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Question of the Week

All done! Congratulations to Angela for being our only (and therefore winning) contestant in last week's Question of the Week and correctly identifying the furniture as being made of FedEx boxes!

Simply Sarah

Katie Marshall

Lest you think that student Sarah O’Connor (who will be finishing her double honours in English and Political Science degree this school year) is concerned only with academics, just hear what she has to say about her summer

“I’ve been working on my tan fairly aggressively this summer,” she says. And she adds that “I haven’t missed a Paddy’s Night all summer”, (except for the last two).

But the Stouffville (40 minutes from downtown Toronto) native has more on her mind then just partying. Starting in September, she will both be working as the Editor-in-Chief of the Acadia student newspaper The Athenaeum and writing her thesis on student media. She says she’ll be working with “the idea that student media is where the leaders of tomorrow learn to interact with media, and the impact that has on Canada.”

While O’Connor had originally planned to be a professional equestrian, she later decided to focus on her academics. Other interests include reading and eating sorbet. “I have a strange attraction to Victorian literature which I’m trying to fight,” she laughs. Most recently, she’s been reading the biography of Catherine Graham, Editor-in-Chief of the Washington Post. O’Connor’s household has recently expanded to include her younger sister, who has moved to Wolfville and hopes to teach yoga.

Hired through the VP Student Affairs office, O’Connor is working with Zac May on three projects. The first is to produce both graduation and frosh week editions of The Athenaeum, the second to design and produce a grad week book for the university, and the third is to start digitizing the old archives of The Athenaeum.

O’Connor says her plans after graduation are simple. “I’ll be figuring out a way to stay in Nova Scotia legitimately,” she says. “I would love to be the editor of some little publication and have a dog and a garden.”

Baby boom

Katie Marshall

Of course, the big news this week is all about AITT full-time staffer Jennifer Bolt. Or, more precisely, what she’s expecting. Director Bolt has announced that she and her new husband George are expecting a second child, due in February.

“George and I are both old goat parents,” laughs Bolt. “I just loved having Sarah, and I really wanted another [child].”

Born in Toronto and growing up in Mississauga, Bolt went to Western University in London, Ontario for her Business degree. After working for IBM for a few years, Bolt (after a year-long world travel odyssey) accepted a job position at George Brown College in downtown Toronto. And although she says she doesn’t miss the noise or traffic, Bolt says she loved living near Little Italy where she started learning Italian and ate her favourite authentic Italian pastas.

In her spare time, Bolt likes outdoor sports like cross-country skiing, hiking, camping, and canoeing. She’s well-known for scrap booking every aspect of her life, and likes to knit and sew. She also loves music, and admits that in high school, “I was the super band geek of the world.” She even asked for a piano instead of an engagement ring.

Spending nine years teaching marketing, communications, and business courses at George Brown, Bolt helped start a division called Learning Innovations and Academic Development. As the chair of that group, Bolt administered technology programs and distance education at George Brown, in addition to her teaching duties. She says the multiculturalism was one of her favourite things about George Brown. “I learned so much about different cultures, languages, and customs,” she said.

As the director of the AITT, Bolt manages the overall operating of the AITT, including budgeting, staffing, and project allocation. She also supports technology use on campus, ensuring through committee participation, consulting, and speaking engagements that the AITT services and resources are integrated appropriately into Acadia’s culture.

Teaching and technology, and the space between the two, are passions in Bolt’s life—and an area she intends to continue to explore. “One of the most amazing experiences is turning a student on to learning,” she says.

Teaching and faith

Katie Marshall

Like the early Church, teaching and faith are twin themes in AITT Academic Computing Specialist Michael Shaw’s life. The son of a Baptist preacher and a Port Williams native, Shaw now attends a New Covenant church with his wife and three sons.

“I think that true faith should impact every aspect of your life,” he says. “For me personally, my relationship with God directly impacts how I interact with people. It’s huge.”

Originally graduating from Acadia with degrees in computer science, Shaw soon discovered teaching. “A few years later I found I loved teaching so much that I went to St. Mary’s and got my education degree,” he says.

Since then he has taught at a variety of schools, including the old Horton High School, Novatek Training Academy, and the old community college in Windsor. “I’ve enjoyed teaching at university the most,” he says. “The students are here because they want to learn something, and I just really enjoy teaching to people who want to learn.”

On his spare time, Shaw enjoys reading (especially contemporary Christian authors such as Rick Joyner and Max Lucado), eating chocolate and nuts, and developing his writing (especially fiction). Most recently, he wrote an analogy about the church. “This writing was interesting in that I saw the story happening as I wrote it,” he says.

Since he’s been at the AITT, Shaw has had many opportunities to further his teaching interests. He works with new faculty, helping them get used to the Acadia environment. He also creates curricula for many training programs, including PRISM (Pioneering Resource Management and Integration in the State of Maine), and faculty Lunch n’ Learn sessions.

“I think one of the best things about working here is that you’re not exactly 100% sure what exactly you’ll be doing when you walk in the door,” he says with a smile.

Turning the tables on Katie Marshall

Beth Lyons

This past week, I was offered a one in a lifetime chance: I was able to sit down and turn the tables on the AITT summer journalist Katie Marshall and ask her to answer hard-hitting questions.

In the interview, we quickly got down to the basics: the job, her history, etc. Katie explained that this is her second summer with the AITT, but her first as the journalist. She describes her job as a mixture of activities meant to bolster feelings of community amongst the summer students, such as creating the weekly newsletter, and behind the scenes work documenting the activities of the AITT for grant applications and reports. Ultimately, Katie says “I find that a very interesting sort of job… I consider my job more of a public relations job that a journalism job.”

Next, we discussed Katie’s school year activities. This year she’s going into the 3rd year of a BSc in Biology, with a Geology minor. “I study trees and rocks;” is how Katie describes her academic interests. Her interest in these fields could quite possibly be attributed to her father, who is a well-known local environmentalist.

After warming her up with these questions, I get down to the dirt of the matter. Leaning towards her and lowering my voice to a confidential whisper, I ask her to tell it to me straight: “What is it like sharing an office with Judy? We all want to know!” Katie laughs and says that the only dirt she has on Judy is that she wishes the Bullpen was more of a ruckus. Katie cites Judy as having declared: “the Bullpen is so quiet this summer, it’s driving me nuts, I want to run screaming through the Bullpen!” With the much anticipated AITT showcase this afternoon, maybe we can hope that today is the day Judy takes action.

After such a charming response, it’s obvious that Katie isn’t going to crack under the pressure of my hard-hitting journalism, so I abandon my plan of asking her about any other top-secret information she’s gathered by keeping her ear to the ground in the Sandbox. Instead, I opt to satiate my curiosity on one issue. I ask Katie just about her Friday morning emails- more specifically, her tradition of sending a preliminary one announcing the unveiling of the week’s newsletter and a subsequent one sheepishly offering the link to it that she forgot to include in the first letter.

Not fazed a bit, Katie laughs and explains that “by the time I finish the newsletter every week, I feel my week is over, I’ve accomplished my big thing.” She says that in her euphoric state, she then shoots off an email announcing the newsletter and runs to get a cup of coffee. It is only upon returning with her caffeine fix in hand that she realizes she forgot to attach the link in the email.

However, she feels that this oversight has become an endearing tradition- after all, as fellow AITTer Darrell Rhodenizer has been known to comment, “it’s not Friday until Katie forgot the link to the newsletter.” Managing to turn her weekly email embarrassment into a charming custom is a testament to Katie’s PR-abilities- and the real scoop that this reporter managed to dig up.