Students returning to campus in the fall of 2011 got a chance to give the world a little piece of their mind thanks to some chalk and black plywood “thought bubbles.”

Dreamed up by Holly Hill, ‘02, assistant director of College Relations, the idea was part of the college’s Day of Welcome program, where new and returning students met faculty and staff on the West Lawn and got better acquainted with the campus.

Students were asked, “How was your first week?” and invited to shout it out on the boards. Here’s a sampling of what they said.

Photo Gallery: Day of Welcome

As a child, Patrick Moser remembers being freaked out the first time he saw the famed 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage that supposedly documented “Bigfoot” traipsing through a California forest.

Now, that uneasiness has led Moser, the chair of the art and design department at Flagler College, to venture into the realm of video with a piece called “Patty Goes.” It was screened at the Fundada Artists’ Film Festival in Wakefield, England, in the summer of 2011.

Photo by Scott Smith, '04

He’s had exhibits at The Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, the Naples Museum of Art in Florida, and even the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York.

But video is something new, and that interest developed during a research sabbatical when Moser began composing his short film. He took 400 individual painted stills and streamed them together to make a moving image of the mythical creature.

“I’m trained as a painter, but I live in the same world you do — this world of technology,” he said, describing the film as “painted animation.” “I love film, movies and video and I’ve always wanted to play with animation, essentially making the material move. It was really just a trial to see if I could do it.”

Moser says the pet project was his escape when work got tough elsewhere.

“What I would do is when I would get frustrated working on other projects, I’d come back to this,” Moser said. “It was such a labor-intensive process that I didn’t have to think about it. I could just get lost in it.”

And while the idea of 400 stills sounds like an enormous undertaking, Moser is quick to point out that it’s not as intimidating as it sounds.

“It basically is 400 individual stills, but they aren’t individual paintings,” he explained. “I’d create an image, take a picture, maybe make a couple marks, then take another picture.”

But why devote so much time to a (possibly) fictional creature?

“I think that footage is kind of performance art and I appreciate the lengths those guys went to construct it, so I was kind of trying to celebrate it,” Moser said.

Moser wasn’t always so sure about the artistic path he’d undertaken. Although he was the kid who could draw really well in school, he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He ended up in business school, silently harboring dreams of being an artist.

“I didn’t realize I’d made a mistake until I graduated,” he said. “I was in interviews with companies and when I saw what I would be doing with my business degree, I realized I’d made a horrible mistake. That’s not a slight on business; it’s just that for me I didn’t realize what it meant for my everyday life.”

After returning to school and earning a bachelor of fine arts degree at East Carolina University and master of fine arts degree from the University of Florida, Moser began teaching painting and drawing classes at Flagler College in 2000.

I’m trained as a painter, but I live in the same world you do — this world of technology…I love film, movies and video and I’ve always wanted to play with animation, essentially making the material move. It was really just a trial to see if I could do it.

“Initially I didn’t want to be a teacher because I thought I had more important things to do. But as soon as I began to do it in graduate school, I realized how rewarding it was and that it was an area where I could grow creatively,” he said. “Every artist’s fear is that teaching will stifle creativity, but that has not been the case.”

Eleven years later, Moser finds himself the chair of the art and design department and with a successful art portfolio. He said it is thanks in part to the faculty and students he works with who inspire him.

“The art department isn’t somewhere to come to just hang out. Students will come and they’ll really get challenged and have to work. We’re very fortunate to have the tools we have,” said Moser, referring to Flagler’s bachelor of fine arts program, the Molly Wiley Art Building and the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum. “Those things have allowed a department that’s extremely strong and gifted to realize its potential. We are at a moment where we’re really operating at optimum capacity creatively because we have the resources and an incredible faculty to do it with.”

While the family dog may not be able to read your mind, research by assistant professor of psychology Monique Udell seems to prove that man’s best friend might just be able to read your behavior.

The idea for the study, which was published in Springer’s journal, “Learning and Behavior” in 2011, was based on the research of Udell and her coauthors with domestic dogs.

The team researched the idea that domestic dogs who live around humans and interact with them on a daily basis were very good at solving social and cognitive problems often thought to be uniquely human.

“While other researchers have proposed that dogs’ success on these kind of tasks may indicate the evolution of a special ‘human-like’ social cognition or mind in dogs, we believe that dogs instead develop their human-like social skills as a result of living in human-based environments,” said Udell.

As a pre-vet student at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., Udell studied both biology and psychology where she became interested the social behavior of animals. In 2006, she helped develop the Canine Cognition and Behavior Lab at the University of Florida, where this research was based.

“My experience with this study was an interesting one,” said Udell. “In general, the study has been well read and well received and was given the Psychonomic Society award for the best paper published in ‘Learning & Behavior’ for 2011.

The study was also covered by many media sources, such as the New York Times, the Huffington Post and some major international titles.

According to Udell, some media outlets, such as Discovery News, took the study a bit literally and ran with the title “Can your dog read your mind?”

“I had many calls from those wanting to discuss the possibility of psychic dogs as a result,” said Udell. “Interesting in its own right, but for different reasons.”

But despite a few hiccups, Udell thinks the results of her research will help to make the connection between man and pet even deeper.

“All in all I think the research brought greater awareness to a species that we call man’s best friend, but still know relatively little about from a scientific perspective,” said Udell. “Hopefully this understanding, among other things, will lead to improved human-canine interactions by highlighting the important relationship between environment, experience, and behavior.”

To conduct the study, Udell and her team carried out experiments comparing the performance of pet domestic dogs, shelter dogs and wolves who were encouraged to beg for food, from either an attentive person or from a person unable to see the animal. The researchers wanted to know whether the rearing and living environment of the animal, or the species itself, had the greater impact on the animal’s performance.

Udell’s findings indicated that pet dogs were consistently more likely to beg for food from a person looking at them as opposed to someone with their back-turned or reading a book. Human-socialized wolves did not beg from someone with their back turned, but were just as likely to beg from a person reading as someone looking right at them. Dogs living in a shelter performed the worst of all the groups.

In 2004, original architectural drawings, sketches and notes for the Hotel Ponce de Leon – now Ponce de Leon Hall – were rescued from a campus boiler room, saving them from high heat and the ravages of insects and rodents.

The blueprints, which include some of the earliest works of architects John Carrère and Thomas Hastings, were literally disintegrating on the shelf. Many of the rolled drawings could not be opened for fear of the historic artifacts crumbling to dust.

But now, thanks to a prestigious Save America’s Treasures Grant administered by the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Humanities, a two-year effort to conserve and digitize the drawings is nearing completion.

The task has been undertaken by a team of conservationists working at The University of Florida in Special Collections, Conservation and the Digital Library Center.

The First Works of Architectural Giants

Carrère and Hastings rank as two of the most significant American architects of the
late-19th and early-20th centuries. Their firm designed more than 600 buildings, among them the famous New York Public Library and Washington, D.C.’s House and Senate office buildings. St. Augustine’s Hotel Ponce de Leon, Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church and Hotel Alcazar were among the firm’s earliest works. But tragically, most of the archives of Carrère and Hastings’ office in New York were destroyed in the 1920s.

Thus, the collection discovered on campus at Flagler College — some 267 original, fragile drawings on cloth, silk and paper, as well as blueprints and copies — is the largest known archive documenting the firm’s early work. The drawings date from 1896-1957.

After the drawings were discovered, Leslee Keys, director of corporate, foundation and government relations at Flagler, with John Nemmers and John Freund of the University of Florida, approached the National Endowment of Humanities and the National Park Service for support. Through their efforts, the NEH and NPS awarded the College nearly $50,000 to aid in the conservation of the collection. This grant was one of only five grants awarded nationally and the only one outside the northeastern United States.

Preservation and digitization efforts will stabilize the collection and make the materials available for study and use without further damage.

Partnership with UF Protects and Preserves

The drawings are housed at the UF Architecture Archives to ensure that they are protected and available for research. The team is in the process of cleaning, flattening, deacidifying and encapsulating the collection.

Once the conservation effort is complete, digital copies of the papers will be available online for viewing and downloading, thus making public the largest collection of early Carrère and Hastings drawings in the world. Some of the drawings will be featured at Flagler College as part of a special exhibit during the College’s celebration of the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Hotel Ponce de Leon in 2013.

To follow the progress of the conservation and digitization project, visit www.flaglerdrawings.wordpress.com.

If you’ve seen an ESPN Film or spent a Sunday night catching up on MTV’s “True Life” series, chances are Andrew Armstrong Rogers, ’07, helped put it together. Rogers is post-production supervisor at Triple Threat TV, a Connecticut-based production company specializing in nonfiction entertainment.

Rogers moved to New York City after graduating from Flagler with a communication degree in the broadcast track. He completed internships at Engel Entertainment and worked for documentary filmmaker, Ric Burns.

In September 2007, he got an internship with Triple Threat TV – then located in Harlem — and was hired on full-time a month later.

The first project Rogers worked on at Triple Threat was a series of eight biographies including pieces on ‘N Sync, Justin Timberlake, The Mickey Mouse Club and Jack Black, among others. He was also put in charge of maintaining the company’s website — skills he attributes to the graphic design courses he took at Flagler.

As post-production supervisor for Triple Threat, Rogers puts in a lot of late nights. His responsibility is to “make sure that the technology doesn’t get in the way of creating.” This means that Rogers is in charge of finishing each project the company produces.

Take, for example, a documentary they produced called “Thumbs,” which aired on MTV. The film follows the texting lives and habits of six teens from across the country. It’s an investigative look at the elaborate world of teenage texters and the integral role mobile phones have come to play in day-to-day communication.

“Initially, we asked ourselves, ‘Do we make a documentary asking if it’s OK for these kids to be texting this much?’ ” he said. Instead, the team chose to highlight the teens getting ready for a marathon race to the 2010 LG National Texting Championship in New York City.

“We had a cool mix of characters,” Rogers said of the teens they chose. “They are all really good kids deep down, and the viewer finds a way to care about each one.”

During the National Texting Championship, Rogers’ job was to sit in a room and wait for all of the cameramen to bring him their footage, then he would dump the footage onto his computer, back it up and organize it. “With on-the-fly interviews like we were doing, it can produce hours and hours of tape,” he said.

Since “Thumbs,” the Triple Threat team has been working on an array of productions including “Catching Hell” for ESPN Films, “True Life: I’m Addicted To Caffeine” for MTV, “The Real Rocky” for ESPN Films, “Small Potatoes: Who Killed The USFL” for ESPN’s “30 for 30,” and “Right To Play” for ESPN Films.

When Rogers worked on “The Flintlock Disaster” for PBS, a documentary about the fateful flight taken by Marine Fighting Squadron VMF-422 during WWII in the Pacific Ocean, he discovered his favorite part of working in filmmaking.

“The best part is getting a hold of all of this material – never before seen photos and film – and digitizing it,” Rogers said. “A lot of this material has never been backed up and is deteriorating every day. I get to help maintain memories.”

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“This is perhaps the most important and even the most exciting thing to happen to me,” she said, adding that Chicago is one of the foremost schools for studying ancient history.

Howlett said she has always been interested in studying Egypt and ancient history.

“In studying Egypt I am not only studying the beginnings of the modern world, but my own beginnings,” she said. “Egypt is one of the oldest civilizations, an example of what we were when we were just beginning to think on a grand scale. The Western World likes to believe it began with Greece and Rome, but the beginnings can be traced back even further, to the first civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia.”

Wayne Riggs, Ph.D., Howlett’s adviser and assistant professor of history at Flagler, said Howlett is an outstanding student, both academically and personally.

“Nicole is a brilliant person with a very gracious personality,” he said. “We’re all very excited about
her acceptance.”

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.

Ten Flagler students spent part of April pushed from their comfort zones when they hopped on a plane to Quito, Ecuador. They lived without clocks, quenched their thirst with licorice-flavored water, slept with monstrous insects and ate yucca for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Needless to say, it wasn’t your typical spring break trip.

Kristin Nelson, former director of student activities, led the 11-day alternative break to Ecuador in April to work with the Foundation for Indigenous Community Development in Pastaza, Ecuador. It’s a nonprofit organization aimed at creating sustainable development in indigenous communities of Pastaza. FUNDECOIPA manages the 2,200 acres of the Arutam Rainforest Reserve.

“Any time you experience another culture and you’re out of your comfort zone, it’s hard,” Nelson said. “No matter how much you talk about it before you go, everything is taken from you.”

But the students relished their rainforest adventure, despite the culture shock. During the first week they lived in the Shuar community of Arutam, where they lived in a wooden shelter with a view of three volcanoes in the distance. They worked on several projects with the Shuar tribe, including constructing a cafeteria for local school children and working on a family garden in the jungle.

Liberal arts major Tina Hudzinski said they helped the community with daily tasks, such as collecting, harvesting, cooking and preparing yucca. She said it was a ton of work split up into three sections every day: work, a jungle lesson and a cultural session.

“We learned about the plants and how people live,” Hudzinksi said. “They talked about the history of the people, their customs, how they are different, and they showed us their traditional Shuar dance.”

Political science major Haleigh Smith said the trip to Ecuador left her thirsty to sharpen her Spanish skills and to become more proactive about making positive environmental changes. It brought to life the environmental issues she is used to hearing about from professors and textbooks.

“It makes it completely different when you go and see what’s happening … you see the people who need the Amazon, and they need the forest. That’s their livelihood,” she said.

Smith said she had a huge “aha!” moment in the jungle.

“I saw this is worth fighting for,” she said. “All of my research and my reasoning — there is a purpose for it, and I have got to do more to help.”

Nelson said the main goal of the trip was to do a knowledge-exchange program.

“Our students learned western farming techniques by working in local community gardens on and around Flagler College,” she said. “We then learned the farming techniques of the Shuar Indians while being completely immersed in their culture.”

She said being immersed in that lifestyle blew her away.

“One student said something like, ‘We think water is a necessity, but here, it’s like a luxury,’ ” she said. “The showers just dripped on you, it takes time to prepare water; they have to make sure it lasts the whole day … and here [in the U.S.] we just turn on the tap and drink all the time.”

Hudzinski was exhausted by the end of each day, but said it was well worth her energy.

“I loved the little things – like when I fell asleep in a hammock every night, and I was outside all the time, which I loved,” she said.

Hudzinksi’s greatest shock was the locals’ concept of time — it’s drastically different from the American lifestyle. Although the Shuars have a strong work ethic and are determined to get things done, she said she never knew what time it was or how long activities were going to last. But it taught her to stay in the present and to not worry about what would happen next.

“Since I have been back, I have been much more relaxed about time,” she said. “I learned to let go of time constraints, and to know that things will happen, and it’s good.”

The Flagler College Ecuador Alternative Break was helped by a $3,500 donation from the Don Ausman Foundation, which hosts a St. Augustine 5K run called Don’s Run in memory of a Michigan State student who died in 2009. The organization also gave $1,000 in 2010 to help two site leaders with stipends toward their trip. Nelson said leftover funds will help other Flagler students go on future alternative breaks.

Photo by Zach Thomas, '00

Abrams lettered in basketball at Flagler from 1976-80. He still holds the college’s record for most free throws attempted in a game with 19 vs. Saint Leo College in 1978. Abrams is currently the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Flagler College Alumni Association.

Sherri Anthony, ‘82 – Women’s Basketball & Softball

Anthony was a four-year starting point guard at Flagler from 1978-82. She helped lead the Saints to an 18-7 record and the AIAW State Title as a freshman. Flagler went on to play in the regional tournament, representing all the schools in Florida. As a senior, Anthony was selected as the team’s most valuable player. She still holds the career record for assists at Flagler with 368 and is 11th on the all-time scoring list with 751 points. Anthony has coached girls’ basketball at Allen D. Nease High School for the past 25 years.

Photo by Zach Thomas, '00

The team won the NAIA National Championship, the first of two titles. Gordon Jones was the singles champion, and he teamed with Jim Twigg to win the doubles title.

Three alumni awarded for achievements and contributions

Photo by Zach Thomas, '00

Stewart began working at Flagler College in 1980 and was the director of Athletics from 1982 to 1993. He helped form the Florida Sun Conference and served as commissioner from 1993 to 2006. In 1993, he was appointed dean of Student Services and has received the Administrator of the Year award four times.

Professional Achievement Award – Dr. Thomas Kelleher, ‘93

Kelleher serves as associate professor and chair of the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii. He published “Public Relations Online: Lasting Concepts for Changing Media” in 2006 and has been published in 10 scholarly journals.

Community Service Award – William “Bill” Walter, ‘84

Walter is the owner of St. Augustine Center for Living, a care facility and day treatment program for developmentally disabled adults. Over the past two years, he helped raised thousands of dollars for Relay for Life, and he is funding a bedroom at the Bailey Family Center for Caring for the terminally ill.

• Hugh Shaw Memorial Surf Contest
• Athletics Hall of Fame Ceremony and Dinner
• Alumni Awards Luncheon
• Markland Reception
• Alumni Art Show
• Public Administration Alumni Picnic