Decker Commits $1 Million for Natural Sciences Chair

Chestertown, MD, January 26, 2001 — Alonzo G. Decker, Jr., retired chief executive officer of the Black & Decker Corporation, has committed $1 million to establish the Alonzo G. and Virginia G. Decker Chair in the Natural Sciences at Washington College. The gift is a significant step for the Campaign for Washington's College, a five-year $72 million fundraising effort that has already reached $64 million since its Fall 1998 inception. The gift will be matched by the Hodson Trust.

A Baltimore native and son of the co-founder of the Black & Decker Manufacturing Company, Decker started his career with the power tool company as a young boy in 1922, working his way through most departments, serving in a variety of executive roles and eventually becoming chairman of the board in 1968. During his 10 years as chief executive officer, the company enjoyed its greatest period of growth.

Throughout his career, Decker has been a prominent supporter of educational institutions and other philanthropic causes, serving on the boards of the Johns Hopkins University, the Hopkins School of Continuing Studies, the Maryland Institute, and Washington College. As a Washington College board member in the 1980s, he was instrumental in the success of the College's $44 million Campaign for Excellence. His leadership was recognized by the dedication of the Alonzo G. Decker, Jr. Laboratory Center at Washington College in 1988. Most recently, he was named honorary co-chair of the Campaign for Washington's College.

Concert Series Hosts Classical Crossovers

Chestertown, MD, January 18, 2001 — The Washington College Concert Series will host the Baltimore Consort on Saturday, February 10, 2001 at 8:00 p.m. in the College's Tawes Theatre. Founded in 1980, the Baltimore Consort explores the popular and traditional music from the 16th century onward. Honored as Top Classical Crossover Artists by Billboard Magazine, the Baltimore Consort treads the line between folk and art while employing artful improvisation and arrangement to awaken the spirit of centuries past. From the early music of England and Scotland to ballads preserved in the folk traditions of Appalachia and Nova Scotia, the Consort's unique sound is found in a variety of instruments--the lute, viol, flute, cittern, early guitar, rebec, recorder, crumhorn and bandora.

The Baltimore Consort has performed extensively in halls, at festivals and on radio throughout America and Europe, delighting audiences with songs both earnest and bawdy and dissolving barriers between folk and art music. The Consort has released several award-winning compact discs on the Dorian Recordings label.

The Washington College Concert Series is now in its 49th season. Single admission tickets are available only at the box office before performances and are $12.00 for adults and $5.00 for youth 18 years of age and under. Season tickets cost $40.00 per person and can be purchased at the box office on performance nights or by mail from the Washington College Concert Series, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, MD 21620-1197. For further information, call 410-778-7839.

Biographer Paints Intimate Portrait of the Young Abraham Lincoln

Chestertown, MD, January 10, 2001 — Lincoln scholar and biographer, Douglas O. Wilson, will speak at Washington College Monday, February 12, 2001 on his work Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln. The talk is sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and will be held in the Casey Academic Center Forum at 4:30 p.m.

Awarded the prestigious Lincoln Prize in 1999 and acclaimed as one of the best books about Lincoln published in recent years, Honor’s Voice explores in depth the personal development of Abraham Lincoln as a young man. Examining Lincoln's transformation from an uneducated frontier farm boy to a skilled lawyer, orator and political leader, Dr. Wilson utilizes a wealth of private correspondence and reminiscences from Lincoln’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances to paint an intimate and authentic portrait of this American leader.

Dr. Wilson is the co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he taught American and English literature for 33 years. In addition to Honor’s Voice, his works include Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book, Thomas Jefferson’s Library, and Lincoln Before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years. The presentation is free and the public is invited to attend.Awarded the prestigious Lincoln Prize in 1999 and acclaimed as one of the best books about Lincoln published in recent years, Honor’s Voice explores in depth the personal development of Abraham Lincoln as a young man. Examining Lincoln's transformation from an uneducated frontier farm boy to a skilled lawyer, orator and political leader, Dr. Wilson utilizes a wealth of private correspondence and reminiscences from Lincoln’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances to paint an intimate and authentic portrait of this American leader.

College Co-Sponsors Environmental Speakers Series

Chestertown, MD, January 9, 2001 — The Historic Avalon Theater in Easton, Md., will host a 2001 Eastern Shore Lecture Series entitled "Journeys Home: People, Nature and Sense of Place." The presentations will explore the value we place on the natural world and give new insights into how those values translate into vibrant, safe and environmentally sound communities.

"Journeys Home" is a subscription lecture series co-sponsored by the Washington College Center for the Environment and Society, the Adkins Arboretum, the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, the Horsehead Wetlands Center and the Maryland Center for Agroecology.

The schedule of presenters for 2001 is:

Wednesday, February 14, 2001

Wes Jackson: "The 10,000-Year-Old Problem of Agriculture Can Now Be Solved"

Director and Founder, The Land Institute, Salina, KS. Author of Becoming Native to this Place, sketching his vision for the resettlement of America's rural communities. His most recent work, Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place, co-edited with William Vitek, was released in 1996.

Tuesday, March 6, 2001

Janisse Ray: "The Country of Longing"

Author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a remarkable first book that juxtaposes growing up as the daughter of a junkyard owner with the ecology of the Georgia longleaf pine ecosystem. Naming the Unseen, her chapbook of poetry about biology and place, won the 1996 Merriam-Frontier Award from the University of Montana.

Wednesday, April 18, 2001

Stephen Kellert: "Values of Nature, Sense of Place, and Human Well-Being"

Professor of Social Ecology, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University. Dr. Kellert was co-author of The Biophilia Hypothesis with E. O. Wilson, a work that explores human values in conservation biology and nature. An earlier work, Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle, highlights his interest in environmental ethics that has made him a major figure in conservation biology.

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

John Hanson Mitchell: "Inventing Place"

Author of Ceremonial Time, Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile, and other books melding history, environment, and place around his home in Massachusetts. Mr. Mitchell freely admits that visits to his Eastern Shore roots were the origin of the values he has developed about people, places, and things environmental.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Christopher Tilghman: "The Pull of the Land: Place and Imagination"

Mr. Tilghman’s first book, In a Father’s Place, is a set of stories set against natural landscapes of North America, including Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The novel Mason’s Retreat is about an expatriate Eastern Shore family that, on the eve of World War II, returns to its old estate on Chesapeake Bay. He is noted for being able to set scene after scene with remarkable clarity and sensitivity.

Wednesday, November 7, 2001

Northern Neck Chantey Singers: "Songs of Our Life, Songs of Our Sea"

The series concludes with a live performance of narrative and songs by a troupe of retired menhaden fishermen from Reedville, VA. Their cassette recording, See You When the Sun Goes Down, contains a selection of the chanteys they sing, traditional work songs that all-Black crews sang to coordinate the raising of their fishing nets. Performance organized in cooperation with the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, Annapolis.

Ticket prices are $50 for the complete six lectures, $30 for the spring or fall component of three lectures, or $10 per individual lecture. Student tickets are half-priced. All presentations will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Historic Avalon Theatre, Easton. For further information, call Dr. Wayne H. Bell, Director of the Washington College Center for the Environment and Society, at 410-810-7171.

Washington College Campaign Reaches $64 Million

Chestertown, MD, January 9, 2001 — Four major commitments in December pushed the Campaign for Washington's College to $64 million in just the first two years of a five-year fund-raising goal of $72 million. The four gifts will be doubled in value in accordance with a $10 million challenge from The Hodson Trust.

Major gifts include $1 million from Connie and Carl Ferris of Rock Hall, Md., to establish a Chair in Business Management; $800,000 from Chevy Chase Bank to endow the Chevy Chase Bank Scholarship; and $100,000 from the Seraph Foundation to create the Seraph Foundation Scholarship.

"On behalf of the entire Washington College community, I extend my deep thanks to everyone who has contributed to the early successes in our Campaign," said Jack S. Griswold, Chair of the National Campaign Cabinet. "Response to the Hodson Trust Challenge has been wonderful. More than 15 gifts totaling $6 million will be matched by The Hodson Trust."

In addition to scholarships, faculty support, campus enhancements and improvements to academic programs, Campaign funds are helping to develop three new centers of excellence at Washington College: The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Center for Environment and Society and the Center for Writing and the Creative Process.

College Presents "Black History is American History"

Chestertown, MD, January 3, 2001 — February is Black History Month and Washington College will celebrate with a program of speakers, performances and student activities emphasizing "Black History is American History." The public is invited to attend the following events:

Thursday, FEBRUARY 1, 2001

AFRICA PAST AND PRESENT: STORIES, SONGS AND SLIDES, a presentation by Professor Harriet Masembe. Originally from Uganda, Professor Masembe holds a Ph.D. in African Languages and Literature from the University of Wisconsin and has performed African folktales as a professional storyteller on television and radio, as well as for numerous schools, universities and associations. Goldstein Hall 100, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, FEBRUARY 7, 2001

BLACK HISTORY IS AMERICAN HISTORY: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Student presentations on famous African-American scientists and inventors. Goldstein Hall 100, 4:30 p.m.

Monday, FEBRUARY 12, 2001

The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience presents HONOR'S VOICE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, a talk by eminent Lincoln biographer, Douglas Wilson, the George A. Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Knox College and the Co-Director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Casey Academic Center Forum, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, FEBRUARY 17, 2001

Kent Youth, Inc., the Kent County Arts Council, and Washington College present KAREN SOMERVILLE, gospel, blues and jazz vocalist. Gibson Performing Arts Center, Tawes Theatre, 8 p.m. Tickets $12/adults and $5/children 14 years and under. Tickets are available at Twigs and Teacups and the Compleat Bookseller. For more information, call Kent Youth, Inc. at 410-778-1370.

Monday, FEBRUARY 19, 2001

Dance on Film Series presents FALL RIVER LEGEND, TROY GAMES, THE BELOVED, and JOHN HENRY. Casey Academic Center Forum, 6:30 p.m.

Thursday, March 1, 2001

Dr. CORNEL WEST, Harvard Professor of Afro-American Studies and author of Race Matters and Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism (winner of the American Book Award), lectures on the subject of race in contemporary American politics, economy and culture. Tawes Theatre, 5:00 p.m.

All events are free unless otherwise noted.

College Programming Team Vies With The Best in Regional Collegiate Computing Competition

On Nov. 11, 2000, Washington College's first computer programming team competed in the 25th International Collegiate Programming Contest sponsored by the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) and IBM. Vying with 137 teams from the Mid-Atlantic region, Washington College finished 38th, tying with several schools, including Duke University, University of North Carolina, and University of Delaware.

More than two thousand teams worldwide participated in thirty regional competitions of the ACM's International Collegiate Programming Contest. During the five-hour competition, teams had to design various programs, such as a word processing grammar check and an airplane collision detection system. The contest provides college students with an opportunity to demonstrate and sharpen problem-solving and computing skills in a competitive, time-sensitive environment.

Washington College was represented by seniors Chris Klimas, an English major and computer science minor from Randallstown, Md.; Colleen Hick, a double major in mathematics and computer science from Levittown, Pa.; and Chris Lawrence, a computer science major and president of the Washington College Computer Club from of Narberth, Pa. The team's faculty advisor, Austin Lobo, assistant professor in mathematics and computer science says, "Though this is the first year Washington College has offered a computer science major, our students have emerged as motivated, knowledgeable, and our best and brightest are able to compete with peers from the top schools in the field."