Lyon College to host reception in Little Rock Thursday

Lyon College will host a reception Thursday evening in Little Rock. The college's Office of Alumni and Parent Services and its Office of Enrollment Services will host a joint reception from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Juanita's Party Room, 1220 S. Main St.

Dr. Terrell Tebbetts, the Cox Chair in American Literature, and Dr. Robert Gregerson, the Bryan Associate Professor of Biology, will be at the reception to visit with alumni, parents and prospective students. All Lyon alumni, parents of students and alumni and friends of the college are invited. Prospective students and their parents are also welcome to attend.

Hosts for reception are Christy Schuchardt '05, Rob and Jill Holyfield '93, Beth '54 and Sam Highsmith, Jason Zellmer '03, and Matt and Melanie Buchanan '05.
Call 870-698-4240 or e-mail krush@lyon.edu to RSVP for the event.
 

Guest lecturer Dr. Wayne Flynt will discuss "The South’s Battle Over God" at a convocation at Lyon College at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2, in Nucor Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Flynt, professor emeritus of history at Auburn University, is a leading authority on Southern history, Alabama history and Baptist history. A former Mobile Register Alabamian of the Year, he is an ordained Southern Baptist minister who recently retired after four decades in higher education. He is the author of 11 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated "Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites." He is also author of "Dixie’s Forgotten People: The South’s Poor Whites" and two biographies of former Florida governors.

Dr. Flynt’s books have won many awards including the Lillian Smith Award for Non-Fiction, the Alabama Library Association Award for Non-Fiction, Outstanding Academic Book from the American Library Association, and the James F. Sulzby, Jr. Book Award. He is co-author of "Alabama: A History of a Deep South State," which was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and editor-in-chief of the "Online Encyclopedia of Alabama."

Dr. Flynt has actively devoted his life to bringing the issues of history and poverty and their social impact to the forefront of the public's consciousness. He was educated at Samford University (A.B., 1961), and Florida State University (M.S., 1962; Ph.D. 1965).

The event is sponsored by the College Convocation Committee.

Geologist and noted cave explorer Louise Hose will visit Lyon College for a convocation at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 30, in Nucor Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Hose has traveled the world in an adventurous pursuit to better understand unusual geologic sites, particularly some of the world’s most intriguing caves. She has more than 30 years of experience in research, education, exploration and conservation efforts, including the exploration and investigation of caves in New Guinea, England, Greece, South Africa, Oman and Yugoslavia. Some of her most noted work has been featured twice in National Geographic magazine.

Dr. Hose left a 13-year career in higher education and academic research to help the National Park Service establish the new National Cave and Karst Research Institute in Carlsbad, N.M., over the last three years. During her professorial career, her work was sponsored by her academic institutes and organizations including the National Science Foundation, U.S. Forest Service, National Geographic Society, National Speleological Society, and two foreign resource management agencies.

She considers working at Westminster College in Missouri under Dr. Walter Roettger’s mentoring to be the best years of her academic career and regrets that the experience was cut short by his appointment as Lyons College’s President

She also served six years as a director of the National Speleological Society and has edited their multi-disciplinary, refereed scientific publication for more than seven years, the Journal of Cave and Karst Studies.

Dr. Hose holds a Ph.D. in geology from Louisiana State University, an master’s in geology from California State University, Los Angeles, and a bachelor’s in secondary education from Arizona State University. Prior to her Ph.D. program, she taught junior high school, worked as a geologist in the petroleum industry, and spent 15 months with the U.S. Geological Survey.

While at Lyon, Dr. Hose will also accompany a group of Lyon students on a wild cave tour at Blanchard Springs Caverns. The event is sponsored by the Student Activities Council and the X-treme Adventure Squad (XAS).

Lyon professor is 'Searching for Life in the Solar System and Beyond'

Dr. David Thomas, Lyon College's associate professor of biology, wonders if humankind is alone in the universe?.

Out of all of the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, and the potential planets around those stars, is Earth the only planet that harbors life?

Find out how astronomers, geologists, chemists, biologists and other scientists engage in cooperative research to find the answers to these questions. Join Dr. Thomas, astrobiologist and NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, for his program “Searching for Life in the Solar System and Beyond” at Lyon College's Mabee-Simpson Library on Nov. 7 at 1 p.m.

Broadly educated in biology and other sciences, Dr. Thomas has worked in industry, government and education. Currently, Dr. Thomas the campus representative to the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium.

Before coming to Lyon College, Dr. Thomas helped to develop the life support systems for the International Space Station. He has also worked at summer programs at NASA's Ames and Kennedy Space Centers.

Dr. Thomas actively pursues research in astrobiology, and is interested in all space missions that provide insight into the evolution and distribution of life in the Universe.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Camille Beary at (870) 698-4267.
 

The mysteries of Catholicism and the conflicted feelings he felt as a young child surrounded by non-English speaking emigrants left an indelible impression on Harry Ally.

And those feelings inspired the artwork that will soon be on display at Lyon College.

The exhibition, "Harry Ally: Paintings and Drawings," will be on exhibit in the Kresge Gallery on the Lyon campus from Nov. 1 – Dec. 9, 2006. An Opening Reception and Artist Talk is slated for Thursday, Nov. 16, at 6 p.m., also in the gallery.

Ally is currently represented by the Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, Ga., and in Los Angeles, Calif.  A professor of art in drawing and painting at Valdosta State University where he has taught since 1985, he said his work follows in the figurative tradition; it follows in man’s search for meaning and identity. 

"For me, painting is the primal impulse to mark," he said. "It’s a visual record of the mind, the body, and the human spirit. For me, there is an urgency to both create and destroy. Maybe it’s out of sheer frustration that I work. Maybe it’s just to satisfy a need to violate or to contradict."

 Ally’s work is largely rooted in Catholicism and influenced by his feelings as a child growing up in New Jersey during the 1950s and ‘60s. 

"The church played an important role in our community," he recalled. "It had strange traditions, unexplained rituals, with mass spoken in the foreign language of Latin."

As a child, Ally grew up surrounded by non-English speaking relatives. His paternal grandfather came from Burma and his three other grandparents were from the Ukraine.

"There were always so many people living in our house and most of them were old, whiskery, and couldn’t speak English but, they all had another thing in common – they all worshipped the Lord and in broken English spoke of drinking the blood of Jesus," Ally said. 

Those people stayed in the attic, in the cellar and in a shanty out back. They seemed very unusual with their foreign ways and strange language, and, the "ominous Roman Catholic Church" seemed to be central in their lives. 

Ally said he didn’t understand them, the church or the nuns who supposedly educated the children of the church.

"In truth, they ruled over the children with fear tactics, with physical and mental abuse," Ally said. "As a child I felt uneasy, insecure, and somewhat insignificant surrounded by all these strange elders."

Still,  Ally’s family was pretty typical in the ethnic neighborhood where most of the families had three generations living together with the oldest generation always speaking some foreign language and most of the families were part of the church. 

Some of his recent paintings, Cain and Able and Pieta, are obviously Biblical in nature.  The Sister paintings and Nicholas were about nuns in the church

Are the paintings cathartic in nature, an exorcism of past demons? 

"The sisters are almost all red headed in my paintings," Ally said. "My wife has red hair. Then there are the solitary figures, standing alone with existential overtones.  But there are other significant things as well."

There are scratches, gouges, and cuts referring to Catholicism, stigmata and the Blood of Jesus. There are small crosses and marks on canvas that refer to the Holy Trinity, bound torsos communicating a kind of helplessness to the figure.  In some of the paintings some arms are missing in reference to antiquity and vulnerability. 

After more than 30 years of being a purist, using the traditional and sacred painting medium of oils, Ally stopped. 

"I now use mostly water-based paints combined with more earthly materials such as dirt, clays, tar, and other more common materials found in the earth," he explained. "As the saying goes, we were made from the earth and we shall return to the earth. Even the process of painting itself has meaning. It’s all a history of marks, stains, and revisions, like life, death and a resurrection."

Compositionally, the figures are always centralized, intentionally awkward, and staring out at the viewer creating a somewhat uneasy feeling. 

"For me, everything goes back to the beginning, to my specific circumstances and to my experiences from my past," the artist said. "Obviously, the mysteries of Catholicism has had a strong influence on my art and the feelings that I felt as a young child being surrounded by so many strange non-English speaking emigrants tucked away in every corner of our house also left a strong impression.  My life and my art are all a reflection of feelings seeded in the past. These are the feelings that continue to emerge and reappear in my work today."

The exhibition is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Lyon College assistant professor of art Chris Valle at (870) 698-4336.

Robert Bailey (pictured at right), Nate Pyle, Nathan Reinhardt and Dr. Russell Stinson, the Josephine Emily Brown Professor of Music and College Organist, will perform an organ recital in Brown Chapel on Friday, Nov. 17, at 7:30 p.m.

The composers represented will Alain, Bach, Barber, Buxtehude, Rorem, and Walcha.

With the exception of Dr. Stinson, all the performers will be Lyon College students.

Three of the performers also have positions in churches in this town. Reinhardt is the youth minister at Fellowship Bible Church, Bailey is organist at First United Methodist Church, and Dr. Stinson is the organist at St. Paul's Episcopal.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Dr. Stinson at (870) 698-4261.

The Lyon College family has grown with the addition of two new staff members.

Sara Reynolds is the new transfer and international student recruiter, and Deanna Devall is the new administrative assistant in the Mabee-Simpson Library.

Reynolds’ first day was Oct. 9. She’ll be the contact person for all transfer and international students interested in Lyon and will attend college fairs and make visits to help students through the transfer process.

"I will also give campus tours and help new students through the admission process when needed," she added.

A native of Ashdown, Ark., Reynolds moved back to Arkansas from Fort Worth, Texas, where she had been living.

Her uncle, Calvin Johnston, is a ‘79 graduate of Arkansas College, and her mother and her family are all from Batesville.

Reynolds graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in Writing and Speech with an emphasis in Public Relations, and she earned a master’s degree from Texas Christian University in 2006 in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Human Relations.

Though her current position is her "first real job" after college, she has performed several internships and contract work in the past.

"I was a contract employee of Crescent Real Estate in the Internal Communications department as a Communication Specialist," she said. "I completed internships at the Arkansas State Fair and the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce while at UCA. Also while at UCA, I was a member of the Model United Nations Club and chaired several committees."

She was also a member of Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communication Association communication studies honor society, and vice president of communications for the Public Relations Student Society of America.

"I hope to grow the number of transfer and international students in the Lyon community," she said. "I want this increase in the community to not only be in numbers, but also in commitment to the College and its liberal arts ideals."

Originally from Independence County, Devall started her new job at Lyon on Oct. 2. She previously served as an administrative coordinator for institutional advancement at Lyon.

"I moved to Little Rock in mid-2005 because of my husband's new job," she said. "In Little Rock, I worked briefly for Arkansas Children's Hospital. It was a wonderful experience to see how the physicians and staff offer world-class care to children from around the world."

When she returned to Batesville, she worked as a business development representative for Pro-Dentec.

Devall has a 13 year-old son, Blake, who attends Cedar Ridge High School. Currently working on a bachelor’s degree in marketing, she’s been an administrative assistant for more than 20 years, serving organization's top-level management/leaders. In those positions, she served in positions beyond the administrative assistant role on many education-related outside organizations throughout Batesville, Independence County and Arkansas.

In 1995, the Arkansas Quality Award Board of Directors gave her the "World Class Assistant" award. She’s also been recognized by numerous organizations for her contributions to their success in the area of education.

"In my current position, I hope to provide excellent support the Library staff and faculty, staff and students we serve," she said. "I am so blessed to have the opportunity to return to Lyon College and will give my very best at every task assigned to me. I will offer suggestions when I see opportunities to provide an even higher level of customer service to our Library ‘customers’."

They "got to be good lookin’ ‘cause they’re so hard to see," but they’ll soon be visible on a stage at Lyon College.

The line-up will include some Lyon students and staffer Tommy Tucker.

"Tommy wails," Dr. Stinson said. "We’ve also got Batesville guitar virtuoso Danny Dozier, Lyon freshman Seth Flood, who’s an awesome guitarist in his own right, and Lyon freshman Corey Emerson, an excellent vocalist."

Dr. Stinson is teaching his Beatles class this semester, and the live show has become a part of the end-of-the-semester wrap-up.

The band won’t be portraying individual Beatles. Adler, who’ll be a guitarist and singer for the band, said the performance will be along the lines of "The Concert for George," where the group will be interpreting the music of The Beatles.

"There will be about ten musicians onstage at all times," Adler said. "We’ll be featuring different people performing the various tunes with different combinations of others backing them up."

Adler sees it as a celebration of what the students spent their time learning in the class.

"And an opportunity to rock," he added.

The show will be held on the stage at Brown Chapel in order to accommodate audience members from the community as well as the campus, Dr. Stinson said.

Adler’s old musical brother-in-arms, Bruce Murrell, will play drums and sing back-up vocals.

"Bruce played with me for four years in Denver in a band called The Mechanics, and we performed a lot of Beatles tunes together over the years," Adler said. "He’s currently the art director for the city of Springfield, Missouri, and will be coming down for the show."

This won’t be Dr. Stinson’s first foray into the rowdy world of rock.

"While I was in high school, I played keyboard in a very bad rock band named Tombstone Shadow," he said.

Adler’s musical past includes time spent as a popular fixture on the coffeehouse circuit in Greeley, Colo., when he attended the University of Northern Colorado for a year. He also made his forays into recording during that time.

In 1976, he joined the Navy and ended up stationed in Memphis for a couple of years. That allowed him the opportunity to go down to Clarksdale, Miss., on a regular basis and play in a duo with a friend named Freddy Bolm. Upon returning to Denver in 1980, Adler played in several bands. One, the aforementioned Mechanics, made a high-quality six-song EP demo record with producers Kellis Ethridge and Don Prorak. Adler’s subsequent band recorded a 17-song album with the same engineer that worked on the Mechanics sessions.

His most recent songwriting effort was recognized by rock legend Neil Young, whose website features a page called "Living With War Today." Adler’s original composition "I’ve Had Enough" is posted on the site along with songs by other songwriters concerned with the war in Iraq.

For more information on the show, contact Dr. Stinson at (870) 698-4261.

The Office of Residence Life and the Residence Life Staff will be sponsoring the second annual RLS Halloween Carnival from 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 31, in the Derby Center parking lot. 

Student organizations and campus departments will sponsor carnival booths with games and activities.

The event is also open to the children, grandchildren and families of all Lyon faculty and staff. There will be candy, games and activities, including a hayride around campus for the participants.

Barb Dyer, director of residence life, said they’re are asking each family to bring one canned good to donate to Help & Hope. Donations are voluntary and appreciated.

Even though rain fell during last year's event, forcing the carnival to be moved to the lower union at the last minute, an ample supply of area children still had a good time, Dyer said..

"We had about 35 kids come though," she said. "We had anticipated 50-75 kids though."

Even off-campus businesses and individuals can sponsor a booth, Dyer said.

"I would be open to anyone who wanted to provide an activity for the carnival," she said.

Anyone who's interested in sponsoring a booth should contact Nathan Reinhardt at 307.7182.

For more information about how to sponsor a carnival booth or about the event in general, contact Lana Fugett, 698-4314, or Barbara Dyer, 698-4310.

Questions about the evening’s activities should be directed to Mary-Margaret Nester at 307-7548 or Barbara Dyer at x4310.

Representatives of student organization on campus interested in sponsoring a booth at the carnival should contact Nathan Reinhardt at 307-7182.

Media that Matters is a pioneer at making the films accessible and useful for educators and community activists. Films are available for viewing online and study guides are provided for each film. The films represent the cutting edge in "engaged filmmaking," filmmaking with a social purpose.

A landmark women’s soccer season for the Lyon College Pipers has netted the team two first-team and three second-team All-TranSouth Conference selections in a release from the TranSouth Conference office.

So far this season, the Pipers have notched a school-record 13 wins against only four losses. Lyon also made its first appearance in the TranSouth Conference tournament and picked up a 2-0 win over Lambuth, earning a bid in the tournament semifinals.

Leading the list of All-Conference honors were goal keeper Stephanie Henderson and defender Ashley Goheen, who were both named to the All-TranSouth Conference first team.

Henderson, a junior from Yuba City, Calif., picked up a single-season, school-record seven shutouts during the regular season while saving 93 shots on goal. The junior keeper also won a school-record 11 games with a 1.240 goals against average.

Goheen, a junior from Manteca, Calif., assisted on a goal and played a key role in the Pipers defense that allowed only 21 goals in 17 games this year.

The All-TranSouth selections were Goheen’s and Henderson’s first of their careers.

Pipers making second-team All-Conference were defender Allison Morrison, forward Angelique Armenta and midfielder Aurora Alba.

Armenta, a junior from Tucson, Ariz., scored seven goals and assisted on four more to account for 18 points this season.

Morrison, a senior from Little Rock, Ark., scored a goal this year and also played a huge part in the Pipers’ defense this season.

Alba, a sophomore from Las Vegas, Nev., had two goals and five assists this season for a total of nine points.

The All-Conference selection was the second for Morrison and the first for Alba and Armenta, respectively.

A see-saw battle turned into an absolute rout in the fifth game of Thursday night’s volleyball match between the Lyon College Pipers and the Union Lady Bulldogs at Becknell Gym.

Tied 2-2, Lyon took a 13-3 lead in the final set, then obliterated Union 15-5 to earn the TranSouth Conference victory.

Combined with a 3-0 win over the Lady Bulldogs on Sept. 21, the Pipers take the season series from Union and also halt a two-game losing streak.

Union took the first game 30-28, Lyon battled back to take the next two sets 30-24 and 30-27. The Lady Bulldogs earned a win in the fourth game, 32-30, to force a fifth and deciding set.

Junior outside hitter Daria Paunovic had 17 kills to lead the Pipers while senior Alison Sablick and freshman Katie Beineke had nine apiece. Beineke also added 2.5 blocks.

Setter Jessica Sylvester led the Pipers in assists with 23 and teammate Julie Arnold added 17. Lyon libero Ann Sullivan picked up 31 digs while Alyson Boone, Lauren Castleberry and Jessica Sylvester had two aces each.

Lyon improves to 16-9 this season and 8-6 in the TranSouth, tied for fourth with Trevecca Nazarene. Union drops to 23-6 and 9-5 (third in the TranSouth).

CONWAY -- Barlow Hardin and the Hendrix College Warriors scored the opening goal, but watched as Lyon College fired off three goals in a matter of six minutes in a 3-2 win for the Scots in a non-conference affair on Tuesday evening.

Scots goal keeper Matt Callaway played all 90 minutes, saving four shots.

Lyon evens its record to 8-8-1 this season. Hendrix falls to 6-7-2.

Bethel College’s Leah O’Grady scored three goals and Florence Iweta added another to collect a 4-1 victory and eliminate the Lyon College Pipers Friday in the semifinals of the TranSouth Conference Tournament at Pulaski, Tenn.

Piper goal keeper Stephanie Henderson had eight saves.

Lyon falls to 13-5 this season. Bethel moves to 13-3-1 and advances to the finals to meet the winner of Friday afternoon's contest between Union and Martin Methodist.