The Newtown, PA, native began his road to marathon running slowly, starting with lifestyle changes. “I started to work out a little bit, doing simple things like push-ups and sit-ups and I watched what I ate. I knew that running was the best way to lose weight, so I started off small and ran one mile a day and slowly added on until I was running eight miles a day. Overall, I lost 80 pounds and had a lot of fun running. So I wanted a new challenge.”

Franc found that challenge in the New Jersey marathon. Training daily with his father, he went from running eight miles, to 12 miles, to 24 miles at a time. He finished his first marathon on May 1, stride in stride with his father, clocking in at three hours forty minutes. One year later, Franc cut his time by more than 20 minutes, crossing the finish line in 3:19.

Franc ran once again at the New Jersey marathon on May 5, achieving a personal best time of 3:09 and placing in the top three for his age group. Throughout his running career, Franc has supported the Kortney Rose foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports pediatric brain tumor research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Through three years of fundraising, he has raised over $3,500 for the foundation.

More than 430 artworks submitted to Art, Innovation, and Ideas submissions are being reviewed by a jury of contemporary artists, curators, and educators, including internationally acclaimed artist, illustrator, and author Faith Ringgold. Ringgold, most known for her painted story quilts, has works in the permanent collections of many museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  She has received innumerable awards including 22 honorary doctorates. She is a devoted advocate for art education and has illustrated 16 children’s books, 11 of which she also authored. Other jurors include New Jersey artist and educator Aylin Green, Baltimore-based sculptor and fine artist Christine Tillman, painter and director of Art Collaborations in Princeton Heather Barros, and TCNJ Gallery Director Emily Croll.

Art, Innovation, and Ideas is intended to connect student learning and art to current real-world issues. It aims to exhibit meaningful two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and media artworks and to recognize efforts by New Jersey art educators to push the boundaries of the arts in K–12 schools. LaJevic comments: “As the world is changing, it is vital that arts pedagogy and curriculum reflects the world in which we live. As such, I support innovative art-making that connects student learning and art to the real world, academic subjects, social issues, big ideas, and/or contemporary art.”

TCNJ Art Gallery is located in the Arts and Interactive Multimedia Building (AIMM) on the campus at 2000 Pennington Road in Ewing. In June, the gallery is open to the public free of charge Wednesdays and Sundays from 1 until 3 p.m and by special appointment for groups and school visits. For more information about exhibitions and programs at the TCNJ Art Gallery and for directions and parking, visit tcnj.edu/artgallery or call 609-771-2633.  Exhibitions at TCNJ are funded in part by the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission through funding from the Mercer County Board of Chosen Freeholders and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Click here for photos from TCNJ’s 2013 Commencement activities.

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Click here to see our Storify recap of TCNJ’s 2013 Commencement ceremonies.

All photos (c) Dustin Fenstermacher.

Mark S. Kiselica

Additionally, Kiselica will participate in weeklong retreats and group case studies, in efforts to create a network of higher education leaders across the United States and abroad. Margarita Benítez, interim director of ACE’s Emerging Leaders Group and the ACE Fellows Program, calls this year’s group of fellows a “talented, diverse group,” stating that “The ACE Fellows Program will strengthen their leadership skills, expand their networks, and prepare them to tackle the wide array of issues facing the higher education community.”

Kiselica, professor of counselor education, has served as the interim dean of the School of Education for the past three years.  Previously, Kiselica served as chair of the Department of Counselor Education, acting dean of the School of Education, and vice provost of TCNJ. He completed his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Saint Vincent College, his master’s degree in psychology from Bucknell University, and his doctorate in counseling psychology from the Pennsylvania State University. Kiselica has dedicated much of his professional life to studying, understanding, and helping troubled boys and men and to addressing serious social problems, such as racism and adolescent pregnancy and parenthood. He is the author of over 140 publications, including five books. A former president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity, he has served as a consulting scholar for the Federal Fatherhood Initiatives of the Clinton, G.W. Bush, and Obama administrations, and he headed an award-winning campaign to confront racism and anti-Semitism in Pennsylvania. In recognition of his national impact on the science and practice of the profession of psychology, he has been named a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and in honor of his work on many social issues, he received the American Counseling Association’s Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person.

Mark Woodford, chair of the counseling education department at the College, calls Kiselica “a remarkable professional and individual.” Woodford added, “It is not surprising to me that he has been nominated for, and been awarded, an American Council of Education Fellowship. This honor serves as a testament to the far reaching influence of his scholarly achievements and to his leadership and service to The College of New Jersey community and beyond.”

Founded in 1918, ACE is the major coordinating body for all the nation’s higher education institutions, representing more than 1,600 college and university presidents, and more than 200 related associations, nationwide. It provides leadership on key higher education issues and influences public policy through advocacy.

Keith Brown ’99

Ever since he was a child, Keith Brown ’99 remembers seeing the balance between morality and economics.

“I’ve had a series of meaningful moments where culture shaped economic interactions,” Brown told the audience that gathered on campus earlier this semester to hear his lecture, “Just One Normal Coffee: Crafting a Moral Reputation Through Fair Trade.

During Brown’s childhood years, he said, his mother worked for Bell Atlantic and his father sold products for a fire safety company over the phone. In both atmospheres, Brown was able to see heads and tails. Though his parents seemed upbeat and optimistic while conducting their business, their demeanor changed upon hanging up the phone.

Brown said those experiences were still in his mind when he arrived at TCNJ, in 1995, to study sociology and economics.

“I think consumption, markets, and morality—these issues have always interested me,” Brown said. “I became a sociology major, in part, because I was interested in how culture influences markets, how we make economic decisions, and how that is influenced by our personal beliefs and moral code.”

Brown continued to see these values displayed in the workplace, and that’s what led him to quit his job as a financial planner after one day. He said the company wanted him to have a certain haircut and wear a certain suit; he wasn’t comfortable with such an arrangement.

Since handing in his business suit, Brown has focused his curiosity on research. Now an assistant professor of sociology at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, he recently published Buying into Fair Trade: Culture, Morality and Consumption. The book “turns the spotlight onto this growing trend, exploring how fair-trade shoppers think about their own altruism within an increasingly global economy,” according to the publisher’s description.

“Fair-trade focuses on how you should buy [a certain] product because it’s more socially responsible,” Brown said. “I was interested to see how morality compares with things like price, taste, aesthetics, and things like that.”

To obtain the data and information he needed about fair-trade coffee and handicrafts, Brown conducted over 100 interviews with fair-trade consumers, national leaders of the movement, coffee farmers, and artisans. He also took trips to Nicaragua to see the fair-trade coffee farms first-hand.

“I think every day we make decisions as consumers that put our moral or ethical code in conflict with our finances, but to see store owners and managers, who own fair-trade coffee shops or handiwork shops, make decisions to try and put their ideals into practice was inspiring,” Brown admitted.

Going into the process with almost no prior knowledge of the two areas of study, Brown was in awe of some of the realities he came to learn about. Although the shop owners’ main concerns were to help those in need, Brown found that they were forced to focus on other areas to sell their products.

“What surprised me is that when people talk about fair trade, they rarely talk [about] the moral imperative of buying responsibly. They don’t say, ‘You should buy this to help save these families,’” Brown explained. “They say, ‘You should buy this because it’s priced competitively or it taste good or it looks nice.’ Very rarely do they promote moral issues and explain why people should buy a product.”

While working on the book Brown came to know Joe Cesa, who owned a fair-trade shop in Philadelphia and helped connect Brown with the fair-trade community. It was through Joe’s story that Brown saw values put into practice, showcasing that money wasn’t everything.

“Joe was losing his home, lost all his retirement [funds], took out all the equity in his home, and basically went bankrupt,” Brown said. “Yet while he was doing that, he was funneling this money toward issues that he cared about. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest decision on his part, but it was still inspiring.”

While Brown admits there are many sides to the story told in his book, he says it’s a story that is just as two-sided as the one he saw growing up.

“On one level it’s an optimistic story about people doing whatever it takes to support the causes that they believe in,” Brown said. “On the other hand, it’s a critical or pessimistic story in the sense that a lot of these movements for social change within markets… at the end of the day these retailers need to make a profit. They’re a business and they have to abide by the rules of the market, and that often means promoting things that they don’t care much about.”

Through Point:Safety Education, Taylor and Stanton use their skills and experiences to provide tips to educators on how to assess, react, and manage a violent scenario in their school.

“It’s a flight or fight thing,” Taylor said. “If you have no other option than to fight, we teach use of concealment and use of cover.”

The duo held its first seminar in early March. Teachers from Piscataway, Hamilton, and Toms River attended. “It was very well received,” Taylor said. “We’re still tweaking a few things, but it’s a very informative and comprehensive program.”

In addition to running seminars for individuals, Point:Safety has also performed active shooter drills—with safe train weapons that do not fire—at Mercer County schools, including the Peddie School. Taylor and Stanton have also been in touch with Notre Dame High School (in Lawrence) and were recently recommended to the Elizabeth School Board by the city’s police department, according to Taylor.

On top of dissecting what can be done in the classroom if a shooter enters, the program also teaches the school’s faculty and administration how to describe a threat when calling it in to local police. Stanton introduced SWAT terminology to the program that details how to label sides of a building as well as openings, which include doors and windows.

“Our training has bits and pieces of defensive tactics, firearms training, SWAT, and hostage recovery tactics,” Taylor said. “We even go in and talk to them about police emergency response to help them get a good emergency plan in place.”

While the program is only in its infant phase, Taylor and Stanton have high hopes for the future of this kind of training.

“We both believe in this,” Taylor said. “We really think it’s something that’s needed and something that’s necessary. I even think we should reach out to colleges and say this should be part of a teacher’s training before they get their degree. We should let [future teachers] have this knowledge to protect themselves and the children if this stuff happens.”