Wagner Celebrates 125th Anniversary with Founders’ Convocation Wagner students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends celebrated the College’s 125th anniversary with a first-ever Founders Day Convocation on October 15. The ceremony was one of a series of events marking Wagner’s anniversary year and included the reading of a proclamation of congratulations by Staten Island Borough President James P. Molinaro. Among those who spoke at the service that day were President Richard Guarasci, the Rev. Robert Rimbo, Bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod, Jay P. Hartig, ’67, chair of the Wagner Board of Trustees, and Harry Jackson, student body president.
During the ceremony, an honorary degree was presented, posthumously, to the College’s namesake, John George Wagner III. Young John George died before he could fulfill his dream of becoming a minister. Accepting the diploma on his behalf was his great grandniece, Margaret-Anne Milne.
The program concluded with three different reflections on Wagner of various eras.
Wagner to Sponsor Post Election Forum
Three close observers of religion in American life — Peter Steinfels, James M. Dunn, and A. James Rudin — will meet at a forum exactly one week after the presidential election, on Tuesday evening, November 11, to share with the public their observations and analyses about “The Pulpit and the ‘Bully Pulpit’: Religion in the 2008 Presidential Election.” The event, sponsored by New York City’s Wagner College and the Center for Jewish History, will take place at the Center, located in Manhattan at 15 West 16th Street, and will start at 6:30 pm. Each of the evening’s panelists is a highly regarded commentator who has written extensively about developments in American religious life.
Seahawk Trio Earns Weekly NEC Awards
Senior Brecken Drager (Loomis, CA/Del Oro) and freshmen Zachary Spector (Yaphank, NY/Longwood) and Kaela Townsend (Los Gatos, CA/Los Gatos) have each topped the best in the Northeast Conference (NEC) as Drager earns her third Athlete of the Week award while Spector and Townsend take Rookie of the Week honors, as announced by the league office.
Drager took the Central Connecticut University Mini-Meet by storm, placing second in the meet with a time of 11:12, good for second place and just three seconds behind first place finisher Sarah Mosser of Boston University and 23 seconds better than the rest of the NEC pack. This is her sixth NEC Athlete of the Week award of her grand career.
With a 15:33, 11th place finish Spector has won the NEC Rookie of the Week title in back-to-back weeks while this week’s award is his third of the season. Spector’s efforts on the five-kilometer course helped the Seahawks to a fourth place finish out of 14 teams.
Townsend brings home her first NEC Rookie of the Week award after running in just her second collegiate meet. After battling injury and illness, Townsend put the pedal to the metal and sped through the two-mile course for a 54th place finish in 12:18.
Northeast Conference Institutions Continue To Excel In Latest NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR) Data With Division I student-athlete graduation rates continuing their upward trend, Northeast Conference (NEC) institutions again ranked among the nation’s elite in Graduation Success Rate (GSR) figures recently released by the NCAA.
According to the NCAA data, NEC student-athletes graduated at an 83.8 percent rate, easily surpassing the national average of 78 percent. The GSR for NEC women’s student-athletes was 91.4 percent, well ahead of the national average which reached 87 percent. The men’s GSR for the conference was 74.5 percent, outpacing the 71 percent nationwide rate for male student-athletes.
Wagner Football Fights against Muscular Dystrophy On Saturday, Oct. 25, when Wagner hosted Robert Morris, Seahawk head coach Walt Hameline and his assistants were among the many college football coaches from around the country that are joining together to fight another opponent – Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. By wearing an arm band with the Coach to Cure MD insignia, coaches will show their support for Coach to Cure MD, the American Football Coaches Association’s (AFCA) newest charitable project. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is the most common fatal genetic disorder diagnosed during childhood. Because the Duchenne gene is found on the X-chromosome, it primarily affects boys and occurs across all races and cultures.
