Hannah Rose Mendoza, assistant professor of interior architecture, works with students Anna Will, center, and Josie McKinney.

Anna Will, a senior interior architecture major, came home from a Habitat for Humanity trip with a mission. She wanted to design a school for the Kyekyewere village she had visited in Ghana, Africa.

Anna had seen the lust for learning in the Kyekyewere children, who had to walk several miles to school in neighboring villages.

“It was upsetting to hear children explain that they probably wouldn't have the opportunity to see the future they dreamed of just because they didn't think they were capable of making it to university,” she says. “Witnessing this determination to learn made me realize how important it was to bridge the gap between reality and dreams to better the futures of these children.”

The children's dreams are fast becoming reality. Assistant professor Hannah Rose Mendoza and Anna's fellow design students quickly embraced Anna's idea. The project represented the same community-engaged social activism that interior architecture has invested in earlier projects like Our Sister Susan's House, a home for single teen moms and their children.

Anna and other students worked under Mendoza, adopting the school design project as part of their coursework. Final designs were chosen, and several of the students traveled to Ghana in January to help build the school.

“The world is much smaller than we realize; students at UNCG need to understand the importance of global involvement and thinking beyond our school, state and country,” Anna says. “We spend so much of our time focused locally that we turn a blind eye to the lives of those in greater need. If children of rural villages, such as Kyekyewere, can understand and idolize the opportunity in our ‘American’ way of life, it is only fair that we invest efforts in giving them the same.”

Mendoza has put in countless extra hours on the project. She has written to ambassadors, Nestle, even Oprah, to raise funds for the project. She has recruited help and advice at UNCG and beyond, engaging local businesses as well as structural engineering students and a Ghana-born professor of agricultural economics from NC A&T.

“We're trying to build as broad a coalition as possible,” Mendoza says. “The outpouring of support has been amazing.”

In designing a school for Kyekyewere where there is no phone service, no electricity, no plumbing, no air conditioning and no means to replace broken glass, Mendoza's students faced unique challenges.

“They are having to step outside of their own experience of what a school is,” she says. Mendoza looks on the Ghana project as a pilot for future global design projects, hopefully building a school somewhere in the world every two years.

“I want to build 15 schools before I retire,” she says. “There's a transformative process in making something you've envisioned come to life. It's a lifestyle. And we want to show people that you don't have to wait for a millionaire or a government program; they can go grassroots.”

Read a first-person account about the trip on Hannah Rose Mendoza's blog at hannahsghana.wordpress.com. To learn more about the project itself, visit iarcghana.wordpress.com. Or read student reflections on the trip at uncgiarc.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/global-studio-update-return-from-ghana.

“Salmon Is A Jumpin'” CD

It's a first for Dr. John Salmon.

Salmon, professor of piano, has made several recordings through the years. Now he's put out the first recording of his own compositions.

The CD, titled “Salmon Is A Jumpin',” was released on Albany records Nov. 1. It features jazz piano compositions, recorded in the Music Building Organ Hall in the fall of 2009.

“They reflect my background in both jazz and classical music,” he said.

The recording was funded by grants in 2009 from the North Carolina Arts Council ($10,000) and the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro ($1,500), and the project was also made possible by a research leave in the 2009 fall semester.

The style of the compositions could be classified as “third stream,” a term describing jazz influenced by classical music.

“fireworks!” CD

The UNCG Wind Ensemble got the attention of someone at the National Academy of Recording and Arts and Sciences.

Yes, the people who give out Grammy Awards.

The ensemble was entered into consideration for music's highest honor by a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for its most recent recording, “fireworks!” The Wind Ensemble was on the Grammy Entry List in the Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance categories.

“To be placed on a worldwide ballot with the greatest classical ensembles is very rewarding,” said Dr. John Locke, UNCG's director of bands.

At least one of those competitors was very familiar. Also making the list were Dr. Michael Burns, an associate professor of bassoon, and Dr. Inara Zandmane, staff accompanist for the music departments, for their CD “Primavera: Music for Bassoon and Piano by Bassoonists.” The recording was listed in Best Classical Album and Best Chamber Music Performance categories.

“fireworks!” is the ensemble's 16th studio recording and the first to be distributed through a commercial recording label. The album was released in March 2010 and is available at Amazon.com, through many online distributors, directly from Equilibrium Records and for download through the Apple iTunes Store.

“Primavera” is available from Amazon.com, cdbaby.com and other online retailers.

Weatherford's book about John Coltrane

Carole Boston Weatherford '92 MFA was one of six North Carolinians who received the state's highest civilian honor, the North Carolina Award, in October.

Gov. Beverly Perdue presented the awards, which have been bestowed to more than 250 North Carolinians over the last half century.

Writing fiction, nonfiction and poetry for juvenile audiences, Carole has published 40 books since 1995. With the goal of sparking children's imaginations, she frequently performs readings at schools. She also conducts educational workshops and teaches literature at Fayetteville State University. Her celebrated writing career has been tightly focused on mining the past for “family stories, fading traditions and forgotten struggles.”

Carole grew up in Baltimore and wrote her first poem in first grade. She later found her niche with children's literature. Her books have garnered wide acclaim, including the Golden Kite Honor for Picture Book Text, the NAACP Image Award, a Caldecott Honor and the Jane Addams Children's Literature Honor. She has written about real-life heroes such as Harriet Tubman, Jesse Owens and John Coltrane.

Kelly Cherry '67 MFA grew up with music permeating her home.

Her parents were string quartet violinists, and Beethoven's music wove itself into their lives.

“I grew up on that music, and I hoped to make something to help people feel what I felt when I listened to that music.”

Now she will share the music of words in her new role as Virginia's poet laureate. She follows the tenure of another UNCG alumna, Claudia Emerson '91 MFA.

Like her professors at UNCG, namely Fred Chappell and Bob Watson, Cherry moves easily within a variety of genres — fiction, poetry, memoir, essays and criticism. To date, she's published 20 books of fiction, poetry and nonfiction and eight chapbooks.

“I love them all,” she says of literary forms. “But poetry always comes closest to home. I don't mean autobiographically; I mean emotionally. It's the one I feel the most.”

Poetry is not something she can write every day. Writing in other formats “means less loose time on my hands.

“It felt very natural to move among forms,” she says. “I've always been interested in poetry and fiction. They represent music and character.”

Through the years she has written about science, nature and religion. Her latest book of poetry, “The Retreats of Thought,” is a sonnet sequence on philosophy.

And the awards and accolades have followed. Her fiction has appeared in “Best American Short Stories,” “Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards,” “The Pushcart Prize” and “New Stories from the South” and has won three PEN/Syndicated Fiction awards. For her poetry, she received the Hanes Prize for a body of work. Her new and selected poems, titled “Hazard and Prospect,” was a finalist for the Poets' Award.

Cherry, who is also the Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says she retired early to get more writing done.

In addition to the duties of poet laureate (through which she hopes to work especially with seniors), she has another book of poems scheduled for 2013. She is completing a new book of stories and working on a book-length poem. After that there will be another book of stories (the third in her trilogy of short story collections set in Madison, Wis.), a memoir and a novel.

“I love writing. It really makes me happy, even when it's going badly,” Cherry says. “It's what I was born to do.”

My Mother's Father

lived in a sawmill, whittling
houses for strangers.
On Sunday he rowed to church
via bayou backwaters. All his daughters
dreamed of Ahab and Ulysses
(they were at that age).
They drifted like leaves pried from the riverbank.
Their bare limbs glowed in the late of day.
When twilight came, the woody cypress grew
shadows, and fairy rings
sprang up and disappeared
overnight.

From “Relativity” by Kelly Cherry

• “The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted,” a novel by Julianna Baggott '94 MFA under the pen name Bridget Asher
• “Water Never Sleeps,” winner of The Comstock Review's 2009 national chapbook competition, by Lynne Martin Bowman '89 PhD
• “The Woman Who,” a collection of short stories by Kelly Cherry '68 MFA
• “Tea and Other Assorted Poems,” by Ruth Morris Moose '89 MLS
• “Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence: Discovered Letters of a Southern Gardener” by Emily Herring Wilson '61