The new issue of Saint Joseph's College digital magazine for Spring 2019 is out now! It features the college's brand new Pollinator Garden along with a story about Monks Athletics, our very own Sisters of Mercy and much more. The magazine also includes both student and staff spotlight articles as well as stories about the community and alumni of our college.
The Pollinator Garden is a project that many different people, including students and faculty from various departments, have been building as a team together. At the Sustainability Festival this past April, elementary students were helping to plant in the gardens and able to learn more about the environmental issues facing our world today.
Experiential learning at Saint Joseph's College is a concept well known by all students and staff. This way of teaching is especially well known in the arts and environmental sciences. Experiential learning can be described as exactly how it sounds. Picture sitting in the classrooms in Alfond Center, waiting for your professor to arrive and tell you your assignment is to go outside in the middle of February, to take photographs of the sunlight hitting the blankets of ice covering Sebago Lake. That's what this type of learning is- a hands-on experience that takes you outside of the classroom. As best put from the article, "The world is our studio. The world is our laboratory."
Monks Athletics are highlighted supremely in this issue of the magazine. This past fall, three of our athletic teams each won a GNAC Championship all in a single day. Not only were the athletes themselves ecstatic about the wins, but the whole campus itself was buzzing with high energy that Sunday afternoon. An article is written about director of athletics, Brian Curtin, and his strong belief in coaches shaping their athletes into leaders. Curtin also won the 2019 GNAC Executive of the Year award, which marks his fourth award from the fourteen years he has been with the college.
An alumni story is also brought to life in this magazine. In 1975, a young woman by the name of Nga "Swan" Nguyen Goodhal fled from persecution by the Viet Cong and found herself and her family as refugees on the campus of Saint Joseph's College. A few weeks later, Swan and her family found sponsors and were able to move off of campus, but she then was able to enroll at the college with a scholarship from the Sisters of Mercy. She earned an undergraduate degree from SJC, and completed her osteopathic medical degree at Kansas City University. Swan's story showcases the hardships and difficulties students face to reach their goals.
These four featured articles are just several of many different stories that reach out to the community of the college. Saint Joseph's College Magazine brings these stories to the surface and conveys what it is like to be apart of something so special here at SJC. To view the whole magazine and all of the stories, visit https://magazine.sjcme.edu/.
