Don Shelby will retire next month after 32 years as an anchor and reporter for WCCO-TV, and recently was saluted with an appropriate “roast” sponsored by St. Thomas and its ThreeSixty journalism program. Dave Nimmer provides the highlights of the fun evening in The Scroll.

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Yung Jen Vang returned to class earlier this week and told students and her professors about the accident when she was hit by a truck in the intersection of Cretin and Summit avenues. As it turns out, Carol Bruess explains today in The Scroll, Yung was saved by textbooks in her backpack.

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Miles Trump has a lot of good professors at St. Thomas, but one of his best teachers has turned out to be sophomore Alex Schulte, who lost most of his vision in a traffic accident. Writes Miles today in The Scroll: “Alex has taught me to take a little bit more pride in the things I do each day and to be a little bit more courageous about the things I haven’t done.”

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Cecilia Petschel is still feeling that Tommie spirit on campus following last Saturday’s stunning 27-26 overtime win over St. John’s in football. “It is,” she writes today in The Scroll, “a great victory to savor.”

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Dave Nimmer used to love to smoke cigarettes, but he finally kicked the habit after 25 years. His experiences – and those of his college roommate – convince him that it’s time for St. Thomas to ban smoking on campus. He explains why today in The Scroll.

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Brady Narloch didn’t pay much attention four years ago when Dean Christopher Puto spoke at a student government meeting about accreditation for the Opus College of Business. After all, Brady was a political science major. Four years later, he’s a finance major, and he writes today in The Scroll about the importance of accreditation for St. Thomas’ future.

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The recent U.S. News & World Report rankings got people talking again, and that’s good, says Dr. Michael Cogan, director of institutional research and analysis. But as he writes today in The Scroll, we need to be careful not to let rankings drive our decision-making process and we should stick to the way we approach teaching and facilitate learning at St. Thomas. Our model works.

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Susan Alexander has some tongue-in-cheek advice for Flynn Hall residents concerned with mice: Get an illegal cat. As Susan writes today in The Scroll, her neighbor’s cat, Sophie, does a good job of keeping away both the mice and her dreams about 200-pound dancing rodents. Have a mouse story? Share it with us!

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Cecilia Petschel was getting frustrated in her “Acts of Kindness” conversations around the family dinner table, and then she realized she had to model those deeds herself and share them with her children. “What about you?” she asks today in The Scroll. Have you shared your acts of kindness?

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Sarah Gallenberg finds herself living out a definition of leadership that a professor recently shared with her: “Leadership is continuous … Internally derived and outwardly manifested.” She derives great satisfaction, she writes today in her first blog for The Scroll, in working with students who begin to live up to that definition in carrying out St. Thomas’ mission.

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As classes move into their third week and students lug their backpacks across The Quad, I can’t help but think of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s remarks on “The Daily Show” earlier this summer about higher education, its cost and the alternatives.

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Carol Bruess loves new stuff, and she certainly finds a lot of it with the dawning of another school year. But as she writes today in The Scroll, there’s something to be said for the old, too, and how the two are so inextricably linked.

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Susan Alexander likes both beginnings and endings, and finds plenty of them on a college campus. She goes back and forth on which is her favorite, she writes today in The Scroll, and a recent conversation with a Student Affairs colleague helped her make up her mind.

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That’s today’s advice from Tonia Jones in The Scroll. She still is having a hard time believing it’s already May 18 and graduation is just a few days away. But it’s true, so buckle down, she advises, and “do it!”

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Brady Narloch was pretty nervous when he moved into Brady Hall four years ago and found himself surrounded by freshmen from Wisconsin. But he learned to love them, he writes today in The Scroll, and he’s excited that a record number of natives from the Badger State will enroll this fall.

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Carol Bruess always has thought St. Thomas sophomore Christine Ertl was a darn sharp student. But the publisher of what could be a national best-seller about an 11-year-old girl left to die in the Atlantic Ocean nearly 50 years ago? It’s true! Read more about this fascinating story –­ and watch a “Today Show” interview with the survivor of that boat tragedy –­ today in The Scroll.

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With less than three weeks to graduation, Dave Nimmer knows the seniors are antsy to move on, but he has a “cautionary note” in The Scroll today. “Don’t be too hasty,” he advises. “And whatever you do, take some of St. Thomas along, especially the part involving a life of the mind.”

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With the closing of the McCarthy Gymnasium pool and the recent demolition of O’Shaughnessy Hall, Jim Winterer finds himself without a pool in which to swim these days. And that, he writes today in The Scroll, means he’s temporarily without a place “not to think.”

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Susan Alexander plans to celebrate National Poem in the Pocket Day on Thursday, so watch out! Her choice has something to do with pie, she writes today in The Scroll. Well, not really … but its title, “If The World Was Crazy,” should be reason enough to ask her on Thursday for a dramatic reading. She thinks you should find a poem of your own, too.

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Carol Bruess has found the perfect place to swear – and to let her kids swear. It’s the car wash – a perfect place, she writes today in The Scroll, for people “to cleanse themselves of the intense words and emotion they might wish (but choose not to) express at other times.”

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Susan Alexander occasionally hears long-time colleagues pine for years past, “when all of the students were angelic, dedicated and brilliant.” But then she becomes astounded when she considers the quality of today’s students and their scholarly achievements. She conferred with Dr. Michael Cogan, director of institutional research and analysis, on whether students are better prepared for the world these days. Read her conclusions today in The Scroll.

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People have long used dictionaries and encyclopedias in working on crossword puzzles, so Doug Hennes didn’t think twice when he started “Googling” for answers on a recent puzzle. Some people think that may be “cheating.” Is it? He reflects on the issue today in The Scroll.

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Dave Nimmer likes the stories that TommieMedia.com is publishing these days. They are accurate, fair and balanced, he says today in The Scroll, and he has found the site “neither a lap dog or a pit bull.”

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Carol Bruess is pretty excited about spring break and the “buzz” that precedes it on campus. She describes what that buzz looks like ­ and sounds like and feels like ­ today in The Scroll.

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Now that spring has arrived officially, Brady Narloch likes the sounds that he is hearing: baseballs popping into leather mitts and birds chirping in the trees, not the crunch of snow under foot and the howl of the wind. The change is quite welcome, he writes today in The Scroll.

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