INSIDE this issueMath Center alleviates anxiety ...................................... 2Instructor teaches wilderness medicine in Haiti ............. 4Staff challenge raises cash for Annual Fund ................... 6Theater promises fun with Shakespeare play .................. 7Couple creates everlasting fund .................................... 8Speech team off to good start ....................................11Photography students share talents ............................12 Fall 2011 Volume 5, Number 3

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Central Wyoming College is employing an innovative method for teaching pre-college math courses that gives students instant feedback and instructors the ability to monitor their progress. By utilizing specialized software, students in developmental math courses can use a self-paced

learning program that is personalized to the indi-vidual’s strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to learn more and experience success in ways previously unattainable. “It’s a really robust system,” explained CWC math instructor Mike Bostick, who along with

Professor Val Harris researched the implementa-tion of the software at other institutions and designed a program tailored for CWC students. Harris said that students learn in a mastery-based system in the new Math Center which was constructed during the remodel of CWC’s Class-

MATH CENTER

Math education personalized to student’s strengths, weaknesses

Math Professor Valerie Harris (teaching above) implemented the new Math Center at CWC with help from instructor Mike Bostick.

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room Wing last summer. The center has 34 computer stations and is open from 8 a.m. until the college closes in the evenings. Walk-ins are allowed to use the system though students enrolled in developmental math courses have first preference. For the student who has been out of school for some time, the pre-college math courses give them the necessary refresher. For the large population of students who have math anxiety, the system gives them step-by-step instruction to a problem which includes both videos and animation. The center is more informal than the normal classroom setting, which Bostick said is espe-cially important for the student to master those skills so they can move on to college level work. “The greatest feature is that it gives you instant feedback,” Bostick said, explaining that he’s had students who make one mistake while completing a problem making the entire problem wrong. “This system can find those problems and help the student to fix them immediately,” he said. The purpose of the Math Center is to get the students prepared to take college level sci-ence, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses, Harris explained. “We’d like for them to

go through STEM courses, like algebra,” she said. The students are required to be in the Math Center a minimum of four hours each week and then spend an additional eight to 12 hours work-ing on the program on their own, either at home or in the lab. Harris said the instructors have a rich and flexible set of course materials and tools that offer students a personalized interactive learning environment where they can learn at their own pace. The math instructors are not lecturing to the students and therefore can give the students in the center individual attention. “If they get a problem wrong, it gives them hints on what they did wrong,” Harris said of the

software. The student can click on “Help me solve this,” and the program takes the student through it. “It is an indispensible tool,” Bostick said, noting, however, the computer isn’t always a replacement for the in-structor. Bostick and Harris made sure not to eliminate the need for pencil and paper in figuring out math concepts and that is the way the classes take quizzes. Each student is also required to keep a note-book of their work, which Harris said is a “huge factor” in their success as it helps students develop organizational skills. “I’ve had so many students who say

they do everything in their head,” Bostick said. “By forcing them to write it down, we are catch-ing their mistakes.” Some of the motivated students in pre-college math can get through the class quickly and immediately enroll in a college-level course, MATH 1000. Those who struggle with certain math concepts can concentrate on learning to overcome them, he said, adding the center “takes the stress out of taking math.” The Math Center is still a work in progress. “I think we’ve done a lot of things the right way,” Bostick said. With the remodeling of the Class-room Wing, both Harris’ and Bostick’s office were moved adjacent to the facility so they are always available to assist students.

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Math

Math instructor Mike Bostick with Kristina Immenschuh.

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Central Wyoming College English instructor Buck Tilton put his skills in wilder-ness medicine to work caring for impoverished and sick people in a remote village in Haiti this past summer. Tilton, the founder of the Wilderness Medicine Institute, which is now oper-ated by the National Outdoor Leadership School, taught eager Haitians how to assess illness as well as the basics of splinting and bandaging. Tilton joined a group of first year medical school students on a mission in May to Verrettes, a remote village high in the Haitian mountains about a four-hour drive from the capital of Port-au-Prince. Verrettes was not affected by the 2010 earthquake, though the village has been ravaged by cholera and other water-borne illnesses, HIV and poverty and very limited access to health care. Dr. William Forgey, an instructor at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, asked his old friend Buck, who has published 43 books and thousands of articles on wilderness medicine, to join the mission. Shortly after CWC’s spring commence-ment, Tilton met with the students in Miami for the trip to the Caribbean island that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. Dr. Forgey founded a program called Medical Student Missions to promote vol-unteer medical service, and asked Tilton to train students in wilderness medicine as well as the locals. Utilizing the services of a local translator, Tilton demonstrated first aid les-sons with his interpreter translating the instruction into Haitian Creole. He fo-cused on assessments of the patients, teaching his students how to ask the right questions to determine ailments and conditions patients might be experiencing. His Haitian students have a history of volunteering and that is how they were selected to receive his instruction. These villagers would walk up the mountain for hours to carry an old woman on a door down to the clinic, Tilton recalled. The medical mission left the volunteers with a litter for their subsequent missions to aid the sick and injured.

Instructor offers medicine skillsto impoverished Haitian villagers

Buck Tilton, right, is pictured with his Haitian interpreter Jean Eric Croyance, who translated Tilton’s instruction into Haitian Creole. Below is a group of medical students volunteering for Medical Student Missions in Haiti. Tilton trained locals, as well as the students, in wilderness medicine last summer.

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Tilton also helped out at the village’s clinic. “Every day a hundred, or two or three hun-dred, line up and wait with torpid patience to be examined and given a packet of Advil or an anti-diarrheal or a vitamin,” he said. “The ones who test positive for HIV are told, sorry, there’s nothing we can do, but we recommend you visit the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at the other end of the valley…where it is most likely you will be told there’s nothing we can do. I don’t say that last part out loud, but I know it’s true,” Tilton wrote of his summer visit. Verrettes is the epicenter of the cholera epi-demic though many of the patients had a variety of illnesses that could be treated by Tilton’s brand of outdoor medicine. “That’s the kind of medicine they have,” he said. “It’s quite a ways to a hospital.” There is no running water in the village so the children, who called Tilton “Blanc” because of his white skin, bring plastic jugs to a spring that offers the only source of cholera-free water in the area. Hunger and the illnesses that follow on extreme poverty are prevalent, which gave Buck a feeling of total hopelessness for his short-term Haitian home. The mountain people of Verrettes are rela-tively fortunate over their neighbors in Port-au-Prince where more than a million people are still living in tents or under tattered tarps. “At least

Haitian villagers those one million people are alive,” Tilton wrote, “not the nearly quarter million that died within hours of the start of the earthquake of January 2010.” His mountain community that once had a carpet of green and flowering trees is now barren and rocky. “Trees make coals, coals cook goat, and 9.75 million people, the current population of Haiti, gotta eat,” he wrote. The earthquake and its aftermath is what brought Tilton to Haiti in the first place. The country is slightly smaller than Maryland with double the number of residents . . .”a nation with all its arable land planted yet unable to produce enough food to feed half its 9.75 million inhabitants. The nation feeds the other half with imported food given to them by fatter nations.” “There is no food…no jobs, and they can’t afford to leave the country because they don’t have any money,” he added. Yes, Haiti is a thin nation. The people are thin, the goats are thin, the few trees are thin, the soil is thin – and hope is thin. I have handed out a few tablets of amoxicillin, spoken encour-agement through an interpreter, spoken doom to others, eaten their goat and their papaya – I will go home, I decide, taking more than I leave behind. I smile and wave to the smiling children, calling out “Oui, blanc. Mersi, mersi.”

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Every day, up to 300 villagers would come to the clinic in Verrettes, the epicenter of the cholera epidemic in Haiti.

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The employees at Central Wyoming College have challenged one another to a “Race to the Finish”. The faculty, classified and professional em-ployee associations along with student organiza-tions, administrators, CWC Board of Trustees and the Foundation’s board and staff are in a competi-tion to see which group can raise the most money for the CWC Foundation’s Annual Appeal. The race began Nov. 1 and the group with the best participation percentage as well as the great-est amount donated, has race cars moving along a track that is being displayed throughout campus. Results are also posted each week on various col-lege messaging systems to stir the competition. Dean for Institutional Advancement Dane Graham has met with the individual groups asking

The winning participant group will be treated to a pizza party at the home of President Jo Anne McFarland. “The event lasts for one month, but the spirit of support and giving will last throughout the year,” Graham said. The employee challenge kicks off the CWC Foundation’s Annual Fund campaign which also in-cludes generous supporters outside of the college, who will be receiving giving reminders before year’s end. “A successful Annual Fund is vitally important to CWC’s financial well being,” Graham said. “Now, more than ever, CWC needs the help of its friends and supporters to continue to accomplish our important mission of innovation and excellence in education.”

them “to rise to the challenge” with the aim of helping CWC’s Annual Fund to grow. “In times like this, when endowments produce less revenue, the Annual Fund matters more than ever for CWC,” Graham said. “The funds allow the Foundation to work with the college to address the institution’s critical needs, strategic priorities and unexpected challenges and opportunities.” When individuals donate, either through pay-roll deduction or by making a pledge to the An-nual Fund, they get to choose a little race car to enter in the Dec. 2 rally event. The group with the most racing points going into race day, coupled with bonus points earned for winning the rally will be crowned champions. The goal for the month-long challenge is to raise a total of $5,000 in support of the college, and to have fun while doing it, Graham explained.

FinishCollege groups rise to challenge in fund raising event

CWC Challenge

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Central Wyoming College theater director Mike Myers doesn’t want theater patrons to miss the CWC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream because it was written four centuries ago by William Shakespeare. “We are doing everything to make it enter-taining and fun,” Myers said of the Shakespeare comedy CWC stages Nov. 11-13 and Nov. 18-20 on the Robert A. Peck Arts Center stage. “People shouldn’t assume that they are not going to understand or like it. They should give it a chance.” Don’t be turned off by the narrative poetry. Instead enjoy the comedy as a brash group of incompetent laborers go into the enchanted woods to prepare a play to celebrate a wedding. Enjoy the romance of two other couples that is complicated by the magic of mischievous fairies. Overlook the silliness of its story and concen-trate upon its unique lyrical qualities. Fear no Shakespeare. “It’s not a heavy play,” Myers emphasizes of

Shakespeare’s comedy about two couples in love with the wrong partners. “It’s about romance, magic, love and comedy.” The director always tells his students they may be unable to understand every line in a Shakespeare play. “It doesn’t matter. You can still follow the story.” A shortened semester only allowed the theater department to put on one major show this fall so Myers is using the longer rehearsal schedule to tackle this difficult production. The student and community actors must memorize the difficult verse and speak it in one of three different dialects. And the technical staff is transforming the Arts Center stage into a magi-cal moonlit forest. “I think the fairies are really cool,” My-ers said. The fairies come to bless the wedding of Theseus, the king of Athens and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. They are haunting the same wood where the laborers and lovers plan to meet and magic turns to comedy.

“It’s funny,” the director emphasizes. “There is no deep meaning to Midsummer. Shakespeare wrote to entertain.” Unlike many other directors, Myers is not edit-ing Shakespeare’s original script. “We are doing what we can to make it appealing and under-standable,” he said, explaining the Bard’s script is clearer with the singing, dancing and physical comedy being added by the CWC cast. “We try to make the meaning clear.” Shakespeare wrote lyrics for many of his plays though the music was lost over time. Jeannie Robbins, a theater and music major at CWC, has composed the music for Shakespeare’s lyrics in Midsummer. Amanda Kusel Galitz is choreograph-ing her first show. Theater major Molly Thornton is the dialect coach. Nov. 11 and 12 and Nov. 18 and 19 shows begin at 7:30 p.m. The Nov. 13 and Nov. 20 pro-ductions are 2:30 p.m. matinees. Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for seniors and students. CWC students can reserve complimentary tickets.

Shakespeare play is beauty, comedy and love

Tickets: CWC Box Office 855-2002

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

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Central Wyoming College has re-intro-duced a speech and debate program and the team is putting in a lot of time and effort to be competitive this season.

CWC hired Jeremy Christensen to start an intercollegiate program and he has recruited a team of nine eager, yet inexperienced, students. His goal is to grow the team to a dozen solid competi-tors.

“In competition, they are doing very well considering some of the limitations of being a new team,” Christensen said af-ter the first competitive meet. He expects the group to perform at a higher level by

CWC’s program. Now he is working with the team to think critically, using an interdisciplinary ap-proach. This current team has had no previous experience in forensics and he is requiring the students to read a great deal from an intensive liberal arts curriculum to prepare for upcoming events, which include 11 regional and national competitions.

The second part of his plan is recruitment, and he acknowledges that it will be easier to recruit when CWC builds a winning team. In addi-tion to the collegiate tournaments, Christensen, who is completing a doctoral program at the Uni-versity of South Dakota, is also judging at high school meets and getting a first-hand look at the

talent coming to the collegiate ranks.In the meantime, Christensen is welcom-

ing all students to participate and promises that they will come out of forensics better prepared academically as “that is what it takes” to get through the program.

In addition to developing confidence, organizational and interdisciplinary skills, Christensen said students are better able to engage in larger political and social issues as well as apply materials they are learning in the classroom. “Writing papers and research will come easier for them,” he said.

Forensics students come out with better

Competitive speech program off to promising start

Speech team members Nicholas Esposito, Kelly Inglet and Codi Morris practice with director Jeremy Christensen, facing right.

the spring season, emphasizing the team is in a “solid position” now. “They are not where I would have hoped they would be,” he said, noting his expectations are extraordinarily high. “I expect a great deal from my students.”

He’s satisfied that he was able to generate enough interest to put this first team together as they have a rigorous practice schedule as a team and individuals spend additional time with Christensen receiving one-on-one coaching.

Christensen, who previously coached college and high school programs in Wyoming, Michigan and South Dakota, is hosting a tournament at CWC in December.

Christensen said he has a twofold plan for

writing and communication skills, making them in high demand with employers and those are at-tributes Christensen uses for recruitment.

Prior to Christensen’s arrival on campus this fall, longtime CWC Communication Professor Jane Warren developed a degree program in the sub-ject. Communication courses are often required with most degrees but until this fall, CWC did not have a degree program in the subject.

The program is designed to prepare students for employment within the industry. With a com-munication degree from CWC, a student is pre-pared to become an entry level public relations specialist or a communication consultant. Other careers include press secretary, mediator, speech writer, advertising and marketing specialist.

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As an avid reader of The Wall Street Journal, Shirley Miller took some investment advice to heart and created a program endowment for Central Wyoming College’s new Intertribal Education and Commu-nity Center.

An article in the daily investment journal gave Shirley the idea to roll over Individual Retirement Accounts she and her late husband John had established to create an endowment for the Intertribal Center. The article detailed how she could roll over the IRAs to a charitable organization without having to count the distributions as taxable income.

The decision to make the sizeable donation came after Shirley read another article about the college taking advantage of a favor-able construction environment to move forward with building the Intertribal Center though it was short of its fundraising goals.

The Miller’s $400,000 donation was matched dollar for dollar by the State Endowment Challenge Match, creating a perpetual source of funds to support programs and activities related to the operations and educational mission of the center.

The Riverton woman saw this as an opportunity to celebrate the cultural heritage of her Wind River Reservation neighbors. This fall, CWC officially recognized the donation by naming the lobby area of the Intertribal Center as the John and Shirley Miller Community Hall.

Shirley Sauer and John Miller were both raised in rural Riverton though they didn’t know each other until John was discharged from the Army at Camp Pickett after developing some health issues. They later met and were married and moved to Casper where Shirley went on to have a long career in the accounting department at Marathon Oil. John operated big equipment for a number of companies.

Riverton native Shirley Sauer Miller and her brother, Floyd Sauer, tend to a garden on the family farm north of CWC. While Shirley has a place in town, she spends most of her time at the homestead. The college recently honored Shirley and her late husband John Miller for a donation that created a program endow-ment for the CWC Intertribal Center.

Wise investment decisionsallow for future endowment

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CWC Foundation Pledge CardReturn this form to: CWC Foundation, 2660 Peck Ave. , Riverton, WY 82501

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CWC Foundation.

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Giving LevelsThe CWC Foundation offers the following giving levels:

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FOUNDATIONEvery gift is important. No gift is too small.

Every day her boss at Marathon would discard his copy of The Wall Street Journal and Shirley would retrieve it and get ideas on investing.

As a Marathon employee, she had different options for investments including the purchase of company stock. “I left it in the plan and let it grow,” she said.

Shirley returned to Riverton when John died at the age of 72. She immediately noticed con-tinued discrimination of the people of Wind River Indian Reservation, and she believed the college’s

Intertribal Center would bring a better under-standing of the county’s diverse cultures. Both Shirley and John had struggled growing up and were just as poor as their reservation neighbors.

She also recalled a time when her husband worked on the reservation operating equipment for Brasel and Sims and he was concerned about impoverished children. “He felt so sorry for them,” she said. “That kind of stuck in the back of my mind that things hadn’t got much better over the years.”

With both of them working for a lifetime, Shirley decided to “pay it forward. We already let it accumulate. Now it’s time to put it to work,”

she said. “I know my husband would have felt the same way.”

She also recognized that CWC “has done a lot for this town” and was happy the donation would benefit a variety of people.

Jackson nursing student presents on medical mission trip to Ethiopia A second year Central Wyoming College nurs-ing student from Jackson details a 10-day medical mission trip to Ethiopia Friday, November 18 over the college’s interactive classroom network. The presentation is open to the public and is scheduled for 4 p.m. and is delivered to room 106 of the CWC Professional-Technical Center. Amie Arland made the journey to Africa this past summer with Hand of Hope, an outreach of the Joyce Meyer Ministries. She said while in

Ethiopia, Hand of Hope partnered with Interna-tional Crisis Aid, provid-ing dental and medical care. “In the five days of the clinic, over 2,100 people were cared for and over 7,500 medi-cations were adminis-tered,” she said. The mission also assisted in a feeding

clinic and spent an evening with some women who were saved from the red light district in the capital city of Addis Ababa.

Wise decisions(continued from page 9)

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John Little had only been at his new job at Central Wyoming College for a few weeks when he volunteered to take on a big assignment — one that would ultimately test his skills as a filmmaker and as an instructor. Little, who was hired to start a new film program at Central at the request of the Wyoming Film Board, offered to create a video for the Wyo-ming Summit on Community Colleges. The film in-cluded stories on students, alumni and community partners from all seven of Wyoming’s community colleges and was shown in Cheyenne to Gov. Matt Mead, state officials, college presidents and board members and industry partners earlier this month. In a very small window of time, Little de-

out the window and utilized the task as teach-ing moments. “It was less about books and more about the real world,” he said. The project was so successful, he is pocketing his syllabi and his students are out making a film on their own. “They have really knocked my socks off,” said Little, who has traveled and lived all over the world making films. The classes are work-ing on a 15-minute film based on the legends of the haunted Acme Theater in Riverton, which will be shown to the public in December. “I’m stepping back and letting them do it,” he said of the students who have been assigned tasks as producers, directors, editors and actors. “Based

on the experience of the summit film, they’ve re-ally got their act together.” Several of his students came out of Amanda Nicholoff’s television program and worked as production assistants on an independent film and on the TV series Modern Family that were shot in Wyoming this summer. And using Wyoming as a backdrop for film and television was the entire reason the Wyoming Film Board came to CWC about starting the film pro-gram. The state can attract more filmmakers here if there is an educated workforce to assist. “That’s what we’ve set out to do,” said Little, a former physicist who has made literally hundreds of science-based documentaries and entertain-

ment films for the Science and Discovery chan-nels as well as at Montana PBS. Little was drawn back to academia and taught film and television at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point until he was awarded a Fulbright professorship to teach film and communication in the Middle East in Oman. Research took him to central east Af-rica, to the island of Zanzibar, where he started a charity project and obtained 40 computers for a trio of very poor schools. He purchased land on Zanzibar and plans to build a film institute and hostel for visiting volunteer teachers. Film instructor John Little, right, discusses a shot at

Sheridan College with student Shawn Fagnant.

Statewide project tests new film instructor, students

veloped the concept, was involved in the majority of the filming, directed, produced and edited the video though he also turned it into a class project for three of his film courses. “It was a great class experience,” Little said. “They literally had hundreds of hours of practical experience, the kind of hands-on training that is really important for film students.” Little and his students traveled more than 2,000 miles to visit every college campus from Sheridan to Torrington to shoot “tons and tons” of film. He essential-ly threw the original syllabi for his classes

Connect is a publication of the CWC Public Information Office and is scheduled to be published quarterly.

Nov. 11-20 ....Theater production, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

November 11-12 ........Bailey Tire Tip-Off Basketball Tournament

November 18-19 ..... Electrical Dynamics Inc. Classic Tournament

November 22 ..........................................Fall Showcase Concert

November 30-December 3 ......................... State Drama Festival

December 7....................Home basketball vs. Northwest College

December 9-10........ Wind River Invitational Debate Tournament

December 10 ....................... Home basketball vs. Casper College

December 12 ................................Winter Music Student Recital

December 13 ..................................... Home basketball vs. LCCC

December 13-14 ............. Theater auditions for musical, Camelot

January 3 ...........................Home basketball vs. Utah All-Stars

January 6-8 ..........................................Mid-Winter Fire School 2660 Peck Avenue, Riverton, WY www.cwc.edu

January 14 ...........Home basketball vs. Miles Community College

January 16 ..........................................................Classes begin

January 18 .........................Home basketball vs. Gillette College

January 26 ...........Home basketball vs. Eastern Wyoming College

January 28 ......................... Home basketball vs. Little Big Horn

February 8 ...................................... Home basketball vs. WWCC

February 11 .....................Home basketball vs. Sheridan College

Schedule of Upcoming Events

Wilderness first responder students worked on simulated injuries at the Sinks Canyon Center recently. A CWC pho-tography student was on hand to record images of the train-ing practice. This year, second year photography students are taking campus life shots to be used by a variety of lo-cal publications as part of their class assignment. Photos by: Whitney KinneyCover photo by Brittany Rose