A weekly newsletter to build community through updates, opportunities, and celebrations | | March 27, 2025 | Volume 11 | Issue 27 | | Spotlight on Sarah Shuman | | |
By Sarah Shuman, Faculty Medical Laboratory Technology
I grew up in Davidson County most of my life. I started attending the college as an early college student in 2006. I graduated in 2010 from high school and decided to stay here and go through the MLT program. A few years after finishing the program, they asked me to come back and be a lab assistant. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and that lead to me getting my bachelors degree so I could teach full time. While this is my first year full time, I have been around awhile and have been teaching part time for a few years now. I love what the college is doing and getting to be apart of the education here.
I have been married to my husband for 13 years (who I actually met in a college class here) and we have one daughter who is 8. We also have a dog, several chickens, pigs and turkeys! In my spare time, I love to garden. I grow a lot of food each year as well as own a cut flower farm with my sister in law.
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Travel: I am not a huge traveler and love to stay home but if I had to pick a place to visit, it would probably be the Grand Canyon
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Podcasts: I listen to a lot of gardening podcasts, some of my favorites are The Beginner's Garden with Jill McSheehy and Field & Garden with Lisa Mason Zieglar.soon is "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl" by Issa Rae.
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Food: This is tough for me to answer. I grow so much food that I love to try it all. If I had to pick just one vegetable that's my favorite I would say tomatoes. I love to put them on pizza and tacos.
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Show: I loved With Love, Meghan on Netflix.
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First job? My first job was at a small grill in High Point. I learned quickly that I wasn't a good waitress because I constantly dropped things or spilled them. One time I spilled 4 Cheerwines on someone wearing a suit with a white dress shirt at lunch.
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Professional Learning Events
| | | | Spring Break in Costa Rica | | |
By Alison Pearce
Over spring break, Jill Simpson and I took a group of students and community members to beautiful Costa Rica. Costa Rica is home to 6 active volcanoes, tons of wildlife, and many different ecosystems including tropical rainforests, dry forests, and cloud forests. We tried to see and do as much as possible over our 8 days there.
We flew into San Jose, and left early the next morning for Tortuguero National Park. This area is an important nesting site for several species of sea turtles including the leatherback. We learned about sea turtle conservation at the sea turtle conservancy and toured the museum. We also took a canal tour by boat and saw monkeys, caiman, toucans, macaws, and lots of other animals.
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Our next stop was the town of La Fortuna, near the Arenal volcano. We kayaked on lake Arenal, which is the largest lake in Costa Rica. It was tripled in size by the building of a dam in 1979, which now generates about 20% of the country’s electricity.
Next we headed to Monteverde, in the mountains of Costa Rica. This leg of the trip was action packed to say the least! We hiked in the cloud forest, zip lined over the forest canopy, visited a butterfly garden, toured a coffee and chocolate plantation, and went for a night hike.
Next it was back to San Jose for the final stop of our trip. The last big event was our whitewater rafting trip on the Rio Sarapiqui. We rafted through class 2 and 3 rapids and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. We learned so much about Costa Rica, and made so many great memories and friendships along the way.
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Dear Widgy,
Can I Use Panorama without a Moodle course?
Yes! Whether you have a Moodle course or not, faculty and staff have access to Panorama’s DocHub through the YuJa Panorama Platform and entering your Davidson-Davie credentials.
DocHub enables you to:
- Create folders
- Upload, sort, and organize individual documents such as PPT, DOCX, and PDF
- Access accessibility reports and
- Remediate your digital content--more on this in the upcoming weeks!
Want to learn more about YuJa Panorama’s DocHub? Check out this DocHub article.
| | Professional Learning Faculty Fellow | | |
By Amy Holmes
Amanda Klinger is our first Faculty Fellow, Professional Learning. She's already busy collaborating with Gloria Johnson, CTL Chair, to make Summer Institute a great experience. During the next few months, Amanda will help us roll out Vector Solutions, our new professional development tracking platform, collaborate with Grant Jolliff and the Piedmont Hub, and support New Faculty Orientation. Additionally, Amanda is full time math faculty at the Davie Campus.
Please reach out to Amanda with ideas you have for professional learning.
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By Michelle Williamson
Over Spring Break, Keisha Jones and I led 20 students and community members through Japan - from Tokyo, to Kyoto, to Hiroshima, to Miyajima Island, back to Kyoto, and finally back to Tokyo! During that week, we dressed in kimonos for a traditional tea ceremony, saw the very first cherry blossoms in Tokyo, practiced the art of calligraphy with a professional calligrapher, hung out with some incredibly hungry and only somewhat tame sika deer, participated in a guided tour of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park led by survivors and their families, did entirely too much shopping in Tokyo’s famous shopping districts, spent way too much time in convenience stores (commonly referred to as "Konbini"), experienced rush hour in Tokyo - the most populated city in the world, and more!
| | While there were a few hiccups early on, specifically while transporting our luggage through the subway in Tokyo during rush hour, our travelers showed that they could adapt and overcome unexpected challenges. By the end of the week, even our most reserved travelers were confidently navigating the busy streets, including Shibuya Crossing, the world's busiest pedestrian intersection, with thousands of people crossing from all sides at once! Seeing this transformation from unsure and overwhelmed to confident and resourceful is always one of my favorite parts of leading this trip. | | |
Our marvelous tour guide, Jan, was also impressed and gave kudos to our group for being the best group he’s ever worked with. In particular, he cited their punctuality (which is very important in Japan!), respectfulness, and understanding of customary Japanese societal rules and communication styles. Normally, he has to spend a lot of time clarifying misunderstandings and explaining fundamental aspects of Japanese culture; however, with our group, he could instead have deeper conversations with travelers about Japan’s history, culture, and traditions.
As always, our time in Japan was both memorable and transformative. I’m already looking forward to our next Japan program, as I envision the places we’ll explore and the meaningful experiences we’ll share along the way!
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International Intrigue
The Truth behind St Patrick’s Day
By Órla Casserly
St Patrick’s Day is the national holiday of a small island off the west coast of Europe, yet it is celebrated joyfully and annually far beyond Irish shores. What began as a religious festival commemorating the death of Ireland’s most famous slave has grown into celebrations of Irish culture and society and in what is the most widely celebrated Saint’s day in the world - why so?
Born in Wales in the 4th century, Patrick himself was captured by pirates and brought to Ireland where he worked as a shepherd. He is said to have brought Christianity to the pagan people of Ireland and founded schools, churches and monasteries across the country. Some of the most commonly told stories associated with our patron saint are:
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- He used the shamrock (not the four-leaf clover) to explain the holy trinity - the father, the son, and the holy spirit - to the people of Ireland
- He is credited with riding Ireland of snakes
- He fasted at the summit of a mountain in County Mayo, now known as Croagh Patrick, for 40 days. Today, many climb this mountain in pilgrimage while others simply climb for leisure and the breathtaking views of 365 islands in Clew Bay and the Atlantic coast, a challenge my family and I undertake annually.
- March 17th is considered the one day when people are allowed to break Lent, and so marked a day of chocolate and ice-cream feasts for a young Órla.
Fundamentally, St Patrick’s Day is an immigrant holiday. St Patrick himself was an immigrant and it was homesick Irish emigrants in the United States who turned it into a largely secular holiday. Although some deliberation remains as to where the first St Patrick’s Day parade took place, records show a celebration of ‘the Feast of San Patricio’ in St Augustine, Florida in 1601. It wasn’t until 1762 that New York held their first parade and not until 1903 that a parade was held in Ireland. Today, the parade, along with a trip to the pub, is considered an essential part of celebrations in towns, villages and cities across the island and abroad.
Paddy’s Day is more than a wear green and drink Guinness holiday. It is an endorsement of the fantastic things that immigrants can bring to the places they go to when they bring their own culture, embrace their own identity and gather as a community. It shows what can happen when an immigrant people acknowledge where they are and the work they do while maintaining a proud connection to their homeland. More so, it shows what is possible when immigrant and host communities overcome discrimination and opposition and provide a space for mutual growth and understanding.
Today, Ireland is the destination of many immigrant communities whether that be by choice or for those fleeing conflict in their homelands. Parades are evolving to include and represent the growing diversity of modern Ireland while music festivals such as Dermot Kennedy’s Misneach in Sydney and Boston are creating an outlet for the many young people who continue to emigrate from Ireland. Every year Ministers of the Irish Government are appointed to visit cities and communities around the world to engage with the diaspora and acknowledge the continuing impact of the Irish abroad across various fields such as entrepreneurship, technology and the arts.
Please allow me to leave you with one insight to make your celebrations that bit more authentic: we do not call it St Patty’s Day, stick to St Patrick’s Day or Paddy’s Day and enjoy the ‘craic’!
| The summit of Croagh Patrick, County Mayo, with my Granny and Mam in August 2018 | | | | Do You Have a Story to Share? | | We want to promote faculty and staff stories! Please contact Amy Holmes (amy_holmes@davidsondavie.edu) with ideas or referrals for stories. | | The Storm Report is brought to you by | | | | |
