STILLPOINT Archive: last updated 12/14/2007
Restore Creation
Susan Sawyer '08
Restore Creation is an on-campus program of recycling and energy-saving that is supervised by Physical Plant. Its major initiatives take place during Symposium week--an intensive schedule of student-led forums and activities organized each year around a different theme. This year's initiatives included:
Each year Restore Creation has expanded its conservation and recycling efforts, including the recent addition of ink cartridge and cell-phone recycling programs. The Design Center also now purchases 100 percent post-consumer content copy paper for the printers and copiers around campus. Meredith Longo '07 says, "Gordon makes it obvious to students that they can be active participants in recycling and in turn be small parts of a greater movement in conservation."
Read More... Restore Creation
To Know and Be Truly Known
Amy Gentile '07
This year's Symposium--a weeklong series of student-initiated seminars and activities--was focused on the theme "To Know and Be Truly Known." Some events asked us to think about our sexuality: How do we express our intimate desires in God-honoring ways? Other events focused on relating to God through worship. We were challenged to "love the other" in our midst--the mentally ill, the homeless, the disabled, and those of different cultures or religions. We were required to take a good look at what it means to truly love when Soulforce--an activist group of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christians and non-Christians--visited the campus and presented their views. How do we love in grace without compromising truth? How does looking at our own virtues and vices affect how we look at others?
We all deeply desire to be "known truly and truly known." At a time when our identities are being profoundly shaped--apart from the churches, friends and families who have shaped us--we are reminded that we still have a need for relationship, both with each other and with the God Who bestows our identity and knows us more truly than we know ourselves.
A Technology Pioneer's Legacy
Gordon's West Campus office building contains a treasure--the personal archives of Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and longtime trustee and benefactor of the College. The archives contain thousands of pages of research and business documents, books, and objects such as hard drives, circuit boards, an "antique" magnetic core memory (pictured to the left), a complete Digital VAX computer, and Olsen's own desktop computer. Receiving the archives was a major event for the College and was noted in an article by Hiawatha Bray that appeared on the front page of the business section in The Boston Globe on April 16, 2007. Bray interviewed Daniel Tymann, executive vice president for advancement, communications and technology, and Media Relations Manager Ashley Hopkins.
The Olsen archives are considered one of the top computer collections donated in the last century and contain valuable technology history. College archivist John Beauregard '53 estimates it will take years to sort through the collection. With consulting support from John Toole, executive director of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, and his team, Beauregard and Gordon junior Lindsey Alexander will digitize and index Olsen's papers, which now exist as hard copy in file cabinets and cardboard boxes. This painstaking process will make the data accessible to researchers interested in tracing the life cycle of the Digital Corporation and legacy of Ken Olsen. Tymann believes there are important and valuable best practices and discoveries in foundational technology, company culture, leadership models and business processes--all standards in industry today.
Olsen is notable not just as a pioneer in computer technology but as a servant leader and longtime friend of the College. He served for 30 years on Gordon's Board of Trustees, along with former Raytheon Corporation's CEO Tom Phillips and evangelist Billy Graham. More recently Olsen has lent considerable support to the construction of a new science facility at the College. The Ken Olsen Science Center is the College's most ambitious building endeavor to date--an 80,000-square-foot science and technology center to be built in two phases at the heart of the Gordon campus, between Frost Hall and the Phillips Music Center.
Read More... Ken Olsen Tribute