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Southern Company Supports UWF Multicultural Center

English Department Launches 1925 Virtual Newsstand Web Site

Cooperative Education Benefits UWF Students in a Variety of Ways

Southern Company Supports UWF Multicultural Center
By Lauren Smith, University Marketing Communications

The charitable foundation of the Southern Company, the parent firm of Gulf Power, has pledged $375,000 to support the university-owned and operated Multicultural Center as a dollar-for-dollar match of the $375,000 commitment that Gulf Power’s charitable foundation made in 2009.

An integral part of the Vince Whibbs Sr. Community Maritime Park, the Multicultural Center will provide a unique venue for the public to learn about and experience the Pensacola community’s unique multicultural history. Both gifts to the UWF Foundation will be submitted for a dollar-for-dollar match through the state of Florida’s Alec P. Courtelis program for university facilities, translating into $1.5 million in support for the planning and construction of the center.

“The Multi-Cultural Center will be a wonderful showcase for telling the stories of how people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures have come together in the past 451 years to create this amazing community,” said Susan Story, chief executive officer of Gulf Power. “All people who are a part of our history have created an incredible ‘tapestry’ of voices that make this a place like none other. What better way to celebrate this than in our new park!”

The preliminary concept for the Multicultural Center was developed by a diverse group of community leaders under the leadership of Story. It will tell and weave together the unique stories of the diverse groups that contributed to Pensacola’s development and history, including Native Americans, Europeans, Africans, Latin-Americans, Asians and others. Through interactive exhibits and meaningful programming, visitors will have the opportunity to learn how events and cultural diversity shaped what Pensacola is today.

“Thanks to the leadership of the Southern Company and Gulf Power, we are closer to reaching our goal of showcasing the country’s oldest community and preserving the stories before they are lost,” said Kyle Marrero, vice president for University Advancement at UWF.

To support an effective planning process, three consultants have been engaged to work with key stakeholders, including Doug Mund, a national leader in museum planning. Mund is also working on the conceptual design and programming for the Vice Admiral John H. Fetterman State of Florida Maritime Museum and Research Center, which will also be a key component of the Community Maritime Park.

“I am honored to work on such a unique project,” said Mund. “Having the Multicultural Center connected to the University of West Florida will result in a close connection between the Center’s educational outreach and key university departments, such as public history, and will provide excellent volunteer, internship and research opportunities for students of all ages.”

Story and Carol Carlan are heading up fund-raising efforts, which will publicly kick-off later this year.

For more information about the Pensacola Multicultural Center, contact Marrero at (850) 474-3306 or e-mail kmarrero@uwf.edu.

English Department Launches 1925 Virtual Newsstand Web Site
By Lauren Smith, University Marketing Communications

While the advent of the Internet has endangered the future of print newspapers and magazines, it has enabled the history of a lost institution to be shared via The 1925 Virtual Newsstand Web site. Created by University of West Florida senior English majors, the site is the culmination of an ongoing senior capstone project lead by Assistant Professor David Earle who teaches the Capstone Experience class ENG 3944. The focus of the class is to introduce students to “periodical studies,” with all of its accompanying literary and critical methodology.

“The project’s goal is to convey the feel of the newsstand during the first half of the 20th century, which was ubiquitous in American cities and where the majority of Americans got their news, literature and culture,” said Earle.

Earle asserts that the newsstand has been one of the most important and visual aspects of the literary marketplace for the majority of Americans for generations.

“Although it was a vivid, colorful and constant part of daily urban life, there are scant records of this important institution in archives,” he said. “The academic archive largely ignores the vast history of mass-market magazine production due to both its ubiquity and ephemeral nature. My class seeks to recover that history.”

Students who have taken the class have given it rave reviews, including Kelley English.

“The class was an incredibly inspiring and bonding experience,” she said. “Through our efforts to create our database, I feel as though we have produced a strong foundation for archival research in periodicals at UWF for students to build on throughout the coming years.”     

The Virtual Newsstand Web site could be considered a digital recapitulation of a 1925 newsstand. It also serves as a major research tool. Visitors can view photos and histories of newsstands and digital issues of magazines from the summer of 1925. It has been linked to the Modernist Journals Project at Brown University and the Modernist Magazine Project at the University of Sussex.

Robert Scholes, research professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and co-director of the Modernist Journals Project, said that the Virtual Newsstand Project is widely known and much admired in the field of modernist studies. He commended Earle for his work.

“Earle is a leader in the uses of digital technology in studying and teaching modernism through the magazines of the early 20th century,” said Scholes. “He knows how to draw students into the world of the early 20th century, so that they can connect it to their own world.”

For more information about The Virtual Newsstand project, visit uwf.edu/dearle/enewsstand or contact Earle at dearle@uwf.edu. To learn more about the UWF Department of English and Foreign Languages, visit uwf.edu/english or e-mail English@uwf.edu.

Read Other Student Reviews of the Capstone Experience English Class (ENG 3944)

Cooperative Education Benefits UWF Students in a Variety of Ways
By Susie Forrester, University Marketing Communications

The UWF Cooperative Education program offers students an attractive package: Learn more about a chosen career, earn credit hours and get paid -- all at the same time.  
 
“An experience in cooperative education benefits a student in a multitude of ways,” said Patrice Friant, who supervises the program and works with employers to develop employment opportunities and assists students in finding those opportunities. The benefits include learning about organizational hierarchies; workplace dynamics; and balancing work-life-school issues and employer expectations such as meeting deadlines, arriving at work on time and being ready to do the job. And, of course, these students have the opportunity to put the knowledge they’ve learned in the classroom into action.

The biggest benefit? The co-op program basically puts students behind the wheel for an occupational test-drive.  

Krystle Escarfullet is a UWF co-op graduate student working at the Naval Education and Training Professional Development Technological Center as a systems analyst. She is assigned to the Corporate enterprise Training Activity Resource System (CeTARS ), which is the authoritative source of official Navy training. She’s in her third semester on the job and each has brought new tasks and more responsibility. 

Her job “directly aligns with my career plans. I act as a liaison between the computer programmers and the customers ensuring that business needs are met. This is exactly the job description that my major relates to,” Escarfullet said.

Escarfullet’s first assignment involved Interface Control Documents (ICD). When she arrived, her department had seven interfaces that did not have an ICD. Her task was to develop and construct a separate document between her department and each of those interfaces. While working closely with the Rachel Errington [rerrington@uwf.edu] program manager, she accomplished that and also developed a master template which can be used to develop future ICDs.

“These students are not out there just play-acting, they are an integral part of their employer’s work force and they are accomplishing important tasks,” Friant said.

Students learn quickly what they like and do not like about possible career choices, she said. “For example, we have students working with a local power company. Recently, one of my students confided in me that he loved the engineering side of his job, figuring out how things worked and how to fix things, but he really didn’t like the reports and administrative part of his co-op. He knows he would be happier as a hands-on engineer as opposed to an engineering manager.”

The most important thing about choosing a career is choosing a career you like, Friant said. “Also, students learn that they may want to change courses or add courses as they go along in order to be better prepared for a future career.”

“It is surprising how many students decide that they want to go on to graduate school after they have participated in a co-op,” she said. “They see the opportunities that are out there first hand and they have a leg up on how to take advantage of them.”

Escarfullet said, without a doubt, she would recommend the co-op program to other students. “Through it, the student learns what isn’t able to be taught in the classroom.”

For more information about Cooperative Education, contact Patrice Friant at Career Services, at (850) 474-2254 or e-mail pfriant@uwf.edu  or visit uwf.edu/coopeducation.