This past fall, Juniors and Seniors in the Interior Architecture + Design (IAD) program at Queens volunteered to participate in Furnished, a fundraising event held by local non-profit Furnish For Good (FFG). The event benefited FFG’s clients in need of quality furniture for their homes. Student participants included Calli Romig-Koch ’23, Elise LaMonica ’23, Julia Castiglione ’23, Ethan Davis ’24, Gaby Vasquez-Orocio ’24, Haley McIntosh ’24, and Sienna Phillips ’24. Additional participating teams included nine of Charlotte’s top interior designers, each engaging in a friendly competition to create the “best” vignette for voting and bidding. Queens was the first university to ever participate in the event. I was also a part of the Queens student design team, and like my classmates, I was eager to design alongside professional designers.
Each design team was required to incorporate two of five pre-selected furnishings by FFG in their vignettes. The teams were also given $500 each from Lowe’s (one of Furnished’s sponsors) to use towards decor, furniture, materials, and supplies to complete their designs. Queens University of Charlotte Associate Professor and IAD Program Director Bill Furman advised the student team and their design decisions, furniture fabrication, and overall project management. The IAD team created a palette of moody, rich colors to inspire their space. They then began crafting pieces for the vignette and collecting furnishings and decor to display and later donate. Student-made pieces included coffee and bar-height tables as well as custom wall art (in which each student drew a chair by hand at a team rendering party). “What makes this opportunity unique is that the students get to apply knowledge and skills that are distinctive to their major,” Professor Furman said.
Art and Design faculty Melissa Gamez, Denny Gerwin, Jayne Johnson, and Mike Wirth also contributed by lending or donating some of their artwork to the vignette. Each design team had two days to set up their vignettes to be photographed for SouthPark magazine’s December 2022 issue. The voting for the ten vignettes raised an overall $200,200 for the non-profit. “As the Queens motto is, ‘not to be served, but to serve,’ it was inspiring to put our design skills towards this important and impactful charitable cause that makes changes in our community,” the student team said in their project statement. “We believe in this meaningful impact and recognize Furnish for Good’s empowerment through providing choice—a sense of normalcy we so often take for granted. Well-considered, carefully designed choices should be accessible to all.”
Students setting up the vignette. From left to right, Haley McIntosh, Calli Romig-Koch, Ethan Davis, Sienna Phillips, and Elise LaMonica.
(Vignette images photographed by Dustin Peck)
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My name is Grace Williamson and I am a Senior at Queens. I am majoring in Interior Architecture + Design and minoring in Professional Writing & Rhetoric. In my spare time, I love to draw, paint, and play with my dog and two cats. I am excited to combine my passions for writing and the arts as a CAS blog writer!
Research papers can be one of the most stressful parts of college. The extensive archive of scholarly sources, deciding on a thesis, and a short deadline are contributors to the dread of research papers. However, Queens Literary Studies Undergraduate Research Program, also known as QLit, is a great opportunity to fall in love with the research process and become confident in your writing ability. QLit is a mentored program in which students develop a topic that interests them and work on that alongside Dr. Shishko and Dr. Hull from the English department from the summer through the fall semesters. By the end of the summer, the students submit their research papers to the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) conference, and then they spend the fall fine-tuning their research papers and preparing to present their research. Through the Rogers Summer Institute, students are compensated for their time and research. This undergraduate opportunity helps students to become more confident in their writing, presentation, and other academic pursuits.
Dr. Bonnie Shishko, Lexi De Primo, Ellie Fritsch, Anna Julia Vissioli Rodrigues, Dr. Helen Hull presenting at the virtual SAMLA conference, November 2022. Photo from the Queens English Department Instagram account, @queengdept.
Lexi De Primo is a senior Creative Writing and Professional Writing & Rhetoric Major at Queens. She presented her research on the Real Housewives at SAMLA in November. Her paper, “Unraveling the Real Housewife,” explored the many nuances of what it means to be a housewife. She expanded on how women are often not given the credit they deserve and are looked down upon in whatever role they take on. During the research process, Lexi discovered how little attention people pay to pop culture in the academic space. She stated, “One of my sources talked about pop culture as being unpopular in the academic setting and that people dismiss it and they laugh at it. I think there is so much that we can talk about in the academic space using pop culture as examples or solely analyzing them.” Despite the challenges in finding sources about the Real Housewives, Lexi was able to adapt and work around this to find authors talking about similar issues. This adaptability is something she will carry into future research. Overall, Lexi found that her experience was an important step for her as a senior fighting imposter syndrome.
Another student who presented at SAMLA was Anna Julia Vissioli Rodrigues. She is a junior Creative Writing Major at Queens and did her research on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Her paper was titled “Toxic Masculinity’s Weapons: Colonialism, Sexuality/Gender, and the Gothic in Jane Eyre.” In the beginning, Anna Julia’s research was going to cover themes of the Gothic across multiple different fiction pieces, but one of the great things about QLit is how the research process is flexible and ongoing. In the end, she focused on how different themes impacted one of the characters, Bertha Mason, a Creole woman and the wife of Mr. Rochester. Before finally landing on her topic Anna Julia realized how few scholarly articles focus on Bertha outside of Jane and Mr. Rochester. She took this opportunity to explore how devices such as colonialism, sexuality, gender, and the Gothic genre all affect Bertha. For Anna Julia, the best thing about the QLit and SAMLA experience was how freeing the research process was and that she presented a paper she was proud of.
Ellie Fritsch is a Creative Writing and Psychology major at Queens who also presented at SAMLA this past fall. Her research and resulting paper, “Victorian Victims: Women’s Rights & The Role of Trauma in Lady Audley’s Secret (1862),” focused on how Victorian culture understood trauma and how that affected women at the time. Inspired by Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellie started her research by questioning if Lady Audley was the villain or a victim. From a psychology and creative writing standpoint, she analyzed the craft choices and the aspects of trauma woven through the novel. In her paper, Ellie argues that a 19th-century woman reading this novel would have picked up on these clues, but a man would not. Alongside her revelations about Victorian madness, Ellie expressed the newfound confidence she found after presenting her research at SAMLA and to the Board of Trustees. One of the biggest takeaways for her was realizing how she had become an expert in her topic during the Q/A part of the presentation.
Lexi, Anna Julia, and Ellie will all graduate with undergraduate research experience, guided by talented and caring professors Dr. Shishko and Dr. Hull, that will set them apart as they apply for graduate school or apply for jobs in their respective fields.
Stephen King once said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Well, English major Lara Boyle ‘23 is adding a task to that to-do list: pitch a lot. In the last year, Lara has published multiple creative non-fiction pieces and personal essays in various highly ranked magazines from the Huffington Post to Newsweek. Her articles range around a variety of personal and important topics in today’s society: mental health, antisemitism, and queer culture. Her powerful work has made a splash around the Queens community, challenging us all to reflect on our own experiences and to re-examine how we view the world.
Lara Boyle in NYC. Photo provided by Lara Boyle.
Lara joined the Creative Writing department as freshman transfer student from Central Piedmont Community College with the hopes of becoming an author someday. “I knew I wanted to be an author in seventh grade when I had an English teacher who inspired me and pushed me to keep exploring writing,” Lara said. “When I came to Queens, I wanted to be a fiction writer because I thought in order to be successful as a writer, one had to write fiction.” The only exposure Lara had had to creative non-fiction was the college essays she had written. In her freshman year, an essay Lara wrote for Intro to Writing became her very first publication: in Queens’ own literary publication, Signet. “I was shocked to see my quote on the back cover. It also made me wonder if I should write more nonfiction,” reflected Lara. But then she took Writing of Creative Non-Fiction with Professor Israel and her view of writing changed. “My final essay for his class was my first piece to be accepted to a major publication.”
Like many aspiring writers, Lara believed the only career in writing was to be an author of fiction. Queens’s Creative Writing department opened up many doors for Lara and students like her to explore the many avenues of writing and the various genres that allow students to find their voices on the page. Lara specifically cites Professors Sarah Creech and Charles Israel in being influential in her journey to finding her own writing style and voice. She also draws inspiration from authors and essayists like David Foster Wallace, Toni Morrison, and Melissa Febos, a contemporary essayist who published the memoir Girlhood. Lara mentioned how many of her favorite authors pulled from their personal experiences, and she followed their example. She remembered thinking, what I’m writing is so close to my own life, why am I calling this fiction?
The issue of Signet in which Lara was first published.
Lara didn’t intend to become a successful essayist. She recalls, “I did it by accident. I got tired of waiting for responses on my fiction submissions to literary magazines and I found a call for pitches on essays about mental health and I decided to give it a try. I fully wasn’t expecting a response, but I heard back in a day.” Once Lara started, she was hooked. “I really enjoyed how vulnerable I got to be on the page and how it led to connections with other people who related to what I wrote,” she said. “I’m really proud of all of the pieces I have published and how they have allowed me to connect with people, but I am particularly proud of my piece on OCD and my op-ed in the Jerusalem Post because of how scary they were for me to write.”
To be a personal essayist means to take on a degree of vulnerability, exposure, and honesty that not many can achieve. When asked how it felt to publish such raw, vulnerable pieces, Lara admitted, “I was terrified every time I published something. I worried if I had been too honest, and after the euphoria of getting published I have to then remember that people are actually going to read this.” But while total honesty and vulnerability can be a daunting task, Lara overcame this fear to produce remarkable, moving works of non-fiction that have allowed people who have experienced similar things to have a platform to share their stories. “I overcame my own fear of being exposed by hearing the messages from people who have told me that my stories have helped them,” she said. “A teacher DM-ed me and told me my work mattered and I’ve had girls reach out to me who told me how they felt seen because they too struggled being a woman and getting an autism diagnosis.”
Lara’s success in the publication industry is no accident or coincidence, though. She has persistently pitched to various literary magazines over the last several years hoping to find the right platform for her unique stories and voice. She explained her reasoning for why so many submissions, stating, “I wanted to see what that process was like and to start treating my writing seriously, because I want to write full time as a career and I want to get my foot in the door now.” And while Lara is an extremely talented writer, publication does not come without experiencing a few rejections along the way. “I pitch expecting to be rejected,” the creative writing major said. “I say my goal is to get ten rejection slips this month and hopefully one will get in, but I try to pitch as much as possible to increase the likelihood that I get in somewhere. I started with really small publications and worked my way up from there, and I was equally excited for each publication I got.”
Lara’s writing journey is far from over, and she hopes to continue publishing her work as she goes onto graduate school next year to pursue an MFA in creative non-fiction. She hopes to write a biography of her grandfather’s incredible life as a Holocaust survivor as part of her thesis, and to capture his unique experience and how it has shaped her family’s lives. She encourages everyone who is considering trying their hand at creative non-fiction writing to give it a go, and for all English majors considering applying for publication—go for it! “Don’t wait to pitch stuff,” Lara advised. “I always thought I had to wait until I was good enough to submit or pitch, but then I realized people only got good enough because they pushed themselves even when they weren’t fully confident in what they were doing. I saw people put in their bios ‘aspiring authors’ and I realized I didn’t want to be aspiring anymore and the only way to do that was to just do it. You just have to keep submitting, not every piece is right for every magazine but eventually you’ll find the place where your work was meant to be housed.”
If you are interested in accessing Lara’s work, you can find her articles linked below.
Fairies, parliament, and politics, oh my! This past November, the College of Arts and Sciences came together in a huge collaborative effort to present Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, directed by Alistair Donkin and conducted by Dr. Justin Smith.
Iolanthe’s satire took the Queens’ stage by storm the weekend of November 12, showing four sold-out shows in two days. The story of the opera occurs twenty-five years after the fairy Iolanthe was banished for falling in love with a mortal man, a crime usually punishable by death. Her son, Strephon, a half human, half fae, lives among mortal men and has fallen in love with Phyllis, the Supreme Chancellor of parliament’s ward. The story tracks Phyllis and Strephon’s forbidden romance, Strephon’s voyage through parliament to overthrow the privileges enjoyed by nobility, and Iolanthe’s journey for redemption, all being told through satirical humor, song, and dance. The opera ends happily, with Phyllis and Strephon married, Iolanthe reunited with her mortal lover, and the fairy world intermingling with the mortal world once more.
Iolanthe, the Fairy queen, and the cast ensemble. Photo provided by Janay Armbrister.
The cast and crew for the opera come from many diverse backgrounds and departments—from a biochemistry major playing one of the lead fairies, graphic design majors assisting with advertisement and set design, and a nursing major as stage director, the show opened up doors for far more than just our talented music students. Keely Billiar, class of ’25 commented on this, expressing, “I am majoring in Biochemistry with a minor in Music. Because of this, I am very thankful that I had the opportunity to perform in this production as well as being able to perform in the Queens Chamber Choir. Singing and performing has always been my form of relaxing and escaping from reality, and it was so much fun getting to work with everyone during this show, and I made some great friends and connections.”
The interdepartmental effort was also noticed by Tanis James ’25 and Janay Armbrister ’22, who played Iolanthe and the Fairy Queen respectively. “I had the chance to work with Professor O’Neil to take photos to help promote the show,” says James. The collaborative effort across departments gave our students the opportunity to engage with and appreciate new skills sets. “He used a special lens on his camera that captured infrared light and hearing him explain how it works was a cool experience.”
The showcasing of our talented students and professors were not the only benefit of the cross-department collaboration. “I didn’t realize how many non-music majors we had in our program until we started working on the show,” says Armbrister. “There was a girl in the movement group who was an education major, and I don’t think I would have ever come across her during my time here if it weren’t for the show. And I’m so happy I got to meet her and some of the other people who worked on the show, because they were all so lovely. I don’t think these are friendships that will be going away anytime soon.”
This amazing, collaborative experience was led by the one and only Alistair Donkin. Donkin is the only member of the original Gilbert and Sullivan production crew still performing, and while it saddens us greatly, after five years of working with Queens, he will be retiring and Iolanthe was his final performance. In tribute of all of the work he has done over the last fifty years, during the final performance, the cast changed the lyrics to one of Armbrister’s songs as the Queen to highlight all of the roles Donkin has played during his time as a performer. Armbrister described what a wonderful and unique experience this was. “We were the last production group to do a Gilbert and Sullivan show to the original staging,” Armbrister says. “He brought a lot of knowledge and expertise to our show. He did the staging entirely from memory. He didn’t even have a book, he did the whole show from memory. He was really outspoken about how the show should go and he worked really hard to make sure everything was perfect. But I also feel like no matter how long you’ve known him or if you’ve just met him this semester, you feel like you’ve been working with him for years. He was just very, very sweet.”
Iolanthe and the Fairies. Photo provided by Janay Armbrister.
The show was truly a marvel to behold, especially with everything going on in the world today. The choral program at Queens has been trying to put on a production of Gilbert and Sullivan with Donkin since 2019, but due to the complications of Covid and international travel, this was the first year we were able to have him back on the Queens stage. Last fall, the music and arts program produced The HMS: Pinafore also known as The Lass Who Loved a Sailor. The show was another a huge success, but due to Covid-19 the cast and crew had to perform masked, and all international travel in and out of the UK was banned and Donkin could not aid or perform in the show. The performers and community members were so excited to return to a world of live theatre, and to have Donkin back on the Queens’ stage one last time.
Iolanthe spread a message of hope and strength to our community, and the performers all hope the audience left with smiles on their faces and courage in their hearts. “I think the most important takeaway I have from the story is to keep an open mind so that we don’t miss out on important relationships and opportunities” says James. The leads of the show all also emphasized how the show supported the voices of women and their role in the world, a message they think needs to be shared openly and talked about more. “The main theme is centered around women and their importance in the government/parliament. The show opens with the chorus of peers, and the women are a predominant part of the story,” says Billiar. “If there is one thing that I would like to express to the audience, it would be that even though this is a comedic opera, the themes that are present in this are important and still applicable to our world.”
For anyone who missed the breathtaking performance, keep an eye out for the cast recordings that are expected to release soon. There will be recordings of every night and every cast available. Email Dr. Justin Smith for more information at smithj11@queens.edu.
“There was a need for doing something new but what it looked like nobody knew.” (Anni Albers, Oral History Interview, July 5, 1968).
This past October, Dr. Siu Challons-Lipton and Astrid Bridgewood presented at ReVIEWING Black Mountain College International Conference, co-hosted by BMCM+AC and UNC Asheville. Dr. Challons-Lipton is the Executive Director of the Art, Design, and Music Department at Queens as well as Professor of Art History. Astrid Bridgewood is currently an Art History Major at Queens. Both presented their research focusing on the women of Black Mountain College.
Dr. Challons-Lipton’s research on the women of Black Mountain College has been ongoing for multiple years. She first learned about the school in a book written by one of the founders, John Rice. The school as a whole created an atmosphere that allowed many people, especially women, to thrive without the constraints of oppression. According to Dr. Challons-Lipton, the college was a refuge from different types of oppression such as Jim Crow laws, Nazi Germany, and McCarthyism. Artists such as Anni and Joseph Albers came to Black Mountain College from the Bauhaus when it was shut down. Alma Stone Williams was one of the first black students who studied music. Ruth Aswa was a remarkable sculptor who was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp during the second world war. One of the artists Dr. Challons-Lipton has most recently focused on is Anni Albers, a weaver who taught at Black Mountain College. Dr. Challons-Lipton elaborated, “Anni saw the relationship between color and line and threads like the relationship between people, the idea of empathy and sharing, all of that. She had a huge impact on a lot of the women and men at Black Mountain.” She discusses Anni further in the research she presented entitled, “Anni Albers: Exploring the Material, Exploring Life.”Dr. Challons-Lipton explores how Anni’s teachings and artistic process inspired her students to be more innovative and see new connections in art.
In Astrid’s research, she focuses on M.C Richards who was one of the only professors who had formal training and a degree. Richards was a poet and ceramicist who taught at Black Mountain College but was also a student. Her work and teachings encouraged interdisciplinary work and connections between art and literature in her classroom. Astrid was first interested in M.C. Richards when she learned about her in Dr. Challons-Lipton’s Black Mountain College Seminar class in the Fall of 2021. Astrid mentions that Richards was only briefly mentioned in their textbook as the most highly educated woman at the college and the lack of a biography on her sparked her interest. Astrid presented her project, entitled “Alchemizing Poetry and Pottery,” during a conference this October. Through archival research and analysis of Richards’ poetry and pottery, Astrid was able to find new meaning behind Richards’s work that had not been previously in conversation about the Black Mountain artist. Her project consisted of five poetry pieces, five ceramic pots, and a research paper. In naming and creating her project, Astrid took inspiration from Richards’ teachings and work. Astrid explains, “She has a huge theme in her poetic work of alchemy and of how people are changed over time.” One example Astrid says is how Richards wrote a poem about her mother’s death in which she reflects on how active grieving changes a person on a fundamental level. Astrid is continuing her research on Black Mountain College by looking into Buckminister Fuller’s teachings and innovations in liberal arts.
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My name is Allison Morton, and I am a sophomore at Queens. This is my first semester writing for the blog. I am a creative writing and graphic design major. My go-to coffee order is an iced dirty chai or matcha latte. If I were to meet a writer, dead or alive, it would be Shirley Jackson. I am thrilled to share more about the exciting stuff happening on campus!
Lara Boyle is a Creative Writing major and a senior at Queens this year. She’s been writing for the CAS blog for a year now, but she has been interested in creative writing and literature for much longer. “I’ve always loved literature, but I really knew I wanted to be a writer… whenI found classics like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, I immediately knew that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
Lara’s interest in writing has led her to find success in the journalistic world, publishing pieces in The Huffington Post and on Newsweek. Lara’s writing speaks on feelings of polarization within society while simultaneously giving her audience a voice to connect to. She makes her passion for writing clear in how she connects personally to each piece she makes. Through her work on the CAS blog, Lara says that she wants to examine “how other people pursue their passions, and how those endeavors affect the world around them.”
Be on the lookout for Lara’s upcoming articles on the blog. And if you want to see more of her work, follow the links below to see several of her previous publications:
Connor Lindsay is a Junior Creative Writing major at Queens University of Charlotte. Connor has worked for the CAS blog before and looks forward to writing about events happening this Fall semester. He has been writing for a much longer time, however. Connor says, “I discovered a love for writing at a young age, when I discovered that creating stories allowed me to connect with other people in a way that no other art form could for me. I began trying to write my first novel in fourth grade, and since then, I have been dedicated to creating my own prose works.”
Connor has multiple poems and fiction pieces published in Signet Literary Magazine on campus. He also has pieces published in Atlantis Creative Magazine. Along with his passion for writing, Connor is interested in social issues and change. He says, “I am passionate about issues of progressive social movements. I enjoy learning about and participating in events that support a more tolerant and political progressive future for our nation. I also see my writing as a potential way to contribute to that goal.” Be sure to keep an eye out for Connor’s work in the future.
Allison Morton, she/her, is a Creative Writing major. If given the chance to meet any author, dead or alive, she would choose Shirley Jackson, who inspired her love of the gothic genre. She’s currently reading “If We Were Villains” by M.L. Rio. This semester, she is excited about designing posters for voter registration with her graphic design class, typography with Professor Gamez. She chose to be a writer for the CAS blog to challenge her writing and help raise awareness about arts and writing at Queens.
For the fourth consecutive year, the CAS Success Blog wants to share the summer and 2022-23 academic year plans for our writers. They have worked hard and worked well to share the vital success stories here in the College of Arts and Sciences. In our stories this year, we have trained our eyes on student participation and student leadership at Queens and the greater Charlotte community.
We are happy to say that our writers, Connor Lindsay, Lara Boyle, and Chase Mauerhan will be returning as writers for 2022-23. In the meantime, hear them describe their summer plans below.
Connor Lindsay
As this year comes to a close, I look forward to my travel plans over the summer. I am going on a JBIP trip to Italy to see Florence, Rome, and Tuscany, and learn about the influences of the Renaissance on the modern world. I look forward particularly to seeing how Renaissance writing has made an impact on prose and poetry being created today. I plan on taking plenty of inspiration from the trip to incorporate into my own writing.
Next year, I will be busy working both here with the CAS Success Blog and on Signet Literary magazine. Signet has big changes planned regarding our submission schedule and online presence, so be on the look out if you are interested in being a part of the magazine! I wish you all a great summer, and I look forward to writing for you again next semester!
Hi, I’m Lara, a current junior and Creative Writing Major!
This summer I’m excited to relax with family, friends, and my dogs at home in Waxhaw, North Carolina! I will be a counselor for the Queens Creative Writing camp with Professor Sarah Creech which should be an exciting experience! I plan to read a lot and develop my portfolio as I will be applying to various MFA programs in the fall! Some books on my to-be-read list include Franny and Zooey by J.D. Sallinger, How The Word is Passed by Clint Smith, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, and Who Wants to be A Jewish Writer? by Adam Kirsch.
For 2022-2023, I am very excited to take the Prose Capstone course with Professor Craig Renfroe and Seminar in Creative Writing with Professor Sarah Creech. I can’t wait to enjoy my senior year and look forward to seeing what the future has in store for me!
The Crowder Greenhouse is a hidden green gem that offers a refuge for both plants and people.
As you first walk into the greenhouse on the third floor of Rogers Hall, you feel like you’ve stepped into another world where the stress of reality falls away and is replaced by the sudden stillness of the natural environment. A sense of calm fills you immediately, followed by the awe at the vast diversity of fauna housed within the glass conservatory. The hum of the radiator roars to life, and if you look closely, you’ll notice all kinds of different faces nestled among the geraniums, impatiens, ferns, and various types of shrubbery.
Haley Frey poses behind a plant in the Greenhouse Conservatory!
Haley Frey (Queens, 2001), the Greenhouse Operations Manager, said when she was a student in 1998, there used to be a greenhouse where the North Parking deck is currently located. It was torn down to build the parking deck, and she was the only biology major at the time who wasn’t pre-med, so she was already looking into botanical science. After she graduated, she worked in environmental chemistry for a few years and then came back in 2003 to work in biology. She was still in the Walker Science building, which is now Knight-Crane, and there was talk about a new building with a greenhouse for students like her who were more about “plants, not people,” Frey said. She went to NC State for her Masters of Forestry and Horticulture and came back to see the construction of the rooftop Crowder Greenhouse for Rogers Hall. One of her professors asked if she was still interested in the position (first talked about years ago), and the rest is history. For the three years while it was under construction, she worked at Discovery Place in the rainforest there.
“To come here to Queens and be able to have a full circle of the greenhouse that was here when I was a student is incredible. I hope that more people find out about it because I don’t think a lot of people are aware it exists,” Frey said. For the many students who do know, however, it offers an escape from the stress of college life, and a chance to grow their own skills working with plants. The conservatory used to be for the botany class. Then the professor left, and there wasn’t any class interested in botany anymore, so Frey kept getting “weird stuff,” and then the arts department started to get involved with murals and sculptures made for the garden.
“It’s about experiencing this space, and people still love to learn in this space,” Frey added. “The art classes use it to draw still life. It’s also a place of peace for visitors. And when people do come, I offer them the opportunity to have me here to tell them stuff, or to have me here but not tell them anything.”
The verdancy of the Crowder Greenhouse
Izzy Harvey, an English major (Queens, 2022), has used the greenhouse as a private sanctuary to read before she began to volunteer in the space. She would come in between classes with a book and sit in the chair. Her work includes helping Frey report plants, irrigation, fertilization, or trimming dead spots.
“It means a lot to me because it’s such a quiet and peaceful place to be, and Haley has taught me so much about taking care of plants. I love being there so much!” Harvey said. Interns and volunteers have come from all different backgrounds and majors, united by their shared passion for the Greenhouse and plants. Anyone can utilize it as a space to find peace in nature regardless of their academic interests: all they have to do is ask Frey for details.
Ultimately, though, the mission of the Crowder Greenhouse at Queens is to provide a plant collection and environment to support faculty and student learning and research. It also serves as a classroom, a laboratory, and restorative space for the Queens community to interact with plants to gain appreciation and knowledge of the botanical world. To those nervous about reaching out, Frey said “Everyone’s welcome. No skill level necessary, and I’ll help you figure out what you want to get out of it.”
The Royal Voices of Charlotte haven’t let the pandemic get in the way of having their voices heard.
Right before the pandemic hit, in February 2020, Queens was preparing to send a choir to Carnegie Hall. The most famous concert hall in the country, Carnegie Hall would provide the newly formed group a chance to represent Queens University’s music program on a national scale. But COVID-19’s arrival caused Carnegie Hall to shut down, for the first time since Pearl Harbor. In lieu of this concert, which was rescheduled to summer 2022, the Royal Voices of Charlotte have sought out other exciting opportunities to perform.
The Royal Voices of Charlotte Singing at Belk Chapel
Dr. Justin Smith, Assistant Professor of Music and director of the music program and choral activity at Queens, spoke on some of the performances the group has given in the past two years. “We’ve done things like the North Carolina ACDA conference, [and] we did a collaboration with Bach Akademie Charlotte this February,” he said, showing how Royal Voices have stayed active in demonstrating Queens’s music program across the state. During the ACDA concert the group even got to perform some original music by Dr. Zach Zubow, an Associate Professor of Music.
Dr. Smith noted that Royal Voices are an auditioned choir and intended to perform in more competitive spaces. “The plan was really to start a high-level auditioned ensemble,” he said, adding: “We have choirs where you can walk in off the street and sing with us, no audition required, and that is wonderful… but I also wanted to start a group that would be auditioned and really go out and represent Queens… at a local, national, and hopefully international level.” It’s also worth noting that Royal Voices do not just consist of Queens students, but also of community members in the area, many of which have extensive prior experience working in the musical field.
For one Queens student, Janay Armbrister, singing in the Royal Voices choir has been a revelation: “For students, you definitely get experience. You learn from community members who have been in the field a lot longer.” Aside from getting that learning experience, the venues Royal Voices have performed at are a draw as well. The upcoming performance at Carnegie Hall is much anticipated by all those involved. Of Royal Voices, Janay said, “I love the group, I love the kind of music we perform, and the opportunities we get would be hard to pass up.”
Another Royal Voices leader is Dr. Yu-Ling Chen, an Assistant Professor of Music Therapy and the group’s pianist. While Dr. Chen doesn’t perform with them at every show, she still enjoys the chance the group gives her to play and be a part of the ensemble, adding: “With the choir, it’s an interactive experience, playing with other musicians, making music together… it’s a great experience.”
Dr. Smith spoke on wanting more non-music majors to engage with Queens’ choirs. “There seems to be a conception that our ensembles are only for majors, or you need to have tons of experience,” he said, “and that’s just not the case.” Indeed, many members of Royal Voices are not music or music therapy majors. Dr. Smith added, “And aside from that, Queens has two other choir groups students can join: Queens Chamber Singers and Choral Union.” Dr. Chen, who performs with Choral Union, elaborated on this point: “Students on campus need to have a space to sing together… choral union is a great place for that… it’s low pressure, and it’s great for forming a community, too.”
As the Royal Voices of Charlotte look forward to their Carnegie Hall concert this summer, they also look forward to other engagements. The group’s activities have already succeeded in making Queens and its music department more well-known. “I live in a small town about an hour from here,” says Janay Armbrister, “there was stuff about our music performances posted up, people were talking about it, not knowing that I was a student who was a part of it.”
Justin Smith said, “I want people to know about the quality of the arts that we make here. Carnegie Hall is just the beginning.”
How do you talk about the Covid vaccine, particularly with people in marginalized groups who may be vaccine hesitant? Last year, Queens chaplain and a dedicated group of Queens students did just that, as part of the national Faith in the Vaccine initiative. Chaplain Joey Haynes, who has been spearheading the initiative in the Queens community and Charlotte, summed up the initiative as a space in which the “goal is to reach out to marginalized communities and have conversations surrounding vaccine hesitancy. Not in a way to push people to take the vaccine but in a way to think more deeply about what community looks like and to open a dialogue. We want to support community organizations that are already doing the work by helping to provide them with resources such as funding, information, and good humans.”
Haynes gathered a group of passionate students, and together, they got to work. They put themselves in position to be outreach coordinators, to sit at soccer games and teach people about the vaccine, and to offer support to the community in whatever spaces they could.
Right to Left, Queens students Matilde Sanchez, Rose Sall, Lucca Ferreira
Faith in The Vaccine, an initiative started by the Interfaith Youth Core based out of Chicago, and supported by the White House, attempts to bridge the gap between religion and vaccine hesitancy across the continental United States.
The initiative is also an attempt to to reach herd immunity, which is a short term stating that the majority of a population is immune to a specific disease. Haynes noted that the vaccine does not belong within the binary of vax vs. anti-vax, but instead within the confines of access to education.
He stated that a “a lot of people in the middle weren’t anti-vax, but that they were hesitant for various other reasons. For example, impaired relationships with the medical community caused marginalized groups to be more weary of receiving the vaccine.” He continued, saying that “faith communities are a large percentage of the population and are necessary to tap into to reach herd immunity.” The initiative was less focused on “convincing people to receive the vaccine, but on healing relationships between marginalized religious communities and the medical community.”
The “Faith in the Vaccine” initiative at Queens was started in May 2020, and planned as a year-round coalition. Funding was received through the Duke Endowment and other grant money, with the initial focus being on responding to neighborhood needs. Haynes said that “there was no formal plan to start this thing. We just saw something that needed to be done and decided to just do our thing. Help out the people around us.”
Matilde Sanchez, Queens student, said the outreach process was one of great importance. Her role was one of being a vaccine student ambassador on campus and working in outreach spaces by creating the educational and informative material for Queens Vaccine Outreach events. Through this initiative, she has been able to do community outreach through vaccines clinics such as the Pineville clinic.
Sanchez also interviewed Dr. Singh, a professor of medicine, about his religion and how it has informed his perspective on the vaccine. She said that “the most satisfying thing about outreach is seeing people want to get vaccinated/getting vaccinated. When we did the vaccine clinic on campus and found out 100 people got vaccinated, it was an amazing feeling to know that with information and resources, we can get more and more people protected.”
Queens Members stationed at the Pineville Neighborhood Place
She continued by expressing her excitement about how she was given the ability to work in outreach in a way she never had before. She said that she “had not done this type of outreach or this level before. What drove me to want to be a part of it was that it was becoming a crucial moment where we needed more people to share facts to try and fight against the misinformation. This was something we hadn’t dealt with before, and I wanted to help protect the people around me and also be on the right side of history. I learned that outreach is so important. That being there and offering services, resources, and knowledge will help create the change you want to see. That our voices are powerful. But also that listening is a key factor to being understanding. You can’t create change without listening first.”
Rose Sall, a senior at Queens, also explained how this initiative allowed her the space to work on her outreach skills and dive further into her love for learning about other people. The experience also allowed her to discuss a subject of extreme importance. “This really was the first step to all of us looking at each other in a humane way,” was one of her closing remarks.
Haynes summed up the program: “This work is not about recognition, or being right or wrong, but recognizing and supporting community organizations that are already doing great work. We have the funding, so we might as well pour it back into the community that it truly belongs within.”
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