Beloit College Magazine
Beloit College Magazine
Spring 2001 Contents
Departments
Features
- Do You Do What You Say You Do?
- Renewed Spirit Marks Inauguration Day
- On the Trail of Roy Chapman Andrews
- A Hands-on Approach to History
- Chalk One Up for Student-Faculty Research
- The Writing is On the Wall
- A Touch of Gold
- A Beloit and the Peace Corps: Adventures in Service
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Interstate Park and Dalles of the St. Croix
- By Alonzo W. Pond’18 The Standard-Press St. Croix Falls, Wis., 1937
This slim volume has been reissued to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wisconsin state park that it describes. The handbook provides a thorough overview of rock formations, roads and trails, the river, the local flora and fauna, and the history of the territory, circa 1937.
The late Alonzo W. Pond, a Janesville, Wis., native, knew the turf right down to the last pothole and trillium. “He was a rather small man with leather boots laced almost to his knees,” writes the president of the St. Croix Falls Historical Society in an epilogue, “but what a giant of a man in energy and intellectual capacity.”
After earning a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago, he led expeditions to Algeria for Beloit’s Logan Museum and, photos inform us, worked in the company of Roy Chapman Andrews’06 (see story on pages 8-9). He was superintendent of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp, managed Cave of the Mounds near Madison, Wis., researched desert survival techniques for the U.S. Air Force, and punctuated his schedule with anthropology and archaeology lectures at schools and colleges throughout the U.S. Chomingwen D. Pond’50, daughter of Alonzo, contributed a thoughtful foreward.
Values Shift
- By John B. Izzo and Pam Withers’78 Prentice Hall Canada Toronto, Canada, 2000 Fair Winds
Press, Lions Bay, B.C., Canada, 2001
The book’s premise rests on common sense: If employers want to keep good people, they must create a workplace that respects workers’ personal lives and the changing values that employees are bringing to their jobs. This means that the successful employer must consider opening possibilities for training and development, acknowledging that the workplace is also an important community, and anticipating that workplaces are shaped and reshaped by shifting sets of wants, needs, and desires. Businesses ignore these elements at their peril.
Izzo and Withers combine management psychology and sociology with human resource strategy, and they point out that a company’s talent contributes mightily to its market value. In a competitive global economy, neither salary nor promotions have the power they once did to hold employees who seek to balance work and private life. The authors tapped experiences from more than 200 companies to support the Values Shift premise. Although the volume is especially relevant in a Silicon Valley environment, it is equally applicable to forward-looking service and manufacturing companies, and the authors provide examples from those venues.
Special Functions
- By George F. Andrews, Richard Askey, and Ranjan Roy Cambridge The University Press
Cambridge, England, 1999
Special Functions has generated a heartening academic murmur of appreciation and, as texts go, it is doing well: A paperback edition is under way. It is of special interest because one of the authors, Ranjan Roy, is professor of mathematics and computer science at Beloit College.
A reviewer from The Mathematical Intelligencer named the book to “the Hobbs class.” Jack Hobbs was the best cricket player of the 1920s, and the great English mathematician G.H. Hardy loved cricket. Thus, Hardy’s highest praise for anything was that it was in “the Hobbs class.”
The paperback edition will contain a reprint of the comic strip “Fox Trot.” In the strip (from June 1, 1996), a character is having a nightmare that his calculus teacher has set a problem involving ideas way beyond those considered in the class.
In the first edition, the authors included this problem among the exercises in Chapter 1. For the paperback, the authors got cartoonist Bill Amend’s permission to include the comic strip in the book. Says Professor Roy, “Apparently, this is the first time an advanced math book will have a cartoon in it.”
Training Camp
- By Cecil Youngblood Writers Club Press Lincoln, Nebraska, 2000
Those who think the life of a National Football League player, or any professional athlete, is all guts and glory need to think again. Or they can read Beloit College Men’s Basketball Coach Cecil Youngblood’s book.
Training Camp follows Youngblood through the 1979 Kansas City Chiefs training camp and preseason as he attempts to make the final roster of the NFL club. The true story shows how life in the National Football League and professional sports is much more than the celebrity lifestyle the average individual sees. The book is an in-depth look at Youngblood’s trials and tribulations as he tried to achieve his goal.
The personal account of this talented free agent gives readers the chance to experience what happens during the course of an NFL team’s training camp. Youngblood’s insightful look beyond the playing field describes his determination, stress, triumphs, and sorrows along the way. While reading the book, you can’t help but cheer for Youngblood as he comes within an eyelash of living his dream.
Beyond athletics, the book also focuses on how Youngblood used his training- camp experiences to help him later in life. The book shows how believing in yourself can pay big dividends and turn negative encounters into positive experiences.
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