The ECU Report Hands across the water
Dr. Jonathan Dembo pulls a protective glove over his hand before carefully removing Specimen No. 1283-1297 from the vault in the Special Collections Department at Joyner Library. The artifact is more than 400 years old and shows the effects of centuries of weathering but there’s no mistaking what it is. It’s a gold signet ring with a lion crest. Dr. Dembo, who heads Special Collections, gently slips the ring on his finger and demonstrates how it was used to emboss the lion figure into drops of hot wax to seal a letter. The ring probably was last used for that purpose by a member of the doomed Lost Colony, which disappeared into the mists of time around 1585. Two of the colonists were members of the Kendell family, whose crest was a prancing lion. ECU archeologist David Phelps discovered the ring and other artifacts at a site near Buxton on the Outer Banks, which an increasing number of experts believe was the site of the Lost Colony. A flintlock, coins, pipes and other artifacts consistent with the colonists also were found there. Today the ring holds a new significance —as a symbol of ECU’s growing reputation in coastal archaeology. Before discovery of the Lost Colony relics, the university grabbed headlines around the world for its work recovering an 18th century shipwreck believed to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge piloted by the pirate Blackbeard. ECU researchers also discovered the oldest shipwreck ever off the coast of Alaska. Now, ECU trustees have approved the building plan for the Coastal Studies Institute, a project between ECU, the UNC System and Dare County to develop 40 acres in Manteo. The project has received $1.3 million for planning.
It was an unusually warm winter day in Greenville when the president of the University of Oulu in Finland stopped by to renew his school’s student exchange program with East Carolina. Many ECU students were wearing flip-flops and shorts that day, including some of the nine Oulu students enrolled at ECU this semester. It was 50 degrees colder that day in Finland, but ECU student Korie Amberger, an anthropology major from Kinston, still wanted to get outside to see more of his home-away-from-home. He tried ice-skating and later went for a run. “That…was, like, wow,” he wrote in his blog. “My eyelids kept freezing together and I was covered with ice when I was done. I need to get some goggles for sure.”
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The student exchange program between East Carolina and Finland’s second-largest university is an example of a new emphasis at ECU on providing students with international experiences. In 2004, the university adopted a five-year plan to increase international programs, including international exchange students, student study abroad programs and faculty research and teaching opportunities. With that groundwork now in place, “next year has been declared the year of living abroad,” says International Programs Director Terry Rodenberg. Rodenberg says his goal is to double to 500 the number of foreign students attending ECU by 2009 and to have at least 300 of our students studying abroad. Fifty-three ECU students were studying abroad this academic year, 19 of them in England. ECU created an international dorm on
Anja Mäläskä
With this ring…
Left: ECU students Josh Hall, Matt Leggett and Korie Amberger on the campus of the University of Oulu in Finland, where they are enrolled this semester. Right: University of Oulu students Arto Kaukko and Mervi Koistinen at ECU.