Stories and updates from around campus

Naomi Darling on Sustainable (and Inspiring) Architecture

IMG_1772To kick off her talk about sustainable design, Naomi Darling showed a slide of a place all Williston Northampton students would recognize.

“That’s where we are right now, right?” said Ms. Darling as a picture of Reed Campus Center appeared.

“Pretty much everything we see has been designed,” said Ms. Darling switching to a view of the Williston pond. “It’s all part of a built environment that very much shapes our lives.”

Ms. Darling, a Five College assistant professor of sustainable architecture, was visiting Natania Hume’s Contemporary Arts and Culture class to talk about historical architecture, best sustainable practices, and some of her recent projects. To give students a basis for comparison, she showed how the Williston campus integrated aspects of other designed spaces: English gardens, the University of Virginia, and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“Architecture embodies the aspiration and achievements of a society,” said Ms. Darling. “It is a realization of a culture, time, and place.”

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A Million Voices

IMG_1497Dr. Felicia Barber couldn’t get over the sound in the Phillips Stevens Chapel.

“What a great hall!” she said to Joshua Harper, choral director at the Williston Northampton School. She gestured to the large, sunlit room. “What an awesome space!”

Behind her in the chapel nave, her accompanist, Scott Bailey, launched into a resonant tune on the organ.

Dr. Barber, a conductor at Westfield State University, had just finished leading her Chamber Chorale in a private concert for the Widdigers and Caterwaulers. Her group, some 20 college students dressed in formal black, performed a short program of new and known works, including pieces by Troy Robertson, Benjamin Britten, and Moses Hogan.

Mr. Harper said the idea behind the concert had been to give Williston students a chance to hear counterparts at the college level and talk to them about technique.

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Website Redesign 2014

2014 homepageFor the past year, the Communications Office has been working on a new website, featuring a fantastic new look by the Boston-based firm Stoltze Design and a content management system by Finalsite, a company that works specifically with and for the education community. With a planned website launch on April 5, we are excited to preview just a few of the website’s great new features with you!

Homepage

The new homepage design is a sleek and streamlined introduction to the school, inviting new visitors to dig deeper. We’ve added more profiles, doorways into large amounts of content, and pop-up features, such as the I WILL statements. Finalsite’s robust search function will help users quickly find what they need, while a login button gives those familiar with the school direct access to WillyNet.

2014 WillyNetWillyNet
All the content remains the same—we’ve made sure documents, forms, and links in the old WillyNet are still there in the new—but functions available on Finalsite let us display it in a much more user-friendly and helpful way. Quick links can be found on the WillyNet landing page, while documents are sorted in the forms and resources tab. The left-hand navigation also offers easy access to mashup pages, the campus directory, and dining hall menu.

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Seen, Read, Heard, Considered: Public Poetry on Campus

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Photo via ‏@MrJoshSeamon

This week, students and faculty were surprised to see poetry popping up around campus. The short poems appeared on stairwells and allowances, in the campus store and on cars.

The public poems were part of collaborative projects created by students in Modern American Poetry as part of their final assessment, said Jennifer Gross, who teaches the class.

“The challenge? How can we bring poetry more into prominence this week on campus?” she wrote in an email. “In small groups they devised projects for getting more poetry seen, read, heard, and considered.”

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Gia Parker ’14 Commits to Dartmouth

Photo by Paul Rutherford
Photo by Paul Rutherford

On Friday, as she committed to Dartmouth College—finalizing an agreement that she had first made as a sophomore—Gia Parker ’14 was surrounded by not one, but two teams.

Her varsity soccer teammates had come to cheer on their captain’s decision to play soccer at the Ivy League school; the varsity basketball team was there to support one of the players and leaders who had helped make their tournament run possible.

Watching the huge group throwing their arms around her daughter, Ms. Parker’s mother Jennifer Parker noted that the Williston community has become an “extended family” and has helped her develop self confidence and poise.

“Williston has been a wonderful place for her,” agreed her mother, Sonia Schloemann. “It’s helped her come into her own.”

For her coaches, as well as her teammates, the feeling is mutual.

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Stories and updates from around campus