Stetson Magazine 2021-37-1

STETSON S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 Professor Rajni Shankar- Brown, PhD, and her “artivism” are helping to guide a university’s journey from its pandemic past to today — and beyond. PORTRAIT OF PROGRESS AND PROMISE U N I V E R S I T Y M A G A Z I N E B E G I N N I N G S Spring Football On March 13, 2021 — exactly one year and one day from Stetson’s announcement that all classes would be moving online, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — the Hatters took the field to play football. Spring football. The game against the Davidson College Wildcats certainly was welcome, and the setting was grand at Spec Martin Memorial Stadium in DeLand (although fans were scant and socially distanced, of course). The scene also was quite uncommon, with the Hatters originally scheduled to open their season last September. Then again, what hasn’t changed in the past year for any of us? The outcome: After falling behind 26-7 with under nine minutes left to play, the Hatters put on a furious rally that ended just short in a 26-20 loss. It was the first of six games scheduled for this spring. Photo: Simoneau Photography 2 STETSON | Spring 2021 Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 3 Departments 2 BEGINNINGS Spring Football 6 WELCOME Moving Toward a Very Bright Future 8 INTELLIGENTSIA News and Notes About Knowledge 18 FIRST PERSON Remembering a Rock Star 54 ATHLETICS ‘Find Something Positive’ 56 ALUMNI Alumni Awards 62 THE CLASSES Accolades and Achievements 67 PARTING SHOT Resiliency Features 20 Once in a Century A global pandemic from so long ago stirs echoes of a university’s wearisome journey and subsequent triumph. 28 Investigating COVID-19 Seizing opportunity, current students, alumni and professors are striving to become part of the public-health solution. 32 Portrait of Progress and Promise Amid the pandemic, Rajni Shankar-Brown, PhD, shines as a beacon of hope for social justice and equality, with the belief that “there’s critical change to be done.” 20 STETSON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE SPRING 2021 • VOLUME 37 • ISSUE 1 President Christopher F. Roellke, PhD Vice President of University Marketing Bruce Chong Assistant Vice President, Marketing/Media Relations Janie Graziani Editor Michael Candelaria Designer Kris Winters Art and Photography Faith Jones ’21, Joel Jones, Ciara Ocasio Writers Sandra Carr, Rick de Yampert, Emma Horton ’16, Janie Graziani, Cory Lancaster, Kelly Larson, MLIS, Ashley McKnight-Taylor, Christopher F. Roellke, PhD, Jack Roth, Susan Ryan, MLS, Laura Sikes Class Notes Editor Cathy Foster STETSON UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE is published three times a year by Stetson University, DeLand, FL 32723, and is distributed to its alumni, families, friends, faculty and staff. The magazine is printed on FSC-certified paper. The College of Arts and Sciences, School of Business Administration and School of Music are at the historic main campus in DeLand. The College of Law is in Gulfport/St. Petersburg. The university also has one satellite center: the Tampa Law Center. Want to add, remove or change your magazine subscription? Email [email protected]. Also, we accept paid advertising. Email inquiries to [email protected]. 4 STETSON | Spring 2021 38 NSF + STEM = Diversity A nearly $1 million award from the National Science Foundation for an initiative involving science, technology and math targets students who most need the help. 42 Cilantro to Self-Discovery Kendall Buck ’23 isn’t quite raking in the big dough just yet — but she is already beating the odds with a simple, clever, market-viable kitchen utensil. 46 Summoning Captain Kirk and Uhura From “Star Trek” to professorship, Harry Price, PhD, reflects on the university’s evolving campus climate and chemistry, and offers messages of hope. 50 Beyond the Horizon As the university looks ahead, the physical environment — specifically, climate change — emerges as an issue that is demanding, and receiving, attention. 28 42 ON THE COVER: Professor Rajni Shankar-Brown, PhD Enduring and triumphant efforts such as those from Shankar-Brown highlight Stetson’s successful rebound from pandemic times not seen in a century. Shankar-Brown received the 2020 McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching — the university’s most prestigious faculty honor. Photo: Stetson University/Ciara Ocasio Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 5 WELCOME On these same pages in the Spring 2020 issue of Stetson University Magazine, not long after I became the new president, I commented, “There is so much about Stetson that resonates with me. ... What stands out most to me is that the people who study and work here are kind, engaging, thoughtful and hungry to make a difference. The commitment to experiential learning, to modernizing concepts of a broad and pragmatic liberal arts education, to promoting diversity and inclusion — all of these commitments have been central to my own thinking about education.” Today, I must say that, after approximately 10 months on the job, I could not have been more right. Our Stetson community has been amazing during this past year — a year like no other at our beloved university. Last spring, we were forced to go entirely online, something Stetson had never done before; yet, we prevailed — in the spirit of progress and promise, as the cover of this magazine suggests. That transition online was remarkable, and unlike some institutions, Stetson never closed. Our faculty, our staff, our administration and our community all dedicated themselves to moving a Stetson education forward for our amazing students. In the February 2021 edition of The Rolks Report e-newsletter, I called attention to our Everyday Heroes. They are the people across our campus that go above and beyond and make the extraordinary, routine. We have many, many heroes. I cannot thank them enough for their outstanding work. (My nickname is Rolks — hence, The Rolks Report, which was introduced last fall.) My belief in our Stetson community has been further confirmed through our presidential webinars, which have been recurring almost weekly for the past several months. Whether it has been our discussion about national politics, such as our political roundtable following the events of Jan. 6 on Capitol Hill, or our Values Day - Hindsight 2020 webinar focused on acknowledging and reflecting on the racial injustices that have occurred throughout history, our community’s voice has been both open and robust. I salute all who participate, including students, faculty and staff, and members of the broader community. Through all of our interactions, we are learning from one another about how we can move forward. And, to be sure, we are moving forward. Recently, for example, two significant academic advancements were achieved by virtue of highly competitive national grants. With a $359,000, two-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Stetson’s Community Education Project (CEP) now is able to expand its course offerings at the Tomoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach. Our CEP has been providing liberal-arts education through credit-bearing courses to MOVING TOWARD A VERY BRIGHT FUTURE 6 STETSON | Spring 2021 Christopher F. Roellke, PhD President, Stetson University incarcerated students for the past three years. The grant will fund five new courses, as well as deliver other benefits to those students. Also, the National Science Foundation awarded Stetson nearly $1 million to provide additional scholarships to low-income students in fields that involve science, technology and math. And to help ensure the success of those students, our curriculum development initiative is taking an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes peer-interaction, project-based learning and community partnerships, among other important components. As we look ahead, the two new grants are a big win for Stetson. Indeed, as Professor Rajni Shankar- Brown, PhD, who won our most prestigious faculty award for 2019-2020, represents on this magazine cover, Stetson is all about progress and promise. We are moving ahead, overcoming the challenges of a historic pandemic, toward an exceptionally bright future. P.S. Most of you should receive The Rolks Report e-newsletter in your email inbox. If you aren’t and would like to receive it, please send your request to universitymagazine@ stetson.edu. SPRING 2021 CENSUS ENROLLMENT SNAPSHOT PERSISTENCE MOST POPULAR UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS UNDERGRADUATE ENROLLMENT BY UNDERGRADUATE COLLEGE/SCHOOL TOTAL SPRING 2021 ENROLLMENT: ENROLLMENT BY CLASS LEVEL of Fall Semester 2020 first-time-in-college students returned to Stetson for the Spring Semester 2021 Source: Office of Institutional Research & Effectiveness, Feb. 2, 2021 Health Sciences UNDERGRADUATE LAW GRADUATE Psychology Business Administration Political Science Biology 88.2% 258 2,890 4,201 916 395 224 222 167 147 56.5% 43.5% FEMALE MALE FIRST YEAR SOPHOMORE JUNIOR SENIOR GRADUATE LAW 14% 16% 17% 22% 9% 22% 1,822 63% ARTS & SCIENCES 7.6% MUSIC 219 29.3% BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 848 Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 7 Head of the Class In the latest National Council on Teacher Quality report, “Teacher Prep Review: Program Diversity and Admissions 2021,” Stetson’s Elementary Education program placed in the top 5% (59 out of 1,256 institutions) nationally for admission standards and diversity. The report by NCTQ, a nonprofit research and policy organization that works to modernize the teaching profession, analyzed the diversity of elementary-teacher preparation programs by comparing the diversity of the teacher candidates enrolled in the program to the diversity of the state teacher workforce and local community where the program is located. NCTQ also evaluated the elementary education programs’ admission standards, including SAT/ACT performance, audition expectations and applicants’ GPA. In 2019, research published in Sage Journals’ “Review of Educational Research” showed that Black students and Latino/a students scored higher on standardized tests and had more positive behavioral outcomes when they were assigned to a teacher of the same race/ethnicity. “The education department’s strategic plan has a focus on program diversity and recruiting a diverse teacher workforce,” said Chris Colwell, EdD, Stetson Department of Education chair and associate professor. “The national recognition of the work that the entire Stetson community supports in identifying, recruiting and graduating talented and diverse educators is a wonderful achievement.” — Sandra Carr INTELLIGENTSIA DID YOU KNOW? This winter, Stetson University College of Law inducted Richard O. “Dick” Jacobs and Madison M. Mosley Jr., PhD, into its Hall of Fame. Jacobs is a 1967 graduate of Stetson Law who in 2016 created (with his wife) the Dick and Joan Jacobs Environmental Law Externship Fund to provide financial assistance for students to pursue the “dirty hands, wet feet” experiences. This year, he launched the Stetson Environmental Tax Policy Writing Competition for students to develop innovative tax law policies to fund solutions for sea level rise. Also, his vision for Stetson Law continues to expand, with the creation of a Center for Environmental Justice now underway. Mosley is a 1992 graduate of Stetson Law who earlier had received a doctorate in library science from Florida State University in 1980. Mosley’s most prolific work was as an executive board member of the Florida Library Association. Mosley was considered a leader in the field who made significant contributions to libraries and librarianship. He mentored many students and other librarians throughout his service to Stetson, the community and the profession. Mosley continued those efforts until his unexpected death in 2005 at age 55. Chris Colwell, EdD 8 STETSON | Spring 2021 Advocating Success It happened again — for the 25th time in 38 years. This winter, the Stetson University College of Law Trial Team won the Chester Bedell Mock Trial Competition. Team members Alicia Roddenberg, Samantha Simmons, Lauren Cleveland and Tyler Hillier kept the winning trend alive after participating in the three-day competition, held virtually this year. Roddenberg was named Best Advocate. A second Stetson team of Magner Tiuso, Hillary Hazeltine, Bryan Lawlor and Jasmine Mattear made it to the quarterfinal round of the competition. The Trial Lawyers Section of The Florida Bar annually conducts the prestigious competition for mock trial teams from Florida’s accredited law schools. Each school is invited to send two teams to the competition, which culminates with the final round presided over by a distinguished federal or state court judge. In 2021, Stetson’s program in trial advocacy is nationally ranked No. 1 by U.S. News & World Report. — Ashley McKnight-Taylor NEWS AND NOTES ABOUT KNOWLEDGE Timely Sabbatical in Taiwan In a sense, the timing couldn’t be much better. By virtue of a Taiwan Fellowship, awarded through the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Stetson’s Rachel Core, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, had barely made it through travel restrictions on the way to her sabbatical in Taiwan. Due to a new strain of COVID-19, Taiwan had closed to foreigners, but Core had a visa with special entry permission. It was the only type of visa, in fact, that the country was still allowing. She departed on Dec. 31 and arrived in Taiwan the morning of Jan. 2, 2021. She will remain in Taiwan until the end of July before returning to Stetson for the Fall Semester. And, as the only Stetson professor currently in Asia, Core is seeking to maximize her time there. Her work is the continuation of research chiefly focusing on the People’s Republic of China. Specifically, it’s about the rise and decline of the urban work-unit system, and how that affects people’s access to infec­tious disease control, primarily tuberculosis but also applicable to many other infectious and chronic dis­eases. Through the years, Core has studied preventive health programming and case finding — with special attention to social determinants of access to health care and infectious control. Core now finds herself in the midst of new relevance. She is in final stages of manuscript preparation for a book project, with the contents expanding her disserta­tion written at Johns Hopkins, where she graduated in 2013. The manuscript, “A Great Leap Forward in Health,” examines why, after controlling TB successfully from the 1950s to the 1990s, China began facing TB-control challenges at the same time it was becoming an economic superpower. This fall, she expects to resume one of her usual courses on the social determinants of health — class, gender affecting people’s access to health care and health outcomes — as well as the social construction of health and illnesses, and the way health professionals interact with patients. “I’m sure students will be excited to take these courses again,” Core commented via Zoom. — Michael Candelaria Associate Professor Rachel Core, PhD, at the Shilin Night Market in Taipei, Taiwan Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 9 INTELLIGENTSIA In 2015, a Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs research article, titled “Higher Education in an Era of Mass Incarceration: Possibility Under Constraint,” showed that among the more than 2.2 million individuals behind bars in the United States, only 6% have access to formal postsecondary educa­tional opportunities. Since its inception in 2015, CEP has been committed to offering high-quality liberal-arts education to incarcerated students, and for the past three years has been teaching incarcerated students credit-bearing courses and providing them with additional learning, research and teaching opportunities. The grant will allow CEP to offer five new courses, including two food studies classes on sustainable food production that explore race, class and gender in the food system, two humanities courses that are aimed toward food studies, and a special-topics class on race, food and nation in the Americas. The grant also will provide CEP with an opportunity to create a garden, an outdoor classroom, employ a garden manager and postdoctoral fellow in the humanities, and help to fund a second edition of CEP’s literary journal. CEP’s co-directors are Pamela Cappas-Toro, PhD, associate professor of world languages and cultures; Andy Eisen, PhD, visiting assistant professor of history; Melinda Hall, PhD, associate professor of philosophy; and Jelena Petrovic, PhD, associate profes­sor of communication and media studies. — Sandra Carr A ‘Best Business School’ Stetson’s MBA program has been named a national leader by The Princeton Review as part of its 2021 Best Business Schools. Stetson moved its MBA program to an online-only program in 2019. Only 244 business schools across the nation were chosen for the list, which was based on surveys of administrators at business schools during the 2019-2020 academic year. The surveys included more than 200 questions and covered topics from academic offerings and admission requirements to data about currently enrolled students and graduates’ employment. Additionally, an 80-question student survey asked students about their school’s academics, student body and campus life, as well as about themselves and their career plans. The student surveys were conducted annually between 2017 and 2020, totaling more than 17,800 students at 244 business schools. “What makes our Best Business Schools list unique is that we factor in data from our surveys of students attending the schools about their campus and classroom experiences,” noted Robert Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review, which doesn’t rank the online MBA programs or name one best school overall. “Stetson is honored to be included on this list,” said Neal Mero, PhD, dean of Stetson’s School of Business Administration. “To be repeatedly recognized for exceptional programs is a testament to the hard work of our faculty and students, as well as the mark of an excellent education.” In its profile of Stetson, The Princeton Review quoted student surveys affirming that Stetson has a convenient evening course schedule attracting many “working professionals who are striving to advance their careers.” On the whole, these students comprise a “very driven group,” who are “goal-oriented” and “serious about academics.” At the same time, the atmosphere is collaborative, as most students are also “interested in diversifying their skills in both business and networking.” Further, the atmosphere is supportive for professionals, and students find they “can relate with classmates, since many also have full-time jobs.” — Janie Graziani Students at the Tomoka Correctional Institution College-In-Prison Program Receives Mellon Grant Stetson’s Community Education Project — a multidisciplinary college-in-prison program — is expanding its humanities course offerings at the Tomoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach, thanks to a $359,000, two-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant, Seeding Justice: Collaborative Learning Landscapes in Carceral Spaces, was made possible by the foundation’s The Future of Higher Learning in Prison initiative. CEP is the first recipient at Stetson to receive a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Neal Mero, PhD 10 STETSON | Spring 2021 DID YOU KNOW? Hala ElAarag, PhD, professor of computer science, received the Florida Council Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Outstanding Engineering Educator Award. The recognition process requires a nomination by an electro-technology professional, two endorsements and a recommendation by the award committee chair of the local IEEE section to the state level. Contestants include university professors and government and industry professionals who have made an outstanding contribution to the electro-technology profession. In 2019, ElAarag won the IEEE Orlando Section’s Outstanding Engineering Educator Award. Arriving at Stetson in 2002, she is a senior member of IEEE and a former president of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges. According to ElAarag, this latest award “highlights Stetson University for its high level of computer science, computer information systems and cybersecurity education, along with having one of the best degree programs in Florida.” Students Of Color Business Study Abroad Fund The Stetson Innsbruck Program has a long and rich history at the university’s School of Business Administration. Now in its 25th year, the program allows students to take AACSB International-approved business courses taught abroad by full-time Stetson faculty and distinguished visitors — with picturesque Innsbruck, Austria, as the back­drop. And this year the program includes group learning excursions to Bavaria-Munich, Germany. Plus, for the first time, the program offers an additional opportunity that features greater access for Stetson students who typically are underrepresented on the popular summertime trip. Introducing: the Students of Color Business Study Abroad Fund. As part of Stetson’s current universitywide emphasis on inclusion and diversity, the School of Business Administration has created a targeted scholarship to help defray student costs. The fund is designed specifically for Stetson students of color, regardless of their academic major, to support their participation in the Stetson Innsbruck Program. To establish the fund, a faculty member of the business school anonymously committed to a total of $25,000 over five years. Inspired by that generosity, another faculty member then agreed to match the first $1,000 of gifts donated by other busi­ness professors and staff members. Additional dollars have since been collected, with the hope of growing the fund. Beginning this summer, several students of color may receive scholarships of $1,500 or more for travel. The Stetson Innsbruck Program is scheduled June 30-July 31 (pandemic permitting). The all-inclusive cost is $5,950. Want to contribute? Visit the School of Business Administration’s site for online giving. Once at the site, select “Other” in the designation dropdown menu. Then, type in (or cut/paste) Stetson Students of Color Business Study Abroad Fund. — Michael Candelaria Innsbruck, Austria Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 11 INTELLIGENTSIA College of Law Adds Honorary Scholarships In recent months, Stetson College of Law has added four new scholarships in honor of alumni and faculty. The Robert E. Jagger Public Defender Scholarship honors an alumnus (JD ’58) who was the first public defender for the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court in 1961 and served there for 35 years. At the time, Jagger was believed to have been the longest-standing elected Public Defender in the country. The Hon. Thomas B. McCoun III Scholarship is named after a judge who practiced law for 41 years, serving the last 24 years as a Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida. He also taught as a Stetson adjunct professor for many years. The Dean Michèle Alexandre Scholarship was created by William R. Nunno, JD ’71, as a way to both thank the College of Law for giving him “the opportunity to become a lawyer” and to recognize Alexandre, who became dean in 2019. Nunno was a solo personal injury practitioner from 1972 until his daughters joined his law firm 20 years ago. He has been appointed by the Superior Court of New Jersey and has served as a per­sonal injury arbitrator for more than 30 years. The Professor Dorothea A. Beane Scholarship honors her work as a teacher for 30-plus years in federal pretrial practice, civil procedure, inter­national human rights law and law of international tribunals. The scholar­ship is intended to attract and retain Black students with enormous potential. Beane was founder and director of the Stetson College of Law’s Summer Abroad Program in The Hague, Netherlands. She was awarded the College of Law Teaching Excellence Award in 2005. — Ashley McKnight-Taylor DID YOU KNOW? Stetson’s Centurion Sales Program is teaming up with NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) to give students hands-on experience during race events and opportunities for internships and jobs. The program now is a collegiate sales partner of NASCAR and part of the company’s new initiative called NASCAR University. The program allows Stetson students to join NASCAR’s Group Sales team during race events and receive instruction. Students also can sell tickets to customers — with the top-performing sellers guaranteed an interview for internships and jobs. In February, students participated during events at Daytona International Speedway, including the Daytona 500. Stetson University College of Law 12 STETSON | Spring 2021 Student Becomes National Diversity Fellow Nelson Quezada Herrera ’21, a political science and English major, received the prestigious American Political Science Association Diversity Fellowship Award — becoming the first student at Stetson to be named an APSA Diversity Fellow. The APSA Diversity Fellowship Program supports scholars from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic back­grounds who are applying to or are in the early stages of political science doctoral programs. Herrera was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the United States when he was 7. Herrera, who received a $5,000 fellowship award, cur­rently is applying to top master’s and doctoral political science programs. His research and studies will be focusing on political behavior and psychology, and public opinion. In 2019, Herrera participated in the Stetson Undergraduate Research Experience, a signature program that fosters excellence in research and creativity under the mentorship of a Stetson faculty member. Herrera also was a 2020 APSA Ralph Bunche Summer Institute Program fellow. The virtual event included faculty and RBSI alumni presentations, as well as research-writing and professional-development sessions, among other activi­ties. — Sandra Carr ‘Sinfully Vegetarian Odyssey’ At age 21, Hari Pulapaka came to America for graduate school, leaving behind his home in India and the vegetarian diet he had eaten all his life. As a graduate student, he needed fast, convenient meals at a reasonable price. In this country, that meant pepperoni pizza, fast- food burgers and fried chicken. Overnight, he began eating meat. Pulapaka, PhD, an associate professor of mathematics, has transitioned in the past year to minority owner of Cress Restaurant in downtown DeLand near the Stetson campus. He no longer juggles dual professional lives as a chef for the top-rated restaurant. Yet, that change hasn’t dimmed his passion for food, especially decadent vegetarian cuisine. Last fall, that passion led to “Dreaming in Spice: A Sinfully Vegetarian Odyssey,” the second in Pulapaka’s “Dreaming in Spice” series. It follows a memoir/food cookbook from 2015. He began writing the latest one when the pandemic arrived last spring and already has planned a third book, “Dreaming in Spice: Maximum Taste, Minimum Waste.” While his first book was mainly autobiographical, the second book is educational, exploring the benefits of a plant-based diet, whether for religion, health, the environment, ethics or finances. Self-published through his company, Global Cooking School LLC, it includes 251 globally inspired recipes, such as Pumpkin Gnocchi Parisienne with Gorgonzola, Walnuts and Sage, and Sinfully Vegetarian Bread Pudding. — Cory Lancaster DID YOU KNOW? After 11 years as a school nurse and supervisor, Johana Burgos became director of Stetson Health Service in November. A registered nurse, Burgos provides COVID-19 testing to the Stetson community and assists with contact tracing. Also, she serves on the Safer Campus Task Force, which oversees the university’s extensive mitigation efforts during the pandemic. She established a well-orchestrated effort to prevent and reduce transmission of the coronavirus, based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Florida Department of Health. Burgos spent the past five years as a nursing supervisor for Volusia County Schools, overseeing 13 school clinics. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from Daytona State College. “I knew this was a lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t let pass,” said Burgos, who was born in Colombia and immigrated to the United States with her parents at age 18. Nelson Quezada Herrera ’21 Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 13 INTELLIGENTSIA ‘If We Empower the Weakest …’ Stetson Law honored Desmond Meade with the prestigious Wm. Reece Smith, Jr. Public Service Award, which recognizes individuals who have provided outstanding contributions to public service, the justice system and the community. During his acceptance speech in late February, Meade shared how in 2005 he was a convicted felon, homeless and addicted to drugs. He was tired of struggling and contemplated taking his own life. Instead, he found the strength to seek help and began rebuilding his life. By 2014, he had earned a law degree from Florida International University College of Law. Meade became president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy. He led the coalition to a historic victory in 2018 with the successful passage of Amendment 4, a grassroots citizens’ initiative that restored voting rights to more than 1.4 million Floridians with past felony convictions. Amendment 4 represented the nation’s single-largest expansion of voting rights in half a century. Meade’s overarching philosophy for work and life: Always strive to find something within yourself to give back for the betterment of others. People who appear to have nothing in life, but who are joyful, are so because they share what they have with others, he believes. “If we empower the weakest in our community, we empower the commu­nity as a whole,” Meade said during his acceptance speech. As such, Meade embodies the spirit of the award’s namesake — a legend­ary Florida lawyer who dedicated more than 60 years working to increase the legal services available to people who could not afford them. — Ashley McKnight-Taylor DID YOU KNOW? Burrow Press — a small Florida-based literary publisher — has a new home: Stetson. The press, however, won’t be publishing works by Stetson faculty or students. It’s a literary press based out of a university, not a university press, according to Ryan Rivas, publisher of Burrow Press and the sole full-time employee since its founding in Orlando in 2010. Burrow Press has moved its operations to Stetson, and Rivas, who graduated from Stetson’s MFA of the Americas writing program in December, has joined the Stetson staff as the new coordinator of MFA Publishing. The plan for Burrow Press is to “expand the boundaries of Florida literature by publishing the best contemporary writing by new and established authors” and to “foster literary communities in Central Florida and beyond.” Since 2010, Burrow has provided more than 1,400 opportunities for writers to publish and share their work in print, online and at readings. “We take literature seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Rivas said via Zoom last fall. “We’re aware of the narratives out there about anything that comes out of Florida. I think the work speaks for itself in terms of overcoming any misperceptions.” Desmond Meade 14 STETSON | Spring 2021 Air Force ROTC Ascends Not much time was needed before Stetson’s Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program received its first national salute. In 2018, the university welcomed the Air Force ROTC program on campus in partnership with our School of Business Administration, with the program designed to prepare students to become Air Force officers while earning a college degree. Last fall, Air Force ROTC Detachment 157 — including Stetson, Bethune-Cookman University, Daytona State College, University of Central Florida-Daytona and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University — received the Right of Line Large Detachment award for the 2019-2020 school year. The award, recognizing both cadets and staff, is for “best detachment in the nation.” Award criteria included overall production of Air Force and Space Force officers, educationally focused efforts, recruiting and retention, university and public relations, and cadet activities. Detachment 157 is the third-largest detachment nationwide from a total of 145 organizations, which serve more than 1,000 colleges and universities, as well as the U.S. Space Force, a new branch of the Armed Forces. — Michael Candelaria DID YOU KNOW? In November, Stetson’s Wendy Anderson, PhD, was elected to Seat 4 on the Volusia Soil & Water Conservation District. Anderson received nearly 60% of the vote in a campaign that emphasized her qualifications, including a doctorate in biology and her job as a professor of environmental science and studies. One of five elected supervisors, Anderson is serving a four-year term in the volunteer position. The conservation districts originally were created by the federal government after the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Their mission was to help farmers protect their soil and provide water resources to ensure food security for America. Today, with less agriculture in Volusia County, the district’s mission focuses on promoting conservation and educating the public about the importance of efforts like low-impact development, sustainable landscaping and solving water quality issues. ‘Your Leadership Legacy’ Retired Lt. Col. Oakland McCulloch, who has been at Stetson since 2011 and has built his own legacy of ROTC success, now is an author. His book, “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be,” was released in February. “Today’s leaders have a responsibility to inspire the leaders of tomorrow,” said McCulloch, who is the recruiting operations officer for the Eagle Battalion ROTC program, which includes Stetson and three other universities. Prior to that role, McCulloch had a decorated 23-year career in the U.S. Army and held various civilian jobs, all with an accent on servant leadership. Published by Skrive Publications, the book (ISBN: 1952037107) shares com­monsense principles that every current and aspiring leader can use. Experiences from his childhood and adult careers frame the leadership legacy McCulloch has personally passed down to others. As he likes to say, “Great leadership handed down from generation to generation is what develops great nations.” In May 2019, McCulloch was named national Recruiter of the Year by the U.S. Army Cadet Command. He was selected from among 273 Army ROTC programs at major universities throughout the United States. The Eagle Battalion is one of the nation’s largest ROTC units. “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be,” available on Amazon, comes in hardback, paperback and e-book. — Michael Candelaria Air Force ROTC at Stetson received its first national salute. Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 15 INTELLIGENTSIA ‘Voter Friendly Campus’ Thanks to the efforts of Stetson Votes, a dedicated group of Stetson students and administrators, the university has been named a “Voter Friendly Campus” for 2021-2022. The designation in March came from the Voter Friendly Campus Initiative, led by two national nonpartisan organizations, Campus Vote Project and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Stetson was one of 234 colleges and universities across 37 states and the District of Columbia to be selected. The award recognizes the work of groups that set goals, form a coalition and successfully implement and execute their plans, as well as establish new goals. The Voter Friendly Campus designation pro­gram, established in 2016, helps institutions develop plans to coordinate administrators, faculty and student organizations in civic and electoral engagement. Stetson Votes, whose director is Amelia Maulfair ’22, a political science and philoso­phy honors major, helped to increase voter registration by 5% and increase turnout by 18%, compared to the presidential election of four years ago. — Laura Sikes Spring 2021 Commencement In May, Stetson will host Spring 2021 Commencement outdoors at Spec Martin Memorial Stadium, offering more room for family and friends to attend while still providing physical distancing. Three ceremonies are scheduled for Undergraduate Commencement and one for Graduate Commencement between last May 7 and May 9. Commencement 2020, encompassing six ceremonies, was held on campus in December, delayed from last May due to the pandemic. They were the first graduation events presided over by Stetson President Christopher F. Roellke, PhD. (See PARTING SHOT, Page 67.) The events in May will take place rain or shine at the stadium. Ceremonies are being divided by college or school. To ensure physi­cal distancing, eligible graduates can receive up to six tickets at no charge for family and friends to attend. — Cory Lancaster Newest Newman Fellow Lindsay Turmelle ’22, junior health sciences major and Bonner Program participant, has been named as a 2021 Newman Civic Fellow by Campus Compact. Turmelle joins 211 other students from 39 states in the newest cohort of fellows for the 2021-2022 term. Campus Compact is a national coalition of colleges and universities committed to public purposes of higher recognition and dedicated to campus-based civic engagement. The fellowship, named in honor of Frank Newman, one of the organization’s founders, is a yearlong program that recognizes and supports community-focused students. Through Stetson’s Bonner Program, Turmelle has spent three years serving at Hispanic Health Initiatives Inc., which works to advocate for and connect with underserved people in Central Florida, helping them access health services and related educational programs. Turmelle plans to attend medical school after she graduates from Stetson. — Laura Sikes Students encouraged their classmates to vote. Lindsay Turmelle ’22 DID YOU KNOW? Brian Fortman is Stetson’s new admissions director, effective March 1, after serving as dean of Enrollment Management at Presbyterian College in South Carolina. Fortman has worked in college admissions for two decades, starting as an admissions counselor and assistant director of admissions at his alma mater, Goucher College in Baltimore, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management. 16 STETSON | Spring 2021 Your $10 gift can help Stetson rise in the rankings! $10 for10%A donation of even $10 to the fund of your choice will make an immediate difference on campus and elevate Stetson’s name, and your degree, in the marketplace. Time is running out to get your gift counted toward this goal!As notable as the Stetson community and experience are, our participation rate is below our peer institutions at only around 6% Hatter Alumni giving. We can change that! The number of Hatter alumni who contribute to Stetson each year carries weight in our U.S. News and World Report ranking. Each additional 250 alumni donors above and beyond last year’s total raises our participation rate by approximately 1%.If you have not yet invested this year, please consider joining us in the 10 for 10 Campaign before June 30th. Your $10 can be the difference as we strive together to reach 10% alumni giving!This year we are asking all Hatters to rally together to raise Stetson’s profile on a national level, which also enhances the value of your degree!Scan the QR code, or visit https://stetso.nu/sbVLS to donate today!Stetson University Office of [email protected] Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 17 I walked into my first day of Management 315 optimis­tic. The professor, Robert Boozer, PhD, had a reputa­tion for conducting classes that were engaging. From other students who had gone before me, the promise was hands-on learning about what it takes to run an enterprise. What I experienced in that first class, and many others to follow, was nothing short of exhilarating. When I arrived at Stetson in 2012, Professor Boozer had already been part of the School of Business Administration for 24 years, teaching while also taking numerous leadership roles, such as the management chair. Yet, at first glance you would never know it. His typical style was to walk into the classroom after everyone else, casually dressed in cargo pants and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. We were all immediately impressed, but our positive impressions only started there. Professor Boozer told us we would be asked to organize ourselves as would be expected in a business organization, and to carry out responsibilities in a similarly professional level. Then, he sort of — in a very good way — mostly let us figure things out on our own. He would provide meticulous descriptions of all the required tools and management FIRST PERSON Professor Robert Boozer, PhD, with mentee Emma Horton. One alumna describes why cargo pants and Led Zeppelin T-shirts weren’t the only big hits for late Professor Robert Boozer, PhD. BY EMMA HORTON ’16 REMEMBERING A 18 STETSON | Spring 2021 theories, and, of course, he would assist us along the way. But, aside from lectures at the start of class, the time was largely ours to organize and operate as though we were in the real world. I guess one can call it a form of entrepreneurship — learning by doing and exploring. And it worked. I feel quite comfortable in stating that I wasn’t the only student who went home encouraged, maybe even ecstatic. We were given the reins to our own learning and told we’d get our own real-world experience in doing so. Basically, it was a college student’s dream. Professor Boozer was always patient and available, absolutely. Also, he would make us feel secure about our goals and was purposeful in his lectures, particularly in the areas of logic. A passionate psychometrician, he was a staunch proponent of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator theories — basically, designed to identify a person’s personality type, strengths and preferences. Sometimes, in fact, he would discuss the evolution of con­sciousness and the importance of language, but in ways that left us enthralled and inspired. He was utterly fascinated with higher-level ideas about linguistics. At the same time, he let us be us. Professor Boozer went on to retire and continued to live in the DeLand community that he had moved into with his wife, Bonnie, so many years earlier. Bonnie passed away before I met Professor Boozer, but from his stories she was an incredibly talented artist. I sought to maintain contact with him after the class ended, and during that time I grew to understand how deeply he loved and missed her every day. Professor Boozer taught at Stetson from 1990 to 2014. By the summer of 2015, I had gained an internship at Miller Electric Co. Somehow, with the encouragement of Greg McCann, PhD, a business law professor (then-director of Stetson’s Family Enterprise program), I was able to perform human-resource duties for the company with literally no experience outside of Professor Boozer’s class. Without a doubt, I credit Professor Boozer’s eye for analytical detail. I wouldn’t have made that career leap without him. In the summer of 2014, I pitched the development of an analytical report within the HR environment, a project that would be in the form of an “engagement” survey. I knew how passionate Professor Boozer was about this type of work, and wanting to utilize his advanced knowledge, I reached out to him despite his retirement. He agreed to help. To him, it was no trouble at all. He reviewed my work and provided article after article on related topics, and explained (again in great detail) how to frame the survey in a way that was measurable and actionable. I learned what factor analysis was from him, and how to perform confirmatory factor analysis to support my findings for the various constructs put forth, such as “leadership effectiveness” or “continuous improvement.” Professor Boozer, being the type of person he was, didn’t consider it work, even though it involved countless hours of his effort. He absolutely enjoyed mentoring. During my internship at Miller Electric, the survey was a big success, and not only for the company — it launched my career and prompted me to become a teaching apprentice at Stetson in 2015. To me, Professor Boozer was a rock star. And he was a rock enthusiast and musician — hence the Led Zeppelin T-shirts. While he got along with everyone, his closest friend at Stetson was Professor Nick Maddox, PhD, also in the School of Business Administration. The two of them lived near each other and often got together, even in retirement, to play their guitars. Professor Boozer’s house was an antique collector’s dream, filled with all kinds of unique pieces, including a retro 1970s purple low seat and walls filled with homemade art that likely was supplied by Bonnie. After that summer of 2014, he had become my friend and mentor. I would email him, and he would allow me to visit him in the afternoons or a weekend morning for statistics tutoring, or to discuss a new project I had in mind. There were never any bad ideas with him, only endless possibilities. He was there for me during some of the hardest times of my life, and he made me feel like the world was at my feet. I graduated in 2016, majoring in family enterprise and business systems and analytics with minors in applied statistics and management. Today, I’m a contract analyst and emerging data scientist. I’m resource manager at the University of South Florida. When I got my first professional job, Professor Boozer was the first person I called. During that time, he was getting ready to go live with his niece Katie, whom he loved dearly. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be my final phone call with him. I wish I had known. Shortly thereafter, he passed away. That was in February 2018. Professor Boozer is gone. But he is not forgotten and won’t be. Ever. Emma Horton ‘16 This picture was created by Professor Boozer’s wife, Bonnie. The artwork — composed of millions of dots — was gifted to Horton by Professor Boozer before he left DeLand. Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 19 CENTURY Vecteezy.com ONCE IN A In March 2020, when faced with the advent of a worldwide pandemic, Sue Ryan, the Betty Drees Johnson Dean of the Library & Learning Technologies at Stetson’s duPont-Ball Library, along with archivist Kelly Larson, began a search for informa-tion to document Stetson’s experience with its only other similar event — the 1918 H1N1 virus pandemic, commonly known as the Spanish flu. Working from home at the time, the library’s staff searched the library’s digital database that includes all of the student newspapers, yearbooks, university catalogs and many other university docu-ments from that time period. Surprisingly, the searches yielded little about the pandemic. Even Gilbert Lycan’s “Stetson University: The First 100 Years” devotes only four sentences to the pandemic, which implies that Lycan found only scant information about the outbreak during his research. Ryan and Larson, however, knew Stetson was unlikely spared from an illness that claimed more than 50 A global pandemic from so long ago stirs echoes of a university’s wearisome journey and subsequent triumph. BY S U SA N RYA N , MLS, A N D K E L LY L A R S O N , M L I S 20 STETSON | Spring 2021 CENTURY million lives more than 100 years ago, including approximately 675,000 deaths in the United States. According to the Florida State Board of Health, Florida lost more than 4,100 residents from the disease, and 75 people died in Volusia County in 1918 alone. That incredible loss of life came immedi-ately after 20 million people worldwide lost their lives to World War I. When the library staff returned to campus last August, the search for information resumed — this time digging through the tens of thousands of pieces of correspondence and ephemera that make up the general files in the library’s archives. Buried in university correspondence, personal letters, scrapbooks and diaries, staff uncovered information that often mirrored what we all experienced in 2020. Just as today’s easy and relatively inexpensive worldwide travel has made the spread of COVID-19 difficult to contain, researchers documented that the Spanish flu was similarly linked to World War I soldiers moving across Europe and then returning to their home countries, often bringing the flu with them. Stetson’s experience with the 1918 pandemic, therefore, is intertwined with the effects of World War I and its aftermath on campus. And even more pertinent is this fact: That experience offers similarities to what is happening at Stetson today. A scene from the east side of Elizabeth Hall just after the original palm trees were planted Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 21 Vecteezy.com u Students drilled on campus and marched along Woodland Boulevard. p John B. Stetson Jr., president of the university’s Board of Trustees, served in the Army Air Corps during World War I. u Ruby Carlisle Stetson, the wife of John B. Stetson Jr., was a member of the Women’s Motor Corps of America. t Mary Hulley’s Red Cross certificate of membership. She was the daughter of then-Stetson President Lincoln Hulley, PhD. In turn, the university, in what would foreshadow efforts of more than 100 years later, rallied to ensure continued vitality. In September 1918, the U.S. government contracted with Stetson to house, train and educate young men who were waiting to be sent to war. Those students were part of the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.), a national effort that placed male students in colleges for war training and studies. Stetson, one of four Florida colleges granted the S.A.T.C. designation, eagerly sought S.A.T.C. students, as they brought with them government funding that helped improve the university’s financial health. ‘NO MORE PATRIOTIC SPOT IN AMERICA’ In his February 1915 report to the Board of Trustees, Stetson President Lincoln Hulley, PhD (1904-1934), optimistically reported about Stetson’s financial situation, despite ominous outside influences: “We have been able to maintain our numbers [of students] in spite of the depressing effects of business, of the war, and of other causes that have operated against all Southern schools and colleges.” Similarly, Hulley reported in February 1916 that the university’s income had “suffered no disruption.” The next year, however, the president’s report reflected a bit of a downturn as outside influences started to affect Stetson: “The high cost of living hit us, and our boarding department has a small deficit. The freeze, the longer terms of the public schools, the new DeLand High School [which siphoned off students who might have attended Stetson’s preparatory school, the Academy, which closed in 1925], and the high cost of living will affect our attendance next year, cutting it down some.” The effects of World War I on Stetson began to take root in 1917, with Hulley declaring that “we have been greatly dis-turbed by the war.” So many male students enlisted in the military that enrollment plummeted, and the university temporarily closed its law school. Stetson’s budget, always somewhat precarious, suffered significant loss of revenue. As the male students enlisted in the military, the student newspaper, The Stetson Weekly Collegiate, noted their service. The March 8, 1918, issue listed 160 Stetson students and alumni who had answered the call to service, noting that “no more patriotic spot in America can be found than Stetson University.” 22 STETSON | Spring 2021 A special edition of the university catalog outlined the advan-tages of enrolling at Stetson as an S.A.T.C. cadet, which read in part: “Members of the S.A.T.C. are to be able-bodied college students not under 18 years of age, who are enlisted as privates in this newly-created corps of the United States Army. They take along with their educational training such military training as the War Department stipulates. College students under 18 may also enlist; and also men 18 to 21 years old who never had more than a grammar school education may enroll in the student’s vocational school.” The catalog continued: “Many a 1918 high school graduate is debating with himself this year: Shall I go to college? Or shall I enlist at once for military service? The War Department has just made it possible to do both. It says, in effect to the ambitious young American: ‘You serve your country by going to college. To make sure that you do not lose thereby the opportunity of serving your country in a direct military capacity, you will be asked to join the special U.S. Army college training units that are to be formed. You will be liable for service at a moment’s notice, but because you are worth more to the nation with your college training than without it, you will be expected to stay in college until called by the Government.” Correspondence from the office of the president and the dean showed a high interest in the S.A.T.C. from both potential students and their parents. The student population increased significantly with the arrival of the S.A.T.C. cadets, and those students had to be accommodated in classes. A French class that usually held 10 to 12 students swelled to 87, an English class enrolled 70, and 85 students enrolled in a new course titled Issues of the War. Not only did the class numbers increase considerably, but a curriculum required by the federal government had to be quickly developed, including specific business, history, law, math and politi-cal courses. In mathematics, for example, the S.A.T.C. cadets studied trigonometry and analytics with practical applications in surveying and mechanical engineering. Likewise, in preparation for service in p Many students joined the special U.S. Army college training unit on campus. Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 23 Vecteezy.com the quartermaster’s branch of the service, business faculty taught bookkeeping arithme-tic, commercial law, penmanship, business English, rapid calculation, spelling, commer-cial geography, office practice and business practice. Also, vocational courses were offered, including iron work, mechanical drawing and military mapmaking. The enrollment surge brought further challenges, too. The university redesignated Conrad Hall, a dormitory, as Conrad Barracks, which was filled to capacity with four men to a room. An Army officer supervised the men residing in Conrad — marching them to classes and to meals, and drilling them on military tactics. The faculty and staff became exhausted from the influx of students. Then there was the Spanish flu. ‘PECULIARLY FATAL FORM OF PNEUMONIA’ The first wave of the Spanish flu in the United States was officially noted in April 1918 after unusual flu activity had appeared in Haskell, Kansas, in January 1918, and then spread to nearby Fort Riley, an Army base. The flu also spread across the battle-fields of Europe, but was rarely fatal, and by July the outbreak was considered “completely disappeared.” Evidence (or lack thereof) suggests that Stetson was largely unaffected by this initial influenza wave, but a second wave of the virus emerged at Camp Devens, an Army training camp near Boston, in September 1918. This time, the flu became more widespread and then fatal. The virus became so deadly, in fact, that the average life expectancy in the United States fell by 12 years in 1918. As Stetson opened for the fall that September, the influenza pandemic appeared on campus — likely brought by new and returning students and the S.A.T.C. cadets who arrived from various parts of the state and country. In his February 1919 annual report, Hulley described what he called the “very distressing” situation during the fall semester: “The [S.A.T.C.] men came down with disease daily, and some days hourly. They had come without bedding, expecting the government to have bedding here. It pleases me to say that the Red Cross organization of DeLand came to our relief with bed linen, that the good mothers of DeLand came in details to assist in the nursing, and that the Town Council expressed itself willing to stand back of us financially in the employment of nurses and the purchase of medicines. This was a real service, because the influenza got here ahead of the induction of the men and before the contracts with the government were signed. We turned the old gymnasium into a hospital for the men, and the young ladies were taken care of in their own rooms. About 150 students got the disease [out of 459 regular students and 170 S.A.T.C.]; two of this number died here from the disease. After recovering, two or three returned home, and from exposure, had relapses and died.” That description is one of the few times Hulley publicly mentioned the 1918 influenza in any detail. Known for his relentless promotion of the university, he may have been reluctant to call attention to the pandemic on campus. Nevertheless, it seems certain the flu affected the campus significantly. Especially enlightening about both the war and the 1918 pandemic is a collection of letters that George Prentice Carson, MA, LLD, dean of students, wrote to alumnus Rubert Longstreet, who was a Stetson Academy graduate (Class of 1912) and subsequently earned a Stetson BA in 1916 and a law degree in 1917. Longstreet, after a successful career as a supervising principal of schools in Daytona Beach, returned to Stetson, where he joined the education department faculty until he retired in 1964. His close lifetime friendship with Carson, his mentor, was reflected in their correspon-dence throughout 1918 and 1919, when Longstreet would be one of many Stetson students and alumni to fight in Europe. p G. Prentice Carson, longtime faculty member and dean: “I am now on my 33rd year here and never before in all that time have I been so utterly exhausted … .” 24 STETSON | Spring 2021 Sept. 30, 1918: “Wrote to Bernalyn who has the Spanish Flu.” [This is likely Bernalyn McBride from the Class of 1919 who lived in Seville, Florida.] Oct. 1, 1918: “Won a bet of a soda from father on whether Bob and Judy had the Spanish Flu. They do.” Oct. 1, 1918: Mary mentions two boys fainting at a university gathering around the flagpole. While she does not relate this to the flu, the fainting does seem to fit with the general debilitating weakness associated with those recovering from the virus that Carson described in his letters to Longstreet. Carson repeated Hulley’s reports of the flu on campus in a letter to Longstreet dated Oct. 6, 1918: “In the midst of all this excitement [speaking of the influx of the S.A.T.C. students] another blow fell, and we are still reeling backwards. Someone, or more, of the new students brought in the germ of the so-called Spanish Influenza, and it is now sweeping through the university. A peculiarly fatal form of pneumonia often supervenes, and the disease is very dangerous.” Although the exact nature of the 1918 virus had not yet been discovered, there was a general understanding of its modes of transmission. The Surgeon General of the Public Health Service regularly distributed information on prevention, and his advice was often printed in the DeLand newspapers: “Influenza is spread by direct and indirect contact. It is not yet certain that the germ has been isolated or discovered, and as a consequence there is yet no positive preventive, except the enforce-ment of rigid rules of sanitation and the avoidance of personal contact. General Blue [Rupert Blue, the U.S. Surgeon General] says that evidence points strongly to infected eating and drinking utensils, especially in places where food and drink are sold to the public, as being one of the modes of transmission of the disease.” Sound familiar? p Rubert Longstreet, Stetson Academy graduate, Class of 1912. Longstreet was one of many Stetson students and alumni who fought in Europe. From newspaper accounts at the time, like today, Stetson encour-aged outdoor classes as much as possible as a preventive measure for avoiding the flu: “Much of the life [of the university] has been in the open air. Mathematical classes … have been conducted as surveying classes. It has been the policy of the university to keep the fellows out in the open during the fair weather.” Not many student accounts of the pandemic were found, although Mary Hulley, daughter of the president and a sophomore at the time, mentioned the flu in several entries in her 1918 diary. Mary Hulley’s diary makes no mention of what we would today call “social distancing,” and although the flu was spreading across DeLand and the campus, she seemed to be happily participating in all of her normal activities — going to class, to the chapel and to the library, while also going to the beach, downtown, parties and meet-ing with friends. Carson, however, paints a more grim reality. On Oct. 27, 1918, he wrote: “… Frightful tales are being told of the life taken by the ‘flu,’ and its aftermath pneumonia in some places. Sometimes the stricken family was compelled to bury its own dead — no undertaker being available. The supply of coffins was exhausted in scores of places and interment was made directly into Mother Earth. … I have never known so serious and widespread of a disease.” The university was not alone in battling the pandemic, of course. The flu spread throughout the DeLand community, as well. The DeLand News, which often published social and other news about its citizens, reported on a number of townspeople stricken with the flu in the fall of 1918, including some who attended Stetson. Churches were closed during the month of October, and court cases were delayed because of the “sickness of attorneys.” Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 25 Vecteezy.com Yet, at the same time, just as we see today, there were differences of opinions about how to manage the pandemic. A letter from “a tourist” published in the Oct. 9, 1918, DeLand News scolded DeLand for its lack of vigilance against the illness — reminiscent of the current divergence of opinion on masking and social distancing. The letter, titled Shall We Promote Influenza?, read: “DeLand is willing to help the sick but seems bent on increasing their number. In Chicago, if you sneeze without using a handkerchief to catch the germs, you may be arrested. In Philadelphia, all public meeting places are closed. New York is placarded with directions to prevent spread of grip [flu] and business hours changed to avoid crowded street cars. What is DeLand doing? Only the churches show good judgment [while] ‘movies’ and dance hall, schools and college are open. What self-respecting epidemic could help prospering with all that help? …” Perhaps an indication of what many in DeLand believed at the time, the newspaper’s editors responded to the tourist letter with, “Precautions necessary in a Northern climate or in a congested district would be absurd in an open park like DeLand, or in a Southern climate.” These misperceptions about the effect of climate on the virus might indicate one reason no evidence of a mask ordinance or widespread mask-wearing was found for DeLand. Historical accounts of the 1918 pandemic document mask ordinances enacted in many other cities and counties across the country, including Jacksonville and Pinellas County in Florida. Much like today, though, mask ordinances were not universally accepted, and they were often resisted. Some mask-wearing evidently occurred in Volusia County, as the local newspaper reported that Port Orange Red Cross workers helped the Daytona Red Cross chapter make influenza masks, which were “needed very much.” However, a one-sentence com-ment in the DeLand newspaper suggested skepticism on mask effectiveness: “The influenza germ is so small that it cannot be seen with a microscope. And yet people have been trying to shut it out by the coarse meshes of a ‘flu mask.’” The local newspaper also printed a rather rosy assessment of the flu on Stetson’s campus on Oct. 16, 1918: “Stetson has been fortunate in getting a good grip on the influenza pest. At no time has the disease gotten the better of the physicians or the nurses. There have been no deaths among the students at Stetson.” While it isn’t known exactly when the first death did occur on campus, at least a few students died sometime in October and November of that year. Notably, though, the newspaper did correctly report that Stetson appeared to manage the pandemic well consider-ing the numbers of students who contracted the virus. While the level of concern about the influenza varied consider-ably, the citizens of DeLand rose to the challenge of dealing with the virus. The Presbyterian Church said of its work, “Much noble self-sacri-ficing service has been rendered by a considerable number of our church people in going out from their homes to administer help to those who have been brought to the sick bed by the visitation of the ‘Spanish influenza.’ Figures show that the ravages of this disease have been more fearful in America than that of the war among our soldiers. The life risk to those who have gone out to nurse those who were sick has been very great, yet many have been in the work with exemplary abandon. The figure of risk as compared to that of those who have gone forth to rid the world of Prussianism is high enough to put our voluntary nurses in the hero list.” By Oct. 30, 1918, Stetson reported that all of the female students had recovered from the influenza, and the university had only four active cases among the S.A.T.C. cadets. The editor of The DeLand News praised members of the Stetson and DeLand community who had helped care for the ill students. At the same time, the editor declared prematurely that “the influenza has spent itself,” as another wave of the virus would impact DeLand when soldiers returned home from the war. ‘THINGS WILL BE VERY DIFFERENT NOW’ Mary Hulley pointed to the end of the Great War on Nov. 7, 1918, when she wrote at the top of a page in her diary, “The War is Over.” She described walking to downtown DeLand that day: “The band played — a lot of us girls paraded. … Then we got out the big truck loaded with people at the corner. Went thru town several times on that. I beat two tin pans — people rang bells, twirled noisy claxons [a kind of horn used on vehicles at the time], tooted horns, the school bell, fire whistle … chimes rang, blew and played.” Mary Hulley told of a street dance downtown later that night, and dancing at Chaudoin Hall. Despite the celebrations and joy that marked the end of the war, the influenza pandemic raged on. Carson wrote to Longstreet on Nov. 17, 1918: “The influenza is still reaping its harvest of death and last week claiming [one] of your old chums, Joe Laing. We have only one of two holdover cases at the university, but the public school here is now seriously affected.” One week later, Carson wrote: “The influenza is still doing its deadly work. The Philadelphia Ledger declared that it has already cost the country more lives than the total casualty list of the Great War. I never knew so severe an epidemic to suffer an attack of pneumonia in the aftermath of the ‘flu’ was almost certain death. Some of our boys are slowly wandering back to campus from their homes [after battling the flu] pale, weak and emaciated.” At the end of 1918, Stetson’s S.A.T.C. unit disbanded and demo-bilized, and 172 men were sent home. Carson wrote that the military By Oct. 30, 1918, Stetson reported that all of the female students had recovered from the influenza, and the university had only four active cases among the S.A.T.C. cadets. The editor of The DeLand News praised members of the Stetson and DeLand community who had helped care for the ill students. 26 STETSON | Spring 2021 students “left a big hole” in Stetson’s ranks. He reiterated how tired everyone was, saying that “I have never had such a hard nervous term of work and have tried cheerfully to ‘carry on’ in a spirit of patriotism.” A number of war veterans returned to Stetson in January 1919, coinciding with a worldwide third wave of the pandemic. Indeed, the newspaper reported that occa-sional influenza cases still occurred in DeLand and the surrounding county, and cases were expected for several more months. Due to the new influenza outbreaks, many of the Volusia County public schools closed for a second time in mid-December 1918 right before the Christmas break. More than 80% of the nearby town of Spruce Creek schoolchildren were sick, and Holly Hill reported 50% of its students absent due to illness. School reopenings were delayed until at least Jan. 6, 1919. Just as school systems in 2020 made new rules regarding attendance and grades, the State of Florida decided in 1919 that it would not require high school students to make up time lost to influenza, and any student who had otherwise met the requirements would be given credit for the year’s work. Despite residual flu cases from the 1919 third wave, President Hulley reassured parents in January 1919 that Stetson was safe: “I am indeed glad to be able to advise that our dormitories are clear of the influenza and have been thoroughly cleaned and put in first class condition during the Christmas Holidays, and I feel that you should send [your child] back to us. … Things will be very different now to what they were at the close of school for the vacation when we were so badly troubled with the epidemic of influenza.” With the war over, the pandemic eventually ran its course, and began to fade from memory, as Stetson returned to normal. Although the flu continued to affect members of the Stetson community over the years, its return rarely resulted in the catastrophic outcomes of the 1918 pandemic. One tragic exception was the influenza-related death of a Cuban student, Ernesto Casaus, in his dormitory room over the 1922 Christmas holidays. At the time, the university employed no medical staff, and the incident ensured that from that time on, Stetson hired a nurse to support the campus. Separated by a century, striking parallels define the pandemics of 1918 and 2020: the rapid rate at which the viruses infected people worldwide; the high death toll; the promotion of dubious cures; the conflicting views on practices to reduce the spread of the virus; controversial mask ordinances; the closures of schools, churches and courts; and the heroics of health care workers. At Stetson, parallels also occurred, including the significant disruption to university operations and finances, the outdoor classes, the strict clean-ing protocols, the isolation of those with active cases, and the exhaustion of those people trying to manage the disease on campus. And resiliency. (See PARTING SHOT, Page 67.) COVID-19 has been called a once-in-a-century event, and the firsthand accounts from the univer-sity’s archives show that, indeed, we are reliving a bit of Stetson history from a century ago. Both its tribulations and, assuredly to come, its subsequent triumphs. Editor’s note: To see a video presentation of the material in this article, go to: https://youtu.be/3AcLbwD5O9g. For the latest about Stetson and COVID-19, go to www.stetson. edu/other/safer-stetson. p A sample from one of the numerous letters Carson wrote to Longstreet about the war and the pandemic Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 27 C VID-19 Seizing opportunity, current students, alumni and professors are striving to become part of the public-health solution. BY M I C H A E L CANDELARIA I N V E S T I G AT I N G Vecteezy.com 28 STETSON | Spring 2021 Zoe Toledo ’22 arrived at Stetson in fall 2018 from Father Lopez High School in nearby Daytona Beach as an unde-clared major. Although her mother was a nurse, her father worked in surgical technology and her sister was in nursing school, Toledo wasn’t quite certain about her own course of study. That is, until she took an introductory class, where her future came into focus, prompting Toledo to major in public health. Now, suddenly, a career path already is unfolding, with Toledo starting last August to work — before her junior year — as a COVID-19 biological scientist (contact tracer) at the Volusia County Department of Health, not far from campus. When the pandemic hit Stetson during the 2020 Spring Semester, Vincenzo Cornacchione, like so many other students, scrambled. He was in his final semester and worried about getting a job after graduation. Ultimately, holding a bachelor’s degree in public health and with LinkedIn luck on his side, Cornacchione found one in Jacksonville, where he works via the CDC Foundation as a biological investigator for the Duval County Health Department. Similarly, as COVID-19 continues to swirl worldwide, Julia Finver ’21 and Victoria Crawford ’22 find themselves squarely in the middle of the storm. Finver began in January as a contact tracer for the health department in Volusia County. Additionally, both are collaborating on a yearlong senior research project, exploring disparities surrounding access to COVID-19 health care in high-risk areas of Florida. They are analyzing data from the past year, with hopes of publishing and presenting their works. Indeed, while the pandemic certainly has affected Stetson, in essence redefining higher education for a university established in 1883, it hasn’t been all bad. Just as with the pandemic of 1918 (see Page 20), the university is moving forward — this time with current students, alumni and a profes-sor striving to become part of the public-health solution. The professor is Asal Johnson, PhD, associate professor of public health in Stetson’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Studies. “I believe this is extraordinary that our students are employed, some even before they are graduated. I believe that speaks to their Stetson experience and skills they learn here to prepare them for graduate schools and careers,” Johnson commented, adding that typically those jobs require a bachelor’s Left: Zoe Toledo ’22 Middle: Julia Finver ’21 and Victoria Crawford ’22 Right: Vincenzo Cornacchione ’20 Students broadened their existing studies to include the exploration of COVID-19. On the right is research by Vincenzo Cornacchione, who graduated last spring. Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 29 Cornacchione was hired by the CDC Foundation to work at Duval County’s Health Department one month after graduation. Coming to Stetson from Coconut Creek, Florida, in 2015 without a firm idea about a career, Cornacchione embraced the liberal arts. He explored sociology and gender studies, and through that path he grew interested in public health. “Now, I feel like I got to put my skills to use and serve the community in a way,” he said. “I love the idea of prevention and social justice, and being able to contribute to community issues through a broader lens.” And Cornacchione is still learning, with his job sometimes requiring uncomfortable conversations. “It can be difficult. … I’ve learned to approach this in a way of dialogue,” he said. “I’m trying to understand where they [people with COVID-19] are coming from and what their fears are, and how they are feeling. We connect with people in the community so that we can follow up later and build a relationship.” In much the same way, Finver and Crawford, both from Rockville, Maryland, are delving into COVID-19’s social nuances in close partnership with Johnson. Their research is measuring age, ethnicity and geography, among others, and how those factors impact health care access. Finver and Crawford are responsible for separate sections of the research, which encompasses multiple complex components. Finver, who will graduate in December, credits Johnson for her interest in research. “I came to Stetson not really knowing what to major in, but choosing public health and having Dr. Johnson as my adviser made the difference for me,” Finver said. She remembers watching the movie “Contagion” in Johnson’s class during the 2019 Fall Semester, as Johnson cautioned students about pandemics. By the next spring, COVID-19 had become a household name. Finver’s words: “It’s crazy. … That’s kind of the reason I like public health so much, because you have to be ready for degree and involve special “real-world” training. Johnson stopped short of calling COVID-19 the opportunity of a lifetime for students to study. An expert on the topic, she fears another pandemic, unfortunately, is quite possible. “We were waiting for the big one, something similar to the 1918 one,” she said. “Nobody is sure it’s this one. With the rapid rate of global warming, deforestation and the consequential rise in emerging infections, we do not know what and when the next new disease is going to hit us.” At the same time, Johnson is proud, noting, “We’re in the middle of history making [in terms of pandemic research]. I think this is going to be a great story for all of us, a story that students can tell their grandkids.” Johnson actually is assisting the Department of Health in Volusia, too. On sabbatical for the 2020 Fall Semester, she began working as an epidemiologist with the department, and she now has returned from her sabbatical with invaluable field-work experience related to the pandemic. “Even for me as a professor, this was an amazing learning opportunity,” she explained, “because I actually learned what happens on the ground when you’re doing epidemiology and how difficult it is to collect data — data that is so vital for mitiga­tion at least. I certainly knew about the challenges of data collection, but getting to experience it at this level is incredible. So, I cannot emphasize enough how important that could be for our student-learning.” Last July, Toledo received an email from Johnson about Department of Health case monitoring in Volusia. By August, Toledo had begun training. Initially, she had to contact people who were exposed to the virus, not necessarily who had tested posi­tive. She then advanced from case monitor­ing to case investigation, first working with her peer age group before her contact list consisted of those age 65 and up. She asked questions, such as about symptoms, and provided resource information and guidance — “that way we’re both educating and preventing the virus in the community,” she said. “Some people are forthcoming, and some are not,” Toledo added. “Also, some of them were angry, frustrated and confused. Since I was public health with a sociology concen­tration, those lessons have helped.” Among her classes during the fall semes­ter, for example, was Social Research Methods, with one of the course sections being about the challenges of conducting surveys over the phone. “I would go to work and put it into practice,” she noted. In addition, classroom lessons from the 2020 Spring Semester truly hit home. She remembers being in a class taught by Johnson about epidemiology and pandem­ics. “A few weeks later,” Toledo described, “the world was shut down. It’s surreal. It kind of feels like it’s a movie.” For Cornacchione, finding his job lead on LinkedIn for the CDC Foundation was fortunate. The nonprofit CDC Foundation is authorized by Congress to mobilize philanthropic partners and private-sector resources to support CDC’s critical health protection mission. Yet, Cornacchione had been a stellar student. His senior research centered on health care access among rural Honduran community residents, including data collec­tion in Honduras. Also, in 2017 he became a student volunteer for the Global Brigades, eventually emerging as a leader for Stetson’s chapter of the organization, which works to improve health conditions in the developing world. Asal Johnson, PhD Photo: Canova Photography 30 STETSON | Spring 2021 anything. And things come up all the time that you just have to jump into and figure it out.” The summer following her first year at Stetson, Crawford dove headfirst into research, studying racial disparities in Spring Hill, a Black community near the campus. By virtue of a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) grant prior to her junior year, she won a national fourth-place prize for that work from the American Public Health Association. Her results revealed significant disparities among white and Black residents of DeLand. Like Finver, she points to Johnson’s mentorship and related educational oppor­tunities. “I wanted to try to figure out what I liked, and I did enjoy doing [research]. So, I continued to do it, and I’m going to con­tinue to do it,” said Crawford, who is working remotely this spring due to being immunocompromised. And there are others, such as students Tahira Perry ’21 and Peter Greubel ’21, and alumna Chelsea Seaver ’20. Perry, graduating in May as a biology major with minors in public health and Spanish, already has been accepted into Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. She will pursue a master’s degree in public health with a concentration in global health. Like Toledo, Perry began at the Volusia County Department of Health last August, quickly advancing from case monitoring to case investigation. (See related story, Page 38.) Greubel, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is majoring in public health (with a concentra­tion in health promotion and behavior) and minoring in Spanish. A student in Stetson’s Honors Program, he became a case investiga­tor for the Volusia County Department of Health in January 2021 — with the belief that “this type of work is a great opportunity and experience for me “ and “very beneficial in finding a full time position in public health wherever I end up after I graduate.” Seaver graduated last May, got married and moved to Indian River County, where she now works for that county’s Health Department. As a student, she was a health-department intern in Volusia, doing com­munity outreach in its nutrition-assistance program. While in that same role in Indian River, when the county’s mass-vaccination clinics opened, she was moved there to help. She saw the impact of COVID-19 up close. “The people getting vaccinated mostly are grateful and excited, but some others are nervous and skeptical. They’re 65-plus [in age]. … And they just want this to be over,” said Seaver, who as a health care worker was vaccinated in late December. Notably, years earlier Seaver had initiated the research work that Crawford successfully continued at Spring Hill. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stetson is investigating to make a difference. “Somehow, I think COVID-19 is bring­ing everything together,” Johnson con­cluded. “In less than a year, we can see that our students are getting jobs. And before they graduate, they are doing research that is impactful. … They are at a very historical moment in this country and the world, and they’re being very relevant. So, they’re important, they’re useful and they’re beneficial.” Peter Greubel ’21 In 2019, Johnson (on right) traveled to study with students in Geneva, Switzerland. (Chelsea Seaver ’20 also is shown, in black shirt.) Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 31 PROGRESS AND PROMISE PORTRAIT OF Amid the pandemic, Rajni Shankar-Brown, PhD, shines as a beacon of hope for social justice and equality, with the belief that “there’s critical change to be done.” BY JAC K ROTH It’s been said that our experiences, especially during childhood, shape who we are as human beings. If that’s true, it is most certainly the case with Rajni Shankar-Brown, PhD. Shankar-Brown is a professor at Stetson, as well as the Jessie Ball duPont Endowed Chair of Social Justice Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Also, and perhaps even most notably, she is internationally known as a scholar in social justice and educational leadership who has made education, equity, poverty and homelessness her life’s work. As such, in a time of difficult pandemic darkness, she has been an enduring light. It just didn’t happen easily for her. Born to Indian parents who immigrated to the United States, Shankar- Brown was raised with her older brother and younger sister in a small town in Northern Virginia, where they were exposed to racist and xenophobic attitudes toward foreign cultures. The result: She became aware of social inequalities and prejudice at an early age. 32 STETSON | Spring 2021 Photo: Stetson University/Ciara Ocasio Also, Shankar-Brown spent parts of her childhood in southern India in Madras, now called Chennai, a city in the state of Tamil Nadu. The city was renamed Chennai in 1996 to break free from the centuries-old legacy stamped by British colonists. There, her mother took young Rajni and her older brother to help take care of their ailing grandmother who had cancer, and to offer support to other family members also struggling. That trying, emotional experience was similarly transformative. Further, as a middle-school student in the States, Shankar-Brown was chosen as a youth ambassador and spent time in Japan — where she witnessed the same troubling issues and social divides. Those early global experiences and exposures left indelible marks. In particular, Shankar-Brown remembers her time in India during childhood being full of “rich traditions, cultural treasures, beautiful languages, bursting flavors, colorful markets, a symphony of sounds and a mesmerizing mosaic of the arts.” Yet, she also remembers the “extreme poverty” seen firsthand. “Children were sleeping all over the sides of the streets, many without access to clean water, facing severe starvation and begging for food,” she recalled in January via Zoom. “It clutched and tore open my heart. And as a fellow child, being the same height, looking directly into their eyes and thinking this ‘could easily be me’ was a moment of shared humanity that taught me we’re all connected, quite literally made of stardust. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu noted, ‘My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.’ These experiences shaped me and my internal compass. My aching and longing for beloved community grew, as a child; and this aching and longing continues to pulsate, guiding my journey.” While navigating different countries and cultures, she and her family experienced painful racism, classism and religious discrimi-nation. As a child, she couldn’t classify those incidents, but she knew they weren’t right. In one instance, when she was in elementary school, the family home was vandalized, with racist remarks left as incomprehensible remind-ers for such a young girl. “You ask yourself, in pain and in vain, why someone would do this to your family,” said Shankar-Brown, who now has two children of her own, a son and a daughter who she describes as “my right and left ventricles, the beating of my heart.” Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 33 “I view mindful service as love in action. I considered it a privilege to hold someone’s hand as they reflected on their life. You see these unjust inequities glaring in front of you; you see the pain and suffering. I witnessed and felt this viscerally as a kid, and it profoundly impacted me.” “Fear sets in when you live in a world that treats you in these vicious ways and you see these terrible fractures, but thankfully my parents wouldn’t let that destroy them or devour their, our, spirit.” Her parents were committed to having their children serve and uplift others because there were others who helped them along the way. Shankar-Brown was raised with that cognizance, making her wrestle with strong emotions and tough questions. She credits her No. 1 role model, “Amma” (her mother), with encouraging her to ask. Today, Shankar-Brown does the same with her students. Likewise, both she and husband Ben Brown, interim director of Online Learning and Educational Technology at Stetson, make sure to do so daily with their children. (They met and fell in love decades ago during Shankar-Brown’s first year at George Mason University.) “I had a deep understanding of knowing this wasn’t OK. This was not kind or fair, or acceptable in any way,” Shankar-Brown asserted. “As I grappled with these injustices and harrowing experiences, I developed a sense of agency to not simply ask questions, but to also honor civic responsibility and figure out what I could do. I felt compelled to act, to help change these distress-ing, unacceptable realities.” Knowing she wanted to do her part to alleviate suffering and advance justice, Shankar-Brown would spend hours in local libraries reading about Mahatma Gandhi, Sarah Winnemucca, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. — leaders with the courage to stand up for themselves and others. Also, she volunteered regularly in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, health clinics in low-income communities, where she came face to face with the world’s inequities and couldn’t understand why these artificial hierarchies were always put in place. “I wrestled with why caste systems, or these false hierarchies of race and noxious rankings of human value, continue to exist around the world, particularly in the United States and in India, the places I knew as home,” she said. “Everywhere I served, I sought to listen and learn from others. I embraced diverse stories and collaboration. Service is rooted in love, intentional and organic love. I view mindful service as love in action. I considered it a privilege to hold someone’s hand as they reflected on their life. You see these unjust inequities glaring in front of you; you see the pain and suffering. I witnessed and felt this viscerally as a kid, and it profoundly impacted me.” Shankar-Brown went on to become a public school teacher, working in high-poverty schools in the U.S. and overseas, eventually pursuing a doctorate in curriculum and instruction while focusing on human rights, specifically poverty and homelessness. She now was fully equipped to teach others and motivate them to become advocates for social justice. And, in doing so, she herself became a champion. ART AS ACTIVISM Since arriving at Stetson in 2013, Shankar-Brown has received the Hand Award for Distinguished Faculty Achievement in Community Impact (2014) and, most recently, the 2020 McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching — the university’s most prestigious faculty award. In addition, she received the Engaged Scholar Award by the Florida Campus Compact and recently was selected by the International Honor Society Phi Delta Kappa as the Educator of the Year in Florida. Not coincidentally, her projects often are used as models for equity-centered community engagement. At Stetson, where she is on sabbati-cal this spring, a course she teaches, Advancing Human Rights and Social Justice: Art as Activism, is designed to help students find innovative ways to engage and connect, and “realize their divine inner light.” The course is a part of Stetson’s First Year Seminar Experience, helping Shankar-Brown make an immediate impact on campus and in communities. First-year student Jennifer Hanco called taking the course as her first class on campus “the best decision I could’ve made.” “Her interactive teaching style made me excited to attend class and challenged me to learn,” Hanco continued. “The class showed me I can play an active part in changing my environment and help put an end to social injustices by staying informed and using my voice.” Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students met virtually with community partners, including the Alliance for Fair Food and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and engaged in collaborative projects focused on mental health issues, LGBTQIA+ rights, advocat- Born to Indian parents who immigrated to the U.S., young Rajni (pictured through the years) was raised with her older brother and younger sister in Northern Virginia, where they were exposed to racist and xenophobic attitudes toward foreign cultures. 34 STETSON | Spring 2021 ing against the separation and detention of migrant families and children, educating on racial profiling, examining the gender pay gap, and researching climate change. Students also met with various community leaders, wrote critical self-reflections and analytic research papers, and engaged in several lively debates. The economic realities of COVID-19 also were incorporated into the course, as the effects of the pandemic have increased homelessness for individuals and families, including millions of children and youth, and have exacerbated racial disparities. After learning about poverty and economic social inequalities, students actively helped in collecting items to help stock the pantry of The Neighborhood Center of West Volusia and Stetson’s Hatter Pantry. They also learned about institutional and structural oppression, and the importance of educated voting, with many students voting for the first time in the 2020 elections. “The start of my fall semester was around the same time the Black Lives Matter movement regained traction following the death of George Floyd,” said first-year Stetson student Camille Taylor. “I felt especially attacked as an Afro-Latina woman, and I’m thankful to Dr. Shankar- Brown for her investing in me and because her course allowed me to learn more constructive outlets to help fight for equality. It opened my eyes to many human rights issues I hadn’t previously been exposed to, and each class engaged me to learn more and inspired me to continue strides in being an advocate.” Students read foundational academic books, such as Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and Elizabeth Acevedo’s “The Poet X.” They also read dozens of articles focused on human rights, historical and current justice issues, and global social change movements, and primary writings from luminaries that included Nelson Mandela, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Audre Lorde, Congressman John Lewis, Vandana Shiva, Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa and others. Throughout the course, students were encouraged to reflect on their own values and dreams, as well as on environmental and justice issues they feel most strongly about. And they worked on creating their own justice manifesto shields during the semester — one of many forms of empowered artivism that Shankar-Brown taught. “Artivism is an intentional weaving of art and social justice activism to challenge and change power relations,” Shankar-Brown explained. “The goal is to offer students the opportunity to tap into their own strengths — whether as a writer, painter, photographer, actor or poet. I want them to have a deep appreciation for how the arts can have a profound impact on effecting change. Artivism is a pathway to figuring that out; I want them to think critically about this and be restless in the process. I treasure teaching and learning, exploring and growing along-side my students, inside and outside of the classroom.” Shankar-Brown attempts to open her students’ eyes, minds and hearts as she immerses them in learning about human rights issues and inspires them to be part of the change our world needs, especially in the midst of a global pandemic during which all human beings have been forced to become more introspective about their lives. “The thing about a pandemic is, it magnifies all social inequalities and intersectional ‘isms’ in so many ways,” she said. “It’s very daunting and heavy, but for me it’s also a time of hope because it’s a reminder that there’s critical change to be done, and we can push needed change forward if ‘we the people’ open our hearts and put our minds to it. We have to share and leverage resources, prioritize equity, cultivate courage, and continually renew our commitment to doing this critical work. This is hard work and heart work. It requires individual and collective energy to take bold steps for love, liberation and justice.” Left: Shankar-Brown makes time to create and model artivism for her students: “Artivism is an intentional weaving of art and social justice activism ... . The goal is to offer students the opportunity to tap into their own strengths — whether as a writer, painter, photographer, actor or poet.” Right: Shankar-Brown has mentored many students, including Autumn Hope Johnson ’20, whose story of homelessness made national news. Johnson is working toward her goal of becoming a child defense attorney with support from her family and Shankar- Brown, who was part of Johnson’s wedding ceremony. “The thing about a pandemic is, it magnifies all social inequalities and intersectional ‘isms’ in so many ways. It’s very daunting and heavy, but for me it’s also a time of hope because it’s a reminder that there’s critical change to be done, and we can push needed change forward if ‘we the people’ open our hearts and put our minds to it.” Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 35 EFFECTING CHANGE NATIONALLY The past year has been busy for Shankar-Brown, as she continues to advocate at macro national levels for social justice. She is, for example, designing a national peer-support certification program for the National Coalition for the Homeless. “A fundamental goal of the program is to amplify the voices, knowledge and lived experiences of those who are in homeless situations and to help find them jobs and increase their agency, so they can become mentors within organizations,” she said. Given the potentially impactful nature of the program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to fund it and make it a national model. Shankar-Brown calls the program “a transfor­mative and hopeful vision rooted in love and justice.” Similarly, as an officer and executive board member of the National Coalition for the Homeless, she was asked to share her exper­tise with and contribute to the Biden adminis­tration in helping develop a “playbook” on homelessness during the transition of presi­dency. The playbook is being used to help guide the administration during the first 200 days to set the tone on the topics of homeless­ness, children, education and youth. “There is an incredible amount of work to be done, and we must persist,” she noted. Shankar-Brown shared deep appreciation for both her department chair, Chris Colwell, PhD, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Elizabeth Skomp, PhD. “Dr. Colwell has been an incredible source of encouragement from my very first day at Stetson,” she commented. “His support has been instrumental, and I am beyond grateful.” Shankar-Brown described Skomp as a “thoughtful and caring dean, who has brought tremendous energy and resources to Stetson.” This spring, while on sabbatical, Shankar-Brown is working on several book projects focused on educational equity and justice. Also, she’s working on a project called Nourish, which encompasses Sanskrit and Eastern paradigms and focuses on addressing secondary trauma and promoting healing for educators, including school administrators, teachers, social workers and counselors. In addition, she is working on finalizing creative works affirming diversity, including a series of children’s books and a novel. When she returns from sabbatical in the fall, she plans to help establish a curriculum for an interdisciplinary master’s program in equity and social change, with the hope of making it a national model for student, faculty and commu­nity collaboration. As a member of the Nina B. Hollis Institute for Educational Reform, she is in the process of developing an anti-racism certifica­tion called SEED (Sustainable Equity Education Development), working in partnership with community leaders and local schools. And she is collaborating with Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, and a team comprising key experts and leaders on a national project focused on addressing and preventing systemic and internalized racism in connection to homelessness. “I love that our mission and values at Stetson call on us to respond to these issues thoughtfully,” Shankar-Brown said, “and there’s certainly some amazing work being done on our campus across disciplines.” Ultimately, Shankar-Brown is working on building a Center for Equity, Justice and Social Change (CEJSC) at Stetson, a project soon to be launched and currently in the fundraising process. As far as teaching is concerned, Shankar-Brown sees students as “solutionaries” and “positive change agents,” and she believes having those conversations and discussions with them at this time in their lives is critical. “Part of this work requires a strong under­standing of ourselves and a dismantling of our biases,” she asserted. “I want my students to be committed to doing that inner work to open their eyes, minds and hearts to truly understand human rights and social justice issues in more meaningful and deeper ways, and to develop a deeper understanding of themselves and the world through this process.” Above all, Shankar-Brown wants them to have a “sense of agency,” to hone into their own passions and develop the skill sets that excite them. Her words: “No matter what your passion is, you can use it as an instrument for social change, to know and recognize our shared humanity, and to creatively and critically collaborate together to transform our world. And at the end of the day, you can walk away tapping into this revolutionary love, which hopefully flows into whatever you’re doing in the world. The pursuit of justice requires knowledge, passion, stamina and so much more, but at its core, before anything else, it requires love.” “Empathy and love need to be deliberately embedded in curriculum and instruc­tion because our young people are often the best change agents in our world. We need to provide them with tools, knowl­edge, skills and dispositions that will inspire them to be solutionaries, to bend the arc toward justice and peace, and to collectively build a better world – especially for our children.” 36 STETSON | Spring 2021 “Whether educators or not, we all have a civic responsibility to show up in our community to promote equity, to be better humans,” she continued. “I want my students to ask questions that don’t always have easy answers, and I want to help them develop the courage and compassion to do this. I want them to live embold-ened and authentic lives with a sense of civic and social responsibility.” Along with being an Amma (mom), Shankar-Brown believes that being an educator is her truest form of activism and provides a source of continual fuel. “I’m grateful for my students — past, current and future — because the work I’m immersed in every day can be heavy and distressing, often full of heartache, but teaching gives me hope,” she explained. “Teaching restores, renews and heals me; it provides the ever-giving gift of luminous hope. To see our students full of passion and determination, empowered to accomplish their goals and pursue meaningful aspirations as they navigate the complexities of our world and as they work to make it better, it keeps me going; it wakes me up each morning with hope.” For Shankar-Brown, everything in terms of human and civil rights is rooted, first and foremost, out of recognition of shared humanity and the “love that’s often missing in this world.” That struggle continues today and is far from being fulfilled. In fact, she believes that numerous disparities and gaps have widened as a result of the pandemic and other struggles we face as a collective. Yet, despite the anguish and pain of the pandemic, Shankar-Brown seeks to hold onto an “eternal hope and optimism to keep moving forward faithfully and with radical love.” “All of my work is rooted in that motivation, woven together with love and hope,” she concluded. “In some ways, we have more knowledge and access to information than we ever have. However, empathy and love, revolutionary love, appears to be missing in so many communities around the world. And justice and love are intertwined, which is why we need to plant and grow lush gardens of love. We need to love each other and our environment more fiercely and with intention, sunrise to sunset, on repeat. “Empathy and love need to be deliberately embedded in curriculum and instruction because our young people are often the best change agents in our world. We need to provide them with tools, knowledge, skills and dispositions that will inspire them to be solutionaries, to bend the arc toward justice and peace, and to collectively build a better world — especially for our children.” DID YOU KNOW? In addition to being a teacher-scholar at Stetson, Rajni Shankar-Brown, PhD, is an artivist herself. She is currently working on a traveling art exhibition focused on human rights, consisting of more than a dozen original paintings, and she recently published her first collection of poetry, “Tuluminous” (2020), which is rooted in social justice; proceeds are being used to support projects to address hunger and homelessness (book is available at shankar-brown.com). The collection has been described by Presidential Poet Richard Blanco as “a marvelous and meaningful testimony of the power of language to heal and transform.” And it continues to receive national praise, including from Tim Tomlinson, PhD, award-winning author and professor in New York University’s Global Liberal Studies program; New York Times bestselling author and NPR correspondent Eric Weiner; and Paul Gorski, PhD, distinguished scholar and founder of the Equity Institute and EdChange. Shankar-Brown also has two other book projects being published and released in 2021. They are “Bending the Arc Toward Justice: Equity- Focused Practices for Educational Leaders” and “Re-Envisioning Education: Affirming Diversity and Advancing Social Justice.” Additionally, she has three academic book projects centered on social justice topics and several creative publications in the works, including a multicultural novel and a social-justice series of children’s literature. THE LOCAL COMMUNITY IMPACT Rajni Shankar-Brown, PhD, generously invests her time and energy throughout the local community. Aside from her ample work on campus, she continues to organize the Acts of Kindness and Justice (AOK-J) program, a program she founded and co-directs with Felicia Benzo, founder and CEO of CATALYST Global Youth Initiatives. The inclusive program teaches and promotes kindness, empathy and equity-centered activism to Volusia County schoolchildren and youth, especially students who are living in poverty, experiencing homelessness or dealing with racial injustices. Currently, youth scholars in AOK-J, including Shankar-Brown’s daughter, Romila Sitara, and son, Valen Siddhartha, are working on two mural projects in collaboration with the African American Museum of the Arts to become a part of Mainstreet DeLand. One mural depicts a civil rights sit-in protesting segregated facilities that took place in 1960 in downtown DeLand, featuring former county commissioner and state legislator Joyce Cusack and students from Euclid High School. The second mural project consists of a tree representing compassion and justice. That mural, based on artwork co-created by Shankar-Brown and her son, will be a community mural painted by youth, including AOK-J student-scholars. Shankar-Brown also founded the Hatters University Scholars, a multilayered mentoring program for local youth experiencing poverty and homelessness. She also is active with the Mainstreet Diversity and Inclusivity program for downtown DeLand businesses that want to help make the community more inclusive. Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 37 NSF Vecteezy.com 38 STETSON | Spring 2021 + STEM = DIVERSITY A nearly $1 million award from the National Science Foundation for an initiative involving science, technology and math targets students who most need the help. BY M ICHA E L CANDELARIA Of course, this isn’t exactly a news flash: STEM is a global concern. According to the World Economic Forum, a not-for-profit foundation based in Switzerland, female students and employees are underrepresented in fields related to science, technology, engineering and math, with only approximately 30% of the world’s researchers being women. Further, according to numerous published studies, similar inequities exist with respect to race. By percentage comparisons, there simply aren’t enough people of color involved in STEM disciplines. At Stetson, recent discussions among administrators and faculty, along with a general commitment to combat such disparities, have been buoyed by a significant new grant to support the university’s STEM curriculum development initiative. In mid-November 2020, the National Science Foundation officially awarded Stetson $999,823 for a project titled Cohort-Based Interdisciplinary Learning to Increase Retention and Graduation Rates of Undergraduate Students in Science, Technology and Mathematics. (Engineering isn’t an academic focus at Stetson.) The award establishes a new financial high-water mark at Stetson for an NSF-funded proposal. The budget allocates $720,000 for STEM scholarships over the next five years to support 32 scholars in two cohorts. The funding is scheduled to begin this spring and end Feb. 28, 2026. Tandy Grubbs, PhD, is the principal investigator. William Miles, PhD; Ben Tanner, PhD; Lynn Kee, PhD; and Holley Lynch, PhD, are the co-principal investigators. Elizabeth Skomp, PhD, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, described the NSF award as a “wonderful example of a collaborative, Elizabeth Skomp, PhD Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 39 Tandy Grubbs, PhD William Miles, PhD Ben Tanner, PhD Lynn Kee, PhD, and Holley Lynch, PhD Tahira Perry ’21 interdisciplinary initiative” — one that “will result in significant support for students from underrepresented backgrounds who wish to pursue studies in the natural sciences.” “The current cohort-based model not only builds on Stetson’s previous success in the S-STEM [scholarships in STEM] competition [for students], but also utilizes high-impact practices, project-based learning, and a focus on skill development to prepare our students well for a wide variety of post-graduation endeavors,” Skomp said. Specifically, Stetson’s STEM curriculum development initiative is intended to promote STEM enrollment in two primary ways, said Grubbs, a professor and chair of chemistry. One way is by providing added scholarship awards to low-income students who have demon-strated academic promise in STEM. The second way is by engaging those students as a cohort within a novel STEM-enriched, interdisciplinary curriculum that emphasizes peer-interaction, project-based learning, community partnerships, numerical problem-solving skills, technological literacy, and professional writing and presentation skills. Grubbs said the university will recruit students who have expressed an interest in pursuing a degree in one or more of the following disci-plines: biochemistry, chemistry, computer science, environmental science, mathematics, molecular biology and physics. Additionally, the recruitment plan includes steps to identify academically talented, financially needy scholars from underrepresented groups, including African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian and American Indian/Alaskan Native ethnicities, along with veterans and first-gener-ation college students. minors in public health and Spanish. (See related article on Page 28.) “I really think that’s an amazing opportunity for students like me who may come from disadvantaged backgrounds and often aren’t exposed to the opportunities and experiences in those STEM worlds prior to coming to undergraduate [study],” said Perry, also the chair of Stetson’s Multicultural Student Council. “It would be amazing to see other people who look like me in class,” she added, noting that while the demographic mix has improved during her time on campus, more improvement still is needed. “It makes things a lot more comfortable and a lot easier when you walk into a classroom and you’re not the only student of color sitting in there.” Also, Perry applauds the enhanced possibility of having future STEM students experience the “power” of sitting among diverse individuals and sharing perspectives. Fellow student Savannah Rheingold ’22, a chemistry major and German minor, believes such settings will help underrepresented students “obtain a personalized education provided by faculty” and allow for “broader participation in STEM curriculum.” “Moreover,” Rheingold said, “it shows that Stetson is providing a supportive and cultural environment for underrepresented students who want to pursue a STEM career. All around, it’s an amazing opportunity that allows a growth of diverse students.” The approach used in the project, Grubbs added, is inspired by a successful pedagogical experiment originally developed at Brandeis University, which found that a closed-cohort model toward STEM study enhanced retention and persistence to degree completion, especially among students from underrepresented groups. “The project methodology,” he explained, “will track and assess the progress of these scholars alongside peer STEM cohorts who are engaged “Recognizing that underrepresented minority undergraduate students are far more likely than white students to come from low-income households and, therefore, to feel the financial strain of pursuing a higher education degree more acutely, we anticipate that the availability of these NSF scholarship awards will significantly improve access to STEM educational opportunities for underrepresented groups at Stetson,” Grubbs commented. Tahira Perry ’21 wholeheartedly agreed. Perry is a biology major with 40 STETSON | Spring 2021 HOW THE NSF AWARD HAPPENED Stetson applied for the National Science Foundation grant on April 20, 2020, two days ahead of the published deadline of April 22, according to Sidney Johnston, assistant director (for pre-award) in Stetson’s Office of Grants, Sponsored Research and Strategic Initiatives. Approximately 25 Stetson personnel were involved in the application process, which encompassed internal meetings and follow-up responses with the university personnel plus external outreach, along with writing the project description and providing various required components. That breadth of the internal collaborations reflected an equally broad collaboration of external partners who agreed to work with Stetson. The total application consisted of 112 pages with narratives, tables and budgets in required sections. This type of STEM-related NSF is among the agency’s most competitive and coveted awards, Johnston said. At least 60% of those grant requests must fund student scholarships, “so this grant exemplifies Stetson’s focus on undergraduate education,” he said. In this case, Stetson allocated 72% of the grant to scholarships. Over the past decade, various Stetson faculty members have submitted NSF STEM requests, with the previous most occurring in fiscal year 2016. All of those submissions were declined. In fiscal year 2020, Stetson’s Office of Grants, Sponsored Research and Strategic Initiatives submitted four NSF grants for faculty research and institutional needs, with, finally, that one STEM-related success. “Actually,” said Johnston, “that’s pretty much in line with NSF’s overall funding rate of all proposals, which consistently calculates near 24% of all proposals received-to-awarded.” Nationwide for fiscal year 2020, NSF estimated funding between 60 and 80 STEM proposals, totaling $70 million to $90 million. Stetson’s largest NSF award prior to the current STEM award equaled $610,000 in 2010 to renovate research spaces in Sage Hall that serve biology and chemistry education. in a traditional STEM curriculum in order to answer the primary research question of this study: Are learning, enthusiasm and persis-tence toward degree completion significantly enhanced when STEM students navigate a series of courses as members of a close-knit cohort where all participants actively and purposefully engage in a common interdisciplinary general education core that culminates in a commu-nity- based research project and a capstone research experience? “The effectiveness of the innovative curriculum will be evaluated, with care taken to examine what elements are associated with improve-ments in learning and retention.” Tanner, associate professor and chair of environmental science and studies, lauds the initiative’s approach. “This project is exciting to me because it will focus considerable resources in a very concrete way to recruit, retain, graduate and launch underrepresented students in STEM fields,” he said. “Among other things, our project will focus on technology and interdisciplinary collaboration, which are critical for successful STEM careers.” Tanner hopes to use Stetson’s new Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience water-monitoring resources at the Sandra Stetson Aquatic Center to engage NSF-student cohorts. “This will be realized through project-based learning in a grant-related environmental science course and through collaborative student research projects,” Tanner noted. “As an additional benefit, this grant will bring together Stetson colleagues from a number of different STEM fields, and I’m sure that promising new collaborations will develop as a result.” That’s certainly how Lynch sees things. As an undergraduate student at Earlham College, majoring in physics and mathematics, she didn’t have a female physics professor and only one in math. “I benefited from the peer connections I made with women who were mostly not in physics and not in my year. But those peer connec-tions are really important,” said Lynch, who also went on to earn a master’s degree and doctorate from Vanderbilt University. “Hopefully, this [NSF award and STEM initiative] will make our students feel like this is what ‘I should be doing.’ It can be hard if you look around and people don’t look like you. You start to feel like, ‘Well, do I really belong here?’ … I think this will be a big help.” Kee, an assistant professor of biology, points to diversity as well as inclusivity. “Now, more than ever, it is imperative that these fields are not only representative of our entire community, but also allow us to actively communicate science across disciplines,” she said. “I look forward to being part of a tight-knit learning community that embraces discovery and curiosity, both as an instructor and mentor to the students. My mentored research experience as an undergraduate student had a huge impact on my career. I am excited to welcome a new generation of STEM students at Stetson.” For Miles, the NSF award represents all of the above — plus the chance for math to be part of the equation. “I welcome the opportunity to promote math as being fundamental in any scientific endeavor,” said Miles, an associate professor of mathematics. “To have the idea that a student would eventually see the connec-tions, because this compartmentalization of math, of science, it’s natural to do that. But to break up that compartmentalization, and connect those fields in ways they can experience outside of academia, is an exciting piece of the puzzle.” Stetson’s Sidney Johnston Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 41 Sophomore Kendall Buck comes from a foodie family. Her father was a chef for 14 years. So, family members bonded and enjoyed time in the kitchen making their own pasta, sauces and other delicious foods. Fun was had by all — until it was time to strip the leaves off the herbs. “We would make bets on who would have to pick the cilantro, which nobody wanted to do because it was the most annoying and time-consuming job in the kitchen,” said Buck, who came to Stetson from Gilbert, Arizona. “It got to the point where we tried to make deals with each other about washing the dishes instead of peeling herbs, because we knew how tedious it was.” The family looked for tools that could make the job easier, but none of them were efficient. Then, Buck had an idea: Make something that worked like a rake. And before you knew it, she came up with an early design for her product, which, pandemic notwithstanding, ultimately became the Herbtastic. Now the rest of the story. CILANTRO TO SELF-DISCOVERY Kendall Buck ’23 isn’t quite raking in the big dough just yet — but she is already beating the odds with a simple, clever, market-viable kitchen utensil. BY JAC K ROTH Kendall Buck 42 STETSON | Spring 2021 THE ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY BEGINS When Buck entered Stetson’s School of Business Administration as a first-year stu-dent, one of her professors, Joshua Truitt, PhD, asked her what she wanted to do. When she said she wanted to be an inventor and open businesses, Truitt asked why she wasn’t working on it at Stetson. His response sur-prised her. “It never occurred to me that I could be doing this while I was in college,” Buck said. “The fact that Stetson encourages student entrepreneurship is amazing and opened up a lot of doors for me.” When she gained access to a 3D printer in the duPont-Ball Library’s Innovation Lab on campus, she started creating prototypes — it took about 30 iterations to get it right. The final product: a red, double-sided cooking utensil that successfully strips leaves of cilantro, rosemary, dill, basil and more off their stems. She finalized the design at the end of her first year with the assistance of Tony Ganus, the Innovation Lab manager. Then came more questions, particularly one last year from her academic adviser, Lou Paris, MBA, assistant professor of practice and management. “On a whim, he asked me if I had any great business ideas,” Buck recalled. “I told him about a prototype I printed in the lab. So, he asked me to participate in a business-idea pitch competition that Stetson was hosting that evening.” Paris, also director of Stetson’s Joseph C. Prince Entrepreneurship Program, helped Buck outline her pitch, and he actually brought cilantro to the competition so she could demonstrate her invention. Buck won the competition. Shortly thereafter, she had a seat in the Launching Your Venture class for students in the Prince Entrepreneurship Leaders Program. “I remember telling her we had a pitch competition that night, and she was taken aback, telling me, ‘But I’m just a freshman,’” Paris said. “I told her I would sit with her for an hour and help prepare her for the pitch, and if she was comfortable after that hour, she should do it. When she won the competi-tion, it was obvious she was a great fit for the Leaders Program.” Buck created prototypes on a 3D printer in the campus library. The final product: a red, double-sided cooking utensil that strips leaves of cilantro, rosemary, dill, basil and more off their stems. DISCOVERY Stetson.edu/today | STETSON 43 TAKING ADVANTAGE OF RESOURCES According to Buck, one of the “incredible resources” she has been able to access at Stetson is the Joseph C. Prince Entrepreneurship Program, which focuses on creative problem-solving and fostering an entrepreneurial mindset for students. The program is designed to provide guidance and support for those who are serious about launching their own scalable business either while at Stetson or after graduation. It also showcases Stetson students at various competitions. Recent standouts include Bryson Pritchard ’21, who developed the Dyad Syringe, and Deja Robinson ’22 with her YuubiHire social media startup business. “The Entrepreneurship Program and Professor Paris have helped me learn every­thing I’ve needed to know, not only about pitching the product, but also about patents, market validation and selling the product, which can be very overwhelming,” said Buck. “I can’t say enough good things about the program and what it has done for me.” In spring 2020, Buck made another pitch with her product, then called the Herbie Rake, this time at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization Southeast Entrepreneurship Conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, reaching the finals of the three-round competition. In December 2020, she launched a Kickstarter campaign with a $2,000 goal. By month’s end, she had raised $4,779 from 131 financial backers. For the uninitiated, Kickstarter, based in New York, maintains a global crowdfunding platform. The compa­ny’s stated mission is to “help bring creative projects to life.” In addition to Kickstarter, Buck made the Herbtastic available for purchase via her own website and sold more than 230 units. The product already is on Amazon, and eventu­ally Buck would like to see the Herbtastic on the shelves of prominent retailers, such as Walmart, Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond. As a side note, that story of success was preceded by sadness. When Buck was a junior in high school, her father died sud­denly at age 47. Having “definitely pushed me to be outgoing and take risks,” Gordon Buck never saw the results. Kendall credits her mother, Tabitha Buck, for inspiring her with the final design. Paris doesn’t doubt Buck’s determination and potential. “Kendall had a spark in her eye,” said Paris. “She was very articulate and animated, and most importantly she had a deep desire to do it. You never know what you’re going to get as you start developing these ideas. Students can understandably get frustrated and fizzle out on it, but Kendall never did.” Buck doesn’t plan on stopping. While acknowledging that she’s “only a sopho­more,” she intends to get the Herbtastic up and running so she can focus on developing another kitchen product. At the same time, she concedes the entrepreneurial journey is a step-by-step process during which she has learned and sharpened skills through trial and error. Her words: “From the first pitch competi­tion until now, I’ve refined the pitch so much I know exactly what to say. The most beneficial aspects of the program are the While the Herbtastic is available for purchase mostly via a small website, there are big plans, including Walmart, Target and other major retailers. 44 STETSON | Spring 2021 GUIDING INFLUENCES While pursuing his bachelor’s degree at Daytona State College, California native Thomas Oltorik ’18 MBA was fishing in a tournament in South Carolina when one of his fishing poles started losing its rod guides. One guide failed, followed by more guides giving out. Apparently, direct sunligh