Fall financial aid now needed for December mini MEAGHAN MORTON Staff Writer Students who are planning to enroll in the December mini-mester are being advised to save money from the Fall financial aid refund on Oct. 18 to be able to pay for classes. The mini-mester will now be counted as a stand-alone semester for which no financial aid will be rewarded. “Students who plan to enroll in the December mini need to plan ahead, especially
if they are students who have financial aid, budget problems or have limited funds, and they were planning on using their financial aid,” said Becky Johnson, dean of liberal and fine arts. During the December mini, KC will also be offering fewer classes. “We are going to offer a reduced number of courses,” Johnson said. “We offered some multiple sections of the same course, like a face-to-face history class and a web history class, but this year we’ll probably just offer
that one course, whichever format we offer it in.” KC, like other schools, is funded based on contact hours the school and students receive. “Well, we had a budget crisis this year that we finished dealing with, but part of that money we lost due to contact hours. Our money comes from our contact hours, our student enrollment,” Johnson said. Last year, the December mini was not a stand alone semester. Now, there is a concern
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for lack of students being able to enroll due to not being able to pay for classes. “I can tell we had 191 students last December mini. About 160 of those used financial aid, so if those were three-hour classes, that’s five hundred and something contact hours at least,” Johnson said, “which we had last year and would like to have again this year, but I suspect we will have a reduced number of contact hours.”
Friday, September 25, 2015 Vol. 79 No. 4 Serving Kilgore College since 1936
Marie Smith / THE FLARE
KC band director Glenn Wells instructs his students during a rehearsal as they play their instruments.
Marching through tragedy Band director finds joy in working through adversity; Rallies spirits around music, students and lifelong passion
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Tiffany Johnson / THE FLARE
Glenn Wells conducts the band at the football game Saturday.
MADELINE GREENE Staff Writer
s I swung open the glass doors to a building I had never been in before, the sweet sounds of jazz floated out into the heavy summer air along with a voice counting off the beats to a piece of music that seemed to have been rehearsed many times. A bit hesitant, I stood in the open doorway of the band hall trying to decide what to do. The interview had been scheduled for two o’clock in the afternoon and I was nearly twenty minutes early. Just as I began to turn and leave to pass some time outside, the music stopped and I heard the voice say, “Are you my interview? You’re a bit early but you can come on in and sit if you want.” Glenn Wells has been a band director for his entire working career. Watching him direct with such energy I would never have guessed that the man standing in front of the room, wildly gesturing at a trumpet player to give more vibrato, had been battling with melanoma and was currently in remission. Standing at the front of the room with one leg on a chair and pounding on it to keep time as students were playing, Wells called each student by their first name and kept track of where each of them were in their sheet music. “I was in band in high school.” Wells said. “I loved playing in the band. I decided to move that way in my vocation. It’s just a draw for me and I’ve always
done it.” This fact was evident as I watched the way he interacted with his students. After the piece had been restarted three times, he turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, we just started this and we’re all kind of sight-reading right now.” as though the music, that I had been thoroughly enjoying, sounded bad. Never having picked up a musical instrument in my life, this floored me as I pondered the possibilities of a KC Jazz band that knew their music. What must that sound like? “Band directing is kind of my way of life.” Wells said. “I’ve dealt with so many stressful things and band directing...when you have to put a group of kids on stage and stand in front of them and there’s an audience full of people...the worst case for me is marching band because you can’t be with them. It’s pretty stressful knowing ‘Are they going to get through this or are they not going to get through it?’ Maybe it helped me deal with [cancer] a little bit better.” In 2009, there were 876,344 men and women in the United States with a history of melanoma. It’s a cancer that affects skin cells through exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. On average a person is more at risk to have Melanoma if they’ve had five or more sunburns, especially while they are still young “Melanoma is so fast, it is so aggressive, that you have to be scanned about every three months for the first three years.” Wells said. See WELLS on Page 3
Highlights from Rettes’ 75th birthday performance: Page 8
Tiffany Johnson/ THE FLARE