Digging in and Breaking Ground
Construction on Schumo Center for Fitness & Well-Being is Underway
Donning construction hats
and toting gold shovels at the
official groundbreaking for
the Schumo Center for Fitness& Well-Being are
(l to r):
Steve George, Ed.D.’68,
director of athletics; Melissa
Jaworksi ’09, member of
planning committee; Cynthia
Lynn, donor; Margaret
Schumo, donor; President
McMillan; Stacey Ferraro ’07,
president, Student
Government Association;
John Thorsen, executive vice
president of Advanced
Building Systems; and
Salvatore M. Cutrona Sr. ’73,
chair, Albright Board
of Trustees. photo: Ryan McFadden
Calling it a “showpiece” on Albright’s campus, President McMillan
and honored guests, including donors Margaret Schumo and Cynthia
Lynn, officially broke ground on the Schumo Center for Fitness &
Well-Being in June.
Construction by Advanced B uilding Systems of Reading Pa., which
built Gene Shirk Stadium last year, began in August.
Offering a multitude of choices for health and wellness, the
two-story, 22,000-square-foot facility will offer a cardiovascular fitness
room; a weight room; an aerobic room; a nutrition classroom;
conference space; offices; locker rooms; an atrium; and a café featuring
healthy snacks. The center will be attached to the Bollman
Center, Albright’s indoor athletic facility located along north 13th
Street. The façade of the Bollman Center will also receive a facelift.
Thanking Schumo and Lynn once again for their gift of $4.75
million, the largest gift in Albright’s history, McMillan said, “The
Schumo Center for Fitness & Well-Being will allow us to enhance and
expand the holistic education we provide. We encourage our
students to attach a high value to their fitness and health, and we
hope that this education will stay with them all of their lives.”
The Schumo Center will be completed during the spring 2007
semester.
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Albright Senior Goes the Extra Mile
for People with Disabilities
photo: John Pankratz
What do Charles Kolb ’07 and movie
character Forrest Gump have in common?
Both took a road trip without a car – the
former on foot, cross country, and the latter
on a bicycle, across the state of Florida. However, they each left home for very different reasons.
Forrest, “just felt like running.”
Kolb, on the other hand, set out on a
two-week, 800-mile cycling journey to raise
money and awareness for people with
disabilities.
The program, known as Gear Up
Florida, is a project of Push America, a nonprofit
agency founded by Pi Kappa Phi
fraternity in 1977. Kolb is one of 35 men
from across the United States who biked
from Miami to Tallahassee, making stops in
11 other Florida cities along the way. The
riders biked 70 miles a day, stopping to
make “friendship visits” and participate in
special events with the physically disabled.
Beginning in Miami, Fla., on May 11,
2006, Kolb and his team rode to Tampa Bay
(the Gulf side), back up the middle of
Orlando and through Jacksonville, and all
the way back to Tallahassee. In all, they
spent 12 days cycling a combined 800 miles,
with only two days off.
In 2005, Albright’s Zeta Chi chapter
raised $6,000 in support of Push America.
Kolb himself raised more than $3,000 this
year by participating in the cycling event.
A Gap, Pa., native, he says his most
memorable experience was the friendship
visits. He says he learned that many people
have disabilities, but they still do the same
things that those without disabilities do.“You really see it (number of disabled people)
by going to different places,” he says.
Kolb and his fellow team members
stopped at different centers along their
cycling route. “The coolest place I went to
was Give Kids the World, a part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, located outside of
Disney World,” he says.
At these centers, five or six children
would eat dinner with the cycling team.
This was good for them, says Kolb, because
it was something special for them to do that
they don’t get to do very often.
Although the team slept on a lot of high
school gymnasium and YMCA floors, Kolb
says “cycling itself made you feel good
about yourself.” And, he adds, “It wasn’t as
hard as you might think. Most of Florida is
actually flat,” he says, laughing. “It’s cool to
know you rode your bike across Florida.”
Ultimately, Kolb says, “The people we
met on friendship visits, many with
severe disabilities, made me realize how
lucky I am.”
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