Kenyon Home » About Kenyon » College Leadership » Office of the President » Speeches » The Inauguration of S. Georgia Nugent » Hands on! Discover Kenyon and Knox County

Kenyon CollegeAbout Kenyon

Hands on! Discover Kenyon and Knox County

Inauguration Weekend Activities

Robert Fagles to present address

President Nugent has chosen the classicist as the inaugural speaker

Guitar Wizards

Inaugural events will include performance by classical, folk, and pop guitarists

Learn inaugural ballroom dancing. Explore a wetland or an organic farm. Compose a poem. Ride a horse. Play musical instruments from Indonesia. Explore the intricacies of beer in the laboratory. Tour historic restorations. Have your picture taken with President Nugent. Hands On! offers you the opportunity to seek new worlds of knowledge and experience throughout Kenyon College and across Knox County. And it's fun!

With the Department of Art
Olin Library Atrium

Stop by to have your picture taken with President S. Georgia Nugent and place it on a specially made mural of Kenyon. Return later to find an image of the president posing with herself. Where's Georgia?

Back to Top

With the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
114 Chalmers Library

Visit with Kenyon students who will recount highlights of their studies abroad.

Back to Top

With Pat Urban, Professor of Anthropology
200 Palme House

The ancient Maya were so obsessed with time that they worshiped it, and this religious approach to time is inscribed on their monuments. Explore these myths about the Maya while you learn to read a typical inscription. Write your birthday in ancient Maya hieroglyphs.

Back to Top

With the Kenyon Ballroom Dance Club
Gund Commons Lounge

Learn some new Latin dance steps for the Inaugural Ball.

Back to Top

With the Department of Religious Studies
120 Ascension Hall

Students and faculty will be on hand to describe and demonstrate a variety of religious practices found throughout the world. Visitors may handle some religious objects and learn how they are used. Other objects will be on display.

Back to Top

With Siobhan Fennessy, Associate Professor of Biology
Depart from Middle Ground café

What are wetlands, what lives there, and why are they important? Get your hands (and feet) dirty at two area sites and find out the answers to these questions and more. We'll provide the boots!

Back to Top

With Linda Smolak, Professor of Psychology
Depart from Middle Ground café

The Kenyon College Equestrian Team will offer a riding demonstration that includes synchronized riding, jumping, and dancing with horses. Among the horses is a descendent of the famous Seabiscuit! Pony rides will also be available.

Back to Top

With Will Scott, Professor of History, and restorer Jack Esslinger
Depart from Middle Ground café

Tour the Quarry Chapel, built by College stone masons in 1862. Visit the chapel interior, learn about the restoration process (including its specially designed stain glass windows), and hear plans for its future use.

Back to Top

With Laurie Finke, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, and Peter Rutkoff, Professor of American Studies
Begin at Wing Center

The flâneur is the stroller, the pedestrian who finds delight and pleasure in ambling contentedly and unhurriedly through the city. Can one be a flâneur in the country? On a college campus? What is to be learned from the exercise of wandering about? Participants will divide into four groups and wander off to examine different historical buildings on campus armed with pictures from the archive. They will return to Wing to share their explorations over refreshments.

Back to Top

With Jennifer Clarvoe, Associate Professor of English
Sunset Cottage Seminar Room

Write your own poem by mixing elements from the past with energies in the present--not unlike the way we get heirloom tomatoes.

Back to Top

With Ellen Bell, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology
200 Palme House

As a prelude to Kenyon's inaugural festivities, explore a royal inauguration Maya-style. Consider hieroglyphic inscriptions, stone monuments, and royal burials from the Maya as a prelude to examining S. Georgia Nugent's own accession monument!

Back to Top

With the Kenyon Ballroom Dance Club
Gund Commons Lounge

Learn some new Latin dance steps for the Inaugural Ball.

Back to Top

With farmers Eric and Kate Helt and Kenyon student intern Jesse Laskey
Depart from Middle Ground café

Explore the Dharma Farm, a Knox County organic farm, its practices and philosophy. Enjoy a wagon ride.

Back to Top

With the Department of Psychology
306, 308, and 315 Samuel Mather Hall

Participate in a series of interactive stations to learn about and contribute ideas to studies by psychology department faculty members and students on the impact of mass media and various subcultures on body image and eating behavior in females and males.

Back to Top

With Jamie Keller, Associate Professor of Chemistry
103 Tomsich Hall

Students and chemistry faculty will outline the biochemistry of beer-brewing while converting malted barley into wort---a hands-on adventure in fermentation science.

Back to Top

With Charles Kindel, Woodward Development Corporation
Depart from Middle Ground café

Tour the Woodward Opera House in downtown Mount Vernon, the oldest authentic nineteenth-century theater in America. Experience what is was like to perform from the stage, take in a show from the unique horseshoe balcony, or gather in the parlor with friends after the show. Learn about the restoration currently under way.

Back to Top

With Henry Spiller, Luce Assistant Professor of Asian Music and Culture
Bemis Music Room, 201 Peirce Hall

Try your hands at some of the various hanging gongs, gong chimes, and bronze xylophone-like instruments that make up a gamelan ensemble. No prior experience (with music or with Indonesian cultures) is necessary.

Back to Top

With Ray Heithaus, Jordan Professor of Environmental Science and Biology
Brown Family Environmental Center

Hike to the BFEC pine plantation for a whole new perspective on the Kokosing River Valley and Kenyon on the Hill.

Back to Top

With Tim Shutt, Associate Professor of English and IPHS
Depart from Middle Ground café

Hear lore and ghost stories from Kenyon's history as told by Professor Shutt

Back to Top

With Balinda Craig-Quijada, Assistant Professor of Dance
Hill Theater

Conceived by post-modern choreographer Yvonne Rainer in 1970, this participatory dance is easy and fun to learn. Appropriate for folks of all ages and backgrounds--i.e., you need not be a dancer!

Back to Top