It isn’t often that you find a business professor teaching Shakespeare. Or an English professor talking to college freshmen about Spanish Renaissance architecture.

But step into a Keystone Seminar class — a required freshman course that is replacing composition classes — and that’s exactly what you will find. The seminar is designed to bring different teaching backgrounds to a class that goes beyond mere writing and reading. Instead, the aim is to do something college professors say students aren’t doing enough of: thinking.

“[With the keystone seminar] the goal is to establish a culture of reading, writing, thinking, engaging and talking,” said Professor Doug McFarland, who headed up the seminar in 2010-11. “They’re going to encounter that in their first year.”

The class is a far cry from typical composition classes with standard essay exercises. Students might have to look at a John Locke essay on government. Instead of being told about U.S. government, they have to work through the text and then analyze what it means to be a citizen of this country. McFarland said they want them to engage issues, think through what they mean and then express themselves in writing.

“What we’re trying to do is cultivate in them a questioning attitude and a passion for learning,” said Dr. Hugh Marlowe, an associate professor of philosophy who is taking over as director of the Keystone Seminar. “Of course we want them to learn some Rousseau, learn some Locke, but really what we’re trying to do is inspire them to ask some questions they’ve never asked before.”

Advancing Academics
The Keystone Seminar is just one example of how academics at Flagler has changed dramatically the past several years. This has included new programs of study like a math minor, new faculty, beefing up science courses and labs, and even a rewrite of the general education program — core classes that make up freshman and sophomore schedules. Until recently there had been no major changes to the general education program in 30 years.

“The [general education] requirements are more challenging and there is a great deal more writing required of students,” said McFarland, who helped implement the changes.

And there is more to come. The president and Board of Trustees recently approved an academic strategic plan, and Flagler is also launching a “First Year Experience” initiative that will seek to improve all facets of a student’s first year at the college.

“The last five years on the academics side, it’s been astonishing the amount of transformation,” said Dr. Art Vanden Houten, an associate professor of political science who is leading the First Year Experience with Student Services Dean Dan Stewart.

“It’s extraordinary to think of all the change that’s underway,” Vanden Houten said.  

Academics Dean Alan Woolfolk believes the First Year Experience, called Foundations of Excellence, will make a major difference for students. “The goal is to improve student retention,” he said. “This will look at how all the parts — from registration and orientation to classes — relate. We’ll be studying everything from bill paying to advising. It’s time to look at the whole experience.”

Woolfolk, who has been with the college for a little over three years, said all the changes taking place will help further the strong academic foundation that was already in place. He credits the college’s Faculty Senate with being a catalyst for many of the changes, and believes the new strategic plan will continue to push academics forward.

“I think Flagler has done a fantastic job on developing the physical side,” Woolfolk said. “The goal of the academic strategic plan was to put emphasis on the education side.”

Chaired by Marlowe, the plan sets out numerous proposals covering everything from what classrooms should look like to establishing new academic programs.

Changing how students learn
Marlowe said the academic strategic plan and adoption of the keystone seminar are great examples of how academics are not only changing at Flagler, but also changing how students learn.

He said part of a liberal arts college experience should be helping students better understand issues and why they believe the things they do by “working through a process of scrutiny and self-reflection.”

He said the first year of the seminar under McFarland was a success, and now all freshmen — more than 500 — are going through them.

The theme of the seminar has been the idea of the civilized and primitive worlds coming together. This ties in well with the history of St. Augustine from its Native American period through the arrival of the Spanish to Henry Flagler’s opulent hotel that today is the centerpiece of the college.

Building on the past
Woolfolk said the ultimate goal is to raise the level of academic challenge at the college.

“Part of my aim is to develop some programs that are highly distinctive,” he said. “To begin the discussion of where [academically] we want to go.”

But everyone involved agrees that the changes don’t break with what made the college successful in the past.

“What we’re trying to keep intact is how well Flagler has helped to transform the lives of its students,” Marlowe said. “You don’t ever want to change in a way that you lose that.”

Vanden Houten credits a lot of the academic changes to Woolfolk, as well as faculty who have worked on general education revisions, the academic strategic plan, the Faculty Senate or other initiatives.

“The college has laid a tremendous foundation and there’s an opportunity to continue that advancement and growth,” he said. “We’re not standing on our heels. We’re moving forward.”

What does it mean?
Flagler has seen some dramatic changes on the academic front the past several years, and there are more to come. Here is a sampler of some of the terms you might hear on campus in academic circles:

Foundations of Excellence First-Year initiative:
This new program, which promotes first-year students’ engagement with the college, is kicking off this year. It is being developed in collaboration with the John N. Gardner Institute and will evolve into a plan that covers every facet of a new student’s experience at Flagler.

Academic Strategic Plan:
Approved in the spring of 2011 by the Board of Trustees, the plan lays out 53 specific proposals developed by a faculty-led Academic Strategic Planning Committee. Proposals range from increasing the number of full-time faculty and improving classrooms to developing new majors like environmental science, public history or international studies.

Keystone Seminar:
Drawing upon materials from a variety of disciplines, this freshman course replaced composition. It investigates cultural identity and communal values with particular attention paid to the European encounter with the indigenous cultures of America, as well as the underpinnings of the architecture of the Flagler campus.

Ignite Learning Communities:
To improve the transition from high school to college, Flagler developed these clusters of courses designed around a central, interdisciplinary theme with each class attended by the same group of students. Focusing on active and collaborative learning, students engage themselves and each other in the learning process while also participating together in co-curricular activities and campus events.

Don’t dally in the bathroom. That’s part of what Casey Welch, an associate professor of sociology at Flagler, learned a few years back when he went to work at a national fast food chain. He won’t name the burger-flipping joint where he took a minimum-wage job to study how chains exert total control over workers. Even bathroom breaks are timed!

Welch admits he wasn’t a very good worker. But it did give him fascinating material that he has presented at conferences and plans to eventually publish in an academic journal. Wanting to know more, we interviewed him about this unique study, as well as what it was like shoveling fries.

Q. How did the idea for this come about?
A. The background issue for me was marginalization and power. All of my research, all of my interests have been the distribution of power, the use of power, the shifts of power in all types of ways.

Q. What made you think to look into fast food restaurants?
A. I remember being struck while going into a [fast food chain] that everybody on the dayshift was older — no high school kids. Before I entered the field I knew that at least several of them had kids. So they’re working minimum wage, no benefits, just the worst of jobs as adults raising children. … What they would do is as soon as you were there long enough to get raises, they would cut your hours or they would fire you. So there were just constant labor cost caps, and I just thought it was such an abusive system. … They had a help wanted sign in concrete in the front lawn. So they were always hiring. That just struck me as weird. Why would anyone work there?

Q. In your background research you use the term “cheerful robots” to describe fast food workers. Where did that come from?
A. American sociologist C. Wright Mills is the one who described what our modern system is becoming — the automatization and standardization of American culture. He was referring not just to production, but to social and cultural life. So we are “cheerful robots” in our homes, in our social lives. We’re so incredibly conformist even as we espouse individualism.

Q. How does that apply to fast-food workers?
A. The majority of workers [in the restaurant] do not question the value of their work, per se. They might be disgruntled about their manager, their supervisor or their pay. But overall they just clock in and do their work. … They liked being at work. They liked their co-workers. They worked really hard to get the average time for the drive-thru down. They got nothing. Every time they got it low, the MANAGER got a bonus! … The manager I was under never did a thing for the workers. Not a single thing. Didn’t give them a free fry. But [the workers] still were like, “Let’s do it guys!” They would yell at each other. And when the shift was over they would high five. They were just “cheerful robots.”

Q. Was it a sense of accomplishment they were looking for or were they conditioned to do it?
A. That became my first research question, which was how do they control the people? I was really looking at the systems of control. If someone spent too much time in the bathroom — and too much time was like three or four minutes — the manager would say, “What are you doing in there?” Whenever you went on break, they had a timer. You set the timer and it would beep loudly when it was done. Of course all the food was timed. They had what we referred to as stations, and a common phrase was, “don’t forget you’re chained to your station.” You weren’t literally chained, but it was metaphorical.

Q. Was it difficult to get a job in a fast-food restaurant?
A. No experience necessary. … They were a bit puzzled by the educational level of my application.

Q. You say in something you wrote that you were not a good fast-food employee, but you tried to be. What did you mean?
A. That type of operation depends on standardization and repetitiveness. Coming out of owning my own business and academics, I just wasn’t accustomed to that. That was a general problem, and was manifest in situations like assembling the sandwich: I would communicate with the customer on the other side of the counter about their preferences. This slowed down the process. … The idea of speed of production being the dominant principle did not make sense to me personally … I would make very thoughtful double bacon cheeseburgers, and the manager would chastise me (and make me re-watch the instruction video on the official way to assemble each sandwich).  

Q. How important is it for researchers to really get boots on the ground and see for themselves what they’re studying?
A. Very important. We can’t identify patterns with single interviews, observations, anecdotes or even surveys. This is the irreplaceable advantage of good qualitative research — the domain is smaller, but the depth of knowledge is much deeper.

Q. Why is research like this important?
A. Any research that can assist us in more accurately and fully understanding social phenomena is beneficial.  In the case of my work, it is good for people to know more about our economic and labor system — how it operates and how it impacts the lives of real people.

Professional Profile: Dr. Casey Welch
Welch earned his Ph.D. and his M.A. in sociology from The University of Illinois. He earned his B.A. in criminal justice with a minor in philosophy from The University of Florida. His research interests include crime, marginality, stratification and social control. This summer his Sociological Research Methods class produced a study for the city of St. Augustine about public opinion on the future of the Willie Galimore pool in Lincolnville.

The classrooms Jenni Peters saw in Uganda were vastly different than the ones she left behind at St. Augustine’s Pedro Menendez High School.

She had never known bare-earth floors — where students bring cups of water to pour on the ground so the dust won’t billow up. She had never seen classes with as many as 80 students crammed on rickety wood benches with few, if any, school supplies.

And of course, she had never heard students tell horror stories of Africa’s longest running war — the hardship of life in displacement camps; family members murdered; even being forced to fight as child soldiers in the ranks of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that has been battling the Ugandan government for more than two decades.

“Some of their stories were hard to process,” said Peters, a 2007 Flagler alumna who now teaches high school English. “One student told me about how he was working in the gardens and the LRA came and shot his dad in front of him. Another student’s parents had both passed because of AIDS. So seeing those things, that was difficult.”

But Peters wasn’t there just to hear stories about Uganda’s violent past. Rather, her six weeks last summer were spent as part of a teacher exchange through Invisible Children, an organization that is raising awareness about Uganda’s plight while also helping to rebuild the war-torn nation’s educational system.

The exchange partners international teachers with Ugandan counterparts as a way to share skills and ideas. The organization’s goal is to bring classrooms in Uganda to a competitive standard by enlisting volunteers like Peters who are willing to share with and train teachers there.

Peters, who graduated from Flagler with a degree in secondary education and English, said her involvement with Invisible Children is simply an extension of her passion for teaching, as well as her belief that education has the power to improve lives and even heal a nation as desperate as Uganda.

“We were teaching, but more importantly, we were paired up with a teacher,” she said. “It’s an exchange — an exchange of ideas, an exchange of curriculum.”

Peters said that long-term, forward-thinking approach attracted her to the group.

It teaches people that it’s possible to make a change, as this organization has shown with its limited resources and grassroots approach … So I’m teaching my kids here the power they have as individuals.

“These 11 schools Invisible Children focuses on, some of them have been displaced, all of them have been affected by the war and because of that, their standards have just fallen so low,” she said. “To these people, education is their way out.”

A different, dangerous world
Peters became involved with Invisible Children while in college after seeing one of the group’s documentaries about the LRA.

“It was one of these things where this kid was crying over his brother who was killed, and you see these thousands of kids sleeping in a bus stand trying to hide,” she said. “It kind of tugs at your heart strings.”

Since 1986, the LRA has been battling the Ugandan government in a war that spread to three other countries, and at its height forced almost 2 million people out of their homes and into miserable displacement camps. More horrifying, LRA leader Joseph Kony built his army primarily by abducting children, some as young as 5, and forcing them to fight the government as child soldiers. It is said as many as 90 percent of Kony’s fighters were kidnapped children, and over the years thousands found themselves on the front lines as rebels.

The conflict gave rise to what were known as “night commuters.” Parents in the displacement camps fearing their children would be abducted often sent them on long, nightly walks to nearby towns where they slept on the street, hoping to evade the LRA.

Security has improved in recent years as the LRA shifted south, and northern Uganda has seen greater stability. But thousands still live in camps, like the one Peters stayed in, and the wounds of two decades of fighting aren’t quick to heal.

To raise interest in its cause, Invisible Children produced documentaries on the conflict, the child soldiers and the night commuters. The group also holds events around the U.S. to appeal to high school and college students. In college, Peters got involved in a global “night commute” designed to model the nightly walks Ugandan children made from the camps.

She stayed involved after graduation when she began teaching English and intensive reading at Pedro Menendez. Going on the teacher exchange was the next logical step for her as she wanted to pass along to others her own passion and love for teaching.

In Uganda, she said, education brings a sense of hope to the desperation so many have experienced. She remembers times when Ugandan teachers were sick and the kids came to the international teachers to ask if they would teach them. “It’s something they value,” she said.

But the trip wasn’t an easy one. Peters had never been out of the country and didn’t even have a passport when she applied for the program 7,000 miles away from home. She stayed at one of Uganda’s first and largest displacement camps, Pabbo — a sprawling slum of ramshackle buildings, dirt roads and thatch huts where thousands still live.

There she taught teachers about reading strategies and other methods used in the U.S.

She went to an international conference that focused on emotional literacy, which is being implemented in schools where so many children need rehabilitation thanks to seeing family members killed, fleeing the LRA or even being forced to kill as child soldiers. Peters said the goal was to train teachers to help students recognize their feelings, deal with self-esteem issues, interact with others, build friendships and trust, and even learn conflict resolution.

“(Uganda) is not a place where you can just go to therapy every week,” she said. “So it has to be part of the educational system.”

Bringing something back
Peters said she expected to find Ugandans distrustful and wary of strangers after so much hardship, but what she found was the opposite.

“These people will extend an invitation into their homes and their lives and offer these friendships,” she said. “That was surprising.”

It also made it all the harder to leave. She said she built numerous relationships with teachers and students. Before she left, she filmed Ugandan students giving advice to her American students. Their message was simple: cherish what you have and work hard for it.

Peters said she has incorporated many things she learned from the trip into her teaching in the U.S., but most important she said is the idea that change is possible, and you can use your education for great things.

“It teaches people that it’s possible to make a change, as this organization has shown with its limited resources and grassroots approach,” she said. “So I’m teaching my kids here the power they have as individuals.

Peters is already thinking about returning next summer to Uganda, as well as hosting a reciprocal exchange where a Ugandan teacher would come to her school. This past fall a student from Uganda traveled to Pedro Menendez to tell her story.

Looking to the Future
Looking back on it, Peters said it’s hard to truly understand the situation in Uganda — the years of fear, the insecurity, the pain and especially the senselessness of it all.

“You see the scars of war everywhere — from orphans to kids with missing limbs,” she said.
Her own trip was marred by the death of an Invisible Children staffer, Nate Henn. He was an American killed in a terrorist bombing at a rugby field where hundreds had gathered to watch the final of last summer’s World Cup. Henn was to have met up with Peters’ group, and she said that event meant tighter security for the rest of her stay. More importantly, it gave her a taste of what Ugandans have lived with on a daily basis.

“We had that fear for the remainder of the two weeks, and that’s something they’ve had for 24 years,” she said.

Still, she was moved by a sense of hope in Uganda, in spite of the country’s still-desperate situation. Education, she believes, gives people hope — the possibility for a new and better life — and that is why she believes the small part she played last summer was so critical.

And while she admits it sounds cliché, she says the trip made her a different person and contributed to the best year she’s had as a teacher.

“It’s changed me in a lot of ways,” she said, “from just the way I see things to the way I teach my kids. I love it.”

It wasn’t even a college when Phyllis Gibbs first applied to teach at Flagler — only a shuttered historic hotel where plans were being hatched for a women’s college. Flagler officially opened in 1968, and Gibbs started teaching English the next year, only later moving on to what had always been her passion — theatre.

Forty years later (she took a year off for an exchange program in England), Gibbs is Flagler’s longest still-serving faculty member. And, she says, there are no plans to retire. So we sat down with Phyllis to look back at 40 years at Flagler and hear about her love for the stage.

Q: When I say it’s been 40 years, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
A: The first thing that pops into my head is how quickly it’s gone by, like everything else. (Laughs). It doesn’t seem to be 40 years. I can remember walking by the hotel on a Saturday at the time and seeing this sign. I was married to Steve Gibbs. I was already teaching at Levy County High School and he was getting ready to graduate from the University of Florida graduate school. I said, “Look at that sign. It says they’re changing this hotel into a college.”

Q: Having been through those early years when Flagler struggled, and even had to be reorganized, did you ever think the college would become what it is today?
A: No … (long pause) … No, I didn’t … (longer pause) … I actually didn’t think that far ahead. I liked St. Augustine, but to me it was too small a town. I was getting ready to go to the big city.

Q: How many students do you think you’ve taught over the years?
A: Oh, you got to be kidding me? I have no idea! What do I teach 100 people a semester? I’d have to sit down and really figure it out. Last night I went to the induction of Alpha Chi and there was the mother of one of the seniors who got inducted. She came over to me and said, “Do you remember me? I was in your speech class.”

Q: Why do you think people are drawn to theatre and stage?
A: A lot of people come to the arts because they have no other place to go. They are rejected by other groups. They find camaraderie in the arts because the arts are very liberal. They bring their own creativity and accept people. A lot of people who are trying to find themselves in their journey in life are drawn to art and they’re drawn to theatre. You see a lot of kooky people. They’re like little rebels in their own little world, but they want to connect.

Q: It seems like it would be a real confidence builder for students, too. Is that one of drama’s main strengths?
A: It’s not only confidence building. There is an ensemble that develops in a particular group. Every time I teach an acting class I say, “you will be closer to these people at the end of the semester than you will be in any other class.” Invariably — 99 percent of the time — they write me in their journals, “you were so right.” There’s this feeling of a creative project they’ve done together. It’s not only built their confidence, but also their understanding of one another. The ensemble aspect is really great.

Q: It’s about more than just acting and being on stage when it comes to Flagler productions, right?
A: They’re learning every single aspect (of theatre.) We’re rare in that sense. A lot of theater departments (at other schools) want to “track” kids. (Students) have to make a decision very early on, and they have to go into acting, or they have to go into tech, or they have to go into some narrow aspect. We train kids in every area to make them more marketable.

Q: How do you pick shows?
A: I don’t like to do anything twice. I want to be able to challenge myself. I tend to like large cast musicals because I want to be able to get as many of the kids on the stage as I can to get that stage experience. … I’m more like the cast of thousands — the Cecil B. DeMille of Flagler College.

Q: Often in theatre you have to make do with the resources you have and really improvise. Can you think of any instances like that?
A: I did a children’s show of “Peter Pan.” (Laughs). We tried to fly Peter Pan. We had two guys who were in the back with the rope. (Peter Pan) was kinda’ sort of flying around. It worked because we had little kids in the audience. On a larger scale, it was kind of a little weird. … It was the idea that he could fly, and the two guys screaming, “OK, now!” (Laughs).

Q: What’s the sensation you feel right before the curtain goes up?
A: Nervousness. But you know what? At that point, you’ve taken them as far as they can go. I used to not be able to sit down. I used to pace. Now, I’m pretty much, “I’ve done what I can do.” That’s not to say if something is happening on stage that isn’t supposed to be happening I’m not running back stage!

Q: What’s the feeling right after the curtain comes down?
A: Bittersweet. It’s a bittersweet feeling. It’s tough. It’s very, very tough. And for the kids, too. That’s the reason why you have cast parties: To get over that feeling of being let down. You have this party as a finalization — that you’ve done a great job. You celebrate you’ve done it and that it’s time to move on to the next project.

Q: Do you miss being on stage yourself?
A: I like being behind the scenes. Although in my early days I did a lot of acting. But now, you would have to get a tow truck to get me on stage. I like other people being on stage and me being in the background. Kind of the puppeteer manipulating it.

Q: What advice do you give students to overcome being nervous about going on stage?
A: You know, adrenaline is a good thing. As long as it’s not debilitating, adrenaline keeps you on your toes so you can stay in the moment. Even stars say that if they’re not nervous, they’re going to do a crappy job on stage. You have to take that nervous energy and use it.

Q: So, the big question: Any plans to retire?
A: People say why don’t you retire now and just hang out. Why would I want to do that? That means I can’t get to meet the kids in the freshman class who are going to be the creative forces. I just love that. I love meeting the new ones and getting to know them and seeing their work. When I leave I wouldn’t have that. So, they’ll probably have to drag me out of the classroom.

Photo by Scott Smith, '04

There they were, some of the biggest names in the world of golf: Tiger Woods. Michelle Wie. Donald Trump’s son, Donnie, and even pop star (and golf aficionado) Justin Timberlake.

They were all part of Golf Magazine’s “40 Under 40” list, which was billed as a collection of “the most influential people in golf under 40-years-old.”

But if you looked past the celebrities and sport stars, you may have noticed two more recognizable names on the list: Flagler alumni Laura Hill and Guy Garbarino, both 1998 sport management grads.

Hill is senior director of communications for the PGA Tour and Garbarino is senior director of outreach for The First Tee, an organization that helps bring golf to elementary schools across the United States.

Garbarino said his inclusion on such a star-studded listed was pretty unexpected.

“Honestly when I heard that I made (the list), it was pretty humbling,” he said. “There are some big names on the list (Timberlake, Tiger, and others) and I was glad to see that The First Tee was recognized for our youth development efforts in golf.”

Hill — whom the magazine lauded for her media liaison skills, saying it was “no small chore in the eye of the Tiger storm this year” — was also shocked by her inclusion.

“Of course, I headed to the bookstore to pick up a few copies,” she said. “The woman at the cash register asked, ‘Oh, do you know someone in here?’ … I have to admit it was kind of fun to tell her, ‘Yes … me!’ ”

Garbarino was picked for his involvement in the The First Tee National School Program, which helps to bring the sport to elementary schools across the United States.

“At the end of the day, I hope that the article will help to create more recognition of our organization and that it will lead to additional opportunities to reach more young people in this country,” he said.

For Hill, it was a reward for what has been a difficult year with the controversy surrounding Woods as he returned to the links.

“It’s been an interesting year, definitely,” she said. “We’ve been dealing with media that don’t typically cover the PGA Tour or golf in general — more from the entertainment side of the business — because of Tiger’s situation.  

“But it’s also given us a chance to highlight the personalities of some of the other players who often get less attention because Tiger was dominating the Tour for so many years. Every day is different, which keeps this job exciting and challenging for me.”  

The magazine called the 40 picked for its list the game’s “up-and-coming generation of influencers, trendsetters and newsmakers, an eclectic mix of talent worth watching today and for many years to come.”

Nominees for the ranking were solicited from a wide variety of sources and the finalists were picked by a panel of Golf Magazine editors. See the full list at www.golf.com.

For James Scheideman, flying fighter jets into combat is a far cry from what’s portrayed in movies like “Top Gun.” No trigger-happy pilots dog-fighting Soviet MiGs or Hollywood dramatics.

Sure, you can’t beat the adrenaline rush of flying an F-15 Strike Eagle — a $31 million jet that can top mach 2.5 and unleash a torrent of weapons — but when you’re screaming over the mountains of Afghanistan with bombs strapped to each wing, there is little time for movie-star bravado.

“It is demanding,” he said. “It’s not Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun.’ It’s very rigorous.”

Scheideman, ‘94, is an Air Force major who flew dozens of combat missions in Afghanistan in 2008, and before that in Iraq. He said the job requires focus, intense training and the constant awareness that lives are on the line.

“The thing that has you kind of clinching and thinking tightly through scenarios is when you have that guy on the ground literally meters from the enemy,” he said. “That’s when you know you’ve double-checked the coordinates for the bomb, and you’ve verified you’ve seen the enemy in relation to the friendlies. Nobody wants to live with that mistake of injuring a friendly force or dropping too close to those guys.”

More and more, fighter pilots are flying in support of combat troops on the ground as they engage enemy forces. That’s why a sign at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base reads: “The mission is an 18-year-old with a rifle.”

“It reminded you that anything that occurs after you go out there, start up your jet and get airborne is not about what you’re thinking. It’s not about your personal opinion on things. It’s about that guy on the ground getting shot at and saving his life.”

Now back in the states working at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base — the command center of both wars — Scheideman said he never lost sight of how critical a role he played in keeping “grunts” on the ground alive.

“The thing that has you kind of clinching and thinking tightly through scenarios is when you have that guy on the ground literally meters from the enemy”

Scheideman, who won this year’s Flagler College Alumni Professional Achievement Award, trained fighter pilots at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina before moving on to MacDill.

At Central Command, he will see another side of the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His role there will be ensuring the rules of engagement are followed during an air strike and that collateral damage is limited.

“With the progress we’ve made [in Afghanistan], we can take so many steps forward, but then have a casualty of the civilian population or a civilian building struck by accident, and we then take leaps backwards. It’s hard to regain that trust.”

For Scheideman it will be a chance to see the war from a new perspective, surrounded by decision-making brass, rather than seeing and hearing it on the front lines.

Scheideman said the most rewarding part of being in combat was knowing he helped save the lives of American troops on the ground, whether it was taking out Taliban leadership, supporting special operations missions or targeting Taliban ambushes.

“It is demanding … It’s not Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun.’ It’s very rigorous”

“A good half of our missions over there, we flipped over to a frequency to contact a ground controller and soon as we [did], we heard nothing but gunshots and screaming,” he said.

Scheideman’s path to a seat in the F-15 wasn’t exactly clear-cut. He was a communication major at Flagler, played in a band and had no intention of following the footsteps of his father, who had also been an Air Force pilot. But he credits his wife with helping him make a 180-degree turn that ultimately led him to join the military.

He joined the Air Force in 1999 after graduating from Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and went on to become a C-130 navigator in the 517th Airlift Squadron in Alaska. But sitting behind pilots looking out side windows on massive cargo planes left him wanting more. “I would look at them flying and say, ‘You know, that’s where I want to be,’” he said.

In 2002, he transferred into flight training and was selected to attend the elite Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas. There he trained for two years with pilots from 15 NATO alliance nations.

In 2006, Sheideman was sent to Qatar as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom where he got his first taste of combat flying missions up the Persian Gulf and then into Iraq. Two years later, he would deploy to Afghanistan. Scheideman said he dropped far more ordnance there than in Iraq and found himself working closely with special operations forces on the ground. All totaled, he has flown more than 420 combat hours and 76 missions.

One mission more than any other sticks out in his mind. He was flying in support of Chinook helicopters, which were transporting special operations troops into the treacherous mountains of Northeast Afghanistan. He figured it would be a routine flight. But as ground forces were dropped in a rocky riverbed, he could see on his cockpit monitors civilians in the nearby village running for cover.

“[The special operations forces] ended up taking fire immediately after the Chinooks departed and for the next four hours it was just non-stop shooting … We deployed every ordinance we had that day.

“That day stands out, first of all, for the immensity of the situation. But also the rules of engagement weren’t spelled out. We encountered an environment that put our wings on the line. We as strike aviators, we don’t just start bombing indiscriminately. We have to verify the target, positively identify it and make sure there is a threat.”

After returning from Afghanistan, Scheideman’s mission switched from dropping bombs to training the next crop of F-15E fighter pilots. As chief of training for the 333rd Fighter Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, he trained a new generation of F-15E combat pilots, as well as oversaw the squadron’s 60 instructor pilots and weapon system operators.

But he said he is most proud of his time in Afghanistan.

“It’s definitely been the most rewarding part of my Air Force time, going over there and doing the mission,” he said. “You are the tip of the spear out there. You are fighting back, right there on their territory.”

It opens with the sound of lapping waves and shots of a serene, glassy bay. Colorful sheets are laid out on the beach. People walk beneath swaying palms. A child strolls along the sand. A man works on a fishing net by the shore. A boy in a striped shirt stands with arms crossed, staring into the camera.

And you have to wait for it — half an agonizing minute — before you finally get what you know is coming: scenes of destruction from the magnitude 7 earthquake that tore apart Haiti in January.

That slow intro, along with a total lack of music and long, often uncomfortable montages, were all intentional, said filmmaker and Flagler alumnus Dustin Miller, ‘04.

“I think documentaries a lot of time over-explain themselves,” he said of the stripped-down approach he took to the documentary, which tells the stories of survivors. “They don’t let the images just do their thing. That was the consensus early on, that these images were powerful enough [on their own].”

Miller shot the 13-minute documentary in Haiti just three weeks after the temblor killed more than 200,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless. He called the film “35 Seconds” — the amount of time it took the earthquake to tear the country apart.

From the peaceful, opening scenes in the coastal town of Petit-Goâve, the film moves on to jaw-dropping destruction in Port-au-Prince.

“Words can’t express how bad it is,” he said. “The buildings that are still standing are really cracked, and people are still scared to go inside them. It couldn’t have happened in a worse spot in this part of the world.”

But Miller said “35 Seconds,” which he showed at Flagler College’s Communication Week this past spring, isn’t about the destruction he saw or even the quake itself. Rather, its real focus is on the people he encountered — their stories of survival, hardship and hope.

“The only game plan was to go and tell people’s stories and just see what [they] had to say,” he said.

Scenes of the devastation — the tent cities made of bed sheets; the piles of rubble in the street; the damaged buildings leaning at improbable, gravity-defying angles — are interspersed with the stories of survivors he met while traveling for five days with fellow alum Eric Hires, ‘08, and friend Nathan Lewis.

“We just talked to folks and basically asked them what happened that day,” he said. “A majority of people literally thought it was the end of the world.

“I think everyone we talked to either had an immediate family member or a close friend not make it. We heard a story of one guy who lost five kids. You don’t even know what to say. For me it was the little details, like the mom who held her daughter so tight that [the girl’s] clothes tore. It sounds so little, but you think of that mother’s reaction and love. It became more real. It was powerful.”

Miller said the idea for the film came to him shortly after he heard news of the scale of the quake.

“Right after it happened, just like anybody, I wanted to do something,” he said. “Instantly I was thinking, ‘I need to go and tell stories.’ ”

He didn’t really think too much about it and pushed the idea aside. But he couldn’t completely shake it, and Hires kept encouraging him to do it.

“My wife said, ‘I think you kind of need to go,’ ” he remembers about that final push that prompted him to get in touch with a missionary friend in Haiti.

The project was definitely a bit of a departure for the St. Augustine-based filmmaker, who works on everything from surf films with the likes of professional surfer Dane Reynolds to a nonprofit organization called “To Write Love on Her Arms” that helps people battling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.

But in spite of all he experienced in Haiti, Miller said he was struck by a sense of hope, and just how resilient and inspiring the people he met were.

He is now planning to enter the documentary into film festivals. It was shown at an Atlanta art gallery’s Haiti benefit this past May, and he is also working with an art center in Virginia to show it.

Read More: Flesh Profits Nothing

He’s never been a farmer. Never been a gardener or even had any training growing plants. But that hasn’t stopped Flagler senior Chuck Riffenburg from starting three community gardens that will help St. Augustine families in need.

“This is really the first garden I’ve ever had,” said the philosophy-religion major who launched the Flagler College Hunger Initiative this past spring. “I’ve got a pretty green thumb, as it turns out.”

The gardens — one at Flagler, another at St. Augustine’s Temple Bet Yam and one at the Mission of Nombre de Dios — were part of Riffenburg’s idea to put healthy food on the plates of people who can’t afford it. But along the way, he’s also hoping to raise awareness for green initiatives, community gardens and the importance of organic and locally-grown vegetables.

Riffenburg said many people don’t realize what they’re putting in their mouths, or from where it comes.

“We’ve become so alienated from how our food is produced,” he said. “But I really believe a food revolution is taking place. People are waking up. People are realizing the importance of growing their own food.”

He says the country is in the midst of a food crisis when you consider pesticide usage, genetically engineered food, issues with obesity and even malnutrition. But he is encouraged by the number of community gardens that are popping up across the country, the increase of organic and non-genetically modified food and the number of people becoming educated about food.

Riffenburg came up with the Hunger Initiative idea after he was elected head of the Student Government Association’s newly formed Green Committee. The committee’s goal is to promote sustainability, help push green initiatives at the college and educate students about why such efforts are important.

Using connections at the Catholic Mission and the Temple’s Rabbi Mark Goldman, who also teaches at Flagler, Riffenburg began planting this past spring.

The 13 beds scattered among the three gardens are now brimming with beans, squash, zucchini, watermelons, tomatoes, sunflowers, radishes and a handful of other vegetables. His first crops were harvested this summer and given to the Betty Griffin House, a St. Augustine domestic violence shelter for women and their children.

“The food we’re growing is all going to be donated to people in need,” he said. “It’s children who are so malnourished in contemporary society, so I would rather see this go to kids who need it.”

Congregation members and Flagler students tend to the beds, and Riffenburg said everything is organic.

“Anyone can grow… There’s no such thing as a ‘black thumb.’ Farming is rooted in our genes. I want people to realize how much can be produced from a very small area.”

He became interested in where food comes from shortly after high school, thanks to a class on medicinal herbs. At Flagler, Professor Tim Johnson encouraged him to intern with CitySprout, a community garden in St. Augustine’s Lincolnville area. That experience was integral to launching the local gardens.

“Just seeing the community come together as a whole has been really exciting,” he said, noting that the response from Flagler students has also been terrific.

Riffenberg said the project is special because it is multi-layered: food is grown locally to help people in need; different faiths have come together to take part; people are becoming better educated about food; and those involved begin to understand how easy it is to start their own garden.

There has been no shortage of hiccups along the way — ants recently started eating away at his sunflowers — but he’s continued to educate himself on urban gardening and said it hasn’t been all that difficult.

“You just have to tend them and feed them properly,” he said. “It’s like having a child or a pet.”

His hope is that the Hunger Initiative will continue to grow and expand, and he’s planning to talk with other churches in the area to see if they will also get involved in the movement.

They are a people without a country — more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees who were trapped between a nation that disowned them and another that wouldn’t take them.

For two decades they languished in United Nations refugee camps with nothing but bamboo huts covered by plastic tarps and meager rations, toiletries and other essentials. Then in 2007, the United States and other countries agreed to end their plight and take in the refugees. More than 22,000 have already immigrated, settling in cities across the country like Jacksonville, Fla.

And that is where two Flagler College roommates come in. For Sheila Acharya, it was a calling to help people from her homeland after her parents began doing whatever they could to help the refugees in Jacksonville. For Jessica Welch, president of Flagler’s Students in Free Enterprise team, it was a chance to develop a unique project around helping people.

They called the project “Suruwat” — Nepali for “creating new beginnings.”

“The first time you meet [the refugee families], you can’t help but want to help them,” Welch said. “It’s instantaneous.”

Welch says this venture isn’t a typical SIFE project.

“It’s the biggest challenge we’ve faced as a team because it’s not just teaching people how to run a business,” she said. “It’s teaching them everything. I mean, we taught them how to go grocery shopping. We taught them how to clean their house, which are not things that meet SIFE criteria. But until we do, we can’t teach them how to get a job.”

This is a heartstrings project, she says, and for her and Acharya, it has also become a passion.

The Life of a Refugee
The plight of the Bhutanese refugees is little known around the world — lost among much bigger and better-known ethnic cleansings and refugee crises, like Darfur and Sudan.

The U.S. agreed in 2007 to accept most of the Bhutanese refugees — about 60,000 in all — who were living in seven refugee camps on the eastern edge of Nepal. Bhutanese by birth, but ethnically Nepali, the refugees were victims of an ethnic cleansing when Bhutan expelled them and revoked their citizenship in the 1990s. Exiled, they crossed the border to Nepal, which also refused to take them.

“They fled to Nepal, but Nepal is a very poor country,” Welch said. “They didn’t have the infrastructure or the desire to support them.”

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, there are still more than 86,000 refugees in the Nepal camps, all of whom are expected to eventually be moved to new host countries where they will try to make a home.

Jacksonville is slated to receive 6,000 refugees, and about 300 are already living there. One of three charities helps setup the refugees, the oldest of which is a deaf and blind woman in her 80s and the youngest, infants. But the money they’re given doesn’t go far, and their housing is often substandard and in some of the city’s rougher neighborhoods. Many do not speak English, especially the older refugees, and the younger struggle to find jobs, especially in this down economy.

With not much more than the clothes on their backs, they come to the United States to start new lives from scratch.

“Sheila and I were lucky enough to be invited to go and pick up two families when they came in,” Welch said. “A family of four walked off the plane clutching these plastic bags that had all of their documentation and a duffel, which was an overnight bag by our standards. And that’s all the possessions that this family of four owned.

“It’s incredible,” she continued. “For Sheila and me, it’s not uncommon when we’re driving back, especially after that, to sit in the car and cry for hours because there’s just so much you want to do, but you don’t know how.”

Starting Over
In its first year working with the refugees, SIFE completed projects that helped the Bhutanese better understand how to succeed in the United States, like field trips to banks where they learned basic banking.

“There’s a fear of bank accounts because the money is no longer in your hands,” Welch said. “And so we have to explain the benefits and how it actually keeps their money safer.”

They took the refugees to grocery stores to teach them about the fundamentals of shopping, led workshops on English, and taught them other basics that most people take for granted.

The American culture is an alien world to the Bhutanese, and one that is very intimidating and overwhelming. And while Welch and Acharya find it an incredibly rewarding project, they also say it’s never easy.

“The hardest thing is you can’t do enough,” Welch said. “You have all these wonderful ideas, but it’s just a matter of implementing them and getting community support. You just don’t want to let them down, but it pushes you.”

The students experienced how tragic the situation can be in July when one of the refugees — 21-year-old Hari Adhikari — was shot and killed during a robbery. He’s someone both Welch and Acharya knew personally from working with the families.

“He was 21,” Welch said, her eyes growing heavy. “He was our age. He was the only one in his family who spoke English. The man who shot him got food stamps … that’s it. [Adhikari’s] family not only lost a member of their family, but also their sole financial support.”

Acharya said most people don’t understand much about the refugees — what they’ve been through in Nepal’s decrepit camps, how difficult it is to leave their homeland for a new country, and the challenges they face as they try to succeed here, especially in a slow economy.

“There are so many things that we see them struggling with,” she said.

Yet, for all the struggles and hurdles they face in their adopted country, Welch and Acharya say they see something much more positive: a chance for them to live out the American dream. Acharya said her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from Nepal, are prime examples of how that really can happen.

“When [the refugees] were living in Nepal, they had no opportunities at all,” Acharya said. “They were living in the camp, and they were educated, but they couldn’t do anything with it. And then they’re here now and they have these obstacles, but they always say the sky’s the limit. It’s hard for them at first, but my parents went through the same struggles, and I definitely think they can do well.”

Moving Forward
This year the SIFE team is planning on helping the refugees create videos for newcomers as orientations to this new country. That way the Bhutanese will learn from their own people in their own language tips on acclimating, as well as some of the ins and outs of coming to the United States.

“These individuals have incredible skills, but the job set in Nepal is very different than here,” Acharya said. “So it’s tweaking them a little bit so we can then create a business that we can sell their products.”

Acharya says she is excited about the opportunity because the refugees have so many skills and such a rich, vibrant culture.

“A lot of the adults can’t work because they don’t speak English and they just stay at home,” she said. “But many of them have skills like making jewelry, painting and different arts and crafts like that.”

For Acharya, who will graduate with Welch in the spring, it will be tough to let go of the project after it has become such an important part of her life.

“To see how strong they are after what they’ve been through and how optimistic they remain, it’s completely, I don’t want to say changed me, but I realize a deeper understanding of what people struggle with right here,” she said. “To see them improving every week … it’s really cool to see how much they’ve overcome.”

Osama bin Laden and Mohandas Gandhi are two names you wouldn’t expect to share the same cover of a book.

While the first is an international pariah whose acts of terrorism have brought fear, suffering, hatred and war, the second chose a path of absolute nonviolence as he waged his own “battles” to free India from British Imperial rule.

Both turned to religion to justify their actions, yet ended up on opposite ends of the spectrum. That is what troubles Flagler Assistant Professor of Religion James Rowell, and why he tried to make sense of it in his first book, “Gandhi and bin Laden: Religion at the Extremes.”

“On the one hand we have a person who believes that religion is nonviolence and must be nonviolence,” Rowell said. “That we must embrace the religious other whether he be Christian, Muslim, Jew or Hindu. On the other hand we have bin Laden saying we emphatically reject nonviolence and that we think that only violence will result in a solution for our problems.

We have two completely contrasting worlds out there. … These are two individuals both claiming to be religious. How can we assert that this phenomenon that we call ‘religion’ encompasses both of them? Can we say that?”

Rowell came to the idea for the book while at the University of Pittsburgh working on his doctoral dissertation, which was primarily about Gandhi and his nonviolent movement.

“I have a great love of Gandhi, nonviolence and his ideas, especially of inclusive tolerant religions — that there is a universal kind of calling to all faiths,” he said. “But right after I finished my dissertation, about 2002, we were of course dealing with 9/11 and the opposite extreme.”

He said it became harder to look at the idea of nonviolence, which also includes Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement, without taking into account bin Laden’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This prompted him to try and understand how two so-called religious figures could be so different.

“I was completely faced with this opposite figure,” Rowell said. “So not only as an American moved by this event, but also an academic feeling responsible to understand religion in the moment, I started studying bin Laden.”

Rowell later took his research and developed it into a class at Flagler before turning it into the book that was released in 2009 from University Press of America.

To him it’s a way to expose people to the significance of nonviolent movements led by the likes of Gandhi, King and even Islamic figures like Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

“Abdul Ghaffar Khan was a Muslim who believed passionately that the heart of Islam was nonviolence — that jihad is nonviolence,” he said. “That’s really a remarkable thing because he actually comes from the Pashtun tribal clan, which is the same clan that contributes to the Taliban.”

Sadly, Rowell said Ghaffar Khan’s memory has been eclipsed by a more violent alternative spouted by bin Laden, the Taliban and other religious extremists. But he felt it was important to include a chapter on Ghaffar Khan to show that throughout history there have been Muslims who were more closely aligned to the teachings of Gandhi and King.

And he hopes that more people will look to these leaders for inspiration, and that followers of bin Laden and Al Qaeda will begin to realize very little can be accomplished through violence.

“There’s no real coherent declaration to what bin Laden wants to do,” he said. “I think what’s substituted is a dark rage and a zealous religious hope that if we just create massive confusion as much as possible we will come to power.”

King and Gandhi, he said, both knew that once a movement took a violent path, it was almost impossible to bring it back. Rowell writes “Rebellion by nonviolence was more permanent, more lasting in Gandhi’s view. What was gained by the sword could easily be taken back by the sword, but what was established on principles of truth and justice might be held and prized forever.”

Which is why he is hopeful that some day a new Islamic champion of nonviolence will emerge as a “kind of counterbalance to the current extremism.”

“It’s very important that we try to recapture nonviolence,” he said, noting that today Gandhi and King are more relevant than ever. In fact, when President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in December of 2009, he said that the two leaders must remain guiding forces in the world, even while countries like the United States find themselves dealing with extremists like bin Laden through force.

Rowell, who said his class on bin Laden and Gandhi is well-received by students, would like to see more classes on world religion taught — not to preach a certain value or belief, but to help students better understand how religion continues to play such a critical role in world history, politics and even economics.

Rowell, who came to Flagler in 2006, also teaches “Religions of the World,” “Religion from Tibet to India,” and a class he calls “God, Ape and Man.”

Those classes touch on topics often touchy and controversial. “God, Ape and Man,” for instance, focuses on the debate between evolution and religion — primarily whether they are compatible. “I like to think of them as compatible,” he said.

On the whole, Rowell said it is a thrill to be able to teach to students about his passions.

Excerpts from “Gandhi and Bin Laden: Religion at the Extremes”

ON GANDHI’S EARLY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH:
What made Gandhi a “Great Soul”? At the time of his life there were approximately 300 million Indians under British Imperial rule. Why did he stand out from the rest? Why do we remember Mohandas Gandhi as the Mahatma? It is a title he was reluctant to accept, to be sure, as he always spoke freely and openly about his own faults, yet he was the “Great Soul,” or “Mahatma,” the pioneer of the non-violent technique in politics during a very violent century. … How was it that this lone, frail Hindu, scarcely five and a half feet tall and not much over a hundred pounds, could bring such a monumental and heart-felt impact upon a heartless world?

ON BIN LADEN AND THE ROOTS OF JIHADISM:
The comparison of Gandhi with bin Laden is a striking mix of similarity and stark contrasts, a myriad of puzzling questions about our human nature, our politics, and our concept and use of religion. Why is it some have been captivated by the forces of
religious civil disobedience, while others are prepossessed by a dark religious rage? The answer cannot be as simple as that we are dealing with a different religion. In short, we cannot posit that Christianity and Hinduism are conducive to non-violence, and that Islam is not, because counterexamples are easily furnished to disprove this.