The awards celebrate Minnesota businesses that exemplify and promote ethical conduct in the workplace, the marketplace and the community. Keynote speaker for the awards lunch will be Gregg Steinhafel, chairman and CEO of Target Corporation.

Go here to learn more and register.

The MBEA confers awards in in three size categories: small (under 100 employees), medium (100 to 500 employees) and large (more than 500 employees).

The 2013 award recipients will be announced at the May 15 program. The finalists are:

• Small-size category: Cresa Minneapolis/St. Paul;  Douglas Scientific; and  Latuff Brothers Auto Body
• Mid-size category: Affinity Federal Credit Union;  Mintahoe Catering and Events; and  Premier Disability Services LLC
• Large-size category: Cummins Power Generation; and St. Francis Regional Medical Center

Since its inception in 1999, the MBEA has recognized 38 Minnesota-based businesses, ranging in size from less than 10 employees to more than 150,000.

The program is organized by the Twin Cities Chapter of the Society of Financial Service Professionals and the Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC) at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. This year the MBEA welcomes the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors as a co-organizer for the awards.

A list of past MBEA recipients can be viewed at this website.

Dr. Camille George poses next to the Ultralight Mod Pod, a breadfruit drier she co-designed last year. (Photo by Mike Ekern ’02)

The event, open to members of the St. Thomas community, begins with a 4:30 p.m. reception. The program runs from 5 to 6 p.m. Those planning to attend are asked to RSVP here.

Highlight of the celebration is the premiere of the documentary “Field to Fork,” a film is about Dr. Camille George’s work to engineer the post-harvest processing of breadfruit in Haiti.

“My five-year goal is to feed 100,000 Haitian school kids a day,” she said.

In 2003, George, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, led student-teams from the School of Engineering, French Department and Communication and Journalism Department to St. Vincent and collaborated on preliminary designs for shredding and drying breadfruit.

Later, another team of students studied the entire process of using breadfruit, from harvesting to shredding to drying to grinding it into flour. And in 2012, the School of Engineering, along with Minnesota-based nonprofit Compatible Technology International, held a “Peace Engineering” contest to build and deliver a breadfruit-drying device to the Breadfruit Institute, a subdivision of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kauai, Hawaii.

Breadfruit is an underutilized staple crop long recognized for its potential to provide food security in tropical regions. The fruit, named for its bread-like fragrance, is high in carbohydrates and contains many minerals and vitamins. A significant challenge in taking advantage of this food source, however, is its short shelf life once picked.

In addition to the breadfruit project, George and the Peace Engineering program have worked on a low-power cooling system, solar-powered water-pasteurization system and a method to produce shea butter more efficiently.

A goal of each project is to use engineering to help empower impoverished women and enabled them to profit from their countries’ natural resources.

The May 9 event also celebrates the collaboration of the St. Thomas School of Engineering with the Fetzer Institute, Compatible Technology International, Satag Inc. and the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church.

More information can be found at this Peace Engineering website and in this article, “Dr. Camille George Engineers the Future of Breadfruit.”

Klaus Leisinger

The program marks the 35th anniversary of the St. Thomas-based Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC), established by Minnesota business leaders, and the 20th year of the Annual Stakeholder Dialogue, sponsored by the university’s Opus College of Business.

The program is free and open to the public but advance registration is required. To register, visit this website or email the center at mail@cebcglobal.org.

Leisinger has led the Novartis Foundation for more than 30 years and will discuss the ethical and social challenges of expanding a business in developing nations. He is an adviser to the CEO of Novartis, which had $56 billion in sales last year, and to international organizations such as the World Bank and World Economic Forum.

Leisinger’s remarks will be followed by comments from a panel that includes Michael Balay, vice president of strategy and business development at Cargill, and Bradley Buck, senior director of operations and corporate engagement for Land O’Lakes International Development.

The program will run from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Thornton Auditorium and will be followed by a reception.

Co-sponsors of the program are the Center for Ethical Business Cultures, the Koch Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and the Veritas Institute, all based at the Opus College of Business.

In 2008 Father Dennis Dease, president of St. Thomas, along with college and university presidents from across the country, signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. That year the university adopted a Climate Action Plan to achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2035 and to pursue green, sustainable and energy-efficient strategies for all new building projects.

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday recognized St. Thomas as the 2012-2013 conference champion for using more green power than any other college or university in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

St. Thomas won the EPA’s College and University Green Power Challenge by using nearly 33 million kilowatt hours of green power in 2012. Collectively, schools in the MIAC purchased nearly 50 million kilowatt hours of green energy.

Windsource, the green-energy program of Xcel Energy, the nation’s top wind-power utility, announced that St. Thomas is the largest purchaser of renewable energy in the company’s history. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 82 percent of the electric power used on the university’s St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses was purchased from the Windsource program.

The Gabriel Kney organ.

The nearly 33 million kilowatt hours of wind-generated power used by St. Thomas last year is equivalent to reducing nearly 57 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually. It also is equivalent to the annual output of five large wind turbines or taking 5,380 passenger vehicles off the road.

And after studying the electric motors that power the 2,786-pipe Gabriel Kney organ in the university’s Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, Windsource engineers calculated that the amount of wind energy the university purchases each year would be enough to perform Bach’s 15-minute Toccata and Fugue in D minor a total of 1,323,364 times.

Laura McCarten, Xcel Energy regional vice president, will congratulate St. Thomas and present the university with a six-foot model of a wind turbine during an Earth Week celebration at noon Thursday, April 25, on the John P. Monahan Plaza just outside the Anderson Student Center.

All are welcome to the event. Refreshments will include ice cream and, in keeping with the theme of wind-generated power, there will be kites to fly and Lil’ Dutch Maid Almond Windmill Cookies to eat.

If you are reading this at St. Thomas, 82 percent of the energy to run your computer comes from wind farms like this one near Worthington in southwestern Minnesota. Xcel’s Nobles Wind Farm is powered by one of the best wind resources in the country.

A two-minute video about St. Thomas’ use of wind-generated energy, prepared by Windsource, will be shown on the screen in the main atrium of the Anderson Student Center. You also can see the video here.

A Sustainable Saint Paul Award was presented to St. Thomas Wednesday for its work on the Anderson Student Center.

Mayor Chris Coleman and the St. Paul City Council honored the university and Opus Design Build and Opus AE, the contractor and architect, with the Institutional Green Building Design Award at the beginning of the council’s weekly meeting.

“The Anderson Student Center is a testament to the environmentally conscious steps the University of St. Thomas took in building the new student center, and is a great model for institutional green building design,” the city said in honoring the project.

The $66 million, 225,000-square-foot center, located at the corner of Summit and Cretin avenues, opened in January 2012 and last summer was awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

In designing the Anderson Student Center, Opus and St. Thomas participated in Xcel’s Energy Design Assistance Program that helps owners and design teams evaluate energy-conservation strategies. While conservation measures initially were more expensive, it is expected they will provide a projected annual savings of $62,000, with an estimated payback of about four years.

The Recyclemania Tournament, a friendly national and state competition meant to promote recycling and reduce waste at colleges and universities, announced winners on Friday.

In state competition, St. Thomas placed second overall behind the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and was first in four of seven categories. St. Thomas was first in overall pounds of recycled material (116,602 pounds), and first in the per-capita categories for paper, cardboard and bottles and cans.

The Princeton Review on Tuesday announced that St. Thomas is included in its fourth annual “Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition.”  The free guide, according to Princeton Review, “profiles 320 schools in the United States and two in Canada that demonstrate notable commitments to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation.”

All Earth Week activities at St. Thomas are free and open to the public. They are:

• All week, April 22-26: Tours of the greenhouse, located on the south side of Owens Science Hall on the south campus, will be held from noon to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday of Earth Week. The tours will feature projects of St. Thomas students, staff and faculty. You can see videos about the projects here, here and here. Free garden-soil analyses are available for the first 20 visitors.
• Monday, April 22: Read about Earth Day here.
• Tuesday, April 23: A Green Research Symposium will be held at noon in Room 126 (first-floor auditorium) of the John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts.
• Tuesday, April 23: The St. Thomas Green Team will hold a B.Y.O.B (bring your own bottle) event during the noon convo hour in Anderson Student Center. Participants can play water pong; winners receive reusable water bottles.
• Tuesday, April 23: An interdisciplinary panel discussion of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring will be held at 3:30 p.m. in Room 108 (the leather room) of O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center. Refreshments will be provided.
• Tuesday, April 23: BEAST (Bicycle Enthusiasts at St. Thomas) will host its annual neighborhood bike ride during Earth Week over the noon convo hour. The ride starts at John P. Monahan Plaza on the university’s lower quadrangle and is open to anyone with a bike and helmet.
• Wednesday, April 24: BEAST (Bicycle Enthusiasts at St. Thomas) will offer free bike tune-ups and repairs for the St. Thomas community. Tune-ups start at 3 p.m. in the BEAST “lair,” located in the basement of Loras Hall on the university’s south campus.
• Thursday, April 25: Green research posters will be on display all day Thursday in Anderson Student Center. The posters will depict environmental research conducted by St. Thomas students.
• Thursday, April 25: A Windsource celebration will be held over the noon convo hour on John P. Monahan Plaza. St. Thomas will receive a six-foot-tall wind-turbine model and will be recognized for being the biggest user of green energy generated by Xcel’s Windsource program. The university also will receive a plaque from the Environmental Protection Agency for winning the College and University Green Power Challenge in the MIAC. There will be displays, kites, ice cream and Lil’ Dutch Maid Almond Windmill Cookies. All are welcome.
• Saturday, April 27: The 21st annual spring cleanup of the east bank of the Mississippi River will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Volunteers should meet at the monument area at the intersection of Mississippi River Boulevard and Summit Avenue. The annual rite of spring is co-sponsored by the UST Green Team, Recycling Team and the Department of Natural Resources Adopt-a-River program.

A list of St. Thomas Earth Week events can be found here.

Wind turbines at work near Lake Benton in southwestern Minnesota. The town calls itself “the original wind power capital of the Midwest.” The blades are 122 feet long and the turbines are 262 feet tall, nearly as tall as a football field is long.

The presentation is the 16th annual Julian Parker Lecture sponsored by the university’s College of Education, Leadership and Counseling. The program is free but registration is requested by sending an email to Dr. Robert Brown, professor of education emeritus, at rjbrown@stthomas.edu. Contact Brown at (651) 962-4992 if there are questions.

Joseph Scherer

A 6:30 p.m. reception precedes the lecture; coffee and conversation follow.

“Public perception lags far beyond reality in the public-policy arena,” said Brown, coordinator of the Julian Parker series. “For those of us in education this is a particular problem since many adults in our area think of the schools as being like they were years ago … overwhelmingly white with a smattering of various minority kids.

“Now, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and some of the suburbs no longer have a white majority and are composed of a wonderful blend of black, white, Asian, Latino and American Indian students. This has implications for hiring policies, curriculum and cultural awareness,” he said.

Data from the state demographer’s office will be distributed at the program. The information describes population changes over time in the metropolitan area and the state.

Scherer’s remarks will be followed by a multicultural group of panelists from Latino, African, Asian and American Indian communities. Patricia Jensen, director of St. Thomas’ Master of Arts in Public Policy and Leadership Program, will moderate.

Audience members will participate in a follow-up discussion, with St. Thomas public-policy students serving as recorders. The program also will include a brief award ceremony for the Minnesota Alliance of Black School Educators.

A former teacher and school administrator, Scherer holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from St. Thomas and a master’s and doctorate in psychology from the Peabody School of Vanderbilt University.

Julian Parker

He has held multiple leadership positions in the public and private sectors of the education industry throughout his career. As head of the Superintendents’ National Dialog, Scherer brings together groups of school superintendents to help them develop a vision for their districts. Previously he co-founded the District Management Council, a national organization for public school leaders.

The Julian Parker Lecture Series honors the former longtime chair of the Education Department and dean of the graduate school at Xavier University in New Orleans. Parker was a national leader on urban education and race relations. In the 1960s, he was instrumental in dealing with issues of race and diversity when he worked at St. Thomas in an exchange program between the national historically African-American colleges and private colleges in Minnesota.

Co-sponsors of the Julian Parker Lecture are the St. Thomas Master of Arts in Public Policy and Leadership Program, Minnesota Alliance of Black School Educators and Generation Next.

Co-sponsored by Target and St. Thomas’ College of Arts and Sciences, “Freed Speech” has its roots in the college’s annual lectures on civil discourse and other initiatives to address the widespread and growing lack of civility in discourse in U.S. society.

The topic on April 17 will be “listening with civility.” Leading the discussion will be moderator Nate Garvis, co-founder of Studio/E, an entrepreneurial program for top-tier leaders conducted quarterly out of St. Paul’s James J. Hill Library. Garvis is a former Target vice president and author of Naked Civics.

Panelists will be Kevin Beacham, marketing specialist for Rhymesayers Entertainment; Dr. Kurt Illig, director of neuroscience at St. Thomas; and Dr. Simone Ahuja, co-author of Jugaad Innovation.

The forum is free and open to the public; however, space is limited so guests must register beforehand.

The College of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with its board of advisers, launched the civil discourse series with a 2010 lecture by Jon Meacham, then editor of Newsweek. Other speakers have been Harvard political philosopher Dr. Michael Sandel and Georgetown linguistics professor Dr. Deborah Tannen, author of The Argument Culture.

The first program in the series’ “Freed Speech” format was held at Pantages Theater in Minneapolis last November and featured news anchor Soledad O’Brien.

Each year the forum honors individuals or organizations for their exemplary efforts to address workplace diversity issues. Recipients will be honored during a Thursday, April 11, luncheon.

Recipients are:

Howard Ross.

Howard Ross, who will receive a Winds of Change Award for individuals, is founder of Cook Ross Inc., a leading diversity consulting firm. Specializing in leadership, diversity and organizational transformation, Ross has served more than 25 years as a consultant to hundreds of organizations across the United States and in 25 other countries. He is a leader on the topic of unconscious bias and is also the architect of award-winning training and awareness programs.

Ross is the author of ReInventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance, published by Rowman Littlefield in association with the Society for Human Resource Management.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which will receive a Winds of Change Award for organizations, is a $10 billion, global health enterprise with more than 55,000 employees.  The center is transforming health care by integrating more than 20 hospitals, 400 doctors’ offices and outpatient sites, a health insurance services division, and international and commercial services. Affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, the center ranked No. 10 in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Honor Roll of America’s Best Hospitals in 2012.

Elsa Batica.

Elsa Batica, who will receive a Friend of the Forum Award, is an experienced civil rights mediator and has been involved for more than 25 years in the areas of multicultural issues, cultural competency, diversity management and community development. She has developed and delivered hundreds of workshops and sessions for government, corporate, education, health, nonprofit and community clients.

Batica has served on numerous boards and was appointed by Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton to serve as commissioner for the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans. She has served as associate county administrator for Scott County, deputy director for the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, and in other roles for NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics and the Hennepin County Community Health Department. She is president of Batica and Associates and corporate trainer for Diversity Council Inc.

About The Multicultural Forum on Workplace Diversity

The forum is designed for professionals who manage a diverse workforce, are responsible for diversity within organizations of all sizes, or work with multicultural clientele; it attracts more than 1,200 participants from 35 states and more than 400 companies.

The forum is sponsored by Target and presented by the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas in partnership with the National Black MBA Association Twin Cities.

The forum runs Wednesday and Thursday, April 10 and 11. A Career Services Center will be held Tuesday and Wednesday, April 9 and 10, and a Career Fair will be held Wednesday, April 10. More than 50 Midwest companies will be represented at the Career Services Center and Career Fair, which are free and open to the public.

Registration for the forum and diversity awards luncheon remains open. Participants can choose to attend either the full three-day conference or single conference days. Rates for travel and accommodations are available. More information is available on the Multicultural Forum website, by phone at (651) 962-4377 or email at mcf@stthomas.edu.

The forum began in 1988 as a two-hour video conference. In addition to its professional staff, more than 60 volunteers assist with planning workshops and logistics, and more than 150 volunteers will help staff the conference.

Free and open to the public, the Education for Everyone series aims to share information and raise awareness of students with different challenges so that everyone can better support these individuals in schools and communities. This event may satisfy the Early Warning Signs of Mental Health Continuing Education Credits required for re-licensure (check with your district licensure committee).

Dr. Shelley Neilsen Gatti, assistant professor in the Department of Special Education and Gifted Education in the College of Applied Professional Studies, and Dr. Tim Balke, director of MA and certificate programs, College of Education, Leadership and Counseling, will present on “Early Warning Signs of Mental Illness.”

The event also will include a mental health musical performed by Fidgety Fairy Tales, the retelling of popular fairy tales with a twist. Each story contains positive messages and portrayals of children with mental health disorders as well as some of the common symptoms of each disorder.

Featured this year: Fidgety Fairy Tales’ Greatest Hits:

• “Little Red Riding Hood” (AD/HD) – Little Hood gets distracted on her way to granny’s house, but her ability to pay attention to multiple things at once helps her defeat the wolf.
• “The Prince and The Pea” (autism) – Prince Frank doesn’t act like other princes. When the queen decides to test him, his hypersensitivity helps him feel a teeny, tiny pea under 20 mattresses.
• “Boyd, Who Cried Wolf” (Tourette syndrome) – Shepherd Boyd can’t help shouting “Wolf!” The townspeople want to fire him because he keeps disturbing their sleep, but then they come up with a creative solution that makes everyone happy (except the wolf).

Register online. For more information visit the Education for Everyone Web page or view the event flyer.

The multiple-award-winning documentary “Justice for My Sister” will be shown at 7 p.m. Monday, April 15, in Room 126 of the John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts on the university’s St. Paul campus.

The film will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Kimberly Bautista, its producer and director. “My hope is that audiences from all walks of life will be moved to recognize the violence in our own communities and take a stand against it,” she said.

Adela at age 27.

The program is free and open to the public. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles. The discussion with Bautista will be translated from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish.

The feature-length documentary begins with the story of a 27-year-old Guatemalan, Adela, who left for work one day and never returned. Her ex-boyfriend beat her until she was unrecognizable and left her at the side of road.

Despite dismal odds, Adela’s sister Rebeca takes on Guatemala’s corrupt legal system in a three-year fight to bring the ex-boyfriend to justice. Of the 6,000 cases of women murdered in Guatemala over the past decade, only 2 percent of their killers were sentenced.

A trailer for the film can be seen here.

The April 15 program includes the sale of Guatemalan crafts; free-will offerings will be accepted. Checks may be made out to La Paz International Inc. All proceeds go to provide financial support for Rebeca, the subject of the film, and Olga, another Guatemalan woman who lives with her children in poverty.

The program is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ College of Arts and Sciences, Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion Services,  Luann Dummer Center for Women, and the departments of History, Political Science, Women’s Studies, Family Studies, Justice and Peace Studies, Modern and Classical Languages, and Sociology.

Co-sponsored by the University of St. Thomas Law Journal and the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy, the 2013 UST Law Journal Symposium will take place Friday, April 5, in the Schulze Hall Grand Atrium, Minneapolis campus. The event will feature 11 scholars from around the country and the world who will share their research and opinions on a subject that event organizers hope will serve as a catalyst for a new approach to the study and practice of intellectual property law.

For more information and to register for this free event click here.

“As intellectual property right law tries to keep up with technology in order to continue to drive technological innovation and economic development, and as the economy globalizes, we are forced to question the fundamental assumptions about intellectual property,” said Phil Steger, Law Journal Symposium editor. “IP and technology present fundamental questions concerning the ownership of life and the origins of creativity. IP and economic development confronts us with questions concerning how to balance the rights of IP owners with the needs of the poor.

“Globalization means that traditional IP regimes, which developed in Christian societies, are entering societies shaped by equally ancient and sophisticated religious traditions that have different ways of understanding and ordering the world. Finally, the ubiquity of the Internet and its domination by social media and open source sharing suggest that traditional IP, with its emphasis on individual ownership rights, are being challenged by new emphases on social relationships and duties. We are bringing in some of the brightest minds in IP law, bioethics, and religious scholarship to help answer the question of ‘How can religious thought constructively inform the meaning and direction of intellectual property law?’”

The symposium will feature paper presenters and panel participants from several different religious backgrounds, including Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, as well as Protestant and Catholic Christianity. The goal of bringing in this religiously diverse group of scholars and advocates, Steger said, is to shed some light on how various religious traditions can contribute perspectives and answers to the latest intellectual property law questions and ethical dilemmas.

The lineup of speakers includes University of Virginia law professor and intellectual property law scholar Margo Bagley, who will present “The Wheat and the (GMO) Tares: Lessons from Plant Patent Litigation and the Parables of Christ,” which will feature discussion on the ongoing U.S. Supreme Court case Bowman v. Monsanto.

The symposium also will include DePaul University law professor Roberta Kwall, whose presentation, titled “Remember the Sabbath Day and Enhance Your Creativity,” will draw from themes found in her recent research that explores the intersection between intellectual property, cultural property and Jewish law.

Prominent theologian Paul Griffiths of Duke University also will present on some of the fundamental tensions between Christian scripture and theology and IP law concerning the ownership of creativity and ideas.

Steger said the Law Journal staff credits the idea for and development of the theme for the upcoming symposium to UST law professor Tom Berg who, in addition to his work as a religious liberties scholar, has a professional background in intellectual property law.

“Professor Berg is a first-rate IP scholar and a nationally recognized scholar on the First Amendment and religious liberty,” Steger said. “The idea for the symposium and the excellent responses by scholars to our invitations are the direct result of his expertise and reputation.”

Papers from the symposium will be published in a forthcoming issue of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.

The festival, which began at St. Thomas in 1980, traditionally presents a broad range of artistic forms. All of this year’s events are free and open to the public and will be held on the university’s St. Paul campus. They are:

Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley will give a lecture on his book Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center.

Nola recounts the life of the author’s sister, who died at age 25 after several years of treatment for schizophrenia.

Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Hemley has published seven books; his stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and many literary magazines and anthologies. He is the editor of Defunct magazine.

Quvenzhane Wallis

Beasts of the Southern Wild, nominated for four Academy Awards and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, will be shown from 8 to 11 p.m. Tuesday, April 16, in Scooter’s, located on the first floor of Anderson Student Center.

The film, a drama with fantasy elements, is set in the Louisiana bayou and stars 6-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. The film will be introduced by Dr. David Penchansky of the St. Thomas Theology Department. More information about the film can be found here.

St. Thomas Alumni Choir, a mixed vocal ensemble of young and old alumni, will present a concert from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, April 21, in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The choir is directed by alumni Sean Barker, Josh Bauder and Casey Johnson.

The choir will perform sacred and secular music by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Elizabeth Alexander, Josh Bauder, Jonathan Tschiggfrie, Stephen Paulus, Felix Mendelssohn, Alice Parker, Z. Randall Stroope and Keith Hampton.

The Gabriel Kney organ.

An Organ and Choir Concert, part of a series marking the 25^th anniversary of the dedication of the university’s Gabriel Kney organ, will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 28, in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas. Host will be Merritt Nequette, retired professor and former chair on the St. Thomas Music Department.

The program will feature the university’s Liturgical Choir and guest alumni singers directed by Aaron Brown and retired Liturgical Choir founder Robert Strusinski; Orchestra directed by Matthew George; and organists James Callahan, David Jenkins, Kevin Seal and Robert Vickery.

They will perform Noel Goemanne’s “Song of Praise” for choir and organ, which was commissioned for the Gabriel Kney organ dedication in 1987; the Franz Schubert Mass in G; the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani by Francis Poulenc; and the new Concerto for Organ, Strings and Percussion, featuring its composer, organist and professor emeritus of music James Callahan.

Joyce Lyon

The art exhibit “Passaggio/Passage,” featuring works by Joyce Lyon, is on permanent display on the Campus Way, located on the second floor of the Anderson Student Center.

An associate professor of art at the University of Minnesota, Lyon’s works are in public and private collections nationally, including Georgetown University Law Library, the Florida Holocaust Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center and the Weisman Art Museum.

Her work focuses on the intersections of place and memory. “I work from observation with an acute sense of the layering of time,” she said. “In ‘Passagio/Passage,’ I consider pilgrimage as it relates to a physical and spiritual journey and as a meditation on here and there and the passages in between.”

“Passaggio/Passage” by Joyce Lyon

A schedule of this year’s Sacred Arts Festival events can be found here.

The forum is sponsored by Target and presented by the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas in partnership with the National Black MBA Association Twin Cities.

The forum is designed for professionals who manage a diverse workforce, are responsible for diversity within organizations of all sizes, or work with multicultural clientele. The largest diversity and inclusion conference in the country, the forum attracts more than 1,200 participants from 35 states and more than 400 companies.

The forum runs Wednesday and Thursday, April 10 and 11. A Career Services Center will be held Tuesday and Wednesday, April 9 and 10, and a Career Fair will be held Wednesday, April 10. More than 50 Midwest companies will be represented at the Career Services Center and Career Fair, which are free and open to the public.

Participants can choose to attend all or any of the days. Information can be found on the forum’s website, by phone at (651) 962-4377 or email at mcf@stthomas.edu.

The forum features four general sessions, 62 concurrent learning sessions, and eight program tracks for those interested in specific areas such as government, health care and law.

Among the general-session speakers are Barry Posner, professor of leadership at Santa Clara University and author of Leadership Challenge, and Phoebe Eng, social-change strategist and author of Warrior Lessons.

The forum began in 1988 as a two-hour video conference. In addition to its professional staff, more than 60 volunteers assist with planning workshops and logistics, and more than 150 volunteers will help staff the conference.

Participants at a past Career Fair.

A Career Fair and Career Services Center will be held at the Minneapolis Convention Center in April as part of the 25th annual Multicultural Forum on Workplace Diversity.

Both are sponsored by Cargill and are free and open to the public.

• More than 50 Midwest companies will participate in the Career Fair from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 10.  The companies are seeking professionals who hold or are working toward the minimum of a bachelor’s degree, college students, veterans and professionals in business, engineering and information technology.
• The Career Services Center will be held 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 9, and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 10. It will offer one-to-one job-search services, including sessions dedicated to veterans and those currently serving in the military.

Career experts will help participants with résumés, elevator speeches, interview preparation and job-search strategies. Handouts will be available, including sample résumés and a guide to converting military terms to civilian terms.

Participants at a past Career Fair.

• The half-day seminar “Leaders in Veteran Employment” will run from 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday, April 9. The Multicultural Forum, in partnership with U.S. Bank and the U.S. Department of Labor, will provide information on military culture and state initiatives to help employers hire veterans.

The Multicultural Forum is presented by the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas in partnership with the National Black MBA Association Twin Cities.

More information can be found on the forum’s website, by phone at (651) 962-4377 or email at mcf@stthomas.edu.

The program features presentations and panel discussions by scholars, creative writers, graduate and undergraduate student researchers, and those in the helping professions. All sessions will be held in the auditorium, Room 126, of the John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts.

The program is sponsored by the university’s Center for Irish Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Sociology Department, and Family Studies Program. The Irish Genealogical Society International also is a sponsoring organization. The program can be viewed here.

Dr. Brigittine French

Dr. Brigittine French of Grinnell College will open the symposium with a keynote address titled “Anthropologists Look at the Irish Family: Solidarity and Strife, Conflict and Cooperation.” French, who has just returned from a Fulbright Fellowship at Dublin City University, is the social science representative of the American Conference for Irish Studies. She has presented numerous lectures and conference papers on Irish identity formation and on conflict resolution in the early Irish Free State.

Later panels will include sessions on “Therapists’ Perspectives on the Irish Family,” “Literary Images of Vocation in Irish Life,” and “Mothers and Fathers in Irish Life Writing.” There also will be two sessions involving creative writers. In one, memoirists Nick Hayes, Brian Nerney, Marge Barrett and Fred Nairn will discuss “Shame and Respectability in the Irish Family.”

The program will conclude with a session called “The Last Word Belongs to Poets,” in which local writers (including Pat Barone, William Cavanaugh, Ethna McKiernan and Mike Finley) will read original poems about their families.

The luncheon speaker is Dr. Patrick O’Donnell of Normandale Community College; he will speak on “Tyrone Guthrie’s Remarkable Family.”

Registration is $12 for the general public, or free with a St. Thomas ID. (A buffet lunch is available for an additional $12, and must be ordered at the time of registration.) Registrations are handled through the Tommie Central website.

For more information contact Jim Rogers, director of the Center for Irish Studies, (612) 962-5662 or jrogers@stthomas.edu.

Jacqueline Woodson

Two well-known authors of books for youngsters – Jacqueline Woodson and David LaRochelle – will be featured at the 21st annual Hubbs Children’s Literature Conference Saturday, Feb. 23, on the downtown Minneapolis campus of University of St. Thomas.

The conference is open to anyone: authors, illustrators, teachers, parents, storytellers, librarians, students and others interested in encouraging the use of quality children’s literature in homes, schools and communities.

Woodson, of Brooklyn, has won many of the top awards in the field of children’s literature. She has received three Newberry Honor Medals, a National Book Award, the Caldecott Medal, the Coretta Scott King Award and her Each Kindness was named Best Book of 2012 by the School Library Journal.

LaRochelle, of White Bear Lake, is a 1983 St. Olaf College graduate and former grade school teacher whose first book, A Christmas Guest, was published in 1988. He has since written or illustrated more than 25 books. His Best Pet of All won a Minnesota Book Award and was read aloud by Reese Witherspoon at the 2010 Easter Egg Roll at the White House.

David LaRochelle

The 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. conference includes talks by Woodson and LaRochelle and a series of breakout sessions. The Red Balloon Bookstore will be there with a collection of children’s books and literature available for purchase.

The conference is sponsored by the School of Education, part of St. Thomas’ College of Education, Leadership and Counseling, and is supported by an endowment by Margaret and the late Ronald Hubbs. The couple also provided funds for the St. Thomas libraries’ children’s literature collection.

The cost of the conference is $60 for general admission and $20 for students. Five continuing education units are available. To register or for more information contact St. Thomas at (651) 962-4441 or celcevents@stthomas.edu.

For more information visit the conference website.

John Inazu, a professor at Washington University Law School, will argue “yes.”

Nelson Tebbe, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, will argue “no.”

Free and open to the public, the forum is sponsored by the university’s Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy. A complimentary lunch will be served to those who register for the lunch program.

The Hot Topics: Cool Talk series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, focuses this year on the challenges of religious freedom in the United States and around the world.

John Inazu

In his book, The Four Freedoms and the Future of Religious Liberty, Inazu wrote that the First Amendment’s freedoms of speech, press, religion and assembly once reinforced each other: “They protected citizens from forced participation in state orthodoxy and created spaces for these citizens to generate and pursue ideas and ways of life apart from the watchful gaze of government. They protected, among other things, a pluralistic civil society that tolerated genuine disagreement and shielded private groups from the imposition of majoritarian norms.”

Nelson Tebbe

The Hot Topics: Cool talk debaters on March 8 will discuss whether these freedoms are crumbling under pressures of anti-discrimination measures and if religious groups are losing the constitutional protections they once enjoyed.

Tebbe teaches courses on constitutional law, religious freedom, legal theory and professional responsibility. He is immediate past chair of the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools and is co-organizer of the Annual Law and Religion Roundtable. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, he also holds a Ph.D. in the academic study of religion from the University of Chicago.

Inazu’s scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. His first book, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly, seeks to recover the role of assembly in American political and constitutional thought. He is a graduate of Duke University School of Law and holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina.

Rob Vischer, dean and professor at the St. Thomas School of law, will moderate the March 8 program. More information about the Hot Topics: Cool Talk series is available here.

The program has been approved by the Minnesota Board of Legal Education for an “elimination of bias” continuing-legal-education credit.

Free and open to the public, the forum is sponsored by the university’s Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy. A complimentary lunch will be served to those who register for the lunch program.

The Hot Topics: Cool Talk series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, focuses this year on the challenges of religious freedom in the United States and around the world. The Nov. 30 forum is titled “The Romeike Asylum Case: Does Germany’s Ban on Homeschooling Count as Religious Persecution?”

The forum will feature legal experts debating the case of Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children, ages 4 to 14. Starting in the fall of 2006, the parents began keeping their three oldest children out of school, which is illegal in Germany where attendance at an officially recognized school – public, private or religious – is mandatory.

When the Romeike family did not comply, officers showed up at their home in the town of Bissingen and took the children to school in a police van. Facing steep fines and threats that they could lose custody of their children, the parents emigrated to Morristown, Tenn., in 2008, and applied for political asylum the following year.

Luke Goodrich

Early in 2010, U.S. Immigration Judge Lawrence Burman granted asylum to the family, saying that “home-schoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution … therefore, they are eligible for asylum.”

David Abraham

The case was appealed by U.S. Immigration and Customs to the federal Board of Immigration Appeals; a decision is pending.

Presenting the case in favor of the family at the St. Thomas forum will be Luke Goodrich, legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has submitted an amicus brief supporting the Romeike’s asylum claim. Presenting the case against asylum will be David Abraham, a professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Miami School of Law.

Sarah Brenes, an attorney with Advocates for Human Rights and a former fellow with the St. Thomas School of Law Immigration Clinic, will moderate the discussion.

Information about the Hot Topics: Cool Talk series is available here.

The Minnesota Board of Legal Education has approved the program for a standard CLE credit.

The forum is being held in conjunction with the Journal of Law and Public Policy’s fall symposium, “Homeschooling: Rights and Tensions at Home and Abroad.” Symposium speakers include Dr. Dick Carpenter, director of strategic research for the Institute of Justice; Mary Rice Hasson, a fellow in the Ethics and Public Policy Center; and Michael Donnelly, the director of international affairs and staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Go to the UST Law event page for the complete symposium schedule.

Free and open to the public, the forum is co-sponsored by the St. Thomas Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center and the Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy.

The Hot Topics: Cool Talk series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, focuses this year on the challenges of religious freedom in the United States and around the world.

Abdulwahid Qalinle

Speaking at this fall’s second forum, titled “The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws: Muslim and Catholic Perspectives,” will be Abdulwahid Qalinle, a native of Somalia and adjunct associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Robert Vischer, professor and associate dean for academic affairs at St. Thomas’ School of Law.

Qalinle holds a master’s degree in Islamic, or Shariah, law, and law degrees from both the International Islamic University in Pakistan and the University of Minnesota Law School, where he directs the Islamic Law and Human Rights Program. Vischer graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is the author of two books and many journal articles that explore the intersection of law, religion and public policy.

Robert Vischer

The title for the Oct. 23 forum comes from Vischer’s article, “The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws,” published in First Things, the journal of The Institute on Religion and Public Life.

In the article, Vischer explains that Shariah means “the way to the watering place.” It refers to the correct way of practicing religion and rules that govern the lives of Muslims, including conduct between spouses, behavior at funerals and even etiquette.

“Though popular with secularists and religious conservatives, anti-Sharia legislation does not defend against theocracy but calls into question our society’s fundamental commitments to meaningful religious liberty and meaningful access to the courts,” Vischer wrote. “These commitments have been relied on by generations of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and Jews, and to try to remove them for Muslims both is unjust to Muslims and sets a dangerous precedent for other religious groups.”

Later in the article, Vischer writes: “Anti-Sharia legislation proposes an unconstitutional double standard. Canon law and biblical principles are not dirty words in the American court system, and Sharia should not be either.”

In an August 2011 Star Tribune article on “The Muslim Experience in Minnesota,” Qalinle said that bills submitted in some state legislatures to prohibit the use of Sharia “are quite pointless because there is no such thing as Shariah creeping into the legal system. … I think it is being motivated by a sheer confusion and misunderstanding of Muslims and Islam and Shariah.”

Qalinle, who immigrated to the United States 12 years ago, said the U.S. Constitution “is the law that I chose to live under, and so are all the Muslims who are here.”

Information about the Hot Topics: Cool Talk series is available at this website.

The Minnesota Board of Legal Education has approved the Oct. 23 program for one “elimination of bias” continuing-legal-education credit.

The Cool Talk series is sponsored by the university’s Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy.

The series, which explores Catholic positions and other perspectives on provocative issues of law and policy, will focus this year on the challenges of religious freedom around the world and address topics such as anti-Sharia laws in the United States, religious freedom and progressive politics, and public education, vouchers and charter schools.

“There is much to be discussed about religious freedom at this point in our history – beyond the current U.S. flash points emerging from the controversy surrounding the health-care mandate,” said Dr. Don Briel, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Thomas.

Bishop Charles Morerod

“It’s important to examine the many threats to religious liberty around the world so we can better understand what freedoms are at stake both here and abroad. It is timely, too, as we approach the 50th anniversary of one of the most significant documents of the Second Vatican Council – Dignitatus Humanae – the Declaration on Religious Freedom. The preparatory discussions for the document, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965, began in 1962,” he said.

Speaking at the first lecture in this year’s series will be the Most Rev. Charles Morerod, 50, who since November has been bishop of the diocese of Fribourg, Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland. He will speak on “Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom: The View from Europe.”

Prior to his appointment as a bishop in Switzerland, Morerod spent 15 years in Rome, most recently as rector of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also called the Angelicum. He also has served as secretary general of the International Theological Commission and as a consultant to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In June he was named to the Congregation for Catholic Education.

A member of the Dominican order and a native of Switzerland, Morerod was ordained a priest in 1988. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Toulouse and a doctorate in theology from the University of Fribourg. An editor of the journal “Nova et Vetera,” he has written on the doctrinal and philosophical aspects of ecumenism.

While serving at the Angelicum, Morerod was academic director of the Rome program for University of St. Thomas’ Catholic studies students.

For information about future programs in the series, including an Oct. 23 program on the dangers of anti-Sharia laws, visit the Terrence J. Murphy Institute website.

Application has been made for an “elimination of bias” continuing-legal-education credit.

Related “Hot Topics: Cool Talk” program: Sept. 25 lunch and forum

Bishop Charles Morerod, along with Father Reginald Whitt, O.P., a professor of law at St. Thomas, will discuss “Vatican II on Religious Freedom: European and American Perspectives” at a 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. luncheon program on Tuesday, Sept. 25, in Room 235 of the School of Law on St. Thomas’ Minneapolis campus.

The lunch and program are free and open to the public but registration is required. To register and for more information, visit the Terrence J. Murphy Institute website.

A poster session featuring displays about programs designed to improve the health and well-being of Minnesotans will run from 3 to 6:30 p.m.

“Getting Communities Into Action,” a panel discussion led by Dr. Ed Ehlinger, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health, will run from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Panelists will include representatives from:

• Heartsbeatback, the Heart of New Ulm project.
• Hennepin Health, Hennepin County’s integrated health network.
• Do.town, a collaboration of Bloomington, Edina, Richfield, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.
• Healthy Community Partnership, sponsored by Allina Health System.

The panel discussion will be followed by comments from Dave Durenberger, former U.S. senator and now senior health policy fellow at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business.

Dr. Regina Benjamin
U.S. Surgeon General

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin will give the closing remarks. Benjamin, who holds an M.B.A. from Tulane University, studied medicine at the University of Alabama and the Morehouse School of Medicine. She oversees 6,500 uniformed public health officers in the United States and around the world.

“I strongly believe in the importance of empowering individuals to make healthy choices,” Benjamin said recently. “That’s one of four strategic directions of the National Prevention Strategy that aims to transform our health care system into one that rewards prevention.”

The program is free and open to the public, but registration is required. For information on how to register, send an email to medmba@stthomas.edu.

“Healthy Minnesota: Communities in Action” is being organized by the Health Care MBA Program in the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas in conjunction with the Minnesota Public Health Association. The event is being coordinated by two students in the MBA program, Laura Templin-Howk and Tina Morey.

The program’s premier sponsors are Allina Health System; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, a nonprofit independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Cardinal Health; the Midwest ENT Foundation; Prime Therapeutics; St. Francis Regional Medical Center; and UnitedHealth Group.