Everything Nac

Eugene Mitchell Weatherly, a 1970 graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University, will offer the commencement address during the university’s graduation ceremonies Friday, Dec. 13, and Saturday, Dec. 14.

A Nacogdoches County native, Weatherly was a member of the SFA Lumberjack Cadet Battalion and graduated as a distinguished military graduate from SFA’s historic first commissioning class of 1970.

Upon being commissioned as an infantry officer, Weatherly received flight commander training and became a helicopter pilot. Serving one year in Vietnam in 1971, he was assigned to an assault helicopter company in Can Tho, Vietnam, and flew missions in the Mekong River Delta region of Vietnam and Cambodia. He was on active duty in the Army for a total of three years — one in various military schools, one year in Vietnam and one year as a member of the 1st Calvary Division at Fort Hood.

Following his military service, Weatherly joined Pier 1 Imports and became an executive vice president for the company, overseeing operations of all 1,200 Pier 1 Import stores in the U.S. and Canada, which employed more than 20,000 employees.

Weatherly retired in 2007 and currently resides in Kerrville. He was inducted into the U.S. Army Cadet Command Reserve Officer Training Hall of Fame, which recognizes overall excellence and accomplishment in leadership, at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in June 2016.

According to Weatherly, while 600,000 cadets have been commissioned through ROTC in the past 100 years, only 323 have been chosen for the Hall of Fame – a Supreme Court justice, a Medal of Honor recipient, hundreds of distinguished Army generals and a few business leaders.

“SFA gave me a view of the world and what could be if I applied myself,” Weatherly said. “My SFA education was the foundation of the success I achieved. The basic economic principles I learned in my economic major combined with the leadership training I received from ROTC set the stage for my military and business success.”

Candidates from the James I. Perkins College of Education will participate in a 6 p.m. ceremony on Friday, Dec. 13. On Saturday, Dec. 14, candidates from the Rusche College of Business and the College of Liberal and Applied Arts will participate in a 9:30 a.m. ceremony, and candidates from the College of Fine Arts, the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture, and the College of Sciences and Mathematics will participate in a 2 p.m. ceremony.

Degrees to be awarded include 857 bachelor’s and 156 master’s degrees. Approximately 239 students will graduate with honors, including 92 cum laude, 68 magna cum laude and 73 summa cum laude. Forty-nine will graduate with the university scholar designation.

To view the ceremony online, visit facebook.com/sfasu.

By Joanna Armstrong, marketing communications specialist at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Looking for a memorable Christmas gift for that someone special? Tickets to hear gospel sensations The Isaacs in concert on the Stephen F. Austin State University campus might be the most appreciated present you’ll give this year.

The College of Fine Arts at SFA will present The Isaacs in a special Encore Event concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24, in W.M. Turner Auditorium. The concert is sponsored in part by BancorpSouth.

The multi-Dove Award-winning and two-time (2017 and ’18) Grammy-nominated family of gospel singers, The Isaacs have an inspirational style that blends tight harmonies with contemporary acoustic instrumentation to produce a sound that appeals to audiences all over the world.

“Their unique mix of southern gospel and other sounds is heard regularly at the Grand Ole Opry and at Carnegie Hall, CMA Fan Fest and recently on ABC-TV’s CMA Country Christmas with superstar Reba McIntyre,” said Scott Shattuck, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts and director of the University Series and Encore Events.

The Isaacs began singing 35 years ago and include mother Lily Isaacs and siblings Ben Isaacs, Sonya Isaacs Yeary and Rebecca Isaacs Bowman. Playing their own acoustic instruments and joined by other band members, The Isaacs’ distinctive style has been influenced by many genres of music including rhythm and blues, bluegrass and folk, as well as country, contemporary, acoustic and southern gospel.

Encore Event tickets are: adult $45/36/27; senior $36/29/21; youth $18/14/11; SFA student $3. All seating is reserved. Pricing is based on chosen section (A/B/C). Discounts are also available for SFA faculty and staff members.

For more information, visit finearts.sfasu.edu, stop by the Box Office in Room 211 of the Griffith Fine Arts Building, or call (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS.

Spending less than $10 on the ingredients for a meal to feed four people, choosing the right beverages to avoid added sugar, preparing meals using general frameworks instead of recipes — these are some of the lessons the 23 participants in the six-week Cooking Matters program learned from Stephen F. Austin State University School of Human Sciences students.

The SFA students served as recruiting officers, nutrition educators, chef instructors, classroom managers and cleanup crew for Cooking Matters, which is a partnership between the School of Human Sciences and the East Texas Food Bank in Tyler. The program is designed to help curb high levels of food insecurity in East Texas.

“With the Nacogdoches poverty rate at 30.9%, Cooking Matters provides SFA students with a transformative experience by helping them apply their classroom knowledge and intertwine it with a community program,” said Justin Pelham, the food, nutrition and dietetics clinical instructor who teaches SFA’s Community Nutrition class.

Kacey Creel, a food, nutrition and dietetics senior from Madisonville, presented cooking and nutrition lessons to the participants.

“Students should get involved as much as they can with organizations that serve the community,” Creel said. “Seeing how much of an impact we were making in the participants’ lives through teaching them how to cook and how to implement healthier options showed me how necessary it is for us to reach out to our community.”

While SFA students developed their leadership and oral and written communication skills, Cooking Matters participants honed their grocery shopping and cooking skills. At the end of each class, they received a bag of groceries with the items prepared during the lessons that day to cook the same dish at home and reinforce their learning.

One of the participants, Jeanette Duckworth of Nacogdoches, said, “The SFA students were wonderful. They helped me change my eating habits. I hope they create a Cooking Matters 102 to build on what we learned in Cooking Matters 101.”

In its fifth year, the program generated enough interest for two classes, one at SFA and one at the Helping Other People Eat Pantry in Nacogdoches. Many of the participants heard about the program from SFA faculty members and students volunteering at Jo’s Diner, a soup kitchen at HOPE Pantry that serves meals to those in need.

For the Cooking Matters Nov. 11 graduation ceremony and potluck at the HOPE Pantry, participants made their own healthy dishes to share and enjoyed food prepared by student chefs on the Lumberjack Express, SFA’s mobile food lab.

Participants said they were grateful not only for their new nutrition and cooking skills but also for the social bonds they created during the six-week program with both their classmates and the SFA students.

“As this class went on, we attended just as much to visit with people as to learn new recipes,” said Bonnie Park, a participant from San Augustine.

After graduation, the participants hugged the students, swapped contact information and headed to their cars amid shouts of, “Call me if you need some of my soup!”

By Jo Gilmore, marketing communications specialist at Stephen F. Austin State University.