Dear Bellarmine Students, Faculty and Staff,

As you know, this coming Tuesday, November 4, is Election Day. In my experience as a citizen of the United States, there has never been a presidential election of any greater importance or significance than this one. I am pleased to live in a nation that has two major political parties, so apart from the issue of independent or third party candidates, we always are assured a choice between at least two different major candidates, two different platforms, and thus at least two real choices for whom we will elect to lead our country over the next four years.

While of course I have my preference, this note is not an endorsement of any one presidential candidate over another, but rather it is a very strong endorsement of the great privilege and opportunity we have every four years to elect the President of the United States of America. My enthusiastic encouragement to those of you who can vote, therefore, is to be sure to get out to the polls on November 4 and cast your personal vote for the presidential candidate of your choice.

On Election Day of course, there also are many other important political races in contention, ranging in Kentucky for example from a nationally watched contest for Senator to United States Representative to many other important local elections.

You have a powerful and valuable individual voice and vote. On November 4, please be sure to exercise your right and carry out your responsibility to influence the election of those political leaders who will be influencing your life and the life of the communities in which you live for the next several years.

Discover Day and Family Weekend

Bellarmine was the site of a couple of fantastic events in October. On Discover Day, we hosted a standing-room-only crowd in Frazier Hall, and hundreds of future students and their parents toured campus on a gorgeous Fall afternoon. Congratulations on a job well done to our Admission staff, who rolled out the red carpet, as well as to all faculty and staff who helped show our guests why Bellarmine is such a special place.

The very next weekend, we hosted hundreds more guests for Family Weekend, a special time when parents and siblings come to campus to enjoy games, special events and good food. Again, every event was packed and the Saturday Knight Live talent show had a standing-room-only audience. Sunday saw perhaps the largest Mass ever on Bellarmine's campus. Congratulations to Student Affairs and everyone who helped make this event so memorable.

Student News

Congratulations to BU students Christina Clements, Lauren Pieper, Amy Puerto and Shannon Siders for winning the Writing Competition for Women presented by the Institute for Media, Culture and Ethics at Bellarmine University. These students, along with Mr. Ed Manassah, Dr. Gail Henson and several Humana Inc. executives traveled to New York City aboard the Humana corporate jet to attend the luncheon for the 2008 Courage in Journalism Awards of the International Women’s Media Foundation. Students also met Jim Lehrer’s anchor Judy Woodruff, had lunch with Today Show’s Ann Curry, and saw four remarkable international journalists honored for service under pressure.

Senior Psychology major, Krista Clark, was a National Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Sponsorship recipient for a $5000 scholarship this summer. Only 40 students nationwide were selected for this honor and the money is awarded to fund an internship experience in HR. Clark is using the money to continue her internship at Appriss. She was also awarded a $1000 scholarship this summer from the local chapter of SHRM - Louisville Society for Human Resource Management.

Our own Amanda Moore was named Great Lakes Valley Conference Women's Soccer Player of the Week on October 13. This honor came after scoring the game-winning goals in all three of Bellarmine University's matches the week prior. That week, Moore scored the only goal in a 1-0 victory against Quincy, a goal in double overtime in a 2-1 victory against Southern Indiana and two second-half goals in a 3-1 victory against Kentucky Wesleyan. Click here to read more about GLVC honors.

Faculty and Staff News

Dr. Joann Lau and Dr. Dave Robinson of the biology department recently published a chapter on forensic science in Tested Studies for Laboratory Teaching (Proceedings of the 29th Workshop/Conference of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education). ISBN: 1-890444-11-1

Dr. Dave Robinson presented a poster at the Frontiers of Sexual Plant Reproduction III conference in Tucson, AZ, October 17-19. Dr. Joann Lau co-authored this research. The poster focused on the Ambrosia Project.

Dr. Dave Robinson and Dr. Joann Lau presented two 3-hour workshops at the annual meeting of ABLE (Association of Biology Laboratory Education) held at the University of Toronto-Mississauga. The workshops were given to college instructors interested in teaching bioinformatics. They were co-authored by researchers at Bio-Rad Laboratories (San Francisco, CA) and Geospiza, Inc. (Seattle, WA).

Dr. Joann Lau co-presented two different workshops at the annual meeting of the National Association of Biology Teachers held in Memphis, TN on Oct. 16-18.These workshops were sponsored by Bio-Rad Laboratories and concerned a gene-cloning project designed at Bellarmine.

Steven Wilt and David Porta of the Biology Department received a Metroversity Instructional Development Award for their proposal, An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Marine Biology.

Dr. Kimberly Parker, Assistant Professor of Communication, has recently published the book Adolescents and communication regarding sex and contraception: Examining adolescent communication and the journal articles: The Attitude Base as a Moderator of the Effectiveness of Inoculation Strategy, Communication Monographs and A Note of Caution: Conceptual and Application Issues of Structural Equation Modeling, Central Business Review.

Assistant Professor of Communication Dr. Kyle Barnett’s essay, “The Role of the Recording Industry in Media History,” will appear in a media studies anthology titled Convergence Media History (Routledge Press). Barnett recently attended the Flow Conference in Austin, Texas and gave a presentation titled Waiting for the Playback: Searching for the Recording Industry’s Future in its Past. Kyle also represented the Institute for Media, Culture, and Ethics and the Department of Communication at the Idea Festival in Louisville. He introduced Jack Epps, Jr., director of the screenwriting program at University of Southern California for a discussion on the art and business of screenwriting. Epps co-wrote screenplays for Top Gun, Dick Tracy, Anaconda and others.

Adjunct faculty member, Stephanie Sullivan, Principal of Graves County Central Elementary School, was named the runner-up for the National Distinguished Principal Award.

Rebecca Jackson, President and Chief Executive Officer, of the WHAS Crusade for Children, visited the School of Education to present a check totaling $38,000 representing $14,000 for tuition aid for Master of Arts in Education students and $24,000 for the new Assessment Clinic. Bellarmine Center for Economics Education also received a $2,000 grant from the National Council for Economics Education to sponsor the Gallery of Multicultural Studies for Middle and High School Teachers. Dr. Corrie Orthober and Dr. Kathy Cooter are the co-directors of the center.

Dr. Claire Hughes spent the summer in England and Ireland; first, as a Visiting Fellow at the Harris Manchester College at Oxford University thanks to the McGowan Prize for Faculty Development, and then as a faculty member teaching a course on Irish children's literature through Bellarmine's collaboration with the Cooperative Center for Study Abroad.

Dr. Adam Renner’s article, “Teaching community, praxis, and courage: A foundations pedagogy of hope and humanization” has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Educational Studies.

Dr. Anne Bucalos has been appointed to serve a two-year term on the Executive Board of the Kentucky Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, representing private institutions in the state.

Dr. Cindy Gnadinger has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the Kentucky Reading Journal.

Instructor John Sizemore is serving as the lead developer in writing the Social Justice and Teacher Leadership curriculum for Master’s level teacher leadership courses for the Wallace Foundation.

Instructor Deb Baker presented at the Kentucky Association of School Administrators Annual Conference, in Louisville, KY.

Instructor Sonya Burton and Dr. Cindy Gnadinger presented at the Kentucky Reading Association’s annual conference in Louisville, KY on Sept. 26. The presentation was entitled, Teaching History in a Reading/Writing Workshop.

Dr. Corrie Orthober made several presentations at the annual Kentucky Council for the Social Studies in Louisville, KY, including presentations on History Workshop, assessment methodology, and using student score reports to develop differentiated classroom questioning strategies.

The article “The Sound of Silence: How Memory Becomes Text in Tina De Rosa’s Paper Fish” by Melody Carriere, Adjunct Faculty in Global Languages and Cultures, has been accepted for publication in the Spring 2009 issue of Forum Italicum.

During the summer, Foreign Language Depatment Faculty members Julien and Melody Carriere volunteered at The Savannah Cheetah Foundation. The foundation is a cheetah breeding and reintroduction facility located near Parys in South Africa situated on a 1,000 hectare nature reserve. The facilty also is home to other animals such as giraffe, rhino, and antelope. See some of their photos here.

Christine Hutchins, new Adjunct Faculty teaching Mandarin Chinese, was honored for her two years leadership service with the Kentucky Association of Chinese Language Teachers (KACLT) at the Kentucky World Language Association Fall Conference September 25-27, 2008 (photo available). She also served as a Master Teacher and mentored five incoming Chinese teacher-candidates at Northern Kentucky University’s summer Chinese teacher certification program.

Eric Roorda, Professor of History, wrote several entries (“Castro,”“Cuban Missile Crisis,” “Dominican Republic”) in the recently published Encyclopedia of the Cold War (Routledge).

The Respiratory Therapy Program, Dr. Christy Kane, Dr. Jerry Walker, Dr. Harry Snider, and Pat Reidinger was awarded Continuing Accreditation, Advanced Level by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP). The peer review was conducted by the Committee on Accreditation for Respiratory Care (CoARC) and substantial compliance with the nationally established accreditation Standards was found.

Dr. Kane has also had an abstract, “Factors of Importance in the Persistence of Non-nursing Health Science Students Enrolled in Community Colleges”, accepted for the AARC National Conference, December 2008. This abstract will be presented at the Open Forum Poster Presentation. Another abstract, “Comparing Predictions of Maximum Aerobic Capacity Using Submaximal Exercise Procedures in a Small Sample of University Students”, written by students, Jenifer Chism, Sean Chism, Angela Hill, Kelly Hargrave and Destiny Sharp, has also been accepted to be presented at the same meeting.

Dr. Sherill Cronin and the acceptance of her most recent publication, “Infection prevention compencies for hospital-based healthcare personnel” in the Journal of Infection Control.

"Bus Arrivals and Bunching" by Adam Molnar, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, was published in the July 2008 issue of the Journal of Statistics Education.

At the 2008 Joint Statistics Meetings, Prof. Molnar participated in Stat Bowl, a Quiz Bowl style competition for graduate students and recent graduates. He finished with the highest score in each of the three rounds, winning the entire competition. To read more about this competition, click here.

Two new compositions by music department faculty member Richard Burchard were featured in the closing concert of the Kentucky Music Teachers State Conference on Oct. 26 at Campbellsville University. Kyrie for choir and organ, and Lord God of this great night for 8-part choir, set to a text by Thomas Merton, will be performed by the YPAS choir, Timothy Glasscock, conductor, with Timothy Baker, organist.

Karen Lord-Powell, Instructor of violin and viola, was recently appointed Principal 2nd Violin of the Louisville Orchestra, after having been a member of the section for several years.

Fong Choo, Adjunct Faculty in Art, will be in Israel in December to be one of 3 presenters, along with a British and Scandinavian artist, sponsored by the Binyamini Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Israel. In September he received First Place Award at the St. Louis Art Fair, in St. Louis, MO. This is 4 consecutive years that he has received awards at this prestigious event.

David Mosley, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, presented a paper Defining and Disciplining Interdisciplinary Studies at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Association for Intergrative Studies on Oct. 17.

Adjunct Faculty in Philosophy Jeffrey Post's dissertation, "Modern Technology: The Separation of Arts and Sciences," is being published by Verlag Dr. Muller Publishing in Germany.

Ann Jirkovsky, Assistant Professor of Psychology, was invited to participate in the NCAA Division II Faculty Athletics Representative Institute in Indianapolis October 17-18.

Dr. Melanie Prejean Sullivan’s article “Helping college students create their own discernment models,” was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Horizon, the Journal of the National Religious Vocation Conference.

School of Education Alumni

MAT graduate Logan McIntosh has been selected to participate in the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program. Mr. McIntosh, a teacher at Klondike Lane Elementary School, was selected from a pool of more than 1,700 applicants and will be one of 160 educators participating. He will be in Japan for three weeks this month to promote greater intercultural understanding between the two nations.

Jodie Zeller, a graduate of the Principal Program, has recently been named the new Assistant Principal at Southside Elementary Schools in Shelby County, KY.

School of Education graduate, Nicole Travis, was recently appointed Associate Principal at Ten Broeck-Dupont and St. Joseph Children's Home (JCPS/SAC program schools).

Former MAT student and graduate, Beth Meadows has been elected as the current Treasurer for the Kentucky Reading Association.

New Photo Galleries

We've recently added several photo galleries, including Alumni Athlete Day, the President's Classic golf tournament, Wyatt Lecture Series visit by Ray Suarez, and Drs. Melody and Julien Carriere's volunteer work with cheetahs in South Africa. Check them out here.