10/31/2005		OT grad, students at work on Capitol Hill
10/28/2005		Campus community takes service 'Into the Streets'
10/28/2005		Career services director named
10/25/2005		Two alums earn Educate for Service awards
10/21/2005		Pulitzer Prize-winning poet to read from works
10/19/2005		'Will in the World' author to discuss Shakespeare
10/18/2005		NEH grant to fund study of Amish
10/17/2005		E-town prof quoted in Time
10/12/2005		Sacha Sacket to perform Oct. 31
10/10/2005		E-town prof awarded cancer research grant
10/7/2005		English prof to discuss book on Narnia series

Rebecca Bowling '05 (right), a member of the first Elizabethtown College class to earn master's degrees in occupational therapy, is serving as a state policy intern at the American Occupational Therapy Association. She and two members of this year's master's class -- Rachel Halton (second from right) of Emmaus, Pa. and Crystal Nealis (left) of Rome, Pa. -- recently visited Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania's senators, Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, to lobby for two bills. Bowling's story is available here. 

Elizabethtown College recently presented Educate for Service Awards to two alumni. The highest honor given to alumni, these awards are presented to those who have made exceptional contributions to the community, professional field or the College.

A Service to the College award was presented to Robert V. Hanle of St. Paul, Minn., a 1962 graduate who served in various administrative roles during his 12-year tenure at the College. He is also credited, along with 1932 graduate K. Ezra Bucher, with creating the Educate for Service Awards.

Hanle earned a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy, then went on to earn a master’s degree in higher education and a doctorate in the history of higher education from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1964, he returned to Elizabethtown as the director of alumni relations. After developing a career services programs for seniors, he was appointed in a dual role as the first director of placement services.

Hanle was promoted to assistant to president Morley J. Mays in 1968. Charged with seeking funding opportunities presented by the new Higher Education Act, he was able to secure funds for the construction of Esbenshade Hall and Thompson Gymnasium.

In 1972, Hanle was named assistant dean of the faculty, and in 1973, he was promoted to dean of the faculty. During the next three years, he added two academic programs – music therapy and occupational therapy, which recently celebrated their 30th anniversaries.

A Service to Humanity award was presented posthumously to Charles C. Walker of Cheyney, Pa., a 1940 graduate and member of the Society of Friends who dedicated himself to furthering the causes of peace and justice throughout his lifetime.

Walker won a full scholarship to Elizabethtown College at the age of 16. As a conscientious objector, he spent time in alternative service during World War II. He was on the staff of American Friends Service Committee when it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947.

Walker became active in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, working closely with Bayard Rustin and others. After studying Gandhi’s methods and achievements, he organized and trained for nonviolent direct action. His book, "Organizing for Nonviolent Direct Action," was used widely in the civil rights and peace movements and remains the standard training manual today.

Walker worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after he met him in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. King later recommended him for leading numerous seminars and training programs. He recruited, organized and trained for the Freedom Rides, student sit-ins and voter registration drives. He was on the staff of the Mississippi Summer Project in Akron, Ohio. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington as the deputy coordinator of the Philadelphia area. He later was instrumental in organizing the War on Poverty in Washington, D.C.

During the Vietnam War, Walker helped organize many anti-war, anti-nuclear and anti-chemical warfare protests. He was called to Kent State to help after the violent incidents there and worked with Caesar Chavez on farm problems. He helped found the World Peace Brigade in the 1960s and Peace Brigades International in 1981. Peace Brigades International won the Conrad Hilton Award, the highest humanitarian award in the world. It also was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell will read from his works at 8 p.m., Nov. 10, in Elizabethtown College’s Leffler Chapel and Performance Center. The event is open to the public free of charge.

Kinnell studied at Princeton University and the University of Rochester. His volumes of poetry include "A New Selected Poems," a finalist for the National Book Award; "Imperfect Thirst;" "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone;" "Selected Poems," for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; "Mortal Acts, Mortal Words;" "The Book of Nightmares;" "Body Rags;" "Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock;" and "What a Kingdom It Was." He has also published translations of works by Yves Bonnefroy, Yvanne Goll, François Villon and Rainer Maria Rilke.

Kinnell divides his time between Vermont and New York City, where he is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. He is currently a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

A Harvard professor and author of the 2004 National Book Award Finalist "Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare" will discuss the life of William Shakespeare at 11 a.m., Nov. 9, in Elizabethtown College’s Leffler Chapel and Performance Center. Stephen Greenblatt’s talk is open to the public free of charge.

Greenblatt will focus on the challenge of writing a biography of Shakespeare with no surviving diaries, journals, manuscripts or personal letters to place any of the writer’s works within his life. The John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, he is the author of several other books, including "Hamlet in Purgatory" and "Practicing New Historicism;" editor of "The Norton Anthology of English Literature" and "The Norton Shakespeare;" and a founding editor of the scholarly journal "Representations."

As visiting professor and lecturer at universities throughout the world, Greenblatt has delivered such distinguished lectures as the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford and the University Public Lectures at Princeton. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships has been president of the Modern Language Association.

Greenblatt has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned a master’s degree from Cambridge and a bachelor’s degree and doctorate from Yale.

Elizabethtown College’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies has been awarded a $100,000 grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a three-year collaborative research project titled "Amish Diversity and Identity: Transformations in 20th Century America."

The research team for the project is composed of principal investigator Donald B. Kraybill, senior fellow at the Young Center, and co-investigators Steven Nolt, professor of history at Goshen College in Indiana, and Karen Johnson-Weiner, professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Potsdam. A national panel of seven scholars will advise the research team throughout the project.

The NEH grant will enable the researchers to investigate the Amish experience at the national level, giving attention to geographic expansion, the growth of diversity, changing conceptions of identity and evolving patterns of interaction with the larger society. The team will also explore how the Amish have contributed to shaping the identity of a nation that made exceptions in the areas of education, Social Security and child labor for a religious minority living on its cultural margins.

Using primary source documents -- including those written by the Amish, oral histories and secondary sources -- Kraybill, Nolt and Johnson-Weiner will describe and analyze the cultural influences that shaped the Amish story in the 20th century. The project will result in a scholarly book on the Amish in the 20th century, a major academic conference, an annotated bibliography of Amish studies and an academic website with resources on Amish studies. The project begins this fall and will conclude in the summer of 2008.

What's Next . . . With the Amish
by Joel Stein
Oct. 24, 2005 issue of Time

When Stein was looking for a source to provide information on what's new with Lancaster County's Amish, he "tracked down Donald Kraybill, a professor in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College."

Kraybill told him about Amish churches wrestling with several issues during the next year, including cell phones, rollerblades, a proposed Wal-Mart in Buck. The article appears on Time's site.

An Elizabethtown College biology professor has been awarded a $150,000 grant to continue her research into the origins of cancer.

Associate Professor of Biology Jane Cavender (shown here working with first-year student Kelly Thom of Penfield, NY) competed against researchers from all non-doctoral awarding U.S. colleges and universities to receive the grant from The National Institutes of Health: National Cancer Institute (NIH: NCI). The funding, the second renewal of a previous grant, is expected to continue the professor’s research for the next three years.

Cavender’s research will investigate the mechanisms through which the viral protein, SV40 T-antigen, causes cancer. Specifically, she will look at two genes activated by the protein – the ribosomal and cyclin A genes – to determine if a relationship exists between these genes that results in the cellular transformation that leads to cancer.

This type of research could offer clues about the mechanisms by which other viruses and biological agents cause cancer and may indicate methods by which cancer formation can be interrupted, according to Cavender. "To prevent cancer, we need to find out more about the process through which the cancer is formed," she said. "By identifying those mechanisms that are necessary and sufficient to form a malignant tumor, we can find opportunities to stop the process and prevent the cancer."

Cavender was first awarded a grant from NIH: NCI to do basic cancer research in 1996. The grants – called R-15s – are specifically designed to fund research at colleges and universities that do not grant doctoral degrees. By showing progress in her research and demonstrating the promise of her work, Cavender was able to earn a second grant renewal from the national health organization.

In addition to purchasing research supplies, the grant also will provide summer stipends for two to four Elizabethtown College students during each year of the grant. "The refunding of this grant is so important for education and my ability to train young researchers," Cavender said. "Involving students in this research teaches them to ask the questions that are at the very foundation of important scientific discoveries and helps them to think differently about how things work. It’s this type of thinking that leads to solutions for today’s most challenging issues."

To see media coverage of Downing's book, visit E-town in the News.

Nationally acclaimed C.S. Lewis scholar and Elizabethtown College professor David C. Downing, who recently published “Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles,” will discuss his book and the recently released movie at 3:30 p.m., Jan. 26, in the College’s High Library. The R.W. Schlosser Professor of English at Elizabethtown, Downing will also sign copies of his book, which is available in the College Bookstore. The event is open to the public free of charge.

Downing’s book tells of the genesis of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” a seven-book series written by Lewis. The first book in the series, “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” introduces readers to four London children who are sent to a professor’s country home for protection during World War II. There they find a magic wardrobe that leads to a mystical land called Narnia, which is being ruled by an evil witch. To defeat the witch, they must join forces with Aslan, the lion God of Narnia, and fight the great battle between good and evil.

Lewis drew on his extensive knowledge of mythology, medieval literature and Christian theology, as well as his own lively imagination to produce this classic series of books. They can be read on several levels, and have been loved by both children and adults for half a century.

Downing’s book has received very favorable reviews in such diverse publications as Christianity Today, Library Journal and U.S. News and World Report. Other books by Downing include “Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C.S. Lewis,” “The Most Reluctant Convert: C.S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith,” and “Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy.” “Into the Wardrobe” and “Into the Region of Awe” both received mention in Christianity Today as two of the 10 best books on Lewis published this year.