Posts filed under ‘College of Arts and Architecture’
Gen Ed Classes: A Lot of Learning, A Little Bit of Fun
Twice a year, I find myself staring at my computer screen feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed.
When it comes time to schedule classes, I’m always intimidated by eLion’s lists and lists of courses. That’s what happens when you go to a school with 40,000 students and more than 160 majors. I’m usually fine with classes in my areas of study (journalism and English), but general education courses are a different story. There simply are too many. Some seem intriguing; some, not so much.
Gen-ed requirements have changed a lot over the years: Now, all baccalaureate degree programs include a 45-credit gen-ed component, including three credits in health and physical activity, nine credits in natural science, six credits in art, six credits in humanities, and six credits in social and behavioral sciences.
So as students begin to schedule for fall 2012, I took a look at some of Penn State’s more interesting gen-ed courses. I begin with a class I took last year—a class where SpongeBob appears on the syllabus.
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Course: Geosci 040: The Sea Around Us
Requirement satisfied: GN (Natural Science)
Why I took it: I’m not a science person at all. I had to late drop meteorology my freshman year (who knew predicting weather included calculus?) and needed an easier science class to take.
Interesting assignment: Once, we reported to the HUB-Robeson Center for class. Our lab that day consisted of analyzing the aquarium on the bottom floor. I had no idea there was such an intricate ecosystem living just 100 feet away from Sbarro’s. The most interesting aspect, to me, was that the 500-gallon tank has a self-regulated lighting system, which gets dark at night to mimic the real ocean.
What I got out of it: A new appreciation for beaches and environmentalism. When I visited Cape Cod last summer, I had a hard time looking at the dunes without thinking about how big they once were, and how they got there.
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Course: CMLIT 120: The Literature of the Occult
Requirement satisfied: GH (Humanities)
Interesting assignment: Read the third installment of the Harry Potter series.
What you can get out of it: “In all honesty, an appreciation for the Harry Potter series,” says Alexa Agugliaro, who says she wasn’t on the J.K. Rowling bandwagon before enrolling in the course. “There are a lot of major drabby classes that people have to take while they’re here, so why not, if you have the room, take a cool class about like vampires and monsters.” It’s not all Harry Potter and Twilight, though. Agugliaro wrote her final term paper on the witches in Macbeth.
Side note: Agugliaro says the teacher wore a wizard hat and a robe every day and had a magic wand.
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Course: KINES 028: Fencing
Requirement satisfied: GHA (Health and Physical Activity)
Interesting assignment: Just fence. Senior Matt Giacometti said there’s not much variety to the course, but he doesn’t mind. Students participate in basic drills, then fence each other. “It’s fun,” Giacometti says. “Exactly what you want from the class.”
What you can get out of it: “A ton,” Giacometti says. “I’m learning from coaches that have succeeded at the highest level. These guys have coached Olympians.” Giacometti’s professors for the course? Assistant coaches with the Penn State varsity fencing team—a program with 12 national championships and more than 170 All-Americans in the last 28 years. Did you know that Suzie Paxton ’93, a former Nittany Lion fencer and 1996 Olympian, started fencing in this gym class?
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Course: Applied Linguistics 100
Requirement satisfied: GS (Social and Behavioral Sciences)
Interesting assignment: During one class, the students were asked to think of as many examples of semantic word as they could. As junior Jackie Giraldo recalls, “That was the first time I ever heard the word yinz,” Giraldo says.
What you can get out of it: Says Giraldo: “I learned how language has evolved over time, but also got a deeper look at how words have evolved, how syntax has evolved, and why things are said different ways in different places. I definitely have a new appreciation of communication of different cultures.”
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Course: INART 115: Popular Music in America
Requirement satisfied: GA (Arts)
Interesting assignment: Students were required to participate in online discussions. One debate revolved around who is the most influential musician today, with one student making a good case that the answer was definitively Lady Gaga.
What you can get out of it: “I now understand the hardships that a lot of musicians had to endure in the past in great music from that, era like the jazz and blues,” junior Jared Cruz says. “And it also influenced the development of music nowadays.”
Emily Kaplan, intern
More Tintypes by Cody Goddard
One of many cool tintypes from Cody's Halloween shoot.
Last week, we introduced to you to Cody Goddard ’10, a photographer who works with old-fashioned equipment and techniques. As promised, Cody posted the results of Friday’s Halloween-themed tintype shoot to his website. Check them out here. The photos—and the costumes—are fantastic. Although I watched the making of some of these images, it’s still hard to believe they’re not actual antiques.
A collection of Cody’s tintypes will be on display at the Green Drake Art Gallery in Millheim, Pa., this month, as part of the “Under 30 – The Work of Young Artists” exhibit. The show opens today.
Mary Murphy, associate editor
A Lesson in Tintypes from Cody Goddard
Cody sets up the shot with grad student Alicia Brogan. A wooden brace helps keep her head steady during the 15-second exposure.
Cody Goddard came to Penn State prepared to study computer engineering. And he did, for a year—until he attended a photography workshop as a sophomore. In the workshop, Goddard ’10 not only discovered a love for photography, but became particulary interested in old wet-plate techniques, like tintypes, which create images on sheets of metal.
On Friday, Cody, who now works on campus for the College of Arts & Architecture in the e-Learning Institute, set up a makeshift studio in the Visual Arts Building, where he offered to make tintypes of anyone who showed up, preferably in Halloween costume. Our graphic designer, Jessie Knuth, and I stopped by Friday morning to check it out.
The tintype process is fascinating. Cody was nice enough to walk Jessie and me through the making of a tintype, and his explanations were so clear, even a photography neophyte like me could understand.
He begins in the darkroom with a plate of aluminum.
Our November/December Issue is on the Way
A couple of Saturdays ago, I arrived at the gym early, too early to snag my favorite bike for the 10 a.m. spinning class. So I ended up chatting with a couple of other early arrivals, and I mentioned how much I like 3:30 football games because I have more time to get in a workout before kickoff.
Turns out, they love any home football games. Because they can buy groceries, pick up whatever they need at Target—without having to wait in line. I was incredulous; in my three “tours” of State College, I’ve missed one home game. Under duress. “You never go to football games?” I asked. Turned out, they wouldn’t even think of it.
My spinning classmates aren’t alone. You can meet more people who ignore Penn State football—and learn what they do during the games—in our November/December issue, which should be making its way to your mailbox if it’s not there already.
We’ve got a couple of other good stories in this issue:
—English professor Sandra Spanier ’76g, ’81g talks about the first volume of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, a project she’s spearheading, and recommends the one Hemingway book you should read if you’re going to read just one. (It’s not my favorite book, A Moveable Feast, but of course it’s an excellent choice. And, no, I’m not going to give it away here.) Still to come: about 15 more volumes of letters.
—And we’ve got a profile of Beverly McIver ’92g, an artist I’m ashamed to say I knew nothing about until I read the story. She paints beautiful portraits of herself and her loved ones, paintings that, as my colleague Ryan Jones writes, “offer unflinching takes on race, gender, and mortality.” You can get a sense of her work here, and the backstory in Ryan’s article.
Please let us know what you think!
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Recycling Stuff You Didn’t Think Could be Recycled
When it comes to recycling, I know I’m a little quirky. I suspect my family would go so far as to use the word “eccentric.” I really have trouble throwing something away if there’s any chance whatsoever that it could be recycled—or if someone, somewhere might be able to use it.
This explains, for example, why I save packing peanuts and every so often take a big bagful of them out to Tait Farm, which re-uses them in their mail-order business. Or why I once spent money to ship a box of empty pill bottles I had accumulated to a friend in Madison, Wisc.—one of the few places where they can be recycled.
So I was impressed to discover that Penn State’s Center for the Performing Arts has organized a drive to collect and recycle—of all things—plastic candy wrappers. Anyone attending a CPA show during the 2011–12 season is invited to bring in candy wrappers or multi-pack candy bags (trick-or-treat candy, anyone?) and drop them in one of the collection boxes in the lobby. The CPA staff will then ship the wrappers to an organization called TerraCycle, which will recycle them.
TerraCycle will also reward the CPA’s efforts by making a donation to a clean-water initiative in a developing country.
It turns out that the “Candy Wrapper Brigade” is (more…)
Artful Clocks—or, You Might Say, Timely Art
'Flying Toaster Time,' by Randall Cleaver
One of the fun things about this job is discovering that some Penn Stater I never heard of before is doing something really cool. I got exactly that kind of surprise the other day when a woman at the National Watch & Clock Museum (I mean, who even knew there was such a place?) called to tell me about an art exhibition they’re running right now. The museum is in Columbia, Pa., and the artist is a Penn Stater: Randall Cleaver ’81.
'Dance,' by Randall Cleaver (click to enlarge)
Cleaver studied sculpture as an undergraduate; officially, he was an art major. He now lives in Takoma Park, Md., and has a pretty interesting niche in the art world: He creates clocks out of found objects.
As just one example, in 2001 he did a six-foot-tall piece called Carousel of Time out of a bicycle wheel, copper toilet floats, a trash can, some tin cans, and so on. He’s got clocks made from old heaters, clocks made from globes, clocks made from waffle irons.
The National Watch & Clock Museum is showing 30 of his pieces in an exhibition called Found Time, which runs through next May. You can learn a bit more about it by watching this video shot by a local TV station—or by taking a little road trip to the museum, located on 514 Poplar St. in Columbia, Pa.
Tina Hay, editor
Arthur Miller’s ‘All My Sons’ Onstage at Penn State
Richard Bekins and Jane Ridley as Joe and Kate Keller.
I’ve really grown to love going to dress rehearsals of Penn State theatre productions. The director and crew always are happy to have me bring my camera gear—something that would be forbidden at the actual performances—and I inevitably get engrossed not only in shooting the play but in the play itself.
On Monday night I had a chance to photograph the dress rehearsal for All My Sons, which opens Friday night in the Pavilion Theatre. It’s an Arthur Miller tragedy (I’m thinking that “Arthur Miller tragedy” is a redundancy—did the guy write any happy plays?) set in an American suburb a few years after World War II.
Penn State MFA acting candidate Lance Beilstein as George Deever, recently back from serving in WW II.
The play centers on two families whose sons were drafted into the war; one of those sons didn’t come back. Complicating the tensions, the fathers—Joe Keller and Steve Deever—once co-owned a manufacturing plant that made airplane parts for the war. The pair were accused of allowing defective parts to be shipped, leading to the deaths of 21 U.S. pilots. One of the fathers was exonerated and the other is still in prison, but from the start of the play, it’s not clear that the right guy is (more…)
Meanwhile, Up at the Palmer Museum…
Our Executive Board—part of the Alumni Association’s all-volunteer governing body called Alumni Council—was in town for meetings last Thursday and Friday, and on Friday evening they finished with a tour of the Palmer Museum of Art. Some of us on the staff tagged along. And I think everyone, volunteers and staff alike, was glad they went.
A detail from the Kenneth Hayes Miller painting "The Little Coat and Fur Shop" (1931).
I must confess it had been three years since I’d visited the Palmer; that was when I interviewed curator Joyce Robinson for a feature for the magazine. On Friday I was surprised (though I realize I shouldn’t be) at how much had changed since 2008.
The very cool figurine from the Ming Dynasty was still there, as were the Baroque-era painting “St. Sebastian Healed by An Angel” and the Henry Dexter bust of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But there were plenty of works I hadn’t seen before, as well as a new exhibition of works by School of Visual Arts faculty that will be up there through Dec. 11.
And a Dale Chihuly glass piece that wasn’t on display when I last visited was available this time. (I remember Joyce telling me that only a small fraction of the museum’s holdings are on exhibit at any given time.)
In addition to the two photos you see here, I took photos of a dozen or so works that caught my eye; you can see those at the magazine’s Facebook page.
The Palmer Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 4:00. On Fridays during home football weekends, the museum stays open a little later, until 6:00 p.m. I highly recommend a visit.
By the way, we’re tentatively planning to do a photo essay in our Jan-Feb issue on an exhibition called Painting the People: Images of American Life from the Maimon Collection, which runs Jan. 31–May 13 at the Palmer. Lee Maimon ’56 and his wife, Barbara, have collected some very interesting paintings from the 1920s and ’30s and are lending them for the exhibition. More on that another time.
Tina Hay, editor
Penn State Night at the Emmys
He was nominated for an Emmy Award last year, but this year Ty Burrell ’97g actually won the thing.
Burrell captured an Emmy last night for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy, for his role as the dorky dad Phil Dunphy on the ABC sitcom Modern Family. The show itself also won for Best Comedy, and Ty’s on-screen wife, Julie Bowen, won for Best Supporting Actress.
You can see the entire list of Emmy winners here. Note that it includes another Penn Stater: Don Roy King ’69, director of Saturday Night Live, won an Emmy for Outstanding Directing. Not a bad night for Penn Staters, huh?
By the way, King will be speaking at Penn State next spring.
We did a profile of Ty Burrell in the magazine back in Jan-Feb 2010. That story got its start when I was trying to recruit Vicki Glembocki ’93, ’02g to write a story for us on some other topic, and she wrote back: “How about Ty Burrell??? Are you watching Modern Family? I can see the subhead: How does a guy become the most lovably annoying dad in America?”
Vicki usually knows what she’s talking about, so I took her up on the offer, and I’m glad I did.
You might enjoy reading Vicki’s tale of what it was like to meet Burrell, and that’s also where you can download a PDF of her story in The Penn Stater about him.
Tina Hay, editor
Happy PARK(ing) Day
Anyone looking for a parking space Friday in downtown State College will have three fewer options than usual. And for good reason.
Friday is PARK(ing) Day, a loosely connected international event started in 2005, when some artists in San Francisco decided to make a statement about the lack of open public space in American cities. They picked a parking space, filled the meter, laid down a roll of sod, added a tree and a park bench, and voila, a temporary oasis of green squeezed between a couple of parked cars. Since then, the idea has spread internationally to hundreds of cities, one of them being State College. For students from Penn State’s Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, it’s a chance to make a point and get some experience that’s applicable to their future careers.
Starting before sunrise Friday on the first fall-like day of the year (I know because the heat clicked on in my house this morning), students began setting up their “parks” in three downtown parking spots, on South Allen Street, West College Avenue, and East Beaver Avenue. Each project forced the students (more…)
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