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Click on the links below to read about each student's experience at Antioch:
Jennifer Borges Foster
Arts & Literature
B.A. Liberal Studies, current student
 Jennifer Borges Foster says she likes to create ways in which poems interact with their environment and with the reader by looking like something different than what they are.
Her goal? She wants to persuade readers to try to understand poetry rather than shy away from it.
"Anyone can spot a poem on the page from 10 paces," she says. "If a person feels poetry is too confusing or too intellectual, they'll keep walking. But if we can make visually appealing, tactile poems, there is a greater chance for poetry to beckon and be approached."
If anybody can do it, Foster is on the shortest of short lists. She was programming director for the 2007 Seattle Poetry Festival in April at Richard Hugo House and Pravda Studios, an effort that's part of her independent studies for her Antioch degree. In 2005, she coordinated a small press fair in Seattle, another independent study. For a year, she worked on KNOCK, Antioch's literary arts journal, and now serves as one of its advisory editors.
"Flexibility is one of the great things about Antioch. A lot of what I've done involved independent studies.
"KNOCK was a great learning experience. As a result of KNOCK, I decided to do Filter," she says.
Filter is the hardbound literary journal she founded. Each of the 200 copies in the limited edition of her first issue she is making by hand. Unlike most editors, Foster threads a colophon straight needle with Irish linen thread and sews together the 87 pages, spending three to four hours to produce a single copy. She tears the endpapers by hand. She's making her way through 10 tubes of acrylic paint and 22 yards of bookcloth and that's just for the cover.
"I do stab myself with a needle from time to time, so you could say this literally involves blood, sweat and tears," she says.
Each issue of Filter is likely to change in size and format as she discovers more about bookmaking. It will be a bit, though, before Filter is available by subscription.
"We will offer subscriptions when our pockets are deep enough to put out books in a timely manner. Until then, we will produce our visions as we can afford to. If you would like to be a patron, we will gladly accept your donations and shamelessly sing your virtues in our next issue," she writes.
For now, St. Mark's Bookstore (NY), Open Books: A Poem Emporium and Wessel & Lieberman (both in Seattle) carry copies and Foster totes some around town and sells them for $20 apiece.
Filter includes original artwork, photographs and fiction as well as poetry. Among the poems are playful erasures, a literary recycling of sorts. A poet takes any existing text – a play, an essay, someone else's poem – and erases all but those words they choose to create a new work called an erasure poem.
While most poets resign themselves to heaps of rejection letters, Foster was thrilled when her first submission to a well-known literary journal prompted an immediate phone call from the editor. Here's a link to "Husbandry," her first poem to appear in print in the literary journal Zyzzyva.
"Entering into Antioch was the impetus for pursuing my writing career," she credits.
Foster also recently was awarded the Footpaths to Creativity Artist and Writer Residency in the Azores Islands, an archipelago in the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal. She will spend a month in the fall incorporating all she's learning about bookmaking into the poems she writes while there. A month to focus on nothing but her poetry writing and bookmaking sounds blissful to her.
Why just a month? This energetic poet also has a full-time job with LexisNexis. That's why the flexibility of Antioch's B.A. completion program attracted her.
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Aaron Dietz
Arts & Literature
B.A. Liberal Studies, 2007
 Not able to find a good job and living off his credit card, Aaron Dietz decided Antioch sounded much better than working two low-paying jobs.
He says many reasons led to his decision to attend Antioch. "I was interested in learning more about publishing and Antioch University Seattle has its own literary journal," says Dietz. Earning credit for working on a literary journal appealed to him.
He was also attracted to Antioch for giving him the opportunity to document his life experience for college credit. After working as a professional musician, web designer and writer with self-taught skills, he wanted to get credit for what he had learned.
"Antioch's style of education sounded great," Dietz says. "I had dropped out of two state colleges because of their uninspired style of teaching. Antioch had a good reputation for being able to educate self-learners and for keeping students involved in the learning process."
He credits independent study with helping him round out the gaps in his education. "I was able to create classes geared toward writing and publishing my own book, something that would have been much harder to do at a state college.
"Antioch knows that offering easy ways to construct your own independent studies is one more way for you to be sure you're getting the education you want," he notes.
What does he tell those who might be considering Antioch?
"I tell prospective students it is a classroom experience like no other. It is more expensive than a public university, but it is every bit worth it," says Dietz.
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Richard Long
Arts & Literature
B.A. Liberal Studies, 2007
 Ask Richard Long what he'd say when recommending Antioch to prospective students and his response is especially thoughtful.
"This is a place where you can bring your past and, by opening your mind and your heart, turn it into your future," Long says. "The people are caring and strongly qualified, the classes are small yet intense, and the experience not only will provide you with the knowledge that is necessary, but also will change you as a human being for the rest of your life. I came here for the degree, but I leave with the degree and the desire to change our world in any positive way I can."
Before he arrived at Antioch, Long was a member of Actor's Equity Association and performed in more than 60 professional theater productions for young audiences in Louisville, KY. His dream is to teach high school theater, which he says encompasses the expression of human experiences of all types.
"The focus here at Antioch on the human condition, and our responsibilities to the world around us, have provided me with a sense of empowerment that I have never felt before," he describes. "This empowerment will certainly enable me to become a much more effective teacher, both in and out of the classroom. If I have grown as a person, then surely I have grown as an educator."
He says it was the caring atmosphere, the commitment to social justice and solid support from faculty and staff that made him choose Antioch when he, his wife Natalie and daughter Sarah moved to Seattle to be close to family in the area.
"After looking at several schools to complete my degree and gain my teaching credentials," Long notes, "I chose Antioch because of it's commitment to adult education, and it's social ideology, which has become my own as well. If the concept that a student, through study, research and relationships, obtains the basic philosophies of the institution they attend, then I am a better student, friend and person because of Antioch University Seattle."
He explains the valuable inspiration he received in Liberal Studies I with instructor Charles Morrison. "I came away with not only the foundation of what it truly means to be a liberal artist, but also an extraordinary example of the type of teacher I strive to become some day. Charles Morrison's extensive knowledge was inspiring, his firm guidance through some very difficult material was refreshing and his passion for teaching simply changed the way I look at education and learning as a whole. He became the teacher that I will never forget, and that I will always aspire to be."
His best memory? "I will always remember a class called 'Vocal Bliss' with Deborah Shelton at the helm. She graciously inspired me and several other adult learners, to 'find our voices' through the art of song. It was the first time I have ever felt as though I took a real, calculated educational risk that paid off extensively. I experienced a new sense of freedom and confidence that I had never felt before, even after 10 years of acting onstage. The sense of community I experienced with the rest of class was remarkable, as I watched others face the same fears as I, and the effect that overcoming those fears would have on us all. It was an unforgettable experience."
Opportunities for independent study are another plus at Antioch, according to Long. "I am so pleased with the opportunity to create such a personalized learning experience, and to have the solid support and guidance that I am receiving. One of the strongest aspects of the University is its understanding of the value of individualized experience, and I am very pleased with what I have learned through the process," he says.
For those who have concerns about the cost of Antioch, Long says, "It's easy to put a price on a solid education, but the extrinsic experiences here that change you as a human being are limitless. I am sure other institutions are more affordable, but the immeasurables you experience here are well worth the small additional costs involved. Here at Antioch, you truly get what you pay for."
He suggests Antioch's Financial Aid Office has been a big help to him. "I have received financial aid at every institution I have attended, and Antioch's Financial Aid Office is by far the easiest and most supportive experience I have ever had," Long says. "The staff here have been efficient, communicative and mistake-free and I would simply not have been able to succeed without their assistance."
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