The newest addition to Southwestern Community College’s Oconaluftee Institute of Cultural Arts holds a piece of Cherokee history. OICA will soon obtain a letterpress that will be used to print books in the Cherokee syllabary.

“We are bringing back the Cherokee history in true art form,” said Luzene Hill, OICA progam outreach coordinator.

Through a $68,846 grant from Cherokee Preservation Foundation and a $47,792 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, OICA will purchase a metal press and develop a printmaking studio at its facilities on Bingo Loop Road in Cherokee.

Years ago, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians published a newspaper called Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi, or the Cherokee Phoenix. This first Native American newspaper was printed on a hot-type letterpress in which each word is put together by hand, combining individual metal letters or characters.

“It opens up a whole new craft of book art for us, including printmaking, hand-papermaking and hand-bookbinding,” said Hill. “For our students, book art will blend fine arts with crafts.”

After 12 years, Sequoyah finished developing the Cherokee syllabary in 1821. Each character represents a syllable, instead of one sound, thus the name syllabary.

As in the Phoenix newspaper, the power of the Cherokee language rises through the printed word on the page, transforming from thoughts to art, Hill explained.

“You already feel the power of words but capturing them in a book through individual characters you’ve laid out in hot type and on paper you’ve made from linen or hemp fiber really helps you feel them in an art form, too,” said Hill.

As students learn to produce first the paper and then the books, they will also learn skills such as precision, technique, spacing and artistic layout composition, said Hill, who is consulting with noted instructor Frank Brannon.

Brannon, who runs his own letterpress studio, SpeakEasy Press, in Dillsboro, earned his master of fine arts in Book Arts at the University of Alabama and has recently taught Letterpress at the Penland School of Crafts and Papermaking and Printing at the John C. Campbell Folk School.

“One of Frank’s specialties is the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper,” said Hill. “He has explored and published copies from the original hand impressions of type from the Phoenix, found in a 1954 excavation of the New Echota historic site. He hand printed and hand bound the publications for exhibition.”

“The Phoenix was a bilingual weekly newspaper printed in parallel columns in Cherokee and English and one of its biggest subscribers was the British Library,” said Brannon, who also teaches at Book Works in Asheville.

The first paper that the Phoenix was printed on came from Knoxville by wagon and it took two weeks to arrive, according to Brannon. The last issue was published in 1834, shortly before the Cherokee removal to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

“Students will learn the Cherokee history right along with the history of the letterpress,” said Hill.

The Cherokee language will also be incorporated into the course since the books can be published in the Cherokee syllabary, she added.

For more information contact Hill at 828.497.3945.

In August a computer hacker broke into a North Carolina Community College System server and potentially gained access to the personal information of 51,000 library users across the state.

The cyber break-in was deemed harmless by investigators in the wake of the event, but it left behind glaring questions about the security of personal information on the Internet.

According to N.C. Community College officials, the perpetrator accessed the library patron information in August via a computer server housed in the community college system office in Raleigh by decoding a user password.

An initial investigation revealed that 8,300 driver’s license numbers, originally collected by 18 colleges to help identify library users, were stored on the server. However, an ongoing review of the incident revealed that an additional Social Security numbers of 42,500 library patrons were also stored on the breached server, including the information of patrons from Haywood Community College and Southwestern Community College.

Ryan Schwiebert, IT director at SCC, explained how the breach affected the college.

“As a college we stopped using social security numbers quite some time ago,” Schweibert said. “The social security numbers that were jeopardized in the breach were left in the library’s system from two years ago.”

Schwiebert said the state’s community college library server is an “open facing” system, which means it can be accessed via the Internet. He said best policy dictates that private information be maintained only on servers that don’t allow that level of access. For instance, the SCC’s student information database is secured on a server protected by layers of firewalls.

“That type of server would be very difficult for a hacker to access without being caught,” Schwiebert said. “Even for one of our own people.”

In the wake of the security breach, N.C. Community College officials notified 51,000 library users from 25 community colleges that a security breach had occurred on a computer server containing their personal information. While reviews and investigations after the event indicated that the hacker had not accessed any personal information, state and federal privacy laws dictated that the college system inform all of the users who had potentially been affected by the breach.

Forty-six community colleges that participate in the Community College Libraries in North Carolina consortium maintain information on more than 270,000 library users on this server. The security breach was discovered Monday, Aug. 24, during a routine security review and was reported to the state’s Information Technology Service at that time. Students potentially affected weren’t notified for another four months.

Wanda Morris walked into uncharted territory when she started teaching Gaming Management Technology three years ago at Southwestern Community College.

“We were the first community college in the state to offer the program so we took our chances thinking outside the box,” said Morris. “In fact, very few four-year colleges even offer the program.”

At the college’s graduation ceremony Tues., Dec. 15, the first graduates of SCC’s program will receive their certificates.

Gaming is a big business with a certain lure of 24/7 excitement as blackjack tables whirl and slot machines hit jackpot.

To design a college program that accurately represented the professional field, Morris called on experts like Ron Hager, who has more than 25 years experience in the gaming industry. Hager, who came to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino from Caesar’s in Indiana, gave the students an overview of the different games like craps, roulette and cards. Then he took them into Harrah’s training center to practice dealing and playing with professionals.

“I knew if I was going to bring that same sense of excitement to the classroom that the classroom sure wouldn’t be typical,” Morris said.

Harrah’s director of marketing Leeann Bridges-McHattie instructed the class in planning a marketing calendar. Students learned the customer service end from Greg Galloway of Harrah’s. They learned about job descriptions and job analysis from Jo Blaylock and Tina Vaitkus, who talked about how many job descriptions will change as a result of the casino’s ability to serve alcohol.

Other courses in the program dealt with gaming law and regulations, accounting and controls, gaming facility management and social issues in gaming.

For more information, call Thom Brooks, SCC dean of career technologies, at 828.586.4091, ext. 202.

In this day and age, as the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen and this country’s manufacturing economy undergoes a dramatic transformation, community colleges are more important than ever.

Southwestern Community College officials anticipate holding classes this fall at a new satellite campus in Macon County, more than a half-year later than originally planned.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Officials with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on Monday unveiled plans for a new Associate in Fine Arts degree focusing on Native American art to be offered in collaboration with Southwestern Community College.