Steven L. Solnick, Ph.D., New Delhi Representative for the Ford Foundation since 2008, has been named by the Warren Wilson College Board of Trustees as the college’s seventh president, effective in July 2012. He will succeed Sandy Pfeiffer, who is retiring in June after six years as president.

Go here to read more about Warren Wilson’s seventh president. You also can read the incoming president’s recent interview with sophomore Micah Wilkins of The Warren Wilson Echo at this link.

Warren Wilson is No. 4 nationwide on Sierra magazine’s 2011 list of “Coolest Schools” – college and universities recognized for their efforts to stop global warming and to operate sustainably. The “Coolest Schools” are featured as the cover story of Sierra’s September/October issue.

Warren Wilson has appeared on the annual list ever since it was launched by Sierra in 2007. The only other school in the Southeast to make the 2011 list is Appalachian State University, at No. 12.

According to the magazine, “Each year since 2007, we at Sierra have sat in our offices for weeks doing the detailed, quantitative work to rank U.S. universities on their greenness. This year, we also wanted to find out what lessons are learned when the classroom walls fall away.

“To derive the numbers, we asked the Sierra Club’s conservation experts to help us rejigger our 12-page questionnaire to reflect the Club’s most pressing priorities. We e-mailed surveys to 940 schools…. We corresponded with many of the colleges’ devoted sustainability officers.”

The “Coolest Schools” article in Sierra notes, “As part of Warren Wilson’s put-on-your-boots-and-grab-a-shovel philosophy, students grow trees, alfalfa, and corn and raise cows, pigs, and chickens on the school’s 250-acre farm.”

Observes Sierra editor-in-chief Bob Sipchen: “When students take what they’ve learned in the classroom and proceed to get their hands dirty in the real world, they realize the potential they have to make a difference. We’re thrilled to highlight these forward-thinking schools for emphasizing environmental responsibility, and for teaching, inspiring, and empowering students to effect real change.”

Coverage of this year’s “Coolest Schools” can be found here.  The page on Warren Wilson is here.

In addition to many other green accolades, Warren Wilson was named to The Princeton Review’s 2012 Green Rating Honor Roll comprising 16 schools, and to U.S. News & World Report’s list of “10 Eco-Friendly College Campuses.”

Warren Wilson College senior Madeline Wadley has received North Carolina Campus Compact’s Community Impact Student Award.

Wadley is one of 19 college students across the state to receive the award for making significant, innovative contributions to their campus’ efforts to address local community needs.  Awardees also received a Certificate of Appreciation from Gov. Beverly Perdue.

Wadley, a senior from Birmingham, Ala., is a member of Warren Wilson College’s Service Program Crew and Bonner Leader Program. She has taken advantage of leadership opportunities by organizing and facilitating Kids on Campus; a weekly Big Brothers Big Sisters program; co-leading an immigration workshop; co-leading two alternative break trips to Alabama; and helping move forward the infrastructure of Warren Wilson College’s break trip and service-learning program.

She also has played an important role in the college’s increased commitment to the issue of housing and homelessness by co-leading two Heart of the Issue Workshops; serving as a summer intern and a co-leader of a weekly service opportunity with a local homelessness day shelter; and working with other students and community partners to increase educational, advocacy, and policy work.

The awards were presented at the 19^th NC Campus Compact Student Conference at Wake Forest University that brought together more than 200 college students and guests representing 26 North Carolina higher education institutions.  The compact’s executive director, Lisa Keyne, presented the awards with John  Barnhill, founding director of NC Campus Compact.

Teammate Molly Friedland, a senior from Annapolis, Md., was sixth and Michael Flynn, a WWC sophomore from St. Louis, was 13th in the male omnium scores.

The Owls as a team finished second in Division II, marking the ninth consecutive year that Warren Wilson has finished among the top three D-II teams. For complete results from the 2011 nationals go here.

Grammy Award winner Janis Ian will deliver the main address at the 2012 Warren Wilson College Commencement May 12. The ceremony begins at 10 a.m. on the lawn of Sunderland Residence Hall, near the North Entrance to campus.

Best known as a songwriter-singer, Janis also is a magazine columnist and science fiction author. Her autobiography, “Society’s Child,” received much acclaim upon publication in 2008. She has received several Grammy nominations and in 1975 won “Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female” for her huge hit record “At Seventeen.” On Oct. 11, 1975, Ian and Billy Preston were the first musical guests on the debut of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

Ian and Warren Wilson College have forged strong ties in recent years. In 2010 the Pearl Foundation, founded by Ian and named in honor of her late mother, established The Pearl Foundation Scholarship at Warren Wilson. Janis Ian and her partner, Patricia Snyder, oversee the foundation. This past summer, Ian was one of several Grammy Award winners who taught and performed at The Swannanoa Gathering during its 20^th anniversary season.

The funds will be used to send the professors and three Warren Wilson College students — Mary Reding, John Slaff and Jacey Walrod — to Kunming, China this summer. The team will join their Chinese collaborators, Xiang Rong and his students at Yunnan University, in assessing the hazardous exposures of urban waste pickers and developing amelioration strategies.

The project also will begin to examine why the waste pickers gave up farming in their rural ethnic villages and moved to the cities, where they face significant socio-economic barriers.

Along with a recent one in rural Mexico, the project is part of the college’s new Global Exchange for Sustainability Program, a joint program of Warren Wilson’s Environmental Leadership Center and International Programs Office.

In an era of rapidly rising college costs, the Fiske Guide to Colleges 2012 has named Warren Wilson College as one of the nation’s 25 “Best Buys” among private colleges and universities for the sixth time in eight years.

According to the 2012 guide, schools “qualify as Best Buys based on the quality of the academic offerings in relation to the cost of attendance” – or as the book also puts it, “outstanding academics with relatively modest prices.” With tuition and fees of under $27,000 for the 2011-12 academic year, Warren Wilson is rated as “inexpensive” in relation to other private colleges and universities in the selective guide.

In its narrative on the college, the Fiske guide notes, “Success at Warren Wilson is measured not only by grades, but by community service and a sense of stewardship…. [The college] promotes global perspectives, puts students to work on the campus farm, and makes service-learning a central part of the educational experience.”

In addition to giving the college high marks for its academics, social life and affordability, the Fiske guide gives Warren Wilson the highest possible rating for its overall quality of life for undergraduate students.

The Fiske Guide to Colleges, first published in 1982, has been called “the best college guide you can buy” by USA Today. Read more here on a few of the more interesting colleges, including Warren Wilson, in the 2012 guide.

Newsweek has selected Warren Wilson as No. 3 on its nationwide list of “Most Service-Oriented” colleges and universities. In a feature titled, “The Best Colleges for You,” the magazine calls the institutions “the top schools in the nation for encouraging students to give back to the community and spend time in selfless service.”

Newsweek described its rankings methodology as follows:

“To rank the schools and the students that put the most into giving back, Newsweek partnered with Washington Monthly, [which] scoured an exhaustive amount of data to rank universities based on ‘their contribution to the public good.’ Combining data on national and liberal arts schools, Newsweek and Washington Monthly determined which colleges have the most service-minded students, faculty, and policies….”

Warren Wilson Dean of Service Cathy Kramer said, “We are very pleased with our third-place ranking in Newsweek. With service as part of our educational Triad of academics, work and service, we firmly believe that experience in the community not only prepares students for a life of civic engagement, but also enhances their academic learning.

“We appreciate the recognition that Warren Wilson is a place where we value students making a difference in the broader community through their actions. This is a wonderful reflection on our program that offers students extensive service opportunities and on the very special students that come to Warren Wilson to be a part of our culture of service.”

Warren Wilson instituted its first service requirement for students more than half a century ago. Today Warren Wilson students engage in a minimum of 100 hours of service as a graduation requirement, in a program rooted in community action. In many cases, students’ service is blended with coursework and various papers or presentations.

The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson holds two 10-day residencies each year, in January and July. Warren Wilson MFA students and faculty mentors remain in contact by various means throughout the respective semesters. The residencies also feature public readings and lectures by the program’s distinguished faculty.

MFA Program Director Debra Allbery said, “Our program’s strengths lie in the effectiveness of our design, the diligence and dedication of our faculty and the talent and distinguished achievements of our graduates — each aligned with the high standards this program has set for itself throughout our 35 years.

“We pioneered this model, and it has proven both remarkably stable and brilliantly adaptive; it also provides an enduring and deeply supportive community. Our students, faculty and staff all consider it an exhilarating privilege to be part of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.”

Founded by Ellen Bryant Voigt, the MFA program began with 17 students and three faculty members in 1976 at Goddard College. The program moved south in 1981 to fellow work college Warren Wilson and now receives about 10 times the number of applications for admission it can accept. Warren Wilson MFA alumni have published several hundred books, and its faculty have won nearly every major honor in the country, including MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award.

Warren Wilson College is among 16 colleges and universities nationwide to be included on The Princeton Review’s 2012 Green Rating Honor Roll. WWC is the only private college in the Southeast on the honor roll, having received the review’s highest possible green rating of 99.

According to The Princeton Review’s website, “criteria for the green rating cover three areas: whether the school’s students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable; how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges; and the school’s overall commitment to environmental issues.”

The website also noted that “the institutional survey for the rating included questions on energy use, recycling, food, buildings, and transportation as well as academic offerings and action plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Princeton Review developed its Green Rating with ecoAmerica, a non-profit environmental organization….” For more information on the 16 schools, listed alphabetically in the review’s 2012 green ratings, go here.

The recognition by The Princeton Review is the latest in a long list of green accolades Warren Wilson has received for its environmental and sustainability initiatives. The college also received top billing regarding the Green Rating Honor Roll on the Earth911.com website.

The following Warren Wilson students received prizes for original research: Alissa Gore, first place, and Taija Ventrella, second place, chemistry and biochemistry; Amy Wagner, first place, and Octavia Sola, third place, zoology; Jesse Rickard, first place, and Linden Blasius, second place, environmental science; and Laurel Thwing, second place, botany.

Over the years Warren Wilson students have won more N.C. Academy of Science awards for papers on their research than students from any other college or university in the state. A total of 11 Warren Wilson students presented results of their original research at the 2011 meeting.