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                                                  College of Liberal Arts  

CoLA Color


 

CoLA Weekly

 

Friday, April 3, 2015  

 

Save the Date: I am excited to announce that this year's CoLA Retreat will be held on Wednesday, August 26 from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. in the Mathile Room of Schuster Center downtown. We will be given backstage tours of Schuster Center and the Victoria Theatre, talk about CoLA's future, and celebrate our CoLA Outstanding Award recipients. Lunch will be provided.

 

Congratulations to the following recipients of this year's CoLA Research Grants:

  • Deborah Crusan, English - Research Travel to Australia, $2000
  • Shelley Jagow, Music - Score Study, Conducting, Rehearsing, and Performing with Digital Sheet Music, $2,500
  • Bill Jobert, Music - Bassoon Trio Pedagogy Project, $2,150
  • Noeleen McIlvenna, History - Colonial Democrats Monograph, $5,000
  • Jason Kaufman, Theatre - Funding for Slippage (a film), $5,000
  • D. Miyasaki, Philosophy - Research Travel to Germany, $2,000
  • Damaris Serrano, Spanish - Transatlantic Connections, Global Aldeas: The Reinsertion of Subaltern Cultures: A Negotiation, $2,000
  • Heidi Wendt, Religion - Plotting Rival Christian Experts in Second-Century Rome, $5,000

 

A BIG Congratulations to the many people who made our 16th annual ARTSGALA such a huge success. Our "Under Construction" year attracted over 770 people - an increase in 10% over last year! - to the Creative Arts Center for an amazing night of arts entertainment. This success wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of the faculty, staff and students in the fine and performing arts, as well as an amazing host committee and hard-working internal committee consisting of Jennie Buckwalter, Susan Paul, Steve Aldredge, Linda Caron, Glen Cebulash, Victoria Chadbourne, Tess Cortes, Hank Dahlman, Stephanie Dickey, Stuart McDowell, Victoria Oleen, Nancy Patton, Randy Paul, and Lee Ann Bradfield and Susan See from Student Union Administrative Services who worked all year long to prepare for this event. Our talented arts students will really benefit from the scholarship support generated this year!

 

 

 

The Visiting Writers Series will host its final writer for the academic year on Wednesday, April 15. Poet Shane McCrae will read that evening at 6:00 in the Robert & Elaine Stein Galleries in the CAC. McCrae rounds out a wonderful year of writers, including Antony McCann, Catherine Wagner, Mike Young, Anne Valente, Ben Stroud, and Michael Earl Craig. The Creative Writing Program is already working on next year's line-up and is excited the schedule will include visits from two alums of the BA and MA English program who have published their first books-James Brubaker, author of Liner Notes, and Ryan Ireland, author of Beyond the Horizon. Other visiting writers in 2015-2016 will include Madeline Fitch, Amina Gautier, Philip Metres, and Rachel B. Glaser. Thank you to Erin Flanagan, English, for her leadership of this important series.

 

Congratulations to La Fleur Small, Sociology, on being acknowledged by the Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society for First-Year Students as integral to the Fall, 2014 first-year students' academic success! La Fleur has been awarded honorary membership into the society. The induction ceremony takes place on Sunday, April 12 in 156 Student Union.

 

Donna Schlagheck and Vaughn Shannon, Political Science, along with Mark Ensalaco from the University of Dayton, will lead a panel discussion on Terrorism and Torture: The Impact(s) of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report. The panel will take place on Wednesday April 8, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. in Health Sciences, Room 116.

 

April is National Poetry Month and the Department of English Language and Literatures is celebrating with the Milton Marathon, a shared public reading of John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, on Tuesday, April 7 from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. in the Student Union Rathskeller. The department has lured Henry Limouze out of retirement to teach his signature Milton course, and as the poem is around ten thousand lines long the students welcome all the help they can get! So please stop by to listen, participate, and help read aloud as much or as little of the poem as you like. Copies of the poem will be available, as well as snacks and drinks. I plan to stop by and read my very first Milton.

 

Also as a part of National Poetry Month, LEAP will host its annual International Poetry Day event today from 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. in the Millett Atrium. Students from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, India, Brazil, and China will read poetry in their native languages and talk briefly about the meaning of the poems. Please stop by and check it out.  

 

This week's featured New Faculty is Instructor of Voice, Peter Keates. Peter earned a bachelor's degree in vocal performance from the University of Oklahoma, and then earned a master's and doctorate of musical arts degree in vocal performance from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Along with his studies at CCM, he studied and performed for two summers at the Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca in Lucca, Italy. Peter has performed a number of operatic roles such as Sam in Trouble in Tahiti and Betto in Gianni Schicchi. His concert performances include solos in Handel's Messiah and Beethoven's Mass in C. Peter currently teaches voice as well as vocal technique and diction. We are happy to have him on board!  

  

I close with an update on the Center for Liberal Arts Student Success (CLASS). Director for Student Retention, Becca Salay, started last week and she has jumped right in figuring out how to implement our new direct admit policy. A big thank you to our wonderful CoLA Advisors Ann Barr, Forest Wortham, Kathleen Kollman, and Mel Brown, as well as Penny Wipert and Herb Dregalla for helping Becca during this important transition.   Welcome Becca! 

 
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Kristin Sobolik
Dean