Karla DeJean is Director of Diversity at Pine Crest School in Boca Raton, Florida where she coordinates diversity in the curriculum, community outreach, and student programming. The school enrolls 2,000 pre-K through 12th grade students across two campuses in Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale. DeJean is a former reporter for a large daily city newspaper in Florida as well as newspapers in Michigan and Indiana. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University in Athens.

DeJean’s nephew Daniel Lowe, from Covington, Kentucky, is a ninth grader at Olney Friends School.

DeJean led a panel discussion focused on heritage, family, and culture in the Barnesville area. She used the occasion of the 2010 census to explore the demographics of Belmont County, Ohio and the nation. Speakers from the local area community and student speakers addressed a variety of questions about living in Barnesville. DeJean and the panelists took questions from the audience.

Panelists (back row, left to right): Karla DeJean, Gina Carvin, John Rataiczak, Carolyn Stanley. Front row: Joseph Su ’11, Joey Dockery ’13, Daniel Lowe ’13, and Tyler Stamm ’11.

Olney will celebrate National Poetry month with award-winning poet Talvikki Ansel, who will read from her work. She is the author of two collections of poetry: My Shining Archipelago (1997), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and Jetty & Other Poems (2003). Currently an instructor at the University of Rhode Island, she has taught as a visiting instructor at the University of Texas at Austin, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Vermont College.

Her awards include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing, a Pushcart Prize, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and an individual artist fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Each year, Olney Friends School students assist in a local tree planting effort on reclaimed coal mining land. More details are in this Olney news story.

Photos from the 2009 tree planting:

Olney Friends School Front Office Manager Shelley Rockwell ’82 and her favorite tree on the Olney campus, a red maple outside of the Main Building. Rockwell, formerly a certified arborist, serves on the local volunteer committee that organizes the community-wide tree planting each year.

Local volunteer committee organizing the 2010 tree planting (left to right): Nathan Taylor (Belmont County Soil and Water District), Jeremy Scherf (service forester, Ohio Department of Natural Resources), Paula Grear, Shelley Rockwell ’82, Marie Bundy ’54, Jimmy Grear.