Everything Nac

Stephen F. Austin State University’s School of Human Sciences recently hosted its third annual Cooking Up Careers event where student teams from eight East Texas high schools competed in a cooking competition.

This year, students competed in a Market Basket Challenge where they were tasked with preparing two plates comprising a protein, starch and vegetable. High school students arrived at SFA without knowing the main ingredient they were required to cook with in the competition.

Teams of five students prepared a bone-in French pork roast. Several of the teams cut the meat into pork chops while others cubed the roast or cut it into strips.

One of the required two plates was judged on presentation and the other on taste. Both plates had to demonstrate consistency, correct portion sizes and creativity with ingredients, according to Todd Barrios, chef instructor at SFA.

“The Market Basket Challenge is a great opportunity for the visiting students to test their culinary knowledge and skills in a fun environment while also using our state-of-the-art kitchen. The event provided a day of sportsmanship and competition,” Barrios said.

Chefs Jack Bretzke, Daniel Conroy and Maurice Zeck served as competition judges. Bob Westbrook and Roger Lumley attended as representatives of the East Texas Restaurant Association.

Schools that participated include Athens, Chapel Hill, Hudson, Lindale, Marshall, Pine Tree, West Rusk and Union Grove.

“Each year this event gets more focused and better,” said Dr. Chay Runnels, event organizer and hospitality administration program coordinator. “We are pleased to partner with the Center for Teaching and Learning along with the East Texas Restaurant Association to bring top high school talent to SFA.”

Cooking Up Careers also introduced students to SFA’s hospitality administration program and culinary arts focus. SFA is the only four-year institution in Texas with this type of culinary program.

“I think the event was very successful. We were able to host eight high schools with hospitality or culinary arts programs on SFA’s campus to see our facilities, meet our faculty members and work in our lab space,” Barrios said. “We hope to see some of these students in our hospitality program at SFA soon.”

Areas of emphasis within SFA’s hospitality program include lodging, restaurant, travel and tourism, event planning, and culinary arts. For more information, visit http://www.sfasu.edu/hms/102.asp.

The Stone Fort will host a pop-up concert featuring the Stephen F. Austin State University Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble from 1 to 2 p.m. Friday, May 5, at the Stone Fort, located on the SFA campus.

The concert is the second in a series of pop-up events and part of the Stone Fort Museum’s Inside-Out project, an outreach program designed to pique interest in the museum’s exhibits and encourage students and community members to come inside.

“For decades, there’s been a myth circulating among SFA students that if they come inside the Stone Fort they will not graduate, which is entirely untrue,” Carolyn Spears, curator of the Stone Fort Museum, said. “Hosting the Inside-Out events is a way to attract members of the SFA and Nacogdoches communities to come to events outside the Stone Fort and then encourage them to step inside and continue to experience local and Texas history through the impressive exhibits.”

The Stone Fort’s current exhibit is “El Camino Real de los Tejas & Building Nacogdoches: 1716-2016.” The exhibit documents the history of the Camino Real and focuses on the people who lived and traveled the road.

Objects on loan for the exhibit include flintlocks, flint knives, cruciform stirrups, belt knives, and tools for traveling and carpentry from the private collections of Rick Still and George Avery, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the SFA Anthropology Lab.

“Upstairs, we have a panel highlighting Music in the Borderlands that features common musical instruments, including a mandolin and part of a mouth harp recovered from the Mission Dolores de los Ais archeological site,” Spears said. “The Pop-Up on Friday will feature scanned sheet music from the period and an amberola, which is an early type of phonograph that used wax cylinders.”

The event will feature SFA’s Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble performing selections from Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird Suite” and Paul Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis.” Additionally, “Canzona Prima,” “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” and “Desperado,” will be performed. Fitting for the occasion, the ensemble also will perform “Nine Flags of Nacogdoches,” written by Kelley Wittington of Nacogdoches. The ensemble is led by Dr. J.D. Salas, associate professor of music at SFA.

“When people think of a group of tubas playing together, thoughts of massed pachyderms may immediately spring to mind,” Salas said. “However, the euphonium, which is similar to a tuba but about half the size, has a higher and lighter sound and performs most of the melodies. Together, the two instruments create an ensemble that possesses remarkably sonorous timbre and a wide dynamic range.”

The majority of the ensemble will perform in front of the Stone Fort at ground level; however, 12 members of the ensemble will perform on the Stone Fort’s second-floor porch.

The concert is free and open to the public. For more information about the Stone Fort, its exhibits or the Inside-Out series, contact Spears at cspears@sfasu.edu.

Why is math important?

Stephen F. Austin State University early childhood through sixth grade elementary education online teacher candidates recently hosted a Math Career Carnival at Raguet Elementary School to help answer this question.

Through a variety of interactive booths, SFA students showcased math skills and connected those skills to careers such as aerospace engineering, managing a bakery, landscaping and working as a veterinarian.

Drs. Paula Griffin and Mark Montgomery, assistant professors in SFA’s Department of Elementary Education, orchestrated the Math Career Carnival as a way to engage online teacher candidates in a real-world teaching experience.

“SFA online students live all over Texas. Unless they are paraprofessionals in a school district, our online students have limited access to students in public school classrooms,” Griffin said. “Participating in the carnival is beneficial for them on many levels. SFA online students have the opportunity to plan and develop a mathematics lesson or activity that truly answers questions many elementary students pose, ‘Why is math important?’ and ‘When am I ever going to use it?’”

More than 40 SFA students participated in the event this semester. SFA students created and implemented activities for their booths, which served approximately 200 fourth and fifth-grade students at Raguet Elementary School.

“One of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills teachers struggle with is making connections to the real-world. This event helps our students and Raguet teachers see that connections are everywhere and can easily be made for students,” Montgomery said. “One SFA student prepared for her booth by visiting her local airport and talking with pilots. By simply seeking out that real-world connection, she was able to design her activities and now has a partnership with the local airport for her future students.”

In another booth, SFA students created an activity where participants explored the career of a baker who must use decimals and fractions to correctly portion and serve cake. Students also built another booth where participants discovered how engineers use multiplication of decimals to design and build various aviation and space-flight apparatuses.

“Actual facilitation of the activity at the carnival provided multiple scenarios for SFA students to quickly monitor and adjust instruction to fit the needs of individual learners because fourth and fifth-graders rotated in and out of the booths constantly during the two-hour carnival,” Griffin said.