Free Lunch

Members of the Crestview Baptist Church in Georgetown are offering a free lunch to Southwestern students every Monday this fall.

Top News

MUSIC STUDENTS, PROFESSOR RECEIVE NATIONAL RECOGNITION

Although she attended a high school that focused on the performing arts, Abigail Jackson was by no means decided upon a career in music when she came to Southwestern three years ago.

“I just wanted to get a liberal arts education,” she said.

All that changed in her first semester when she took voice lessons from Dana Zenobi, an assistant professor of applied music at Southwestern.

“I didn’t realize my potential in the opera world until Professor Zenobi showed me what I could do with my voice,” Jackson said. “It opened up a whole new world for me.”

Now, Jackson has her sights set on attending graduate school for vocal performance. She has already started working as a professional opera singer, having been hired by the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus to perform in last year’s production of “Tosca” and its upcoming performance of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.” 

Jackson is one of three students of Zenobi’s who recently received Career Encouragement Citations from The American Prize, a national competition for music performance. They were among the youngest to enter the competition in the college/university opera division, which can include students at any level through the doctoral degrees. After realizing that the three Southwestern students all study with Zenobi, The American Prize judging panel also awarded her a Citation for Inspiration in Teaching.

Read more here.

EDUCATION MAJOR RECEIVES STATEWIDE HONOR

When she was growing up, Relda Comer always knew education would be a part of her life. Both her grandmother and her mother were educators, and she planned to be one, too.

Comer was sidetracked on the way to her teaching career, however. She began working right out of high school and met her husband soon after. They were married and had two children. After years of not pursuing her dream, she decided to return to school to obtain her degree. She started at Austin Community College and is now a senior at Southwestern.

Comer will be graduating in May with a major in education specializing in secondary math and all levels of special education. After graduating, she will be certified to teach grade levels 7-12 and she hopes to land a job in the Austin area so she can stay close to her family in Round Rock.

Comer’s potential as a teacher was acknowledged this year when she was one of the three students selected to receive a scholarship from the Texas Association of School Personnel Administrators (TASPA) for the 2014-2015 academic year. The scholarships are given each year to the three students TASPA identifies as the best teacher candidates in the state.  

Read more here.

Events

FILM FESTIVAL SPONSORED BY THE SPANISH DEPARTMENT CONTINUES THROUGH OCT. 9

The Spanish Department is hosting a film festival this fall featuring films from Spain and the Americas. The films are being shown Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. in Room 105 of the F.W. Olin Building.

The film that will be shown Sept. 18 is from Brazil and is titled “Eternal Amazon.” The film that will be shown Sept. 25 is also from Brazil and is titled “Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo” (“I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You”).

Read more here.

SEPT. 28 FACULTY RECITAL WILL FEATURE WORKS FOR CELLO AND PIANO

Faculty members Hai Zheng and Kiyoshi Tamagawa will give a recital on Sunday, Sept. 28, at 7 p.m. in the Alma Thomas Theater. The program will include Beethoven’s Twelve Variations for Cello & Piano in G major, Madrigal by Enrique Granados, Intermezzo from the opera “Goyescas” by Granados, Tango by Issac Albéniz, Danza Española No. 5 ”Playera” by Granados, and the Sonata in A major for cello and piano by César Franck.

The concert is free and open to the public.

OCT. 9 HISTORY COLLOQUIUM WILL FOCUS ON THE HISTORY AND MEMORY OF WORLD WAR I

Jay Winter, the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University, will give a lecture titled 100 Years On: Remembering the Great War, 1914-18” on Thursday, Oct. 9, at 4 p.m. in Olin 110.

The lecture is part of the annual History Colloquium series sponsored by the Department of History. It is free and open to the public.

Media Coverage

Political science professor Tim O’Neill and junior Samantha Skurka contributed a piece to the Huffington Post about the race in Texas’ 27th Congressional District. Read their piece here.

The Williamson County Sun ran a story about the employees who received the 2014 Mundy Awards.

Several media outlets covered the football team’s first win, including KXAN-TV, KEYE-TV and The Williamson County Sun. Watch the KEYE-TV story here. See the coverage in the Sun here.

The Williamson County Sun ran a story about Career Services’ first-ever survey of Southwestern graduates 10 years out. Read the story at the bottom of this page.

Notables

Linebacker Tanner Rogers was named the SCAC Defensive Player of the Week and quarterback Bryan Hicks was named the SCAC Special Teams Player of the Week for the week ending Sept. 14. The recognition came after their performances in the football team’s first win since the program was reinstated last year. Read more here. Rogers was also named a Dream Bowl Player of the Week, along with cornerback Nik Kelly. The Dream Bowl honors the top Division II and Division III players each week in addition to inviting top seniors from around the country to participate in a bowl game.

Admission counselor Nicole Anderson has a painting on display in the current show at the Georgetown Art Center. The show will be up through Sept. 28.

President Edward Burger will be the featured speaker at aSept. 25 luncheon sponsored by The Discovery Learning Project at UT-Austin. President Burger will share the story of Southwestern’s commitment to inquiry-based learning in all of its natural sciences courses.

Eileen Cleere, professor of English, participated in a roundtable conversation on the topic of “College and Controversy” at The University of Texas at Austin Sept. 11. Cleere was invited to discuss both the pleasures and challenges of teaching at a liberal arts college in central Texas with a panel of professors and academic administrators from a variety of local universities.

James Gaeta, director of financial aid, has been nominated to serve a three-year term on the College Scholarship Service Assembly that is run by the College Board’s Southwest Regional Council.

Fay Guarraci, professor of psychology, gave a seminar at The University of Texas at Austin Sept. 10 titled “Breaking Bad or Breaking Good: Drugs of Abuse and Female Sexual Motivation.” Guarraci was also invited to be an invited panelist at the 2014 BRAINS symposium sponsored by the BRAINS (Broadening the Representation of Academic Investigators in NeuroScience) program based at the University of Washington. The symposium will be held Sept. 25-28.

Thomas Howe, professor of art history, will be among the featured speakers at the 18th conference on Internet Culture, Policy and Law, which is being held Sept. 17-19 at Cornell University. Howe is participating in a session on “From MOOCs to Cybercollege,” in which he will talk about reducing the cost of study abroad through synchronous distance learning.

Shannon Mariotti, associate professor of political science, had an article published in the August issue of Political Theory, the flagship journal for her subfield. The essay is titled “Adorno on the Radio: Democratic Leadership as Democratic Pedagogy,” and draws from her second book manuscript, Another Adorno: Democracy in America.

Kimberly Smith, professor of art history, gave a talk titled “Maria Marc’s Letter” at a conference on “Crossing Borders: Marianne Werefkin and the Cosmopolitan Women Artists in Her Circle” that was held Sept. 11-12 at the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen, Germany. Smith’s talk addressed Marc’s writing, from letters to provenance notes, as a generative act that should be considered crucial to our understanding of Blaue Reiter Expressionism.