Abare Hall, part of Flagler College's largest-ever construction project, will open its doors to upperclassmen this weekend after 15 months of work. The new residence hall, named after retired President Dr. William T. Abare Jr., sits on the west side of the college’s existing FEC Residence Halls on the banks of St. Augustine’s San Sebastian River. It houses 159 students in 75 suites.

Flagler College recently welcomed 14 faculty members to campus. Those individuals with a “Visiting Lecturer” title represent a new rank, elevating former adjunct instructors to full-time teaching and advising responsibilities.

Flagler College’s Hospitality and Tourism Management program is growing — in size, community support and now scholarship assistance, thanks to its first scholarship donor. The Columbia Restaurant Group, owner of St. Augustine’s downtown Columbia Restaurant, recently agreed, for five years, to fund a $2,500 annual scholarship to deserving students majoring in Hospitality and Tourism Management. The decision to fund the scholarship was conceived by Richard Gonzmart, a fourth-generation co-owner of the famed Florida restaurant.

This summer Flagler College students had the unique opportunity to study the 100-year anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, in which the imperial government of Russia was overthrown, when they visited St. Petersburg and Moscow.

The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum at Flagler College will kick off the 2017-2018 academic year with Gamaliel Rodriguez’s exhibition, “A Third Way to Look at You.” The artist’s work delves further into the aesthetics and ideas explored in a 2015 series titled “Figures,” which feature indeterminate architectural structures that are overrun by an encroaching landscape.

The Gargoyle, the Flagler College’s student-led online newspaper, won first place for Best Website in the Society of Professional Journalists Florida Chapter’s 2017 Sunshine State Awards. The publication took the top award ahead of University of Miami and Lynn University. This also marks the 100th award for The Gargoyle and its staff, all won in the last decade. The Gargoyle's student editors are Mallory Hopkins, Julie Householder and Katie Garwood.

The Princeton Review’s newest guidebook, “The Best 382 Colleges,” has again included Flagler College among the top 15 percent of all American four-year schools.

In an effort to better serve the Flagler College community, several additions and changes will be coming to the St. Augustine campus this fall. The most prominent of these will be the opening of Anderson Cottage as the new Alumni House, located just south of the Proctor Library. The renovated building will serve as a central meeting hub for local and visiting alumni, and will also house the Career Development Center. The aim, Dr. Alan Woolfolk said, is to enhance the overall student experience.

This year marks the 500th commemoration of the Protestant Reformation, the 16th-century upheaval that redefined the Roman Catholic Church. This summer, Flagler College students enjoyed the unique opportunity to study the transformative period at the University of Dresden in Germany, as part of an interdisciplinary-transatlantic program titled “Faces of Faith: Late Medieval and Reformation Germany.”

Six Flagler College students recently returned from a 10-day adventure in Belize, where they worked on research to help save the critically-endangered Hicatee turtle, experienced first-hand living sustainably deep in a tropical rainforest, witnessed wildlife thrive in its native habitat and snorkeled the country’s barrier reef.

Two Flagler College professors, four alumni and two current students recently attended a symposium commemorating the 800th anniversary celebration of the 13th-century Franciscan leader Saint Bonaventure. The conference, held at The Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University in New York in mid-July, was dedicated to the cultural and religious dynamics that shaped the scholar’s theology and spirituality.

Flagler College students witnessed first-hand the changes Cuba is experiencing, as the socialist country grapples with the impact of its revolutionary past and uncertain future. As part of this summer’s study abroad trip to Cuba, Assistant Professor Tracey Eaton guided students on a Cuban adventure. They met Cuban entrepreneurs, artists, farmers, guides and other locals who shared their perspectives on economic and social conditions, mass tourism, property disputes between the United States and Cuba, the Cuban missile crisis and more.

Flagler College has joined the international arena of historic preservation. Dr. Leslee F. Keys, the college’s assistant professor of History and director of Historic Preservation and Special Initiatives, has been elected to the 21-member Board of Trustees of the United States chapter of the International Commission on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS).  She is the member representing Florida, and one of four newly-elected trustees.

This summer as part of Dr. Michael Butler’s course “The American War: The Struggle for Independence in Vietnam,” Flagler College students visited the places and listened to the voices in Vietnam that they read about in course texts — those that shaped the narrative of the Vietnam War through the eyes of the Vietnamese.

For Flagler students in the college’s Natural Sciences department, the classroom is as much the marsh, wetlands or any other coastal habitat surrounding St. Augustine as it is the lab on campus. Their studies in the field often yield valuable research and play a significant role in better understanding the area’s ecosystems.

Flagler College is being featured across the country in travel journalist Burt Wolf’s “Travels and Traditions,” which is airing on PBS affiliates.

This week officially marked the start of Dr. Joseph G. Joyner’s tenure as the fourth president of Flagler College. He succeeds Dr. William T. Abare, Jr., who served in the role for 16 years before retiring this June.

Brian Thompson, who has written an award-winning, weekly column for The St. Augustine Record since 1998, has been named to the board of directors for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Thompson, who is also News and Information Director for Flagler College, will serve as the chair of the organization’s national awards contest.

Flagler College’s library services is now more mobile-friendly, thanks to a new automated system. The Proctor Library upgraded last week from a system known as Voyager to another called Sierra.

Managing disasters is not what Linda Stoughton envisioned she’d be doing 30 years ago. She had studied forestry, and wanted to pursue that field wholeheartedly. But in 1985, she took a job with St. Johns County as a fire rescue dispatcher, and before she knew it, had progressed to the role of emergency management director.