Tampa campus office manager wins Creative Loafing award

Craig Anderson '15 with Professor Helen Wallace at the awards event.

by Anne W. Anderson

photo by Alaina Tackitt

Craig Anderson '15, PEL's Tampa campus office manager and PEL academic writing coach,  has won the Readers' Pick Award for Fiction in Creative Loafing's 2016 Writing Contest  for his story "Lucky Stars". This year's contest attracted more than a hundred stories and poems, each addressing the theme of Green.

Fiction judge and local novelist Sheree L. Greer, commented that in Anderson's story, "which made it to my personal top three . . . green was about a rebirth and an implicit challenge to discover. The main character, Frankie-but-not-really, learned lessons in aim — from the misfire of a dart to the deliberate stroke of a thumb."

Creative Loafing editor David Warner read the fiction entries and selected the top ten, which he then sent on to Greer. Greer, who also teaches creative writing, composition, and literature courses at St. Petersburg College, selected first, second, and third place winners. (Read Greer's thoughts about the fiction entries HERE.)

All poetry entries were read by St. Petersburg Poet Laureate and Eckerd professor Helen Pruitt Wallace, who made her selections. (Read Wallace's thoughts about the poetry entries HERE.)

How does a green ninja turtle figure in to Anderson's story?

Additionally, the top ten entries in both categories also were posted on line for readers to choose their favorites. Winners and finalists were feted at a Reading and Issue Release Party on March 16 -- hence the Green theme -- at Creative Loafing's event venue, CL Space, in Ybor City.

Not only was Anderson's story readers' favorite, it also inspired the artwork for the March 17 issue cover, which contained the article about the contest winners.

Anderson, who graduated last year from Eckerd College's Program for Experienced Learners with a degree in Human Development and then returned for a minor in Creative Writing, has been accepted to Arcadia University's low-residency Creative Writing MFA program. He begins this August with a session in Philadelphia and travels, for the 2017 session, to Edinburgh, Scotland. Anderson's work also has appeared in Glitterwolf Magazine (issue 5), The Legendary (October 2014), and the 2014 Eckerd Review.

Anne W. Anderson is PEL's director of blended and online learning.

Twelve January PEL graduates; Alumni news; Faculty & Staff news

courtesy of SweetClipArt.com

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Warmest congratulations to these PEL students who completed their programs of studies and graduated in January, 2016 :

Craig Michael Cuatt (H), Concentration in Media and Film
Stephen Alan Douglas, Concentration in American Culture and Society
Jana Lené Gross, Human Development
Marilyn Beatrice Haegele (H), Concentration in Communication Art
Lennise Quantaie Jackson, Human Development
Tamara C. Lasser, Business Management
Jennifer Worsham Lillquist (D), Business Management
Sherry-Ann A. Murphy, Humanities
Michelle Darlene Rees, Human Development
Angela Aquinda Sealy, Organizational Studies
Karen Lynn Trzcinka (D), Business Management
James Edward Weaver (D), Concentration in Human Learning

H - Honors; HH - High Honors; D - Distinction

ALUMNI  NEWS

• Valerie Bendt '09 (Creative Writing) earned her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in children's literature from Pennsylvania State University. For her thesis/project she wrote a bilingual children's book (Lucinda the Goose and the Yard Sale) and developed several related activities parents and children could complete together. She also earned a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate from the University of Toronto.
• Todd DeLozier '09 (Humanities) has opened his own business, Meridian Security, and he was featured on #ThatBusinessShow, a radio program on 1250whnz.
• Mike Domke '14 (Business Management) recently was promoted to coordinator of Central Printing Services for Pinellas County Schools. As such, he oversees the school district's interoffice mail systems and production of all the printed materials for the district.
• April Griffin '16 (Organizational Studies) and chair of the Hillsborough County School Board was featured in a recent Tampa Bay Times article acknowledging her December 2015 graduation. 
• Bernard LiLavois '10 (Business Management) subsequently earned an M.B.A. in Healthcare Administration from South University in Tampa. He currently is the director of the respiratory and EKG services at HealthSouth Rehab Hospital in Largo.

Note: An alumni class includes all students who graduated between June of one year and May of the next year. For example, students who graduated in August 2015 are considered part of the Class of 2016. 
What's new with you? Share your good news two ways:

• Share your personal and professional updates by emailing us at pelsuccess@eckerd.edu. We reserve the right to format announcements to fit style and other considerations. 
• Share Instagram Photos via live update on the Eckerd Alumni Engagement page by including the #EckerdNotes hashtag. 

FACULTY & STAFF NEWS  

Anne Anderson '07, PEL's director of blended and online learning, co-authored a chapter, "The World is Flat, Stanley! Globalization, Ethnocentricity, and Absurdity," which recently was published in The Early Reader in Children's Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2016). The chapter discusses the Flat Stanley series of books for their contributions to increasing globalization, for their insight into ethnocentric thinking and actions, and for the ways in which their absurd premises complicate the reading.

 

Catherine Griggs, PEL coordinator of Humanities and Associate Professor of American Studies, recently was featured in a WTSP 10News article, which included a Studio 10 televised interview.  Griggs and Nathan Andersen, also an Eckerd professor, organized the Environmental Film Festival held this past month. 

 

Gregory Padgett, Associate Professor of History at Eckerd College who teaches African-American History and other courses in the PEL program, recently was featured in an article in The Weekly Challenger. The article focuses on a civil rights course titled "What’s Past is Prologue: The Civil Rights Movement In the United States" that Padgett taught through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), another Eckerd program. The class met at the Midtown campus of St. Petersburg college.

 

Jim Schnur, PEL professor of  Florida history and USF-SP Special Collections librarian, recently had a book published and a day designated in his honor. Seminole, part of the Images of America series (Arcadia Publishing, 2016), tells in words and images the story of Pinellas County's youngest municipality. The City of Seminole designated January 12, 2016, the official date of publication, as "Jim Schnur Day."

 Helen Pruitt Wallace, PEL professor of creative writing, recently opened Mayor Rick Kriseman's State of the City address with her poem, "Reunion in the Sunshine City."

 

[January 18, 2017] Editor's Note: This post was supposed to  have been published on February 29, 2016, as part of the March PEL Connector, but it was just discovered sitting in our drafts. However, we included it in our EMMA email, and we usually check all the links before sending it. Was it published and then pulled for further editing? Was it kidnapped by cyber-gremlins or lost in a cyberspace time warp? We cannot say for certain, but we are posting it in it's proper slot of February 29, 2016, and are noting that the actual publication date is only about a year off.

Reunion in the Sunshine City: Helen Pruitt Wallace's opening poem for St. Petersburg's State of the City address

Reunion in the Sunshine City 

We are a city of palm trees, banyan, and oak, bougainvillea, hibiscus
and yes, even kudzu twisting its green arms around us. In Williams Park,
 Babe Ruth and Peter Demens play checkers through decades;
flying above, Tony Jannus circles and waves. We are a city

of sunlight, beaches, sand, the grand dreams we conjure and failures
we learn from. The well-heeled and homeless, lucky and lost.
We know the cost of neglect—work to fix it. Like Sarah Armistead
in 1913 who once shut saloons like Sunny South, the women

of WCTU, now tap pink toes at the bustling bars on Beach Drive.
Sarah Straub’s in the park with her nail file carving her name
in the bark of the Kapok tree, where a mockingbird sings to Bell
Tippetts, who sketches his wing, her parasol tossed on the grass.

The men tip hats as they pass Handsome Jack Taylor sipping
a cold beer at Ferg’s. They’re all here among us. We are a city
of color, made richer for it: Lakewood, Midtown, Highland Oaks.
The sun shifts every day on all of us; respecting who we’re not

shows who we are. This city, like every city learns from scars.
John Donaldson’s in 1868, when dark hands paved our streets,
tarred our roofs. Truth is Cooper’s Quarters and Pepper Town,
now found in the taste of an orange we peel together. We are a city

of murals blooming on buildings, glittering galleries, children’s blue
chalk on our sidewalks, parrots raucous in treetops. And there’s Dali
walking his favorite lobster, as Annie McRae paints fishing boats
out on the docks, their nets splayed out like a lady’s long tangled hair.

We are a city of lovers that doesn’t care if you’re gay, straight,
or both. The bay is warm, you can love who you love here.
If you’re lucky like Juan Ortiz, that love might save you. He’s hugging
Princess Hirrihigua, who freed him in 1536, mounds marking

the spot where they doused him off the spit. We are a city
of laid-back, welcome back, cool jack kindness grown thick.
Find us at the Saturday Morning Market, toss Frisbees to our dogs
at the Pier that will one day appear. Even Jack Kerouac’s back

reciting his poems, along with Bellona Brown Havens, and there’s
Nelson Poynter, pen neatly tucked behind his ear. They’re all here
toasting our progress. Doc Webb with his dancing chickens, hailing
brown cigars and sour-sweets, his mermaids waving their green tails.

  ~~ Helen Pruitt Wallace, Poet Laureate, St. Petersburg, Florida

Written to open the State of the City address by Mayor Rick Kriseman

January 23, 2016