Knox in the News

From the Register-Mail:

When my old Register-Mail pal Ken Exum showed me a recent picture of his wife, Cathy Walters, dressed in ACU (Army Combat Uniform) apparel, and told me that she had enlisted in the Army Reserves, I was impressed, but not surprised – at first.

I knew that both Ken and Cathy had served before, so her decision to continue her service didn’t strike me as unusual. Later, I realized the uniqueness of Cathy’s story.

A former Navy officer for 10 years, Cathy joined the Army Reserves last year after being out of the military for more than two decades. She celebrated her 52nd birthday at Ft. Sill, Okla. where she went through the seven-week Warrior Transition Course, returning home to Galesburg on Aug. 6, 2009.

The military recently changed its age restriction to 43, but for prior service members the individual’s total years of service can be subtracted from their current age, making Cathy 10 years younger in the Army’s eyes – and still eligible to enlist.

The idea of carrying a gun and crawling around in the dirt is not what appealed to Cathy – that just isn’t who she is. But she does want to make a difference and help other men and women who are serving overseas – and that is a big part of what led her into the local recruiting office for the Army Reserves.

From the Register-Mail:

Knox College students complete summer internships
Two Knox College students completed internships with The Register-Mail this summer. Annie Zak and Ben Reeves each worked part time for the newspaper. Annie interned with The R-M in the winter and spring terms and signed on again for the summer. For her internship, she put together the recent Sunday Focus on Hispanic life in Monmouth. She’s a senior at Knox College and will be editor of Knox’s student newspaper.

Ben did a variety of stories for The R-M during the summer months. Ben is a senior this year at Knox and is majoring in Latin, with minors in journalism and history.

From the Register-Mail:

When new Knox College head football coach Chad Eisele tells his players, “We are building a championship program, we will not fail,” he’s not playing mind games with a team that finished 1-9 last year.

Eisele, the Prairie Fire athletic director of the past four years who took over the football program’s top job late last fall, is speaking from experience.

The Knox alum engineered a similar turnaround at Lake Forest College a decade ago. The Foresters hadn’t had a winning season in 18 years, but went 9-2 in 2002 to share the Midwest Conference title — Eisele’s third season as head coach.

Having Casey Urlacher, Brian’s brother and MWC Player of the Year that season, didn’t hurt but Lake Forest also posted 7-3 and 8-2 records after Urlacher’s departure and helped Eisele gain the Minnesota State-Moorhead job for one season before he became Knox AD in 2006.

“The year I took over at Lake Forest, we’d graduated 18 or 19 starters and I said, ‘I’m not here just to collect a paycheck’,” said Eisele.

“It’s similar, but it’s also new,” he said of his opportunity at Knox.

From the Register-Mail:

Knox College found itself in the national spotlight this week when The Huffington Post released the Best Kept Secrets: 10 Colleges You Should Know About. They are 10 schools that fly under the radar, but shouldn’t.

Here is the lead from The Huffington Post story:
“Scattered across the country are ten colleges that are not widely known for their celebrity professors (or students), fancy recreation centers or top-notch graduate programs. Rather, these often tiny schools place a firm emphasis on learning; whatever else happens at them usually stems from that.”

Unigo ranked these 10  hidden gems based on their survey of more than 30,000 students this past year.

From the Register-Mail:

Rhonda Brady has a question: why are so few black children participating in the Knox County Area Project’s summer water safety program?

She wants to know how she can address these kids and get them water safety training, since she wants all kids to know how to swim properly. But with KCAP’s limited state funding, she doesn’t have the manpower, time or resources to study the issue.

That’s where Knox College could come in, if discussions that took place at a Community-Based Research Workshop continue.

College faculty and local organization leaders, including KCAP, the Galesburg Community Foundation, Galesburg School District 205 and the Knox County Housing Authority, met early this week to discuss how the college and its resources can help the community identify and answer crucial questions.

Community-based research involves a collaboration between researchers (in this case, Knox faculty and students) and community partners (like KCAP). Researchers help the organization define a project’s objectives and guide the organization in completing the project with research methods with the goal of understanding and possibly solving a community problem.

“We already have a lot of classes and majors that put our students out in the community,” said Sandra Mehl, acting director of Knox’s Center of Research and Advanced Studies. “We want to formalize it a bit and create a way for community agencies to ask us to provide resources.”

Knox can provide time, analytical tools and technology that agencies like KCAP don’t have, while faculty and students complete projects that enrich them academically, Mehl said.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The AP’s “When Frugal Is All in the Family” examines whether or not frugal parents raise children who have absorbed their values. Knox College professor Tim Kasser, who studies materialism, reasoned:

Whether individuals grow up to be thrifty is probably going to be influenced by whether they had a thrifty parent. If parents make saving money fun, give children choices and explain why careful spending is a good way to live, the children will probably get the message.

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s were lucky — back then, Consumers’ Union published the children’s magazine Penny Power, which walked its pre-adolescent audience through the joys of envelope-system budgeting, calculating the cost-per-unit of a six-pack of Bubblelicious, or practicing delayed gratification. If being a careful 6th-grade saver wasn’t exactly a laugh riot, it was thrilling to feel like one had control over one’s finances.

And now, it appears, those of us who grew up reflexively chanting the phrase “opportunity cost” and brown-bagging our lunches are now dating — and trying to figure out how to convey our values when looking for a mate.