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| Please feel free to submit your own news, or corrections
to or comments on any stories below, to Tom Magliery '96 at webmaster@kenyon1996.org.
Personal news for directory pages should be submitted through the update
form. Opinions and errors herein are solely the responsibility of the editor, Tom Magliery, who regrets it if you're upset with him. Email him to express your concerns. |
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New administration takes the helm at Kenyon Virtually a whole new senior staff started work this fall in Gambier. Incoming President Georgia Nugent, Kenyon's eighteenth (but first female) president in its 179-year history has taken up residence in Cromwell, but she is hardly the only new person in Ransom Hall. The departures of President Rob Oden to Carleton College, Acting President and previous Provost Ron Sharp to Vassar College and Dean of Admissions John Anderson to Phillips Academy (Andover) have caused both internal promotions and outside hiring. The previous associate provost, also last year’s acting provost and art professor, Greg Spaid ’69, was promoted to provost, resulting in appointments of anthropology professor Rita Kipp to associate provost and sociology professor Howard Sacks to special assistant to the president. Kipp joins psychology professor Sarah Murnen at the associate provost level. Meanwhile, Jennifer Delahunty Britz, previously of academic brand-management consulting firm The Lawlor Group, was named Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. Don Omahan ’70, dean of students, joined Kenyon in 1996 after the departure of Craig Bradley. The years around our graduation were also a time of considerable change in the senior staff. President Phil Jordan announced his retirement in 1994 after serving for twenty years, and was succeeded by Rob Oden in 1995. Craig Bradley left with our class, and the provost’s office was amidst what has been a decade of rapid turnover. Another area that has seen great change has been development and communications. Last year, previous director of public affairs Tom Stamp ’73 served as the acting director of development, a position for which there is now an active search. Stamp is now assistant vice president for communications, and Shawn Presley has become the director of public affairs, responsible for the Alumni Bulletin, among many other things. The director of development reports to Kimberlee Klesner, vice president of development, who was herself the director of that department until the 2001 departure of Doug Givens to the Philander Chase Corporation for land acquisition. This division of the administration is especially important right now, with the $60 million construction of the athletic facility, the need for further land acquisition to protect Kenyon’s rural character, and a mere $120 million endowment—an amount that is far less than half of what most of Kenyon’s academic peers have in the bank. President Nugent will be inaugurated the weekend of October 24-26, with classicist Robert Fagles, well-known for his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, to present the guest address. More information: |
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The Master Plan: Graham Gund and the future of the Kenyon campus Last spring, incoming President Georgia Nugent announced the commissioning of a ‘master plan’ for the future development of the college, and distinguished architect Graham Gund ’63 was named to create that plan. Provost Greg Spaid '69, Vice President of Development Kimberlee Klesner and Vice President of Finance Joe Nelson are overseeing the plan's development. Among its guiding principles are the preservation of ‘green space’ and the central role of the village of Gambier, and the continued centralization of academic buildings south of Wiggin Street. Graham gave public presentations this week (Sept. 15-17), asking for input on the plan and discussing his architectural work. Gund, both an alum and a generous benefactor of the college, has designed Storer Hall (the addition to Rosse), the science quad, Eaton Center (finance), and the new fitness and recreation center. Gund has loaned the Henry Moore sculpture Large Spindle Piece to the college (it resides in the Philip Mather science quad, and has received somewhat mixed reviews), and recently loaned a Dale Chihuly chandelier for installation in the Storer Hall lobby. Response to the plan and Gund’s openness have been enthusiastic, although there has been some call for increased campus input into the plan, and some word of caution against allowing a single architectural vision to define the entire campus. More information: |
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| Britz appointed dean of admissions, financial aid April 2, 2003 Jennifer Delahunty Britz will join Kenyon in July as the dean of admissions and financial aid, succeeding acting dean Bev Morse after the departure of John Anderson in July, 2002. Britz is the editor of the higher education marketing journal The Lawlor Review and has been a consultant with The Lawlor Group in brand-management for higher education since 1989. Britz has specialized in work with liberal arts colleges. Britz received a bachelor’s degree in history from Carleton College and a master’s in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona. Before working at The Lawlor Group, she was director of admissions and communication for the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota. More information: |
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| Kluge on ‘Kamp Kenyon’ March 30, 2003 P. Fred Kluge, the Kenyon Writer-In-Residence, evoked a strong response with a Feb. 21 piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled ‘Kamp Kenyon’s Legacy: Death by Tinkering.’ In it, Kluge laments the rise of ‘coddling’ students in the liberal arts and its effects on student education and the role of the professor. The piece ran alongside another by Harvey Mansfield entitled ‘How Harvard Compromised its Virtue.’ The article, which went out as an ALLSTU email, evoked a strong response via email and in the Collegian. Kluge is also the author of the 1993 book Alma Mater: A College Homecoming, an exploration of President Phil Jordan’s Kenyon College and Kluge’s experiences from student to faculty member. More information: |
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| Sharp to become dean of faculty at Vassar March 19, 2003 Acting President Ronald A. Sharp, the John Crowe Ransom Professor of English, will leave Kenyon after 33 years to become of the dean of faculty at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, on July 1. Sharp came to Kenyon in 1970, and was named Ransom Professor in 1990. He served as provost since 1999, and acted as president during the year following Rob Oden’s resignation to lead Carleton. That year has ended with the appointment of Georgia Nugent to the presidency of the college. Sharp is a world-renowned expert on Keats and is widely known for The Norton Book of Friendship, which he co-edited with Eudora Welty. In addition to his scholarship, he stands out as one of Kenyon’s great English professors, and he was instrumental in the resurrection of The Kenyon Review in 1978. Sharp’s wife Inese has been the co-director of the Brown Family Environmental Center in 1996. There has been no official announcement of who will be provost next year, or what role acting provost Gregory Spaid ’69 will play. In related news, although there have been several reports that the search for dean of admissions is coming to a close, no one has been named to the post yet. More information: |
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Kenyon offers permanent email forwarding to alumni With recent changes to email policies at Yahoo! and Hotmail, and with the increasing number of users switching to DSL/cable modem providers, email addresses are looking less and less permanent. Kenyon is offering a solution to all of its alumni through the alumni.kenyon.edu website: permanent email forwarding. The service allows you to choose a permanent, free email address in the form of "username@alumni.kenyon.edu," and designate a real email account to which email will be forwarded (such as Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail, or or your workplace email address). If your email address changes, you can simply update the forwarding target to your new address, but you won't have to inform your friends about the new address. They can keep emailing your alumni.kenyon.edu address, and you'll get the email at your new address. For more information and to set up your forwarding settings, go to: http://alumni.kenyon.edu. |
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Radnor, Kim featured in Winter Bulletin
You'll probably recognize a few faces in the Winter 2003 Alumni Bulletin. Josh Radnor '96 and Samie Kim '96 are featured in the cover story 'That's Entertainment,' and Radnor is pictured on the cover. Radnor's recent career, including his role of Benjamin Braddock in Broadway's hit production of The Graduate and his leading role in the short-lived ABC series The Court, grabbed him a spot in the Bulletin article. He also appeared in an episode of Law & Order and in Not Another Teen Movie. After Kenyon, Radnor earned an M.F.A. from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Kim is the director of current programming at Fox Broadcasting, which means she acts as a liason between the network and Fox's shows (such as Boston Public and The Simpsons). Samie also worked for NBC since completing her Kenyon English degree. More information: |
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| Georgia Nugent named Eighteenth President of Kenyon February 9, 2003 S. Georgia Nugent, dean of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton University, was named Eighteenth President of Kenyon College on February 3. Nugent is a 1973 graduate of Princeton University and received a Ph.D. in classics from Cornell University. She taught at Swarthmore, Princeton and Brown before becoming assistant to the president and associate provost of Princeton in 1995. She was appointed dean of the McGraw Center in 2001. A member of the first co-educational class at Princeton in the same year Kenyon became a coed institution, Nugent was also the first female graduate of Princeton to hold a full-time faculty position at the university. She is a well-known scholar of epic poetry, and she was singled out at Brown as an outstanding teacher, as well. Nugent will move to Cromwell House in July, 2003, and her husband Thomas J. Scherer, general counsel in financial services at Swiss Re, will split his time between Gambier and New York City. No announcement has yet been made about what Acting President Ronald A. Sharp or Acting Provost Gregory Spaid ’69 will do next year. On a related note, Alumni Trustee Julie Johnson ’73 announced this weekend that the search for the next dean of admissions has narrowed to three candidates. More information: |
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| Ted Stanley named head football coach February 9, 2003 The college’s athletics director Peter Smith announced on Feb. 6 that University of Chicago assistant coach Ted J. Stanley will be the 34th head football coach for the college. Stanley is a 1993 graduate of Iowa’s Grinnell College. Before acting as a defensive coordinator at Chicago, he coached the defensive line and special teams for Grinnell. Stanley is known for his work turning around struggling programs and recruiting. He played four years at Grinnell himself, and holds a master’s degree in exercise and sports science from the University of Utah. Stanley replaces Vince Arduini, who resigned abruptly on Nov. 13 amidst his second consecutive 1-9 season. In addition to crushing losses to Wittenberg (79-0) and Wabash (58-0 at Homecoming), the team size dwindled to a mere 35 this year, raising worries about the future of the program. More information: |
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Presidential, admissions searches move forward Search Committee Chair and Trustee Cornelia ‘Buffy’ Ireland Hallinan ’76 confirmed in December that the Presidential Search is on schedule, meaning that the committee has been reviewing applications with the intent of off-campus interviews in January. Hallinan said that three finalists will then be asked to visit the campus and meet various groups, probably confidentially. In a December 5 article in The Collegian, Hallinan was quoted as saying, “We have a very good number of candidates. I am pleased with the candidate pool.” Her comments followed a November 21 all-campus email noting that the committee was ready to begin narrowing the search and that it was pleased with the level of interest from minority and women applicants. The Presidential Search is the result of the June, 2002, resignation of Seventeenth President Robert A. Oden, Jr., to accept the presidency of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. English professor and provost Ronald A. Sharp was named acting president, and art professor and associate provost Gregory Spaid ’69 was named acting provost, as a result. Hallinan also lead the 1995 committee that selected Oden, as well as acting as Kenyon’s first woman and first alumna Board Chair of the Trustees. David Horvitz ’74 was elected to succeed Hallinan as Board Chair last year after Hallinan resigned the post upon the extremely successful completion of the $116 million Campaign for Kenyon. Kenyon is also searching for a dean of admissions and financial aid to replace John Anderson, who is now directing college counseling at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Beverly Morse, the previous director of admissions, is currently acting as dean of admissions. Associate provost and sociology professor Howard L. Sacks is chairing the search committee. More information: |
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New Greek Alumni Council asks Campus Senate to rethink sophomore
housing The GAC re-formed to combat the decision in a move similar to its original founding in the early 1990s. Then, the GAC successfully argued to end a five-year moratorium on sophomore division housing. Last year, the proposal to remove sophomores from division housing was overwhelmingly supported by both Student Council and the Senate. Two other decisions affecting Greek life failed in the Senate last year: a proposal to raise the minimum GPA to 2.75, and a proposal to move rush to sophomore year. The controversy occurs as construction on Ganter Hall begins. Ganter Hall, a new all-campus meeting center being constructed adjacent to the Alpha Delta Phi lodge, is the result of the 1996 out-of-court settlement between the AD’s East Wing alumni association and the college. The 1995 lawsuit was brought against the college over the college’s 1991 decision to house women and non-fraternity members in parts of Old Kenyon traditionally reserved for fraternities. Funds to build Ganter were raised by the East Wing association, but the space will be controlled by the Dean of Students under the agreement. More information: Update Collegian story Jan. 30 http://archives.kenyon.edu/collegian/article.php?id=1175 |
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Kincade, Navigators play big venues with old and new music Dewey Kincade ’96’s band The Navigators has been playing significant venues in and around New York City, performing music from their two records as well as new music. The alternative blues trio has frequently been on the bill at The Knitting Factory, The Bowery Ballroom and The Mercury Lounge in Manhattan. The Navigators are scheduled to play January 11 at Harper’s Ferry in Brighton, MA (near Boston) with Young Neal & The Vipers and Memphis Raines. Tickets are $8 at the box office. The Navigators played Harper’s Ferry last November, also. January 17, they will appear with Marah and The Todd Deatherage Band at the Mercury Lounge in New York City (Avenue A and Houston, $10). Look for new upcoming dates at the Bowery, too. The Navigators opened for Grammy-winner Susan Tedeschi at the Bower Ballroom on December 11. Despite a cold (drummer/singer Philem White called him ‘Sudafed boy’), Kincade sang a fabulous set to a mostly-full house. A dozen or so people in the front of the audience (‘the Navi’s’) knew the music well enough to sing along to Kincade’s lyrics, backed by White and Andrew Emir on upright bass. The Navigators’ music is a rock/blues mix reminiscent of bands like Big Head Todd, Counting Crows and Shawn Mullins, with an alt-country edge like Ryan Adams and Uncle Tupelo. Kincade has released two albums since graduating from Kenyon, who are the Navigators in 1998 and Lost and Found in 2001, both on the Snug Records label. Their 1998 debut album caused The Louisville Scene to call them ‘the most promising Louisville band in several years.’ MP3s of ‘One Line Epitaph’ and ‘Christ I’ve Done It Again’ from who are the Navigators can be downloaded from The Navigators’ website. Photos on The Navigators’ Website and album were taken by Andrew Dailinger ’96, who interned for Annie Leibovitz before starting on his own in 2000 in New York. More information: |
