Alumni Alive - Winter 2016

Newsletter for Scouting Alumni association Affiliates

alumni alive!

WINTER 2015

What’s Inside Director’s Message.........................2 Alumni News.........................................4 Happenings..............................................6 Program...................................................8 Profiles.......................................................10

A Message From the Director I have a story about an incident one cold, winter day at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War. An officer, in civilian clothes, rode past a fortification that was being repaired. The commander was shouting instructions, but not helping. When the officer riding by asked why, the commander reported, “Why sir, I am a corporal.” The stranger apologized, dismounted, and proceeded to help repair the fortification. When the officer finished helping and returned to the corporal, he said, “Mr. Corporal, the next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do it, go to the commander in chief, and I will help you again.”

It was too late, as the corporal recognized General Washington.

As a Scouting alumnus, you lead in many different ways. You’re a community leader. Sometimes you’re a recruiter of other leaders. Many times you represent Scouting. You do it because it might change a boy’s life for the better.

The impact Scout leaders can make was evident last November, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott presented the Eagle Scout Award to Ben Thompson during the Northwest Texas Council’s Americanism Dinner.

Thompson, who was born with spina bifida, has been overcoming obstacles and challenges his entire life.

He completed every step of the award with a few modifications.

“It’s great to finally get the award,” Thompson said. “There are no words to describe it. It’s an honor to be awarded anything by (the governor). To me, Scouting is about learning new skills and putting them to use, whether it be starting a campfire, learning how to be a good citizen, or gaining leadership skills. … You learn from experiences—good or bad—to better yourself and better the lives of others.

“I go out and do whatever I can, and there’s not much I can’t,” Thompson added. “My freshman year, I went with other students to Barcelona with our Spanish teacher. After high school, I’ll go on a two-year

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(Mormon) church mission somewhere. After I turn 18, I submit papers to the leaders in Salt Lake, and they’ll determine where I go.”

Gov. Abbott, who was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and raised in Duncanville, Texas, praised Thompson’s accomplishments. “It’s incredible to be part of any ceremony that honors Scouts,” Gov. Abbott said. “But to see and hear about what Ben has done and overcome and accomplished shows we are not defined by our circumstances. Instead, we get to define ourselves by how we respond to our circumstances.

“Many of the lessons I learned while with Troop 201 still remain with me to this very day,” the governor said. “It isn’t just the merit badges you earn along the way, but the process of earning them.”

As a Scouting alumnus, you too have benefited from the process of earning badges, and you carry with you lessons from Scouting. As a new year dawns, I hope you’ll tell someone your Scouting story, invite your Scouting friends and associates to become Hikers or Pathfinders in the Scouting Alumni Association (at BSAalumni.org), and remember—once a Scout, always a Scout!

Dustin Farris Director, Scouting Alumni Association

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alumni news Measuring Scouting’s Impact was no statistically significant difference in character between those in Scouting and those who weren’t— ruling out the possibility that Scouting simply attracts people of higher character to begin with.

In recent years, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has run TV ads pointing out that most college athletes will “go pro in something other than sports.”

That’s certainly true; according to the NCAA’s own data, a college athlete’s chances of getting drafted by a professional team range from 0.9 percent (women’s basketball) to 8.6 percent (baseball). The only question is how well playing sports prepares young people for other pursuits.

“After three years, Scouts reported significant increases in cheerfulness, helpfulness, kindness, obedience, trustworthiness, and hopeful future expectation,” says Dr. Richard M. Lerner, who led the study at Tufts.

“In our control group of non-Scouts, there were no significant increases, and in some cases (e.g., religious reverence) there was an observed decrease, which was quite striking.”

In addition, the study found a direct correlation between the amount of time boys spent in Scouting and the positive impact realized—those who spent more years in the program reported higher character attributes.

Scouts who were more engaged also reported higher character attributes. And those who attended regular meetings reported higher character attributes compared to those with lower attendance.

The Boy Scouts of America could probably run a similar ad campaign, since relatively few Scouts become professional Scouters or pursue careers that require expertise in camping, first aid, or knot-tying. The only question might be how well participating in Scouting prepares young people for other pursuits.

But that’s not a question anymore, thanks to a recent study by Tufts University.

“Each and every day, we get to see the positive influence Scouting makes in young people’s lives,” says Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh. “And while we weren’t surprised by the study’s results, it is great to be able to quantify the impact of the program and show parents the value of participation.”

The Tufts Character and Merit Project Study, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, sought to measure the difference Scouting makes in young people’s lives.

Over a three-year period, it assessed nearly 1,800 Cub Scouts and 40 non-Scouts to see if character changes were taking place. At the beginning of the study, there

To learn more about the Tufts CAMP Study, visit http://www.tuftscampstudy.com/.

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Introducing the Scouting Alumni Network professional details, alumni will be able to include their Scouting histories and add links to their pages on common social-media platforms.

In the digital age, people have all sorts of ways to stay connected with one another, including websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Soon, Scouting alumni will have a new way: the Scouting Alumni Network.

Larson is particularly happy that alumni will have control over their information. For example, an alumnus could specify that mail goes to a seasonal address or that he would like to receive postal mail but not email. “There’s no nuance to the current system,” he says. “This will help provide that nuance.”

Launching in the first quarter of 2016, the new online database will replace the system the National Eagle Scout Association has used since the publication of its 2008 Eagle Scout Roll of Honor. It won’t just include NESA members, however. Instead, it will bring together records from NESA, the Scouting Alumni Association, the Order of the Arrow, and the alumni groups affiliated with the BSA’s four national high-adventure bases. That will make it easier for alumni to find each other and keep their records up to date, while improving local councils’ ability to engage with people who are committed to advancing the cause of Scouting.

Larson says additional features may be added over time, but not at the expense of usability. “The new database is not fancy, but neither is Craigslist,” he said. “It is the functionality for the customer that we are excited about. We think that alone will create the engagement we are looking for with the new system.”

Local councils often reach out to the National Council for mailing lists or information on alumni who’ve moved into their service areas. With the new database, they’ll be able to access that information themselves.

“The process will be quicker because they will be able to access the information in real time,” said Ryan Larson, associate director for the Scouting Alumni Association and the National Eagle Scout Association.

The new database will also give alumni extensive control over what information appears on the site. In addition to contact information and educational and

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Happenings Exploring Plans an Explosion More than 230 councils have already signed up to participate in the 2016 Exploring Explosion. By signing up, they gain a year’s worth of free access to the Learning for Life Online Career Interest Survey, which makes it easy to identify middleschoolers and high-schoolers who are interested in specific career areas.

Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh likes to say he was a failed Explorer. During high school, he accepted an invitation to join an Explorer post that focused on accounting, a field he thought he was interested in. He quickly discovered accounting wasn’t for him, a valuable lesson many young people only learn once they get to college and have invested both time and money in the wrong field of study. (Depending on which research study you read, between 50 and 80 percent of college undergraduates change their majors at least once.)

For more information and to learn how you can get involved, contact your local council or visit http://exploring.learningforlife.org/exploring-explosion/.

For decades, the BSA’s Exploring program has offered a fun, inexpensive way for young people to try out career fields like law enforcement, medicine, and accounting. In fact, Exploring has served 2 million young people since 1998. Many of them have gone straight from Exploring into related careers or education programs; others, like Surbaugh, have gone in different directions.

To reach even more young people, Exploring recently launched a growth initiative called the 2016 Exploring Explosion. In February and March, local council professionals and volunteers will participate in a series of training webinars focusing on four phases of Exploring growth—research, leadership, program, and participation. Extensive support materials are also available on the Exploring website (http://exploring.learningforlife.org).

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Continuing a Journey Toward Sustainability participated, and most held local forums where they discussed in real time what they were seeing onscreen. Participants included Scout executives, camp directors, property managers, and volunteers interested in strategic planning, marketing, and, of course, sustainability. Thanks to the virtual format, participation spanned the globe from Hawaii (Aloha Council) to Europe (Transatlantic Council).

“The forum provided the first glimpse of how sustainability can be a driving force for the Boy Scouts,” said Cynthia Scott, Ph.D., the Presidio Graduate School professor who coordinated the program. “The presentations mixed with small-group participation in local councils gave an opportunity for people to digest and emerge local ideas.”

In many of those local councils, the digesting and emerging continues as they determine what their next steps are. To support councils in that process, the BSA released its first Council Sustainability Resource Guide in conjunction with LeaderSHIFT. The free guide highlights dozens of success stories related to planning, finances, sustainable construction, and conserving water, energy, and other resources. It and all the materials from LeaderSHIFT are available for download on the BSA’s sustainability website, www.greentodeepgreen.org.

Since 2012, the BSA has held annual sustainability summits, bringing together sustainability experts and BSA leaders to discuss ways to positively impact the triple bottom line of people, prosperity, and planet. This past October’s summit had the same purpose—but a very different structure.

In his remarks at LeaderSHIFT, Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh emphasized sustainability’s place in the BSA today. “Sustainability isn’t a program we’re starting tomorrow that will have some end date; it doesn’t have a natural life cycle,” he said. “Sustainability is something that needs to be incorporated into literally everything that we do.”

LeaderSHIFT, as it was called, was the BSA’s first virtual sustainability summit. Broadcast live from National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., the summit let people across the BSA hear national presentations and hold local discussions all at the same time. More than 50 councils

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Program Getting to Know the Summit camps have to offer. Participants can pursue merit badges like Climbing and Whitewater, Venturing Ranger electives like Cycling and Shooting Sports, and activity awards like the BSA Stand Up Paddleboarding Award. They also have full access to the adventure and educational venues in the Scott Summit Center, which give them a taste of climbing, rappelling, kayaking, canopy tours, zip lines, and more.

An ancient fable tells of a group of blind men who are trying to describe an elephant. One man touches the elephant’s side and says it’s like a wall. Another holds the tail and says it’s like a rope. A third touches an ear and says it’s like a fan. All three are right, but all three have missed the bigger picture.

Council camps within driving distance of the Summit can participate in the Council Adventure Partnership, which lets younger Scouts enjoy traditional camp activities while older Scouts head to the Summit. Also available is the three-day, two-night Appalachian Adventure that gives Scouts and Venturers a taste of Summit activities while they are exploring other activities in the New River Gorge and beyond.

Describing the Summit Bechtel Reserve—whether you can see it or not—is just as difficult. Although it’s best known as the permanent site of the national Scout jamboree, the Summit offers far more than a 10-day program every four years. In fact, the 10,600-acre facility is actually home to three separate, interdependent facilities that operate every year: the Paul R. Christen National High Adventure Base, the James C. Justice National Scout Camp, and the John D. Tickle National Training and Leadership Center (which will open in 2016).

John D. Tickle National Training and Leadership Center Like the Philmont Training Center, the Tickle National Training and Leadership Center at the Summit provides high-quality training experiences that support local council, district, and unit Scouters who want an immersive training experience conducted by experienced Scouting volunteers and Scouting professionals.

Here’s an overview of what each facility offers:

Paul R. Christen National High Adventure Base

Among the initial offerings will be training in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for both youth and adults and the National Advanced Youth Leadership Experience (NAYLE), where Scouts and Venturers can enhance their leadership skills through team building, ethical decision-making, problem solving, and service to others.

The Summit’s Adventure Zone houses an array of world-class facilities for shooting sports, mountain biking, skateboarding, rock climbing, zip lining, and other adventure pursuits. Right next door is the New River Gorge, known the world over for whitewater rafting.

The Christen National High Adventure Base offers a variety of seven-day programs that take advantage of these facilities. The Summit Experience lets Scouts and Venturers experience all nine adventure sports venues, while focused programs like Helmets and Harnesses, and The River, zero in on specific areas.

And if all that weren’t enough, the national jamboree will return to the Summit in 2017, followed two years later by the world Scout jamboree—the first time the international event has come to North America since 1983.

James C. Justice National Scout Camp The Summit’s summer camp promises a new adventure for older Scouts and Venturers who have done everything their council

For more information about the Summit, visit www.summitbsa.org.

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A New Handbook for a New Generation In 2009, the BSA unveiled the 12th edition of the venerable Boy Scout Handbook, a lavishly illustrated book designed to commemorate Scouting’s 100th anniversary the following year. Images from every previous handbook were combined with contemporary photographs and illustrations to put modern Scouting in a historical context.

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throughout the book highlight the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) principles that underlie Scouting activities. In the camping chapter, for example, Scouts can read about the engineering principles that make dome tents work, the technology used to rate sleeping bags for warmth, and why bears can smell seven times better than bloodhounds.

No single book can contain the breadth and depth of the Scouting program, but the Boy Scout Handbook comes close.

If your copy of the 12th, ninth, or sixth edition has seen better days, you can buy the new 13th edition in January at your local Scout shop or at http://www.scoutstuff.org/.

Today, that handbook is a historical document itself.

The BSA’s 100th anniversary occurred half a lifetime ago for today’s youngest Scouts; meeting their needs means having a handbook firmly rooted in Scouting’s second century.

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That handbook will arrive in Scout shops in January. While the clean, modern look is the most noticeable change, the book has gotten a thorough makeover from page 1 to page 488.

That’s partly to better address the needs of today’s Scouts and partly to support the revised advancement requirements that take effect on Jan. 1, 2016.

The 13th edition has new features as well. A new chapter on personal safety awareness covers everything from child abuse to cyberbullying. Good nutrition plays a more prominent role in the chapters on cooking and fitness. And sidebars sprinkled

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profiles Taylor Wilson, Nuclear Physicist year. The best available radiation detectors today use helium-3, a rare and expensive manmade chemical. Wilson’s detector uses water instead, which is obviously both cheap and plentiful.

His prototype, which won him $50,000 in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, cost a few hundred dollars to build, compared with hundreds of thousands of dollars for a helium-3 tester.

Like many kids, Taylor Wilson once dreamed of being an astronaut, but those plans changed about the time he became a Boy Scout.

Perhaps because of the Scouting connection, his grandmother bought him a copy of The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein for his 11th birthday. The cautionary tale of David Hahn, who secretly built a smallscale nuclear reactor in his Michigan backyard, ignited a passion in Taylor for nuclear science, which has led Photo by Bryce Duffy him to the White House Science Fair, in-depth profiles in Popular Science and on CNN, and a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship.

Then-Under Secretary of Energy Kristina Johnson told Popular Science that she was stunned by Wilson’s work. “I would say someone like him comes along maybe once in a generation,” she said. “He’s not just smart; he’s cool and articulate. I think he may be the most amazing kid I’ve ever met.”

One of Wilson’s mentors, physics professor Ron Phaneuf, Ph.D., of the University of Nevada, Reno, offered similar praise in a CNN interview. “He’s a phenomenon, probably the most brilliant person I’ve met in my life, and I’ve met Nobel laureates,” he said.

“When I read that book, this kind of lightbulb went off,” he said.

“I realized I could, as a kid and without specialized facilities, do nuclear experiments.”

Wilson estimates that his radiation detector could be in production within a couple of years, as could a separate device he’s developing to create the short-lived isotopes used in PET scanners. He’s also working on a commercial version of the molten salt reactor invented in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “I think with the right support, everything like that, it’s a technology that probably within five years could have the first commercial prototype,” he said.

And that’s just what he did. Unlike David Hahn, whose research ended when the EPA declared his house a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, Wilson approached his work from a position of safety. Soliciting help from the Internet, university researchers, and mentors that his (understandably) concerned parents identified, Taylor became, in 2011 at age 14, the youngest person in history to achieve nuclear fusion, according to Fusor. net, an online gathering place for fusion researchers. The federal government did come calling—but only because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Energy were interested in a technology Taylor had developed.

The invention that got federal officials’ attention was an inexpensive radiation detector that could be used to scan some of the 35 million cargo containers that arrive at U.S. ports each

So, at age 21, this Scouting alumnus is pursuing projects that could have a major impact in three critical fields: security, medicine, and energy. But he hasn’t lost the sense of wonder that first led him into nuclear science. “I love to go out in the desert and collect uranium and blow things up,” he said. “I have an interesting set of hobbies, I guess.”

For more on Taylor, visit http://www.sciradioactive.com/.

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Tony Stanley, Video Game Art Director (with older son Christian) and Northern Tier (once with Christian and once with younger son Kyle).

Stanley has often found ways to connect his vocation and avocation. For example, when he served as counselor for the Game Design merit badge, which requires Scouts to invent a new game, he brought Scouts to the office to pitch their ideas to EA game designers. “Some kids that didn’t speak very much and kept to themselves just came alive,” he says. “It was absolutely amazing to watch that.”

(Although the Scouts learned a lot from their pitch meetings, the game they ended up developing is played outdoors. Called Hog Hockey, it’s a mashup of hockey and canoeing that uses an exercise ball in place of a puck. Stanley says the game was a great way for the Scouts to practice canoeing skills before a Northern Tier trip.)

The cover of Madden NFL 16 features John Madden’s name and Odell Beckham Jr.’s picture, but it takes an army of less famous people to create the popular video game. Among them is art director and Scouting alumnus Tony Stanley.

Stanley has also used his video game background to promote outdoor activity among his Scouts. “We stress having fun with the games, but we also stress a balance in life,” he said. “A really important part of being an artist and creating the games is you’re basically emulating life. You can’t emulate it if you don’t live it.”

After a decade at Walt Disney Feature Animation, the former Scout joined EA Sports as an animator 12 years ago. He then became an art director on NASCAR Kart Racing, EA Sports MMA, NFL Blitz, and the last three editions of Madden NFL, which sells more than 5 million copies each year.

While most of Stanley’s Scouting involvement has been at the local level, he also served on the team that developed the Animation merit badge pamphlet in 2015. Among his responsibilities were writing about the principles of animation and scene planning, as well as providing videos for the interactive version of the pamphlet.

“It was an amazing team, a very talented team,” he said. “To see what some of the younger animators were able to bring to this, I was really impressed.”

“I’m responsible for the look of the game, and I also get involved in the animation,” he said. “We try to make sure the stadiums look correct, the guys move like they’re supposed to, and the uniforms are correct. We’ve even spent time going around to all the NFL teams and scanning the players so we could get their likeness in the game properly.”

Stanley’s work at EA Sports is challenging and demanding, but he has always found time to work with his sons’ troop, Troop 826 in Kissimmee, Florida. He has served as Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmaster, and participated in trips to Philmont Scout Ranch

Who knows? Perhaps some of the Scouts who earn the Animation merit badge will work with Stanley someday. Madden 26, anyone?

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