Everything Nac

The Stephen F. Austin State University Early Childhood Lab, in partnership with the Greater East Texas Community Action Program Head Start Program, invites the community to participate in the Week of the Young Child, which will be observed Monday, April 13, through Friday, April 17, in Nacogdoches County.

As part of the National Week of the Young Child celebrated across the U.S., Nacogdoches is honoring young children and all those who make a difference in children’s lives.

“All young children need and deserve high-quality early learning experiences that will prepare them for life, and Nacogdoches has a great opportunity to do our part to help young children,” said Lori Harkness, director of the SFA Early Childhood Lab. “Week of the Young Child is a time to recognize the importance of early learning for all young children and to bring the community together to help give all young children a great start.”

“As a community, we share the responsibility to provide all children with a safe, nurturing, engaging, enjoyable and secure learning environment that will give them the necessary confidence to succeed in the present and to deal with later responsibilities in school and in life,” said Weldon T. Beard, head start director of GETCAP.

The annual Family Fun Day will be from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, April 11, at Festival Park in downtown Nacogdoches. This activity will be a free event with many fun-filled activities for children and families to do together.

During the week, all daycares, schools or other organizations working with children are encouraged to join together to honor young children and their families. The community has the opportunity to participate in various events and activities that focus on our children and those who work with children. Each day will reflect a designated theme. The themes are as follows:

Monday, April 13 – Physical Activity Day

Tuesday, April 14 – Literacy Day

Wednesday, April 15 – Promoting Health Day

Thursday, April 16 – Children Safety and Community Helpers Day

Friday, April 17 – Art/Music Appreciation Day

According to Harkness, young children and their families depend on high-quality education and care, which help children get a great start and bring lasting benefits to Nacogdoches. This week-long event is a time to recognize the importance of early learning and early literacy and to celebrate the teachers and policies that bring early childhood education to young children.

The SFA Early Childhood Lab and the GETCAP Head Start Program are comprised of early childhood professionals working together to improve professional practice and working conditions in early childhood education and to build public support for high-quality early childhood education programs.

For more information, contact the SFA Early Childhood Lab at (936) 468-4006.

The second annual In the Trees concert series at Stephen F. Austin State University will feature John Luther Adams’s monumental work, “Inuksuit.”

The free concert will be at 3 p.m. Saturday, April 18, in the university’s Free Speech Area, which is located among the trees between the Wright Music Building and the student center. The annual outdoor series is directed by Dr. Brad Meyer, director of percussion studies at SFA.

“Written for nine to 99 players, ‘Inuksuit’ is a piece that was created in order to explore a specific space, typically a large outdoor space,” Meyer said. “Players will perform on a myriad instruments, including conch shells, sirens, tom-toms, bass drums, cymbals, gongs, glockenspiels, triangles and megaphones.”

Adams explains that his music has “always been rooted in the earth.” Over the past 35 years, he has composed works inspired by the outdoors, but heard indoors.

“Recently, after hearing ‘Strange and Sacred Noise’ performed in the Anza-Borrego desert, the New England woods, and the tundra of the Alaska Range, I wanted to create a large-scale work conceived specifically to be performed outside,” Adams writes in his program notes.

“Inuksuit” was inspired by the stone sentinels constructed over the centuries by the Inuit in the windswept expanses of the Arctic. The word “Inuksuit” translates literally “to act in the capacity of the human,” Adams said.

“This work is haunted by the vision of the melting of the polar ice, the rising of the seas, and what may remain of humanity’s presence after the waters recede,” he said.

“Inuksuit’ is a concert-length work for percussion, in which the performers are widely dispersed and move throughout a large, open area. The listeners, too, may move around freely and discover their own individual listening points.

“This work is intended to expand our awareness of the never-ending music of the world in which we live, transforming seemingly empty space into a more fully experienced place,” Adams said.

The performance at SFA will consist of about 30 performers, including 15 from SFA and 15 from regions across Texas. It will last a little over an hour, and spectators are encouraged to take pictures and walk around, Meyer said. If there is inclement weather, the performance will still take place (unless there is lightning), so Meyer encouraged participants to dress accordingly for the outdoors.

“Inuksuit” has been performed in New York City’s Morningside Park and at the Park Avenue Armory, as well as many other outdoor venues throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia.

For more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.

Stephen F. Austin State University students enrolled in Dr. Marlene Kahla’s advertising and promotions class have a unique opportunity that could win them funds for scholarships and five representatives from the class an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco.

At the beginning of the spring semester, EdVenture Partners, project directors for the American Petroleum Institute, reached out to colleges and universities and asked students to submit creative briefs for an opportunity to help API increase the millennial generation’s awareness about career opportunities in the oil and gas industry.

“On day two of the semester, we hit the ground running,” said Dr. Marlene Kahla, SFA associate professor of marketing. “We immediately started conducting research on the best way to reach millennials and capture their attention. Then, we began developing a way to accomplish it.”

The group, comprising millennials themselves, knew that visual awareness would help gain attention, so they devised a campaign utilizing a small oil derrick supplied by one student’s father.

The oil derrick, decorated with fake money, helps symbolize the higher-than-average salaries often associated with jobs in the oil and gas industry. The group moved the derrick around campus, stationing it in high-traffic areas. Students in the class set up tables near the derrick and offered giveaways to fellow students who stopped by and inquired about the display.

“The class used ‘Did You Know’ fact cards that participants pulled from blue hard hats donated by Fastenal. The fact cards called attention to often little-known details about careers in the oil and gas industry,” Kahla said.

During their interactions, representatives from the class also requested participants log on to a special website created by EdVenture to count unique hits, which also is an element of the competition.

“At the competition’s end, the number of unique hits increases the classes’ chance of winning and advancing to the final round of the competition in San Francisco,” Kahla said. “The hits help validate that the class is out there and communicating its message.”

Guest speaker Jeff White, director of operations for SPX Power + Energy in Houston and father of class member Taylor White, will be on campus from 12:20 to 12:50 p.m., Monday, April 13, in the McGee Building, Room 133, to help highlight the campaign and share information about careers in the oil and gas industry.

The event, titled “Snack N’ Fact,” will include free food and giveaways. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

The first leg of the competition runs through Wednesday, April 15. Anyone wishing to help the class with collecting hits on the API website can access www.oilandgasworkforce.com/stephen-f-austin-state-university.

For more information, contact Kahla at (936) 468-4103.

Newly sworn-in Texas Secretary of State, Carlos Cascos, spoke to Stephen F. Austin State University economics students Wednesday about the strengths and challenges of Texas and the importance of understanding their community.

Appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott shortly after his election in November, Cascos spoke to the class of approximately 100 students during a stop on a statewide tour. Cascos said the tour was to learn more about the different areas of Texas while educating residents about local, state and federal issues.

He stated he did not want to give the typical secretary of state message encouraging people just to get out to vote, but instead, he wanted Texas residents to understand the issues and their importance. He said students often do not know details of the area in which they live until they establish roots and a career.

Cascos said among his first goals as secretary of state is to improve relations with Mexico, the state’s largest trade partner. Cascos said he expects a deal within the next month to honor the 1944 U.S.–Mexico Water Treaty.

He also highlighted the state’s job growth in various sectors and touted the business-friendly environment of Texas.

In addition, he encouraged students to research communities when choosing a job after college, including tax rates, schools, health care and the effectiveness of local governments.

The Texas Association of Broadcast Educators held its annual winter conference at Stephen F. Austin State University Feb. 27. During the conference, the TABE presented the Broadcaster of the Year Award to Brad Streit, Raycom Media Group’s senior vice president/television. Pictured are, from left, Dr. Al Gruele, SFA associate professor of mass communication; Streit; Sherry Williford, SFA instructor of mass communication and Dr. John Hendricks, SFA professor of mass communication and chair of the SFA Department of Mass Communication.

Students participating in Stephen F. Austin State University’s Mast Student Investment Roundtable are proving they have what it takes to be top-notch financial portfolio managers.

The group, comprising 15 SFA students who have demonstrated exemplary performance in specific investment courses, won first place in the competition’s growth category at the ENGAGE International Investment Education Symposium held in March.

ENGAGE is one of the largest student investment conferences in the U.S. The annual event was held this year at Wayne State University in Detroit to provide students with the opportunity to participate in discussions with today’s leading investment professionals in preparation for their role as tomorrow’s financial leaders.

Student teams from 57 universities across the U.S. and Canada participated in this year’s event. Universities with student-managed portfolios were invited to compete based on their financial performance in the areas of growth, value, blend/core and asset allocation styles of management. Twelve-month risk-adjusted returns from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2014, were used to identify the top portfolio team in each category.

“The growth category focused on universities with student teams that only invest in stocks,” said Dr. Kyle Jones, SFA associate professor of finance, who accompanied the team to the competition. “SFA’s students had a return rate of approximately 19 percent in 2014. That’s incredibly impressive, especially when you consider that the Standard and Poor’s 500 index return rate averaged markedly less at about 13 percent.”

Students representing the Mast Student Investment Roundtable included Neel Warren, a senior finance major from Palestine; Steven Hawkins, a senior economics and finance major from Longview; Blake Moore, a senior finance major from Lufkin; and Ryan Swor, a senior finance major from Carrollton, who later discussed the team’s win on CNBC.

During the nationally televised interview with a panel of financial experts, Swor provided details about the stocks the team selected. “Gilead is a strong biotechnology company,” Swor said. “It recently developed a breakthrough hepatitis C treatment drug. We also like Home Depot. More and more people today are opting to make improvements to their homes rather than purchase or build new ones, so that stock is performing well.”

The children of A.T. and Patricia Mast, honoring the Mast family’s longtime support of the university, established the Mast Student Investment Roundtable in 2012. The roundtable’s members invest more than $500,000 of real money, which includes funds from the SFA Alumni Foundation and the SFASU Foundation.

“The faculty members in SFA’s finance department provide our students with a thorough education in financial management, teaching them to analyze stocks and then encouraging them to use that knowledge to make sound investment decisions,” Jones said. “The opportunity provided by the Mast Student Investment Roundtable is a key element in helping our students gain the skills they need to compete and win on the national level.”

The Stephen F. Austin State University Stone Fort Museum will present the inaugural Cum Concilio Club Heritage Preservation Award, honoring those who are dedicated to preserving Nacogdoches and its history.

Officially established in 2009, the award will highlight the CCC of Nacogdoches’ commitment to the preservation of the city’s cultural and historic landscape. This women’s study club, organized in Nacogdoches in 1894, acknowledged the importance of historical preservation with the loss of the Y’Barbo stone house in 1902. Distraught by the demolition of the house, members dedicated their time and efforts to protecting other historic aspects of the community.

In 1936, a replica structure of the stone house was built by the Texas Centennial Commission on SFA’s campus. The house, which paid homage to the club’s preservation efforts, became a regional history museum known today as the Stone Fort Museum.

The biennial award, which will be presented in October, will recognize an individual or group who has made significant contributions to the preservation of the natural and cultural history of Nacogdoches County. Award recipients will be recorded on a plaque located in the museum garden, which will guide visitors to completed preservation projects throughout the county.

Nominations are now being accepted and are due by Tuesday, June 30. For more information, contact Carolyn Spears at (936) 468-2408, or email stonefort@sfasu.edu, or visit www.sfasu.edu/stonefort for further instructions.