Archive for the ‘Alumni News’ Category

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Widener Biology Degree: A 75-Year Tradition

May 2, 2013

By Allyson Roberts

Pennsylvania Military College offered its first biology degree to John Frederick Rhoades on June 7, 1938, making this year’s class the 75th in program history. To mark this special anniversary, science faculty and students gathered outside of their Kirkbride Hall home for a celebratory picnic.

The graduating biology majors include Victor Abadom, Garrett Abadom, Mike Colgan, Janelle DelBuono, Alexandra Taratuski, Karen Levy, Kelsey Fisher, Greg Millio, Stacey Lytle, Christina Henderson, Josh Koble, Robert P. Kelly, Amanda Guy, Keith F. Davis, Samina Martin, Dhan Thomas, Laya Thomas, Lisa Shiels , Lauren Campion, Nicole Gezzi, Kendra Sohara, and Gabrielle Long.

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Widener’s Own Earth Day Coffee Brew

April 18, 2013

WU Brew, a Widener-branded coffee, will be introduced at a coffee tasting on Earth Day, April 22. Why Earth Day? Because the coffee is earth friendly, grown without herbicides or pesticides and under trees, a shade-grown method that preserves forests.  It’s a project that brings together students, faculty, and alumni involvement.  If you are on campus, please stop by our table in University Center from noon – 2 p.m. Monday.  If not, please visit the WU Brew page for more information and the opportunity to buy a bag online.

Dr. Stephen Madigosky, chair of Widener’s environmental science department, and students conducted research at Las Lajas Farms in Costa Rica where WU Brew coffee beans are grown organically and beneath shade trees. Here a student tastes a coffee bean.

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An Unlikely Pair on Widener Spring Magazine

April 8, 2013

spring 2013 magazine new

The spring issue of Widener Magazine is off the press and in the mail to alumni and friends of the university. The cover features the unlikely pairing of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was honored on campus by Pennsylvania Military College in 1963, and Bruce Springsteen, who played three memorable shows at Widener College in the mid-seventies. This issue also includes four stories written by three Widener students.

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Putting the Past Online: Widener-PMC Annuals

February 22, 2013
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PMC’s 1961 yearbook

By Brittany Cassidy ’16

Tracking down a photograph from an old Widener or Pennsylvania Military College yearbook no longer requires finding your dusty copy in the attic or visiting campus.

Widener University’s archivists  have posted more than a century’s worth of yearbooks online in a digital format that is easily accessible and free to use.

Jill Borin, assistant archivist, said family members and friends often would contact the library asking if they had a yearbook that had a picture or information on their relatives or friends. Now, anyone seeking the information can find online by going to the Wolfgram Memorial Library’s Digital Collections and scrolling down to the yearbook collections.

The process of scanning thousands of pages took a year and a half to complete, Borin said. She added, “Putting the yearbooks online was a satisfying project.  There are high quality pictures that can be found online, and those who wish to search will find some impressive resources.”

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The 1973 yearbook

In addition to alumni, the project makes much information available about Pennsylvania Military College and Widener to historians and current students.  The early yearbooks contain humorous comments, nicknames for PMC cadets, and pictures of cadets that students drew themselves. All yearbooks are stored as PDF files so that they remain searchable for those who wish to seek information.

Also searchable in the Digital Collections are all of the issues of the Dome and PMC News, as well as biographies of notable alumni, old photographs and scrapbooks, course catalogs, and a digital version of the award-winning Connections Timeline.

Jan Alexander, university archivist, is excited by the sheer quantity of historical resources the archives has been able to put online, and reports that “increasing numbers of alumni, historians and genealogists are utilizing this information in their research.”

If you happen to find a picture that you would like to have in better quality, or you have more questions about finding information on a family member or friend who attended PMC or Widener, you can contact either Borin or Alexander via e-mail at archives@mail.widener.edu.

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Widener Alumna to Speak About Liberia

February 14, 2013

SimmonsBy Maria Klecko ’15

When Williametta Simmons was a Widener sophomore twelve years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about her difficult journey from her native Liberia to the United States.  On February 25, Simmons – who now holds doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Widener – will speak on the Chester campus about an effort to aid her home country in West Africa.

As part of Widener’s Black History/Women’s History month, Simmons will give a lecture from noon- 1 p.m. in the Webb Room in University Center about a medical mission trip to Liberia she is participating in this March.  The purpose will be to provide medical and mental health services for Liberians; Simmons is also running a baby bottle drive.

Her presentation will include a brief history of Liberia that involves noting its connection with freed U.S. slaves and spotlighting influential Liberian women. Simmons survived the country’s civil war.

Simmons immigrated to the U.S. when she was 12. She graduated with a bachelor’s from Widener in 2004, and went on earn a doctorate in clinical psychology and a master’s in business administration. She is currently a clinical psychologist at Temple University Hospital-Episcopal Campus and works as an adjunct professor at Temple University School of Medicine.

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PMC Grad Pens Article on Aviation Security

January 24, 2013

A 1962 Pennsylvania Military College graduate has written an article, “Preventing airport security from going to the birds,” that is being widely published. Glen Winn, a former Secret Service agent, is president of Condor-AvSec Inc., a consulting firm.  His article is being featured in Government Security News, and will run in Aviation Week and TSA Security News.

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An Easy New Year’s Resolution for Widener and PMC Alumni: Send In Your Class Notes

December 20, 2012

commencement 2012Calling all Widener graduates.  Here is an easy New Year’s resolution for you.  Send us items for the Class Notes section of the next Widener Magazine.

If you are an alumnus with news to report,  we want to include it in the forthcoming spring magazine. Tell us about new jobs, marriages, new children, and other noteworthy items.

And don’t forget to e-mail photos as well (please send larger, higher resolution images — they reprint better that way.)

The deadline to be included in the spring 2013 magazine due out in April is Wednesday, January 2.  You can submit your class notes and photos three ways:

1. Join or log onto the Widener Pride Network
at alumni.widener.edu/WPN
2. E-mail Patty Votta at pavotta@widener.edu
3. Mail to the Office of Alumni Engagement, One University Place
Chester, PA 19013

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In Search of…Eisenhower Video of PMC Visit

December 12, 2012

For the spring issue of Widener Magazine, I am working on a story about President Eisenhower’s 1963 visit to Pennsylvania Military College. May 31 will mark fifty years since he reviewed the cadets, presented military awards, and became the first honorary captain named in the long history of PMC.

If anyone has video of that day, please contact me by commenting on this post, e-mailing me at jsstarnes@widener.edu, or calling 610-499-4246.  (There is a video on Youtube.com of Eisenhower and the parade on Memorial Field, but we are hoping to find additional video footage since there were numerous cameras rolling).  I also am interested in photographs and stories from alumni and others who were there that day. – Sam Starnes, Editor

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A “Bazaar” Tale Told By Widener Alums

November 30, 2012

By Autumn Heisler ‘15

When you think of English and engineering majors, you usually don’t picture them together. But class of 1999 alums Patrick Manley, with a degree in English, and Brendan O’ Riordan, with an engineering degree, thought otherwise. This pair of Widener graduates collaborated to make and produce a documentary on a groundbreaking Delaware County mall known as the Bazaar of All Nations.

The Bazaar was one of the first models of today’s modern mall, predating the King of Prussia Mall among others. It opened November 8, 1960, on Baltimore Pike in Clifton Heights with the idea of bringing stores together. A community — one that some considered a family — grew out of the four-city-block-long center. Manley and O’ Riordan, along with cinematographer and director Melissa Whitely, decided to commemorate this “mother of all malls” by creating the documentary that debuted in 2010,  the 50th anniversary of the Bazaar’s opening.

The idea came to Manley about a decade ago when a basic search on Google turned up little information on the Bazaar. “It seemed odd to me, considering there are websites for even the most obscure things, that a place as fondly remembered had no presence on the Internet, or anywhere else for that matter,” Manley said. But it wasn’t until 2006, when Manley met Whitely and proposed the idea of putting together a documentary, that the idea truly blossomed. Manley asked his lifelong friend O’ Riordan to join them in their project.

Read the rest of this entry ?

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Heroic Arab Nurse to Visit Widener Campus

November 28, 2012

Only fifteen months ago, nurse Rula Al-Saffar remained locked in a prison in her native country of Bahrain. She was held and tortured for treating victims injured during the Arab Spring protests that fostered increased democracy across the Middle East.

Next week, the Bahraini nursing leader who graduated from Widener with a master’s degree in nursing 2000 will visit campus and tell her story in a public lecture. The lecture at 1 p.m. Thursday, December 6 in Founders Hall, Room 109, is free and open to the public. For more about her story, see the feature article “A Nursing Leader’s Nightmare” in the recent Widener Magazine.

 

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