Knox College has hired coach Jami Strinz to head Prairie Fire softball next year.
Excerpt:
Jami Strinz has been named head softball coach at Knox College. She will replace Kathy Wagoner, who is retiring from coaching at the end of the 2007 softball season.
Strinz, currently the softball coach at Beloit College, was also named as the Senior Woman Administrator and assistant volleyball coach at Knox. She will begin her duties July 1.
Strinz has spent the past two years at Beloit College, serving as the head softball coach in 2006 and 2007 and the head volleyball coach in 2006. She led the Buccaneer softball team to a 16-18 record last year and is 5-6 in the early going this spring. In her only season as the head volleyball coach, Strinz guided Beloit to a 21-9 record, a Midwest Conference championship, and a berth in the NCAA Division III National Tournament.
Read the Register-Mail story.
Knox College will renovate its student apartment building Hamblin Hall over the summer of 2007.
Excerpt:
The project will add spaces for 29 students, increasing capacity to 101 from the current 72.
The new two-person and four-person apartments will be built on the ground level, along with a new lounge area. The college also will replace all kitchens, bathrooms and doors in the existing apartments. The outside entrance and all the lounges and common living areas will be renovated. A sprinkler system, new fire alarm system and an elevator will be installed.
The college is still working with the architect to determine cost estimates, officials said.
Some preliminary work is planned to begin this spring, with the major construction in June and July. Completion is planned for August, before students returning to campus in late August and early September.
“The renovation will raise both the quality and the variety in residences for seniors,” said Craig Southern, associate dean of students for campus life and director of residential learning. “We are also increasing the number of handicapped-accessible rooms and our overall flexibility in meeting student housing preferences.”
Read the Register-Mail story.
The combined Monmouth-Knox “Scot-Fire” Invitational kicked off with freezing temperatures and blustery winds.
Excerpt:
On a day when baseball, softball and track were cancelled, collegiate golfers braved the frigid temperatures and whipping winds. Knox College senior Ryan Meier isn’t sure what that says about the mental makeup of golfers.
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just a little more crazy,” Meier said with a laugh.
Despite difficult playing conditions, the Monmouth College men’s golf team utilized its home course advantage for a three-stoke victory in the inaugural Scot-Fire Invitational at Gibson Woods Golf Course on Saturday.
Monmouth and Knox Colleges combined forces this year to create a two-day weekend tournament that attracted a total of 14 teams. Right on cue, freezing temps hit the area and caused scores to soar into the 80s and 90s in Friday’s first round at Soangetaha Country Club.
The cold conditions convinced four Midwest Conference teams to leave after the first day, including St. Norbert, Beloit, Ripon and Lawrence. But with the conference tournament less than a month away, the Monmouth and Knox coaches decided to carry on and finish the invite Saturday.
Read the Register-Mail story.
Knox College students help local prisoners study for success beyond the cell block.
Excerpt:
Moriah Spicer and Cordelia Bone are buzzed through the heavy metal doors at the Knox County Law Enforcement Center every Monday and Wednesday afternoon.
With book-filled bags strapped to their backs, the two Knox College students make their way through the jail’s lobby, past the inmates in holding cells and the deputies in uniform.
They enter a small room lined with metal shelves full of worn paperbacks, Bibles and outdated encyclopedias. After rearranging the tables and chairs, they write lesson plans on a dry-erase board mounted on the cement-block walls….
….Spicer and Bone are the latest Knox students to run the jail literacy program, which is affiliated with the college and Altrusa Club of Galesburg. They began tutoring inmates in January as part of a service project for a college course.The course is now over, but Spicer and Bone keep coming back.
Read the Register-Mail story.
Knox College hosts the David Dorfman Dance troupe — and the community dances along.
Excerpt:
Throughout this week, about 25 students, faculty and staff have been rehearsing with two members of Dorfman’s professional dance troupe, David Dorfman Dance, for the Midwest premiere of “underground,” a new work from Dorfman based on the activities of the 1960s-era protest organization The Weather Underground.
Dorfman, who specializes in community-based dance projects and has received seven New York Dance and Performance Awards, will perform a solo dance prior to “underground,” which will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Ford Center for the Fine Arts’ Harbach Theatre on the Knox campus.
The performance is free and open to the public.
Ten members of David Dorfman Dance, including Dorfman, will be performing “underground” with the Knox students, faculty and staff. Kathleen Ridlon, lecturer in dance and director of the Center for Community Service at Knox, equated the chance to perform with Dorfman and his troupe to “shooting hoops with a professional basketball player.”
Read the Register-Mail story.
The Chicago Sun-Times notes Knox’s rising star — and credits the comments of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert.
Excerpt:
Call it the Colbert Effect.
Almost a year after comedian Stephen Colbert gave the commencement address at Knox College in western Illinois, the liberal arts college has a record number of applicants. It got 2,500 applications — 20 percent more than last year — for 340 spots on its Galesburg campus.
The school snagged Colbert, of “The Colbert Report'’ on Comedy Central, to speak to graduates last June. It drew headlines again when Colbert said on his show in January that he would burn his honorary degree from Knox if the school grants a similar degree to former President Bill Clinton, this year’s speaker.
“I put Knox College on the map,'’ the Northwestern grad declared on his show, where he plugged Knox again three weeks ago.
Read the Sun-Times story.
