When Flagler Magazine spotted Britt Corry’s “Combat for the Stage” class thrusting swords at each other on the Flagler College Auditorium steps, we thought we would ask him about the five most important things he tells students learning to fight on the stage:

Harry Mansford, a Vietnam Veteran and St. Johns Country resident, says he can still hear a helicopter well before anyone else can.

“I have a hearing problem, and I can still hear one even when it’s off in the distance, “he said. “I suppose it’s because that sound is embedded in my brain.”

Mansford is one of five Vietnam Veterans who participated in a documentary called “Vietnam: Service, Sacrifice and Courage; Local Neighbors, National Heroes.” He also served as a Sergeant in the Marine Corps in the war from 1965 to 1966.

Civil rights activist Andrew Young donated interviews from his documentary “Crossing in St. Augustine” to Flagler College in what will begin a new archive chronicling the historic civil rights movement in the Nation’s Oldest City.

Flagler Assistant Professor of History Michael Butler, who studies the civil rights era and Southern history, called Young’s gift a momentous occasion for the college.

Visitors to Flagler Field will be treated to a radical change this spring. Where there was once a dirt lot for cars and the barest facilities, fans and athletes attending baseball, soccer and softball matches will now find paved parking and the new Flagler Field Locker Room Facility.

Construction began in 2010 on the complex, which is on Old Moultrie Road, just a couple miles from the main campus in downtown St. Augustine.

Bestselling author Pat Conroy, known for novels “The Prince of Tides” and “The Great Santini,” visited the Flagler’s Writers-in-Residence Program in January, where he spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in the Flagler College Auditorium.

Conroy’s latest book, “My Reading Life,” revisits a life of passionate reading, including anecdotes from his school days, moving accounts of how reading pulled him through dark times, and lists of books that particularly influenced him at various stages of his life. Several of his novels have been made into feature films starring such Hollywood notables as Robert Duvall, Jon Voight, Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisand.

He is the recipient of a wide range of literary awards, most recently the 2010 Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts, South Carolina, Lifetime Achievement Award.

Assistant Professor of Art Sara Pedigo, ‘03, recently won “Best in Show” for her paintings at the Fifth Annual 100% Pure Florida juried exhibition at the Fifth Avenue Gallery in Melbourne, Fla.

Pedigo’s oil-on-panel paintings, “At the Lake” and “Late Summer,” were part of the show that featured Florida artists working in a variety of subject matter and mediums.

Will Nix may be a fine art major at Flagler College, but he’s found that his passion is really people. In the past three years, he has been everywhere from Rwanda to Haiti helping those in need.

“I felt very blessed to be able to travel while giving a helping hand,” Nix said.

Last summer he traveled to Rwanda with the intent of mapping out land for a children’s camp; however, when he arrived, the project fell through, and he ended up teaching English to children. He says the freedom, adventure and the uncertainty of travel is everything to him.

Flagler College celebrates a decade at its second campus at Tallahassee Community College

In 2000, Flagler College opened a satellite campus at Tallahassee Community College — a first-of-its-kind partnership between a traditional private college and a two-year school.

Flagler Tallahassee Dean John Bruno calls the campus there a hidden secret. “I tell people I’m the dean of Flagler College and they say, ‘You commute all the way to St. Augustine?’ ” he said with a laugh.

College campuses buzz in the spring, and Flagler is no exception. The semester becomes a flurry of activity as student clubs, organizations and programs bring the campus alive with unique projects and events.

These are just a few of the events that happened at Flagler this past spring.

Associate dean’s research debunks idea of bias in NBA scheduling

Was there some kind of nefarious conspiracy at work in scheduling NBA basketball games? That was the question Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Yvan Kelly answered last fall in research published in the “Journal of Sports Economics.” His article was titled, “The Myth of Scheduling Bias with Back-to-Back Games in the NBA.”

Kelly, a former economics professor and scout for the Seattle Supersonics, employed game theory to analyze five seasons of data from NBA schedules to see if there had been any potential scheduling bias. His research was prompted by a noticeable pattern: certain teams were playing games two nights in a row, and most of the time they would lose the second game.