Author: Tanya Couch

Student Spotlight: Kyna Burke ’19

Serving as a Miller Fellow, Kyna Burke ’19 started her journey with Yellow Springs Home, Inc. shortly after arriving to campus. A little hesitant about the full-time job experience, Kyna quickly learned that when you truly believe in the mission of an organization, each day is an adventure and does not feel like “work”. After working part-time for the first two quarters, Kyna transitioned into full-time work for her Co-op quarter. Each day was filled with new, varying tasks from grant writing and research, to planning open house events, running in and out of meetings, working with volunteers, or even removing fiberglass insulation from a home in the process of being built. For Kyna, working at Home Inc., is more than just completing tasks on time.  “I can’t help but see the end goal of handing somebody their first set of keys when I’m filing papers or making a coffee run. Knowing that my supervisor doesn’t have to worry about the smaller tasks that I handle means they can move forward with the bigger and more time sensitive tasks,” she states. Thanks to the wonderful crew at Home, Inc., Kyna has been able to see first-hand what it looks like to develop community on a daily basis.

Faculty Spotlight: Karen Velasquez and Kevin Mulhall

Faculty members Karen Velasquez (Co­-op) and Kevin Mulhall (Library) are recipients of this year’s GLCA Library of Congress Research Initiative. They will be joined by students Jane Foreman ’17, Keegan Smith-­Nichols ’17, and Hannah Strange ’17 on a 10-­day visit, this summer, to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. where they will be assisted by Library of Congress librarians in researching various aspects of refugees and immigrants in American higher education. The Antioch team, the only U.S. team selected this year, will meet up with other selected groups from Japan and Morocco on the visit. We look forward to hearing more about their experience and findings. Congratulations to the team for their receipt of this great honor!

To learn more, check out the article titled “Research teams selected for GLCA Library of Congress and Boston Summer Seminar Programs” on page 3 of the GLCA’s Winter 2016 edition of the Beacon Newsletter.

Photo Credit: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/highsm.17594/?co=highsm

Student Spotlight: Ishan Allen ’17

For his third Co-­op, Ishan Allen ’17 delved into the exciting worlds of science and radio by joining the team of Neil deGrasse Tyson and his comedic co­-host at StarTalk Radio. Ishan worked behind the scenes managing several projects, one of which was the StarTalk SoundCloud account. He was tasked with transforming full length, hour radio episodes into digestible and intriguing sound bites or clips ranging in length from 1 ­- 5 minutes. Through his work with StarTalk Radio, Ishan was able to improve his “audio editing skills and artistry.” While attending an event called StarTalk Live!, Ishan participated in meet and greet tours and even had the pleasure of meeting Bill Nye the Science Guy! You can check out some of Ishan’s work with SoundBites and a series called Cosmic Minutes below:

Garbage Disposal on Mars

Werewolf Myth

Bill Clinton Moon Rock

*excerpts taken from Ishan’s blog assignment

Faculty Spotlight: Jessica D’Ambrosio

Serving as the Chair of the Environmental Commission (EC) for Yellow Springs, Co-­op Faculty member and advisor, Jessica D’Ambrosio had the pleasure of reporting to the Council on the recent activities and happenings of the Commission. One announcement was the receipt of a grant from the Clean Ohio Open Space Fund. A subcommittee of the EC, lead by Tom Dietrich, was charged with submitting applications for funding. Now that the Clean Ohio Open Space Fund has approved the grant submission, the EC, in partnership with the Tecumseh Land Trust, hopes to transform portions of Glass Farm into recreational opportunities for residents. The goal is to create trails, a parking area, perform invasive species removal followed by the planting of natives, and to include signage that creates educational opportunities for visitors. Jessica has been the Chair of the Environmental Commission since November of 2015 and looks forward to the implementation of this project as well as other activities that the EC continues to pursue. Some include updating the village wellhead protection plan, conducting environmental education and outreach, working with community organizations on climate action planning, and promoting pollinator friendly management practices. The Co­op department is proud to have a member of the team diligently and actively working towards making positive changes to the environment. Great work, Jessica!

To learn more about the Environmental Commission of Yellow Springs and its projects, check out this article by the Yellow Springs News.

Photo Credit: YS Springs News, Submitted Photo

Student Spotlight: Roland Scaife ’17, Meridian Howes ’17, and Tess Haskin ’17

For their third co­op, Roland, Meridian, and Tess ventured across oceans to Tel HaShomer, Israel to join the renowned team of Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein at Sheba Medical Center. Working as Research Assistants within the Radiation Oncology department, they played an integral part in exploring and analyzing data related to “internal mammary lymph nodes… in locally advanced breast cancer patients because there is a chance that they can become cancerous due to uptake from the breasts.” The students were able to examine hundreds of patient scans to identify a possible presence of cancer. Most notably, in their time there, Roland, Meridian and Tess were able to co­author an article, with Dr. Goldstein, titled: “The Use of PET­CT Imaging to Determine Internal Mammary Lymph Node (IMN) Location for Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning in Breast Cancer Patients.” The article has been submitted to a journal for review, and hopefully publication, a remarkable feat! Great work!

*excerpts taken from Roland Scaife blog assignment

Photo Credit: Tess Haskin ’17

Faculty Spotlight: Beth Bridgeman

Student Spotlight: Julia Dwight ’18, Tess Haskin ’17, and Steven Taylor ’17

Antioch Alum and Business Owner, Paul Millman, Offers Paid Leave to All Parents

Paid Parental Leave Inaugurated at Chroma Technology

Faculty Spotlight: Brooke Bryan

The Great Lakes Colleges Association awarded Co-op faculty member Brooke Bryan and co-director Ric Sheffield (Kenyon College) a significant three-year grant for Oral History in the Liberal Arts (OHLA), an initiative designed to get GLCA students engaged in local and global communities through oral history and digital storytelling projects. Across the consortium of 13 small liberal arts colleges, OHLA will catalyze a community of faculty and students doing interview-based research with open source technology stacks and digital tools like PopUp Archive and the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer, while supporting faculty-mentored undergraduate research and building a pilot archive of interview projects with curricular ties. Dreams do come true!

*Pictured is Brooke Bryan talking about OHLA during its planning stages at ILiADS (Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship) at Hamilton College’s Digital Humanities Institute.

Paving a Path for Success: John Heinrich, ’66 Alum

To start with, the Antioch Cooperative Education program was the reason I attended Antioch over Stanford. I am a native Californian, but my parents thought it would be good for me to see the rest of the country. In addition, my father was selling truck parts to what was then White Motors in Cleveland, and their Chief Engineer said Antioch engineers were the only ones that could design parts that could be produced for a target price. It didn’t hurt that Fressa Inman, Antioch’s Registrar, journeyed to San Francisco from Yellow Springs to meet with about five prospective students. As I recall, Antioch accepted all of us, and two of us graduated together.

Against that backdrop, I was prepared to like Antioch’s Co-op program.

After I did my first co-op, in Chicago in the winter, I wasn’t too sure. But, the law firm in which I worked certainly convinced me that I didn’t want to become a lawyer, so that was a valid co-op experience.

Other notable co-ops (and I found most of them, because Antioch wasn’t strong in business co-ops), were as a junior staff economist for the Federal Trade Commission, a New York advertising firm, and a New York financial public relations firm (twice). The ad and P.R. firms convinced me that I didn’t want to be a Mad Man.

After the FTC co-op, Antioch hit bottom on business co-ops, (they had only about three co-ops), so I went ‘own plans’, which meant you were on the hook to find your own co-op jobs. Which is how the ad and P.R. jobs came to be. And, I just couldn’t see myself as an orderly in a hospital, which is where I was bound if I didn’t find a job.

One of the more colorful co-op experiences came when my dad fired his Northwest sales representative just before I was due to go on co-op, and asked me if I could cover the Northwest until he found a replacement. He literally handed me a roadmap and a list of accounts and the keys to a company vehicle, and said “Well, you can’t do any worse than he did.” I was on the road for the better parts of two months to wonderful places in Montana, Idaho and Eastern Washington. As part of this co-op, he also sent me to Los Angeles to look into why one of his companies wasn’t making the money that he thought it should; I figured it out.

Probably the most unique co-op experience was when I did my year abroad (fourth year of five), living in Italy, and my dad wanted me to research the European marketing for his parts. So, I went to the AEA-sponsored Italian business school four or five days a week, but I missed a lot of Fridays and Mondays because I was somewhere in Europe selling truck parts. I opened up Fiat and Volvo, among others. And, when school ended, I worked at selling full time, again going all over Europe, and opened up British Leyland.

So, that’s my co-op experience. I hope other Antiochians remember the program as fondly as I do, and they benefit as much. The co-op experiences are truly life changing.

~ John Heinrich, ‘66