Glen Ayres, College of Business, has been elected to a two-year term as president of the Family Firm Institute. He is an attorney at the law firm Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis and is a national family business consultant. He is a founding member of the Center for Family Enterprise at St. Thomas. The Family Firm Institute is an international professional organization dedicated to assisting family firms by increasing the interdisciplinary skills and knowledge of family business advisers, educators, researchers and consultants.
Dan Gjelten, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center, was one of 41 academic librarians and information technology professionals chosen to attend the Frye Leadership Institute in June. The institute is an intensive, two-week residential program at Emory University in Atlanta. Participants are selected competitively from a pool of nominated candidates (who this year represented colleges and universities from the United States, Australia, France and South Africa). Frye fellows conduct a practicum during the year following the two-week program. Gjelten's work during the coming year will be focused on the challenges presented by new organizational structures and new professional roles for those who work with libraries and information technology in higher education. Results of the work completed on the practicums are shared at a short seminar at the end of the year. Gjelten served on a panel discussing the Frye experience at this year's Educause conference, also held in Atlanta.
Dr. Mel Gray, Economics Department, and Dr. Jone Cherbo, senior research fellow in arts policy and administration at the Ohio State University, havae been awarded a contract by the National Endowment for the Arts to conduct analyses of the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. NEA sponsors the SPPA every five years, and Gray and cherbo have conducted analyses of prior surveys. Their task this time is to produce a research report/monogaph focusing on classical music in the United States.
Dr. Michael Hennessey, Programs in Engineering and Technology Management, presented a paper, "Galleries of CAD-Generated Imagery," with A.C. Jaedike and P.S. Rhode at the 2002 North Midwest Section annual conference of the American Society of Engineering Education Oct. 10-12 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Cornelia Horn, Theology Department, recently presented two papers at national and international conferences. At the 16th annual meeting of the North American Paristics Society in Chicago, she delivered a paper, "Fighting With the Devil: The Central Function of Women in John Rufus' Anti-Chalcedonian Polemics." At the international Second Chicago Conference on Caucasia, held at the University of Chicago, she presented a paper, "From Syriac Into Armenian: Food for Body and Soul in Ephraem the Syrian's Armenian Poetry." The second paper's co-author is Robert Phenix Jr., an independent scholar from St. Paul.
Dr. Ellen Kennedy, Marketing Department and coordinator of service-learning, conducted two workshops at the recent meeting of the National Society for Experiential Education. The first was an invited session introducing service-learning and explaining the rationale, reviewing "best practices" and giving examples of its implementation at the University of St. Thomas. The second workshop presented information about the Ascension Parish Project, which is St. Thomas' multidisciplinary service-learning work with the Church of the Ascension in North Minneapolis, the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest, and the Jay Phillips Center for Jewish-Christian Learning. This project involves 12 UST faculty in eight disciplines and serves as a model for other service-learning projects here and at other institutions.
Joe Landsberger, Information Resources and Technologies, has revised and reformatted the Study Guides Web site. It now includes menu categories of "learning with others" (collaborative learning, conflict management, tutoring, peer mediation) and "project skills" (research, organization and presentation). With a grant from Sung Kyun Kwan University, the oldest university in the Koreas, Dr. Jung-Mo Lee and his staff translated guides to the Korean section. Professor Daniel H.P. Borocci of Rio Negro, Argentina, translated and contributed 15 guides to the Spanish section. Dr. Richard Rashio, UST Department of Modern and Classical Languages, reviewed the Spanish section for grammar and usage. Marta Kotonova, a St. Thomas undergraduate from the Czech Republic, translated and contributed 15 guides to the Czech section. Christophe Touzelet, UST undergraduate student from France, reviewed the French section for grammar and usage. Dr. Larry Spence of Pennsylvania Sate University, contributed the manual, "Problem-Based Learning: Lead to Learn, Learn to Lead," to the Web site without reproduction restrictions and is collaborating on the development of PSU's summary guide for the Web site. Spence led the summer 2002 St. Thomas seminar on problem-based learning.
MERLOT, a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students in higher education, rated the Study Guides Web site 4.33 out of a possible score of 5. Selected guides have been adapted for print publication in "Focus on Florida: Writing Paragraphs and Essays" (Houghton Mifflin Co.); the National Council of Teachers of English; the U.S. Bureau of the Census' Census Corporate University student handbook; the Oklahoma Society of CPAs student newsletter; Teen Graffiti magazine, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education for incoming international students.
Landsberger was a featured speaker on electronic learning resources in the development of the federally funded Commonwealth Center for Instructional Technology and Learning for the University of Kentucky's Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling.
He also has received $8,000 in grants from the City of Dt. Paul's Cultural STAR program, Riverfront Development Corp and the Abraham and Lillian Rosenberg Foundation to further develop the North HighBridge Park in St. Paul. One project will be the installation of the baptisimal gate of St. Stanislaus Catho
lic Church as the park's first historic and cultural artifact, with a design by West Side artist Craig David. Since the church has burned and been rebuilt several times, the gate's origin is being researched. The neighborhood project seeks to raise $20,000 to complete its three phases.
Dr. Richard Raschio, Modern and Classical Languages Department, attended the annual conference of the National Society of Experiential Education Oct. 2-5 in Las Vegas. He also was a member of a panel of parents of students at eh Adams Spanish Immersion School in St. Paul; discussants presented their concerns about the changing demographis in the student population that has necessitated a need to re-evaluate the initial philosophy of one-way immersion and the extra burden placed on thee school to accommodate the learning needs of non-English-speaking students.
Dr. Susan Smith-Cunnien, Sociology Department, completed her term as past president and was elected treasurer of Sociologists of Minnesota at its annual meeting Oct. 3-4 in St. Cloud.
