Professional Notes for April 21, 2017

Father Jean-Pierre Bongila, Ph.D., Leadership Department, College of Education, Leadership and Counseling, has been notified that he will receive the International Educator Citizen Award from the International Leadership Institute (ILI) at the annual Twin Cities International Citizen Awards gala on Thursday, May 11, at the Minneapolis Club in Minneapolis. In her notification letter, Judge (ret.) LaJune Lange, ILI president, wrote, "You are being honored with this award of excellence because of your many achievements and contributions to local communities and international programs through interfaith dialogue and philanthropic activities. This, of course, is just a portion of your professional experience and impressive outreach to diverse communities and international programs."

Maintaining a variety of international partnerships, ILI is a Minnesota-based nonprofit established in 1994 in response to the Rwanda genocide and to the end of apartheid in South Africa. The organization's award element, the Twin Cities International Citizen Awards, honors individuals and corporations whose work has contributed significantly to international understanding, cooperation, friendship and development. Please see the ILI calendar website for further information on the organization and how to support Bongila and attend the award gala by sharing or reserving a table. The reception will begin at 5 p.m., with the awards dinner to follow at 6 p.m.

Dr. Joseph Brom, professor emeritus, Chemistry Department, College of Arts and Sciences, is the author of an article, "Quantum Interference: How to Measure the Wavelength of a Particle," that appears in The Journal of Chemical Education, published by The American Chemical Society.

Dr. Dave Deavel, Catholic Studies Department, College of Arts and Sciences, is the author of "Prospects of Catholic Literary Revival," which was published March 26 in The Catholic World Report.

Daniel Elenz and Kristen Nelson, doctoral students in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology, have been invited to participate in three symposia at the American Psychological Association National Convention to be held in August in Washington. They submitted three papers, listed below, all of which were accepted.

• "Paving the Way for Increased Resilience in Our Work as Therapists: A Skill Building Opportunity" (a two-hour, skill-building workshop in collaboration with the University of Minnesota's Counseling and Student Personnel Psychology faculty and students)
• "The Professional is Political, or Is It? Navigating Identity in Therapeutic Practice and Supervision" (a two-hour symposium in collaboration with University of Minnesota's Counseling and Student Personnel Psychology faculty and students)
• "Reversing Roles With Bees in the Room: What Happens When the Helpee Becomes the Helper?" (an hourlong symposium in collaboration with University of Minnesota's Counseling and Student Personnel Psychology and Auburn University faculty and students)

They are currently gathering stories via surveys from licensed psychologists about their experiences relevant to each of the topics.

Dr. Hans Gustafson, Theology Department, College of Arts and Sciences, and Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning, co-presented with Zafar Siddiqui, co-founder and former president of the Islamic Resource Group, six workshops on the religious landscape of Minneapolis-St. Paul, religious literacy, pluralism and Muslims in Minnesota at the Metropolitan Council’s “Travel Toward Management Success” diversity training for over 450 of its managers and supervisors. These workshops took place on Feb. 23 and March 23.

Dr. Anne Klejment, History Department, College of Arts and Sciences, is the author of a book chapter and journal article on Dorothy Day: “Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez: American Catholic Lives in Nonviolence,” which was reprinted in Remapping the History of Catholicism in the United States: Essays from the U.S. Catholic Historian (David Endres, ed., Catholic University Press, 2017, pp. 119-144); and “Dorothy Day’s Fictionalized Family," which was published in U.S. Catholic Historian 35.2 (Spring 2017): 51-71. The article explores an obscure period of Day’s life through a previously unknown newspaper column.

She recently chaired and commented on papers pertaining to Latino Catholic Activism and Social Reform at the joint meeting of the American Society of Church History and the American Catholic Historical Association in Berkeley, California. Klejment is serving on the Koenig Prize Committee for Biography and the Centennial Committee of the American Catholic Historical Association.

Talia Nadir, Greg Argo and Meg Manahan, University Libraries, were presenters at the national biennial conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries in Baltimore last month. ACRL, a subset of the American Librarian Association, is the professional association for academic librarians. Argo and Manahan were on a panel (“Consortial eBook Purchasing for the Rest of Us”) discussing the ways in which our libraries and our partner libraries in CLIC have developed a framework for the purchasing of shared electronic books. Nadir’s panel presentation, “Crossing the Unknown Sea: Navigating the Unintended Outcomes of Instruction Assessment,” covered the assessment of student learning in information literacy in first-year writing, writing across the curriculum and capstone projects.

Sister Katarina Schuth, O.S.F., Ph.D., Endowed Chair for Social Scientific Study of Religion, Saint Paul Seminary, School of Divinity, made the following presentations in 2017:

• “Seminary Formation for Priesthood: Content and Integration of Intellectual Formation” for a faculty workshop at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, Jan. 26.
• Three presentations at a conference on human formation in seminaries for seminary rectors and formation staff in all of India: “Human Formation: Orientation,” “Integrating Sexuality, Celibacy, and Intimacy” and “Human Formation: Challenges Today” at Dharmaram College, Bangalore, India, Feb. 10-13.
• “Preparing for Ministry in the 21st Century Church” for a gathering of friends of The Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity in Naples, Florida, March 6.
• “Background on Seminary Formation for Priesthood and Discussion of Communications between Academic and Formation Faculty” for a faculty retreat day at Christ the King Seminary, East Aurora, New York, March 24.

Dr. Angela Senander, Theology Department, College of Arts and Sciences, will participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute titled “On Native Grounds: Studies of Native American Histories and the Land." This will provide an opportunity for archival research at the Library of Congress. Her research of missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas, OP, and his interactions with Native Americans will enrich her teaching of the course Church in Latin America. Senander also has some recent publications which include: “Power and Church Reform: A Jesuit Pope Named Francis” in Theology and Power: International Perspectives ed. by Stephen Bullivant et al. New York: Paulist Press, 2016, 155-173, and “Beyond Scandal: Creating A Culture of Accountability in the Catholic Church,” Journal of Business Ethics, DOI 10.1007/s10551-016-3217-4 (June 1, 2016), and a review of The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights by Meghan J. Clark in Theological Studies 77 (2) (June 2016): 544-545.

Dr. Kevin Theissen, Geology Department, College of Arts and Sciences, and three student researchers presented their work at the Geological Society of America joint North Central and Northeast section meeting held March 21 in Pittsburgh. Student researcher Sam Duncanson gave an oral presentation on his work investigating the recent history of nutrient-loaded lakes near Forest Lake, Minnesota, titled “Drastic Sedimentation Changes in a Twin Cities Metro Area Watershed on the Urban-rural Boundary." Student researchers Ashley Brundrett and Sarah Horns gave poster presentations on their work investigating a geological record of climate and ecological change from a southern Nevada lake. Their posters are titled “Microbialite Signatures in a Great Basin Lake Core Record of the Past ~5500 yr” and “New Extended Record of Holocene Paleoecology and Paleohydrology From Lower Pahranagat Lake, Great Basin," respectively. Theissen is the faculty adviser and co-author on each of these projects. Geology faculty member Dr. Thomas Hickson is a co-author on the presentations by Brundrett and Horns and St. Thomas student Gabrielle Houle is a co-author on the presentation by Duncanson.   

Dr. Christopher Vye, Dr. Chris Bedford and graduate student Greta Gilbertson, Graduate School of Professional Psychology, will present at the 2017 Child & Adolescent Mental Health Conference held April 23-25 in Duluth, Minnesota.

Their presentation topics are:

• "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Adolescents: Recognition, Management and Exposure-Based Treatment Strategies" (Vye, Gilbertson and Rebecca Swan, Ph.D., LP, licensed psychologist for Anxiety Treatment Resources

• "ADHD Update 2017" (Bedford and Gary Johnson, Ph.D., LMFT, LP, licensed psychologist for Clinic for Attention, Learning, and Memory)

Dr. Christian D. Washburn, Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity, attended the eighth meeting of Round XII of the U.S. Lutheran–Catholic Dialogue, held March 15-19 at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. Additionally, Washburn recently is the author of two articles: “Doctrine, Ecumenical Progress, and Problems with Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry, and Eucharist,” published in Pro Ecclesia 26 (2017), 59-80; and “The First Vatican Council, Archbishop Manning, and Papal Infallibility,” published in Catholic Historical Review 102 (2016): 27-60. He also attended the Evangelical-Catholic Dialogue of the United States at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, where he delivered a paper called "Nothing Unclean Will Enter Heaven: Justification and Eschatology "at the three-day conference in March.

Dr. John T. Wendt, Ethics and Business Law Department, Opus College of Business, is the author of an article titled “Flying Down to Rio – The 2016 Summer Olympic Games” that has been accepted for publication by Entertainment & Sports Lawyer. The journal is the official publication of the Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries of the American Bar Association.