Captain Jeff Lewis has taught at Northern Virginia Community College since 2000 and has been a member of the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department for the past 16 years. He wears the stress of such intense work well, and one would never guess that this young Emergency Medical Services worker is also the medical section coordinator of the elite Fairfax Urban Search and Rescue team known as Virginia Task Force One (VATF-1).

Born in the northeastern United States, Lewis’ family moved to the Fairfax County area when he was 13. It was as a George Mason University freshman that he experienced what he called an “epiphanous moment.” On the way home from classes at the medical education campus in Springfield he passed a car accident and stopped, though he did not know why.

Dr. Terry Alford’s upcoming biography, Fortune’s Fools is about the life of John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor and infamous assassin of the 16th president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln scholar has already written two books published by Oxford Press, made numerous television appearances, worked as a consultant for the 2007 film hit National Treasure 2, and helped found the NOVA Honors Program. He was recently awarded the 2010 Outstanding Faculty Award by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is the only community college professor to ever receive the accolade.

“Everything seemed to be going my way,” Regina Spiegel recently told the large audience at the theater at the NOVA Woodbridge campus. The Polish winter was her biggest complaint in life. The topic turned serious as the guest speaker talked of her experience as a survivor of the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz on April 8.

She remembered the exact date that the German army attacked her village in Radom, Poland: Sept. 1, 1939. The building shook with the force of the army. Spiegel ran from her home, where her mother, Brandla, was preparing a traditional Shabbat dinner, to see what was happening.

When one thinks of Brazilian music the fervent samba drum beats of Carnival or the smooth sounds of bossa nova may come to mind. Whatever the style, one may not think of NOVA music major Mark Sawasky. Don’t let his Dearborn, Mich. roots fool you though. He plays as passionately and soulfully as any world musician. He is a true artist.
Sawasky got his start in a rock band in his hometown. When a two-stringed Albanian Lute musician wanted to record with the band, they took their music to the recording …

“Something special is being created at NOVA.” Those were the opening words of A’Lelia Bundles, biographer and great granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, when she addressed her interested United States History 122 class on Wednesday, March 3, 2010. “With more than 180 countries represented at NOVA, it is an interesting representation of what America will look like in the next three decades,” Bundles began.

An African American History II class on the Alexandria campus recently had a special guest speaker, the co-founder and CEO Dr. Ayize Sabater of Mentors of Minorities in Education’s Total Learning Cis-Tem. Dr. Joseph Windham introduced Sabater, a former student of his at Morehouse College. Sabater spoke about how his non-profit organization is using progressive history to nurture at risk children of color and help them achieve positive educational outcomes in the District of Columbia.

If one needed encouragement to counter balance the negative daily news regarding the employment and the economic downturn, the Ernst Cultural Center Theater on the Annandale campus was the place to be on Wednesday, Feb. 24. Author, entrepreneur and public speaker Jonathan Sprinkles was the special guest speaker on that afternoon.

During the summer of 2009, Dr. Joseph Windham, Professor of History at the Alexandria campus, attended a Yale University seminar, Passages to Freedom: Abolition and the Underground Railroad. The course was taught by Professors James and Lois Horton, graduates of George Washington University and George Mason University. The seminar series offered at The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History was designed to help teachers bring new life into teaching history. On Wednesday, Feb. 18, Windham led a lecture in the Bisdorf Building, sharing what he learned with NOVA students.

This year’s Homecoming Dance will take place during Spirit Week on Friday, Feb. 19 in the Annandale Campus CF Cafeteria from 8:00 p.m. – midnight. The cost for the event will be $3.00 in advance and $5.00 at the door. Tickets will be available at your local student activities office. All money collected from ticket sales will go to Haiti relief effort.

NOVA sponsored its first annual Martin Luther King Day of Service on Monday, Jan. 18. The event coincides with the National Day of Service which always takes place on the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday. This NOVA Day of Service included two on-campus and two off-campus events. Both on-campus events, a free vehicle maintenance program and a school supply drive, took place on the Alexandria campus.