Knox in the News

From The Register-Mail:

Knox College graduate Mary Jo Festle returned to Knox to give a presentation Thursday on the history of lung transplants.

As an undergrad Festle studied social change, but when her brother needed a lung transplant at the age of 22 her focused changed.

“My brother waited two years before he got a transplant,” she said. “(Once he received one) he finished his degree, started a career and fell in love.”

Her brother died five-and-a-half years after the transplant from chronic rejection, where the human body rejects foreign bodies and attacks donor organs. Festle said the five year survival rate is still only 50 percent for lung transplants. But five years can be a long time for families battling disease.

“Five years is a lot for someone who is only 22,” she said.

Festle’s proximity to transplants gives her scholarship a unique view. She said much of the research on transplants has dealt with doctors, government organizations and the disease. She adds the point of view of the people waiting for transplants.

One of the things she focused on during her lecture Thursday was the lung transplant community.

“There are a lot of emotions involved,” Festle said.

For example, lung transplant recipients often receive false alarms, when a lung that initially is deemed acceptable can’t be transplanted. In those instances recipients rush to the hospital only to be told the organ that could save their life isn’t available…

From The Register-Mail:

The Knox College presidential search committee is moving closer to its goal of announcing a new president early this year, leaving plenty of time for some overlap before President Roger Taylor retires June 30.

The committee met Jan. 5 and 6 to interview semifinalists and narrowed the list to three candidates who have been invited to campus for a second round of interviews later this month.

“We were very impressed with the qualities and experience of everyone that we interviewed,” wrote Richard Riddell, search committee chair and Knox College trustee, in his latest update on the Knox College website.

Riddell, who also serves as vice president and university secretary of Duke University, said in a phone interview Thursday that the committee is working on a schedule for the meetings, which will serve multiple purposes.

“We want to give the search committee a chance to get input from the Knox community and give candidates a chance to validate their choice to be at Knox,” said Riddell. “And we want to have a chance to recruit them, because all three finalists would be a great fit.”

Riddell said the candidates have had “substantial” leadership experience at liberal arts colleges, possessing titles such as provost, dean and assistant dean. In alignment with the committee’s initial goal, the candidates also have experience in the Midwest, either through their careers or family ties to the region…

From The Register-Mail:

…At the end of the fall term, Knox senior Alison Ehrhard received an e-mail from The People in Galesburg’s Hunger Action Group, one of many involved in The Lunch Spot, announcing a meeting to discuss how to feed the more than 60 percent of District 205 students who rely on free or reduced-price lunches.

“I saw the schools would be closed for two extra weeks to save on heat and they wanted to get food to those kids during that time,” said Ehrhard, who, along with her friend Rosie Worthen, is a member of the Alliance for Peaceful Action at Knox.

“Rosie and I showed up at the meeting and figured our organization could do something,” said Ehrhard. “There’s an overabundance of food here, so it’d be very easy for Knox students to give.”

At first, Ehrhard, Worthen and other students organized a food drive for the cause, encouraging their peers to use leftover money from their meal plans.

“A lot of students have leftover dining dollars at the end of each term, and if you don’t use it all, it doesn’t carry over to the next term and it’s wasted,” said Ehrhard. “We ended up collecting a lot of food, so that was really exciting. I guess it made sense to a lot of people.”

Wanting to do more, Ehrhard worked with Helmut Mayer, Knox’s director of dining services. In the past, Mayer said, the school has allowed students to donate meal swipes that would go toward feeding senior citizens in need, but this effort was a much larger scale.

“Initially the plan was to make some boxed lunches and give them to The Lunch Spot,” said Mayer. “But as the numbers came in, it became clear that we didn’t have the capacity to do that.”

In less than three days, just 235 students donated 1,567 meal swipes, from which Mayer was able to translate into 1,600 meals that will include a sandwich, granola bar, fresh fruit and bottled juice. Since Mayer’s staff already serves 1,900 meals daily, however, he didn’t have the manpower to serve hundreds more. Grateful for the donations alone, The Lunch Spot’s coordinators accepted the ingredients and will prepare the meals this week with the help of volunteers. The supplies will cover 400 meals for four days. Mayer said he is proud of the Knox effort…

 From WGIL.com
FIRST REPORTED 12:00pm 1/7/11