News and Events
Poet, playwright, and advocate, LeDerick Horne, will discuss living with learning disabilities on April 1, 2009.
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY – When he was in the third grade, LeDerick Horne was told he didn’t have much of a future. But despite being classified as neurologically impaired, Horne has spent his life overcoming his disability and has become successful spoken word poet, playwright, motivational speaker, and advocate.
On Wednesday, April 1, Horne will discuss living, “Beyond Classification,” on Wednesday, April 1. His presentation, the eighth annual Steven Hirsch ’71 and Susan Hirsch Disability Awareness Lecture, will address increasing performance, confidence, self-determination, and self-advocacy by looking beyond classification and labels. Free and open to the public, the lecture will begin at 5:30 pm on the second floor of the Students’ Building.
Through poetry and spoken word, Horne has been recognized across the country as a motivational speaker and advocate for people with disabilities. After graduating with honors from New Jersey City University in 2003, he has organized poetry events throughout the state and performed across the region.
Since then, Horne has released Rhyme Reason and Song (2005), an album of poetry set to hip-hop and house music, and co-created and performed in New Street Poets, a spoken word play addressing urban culture and gentrification. The play received great critical acclaim at the New York City International Fringe Festival in 2007. He also founded and serves as CEO of the real estate investment firm, Horne & Associates, LLC.
Horne is currently the board chair of Project Eye-to-Eye, a national nonprofit that provides mentoring programs for students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. Through Eye-to-Eye, Horne has facilitated workshops, delivered keynote presentations, and spoken to thousands of students, teachers, and service providers about his experiences (http://horneonline.com/poet/).
VASSAR’S CHAPTER OF PROJECT EYE-TO-EYE
Vassar was one of the first colleges to establish a chapter of Project Eye-to-Eye, a national organization founded by Jonathan Mooney and David Cole (authors of Learning Outside the Lines) while they were attending Brown University. Vassar students with learning disabilities (LD) and/or attention deficit disorder (ADHD) serve as mentors of school age students with learning differences. The program is unique as it is coordinated and staffed entirely by college students with LD or ADHD. Mentors work one-on-one with middle school students in the local community with LD or ADHD to address the intense feelings of alienation, frustration and failure that are so commonly experienced by those with LD/ADHD.
ABOUT THE STEVEN HIRSCH ’71 AND SUSAN HIRSCH DISABILITY AWARENESS LECTURE
The lecture series, made possible by a gift from the Steven and Susan Hirsch, whose commitment to enhance student learning and faculty teaching development is helping Vassar more effectively meet the needs of students with diverse learning needs, particularly the needs of students with learning disabilities. Past speakers in the lecture series have included academics and psychologists, discussing their struggles with conditions such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, and clinical depression. The fund also helps support the Vassar chapter of Project Eye-to-Eye.
This event is sponsored by Disability and Support Services. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available. Directions to the Vassar campus are available at www.vassar.edu/directions.
Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.
Posted by College Relations Saturday, February 28, 2009
About the Arts
Powerhouse Theater
The Powerhouse Theater is a collaboration between New York Stage and Film and Vassar College. It is dedicated to both emerging and established artists in the development and production of new works for theater and film. During an intense eight-week summer residency on the Vassar campus, up to twenty different projects are publicly presented, typically engaging more than 200 professional artists and theater students. Plays, musicals, and screenplays are presented in a variety of forms: readings, workshops, and fully staged productions. Since the first Powerhouse Theater season in 1985, New York Stage and Film and Vassar have served more than 2,000 artists and over 175,000 audience members through the development and production of artistically exceptional and affordably priced performances.
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Located just inside Vassar's Main Gate, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center houses the college's permanent collection, over 18,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and glass and ceramic wares, charting the history of art from antiquity to the present. The Permanent Collection Galleries feature 350 works, ranging from the sculpted Head of Viceroy Merymose from His Outer Sarcophagus (Egyptian, c 1375 BCE) in the Antiquities Gallery to Marsden Hartley's oil on canvas Indian Composition (1914-15) in the Twentieth Century Gallery. For information on current and upcoming special exhibitions, self-guided and curriculum-based tours, and group visits, please visit the website. The art center is open to the public, and admission is free.
James W. Palmer Gallery
Located in the College Center in Main Building, the James W. Palmer III '90 Gallery presents eight shows annually, including exhibitions by renowned artists and photographers, studio art faculty and students, and local arts organizations. Recent highlights included Andrea Baldeck’s black-and-white photo exhibit, Touching the Mekong: A Southeast Asian Sojourn, organized by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; the Vassar Haiti Project’s annual exhibition and auction of imported arts and handcrafts; and Design Inside, showcasing the work of Vassar’s College Relations design team. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. For information on upcoming exhibitions, visit the website or call (845) 437-5370.
Music Department
Located in the Belle Skinner Hall of Music, the Martel Recital Hall is wonderfully suited, both acoustically and aesthetically, to music performance. With seating for 500, the Martel is home to the Vassar College Orchestra, Choir, Women's Chorus, Madrigal Singers, and numerous chamber groups and ensembles. The Martel concert schedule routinely includes distinguished guest artists, faculty recitals, senior recitals, and special musical events, such as last year's series of organ recitals celebrating the installation and dedication of the college's superb pipe organ, designed by masterbuilder Paul Fritts. For information on upcoming concerts and events (which are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted), please visit the website.
Dance Department
The Department of Dance sponsors several public performances each year. Among those, the Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre (VRDT) has a series of Works in Progress showings in the fall, a winter Modfest performance in conjunction with the The Department of Music, winter galas at the 1869 Bardavon Opera House, and two All Parents Weekend performances in the spring. The department's Master Class program annually invites at least one ballet and one modern expert to campus in addition to two people in other areas of dance. Public performances and lectures are often associated with these renowned visitors. Guest artists in the past have included: Irina Kolpokova, Arthur Mitchell, Helene Alexopoulos, Gregory Hines, Anna Kisselgoff, Donald Byrd, Edward Villella, Ronald K. Brown, Irene Dowd, Allegra Kent, Gelsey Kirkland, Pilobolus w/Adam Battlestein, Suzanne Farrell, Mummenschantz, Eldar Aliev, Deborah Jowitt, Bill T. Jones, Pascal Rioult, Clinton Luckett of ABT, Bill Irwin, and Donald McKayle. Many of the department's dance performances are in the Frances Daly Fergusson Dance Theater, located in Kenyon Hall.