“The Living Building Challenge is LEED on steroids,” says Rich Dodd, project Manager of Berea College’s new Deep Green Residence Hall, with lots of “extra special efforts” along the way designed to make the building not only 55% more energy efficient than most buildings, but the entire construction process more sustainable.

Deep Green Dorm over 50% complete

Last month, for example, expenditures on recycled materials totaled 28 percent of material costs. “Aluminum cans, all the stuff that contractors have for lunch, even the fill dirt taken from the site, scrap wood, 100 percent of the scrap metal—all of that job-site waste is recycled” says Rich Dodd, noting that about 91 percent of all waste material generated from the Deep Green Dorm’s construction is re-used.

Adding recycled brick face

As we walk toward the construction site, a light rain carves out channels in the mud surrounding Berea College’s Green Res Hall jobsite as the industrious clanks, buzzes, calls of “heads up” and putter of machinery drone on despite the weather. Workers busily lay the buildings brick facade made entirely from the tailings of other manufacturers, their yellow safety vests forming a network of dots against the building’s scaffolding. Meanwhile, workers below in hardhats and heavy ear-muffs tend to the drilling of the geothermal wells on the east side of the building, beneath what will be dorm’s parking lot.

Drilling geothermal wells

Geothermal heating and cooling is one of the most energy efficient systems out there, according to Dodd. This is because geothermal capitalizes on naturally occurring temperatures deep underground, rather working to turn the much colder (or hotter) outside air to the wanted indoor temperatures. Typically geothermal systems use about 40 percent less fossil fuels than conventional heating and cooling systems. The Deep Green Dorm’s system will circulate water through 1 inch pipes buried in 50 different wells 375 feet underground. The water in these pipes will absorb the underground temperatures, which normally hover at roughly 50 degrees Fahrenheit. From here the water will be pumped from the wells to an indoor heat-exchanger or chiller as the season demands and continue on throughout the rest of the building to each individual coil unit. A blower on each coil unit will distribute the warm or cool air to each dorm room, each regulated by individual thermostats, so students will have control over the temperature of their dorm room.

Geothermal pipe inlets

“Honestly, the temperature is not going to fluctuate as much as you’d normally see in buildings,” says Dodd, pointing to the highly insulated shell of the building— three inch thick pockets on either side filled with foam insulation  sandwiched by another three inches of air-space. Dodd refers to this as the building envelope.  “The outside air is not getting to this steel” says Dodd, thumping the heavy steel column supporting the ceiling above, “So you won’t have cold temperatures on the outside transferring through the steel to the floor slab inside.  It’s not going to be toasty warm, but neither will it frost up.” Several other buildings on campus also utilize geothermal systems, including Fairchild, Woods-Penn, Frost, and Phelps-Stokes.

Air pockets and insulation in building’s envelope

Says Vice President of Operations and Sustainability Steve Karcher, “We’ve been incorporating sustainable features in our renovations for the last 15 years,” noting the college’s recent renovations in rainwater catchment, low-flow toilets, and energy efficient lighting. “What’s remarkable,” continues Karcher, “Is that while the Deep Green Dorm will be among the most energy efficient and sustainable such buildings in the country, it doesn’t rely on remarkably expensive and risky new technologies or construction processes.”

“Industry-wide if you go from just a standard meeting code building to doing a LEED anything it’s about 30% of material costs,” says Dodd. But these costs are expected to quickly be made up in reduced energy and maintenance costs. The building’s oversized air ducts, for example, will both reduce friction of air-flow and the strain on the air handlers bringing in outside air, minimizing both energy and maintenance costs.

As we pick our way past the giant piles of insulation still to be installed and stacks of poplar two by four boards harvested from the Berea College Forest (48,868 board feet of lumber total), Dodd points out hitches along the way, features which proved difficult to meet the third-party LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge certification standards.  For one thing, the contractors had to ditch any products containing red-list products such as PVC, formaldehyde, or neoprene. The prevalence of these materials has proved difficult in sourcing some products, and in many cases requiring innovation. The substance used to water proof restrooms and shower rooms, for example, had to be changed, as did the roof paints, and numerous other product. Neoprene is typically in pipe insulation, so they had to find a replacement for that. Sourcing materials without PVC was also a challenge, as it is present in almost everything these days, not just in pipes but in carpets and even windows.

Overhead men are soldering pipes together. Dodd points to the air ducts next to where they work, recounting that one of the most difficult challenges was coming up with a duct putty that passed code. “Its really, really tough,” says Dodd, “With lots of effort on everybody’s part, from the subcontractors, to the contractors, to Berea College, to the architects, and the engineers.” He continues, “Third party certification programs aren’t an ‘end all’ to sustainability efforts, but they are a means to an end. We chose to measure this project with a LEED Platinum Certification. That is the highest, most stringent certification. We also chose to use several of the Living Building Challenge’s prescriptive paths because of their holistic nature…by forgoing substances like hydroflorocarbons, pthalates, wood treatments containing creosote, etc., the building will be a healthier place for our students.”

Study nook with lots of natural light

Many of the ‘holistic’ features Dodd mentions will contribute to the overall beauty of the building. Tall ceilings and relatively spacious rooms, each designed to be ADA compliant, with enough to square footage to accommodate two wheel-chair bound students are just one part of the draw. Large floor to ceiling windows allow a flood of natural lighting as well as a good view of the hills beyond. Every floor will have a large open study area and kitchenette, and will feature art-nooks where student crafts will be displayed, lit by night by little LED lights. Student harvested and crafted furniture will also adorn the rooms and study areas, as well as form the baseboards and decorative finishes. Even the shape of the building itself is designed to invite the outside surroundings inside. An L shape layout, the building has one long South facing and East facing wall, opened up so that the East facing side still has south-east exposure to the sun.

The building is projected to be completed in June 2013. The West wing of the building is currently being drywalled and the East half is about to fitted with the wood trim from the college forest. Furniture will begin to be moved in come May. By fall of 2013, students will grace the halls of the college’s newest, most energy efficient building on campus.

Dr. Richard Cahill, Director of the Francis and Louise Hutchins Center for International Education (CIE) and Associate Professor of History, has poured his passion for international education into the College through various programs sponsored by the CIE.

Dr. Richard Cahill

“Life in a different cultural setting,” Cahill said, “can be a really transformative experience.”

Cahill earned his bachelor’s degree at Westmont College, his master’s degree at the University of California, his Ph.D. at the University of California and has also studied at the American University in Cairo.

Interest leading to a deep passion for the Middle East began with Cahill’s first visit at the age of eighteen. After Cahill’s first year of college, he peddled his heart out biking around Europe. His plan was to explore, observe and discover new cultures and viewpoints. After four months of biking in Europe he decided to hitch-hike in Africa. “I discovered the genuine hospitality of Egyptian people and fell in love with their way of life,” Cahill said. Cahill remembers feeling, even then, that all students should have opportunities for study abroad.

The life of academia had always influenced Cahill. Throughout high school and college, teachers and professors encouraged him to become an educator himself.  He followed their advice. At Berea College Cahill teaches “Pre-modern Middle East,” “Introduction to Islam,” “History of the Arabic-Israeli Conflict,” and “Contemporary Global Issues.” His academic background is in Islamic and European history.

The first part of Cahill’s academic career was focused on both Middle Eastern and European history; however, in 1996 he switched over to only Middle Eastern history. That same year Cahill was appointed the Director of the Middle East Studies Program (MESP) in Cairo, Egypt. He lived in Egypt for six years. In 2002 he returned to California and taught for three years — until a friend from Cairo, who was living in Washington, DC, contacted Cahill about a position as CIE director at Berea College. “He knew that I was into the kinds of things that Berea cares about,” Cahill said. “Primarily social justice, inclusive world views and interesting students.” After researching the college and discovering its ideals and history, he applied for the directorship of CIE and a position on the faculty. Cahill has been working at Berea College since 2005.

As Director of the Center for International Education, Cahill oversees education abroad, international student and scholar services, campus programing for internationalization and faculty and curriculum development. The campus programming entails events every Friday, known as the “Think Globally Its Friday,” or TGIF, and the first Monday of the month, which has a global focus on cultural events. Faculty and curriculum development encourages teaching abroad, researching international and global issues and bringing international and global issues into the classroom.

International events on campus arouse curiosity and desire to study abroad. Cahill said, “Students often say that traveling abroad is a life changing experience. Sometimes the students experience hard transitions into the culture. It isn’t always an easy experience, and it takes time to reflect on how monumental the experience actually was. It’s nice when students return to Berea years after graduating and reflect on their experiences studying abroad.”

Cahill notes that it is also a transformative experience for the international students who come to Berea College. When domestic students become friends with international students, their view of life becomes multi-cultured and diverse. Many domestic students have a different view of life because they had a roommate from someplace far away. Currently there are over sixty countries represented on campus.

What better way is there to expand your knowledge than to take a class abroad? Dr. Cahill shrugged. To ensure this remains the case, the CIE is always looking for new and improved international education opportunities. “We are always trying to raise awareness and encourage students to take advantage of opportunities to study abroad,” Cahill said. He was between his freshmen and sophomore years when he first biked and hitch-hiked abroad, and now he’s realizing a notion that came to him at that time — that students should have opportunities to study abroad. “It seems to be going very well,” Dr. Cahill said with a grin that won’t be restrained. And behind his bright blue eyes you just know there’s a part of him that wishes he could go with each and every one of them.

Dr. Richard Cahill on Berea College campus

Related links:

• Berea College RecycleMania 2013 website
• RecycleMania Contest website

Berea College students enrolled in Peace and Social Justice courses taught by Dr. Michelle Tooley and Jason Strange attended the 2012 Lake Junaluska Peace Conference from November 8-11. Lake Junaluska is located in the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and has been a Methodist Retreat Center since 1913. Each year over 150,000 people experience Lake Junaluska through the ministry programs, church retreats, annual conferences and countless other events. The fifth annual Peace Conference theme was entitled “Love in Action: The Transformative Power of Non-Violence.”

The outstanding platform of key-note speakers included:

• Liberian Peace Activist and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Leymah Gbowee
• Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, Candler School of Theology Rev. Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr.
• President of the Metta Center for Nonviolence Michael Nagler
• Central Methodist Mission in Cape Town, Africa. Rev. Alan Storey.

Each speaker has been on the front lines of non-violence movements around the world from the U.S to Liberia and South Africa. Their testimonies provided rich alternative paradigms to violence and built off applications of non-violence as taught by Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and other spiritual leaders. The goal of the conference was to propose alternative patterns for resolving conflict, achieving justice and building peace.

Students who wished to attend the conference applied for Discovery Funds through Berea College’s financial aid and were awarded with sufficient funds for meals. The costs associated with attending the conference and lodging were provided on behalf of Lake Junaluska in form of generous scholarships. Erica Cook, a senior Communication major from Costa Rica said, “I’m so blessed to have the chance to attend a conference such as this one but if it were not for the grant I and others received from Berea College, many of us would not have had this amazing opportunity.”

Contingent attending Lake Junaluska Peace Conference from Berea College

This year a total of 20 students attended the conference, which is 10 more students than last year. Due to the immense popularity of the experiences expressed by the ones who attended the 2011 conference, more students decided it would be rewarding to see what the hype was themselves. Although many consider Lake Junaluska to be a relaxing and beautiful environment, during the Peace Conference there is little time for outdoor excursions. The conference schedule is quite hectic. Each day begins with breakfast at 7:30 am, followed by prayers and meditation and is continued with speakers throughout the day until about 9 pm.

Kenny Madden, a sophomore Sociology major from Greenup, KY shares, “I thought the Peace Conference was great. It gave me a much needed morale boost for continuing to work for peace. It strengthened my belief in the principle and practice of nonviolence, and taught me valuable skills for engaging in nonviolent resistance.”

Many of the students correlated the speakers to the ones that come to Berea College for convocations. Samuel Gilbert, a Political Science major from Lexington, KY observes, “I really enjoyed the peace conference, it was very informative and eye opening. The speakers were all well versed in their fields and had inspiring things to say. It felt like a long convocation, filled with cathartic speech and moments of peaceful resolution to change the world.”

Although many of the students were excited to learn more about conflict transformation in order to apply it to their Peace and Social Justice classes, they all expressed gratitude for being able to enjoy a “mini-vacation” away from Berea after mid-term exams. Jessica Wells, a junior from Greenup, KY said, “Lake Junaluska is beautiful! This has been the most stressful semester of my college career, so having the opportunity to attend this conference provided me with some much needed relaxation and de-stress time.”

George Marshall, an Education Studies major from Noblesville, IN admitted, “It was the highlight of my semester.”

Most of the students who attended enjoyed the conference because they learned how successful peace activists were able to apply the theories taught in Dr. Tooley and Jason Strange’s classes. Kathryn Pliml, a junior Child and Families Studies major from Grand Rapids, MI recalls, “We’ve been reading and discussing a lot of theory and it was great to see it carried out by professionals and to hear stories of how it’s been implemented in the work that they do. I also got to hear a lot of different takes on conflict transformation which was educational because there have been times when I’ve not completely agreed with ideas we’ve discussed, but they were presented to me in a new light.”

Leymah Gbowee with Erica Cook

The key-note speakers made lasting impressions on the students. It is not every day you get a chance to meet a Nobel Peace Prize winner like Leymah Gboyee who is such an inspiration to millions of people. George says, “It was amazing to hear Leymah’s story of how she, along with thousands of Christian and Muslim women, started a revolution in Liberia and ended the Civil War.” The fact that Leymah Gboyee was successful in accomplishing one of the most difficult tasks in the world, bringing about peace in Liberia, struck many of the students and urged them to think about the ways in which they can also change the world.

Samuel says, “Leymah spoke about her struggle to change the course of history in Liberia, to end the Civil War and to bring peace to her fractured land. It was inspiring to hear her struggle and her triumph.”

Michael Nagler was another inspirational speaker the students were quite fond of, Kathryn recalls, “Not only was he informative, clear, and obviously incredibly intelligent but he also held a workshop about his work and had dinner with us. The ability to maintain a balance between being a renowned scholar and being personable and engaging with those who aren’t was very impressive.”

After four days of intense introspection and analysis of social change based on non-violent approaches, the students left with a sense of empowerment and an eagerness to make a difference in their world, beginning in their communities at the grassroots level. Sarah Clark, a sophomore Sociology major from Knoxville, TN says, “The Lake Junaluska Peace Conference was inspiring, empowering, eye-opening, refreshing, frightening at times and overall an enabler to reflect on all the conflicts that are waged in this world and within lifetimes.”

They all expressed either a new found interest in conflict transformation or the validation they needed. Sam admits, “I learned the value of using non-violence versus other means of interaction. It reinforced my belief that it only takes a few dedicated people to start a movement that can change the world.”

***

Further reading:

• Rev. Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr.
• Michael Nagler

Lake Junaluska Conference Site

Photos by Erica Cook and Johnny Pope

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

Berea College’s Entrepreneurship for the Public Good (EPG) program has, for the past several years, been involved in exploring ways social media engagement could be good for Appalachian communities. EPG Director Peter Hackbert is an advocate for smartphone access to social media. “If you are a motel or restaurant owner in Wolfe County, you want to be easily found in TripAdvisor or Yelp. Next you want to have a 5-star rating. And you’ll want satisfied clients to write positive reviews. This is how social media adds to your bottom line,” Hackbert said. “On the other side, the tourist side, more-and-more people are using mobile media to help them make decisions. A town with lots of businesses and attractions described, rated and reviewed in these websites is a more compelling place to visit than one with little or no web presence.”

Over the summer 2012, EPG’s student project was dubbed “Appalachian Mobile” and 26 students focused on Wolfe County and the city of Berea in Madison County. Participating students were trained to be social media strategists. They held workshops for community businesses and non-profit organizations and they ‘practiced what they preached’ by helping locals become familiar with a variety of social media platforms, create accounts, and drive engagement for their business and their community at large. They located and coordinated with other social media consultants, advocates and bloggers to build partnerships and joint initiatives.

Ali Djire ’15

Berea College student Ali Djire ’15, double majoring in Business and Agriculture, minoring in Sustainability, explained:  “Since we were bringing new ideas and concepts into the Eastern Region, we had to make sure we met and explained our program to community leaders to make our project viable. Therefore, we spent a lot of time talking to and mobilizing civic leaders, business owners and citizens in general.”

While they were on scene in their target communities, the students helped various businesses experience social media engagement by writing their own reviews as “tourists to the community” and posting them in fledgling social media accounts.

***

Related links:

• Berea College’s Entrepreneurship for the Public Good program
• TripAdvisor
• Yelp

Photography by Huy Linh, Erica Cook and Yeshi Tsomo

Rev. Gail E. Bowman in Danforth Chapel

“So far as we know, at Emancipation, the Bowman family came off a plantation somewhere in Kentucky (!), moved west to work the soft coal mines in northern Missouri then moved north into Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota when those mines played out around the turn of the century. My grandfather was born in Iowa, and so was my dad. Only 2% of the population in Iowa is black. My sister and I were the only black kids in our elementary school classes. It was rough.”

One of the challenges of being a minority, then and now, was race-based assumptions. “When I was about 8 years old, my parents became concerned because my report cards from school reflected poorer performance than they could understand. They made an appointment to go talk to the people at school and were told I was simply not too bright. I didn’t hear about this until I was an adult. They just told me to keep working…hard.”

“As I grew older I began to appreciate my parents’ position — my family’s position — on the matter of race, of being black in America at that time. My parents were both well-educated and recognized that the nation was changing, and that there were opportunities in place that had never been there before. They felt a burden, whether it was ever expressed like this or not, that blacks in their position were building a bridge for others to cross over. Consequently, my sister and I were expected to behave ourselves, do well in school, and be above reproach.

“My closest association with other black kids came through church. At that time, going to church was something black people felt compelled to do for an assortment of reasons. But to be honest, I wasn’t buying it. There was this sign at the front of the church that said ‘God is Love.’ But that wasn’t the message I was hearing in the preaching. I was hearing that God was ticked off at us because of what we did. And the people teaching Sunday school couldn’t answer my questions, so beyond believing in God, I wasn’t sure what to think.”

After high school Bowman enrolled in the University of Iowa. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, though. While I was there I had seven different majors. My father was somewhat concerned about my numerous changes in major. One semester I took a course in Swahili and I remember getting a call from him: ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t they teaching French down there?’”

Three semesters deep in college, Bowman was at home when a friend of her father’s came for dinner and opened the subject of what she wanted to do after she graduated. He asked if she’d given law school any thought. When Bowman responded that the problem with that plan was that she would have to major in political science, he responded that she could just as easily major in history. She returned to school, began a history major, and later added a second major in political science.

“I did well on the LSAT exam and my dad and I discussed what law school I should attend. He asked if I’d considered Harvard. I said it had crossed my mind but the application fee was too expensive. He said, ‘If I pay, will you apply?’ and I said Why not? I ended up getting accepted.” However, a week before Bowman started law school at Harvard, the family got word that her mother had breast cancer.

“The entire time I was in Harvard Law School my mother was fighting a long and painful battle with cancer. At one point I confessed to my mother that I didn’t know if I should continue. But she was adamant. She made me promise that I would finish. And I did.” Bowman’s mother died in the fall after Bowman graduated.

Bowman chose Washington, D.C. as the place to practice law, working first for a small firm and then for the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Carter Administration. When the Democrats lost the Senate (Reagan election in 1980) all the Democratic staffers, including Bowman, lost their jobs. Bowman accepted a proposal of marriage and moved to Los Angeles to take the California bar exam and prepare for the wedding, but the relationship “crashed and burned.” She returned to Washington to look for work and try to put her life back together. She found a position on the House side of Capitol Hill and worked on several exciting initiatives, including the creation of the Martin Luther King national holiday. Then she began to recognize that all was not well with her.

“There were two events that I consider spiritual that set me on the path to ministry. The first was the suffering death of my mother. I was not able to get past that. The other was that I was not enjoying my work. I finally prayed what I did not then realize was a ‘dangerous’ prayer. I promised that if God told me what I should do with my life, I would do it. I had not thought, in my wildest dreams, that a ‘call’ to ministry was coming, but that’s what happened.”

At this point, Bowman was not even a member of a church. A friend put together a list of possible churches and Bowman began trying them, one at a time. “Finally, I walked into a church and knew immediately that I was in the right place. After the service I made an appointment to come back and talk to the minister. During that meeting I told him ‘I think I’ve been called to the ministry.’ He seemed pretty startled but then he asked if I’d been baptized and I said, ‘Of course. I was baptized in the AME church,’ and he said, ‘Oh no, that won’t do. You need to be baptized by immersion!’ When the scheduled date came around I showed up with my hair cut off very short.  I didn’t want to have to try to keep my hair dry; I wanted to get completely wet. What I didn’t realize was that this church thought the long hair on a woman’s head is her ‘glory’ and I’d just defiled it. We proceeded when I confessed I was unaware of that passage. After the baptism the pastor sent me to his friend, Lawrence Jones, at the Howard University Divinity School. Dean Jones recommended that I apply; I did, and that’s where I ended up going.

“From the very first night, I loved divinity school. This is where all those questions I had asked in Sunday School were being answered. I really got my money’s worth, because I arrived not knowing much more than the 23^rd Psalm, and that there are four Gospels. I enjoyed writing papers there. One professor asked me where I learned to write like that and I said ‘in law school.’ (Law school, I figure, is the perfect generic graduate school experience.) All in all, I was in seminary for four years because I started out part-time.”

After seminary, Rev. Gail E. Bowman could not find a job in the D.C. area. None of the black churches there hired female pastors. She ended up at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

“I enjoyed working there (PTS). I loved hanging out with the Presbyterians, but my job there was administrative and the President of the seminary told me I did it so well I’d probably never be given any other position there. So I started checking out all the appropriate papers for job openings. I had accumulated a big stack of periodicals in my office and was on the verge of sending them all to recycling when something made me yank one from the stack and flip through it one more time. I saw an ad from Spelman College in Atlanta (historically black, all female) — they were looking for a College Minister. The possibility of that was so exciting I couldn’t apply fast enough.” She ended up spending five years at Spelman.

“Then, during a change of administration at Spelman, a representative from Dillard University (historically black, co-ed) in New Orleans turned up in my office asking me to consider a move. It took two visits, but I finally did. New Orleans wasn’t an immediate hit with me but Dillard was.  I adored it. By the end of that first year I began to ‘get’ New Orleans, and eventually identified it as the ‘home on earth’ I had always been looking for. Then, in 2001, we got one of the massive grants from Lilly, one of the PTEV’s (Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation), and we were set with funding to try all kinds of exciting initiatives.” Things went well until August of 2005.

“The Dillard campus, my home and the homes of lots of our staff and faculty were in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans which was completely inundated by flood water from the Katrina disaster. Here’s the most effective way I’ve heard of expressing the damage done to the university by the flood: Debris removal ALONE cost $25.9 million. We could not return to the city for four months. Many of us finally returned on December 16, 2005, moving into a downtown hotel that would serve as our campus for the next seven months. I had been told all was lost in our area; ‘throw your keys away.’ Coming on campus, I ran into some facilities people who told me my office was okay. So I found my keys, which I had not, thankfully, thrown away, and went in and the only thing that I saw different was a line of silt on the windowsill. The chapel itself was fine, it had not flooded. We had roof damage, but that was it. The chapel was the only building on campus that did not flood.”

“Having the chapel functional helped us a great deal in the months of rebuilding. We were able to have an outdoor graduation ceremony in July ’06 on campus by staging it out of the chapel. Of course, we had to set-up port-a-potties and fresh water because nothing was working. The landscaping was not the usual beautiful Dillard landscaping. But we were back.

Life on campus returned to normal very slowly. “In some ways, rebuilding the physical structure was easier than re-building our spirit. That was such a tough journey. Katrina posed huge issues for us theologically. Lots of folks voicing opinions in the mass media blamed the devastation on the sin of New Orleans. One of the things that offset that meanness was the enormous out-pouring of prayer and help. The help — the importance and the value of it — was indescribable.

“I love New Orleans. There are so many races of people there, and so much cultural exchange. Mardi Gras, with its peculiar history, is just one of many ways people have invented to be together and enjoy each other. I didn’t always go. Sometimes I just stayed at home and worked (I’m a writer on the side). But it felt so good knowing that, around me, my city was having a good time.”

On May 18, 2012, Rev. Gail E. Bowman, J.D., said good bye to Dillard University in an eloquent letter that can be read online (see link, below) and, a short time later, she appeared at Berea College and assumed the roles of Director of the Willis D. Weatherford, Jr. Campus Christian Center and College Chaplain.

Rev. Bowman in one of the Danforth Chapel gardens.

“Berea is so interesting! There is so much to learn here. The community and what we are trying to do resonates with me because it brings together so many aspects of my life experience. Berea is race, it is history, it is possibility, it is quality; it’s Appalachia but it’s also the world. Our convictions require us to get along with each other differently than many other schools, and the struggle to live up to God’s expectations of us keeps us moving. This realization — that this was God’s project first — is part of what makes the Campus Christian Center central to the mission. Howard Thurman (African American theologian and author, favorite writer of Martin Luther King, Jr.) said ‘A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear.’ The ideals of Berea, our commitments, are such a crown, and we in the CCC are honored that we have a role to play in the everyday and overall growth of this ‘beloved community.’”

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Related links:

• Gail E. Bowman’s Baccalaureate speech at Stanford University before the class of 2011
• Gail E. Bowman author page at Amazon.com
• Reverend Gail Bowman Bids Farewell to Dillard

Photography by Alicia Carman ’13 and Doug Widner

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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“There’s definitely compelling evidence that nutrient cycling can be altered, and wildlife species that rely on other plants completely disappear out of the picture,” said Sarah Hall, Secretary of the Kentucky Native Plant Society and agriculture professor at Berea College. One of the reasons for this might have to do with the huge amount of leaf litter accumulated by each plant. Several invasive species have the ability to fix nitrogen from the air, and in the case of bush honeysuckle, which drops its leaves several times a season, drastically ups the nutrient levels in surrounding soils. Suddenly native plants which thrive in low-nitrogen environments are pushed out of the picture. There is even evidence that foreign worm populations start to thrive in the soil under these invasives, further expediting the plant’s nutrient cycling loop and making nitrogen available at a faster rate. Increased available nitrogen in the soil in turn encourages further colonization. If this isn’t enough, several invasives are thought to be allellopathic, releasing chemicals in the soil that actually suppress growth of anything else in their immediate surroundings.

“Here we’re kind of a transition where bluegrass and the knobs meet” Berea College’s assistant forester Glen Dandeneau explained. He gestured to the area behind where the college poultry farms used to be, an area particularly overrun with honeysuckle. It is one of the initial areas of restoration focus. By clearing the area of bush honeysuckle, his team is releasing plants that were beginning to be choked out. Several of the plants uncovered include ones not previously found in this area, including ‘Wahoo’ or Euonymus atropurpureus, ‘Strawberry bush,’ and native Viburnum. Finding Wahoo here was especially neat. Dendeneau said, “That’s what excites me about restoration of a native ecosystem. Seeing things repopulate and come out … you know, what you would normally be used to seeing if the non-natives weren’t there.”

“It’s hard to find the positives about invasive species,” said Sarah Hall, “but one thing is that most of them only thrive in certain areas. Bush honeysuckle is really problematic in the bluegrass region here in the state, but you go in eastern Kentucky and it’s not so much a problem because the parent material in the soils are different there. Now you get other invasive species that are becoming problematic there. It’s not like bush honeysuckle is going to take over the entire landscape of the eastern United States and destroy everything, but it’s definitely taking hold in a lot of areas and where it does, it has an impact.”

Since they started the project in September of 2011, Glen Dandeneau and the college forestry team have systematically gone through and applied cut-stump treatment to 20 acres, or approximately one third of their target goal. The glyphosate compound (otherwise known as Round-up) applied directly to each invasive plant stump is considered the most benign of the chemical options, and more environmentally conscious as its application can be controlled. The chemical disrupts plant growth by entering its cell structure and causing the plants to grow so fast that their cell membranes burst. After going through and treating the entire 60 acres once, it is likely the team will have to do repeated cuttings on an ongoing basis in order to keep any regrowth or new seedlings from emerging. In some of the outskirts of the woods, a topical application is used, although Dendeneau notes that this method is used minimally.

College Forester Clint Patterson explained the reasoning behind these chemicals. “If we are sick, like this woods is, we sometimes take a synthetic treatment to get well.  Sure, an overdose of it can kill us, but not taking it can too.  When properly used, herbicides are a tool which can help us to win the battle with invasives, which have become probably the largest threat to our native ecosystems.”

Dandeneau added, “Our major concern is the impact we have on the environment,” noting that the crew has experimented with applying various levels of herbicide to different swatches of woods to determine the minimum amount of herbicide they could effectively use. Even with the highest amounts of herbicide, their total use per acre for cut-stump application was 4 gallons per acre, well below the restrictions for broadcast spray applications at 60 gallons per acre (there are no restrictions for cut-stump applications). While studies of how these chemicals have impacted the soil or brushy creek haven’t yet been carried out, Dandeneau mentioned they would like to see more classrooms research projects get involved.

What they have focused on is the feasibility of eradicating an invasive species which has become quite prolific. Of the Berea College’s 8,000 acres of woods, the forestry team is focusing on some of the most visible to the public, as well as most over-run area of woods around the cross-country trails behind campus in an attempt to measure how much labor must go into reclaiming a severely degraded area. Along with bush honeysuckle, other invasive plants targeted include Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense), Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), burning bush (Euonymous alata), and scattered russian olive (Elaeagnus augustifolia).

Dandeneau said, “there’s so much forest land in Kentucky and the majority of it is owned by individuals. So anything that we gather research-wise, we want to be applicable to the landowner.” So far their records have indicated that for one acre using a 50% solution of Rodeo (active ingredient glyphosate), they used 3 ¼ gallons of herbicide and 51.5 hours of labor while at a 33% solution, they used 4 gallons and 33 hours of labor. Their project is funded by a grant through the EQIP program, administered by NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service), which can be renewed for up to three years. With the addition of another full-time forestry member Jonathan Collette, the team expects this project to pick up the pace.

Governor Beshear has declared September “National Invasives month.” As fall is the time when plants are pulling their resources back underground to be stored through winter in their root system, now is the best time of year to be applying the treatments. Gardeners and homeowners can help by reviewing the Kentucky Exotic Pest Plant Council’s list of least-wanted plants, many of which (including Japanese honeysuckle) are regularly sold in the regions’ plant nurseries.

For Berea College’s forestry team, one third of the way through their initial treatment, the results of their work are encouragement enough to keep up the fight. Dandeneau said with a hint of enthusiasm, “Right now it’s a lot of work and its very ugly, you know, with all the dying honeysuckle. But seeing the stuff we’re uncovering and the amount of native tree species and shrub species that have survived, that’s very exciting.”

Related links:

More information about Berea College Sustainability
More on Berea College Forestry