on this page:

• Four Inducted into Albright Athletics Hall of Fame
• CLASS ACT
• Welcome Class of 2013!

Four Inducted into Albright Athletics Hall of Fame

During Homecoming Weekend, Rebecca Batdorf Stone, Esq. ’85, The Reverend Dwight Davis ’97, Christopher Michael Rickards ’98 and Rachel Connolly-McGuckin’00 were inducted into Albright’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

Stone was a member of the women’s basketball and track and field teams at Albright, and she still holds the school record for 100 meter hurdles. She was also a recipient of the Women’s Auxiliary Outstanding Senior Athlete, the Women’s Basketball Outstanding Player, and the W.A.A. Senior Service Award. Stone sponsors the Albright College Indoor Female Track Outstanding Athlete Award, which is given annually at the end-ofyear banquet.

Davis was one of the most prolific players to ever step on the court at Albright. A four-year starter and two-year captain, Davis was an All-Conference selection in 1995, ’96 and ’97, and is a member of the 1,000 Point Club. A fierce rebounder, Davis left Reading, with more than 600 career rebounds and is still ranked in the top five in a variety of categories, including blocks per game and field goal percentage in a season. After his career with the Lions, Davis made the jump to the professional level, playing for teams in England and Columbia.

At Albright, Rickards led the Lions on both the baseball diamond and the gridiron. An All-Conference selection in both sports, Rickards received the Albright Freshman Male Athlete of the Year Award in 1995. That same year, Rickards not only helped the baseball team to an ECAC tournament appearance, he was also named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. He then ended his career at Albright as the 1998 recipient of the College’s Senior Male Athlete of the Year Award.

Connolly-McGuckin, a three-sport athlete, shined on the basketball court, setting multiple records throughout her four-year career. Connolly-McGuckin holds nine basketball records, including field goals attempted in a season, threepoint field goals attempted and made in a game and season, three-point percentage in a season and career, free throws made in a game, and assists in a game. She is also a member of the 1,000 Point Club.

Connolly-McGuckin was also a standout in field hockey. The conference’s Most Valuable Player in 1998, she holds the record for most assists in a game. She was named Albright Senior Female Athlete of the Year in 2000.

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CLASS ACT

To give you a taste of the interesting courses that Albright faculty and students are engaged in today, our “Class Act” feature highlights a current Albright course.

First-Year Seminar

Professor: Various Instructors; headed by the Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Joseph M. Thomas, Ph.D.

Description: For many years the College has required first-year students to take a non-qualitative course, first known as Gateway and then known as Freshman Forum. Gateway focused on the basic skills and day-to-day challenges that students face in their academic and social lives on campus, covering topics such as time management skills and total body wellness.

Freshman Forum beefed up the Gateway program and focused on a central theme such as art or math, but students only received a pass/fail grade.

First-year seminar is different from its predecessors. It is now a regular, required course with approval from the curriculum committee and a grading system. Each course is on a topic of the faculty member’s choosing. All courses are designed to introduce students to academic discourse, to be both reading- and writingintensive, and to promote contextualized historical, cultural, and social analysis and understanding of the subject.

Courses Offered Fall 2009

Jane Austen and the Contemporary World; Netherlands, Otherlands: Imaginary Places; Galileo, Diversity, and the Church; Shakespeare’s Hamlet and His Context; Scientific Discovery in Literature; Digital Art and Installation; Coming of Age in African-American Texts; Female Humor Writers in America; “Perfect Children” - Reproductive Technology and the New Eugenics; Psychoanalysis, Literature, Film; Experimental Fiction; Difference and the Quest for Truth; Geography and Identity; Creation Myths; Democracy; Media Literacy; Drugs: Pharmacology and Social Issues; New World Historical Geography; Middle East and Islamic World; Dining with God: Food and Spirituality; What is Life? – Science and Philosophy

What Faculty Say:

Denise Greenwood, instructor of English, teaches “Female Humor Writers in America,” or “Funny Women,” as she calls it. Her goal, she says, is to take the skill sets that were taught in Freshman Forum and pair them with specific readings, so that every assignment is a combination of reading, research, writing and studying. For example, students are reading Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In the novel, the main character, Lorelei, keeps a diary where she explains how her education – which consisted of learning how to snag a rich man – is progressing.

A class exercise asks students to contrast this definition of education with Albright’s definition of a liberal arts education. Students also keep a two-week journal where they write daily about something they learned either in or out of the classroom.

What Students Say:

“I like this class because it teaches you how credits, registration and classes work. This is the stuff they forget to tell you about after orientation is done. It also helps you to broaden your horizons and shows you how you learn through every aspect
of school, not just in class.” - Stephanie Garcia ’13.

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Welcome Class of 2013!

In August, Albright welcomed the largest incoming class in the history of the school. The class of 2013 consists of 543 freshmen who were joined by an additional 43 transfer students and 20 international students studying English as a Second Language (ESL). In addition, the first recipient of the 13th Street Gang Scholarship, Taylor Kutz of Reading, began her freshman year. The 13th Street Gang Scholarship was established by Albright College and the Reading School District in 2006. Freshman applicants are eligible for consideration if they have graduated from Reading High School, Northeast Middle School and 13th & Green or 13th & Union Elementary Schools. The class of 2013 also represents the largest applicant pool in the College’s history, with more than 6,000 applications—a 26 percent increase over last year’s record. Fourteen states and 11 countries are represented among class members.

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