Summer '08 Connect

Volume 3Number 1

Summer 2008

Rebuilding lives while building homes 2Students focus on West Nile Virus 4Supplemental grant funds research 5Rodeo through the lens 6Theater season is family friendly 9Shoshone donation matched 12

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Inmates at the Wyoming Honor Farm near Riverton are learning high-demand job skills that should take them from incarceration to desired employment as a result of a partnership between Central Wyoming College, the Wyoming Community Development Authority and the Wyoming Department of Corrections.

In April, CWC graduated its first class of 19 inmates from a construction trades certification program where the prisoners learned job skills while building desperately needed homes for low-income families in the state.

“It is absolutely the perfect partnership,” said CWC Executive Vice President for Academics J.D. Rottweiler. “This is education, workforce training and community development at its best.”

The felons at the Wyoming Honor Farm get a second chance at rebuilding their lives while building homes for the people of Wyoming who greatly need affordable housing, he said. The program not only gives the incarcerated students hands-on experience in the construction of the houses, it also incorporates a community and service learning component.

CWC has always had the responsibility for providing educational services to the Honor

Farm in Riverton and the Wyoming State Penitentiary at Rawlins. But when the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act overturned the law allowing inmates to receive federal tuition assistance, funding for those services was eliminated.

“Since that time, we’ve been looking for ways to provide educational services to inmates,” Rottweiler said.

After the DOC was unsuccessful in hiring its own construction trades instructor to teach the inmates as part of its Prison Industries program, CWC stepped in and developed the curriculum and provided the

instructor. The WCDA offered the supplies for the building of the homes, and the joint venture was born.

“The project requires the best of all partners,” Rottweiler said. “CWC offers a quality instructional program, the Department of Corrections provides skills for inmates who are soon to be released back into society, and the WCDA provides all the seed money and supplies to build much-needed affordable houses.”

Rottweiler estimates 12 homes will be completed during the first year of the program and 51 students will earn a 20-credit certificate from CWC as well as a number of nationally recognized credentials through the National Center for Construction Education and Research.

“This will allow these graduates the most flexibility possible as they enter the workforce or continue their higher education,” Rottweiler said.

Bil Carter, industries manager with the Department of Corrections, said that if even only half of the 51 inmates who complete the course never return to prison, the program will have saved taxpayers over a half million dollars per year.

In addition to saving taxpayer money,

Rebuilding lives while building homes

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Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal was a guest of the Honor Farm when the inmates unveiled the first two homes built by the Building Tomorow program. He is being interviewed by KCWY-TV’s Jackie Dorothy, a CWC alumnus.

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Carter believes the program will produce productive citizens and will also prevent future victims.

In order to be considered for the program, inmates must have earned a high school diploma or a GED while successfully passing a formal interview. Upon completion of the program, they receive college credit from CWC and the national certification as well.

“We believe in correctional industries for people in our prisons,” Carter added. “It has been proven over and over that inmates who participate in meaningful work and educational programs while incarcerated are much less likely to re-offend and return to prison.”

Melissa Duncan, an Honor Farm employee supervising the construction trades inmates, said they were proud of their accomplishments and were especially warmed by Rottweiler’s commencement address.

“My men could not stop talking about it and how important it made them feel,” Duncan wrote in an email to Rottweiler after the ceremony. Because of Rottweiler’s recognition, one inmate told Duncan that: “maybe it is time I do something with my life that my family can be proud of.”

“Thank you so much for the boost to the confidence level of these men,” Duncan

wrote in her email. Rottweiler said the inmate commencement ceremony was truly the “highlight” of his year and called it “remarkable.” One prison trustee told Rottweiler said it was the first time his mom had said, “I’m proud of you.”

Rottweiler credits CWC construction trades instructor Jay Rodewald for launching the “Building Tomorrow” program from its infancy to the completion of the first two homes in April. Rodewald, who previously instructed CWC and other local students in building the EnCana Centennial Home for Riverton’s Habitat for Humanity, teaches the incarcerated students year round. The homes can be purchased by those who qualify and moved to the location of the buyer’s choice.

Once a prisoner completes the program,

he is allowed to continue working on the housing project and is paid.

“These project homes provide the necessary hands-on component to the education received by the students and provide a true-to-life workforce experience,” Rottweiler said. “The students have worked in varied weather conditions, under unique tool circumstances, while completing their education and have produced homes we can all be proud of.”

The students really work hard, Rottweiler added, and the college degree and marketable skills upon their release are real incentives. The program has the potential to expand.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal was a featured speaker at the ribbon cutting ceremony in April.

Rebuilding(continued from previous page)

CWC estimates 12 homes will be built annually at the Honor Farm.

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A team of Central Wyoming College sci-ence students is undertaking a long-term research project this summer to determine how widespread West Nile Virus is in Fremont County.

Armed with resources from a grant through INBRE (Idea Networks for Biomedical Research Excellence); the students intend to collect sera from local organisms to test for antibodies to the virus.

CWC Biology and Microbiology Profes-sor Steve McAllister said antibodies to the virus remain in organisms after the virus has cleared, which should give more information on the prevalence of the virus host popula-tions.

West Nile was first detected in Wyoming in August 2002 and Fremont County has had the vast majority of the cases in the state. Of the 145 cases reported in Wyoming in 2007, 118 came from Fremont County.

As a graduate student, McAllister worked with the pathogenic bacteria Bartonella, a disease spread by sand flies. The scientist gave a presentation on the research last fall and was encouraged by CWC colleagues to study the high incidence of West Nile in Fre-mont County.

He hopes the research team, which in-cludes students Whitney Ballard, Selena

Hammer and Kera Wakefield, will be able to answer more questions about West Nile Virus. “We don’t know how much of the population has been exposed to the virus,” McAllister said.

Acknowledging the research will take sev-eral years to complete, the professor said he will need to recruit new students each year to complete the study. The first team was se-lected based on their demonstrated abilities in CWC biology courses as well as grade point averages.

McAllister’s long-term plan is to test humans who have been exposed to the virus to determine if they will be immune to future infections. A number of people diagnosed with the virus have already volunteered to be test subjects.

McAllister and his team are beginning to collect the data and he is training the stu-dents in the laboratory techniques to conduct the research. With INBRE funds, the college has converted a storage closet in the chemis-try lab into a bio-safety level 2 lab to handle potentially disease-causing agents.

To his knowledge, this type of survey has not been conducted in Fremont County, McAllister said, and he hopes to have the preliminary study completed by the end of the summer. McAllister’s team will also share

information with Fremont County Weed and Pest, which is also undertaking a West Nile Virus research project.

The students will present their findings at the annual INBRE meeting in the fall. When the research is completed, the findings will be published.

INBRE was created to get undergradu-ate students involved in biomedical research and many graduates of CWC’s program have gone on to universities to continue study in biomedical fields.

“It has had quite an impact on our stu-dents,” said McAllister, who notes it is un-usual for first and second-year students to be able to participate in this type of research. (See related story on page five.)

The students will be collaborating with local veterinarians as well as other local and state agencies in conducting the research.

Since it jumped the Atlantic and landed in New York in 1999, the West Nile virus has spread to all of the lower 48 United States. The West has been especially hard hit by the mosquito-borne disease. In 2007, 11 west-ern states reported nearly 1,600 cases of the West Nile Virus, more than half of all cases in the country. At least 28 people died in the West from West Nile infection during 2007.

Students focus on West Nile Virus in Fremont County

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Central Wyoming College has received a sup-plemental grant to continue the research begun in May of 2006 by a CWC graduate who hopes to someday work for the Center for Disease Control or the World Health Organization.

Funding from the Wyoming EPSCoR Commu-nity College Research Support Program allows CWC students Brittany Barlow and Jim Robeson to carry on the research begun by CWC graduate Sage McCann, who is now a pre-medicine student at the University of Wyoming.

McCann, working with CWC physical science Professor Suki Smaglik, spent several summer sessions collecting water samples at the hot springs in Thermopolis to study organisms that thrive there. The study was prompted by impres-sive developments in medicine and biotechnolo-gy from the bacteria that survives in the thermal features of Yellowstone Park.

CWC Biology and Microbiology Professor Steve McAllister joined Smaglik’s research as an expert on microbes. In addition to McCann, CWC graduate Jennifer Harris, now a senior at UW, worked on the project.

This summer, McAllister’s research team of Barlow and Robeson will collect water samples and categorize thermophiles, the slimy matter growing in the hot springs in Thermopolis. The

Supplemental grant funds more research

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Selena Hammer of Riverton works at a Biosafety Cabinet that is used to safely handle infectious diseases. With grants from INBRE and EPSCoR, CWC purchased an ultra low temperature freezer that can be used to store biological samples at temperatures as low as 80 degrees Celsius below zero. In addition, the students have access to a thermocycler, used to amplify DNA samples, and other equipment necessary for an operating molecular biology lab.

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Before arriving in the United States this past fall, Kate Gaustad’s only concept of rodeo was what she had seen in

the movies and on television. Now the London photographer is an old hand at the sport having spent the better part of a year driving down

long western highways with members of the Central Wyoming College Rustler Rodeo Team.

She’s been to Texas and Arizona and almost every state in between. Her camera is always present, and she is continually clicking off images of ropin’, ridin’, crowds

cheerin’, and cowboys sippin’ Crown and Coke. She’s picked up the lingo, using rodeo vernacular like “slack,” “bull doggin’,” and

“rough stock,” but with a proper British accent. Though she has lived and breathed rodeo for a good portion of a year, Kate said she won’t even begin to know “one-

hundredth of what it takes to compete.” The 25-year-old photojournalist became fascinated with the sport

when she watched a rodeo on the telly while on holiday in New York. She’s photographed soccer, rugby and cricket. When she decided

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to take on this project she hoped that Euro-peans would become just as captivated as she was by rodeo.

“I was looking for a project of interest to English people,” said Gaustad, who hopes some of the more than 10,000 digital images she’s recorded will be published in a European magazine or even in a book. Kate enrolled in a course at the University of Wales and her course project was to spend the semester documenting a year in the life of a successful rodeo team.

“As an English photographer it is impos-sible not to be intrigued and influenced by the mythic traditions of the American cow-boy,” she said. “However, the aim of this project is to go beyond the traditions of the sport itself, and to tell the stories of the varied set of individuals who currently uphold them.”

Financed by student loans, she searched the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Associa-tion website for a rodeo team to follow. She focused on schools that had winning records and wrote 10 letters of inquiry. She received responses from three – one of which was from Charlotte Donelson, an associate dean at CWC who supervises CWC’s nationally-ranked rodeo program.

“Charlotte was quite accommodating and really organized in terms of what the college wanted,” Kate recalled from her 2007 spring correspondence with Donelson. At that time, Kate had no idea where Riverton, Wyo. was located though she was aware of Cheyenne from watching old westerns, and knew Wyo-ming was “somewhere between California and New York.”

She first came to Wyoming in October and bunked in with several female rodeo athletes in the CWC student apartments and began traveling with the team during their fall series.

Unlike other college athletic programs, rodeo contestants travel in their own ve-

hicles, and for those who compete in events such as team roping or barrel racing, haul their own horses. Kate usually hitched a ride with the girls, who tend to go first in the competition.

Some members of Central’s men’s team also participate on the pro circuit, making mad weekend dashes to far away places to compete and then return in time for their classes. Kate tagged along, trying to absorb

The road gets rough and the goin’ gets tough, but you know you’ve gotta try. And there ain’t no way they’re ever gonna change your mind. Don’t everybody know that a cowboy’s got to ride.- lyrics from Chris Ledoux’s “A Cowboy’s Just Got to Ride”

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through the lens of an English photographer

In addition to shooting photographs at rodeos, Gaustad captured the rodeo team’s routine activi-ties, including going to class.

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enzymes from these tiny microbes, which are able to survive in the hot springs, have proven to be of great use in the biotechnol-ogy industry, especially in relation to DNA sequencing.

In the 1980s, a biochemist developed a

to the geochemical conditions in which they thrive.

McCann, who was the first recipient of the Wyoming Community College/UW INBRE Tran-sition Scholarship, presented initial findings from the research at the Wyoming Undergradu-ate Research Day in April.

McCann used specific sequence analyses to confirm identification of the species and exam-ine genetic relatedness in known species.

powerful method of copying DNA that re-quired enzymes that could withstand repeat-ed cycles of heat like the bacteria growing in the hot waters of Yellowstone.

Much of the research in this area has been conducted in Yellowstone, but little has been done at other geothermal features in other parts of the region. The intent of the research is to characterize the microbial com-munities at Big Horn Hot Springs in relation

Research(continued from page five)

CWC Biology and Microbiology Professor Steve McAllister (in left photo) worked with research team mem-bers (from left) Whittney Ballard, Kera Wakefield and Brittany Barlow as they test their own DNA.

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Building on the success of last year’s season, the Central Wyoming College Theater Department has scheduled family friendly shows in 2008-09 and will continue to offer a matinee performance of each production.

And unlike gas and grocery prices, the cost of both the season and individual tickets remain the same for the coming year.

The first show of the season is the world premiere of Generations, a dance show that includes music, passages from significant books and portions of key speeches from the past 100 years, said Director Mike Myers, who is writing the show this summer.

“The idea is that we’d go from 1908 to 2008 and do popular dances from each de-cade and incorporate important material from each time period,” he said.

Last year, Myers took the 500-year-old play Everyman, changed the dialog, selected music of the 1960s and 70s and transformed it into a hip, modern dance production. “It was by far their favorite production of the year,” Myers said of the theater students who starred in the production.

For this production, Myers hopes to work with multiple choreographers, including stu-dent Sami Sanders who has 12 years of dance background in her 19 years.

The show is in the Robert A. Peck Arts Center Theatre Oct. 3 and 4 and 10-11 at 7:30 p.m. and the 2:30 p.m. matinee is on Oct. 5.

In November, the department will stage The Grapes of Wrath, the play based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by John Steinbeck.

“There is a connection with this play and Generations,” Myers said, explaining that the Depression-era play is from one of the great works of American literature. “I know when I was a college student in the 60s, I was in open warfare with my parents and anyone from that generation,” he recalls. “And now I realize that they were of the greatest genera-tion, having experienced both the Depres-sion and World War II. It makes us appreciate those who went before and made everything possible for us.”

Though children of a very young age may not appreciate this play, he believes it is important to stage this type of production because of its historical significance.

The Grapes of Wrath is scheduled for Nov. 14-15, 21-22 at 7:30 p.m., and the 2:30 p.m. matinee is scheduled for Nov. 16.

This year’s musical is Carnival, and while not as commercially successful or as well known as this spring’s production of Beauty

and the Beast, Myers said families, including young children, will love it.

“I picked this play because it’s a family show,” he said. It has recognizable music and is about a European circus. It has clowns, acrobats, magic acts and the major characters are puppets.

Not only will audiences like this show, it will be very good for the actors, Myers explained, saying the cast will learn circus performing and how to be puppeteers.

Carnival runs March 5-6 and 12-13, 2009 at 7:30 p.m., with the matinee scheduled for March 8 at 2:30 p.m.

The season concludes with Showcase 2009 April 24 and 25 and features student-directed plays.

Individual ticket prices are $8 for adults and $6 for children and seniors except for the musical, which are $12 and $10 and the Showcase, which is $3.

As usual, the Theater Department is selling season tickets and Myers encourages theater patrons to take advantage of the dis-count ticket prices, the first selection of seats and recognition in the programs. The cost of a single adult season ticket is $25 and $20 for youth and seniors 60 and over.

Family friendly shows scheduled this season

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as much as she could of this unique culture that is rodeo.

Second year students Seth Glause of Rock Springs and Ty Hamaker of Laramie competed on the World Champions pro tour this spring while enrolled at CWC as full-time students taking online classes. Glause, at one time this spring, was first in the men’s professional all-around standings, due to his talents in bull and saddle bronc riding. Hamaker was also ranked in the professional bull riding standings.

Some of Kate’s pre-conceived notions about rodeo did come true. “I thought it would be a cliché . . . yet some of them were quite accurate, like wearing their hats in restaurants.”

Yet, she hadn’t imagined what it takes for a rodeo participant to compete in the sport, and was amazed how the athletes would drive thousands of miles to win a few bucks.

Unlike other American college athletes who are well-funded and have team buses and planes, “these guys do a lot more fend-ing for themselves,” she said. They are responsible for their travel, their animals and making sure they get to their events on time. And there is not a lot of coddling from the coaches.

Kate understands the pressure that rodeo athletes are under, especially in the pro ranks. There is a limited number of years that they can compete to get to the national finals. “They’ve been falling off bulls since they were quite young. At 18 and 19-years their bodies have taken quite a bit of pun-ishment.”

She was also surprised that the athletes on the CWC team came from all over the country, even Canada, but quickly learned the reason was because of the exceptionally good reputations of CWC coaches Rick and Lynn Smith.

In her travels, Kate has been stuck in a blizzard in Raton, N.M., and saw the most beautiful mountain in Utah.

“That’s the interesting thing about pho-tography. It gives you the chance to go to places you normally wouldn’t go,” she said. “I have a few more weeks of driving through Wyoming before I get tired of what it looks like.” She’s quick to point out, however, that Wyoming has “cornered the market on wind.”

She is traveling with rodeo athletes who are keenly aware of the rising cost of fuel and they remind Kate that taking the “sce-

He was a runaway rodeo was his dream He was ridin’ bulls and a bitin’ the dust by the time he was seventeen Sixteen cowboys in an eight dollar room livin’ on baloney and beans Makin’ a play for all the buckle freaks in the pretty little tight blue jeans A cowboy is one hell of a man when he gets bucked off he gets on again A cowboy is a special breed you leave his hat alone and you leave his women be.- from Chris Ledoux’s “Cowboy is a Hell of a Man”

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nic route” is very costly. As a native of the United Kingdom, Kate chuckles about the U.S. cost of petrol because the price of gal-lon in the U.K. is more than double.

She’s also astonished by the size of ve-hicles the students drive, and finds amenities like cup holders and heated seats in Ameri-can pickup trucks quite luxurious compared to the tiny fuel-efficient cars most people drive in her part of the world.

By documenting the lives of the CWC rodeo team, Kate takes photographs of the team members in everyday life, practicing, studying, playing basket-ball and those endless stops at Wen-dy’s, convenience stores and Holiday Inns.

“From day one, they couldn’t have been more welcoming,” she said, saying that if she was the one on the other side of the lens, she may have felt invaded upon by the con-stant presence of a photographer. “I have become a part of their every day lives.”

They call Kate their “personal paparazzi,” and the athletes lean over her computer to see how she captured their athleticism with her Canon after each week’s rodeo. If the images find them in “bad form,” they encourage her to delete the frame. She said they

don’t quite understand why she wants to take pictures of the other parts of their everyday lives.

She was also surprised to see members of the athletes’ families present at most of the rodeos. “It is very much a family affair,” she said.

She’s finding that photographing rodeo events is very challenging, especially at the indoor rodeos in the fall. She’s not ready to be inside the arena near the bucking stock and opts to use a long lens to catch the action.

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Rodeo team members called Kate their “personal pa-parazzi” as she captured their daily lives with her camera.

Connect is a publication of the CWC Public Information Office and is scheduled to be published quarterly.

Shoshone donation matched by Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community A $25,000 donation made by the Eastern Shoshone Tribe to the CWC Intertribal Center was matched by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota) Community, an economically successful Minnesota tribe which has a charitable giving program. Over the past several years the SMSC has donated more than $115 million to charitable organizations and Indian tribes.

The Shoshone Tribe has been supportive of CWC’s efforts to com-plete the Intertribal Center, which will be constructed west of the Robert A. Peck Arts Center when the final funds are raised.

CWC plans to break ground on the facility in the spring of 2009, working toward a completion date of January 2010.

With support from private donors, state and federal appropriations and the University of Wyoming, CWC has begun to work with architects on the construction of the 13,920 foot facil-ity that will eventually house a num-ber of CWC academic programs, the college’s collection of Native Ameri-can artifacts as well as the Outreach Center for the University of Wyoming.

Shoshone Business Council member Willie Noseep (second from right) presented a $25,000 check to the CWC Foundation to go toward the final push to complete the Intertribal Education and Community Cen-ter. The Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s donation was matched by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux, one of the nation’s most economically successful tribes. Also pictured at the site for the Intertribal Center are Helsha Acuna, CWC’s professor of Native American Studies; Scott Ratliff, the liasion to U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi; CWC trustee Caroline Mills, CWC President Jo Anne McFarland, Noseep and CWC Vice President for Institutional Advancement Dane Graham.