Everything Nac

Although summer has come to a close, it is the perfect time for Stephen F. Austin State University students to begin planning an adventure for the summer 2018 semester.

For students in SFA’s Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture, these summer experiences, more often than not, include collecting valuable data that will inevitably be used to guide future land management practices domestically and abroad.

Perhaps one of the best examples of the college’s ongoing initiative to create meaningful scholastic experiences for students can be found in Dr. Brian Oswald’s work assisting the Netherlands in developing the country’s first quantitatively based wildland fire risk assessment.

Since 2012, Oswald, Joe C. Denman Distinguished Professor of fire ecology at SFA, along with students enrolled in SFA’s Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture, have collaborated with public safety agencies in the Netherlands to collect fire fuel load data that will ultimately be used to develop a wildfire spread model that can predict wildfire behavior.

Will Kruckeberg and Jessica Pruneda, both senior fire management majors at SFA, are the latest students to contribute to this growing body of work.

For 10 weeks, Kruckeberg and Pruneda scoured forested and coastal regions of the Netherlands collecting fuel load data to determine the quantity of fuel classes present.

“We would go through and separate the dead and live grasses and document how many dead grasses were in a given plot,” Kruckeberg said. “It’s a lot of data to collect, but in the end it makes a really good product.”

Kruckeberg and Pruneda worked directly for the Instituut Fysieke Veiligheid, an institute for disaster relief and public crisis management in the Netherlands, and they were independently responsible for every aspect of the fieldwork.

“It was a good professional development situation because we had to be self-driven,” Kruckeberg said. “It was a good opportunity to learn how to keep going, schedule our own research plots and self-motivate.”

In addition to scientific data collection, Pruneda said the opportunity to communicate with Dutch citizens about their work was exciting and meaningful because much of the population is still not aware of the country’s growing wildland fire threat.

“I loved how we got asked a lot about what we were doing,” Pruneda said. “Many of the people we talked to were confused because they don’t think about wildland fires, but we got to explain all of the aspects of the project to them.”

Students will continue to play an integral role in collecting fire fuel load data and conducting related research throughout the country into the foreseeable future. This regional data ultimately will be combined to create a national fire model used by safety agencies.

For more information on this project, contact Dr. Brian Oswald at boswald@sfasu.edu or (936) 468-2275.

Story submitted by Sarah Fuller, outreach coordinator for the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture at Stephen F. Austin State University.

A special free one-night screening of “Christmas With the Dead” is planned for 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 8, in The Cole Art Center @ The Old Opera House, the downtown Nacogdoches art gallery owned by Stephen F. Austin State University.

Directed by T.L. Lankford, “Christmas With the Dead” is a zombie apocalypse film based on a short story by the same name written by Nacogdoches author Joe R. Lansdale. Lansdale’s son, Keith, wrote the screenplay.

It stars SFA filmmaking instructor Brad Maule, who co-produced the film with William Arscott, professor of filmmaking at SFA. Much of the film’s soundtrack was composed and performed by students of SFA’s School of Music. Original songs were performed by Kasey Lansdale, daughter of the author.

The film centers on the bizarre happenings in the fictional East Texas town of Mud Creek after a freak lightning storm causes most of the town’s inhabitants to become zombies.

Those attending the screening are encouraged to dress as zombies, according to event organizer Peyton Paulette. Some of the filmmakers and performers will be in attendance and will participate in a Q&A session following the screening.

The Cole Art Center is located at 329 E. Main St. For more information, call (936) 468-1131.

The Percussion Studio at Stephen F. Austin State University and its director, Dr. Brad Meyer, will coordinate an interactive community performance of Phil Kline’s “Unsilent Night” starting at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, outside the Wright Music Building at 2210 Alumni Drive.

Participants will enjoy a 45-minute walk through the picturesque SFA campus while listening to a recording of “Unsilent Night” that has been downloaded to play over a smart device connected to portable speakers or to a CD played over a boom box.

Meyer encouraged community members to participate in the performance by following one of two steps:

• Download the app (https://itunes.apple.com/app/phil-klines-unsilent-night/id483509723?mt=8 or search “Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night” in your app store) and play it over a smart device by connecting it to a portable speaker.

• Download one of the four mp3 tracks from http://unsilentnight.com/participate and burn it to a CD that can be played over a boombox.

People can play the music from the app over their phone speaker, but this has a less-than-desirable sound quality and should only be used if the other options are not possible, Meyer said.

“If inclement weather occurs, the performance will be canceled,” he said. “To participate, simply be at the music building before 7:30 p.m. and have a way to play the ‘Unsilent Night’ music. Music players are not supplied by the host, so please plan on bringing your own music player.”

Joe Woodard of The Los Angeles Times described the “Unsilent Night” event as, “A dreamy fruitcake of parts, tranquil even through its anarchy.” And K. Leander Williams in Time Out New York said, “Kline’s luminous, shimmering wash of bell tones is one of the loveliest communal new-music experiences you’ll ever encounter, and it’s never the same twice.”

Meyer further defined it as a family-friendly event, with people often bringing their children with infants and toddlers in strollers.

“‘Unsilent Night’ has in fact become a holiday tradition for many families,” he said. “Some families have been doing it for 20 years, and their children have grown up walking ‘Unsilent Night.'”

For more information, go to http://unsilentnight.com, visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu or call (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS.

The choirs at Stephen F. Austin State University, along with the Festival Orchestra, will present SFA’s traditional holiday concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 8, in W.M. Turner Auditorium on the university campus.

The highly anticipated “Christmas Celebration” concert will feature “Magnificat in D” by Johann Sebastian Bach and other seasonal favorites, according to Dr. Michael Murphy, director of choral activities for the SFA School of Music.

SFA’s A Cappella Choir, Women’s Choir and Choral Union, with Murphy and Dr. Tod Fish conducting, will be accompanied by the Festival Orchestra. Graduate guest conductors will be Emily Bulling and Evelyn Shaffer.

“Magnificat in D” will be performed by the A Cappella Choir and will feature School of Music voice faculty members Debbie Berry, Charlotte Davis, Scott LaGraff and Richard Leonberger, along with Houston graduate student Joshua Chavira.

The program also features Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” and a Christmas carol audience sing-a-long.

The concert is a joint presentation of the SFA College of Fine Arts and School of Music. Turner Auditorium is located in the Griffith Fine Arts Building, 2222 Alumni Drive.

Tickets are $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and $3 for students and youth. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.