It's Friday!  The last day of Spring Semester.  And tomorrow we will congratulate the more than 2,000 students (424 from CoLA!) who will graduate from Wright State.  There is much to celebrate.

The 2014 Campus Scholarship & Innovation Campaign (CSIC) wraps up today, and over $450,000 was pledged to scholarships and programs!  50% of CoLA faculty and staff participated generously in CSIC.  Thank you for giving what you could to benefit our many outstanding programs and students.  And thank you and congratulations to Dawn Banker, Dean's Office, who spearheaded the campaign for our college.  I also want to congratulate Dawn on being named chair of CSAC, the Classified Staff Advisory Council.

The CoLA Dean's Leadership Board had an active spring.  All members provided crucial funding which enabled 14 amazing students to receive CoLA Leadership and Study Abroad Scholarships.  Some members of the board served on sub-committees to select the recipients for these important awards, and other board members served on an Advocating for the Liberal Arts Committee that provided wonderful insight into best ways to help the community and our students understand the value of a liberal arts education.  Thank you to all the dedicated people who serve on this board:  Kathy Arquilla '73, David Bignell '89, Susan Deluca '73, Naomi Ewald-Orme '90, Gary Gall '74, Travis Greenwood '84, Kathy Hinders '97, Ildiko Marcus '79, Wendy Merkert '00 /'06, Mark Owens '78, Colleen Ryan, and Judy Thompson '99.

Congratulations to our fantastic student recipients of the Dean's Leadership Board Scholarships.  Recipients of our Leadership Scholarships are Paige Dobkins, Musical Theatre; Benjamin Geist, Piano Performance; Charmaine Griffith, Sculpture and Women's Studies; Prentiss Haney, Urban Affairs; Elizabeth M. Schoppelrei, Spanish; Terry Allan Staten II, Music Education; and Patricia Wightman, Social Work. Study Abroad Scholarship awardees are Kaitlin Coyle, French; Quanita McRoberts, Liberal Studies; Brandon North, Literature; Kayla Schaub, French; Julia Stidham, Political Science; Ryan Stone, International Business; and Evan Weiler, Professional and Technical Writing.

Congratulations as well to the following CoLA students who were nominated by the CoLA Scholarship Committee and selected to receive prominent, university-level scholarships: Leah Fay, Social Work -- Harley E. Flack Memorial Scholarship; Emily Simpson, English - Jeffrey Scholarship; Elizabeth Schoppelrei, Spanish - Robert Oelman Scholarship; and Angelica Lloyd, Political Science/International Studies - Sarah Harris Scholarship.

This year the Department of English Language and Literatures commences publishing the e-journal Best Integrated Writing: Journal of Excellence in Integrated Writing Courses at Wright State, a yearly collection of excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses in the Wright Core and in the majors. Works are nominated by university faculty, and the first issue contains essays written by students in courses as wide ranging as Management, Psychology, Nursing and Comparative Studies.  Best Integrated Writing is primarily an online journal and is fully searchable. It can be accessed here: http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/biw/.  Thank you to English faculty who worked so hard on this great project: Editor in chief, Scott Geisel, and Editorial Board members, Andrea Harris, Karen Hayes, and Kathleen Kollman.

Earlier this week we hosted our Inaugural Internship Celebration Breakfast at the Nutter Center Berry Room.  During the 2013-14 academic year, the College of Liberal Arts saw 200 of its students participate in internships. The hard-working group logged nearly 25,000 internship hours!  Nearly 50 of our more than 150 internship partners came to the breakfast to celebrate these great collaborations between the community and our students.

Speaking of collaborations, last year we held our Annual Faculty Retreat at the Dayton Art Institute, and the partnerships from that retreat were felt across the college over the past year and include: 

• Modern Languages Service Learning project with graduating senior Samantha Steward and Associate Professor Kirsten Halling to create Guided Tours in French at the DAI.
• Theatre Department curatorial, performance and material assistance from Professor D. Bartlett Blair, Professor Joe Deer, and students for Decked Out! in the Experiencenter for 2014-15.
• Institutional loan to WSU of 26 photographs from the permanent collection for a FotoFocus exhibition curated by Assistant Professor Tracy Longley-Cook, Art.
• "Translating the Museum" class in January 2015 with Assistant Professor Anna Casas, Modern Languages.
• Proposed WSU-curated exhibition on Art and Conflict, by Associate Professor Ben Montague, Art, at the DAI in conjunction with a literary conference on the Dayton Peace Accords, with Associate Professor Drew Strombeck, English, in October 2015.
• Possible course utilizing the Ancient Art collection with Assistant Professor Heidi Wendt, Religion Philosophy & Classics
• Impetus to get e-museum (public access for viewing the collection) up and running on the DAI website, which is almost complete!

We look forward to all the exciting new collaborations that will come from our next Faculty Retreat in August at Dayton History/Carillon Park.

Finally, I would like to thank Sukhmanjit Singh, Political Science, for his service over this past year as Student Government President.  He graduates on Saturday and we wish him well!  And congratulations to Kyle Powell, Political Science, who will step up next year from Vice President to President of Student Government.  It is fantastic to see our students so involved and well-represented on campus.

Today we will celebrate many other outstanding students in the college at our Outstanding Student Awards Ceremony in the Creative Arts Center's Schuster Hall at 2:00 p.m.  I hope to see many of you there.

This will be the last CoLA News until fall semester begins.  Have a wonderful summer! 

Kristin Sobolik Dean