Over the last several years, I saw an increasing number of technology news reports about a technology called MapReduce, first revealed by Google in a 2004 paper. In 2006, a group of software engineers created an open source version called Hadoop. This technology uses large clusters of computers, numbering into the thousands, to distribute data and processing. Hadoop is used by a number of very high profile companies, including eBay, Facebook, Yahoo! and Walmart. The technology can tolerate faults and restart tasks as needed. It is designed to efficiently handle terabytes and petabytes of data. Google’s original use was to process the giant index it creates after it crawls the Web in search of information, but it has since spawned applications in many other directions.

One of our adjunct instructors, Gary Berosik, had experience with Hadoop at his company, Thomson Reuters, and encouraged us to explore it. Last year, I attended a local Java user’s group meeting where the speaker from the company Cloudera described the technology and their experiences consulting with it, and that really opened my eyes to Hadoop’s potential. We had an unused computing cluster in our department, so with the help of a student, Harlan Bloom, we got Hadoop running on it. I then decided to teach this technology in my information retrieval course via individual virtual machines and also make the cluster available for student projects.

In today’s computer systems, most of our computing resources are blindingly fast (i.e. CPUs) and hugely abundant (i.e. memory and disk capacity). Moore’s Law predicts that these capabilities double every 18 to 24 months; however, disk access time and throughput have not kept pace with this exponential growth, and this is typically the performance bottleneck for most applications. We compensate by putting more memory in our computers so that we don’t have to access the disk drive as often. Hadoop, operating on a cluster of computers, takes advantage not only of parallel processing but also of parallel disk access. Moving data on and off disk drives in parallel helps alleviate this historic performance bottleneck, and so enables efficient processing of huge amounts of data stored on these disk drives.

Recently, CPU speed is also being strangely affected by Moore’s Law. Instead of racing up the gigahertz ladder, the speed of an individual CPU core is tapering off, so the industry is responding by offering multiple CPU cores to keep pace over time. This, in addition to the disk bottleneck changes, is causing the software engineering community to rethink architecture and programming languages to respond to these changes. At the highest level, I am interested in how traditional applications change under this new paradigm, and what new applications now are enabled by it.

I have two sons. My eldest, Justin, is a junior at St. Thomas, majoring in actuarial science, economics and statistics. My youngest, Nathan, is a senior in high school. He will be attending St. Thomas to major in neuroscience. To help him make his college decision, he asked to attend a neuroscience course, so I found one – taught by Dr. Jadin Jackson, a clinical faculty member in the Biology Department – for him to visit. Afterward, while we discussed Nathan’s academic options, Jadin and I found we had some things in common, including degrees in electrical engineering. Over lunch, he described a computing problem that was getting in the way of his neuroscience research, so we teamed up to see if Hadoop could help him out. Meanwhile, one of my graduate students, Ashish Singh, wanted to work on Hadoop with me in an independent study course, so we decided that he would work on this real-world problem.

During Jadin’s post-doctoral work, he acquired a lot of data from electrodes that were implanted in rat brains. These signals represent individual neuronal activity in a brain region called the hippocampus, which correspond to the rat’s position in space. When the rat finds itself at a tee in the maze and has to decide whether to move left or right to get its reward, the signals reflect the rat’s thinking about moving down the left path, then thinking about moving down the right path, then deciding which route to take and then physically moving. Amazingly, sometimes this signal pattern is generated while the rat is sleeping, so he can see a rat “dreaming” about moving in the maze!

Jadin needs to digitally signal process these signals using a mathematical technique called wavelet analysis, which can pull out both frequency and time information from the neuronal signals. The huge volume of data and amount of computation needed, however, overwhelm his individual computer; furthermore, he would like to have all his processed data available online to query and explore. We hope to show that this processing can be efficiently performed using the parallelism available on a Hadoop cluster, and that the results efficiently can be accessed with a data warehouse component called Hive, which leverages Hadoop. Jadin and I have identified other pre- and post-processing steps that we can explore in future projects in this cross-discipline area called computational neuroscience.

Both Jadin and I enjoy crossing academic boundaries to engage in interdisciplinary work. For me, it is a chance to learn about a new field from an expert and to see if I can apply the knowledge in my own domain to someone else’s real-world problem. This is far more interesting and challenging than contriving a problem. During this process, I also get to deepen my understanding of the MapReduce model and the Hadoop technology, which allows me to share my experiences more effectively with my students.

As another example of how these projects can spawn other activities, I have teamed with another member of our department, Dr. Saeed Rahimi, to create a new special topics course in big data for fall 2012. The course will include these technologies and several others that have gained traction in the industry to deal with the increasingly massive amounts of data and the desire to efficiently analyze them and turn them into information. These technologies provide alternatives to traditional SQL-based relational databases and are better optimized for the fast-growing amount of unstructured and semi-structured data.

In our department, we recently decided to form a Big Data Center of Excellence to integrate our faculty expertise in database, data warehousing, data mining, operating systems, computer architecture, information retrieval and business intelligence around this new area. Our goals are to spawn further research activity within our department, between St. Thomas departments, with other universities and with industry. This effort will influence the curriculum for our existing courses and future ones, including homework assignments, class projects, independent study opportunities and thesis topics. I think this is a good example of using applied research to further our twin goals of maintaining currency and competency in the classroom. This effort is also a good example of a traditional strength of the Graduate Programs in Software, which is to quickly respond to the ever-present changes in the information technology industry, bringing these technologies into the classroom for our students, which in turn benefits their current or future employers.

Bradley Rubin is associate professor at the Graduate Programs in Software program.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

Lisa Weier

Marta loves music. Absolutely loves it. She loves to dance, too. As a consequence, she let us listen to a song sung in Italian at the end of every class, often repeating ones we had previously heard. We would translate the lyrics to English to understand what the song was about. (98.6 percent of Italian lyrics, even if the underlying music is happy-sounding, are tragic and dramatic.)

Here’s my resulting Italian playlist:

• “Tutta mia la cittá” by Giuliano Palma and the Bluebeaters
• “50 Mila” by Nina Zilli, featuring Giuliano Palma
• “La Prima Cosa Bella” by Malika Ayane
• “L’amore Verrá” by Nina Zilli
• “Miserere” by Pavarotti and Zucchero

On our last normal day of class, we listened to all of the songs as a kind of culminating celebration. When we started “L’amore Verrá” (the Italian version of “You Can’t Hurry Love” by the Supremes), Marta sang along and danced, swaying to the beat. We tapped our toes and sang along from our desks. Suddenly, my classmate Tim turned to me: “Lisa. I want to dance with Marta. Will you dance too?” After a moment’s thought, I replied, “Yeah. I will if you will.”

He thought one second more, stood up, pushed his chair back and stepped out into the aisle. I followed. Once we made our intentions clear, the class laughed. Then we worked on getting them out of the seats. After a little persuasion, everyone was up and dancing, to Marta’s sheer delight. I’m proud to say that we were the first of her American Italian classes where everyone danced. She was proud too, inviting us to a homemade gelato feast in return. We enjoyed that a couple of days later, meeting her family at her apartment.

I don’t know if I ever would have danced in a class before. I can’t imagine having a professor quite like Marta, or a group of classmates like my fellow Bernardians (as we call ourselves). It is one of my favorite memories from this semester, a semester not quite past, but very close to being so … .

My next Scroll, I’ll be stateside. See you then!

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, 
And say my glory was I had such friends.

I have always loved those words, which are the closing two lines of the poem, “The Municipal Gallery Revisited,” and as I approach my final weeks as president of the University of St. Thomas I cannot find a more appropriate valedictory in thanking this community.

I find it fitting to quote Yeats, considering that he counts among the dozens of Irish poets who have visited our campus over our 128 years. He appeared on a bitterly cold  January day in 1904 to give a St. Paul Seminary lecture to what one newsletter called “a large and cultured audience.”

I also borrowed Yeats’ words about friendship when I informed the faculty last May of my plans to retire, and in an effort to add some levity to the situation I quoted a  second Yeats observation: “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” The line drew welcome laughter, and I said it could be seen as even inspirational. “I know there have been days that were difficult as well as days that were good,” I told the faculty. “It’s the kind of existential resignation captured in the more homespun American proverb, ‘Some days you’re the bug; some days you’re the windshield.’” And there was more laughter!

In all seriousness, my gratitude today knows no bounds, and for good reason. Any success that I have enjoyed during my 22 years as president has been directly the result of generous, unselfish and heroic work by you – our faculty, staff, students, parents, alumni and benefactors. Or, as I like to say when I address a gathering, our “friends all.”

You also have been kind beyond description – to me and to St. Thomas. I will forever carry fond memories of those kindnesses, which I know were borne out of a genuine desire to make this a better university and to help us provide the best possible education for our students. The lengths to which you go to provide assistance astound me time and time again, almost to the point that it would be easy to take you for granted. I hope I never have done so.

As you know, I am fond of quoting our mission statement, which so perfectly captures what we attempt to do – to educate students “to be morally responsible leaders who think critically, act wisely, and work skillfully to advance the common good.” I take comfort in knowing how those words unite us as we seek to live up to one more Yeats maxim: that “education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire” – and I know they will motivate me in the years ahead.

I will see you around campus!

Read more from St. Thomas Magazine.

“Uncommon decency,” said Morrison. “He’s a man of uncommon decency.”

Dave Nimmer

That describes the man I know – whether he was setting a policy, writing a note or admitting a mistake.

The mistake was back in 2007 when he decided not to invite Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu to campus to speak as part of the Peace Jam celebration. His reason was that Tutu had made remarks offensive to Jewish people in a 2002 speech about Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

What I recall is a noon hour several days after he made the decision. Congressional candidate Coleen Rowley, a former FBI whistle blower, was standing on the grass in front of the Arches holding one end of a banner that read “Let Tutu Speak.”

A retired WCCO colleague of mine, Roger Nelson, and I were walking by and paused to talk with Rowley and her husband, telling them we supported their point of view and admired their courage.  At that very moment, Father Dease walked up to the four of us.

“You can take your sign down,” he said. “I have changed my mind.” He went on to tell Rowley that he had made the wrong decision and now “would be proud to extend an invitation to Archbishop Tutu to speak at UST.” He looked them in the eyes, shook their hands and said he was sorry. Nelson later told me how impressed he was by Dease’s sincerity … and humility.

“How often has any official, public or private, done that (admit a mistake) in the recent past?” Tutu’s supporters later wrote. “The action not only sends a much-needed signal on behalf of academic freedom and the cause of justice and peace worldwide, but it’s a rare example of ethics in action.”

Father Dease never changed his mind about the importance of increasing diversity at UST, most especially providing scholarships to students of color. One of those scholarships went to Laura Lee, a Hmong woman from a big family with a husband and two children of her own when she graduated.

Her mother and father had come to Laura’s December graduation from Missouri and I asked Father Dease whether he could greet them. He not only shook their hands, he spent 15 minutes telling them how proud he was of Laura and how pleased he was to offer aid and assistance.

But his best touch was when he told the Hmong elders that they had done “a fine job” of raising their daughter and St. Thomas was honored to have her as part of its family. Father Dease was both graceful and gracious.

He was also generous with his time and attention to others. They often came in handwritten notes on his office stationery. I got mine two weeks before my surgery for prostate cancer in August 2008.  He’d heard about it from others and wanted me to know I was in his thoughts and prayers.

It was that pastoral touch at the end that defines the man for me. “Please let me know if there’s any way I can be of help,” he wrote.

You have been of help, Padre. You’ve taught me what a good man is and what he does.

Editor’s note: Faculty and staff are invited to attend a celebration for Dease from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday in Woulfe Alumni Hall in the Anderson Student Center. A program will begin at 3:30.

With that fame came a move to commissions of a large scale, such as the 1997 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the 2003 Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and across the river in Minneapolis, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, finished in 1993. These projects supplanted Gehry’s need to design domestic space. But in the summer of 2012, a Gehry-designed duplex became owner-occupied in New Orleans, a part of the actor Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Foundation’s project in the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Lower Ninth Ward.

How do we connect Gehry’s Winton Guest House to the Make it Right House? What has Gehry changed, updated or invented in his domestic architecture in the last 25 years? This is the question I will be examining during my sabbatical next year.

After traveling to New Orleans several times during the last two years to lay the groundwork for this research, I realized that the city was a perfect fit for an architectural history graduate seminar at St. Thomas. And this spring, The Architecture of New Orleans course was born.

New Orleans has been called many things – the Crescent City, The Big Easy, The Birthplace of Jazz, NOLA, the City that Care Forgot. The city’s racial and ethnic makeups have created a variety of architecture found nowhere else in the United States. Settled by the French in the 18th century and controlled by Spain in 1763, New Orleans was also home to a large population of free people of color, as well as slaves.

With the arrival of the 19th century the American element of New Orleans grew with settlers from the Northeast sharing the city with immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Sicily and beyond. Each group has contributed to the architectural legacy of New Orleans in powerful ways, and students in my graduate art history seminar this spring are exploring this variety in their research with topics focusing on cemeteries, voodoo, New Urbanism in housing projects, food markets, public parks, hospitals, sacred spaces (including a contemporary Spanish Baptist church rebuilding after Katrina), colonial plantations, biophilic design, historic preservation, Pitt’s Make it Right Houses, and the connection between Walt Disney and the French Quarter.

The research provides a fabulous overview of the layers of New Orleanian architecture – strata that were made visible on a recent trip our class took to the Crescent City this past spring break.

Students found their own ways to New Orleans early in the week and researched their projects. We all gathered as a group on Thursday, March 28, at Jackson Square in the French Quarter for a walking tour of the Quarter, Central Business District and Warehouse District. I had scoped out the buildings on a previous visit and our tour required that each student present a five-minute on-the-street talk about their building as we progressed through the neighborhoods.

The students were expected to connect their presentations into our classroom discussions and also address the building as an art object. What did they see now that they were standing in front of it? There is no better way to understand the built environment than to be out in it: looking, touching and getting a feel for context and scale. I was thrilled to watch New Orleans come to life for the students.

Saturday morning found us in the Garden District at Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. The cemeteries of New Orleans, with their above ground tombs, are amazingly beautiful, and they clearly reflect the character of the city built largely just a few feet above sea level. After our cemetery visit, a little lagniappe (something extra) found us touring the adjacent neighborhood, stopping by Sandra Bullock and John Goodman’s grand Victorian-era homes.

On Friday, we were fortunate to visit the Lower Ninth Ward with John Williams, the executive architect of Brad Pitt’s Make it Right houses and a longtime New Orleans designer. Supported by funds from the Art History Department, we spent five hours on a bus tour with John. It was one of the greatest architectural experiences I have ever had, and I think my students felt the same.

The area is still, after almost eight years, coming back to life. The Make it Right Foundation hopes to build 150 homes in the neighborhood. But basic services such as grocery stores, schools and the like have not returned to the Lower Ninth. It’s still a very tough go for folks who have returned. Students were able to meet with residents, including John “Smitty” Smith and Ron Lewis at his “House of Dance and Feathers,” and learn their stories of evacuation and survival.

A duplex designed by Frank Gehry in New Orleans. (Photo by John Williams)

And it was here in the Lower Ninth where we encountered Gehry’s work. The pink and purple duplex, its hues selected by the homeowner, recalls the liveliness of New Orleans’ vernacular domestic shotgun houses and Creole cottages. It is built out of environmentally friendly materials and includes solar panels and other sustainable features. The variety of porches encourages engagement with neighbors and passersby.

Gehry believed in Pitt’s vision and wanted to make a house that responded to the “history, vernacular and climate of New Orleans,” as he stated on Make it Right’s blog.

The completion of the house is history in the making – a work by Gehry and a foundation that helped the hardest hit citizens of New Orleans when other entities were slow to do so. And now, the University of St. Thomas has a connection to both.

In spring, nature shows us what is possible. First, buds appear and later we see trees become full with leaves, and flowers show us their color. Sometimes this is a gradual unfolding, each leaf or flower taking time to show itself. We get to know what is possible with each new leaf and begin to imagine how full the tree might become. Other times it seems to happen overnight with a great burst of energy. We go to bed with the tree outside our window looking nearly bare and wake up with leaves everywhere. It’s as if the tree is saying “I’m here, notice me, look at what I have to offer.”

Salina Renninger

For those of us working in higher education, May is also a time of graduation and the celebration of many student accomplishments. Like spring, it calls forth a sense of potential and possibility. Many students excitedly look toward their futures. Families feel a mix of pride in their child’s accomplishments and hope for a successful path beyond college. As educators, we join in these emotions. We have guided, cared and supported students toward their success and we want the best for them.

The truth is, however, that upon graduation some students will show up fully right away and some will take a bit longer to show their fullness. This will depend on a number of variables. The “right conditions” matter. Just as the spring vegetation varies in inherent hardiness and response to the soil, sun and water conditions, students vary in their own internal resources and responses to the various environments in which they are expected to bloom. There is only so much that one has control over, and given the current news headlines, it might be well to remember this.

If one Googles the term “college graduate outlook,” a variety of headlines will appear. These will range from “job outlook positive for 2013 college graduates” to “job outlook for college graduates is grim.” Many of these stories focus on data that evaluates rates of unemployment, underemployment (part time or poorly paid work), and overqualified workers (working in a “high school job” with a college degree). A 2012 Rutgers University study titled “Chasing the American Dream: Recent College Graduates and the Great Recession” (http://www.heldrichpodcasts.com/Chasing_American_Dream_Report.pdf) noted that only one-half of the 444 study participants (individuals who graduated between 2006 and 2011) indicated they worked full time. A 2013 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts (http://www.pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2013/Pew_college_grads_recession_report.pdf) suggests that while all young adults are impacted by the economic conditions in the United States, college graduates are better off than their peers with an A.A. or high school diploma.

On the one hand, it’s not looking good; on the other hand, it could be worse. By any stretch of the imagination, this is not likely reassuring to a new graduate or anyone who cares for a new graduate. Still, it’s what we have. Given this reality, I am reminded of John Krumboltz’s happenstance learning theory (http://www.studentintegration.fi/filebank/77-The_Happenstance_Learning_Theory.pdf ). The theory provides a dose of optimism and expectations for success, eventually. One of the important tenets of this theory is that one’s career path is a result of a mixture of planning and serendipity, and that it is not fully within one’s control.  It is not linear and organized. Rather, most career trajectories are a mixture of intentionally planned events (e.g., earning a degree) and making the most of the opportunity that comes one’s way (serendipity). Additionally, people play an active role in what opportunities come their way. Maintaining an exploratory attitude to each endeavor in which one engages has the potential to yield more opportunity over time.

Ask any person you want about “work story” and you will quickly see how much the role of “chance” plays in his or her trajectory. Sometimes it comes in the form of discovering that your neighbor knows someone who knows someone who can help you get your foot in the door at a particular corporation. Other times it’s applying for one job but being offered something else you hadn’t considered, but wind up loving. Nonetheless, it’s also important to recognize the same chance opportunities may not be as readily available to all individuals. Work by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald (http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/22/177455764/What-Does-Modern-Prejudice-Look-Like) on why individuals may be more likely to help others who are perceived to share some type of group identity suggests that discrimination can unintentionally occur when individuals solely reach out to those more “similar” to them. While happenstance learning theory recognizes the power of the individual to create opportunity through networks and experiences, it is important to recognize some inherent limits. Extending opportunity toward all, versus solely those who share similar identities, is necessary and required for everyone to thrive.

Happenstance learning theory is not only about making interpersonal connections and creating opportunity through openness to various experiences. It also is about getting to know one’s self and what that could mean in the work world. It might involve discovering aspects of a job that are satisfying and determining how to have similar experiences, but in a different work setting.  By way of example, I would suggest that my own experience of cleaning residence hall bathrooms as a college sophomore taught me that I love completing tasks with a beginning, middle and end.  It’s quite satisfying. Nearly 30 years later, doing very different work, I find I am the same. I still enjoy tasks that have clear beginnings and endings. Happenstance learning theory suggests observations like this are worth paying attention to. I didn’t take the job to clean bathrooms because I love cleaning. I took the job because it was conveniently located in the residence hall in which I lived and paid a fairly decent wage compared to other positions on campus. By staying open to the experience and learning what I could, I found out something important to my lifelong career satisfaction.

Thus, while the job outlook data may look somewhat discouraging, I challenge new graduates to adopt an attitude of discovery, potential, possibility and generosity. Scan the horizon for new prospects and say yes when they arrive. Offer your assistance to others when you can. Notice what energizes and excites you, and what depletes and diminishes you. Make efforts to engage in greater energizing activities and fewer activities that deplete you. This approach will yield results. I also encourage the important others in our young folks’ lives to help them maintain this perspective during daunting times.

And always know that like the trees and flowers of spring, some graduates will burst onto the scene in full foliage and color and others will take a bit longer to unfold. In the end, their beautiful offerings will all be revealed, if we assist with creating the right conditions for discovery and success.

Even when discussing the financial benefits, many people, including the national media, make a serious error in focusing exclusively on the first job for which the college senior is prepared. While everyone is relieved when the graduate finds that first paid position, the most important thing about that job is that it leads to a second one, which leads to a third and so on. I am reminded of this fact on the many happy occasions when I run into a former student. Among other of their life’s details, I am always interested to learn where their career paths have taken them. While I never could have predicted in advance where their paths would lead, I am never surprised by even the most unexpected of outcomes. This is because I know that their liberal arts education has prepared them for just about anything.

As a result of their liberal arts education, students do not receive only a limited body of knowledge with which they might practice a profession. Were that the case, many people who graduated 20 years ago would no longer be employable, since the profession for which they might have thought to be training no longer exists. That they still are employable, and that students of today will continue to be employable 20 years in the future, has little to do with any job-related information they may have received and much more to do with important skills they learned. These would include critical-thinking skills, problem-solving skills and the ability to consider new ideas on one’s own – to become a lifelong learner.

I believe these learned skills, and others, are the ones that lead our students successfully along their career paths. I was reminded of this fact while reading this year’s Star Tribune feature on 10 Minnesota business leaders to watch in 2013. For those featured, the single most popular college major field of study was history, a major chosen by three of the 10. Other majors included psychology, political science and philosophy.

Obviously, liberal arts graduates do not begin their careers at the top, but the skills they learn in college help lead them there. Let’s be sure to include that fact when calculating the return on investment.

Read more from CAS Spotlight.

On April 1 (yes, April Fool’s Day), I had my groceries on the conveyor belt when I remembered the milk. My favorite checker said, “Run back for it.” So, I did just that. I should have sauntered. I fell hard on my shoulder. Against the advice of my personal injury attorney, Father John Malone, I am freely admitting that it was not the fault of Rainbow Foods. I am a first-class klutz.

Dr. Susan Alexander

The end of my humerus was sticking out of my arm about eight inches below the ball and socket joint where it belongs. Even with a morphine drip sufficient to make me slur my words, it hurt like – well, just as much as you’d guess from my description.

The first attempt to reset my dislocated shoulder gave me my second Rainbow Experience. Warning me that I might have an out-of-body experience, the emergency room attendant gave me ketamine. Those of you who watch too much “Law and Order” will recognize ketamine as a street drug, Special K. Street drugs!? Really? Me? I am a semirespectable economist; street drugs and I are not well acquainted. I did stay in my body, but the drab florescent lights lowered from the ceiling until my face was in a chandelier of prism lights reflecting every color imaginable.

Now for my UST end of the Rainbow. If you ever doubt the strength of the St. Thomas community, just show up at a meeting with your arm immobilized. From setting up for a board meeting to cutting my meat, offers of help have been thoughtful and plentiful. It is so irritating not to be able to manage buttons and zippers properly, but those problems pale in comparison to one-handed keyboarding – numbers, signs and symbols show up in the oddest $@*&!& places when I hunt and peck. See what I mean? But even in the face of reduced productivity and inconvenience, I recognize that the warmth of our community is truly my own pot of gold.

Of course, all my helpers were hoping for a good story in exchange, and all I had to offer was falling in the grocery. Liz Wilkerson suggested a bar fight, Rick Kunkel a bench-pressing accident (just shouldn’t try to press 300 pounds) and Rich Rexeisen suspected me of punching out my hapless bridge partner over a bad bid. But it’s the grocery story, and I am sticking to it.

Perhaps the most motivating members of our student body are the military veterans who have chosen to earn their degrees after they complete active duty. Whether they choose to begin or continue an undergraduate business degree or pursue an M.B.A. or other graduate business degree, these individuals bring a wealth of experience, deeply held convictions and a great sense of responsibility to their studies. They also bring perspective. Most of the veterans in our programs have seen active duty overseas, have witnessed events that few of us ever will, and that few of us wish to dwell on, frankly. These types of experiences allow veterans to understand that the world of business is just one part of the world and that it should serve a greater good. This understanding is what makes them leaders.

As a Vietnam veteran, I know not only the leadership traits military service can instill in an individual but also the importance of developing those traits into skills that can be put to meaningful work. This is the cornerstone of our efforts to serve U.S. veterans in our business programs.

The University of St. Thomas has been a proud member of the Yellow Ribbon program since its inception following 9/11. This program is part of the GI Bill and allows approved degree-granting institutions and the Veterans Administration to partially or fully fund tuition and fees for post-service veterans. We recognized early on that  those who serve our country have the experience and perspective that business leadership needs. We also recognized that they require more than our commendation; they also require our complete support.

Each of our students, regardless of background, receives personalized attention and service from our recruiting and advising staffs; this is an essential part of the St. Thomas culture. But veterans, our experience has shown, benefit greatly when our recruiting staff go even further in helping them understand how their military service can be translated into success in business. Once enrolled in our programs, veterans often rely on our student advisers to help them balance not only family and class obligations but also ongoing obligations to the reserves. Rather than being seen as an interruption or distraction, we see this continued service as an enhancement to their studies, and yet another element that will contribute to their ability to prioritize, to work collaboratively and to lead effectively.

In all we do, the Opus College of Business is committed to fostering diversity and inclusion among our students, staff, faculty, stakeholders and communities. Our goal is to develop morally responsible leaders who understand the importance of inviting and honoring input from and engagement by all traditions and viewpoints. Ensuring that our veterans are given the opportunity to succeed and, with that success, continue serving our communities is, for me and my colleagues at the university, one tangible means of that commitment.

Read more from B. Magazine.

But is this really true? On social media sites, are people really connected to each other, or merely engaged in an aggregation of anonymous contacts? While it is true that Facebook’s popularity has increased exponentially each year since its inception, many current users censor what photos and comments they share, posting only content that positions them in the best light possible. Yet even with this, a large amount of personal information is being made available online that may hinder your online reputation, as well as aid marketers in creating targeted advertising intended to appeal to your interests and preferences.

Beyond capturing a user’s time and attention, social media is deemed a safe place to share one’s innermost thoughts and feelings for the world – or at least a large online audience – to read. The need for a sense of community and constant audience often means users of social media sites such as Facebook share far more information about themselves than they reasonably should. Gone is the demand for privacy. Now, people put their lives on the Internet for all to see. For Christopher Michaelson, Ph.D., an  associate professor of business ethics at the Opus College of Business, this means that people don’t fully understand the extent to which they are exposing themselves online.

Today, there is more information available to decision makers than one can feasibly manage, make sense of or put to use. What does this mean for marketers? Jonathan Seltzer, an instructor of marketing at the Opus College of Business, said, “The sheer wealth of data that is available increases the segmentation well beyond what was previously imaginable.” Social media sites and online networks leverage the power of peer-to-peer relationships and referrals to learn about their users and make money based on what they know. “In theory, better targeting should mean more efficient marketing for business, and in a consumer economy that should equate to lower costs and happier customers,” said Michael Porter, Ed.D., director of the Master of Business Communication program at the Opus College of Business. But this may not always be the case.

Information is Power

Not so many years ago, large companies were cautious about using social media sites to gather information about job applicants for fear of legal repercussions. Today, it is common practice to Google an applicant’s name as a way to learn more about past work history, interests and hobbies, as well as an applicant’s personal life. Mick Sheppeck, Ph.D., an associate professor of management at the Opus College of Business, noted, “Companies are increasingly using personal information as they search for qualified applicants and this is likely to continue until people become more cognizant of what they are sharing online and who can access that information.”

In a January 2013 WCCO segment “Beware: Your Reputation is Now Being Googled,” Greg Swan, a digital strategist at Weber Shandwick, noted that 70 percent of job candidates are rejected purely based on the results of searching one’s name online. “It used to be that you’d ask someone, ‘Have you Googled yourself lately?’ and we’d all  giggle. But now that’s a real thing,” Swan said.

That’s not to say people are naive about what they do and don’t share online, but many do not realize the full extent of their actions until it’s too late. Generally speaking, social media users can be broken into two camps in terms of how they think about personal information and one’s right to privacy. Sheppeck said the smaller camp believes that access to personal data is the way of the world. Regardless of safeguards, individuals cannot protect themselves and should quit worrying. The other, larger camp needs to pay more attention and be mindful of what they choose to share. “Millennials, even more than other groups, are limited in their awareness of how personal information is being used today,” Sheppeck said.

Targeting the Masses

According to a February 2012 survey by the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of 2,253 adult respondents answered that they would not be OK with a search engine (such as Google) keeping track of their searches and using the results to personalize future searches. And 68 percent said they were uncomfortable with targeted advertising for the same reason: They didn’t want anyone tracking their behavior. That being said, user actions do not reflect these findings as millions of people routinely share the most intimate details of their lives online.

When Facebook launched in 2004, it was heralded for its lack of advertising. With 1 billion active monthly users as of October 2012, a lot has changed since its founding. The  average Facebook user is regularly commenting on photos and “liking” content, updating their status and connecting with friends and family, as well as those they’ve never met. While no stranger to advertising, the average Facebook user may not realize how her information is being used to generate the targeted ads she sees every time she logs in. If you recently became engaged, the ads are tailored accordingly and may include bridesmaid dresses, photographers, upcoming wedding shows and invitations, with many products and vendors showing up as promoted posts in a user’s news feed. Once you update your status to reflect your recent nuptials, the ads will change again, likely  focusing on the next logical step after that blissful walk down the aisle … the honeymoon followed by babies.

For those looking to advertise with Facebook, the online social giant leverages its more than 1 billion users, saying, “We’ll help you reach the right ones.” But what does that mean? Every piece of information shared on Facebook says something about a user. Individually, those pieces of information aren’t much, but together they tell a very complete story about each user’s personal life, education and work experience, likes and hobbies, and much more. By targeting a group based on location, age and likes, marketers can reach a very specific segment of their target audience and one that is likely to be receptive to the message being communicated.

Facebook’s primary source of revenue is advertising. By selecting key words and personal information shared by each user – such as relationship status, location, employment, likes and activities – businesses can run ads targeting a selected subset of users. A February 2012 article on the New York Times opinion page stated that Facebook earned $3.2 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, which makes up 85 percent of its total revenue.

The same article noted Google’s use of personal data for advertising and its resulting $36.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2011. By simply “analyzing what people sent  over Gmail and what they searched on the Web,” Google obtains a mass of data and information to sell ads, markedly more information than even Facebook, given that Google is one of the most popular search engines used today.

A Right to Privacy

According to Porter, “There is a balance that consumers need to accept between privacy and free services as a part of the economic exchange.” As consumers, your buying habits and purchases provide information about you, and retailers would be foolish to ignore this information, but at what point does it cross the line? To that end, Sheppeck raised several interesting questions: “How much data is too much? Where should companies draw the line when it comes to mining for customer information? If privacy is the number one concern, at what point is an individual’s privacy breeched?”

Additionally, Sheppeck added, the mere act of tracking and storing personal data puts that data at risk and, therefore, puts individual privacy at risk. If the practice of mining personal information is to continue with little or no legislation regulating it there must be safeguards in place to protect said data. While breeches of security are to be expected, consumers expect that personal information will be protected in addition to being leveraged.

What the Future Holds

With far more questions than answers, this issue is just starting to heat up. As users of social media start at a younger age and people become more conscious of how their personal information is being used, as well as how it impacts their online reputation and subsequent ability to get a job, the legal ramifications will start coming to light. “Right now, the economy is our primary concern. As the economy improves or at least stabilizes, issues regarding user privacy and how personal information is managed will find their way into the courtroom, and the resulting legislation will better safeguard the personal data being shared online,” Sheppeck said. “In the near future, we will need a federal standard that articulates data areas that are off limits.”

Until then, users must be vigilant about what they do and don’t share online. It often is forgotten that the Internet lives on. You may delete a post or picture, but  somewhere, on some far distant server, there is a record of you at last year’s office party with a lampshade on your head.

Read more from B. Magazine.

The challenge to traditional colleges from MOOCs – massive, open online courses – is very real, Friedman concludes. He believes the competition will force professors to improve their pedagogy and colleges to nurture the unique student-teacher interactions while blending in technology to improve outcomes and lower costs.

Dave Nimmer

In short, the student would come alive as a critical thinker in her philosophy class while garnering enough skills and competency to land a job in her chosen field. I believe that is already happening at St. Thomas, in classrooms all over campus, where students are learning skills (as well as how to think) because of the lively, interactive nature of a well-taught class.

The lessons I learned as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin stick with me in my 70s, and they are not job skills. I recall a freshman philosophy class where we critically discussed the proofs for the existence of God. I remember a history course, prior to the Vietnam War, where we debated the basic tenets of American foreign policy. I treasure a Philosophy of Religion course that helped me to discover that, indeed, a rational man could believe in God.

College ought to prepare students to live a thoughtful, rich, rewarding and expansive life – as well as to get a job. Colleen Schreier, a communication and journalism senior at St. Thomas, had that kind of experience in a media law course she took last semester.

“Going in, I was pretty scared because the topic involved law and I’ve never been able to grasp the concepts,” she says. “But the thing that made this class was the interaction you had with everyone else each day.

“You would learn a concept and then be able to ask a follow-up or ‘What if?’ to test the boundaries of the new idea. By the end of the semester, my class had a handful of inside jokes that all pertained to something we learned.”

Junior Lindsay Goodwin discovered the combination of teaching and technology that Friedman talked about in her Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving class in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. Associate Professor Patrick Jarvis was able, active and available.

“Even though the majority of the class work requires the use of computers, having certain lines of code written on the board as they’re being broken down is extremely helpful,” Goodwin says. “Whenever someone had a question, he or she could simply raise a hand and he (Jarvis) was there to help. That benefits students greatly.”

What also benefits students is the passion of the professor. Goodwin found that in Professor Bob Craig’s Visual Communication course, the favorite in her college career. “His passion and excitement for us to learn,” she says, “created an environment for my class to have discussions.”

It would be tough, I believe, to create passion online for a course like Professor Lon Otto’s Intro to Imaginative Writing. This kind of writing is the stuff of life’s short stories, the ones we want to gracefully and artfully recall as we age. Somewhat surprisingly to me, Otto is of three or four minds about online learning and writing.

“I love face-to-face teaching and learning,” he says, “in discussion-based classes. It’s what feels most natural and engaging to me. On the other hand, at fairly advanced levels, anyway, writing can certainly be taught effectively through active, thoughtful correspondence. This was true long before the Internet was available, back when we wrote letters and sent manuscripts to each other in envelopes with stamps on them.

“Passion about our subject matter is probably most readily and richly conveyed when we’re in each other’s presence, when we can hear a voice tremble or grow harsh or quiet, when we notice the little hunch in the shoulders or narrowing of the eyes as something strikes a person oddly … .”

Amen. At the age of 72, I find the richness of life is in the details, and they’re not always available from a 24-by-20-inch screen, a dozen icons and a blinking cursor.

In 2001 and 2002, two German computer scientists became acquainted with each other over the Internet. One man, Armin Meiwes, had long harbored a desire, ever since childhood, to eat someone. He had been raised in a lonely and troubled family and had always craved a brother who would never leave him. This led him to fixate on cannibalism as the one sure way of internalizing that brother who would never, ever depart. But he could not cannibalize just anyone. His victim had to meet certain standards, be talkative, interested in becoming lifelong friends, and willing to give repeated, voluntary consent to making himself a sacrificial offering.

As luck would have it, there was someone out there who satisfied these exacting criteria. Bernd Brandes was an executive at Siemens Corp., but despite considerable professional accomplishments, had long desired annihilation. Ever since childhood, ever since his mother committed suicide when Bernd was 6 or 7, he had desired his own immolation, preferably in a cannibal feast.

After discovering one another on the Internet, they tested each other, made sure their resolve was fixed and certain. Armin had Bernd satisfy a series of requests. He had to sign a “willingness agreement.” He had to videotape his consent. He made his will, naming third parties, not Armin, as beneficiaries. This, in other words, was the law professor’s dream hypothetical case. It tested, in pure form, the limits of autonomous consent.

I set about investigating the case. As a legal scholar, I am someone strongly committed to having the facts speak for themselves. I believe that exacting historical records need to be developed in order to analyze a case properly. So, I plunged into the case.

I had studied German for a couple of years in graduate school and found myself resuscitating my German-language skills to read accounts of the case available only in German. I even read some of the German legal periodicals, immersing myself in the details of German law on assisted suicide.

It seems, in fact, that Armin and Bernd very nearly committed the perfect crime. Had Bernd committed suicide without Armin’s direct assistance – but with the intent of being eaten – this would have been legal. German law criminalizes only active euthanasia, and did not, at least at that time, criminalize cannibalism. At most, Armin would have been convicted of the misdemeanor offense of desecrating a corpse.

The plan called for Bernd to take an overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol. But when Bernd did not die of what should have been a lethal combination, Armin finished the job by stabbing him through the throat. It was this act that allowed the German courts to prosecute and finally to convict him.

Armin defended himself at trial by arguing the morality of his actions. He could not have done wrong, he claimed, because every step he took was done at the explicit consent of his “victim,” Bernd. The two men had made sure to videotape all of their actions on the evening they met to carry out their plan, so Armin had proof for his claims. In the end, the German trial court imposed a light sentence (Armin could have been paroled in as little as four years). But the appeals court – in Germany, the prosecution can appeal the length of sentence – mandated a second trial at which a life sentence was imposed.

The final part of my research is an analysis the nature and limits of consent. I focus especially on libertarian commentary on this case, which is extensive. In the end, while I believe the libertarians succeed in advancing some reasonable claims, I find myself rejecting their position.

In purely Christian terms, of course, we find consensual cannibalism troubling for its violation of human dignity. But on secular terms, one could use several neglected aspects of John Stuart Mill’s work to argue against such all-encompassing autonomy. Mill, after all, grounded his theory of liberty in a set of background considerations about civilization.

Civilization, to Mill, entailed all of the kindnesses and gentilities of Victorian England. It was a concept Mill contrasted with the “barbarian” Europe of Charlemagne’s time. We could not just tuck into one another at meal time. Second, Mill developed a set of substantive norms from a complex of ideas he called the “religion of humanity.” Mill stressed altruism, decency and a respect for others as elements of this faith he believed all people of good will could share. Eating one another simply fell outside the boundaries of civilized and ethical conduct.

Under Mill’s construct, not only was Armin properly convicted of the crime, but in the end he received the sentence he deserved.

Dr. Susan Alexander

If you are a regular reader of The Scroll, you will not mistake me for Kant or Dickens, but walking to work does get those brain cells moving for me. Some mornings I think of solutions to problems. Other days I compose memos or blogs in my head. I rarely need multiple drafts – by the time I reach Selby the first draft is written; by the AARC, revisions are complete.

Behind the wheel, it is just not the same. I am sure that there are people who can think and drive, but that’s not me. Truth to tell, from the erratic turns I see at Cleveland and Marshall, it’s probably not them either. Activity that requires too much attention is not conducive to English comp, and vice versa.

Some of my colleagues, like Elise Amel, bike to work, but they need to pay even closer attention to traffic conditions. Even with a helmet, bikers are quite vulnerable. So I hope that Elise isn’t writing the next great American novel as she pedals.

Well, of course, I’m not writing the great American novel either. Still, I like to think I provide value as a walker. When I’m not composing haikus as I stride along, I pick up trash. Jim Rogers tells me he picks up one piece every day as he walks to work. Overachiever that I am, sometimes I collect as many as three cans and a couple of bottles.

So, when you see me crossing the quad toward the recycle bin, you shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that I throw down half a six-pack for breakfast with a vodka chaser. If you care to be charitable, you can assume that my synapses are firing.

John Tauer, Ph.D.

As the head men’s basketball coach at the University of St. Thomas, I feel blessed and honored to work with an amazing group of players and coaches. This past season, we had a 30-2 record, tied a school record for wins, won an unprecedented 8th consecutive MIAC championship, and advanced to the Division III Final Four for the third time in school history. More important than the records and statistics are the life lessons we aim to teach our players. Some of these lessons include:

• How we respond to failure and mistakes helps us grow, prepares us for adversity, and defines who we are.
• Controlling our emotions is an important skill in life, particularly in frustrating situations.
• We win as a team and lose as a team.
• Intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation. Approach-oriented motivation is better than avoidance motivation. Finding areas in life that allow us to be passionate and work well with others is invaluable.

In the Rutgers video footage, we see a coach showing his players that failure is not an option, and that mistakes will be punished both physically and verbally. Undoubtedly, players developed a fear of failure (and of their coach). Based on the video and interviews, it is clear Mike Rice’s behavior toward his players was consistently demeaning and aggressive toward his players. How and why were Mike Rice’s actions allowed to occur over time? Understanding the conditions which allowed this hostile environment to take place is important to prevent future situations similar to the one at Rutgers University. Let’s consider the situation from a number of different perspectives.

Why would a coach act like this? Learned Aggression
The research on aggression indicates there are both biological and environmental correlates of aggression. Without knowing Mike Rice’s DNA, it is a safe bet that he learned some of this behavior from other coaches. Rice was a longtime assistant coach, and it seems likely that at least one of his mentors engaged in similar behavior. In working to motivate his players, Coach Rice must have thought they required physical and mental abuse/fear in order to get them to play as hard as he wanted them to play. This approach flies in the face of the research on intrinsic motivation and long-term sustainable performance.

Why would players not turn on their coach? Obedience to Authority
Classic studies on obedience to authority conducted by Stanley Milgram at Yale University in the 1960s demonstrated how quickly and easily average people will obey an authority figure. In one version of Milgram’s study, 65 percent of participants shocked a stranger to a level that could have been fatal (no shocks were actually administered as the stranger was in a different room). The takeaway from this study was that authority figures can abuse their power, yet rarely will others stand up to the person in power.

Players on the Rutgers team undoubtedly disliked how they were treated in practice. However, for non-New Jersey residents, tuition, room and board at Rutgers at a cost of $37,805 per year (or $151,220 over four years), would be a large incentive to stay quiet and avoid risking a scholarship. Furthermore, blowing the whistle on Mike Rice could have led to an ugly situation that, depending on the outcome, could have led to the player leaving Rutgers and struggling to find another school at which to play basketball.

Why would the athletic director not fire the coach immediately upon seeing the video?
Athletic Director Pernetti saw the video yet chose not to fire Mike Rice; rather, he chose to suspend him for three games, fine him and instruct him to attend anger management classes. Pernetti may have thought he could help rehabilitate Rice, but Pernetti also may have been avoiding conflict, hoping to resolve the issue quietly and not draw attention to an athletic program that had more than its share of issues recently.

Why was the public so outraged?
When the video of Mike Rice throwing basketballs at players in practice hit the internet, public outcry was quick to follow. We have an image of how we hope coaches treat players, yet all too often the “Win at all costs” mindset seems to trump all. Why did videos like this not surface 10+ years ago? In part, because videos such as this would be more difficult to obtain and even more difficult to distribute so readily. Mike Rice is not the first coach to treat his players poorly, nor is he the first coach to use fear, vulgar language, and physical abuse as tactics to motivate his players.

Read John Feinstein’s book, A Season on the Brink about Bobby Knight at Indiana University in the 1980s and it is clear Mike Rice is not the first coach to treat his players poorly. Had there been videos of Bobby Knight doing the things Feinstein reported in his book, and an internet to spread those videos like wildfire, my hunch is Coach Knight may have had a more difficult time keeping his job as long as he did in Indiana. Furthermore, I am certain that coaches across the country engage in questionable actions as they seek to motivate, compel and push the right buttons to get their players to play hard and excel. There is certainly a fine line, as athletics are an emotional endeavor, and many coaches walk a tightrope between controlled passion and aggression and uncontrolled physical and mental outbursts. That line can be the difference between an intense, fiery coach such as Rick Pitino winning a national championship with Louisville and an intense, fiery coach such as Mike Rice being fired from Rutgers.

What is the greatest danger stemming from the Rutgers saga? The Fundamental Attribution Error
After the tragic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it was easy to think that if we captured Osama Bin Laden, the world would be safe again. The truly frightening reality was that there were likely thousands upon thousands of individuals who felt the same way Osama bin Laden did about America.

Along these same lines, it feels much cleaner if we believe that now that Mike Rice has been fired, we can go back to believing the “bad coach” is gone and only good ones remain. What is much more frightening is if there are hundreds, or thousands, of Mike Rices out there coaching college and high school sports. Mike Rice learned this behavior from somewhere. It seems unlikely that he is the only one of thousands of college coaches and tens of thousands of high school coaches to employ these types of coaching methods.

The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) occurs when we underestimate the power of a situation while simultaneously overestimating the role of one’s personality in discerning the causes of a behavior. In this case, we likely commit the FAE when we overlook the powerful win-at-all-costs mentality that, when combined with the ultracompetitive world of sports helps us understand that Mike Rice was likely innately aggressive as an individual, became more aggressive in part due to what he learned from other coaches , implemented an aggressive coaching style because he believed that behavior motivated players, and did all of this in part due to an environment that allowed and encouraged aggression.

The real shame of the Rutgers basketball saga will be if the public does not engage in a conversation that revisits the true goals of sports, the best practices for teaching and motivating student-athletes, and a broad view of the culture of sports, and why this culture may be a breeding ground for ultracompetitive fear-based motivation that undermines the very goals sports aims to teach. Until that time, unfortunately, the madness of sports will not be limited solely to the month of March.

John Tauer is an associate professor of psychology and head men’s basketball coach at St. Thomas. 

By my senior year of college, I knew I was going to Columbia Law School to prepare myself for a life as an international diplomat, preferably working for some U.N. agency on refugee issues. After three years at Columbia Law School, though, I was just as certain that I was destined for a career at a corporate law firm in Washington, D.C. I was quickly drawn into the fascinating world of the regulation of banks – writing testimony for Visa and MasterCard in congressional hearings on the regulation of interest rates, helping banks figure out how to securitize credit-card loans and even helping Target Corp. set up its very own credit-card bank. Though my journey toward partnership in a corporate law firm was slowed by a couple of significant life events – moving from D.C. to Minneapolis when I fell in love with a guy from Duluth and having a couple of kids – the path itself never changed. Until, of course, it did.

Around the time I got pregnant with my third child, my husband decided to pursue a long-time dream of his, leaving his law firm job to teach at a law school. The most attractive offer he got was from Notre Dame Law School. Right around the time that he got that offer, we learned that the child I was carrying had Down syndrome. Though I had never seriously considered teaching as a career before then, knowing that my world was going to be turned topsy-turvy by my new child somehow opened me up to whatever else I might find in that upside-down world. What I found was a part-time, tenure-track offer to teach at one of the country’s greatest law schools. And that offer opened the door to the most satisfying and rewarding career I could possibly imagine – teaching law and doing scholarship in two extraordinary

Catholic law schools – first Notre Dame, and then St. Thomas. I entered the world of scholarship rather timidly, writing about the world I had left, the world of banking regulation. As an academic, I found that the more I was able to take an objective perspective, the more I was able to more fully appreciate the tensions between the very real pressures felt by lenders forced to compete in increasingly larger national and international markets, and the very real costs paid by vulnerable consumers when those markets fail. My ongoing work on consumer credit regulation explores these tensions. After three articles on consumer credit in America, my most recent article finds some global insights in the recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, which I relate to the schemes of consumer-credit regulation in the United States and the European Union.

While I was developing this body of scholarship on consumer-credit regulation, my experiences in raising a son with Down syndrome and (we later discovered) autism, also was exposing me to the world of disability rights. When I mentioned to a colleague at Notre Dame that I would like to explore some of these issues in my scholarship, she recommended that I read the book Dependent, Rational Animals: Why Human Beings, by Alisdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre’s book explores the question of how moral philosophy would be affected “if we were to treat the facts of vulnerability and affliction and the related facts of dependence as central to the human condition.” In his introduction, MacIntyre acknowledges his debt to the work of a group of feminist scholars who have been critiquing the traditional liberal theory of justice, based on the ideal of autonomous, independent actors. Known as “care feminists,” “cultural feminists” or “relational feminists,” these scholars argue that what all humans share, most fundamentally, is not some elusive (and largely mythical) state of autonomy and independence but rather a state of dependency – at the beginning and often at the end of life, and at various stages in between.

Right around the time that MacIntyre’s book introduced me to this line of feminist thought, I received an invitation from another Catholic law school to speak at a conference on the identity and mission of Catholic law schools. Because it was fairly clear that I had been asked to participate, in part, because of concerns about the under-representation of women at the conference, I decided to provide an unabashedly female perspective. In preparing this talk, I read, for the first time, the writings of Pope John Paul II on women, such as his 1988 Apostolic Letter, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” and his 1995 “Letter to Women.” I was immediately struck by the dramatic convergence between the arguments of these Catholic teachings and the arguments of relational feminists. I have explored these convergences in a series of articles that focus primarily on the workplace restructuring necessary to support the effective witness of women in the public sphere that both the Church and most feminists advocate: Should Bearing the Child Mean Bearing All the Cost? A Catholic Perspective on the Sacrifice of Motherhood and the Common Good (2007), Motherhood and the Mission: What Catholic Law Schools Could Learn From Harvard About Women, and West, MacIntyre and Wojtyła: Pope John Paul II’s Contribution to the Development of a Dependency-Based Theory of Justice.

Engaging the work of secular feminist legal theory from any faith perspective, let alone the perspective of a Catholic woman, has been a challenge. But one of the most unexpected rewards of this engagement has been the professional and personal relationships I have forged with feminist scholars of all sorts. These friendships led to my current book project, co-editing a collection of essays by feminists of different faiths to be published in the next year by Ashgate Press, Feminism, Law, and Religion. My own contribution to this collection is an exploration of the contemporary Catholic feminist interpretation of the theory of gender identity known as complementarity, which posits that men and women are fundamentally different yet fundamentally equal. This theory has its roots in a Thomistic affirmation of the unity of body and soul; it was developed by a group of predominantly Catholic philosophers who rejected the Cartesian dualism underlying most post-Enlightenment philosophy – phenomenologists such as Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand and St. Edith Stein, and personalists such as Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and Gabriel Marcel.

As my work on feminist legal theory drew me more deeply into the Catholic intellectual tradition, I began to feel the need to learn more about that tradition. During a sabbatical, I began to take courses toward a master’s degree in Catholic studies, earning that degree in the spring of 2010. The interdisciplinary nature of that degree program exposed me to the breadth of the history, philosophy, theology and literature of the Catholic tradition. In almost every class I took, though, I found myself focusing on questions of dependency and vulnerability, particularly as manifested in the disabled. My master’s thesis, “Jesus Wept: A Theological Reflection on Disabilities,” explored the contributions of a series of theologians and philosophers to making sense

of the lives of our most vulnerable fellow-citizens, the mentally disabled. This led to an invitation this past fall to participate in a symposium at Duke Law School on “Theological Argument in Law: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas.” My contribution to that symposium was an argument that Hauerwas’ critique of modern humanism (which parallels in many ways the relational feminists’ critique of modern liberal theories of justice) was consistent with the non theologically-based arguments of a prominent disability rights scholar critiquing inconsistencies in the current state of disability rights theory. Such convergences in thought, I argue, may point the way to fruitful alliances in advocating for fairer inclusion of those with disabilities in our society. This article will be published this year in Duke Law School’s Journal of Law & Contemporary Problems as “Exposing the Cracks in the Foundations of Disability Law.”

My scholarship in three different areas seems to lead me again and again to the discovery of convergences between Catholic thought and secular legal theory. I found this in feminist legal theory, in disability rights theory and even in consumer-credit regulation. I consider this an encouraging discovery, particularly in our increasingly polarized political climate, characterized it seems by ever-escalating tensions between institutional witnesses of faith and increasing pressures toward secularization. It suggests to me that the challenge at the heart of the mission of the University of St. Thomas School of Law – our dedication to “integrating faith and reason in the search for truth” – is not, in fact, an unrealistic one.

Elizabeth Schiltz is professor at the School of Law, a Thomas J. Abood Research Scholar, and co-director, Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

The agreement with the Cypriot government paves way for Cyprus to receive a €10 billion bailout. In return, Cyprus has agreed to downsize its large financial sector and undertake a macroeconomic adjustment program that will require fiscal consolidation, structural reforms and privatizations (among other concessions). In return, the ECB will continue to provide emergency liquidity assistance to Cyprus banks.

The most contentious bank levy, demanded earlier by the troika, has been completely scrapped. Deposits in all banks up to the deposit insurance limit of €100,000 will be protected. The second largest bank, Laiki Bank, will be resolved by splitting it into a good and a bad bank. Deposits up to €100,000 will be transferred to the good bank, which will be folded into Bank of Cyprus. Laiki Banks’ equity holders, bond holders and uninsured depositors will remain with the bad bank, which will be resolved. Bank of Cyprus also will be restructured and recapitalized.

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The problems at Cyprus banks have been known for some time. A major reason for this predicament is that Cyprus’ banks have suffered great losses due to write-downs on their Greek government bond holdings as a result of Greek debt restructuring last year. The two largest banks – Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank – reportedly have suffered losses of about €4 billion. Both the previous Cypriot government and the troika are equally culpable for kicking the can down the road, for perpetuating conditions that could force Cyprus to collapse and exit the European Union.

The economic, social and political implications of the proposed measures are enormous. For the first time, the Eurozone authorities have confirmed that when a member country falls into a banking crisis uninsured bank depositors might have to share losses along with other creditors. This likely creates fear among depositors and leads to a capital flight from the troubled nations such as Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain into stronger countries. A freeze on uninsured deposits, restrictions on withdrawals and capital controls might prevent a big bank run in the short-term, but the damage to Cyprus’s economic model as an off-shore financial center is likely irrevocable.

Although there is no explicit tax on large deposits, uninsured depositors will suffer substantial losses – as much as 60 percent according to some estimates – since they have to share the losses resulting from the resolution of Laiki Bank and the restructuring of Bank of Cyprus. The uninsured depositors might receive shares as settlement for their lost deposits. Given that about one third of €68 billion bank deposits is from outside of the European Union, the Cyprus solution somewhat resembles the Icelandic solution where Icelandic banks defaulted on foreign depositors. But there is one important difference: Iceland is not part of the Eurozone.

The end result is not pretty. Cyprus has been shut out from bond markets for some time. The last time Cyprus issued long-term bonds, investors required a yield of 7 percent. The banking sector is on life support from the ECB through the emergency liquidity assistance program. In an economy where the banking sector is about eight times the size of the economy, a deep liquidity crisis will create a severe blow to the already fragile economy.

The European Union expects the real GDP to decline by 3.5 percent in 2013 and by another 1.3 percent in 2014. Bank and liquidity problems could further deteriorate growth by limiting funding for key business sectors such as tourism, financial services and shipping. Resulting business closures and layoffs will further increase the unemployment rate, which is currently almost 15 percent.

Cyprus has run a budget deficit in excess of 5 percent for the last four years and expects to run similar, if not more, deficits in the foreseeable future. Fiscal adjustments and structural reforms that will be part of the conditionality of the bailout program, and the expected downsizing of the large financial sector will further reduce growth and increase unemployment. All these have the potential to create more social unrest and weaken the position of the new government – which is barely a month old – creating political turbulence when a stable government is necessary for difficult economic reforms.

What is largely ignored in the current debate about Cyprus is its sovereign debt. This is because the debt is only about 84 percent of the GDP, a €18 billion economy with about €15 billion debt. This debt level is the second lowest among the crisis-hit countries, and compares favorably with nations such as Greece (153 percent), Italy (127 percent), Portugal (120 percent), and Ireland (117 percent). But the €10 billion bailout loan will increase debt to 140 percent of the GDP and put Cyprus just behind Greece. Such high level of debt for a smaller economy with increasingly negative growth and budget deficits leads to an inevitable conclusion: Cyprus will not be able to grow out of debt, and this level of debt is not sustainable.

So, what would the debt path for Cyprus look like? Although details of the rescue plan are not yet finalized, the purpose of the bailout is to support debt service payments and budgetary shortfalls. Assuming a three-year disbursement schedule of €4 billion in 2013, €3 billion in 2014, €3 billion in 2015, and the EU and IMF baseline growth, inflation and deficit projection, the debt path for Cyprus takes the form shown in this chart above.

Debt will continue to climb from the current 84 percent to 108 percent by the end of 2013, and to 149 percent by 2017. These debt projections will further worsen if one were to factor in growth declines due to macroeconomic adjustment program and the expected downsizing of the financial sector.

The Cyprus solution clearly leads to an exploding and unsustainable debt path. As in the case of Greece, if the IMF’s target sustainable debt level for Cyprus is 120 percent by 2020, then it will be impossible for Cyprus to achieve it under the forecasted macroeconomic scenario. By any means, 120 percent is not a sustainable level either. This leads to another inevitable conclusion: Cyprus will need a substantial reduction in debt stock through debt relief.

How much debt relief would Cyprus need? Debt stock will need to be trimmed by at least €6 billion to €9 billion, making the current debt-to-GDP ratio 50 percent. With the reduced debt load and the new debt added through the rescue plan, the projected macroeconomic scenario will increase Cyprus’s debt to 114 percent by 2017. With a carefully designed macroeconomic stabilization program that leaves room for growth, Cyprus might be able to show some promise of debt sustainability. Without a “big bath,” Cyprus is looking at decades of unsustainable debt overhang and additional future bailouts.

Lalith Samarakoon is professor and chair of the Department of Finance in the Opus College of Business. As a financial economist, Samarakoon has two decades of advisory experience in financial sector reforms and development, and public debt management. He teaches Global Finance Issues and Policy: Eurozone Debt Crisis.

No, it’s not the new babies; our ’hood has those, and each is decidedly cute. Nor is it the spring tulips; when they pop, they are praise-grabbers for sure. What could it be that has even erstwhile neighbor Father Dease joining in on the oooo and ahhh action?

Carol Bruess

Simple. (Literally!) It’s a Little Free Library, one of an estimated 6,000 in more than 36 countries. These little containers of goodness unilaterally capture pure and good-spirited attention by the young, the old and the priestly alike. Our own stands happily a just block from campus down Portland near Wilder. And it reflects the mission of the Little Free Library concept: Take a book, return a book.

An auspicious idea born by a lone, creative, big-hearted man in Wisconsin a few years ago, the LFL concept is becoming an international phenomenon. You’ve probably started to spy, right in the Twin Cities, LFLs sprouting like spring daffodils in fertile spring lawns. Some of the earliest (I would argue the cutest, not that I’m competitive or anything) are right here within blocks of our own, big and beautiful O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library.

While Littlefreelibrary.org offers a full history of the super-simple LFL concept, I especially appreciate the answer to “What’s so special about having a Little Free Library?” Indeed: “If this were just about providing free books on a shelf, the whole idea might disappear after a few months. Little Free Libraries have a unique, personal touch and there is an understanding that real people are sharing their favorite books with their community … .” Refuge Films has even made a fab little documentary about Little Free Libraries, capturing a movement that “celebrates the joy of reading and the power of community.” The one-minute trailer will make you grin because, well, the idea is just a good old grin-worthy one. Watch the trailer.

Most recently, I have curated our own LFL collection with some books that just might have been shared by someone who just might be president of a university with which you might just be familiar; a president who always has been a generous, delightful leader; and a president who has long been a really caring neighbor as well.

While I can’t say for sure what you will find in our LFL (no records kept, no checking-out required!), you might just find a book that one soon-to-be-retired president, as well as others who wander the best neighborhood in St. Paul, has left in our ooooo-worthy and ahhhh-inspiring, cedar-shake-roofed, always-open library.

In the spirit of LFLs everywhere, we invite you to stop by! Literally, any time. You might take a book; you might leave one. For sure, you’ll enjoy a little moment of looking. It’s impossible not to.

Why teens? My take on society’s perception of adolescents, admittedly painted with a broad stroke, was similar then to what it is now: I had a tendency to view teens as difficult, emotionally tormented individuals who frequently make poor decisions and can be unpleasant to be around. This perception was supported by stories I heard from my colleagues who worked with teens as well as from friends who shared of their own teen years. It crystallized for me when my 10-year-old daughter informed me last summer that she dreaded becoming a teenager because adults would no longer like her. She cited example after example of adult conversations she’d overheard in which they described their adolescent children with an array of negative anecdotes and adjectives, followed by eruptions of laughter and nods of agreement. She didn’t want to suddenly become, by virtue of passing time, a person no longer valued by the adult world.

We sometimes forget that adolescents are, in fact, children, despite their adult-sized bodies. When I got past the outer protective shell, what I found with homeless youth was scared, vulnerable, hurting children who desperately wanted to be loved and respected. As I shifted to the foster care system, I found a plethora of resources for young children and waiting lists of foster parents who want to care for them; however, once they become teens, they are considered “unadoptable” and “difficult-to-place” in foster home settings. As such, they are often relegated to less family-like settings such as group homes. These are the kids who are most likely to linger in foster care until they turn 18, aging out of the system instead of reunifying with their parents or being adopted. What we now know about these young people is that when they “age out” of the child welfare system, they have a very rough transition to young adulthood. Without the safety net of family support, they are at extremely high risk of joblessness, homelessness and incarceration. The system that was set up to protect children fails them once they are no longer small, and we all pay the price when a young adult is homeless or in prison rather than an engaged and contributing member of society.

One of the core values of my profession is “the importance of human relationships.” As a social worker, I lean toward solutions that occur through this venue. While we often think of adolescence as a time of separation and independence, we often do not see that this occurs in the context of relationships and interdependence. A recent research study of mine was an evaluation of a foster care program called Creating Ongoing Relationships Effectively (CORE) at Family Alternatives, Inc. CORE focused on older youth in foster care, helping them identify supportive adults in their lives who would commit to seeing them through their transitions out of foster care and into adulthood. We learned from that study that these youth want such relationships but do not have the skills to build them nor the ability to recognize potential supporters. More importantly, we learned that supportive adults are, in fact, out there and willing to help. We also found it is critical that older foster youth be given the reins to take charge of their lives and make decisions while they were still in care. It was hard for adults to permit the youth to make “poor” decisions. Yet, shortly, in some cases only a few months, they would be completely on their own. The CORE model encourages youth to play out their choices and make mistakes before they are on their own, when the stakes are lower.

I now am embarking on a related three-year study, “Fostering Youth Transitions,” funded by the Andrus Family Fund, which will be conducted with the same agency. The study will assess the effectiveness of a framework developed to help youth and their foster parents make sense of the emotional and social processes youth undergo during major life transitions, in particular the transition into and out of foster care. If this study demonstrates that the framework improves outcomes for young adults once they age out, it will be one of the only such tools available for social workers.

In keeping with the CORE model of youth empowerment, at the center of the transitions study is the voice of the youth. In all the adolescent topics I’ve studied, most of the information about children comes from adults. We have so much to learn when we listen to the ideas and perceptions of children and youth. In my earlier research years, I conducted one of the first studies to interview children of incarcerated parents rather than gather information about them from other sources. The teens in my runaway and foster care studies always have proven to be incredibly articulate and insightful. I count on them to help us adults make sense of their world.

Engaging students in research is critical to me. I want to witness another generation of social workers who not only use information from research but also want to engage in it. For that reason, I built research assistant funding into my grant proposal. It allows me to hire both an undergraduate BSW student and a graduate MSW student through the school year as well as the summers for the next three years. Already, only a few months into the study, they are highly engaged, and in response I have opened more opportunities to meet their enthusiasm. They have taken charge of managing data, have suggested ideas for measurement and analysis, and not only attend the foster agency meetings but are active participants.

Andrea Nesmith is assistant professor at the School of Social Work.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

You know, this has become more about my middle school experience than I had originally planned.

Anyway, those of us in Photo Services thought we’d offer a reminder that it wasn’t always this way. Before it became the March and April bully, winter had a beauty of its own – a quiet side that excelled at hushing the world into a contemplative tranquility.

Winter will eventually get hauled off to the principal’s office and sent home for the day. As we pick ourselves up off the ground and wipe the gravel from our hair, let’s not forget that the bully once had the soul of a poet.

Editor’s note: St. Thomas Photo Services is making images from this post available for purchase here.

Read more from Depth of Field.

Someone was sweet enough to offer me breakfast – literally sweet enough, as I was given a choice between a Nutella cornetto (a horn-shaped, filled pastry) or a ciambella (an otherwise plain donut rolled in sugar). I quite fittingly have become attached to Nutella in Rome, so with little consideration I chose the Nutella cornetto in the midst of a large group of people ready to rush their way into St. Peter’s Square.

Lisa Weier

As soon as I got a couple good bites, rush they did. And rush I did. And, I guess you could say, the Nutella rushed only slightly more slowly out of the cornetto, all over my right hand. The hazel nut and chocolate delight oozed into my palm, through my fingers and over my ring.

I was a mess. I had only a bit of a napkin, my tongue and some hand sanitizer. So I cleaned up as best I could once we were in place for the Mass, caught in between the annoyance of sticky fingers and the hilarity of my situation. Soon after, Papa Francesco rode by in the popemobile, without bulletproof glass between him and the surrounding, cheering throng. At one point, he stepped down to greet people and bless babies.

The papacy may seem to some to be merely politics and power, but if I’ve learned one thing from my thus-far unique semester in Rome, it’s that Catholic people love their pope – and not because of either of those things. The pope loves people. Benedict did and Francis does. Francis is a simple man of virtue called to an extraordinary job. He speaks simply, he acts simply and he’s chosen the name of a simple, yet extraordinary saint.

I think he would have handled the Nutella situation with grace and humor, and I’m excited for his pontificate and the rest of my Nutella-eating time with him in Rome.

Surrounding this third largest metropolis in India were densely settled rural areas, the location of most of my field research. After some preliminary investigation, I narrowed my study to 40 villages with a population of 400 to 800, and with literacy rates varying from almost none to nearly 100 percent. My goal was to find out why the rates varied so much; in a nutshell, the answer included the economic status of the villages, agricultural productivity, their religious make-up, location and history. The nights in a sleeping bag, with sacred cows huddled comfortably in the next room, the simple food of the villagers and their warm welcome made the site visits quite an experience! A year or two later, a condensed version of my dissertation, edited by my adviser, was published in a Cornell University Press volume titled, An Exploration of India: Geographical Perspectives on Society and Culture. The research experience was more than exhilarating and the recognition of being published was quite satisfying.

To say the least, India was a long way from the Minnesota home I had known for most of my life. I grew up near the Mississippi River on a dairy farm in southeastern Minnesota with my parents, grandparents and six brothers. Parts of my German heritage were important to the future direction my life would take – being committed Catholics, being well-organized and disciplined, being active participant-observers of and commentators on all the life around us were essential elements. Though I never would have imagined it would be so huge, that background had a profound impact on my research agenda and ability in later years. After attending the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minn., for a few years, I entered the Sisters of St. Francis in Rochester. After religious formation, I graduated from St. Teresa’s with a history major; just two years later I began graduate school at Syracuse University, earning a master’s and Ph.D. in 1973. For 11 years I taught and held administrative positions at St. Teresa’s, during which time my main research was for my courses dealing with various geographic topics. As an administrator my tasks were to develop an effective undergraduate curriculum and write grants to support some innovative ideas related to curricular changes, both of which required a unique kind of research.

At the end of those years, my community asked me to study moral theology at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. One goal was to have someone in the order prepared to deal with the medical-moral questions that arose at the hospital we sponsor in Rochester, St. Mary’s, which is affiliated with the Mayo Clinic. Since I had served for nine years on the Board of Trustees of the hospital, I had a reasonably good sense of some of the major ethical questions. In a few years I earned a master’s and license in theology from Weston.

At that point my career and research agenda took a decidedly unexpected detour. Because of my dual preparation in the social sciences and theology, the officers of the Lilly Endowment Inc. asked me to consider writing about the status of Catholic seminaries. Another author had done an overview of Protestant seminaries, and there was interest in a comparable study for Catholics. From 1984 onward, the Lilly Endowment and other agencies have funded most of my research.

In the beginning my first Lilly project was focused quite specifically on graduate-level diocesan seminaries and religious order schools of theology. The field was unfamiliar to me, but the research tools I had acquired in both the social sciences and theology were immensely helpful. Site visits were indispensable, and in the three years I had to amass information and write the manuscript, I visited more than 40 seminaries. Msgr. William Baumgartner, former Rector of the St. Paul Seminary, then executive director of the NCEA Seminary Department, was of immeasurable assistance. He introduced me to the seminary world and wrote to all the rectors asking them for cooperation. Every seminary I visited welcomed me as I invaded their territory with a packed interview schedule and endless questions for administrators, faculty, staff, students and board members.

At Weston, where I then was working, the well-published older faculty helped me organize the manuscript, edit content and find a publisher. Realizing that producing a book is very much a collaborative effort, I vowed ever after I would assist faculty who were new to the publishing world in the same way I had been supported. In 1989, the Michael Glazer Press (later affiliated with the Liturgical Press) published Reason for the Hope: The Futures of Roman Catholic Theologates. While it was never on the best-seller list, it was deeply appreciated in the seminary world, especially among the schools that were part of the research. Consequently, ten years later the Liturgical Press published Seminaries, Theologates, and the Future of Church Ministry: An Analysis of Trends and Transitions, a fresh look at the seminary situation ten years later.

Through the years as my knowledge of seminary education deepened, the scope of my research gradually and naturally broadened to incorporate numerous topics related to the Catholic Church in the United States and to seminaries world-wide. In 1995 I was invited to an international gathering of seminary rectors from more than 75 countries at the University of Louvain in Belgium. I presented talks on the status of American seminaries and at the same time learned a great deal about seminaries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Following that event I was asked to make presentations to several Vatican-sponsored programs in Rome for English-speaking rectors from all over the world, and to conduct conferences at many other seminaries in Rome, Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada and Belgium. U.S. seminaries continue to be frequent consumers of my research, but international, national and regional organizations, dioceses and parishes also invite me to present material I have researched and had published.

Two developments in my research agenda resulted in other books, Educating Leaders for Ministry and Priestly Ministry in Multiple Parishes, both published by the Liturgical Press in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The second book especially resulted from teaching seminarians. In the late 1990s these graduate students began to inquire more and more about priests in their dioceses who had been asked to serve more than one parish. Almost nothing was published on the topic, so during my sabbatical in 2005, I applied for and received the Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology, which supported my research on priests serving more than one parish. The topic has grown in popularity among seminarians, many of whom have since done their own research projects on this future ministry for their final papers in the course on “Pastoral Ministry in American Culture.”

My most recent research projects are among the most absorbing, and I hope among the most beneficial for seminaries and for the Church as a whole. For the past five years I have worked with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on studies of the causes and context of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The extensive study, published in May 2011 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is an in-depth report on why and how the abuse took place. My task this year is to prepare study guides for seminaries, parishes and dioceses, with the goal of preventing such abuse in the future – a major issue of human dignity and justice. The second focus relates to my 30 years of studying Catholic theological education, mainly as provided in seminaries. My intent over the next two to three years is to produce a “retrospective and prospective view” of where these institutions have been and directions they may take in the future. Funding for the research is all but assured by a major foundation.

One of the most unexpected and intriguing dimensions of the research I have undertaken is the convergence of several diverse aspects of my background. Cultural studies done in the field in India carried over to studying the culture of Catholic seminaries by site visits to all of these institutions. My knowledge of seminaries opened up broad areas of related studies on topics so vital to the Church today – vocations, priestly life and ministry, the development of lay ministry, and most recently the effects of sexual abuse.

What motivates me to continue examining these vital subjects? Most importantly, it is my Catholic faith that both motivates and sustains me. The richness of our tradition and the ups and downs of its 2000-year history serve as founts of wisdom and of challenge. As a Franciscan, my early formation included several years studying the life of St. Francis. One particular story about his life always has touched me deeply. St. Francis was praying before an ancient crucifix in the Chapel of San Damiano when he heard a voice say, “Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.” Francis took the request literally at first, but eventually came to understand that it applied to the whole Church. Through the years I have translated the meaning to be “Build my Church,” a call that is the foundation of whatever ministry has been mine to do.

Sister Katarina Schuth, O.S.F., Ph.D. is Endowed Chair for the Social Scientific Study of Religion at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

Dave Nimmer

This is the season of hope, with spring around the corner. At my little Evangelical Lutheran Church in Afton, we have weekly Lenten services on Wednesday night. The sanctuary is dimly lit, the parishioners are usually quiet and the music is genuinely prayerful.

My favorite Lenten hymn is “We Shall Rise Again.”

“We shall rise again on the last day

With the faithful rich and poor.

Coming to the house of Lord Jesus,

We will find an open door there, we will find an open door.”

What I found one night, a Good Friday a decade ago, still sticks in my mind and nourishes my spirit. The pastor had called and asked me to read some Scripture. I showed up at 7 p.m. and the sanctuary was almost dark – a few shafts of light piercing the windows – and silent. The altar was draped with a black cloth. An old wooden cross was tipped to one side. I sat next to the pastor.

When it came time to read, the words that came from my mouth had already settled in my mind: “And He went on a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, ‘O my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.’”

I sat down. The choir sang. The pastor spoke. The Scripture continued: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” These words could have come from me: the doubter, the prodigal son, the wanderer in the wilderness. This was Christ with the human touch, and his words touched me that night.

Darkness had fallen. I could only see silhouettes. The sound of the organ settled over the sanctuary, slow and sorrowful, and the Scripture concluded, “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the Ghost.”

It was over. As the Lutherans left that night, they came silently up the center aisle, two by two, family by family, body and spirit. From my front-row seat, I saw it all: the elderly husband and wife who held hands as they knelt, said their prayers and struggled to rise again; the children who came solemnly, as though they had tapped into a wisdom beyond their years; and the choir, singing “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.”

To my surprise, tears streamed freely down my face – one of the few times in my life. It was though I was watching all of humanity, through eons of time, pass in front of me: the young and old, the youthful and fragile, the saints and sinners. When my turn came, I knelt in front of the cross and put my hand on the pastor’s shoulder. Then I got to my feet, walked silently out the back door and felt the mist on my face.

For the moment, I knew all was well with my soul.

Academic training in three different disciplines in three different countries, combined with practical experience in law and finance, made comparative scholarship a natural fit for me. Accordingly, my scholarship focuses on the intersection of economics, finance and law with a particular emphasis on comparative and transnational finance and comparative corporate, securities, civil, and European law and Law and Economics. Because of the comparative and methodological character of comparative research, comparativists often have new and different perspectives on academic debates and real-world problems. As a comparativist, my scholarship is motivated in large part by the desire to make practically relevant contributions to relevant real-world problems from a comparative institutional perspective. I find that this approach enables scholarship that seeks truth independent of political or economic pressure. In my work on the extraterritorial application of securities law, hedge funds, and contingent capital, I strive to suggest socially optimal solutions to real-world problems and policy debates.

In the context of the extraterritorial application of securities laws, I show in several pieces that U.S. policy responses can have repercussions in other jurisdictions with suboptimal social welfare outcomes that merit changes in policy. My most recent article in this context, forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review, shows that European countries are increasingly changing their rules to capitalize on recent changes in U.S. policy pertaining to the extraterritorial application of securities laws. I suggest that many of these issues can be addressed through a bilateral treaty and parties’ choice of law in securities transactions.

In the context of contingent capital securities, a hybrid financial instrument that has the potential to optimize social welfare and already has been used in Europe, I suggest in several articles that using contingent capital securities can improve regulatory regimes that are based on “stable rules,” i.e. rules that do not adjust to ever changing market and economic environments. In several new pieces and a book, I will develop the theory that a combination of approaches and experimentation with different legal regimes may result in “dynamic regulation” of the financial services industry. In addition, I will show that dynamic regulation has great potential to address the shortcomings of current financial market regulation.

In the context of hedge fund regulation, several articles suggest an indirect regulatory approach that balances economic and political demands with social welfare optimizing solutions. Several new pieces examine the policy implications of recent hedge fund registration and disclosure requirements in the United States. In the last two decades, the SEC repeatedly has attempted to register private funds, i.e. funds that otherwise were not regulated if they complied with certain requirements. The Dodd-Frank Act now authorizes the SEC to bring private funds under its regulatory supervision by requiring registration and enhanced disclosure for private equity and hedge fund managers. I examine if the new registration and disclosure rules have an effect on private funds and the private-fund industry. Because new rules pertaining to private funds also have been implemented in Europe, several follow-up pieces will compare the impact of these rules in the respective countries and the United States.

Given the policy and social welfare implication of my scholarship and the large practical application, the concepts and theories used can be transferred easily to the classroom. By explaining the real-world policy implications of my research, I hope to enable and support my students in becoming morally responsible, wise, skillful and critical leaders who are capable of discerning the importance of their decisions for the common good and social policy. My classes in international finance, securities regulation, business associations, and European law present many opportunities to accomplish that objective. Although the subject areas can be very technical, and it is important for students to appreciate the technical details, I always emphasize the methodological and theoretical foundations of the material. I strive to expose my students to the full spectrum of perspectives and discourse pertaining to the methodological and theoretical foundations of their respective subject matters. By introducing my students to my own scholarship and research, I underscore that the concepts students learn can affect our perception of the common good and have enormous practical and policy applications.

My work in the context of hedge funds, contingent capital and the extraterritorial application of securities law may be followed by several theoretical projects that explore the long-term, theoretical and methodological implications of policy initiatives, regulatory developments, and the empirical findings of my research. As my scholarship in these areas evolves, I hope to explore with my students some of the common denominators of Catholic social thought and institutional economics as well as the implications for theoretical foundations of corporate and securities law.

Wulf Kaal is associate professor at the School of Law.

From Exemplars, a publication of the Grants and Research Office.

Dr. Charles Reid Jr., St. Thomas School of Law faculty member (Reid holds a law degree and license in canon law from the Catholic University of America as well as a Ph.D. in the history of medieval law from Cornell University): Cardinal Bergoglio is in many respects a natural and expected selection as Pope. He was runner-up to Pope Benedict in 2005. What is unexpected is his inspired choice of names. Pope Francis – suggestive both of Francis of Assisi and of the great Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier. I think by choice of names he is setting the tone of his pontificate. He will be humble like Francis of Assisi. He will show a preferential option for the poor. But he will also be an evangelizer in the mold of Francis Xavier who traveled to the far corners of the world – to Japan and China in the sixteenth century – to spread the word of Christ. I think we can expect from Pope Francis a powerful vision of faith and works.

Dr. Massimo Faggioli, St. Thomas Theology Department faculty member (Faggioli holds a doctorate from the University of Turin and specializes in contemporary Catholicism, religion and politics): The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis is interesting and surprising. He is the first non-European pope, the first Jesuit and the first with the courage to call himself Francis, after Francis of Assisi. It sets standards that are very high.

It also is interesting that eight years ago he was an alternative candidate to Pope Benedict. This time the cardinals took the road they did not take in 2005.

Cardinal Bergoglio was not on the short list of candidates being discussed widely. Some Italians were shocked at the selection; some there thought the cardinals would select a pope from Italy.

That Pope Francis was elected on the fifth ballot means that many cardinals had him in mind. The fifth ballot is early. Evidently, the press missed something that the cardinals had in mind.

Monsignor Aloysius Callaghan, rector and vice president at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity of the University of St. Thomas: A great gift, tremendous joy, a very pleasant surprise – “Papa Francesco.”

St. Francis of Assisi – what a model for our Church in these challenging times.

In his youth, Francis began to hear the Lord speak to him and feel the stirrings of the Spirit.

One day, while praying before an ancient crucifix in a forsaken wayside chapel of San Damiano below his town of Assisi, Francis heard a voice saying, “Go Francis and repair my Church which you see is falling into ruin.”  That call, that mandate, changed Francis’ life – he offered his life as “a gift to others.”

Yesterday a “new Francis” heard a similar call, “Repair my Church,” “Rebuild my Church.”

As he stepped out on the balcony – our Holy Father humbly invited our silent prayers for him and then he said “Let us start this journey – a journey of fraternity, love, and confidence among us.

And so we begin!

Visit Campus Ministry for more pope news.

Newly elected Pope Francis I appears on the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on March 13. Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th Pontiff and will lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)