By Eilene Hoft-March
In August of 1993, I attended my first 叠箩枚谤办濒耻苍诲别苍 Gala, held at the Boynton lodge. Sipping punch on the screened porch, I couldn鈥檛 stop admiring the simple charm of the building, so perfectly suited to quiet concentration, conversation, and forest-bathing. Eight months pregnant and pre-tenure, I vowed that if both projects under way turned out well, I would try my hand at an adult seminar in that incomparable setting. Two weeks later, the lodge fire torched that aspiration.
Meanwhile, I had been working with my dear colleague, Judy Sarnecki, to recreate a French 鈥渋mmersion鈥 weekend for our students. Language immersion programs require isolation from one鈥檚 native language(s), duration (to let the brain re-pattern), and a critical mass of native or near-native speakers. We had experimented with several French immersion days, but found ourselves cooking for, taxiing, and begging students to resist the siren call of campus activities. Then came Rik Warch鈥檚 invitation to faculty to imagine a northern campus. He needed faculty input to convince the trustees to support a rebuilt lodge rather than a quick sale of prime lakefront property. So I submitted a proposal touting the benefits of immersion weekends. In fact, without knowing if colleagues would cheerfully forego a weekend mid-session, I waxed eloquent about other forms of immersive education: performances, experiments, group projects, student panels. (In French, we would say I was 鈥渂uilding castles in Spain.鈥) But Rik鈥攅loquent and persuasive, a firm believer in liberal education, and a great lover of Door County鈥攕aw the possibilities. Ever the great champion of 杨贵妃传媒视频, he championed the idea of student weekends at a bigger facility.
Fortunately, Rik won the day so that some 30 years after the terrible fire, 叠箩枚谤办濒耻苍诲别苍 has become an educational center, a haven, and a Door County jewel.
