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.
Burchard was named 2008 Kentucky Music Teachers Association
Commissioned Composer, and this concert featured the commissioned work
for the year. There will be a special Bellarmine University premiere of
these works in early spring semester 2009, with details to follow.
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.