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News & Views is a
bi-monthly
e-publication of the Sterling College Admissions Office.
In this issue:
-Admissions Notes
-Mountain Cultures Semester: Destination India
-Who Goes Here? Hannah McHardy ’10
-Faculty Spotlight: Mitch Hunt, Farm Manager
-Game of Logging Comes to Sterling College
-Students of the Subartic: Winter Ecology
News and Views Staff:
Gwyn Harris (Editor), Jenna Ryan (Tech Support), Paul Ferrari '06, and Jay Merrill '02.
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Apply Now for Fall 2007
Sterling College provides a depth of learning and intensity of interaction distinctive in higher education.
Our environmental focus, commitment to experiential learning, and community is not for everyone, but it may be right for you. Begin your exploration. Submit an application for admission for the fall of 2007. |
Please join us on
Saturday, March 31, 2007!
Take a tour of campus, attend workshops, and sample a delicious meal in Sterling's Dunbar Dining Hall. Staff, students, and faculty will be on hand to answer all your questions about our academic majors, experiential curriculum, global field studies, internships, admissions and financial aid.
Click here for more details
and on-line registration
or call
800-648-3591
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Summer 2007 Sustainable Agriculture Semester
Join us in the Green Mountains of Vermont and immerse yourself in the daily rhythms and realities of farming. This 6-8 credit academic program of work and study explores ecological management of plants, animals, and land. Application deadline is April 16, 2007.
Location: Sterling College
Dates:
June 10 - August 17, 2007
Cost: $5,250 (Limited financial aid is available.)
Housing provided.
Click here for more information! |
Wanted: Environmental Stewards to Apply for Full Tuition Scholarship.
Each year we award two, full tuition, four year scholarships to students who have demonstrated an exemplary committment to environmental service. Apply for the Environmental Steward Scholarship by April 1, 2007. Click here to print or request a scholarship application.
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Mountain Cultures Semester:
Destination India
by Jay Merrill '02, Admissions Counselor
Imagine walking among giant snow-capped peaks that are so tall and extraordinary you feel a great sense of insignificance. Imagine sitting, cross-legged, in a room filled with monks wearing the traditional saffron and red robes of Tibetan Buddhism and chanting, in low pitches, ancient Sanskrit prayers. Or maybe you |
Marijke Riddering ’00 co-leads this year’s MCS. Marijke has spent time on her own trekking in the Himalayas of Nepal and studying the culture. Since graduating from Sterling College in 2000 with her degree in Outdoor Education and Leadership, Marijke has gained extensive experience teaching in the field. Soon after graduating, Marijke worked as lead instructor for Proctor Academy’s Mountain Classroom. Marijke has also worked as an instructor for the Voyager Outward Bound School in Minnesota and most recently worked as the Student Affairs Manager for the School for Field Studies in the rainforest of Queensland, Australia. She brings a great amount of experience in world travel and guiding. |
| are happily sipping a cup of tea with your host family in their home or discovering the traditions of shopping in an open market in downtown Gangtok. You may even find yourself working alongside local stone masons as you help erect a tea-house for the village you are staying in. This is a glimpse into the life of a Sterling College student during Mountain Cultures Semester (MCS). |
Each spring a group of students and faculty members embark on a trip half-way around the world to northeastern and northwestern India to begin a semester long journey filled with cultural immersion and explorations. The Mountain Cultures Semester includes courses such as Writing from Experience, Snow Physics and Avalanches, Winter Mountaineering, and Intercultural Studies. The goal is to provide opportunity to not only study, but to see first hand the different cultural attitudes towards natural and human resources.
Ned Houston, professor of the Mountain Cultures Semester, began his own explorations into Himalayan life when he led the first MCS to the Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal in 2001. Currently, the semester focuses on the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim in the northeastern region of India as well as Ladakh, in northwestern India. (click here to read more)
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| Tales from Mountain Cultures Semester Past... |
The Prayer Flag Factory
by Christina Erickson, MCS Faculty 2005
At the end of the street called Mahatma Gandhi Marg in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, a small sign hangs on the side of a building. Prayer Flags. Actually, I think there are more words than that, but those are the only ones in English. Walk down a few decaying cement steps and hang a right into another stairway, leading you down into a dark hallway. Turn right down this hallway, watch out for anyone or anything sitting amongst the darkness, and go through a dingy doorhanging on the left side, near the end of the hallway. A few steps further inside and you’ve made it to “the prayer flag factory.” (click here to read more)
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Journal Entry: April 3, 2005, Day 27
by Dan Schieffelin '06
Yesterday we trekked to Tashiding Gompa, one of the oldest in Sikkim, which dates back to 1641. At the gompa there is a huge collection of Mani stones carved with likenesses of different Buddha’s and prayers for the entire world...(click here to read more) |
Travel Piece
by Andy Paonessa '06
As we continue our travels along the village path from Yoksum to Tashiding the sun encompasses the land providing sustenance for all its beings from soil to sky. This powerful force acts like a mother to her child giving the essential energy needed for natural processes to continue and flourish. Birds dance through the sky singing their unique and unfamiliar tune and the glistening foliage drips wet with moisture in this tropical paradise. As my senses soak up the land like a sponge I can’t help being overwhelmed with joy... (click here to read more) |
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During her recent trip to Laos, Hannah spent time with a napping 10-month old Asiatic Bear that had been rescued. |
Who Goes Here?
Hannah McHardy '10
Hometown: Bentonville, AR
Major: Conservation Ecology
The dreaded switch of high schools senior year, a much maligned event in the history of many teenagers, was a fortuitous happening for Hannah McHardy. Hailing from Bentonville, Arkansas, Hannah moved kitty-corner across the country to Seattle, Washington, in 2003. Here, in the inspirational surroundings of Nova High School, she began her transformation from active student to activist.
“Nova is a small, democratically run public high school full of budding youth intellectuals, activists, and artists,” according to Hannah, “Nova offered a learning environment where I was empowered to take responsibility for my own education.”
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True to her words, take responsibility is exactly what Hannah did when she completed a course entitled All Things Green one semester and then co-taught the same course the next semester. It was this course that introduced Hannah to the landscape of her newly adopted home by covering topics such as forest ecology, native plants, and environmental sustainability. Of this introduction and its ensuing impact on her life Hannah writes, “Inspired by my first steps into the wondrously lush old-growth temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, I set out on a journey for the forests. As it has unfolded, that journey has led me to my greatest adventures, challenges, triumphs, and growth.”
(click here to read more)
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Faculty Spotlight: Mitch Hunt,
Farm Manager
B.A. History, Secondary Education Licensure, Castleton State College, 1997.
A sixth-generation Vermonter, Mitch grew up on a dairy farm in Hartland, Vermont. He studied history at a Vermont state college and became certified to teach. While he enjoyed teaching for a short while, he missed farming. He describes himself as a farmer/educator, in that order. He agrees with the old adage, “You can take the farm away from the farmer, but you can’t take the farmer away from the farm.”
(click here to read more)
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The Game of Logging Comes to Sterling College
by Paul Ferrari '06, Admissions Counselor
A morning chill slapped me in the face when I opened my front door. I hesitantly inhaled the parched frigid air as I walked down the front steps. The world outside had a crystalline dryness to it that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else: it was really cold. I was comforted by the realization that I would have company today. Eighteen blue toed, red-cheeked souls that would stand outside with me, shoulder to shoulder, huddled around our Husqvarna wielding instructors to learn the Game of Logging.
The Game of Logging (GOL) is an educational program that was started by a Swedish immigrant by the name of Soren Eriksson. Eriksson pioneered and proliferated a style of felling that has become the preeminent timber harvesting training program in the US. The GOL offers courses that certify the participants through completion of four day-long classes or levels. Each level builds upon the first and covers a comprehensive list of topics from felling and chainsaw maintenance to personal protective equipment and how to work safely in the woods. (click here to read more) |
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Students of the Subartic
by Jenna Ryan, Assistant Director of Admissions
On this crisp January day the mercury barely touches the single digits above zero as the intrepid group of Winter Ecology students disembark from the van and head down toward the banks of the Lamoille River.
Fresh snow in winter often reveals as much as it covers; especially if you are curious as to the whereabouts of mammals in winter. It is the perfect medium for animals to leave evidence of their movement and activities. Today is no exception as the Winter Ecology students gather around two parallel sets of tracks above the Lamoille River to determine that they were made by a coyote and a fox. The goal of this afternoon is to discover the map of tracks that the denizens of this area have left behind. |
NS360: Winter Ecology
Examines the physiological, anatomical, and behavioral adaptations of polar plants and animals to winter and seasonal conditions in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Among the most important challenges to polar organisms are intense seasonal changes of conditions, intense cold, limited energy resources in the environment, and the establishment of long-term snow and ice cover. These factors have provided selection pressure for a remarkable series of adaptations by polar organisms. The course is taught largely in an intensive lab and fieldwork format. Topics include the observation of animal behavior including radio tracking, the nature of cell adaptation in plants (and some animals) to below-freezing temperatures, the behavior of aquatic ecosystems under thick ice cover and low light penetration, and the means by which organisms have adapted to the presence of a deep snow cover. |
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Along the way, instructor Dick Smyth calls attention to the flora as well as the fauna. Identifying trees bereft of their foliage is another challenge of the Winter Ecology course. It is an important part of the course for Robert Pougnier, a junior who is self designing a major in Natural History. In addition to studying botany, Robert also felt that learning about snow physics from Professor Gerard Courtin (who taught during the first half of the course) enhanced his overall knowledge of the winter landscape. Robert built a quinzhee (snow shelter) as one of his projects. |
| As part of the project, Robert recorded temperatures inside and outside of the quinzhee to measure how effective the snow pack walls were in insulating the structure. Robert notes that he could have built the quinzhee without any knowledge of snow physics, however “Having a knowledge of snow physics, especially destructive metamorphism (how snow crystals break down), helped me understand the why behind the quinzhee structure.” (click here to read more) |
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