The Fitchburg State University ideaLab will host its next community “hackathon” from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 18, where the topic will be how business and videogames intersect to build a creative economy. The event will be held in the ideaLab at 717 Main St. Refreshments will be served and a live DJ will be on hand. Community hackathons bring together members of the Fitchburg community to tackle topics and issues that can help move the city forward. These fun, social brainstorming events value all voices in support of constructive dialogues. The event’s topic is partially inspired by the Entrepreneurship Association as well as the Fitchburg State game design studio at the ideaLab, where students in Massachusetts' only public game design program have the opportunity to develop professional-level original games as their capstone projects. Questions being explored at this hackathon will include:How can students profit off of the content they make? Can students utilize tools like Steam? What does the gaming industry look like today and how do students fit in it? Guests can pre-register online. Back to News

Fitchburg State University CenterStage invites you to ring in the holiday season with Christmas with the Celts at 6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 15 at Weston Auditorium, 353 North St. Tickets are $28 for adults, $25 for Fitchburg State alumni, seniors and staff; and $5 for students. Tickets can be purchased at the Weston Box Office at the auditorium by calling (978) 665-3347 or by ordering online. The Celts, famous staples of PBS Television’s pledge drives, mix lively traditional Irish music and instrumentation with American pop music and their own originals. Complete with an array of top-flight musicians on uilleann pipes, Irish whistles, fiddle, bodhran, banjo, five-string bass, drums and of course, the crowd pleasing Irish dancers.  Christmas with the Celts is the brainchild of producer Ric Blair, one the country’s most respected purveyors of Celtic music. American-born he credits the popularity of the Christmas with the Celts concert presentation and the nationwide broadcasting of the show as a PBS-TV special to his unique blend of modern Christmas standards and sounds with the spirit and sounds of Celtic roots. The high-stepping spirited musical selections will have audiences clapping along from the first lively renditions of popular contemporary Christmas classics: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” as well as “Count Your Blessings,” “White Christmas” and John Lennon’s perennial “Happy Christmas.” The show presents the perfect combination of ancient Irish Carols, contemporary Christmas standards, spontaneous humor and thrilling Irish dancing giving audiences a most memorable Christmas experience. Christmas with the Celts isn’t just a concert; it is a celebration of the holiday spirit, people, community, and common connections. It’s about bring young and old together to celebrate this special time of year. Back to News

Fitchburg State University’s Community Read of Art Spiegelman’s acclaimed graphic novel Maus continues this month with book discussions, film screenings and poster sessions inspired by themes in the book. There will be a book discussion at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 12 in room 210B of the Amelia V. Gallucci-Cirio Library in Hammond Hall on the Fitchburg State campus, at 160 Pearl St. Students in the university’s English Honors Society will lead the talk. The Leominster Public Library at 30 West St. will host “The Family Legacy of the Holocaust” from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, where Professor Kevin McCarthy will moderate a screening and discussion of the film Big Sonia. The story of one amazing woman’s astonishing resilience has been hailed by critics as deeply emotional and intelligent. The discussion will explore generational trauma as portrayed in the film as well as in the graphic novel, Maus. Back on the Fitchburg State campus, there will be a Holocaust-related research poster conference from 2 to 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20 in the Amelia V. Gallucci-Cirio Library presented by students in Professor Ben Lieberman’s course on the Holocaust. To keep up with all the events surrounding this year’s book, visit the Fitchburg Community Read website. The event is part of Fitchburg State University’s 125^th anniversary celebration. Throughout the 2019-20 academic year, the university will be holding programs celebrating the breadth and diversity of the institution and the vitality of its campus community. Learn more on the Anniversary page. Back to News

Fitchburg State recently recognized several deserving alumni for their accomplishments and outstanding contributions at its biennial Alumni Awards ceremony. The inductees of 2019 are:  Jim Todd '76, '81 Alumni Service Award Jim Todd began his career in physical education, starting with Billerica Public Schools then moving on to higher education. During that time he coached basketball, a year at the high school level and then two at his alma mater, when at 25 years old, he was named one of the youngest college head coaches in the country. Todd was then called to New York State where, as Assistant Coach at Columbia University, Marist College and Manhattan College, he oversaw recruiting and scouting efforts and planned the day-to-day operations of these programs. In 1987, Todd returned to Massachusetts as Head Basketball Coach at Salem State University. Over his eight-year tenure, he led the team to nine MASCAC League Championships, one ECAC appearance and seven NCAA bids, including two Sweet Sixteen appearances. He was named the 1990 Kodak New England Coach of the Year and was inducted into Salem State’s Hall of Fame in 1998, Fitchburg State’s Hall of Fame in 2003, and the New England Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. He also led the Salem State golf program to 3 straight NCAA appearances as their Head Golf Coach from 1994-1996. His numerous basketball successes eventually brought Todd to the NBA, where he coached for the Milwaukee Bucks (1996-1998, 2002-2004, 2007-2008), Los Angeles Clippers (1998-2000), Toronto Raptors (2004-2007), Atlanta Hawks (2008-2010), Sacramento Kings (2011-2012), New York Knicks (2012-2014) and Minnesota Timberwolves (2016-2017). A number of these years he saw his teams to the NBA Playoffs. Todd also did a short stint with the Canadian Senior Men’s National Basketball Team and the Zhejiang Cyclones of the Chinese Basketball Association. In addition to his basketball records, Todd is today’s Alumni Service Award recipient for his tireless efforts to boost Fitchburg State’s Men’s Basketball program since 2017. His support of the Alumni Association has resulted in the reengagement of a large group of men’s basketball alumni, reconnecting them to their alma mater through annual reunions and golf tournaments. Todd was also inspired to spearhead an effort to raise money for the program with the end goal of one day creating a large enough endowment to support a full-time coach’s salary. In the three years since, he has successfully raised over $100,000 toward this goal, building up a team of people to support this endowment. He has used his relationships with other alumni and tapped into his personal and professional base of contacts to create a pool of supporters who are committed to not only donating themselves, but reaching out to their own spheres of influence to help raise funds. Todd is now semi-retired from the NBA and jokes that his new full-time job is working for Fitchburg State. He is passionate about his alma mater and is committed to giving our Falcons men’s basketball players the best college experience possible. Judith A. Dumont '86 Alumni Leadership Award After completing her education at Fitchburg State (BS Business) and Boston University (MS Management Information Systems) Judith A. Dumont spent 18 years at Lightbridge, a decisioning software provider for the wireless telecom industry. She helped grow the company’s revenue from $0 to over $175 million and rose to the level of president of the largest business unit. From 2009-2013, Dumont was the director of the Mass Broadband Institute (MBI) under the Gov. Deval Patrick Administration. During her tenure, MBI built a 1,200-mile fiber-optic broadband network in central and western Massachusetts (including Fitchburg) connecting hundreds of schools, libraries and public safety facilities. They also partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Veteran Services to build Mass Vets Advisor, an online tool to help veterans find the benefits to which they are entitled. In 2012, the MBI was named the Broadband Organization of the Year by the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.  In 2013, Dumont received the Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award and was named to the Fierce Telecom “Women in Wireline 2013” list of top telecom executives. More recently, Dumont has built and managed professional services organizations for a small health-information technology company and for PTC, a $1 billion global industrial innovation solution provider. She prides herself on building and transforming high performing teams that meet or exceed the company’s objectives. Since 2001, Dumont has also been a member of The Boston Club, an executive women’s organization with a mission to promote and elevate women to leadership positions. The Honorable Robert S. Hargraves ’60 Alumni Achievement Award Robert S. Hargraves grew up in Ashby in the family’s 1740s homestead where he helped his father with farming chores during WWII and throughout his high school career. He began his studies at Fitchburg State before transferring to the University of Maine at Orono where he graduated with the class of 1958 with a degree in math education. He later returned to Fitchburg State to earn his M.Ed. in Education in 1960. His thirst for learning continued through five National Science Foundation fellowships in mathematics, including two each at Oberlin College and the College of the Holy Cross, and one from Boston University where he later received a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in administration in 1968. Throughout these fellowships, Hargraves served in his first two teaching positions at Groton High School and Swampscott High School. He then served as principal at North Middlesex Regional High School in Townsend for 10 years, followed by Mahar Regional High School in Athol for 11 years, and Athol Middle School for three years. During his administrative career, Hargraves also served on the Board of Selectmen in Groton for many years. In 1995 he was elected to represent the First Middlesex District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he remained until his retirement in 2011. He served with four speakers, including Charles Flaherty, Tom Finneran, Sal DiMasi, and Robert DeLeo, and five governors, including William Weld, Paul Celucci, Jane Swift, Mitt Romney, and Deval Patrick. Hargraves sponsored legislation on matters including Lyme Disease and cyberterrorism. He was also a member of the Ways and Means Committee. In Groton, he served on the town’s Finance Committee for six years following retirement from the Legislature. Hargraves’s significant contribution to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and to the town of Groton, where he has resided for over 50 years, is unquestionable. As such, the Town of Groton declared May 1, 2017 as Robert S. Hargraves Day in honor of his decades of public service. Now retired from politics, Hargraves enjoys antique automobiles and spending time with his wife, Ellen, his three children and nine grandchildren. Back to News

Fitchburg State University’s Douglas & Isabelle Crocker Center for Civic Engagement and the non-profit WORK Inc. that supports individuals with disabilities will present a screening of the film "Intelligent Lives" at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14 in Ellis White Lecture Hall in Hammond Hall, 160 Pearl St., on the Fitchburg State campus. Admission is free and open to the public. The film stars three pioneering young American adults with intellectual disabilities - Micah, Naieer and Naomie - who challenge perceptions of intelligence as they navigate high school, college, and the workforce. The screening and discussion is designed for students, educators, administrators, teachers, and those interested in learning more about disabilities. Following the movie there will be a live panel discussing their disabilities and some of the following topics:What disabilities look like in our current society? How this personal perspective from people with disabilities benefit you? Tips for future educators/nursing/law enforcement officers regarding supporting individuals with disabilities. Learn more and register on the EventBrite page. Back to News

Matches, a series of nine short, two-person plays written by Peter Anderegg will be performed this month as Fitchburg State University’s Main Stage theater production. Anderegg’s works comprise an evening of 10-minute plays exploring themes surrounding the idea that happiness is hard to find, and something is always getting the way. Matches will be performed in the Wallace Theatre for the Performing Arts at the McKay Complex, 67 Rindge Road. Admission is free and open to the public. Donations will be accepted at the door to go toward funding a spring production of Matches in New York City, where students will be given a chance to showcase their talents as they transition into the professional world. Performances will be at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19; 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20; 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21; 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23; and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24. Matches is presented by Fitchburg State in collaboration with The Thisbe Theater Company, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the support and development of playwrights’ new works by offering readings, workshops, and full productions for selected scripts, and to support full-time students gain professional experience in the performance and technical aspects of production. More specifically, it will support students in high impact internship/capstone independent study at select venues in New York City. The event is part of Fitchburg State University’s 125^th anniversary celebration. Throughout the 2019-20 academic year, the University will be holding programs celebrating the breadth and diversity of the institution and the vitality of its campus community. Learn more on the Anniversary page. Back to News

This piece was first published by the Saturday Evening Post on Oct. 23, 2019. By Ben Railton Professor, Department of English Studies Those seeking to advance arguments for American isolationism have long found clear support in a foundational national text: George Washington’s “Farewell Address,” originally published in the American Daily Advertiser in September of his final year as president (1796). Washington’s piece, co-written by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, moves through a series of topics, but features a substantial concluding section that warns against “foreign entanglements” and supports an isolated stance in world affairs. “Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course,” Washington argues. “Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? … It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” While Washington was responding to the specific contexts of late 18th century European conflicts, his remarks also highlight the dangers of becoming too tied to any other nation’s political or global fortunes. But if we emphasize this one document too fully, we risk losing sight of a broader, crucial fact: neither the American Revolution that Washington helped lead nor the new nation that he helped govern would have succeeded or endured without foreign alliances, including a foundational one with a Muslim country. One of our most crucial Revolution-era alliances was with France, in a partnership advanced by two influential individuals: Silas Deane and Gilbert du Motier (better known by his title, the Marquis de Lafayette). Deane, a Connecticut merchant and Continental Congress delegate, was appointed in March 1776 as a secret envoy to France, seeking to secure financial support (if not political alliance) from that nation’s government. He and his colleagues would spend nearly two years pursuing that goal, eventually securing the February 1778 Treaty of Amity and Commerce and Treaty of Alliance that officially linked France to the Revolutionary cause. Just as significant was Deane’s influence on the Marquis de Lafayette, a 20-year-old Frenchman. Lafayette had already expressed enthusiasm for the American Revolution by the time Deane arrived in France, but through their relationship he took his first formal actions in support of the cause: Deane enlisted Lafayette as a major general in the Continental Army in December 1776. The Continental Congress did not have sufficient funds to bring Lafayette to the U.S., so Lafayette bought his own ship (the Victoire) and sailed for America. He arrived in South Carolina in June 1777 and spent most of the next four years in the United States, both fighting in Revolutionary battles and helping secure further French support and reinforcements for the cause. Those joint efforts culminated at the August-September 1781 Battle of Yorktown, where Lafayette coordinated a fleet of French warships to rout the British navy, blockade and lay siege to General Cornwallis’ troops, and eventually join Washington’s forces in eliciting Cornwallis’ surrender (which effectively ended the war). Without the individual efforts of Deane and Lafayette, and more importantly without the political and military alliances that they secured and helped bring to America, the course of the American Revolution certainly would have diverged. At the very least, the war would have gone on far longer, and for a Revolution where both financial backing and citizen support were always fragile and imperiled, that kind of extension might well have produced a different outcome. That success wasn’t just about victory on the battlefield. If the United States were to endure beyond the Revolution, it would also need economic and social (as well as military and political) alliances with foreign nations. The first such economic partnership was offered very early in the Revolution by an unlikely ally: the North African Muslim nation of Morocco. On December 20, 1777, Morocco’s progressive leader, Sultan Sidi Muhammad Ibn Abdallah, wrote letters to European merchants and ambassadors throughout North Africa stating that American ships would be free to enter Moroccan ports under the same conditions as those from any other independent nation. While not yet a formal treaty, this statement represented the first recognition of an independent United States by any nation in the world, and along with that symbolic value offered a key international trading partner during those economically challenging Revolutionary years. Both the Revolution and the threats of Mediterranean piracy kept the two nations from formalizing a treaty for a few years, but in June 1786 the U.S. emissary Thomas Barclay secured a Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and Morocco. In early 1787 Thomas Jefferson and John Adams signed the treaty in their roles as foreign ministers to France and England respectively, and in July 1787 the Confederation Congress ratified the treaty. That treaty, the first of a series that came to be known collectively as the “Barbary Treaties,” did more than just cement the Revolutionary-era friendship between the two nations. It made clear that the new United States was an economic and political actor on the world stage, one whose relationships and alliances would extend far beyond Europe. It also helped facilitate Moroccan immigration to the U.S., which created the influential “Moorish” American community in 1780s Charleston, South Carolina. On December 1, 1789, just a few months into his first term as president, George Washington wrote a letter to Sultan Abdallah, formally extending the “Thanks of the United States, for [the Sultan’s] important Mark of your Friendship for them.” He added, “It gives me Pleasure to have this Opportunity of assuring your Majesty that, while I remain at the Head of this Nation, I shall not cease to promote every Measure that may conduce to the Friendship and Harmony, which so happily subsist between your Empire” and the U.S. Less than a decade after corresponding with the Sultan, George Washington was writing his farewell letter, advising a more “detached and distant” relationship with foreign nations. Ironically, only a few years later, we became embroiled in a naval conflict with France known as the “Quasi-War,” which featured the very bickering over debt, trade, and political maneuvering that Washington was likely hoping to avoid. But by remembering America’s early relationships with France and Morocco, we can engage with the crucial role played by foreign alliances in both the American Revolution and the nation’s enduring existence. This series by American studies professor Ben Railton explores the connections between America’s past and present. Back to News

Musician and visual artist Walter Wright will present as part of the annual Kendricken Memorial Lecture Series at Fitchburg State University at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 25 in Ellis White Lecture Hall in Hammond Hall, 160 Pearl St. Admission is free and open to the public. Wright will share his thoughts on new media, collaboration, and improvisation. He specializes in a blend of improvisation that includes computer programming, electro-acoustic music, video, and performance. What Wright loves about improvisation is that the performance is “in the moment” and, like real life communication, it is “always open-ended, fraught with possibility.” His career has spanned across a wide range of disciplines, and he has been a digital media pioneer. In the 1970s he was an artist-in residence at the Experimental Television Center in New York City, where he started video performance touring at public access centers, colleges, and galleries with the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer. In 1989 he helped work on an “intelligent” paint program for Truevision. Later with partner Mary Ann Kearns, he co-founded the 911 Gallery, the first all-digital gallery on the World Wide Web. Today Wright performs with various groups such as Bats From Pogo, Egregoros, and ensemble inédit?!.   Walter Wright’s presentation is part of the Kendricken Memorial Lecture Series hosted by the University’s Communications Media Department. This lecture is funded by generous support from the Kendricken family and is named for the 2013 alumnus who died in 2014. Kendricken is remembered as an extraordinary individual, whose prodigious energy fueled a boundless curiosity. Foremost among his many passions were film, music, and literature. The lecture series brings in artists whose work and spirit resonate with Kendricken’s legacy to the Fitchburg State community. Back to News

The latest U.S. News & World Report college rankings were published recently with a new element: social mobility. Because of its service to disadvantaged students, Fitchburg State was named a Top Performer on Social Mobility in the magazine's Best Colleges 2020 rankings. The issue reports that economically disadvantaged students are less likely than others to finish college, even when controlling for other characteristics. But some colleges are more successful than others at advancing social mobility by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants. The vast majority of these federal grants are awarded to students whose adjusted gross family incomes are under $50,000. US News has more information about the ranking. Back to News