Press Releases

APPLETON, WIS. — Official ground-breaking ceremonies will be held Friday, Oct. 6 for an expansion that will more than double the size of the Björklunden lodge on Lawrence University’s “northern campus” in Door County.

Lawrence officials and members of the steering committee that coordinated the fund-raising campaign for the building addition will be on hand for the festivities that will begin at 4 p.m. Robert Schaupp, president of P&S Investment Company of Green Bay, a 1951 Lawrence graduate and a member of the college’s Board of Trustees, chaired the campaign and will preside over the ceremonies.

The total expansion project cost stands at approximately $4 million and is the principal component of a $5 million effort, “Extending the Reach: A Campaign for Björklunden,” that was launched in August, 2005.

The addition, to be built on the south end of the current lodge, will add approximately 20,000 square feet to the existing 17,190-square foot, two-story seminar and conference center on the 425-acre Björklunden estate.

“The addition is an affirmation of the love people have for this place and the confidence they have in the unique learning programs we offer here,” said Mark Breseman, director of Björklunden. “This expansion was really user-driven and speaks to the growing popularity of the seminar programs and the need for additional space to accommodate those demands.”

Located on the Lake Michigan side of the Door peninsula just south of Baileys Harbor, Björklunden Vid Sjon — Norwegian for “Birch Forest by the Water” — hosts weekend retreats and seminars for Lawrence students throughout the academic year and week-long, adult continuing-education seminars during the summer. Free music recitals and small concerts that are open to the public also are frequently held there. Björklunden’s facilities, including lodging, are available for use by private, public and corporate groups for conferences, meetings and special events as well.

The expansion of the lodge will include 10 new bedrooms with lake views that will increase summer seminar sleeping capacity from 22 to 44 and school year sleeping capacity from 54 to 104. It also will feature a large multi-purpose room, a second seminar room, a computer room, a mudroom for the sciences and an observation deck for a telescope. Other new features include an elevator, additional bathrooms, storage and mechanical rooms and expanded on-site parking.

Miller Wagner Coenen and McMahon, a Neenah-based architectural firm that designed the current lodge, also designed the addition. Van’s Lumber and Custom Builders, Inc. of Dyckesville will serve as the general contractor on the project, which will be completed by June 1, 2007, in time for next summer’s adult seminars. Lawrence students will still be able to attend weekend seminars during the construction process.

The Björklunden estate, which features large tracts of woods, meadows and more than a mile of unspoiled Lake Michigan shoreline, was bequeathed to Lawrence in 1963 by Donald and Winifred Boynton, a self-taught artist, of Highland Park, Ill., with the understanding that it would be preserved in a way that would ensure its legacy as a place of serenity and contemplation.

During the 2005-06 academic year, more than 1,300 Lawrence students and faculty attended 30 separate weekend programs at Björklunden. Adult summer education seminars, which have been offered at Björklunden since 1980, accommodated more than 500 [articipants at 27 week-long classes between April and October in 2006.

Each July and August, Björklunden also is home to stage performances by the professional classical theatre company Door Shakespeare.

APPLETON, WIS. — The Lawrence University Department of Theatre Arts presents alumni P.K. Allen ’65, Liz Megan Cole ’63, and Ted Katzoff ’65 in a staged reading of “Let Me Count The Ways” at 8:00 p.m. Friday, October 13 in Cloak Theatre located in the Music-Drama Center. A discussion will follow the reading.

“Let Me Count The Ways” is a lighthearted look at love that includes performances of poetry, prose, and songs about love. The exploration of love covers the spectrum of life’s journey, from childhood and young love to marriage, disillusion, and last confessions. Works included in the play range from Sir Walter Raleigh to William Shakespeare to The Rolling Stones and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This reading, compiled by Allen, Cole, and Katzoff, is an adaptation of “Pleasure and Repentance” by British stage director Terry Hands.

This production is free and open to the public. It is funded by the Marguerite Schumann ’44, Memorial Lectureship, which sponsors speakers on topics that were of special interest to her, such as history, music, and writing.

APPLETON, WIS. — Marjorie Venit, professor of ancient Mediterranean art and archaeology at the University of Maryland, presents the slide-illustrated address “Ancient Egyptomania: The Lure of Egypt in Graeco-Roman Alexandria” Monday, Oct. 9 in a Archaeological Institute of America lecture at Lawrence University.

The presentation, at 7:30 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium, is free and open to the public. An informal reception with the speaker will follow the address.

Venit will explore the various ways Greeks and Romans, particularly those who lived in ancient Alexandria, both adopted and adapted the visual themes and motifs of Egypt into their own cultures. The talk will pay special attention to Ptolemaic and Roman-era tombs, among the best preserved monuments of ancient Alexandria.

A scholar of Greeks in Egypt and the ancient city of Alexandria, Venit has focused her research interests on the intersection of cultures and ethnicities. She has conducted field research at Tel Anafa, Israel, and Mendes, Egypt, and has written extensively on the social, religious, economic and political context and implications of Greek painting, especially vase painting. Among Venit’s main publications is the 2002 book “Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria: The Theater of the Dead.”

A two-time recipient of UM’s College of Arts and Humanities Student’s Outstanding Teacher Award for Excellence in Teaching, Venit earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at the San Franscisco Art Institute and holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

APPLETON, WIS. — Ensemble Heinavaker, an Estonian chorale group, will perform at Lawrence University at 8:00 p.m. October 6 in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The concert is open to the public and a freewill offering will be taken.

Gregorian chants, early polyphony, and Estonian sacred folk songs form the basis of this concert. Most of the songs that will be performed are taken from The Lutheran Hymnal, but the melodies are embellished so that they are not easily recognized. Four of the evening’s selections are by composer Johannes Ockeghem, whose music is an extraordinary balance between hidden mathematical constructions and the apparently spontaneous melody lines, which they help construct, but which, nevertheless remain unexpected. Toward the end of the concert one of the oldest and most distinctive examples of Estonian culture will be performed. “Loomiselaul” or “The Creation” is a pre-Christian runic song believed to be a vocal tradition dating back many thousands of years.

The members of Ensemble Heinavaker began making music together in 1988 in Tallinn, Estonia, and have been touring extensively since 1996. The ensemble got its name after the famous altarpiece of Hieronymus Bosch. This rare piece of art depicts a praying angel and hidden demon vying for possession of the beautiful music atop a hay wagon headed for destruction.

APPLETON, WIS. — The importance of negotiating the balance of secrecy and disclosure between parents and their children and the role that balance plays in the development of autonomy during adolescence will be examined in a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.

Jeremy Bakken, a 1999 Lawrence graduate who is pursuing a Ph.D. in human development at UW-Madison, presents “African-American and Hmong Adolescents’ Secretive Behavior: Strategies used to Limit Parents’ Knowledge About Peers” Tuesday, Oct. 3 at 4:15 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.

Bakken will discuss his latest research on how economic and cultural forces influence adolescents’ decisions about disclosing or concealing information about their peer relationships.

Bakken’s study is based on interviews conducted in a mid-sized Midwestern city with 23 African American and 13 first- or second-generation Hmong adolescents in grades 6-12 from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The subjects were asked about their activities with friends, including information management strategies and motivations for keeping information from their parents. Four primary strategies emerged: full disclosure, partial disclosure, topic avoidance and deception.

The research, according to Bakken, suggests several important considerations about disclosure and secrecy in parent-child relationships during adolescence, such as secretive behaviors are not always deceptive. Most adolescents do not want to lie to their parents and avoid doing so by merely omitting part of the story or avoiding talking about particular activities altogether. Conversely, many parents acknowledge that they do not need or want to know every detail about their children’s activities.

APPLETON, WIS. — The important environmental and cultural history of the Fox River and the latest efforts to restore its environmental integrity will be examined in a four-part Lawrence University environmental studies lecture series.

Jeff Mazanec, a senior engineer in the Appleton office of Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc., opens the series Thursday, Sept. 28 with the address “Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance — Working Together to Make a Difference.” The presentation, at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus, is free and open to the public.

In his slide-illustrated address, Mazanec will outline the mission and objectives of the FWWA, focusing on four main objectives: education, sound science, partnering and special places. He also will discuss the future direction of environmental management in Wisconsin.

Mazanec joined the FWWA board of directors in 2000 and has served as its president since 2005. A native of Manitowoc, he holds a degree in civil engineering and has been involved in a variety of public sector works projects, most notably overseeing the design and reconstruction of Appleton’s downtown College Avenue in 2002. His more recent management projects include large river crossing water mains, wastewater collection system flow analysis and modeling and the development of computer-based or web applications for stormwater management.

First formed in 1992 as North East Wisconsin Waters for Tomorrow, the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance is an independent, non-profit organization that identifies issues and advocates effective policies and actions to protect, restore and sustain the water resources of Wisconsin’s Fox-Wolf River Basin.

The Fox River is a central feature of the Fox-Wolf Watershed, which encompasses a large portion of Wisconsin, including 12 percent of state land, 16 percent of Wisconsin’s population and eight percent of Wisconsin stream miles.

The Lower Fox River is among the most highly industrialized rivers in the world. Due to PCB-laden sediment deposits, the Lower Fox River has beome the focus of a $400 million government-ordered cleanup, the largest river cleanup ever attempted in North America. According to the 2006 State of the Fox-Wolf Watershed Report, from 1957-71, approximately 125 tons of PCBs were discharged into the river by local paper mills that were recycling carbonless copy paper. While much of that pollutant has since washed into Green Bay and Lake Michigan, about one-third of the PCBs remain attached to sediments in the river.

Other talks scheduled in the series include:

• Oct. 19 — “Fox River PCB Cleanup,” Jim Hahnenberg, remedial project manager, Fox River cleanup, U.S. EPA Region 5, 4:45 p.m., Science Hall 102.

• November 2 — “The Lower Fox River Watershed Monitoring Project,” Kevin Fermanich, associate professor of natural and applied sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 4:45 p.m., Science Hall 102.

• November 9 — “TOXIC BODIES: An Environmental History of Endocrine Disruptors,”Nancy Langston, associate professor of forest ecology and management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 4:45 p.m., Science Hall 102.

The environmental lecture series is sponsored by the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society. Established in 1999 by Milwaukee-Downer College graduate Barbara Gray Spoerl and her husband, Edward, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on the role of science and technology in societies worldwide.

APPLETON, WIS. — If music truly is the world’s universal language, Rick Bjella is hoping his baton proves to be an effective translator.

Bjella, director of choral studies at Lawrence University, is taking his baton on an extended road trip — to Lithuania. He departs Sept. 27 for a 12-day stay during which time he will serve as guest conductor of the professional chorus Polifonija during a four-city tour of the Baltic nation.

In a whirlwind schedule, Bjella will have just three rehearsals with the chorus before leading them in four concert performances in four days throughout the country: Oct. 3 in Kelme, Oct. 4 in Kaunas, Oct. 5 in the national capital of Vilnius and Oct. 6 in Siauliai.

While always confident of his musical abilities, Bjella admits he’s not entirely sure what he’s getting himself into this time.

“I know not a word of Lithuanian, so I hope we have a good translator to make this all happen,” he said. “It’s going to be a leap of faith, that’s for sure. Who knows? It should be an interesting adventure.”

Gediminas Ramanauskas, Polifonija’s music director, extended an invitation to Bjella to visit his country and conduct his chorus earlier this year immediately after hearing the Lawrence Concert Choir perform in Omaha, Neb. The Concert Choir and Lawrence’s Women’s Choir were two of five college choirs invited to sing at the North Central — American Choral Directors Association Division convention.

Based in Vilnius, Polifonija is a 35-member, mixed chorus of singers mostly 25-40 years of age. Performing with the chorus is the singers’ full-time jobs and they’re paid by the government to do so.

According to Bjella, the reputation of the government-sponsored choirs in the Baltic countries is “quite substantial.”

“Based on what some of my colleagues who have guest conducted there have told me, Polifonija is probably the top choir in Lithuania,” said Bjella.

The unfamiliar language barriers aside, Bjella said the music itself will pose a daunting task for the members of Polifonija.

“They will be learning a repertoire that will be very unfamiliar to them,” said Bjella. “I’ll be asking them to change timbre and diction from what they’re used to. It’s almost like asking a plumber to suddenly become a carpenter in terms of asking them to sing all these new styles that they generally don’t touch.

“Plus, they’re going to be exploring six languages with this program,” Bjella added. “That’s going to represent a major challenge for them. And they’ll be asked to do it all in four days, which will be really quite remarkable.”

At Ramanauskas’ request, Bjella put together an “Americas program” for the tour that features 14 pieces from the U.S., Canada, Central and South America. Among the selections Polifonija will perform are “The Lamentations of Jeremiah” by famed 20th-century Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera, “Epitaph for Moonlight” by R. Murray Schafer, considered by many to be Canada’s greatest living composer, Samuel Barber’s popular American classic “Agnus Dei” (Lamb of God), as well as several representative folk music pieces from these countries and regions. Collectively, the program will be performed in English, French, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish and Inuit.

APPLETON, WIS. — The Lawrence University Artist Series will begin the 2006-07 “Performing Arts at Lawrence” season with a performance by the chamber ensemble group the Czech Nonet at 8:00 p.m. October 7 in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. Tickets are $22 and $20 for adults, $19 and $17 for senior citizens, and $17 and $15 for students and are available through the Lawrence University Box Office, located in the Music-Drama Center, or by phone at 920-832-6749. Tickets, if available, will also be sold beginning one hour before the performance at the box office.

The Czech Nonet is one of the oldest and most original chamber ensembles in the world being founded in 1924 by a group of students at the Prague Conservatory. The ensemble, inspired by the instrumental requirements of Spohr’s Nonet, includes violin, viola, cello, bass, and a wind quintet. This unique combination of instruments offers an abundance of rich and colorful combinations therefore its full sound resembles that of a chamber orchestra. The Czech Nonet’s specific combination of instrumentation naturally invites the ensemble to include works from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods in its repertoire. Together with later 20th century works, the repertoire of the Czech Nonet has become exceptionally deep, rich, and varied.

Invited by the leading festivals of the time, the Czech Nonet was quickly recognized as both an important interpreter of classic repertoire and an ardent champion of new music, inspiring the composition of more than 300 works by some of the greatest living composers, including Prokofiev, Lutoslawski, Martinu, and Shoeck. The Czech Nonet has traveled extensively throughout the Czech Republic and the world. They have toured in such countries as Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Latvia, Mexico, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, and the Netherlands, among others. After a 25 year absence, the ensemble resumed touring in North America in 2002 and by early 2007 will have made several highly successful tours in the States performing over 70 concerts, including acclaimed performances for “Saint Paul Sunday” and National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”

The Czech Nonet’s discography contains many award-winning recordings of works by Mozart, Martinu, Roussel, Schmitt, Schubert, Spohr, Brahms, Dvorak, and more, released by the Praga Digitals label, distributed worldwide by Harmonia Mundi.

Other upcoming Artist Series concerts include vocalist Susan Graham on January 16; cellist David Finkel and pianist Wu Han on March 3; and bassoonist Peter Kolkay ’98 on April 21. For more information on the “Performing Arts at Lawrence” concert series, please visit www.lawrence.edu/news/performingartsseries.

APPLETON, WIS. — The role and importance of individualized learning will be the focus of Lawrence University President’s annual matriculation address Thursday, Sept. 21 as she officially opens the college’s 157th academic year and kicks off the 2006-07 convocation series.

In a multi-media presentation, Beck will offer a historical context for individualized instruction, examine it in action at Lawrence and map out its dynamic role in the coming academic year. Beck’s address, “Liberal Philosophy, Free Discussion and Individualized Learning at Lawrence” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, is free and open to the public.

Beck assumed the presidency of Lawrence in July 2004, becoming the college’s 15th — and first woman — president. Among the themes she has chosen for her presidency are to increase collaborative and complementary activities between the fine and performing arts and the traditional liberal arts and sciences and to encourage more active community engagement by Lawrence and its students.

Under her leadership, the college has created an innovative postdoctoral teaching fellowship program, the Lawrence University Fellows in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. During its first year (2005-06), the Lawrence Fellows program brought eight recent Ph.D.s to campus in fields as diverse as music composition, physics, gender studies, geology and philosophy. The program was expanded for the 2006-07 academic year with the addition of five more fellows with two-year appointments in the fields of economics, psychology, religious studies, anthropology and fine art.

Beck is the founder of ArtsBridge America, an outreach program that offers hands-on experiences in the arts to school-age children, placing university students in K-12 classrooms as instructors and mentors. In 2005, Lawrence became the headquarters of ArtsBridge America and the first private institution to join the program, which now includes 22 participating institution in 13 states and Northern Ireland.

A native of Worcester, Mass., Beck earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and art history from Clark University, a master’s degree in history and music from McGill University, and a Ph.D. in theatre history and criticism from the City University of New York. She served on the faculties of City College of the City of New York and The Juilliard School and has written extensively in the fields of dance history, theory, repertory, and technique, as well as choreographing and directing ballet and modern dance repertory.

From 1995 to 2003, Beck served as the dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine, where in addition to the ArtsBridge program, she established the daVinci Research Center for Learning Through the Arts, an interdisciplinary center for research focused on learning across disciplines.

APPLETON, WIS. — Of the 399 new students Lawrence University officials will welcome Wednesday, Sept. 13 for move-in day and the beginning of six days of orientation, Chris Dorn easily holds the distinction of starting his college search the earliest…whether he realized it or not.

Dorn, a freshman from Arlington Heights, Ill., made his first visit to the Lawrence campus in June, 1987 — in utero! Dorn’s mother, Karen, was pregnant with Chris when she came to campus to attend her sister’s graduation from Lawrence.

“We’re considering the possibility of starting a bus-in program for pregnant mothers to see if early imprinting really does work,” said Director of Admissions Ken Anselment, tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Dorn is one of 374 incoming freshmen and 25 transfer students who help make this year’s class of new students distinctive for another reason as well. Collectively, they are Lawrence’s inaugural class of first-year students who had the option of not submitting their ACT or SAT scores as part of their application for admission.

In February, 2005, Lawrence announced it would become test optional beginning with students matriculating in the fall of 2006. At the time, Lawrence was one of less than 20 liberal arts colleges nationally to forgo standardized test scores as a requirement for admission. It remains the only liberal arts college in Wisconsin to do so.

In the 18 months since Lawrence elected to become test-optional, at least 10 other institutions have followed suit. Of the 215 colleges that U.S. News & World Report ranks in its annual “Best Colleges” national liberal arts colleges category, Lawrence and 12 others of the top quarter of those institutions, among them Bates, Bowdoin and Hamilton, have made the SAT and ACT optional in their admission process.

“We felt the system had gotten out of whack,” Steve Syverson, dean of admissions at Lawrence University, said in a recent New York Times article. “Back when kids just got a good night’s sleep and took the SAT, it was a leveler that helped you find the diamond in the rough. Now that most of the great scores are affluent kids with lots of preparation, it just increases the gap between the haves and the have-nots.”

While students still have the option of submitting SAT or ACT scores, Syverson says Lawrence prefers to rely on its time-tested standard of “multiple intelligences” when reviewing a student’s application for admission.

Anselment credits the decision to go test optional as one of several reasons Lawrence enjoyed a 12 percent surge in freshman applications this year en route to a school record 2,315, shattering the previous all-time high of 2,060 established last year.

“Our applicant pool has been steadily rising over the last few years,” said Anselment. “More importantly, our rate of growth of applicants has been pretty remarkable. In addition to outpacing most of our direct peer institutions such as Grinnell, Beloit and Knox, we’ve been outpacing the national rate of growth as well.

“Certainly going test optional had something to do with the big bump this year,” Anselment said. “But so, too, did some other factors, such as our inclusion in the book ‘Colleges That Change Lives’ and the success of our athletic teams.”

According to Anselment, about one-quarter of this year’s record-number of freshman applicants chose not to submit test scores, a figure he said was very close to what college officials had expected to see.

“We’re discovering that students are genuinely elated by the fact that Lawrence recognizes there is more to them that just a standardized test score,” said Anselment. “When we talk to students these days and explain that option, they light up.”

As a result of the uptick in applications, Lawrence admit rate dipped to 56 percent of the students who applied this year, a 12-point improvement in its selectivity from 2005.

“We were shooting for a freshman class of between 370 and 375 and wound up with 374, so we’re pretty happy,” said Anselment. “We’re right on target in terms of holding our overall enrollment to 1,400.”

This year’s 399 new students hail from 33 states and 17 countries, representing 294 different high schools. Ashwaubenon High School holds the distinction of producing the most members of this year’s incoming class with six, while Appleton East High School and South High School in Minneapolis, each sent five new students to Lawrence this fall.

Wisconsin accounted for 37 percent (140) of the new students, with Illinois and Minnesota responsible for 14 percent and nine percent, respectively. Among international students, South Korea accounted for the most with five, followed by China (4), Canada and Japan (3 each) and Vietnam and Jamaica with two apiece.

The academic profile of the new students maintains Lawrence’s long-standing tradition of attracting top-notch students. Among those students who did include test results with their application, the average ACT score was just over 28, a slight increase from last year. Composite grade points averaged 3.45 unweighted on a 4.0 scale and 66 percent of the incoming freshman ranked in the top quarter of their graduating class. Ninety-three percent of the first-year students were awarded need-based or merit-based financial assistance, with aid awards averaging $23,300.

“Students are excited about our decision to go test-optional, particularly those with really strong grades whose test scores are not good indicators of their academic performance,” Anselment said. “We continue to attract the best and the brightest students by any measure — test scores, grade point averages, leadership skills, artistic talents, community engagement. We’re excited that more of them than ever are interested in attending Lawrence.”

Classes for Lawrence’s 157th academic year begin Wednesday, Sept. 20.