Messiah College Media Mentions

Alumnus Ron Stark’s father Bruce was a legendary artist whose caricatures of professional baseball players were published weekly in New York’s The Daily News. Throughout his childhood and time at Messiah College, Stark was more interested in playing ball than painting scenes from America’s favorite past time.  It wasn’t until he was in his mid-30s and years of baseball, including a stint playing semi-professional ball, were behind him that Stark picked up a paintbrush and began creating his own realistic paintings of some of baseball’s greatest players. The blog, baseballart.com featured Stark in a July 27 post.

Read “Ron Stark a masterful painter of America’s pasttime.”

Cynthia Newcott, a 1976 Messiah graduate, is memorialized in the July 25 Washington Post for hosting dinners for dozens of people in her home every Tuesday night. Newcott, who began cooking at noon on Tuesdays, welcomed people of all ages and walks of life into her home for the past 15 years before dying from ovarian cancer on July 11.

Read “Cynthia Newcott’s weekly dinners stimulated appetities, conversations.”

Messiah College’s career services office used to receive about half a dozen alumni requests for career services, according to Dwayne Keiffer, assistant director of career development. Last month, the center heard from 19 alums, a clear indiciation of the challenging job market.  Keiffer talked to California Job Journal about the role of an alumni association in job searching on June 13.

Read “Studious jobseekers go ‘old school’ to tap valuable career services and alumni connections.”

The service of more than 170,000 women who served in the Nurse Cadet Corps. during World War II is often overlooked, according to 2008 Messiah alumnus Sean Sims who believes the women should be recognized as veterans. These women, recruited to compensate for the shortage of nurses on the homefront, served between 1943 and 1948. Sims wrote an opinion piece about the importance of this organization for the June 13 Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Read “We want you…to join the Cadet Nurse Corps.”

Chris Heisey, the Messiah baseball stand-out who was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds a few weeks ago, is settling into both the nerves and perks that come with being a major league player, according to a June 6 article in the Lancaster Sunday News.

Read “Adjusting to life in the big leagues.”

Vernon Asper `78 was quoted in both the NY Times and an NPR story for his role as a scientist aboard the Pelican, a research vessel gathering information and water samples from the Gulf of Mexico in the area where a BP tanker is gushing significant quantities of oil.

Read “Giant plumes of oil found under  Gulf of Mexico” from the May 16 New York Times.
Listen to the NPR interview with Vernon Asper.
Read ABC 27 story, “Oceanographer with midstate roots researching oil spill,” from May 24.

In one of his first games as a major league baseball player, Chris Heisey hit a homerun, helping his Cincinnati Reds team defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates 9-0.

Read “Messiah grad Heisey launches first career home for Reds” from the May 11 Carlisle Sentinel.
Read “Chris Heisey collects first hit, first home run in Reds‘ win” from the CBS 21.

On April 29, alumnus Chris Heisey received the call he had been waiting for — an invitation to join the Cincinnati Reds.

Read “Pregame: Heisey to debut” from Cincinnati Sports Journalism.
Read “Heisey headed for MLB” from the Carlisle Sentinel.
Read “Local grads gets call up to the majors” from WGAL-8.
Read “Chris Heisey makes the majors” from the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Chris Heisey, Messiah alumnus who is climbing the ranks in minor league baseball, and Chris Heisey, photographer for the local Catholic diocese, had a chance meeting earlier this year thanks to an incorrectly addressed package. Chris Heisey the photographer received a baseball glove intended for Chris Heisey the baseball player in the mail. Eventually the two connected, and the experience made enough of an impression on Chris Heisey the photographer that he wrote about it for the April 23 issue of “The Catholic Witness.”

Read “The fate of baseball.”

The Milliennial generation has technology at their disposal like no other preceding generation, and they are optimistic about the future, despite challenging ecnomic times, according to an April 25 Harrisburg Patriot-News article that included interviews with Messiah alumnus Jonathan Bert and student Michael Jordan.

Read “The Millennial Generation: They’re Connected.”