Poinsettia Festival Speaker
Local school teacher, Tiana Tracy, will speak on Joel Roberts Poinsett, secretary of War, on December 12, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. in the USC Sumter Lecture Hall. Poinsett was the first United States Ambassador to Mexico, appointed by President Andrew Jackson in the 1820's. Poinsett was an international traveler, picking up languages after spending only a week in the country. Because of his interest in botany, he introduced the American elm into Mexico. During his stay in Mexico he wandered the countryside looking for new plant species. In 1828, he found a beautiful shrub with large red flowers growing next to a road. He took cuttings from the plant and brought them back to his greenhouse in South Carolina. Even though Poinsett had an outstanding career as a United States Congressman and ambassador, he will always be remembered for introducing the poinsettia into the United States.
The Sumter Poinsettia Festival is named in honor of Joel Poinsett. His burial site is at the historic Church of the Holy Cross in Stateburg. On December 12, Tiana Tracy will discuss the life and history of Joel Poinsett as Secretary of War in honor of the anniversary of his death on December 12, 1851. Tracy is a local teacher at St. Anne’s who recently collaborated with Colleen Keyes Whitley, a former professor at Brigham Young University, on a book entitled Feed My Sheep: The Life of Alberta Henry. Henry was a black civil rights worker, born on the floor of a sharecropper's shack in Louisiana in 1920.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information please contact Bob Ferrell at 803-938-3762 or via email at bobf@uscsumter.edu
Macias Named to Committee
USC Sumter Psychology Professor Sal Macias was recently named to the nationwide American Psychological Association Committee of Psychology Teachers at Community Colleges (PT@CC). This will be a three-year term beginning in January 2007. The mission of the Committee is to: promote, within the two-year college community, the highest professional standards for teaching of psychology as a scientific discipline with applications to a wide range of human concerns; cultivate a professional identity with the discipline of psychology among psychology teachers at community colleges; develop leadership qualities among psychology teachers at community colleges and increase their participation and representation in professional psychology activities and organizations; establish and maintain communication with all groups involved in the teaching of psychology and with the greater psychological community; and encourage psychological research on teaching and learning at community colleges for the purpose of giving students the best possible educational opportunities. Macias’ teaching interests focus primarily on Introductory Psychology, for which he has written a Study Guide to accompany the general textbook, and also in Developmental Psychology, Learning and Memory and Research Methods. Recently Macias sponsored numerous student research projects that generated professional papers for presentation.
