Recent Event: Generations in the Workplace

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 former LaGrange College counselor and LPC Kenneth Hoats visited the library. Mr. Hoats spoke to students in the Lewis Library Auditorium from 4 to 5 pm. Students who attended recieved cultural enrichment credit for the event, which consisted of an hour-long presentation called "Managing the Generations at Work", or Generations in the Workplace. The presentation gave an overview of the four generations in the workplace today, including (1) Veterans/Traditionalists, (2) Baby-Boomers, (3) Generation X, and (4) Generation Y/The Millenials.

Speaker Kenneth Hoats presenting "Generations in the Workplace"

Mr. Hoats did an excellent job of presenting this material, opening up the floor for discussion and keeping a lively spirit while speaking. His energetic presence made for an interesting take on the material covered, and the accompanying slides helped to deliver a wealth of information despite the brief 1-hour time frame. Hoats, who regularly presents this particular presentation to companies and businesses with employees representing all four generations, gave some good advice and practical tips to the students on how to work with and deal with peers, fellow employees and future employers of varying generations. The presentation, although presented to students, was applicable to all generations, and gave all in attendance (both young and old) a new perspective on working with people of all ages.

If you would like to contact Mr. Hoats about similar presentations or his professional work as a counselor, please email him, or call him: 706-881-0401. If you missed out on this event, you can still review the presentation material, thanks to the presentation slides (provided with permission from Hoats) below:

The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard will be presented at Price Theater by the LaGrange College Theater Department from October 20th - 24th. For ticket information, please call the Price Theater Box Office at 706-880-8080.
All photos by Rachel Evans.

Guest Speaker to Give Lecture via Video Conferencing

Thursday September 23rd from 7:30 to 8:30 pm will mark the college's first live video-conferencing lecture! The lecture is also a Cultural Enrichment event, and will be held in the library's Auditorium. Guest Speaker Bill Freudenburg has been invited by the library and the college to speak on "Learning the Lessons of Katrina". In light of this upcoming event the library wanted to offer a little bit of background info about the guest speaker:

William Freudenburg is the Dehlsen Professor of Environment and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has published extensively on society-environment relationships, particularly on resource-dependent rural communities and on natural hazards and risks. His articles have been published in interdisciplinary journals such as Science, Risk Analysis, Risk, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change, as well as in numerous sociological journals, including American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Rural Sociology, Social Problems, and Social Forces. Much of his recent work has focused on “disproportionality” -- the tendency for environmental damage to be associated with a surprisingly small fraction of the overall economy. His latest book, with Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska, and Kai Erikson, is Catastrophe in the Making (Island Press, 2009), which analyzes the lessons to be learned from the "un-natural disaster" of Hurricane Katrina.

He has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociology of Environment and Technology from the American Sociological Association (ASA), and "best article" awards from the Pacific Sociological Association and three different ASA sections. He won the Award of Merit from the Rural Sociological Society (RSS) Natural Resource Research Group, as well as winning the RSS's inaugural (2006) Fred Buttel Award for the Best Article of the previous several years. Dr. Freudenburg is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has served as a panelist or member of five different committees of the National Academy of Sciences/ National Research Council. He has also served on numerous other scientific advisory committees, including those for the U.S. Departments of Energy and Interior, and he was the first American Sociological Association Congressional Fellow to serve in the House of Representatives.

Needless to say, we at the library are very excited to have a speaker with such credentials to lecture at LaGrange College. Not only does it promise to be a culturally enriching event, but also it is the perfect opportunity for the library to utilize some of its technological features, such as the brand new video-conferencing system and the other multi-media aspects of the library's auditorium. It is our hope that this event will be the first of many video-conferencing lecture and events to come!