Browder to speak at Mabee-Simpson Library

Dr. Sally Browder, associate professor of psychology at Lyon College, will speak on “The Gender Gap in Science” at Lyon’s Mabee-Simpson Library at 4 p.m. Thursday.

Browder’s lecture was inspired by the controversial remarks Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers made in January that embroiled him in a still churning firestorm from the left.

During the lecture, Browder plans to discuss questions that could be asked based on what Summers did and did not say. She will also comment on what scientists know about sex differences in the brain and what they make of those differences.

The Mabee-Simpson Library sponsors visiting authors, poetry readings, book talks, events about current topics, and programs about library services during the school year. For more information see the Press Room at: http://library.lyon.edu/events.htm.

So far, Dr. Tom Carpenter has talked about peace in Israel, Dr. David Stricklin presented Presidential Legacies on election eve, and Jennifer Paddock, author of “A Secret Word,” came for a reading and book signing.

For more information, please contact Camille Beary, assistant director of the Mabee-Simpson Library, at (870) 698-4267 or e-mail beary@lyon.edu.
 

New CDs bring back first folk festival They were just “timber cutters, farmers, housewives and all plain people of the hills.”  That’s how folk music legend Jimmy Driftwood described the performers at Mountain View’s first Arkansas Folk Festival back in 1963. A new two-CD collection produced at Lyon College lets us hear for ourselves the music of those timber cutters, farmers and housewives who helped launch the Arkansas Folk Festival into Arkansas’s most popular spring event. The CD collection, Sounds of the Ozark Folk: The 1963 Arkansas Folk Festival, features more than two hours of performances recorded in the old Mountain View High School gymnasium on those two April nights forty-two years ago. Among the musicians and singers featured in the collection are several of north central Arkansas’s best-known performers, including twin fiddlers Abbie and Apsie Morrison, Almeda Riddle, Ollie Gilbert, Neal Morris, Glenn Ohrlin, and Bookmiller Shannon. And, of course, Jimmy Driftwood emceed the festival and performed a few songs himself.

Lyon hosts scholarship dinner Friday, March 18, Lyon hosted a scholarship appreciation dinner for scholarship donors and recipients on campus. Shown above are (from left) Chris Westpheling ’06, Navisimo Chifunda ’05, Bob Cox, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Batesville, and Claudia Marsh, director of church relations. Photo by Eric Stewart

Sounds of the Ozark Folk was made possible by the recordings made by folklorist and Batesville native John Quincy Wolf, Jr. Wolf spent more than a decade recording folk musicians and singers in north central Arkansas and was largely responsible for introducing the world to Driftwood and other noted Ozark singers, such as Almeda Riddle and Neal Morris. After his death in 1972, his widow, Bess Millen Wolf, donated his folk music tapes to Lyon, formerly Arkansas College. This new CD collection marks the first time that any of Wolf’s recordings have been made available for sale.

Sounds of the Ozark Folk will be available in April. Visit the Lyon College Regional Studies Center’s booth on the Mountain View square during folk festival weekend (April 15-17) to take advantage of a special, one-time-only price of $15 per set. Those who are unable to attend this spring’s festival may relive the magic of the 1963 Arkansas Folk Festival and own a piece of Ozark history by sending a check or money order (made out to Lyon College) in the amount of $20 per set to: Sounds of the Ozark Folk, Lyon College Regional Studies Center, P.O. Box 2317, Batesville, AR 72503-2317. (Price includes costs of shipping and handling.)  For more information please call the Center at (870) 698-4330 or contact the Center’s director, Dr. Brooks Blevins, at bblevins@lyon.edu.

Lyon sponsors Regional Science Fair The North Central Arkansas Regional Science Fair was held on campus in the Derby Center Friday, March 18. Approximately 100 junior and senior high students participate in the event.       Photo by Eric Stewart

Zahner appointed information services director

Jay Zahner has recently been appointed Lyon College’s Director of Information Services.

Responsibilities for his new position include supervision of all technological systems (voice, data, and video) plus the campus mail system and the copy center.

Regarding what drew him to Lyon, Zahner says, “I was looking for a values-based institution with a strong sense of community, and Lyon fit that description perfectly.” He added, “When I first visited Lyon, I was struck by the wealth of scholarly and cultural activity, as well as the quality and variety of facilities. Combined with the small student-faculty ratio, those features enable students to enjoy the best of both worlds.”

Zahner worked as Director of Information Technology at Georgian Court College in Lakewood, N.J., before he came to Lyon. He has also worked as a faculty and staff computer support specialist, a network system coordinator, and a biology professor.

During his time at Georgian Court College, Zahner instituted web-based data services for the college, doubled the size and complexity of the campus data network over four years, expanded network storage capacity by a factor of 100, increased Internet connectivity tenfold, and instituted adaptive technology services to meet the needs of disabled  students, among other things.

He was named to the Township Cable Television Advisory Board; elected to the New Jersey Intercampus Network Board of Trustees, where he was later elected secretary of the board; represented independent colleges on the Network Advisory Board of NJEDge.net, where he later served as treasurer. Zahner also served on a variety of college committees such as the Presidential Search Committee, Budget Resource Allocation Council, Data Committee, Academic Computing and Technology Committee, and Residential Facility Construction Committee.

He holds an M.S. in Ecology from Rutgers University and a B.A. (summa cum laude) in Biological Sciences from Rutgers. His honors include the Beta National Honor Society, Alpha Sigma Lambda National Honor Society, the New Jersey Graduate Fellowship Award, and the Rutgers University Graduate Fellowship Award.

Jay and his wife, Sandy, a retired public school administrator and college instructor, recently relocated to Batesville from New Jersey. “The people at Lyon and in Batesville could not have been nicer in making us feel welcome,” said Zahner.

Woodbury joins Lyon staff as director of institutional research

Anne Woodbury has joined the Lyon College staff as Director of Institutional Research and Communication.

Her responsibilities include compiling information for surveys from outside sources (i.e. U.S. News & World Report, The College Board, ACT, Thompson-Peterson), updating and maintaining the college’s Fact Book, acting as contact person for federal and state agencies with regards to reporting information, working with enrollment services on its direct mail recruiting program, and conducting supporting research for assessment of the college.

Regarding her new position, Woodbury said, “I am really enjoying this position because it gives me an opportunity to work with some wonderful and talented people across all areas of the campus.”

Woodbury has worked for the Ralston Purina Co. in St. Louis, Missouri, and Geo Specialty Chemicals in Little Rock. While with Purina, she was involved in the Tidy Cats Crystal Litter project from lab to completion, earning a Business Excellence Award for the project, which was the fastest product to market.

After leaving St. Louis, she served as assistant manager at Lyon’s campus bookstore. Her responsibilities included ordering textbooks, working with professors, and maintaining and billing personal charges. She also designed a number of new business forms for the bookstore.

Woodbury graduated from Lyon College (then Arkansas College) in 1987 with a B.A. in chemistry. She has been active in the MOMS Club of Batesville, serving as president for two terms, treasurer, and newsletter editor; and the Eagle Mountain Magnet School PTO Board, serving as vice president of publicity. She has also been an ICYAA soccer coach, and an active alumnus of Alpha Xi Delta sorority, where she was president and treasurer.

She and her husband, Warren Woodbury, have two daughters, Lucy, 6, and Molly, 3.

Whereas the story potentially could be a depressing narrative of the grandfather’s struggles with his family, “the redemption of the grandfather and the simple, everyday humor keep the audience interested and entertained,” said Michael Lejman, a Lyon College junior and audience member of the Gautreaux reading.

During the question/answer section of the reading, Gauteaux addressed the nature of writing creative fiction, saying both that “exciting stories are a rare commodity” and that to write such fiction “a certain amount of talent is necessary…it can be nurtured, but the talent needs to be there to be formed.”

Gautreaux, a Louisiana native and teacher of creative writing for over 30 years, has published fiction in Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, GQ, Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and O. Henry Prize Stories, as well as in many textbooks.
 

Grammy nominee to speak at Lyon College

On Thursday, April 14, at 6:30 p.m. in Nucor Auditorium, the Lyon College Regional Studies Center will present a lecture by acclaimed biographer and novelist Nolan Porterfield. A native of west Texas with degrees from Texas Tech University and the University of Iowa, Dr. Porterfield will discuss the history of the field recording of southern roots music, beginning with the earliest commercial “hillbilly” recordings of the 1920s and the pioneer field work of folklorist John A. Lomax.

Porterfield is the author of five books, and his articles and works of short fiction have appeared in many national magazines, including Harper’s and North American Review. His novel, “A Way of Knowing,” won the 1972 Jesse H. Jones Fiction Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Porterfield is better known, however, for his work as a biographer. “Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America’s Blue Yodeler” received an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award in 1981, and his most recent book, “Last Cavalier:  The Life and Times of John A. Lomax,“ was awarded the prestigious Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 1997. In 1987, Porterfield’s liner notes for the Smithsonian Institution’s reissue of Jimmie Rodgers’s music was nominated for a Grammy Award.

A longtime writer-in-residence and professor of English at Southeast Missouri State University, Dr. Porterfield is now an independent scholar living near Bowling Green, Kentucky, with his wife, folklorist Erika Brady. In recent years he has served as consultant to the Country Music Foundation and the Smithsonian Press and as a major on-camera contributor to “The Life and Times of Jimmie Rodgers,” which aired on The Nashville Network in 1996, and to “Century of Country,” seen on TNN in 1999.

Dr. Porterfield’s lecture is free and open to the public and is part of Lyon College’s symposium, “A Legacy of the Folk:  The Roots Recordings of John Quincy Wolf, Jr.,” which takes place on April 13-14, 2005.  For more information, visit http://www.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/wolfsymposiumschedule.html or contact Dr. Brooks Blevins  at (870) 698-4330 or bblevins@lyon.edu.

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