Elon University's second annual celebration of the arts & sciences brought hundreds of people to campus Saturday for hands-on educational activities and the inaugural "5K Run/Walk for H.O.P.E." to benefit a student-run charity that fights hunger in Alamance County.
Elon University celebrated the arts and sciences on Saturday with a campus festival featuring music, dancing and educational activities that introduced children to everything from chemistry to anthropology.
The family-friendly “Explore the World” extravaganza on Young Commons and in the Center for the Arts on May 2, 2015, was the second time in as many years that Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, hosted a community event to cap the university’s annual CELEBRATE! Week.
Performances by Elon’s Ballroom Dance team, the Elon Music Ambassadors, the university’s Gospel Choir, students studying West African dance this spring, campus a cappella groups and a North Carolina children’s dance company highlighted the day.
“I hope everyone has fun and that they left with more understanding of the arts and sciences that will spark curiosity in young children,” said Angela Lewellyn Jones, associate dean of Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences.
Faculty and students who speak a variety of foreign languages taught visitors how to write their names in those languages, with “passports” available for children to claim prizes if they had professors from each language stamp that book.
Elon students in the spring semester’s “Challenges in Engineering” course led children in design and building devices for hitting ping pong balls into plastic cups lying on their sides.
“If we can get people to not be afraid of what they see, they have a good time,” said Assistant Professor Sirena Hargrove-Leak from Elon’s engineering program. “And it’s so fun to design something, test it right away, and see if it works.”
Other activities included an archaeology exhibit, making ice cream from liquid nitrogen, poetry readings and computer games designed by Elon students in a fall semester course for computing sciences majors.
The festival preceded The President’s Music Concert, a 7:30 p.m. program in McCrary Theatre hosted by Elon University President Leo M. Lambert featuring Department of Music students, faculty, staff and alumni.
“I wanted people to leave thinking that Elon is a fun place and that they’d want to come back,” Jones said. “We’re opening our arms to the communities that surround us.”
The celebration kicked off with the inaugural 5K Run/Walk for H.O.P.E., a fundraising effort to support Helping Other People Eat, a student-run charity that fights hunger in Alamance County by collecting donations from visitors to local restaurants. One hundred people registered for the morning race through campus, including many faculty and staff members who brought their children.
The race also attracted current students and alumni who work in the region. “I’m not on campus any more so it’s nice to run around and see what’s changed with the new construction,” said Rebecca Stanley ‘14, a second grade teacher in the Alamance-Burlington School System.
Stanley convinced one of her Elon friends to run with her.
“I like being on campus for reasons other than school,” said Kendal Cinnamon ‘14, now an iMedia student preparing to graduate with a master’s degree from Elon in three weeks. “This helps us appreciate it more and it’s nice to be outside!”
Others offered similar motivations.
“I’ve never run a 5K before, so it was a personal challenge,” said Elon junior Jon Bass, an entrepreneurship major from Peterborough, New Hampshire, who has previously been involved with H.O.P.E. “I wanted to see if I could do it, and I think I ran well.”
Elon junior Greg Stone, one of H.O.P.E.’s five founders, won the race with a time of 19:04. The top female finisher was Assistant Professor Kristina Meinking in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, who ran the course in 23:11.
Jones said the fundraiser for H.O.P.E. was a natural way to bridge Elon’s values of a liberal arts education with its commitment to serving the region.
“It was a natural connection to support the group,” she said. “We know that community partnerships and service-learning are a great partnership with a festival celebrating the arts and sciences.”