The Eckerd College SAR Marine Yard Sale comes but once a year, and it’s an occasion you do not want to miss. In past years, kayaks, paddle boards, sailboats and powerboats have been up for sale. Proceeds from the yard sale fund Eckerd’s student-volunteer maritime search and rescue team. Electronic equipment and motors will also be available for purchase. More.

In their February concert, the Alma College Symphony Orchestra will perform the world premiere of Ishmael by William Cooper along with other pieces influenced by different popular musical styles. Jonathan Spatola-Knoll, director of the Alma Symphony Orchestra, asked Cooper to write Ishmael for the orchestra which tells the Old Testament story of Ishmael through the restatement of melodic fragments and extreme emotional contrasts. More.

After April Munson graduated with honors from Sharon High School, she enrolled in Westminster College, but things didn’t work out. So Munson dropped out and went to work. Now 28, Munson is studying in Westminster’s Entrepreneur Center, and she was among about 30 students who recently attended the center’s forum dedicated to women entrepreneurs. More.

The Tournées Film Festival, featuring six French-language films, returns to Illinois College this February. The wide range of films come from France, Morocco and Ivory Coast. It gives cinephiles a chance to enjoy movies not readily available in central Illinois. The film festival is made possible by a competitive grant from the French American Cultural Exchange Foundation. More.

According to analysis of U.S. Department of Education data, The Chronicle of Higher Education has ranked Bloomfield College ninth nationally out of 621 four-year private institutions that persist in getting more students to graduate in five or six years. The Chronicle list includes schools that graduated the highest percentages of students completing their degree in the fifth or sixth year, as measured in 2018 for the cohort of first-time, full-time students who began their undergraduate education at Bloomfield College in 2012. More.

After looking at what other universities are doing to satisfy the demand for video gaming, TU’s first Esports Lounge opened last week with lots of comfy chairs, high-res screens and basically every kind of gaming console known to man. It became so instantly popular that a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd kept dozens of students waiting in the hallway, where they watched a “Call of Duty” squad gunning its way through enemy defenses live on a large-screen TV. More.

A decade ago, when Governor Paul Patton was president of Pikeville College, he instituted a scholarship for students from Eastern Kentucky called the Pikeville Promise. With all of the buzz about colleges jumping on the bandwagon of no tuition lately, we thought it might be a good time to update the community on what Pikeville Promise has been able to accomplish in the last ten years. More. 

Belhaven University has announced the new Angie Thomas Writers Scholarship program, designed to help young aspiring writers. One incoming creative writing major will receive a full-ride scholarship, while other top applicants will receive additional awards. These scholarships are named in honor of Belhaven alumna Angie Thomas ’11, author of New York Times best-selling novels On the Come Up and The Hate U Give. More.

Though the term “experiential learning” wasn’t coined until the 2000s, Trinity students have been doing it for more than a century. One hundred fifty years ago, Trinity began redefining the liberal arts, giving students the opportunity for hands-on learning inside—and outside—the classroom. In recognition of the University’s 150th Anniversary, a team of faculty, staff, and students explored this rich history. More.