Speed Networking

Twenty-five Southwestern students had the opportunity to practice “speed networking” with members of the Board of Visitors as part of the Board’s Sept. 19 meeting on campus. Senior Penny Wong is shown here with Dale Knoble, president emeritus of Denison University and a former provost at Southwestern.

Top News

SURVEY DOCUMENTS THE LONG-TERM BENEFITS OF A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION

How does a liberal arts education benefit students in the long run?

Southwestern’s Career Services office has always had some anecdotal evidence, but it never had any concrete data – until now.

With the assistance of two students, the office recently completed its first-ever survey of Southwestern graduates 10 years later. The survey was done on students who were in the Class of 2003.

Although Career Services has been conducting a postgraduate survey for more than 25 years, that survey only captures what alumni are doing the first year after graduation.

“A one-year time horizon does not adequately tell the career story of liberal arts graduates,” said Daniel Orozco, director of career services.

Read more here.

POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR APPOINTED TO ENDOWED CHAIR

Political science professor Eric Selbin has been appointed to the Lucy King Brown Chair. The chair is one of six endowed chairs at Southwestern that were established with funds from The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston.

This is the third endowed position that Selbin has been appointed to during his tenure at Southwestern. He served as a Brown Distinguished Research Professor from 1999-2003 and was appointed to two terms as a University Scholar.

“I am very honored to receive this recognition,” Selbin said. “Our Brown Chair holders are an impressive group to have joined.”

As a Brown Chair holder, Selbin will be responsible for planning Southwestern’s Brown Symposium on a rotating basis.

Read more here.

Events

OBSERVATORY TO HOST PUBLIC VIEWING NIGHT OCT. 4

The Fountainwood Observatory will host a public viewing night Saturday, Oct. 4, from 8-10:30 p.m.

The observatory is located on the northeast side of campus adjacent to the Rockwell Baseball Field (see #6 on the campus map at http://www.southwestern.edu/map). Faculty members from the Physics Department as well as observers from the Williamson County Astronomy Club will be on hand to guide viewing.

Viewing nights are free, but donations are encouraged to help maintain the observatory. For weather-related updates about viewing nights, call the observatory hotline at 512-863-1242.

FIRST THINK! EVENT SET FOR OCT. 8

Most interactions between professors and students are hierarchal, with a professor lecturing to students. Senior math major Robert Lehr hopes to change that with a new series he is calling THINK!

The THINK! series, which was funded by a Presidential Innovation Grant, is a collection of interdisciplinary events where students, professors, staff, and community members engage at the same social level. Each THINK! event is structured in two parts. The first part is an interactive, interdisciplinary lecture presented by a guest. The second part randomly splits audience members into teams where they will have 5-10 minutes to solve a challenge.

The first event will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at 6 p.m. in the Mood-Bridwell Atrium. The guest speaker will be Eric Selbin, professor of political science, who will lead a discussion on how stories and narrative affect revolutions.

The second event will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 12, at 6 p.m. in the Mood-Bridwell Atrium. The guest speaker will be Joshua Long, assistant professor of environmental studies.

Additional events are being planned for the spring semester. For more information about the THINK! series, contact Lehr at lehrr@southwestern.edu.

GALLERY EXHIBIT OPENS OCT. 8

An exhibit titled “Contingent Objects: Works by Nina Katchadourian and Annette Lawrence” will be on display in the Fine Arts Gallery Oct. 8-Nov. 16.

The exhibit, which has been curated by Victoria Star Varner, professor of art, celebrates the centennial of Marcel Duchamp’s landmark artwork “Bottle Rack” (1914).

The gallery is open from 1-5 p.m. daily. An opening reception for the exhibit, featuring a talk by Annette Lawrence, will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 8, from 4-6 p.m.

YALE HISTORIAN TO SPEAK AT SOUTHWESTERN OCT. 9

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

Winter is the author of more than a dozen books on World War I and its impact on the 20th and early 21st centuries. Several of his recent works, including Sites of Memory, Sites of War: The Great War in European Cultural HistoryThe Experience of World War I1914-1918: The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century; and Remembering War: The Great War between History and Memory in the 20th Century, are at the forefront of scholarship in the field.

Winter was also co-producer, co-writer and chief historian for the PBS series, “The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century,” which won the Emmy, Peabody and Producers Guild of America Awards for best TV documentary in 1997.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Additional information is available here.

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 Oct. 2 is from Spain and is titled “Amerikanuak.” The film that will be shown Oct. 9 is from Bolivia and is titled “Yvy Maraey, Tierra sin mal”/“Yvy Maraey, Land Without Evil”).

Read more here.

OCT. 9 FACULTY AND GUEST RECITAL WILL FEATURE PREMIERE OF TWO PIECES

A faculty and guest recital featuring a variety of instruments will be held on Thursday, Oct. 9, at 7 p.m. in the Lois Perkins Chapel.

The recital will feature Eileen Meyer Russell on trombone and euphonium, along with Ellsworth Peterson, organ; Dana Zenobi, soprano; Adrienne Inglis, flute; Robert Tung, trombone; and senior Michael Martinez, trombone. The recital will include a variety of compositions, including two world premieres: Free Air, a composition by David R. Gaines for trombone and organ, and Love While You May, a composition for soprano and trombone by 2014 graduate Ashley Kraft. The program will also include an earlier work by Gaines, Five Miniatures for flute and trombone, and a transcription of Arcangelo Corelli’s Trio Sonata Opus 3, No.2.

The concert is free and open to the public.

SECOND ‘PAIDEIA CONNECTIONS’ LECTURE SET FOR OCT. 16

What do classical music and drug abuse have in common?

Members of the Southwestern community and the general public will have a chance to find out on Thursday, Oct. 16, as Southwestern hosts its second “Paideia Connections” lecture.

The Paideia Connections lecture series features short talks by two faculty members from diverse fields about their recent scholarly work. Following their talks, members of the campus community and the general public are invited to share connections they make between the presentations and engage in a discussion.

The Oct. 16 event will feature talks by Fay Guarraci, professor of psychology, and Kiyoshi Tamagawa, professor of music. Guarraci will give a talk titled “Breaking Bad or Breaking Good: Drugs of Abuse and Motivation.” Tamagawa will give a talk titled “My Way or the Highway: ‘Authenticity’ in Classical Music Performance.”

The event will begin at 4 p.m. in Olin 105.

Read more here.

Media Coverage

A story about the solar lounge chair designed by students at Southwestern aired on a national TV program called “It Ain’t Rocket Science” that is part of Time Warner Cable’s Connect a Million Minds initiative. The story is included in the episode of the show that can be found here.

News8 Austin did a story on voice professor Dana Zenobi and her three students who received national recognition in The American Prize competition. Watch the story here.

Dallas Morning News sports columnist Kevin Sherrington did a story about the return of football to Southwestern. Read the story here.

The Williamson County Sun ran a story about the translation of a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet in Special Collections. Read the story here.

The Williamson County Sun ran a story about faculty members who are using the “flipped classroom” technique. Read the story here.

The Williamson County Sun ran a story about President Burger’s Sept. 18 talk to members of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce. Read the story here.

The Williamson County Sun ran an op-ed piece by Provost Jim Hunt about “What education really is.” Read the piece here.

The Williamson County Sun ran a story about playwriting professor C. Denby Swanson and the premiere of her play, “The Norwegians.” Read the story here.

The Fall 2014 issue of the newsletter published by the RECESS (Research Experiences in Solid Earth Science for Students) program included a feature on the summer research conducted by Southwestern student Garth Ornelas. Read about his project here.

Notables

Former coach and athletics administrator Ronda Seagraves, graduates Ken McAllister and Danny Mickan, and the 2007-08 women’s golf team were inducted into the Southwestern Athletics Hall of Fame Sept. 26. At the same ceremony, 10 student-athletes were inducted into Southwestern’s Hall of Honor. Read more here.

Erika Berroth, associate professor of German, presented a research paper titled “Slow Violence and Vibrant Matter in Marica Bodrožić’ Novel Kirschholz und alte Gefühle” at the 38th annual conference of the German Studies Association for a panel with the title Berlin Haunts: Specters of the Past and Future in Recent Berlin Fictions. Berroth also contributed to discussions in a session sponsored by the GSA Environmental Studies Network titled “The Metabolism of Cultures: Consumption, Waste, and Desire in Ecological Humanities,” and in a session sponsored by the North American DAAD Centers for German and European Studies titled Mensch/Natur/Umwelt: New Research and Pedagogy of the Green Germany.”

Eileen Cleere, professor of English, has had an article accepted for publication in Victorian Studies, the premier journal in her field. Cleere’s archival research for “Chaste Polygamy: Mormon Marriage and the Fantasy of Sexual Privacy in Wood’s 1861East Lynne and 1863 Verner’s Pride,” was supported by Competitive Development funding, and she wrote the essay during her spring 2014 sabbatical.

Edward L. Kain, professor of sociology and University Scholar, is co-author with Stephen Sweet (Ithaca College) and Kevin McElrath (Stony Brook) of an article titled “The Coordinated Curriculum: How Institutional Theory Can Be Used to Catalyze Revision of the Sociology Major.” The article appears in the journal Teaching Sociology and builds upon research Kain published in 2007 about the extent to which sociology departments across the country have implemented the American Sociological Association’s national recommendations for the sociology major in Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major.

Shannon Mariotti, associate professor of political science, recently traveled to Iowa City to interview the novelist-philosopher Marilynne Robinson, who teaches at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. The interview will be published in Mariotti’s co-edited volume, A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson, which is forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky. 

Alicia L. Moore, associate professor of education, presented a teacher workshop to public school teachers and university historians at the Association for the Study of African American Life History (ASALH) 99th Annual Conference in Memphis, Tenn. Sept. 25. Moore was appointed by ASALH to be a co-project manager for the teacher workshop.

Sophomore soccer player Blake Smithson was named the SCAC Character & Community Male Athlete of the Week for the week ending Sept. 27. Watch a video about Smithson here.

Dustin Tahmahkera, assistant professor of communication studies, had his invited book review of “Imagining Geronimo: An Apache Icon in Popular Culture” published in the latest issue of The Chronicles of Oklahoma, which is a publication of the Oklahoma Historical Society.