Rising to challenge, CAILCD follows own advice
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
Aya Sobhy ’21 was on her dream career path. She listened to her academic advisor. She studied hard. She attended Dickinson career-exploration and networking events. She researched internships with help from Dickinson’s Center for Advising, Internships & Lifelong Career Development (CAILCD), beginning in her first year on campus. And with CAILCD s guidance, she served two internships and refined her goals.
Then 2020 happened. And in-person classes, advising appointments, internships and career and networking events were no longer available.
How do you seamlessly support students like Sobhy in the midst of a global pandemic? CAILCD staff followed the advice they’ve long dished out: They researched options. They inventoried skills and acquired new ones. They pivoted as needed. And they found new ways to connect students with critical career-exploration, job-search and networking opportunities.
Joan Myers Brown’s company of dancers were midway through a European tour when the pandemic struck.
“It was a 15-city tour but after the fifth performance, I knew we had to get home before the borders closed,” Myers Brown said. “But I still had to pay the dancers for the whole tour.”
The coronavirus-related economic impact on the arts community has been life altering.
For Myers Brown, founder and artistic advisor of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PhilaDanco!), it meant keeping performers on the payroll (the dancers are paid a yearly salary), while adapting to a new norm of pirouettes gone virtual.
Firefighters from a dozen companies in three counties were kept busy by a series of brush fires Wednesday afternoon and evening.
Crews from Bedford, Everett, Cumberland Valley, Breezewood, Shawnee Valley, Bedford Road and Corriganville, along with DCNR Bravo responders, were called to a fire off Mountain View Lane in Colerain Township on Rainsburg Mountain at 1:45 p.m. The fire was in a rugged part of the mountain, and initially firefighters had trouble getting apparatus to the fire. Bedford Chief Bill Foor said initially crews had to fight the fire on foot, with the help of ATVs and UTVs, until a logging road was located that could be used.
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
It takes imagination to make a big career leap and strategy and versatility to land on solid ground. That’s the very stuff Dickinsonians are made of. So in an era when more people are switching careers than ever and, in some cases, doing so several times we asked alumni to show us how it’s done and offer their career-reinvention stories and advice.
Lynn Waldo Smiledge ’75: Keep Learning
Early in her career, Smiledge pivoted within her industry. Then, at age 50, she crafted an entirely different career.
Education: Art history and biology major. B.S., medical arts, University of Toronto.
Here’s How Some MOAA Members Are Going Local With Advocacy Efforts By: Amanda Dolasinski
March 09, 2021
Banners from each state mark the Avenue of Flags, with Mount Rushmore in the background. Multiple state-advocacy resources are available to MOAA members. (National Park Service photo)
(This article originally appeared in
the March 2021 edition of Military Officer, a magazine available to all MOAA Premium and Life members. Learn more about the magazine here; learn more about joining MOAA here.)
A growing number of MOAA members looking to make a difference in their communities are using their voices to pass legislation in their home states.