Volume 4, Number 1 Fall 2009

3Archaeology on the Sweetwater

4 Historical articles receive attention

5Texas student hooked on Wyoming history

6Professor teaches in Nepal

10 Geology professor presents nationally

8 CWC forms Alumni

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}They were exuberant in the worst of conditions. It

rained every day they were there and the mud was almost

incapacitating. They worked like dervishes and laughed

their heads off while doing it.~ – Todd Guenther, instructor

(continued on page 4)

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Heavy rain and “incapacitating mud” didn’t stop a group of students and two Central Wyoming College archaeology instructors from digging up some Wyoming history and pre-history this sum-mer.

Todd Guenther, who has been developing CWC’s fledgling program in Western American Studies, and Jim Stewart, an adjunct teacher for the col-lege who is one of the nation’s leading experts on Rocky Mountain rock art, led a group of CWC students and a few from the University of Wyo-ming on a three-week field study of the middle Sweetwater River area in Fremont County in May and June.

“We got a tremendous amount of field work done,” said Guenther, who was awarded a National Park Service grant to support the summer research project. The group excavated lands near Jeffrey City to Sweetwater Canyon, “be-cause that stretch of the Oregon Trail is virtu-ally undocumented,” Guenther explained.

“There is national attention focused on the lower Sweetwater with Independence Rock and Devil’s Gate, but the middle Sweetwater is sadly neglected,” he said. Besides, the middle Sweetwater is “in our backyard” making it ac-cessible for CWC students to study.

Conducting this type of extensive study of the Middle Sweetwater has been the dream of Guenther, Stewart and Bureau of Land Man-agement archaeologist Craig Bromley. “It’s too big of a project to do on a volunteer basis,” Guenther said. “With the grant, we can make a significant contribution to Wyoming history and pre-history.”

He anticipates the archaeology work will take another ten years to complete, providing students access to experience in analyzing and interpreting material culture. Guenther plans to seek additional grant funding to continue the project.

“These are not arcane, useless skills,” Guenther emphasized. “This is stuff that can get the stu-dents jobs in the field.”

The field studies class recorded 31 new sites that range in age from 10,000 years to material remains from the 1890s. They found prehistoric camp sites in the Oregon Trail ruts, stage sta-tions, a site where it appeared one or more wagons crashed going down a steep hill (see picture be-low) and two old army forts. Guenther was particu-larly excited about the discovery of three Oregon

Trail “road ranches,” completely undocumented facilities that had provided hotel, saloon, and livery stable and blacksmith services during the westward expansion of this nation.

The discovery of the road ranches, he said are “very important to Oregon Trail migration, but no one has done any research on these sites.”

The group found camp sites that contained 10,000-year-old projectile or spear points of the Paleo-Indian. They also discovered a big complex of what appeared to be vision quest circles where young Plains Indians would go to fast as part of their entry into the adult world.

Working in cooperation with the BLM and the Wyoming State Preservation Office, Stewart and Guenther are preparing to complete the site re-

ports. “For every person hour in the field, you spend about three hours in the lab and writ-ing the reports,” said Guenther, who plans to take some of the students who participated in the summer field course to Washington, D.C. in November to conduct further research at the national archives.

“They were exuberant in the worst of conditions,” he said of the students who were enrolled in the field study course. “It rained every day they were there and the mud was almost incapacitating. They worked like dervishes and laughed their heads off while doing it.”

They camped for the length of the course in less than ideal conditions, but were able

Students investigate one the steepest sections of the Oregon Trail. Evidence of wrecked wagons was found this summer, indicating to the students that pioneers had difficulty maneu-vering through this section of the trail.

Students document Oregon Trail at middle Sweetwater

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to make their meals in a cabin offered by the Na-ture Conservancy.

A room in the CWC Classroom Wing has been designated as a lab so that the students may analyze and catalog the artifacts they found during the course. Eventually, the items will go back to the private landowners or to the state repository in Laramie. The students are working to develop an exhibit of their finds for the Intertribal Education and Community Center that opens in the fall of 2010 on the CWC campus.

The field studies courses have piqued the inter-est of a wide assortment of students in Guenther’s

program. This spring, the students were from Wyoming, Texas, and Michigan whose interests varied from equine studies to outdoor education.

Regardless of the abundant efforts this sum-mer, he anticipates there is at least ten more years of work that can be done on the Middle Sweetwater. “It’s pretty exciting,” Guenther said of the finds from this summer’s field work. “I can’t believe I get paid to do this.”

Personally, Guenther, who is a former curator of the Pioneer Museum in Lander and at South Pass City, is more excited about the artifacts of most recent history. He’s begun teaching a “His-tory on Horseback” program.

“Western American Studies, by definition, is interdisciplinary,” he said, noting that students in history, archeology, outdoor education, equine

Two articles written by CWC Western American Studies Program Director Todd Guenther that pro-vide instructional material for his local and region-al history courses have attracted wider attention.

Guenther’s article, “The List of Good Negroes: African American Lynchings in the Equality State,” has been selected for inclusion in the next edition of the Wyoming History Reader by Dr. Phil Roberts at the University of Wyoming Department of Histo-ry. The article becomes required reading in History of Wyoming courses at UW and several community colleges around the state.

“I read your article in Annals and it is both an impressive work of research and, I think, signifi-cant to our understanding of race in Wyoming,” Roberts told Guenther.

science and even welding, would be interested in the program.

Just recently, Guenther took some students back to the site on horses to finish mapping a field school site from last summer.

“On the way out, lo and behold, we found an entire bison eroding out of the riverbank,” he said, “It looks like it died in a forest fire about 400 or 500 years ago.”

He took students to the old John David Love ranch, made famous by the book “Rising From the Plains.”

“We’ve got all the foundational work done in creating courses for the new program,” he said. “Now we are building interest and enthusiasm.” Many of the students had been enrolled in a his-tory or archeology class and wanted to get out into the field and do actual historical research.

“The List of Good Negroes” joins an earlier article by Guenther, “Lucretia Marchbanks: A Black Woman in the Black Hills,” which is already re-quired reading in previous editions of the Wyoming History Reader. The Marchbanks piece also won the “Governor’s Award, Herbert S. Schell Prize” from the South Dakota State Historical Society for the most outstanding article of the year.

Another article by Guenther about an African American homesteader community near Torrington, has earned the Nebraska State Historical Society’s prestigious “James L. Sellers Memorial Award” for the best article published in Nebraska History dur-ing 2008.

The piece is titled, “The Empire Builders: An African American Odyssey in Nebraska and Wyo-ming.”

Sweetwater Adventure(continued from page 3)

Guenther articles receive local, regional attention

Todd Guenther is a colorful instructor.

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Rita Bolton, a second-year CWC student, has “switched.”

The young woman from Jacksonville, Texas came to CWC to pursue an Environmental Science and Leadership degree, but after enrolling in Todd Guenther’s Introduction to Archeology class, she found her true niche. Now she is majoring in CWC’s growing program in Western American Studies and intends to pursue a career as an archeologist.

“Todd is infectious,” Rita said of her first class with Guenther. After taking his course and talk-ing about the opportunities in archeology she has become hooked. “You can make a living digging in the dirt,” she exclaimed.

Bolton was one of the nine students who partic-ipated in Guenther’s field studies course. For three weeks the students and their instructors, Guenther and Jim Stewart, battled the elements, sleeping in tents in a rain-soaked area of the middle Sweet-water River to map undocumented sections of the Oregon Trail.

“It could have been considered miserable, but it was a lot of fun,” Rita said of her summer experi-ence. “I expected a lot out of the course and that’s what I got.”

Despite torrential downpours, mud and wind that would completely destroy their camp, the students were mesmerized by the experience.

“Wyoming has a very interesting history, for sure, but Todd definitely instilled that,” the East Texas native said. Guenther, a former curator at South Pass Historic Site and the Pioneer Museum in Lander, told stories around the campfires each evening that brought history to life for Rita.

“Todd would enlighten us …talking about South Pass and the women and children on the trail and the oxen pulling the wagons,” she said. “He really brought history to life.”

Now Rita is helping Guenther and Stewart to catalog the artifacts and build exhibits, which include the remains of a 500-year-old buffalo found in the river by the students who returned to the site this fall.

“There’s no way you can learn this stuff from a book,” she said of her field study experience. “Hands-on learning is way better.” And while the cataloging and shelving of materials found this summer and fall would seem boring to some, Rita finds the work invigorating especially when she comes upon artifacts that she herself found.

“It’s all a part of archeology and I actually en-joy it for some reason,” she said.

Rita is one of the students who will travel with Guenther to Washington, D.C. in November to con-duct further research at the national archives. The field study was made possible by a grant from the National Park Service.

Summer of field work has Texas student hooked on Wyoming history

Rita Bolton (right) and her roommate Cheryl Veggian of Michigan sift through artifacts uncovered during the summer field studies course on the middle Sweetwater River.

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Mike Myers spent his summer vacation volun-teering in a far away foreign land teaching while learning a few things on the side to benefit his position at Central Wyoming College.

Using his own resources, the CWC theater director spent six weeks in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, teaching English to young boys at one of the many Buddhist monasteries.

Though he had been a Peace Corps volunteer shortly after graduating from college, this was the first chance he’s been able to continue that type of work since his service in Oman.

“I wanted to volunteer somewhere,” he said, noting there were multiple options for him to choose from. He joined an organization based in England that operates around the world conduct-ing all types of projects from agriculture and ir-rigation projects to working at residential facilities for children.

Myers acknowledged that it may have been less expensive if he had booked the trip on his own, but he found the work very rewarding. “It was worth it,” he said of his experience.

Nepal is a landlocked country in southern Asia that is bordered on the north by the People’s Republic of China and to the south, east and west by India. It is perched on southern slopes of the Himalayan Mountains that has eight of the 10 highest mountains in the world.

He described Kathmandu as “third world mod-ern.” People drive motor vehicles but the roads are dirt which turn into mud and lakes during the time he was there which was the monsoon season.

Myers lived at a hotel with the other volun-teers who were primarily from England, Ireland,

Hong Kong and China. Most of the volunteers were college students or recent graduates, so Myers was clearly the most mature of the group.

He taught three classes per day to differ-ent age students who all had varied abilities in English.

“English is the world’s language,” Myers said, and in Kathmandu, a city of approximately 2.5 million people, the ability to speak English is very desirable because of the city’s dependence on income from the tourism trade. The nation is the 10th poorest in the world, and Myers said he didn’t meet anyone while he was there that didn’t want to emigrate to America or Western Europe. “People want to get out,” he said. “Even some of the monks hope to come to the U.S. or Western Europe.”

His students were not all necessarily at the monastery to become monks. While some families send their boys there for an “honorable” career as a monk, other families send their boys, some as young as 5, specifically for the religious and secu-lar education. Others take their boys to the monas-tery because they are handicapped and simply for the reason that they can’t afford to support them.

In addition to the English classes taught by Myers and other volunteers, the monastery stu-dents also study science, math, social studies and the Nepali and Tibetan languages. The Dalai Lama, the revered Tibetan leader, advocates that all monks learn math and science, Myers said.

He conservatively estimated that were at least 60 Buddhist monasteries in Kathmandu though

Professor spends summer vacation teaching in Nepal

(continued on page 7)

only about 11 percent of the nation’s population is of the faith. A majority of the people of Nepal, about 80 percent, follow Hinduism.

His students only see their families once or twice a year and he witnessed the excitement of the children who got to see their siblings and par-ents while he was there.

His experience working in Nepal with the inter-national contingent was especially helpful to Myers as he is also an advisor to international students at CWC. “For one thing, it reminds me of what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land,” he explained. “It makes me understand how our international students feel when they come here.”

He came close to recruiting another monastery teacher to CWC to improve his language skills, but the teacher backed out when he learned only about 5 percent of students from Nepal are allowed student visas to the U.S.

Myers also gained valuable experience for his theater profession. Word got out that there was an American theater professor in Kathmandu, which stirred interest among a group that was releasing a Nepali martial arts film. It was going to be released in Nepal in August, but they wanted to get it into international markets as a “straight-to-DVD” film. They were looking for an American to dub the voices in English and Myers ended up voicing four of the six main characters in the film. “I even had scenes with myself where I played two characters.”

He also helped the film’s creators to re-write the lines to fit the mouth movements of the ac-tors. Myers laughingly said he sounded like William Shatner because he had to punctuate his English to make it fit.

Myers also learned from his volunteer col-leagues. “The great thing about this program is that you have this built-in peer group,” he said. “I learned as much from them talking about their countries as I did from the Nepalese.”

He was surprised to find out that not one of the fellow volunteers were teachers. “They came from all different occupations.”

During free time on weekends, Myers and the other volunteers left the crowded city, which is estimated to have as many at 7 million resi-dents in the greater urban area, to escape to the beautiful countryside. While the city is completely encircled by the Himalayan foothills and the giant peaks can be seen from all sides, the monsoon skies shrouded Everest, K2 and the rest from Myers’ view. Only on early morning jaunts hiking to the top of the foothills allowed him a quick glimpse of the majesty of the great mountains. “They were right there, but you can’t see them,” he recalled.

In summers ahead, Myers plans to volunteer abroad again, hopefully to an Eastern European country.

Adventure in Kathmandu(continued from page 5)

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Kathmandu is rich in color and diversity.

Myers’ students ham it up for the camera, above. Below, the American poses with his teaching colleagues at the Buddhist monastery.

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Remember when... first Alumni eventIf you’ve ever been a student at Central Wyo-

ming College, you’re invited to a special Alumni Association kick-off event prior to the evening basketball games of the Bailey Tire Tip-Off Satur-day, Nov. 14.

Any former CWC student, who took at least 12 credit hours, is invited to the Fremont Room (Stu-dent Center room 103) for some chili and refresh-ments between 4 and 5:30 p.m., giving alumni a chance to get reacquainted with CWC and some former classmates.

CWC chef Duane Van Skike is preparing three different chilis, including a vegetarian dish, for all who want to stop by before the games. Tip-off time for the first game is 5:30 p.m., followed by the second game at 7:30.

After CWC celebrated its 40th anniversary, CWC President Dr. Jo Anne McFarland asked for volunteers to form an alumni association. Several alumni offered assistance including Brian Rohr-bacher, Eddie Wadda, Ernie Over, Jackie Dorothy, Amanda Watkins Nicholoff and RoJean Thayer.

To build a viable Alumni Association, CWC is seeking information about former students and asking that alumni or their family members visit the college website at: cwc.edu and search “Foun-dation.” There will be an alumni contact link to update alumni profiles. People may also call the Foundation Office at 855-2035.

Over, who received his AAS in Radio Television Broadcasting in 1972, remembers his earlier years

at CWC. “There was no paved parking lot or land-scaping and we parked right outside of the door (See picture below that is now the Administration building. In the early days, the building housed the library, student lounge and adminsitrative of-fices). In fact there were only three structures on campus, the Admin building, the classroom build-ing and the utility building.”

“Our basketball team (men only then) played at the Riverton Middle School and our graduation ceremony was at the United Methodist Church. KCWC-TV was “on the air” only one night a week, he recalls.

Rohrbacher of Lander thought CWC instructors were very caring and would always make sure stu-dents got caught up on their classes if they were absent. “You were always treated as a student, not a number,” he said.

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Central Wyoming College has launched two new degree programs in Envi-ronment, Health and Safety (EHS) this fall that were initially driven by Wyo-ming’s booming energy industry.

With the nation’s flat economy, the energy industry has slowed, but the EHS program’s director emphasizes the curriculum is beneficial to a number of businesses, agencies and other types of industry.

“Safety has been, and continues to be a concern,” said Lew Barnett, who was hired this summer to direct the EHS program at CWC. “Individual contrac-tors and companies have really been on this avenue of safety for quite some time. It’s not a new or novel idea.”

What is new is having a pair of Associate of Applied Science degrees where students can become educated as health and safety or environmental technicians to work for companies who are required to adhere to strict govern-mental regulations and standards related to environment, health and safety issues, Barnett said.

Many companies are sending their employees out for different types of health and safety training, which has been provided by CWC’s Department Workforce and Community Education. “The AAS degree is for the individual who wants to become a safety professional or environmental technician,” he said.

Last spring, CWC was awarded a $1.4 million grant from the Department of Labor to implement and sustain the two programs in Health and Safety and Environmental Technician.

The programs were developed at the request of industry leaders who were experiencing a severe shortage of qualified individuals to meet the growing demands for technical positions.

The college worked with an advisory committee made up of officials from EnCana, Conoco Phillips, Devon Energy, MiSwaco and the Department of Environmental Quality to develop the curriculum. “To our knowledge, the EHS programs at CWC are the only degree programs in Wyoming and in surrounding states,” Barnett said.

Program energy driven, yet useful for other agencies, businesses

(continued on page 10)

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In addition to offering the two AAS degrees, the college continues to offer shorter, on-the-job EHS training to industry partners through its workforce development program. Barnett, and Markus Wesaw, a faculty member hired to teach the Health and Safety degree classes, are fre-quently called upon for specific training.

“There’s a huge demand for this type of train-ing on the western side of the state,” he said, noting Wesaw recently provided Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) training at EnCana’s oil fields to 100 employees at a facility near Pinedale.

Jacki Klancher has been hired to teach the environmental technician degree program and she sees plenty of opportunities for students in the energy industry but also for state and federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Depart-ment of Environmental Quality.

The opportunity to develop the content for this side of the program is “fantastic” for Klancher, who has experience in the physical and biological sciences as well as outdoor education.

She also sees multiple prospects for students to put their classrooms skills to work as interns and in research.

The grant made it possible to offer stipends to students interested in pursuing the degrees and already CWC has a full class of students enrolled. Some of the students are recent high school graduates interested in pursuing the profession while others are non-traditional who

have been working for some time in the energy industry.

Wesaw said the Department of Labor predicts a significant demand for environment, health and safety officials and “they are going to be looking at our graduates.”

“Initially the program was energy driven,” Barnett added. “But we don’t have to pigeon whole them into energy.” Anyone who runs a business would find value in an employee with this type of training, he added.

One of the program’s courses results in a valu-able 30-hour OSHA certification, and next spring, CWC will offer a 40-hour Hazardous Waste Opera-tions and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) class.

“These are very valuable to a potential employer,” he emphasized, adding that they would be very expensive certifications to pursue elsewhere. The college is also looking to add a 30-credit hour certificate program as well as a 15-hour credential for the student who wants the training but isn’t interested in the full degree or who already has a degree.

For students in the environmental technician track, Klancher said the degree can open many doors because of its wider applications with the sciences. She said the mixture of the two pro-grams is “very unique.”

The college is also looking to the University of Wyoming and other four-year institutions to offer bachelor degree programs in EHS.

Most of the courses are offered in the evening so that people who work during the day have an opportunity to enroll. The college is also planning to develop online courses in the EHS area.

Professor presents at national meeting of Geological Society A Central Wyoming College science professor was invited to present at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, taking place Oct. 18-21 in Portland, Ore. CWC Professor Suki Smaglik has been invited to present on two topics related to CWC’s geosciences programs in Earth and Envi-ronmental Sci-ence, Environ-mental Science and Leadership and the new Environment, Health and Safety program. (See related article on page 9.) “In addition to classroom work, our pro-grams attempt to spend a significant amount of time outdoors,” Smaglik said in her abstract entitled “Central Wyo-ming College: The Middle of Nowhere Has a Whole Lot Out There.” She said the college utilizes the Sinks Canyon Center for field-based courses and also has several undergraduate research projects ranging from biogeochemistry to hydrology. Smaglik teaches chemistry, earth science, and geology at CWC.

(continued from page 9)

Environment, Health and Safety

Central Wyoming College’s Thermopolis Out-reach Center will be much more accessible and visible in the weeks ahead. CWC has secured space in the ReMax office building at 601 South Broadway and the facility is being remodeled to include a classroom space for 25, a computer lab with 15 stations, a confer-ence room, and facilities for Adult Education/GED classes as well as offices for staff. Along with the new space comes a new face. Melissa Johnson, who was born and raised in Thermopolis, is the new outreach center coordi-nator in Thermopolis, replacing longtime coordi-nator Bev Koerwitz. “We expect the center to be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Fridays,” said Work-force and Community Education Assistant Dean Lynne McAuliffe. The office phone number re-mains the same: 307-864-6526. Before, CWC had one room at Hot Springs County High School that was used for adult edu-cation, credit classes and Koerwitz’s office, which was only open 20 hours a week nine months a year. Johnson’s hours are extended to 30 and she will work year round. The extended hours allows the college to ramp up its community services offerings as well as workforce development programs and additional college credit classes. In addition to partnering with the Chamber of Commerce, the Senior Center and the Recreation District, the college is collaborating with the Hot Springs County School District to enhance offer-ings for high school students in the vocational

area. The school district will also provide staffing at the CWC facility. “I am excited about partnering with these oth-er groups to strengthen educational opportunities for the community,” said Johnson, who returned to her hometown more than two years ago to be a safety coordinator for McCumber Well Service, her family’s business. Prior to returning to Thermopolis, Johnson managed a 4-H program in Park County, develop-ing volunteer training, traditional classes and after school programs. She had taught the Profes-sional Administrative Assistant program for CWC’s customized training program prior to joining the staff full time. The college expects the new outreach center to open by November 1 and plans a community open house. “I’m excited about Melissa’s enthusiasm,” McAuliffe said. With the center under construc-tion, Johnson is concentrating on developing offerings for the spring. A publication describing the offerings will be distributed in the community prior to the spring semester.

Melissa Johnson is the new Thermopolis Outreach Center coordinator for CWC.

New face, new space for CWC Thermopolis

Longtime CWC Dubois Outreach Coordinator Michele Burdick was included in a feature article in the September 2009 issue of Prevention magazine. Burdick, 62, evenly divides her time between her work (she’s also a real estate agent), fun (ten-nis, skiing, riding horses, hiking), and community activism (she volunteers to promote recreation, tourism and children’s issues) and friends, was quoted in the Prevention article on “The New Middle Age.” “Meet the New Middle Age, as personified by Michele and a generation of women like her who are extending the prime of life, with all its rich emotional, intellectual, and spiritual potential, way beyond the short horizons that defined their mothers’ middle years,” writer Peter Jaret said in the article. As an outreach coordinator, Michele organizes “lifelong learning” classes, many of which help her fellow citizens of Dubois acquire new skills, improve their personal health and strengthen their community.

Dubois coordinator featuredin Prevention magazine

Connect is a publication of the CWC Public Information Office and is scheduled to be published quarterly.

November 4-7 ................Region IX Volleyball Tournament at CWC

November 13-14 ........................................... Bailey Tire Tip-Off

November 16-20 ................................................ Advising Week

November 17 ........................................... Fall Showcase Concert

December 4-5, 11-13 ............................. The Wind in the Willows

December 6.......................................................Holiday Concert

December 7................................... Winter Music Student Recital

December 8-9 .......................... Auditions for Fiddler on the Roof

December 18 ..................................................... Fall classes end

December 24-January 1 ....................................... Holiday break

January 4 .......................Registration for spring classes resumes

January 13-15 ......................................New Student Orientation

January 19 ........................................ Spring 2010 Classes begin

Front cover images: (top, left) Art in front of Nepalese temple; (right) CWC rodeo members wait their turn during the CWC Rustler Rodeo in Riverton; (bot-tom photo) students search near the middle Sweetwater area for artifacts.

Schedule of Upcoming Events

Six CWC science students and 10 students from a senior level UW microbiology class collaborated with Dr. Naomi Ward in collecting biological samples from the Thermopolis Hot Springs. CWC Professor Suki Smaglik (right) and CWC students trained in water collection techniques showed the UW faculty and students how to properly collect and test water samples recently in Thermopolis.