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N.C. author Joseph Bathanti won the 2006 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction for his collection of stories, “The High Heart.”
Bathanti’s collection was selected from more than 500 entries.
Bathanti teaches creative writing and co-directs the Visiting Writers Series at Appalachian State University in Boone. His work includes four books of poetry and two novels. Read full story
Kvetching about cellulite may help women forge friendships
It’s almost inevitable: When women get together, the chatter eventually turns to whose skinny jeans don’t fit anymore and who weighs in heavier on the scale. And participation is socially mandatory, a new study finds.
Researchers call this “fat talk,” a term coined to describe a behavior common in middle school-aged Caucasian females. But the phenomenon seems to occur in older females as well.
“We have found in our research that both male and female college students know the norm of fat talk - that females are supposed to say negative things about their bodies in a group of females engaging in fat talk,” said study co-author Denise Martz of Appalachian State University.
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Also posted in the The Times of India
Mmgi (Botswana independent newspaper)
Botswana nutritionist Boitshepo Giyose has won the Distinguished Alumni Award from her alma mater, the Appalachian State University, Boone in North Carolina, United States. She will receive the award on April 21. Giyose is the first African to get the award from the university. Read full story
Unlike many college students who spend their spring break partying, about a dozen students from Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., are going to seize the “chance to give back to the community,” according to a news release from the D.C.-based National Center for Children and Families.
The center said the students, supported by Appalachian State’s Alternative Spring Break program, will leave their school, in the heart of the Appalachian mountains, to volunteer their services to “one of our nation’s most economically distressed areas.”
And where, you may ask, might that be? Why, precious reader, the Appalachian State collegians are coming to us.
Their spring break excursion will take them to Southeast Washington — specifically to J.C. Nalle Elementary School in the Marshall Heights community of Ward 7. Once there on Monday, the students are expected to work through the week with children in kindergarten through fifth grade, as well as on various projects around Nalle. Read full story
Colleges offering volunteer opportunities as spring-break options
Kendra Johnson’s friends probably think that she’s a little crazy.
They’re going to Florida for spring break, while Johnson, a sophomore from Mocksville, will be sleeping on the floor of a church in Washington. She and other student volunteers from Appalachian State University will have to be up and out by 6:30 a.m. to make room for the people who use the building as a shelter during the day.
When you’re in college, spring break is a week of freedom between the winter doldrums and the last push of exams and papers. Spring break means cutting loose and getting away, and in the fantastical tradition of MTV’s Cancun beach house, well-oiled, buff bodies gyrating to music under the hot sun.
But for some, spring break has also come to mean working at a soup kitchen in Nashville or volunteering at an organic farm in Georgia. Some local colleges say they are seeing more interest in school-sponsored alternatives to the spring-break scene. Read full story
NCSU gets $1.5 million for test plant
Researchers at N.C. State University already know they can make ethanol from sweet potatoes and switchgrass. They don’t know if they can do it day after day in quantities more meaningful than a lab beaker. A $1.5 million grant, announced Wednesday by the Golden LEAF Foundation, could help them figure it out. Other alternative fuels will also compete for investments. A second grant of $750,000 from Golden LEAF was given to Appalachian State University to build and operate a biodiesel testing facility. Read full story
KCBS-San Francisco
When a group of American women get together, the conversation will inevitably turn to complaints about their bodies, according to researchers at Appalachian State University.
The phenomenon is called “fat talk”.
“Our research showed that college students - males and females - know that when women are in a group of other women who are fat talking, that they are supposed to join in to say negative things about their bodies,” said Denise Martz, psychology professor at Appalachian State. “And there is pressure to do so.”
Her research also found that women are more inclined to like a woman who participates in fat talk than a woman who doesn’t join the discussion, said Martz. Read full story
Greensboro News-Record
If you want the planet to stop getting warmer, you’ve got to pay for it.
That’s a key theme from a set of recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that the General Assembly is expected to chew on this year.
The time for action is now, said Dennis Grady, the director of Appalachian State University’s energy center and a member of the group that made the recommendations.
“We need to stop talking about whether there is global warming and talk about what we need to do to address it,” he said. “If we don’t start cutting back on what we’re doing right now, we’re making it much more of a challenge for our grandchildren.” Read full story
