Ursinus students, and faculty and staff and their families are all welcome to take part in the first Holiday Hunt, sponsored by the Collegeville Main Street Program Promotions Committee.

The Holiday Hunt is designed to attract people to local businesses to see what they have to offer, promote Collegeville and to arouse spirit for the season.

The Holiday Hunt begins Nov. 27 and ends on Dec. 18. It is similar to a scavenger hunt in that participants obtain entry forms from the first floor of the Ursinus Art House residence, the participating Main Street businesses, or at the Main Street office at 476 E. Main Street.  They then visit the Main Street merchants to find holiday-related articles. Participants note on the entry form where they found the items and when done, deposit the entry form into a box with their name and e-mail address to be considered for prizes.  The grand prize is valued at over $400.

For more information on the Collegeville Main Street Program or the Holiday Hunt contact Linda Flederbach, Main Street Manager, at 610-454-1050 or via e-mail at manager@collegevilledevelopment.org. Visit www.collegevilledevelopment.org<=""> for more information.

Ursinus’ Breakaway Student Productions will present Bertolt Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Szechuan,” Thursday, Dec. 3, through Saturday, Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center’s Studio Theater.  Admission is $2 for all.  Please call 610-409-3785 for reservations or more information.

Breakaway Student Productions are produced, directed, designed and performed by Ursinus students.  The selection of Brecht’s play is an outgrowth of the 2009 Ursinus College Summer Fellows research of Mark Smedberg, Class of 2010, who will direct the play’s cast of 18 students.   Smedberg’s research is titled “The Reality of Illusion:  Brecht’s Performance Techniques and Their Effect on His Audiences.”   His faculty mentor is Beverly Redman, assistant professor of theater and dance at Ursinus.

Breakway Student Productions is an organization devoted to theater.  Its goal is to develop a community that is fully committed to theater and live arts on campus. 

 The Ursinus College Choir will present its annual performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 5, in Bomberger Auditorium on the Collegeville campus.

John French, holder of the Heefner Chair of Music, will conduct, and featured soloists will include Leslie Johnson, soprano; Robert O’Neill, countertenor; Kenneth Garner, tenor; and Reginald Pindell, bass.

Admission is $15. For tickets, please contact Cathy Bogusky at (610) 409-3000, ext. 3583.

For three days Nov. 4 through 6, a team from Washington College is visiting the Ursinus campus as part of the Teagle project to assess and enhance diversity initiatives on campus.

Last year The Teagle Foundation of New York awarded a $300,000 grant to five liberal arts colleges, for a project to assess and enhance the impact of diversity initiatives on student engagement and student learning.

The collaborative includes Ursinus and Washington & Jefferson colleges, in Pennsylvania, and Goucher, McDaniel, and Washington colleges, in Maryland. The multi-year project will use campus teams to assess current diversity initiatives and make changes to integrate findings into the college curriculum and into the daily lives of the students. Application for the highly competitive grant was by invitation.

The site visit model allows a team from each campus to visit another campus each year, and also host a team from the collaborative, to better understand how students, faculty and staff experience the diversity initiatives on the campus. The teams are assessing how the stated mission on campus actually is lived.  From these visits, and the recommendations from them, each campus will determine what changes to implement on their campus. The answers will be used to propel campus-wide enhancements to the initiatives on each participating campus.

The Washington College visiting team schedule includes meeting with 11 focus groups. These include first year students; members of student organizations; Bridge program participants; juniors and seniors; tenured faculty; Resident Assistants, Athletics staff, tenure track faculty; student members of diversity organization; Student Life staff; and aculty who teach diversity/global courses.

They present their findings Friday to the UC Home Team. The assessment is ongoing.

Polymer expert  and “green” manufacturing pioneer Joseph M. DeSimone, a 1986 graduate of Ursinus College, will give the Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia Nov. 19. The lecture, titled Bridging Fields and Harnessing Diversity for the Sake of Innovation, will be at 6 p.m., with a 7 p.m. reception. It is free and open to the public. Registration, by Nov. 12, can be completed at www.chemheritage.org by clicking “Events.”The building is located at 315 Chestnut St., Philadelphia.

The Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture emphasizes the positive role that chemistry and related sciences play in our lives. DeSimone has pioneered solutions in green manufacturing and promising applications in gene therapy, drug delivery, and medical devices. He is the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the William R. Kenan Jr., Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina. He is also the co-principal investigator of the Carolina Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, funded by the National Cancer Institute.

DeSimone is the 2008 recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Prize for his groundbreaking ideas, including using polymers to develop technology for a stent which could eliminate the need for a permanent prosthetic.  He is also working on linking “green” chemistry to new cancer therapies, imaging techniques and other endeavors.  He has mentored countless students, and authored numerous articles.

 He was born in Norristown Pa., and is a graduate of Perkiomen Valley High School.  He chose Ursinus for its polymer chemistry course, and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

The Ullyot Public Affairs lecture is presented by the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia and Delaware Sections of the American Chemical Society, Department of Chemistry of the University of Pennsylvania, and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of the Sciences Philadelphia.

Davide Rondoni will read from his poetry Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. in Bomberger auditorium on campus. The event is free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary.

Rondoni is the author of a dozen books of poetry, several critical books, and is a translator of Baudelaire, with a regular presence on Italian television. He founded, and directs, the Center for Contemporary Poetry at the University of Bologna.

Considered a major voice in Italian poetry today, Rondoni will read alongside his translator, Gregory Pell, associate professor of Italian literature and language at Hofstra University. In addition to reading poems, they will answer questions about the translation process.

The Ursinus College Dance Company will present its fall concert, Thursday through Saturday, Nov. 19 through 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater on the Collegeville campus.

Tickets are $5 for general admission and $2 for students and senior citizens.  For more information and reservations, please call 610-409-3795.

The program will feature new works by Chris Aiken, associate professor of dance at Ursinus; Duane Holland, assistant artistic director of Rennie Harris Puremovement;  Marianela Boan, Cuban choreographer, and excepts from Danny Buraczeski’s “Swing Concerto.” 

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has given Ursinus College $279,100 for faculty development initiatives that will support faculty in several stages of their careers.

The Faculty Career Enhancement grant will allow the creation of a Teaching and Learning Initiative for junior faculty, in addition to a series of grants and workshops designed to help mid-career faculty. The grant, which will run over three academic years, has as a third component a program to develop faculty leadership.

The Teaching and Learning Initiative (TLI) will offer junior faculty constructive ways to strive for teaching excellence. Meredith Goldsmith, assistant professor of English, who helped obtain the grant with Professor of History Dallett Hemphill, explains that meetings and programs will help cultivate a culture of teaching and discussions of syllabus planning and  a web presence with a blog on teaching techniques. Many junior faculty are making a transition from assistantships to balancing multiple preparations and their own scholarly agendas; some are adapting to the environment of a small college after teaching at large research institutions; and some, especially those in small departments, assume service responsibilities in addition to teaching and research. Help will be offered in interpreting student evaluations, taping or visiting a class and in reacting to student feedback.

The second initiative would support faculty to initiate, finish and publish new scholarship after their dissertations. The faculty, intent on continuing student achievement, is also eager to produce and disseminate scholarly and creative works, which provide models for, and enrich student achievement. New projects require a period of background work, from study of the literature in a new field, to visits to research facilities, to preparation of proposals for external grants to supplement the sabbatical.  Supplemental Research Grants will support such work through a special summer grant or course release. Some grants will be available to support a semester free of teaching duties to allow a faculty member to finish a book. 

Over the last decade, Ursinus has become a changed institution. More than half of the faculty has been recruited in the last 10 years, and the interdisciplinary freshman course, The Common Intellectual Experience, is in its 10th year. As senior faculty adjust to a changing institution and as newly-tenured faculty join the ranks of department or program heads and committee chairs, they will be able to share best practices on leadership and governance at Ursinus and elsewhere. 

 The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College is the recipient of several works by the artist Ben Wilson (1913-2001), who is known for   his personal style of Abstract Expressionism.

 The gift of eight large oil paintings, two drawings, and a sketch   pad was made by the artist’s daughter, Joanne Jaffe, from the  Ben and Evelyn Wilson Foundation. It is one of 50 such gifts  Jaffe has made of her father’s paintings and the sculpture of her  mother, Evelyn Wilson, to museums and colleges and universities.

Wilson began his career in the 1930s, and was an artist for the Works Progress Administration, working in an expressionistic figurative style. His early paintings from the 1930s to the 1950s reflect the artist’s agonized response to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the psychological aftermath. In the late 1950s, as world conditions improved, his spirits lifted and his paintings became increasingly abstract and colorful. He remained faithful to his own, very personal style of Abstract Expressionism for the next forty years.

Wilson graduated from City College, now part of CUNY, in 1935. He also studied at the National Academy of Design, and the Academie Julien in Paris. He taught in his studios in Manhattan and Ridgefield, N.J., had 30 solo exhibitions and participated in dozens of group shows.

Berman Museum director Lisa Hanover has chosen, for the museum collection, paintings that reflect high points for Wilson’s 60-year career as a painter, including Lamentation, 1945, representing  his early figurative work. The other works cover a spectrum from the 1960s through the late 1980s.

Admiring Wilson’s inventiveness as a draftsman, Hanover also selected two lively drawings, and a sketch pad. “There’s no better way to see how an artist thinks than by looking at his sketchpad,” she said. “Wilson’s drawings, like his paintings, reveal a tremendous fertility of imagination. He was a real virtuoso.”

Assuming responsibility for her parents’ art estates in 2006, Jaffe first turned her attention to her mother’s sculptures and began making gifts from Evelyn Wilson’s extensive “Community of Women” series, small “table-top” ceramic sculptures depicting single figures, intimate groupings of women, and mothers and children. She contacted  museums, university art museums and galleries, and Women’s Studies programs, donating several hundred sculptures. The Berman Museum was the recipient, last fall, of a gift of five pieces from Evelyn Wilson’s “Community” series. Jaffe welcomes inquiries about her father’s paintings from universities and museums.  She can be contacted at jojaf@aol.com.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and  noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Museum is closed Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500.

(Caption, above left: Flowering, 38x48 inches, oil on panel)

(Caption, above right: Fall of Ptolemy, 51x72 inches, oil on canvas)

The Ursinus Jazz Ensemble will present a concert on Saturday, Oct. 31, in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater at 4 p.m., earlier than traditionally scheduled.  The concert is free, open to the public, and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Holly Gaines, assistant professor of music, will conduct a program including swing, ballads, Latin and funk styles for big band.  Classic works by Miles Davis, Count Basie and Charles Mingus will be performed as well as modern compositions by Don Menza, Don Sebesky, Les Hooper and Victor Lopez. Vocalist Carly Freedman, Class of 2011, will be featured on works by Gershwin and Harry Warren.

 Ursinus College’s Escape Velocity Dance Company will present an all-new show of works choreographed, performed and produced by Ursinus dance students on  Thursday, Oct. 29, through Saturday, Oct. 31, in the Floy Lewis Bakes Center Dance Studio.  Shows are set for 6 and 8:30 p.m. on Thursday; 6 p.m. on Friday and 1 and 3 p.m. on Saturday. A $1 admission is charged for all shows.  For information and reservations, please e-mail evdt@ursinus.edu.

The production is titled “Timeless,” and Escape Velocity’s all-student choreographers, dancers and producers will interpret “time” through a variety of dance forms.

Photographer Alida Fish will present an Ursinus College Distinguished Artist lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. in Olin Hall, Room 108, on the Ursinus campus.
 
Fish is known for her use of traditional, historical and digital processes in bringing her work to life.  A recent exhibition titled “Invented Worlds,” shown at the Delaware Art Museum, included  Ektacolor prints with hand-applied dyes and enamel, silver prints, and wet-plate collodion tintypes.

Fish is a professor of media arts at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts where she teaches classes in photography, film and animation.  She has exhibited her work internationally in more than 30 individual and 150 group exhibitions. She has won many prestigious awards, including an Individual Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994, a Visiting Artist Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome in 2004, and a Master’s Fellowship from the Delaware State Arts Council in 2008.

British organist Roger Sayer will present a Heefner Organ Recital on Sunday, Oct. 25, at 4 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium on the Ursinus College campus.  The event is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Currently organist of Rochester Cathedral (UK) and director of the Rochester Choral Society, Sayer began his musical career as a chorister in Portsmouth. He went on to study at the Royal College of Music under the late Nicholas Danby, winning all the major organ prizes. Between 1980 and 1984 he was organ student at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and in 1981 was appointed organist of Woodford Parish Church, where he built up a fine musical tradition.  Since graduating he has been constantly in demand as an organist and conductor.

Sayer makes regular visits to Scandinavia as well as giving numerous concerts in most parts of Europe and the USA. Recently these included performances in St Paul's Cathedral London in the Celebrity Series and Riverside Church in New York.  His concerts in many parts of the world have included the organ symphonies of Vierne and all the Organ Works of Durufle. In 2009, his performances have taken him to Iceland, Italy, France, Germany and U.S.A.  He accompanies many choirs including the world famous Tenebrae.

Sayer has made numerous highly acclaimed recordings both as an organist and conductor.  His third release in the Classic Selection series is due for release later this year.

Ursinus College students have organized a candidates’ forum to be held Oct. 14 in Olin Auditorium in F.W. Olin Hall, on campus, at 7 p.m.

Among the area candidates for various offices, participants expected include candidates running for Judge of Elections, and candidates running for Collegeville Borough Council.

The public is invited. The forum is being sponsored by SIFE, Students in Free Enterprise, aninternational, non-profit organization that looks to create an economic opportunity for others by doing community outreach projects that focus on market economics, financial literacy, success skills, entrepreneurship, business ethics, and environmental sustainability.  The Ursinus College Democrats, and Ursinus College Republicans are co-sponsoring the forum.

State Sen. John C. Rafferty and State Rep Mike Vereb are holding a town meeting for Ursinus students Oct. 22 at 6 p.m. in Olin 107.

The session will allow students, faculty and staff meet with the state legislators to discuss the issues facing Pennsylvania, and to have an open forum to interact with the elected officials.

Sen. Rafferty, a former state Deputy Attorney General, represents the residents of Pennsylvania's 44th Senatorial District, which includes parts of Berks, Chester and Montgomery counties.  He was re-elected for a second term with the Senate in November of 2006. His top legislative priorities include reducing the property tax burden, protecting our environment, reducing health care costs, providing quality care for senior citizens, fighting prescription drug abuse and insuring that our police and firefighters have the resources they need to do their jobs.

Sen. Rafferty serves as Chairman of the Senate Law & Justice Committee and is a member of Appropriations, Banking and Insurance, Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure, Judiciary, and Transportation committees.  Prior to running for the Senate, Senator Rafferty served as an attorney in private practice, focusing on education, real estate, zoning and business and estates law.  As Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth from 1988 to 1991, he was responsible for the Criminal Law Division and Grand Jury Investigations.
Rep. Vereb was elected to represent the 150th Legislative District in November 2006. As a state lawmaker, he advocates working to achieve true property tax reform for all Pennsylvanians, preserving valuable open space and improving regional traffic planning.

Public service has long been a calling. He served as president of the West Norriton Board of Commissioners, where he worked to make government more responsive and accountable to the taxpayers by holding the line on taxes, preserving open space and supporting first responders.

The Montgomery County native served as a board member-at-large for the West Norriton Little League, a member of the Hancock Fire Company, a member of the Pastoral Council for Visitation BVM, a board member for Visitation BVM Children Youth Organization and an advisory board member for the Norristown Police Athletic League. He has 20 years of combined law enforcement and corporate security experience.

John Churchill, head of the national office of Phi Beta Kappa, will speak at an Ursinus College event celebrating the 10th Anniversary of its renowned Common Intellectual Experience.  The event will be held on Monday, Oct. 12, at 7 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater.  The event is free and open to the public.

Known as the "CIE" on campus, Ursinus’ Common Intellectual Experience provides a broad-based common experience to give first-year students the written and communications skills, and the scientific, cultural, and historical literacy that are fundamental to a liberally educated person.  CIE has been praised by Newsweek/Kaplan and the publishers of other respected college guides.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a former Rhodes Scholar, John Churchill provides leadership for the nation’s oldest academic honorary society and its mission to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences.   Churchill held the positions of professor of philosophy, Dean and Interim President at Hendrix College before becoming Assistant American Secretary to the Rhodes Scholarship Trust in 1972.  He has been active in selecting Rhodes Scholars since then.  His column “From the Desk of the Secretary” appears regularly in Phi Beta Kappa’s quarterly, The Key Reporter.

Leading Saudi Arabian authority Robert Lacey will speak at Ursinus College Thursday Oct. 15 at 4:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater. The historian and author of  the respected and celebrated The Kingdom: Arabia & The House of Sa'ud will deliver The Wright Lecture on Middle Eastern Affairs.

Lacey’s new book, a follow up to his 1981 study of Saudi Arabia, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (Viking), will be released Oct. 19. Copies of the book will be available after the Ursinus lecture. In “Inside the Kingdom,” Lacey traces the history of U.S.-Saudi relations, from the partnership formed during the Persian Gulf War to its deterioration in the wake of 9/11. Tom Brokaw has called Inside the Kingdom:  “Dazzling—on every level.”

Lacey, a British journalist and bestselling author who has become one of the most sought-after resources on Saudi Arabia, recently partnered with NOW on PBS for a documentary titled “Rehab for Terrorists,” which explores Saudi Arabia’s controversial terrorist rehabilitation program. He is also an advisor on the upcoming IMAX Theatre film, Arabia 3D, which will open in 2010. He is the author of the bestselling books Majesty and Ford: The Men and the Machine, among others. In 1979, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia for 18 months to research his new book, which was banned by the Saudis.

From the dramatic seizure of the Grand Mosque in Jeddah in 1979 to the deepening of U.S.-Saudi relations during the Persian Gulf War and the alienation and eventual rise to power of Saudi radicals like Osama bin Ladin, Inside the Kingdom presents a picture of a society trying to recover from the past. Lacey details the shifting winds of U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, from the Bush years to the Clinton administration to the establishment of a post-9/11 relationship. The book also focuses on the steps Saudi Arabia is taking to quell the rise of terrorism on its homeland.

The Walter Livingston Wright III Lectureship was established in 2006 by Walter Livingston Wright III, Ursinus Class of 1954, to provide enhanced opportunities for student and faculty enrichment in Middle Eastern affairs, past and present.

Two Ursinus College Music Department professors will offer a recital Sunday, Oct. 11, at 4 p.m. in Bomberger auditorium.

Saxophonist Holly Gaines and pianist John French, holder of the Heefner Chair of Music at Ursinus, will perform music by Handel, Robert Schumann, Pedro Iturralde, and Christopher Scinto.

The duo has given recitals in Philadelphia and throughout the region.

Dr. Gaines holds a music education degree from Quincy University and Western Illinois University and received her Ph.D. in saxophone performance from Ball State University. She has published articles and presented papers at conferences of the North American Saxophone Alliance, and has researched and written on early American women saxophonists.

Dr. French is the associate conductor of The Mendelssohn Club of Philadelpohia and  organist/choirmaster at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. He holds degrees from Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, Westminster Choir College and University of Cincinnati.

The duo collaborated recently on a CD, Music of Kathryne E. Thompson, who was a musician in the 1920s.

The 2nd Annual Community Investment Conference, "It Takes a Village to Raise a Village," will be held at Ursinus on Oct. 20 in Olin Hall.  The conference, presented by SUN Consulting & Associates, will provide a forum where community and civic leaders, staff of non-profit organizations, members of businesses, and government agencies can exchange information, share ideas, form new relationships, and build strategic alliances.  Workshops and plenary sessions will offer practical tools that will enrich participants as well as the communities they serve.  Community members and students are welcome to register.  Information can be found at www.sunconsult.net. 

The internationally-recognized jazz dance choreographer and teacher Danny Buraczeski will offer a master class in jazz technique on Saturday, Oct. 10, at 10:30 a.m. in the Floy Lewis Bakes Center Dance Studio.  This advanced class is geared to students age 16 or older.  Please contact Carol Royce at 610-409-3000, ext. 2352, to reserve your space in the class before 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9th. This event is  free and open to local residents.

Pictured: Original Swing Concerto

Last spring, the Ursinus Dance Department was awarded $10,000 from the American Masterpieces: Dance-College Component, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with Dance/USA, for the restaging of Swing Concerto , a 1993 piece for nine dancers, choreographed by Buraczeski. The American Masterpieces College Grant to reconstruct and perform a designated American dance masterpiece also includes support for master classes, as well as performances by Ursinus dance students. Swing Concerto is being restaged by Cathy Young of the Ursinus dance faculty, with Buraczeski. Excerpts from the piece will be performed by the Ursinus Dance Company Nov. 19 through Nov. 21, at 7:30 p.m., in the Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater. For information and reservations, call 610-409-3795.

After a career on Broadway, Buraczeski formed the company JAZZDANCE by Danny Buraczeski, which has performed all over the United States and internationally. He is now on the faculty at Southern Methodist University.  As a dancer in Minneapolis, Young was an assistant for Buraczeski, and danced in the original performances of the piece.”

The Philadelphia Water Color Society 109th Anniversary International Exhibition of Works on Paper will open in the Main Gallery of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College on Saturday, Oct. 3.   The exhibition will run through Dec. 18.

(Caption for image, left: Love Lies Bleeding, 30 x 22, Doris Davis-Glackin)  

Several special events have been scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition.  A Reception and Awards Ceremony will be held on Sunday, Oct. 18, from 2 to 4 p.m.  A Watercolor Demonstration by Andrew Kish III is set for Sunday, Nov. 1, from 1 to 3 p.m., and a Gallery Talk by Lisa Tremper Hanover, director of the Berman Museum, will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 11, at 4 p.m.

Juror of Selection, Stephen Quiller, AWS, NWS reviewed over 400 entries to create an installation of 80 works on paper.  Juror of Awards M. Stephen Doherty, has designated over $6,000 in prizes for outstanding achievement.  Internationally known, Quiller was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Berman Museum of Art in 1999 and is the author of five books focused on his approach to color and composition.  Doherty is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of American Artist, Watercolor, Drawing and Workshop magazines.  He is a painter in the Plein Air Tradition and has written dozens of magazine articles and several art books.  This exhibition marks the 5th collaboration between the Berman Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Water Color Society.

 The exhibition is the fifth collaboration between the Berman Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Water Color Society.  The exhibition and all special events are free and open to the public.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and  noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Museum is closed Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and annual support from Epps Advertising.

Ursinus College is pleased to welcome new Senior Vice President for Advancement Jill Leauber Marsteller 1978, who has more than 20 years of successful fundraising experience for major educational institutions in Pennsylvania.

Marsteller, an alumna of Ursinus College, joins the selective liberal arts college administration after serving as Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, where she oversaw the successful completion of a $100 million fundraising effort and led several new and effective marketing and communications initiatives.

“I have been watching Jill’s growth as an advancement professional ever since she left Ursinus,” said President John Strassburger. “I was delighted to see an Ursinus alumna become one of the half-dozen most accomplished collegiate fundraisers and managers in the country. I am also pleased she has stayed in touch with us.  She knows us well and in finishing a consultancy here already is accelerating our forward progress.  Equally important, her passion for our approach to liberal education -- her enthusiasm for our unvarnished focus on fostering student achievement -- means she will be another powerful voice on our behalf with constituencies all around the country.  I could not be more pleased that she is returning to her alma mater at this vital time in the college’s history.”

Her most recent achievements in higher education include serving in 2007 as President of Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pa., and as Vice President of Institutional Advancement for eight years at Haverford College.  At Haverford, Marsteller contributed to the most dynamic period of programmatic growth in Haverford's history, leading a successful $200 million capital campaign, revamping many philanthropic programs and initiating the first comprehensive international efforts of the college.

As leader and chief strategist of Haverford’s most ambitious campaign in the college’s history, she led an effort that doubled annual giving, while significantly increasing alumni participation, and through philanthropy enabled the creation of three new integrated academic centers, including a Gold LEED-certified $28 million athletic facility; $25 million additional dollars for financial aid, and $10 million for new programs to address diversity and globalization issues. As a result, Haverford was recognized with a Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) award for the most improved fundraising programs. She was also responsible for developing new faculty initiatives, overseeing a branding initiative which enhanced visibility, energizing and increasing alumni activity and events and establishing the first comprehensive Parents’ Program at the college.

Marsteller also served as Vice President for University Advancement at Lehigh University, and in various positions at Lehigh from 1995 to 2000, where she led the transition team overseeing the introduction of Lehigh's 12th president; secured a $25 million gift to name the College of Engineering, the largest single gift in Lehigh's history; and oversaw the opening, fundraising and programming for the Zoellner Arts Center, now in its 12th year of operation.
She has been a consultant to various organizations and foundations including the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, The Haverford School, Haverford, Pa., The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, New York, N.Y., and Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, Ct.

She returns to Ursinus, where she began her advancement career in the Ursinus Development Office in the late 1980s and early 1990s, contributing to the successful outcomes of two major capital campaigns.  During that same period she served as an adjunct lecturer in the Ursinus English department.

Marsteller received her bachelor’s degree from Ursinus in 1978, graduating cum laude with honors in English. She received her master’s degree in English from Villanova University in 1980.

Her many community activities recently include membership in The Forum for Executive Women, Trustee and Development Committee Chair of  the Perkiomen School, and membership and leadership in a wide swath of professional advancement and higher education associations.

Karen Arenson, a journalist who worked as a reporter and editor at The New York Times from 1978 to 2008, will speak about her experiences in a lecture titled “Writers’ Lives:  Reporting and Editing at the New York Times” in Ursinus College’s Musser Auditorium, Pfahler Hall, on Sept. 23, at 4:45 p.m. 

Her visit is as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges. The Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program has brought prominent artists, diplomats, journalists, business leaders, and other nonacademic professionals to campuses for week-long residencies of teaching and dialogue with students and faculty members, to create better understanding and new connections between the academic and non-academic worlds.

Arenson covered higher education, nonprofits, Wall Street, and the economy for  the New York Times. She majored in economics at M.I.T. and earned a masters degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She joined The Times as a financial reporter in 1978, after five years at Business Week magazine. She also served as editor of the Times’ Sunday Business Section and as deputy editor and acting editor of its Business/Financial section, before returning to reporting and focusing on higher education.

Prior to her education coverage, she gained an inside perspective on higher education as a member of the M.I.T. Corporation and its executive committee. She is a board member of the International Institute in Madrid and Massachusetts, and a mentor for the Hechinger Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. She currently serves on its visiting committee for the humanities and is conducting oral history interviews for the university.

The Ursinus College student literary magazine, The Lantern, will sponsor a poetry reading by Ursinus Visiting Professor of English Taije Silverman on Sept. 17 at 7 p.m., in The Kaleidoscope Studio (black box) Theater.

Silverman will read from her book of poems, Houses Are Fields, published by Louisiana State University Press in May 2009. The reading is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception and book signing. Books will also be available for purchase.

Taije Silverman’s debut collection chronicles her family’s devotion and dissolution through the death of her mother. Ranging in style from measured narratives to fragmented lyrics that convey the ambiguity of loss, these poems both arc into the past and question the possibility of the future, exploring the ways in which memory at once sustains and fails love. Ultimately the poems are elegies not only to one beloved mother, but to the large and diffusive presences of Keats, Mandelstam, a concentration camp near Prague, a coming-of-age on a Greek island, and the nearly traceless particles of neutrinos that--as with each detail toward which the poet lends her attention—become precious as the mother departs from her position at the center of the world. Furious, redemptive and deeply immediate, Houses are Fields is a beautifully moving first book.

Silverman’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Five Points, Massachusetts Review, and other journals. The recipient of the 2005–2007 Emory University Creative Writing Fellowship, as well as residencies from the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she lives in Philadelphia.

For further information contact Robert Whitehead,  rowhitehead@ursinus.edu

Ursinus College Theater will present the classic horror tale, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,”  Oct. 7 through 10 at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center’s Lenfest Theater. This production, directed by Domenick Scudera, associate professor of theater and dance at Ursinus, will feature the original 1887 script by T.R. Sullivan, which was recently rediscovered by a scholar whose lecture will coincide with the production.

Tickets are $5 for general admission and $2 for students and senior citizens.  Please call The Kaleidoscope Box Office, 610-409-3795, for more information and to reserve tickets.

The original script, approved by author Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote the book in 1886, was re-discovered by editor Martin Danahay, who will lecture Oct. 10 at 6:15 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Black Box theater at Ursinus.

Danahay will be speaking on “Sex and Violence in ‘Jekyll and Hyde.’” He is the leading scholar of the fascinating history of the original stage production of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” The script, explains Scudera, was commissioned by actor Richard Mansfield, an actor who was so convincing in the lead role(s) that he became a serious suspect in the Jack the Ripper murder case which coincided with the London production of the script.  Mansfield bridged the gap between the 19th century declamatory style of acting and the more modern style of psychological truthfulness, Scudera noted.

“I am thrilled that Dr. Danahay will be coming to Ursinus to give a talk about the original 1887 production of ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” said Scudera. “Our production would not be possible without his scholarship; he has studied the play’s history and has published the original script in his book, "Jekyll and Hyde Dramatized."  Prior to this, the play had not been published. We think this may be the first production of the script in over 100 years. He has never seen the play on stage and is very excited to see the Ursinus production. He has graciously agreed to share his scholarship in his lecture.”

Danahay is a professor in the English department at Brock University in Canada and the author of Gender at Work in Victorian Culture: Literature, Art and Masculinity and A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth Century Britain (SUNY Press, 1993) as well as a number of articles in Victorian literature and culture. He has edited the Broadview Press editions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1999) and The War of the Worlds (2003). Currently he is at work on a book tentatively titled Sex and Violence in Jekyll and Hyde: Divided Masculinity 1886-1999.

The Collegeville Main Street Program will have a table in the lobby featuring the work of Greenwald Florist.

A talk by Ursinus Associate Professor of English Matthew Kozusko opens the second Connoisseur Shakespeare Series, a lecture series presented by The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.

The Connoisseur Shakespeare Series features five evening lectures, focusing on five different Shakespeare plays that include in-depth discussions led by Artistic Director Carmen Khan and renowned Shakespeare scholars as well as stage readings by actors. New this year, The Connoisseur Shakespeare Series will include two discussions on Shakespeare and film.

Kozusko’s talk at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 28 will consider how the play text of Twelfth Night marks the social and cultural distance separating Shakespeare's age from today, and how contemporary performances of the play manage to bridge that distance. Working with costumes, blocking, and approximations of Shakespeare's "original practice" staging methods, the audience can  imagine how selected scenes might have looked on Shakespeare's stage and contrast them with what they look like today.

Kozusko teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature at Ursinus. His research interests and publications are in theater history, Shakespeare in performance, and Shakespeare and appropriation.  He is co-founder of Bedlam Faction Theater Company in Austin, Texas.

All seminars are held at The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre at 2111 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Tickets are $35 for each lecture and $20 for students and seniors. Tickets can be purchased by calling 215-496-8001. Other lecture topics can be found at www.phillyshakespeare.org.

Community members are welcome to audition for the Ursinus College Choir, under the direction of Professor John French, holder of the Heefner Chair of Music.

Rehearsals are every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., beginning Sept. 8. Concerts are Nov. 7, featuring Fauré’s Requiem and Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs; and also Dec. 5, the annual performance of Handel’s Messiah.

Interested singers can contact Dr. French at 610-409-3000 ext. 2227.

Author Brendan Deneen and artist Dean Haspiel will present “From Flash Gordon to Billy Dogma:  Collaboration in Graphic Novels” at Ursinus College on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 4:30 p.m. in the Berman Museum of Art, Main Gallery.  The event is free and open to the public.

Deneen is the author of Scatterbrain (2006-7), an original comic book mini-series described as “superhero noir.” He is writing and updating the classic sci-fi comic book, Flash Gordon, and releasing it through Ardden Entertainment, a publishing company he founded and co-directs.  He has worked for prestigious multimedia literary management and production companies such as Scott Rudin Productions and Miramax, where he represented graphic novelists and optioned their work for film and television sale.

Haspiel has drawn many superhero comic books for Marvel & DC Comics, a few semi-autobiographic novel collaborations for Vertigo, and helped pioneer webcomix with the invention of ACT-I-VATE.  He created BILLY DOGMA and STREET CODE, and is a member of DEEP6 Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

(Pictured: Paige Mcquillan; Sarah Brand and Julian Galette. These students created this display case (along with Trevor Zumpano who is not picture) to promote Myrin Library's new graphic novel collection and the upcoming presentation)

Photos from the 2009 Ursinus College Fringe Festival
The Tenth Annual Ursinus Fringe Festival gets underway Sept. 23, with performances on campus, and this year, an event in the Borough of Collegeville. Professional theater companies direct from the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, plus student and faculty performances, are included in this fun, unpredictable festival of creative and original theater performances under the guidance of Associate Professor of Theater Domenick Scudera.

All performances are free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary, and seating is on a first-come, first served basis. All events will take place in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center black box theater on the Ursinus campus unless otherwise noted.

Please call The Kaleidoscope box office (610.409.3795) for updated information on programs, times and locations.  (Pictured, Living Statue Brian McCann of Philadelphia)

The schedule is as follows:
Sept. 23, Noon: Panel Discussion: The Business of Show: Making a Living in the Performing Arts. Ursinus alumna Karin Swartz moderates this discussion about the realities of maintaining a career in the performing arts.  Panelists include Tobin Ost (Broadway/national scenic-costume designer), Renee Chambers (Broadway/touring actor-singer-dancer) and Eduardo Ramos (model/actor and Ursinus alumnus).

Sept. 24, 11:30 a.m. to noon on Wismer Plaza, Ursinus College, and 12:30 to 1 p.m. on the 300 block of Main Street, Collegeville, Pa. Brian McCann, Living Statue. Grab your cameras and have your picture taken with a living statue

Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m., Ursinus Improv! What happens when eight talented Ursinus students study theater improvisation in a week-long series of intensive workshops with improv leader, Bobbi Block (member of Philadelphia improv troupes Tongue & Groove, ComedySportz and LunchLady Doris)?  Come see the results for yourself when they improvise a performance before a live audience.

Sept. 25, 8:30 p.m., Tongue & Groove Spontaneous Theater. Direct from the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, inspired by true, anonymous secrets provided by the audience, this unique ensemble spontaneously creates a one-of-a-kind, serio-comic theater piece on the spot.

Sept. 25, 10:30 p.m., Ursinus Fringe Cabaret. Ursinus students perform works of dance, song, poetry, comedy, you-name-it. Unpredictable and entertaining.

Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium presents The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco. Direct from the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium was formed in 2006 to bring Theater of the Absurd to the Philadelphia area. With The Chairs, they will transform the Ursinus black box into “a lighthouse at the edge of a watery nighttime universe” for Ionesco’s classic farce celebrating life and laughter, inspired by silent films and vaudeville antics. 

 The International Film Festival at Ursinus College will present six films during the fall semester.  All films will be shown at 7:30 p.m. in Olin Auditorium, and light refreshments and conversation will follow.  All are subtitled in English.

The festival opens on Wednesday, Sept. 2, with a screening of Director Li Yang’s Blind Mountain (Chinese, 2007).  Set in rural China in the early 90s, Bai (Lu Huang), a pretty and enterprising college student, travels to a remote mountain village on an expedition to gather herbs.  The story becomes a true crime shocker when Bai’s fellow travelers sell her into slavery.

On Thursday, Sept. 24, Director Eran Riklis’ Lemon Tree (Arabic/Hebrew, 2008) will be shown.  Hiam Abbass portrays Salma Zidane, a widow who tends the family lemon grove along the Green Line dividing Palestine from the West Bank.  When the Israeli defense minister moves in next door, his security detail advises him to destroy the lemon grove, potential cover for terrorists, and Salma plans a fight.

On Thursday, Oct. 8, Director Masaki Kobayashi’s Hara Kiri (Japanese, 1962) will be featured.  When warrior clans are disbanded in peaceful 17th-century Japan, thousands of samurai are thrown out of work and into poverty.  Ritual suicide, or hara-kiri, is the honorable way out of this disgrace.  An elder warrior (Tatsuya Nakadai) seeks admittance to the house of a feudal lord to commit the act. There, he learns that his samurai son-in-law, who sought work at the house, was forced to commit traditional hara-kiri in an excruciating manner.  The details of the story unfold, setting in motion a tense showdown of revenge against the house.

On Wednesday, Oct. 28, Director Gregory Nava’s El Norte (Spanish, 1983) will be shown.   Hailed as "the first epic" of the independent American cinema, the film focuses on two young Mayan Indians--sister Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) and brother Enrique (David Villalpando)--whose lives are shattered by the Guatemalan civil war. They flee to Mexico with the ultimate goal of crossing into the United States--"El Norte"--where they hope for a new, secure life.

On Thursday, November 5, Director Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One (French, 2006) will be presented.  The film is based on Harlan Coben’s international best-selling thriller about pediatrician Alexandre Beck who still grieves the murder of his beloved wife Margot Beck eight years earlier. When two bodies are found near the scene of the crime, the police reopen the case, and Alex becomes a suspect again. Then an anonymous e-mail to Alex delivers shocking news and instructions to “Tell No One.”

On Thursday, Dec. 3, Director Fatih Akin’s Edge of Heaven (German, 2007) will complete the festival.  The critically-acclaimed director of HEAD-ON, Akin weaves overlapping tales of friendship and sexuality into a powerful narrative of universal love. Akin's piercing sense of the human condition and contemporary world events charge these hyperlinked stories into a multi-cultural powder keg.

 For more information on the International Film Festival, please contact Colette Trout at ctrout@ursinus.edu or 610.409.3000, ext. 2432.

Dr. Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor Emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, will hold the Davis Visiting Professorship at Ursinus College for the academic year 2009-2010. Schorsch, a 1957 graduate of the liberal arts school in suburban Philadelphia, will offer several programs to students as well as public lectures.

The first of three public lectures is titled "To Live With Dissonance," on Sept. 16 at 4:30 p.m. in Pfhaler Hall’s Musser Auditorium on the Ursinus campus.

At Ursinus, Dr. Schorsch will attend classes on religious studies and environmental studies, and meet with Hillel students at Ursinus. Prior to his public talk, Dr. Schorsch will be inducted into the Tau of Pennsylvania Chapter of  Phi Beta Kappa. Because a chapter of the national honor society did not exist on the campus when Dr. Schorsch was a student, the organization allows for induction of alumni who qualify.

Since retiring in 2006 from the seminary Schorsch, who holds the title, Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Professor of Jewish History, is at work on a biography of Moritz Steinschneider and more generally on the interdisciplinary nature of Oriental studies in the 19th century.

His book, Canon Without Closure (March 2007, Aviv Press), is a wide-ranging collection of Torah commentaries written during his tenure as Chancellor. In 2004, he published a two-volume collection of the articles and essays he wrote while Chancellor, Polarities in Balance, and in 1995, he published The Sacred Cluster: The Core Values of Conservative Judaism.

Under his leadership, JTSA informed and elevated the lives of Jews through projects such as the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem; Project Judaica in Moscow, the Ramah camps and Schechter schools, and the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at JTSA.

Throughout his tenure, Dr. Schorsch pursued a deep commitment to advancing Conservative Judaism and religious equality for Jews in Israel. His longtime support of the peace process was capped by an invitation from President Clinton to service with the official presidential delegation and to witness the peace treaty singing between Jordan and Israel in October 1994.

Dr. Schorsch was ordained by JTSA in 1962 and holds master’s degrees from JTSA and Columbia University. He was awarded a Ph. D. in Jewish history by Columbia in 1969. He has received honorary degrees, among them, from the Russian State University – the first time in that country’s history that such an honor was given to a Jewish scholar.

Additional lectures will be announced later in the year.The Davis Visiting Professorship of Judeo-Christian Studies was established by Nancy Davis in honor of her late husband Thomas, and was last held by Harvard’s Owen Gingerich, professor emeritus of astronomy and of the history of science.

A dialogue on liberal education to celebrate 10 years of Ursinus College’s Common Intellectual Experience first-year course will feature two highly regarded political philosophy scholars, Stephen G. Salkever, the Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College, and Paul N. Franco, Professor of Government at Bowdoin College.

The program, Thinking About Liberal Education: The 10th Anniversary of the Ursinus Common Intellectual Experience, will be in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Auditorium on the Ursinus campus, Sept. 13, at 4 p.m. The Jack Miller Center, for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History, based in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., is sponsoring the event.

The Common Intellectual Experience, Ursinus’ two-semester core program, introduces students to liberal education by immersing them in it.  First-year students and their professors explore answers to fundamental questions of human existence with the help of ancient and modern texts. The Common Intellectual Experience has been cited in national media and in a Harvard curricular review.On the occasion of its tenth anniversary we celebrate the course in a manner consistent with its goal.  Professors Stephen Salkever and Paul Franco,esteemed  thinkers about and practitioners of liberal education, will engage in a conversation about its prospects in the 21st century. 

Dr. Salkever has taught political philosophy at Bryn Mawr since 1969, with particular interests in Greek political philosophy, America political thought, contemporary political philosophy, constitutional and legal theory, and comparative philosophy (Western and Chinese). He is the author of Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy (Princeton University Press 1990), and articles on Plato, Hume, Rousseau, and on a variety of contemporary issues approached from perspectives derived from Greek philosophy. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought (Cambridge University Press 2009). He received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Franco is a Professor of Government at Bowdoin College, also with a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago, with teaching responsibilities in the history of political philosophy and contemporary political theory.  Before coming to Bowdoin, he taught at the University of Chicago as a William Rainey Harper Fellow. He is the author of The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (Yale University Press, 1990), Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom (Yale University Press 1999), and most recently, Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction (Yale University Press, 2004).

Highly successful fundraising, academic scholarship and  community service activities  helped the The Delta Rho Chapter at Ursinus College win the Carroll K. Simons Outstanding Chapter award from the Phi Kappa Sigma International Fraternity. This award, for the 2008-2009 academic year,  is given to only the best well-rounded chapters that establish excellent records  in all Chapter operations. Ursinus competed against 47 colleges across the country.

The Ursinus chapter also received the Estes Finance Cup, awarded to the chapter that demonstrates the best financial management throughout the year, and the Chapter Newsletter Award, awarded to chapters whose publications are judged to be superior.
Delta Rho was the runner-up in the Philanthropy Award, awarded to chapters who excel in philanthropic activities. The chapter raised more than $9,000.

Ursinus Delta Rho President Michael Cafarchio explained that the Ursinus 20-man  chapter completed 785 total hours of community service last year.  These activities included  a free weekly tutoring session on campus, cleaning up Main St. through Adopt-a-Highway, Wismer on Wheels (delivering leftover food to charities), delivering the Grizzly student newspaper, helping with the 10,000 Villages sale sponsored by Hobson Hall, and many other activities  like swimming lessons, SERV duty and UC Ambassadors.

“Our philanthropy efforts include: raising money and participating in the MS Walk for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, holding two bike-a-thons to raise money for Relay for Life, and a Wing Bowl and campus-wide Assassins game with all proceeds going to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society,” he said.

“In addition to these efforts, each member strives to uphold our values of scholarship and gentlemanly conduct.  Our chapter’s average GPA was 3.25 last year.” The chapter’s education program is based on personal and leadership development, philanthropy and community service.  Also, the chapter has dinner with a professor once a month to facilitate positive relations with the campus. 

All awards are evaluated and chosen through the International Fraternity’s standards program, Mitchell Chapter Standards, which evaluates chapters based on scholarship, membership development, financial management, community service and philanthropy, chapter management, and alumni/campus involvement. 

Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity was founded Aug. 16, 1850 at the University of Pennsylvania. The chapter’s web site is located at  www.pks.org.

Pictured: The Delta Rho Bike-a-thon

The exhibition Muriel’s Moores: Works on Paper by Henry Moore will open at The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art on the Ursinus College campus Sept. 10 in the Upper Gallery. An opening reception will be held Sept. 10 from 4 to 6 p.m. The exhibition runs through Nov. 15.

Over the course of 30 years, Muriel Berman assembled a comprehensive collection of lithographs, drawings and etchings by Moore. Meticulously documented, many of these works were acquired directly from the artist with whom she and her husband Philip had a personal relationship. While the Bermans selected numerous bronzes together, Muriel herself defined the parameters of the graphics collection. She studied, lectured on, and curated focused exhibitions of these works, which include series such as “Stonehenge,” “Elephant Skull,” “Animals in the Zoo,” “Mother and Child,” studies for sculpture, and illustrations for the publications of poets such as W.H. Auden. 

Henry Spencer Moore (1898- 1986), was an English artist and sculptor known for abstract monumental bronze pieces. This installation will include examples of the breadth and depth of  Moore’s series of works on paper, as well as individual works documenting his approach to line, perspective, and figural structure,  as well as his attention to consistent themes.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and  noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Museum is closed Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Caption for image: Henry Moore, Mother and Child 1983, Lithograph 8/65, on loan from The Berman Foundation.

Sue Thomas, Executive Associate Director of Admissions at Ursinus, has been honored by receiving the Delwin K. Gustafson Award, the highest award given by the Pennsylvania Association for College Admission Counseling (PACAC).

A Green Lane resident who has worked in the enrollment management and admissions profession for a number of years, Sue supervises the office staff, does recruitment work, and fosters a welcoming and supportive environment for students and families visiting the college.

She is a longtime member of PACAC and has served in a number of capacities for the organization, including chair of the membership committee, co-chair of the college fairs committee, chair of the development committee and in 2001-2002, president of the association.

“Sue is a consummate professional and a capable and hard working colleague. We extend our best wishes and congratulations to Sue Thomas on this well-deserved honor,” said Richard DiFeliciantonio, Vice President of Enrollment at Ursinus.

Thomas is from Phoenixville, and taught social studies at Perkiomen Valley High School and the Perkiomen School before entering the admission profession.

Longtime Ursinus Coach and Director of Athletics Brian Thomas has a new role as chief liaison to graduates and friends of the College, and to members of the community, with the title of Ursinus Emissary. As part of his new role, Coach Thomas assumes Board positions in both the Perkiomen Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Collegeville Main Street program.

 Coach Thomas, who will continue to coach the Ursinus baseball team, joined the Ursinus coaching staff in 1990 and began building a successful program, with two NCAA Division III regional appearances, and more than 345 Ursinus victories -- more wins than any baseball coach in the college’s history. He is one of best baseball coaches in NCAA Division III play, with over 733 wins in his overall coaching career over 38 years, including three Centennial Conference Championships. He is ranked the second all-time winning coach in Centennial Conference baseball.

Thomas’ accomplishments are equally impressive on the Jr. American Legion level, where he coached teams to the Pennsylvania Jr. Legion Sectional and State playoffs more than 15 times. Among his many honors, he was voted to the Pennsylvania American Legion Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 and was inducted into the Perkiomen School Hall of Athletic Honor in 2001, and was selected as an instructor for the prestigious Roberto Clemente All-Star Camp in Puerto Rico. He was named the Pottstown Mercury Area High School Coach of the Year in 1989, and in 2000 was named to the Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School Wall of Honor.  He was inducted into the Perkiomen School Sports Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 2007 he was inducted into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame.

A retired U.S. Army first lieutenant, Thomas was a platoon leader in Vietnam.  Among his military awards and honors are the Combat Infantry Badge, Bronze Star with V for Valor, Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, Vietnam Service Medal and a Jungle Expert Badge.

Biology Professor Cory Straub is spending the summer months walking the fields of three local farms. Along with two Summer Fellow students, Sarah Muscella and Lydia Civello, Straub is researching the role of predatory insects in controlling pests in agriculture. Two of those key pests, the pea aphid and the leaf hopper, are known to devour the sweet alfalfa farmers grow to feed their cattle. “A lot of farms spray pesticides before the leaf hoppers even arrive,” says Straub. He examines if damage can be prevented through using a ladybeetle or a damsel bug to eat - and therefore - control the pests. “We want more of the predators to keep the aphid numbers down,” says Straub, who uses nets and plastic ground traps to capture and study insect samples. “My long term goal is to learn how to manipulate the environment to make the predators better at their job.”

 An essay by President John Strassburger on liberal education is included in a new international anthology, “Global Emirates: an Anthology of Tolerance and Enterprise.”

The collection of  65 essays by members of the royal families of the United Arab Emirates, leaders in government and business, and notable achievers and scholars in a variety of fields from different countries, emphasize how the United Arab Emirates is increasingly engaged with global themes including sustainable economic growth, technology education, science and issues of cultural sensitivity and social justice. The forward is written by His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan al Mabarak Nahayan, UAE’s Minister of Higher Education and Scientific research.

President Strassburger’s essay is based on his address to United Arab Emirates educators when he gave a keynote address at the 20th anniversary conference of the Higher Colleges of Technology in Dubai in 2007.  The essay, “What Higher Education Means,” conveys that liberal education should invite students to think about how they will find meaning in their lives.

President Strassburger writes that in the 21^st Century, “we need people who understand different cultures.” This education is needed for anyone who wants to be involved in the global economy.  While we think of the best jobs as the end result of education, the role of education is to “entice students into encountering the intellects of other cultures . . . and find ways to have students reach their understandings.” 

The anthology publisher is Motivate Publishing and the editors are Pranay Gupte and Fatema Hadroom Aleghfeli.

President Strassburger is well known for his commentaries on liberal education, including recent essays in the Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today and the Harrisburg Patriot News, and one in University Business, which outlines the crucial role of liberal arts colleges in education the next generation of scientists, an essay which appear in a second anthology.

An American historian, President Strassburger earned a B.A. at Bates College, an M.A. at Cambridge, a Ph.D. at Princeton and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Tohoku Gakuin University in Japan. He is chair of the board of the Council of Independent Colleges and serves on the boards of the American Academic Leadership Institute, the American Council on Education and the Lenfest Foundation.

Relinquishing sunny summer travel, some Ursinus College students are instead on campus assessing the role of natural habitat in the conservation of insect pests; tracing the footsteps of Thomas Hardy in D. H. Lawrence novels; comparing dance education in suburban and urban schools; working with single walled carbon nanotubes; learning the effect on audiences of Brecht’s performance techniques, and exploring topics in every academic discipline.

In its 13th year, the Ursinus College Summer Fellows Program allows students to work one-on- one with a faculty member doing extended research in the summer, in a more focused environment than during the busy academic year. In lieu of a paying job, students receive a $2,500 stipend. Additionally, Ursinus offers a stipend to faculty mentors, provides housing and offers Fellows some meals and activities.

Eighty students began their work June 1, although some began earlier in special 10-week projects with outside grant funding. All students present summaries of their completed research in a public presentation at the end of the program, this year on July 24.

Three faculty have obtained competitive grants for their students, Associate Professor of Physics Lewis Riley (National Science Foundation), Associate Professor of Psychology Gabrielle Principe (National Institutes of Health), and Associate Professor of Biology, Rebecca Kohn (National Science Foundation).

While colleges are cutting programs and scrutinizing budgets, the Ursinus Summer Fellows program is untouched. President John Strassburger, a longtime proponent of undergraduate research, calls the college’s commitment even stronger, “because of the high quality of work we have seen coming from the students. Our former Summer Fellows point to the critical thinking skills they acquired as Fellows as contributing to their success after graduation, and the benefits of continuing their summer research as honors projects, or having a body of work to present at regional or national conferences.”

Here a few examples of Summer Fellows' projects:

Katherine Blair, Naperville, Ill., Peace and Justice Studies and French: “The Contributions of Romain Rolland to French Pacifism in the Interwar Years.”

Elizabeth Cannon, Garrison, NY, Social Ecology and Politics: “Affirming the Legend of Pericles.”

Lydia Civello, Glenside, Pa., Biology: “Assessing the Role of Natural Habitat in the Conservation of Insect Predators and the Biological Control of Alfalfa Pests.”

Kayla Federline, Chambersburg, Pa., Art, and Business and Economics, “Bridging the Gap, The Economy on Canvas.”

Sauymya Kurup,  Elmont, N.Y.  International Relations, Anthropology-Sociology: “The Change from Assimilation to Sustainability of an Immigrant Community “

Roger Lee, Philadelphia, Theater and Dance, and Media and Communication Studies: “A World of Design: The True Meaning of Artistic Collaboration.”

Greg Lewis, Syracuse, N.Y., Biology and Chemistry: “The Attachment of Acyclavir to Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes”

Mark Smedberg, Sterling, Va., Theater, Psychology: “The Reality of Illusion, Brecht’s Performance Techniques and Their Effects on his Audiences.”

Michael Thomas, Brooklyn, N.Y., History: “Why the America Prison System is Ineffective in Issuing Treatment for Inmates.”

Shoji Samson, Bergenfeld, N.J., Neruoscience and Biology: “Tracking the Migration of Neural Stem Cells in the Spinal Cord of Regenerated Tails of Plethodon cinereus.”

Urged to "cultivate their gardens," by sowing a rich life, Ursinus College graduates of 2009 were awarded degrees at the 136th Ursinus College Commencement May 16, which featured an inspiring adddress by a noted neonatologist who spoke of her Haitian family's emphasis on education.

During the ceremony under a tent on the front lawn of the campus, where clouds could not dampen spirits, President John Strassburger bestowed honorary degrees on five accomplished guests, including two alumni, and presented each member of the Class of 2009 with a diploma, as they earned either a Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Business Administration degree.  

Bonnie Marie Kaas of Myersville, Md., was valedictorian of the class, and Christopher Roger Miller of York, Pa., was salutatorian.

The Class of 2009 now joins more than 15,000 Ursinus graduates as members of the Alumni Association, and to mark that step, they followed into the commencement ceremony a procession of red, “old gold” and black flags emblazoned with the years 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989 , 1994 and 1999 and 2004.

Honorary degree recipients who received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters were sculptor and artist George Anthonisen; dance pioneer and educator  Ruth E. Grauert, Ursinus Class of 1939;  and dance educator and company founder Bebe Miller.

The Right Rev. Bishop Robert Wilkes llhoff, a member of the Ursinus Class of 1964, received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. The Baccalaureate speaker, he was, in 1995, elected 13th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

Dr. Phyllis Dennery (pictured), commencement speaker, received an honorary Doctor of Science degree. She is the Chief, Division of Neonatology and Newborn Services at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; holds the Werner and Gertrude Henle Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, at Children’s Hospital, and is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Invoking the Ursinus mission statement, she urged graduates to “live creatively and usefully while honoring your past,” to “live your life with passion,” and to and cultivate your garden.”

“Parents have the responsibility to nurture their children with the rich soil of an outstanding education where seeds of all varieties are sown," she said. "Studying music, literature, the sciences, languages and philosophy, molds well-rounded individuals who can blossom and add to the world with their creativity, instead of drones who can only speak about their jobs and nothing else.  A fulfilling life outside of work is superbly important. Despite a career of accomplishments, we need to be an integral part of our world. In all of its dimensions. We need to cultivate hobbies, honor our relationships and be a part of our community, so that when we reflect back on our lives, we see a colorful garden rather than a barren field.

“You have been given an extraordinary opportunity at Ursinus College,” she said. “You are now armed with a strong liberal arts foundation where your committed teachers have inspired you to dig deeper and to be engaged in so many ways. You have your education, you have your tale, and you have your passion. Your garden is growing lush and verdant.”

Following the granting of degrees, three professors (pictured from L-R) were selected as award winners for their teaching, mentoring and scholarship.

TheLaughlin Professional Achievement Award, endowed by Henry P. Laughlin M.D., 1938, for a faculty member who has made significant contributions to scholarship, was awarded to Associate Professor of Psychology Gabrielle Principe.

The H. Lloyd Jones Jr. Award, established in honor of H. Lloyd Jones, professor of English from 1947 to 1988, was awarded to Matthew Mizenko, Associate Professor of ModernLanguages, for distinguished advising and mentoring.

The Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching was given to Professor of Biology Ellen Dawley, who holds the Brownback-Wagner Chair in Health Sciences.

In what may become a new tradition, the band, led by Assistant Professor of Music Holly Gaines, played the Campus Song, while Caroline Andrews 2011, of Dover, Del., led the graduates and their guests singing a chorus. --W.G.
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The exhibition, "FOLK ART FROM THE DAVID BRONSTEIN COLLECTION,"  will open at The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art on the Ursinus College campus May 29. The exhibit, in the Upper Gallery, will run through Aug. 29. An opening reception is scheduled for June 7, from 3 to 4:30 p.m.

This installation focuses on examples from Dr. Bronstein’s important collection of American folk art. Theorems and paintings by David Ellinger, chalkware, tinware, stoneware, redware, wood carvings and painted chests are highlighted and reflect the careful eye of the collector and the quality of execution by the known and unknown artisans.

Dr. Bronstein, of Harrisburg, became interested in American Folk Art in the 1950s while a student at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathy, and began collecting primarily Pennsylvania redware and stoneware in the 1960s and 1970s. An admirer of Pennsylvania German folk art, he bought at landmark auctions such as the Garbisch, Himmelreich and Wetzel sales.

This exhibition showcases a small cross-section of both contemporary and antique decorative arts in the Bronstein collection. It was compiled as a regional display of objects, many of which are connected to Montgomery County, including Ellinger paintings and Medinger pottery.
 Ellinger, an artist and antique dealer raised in Graterford, Montgomery County who died in 2003 at age 89, was a prolific painter in the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition. His paintings and theorems are owned by 14 museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Jacob Medinger worked in Limerick, Montgomery County and was considered one of the finest Pennsylvania German revivalist potters.

Among the other artists and artisans included in the exhibition are Hattie Brunner of Reinholds, Lancaster County, a painter of Amish farm scenes and country landscapes; Wilhelm Schimmel, a folk carver; Rodney Boyer, a 20th century folk carver; a fraktur by the Sussel-Washington Artist; and Julius Augustus Beck, a 19th century Harrisburg painter known for his Susquehanna River scenes and landscapes.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and  noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (open Sundays beginning May 30). The Museum is closed Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500.

 Daniel Horowitz, a wrestler interested in business and art, was named a Class of 2012 Kemper Scholar at Ursinus College. The prestigious scholarship-mentorship program has been sponsored by the James S. Kemper Foundation of Chicago, Illinois, since 1948.

The Kemper Scholars Program’s mission is preparing students for leadership and service in the management of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. The Foundation believes that an undergraduate liberal arts education represents the best preparation for life and career.  The program aims to promote education in the liberal arts while providing students opportunities for career exploration and practical experience through internships.

Horowitz, of Broomall, is on the Ursinus wrestling team, and also participates on the track team. He is a member of Rising Sons (for the advancement of male underrepresented minorities through community service, campus events, and promotion of positive role-models) and STAR (a sexual health awareness group). He also hopes to delve into Spanish and English studies while at Ursinus. He is a graduate of Friends Central High School.

Expressing himself artistically by painting, he also keeps in shape for competitive athletics by running, biking and enjoys snowboarding. His business experience began as an intern at the Tyme Gallery in Havertown, Pa., which holds work of more than 200 international artists and hosts monthly exhibitions. “In this 2-month internship I was exposed to the business aspects of working in an art gallery. I set up and managed exhibits, dealt with customers, designed a webpage, and publicized upcoming events. I was able to learn a great deal by working directly with the inspiring owner of the gallery.” Horowitz also worked as a lifeguard.

“With the incredible opportunities that will come of the Kemper program,” he said, “ I hope to continue to learn about my academic interests of business and art through experience in the workplace.  Only now, with the Kemper program, I will be able to do this independently in Chicago. I have learned a great deal from the books in school, but now I hope to put my knowledge to use and discover a whole new comprehensive sort of understanding.”

Kemper Scholars receive annual scholarships during their sophomore, junior, and senior years of college.  They also receive stipends for work as interns in major not-for-profit organizations in Chicago during the summer following their sophomore year, placed in full-time administrative positions where they can learn about financial management, organizational strategy, fund-raising, and administration.

“Kemper Scholars represent campus leaders who are academically superior, community-oriented, committed, and well-rounded undergraduates from a pre-selected group of fifteen leading liberal arts colleges around the country,” according to Ryan LaHurd, President and Executive Director of the James S. Kemper Foundation.   During the Chicago summer, scholars participate in a weekly seminar while having opportunities to explore the cultural, historical, and entertainment aspects of the city. During the summer following their junior year, scholars are eligible for grants to support an internship in a for-profit organization of their choice anywhere in the world.

Each fall, all Kemper Scholars attend a national conference to discuss summer projects, meet with former Kemper Scholars, and consider topics in administration, leadership and business. They read and discuss major works on leadership, service, ethics, or business; and they have frequent contact with Kemper Foundation staff to discuss the scholars’ academic and professional goals, as well as their hopes for future internships and learning opportunities.

Lisa Tremper Hanover, director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, is being honored with the Artists Equity Award from the Philadelphia/TriState Artists Equity, at an event coinciding with a major exhibition.

The Artists Equity Board voted to recognize Hanover’s  “outstanding support of contemporary regional artists and arts organizations “ and her “understanding of and cooperation with causes that benefit artists.” Recent past recipients have included Gov. Ed Rendell, and Jane Golden, executive director of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. The award will be presented at the association’s annual meeting June 7, which will be at the Berman Museum.

The meeting and award will coincide with the group’s 60th Anniversary Exhibition, which will open in the Main Gallery at the Berman Museum May 29 and run until Sept. 4.  A Gallery Talk is scheduled for 1 p.m., and the opening reception will be held June 7 from 2 to 4 p.m.

The Philadelphia/Tri-State Artist’s Equity 60th Anniversary Exhibition will showcase 80 works by member artists representing two and three-dimensional genres, drawn from over 400 entries.  Juror Rick Snyderman, principal of Snyderman Gallery, Philadelphia, is a former member of the Mayor's Cultural Advisory Council, a panel of leading business, civic and cultural leaders that assist in developing cultural policy for the city. He is a charter member of, and still active on the regional council that developed and advises the Pew Charitable Trust's Individual Artist Fellowships Program. He will give a gallery talk on the day of the reception at 1:00 p.m. 

Widely known as a curator, panelist,  juror and academic, Hanover has been with the Ursinus campus museum from its inception. It opened in 1989 and is about to undergo an expansion to house its diverse permanent collection of more than more than 3,000 notable works of art. Hanover is a magna cum laude graduate of University of Richmond, one of the first art history majors to be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and received her master’s degree in art history from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.   Prior to coming to Ursinus, Hanover worked with the Armand Hammer art collection. She is also immediate past president of the national group, Association of College and Unversity Galleries and Museums.

The award was announced by Barbara J. Zucker, Anniversary Exhibition Committee Chair and President Emerita, Friends of Artists Equity Trustee, Philadelphia/Tri State Artists Equity Association, Inc. Artists Equity works to advance and serve the profession of the visual fine artist in the tri-state region.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and  noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (open Sundays beginning May 30). The Museum is closed Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500.
 

The Cinematic Guild is showing films on May 8 at 8 p.m. in the Kaleidoscope  Studio Theater.  All are welcome to attend this free event. 

A first-year club, The Cinematic Guild, is showing video projects from interested students who wish to share video work with the campus, regardless of their major.

Many of the films will be made by students in the Digital Filmmaking and Advanced Digital Processes classes. The film genres will range from experimental to horror to comedy.  In addition, The Cinematic Guild itself has created and will screen a short comedy, pooling the talents of students from various majors.

Organist Rebecca Kleintop Owens will present a Heefner Organ Recital on Sunday, May 3, at 4 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium on the Ursinus College campus.  The event is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

The program will include “Toccata” by Charles-Marie Widor, “Fantasy on Nursery Tunes” by Robert Elmore and a “Moravian Hymn Medley” performed with a setting by the organist as well as works by Buxtehude, Bach, Franck, Whitlock and Dupre.

Rebecca Kleintop Owens is the director of music and organist of the historic Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pa.  She is also the organist and choir director for the Moravian Theological Seminary.  She was previously the Senior Organist at the internationally televised Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as well as assistant organist of Philadelphia’s famed Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, the largest playing musical instrument in the world.

A magna cum laude graduate of Moravian College, she graduated with an Artist Diploma in organ performance from the world-renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.  An active solo recitalist, accompanist, and clinician, she has performed throughout the United States as well as in Europe.  She has recorded several CDs with the King’s Brass and the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church choir.  Her two CDs with the Central Moravian Church Choir are “Christmas Eve at Central Moravian Church” and “Favorite Hymns of Central Moravian Church.”   Most recently, she recorded a solo CD, “An Old Fashioned Moravian Christmas.”  Warner Brothers Publications has also published her collection of hymn introductions and interludes, titled “The Coral Ridge Collection.”   

 

The Ursinus Woodwind Ensemble will present a concert on Saturday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater. The concert is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Holly Gaines, assistant professor of music, will conduct a program featuring a medley of Aaron Copland pieces titled “A Copland Tribute,” the Overture to Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro,” a memorial work titled “Elegy for a Young American” and a Spanish March titled “Aparito Roca.” Also to be performed will be two pieces based on folk songs, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “English Folk Song Suite” and John Barne’s “Chance’s Variations on a Korean Folksong.”

 The Meistersingers, a select group of singers at Ursinus College, will sing the National Anthem at the Phillies Game  this Thursday, April  23, when the Phillies play Milwaukee at 1:05 p.m.  at Citizens Bank Park.  The student group is under the direction of Professor John French, holder of the William F. Heefner Chair in Music.

The photo depicts The Meistersingers singing before a Phillies game at the former stadium in 2006.

An interest in climate and environment has led Lindsay Anne Budnick, a sophomore from the Chestnut Hill area of Philadelphia, to win an Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She joins some 100 students selected annually from across the country. The scholarship provides tuition assistance for the next two years, as well as a 10-week stipend-supported internship at a NOAA facility.

 Lindsay is an Environmental Studies major, and one of 11 Bonner Leaders at Ursinus, selected on the basis of leadership and service potential. As part of that program, she created environmental and educational programs for children at a local library, and a mentoring program in local schools, and traveled to the Biloxi, Miss., area to rebuild a home with Habitat for Humanity. Recently she was selected to be a Summer Fellow, one of a group of Ursinus students who will work on an extended research project this summer. Her project will look at differing legal protection for potentially harmful animals.

Her Ursinus activities also include acting in Breakaway Student Productions, serving as a fundraising chair for Sigma Sigma Sigma, participating in Relay for Life, and other activities. Next spring she plans to study abroad in Florence, and she has completed a study trip to Costa Rica with Ursinus faculty.

Her biology research, with faculty member Nicholas Principe, involves monitoring the effects which warmer waters have on fish metabolism, specifically the red breasted sunfish.

Before coming to Ursinus, she was a teen leadership assistant at the Chestnut Hill Library in Philadelphia, where she created cultural, educational and craft programs for 20 children, ages 5 to 17. She is a 2007 graduate of Bishop McDevitt High School in Wyncote, graduating seventh in her class.

The NOAA Ernest F. Hollings scholarship program is designed to increase undergraduate training in oceanic and atmospheric science, research, technology and education and foster multidisciplinary training opportunities. It was also developed to increase public understanding and support for stewardship of the ocean and atmosphere and improve environmental literacy; and to recruit and prepare students for public service careers with NOAA and other natural resource and science agencies, and for careers as educators in oceanic and atmospheric science.

The program provides awardees with academic assistance and a 10-week, full-time internship position during the summer at a NOAA facility, providing Scholars with ‘‘hands-on''/ practical educational training experience in NOAA-related science, research, technology, policy, management, and education activities.

Students in an Ursinus College Business and Economics Department class are enriching their educational experience by developing and running a business. The class, Management and Organizational Leadership (BE230), a required course for all majors, integrates academic study of management and organizational behavior with hands-on practice of those skills in an entrepreneurial business that the students themselves create and run. Students of Professors Steven Bowers (executive in Residence) and Carol Cirka are engaged n the management process, and also in the community. They raise hundreds of dollars for local charities each year.

Remaining events are as follows:

Thursday, April 23 - United Cerebral Palsy 5K Run/Walk in Philadelphia (Ernie Constantine CEO, Kristen Stapler, Tish Walston, Jess Zatwarnicki, Pat Gillen, Matt Hilton)
Friday, April 24 - Golf tournament at Turtle Creek Golf Club - supports Childrens' Hospital of Philadelphia (Brian Munro CEO, Drew Seidenburg, Kevin Zufelt, Bob Wise, Nick Benhayon, Dave Queroli)
Saturday, April 25 - Horse show (contact Tony Ubertaccio CEO, Cara Klothe, Logan Duffie, Greg Strouse, Steve Crandall, Tim Logue) for directions and location) - supports Multiple Sclerosis research and awareness
Saturday, April 25 - Volleyball tournament and refreshments behind Reimert (Evan Gonzalez CEO, Rich Kisielowski, Amanda Sherk, Jake Smith, Alex McBride, Erich Pingel) - supports Philabundance
Ongoing - Project MS Cookbooks to support Multiple Sclerosis research and awareness – (Katie Callahan CEO, JD DeCristofaro, Tom Adelsberger, Justin Laudadio, Mark Stipa, Jake West)
Ongoing - Strong Arms Against Cancer in support of the Lance Armstrong Foundation - various fund raisers - Antonio Scotto CEO, Harry Bambi, Harry Fennimore, Len Moffa, Amy Sezack, Shea Wisler.

Two events have taken place:

Friday, April 17 - Comedian Dave Reilly at the Pottstown Elks - supports Make-a-Wish Foundation (Kristen Gallagher CEO, Sean Whelan, Alex Shivers, Eric Farris, Ian Reitman, Anneka Hoffman); and

Saturday, April 18 - Ball at Berman - supports the Michele McLennan Scholarship Fund (Matt Howell CEO, Luke Benko, Stephanie Brodish, John Discepola, Kayla Federline, Austin Anthony).

“Festus,” a one-man show written and performed by Ursinus Professor of Theater Domenick Scudera, will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 25, in Jazzman’s Café in the College’s Myrin Library. Children of all ages will enjoy the free performance.  Refreshments will be served.

 Festus is a special three-legged dog who currently resides in Collegeville with Scudera.  Festus and Domenick are certified as a pet therapy team with Therapy Dogs International.  As a therapy dog, Festus visits patients in hospitals, providing much-need emotional support and inspiration.  He currently volunteers at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Malvern, where he meets other amputees and physical therapy patients.  He has also regularly visited all types of patients at The Reading Hospital and Medical Center in Reading, Pa.; The Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, and the Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital in Allentown, Pa.

Students are recognized for excellence in a medium and awarded book prizes, cash purchase awards funded by Winnifred Cutler 1973, juried cash prizes and other awards.


The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and noon to 4:30 p.m., Saturday, and closed Sundays, Mondays and college holidays.  The museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500.

Conservationist and author Scott Weidensaul will speak at UJrsinus College Monday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. He will talk on “Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent’s Natural Soul” in Musser Auditorium, Pfahler Hall, on the campus. The program is free and open to the public; no reservations are necessary.

Scott Weidensaul has written more than two dozen books on natural history, including his widely acclaimed “Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds” (North Point Press), which was one of three finalists for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Other recent titles include “The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species” (North Point, 2002), about the search for animals that may or may not be extinct; and his most recent book, “Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding” (Harcourt 2007) which traces 400 years of ornithological history. His talk at Ursinus is based on his explorations of wild places throughout North America, chronicled in “Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul” (North Point, 2005).

Weidensaul’s writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including Smithsonian, the New York Times, Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife and Audubon, among many others. He lectures widely on conservation and nature.

In addition to writing about wildlife, Weidensaul is an active field researcher whose work focuses on bird migration. Besides banding hawks each fall (something he's done for almost 20 years), he directs a major effort to study the movements of northern saw-whet owls, one of the smallest and least-understood raptors in North America. Most recently, he has joined a continental effort to understand the rapid evolution, by several species of western hummingbirds, of a new migratory route and wintering range in the East.  Weidensaul lives in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania.

Language, letters and more specifically, the letter W, fuel Devon Smith’s passion for linguistics, a zeal that has led to her selection as a St. Andrew’s Scholar to study for a year in Scotland.

“Passion is the first stepping stone to creating a scholar,” she wrote in her essay.

A 10th grade presentation on Vulgar Latin sparked the interest, which is so compelling that Devon carries Latin and French dictionaries in her purse, researches Ancient Sumerian for fun and doodles with passages of Cicero, using Greek or Arabic alphabets.

 “I consider it a point of pride to have stepped away from the typical student profile and to have created my own niche at Ursinus,” she said. She is the only student at Ursinus majoring in Linguistics, a self-created independent major. 

While she first intended to major in Classics and teach at the high school level, her freshman advisor suggested becoming a professor instead. John Wickersham, Classics scholar and head of the Classics Department, recalled that “sprightly Devon arrived here eager to research W (the letter and the sound),  and her double major in Classics and Linguistics has been a most rewarding adventure for us—thanks to the learning and wisdom of Peter Luborsky (Lecturer in Modern Languages) and Joyce Lionarons (Professor of English).”

She looks forward to the world-renowned University of Edinburgh, with a course in phonology and phonetics.

A junior from Phoenixville, Pa., Devon was selected on the basis of her academic record, a personal statement and a series of interviews. The St. Andrew’s Society of Philadelphia -- a non-profit service organization for people of Scottish heritage, was established in 1747 and has offered five, $15,000 scholarships each year since 1958 to students attending colleges in the greater Philadelphia area to enable them to spend their junior year at a Scottish university. Ursinus has had 25 scholarship winners, with diverse majors such as chemistry, history, politics, classics and biology.

In high school, Devon was selected to participate in the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Teaching, and subsequently created a program to prepare middle school students for the high school language experience.  She received numerous awards for the National Latin Exam and also from the Philadelphia Classical Society for a Latin poetry composition.

At Ursinus, she is a member of the service-oriented Upsilon Phi Delta, vice president of the Ursinus College Fencing Association, and participant in campus dance companies.

She feels well prepared to study abroad. “I think the relationships I’ve built with my professors academically have prepared me to approach other professors when I go to Edinburgh, though admittedly, Edinburgh is a much larger school. Also, I think our CIE (Common Intellectual Experience) program has taught me to be inquisitive outside of my academics but at the same time to apply my outside experiences to my academics.” She also has studied independently in England and France the summer after graduating from high school.

 “Language is a brilliant window into the culture of any nation,” she said. “In many ways, languages can tell us just as much about the history, culture and politics of a nation as any textbook can. I hope to experience this when I study in Scotland.” -- W.G.

 A respected neonatologist will be the speaker and recipient of an honorary degree May 16 when Ursinus College graduates approximately 335 seniors and awards them bachelor’s degrees. Other honorary degree recipients include a Bishop, two leaders in dance education and a renowned sculptor.

More Commencement Details 

The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on the front lawn of the campus, under a tent. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis, and there are no tickets. The public is welcome to attend. Fifteen degrees will be awarded to students in the Center for Continuous Learning. During the two-hour commencement ceremony, traffic on Main Street in front of the college, will be detoured. The road will reopen when the ceremony concludes.

Phyllis A. Dennery M.D. (pictured) is Chief of the Division of Neonatology and Newborn Service at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.   She is a Professor of Pediatrics with tenure at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr Dennery also holds the Werner and Gertrude Henle endowed Chair in Pediatrics at CHOP.

She obtained her B.S. in Biology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.  After receiving her medical degree from Howard University in Washington, DC, Dr. Dennery completed a residency in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital National Medical Center also in Washington, DC and a fellowship in Neonatology at Case Western Reserve University (Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital) in Cleveland, Ohio. She was on the faculty at Stanford Universtiy from 1990-2003 then she was recruited to Children’s Hospital and the Univsersity of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Dennery is the recipient of many awards and honors including the First Mordechai Wyatt Johnson Scholarship, the Grafton Rayner and Edna Spriggs Browne Award, the Michael Oliver Dumas Prize, the Janet Glascow Award and the Drew-Syphax Prize in Surgery, from Howard Univeristy as well as the Andrew Mellon Fellowship, the Ross Young Investigator Award from the Western Society of Pediatrics, the Alfred Stengel Health System Champion Award from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, amongst many others.

She is an active member of many professional and scientific societies including the Society for Free Radicals in Biology and Medicine where she has served on the Council, the American Thoracic Society, where she served on many committees and was the Membership Chair, and the Society for Pediatric Research where she was the Secretary Treasurer and is currently the Immediate Past President.  She has served as the Chair of the Credential Committee for the Neonatal/Perinatal Sub-board of the American Board of Pediatrics and she serves as an Associate Editor for the scientific journals Free Radicals in Biology and Medicine and Pediatrics. 

Dr. Dennery’s research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and she lists over 70 publications in top tiered journals such as J. Biol Chem, N. Engl J Med, Proc Nat Acad Sci and Blood, amongst others, on the topic of oxidative stress mediated neonatal lung gene regulation.  Her clinical interests are in neonatal jaundice, bronchopulmonary dysplasia and the long-term consequences of prematurity.

Other honorary degree recipients will include:

The Right Rev. Bishop Robert Wilkes Ihoff, Ursinus Class of 1964 will receive an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. He will be the Baccalaureate speaker for the two services, held at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., for students and their families.

Bishop Ihloff was elected the 13th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland in 1995, and served until he retired from that position in 2007. Born in Connecticut, Bishop Ihloff received a B.A. with Departmental Honors in history from Ursinus, and was a recipient of the Ursinus College Alumni Award in 1996. He is married to Nancy Bailey, Ursinus Class of 1966.

In 1967 he received his M.Div. from Episcopal Theological School, and in 1972 he received an M.A. in European History from Central Connecticut State College. He earned the Doctorate in Ministry in 1985 at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and served congregations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland prior to his election as the Bishop of Maryland. He is the author of several published articles.

Beginning at Ursinus and continuing as a seminarian and throughout his service in the Episcopal ministry, he has been deeply committed to and involved with civil rights struggles. His interests have included aerobics, opera, sailing, and the cultivation of antique roses.  

George Anthonisen will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Born in Boston, he  moved to Bucks County in 1971, where he lives with his wife, Ellen. Anthonisen earned his B.A. from the University of Vermont and studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York. He sculpts figurative images which he first models in clay, then casts into bronze, aluminum, stainless steel or hydrostone.

Anthonisen’s public works are in the permanent collections of the U. S. Capitol, Hall of Columns; World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland; New York’s Carnegie Hall; The James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pa.; Center for Interfaith Relations, Louisville, Ky.; Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia; Pennsylvania Academy of Music, Lancaster, Pa. and more than two dozen other sites. Most recently his work was featured at Yale University and in the exhibition, Life in Bronze: The Sculpture of George Anthonisen, in The Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

The sculptor has had a warm relationship with Ursinus College. The Berman Museum of Art showed a major exhibition of Anthonisen’s work 1996: The Compassionate Spirit, Sculpture and Fresco by George R. Anthonisen. In addition, his major bas relief, Promise/Anthem (1998) a commemorative two-panel sculpture commissioned by the Ursinus College War Years Classes of 1942-1949, and the U.S. Navy V-12 and V-5 units, is displayed in the lobby of the College’s Wismer Center. Mr. Anthonisen has announced he will bequeath his entire collection of sculpture, frescoes, drawings and archival materials to the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College.

Ruth E. Grauert Ursinus Class of 1939, will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree. After she graduated from Ursinus with a B.A. in English, she then entered Columbia University where she studied with Martha Graham and earned an M.A. in 1941. Ms. Grauert worked with leading dancers and directors of modern dance companies throughout the mid and late 20th Century. Ms. Grauert was a member of the Nikolais Hartford Company from 1942 to 1943; then served for 40 years as an assistant to Mr. Nikolais, one of the most famous figures in 20th Century American dance, from 1948 to 1988. She was a stage director for Murray Louis from 1953 to 1970 and the lighting designer and stage manager for Phyllis Lamhut, Beverly Blossom, and others from 1948 on. She taught stage lighting at the Nik/Lou laboratory in New York City from 1948 to 1995.

Ms. Grauert is founder and director of Bearnstow, a summer arts community in Maine that has operated since 1946 and is the author of numerous articles on general aesthetics, staging, lighting, and Alwin Nikolais. She writes concert and book critiques and poetry, and continues to maintain a website and journal at bearnstow.org. Ms. Grauert is the recipient of the 2005 Martha Hill Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by The Martha Hill Dance Fund and awarded annually to dancers, choreographers, dance educators, administrators and journalists for demonstrated leadership in dance.

Bebe Miller will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.  She received her B.A. in Fine Arts from Earlham College in 1971 and earned an M.A. in Dance from The Ohio State University in 1975. She founded the Bebe Miller Company in 1985, performing worldwide.   Her most recent work, Landing/Place (2005), a multi-media work made in collaboration with ACCAD, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Ohio State Department of Dance, received a NY Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) in 2006. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Bernstow Community in Maine, a summer program for dance and dancers, founded and operated by Ruth E. Grauert, Ursinus Class of 1939.

She has created works for Boston Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and Philadanco. A four-time “Bessies” winner, she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently serves as a board member for Dance USA, the Dance Theater Workshop and the Danspace Project, and is a member of the International Artists Advisory Board of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State, where she teaches classes modern dance technique, improvisation, repertory, Creative Practice and Choreography, and a Graduate Seminar in Current Issues in Dance.

Ursinus’ Breakaway Student Productions will present a One-Act Play Festival, Thursday through Saturday, April 16 through 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Rehearsal Studio. 

The festival consists of three short one-act plays written, directed and produced by students and featuring casts of student actors.

Tickets are $2 for everyone.  For more information and reservations, please call 610-409-3795.

 Breakway Student Productions is an organization devoted to theater.  Its goal is to develop a community that is fully committed to theater and live arts on campus.  

  

The Ursinus Jazz Ensemble will present a concert on Saturday, April 4, at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater.  The concert is free, open to the public, and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Holly Gaines, assistant professor of music, will conduct a program including the standards “God Bless the Child,” “Route 66,” “Bandstand Boogie,” “Misty,” and “How High the Moon” as well as more contemporary pieces such as Charles Mingus' “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” “Rhyme” by David Springfield, and the Sammy Nestico arrangements of “Birth of the Blues,” and “Tater Patch.”

Ursinus College has opened its Passport Day to the regional community, as well as the campus community. 

The Philadelphia Passport Agency welcomes the Collegeville area community to submit a passport application on the Ursinus campus March 25 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Olin Hall, Room 104. No appointment is needed, but pre-registration is requested by calling 215-931-4536 or 215-931-4537.  Presently passports are required to travel by air anywhere outside of the United States.  Eventually a Passport Book or Passport Card will be required for all travel outside of the United States.  More information on the Passport Card is online at  www.travel.state.gov .

Interested persons should bring a completed application, which is available on site, or also at the web site  www.travel.state.gov and also:

 Proof of citizenship through a certified birth certificate (under age 16 must show parents’ names); a most recent passport; Naturalization or Citizenship Certificate (visit  www.travel.state.gov for more info);

 A current photo ID issued on government authority such as a state-issued driver’s license, government work ID, military ID or prior passport;

 Two color passport photos taken within the last six months, 2” X 2” in size, front view with a plain light background;

 Fee payment by check or money order: Age 16 or older, first-time application $100 (renewal $75.00); age 15 or younger, $85.00.

Children under the age of 16 must appear in person with both parents and present a birth certificate that lists the parent(s)’ names. If one parent cannot be present a notarized statement of consent to the issuance of a passport made by the non-applying parent must be submitted with the application.

Driven  by the passion to learn how poetry empowers Arab women, Kelsey Threatte of Lovettsville, Va., is one of 40 students in the country to win a highly competitive Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for a year of independent exploration and travel outside the United States.

Her creative research project, “Voice and Veil: The Power and Impact of Arab Women Poets on Society,”  will take her to the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco to examine how Arab women acquire a voice in shaping their communities socially and politically.

“Poetry is the heartbeat of the Arab world, a unique way of entering a realm of new understanding and connection where the expression of political values and personal beliefs cannot be silenced by society or the government,” she said.

Fifty liberal arts schools are designated by the Foundation to nominate eligible seniors for the awards, and 177 finalists were nominated by their schools. 

The awards are not just for travel, explains Watson Fellowship Program Director, Cleveland Johnson, but are “long-term investments in people. . . We look for persons likely to lead or innovate in the future and give them extraordinary independence to pursue their interests outside of traditional academic structures.” He called the Fellows “passionate learners, creative thinkers and motivated self-starters who are encouraged to dream big but demonstrate feasible strategies for achieving their fellowship goals.” Each Fellow receives $28,000 for the year of travel, and global experiential learning.

Kelsey’s passion for learning about a culture so different from her own developed during her Ursinus experiences in a senior seminar class, during an independent research fellowship and through her honors research, as she increasingly saw Arabic poetry “as a window into a world we know far too little about.” As a Watson Fellow she will spend time in both northern Africa and the Middle East, visiting universities with women’s studies departments, women’s rights groups and speaking with leading female political and community leaders.  She will also spend time in the neighborhoods, “where the true heart of Arabic poetry beats,” including tea shops, markets mosques, and poetry slams.

Threatte grew up in rural Virginia, and said she learned compassion and patience helping to care for members of her community with special needs, and gained a desire for social justice by encountering those who did not understand them. She found release in writing poetry, prose and short stories, and was inspired by the calls to peace and justice found in the music of her father’s folk records.

At Ursinus she studied Arabic, established the Arabic Language and culture club, and was on the board of the Muslim Student Association.  Her belief in the peaceful resolution of conflict led to creating an Ursinus chapter of STAND, a student-run anti-genocide coalition with a focus on Darfur. She spent a semester at the American University in Cairo as an independent study abroad experience, and traveled to Jordan, Syria and Israel, a journey, she said, “where my whole world split open.” There she discovered the place of poetry in the Arab world. Her Summer Fellows project at Ursinus looked at poetry as a form of political expression in the Arab World.

“Talking to these women poets will empower me discover what their ambitions are, what their goals are, what they have faced, what message they wish to convey, and how they believe they are making an impact,” she wrote in her proposal. “It is the intent and spirit of these poets that is the true indicator of change in their communities.” -- W.G.

For more information on projects:

http://watsonfellowship.org/site/fellows/09_10.html

A Mass written by John French, professor of music and William F. Heefner Chair of Music at Ursinus, will be performed by the Ursinus College Meistersingers on Saturday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the College’s Bomberger Auditorium.  The ensemble will also present selections of American music, sung a capella.  Dr. French will direct the program.

The program is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

John French earned a bachelor’s degree from the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, master’s degree from Westminster Choir College and doctorate from the College and the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati.  The organist/choirmaster at The Church of the Holy Trinity on Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square since 1992, French has been a church musician for more than 35 years.  He is also the associate conductor of the Mendelssohn Club Chorus of Philadelphia.

At Ursinus, he directs the Meistersingers and the Ursinus College Choir, and has received the Laughlin Professional Achievement Award and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in recognition of his professional and scholarly accomplishments. He has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities in addition to other grants and awards. 

For the first time, Ursinus College is  holding events to mark National Brain Awareness Week, including lectures on brain injury and neural disorders, and an induction ceremony for a newly established chapter of the national honors society for neuroscience. Dr. Drew Nagele and  researcher Fernando Fajardo will both offer public lectures.

The events will kick-off on Monday, March 16 with a talk by renowned brain trauma researcher Drew Nagele, Ursinus Class of  1976, who will speak at 4:30 p.m. in Musser Lecture Hall, Pfahler Auditorium.  This event is open to the public.

Nagele conducts his research on neuropsychology and brain injury rehabilitation on children and adolescents at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. He is also the former president of Brain Injury Association of Pennsylvania. He will speak on “Concussion in Youth Sports,” and address the incidence of concussion in youth sports, what happens physiologically in the brain after concussion, signs and symptoms, what athletes, coaches and trainers should do after a concussion, and how to provide appropriate care for the athlete with concussion. It is estimated that up to 3.8 million sports and recreation-related concussions occur each year throughout the United States. Serious long-term health effects can result from seemingly mild bumps to the head.

Nagele’s talk will be followed by the first new member induction ceremony for the newly established Ursinus chapter of Nu Rho Psi, national honors society in neuroscience. In addition, new members of Psi Chi, national honors society for psychology, will be inducted. Ursinus College President John Strassburger will offer remarks before the ceremonies.

Brain Awareness Week at Ursinus College will close March 20 at noon, in room 324, ThomasHall, with a talk on neurological disorders by Fernando Fajardo, longtime friend of Ursinus. His work focuses on advancing research  in neurological diseases. His talk will encompass the clinical, pathological, genetic and financial aspects involved in considering the investigation of neural disorders in general, and specifically Parkinson’s Disease and Parkinson’s Plus, also described as atypical Parkinson’s disease. This event is also open to the public.

As part of the week’s events, on Wednesday, March 18 Ursinus students and faculty will visit  Salford Hills Elementary School for demonstrations involving electric fish, microscopy, coloring books, information about food that is good for the brain, and about the importance of wearing a helmet for sports.

National Brain Awareness Week was created in 1996 in co-operation with the Society of Neuroscience and The Dana Alliance, to elevate public awareness of brain and nervous system research. Throughout the week additional events will take place for the benefit of the campus community.  The events are hosted by Nu Rho Psi, the national honors society for neuroscience, in co-operation with Active Minds, Psi Chi and the psychology club.

Pictured: Nu Rho Psi logo

Author and scholar Sherman A. Jackson will speak on “Blackamerican Islam: Challenges, Prospects and Lessons” at Ursinus College on March 23 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Musser Auditorium in Pfahler Hall.

Jackson is featured on the Washington Post-Newsweek blog, “On Faith,” and is listed by Religion Newswriters Foundation’s ReligionLink as among the top 10 experts on Islam in America.

 He is a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and the Law School, at University of Michigan. At Ursinus, Jackson will address politics and piety among African Americans today, and will speak about what the Obama presidency means for American Muslims.

 His most recent book is “Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking toward the Third Resurrection,” (Oxford University Press, 2005), in which he contends that “Islam owes its momentum to the distinctively American phenomenon of ‘Black Religion,’ a God-centered holy protest . . .  that emerged out of the experience of American slavery,” according to the publisher.

Jackson received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies in the Islamic Near East program. Prior to teaching at University of Michigan and the Michigan Law School, he was on the faculty of several other universities, and was Executive Director of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad, The American University in Cairo, Egypt.

 He is a member of the editorial board, The Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, DePaul University in Chicago, and has served on various boards and scholarly associations. He is also the author  “The Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî's Faysal al-Tafriqa Bayna al-Islam wa al-Zandaqa,” (Oxford University Press, 2002), and “Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihâb al-Dîn al-Qarâfî,” (E.J. Brill Leiden, 1996), and numerous articles.

 Ursinus College Theater will present playwright Nicky Silver’s “Raised in Captivity,” Wednesday through Saturday, April 8 through 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Studio Theater.


 Tickets are $5 for general admission and $2 for students and senior citizens.  For information and reservations, please call 610-409-3795.


 In “Raised in Captivity,” two estranged siblings reunite, and the fireworks of their past rivalries re-ignite. As adults seeking to form new families, they reflect upon the pathetic remains of their immediate one. They evoke sympathy in us, as we watch them trying not only to love each other but also trying to confront their guilt, past and present. Filled with crazy shenanigans, alternately heart-wrenching and hilarious, this comedy acknowledges that humanity is capable of really naughty behavior but never incapable of developing conscience and seeking redemption.


 Beverly A. Redman, assistant professor of theater and dance, directs the cast of Ursinus students. 

Christa Johnson, a senior from Voorhees, N.J., is the recipient of a Council of Independent Colleges American Graduate Fellowship which promotes and supports doctoral study in the humanities by talented graduates of private liberal arts colleges.

She is one of two Fellows selected from a group of 12 finalists, from private liberal arts colleges across the United States.

Last fall, Christa, a runner, was named the 2008 Division III Mideast Region Women’s Cross Country Athlete of the Year by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Recently, she was named outstanding track performer at the Centennial Conference indoor championships. She won the mile, 3,000-, and 5,000-kilometer runs.

She was a 2008 Summer Fellow, selected on campus to work with a faculty mentor on a research project. Her project, in the field of philosophy, was titled, “It’s Always Better When They’re Together: How the Combination of De re and De Dicto Works to Answer the Non-Identity Problem.”

The Fellowships are funded by a grant from the Wichita Falls Area Community Foundation, Wichita Falls, Texas.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College continues to open the process of curatorial assessment and study to the public in its WORK(S) IN PROGRESS exhibition which is on view until April 12.

Visitors can return several times, as the rotating collection currently features town/cityscapes and marine/seascapes, as well as three-dimensional Pennsylvania German works of art, until March 13.  From March 13 to April 13, the exhibit will feature portraits and three-dimensional folklifes and figurative and abstract works.

Bringing works of art out of the vaults and into the open, in preparation for expansion of the Museum building, the staff has turned the Main Gallery into a laboratory for more than 3,000 works from the permanent collection, rotating sections of the collection. During this time the works will be studied by the museum staff for curatorial, educational, registrarial and conservation assessment as the museum moves toward its new addition, the Henry and June Pfeiffer Wing. An official groundbreaking was held Oct. 30 for the new space, named for longtime museum supporter and college Trustee Henry W. Pfeiffer and his late wife, June. The Philadelphia firm Towers & Miller has designed an open storage addition which will allow the Museum’s diverse permanent collection to be on display. 

Also continuing until April 17 is the exhibit, Impressions of an Age: Ukiyo-e Prints from theBerman Collection, in the Upper Gallery. Curated by Matthew Mizenko, associate professor of Japanese and East Asian Studies at Ursinus, and Frank I. Chance, associate director, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania, the exhibit showcases the brightly colored woodblock prints which were a popular art form during the Edo period, which began in 1615.

 The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and  noon to 4:30 p.m. Saturday. The Museum is closed Sundays, Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500.

The second of two prominent scholars on Abraham Lincoln will be featured in a special Ursinus College lecture series commemorating Lincoln’s 200th birthday in 2009, “Lincoln’s Reflective Statesmanship.”

Completing the Lincoln series will be Allen C. Guelzo, Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, on March 2, at 7 p.m. in the Lenfest Theater in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center.

Guelzo's principal specialty is American intellectual history, from 1750 to 1865. His doctoral dissertation, "The Unanswered Question: Jonathan Edwards’ 'Freedom of the Will' in Early American Religious Philosophy", was published in 1989 as Edwards On the Will: A Century of American Philosophical Debate, 1750-1850, by Wesleyan University Press, and won an American Library Association Choice Award. In 1995, he contributed a volume in the St. Martin's Press American History textbook series, The Crisis of the American Republic: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. His 1996 'intellectual biography' of Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (1999), won the Lincoln Prize for 2000 and the 2000 Book Prize of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. He followed this with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004), which became the first two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize (for 2005) and the Book Prize of the Lincoln Institute. His latest book is Lincoln and Douglas : The Debates That Defined America (2008),which became the subject of an interview on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in February 2008.

 Essayist and author Andrew Delbanco, the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, delivered the first lecture earlier in February.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Ursinus College Theater will present Wendy Kesselman’s gripping new adaptation of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s play, The Diary of Anne Frank, Feb. 25 through 28 at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center’s Lenfest Theater.   The cast of Ursinus theater students will be directed by Domenick Scudera, associate professor and chair of the department of theater and dance at Ursinus.

Kesselman’s adaptation interweaves newly discovered writings from the diary of Anne Frank and survivor accounts to create an impassioned story of the lives of people persecuted under Nazi rule.  Anne Frank emerges from history as a vibrant, gifted young girl who confronts her rapidly changing life and the increasing horror of her time with astonishing honesty, wit and determination.  This moving stage adaptation brings her writing to life: “I want to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met.  I want to go on living even after my death.”

 Tickets are $5 for general admission and $2.00 for students and senior citizens.  Please call The Kaleidoscope Box Office, 610-409-3795, for more information and to reserve tickets. 

COLLEGEVILLE, PA. -- The Corporation for National and Community Service has honored Ursinus College with a place on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, for exemplary service to the communities it serves.

Colleges and universities were recognized during the American Council on Education’s Annual Conference in Washington, February 8-9, which was attended by Ursinus President John Strassburger.

At Ursinus, more than one-half of the student body is involved in community service, and one quarter of the students spend more than 20 hours a week on community service activities.

 Launched in 2006, the Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can achieve for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award were chosen based on scope and innovation of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service and other factors.

Some of the community service opportunities at Ursinus include Habitat for Humanity, food drives, blood drives, campus fund-raisers for nearby shelters, support of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program  and  tutoring for America Reads.  Each spring hundreds of students raise $40,000 to $50,000 for the American Cancer Society through Relay for Life.

Ursinus students respond to disaster relief efforts around the world, and in recent years have raised funds for refugees in Afghanistan, Kosovo and other troubled areas. SERV, a team of students who are certified EMTs, provide a first-response team for emergency first aid on campus. A Best Buddies chapter actively works with developmentally delayed adults in the community. 

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. -- The Teagle Foundation of New York has awarded a $300,000 grant to five liberal arts colleges, for a project to assess and enhance the impact of diversity initiatives on student engagement and student learning.

The collaborative includes Ursinus and Washington & Jefferson colleges, in Pennsylvania, and Goucher, McDaniel, and Washington colleges, in Maryland. The multi-year project will use campus teams to assess current diversity initiatives and make changes to integrate findings into the college curriculum and into the daily lives of the students. Application for the highly competitive grant was by invitation.

“It is hoped that the changes that come from this project will eventually impact the college community, and will lead to courses and programs with the goal of changing students’ lives,” said Ursinus College Associate Dean Annette Lucas, who is overseeing the grant. “We want to change the way we educate our students by engaging in conversations about what is important to us, by learning from each other’s successful strategies, by identifying programs that work as well as those that do not, and by linking our conversations to solid research and assessment conducted by our faculty and our students.”

Under the grant the five colleges will put together teams of 15-20 faculty, students, administrators and staff. The site visit model will allow a team from each campus to visit another campus each year, and also host a team from the collaborative, to better understand how students, faculty and staff experience the diversity initiatives on the campus. The teams will assess how the stated mission on campus actually is lived.  From these visits, and the recommendations from them, each campus will determine what changes to implement on their campus. The answers will be used to propel campus-wide enhancements to the initiatives on each participating campus.

 To supplement this work, the Teagle Diversity Fellows -- student researchers from each school -- will conduct research on diversity issues in the summers under faculty mentors.

 The colleges participated in earlier Teagle planning grants which allowed them to share information about their efforts to enhance student learning and engagement through the lens of diversity. This new grant will build on that.  

Ursinus College is proud to announce a $10,000 grant from Verizon to support a unique program in which Ursinus students teach English language skills to service workers.

 The student-initiated program was developed not only to improve language skills, but to create a better relationship between the workers and the campus community.

 Current students tutor and mentor some 20 Spanish-speaking contracted custodial workers, most of whom are recent immigrants to the United States.  The program was launched in the fall of 2007. Student tutors, many of whom have studied abroad in Spain, spend about two hours a week teaching oral and basic reading and writing skills to the employees. The grant will support the students and be used to purchase instructional materials.

 “You feel like you’re making a difference,” says Chris Miller 2009, a student director of the program, who has tutored the same worker for two years.

“It connects us and makes us feel more like a community,” says Liam Smith, a senior who is volunteering for a second year.

“Verizon is proud to improve the quality of life for youth and families by empowering the community with innovative tools and resources,” said Daniel J. Reavy, Director of External Affairs for Verizon Pennsylvania. “We’re investing in programs, such as our partnership with Ursinus College, to reach every type of learner across the lifespan and to touch people's lives by focusing on education, health and family safety in the 21st century. We understand that education does not begin or end in the classroom."

PHOTO CAPTION: Ursinus College gratefully acknowledges a $10,000 grant from Verizon Pennsylvania. Attending the event are (from left) Daniel J. Reavy, Director of External Affairs for Verizon Pennsylvania; Christian Rice, Lecturer in Philosophy and Religion and Director of the Bonner Leaders Program; senior Kari Duck, who is a student tutor, and Ursinus President John Strassburger.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. –  “The Langston Hughes Project” will be presented at Ursinus College on Wednesday, Feb. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Studio Theater of the Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center.  The program is free, but tickets are required.  Please call 610.409.3795 for information and reservations.

“The Langston Hughes Project” is based on the poem Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz by Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes.  It is his homage in verse and music to the struggle for artistic and social freedom at home and abroad during the early 1960’s. Hughes died in 1967, before the piece could be performed.

In 1995, Dr. Ron McCurdy, musical director for the The Langston Hughes Project and Professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Southern California, set the text of the poem to music, and it was performed by his jazz quartet.  The complete multimedia presentation includes the spoken work, jazz quartet and videography.

An internationally known jazz artist and educator in both instrumental and vocal jazz, McCurdy has performed and presented hundreds of masterclasses all over the world and authored several books and articles. He is past-president of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE),  a consultant for the Grammy Foundation, Walt Disney Company, National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA) and a performing artist for the Yamaha Corporation.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Jennifer Finney Boylan, the author of Remind Me To Murder You Later (1988); The Planets (1991); The Constellations (1994); and Getting In (1997), will speak at Ursinus on Friday, Feb. 13, at 7 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium.   The program is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are required.

Boylan is widely praised in publications such as The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday and Entertainment Weekly, for her characterizations of people faced with atypical dilemmas, caused by their own hands or by the spinning forces of  life.  Her stories have appeared in Confrontation, Florida Review, Quarterly West, Western Humanities Review, Writer's Digest and Southwest Review.  Her memoir, She's Not There, published by Doubleday in 2003, was the first bestselling work by a transgendered American; until 2001 she published under the name James Boylan.  Currently she is the Director of Creative Writing at Colby College, Maine.

Prior to her career as a writer and educator, Boylan was the managing editor of American Bystander magazine, an editorial assistant at Viking/Penguin and a production editor of the fiction line at E.P. Dutton.  A native of Valley Forge, Pa., she grew up in nearby Delaware County.   

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Why Nature Itself Wants You To Get A Liberal Arts Education is the title of a lecture by Arthur Melzer, professor of political science at Michigan State University, to be given at Ursinus on Tuesday, Jan. 27, at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope’s Lenfest Theater.  The event is free and open to the public.

Melzer is primarily interested in studying the cultural discontents that modern liberal democratic capitalism has generated and the counter-ideals spawned by those discontents. His research has focused largely on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of almost all modern culture criticism and the originator of such counter-cultural ideals as Romanticism, bohemianism, sincerity or authenticity, secular compassion, and historical relativism. He also has a strong interest in the ethical writings of Aristotle. He teaches courses on the whole history of Western political philosophy.

His writings include The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1990), “The Problem with the ‘Problem of Technology’” (in The Problem of Technology in the Western Tradition, ed. Melzer, Weinberger and Zinman, Cornell University Press, 1993), “The Origin of the Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau and the New Religion of Sincerity” (American Political Science Review, June, 1996), “Anti-anti-Foundationalism: Is a Theory of Moral Sentiments Possible?” (Perspectives on Political Science, Summer 2001) and “Tolerance 101”(The New Republic, July 10, 1991).  

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. –Interdisciplinary artist and sculptor Philip Ross will speak at Ursinus on Friday, Feb. 6, at 4:30 p.m. in Musser Auditorium, Pfahler Hall.  Ross is a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute  as well as a Senior Lecturer at the California College of the Arts. His work readily appropriates the aesthetics at work in varied biological and environmental science practices.  The event is free and open to the public without tickets or reservations.

 Along with his work as an artist, Ross is an amateur bio-engineer and a member of the San Francisco mycological society, North America's largest local amateur society formed to promote the study and exchange of information about mushrooms. Ross uses living organisms, such as mushrooms and oysters, as the inspiration for his art, and he designs and creates highly controlled environments in which he manipulates, nurtures and transforms a variety of living species into sculpture.

Ross has worked collaboratively with a number of institutions.  As artist in residence for the Life Science Department of San Francisco’s Exploratorium, he designed and constructed a hydroponic garden and fountain for its Traits of Life exhibit.  At a California oyster farm, he devised a method of growing a colony of oysters onto an armature, a three-year process that produced a 20-foot- long architectural structure composed of a mass of fused oyster shells.

Working at the disparate intersection of homegrown technologies, folk art, materials science and design-it-yourself cultivation techniques, Ross has grown and exhibited a series of Reishi mushrooms in a highly artistic form and created self-contained survival capsules for single living plants.

His international exhibitions include Bios4 at the Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain, and Biennial of Electronic Arts in Perth, Australia.  In the United States, his numerous exhibitions include GardenLab at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Calif., and he curated the exhibition, BioTechnique at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Calif.   

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Two prominent scholars on Abraham Lincoln are featured in a special Ursinus College lecture series commemorating Lincoln’s 200th birthday in 2009.

Essayist and author Andrew Delbanco, the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, will deliver a lecture at Ursinus College on Lincoln’s birthday, Feb. 12, as part of a special series, "Lincoln's Reflective Statesmanship." The lecture will be in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater at 4:30 p.m. The program is sponsored by The Jack Miller Center for Teaching America's Founding Principles and History.

Delbanco has written extensively on American history and culture, and in 2001, he was named “America’s Best Social Critic” by Time magazine. He is the editor of The Portable Abraham Lincoln, a collection of Lincoln’s writings. Winner of the 2006 Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates, Delbanco is the author of Melville: His World and Work (2005), which won the Lionel Trilling Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in biography. The Death of Satan (1995), Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now (1997), and The Real American Dream (1999) were named notable books by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. The Puritan Ordeal (1989) won the Lionel Trilling Award. Delbanco's essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Raritan, and other journals, on topics ranging from American literary and religious history to contemporary issues in higher education.

Completing the Lincoln series will be Allen C. Guelzo, Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, on March 2, at 7 p.m. in the Lenfest Theater in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center.

Guelzo's principal specialty is American intellectual history, from 1750 to 1865. His doctoral dissertation, "The Unanswered Question: Jonathan Edwards’ 'Freedom of the Will' in Early American Religious Philosophy", was published in 1989 as Edwards On the Will: A Century of American Philosophical Debate, 1750-1850, by Wesleyan University Press, and won an American Library Association Choice Award. In 1995, he contributed a volume in the St. Martin's Press American History textbook series, The Crisis of the American Republic: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. His 1996 'intellectual biography' of Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (1999), won the Lincoln Prize for 2000 and the 2000 Book Prize of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. He followed this with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004), which became the first two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize (for 2005) and the Book Prize of the Lincoln Institute. His latest book is Lincoln and Douglas : The Debates That Defined America (2008),which became the subject of an interview on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in February 2008.

Project Pericles also supported this series.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – International concert organist Gail Archer will present a Heefner Organ Recital at Ursinus on Sunday, Feb. 8, at 4 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium on the college campus.  The event is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Archer is Chair of the Music Department at Barnard College, Columbia University, on the organ faculty at Manhattan School of Music and College Organist at Vassar College.  An active recitalist in both Europe and the United States, she was featured on organ series in Budapest, Turin, Hamburg and the Hague in summer 2004 and in Poland, Germany and Italy in summer 2005. 

 She presented an historic performance practice workshop, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and his Disciples: the Foundation of the North German Organ School at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Los Angeles, Calif., and was a featured recitalist at the Organ Historical Society national convention in Buffalo, New York in 2004. She performs regularly at festivals worldwide, including the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina and the Bach Festival at Rollins College in Florida.

 Ms. Archer holds a DMA in organ performance from the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with McNeil Robinson; she also earned an artist diploma from the Boston Conservatory where she studied with James David Christie and Jon Gillock. 

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. –  Sheree R. Thomas, editor of the groundbreaking anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction (2000 Aspect – Warner Books), will speak at Ursinus College on Wednesday, Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center’s Studio Theater.  An event in Ursinus’ annual commemoration of the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Thomas’ presentation is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

 In her award-winning anthology, Thomas collected the works of some of the best African American science fiction, horror and fantasy writers working at the time, including Steven Barnes, Samuel R. Delany and Charles R. Saunders as well as Walter Mosley, W.E.B. Du Bois and other writers known principally for their work in other literary genres.  The book received the World Fantasy Award, Gold Pen Award and New York Times Notable Book Award.

 Dark Matter: Reading The Bones, Thomas’ second anthology of speculative African American fiction, was published in January 2004. 

 The founder of the Wanganegresse Press, Thomas has contributed to national publications including the Washington Post, Black Issues Book Review, QBR, and Hip Mama. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Ishmael Reed's Konch, Drumvoices Revu, and other literary journals. She teaches creative writing and short fiction at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center in Manhattan.    

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Ursinus’ annual commemoration of the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King will be held Monday, Jan. 19, through Thursday, Jan. 22.  The commemoration will be complemented  by a Friday, Jan. 30, performance event that will link the celebration to programs scheduled for Black History Month in February.  All events are free and open to the public without tickets or reservations.

 On Monday, Jan. 19, an Ecumenical Service will be held at noon in the Meditation Chapel, Bomberger Lower Level.  At 6 p.m., a Candlelight Vigil will begin at Unity House, closing with a procession to the College’s Olin Plaza.

 On Tuesday, Jan. 20, an Inauguration Day Celebration will take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Wismer Lower Lounge.

 Writer, book editor and publisher Sheree Renee Thomas will present a lecture on Wednesday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. in the Kaleidoscope Performing Art’s Center’s Studio Theater.   Thomas’ groundbreaking anthology Dark Matter:  A Century of Speculative Fiction (2000 Apect – Warner Books) collected the works of some of the best African American science fiction, horror and fantasy writers working at the time and received the World Fantasy Award, Gold Pen Award and New York Times Notable Book Award. 

 A panel discussion, Profiles in Excellence:  Student Leadership at Ursinus College, will be held on Thursday, Jan. 22, at 3 p.m. in Musser Auditorium, Pfahler Hall.  The panel of Ursinus students will discuss the importance of collegiate activism.  

 On Friday Jan. 30 at 7:30 p.m., The Substance of Our Soul, a performance by Ursinus’ best singers, dancers, artists and leaders will be held in the Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater.  The program will mark the beginning of Black History Month.

Impressions of an Age: Ukiyo-e Prints from the Berman Collection, opens in the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College on January 20 in the Upper Gallery. The exhibit runs until April 17. The Opening Reception and Gallery Talk by the curators will be Sunday, January 25 from 2 to 4 p.m.

Matthew Mizenko, associate professor of Japanese and East Asian Studies at Ursinus, and Frank L. Chance, associate director, Center of East Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania, are the curators of this vibrant exhibit which evokes an important era in the history of Japan.

The woodblock print (ukiyo-e) was a prominent art form during Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868), which brought peace, stability and prosperity to the country. The growth of an educated and wealthy merchant class set the context for the development of a popular, mass-produced art form that reflected the lives, leisure, aesthetics, fantasies, fads, and aspirations of this urbanized populace.  The brilliantly colored ukiyo-e prints include many depicting scenes from the Kabuki theater, including stylized dramas, images of popular actors in scenes they made famous, and stories of tragedy, romance and revenge from both China and Japan.  Some prints recorded and publicized the activities of the licensed pleasure quarters, which served as a relief from the moral injunctions of the government. The exhibition also includes images of travel and famous sights.  Taken together, the prints present a picture of the "floating world" (ukiyo) of lightness, play, beauty and dreams. Among the artists represented are Moronobu, Masanobu, Hiroshige, Hokusai, Kunisada and Kuniyoshi.

The 27 images in this exhibition are drawn from a collection of 43 prints donated to the museum’s permanent collection by Nancy M. Berman & Alan Bloch.  These prints complement the substantial holdings of the Berman Museum in 20th-century Japanese prints to create a comprehensive collection of Japanese graphic art that serves as a valuable resource for both the community and Ursinus College.  Concurrently with the exhibition, Professor Mizenko will be offering a course in Japanese visual culture in which students will study the museum’s prints as artistic, cultural and social artifacts.

Also opening January 20 is the exhibit Work(s) in Progress, during which visitors can view the curatorial process in action, as portions of the permanent collection come out of the vaults and into the open, in preparation for expansion of the Museum building. That exhibit runs until April 12.

 The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and noon to 4:30 p.m., Saturday. The Museum is closed Sundays, Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500.

Image:  Kunisada (signed Utagawa Toyokuni II), Two Onnagata (actors) and a Puppet, c. 17th c., woodblock print, 14 ¼ x 9 ½”, gift of Nancy M. Berman & Alan Bloch

Ursinus College is a great long-term value, says SmartMoney, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, in its January issue. The article, “Why the Ivies aren’t Worth it” assesses the long term value of a college education by ranking schools by taking into account tuition, and alumni salaries. Ursinus is #10 on in the top liberal arts school list, with Amherst, Bowdoin, Colgate, and Lafayette, and is #38 on a combined ist of 50 colleges in three categories, right under Brown and Bowdoin, and above Swarthmore, Williams and Vassar.

The article is called “Why the Ivies aren’t Worth it” and it assesses the long term value of a college education, by coming up with a “payback” ratio for each school. They state that other rankings measure quality and selectivity and they were not doing that.

To determine each school’s “payback” ratio, the editors started with 50 schools (by tuition) drawn from three categories: Ivy League, liberal arts and public. Then, culling data from a recent survey by PayScale.com, an online salary database, they looked at the median salaries alumni are earning at two career stages – within five years of graduation (median: three years) and after 10 years (median: 15 years). They then divided each of those figures by the school’s historical degree cost and averaged them together.”

The top 10 liberal arts schools listed in the article are:

1.  Washington & Lee

2.  U. of Richmond

3.  Lafayette

4.  College of the Holy Cross

5.  Bucknell

6.  Amherst

7.  Occidental

8.  Colgate

9.  Bowdoin

10. Ursinus

For a complete copy of the article, click here

Old Sports Shoes and Clothing Wanted

Students in the environmental studies classes of Patrick Hurley are collecting used athletic shoes and clothing for two different charitable environmental stewardship projects.

                            

Used athletic shoes can be recycled into tennis and basketball court surfaces.  Students, faculty and staff are being asked to drop off their used sneakers at Wismer Center, Corson Hall and Reimert 308.  Students heading up this project are Amanda Schwartz, Jessica Mack and Jacqueline Hazlett. Environmental students are also collecting used clothing during the week of December 1 through December 5.  Students, faculty and staff may bring their old clothes to be reused at a local center. The collection boxes are in the Wismer Center lobby.

Warm Coats for Children

Approximately 76 children came to campus Dec. 2 Lounge for a holiday party. Ursinus College senior Thomas Russell III was the energy behind the Holiday Extravaganza, which brought children from Norristown and Pottstown to the Ursinus campus. Russell, who last year was student director of the college's America Reads program, along with co-chair Bridget Daly Barnes, student director of ACLAMO, invited the children that those two programs serve. At the party, each child received a new winter coat.

Helping to fund the party were the Student Activities Office,  Unity House, The Bonner Leadership Program, and Rising Sons.

Go behind the scenes of an art museum when the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College opens the process of curatorial assessment and study to the public in its WORKS(S) IN PROGRESS exhibition from January 20 through April 12.

 Bringing works of art out of the vaults and into the open, in preparation for expansion of the Museum building, the staff will turn the Main Gallery into a laboratory for more than 3,000 works from the permanent collection, rotating sections of the collection. During this time the works will be studied by the museum staff for curatorial, educational, registrarial and conservation assessment as the museum moves toward its new addition, the Henry and June Pfeiffer Wing.

An official groundbreaking was held Oct. 30 for the new space, named for  longtime museum supporter and college Trustee Henry W. Pfeiffer and his late wife, June. The Philadelphia firm Towers & Miller has designed an open storage addition which will allow the Museum’s diverse permanent collection to be on display.  The addition will also provide a works on paper study area for flat storage, lecture space and new galleries including a rooftop gallery for outdoor sculpture.

 WORK(S) IN PROGRESS will allow visitors to see “museum work” in action. The Front Gallery will highlight specific parts of the collection on a rotating basis.  Several faculty on campus and schools from the region will be working to integrate this opportunity into their curricula – giving their students a chance to respond to and/or interpret in new ways specific pieces or ensembles of pieces from the permanent collection through their own work.  These “interventions” into the permanent collections will then be exhibited with the Berman Museum pieces that have generated these student responses.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; noon to 4:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, and closed Mondays and college holidays.  The Museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500

 

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. –“Beauty and the Beast” will be presented by Ursinus’ Breakaway Student Productions Thursday through Saturday, Dec. 4 to 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center Studio Theater.

Directed, designed and starring student actors, the production is a comedic take on the classic fairytale.  It is geared to both children and adults, and area families are invited to bring their children to share in the humor and the love story.

Tickets are $2 for everyone.  For more information and reservations, please call 610-409-3795.

Breakway Student Productions is an organization devoted to theater.  Its goal is to develop a community that is fully committed to theater and live arts on campus.
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COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Handel’s “Messiah” will be performed by the Ursinus College Choir on Saturday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m.   John French, holder of the Heefner Chair of Music, will conduct the choir and orchestral accompaniment.

Admission is $15 and tickets are still available.

To reserve tickets, please contact Cathy Bogusky at (610) 409-3000, ext. 3583. 

Please note the college will be closed for the Thanksgiving Weekend from Nov. 27 through 30.  Please leave a message on the voicemail and you will be contacted on Dec. 1.   

Professional soloists for the performance will be Rebecca Carr, soprano; Kim Kodes Lee, alto; Robert O’Neil, tenor, and Reginald Pindell, bass.

The Ursinus College Dance Department has been chosen for the competitive American Masterpieces College Grant to reconstruct and perform a designated American dance masterpiece.

 “We are thrilled and honored to have been chosen for this prestigious grant,” said Cathy Young, Assistant Professor of Dance and co-director of the Dance Program at Ursinus, who was awarded the grant. “This will create a unique opportunity for our students to be immersed in the work of a master choreographer, and for our college to become more visible to the national dance community.”

Ursinus was awarded $10,000 from the American Masterpieces: Dance-College Component, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with Dance/USA, for the restaging of Swing Concerto by premier concert jazz dance choreographer Danny Buraczeski. Swing Concerto is a 1993 piece for nine dancers by Buraczeski, who, after a career on Broadway, formed the company JAZZDANCE by Danny Buraczeski, which has performed all over the United States and internationally. He is now on the faculty at Southern Methodist University. The grant includes support for master classes, lecture-demonstrations and scholar panels, as well as performances by Ursinus dance students in November 2009 and April 2010. Swing Concerto will be restaged by both Young and Buraczeski.

As a dancer in Minneapolis, Young was an assistant for Buraczeski, and danced in the original performances of the piece. “It’s a huge gift to our students, our Dance Program, and  the entire Ursinus community,” she said. 

Pictured: The original Swing Concerto

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Handel’s “Messiah” will be performed by the Ursinus College Choir on Saturday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m.   John French, holder of the Heefner Chair of Music, will conduct the choir and orchestral accompaniment. 

Admission is $15. For tickets, please contact Cathy Bogusky at (610) 409-3000, ext. 3583.    

Ursinus College Dean of Admissions Bob McCullough took part in a live online chat on the subject of college admissions on Monday, Nov. 11.  The chat was sponsored by The Philadelphia Inquirer on its website, www.philly.com.

During the course of the hour-long chat, McCullough and an admissions official from the University of Delaware fielded questions from parents of prospective students about admissions requirements, financial aid and the effect of the current economy on college admissions.

Click here to link to replay the chat.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Organist Andrew Senn will present a Heefner Organ Recital on Sunday, Nov. 23, at 4 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium on the Ursinus College Campus.  The event is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Senn studied organ with John Weaver at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and served as assistant organist at the world-famous Wanamaker Grand Court Organ while a student.  He held posts at St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia, and Washington Memorial Chapel, the National Shrine in Valley Forge National Park, as well.  Upon graduating from Curtis, Andrew was appointed to a unique position of both Organ and Choral Scholar at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall, England. There he studied the English choral tradition under Andrew Nethsingha.

In Philadelphia, Senn now conducts a professional choir and oversees a growing concert series.           

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus College Dance Company will present its fall concert, Thursday through Saturday, Nov. 20 to 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center on the Collegeville campus.

Tickets are $5 for general admission and $2 for students and senior citizens.  For more information and reservations, please call 610-409-3795.

The student dance company will perform an exciting program including new works by “renegade ballerina” Sally Rousse of Minneapolis, modern dance artist Ruth Andrien and Japanese master teacher Isaburoh Hanayagi as well as works by faculty Chris Aiken and Cathy Young.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The internationally-recognized interdisciplinary artist Ohad Meromi will speak at Ursinus College on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at 6:30 p.m. in Musser Auditorium, Pfahler Hall.  The event is free and open to the public without tickets or reservations.

Born in Israel, Meromi lives and works in New York City.  He earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and the master of fine arts degree from Columbia University, School of the Arts, Visual Arts Department, in New York City.   

Meromi’s solo exhibitions have been held at the Harris Lieberman Gallery and P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center in New York City, as well as the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Israel Museum, and the Centre Regional d'Art Contemporain in Sete, France.  Select group exhibitions include the Biennial de Lyon in Lyon, France and Uncertain States Of America, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Daniel Birnbaum and Gunnar B. Kvaran.

            His numerous grants and awards include those of the Israeli Video and Experimental Cinema Fund and the Israeli Minister of Culture.  This year, he received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in support of his visual art.           

The Hon. Joseph Melrose, former ambassador to Sierra Leone and an Ursinus College professor, will lead a delegation of five Ursinus students and one recent graduate to China Nov. 25 to 28, for the first National Model United Nations to be held at an international location.

The groundbreaking conference includes more than 200 student participants from around the world, and was organized in cooperation with Northwestern Polytechnic University in Xi'an. Ursinus students will represent the country of France.

Melrose, who served three decades in the Foreign Service, including postings in Washington, Vietnam, Syria, Pakistan, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, was a three-term president of the board of the National Model United Nations and currently is an active member. He is a senior advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the 63rd United Nations General Assembly, and also served in the same capacity for the last two sessions.

Melrose also headed the Emergency Support Team deployed to Nairobi, Kenya, following U.S. Embassy bombings in the late 1990s, and while in Sierra Leone, he helped broker a peace treaty. He was appointed coordinator of the 9/11 Task Force and was the Senior Consultant on Counterterrorism in the Office of the Secretary of State’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism. He is a 1966 graduate of Ursinus College, and was president of the Board of Directors of the The National Collegiate Conference Association, which sponsors the National Model United Nations.

As professor of international relations and Ambassador-in-Residence, Melrose leads a large delegation of Ursinus students each year to the National Model United Nations in New York City.

Among the Ursinus group attending the Model U.N. in China are Samantha Cohen of Kendall Park, N.J.; Carolyn Smith of Camp Hill Pa.; J. Alex Branham of Collierville, Tenn.; and Jonathan Nagel of Fountainville, Pa.   Also attending is Megan Helzner, who graduated last May from Ursinus, and who is currently working at the National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia.

                                       _______________________

Pictured: Professor Melrose addressing students in China last year

Ground was broken Oct. 30 for an architecturally significant addition to the Philip and Muriel Berman museum of Art on the Ursinus College campus.

The new Henry and June Pfeiffer Wing will be named for longtime Trustee and art museum supporter Henry ‘Hank’ Pfeiffer and his late wife, June. In conjunction with the ceremony, Mr. Pfeiffer received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree for his enthusiastic service to the College.

During the ceremony, Nancy M. Berman, President and Executive Director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, said that “The groundbreaking announcement provides one of those rare occurrences when we can focus on that magic moment when dream, possibility and a clear vision begin the transformation into concrete reality and tangible opportunity.

She added that “the Museum has more than exceeded its original physical and programmatic blueprint. The museum has become a place pulsating with ideas, art, students, faculty, community, artists, art lovers, thinkers, making connections and enjoying the mind in new ways of learning and creative pursuit.”

Ursinus President John Strassburger said of her parents, the Bermans, “their vision for the arts in a liberal arts college setting has been transforming.”

The Berman Museum of Art has become an educational and cultural resource since  the late Philip and Muriel Berman, business leaders and philanthropists, found a home for their extraordinary collections of contemporary sculpture, American paintings and works on paper and folk art, joining an existing collection of 18th and 19th Century American and European paintings. Nearly 20 years later, the museum houses more than 3,000 notable works of art and attracts 35,000 visitors annually.

The Philadelphia firm Towers & Miller has designed a stunning new open storage addition for the study and exhibition of the Museum’s permanent collection. The Museum opened in 1989 in the historic 1921 building that was formerly Alumni Memorial Library. Currently only a small portion of the permanent collection is on display, something the plan to add 6,000 square feet of space will remedy. The addition will also provide a works on paper study area for flat storage, lecture space and new galleries including a rooftop gallery for outdoor sculpture.

Lisa Hanover, the director of the Berman Museum since its inception, described Pfeiffer as a “pied-piper who has educated so many about the quality, goals, and achievements of this institution,” and who has led by example.“We are proud that the Henry and June Pfeiffer Wing of the Berman Museum of Art will be a lasting tribute to your investment in a vibrant program that characterizes the distinctive learning environment of Ursinus College.

Pfeiffer, a 1948 Ursinus graduate, is an unfailing advocate of Ursinus, and has represented the Admissions Office at countless recruiting programs and as the long-time leader of the North Jersey Alumni Area Club. He has served as Chair of the Alumni Loyalty Fund, as President of the Alumni Association, as a leader of the Board’s Development Committee, and in all of the College’s fund raising campaigns, including as a co-chair of the recently completed $120,000,000 Taking Our Place campaign. Except for a one-year interruption as required by the college’s bylaws, Pfeiffer has been a member of the Ursinus College Board of Trustees continuously since 1978. He and his wife established an endowed scholarship at Ursinus. During his successful sales and executive career, he worked for several of the nation’s leading paper companies, and earned an M.B.A. from Columbia University.  Together with his wife, June, who died this past summer, he has been exceedingly generous to Ursinus, particularly to the Berman Museum of Art. 

The Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation has made a $1 million gift to the $5 million expansion; and the Pew Charitable Trusts committed $350,000 in a challenge grant. In addition to the Berman Foundation, the Pfeiffers and The Pew Charitable Trusts, there were several major donors to the expansion.

In preparation for the addition, from January 20 through April 12, the Main Gallery will become a collections laboratory for over 3,000 works of art from the permanent collection, coming out of storage for assessment and study by the museum staff. The WORKS(S) IN PROGRESS exhibition will allow visitors to see “museum work” in action. The Front Gallery will highlight specific parts of the collection on a rotating basis.  Several faculty on campus will integrate this process into their curricula – giving their students a chance to respond to and/or interpret pieces from the permanent collection. These responses will be exhibited with the pieces that have generated them.

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus, known for its diverse collection and innovative educational programming, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; noon to 4:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, and closed Mondays and college holidays.  The museum is accessible to the physically disabled and admission is free. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibitions and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For group tour information, call 610-409-3500.

  

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – “Science in Art: Technical Analyses of 17th Century Dutch Paintings”  is the title of a lecture to be presented at Ursinus College on Monday, Nov. 10, at 7 p.m. in Musser Lecture Hall, Pfahler Hall.  The event is free and open to the public without tickets or reservations.

Dr. Erich Uffelman of the Department of Chemistry, Washington and Lee University, will discuss the technical examinations used by the world’s major museums to arrive at informed interpretation of works of art.  He will focus on the interplay of conservation science, art conservation and art history in the interpretation of works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Jan Steen.

At Washington and Lee University, Uffelman teaches general through advanced chemistry courses as well as a course in Science in Art.  His seminar in 17th Century Dutch Paintings is an interdisciplinary course for non-science-majors that illustrates how chemistry, physics, analytical instrumentation, history, economics, and religion are interrelated.  The course includes a three week period in The Netherlands.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. –  John Holman, the author of the short story collection Squabble and Other Stories and the novel Luminous Mysteries, will speak at Ursinus College on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. in Unity House, on the Collegeville campus.  The event is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are required.

Holman’s stories have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Mississippi Review, Crescent Review, Apalachee Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Oxford American and Alabama Literary Review and in various anthologies

A professor of creative writing and fiction at Georgia State University, he is frequently invited to speak and read his fiction at other universities, literary workshops, and professional conferences. His hosts have included The Brockport Writers' Forum, The Manhattan Theater Club, and the Florida Suncoast Writers' Conference.  He also has written on issues related to the teaching of creative writing.

Holman has received grants and awards for his writing from the Winston-Salem Arts Council, the North Carolina Cultural Arts Coalition and the University of South Florida Research and Creative Scholarship Fund.  In 1991 he received the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation’s Whiting Writer's Award, a prestigious annual literary prize given to 10 American writers of promise.

A native of Durham, N.C., he received his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his master’s degree in English from North Carolina Central University and his Ph.D. in English and creative writing from the University of Southern Mississippi.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Ursinus College Theater will present The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice, Nov. 12 through 15, at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center’s Studio Theater.  The cast of Ursinus theater students will be directed by Domenick Scudera, associate professor of theater and dance at Ursinus.

 The Adding Machine is a highly theatrical, expressionistic classic by Elmer Rice that was a smash hit when it first opened in 1923.  This darkly comic play tells the story of Mr. Zero, an accountant at a large, faceless company who discovers, after 25 years of exemplary work, that he has been replaced by a mechanical adding machine.  What follows is a crazy journey through his life and his death, an after-life romance, and Mr. Zero’s eventual discovery of what it means to be human.

 Tickets are $5 for general admission and $2 for students and senior citizens.  Please call The Kaleidoscope Box Office, 610-409-3795, for more information and to reserve tickets.

 COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus Wind Ensemble will present a concert on Saturday, Nov. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater.  The concert is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

 Holly Gaines, assistant professor of music, will conduct a program featuring Bernstein’s Overture to Candide and Holst’s Second Suite for Military Band.  A suite of short Stravinsky pieces and works by Robert Sheldon, Andrew Boysen and John Philip Sousa will be included.

The Ursinus Residence Hall Association is sponsoring a Trick or Treat fun night for the community, Oct. 29, 7:30 to 9 p.m.

Visitors are asked to park in the Ninth Street Lot, and be ushered to the fun. Various campus houses and dormitories will be decorated as haunted houses.

For further information please call 610-409-3590.

"Gaines & French" to Perform Oct. 24 at Noon in Bomberger
Invented in Belgium 162 years ago, the saxophone was intended for classical ensembles. But even before crossing the sea to its zenith of popularity in American Jazz, it suffered under a cloud of ambiguity in the classical music world, says Ursinus College Professor Holly Gaines.  (sound sample)

Last year Gaines recorded her first solo CD, Music of Kathryne E. Thompson, a seven-song tribute to the American 1920’s alto saxophonist’s work. Through her own playing and research, Gaines wanted to celebrate the roots of the instrument absconded – some say reinvented - by Jazz masters and pop music in the United States.  

“Stylistically, these pieces are a very certain method of early Americana,” says Gaines about Thompson’s 1920’s parlor songs. Gaines had a tough time finding someone who could play the piano parts.

“I really wanted to find someone who understood the music,” she says. So Gaines turned to her colleague and friend, Music Department Chair Professor John French (the William Heefner Professor of Music at Ursinus) to accompany her on the CD.

And everything clicked.

“It’s a great project and wonderful to play together,” says French, who is also associate conductor of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the Organist/Choirmaster at The Church of the Holy Trinity in Rittenhouse Square.

Together they hope to bring the long-overdue limelight to classical saxophone music. And they’re winning fans beyond the UC campus.  For the past year, they’ve performed across the region at church recitals and private salon concerts including the salon of well-known Philadelphia composer Andrea Clearfield.

“The intangibles of playing together are remarkable for me,” says French. “I’ve conducted a lot of musicians and with some people the playing can be mechanical. But, when we play there’s a compatibility in the way we approach the music, a nuance of style. It can come down to the way you shape a particular phrase,” says French. “You can’t practice that.”

The duo, who have temporarily agreed to the stage name Gaines & French, will perform Friday, October 24th at noon in Bomberger Auditorium. “We agree on the interpretative aspect of the music,” says Gaines, who first began playing saxophone in the fifth grade. “And it’s a blast.”  

A lecture presentation on the intersection of art and science will be given Tuesday, October 21, from  12:30 to 1:20 p.m. in Phaler Auditorium.  The event is open to the campus community and the public.  Refreshments will be served.

The program, titled "Art and Science – Many Voices, One Inspiration," is the first in a two part series sponsed by the college's Arts & Lectures Committee and organized by faculty members Garrick Imatani of the Art Department and Rebecca Roberts of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

This program will explore the nature of the science-art interface, the inspiration this interface provides to scientists and artists alike, and the impact of these interactions on art, research, and other human endeavors.  The program will focus on how biological objects--whether proteins, viruses, animals, or others--become an inspiration for an artists’ work, and how scientists, ever so particular about accuracy and specificity, respond to such artistic representations.

The speakers are Mara Haseltine, a sculptor from New York, and Dr. Wayne A. Hendrickson, Ph.D., a biophysicist from Columbia University.

Mara Haseltine’s love of the natural sciences and form has been a constant theme throughout her work. Her work is figurative in that even her most abstract forms relate to the internal-external body, as well as human psychology. 

Dr. Hendrickson studies the structure and biological action of macromolecules, using diffraction analysis and other biochemical and biophysical methods.  He is most noted for his work on HIV proteins and interactions of these proteins with immune cell receptors.

Sandy Hingston, senior editor, Philadelphia Magazine, will give an overview of the print and magazine fields, and career advice, Oct. 22 at noon in the Parent’s Lounge, Wismer Center. Bring your lunch to eat while listening.

In addition to her work at Philadelphia Magazine, Hingston has been a columnist for Underwire, Microsoft’s online magazine for women, and managing editor at the Pennsylvania Law Journal.  She has published articles in popular magazines like More, Women’s Health, Self and Prevention and has written 18 historical romance novels which have been translated into 10 languages.  She has won several magazine association and writing awards.

This program is sponsored by Career Services and the Media and Communication Studies Departments. 

Ursinus College’s student-run Escape Velocity Dance Company will open its seventh season with an all new concert of works choreographed, performed, and produced by Ursinus dance students. 

The concerts take place in the College’s Helfferich Hall Dance Studio of the Floy Lewis Bakes Center.  There will be two performances on Thursday, Oct. 30, at 6 and 8:30 p.m. and a special Halloween closing performance on Friday, Oct. 31 at 6 p.m.

Titled “Escape Velocity Presents: Eternalmotion,” the concert will feature a variety of dance genres including lyrical, improvisation, contemporary, jazz, hip-hop, classical Indian, belly dancing and more.

"Eternalmotion best describes our constant movement, one that is eternal and ever evolving,” said company president Roger Lee. A member of the Class of 2010, Lee is a junior at Ursinus, double majoring in Dance and Media & Communication Studies, hoping to someday run his own dance company.

Lee and an executive board composed of Marianne Conway, Nikolas Stasulli, Catherine Babbitt-Cook, Elizabeth Marion, all Class of 2009, and Sara Abdelmageed, Class of 2011, work with nearly 40 talented student dancers, choreographers, designers and photographers to produce Escape Velocity’s program.

Tickets are $1.00 for everyone.  For more information and reservations, please call 610-409-3795 or e-mail role@ursinus.edu            

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – Organist Terry Yount will present a Heefner Organ Recital on Sunday, Oct. 26, at 4 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium on the Ursinus College Campus.  The event is free, open to the public, and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Yount is a concert organist and on the faculty of the music department of the University of Central Florida, Orlando.  He earned the Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Alabama, where he studied harpsichord with Frederick Hyde, organ with Warren Hutton and piano with Nancy Wright.

A student of Russell Saunders and David Craighead, Yount earned the Master of Music, Doctor of Musical Arts and Performer’s Certificate at Eastman School of Music.  He is a past winner of the national collegiate organ auditions of the Music Teachers National Association, and he has appeared as solo organist in churches and colleges across the United States. 

Yount has held faculty positions at Kentucky Wesleyan College, Towson University, Rollins College and the University of Central Florida in Orlando.  He has appeared as harpsichordist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Winter Park Bach Festival Orchestra and Chorus, with Hesperus and members of the Waverly Consort in Baltimore, and at the Early Music Festival in Vancouver, BC.         

span id=haydn>COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus College Choir will perform The Creation by Franz Joseph Haydn on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium.  The event will be held in conjunction with Ursinus’ Homecoming Day celebration.  The concert is free, open to the public, and no tickets or reservations are needed.

John French, professor of music and holder of the Heefner Chair of Music, will conduct the program.  Professional soloists Edwina French, soprano; Kenneth Garner, tenor; and Reginald Pindell, bass, will perform.  Organist Michael Stairs will be the accompanist for the performance.  

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus Jazz Ensemble will present a concert on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 4 p.m. in The Kaleidoscope Lenfest Theater.  The event will be held in conjunction with Ursinus’ Homecoming Day celebration.  The concert is free, open to the public, and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Holly Gaines, assistant professor of music, will conduct a program including the works of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Herbie Hancock.  Vocalist Carly Jade Freedman, Class of 2011, will be featured on George Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Harold Arlen’s “Stormy Weather.”

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. –  Poet Tracie Morris will speak and read from her work at Ursinus on Wednesday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. in Bomberger Auditorium.  She will sign books of her poetry following the presentation.  The program is free, open to the public and no tickets or reservations are needed.

Morris is an interdisciplinary poet who has worked extensively as a sound artist, writer and multimedia performer. Her installations have been presented at the Whitney Biennial and the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, New York.

Her numerous awards for poetry include the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Creative Capital Fellowship, the National Haiku Slam Championship and an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship. She is the author of two poetry collections, Intermission and Chap-T-her Woman.

Morris’ poetry has been anthologized in literary magazines, newspapers and books including 360 Degrees: A Revolution of Black Poets, Listen Up!, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.  Her words have also been featured in commissioned pieces for several organizations including Aaron Davis Hall, the International Festival for the Arts, The Kitchen, Franklin Furnace and Yale Repertory Theater for choreographer Ralph Lemon.

She holds degrees from Hunter College and New York University and certificates from the Cave Canem Summer Institute and the Hemispheric Institute of New York University.

Sovereign Bank and the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College are continuing their education outreach community partnership.

Linda Dobra, Assistant Vice President, Sovereign Bank, presented a check in the amount of $2,500 to Lisa Tremper Hanover, Director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College recently. According to Hanover, “We are delighted to have the continued support of Sovereign Bank. This grant will provide resources to reach out to our community schools, while exposing our museum student interns to the benefits of mentoring young people whose life experiences and perspectives are often substantially different from their own.”

This year the Museum will be working with the Lakeside Girls Academy in Fort Washington. Through the unusual pairing of Working Women: 19th Century Quilts from the Collection of Judy Roche in the Main Gallery with Tamar Stone and Christine LoFaso:  Women’s Bodies of/as Work in the Upper Gallery, the Lakeside students will be challenged to explore connections between historical and contemporary works and will have the opportunity through these exhibitions and this partnership project to engage with and bring alive history, material culture and art-making.

Pictured: Linda Dobra, Sovereign Bank Assistant Vice President, Lisa T. Hanover, Director, Berman Museum and Susan Shifrin, Associate Director of Education, Berman Museum.

Laura Ng remembers her first exhilarating moments on two wheels; she was five years old and her dad pushed her around the cul de sac outside her Phoenixville home. Perfect training ground. Plenty of kids. All of them riding bikes.

Ng, an Ursinus senior and a math major, is at the helm of UC’s first Bike Share program. Now one month in motion, the environmentally sound initiative has 158 members; mostly students and an even spectrum of men and women riders.


“I’m thrilled about the student interest in the program and the positive feedback I’ve been receiving,” says Ng, 21. “I’m very passionate about saving our environment and the UC Bike Share program is a small step in that direction.  Statistics show that 60 percent of pollution created by automobile emissions happens in the first few minutes of operation, so riding your bike for short distances reduces a good amount of pollution.  Aside from environmental benefits, bike riding is a great form of exercise.”


Ng would like to see more faculty and staff involved: “I hope to see more faculty participation and make them more aware of the program,” says Ng.


UC riders can register at Campus Safety for a full year membership for $5. It’s simple. Sign a contract. Agree to take care of the bike while riding. Students Ray Clark and Greg Little are working with Ng to manage the Bike Share program.


A Trek 3700 Mountain bike is at the ready for errands, getting to class, doctor’s appointments, or just imagine – the sheer pleasure of riding. “One student did 40 miles on the Perkiomen Trail,” says Ng. “I still have a lot of exploring to do.”


Read more about Laura Ng and the Bike Share program in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

 A community investment conference bringing leaders together will take place at Ursinus College Oct. 11.

SUN Consulting & Associates hosts its first annual community investment conference, "It Takes a Village to Raise a Village," providing a forum where community and civic leaders, staff of non-profit organizations, and members of businesses and government agencies can exchange information, share ideas and form new relationships and strategic alliances. 

Among the slate of experts at the conference is plenary speaker Dr. J. Otis Smith, professor of psychology emeritus at Cheyney University, who has participated in several regional community leadership institutes.

There is a registration fee for the all-day event. For more details, visit www.sunconsult.net.

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Jeannine Morrison, concert pianist, and Alan Morrison, Ursinus College organist, will perform in