrators, CWC Board of Trustees and the Foundation’s board and staff are in a competition to see which group can raise the most money for the CWC Foundation’s Annual Appeal. The race began Nov. 1 and the group with the best participation percentage as well as the greatest amount donated, has race cars moving along a track that is being displayed throughout campus. Results are also posted each week on various college messaging systems to stir the competition. Dean for Institutional Advancement Dane Graham has met with the individual groups asking
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them “to rise to the challenge” with the aim of helping CWC’s Annual Fund to grow. “In times like this, when endowments produce less revenue, the Annual Fund matters more than ever for CWC,” Graham said. “The funds allow the Foundation to work with the college to address the institution’s critical needs, strategic priorities and unexpected challenges and opportunities.” When individuals donate, either through payroll deduction or by making a pledge to the Annual Fund, they get to choose a little race car to enter in the Dec. 2 rally event. The group with the most racing points going into race day, coupled with bonus points earned for winning the rally will be crowned champions. The goal for the month-long challenge is to raise a total of $5,000 in support of the college, and to have fun while doing it, Graham explained.
The winning participant group will be treated to a pizza party at the home of President Jo Anne McFarland. “The event lasts for one month, but the spirit of support and giving will last throughout the year,” Graham said. The employee challenge kicks off the CWC Foundation’s Annual Fund campaign which also includes generous supporters outside of the college, who will be receiving giving reminders before year’s end. “A successful Annual Fund is vitally important to CWC’s financial well being,” Graham said. “Now, more than ever, CWC needs the help of its friends and supporters to continue to accomplish our important mission of innovation and excellence in education.”
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Shakespeare play is beauty, comedy and love
Central Wyoming College theater director Mike Myers doesn’t want theater patrons to miss the CWC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream because it was written four centuries ago by William Shakespeare. “We are doing everything to make it entertaining and fun,” Myers said of the Shakespeare comedy CWC stages Nov. 11-13 and Nov. 18-20 on the Robert A. Peck Arts Center stage. “People shouldn’t assume that they are not going to understand or like it. They should give it a chance.” Don’t be turned off by the narrative poetry. Instead enjoy the comedy as a brash group of incompetent laborers go into the enchanted woods to prepare a play to celebrate a wedding. Enjoy the romance of two other couples that is complicated by the magic of mischievous fairies. Overlook the silliness of its story and concentrate upon its unique lyrical qualities. Fear no Shakespeare. “It’s not a heavy play,” Myers emphasizes of
Shakespeare’s comedy about two couples in love with the wrong partners. “It’s about romance, magic, love and comedy.” The director always tells his students they may be unable to understand every line in a Shakespeare play. “It doesn’t matter. You can still follow the story.” A shortened semester only allowed the theater department to put on one major show this fall so Myers is using the longer rehearsal schedule to tackle this difficult production. The student and community actors must memorize the difficult verse and speak it in one of three different dialects. And the technical staff is transforming the Arts Center stage into a magical moonlit forest. “I think the fairies are really cool,” Myers said. The fairies come to bless the wedding of Theseus, the king of Athens and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. They are haunting the same wood where the laborers and lovers plan to meet and magic turns to comedy.
“It’s funny,” the director emphasizes. “There is no deep meaning to Midsummer. Shakespeare wrote to entertain.” Unlike many other directors, Myers is not editing Shakespeare’s original script. “We are doing what we can to make it appealing and understandable,” he said, explaining the Bard’s script is clearer with the singing, dancing and physical comedy being added by the CWC cast. “We try to make the meaning clear.” Shakespeare wrote lyrics for many of his plays though the music was lost over time. Jeannie Robbins, a theater and music major at CWC, has composed the music for Shakespeare’s lyrics in Midsummer. Amanda Kusel Galitz is choreographing her first show. Theater major Molly Thornton is the dialect coach. Nov. 11 and 12 and Nov. 18 and 19 shows begin at 7:30 p.m. The Nov. 13 and Nov. 20 productions are 2:30 p.m. matinees. Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for seniors and students. CWC students can reserve complimentary tickets.
Tickets: CWC Box Office 855-2002 7
Competitive speech program off to promising start Central Wyoming College has re-introtalent coming to the collegiate ranks. duced a speech and debate program and In the meantime, Christensen is welcomthe team is putting in a lot of time and ing all students to participate and promises effort to be competitive this season. that they will come out of forensics better CWC hired Jeremy Christensen to prepared academically as “that is what it start an intercollegiate program and he takes” to get through the program. has recruited a team of nine eager, yet In addition to developing confidence, inexperienced, students. His goal is to organizational and interdisciplinary skills, grow the team to a dozen solid competiChristensen said students are better able to tors. engage in larger political and social issues as “In competition, they are doing very well as apply materials they are learning in well considering some of the limitations the classroom. “Writing papers and research Speech team members Nicholas Esposito, Kelly Inglet and Codi of being a new team,” Christensen said afwill come easier for them,” he said. Morris practice with director Jeremy Christensen, facing right. ter the first competitive meet. He expects Forensics students come out with better the group to perform at a higher level by writing and communication skills, making them the spring season, emphasizing the team is in a in high demand with employers and those are atCWC’s program. Now he is working with the team “solid position” now. “They are not where I would tributes Christensen uses for recruitment. to think critically, using an interdisciplinary aphave hoped they would be,” he said, noting his Prior to Christensen’s arrival on campus this proach. This current team has had no previous expectations are extraordinarily high. “I expect a fall, longtime CWC Communication Professor Jane experience in forensics and he is requiring the great deal from my students.” Warren developed a degree program in the substudents to read a great deal from an intensive He’s satisfied that he was able to generate ject. Communication courses are often required liberal arts curriculum to prepare for upcoming enough interest to put this first team together with most degrees but until this fall, CWC did not events, which include 11 regional and national as they have a rigorous practice schedule as a have a degree program in the subject. competitions. team and individuals spend additional time with The program is designed to prepare students The second part of his plan is recruitment, Christensen receiving one-on-one coaching. for employment within the industry. With a comand he acknowledges that it will be easier to Christensen, who previously coached college munication degree from CWC, a student is prerecruit when CWC builds a winning team. In addiand high school programs in Wyoming, Michigan pared to become an entry level public relations tion to the collegiate tournaments, Christensen, and South Dakota, is hosting a tournament at specialist or a communication consultant. Other who is completing a doctoral program at the UniCWC in December. careers include press secretary, mediator, speech versity of South Dakota, is also judging at high Christensen said he has a twofold plan for writer, advertising and marketing specialist. school meets and getting a first-hand look at the
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Wise investment decisions allow for future endowment As an avid reader of The Wall Street Journal, Shirley Miller took some investment advice to heart and created a program endowment for Central Wyoming College’s new Intertribal Education and Community Center. An article in the daily investment journal gave Shirley the idea to roll over Individual Retirement Accounts she and her late husband John had established to create an endowment for the Intertribal Center. The article detailed how she could roll over the IRAs to a charitable organization without having to count the distributions as taxable income. The decision to make the sizeable donation came after Shirley read another article about the college taking advantage of a favorable construction environment to move forward with building the Intertribal Center though it was short of its fundraising goals. The Miller’s $400,000 donation was matched dollar for dollar by the State Endowment Challenge Match, creating a perpetual source of funds to support programs and activities related to the operations and educational mission of the center. The Riverton woman saw this as an opportunity to celebrate the cultural heritage of her Wind River Reservation neighbors. This fall, CWC officially recognized the donation by naming the lobby area of the Intertribal Center as the John and Shirley Miller Community Hall. Shirley Sauer and John Miller were both raised in rural Riverton though they didn’t know each other until John was discharged from the Army at Camp Pickett after developing some health issues. They later met and were married and moved to Casper where Shirley went on to have a long career in the accounting department at Marathon Oil. John operated big equipment for a number of companies. (continued on page 10)
Riverton native Shirley Sauer Miller and her brother, Floyd Sauer, tend to a garden on the family farm north of CWC. While Shirley has a place in town, she spends most of her time at the homestead. The college recently honored Shirley and her late husband John Miller for a donation that created a program endowment for the CWC Intertribal Center.
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Wise decisions
(continued from page 9)
Every day her boss at Marathon would discard his copy of The Wall Street Journal and Shirley would retrieve it and get ideas on investing. As a Marathon employee, she had different options for investments including the purchase of company stock. “I left it in the plan and let it grow,” she said. Shirley returned to Riverton when John died at the age of 72. She immediately noticed continued discrimination of the people of Wind River Indian Reservation, and she believed the college’s
Intertribal Center would bring a better understanding of the county’s diverse cultures. Both Shirley and John had struggled growing up and were just as poor as their reservation neighbors. She also recalled a time when her husband worked on the reservation operating equipment for Brasel and Sims and he was concerned about impoverished children. “He felt so sorry for them,” she said. “That kind of stuck in the back of my mind that things hadn’t got much better over the years.” With both of them working for a lifetime, Shirley decided to “pay it forward. We already let it accumulate. Now it’s time to put it to work,”
CWC Foundation Pledge Card Return this form to: CWC Foundation, 2660 Peck Ave. , Riverton, WY 82501
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• President’s Club • Leadership Club • CWC Associates • Century Club • Friends of CWC
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she said. “I know my husband would have felt the same way.” She also recognized that CWC “has done a lot for this town” and was happy the donation would benefit a variety of people.
Jackson nursing student presents on medical mission trip to Ethiopia A second year Central Wyoming College nursing student from Jackson details a 10-day medical mission trip to Ethiopia Friday, November 18 over the college’s interactive classroom network. The presentation is open to the public and is scheduled for 4 p.m. and is delivered to room 106 of the CWC Professional-Technical Center. Amie Arland made the journey to Africa this past summer with Hand of Hope, an outreach of the Joyce Meyer Ministries. She said while in Ethiopia, Hand of Hope partnered with International Crisis Aid, providing dental and medical care. “In the five days of the clinic, over 2,100 people were cared for and over 7,500 medications were administered,” she said. The mission also assisted in a feeding clinic and spent an evening with some women who were saved from the red light district in the capital city of Addis Ababa.
Statewide project tests new film instructor, students John Little had only been at his new job at out the window and utilized the task as teachCentral Wyoming College for a few weeks when he ing moments. “It was less about books and more volunteered to take on a big assignment — one about the real world,” he said. that would ultimately test his skills as a filmmaker The project was so successful, he is pocketing and as an instructor. his syllabi and his students are out making a film Little, who was hired to start a new film on their own. “They have really knocked my socks program at Central at the request of the Wyoming off,” said Little, who has traveled and lived all Film Board, offered to create a video for the Wyoover the world making films. The classes are workming Summit on Community Colleges. The film in- ing on a 15-minute film based on the legends of cluded stories on students, alumni and community the haunted Acme Theater in Riverton, which will partners from all seven of Wyoming’s community be shown to the public in December. colleges and was shown in Cheyenne to Gov. Matt “I’m stepping back and letting them do it,” he Mead, state officials, college presidents and board said of the students who have been assigned tasks members and industry partners earlier this month. as producers, directors, editors and actors. “Based In a very small window of time, Little developed the concept, was involved in the majority of the filming, directed, produced and edited the video though he also turned it into a class project for three of his film courses. “It was a great class experience,” Little said. “They literally had hundreds of hours of practical experience, the kind of handson training that is really important for film students.” Little and his students traveled more than 2,000 miles to visit every college campus from Sheridan to Torrington to shoot “tons and tons” of film. He essential- Film instructor John Little, right, discusses a shot at ly threw the original syllabi for his classes Sheridan College with student Shawn Fagnant.
on the experience of the summit film, they’ve really got their act together.” Several of his students came out of Amanda Nicholoff’s television program and worked as production assistants on an independent film and on the TV series Modern Family that were shot in Wyoming this summer. And using Wyoming as a backdrop for film and television was the entire reason the Wyoming Film Board came to CWC about starting the film program. The state can attract more filmmakers here if there is an educated workforce to assist. “That’s what we’ve set out to do,” said Little, a former physicist who has made literally hundreds of science-based documentaries and entertainment films for the Science and Discovery channels as well as at Montana PBS. Little was drawn back to academia and taught film and television at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point until he was awarded a Fulbright professorship to teach film and communication in the Middle East in Oman. Research took him to central east Africa, to the island of Zanzibar, where he started a charity project and obtained 40 computers for a trio of very poor schools. He purchased land on Zanzibar and plans to build a film institute and hostel for visiting volunteer teachers.
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Wilderness first responder students worked on simulated injuries at the Sinks Canyon Center recently. A CWC photography student was on hand to record images of the training practice. This year, second year photography students are taking campus life shots to be used by a variety of local publications as part of their class assignment. Photos by: Whitney Kinney Cover photo by Brittany Rose
Schedule of Upcoming Events Nov. 11-20.....Theater production, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
January 14............Home basketball vs. Miles Community College
November 11-12.........Bailey Tire Tip-Off Basketball Tournament
January 16...........................................................Classes begin
November 18-19...... Electrical Dynamics Inc. Classic Tournament
January 18..........................Home basketball vs. Gillette College
November 22...........................................Fall Showcase Concert
January 26............Home basketball vs. Eastern Wyoming College
November 30-December 3.......................... State Drama Festival
January 28.......................... Home basketball vs. Little Big Horn
December 7....................Home basketball vs. Northwest College
February 8....................................... Home basketball vs. WWCC
December 9-10........ Wind River Invitational Debate Tournament
February 11...................... Home basketball vs. Sheridan College
December 10........................ Home basketball vs. Casper College December 12................................. Winter Music Student Recital December 13...................................... Home basketball vs. LCCC December 13-14.............. Theater auditions for musical, Camelot January 3............................Home basketball vs. Utah All-Stars January 6-8........................................... Mid-Winter Fire School
Connect is a publication of the CWC Public Information Office and is scheduled to be published quarterly. 2660 Peck Avenue, Riverton, WY
www.cwc.edu