Related links:

• Berea College RecycleMania 2013 website
• RecycleMania Contest website

Dr. Alicestyne Turley, Director of the newly established Carter G. Woodson Center and Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies, holds degrees in Anthropology/ Sociology, Public Policy Administration, and History. The question of how these seemingly disparate degrees work together is one Turley admits to receiving often. For her, the answer is a long one, and it began very early in life.

“When I was a kid, a little kid, my aunts and uncles would tell us the story of Moses, my great-grandfather who escaped on the Underground Railroad.” Turley was told that her great-grandfather also became a conductor on the Underground Railroad, assisting other escaped slaves on their journey to freedom. It was frequently told story on her family’s farm in Powell County in Eastern Kentucky. In middle school, however, Turley encountered a teacher that challenged the story, telling her that the Underground Railroad was a myth. “I really kind of shut down after that. I didn’t know whether to believe my family or not, so I decided not to deal with it at all.”

With the story of her family’s history tucked away but not forgotten, Turley graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Toledo. After two years of study as a communication major, however, she abandoned her studies in Communication realizing the difficulties a woman of color would encounter in the field.

Deciding to stay in Toledo, Turley entered the workforce as assistant to the Director of the city’s Economic Opportunity Association. As her talents and dedication were recognized, a string of increasingly impressive jobs followed. Turley became the first African American secretary to Toledo City Council, and the first African American to serve as secretary to the mayor. A position with the Lexington Human Rights Commission brought her back to Kentucky, where a board member took a special interest in her. “He said, ‘You’re too smart to be working here. You need to go back to school.’ He went over to Georgetown College, paid my admission fee, and I was off to college.”

At Georgetown, Turley earned the first of her four degrees, double majoring in Anthropology and Sociology. She also met a professor, Dr. Robert Bryant, who encouraged her to revisit the story of her great-grandfather Moses. Turley told Bryant about the story, and he challenged her to prove it. That effort became the topic of Turley’s Bachelor Honors Thesis and the foundation for much of her career. “It helped me understand how to conduct oral history interviews, and determine what information was important and needed to be captured.”

Before graduation, Turley met the President of Mississippi State University, a Georgetown College grad, who, like her benefactor from the Human Rights Commission said, “You need to complete your terminal degrees,” and offered Turley a full scholarship to the school’s John C. Stennis Institute of Government. There she earned her second degree, in Public Policy Administration. In the process, she worked with the director of the Institute and Mississippi State officials, including serving as an intern for the Mississippi Municipal Association on public policy implementation. It was an opportunity for Turley to affect the policies she had so long observed. “I worked with the political figures making decisions in Mississippi. That just launched me into the realization of the importance of legislative policies—how policy is made and how it affects people’s lives.”

Returning home to care for ailing parents, Turley obtained a second Masters degree and completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Kentucky. Returning to her family history, she found connections to the world of politics. Although she had verified one Underground Railroad story, Turley found dozens more wanting confirmation. She began working with the State Historic Preservation Office to develop the Underground Railroad Research Model for the State of Kentucky requested by the National Park Service. She reached out to the National Park Service and aided in developing standards for preservation at the national level. “There weren’t that many people involved with that aspect of African American history then. After that, whenever Kentucky began talking about various aspects of preservation associated with African American history in Kentucky, they called me.”

The work led her to develop locally and nationally implemented policies. Her recognition in the field of historic preservation resulted in a special invitation from First Lady Hillary Clinton to celebrate restoration of Ellis Island in New York Harbor and from government officials in Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, the site of the recreated slave ship, Amistad. While serving as director of the Underground Railroad Research Institute, the institute she established at Georgetown College, her work with the Park Service culminated in formation of a network of national and international Underground Railroad sites, the Network to Freedom Association. The association brought together for the first time, known members of protected national and international Underground Railroad sites for the purpose of furthering preservation and research efforts.

“That’s how you marry history with policy.” For Turley, it is the intersection that matters, between people, the stories of their past, and the direction of their future. “That’s policy. When you study history, you’re really studying policies that have made an impact.” Those are the kind of policies Turley has worked to implement throughout her career.

When she received the offer from Berea to direct the newly formed Carter G.Woodson Center for Interracial Education, she saw it as a way to continue making history and new policy. “Woodson himself said Berea was the place where his ideas were shaped. His whole educational model both as principal of public schools in the Philippines and in Washington, D.C. was developed here.” As she looks to the future, Turley is excited to tell Woodson’s story, to make the world aware of Berea’s role in influencing education that created change in public education throughout the region, and to continue furthering the cause of interracial education Berea has championed for so long.

Art greets visitors to the Carter G. Woodson Center for Interracial Education

Dr. Rick Meadows

Meadows’ love of French developed early in his life as an outgrowth of his interest in American history. Raised in northern Virginia, he learned of French participation in the design of Washington DC and in the foundation of the United States. “I was interested in Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, their being ambassadors to France, and convincing the French to come into the Revolutionary War on our side.” He began taking courses in French at the age of twelve and continued through high school.

At The New College of Florida, in Sarasota, Meadows found new ways to learn and experience French, both in and out of the classroom. “There were a lot of French kids who would come over for the summer.” Meadows became close friends with many of them, playing volleyball and soccer on the beach, and practicing his French. Recently Meadows has reunited with some of those old French friends in Paris while visiting his six year-old daughter who lives there.

Rick Meadows earned a bachelor’s degree in French at New College and followed it with a master’s from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from Yale, both in French. After teaching at three other colleges, he came to Berea in 2002.

A naturally shy person, Rick Meadows started playing games in class as something of a coping technique. “If I get them up playing games and doing active things, then they’re the ones performing, they’re the ones on stage and not me.” His frequent visual metaphors originally served the same purpose. Over the years, however, Meadows began to see real value in these techniques for his students, and began to tailor them for the specific needs of language classes.

Games, according to Meadows, serve the need for repetition in learning language without feeling tedious. They also help with some of the frustration that students often feel. Learning a new language infantilizes students in a way. They have adult ideas to express, but only a few words to express them. “If you have to put up with those frustrations and be able only to express yourself like a child, at the very least, you should also have the advantages of being a child and be able to play games and do fun things.”

The world of Rick Meadows is not entirely Francocentric though. He is also involved in politics. Having never been active before, Meadows started donating his time to campaigns in 2003. The next year he was serving as a presidential campaign chairperson in Scott County. He was also very active during the 2008 presidential campaign season, which afforded the opportunity for Meadows and over fifty Berea students to attend rallies and even meet candidates personally. In 2010, Governor Beshear appointed him to the position of Fayette County Commissioner, and he won election to the position shortly afterward.

As with his other influences, Meadows does not view his political and policy experience as distinct from the rest of his life. Instead he has bent the experience to serve his students with General Studies courses on topics like poverty and development in sub-Saharan Africa and comparative study of U.S. and European public policy. Meadows, who once planned to major in economics, said, “you never know when something that seems completely unrelated from what you end up majoring in is going to help you tremendously in your career.”

For Rick Meadows this diversity of experience has proved invaluable. As with the Mississippi River he likes to describe, Meadows has benefited from many streams of experience. It is a process that Meadows recognizes as ongoing even now at Berea, thanks in large part to the College’s goal of transformative learning, which Meadows thinks applies as much to professors as to students.

“When we arrive here, we have not achieved everything. We have not become everything that we could become.” Speaking of the Great Commitments and the extraordinary history of Berea, he said, “There is a sense of wanting to live up to that and be worthy of it.” To Rick Meadows, like many members of the Berea College community, education is a way of life. It is about the community of diverse individuals and opinions afforded by Berea, and wanting to make the most of that community every day.

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Jan Pearce, Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, is a woman of many talents and passions. When asked about her interests, she responds with a deluge of answers that sound more like driving directions explaining her present position by telling where she has been.

Jan Pearce, Ph.D., Chair, Academic Division II

One of Pearce’s greatest passions is for the Liberal Arts. It grew during her undergraduate years at Augustana College in Illinois and followed her all the way to the University of Rochester, where Pearce received her Ph. D. in Mathematics. She smiles when she remembers the final days of her doctoral studies, when she announced her career plans to her dissertation advisor. “I told him that what I really wanted was to teach at a small Liberal Arts school like the one I went to, and his eyes just went wide,” she says. Teaching at a school like Berea wasn’t part of the usual plan, but it was what Pearce wanted. In 1992 she fulfilled that goal by joining the Berea College Faculty.

Since her arrival Pearce has spent much of her time pursuing her ever-changing professional passions, which have included Mathematics, Computer Sciences, Robotics, and Educational research. “They’re always shifting,” she says, “but it’s that intellectual curiosity that keeps us young.”

An outsider might argue that Jan Pearce’s intellectual curiosity has not only kept her young, but also made her an invaluable problem solver for Berea College. When she first arrived, Pearce was greeted with a Computer Science curriculum in need of some work. It was a linear program, and the only available introductory course had recently been cancelled. “The only students who could actually take computer science had to have had some in high school,” she says. Since then Pearce has crafted a new minor and major curriculum with three different exploratory courses and a fourth on the way. She has also authored literature so that other institutions may follow her example.

Most recently Pearce applied her mathematical skill and creative ingenuity to Berea’s Academic restructuring. When others saw an arduous challenge in trying to rework the school’s departmental model, Pearce saw an opportunity. In a series of two campus wide surveys, she gathered data from faculty members regarding which departments they were most likely to work with. With that data, she constructed a ground breaking mathematical model called a cluster analysis based upon a pseudo-metric to predict the most beneficial arrangements. The structure her research generated is the very framework for the College’s current six-division model.

These achievements have certainly not gone unnoticed. Following the restructuring, Pearce assumed the chair of Academic Division II: Resources, Technology, and Commerce. She is also currently the sole Faculty Representative to Berea’s Board of Trustees, and has received numerous awards during her tenure. Among them, she is most proud of her recent Brushy Fork Bob Menefee Service Award. She received the award for her work with a digital storytelling class. “Brushy Fork had identified community leaders in Appalachia, people who have really made a difference, and asked them to tell their stories,” she says. The students worked with those recorded interviews, edited them into videos, and constructed an interactive website to show them off. “I’m really proud of it,” Pearce says. “Now those stories are accessible to anyone in Appalachia. Before, you couldn’t access those stories unless you knew those people. “

As if Jan Pearce’s passions for science and education were not enough, she is also an accomplished dancer. She regularly performs with the Lexington Vintage Dancers and has performed several times with the Kentucky Ballet Theater. She even hosts a monthly dance in Lexington called “Mostly Waltz”. Her favorite, however, is the Argentine Tango. It is a passion that has led Pearce all the way to Argentina with Berea College students to study with the masters of the Tango.

With so many diverse passions and accomplishments already acquired, Jan Pearce is hesitant to predict her future. “I have no idea what’s going to come next,” she says, “but I’m sure it will be fun.”

• Jan Pearce Faculty web page
• Lexington Vintage Dance

On trips to Lexington he stopped in Berea and began to learn about the College and its mission. Through his work, Rosen met Berea faculty members like Ralph Thompson who told him more. He found the College’s mission and dedication to service well aligned with his own. “When a position came open,” he says, “I jumped at the chance. I was very anxious to become a part of this thing we call Berea.”

That was 1989.  Although the College’s mission originally attracted him, Rosen readily admits that he has found many more reasons to stay at Berea over the years. “I don’t think anyone really understands what it is like to teach here until they have done it.” The difference, in his opinion, is the student body. “Our students don’t start at the top. They are not the children of doctors and lawyers,” he says.“They’re good kids though, and they have tremendous work ethic.” For this professor, the joy and the pleasure are in helping those students reach the top.

Rosen, an educated man with a Ph.D. in Parasitology from The University of Manitoba, is not one to tout his achievements. When he talks about the successes of his students, he prefers to credit his fellow faculty and staff, as well as the drive that the students themselves bring to their work. Mr. Rosen’s own work, whether he likes to admit it or not, is remarkable in both its breadth and depth.

One of Rosen’s greatest focuses during his tenure has been the encouragement of undergraduate research. “It is probably the highest form of teaching one can engage in,” he says. Sometimes his involvement is hands on, performing animal necropsies with his students or counseling them regarding independent projects. Sometimes it is sending them off to research partnerships like the one Berea has established with Vanderbilt University. In every case Rosen says “Research is not something extra. It’s not something we do in addition to school.” For Rosen, this kind of study is central to the process. Students are co-authors on 11 different peer-reviewed publications with Dr. Rosen, and have received 11 first, second or third place awards for their research presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Kentucky Academy of Science since 1998.

He also prefers not to dwell on his numerous honors, which include the Seabury Award for Excellence in Teaching, received in 2008, and the office of President of the Kentucky Academy of Science, which he held from 2001 to 2002. Instead, Rosen is looking toward the future of his ever-changing institution. “Students are a moving target,” he says, adding that the duty of the college is to keep up with them while maintain the highest of standards. With characteristic modesty and affection, he explains that it is all about the students. “Seeing them complete their degrees and find success means more than any recognition.” For him, everything else is just a nice pat on the back.

Fittingly, the nicest pat on Ron Rosen’s back comes from those students. Years after the classes in Biology and Parasitology, after the necropsies and research projects, he tends to get a phone call. The student on the other end of the line says, “I saw road kill today and thought of you.” Rosen laughs to himself and thinks, “How gratifying. What better way could I be remembered?”

From left to right: Julianna Dolan ’12, Ericka Berg ’14, Michon Martin ’13, Franceska Mehmeti ’14, Dr. Ron Rosen, Bailey King ’13 at North Elkhorn Creek in Scott County, Ky

Related Link

• Ron Rosen’s faculty profile
• Rosen Reveals Parasite Research