Press Releases

Category: Press Releases

Lawrence University Hosts Town Hall Forum with Four Black Authors

Four distinguished writers will participate in a town hall style forum at Lawrence University Monday, Feb. 21 as part of the 2005 Black Author’s College Tour. The forum, focusing on issues that shape and impact the African-American community, will be held at 7 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Participating in the forum will be authors Brandon Massey, Jamise Dames, Lois Benjamin and Yasmin Shiraz. Each will give a brief talk addressing a specific issue related to the African-American community and then take part in an open discussion with audience members.

A resident of Atlanta, Ga., Massey will address issues of the black man’s challenge in America. He self-published his first novel, “Thunderland,” in 1999 and a revised edition was republished in 2002 by Kensington Publishing. His second book, “Dark Corner,” a vampire novel set in rural Mississippi, was released in January, 2004, while “Dark Dreams: A Collection of Horror and Suspense by Black Writers,” was published last August. His latest work, the supernatural thriller “Within the Shadows,” is scheduled for release in June.

Dames, a published songwriter and former recording artist, will share her insights on the importance of sustaining self esteem in the black community. She is the author of the national best-seller “Momma’s Baby Daddy’s Maybe” (2003) and “Pushing Up Daisies” (2004). A graduate of the University of Connecticut with a degree in English and an emphasis in creative writing, Dames is currently pursuing graduate studies.

Benjamin, a professor of sociology at Virginia’s Hampton University, will speak on the secrets of the black elite. She is the author of “The Black Elite: Facing the Color Line in the Twilight of the Twentieth Century,” for which she interviewed 100 prominent African-Americans. She also served as editor of the 1997 book “Black Women in the Academy,” a collection of essays written by 33 black female academics and administrators from around the country who discuss their experiences of working in higher education in America. Benjamin earned a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

Shiraz, a journalist and empowerment speaker, will examine the impact of hip-hop culture on the African-American community. She is the author of the 2004 book “The Blueprint for My Girls” and is working on a sequel, “The Blueprint For My Girls In Love.”

As an entertainment reporter, Shiraz has written for a variety of publications, including Black Enterprise, Upscale, Impact and the Electronic Urban Report and has interviewed numerous celebrities, including Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, singers Jay-Z, Queen Latifah and Brandy, actors Jada Pinkett-Smith and Martin Lawrence and attorney Johnnie Cochran, among others.

The Black Authors Tour program is sponsored by Lawrence’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and is part of the college’s celebration of Black History Month.

Lawrence University Alumnus, Poet William Fuller Gives Reading

Poet William Fuller, a 1975 Lawrence University graduate, shares some of his work in a reading Thursday, Feb. 24 at 7:30 p.m. in the Milwaukee Downer Room of the Seeley G. Mudd Library. A reception and book signing will follow the reading, which is free and open to the public.

Fuller, whose work leans toward the experimental, has produced an impressive body of work, including four books and five chapbooks. His first collection of poems, “byt,” was published in 1989, but it was 1993’s “The Sugar Borders” that earned him widespread recognition. “Aether” was released five years later and his fourth book, “Sadly,” was published in 2003. The chapbook “Avoid Activity” also was released in 2003. His newest collection of poems, “Watchword,” is slated for publication next year.

“William Fuller writes poems which stage collisions of different kinds of diction — literary, philosophical, corporate and colloquial,” said Lawrence Univesity assistant professor of English Faith Barrett, who helped arrange Fuller’s visit. “Responding to the project of the language poets, his work is at times playful, at times elegiac, but always committed to an exploration of the limits and the powers of lyric voice.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in English from Lawrence, Fuller attended the University of Virginia, earning his Ph.D. in English in 1983. In addition to writing poetry, Fuller is senior vice president and chief fiduciary officer in the Trust Department of Chicago’s Northern Trust Company.

Fuller’s appearance is supported by the Mia T. Paul Poetry Fund. Established in 1998, the endowed fund brings distinguished poets to campus for public readings and to work with students on writing poetry and verse.

What is a Life Worth? “Rational” Rationing of Health Care Examined in Lawrence University Biomedical Ethics Series Address

The notion of rationing health care may be a frightening concept, but is it necessarily wrong?

Northwestern University Professor David Dranove explores the question of what is a life worth and offers insights on why “rational” rationing of health care resources is becoming increasingly embraced in the third installment of a Lawrence University’s 2004-05 Edward F. Mielke Lecture Series in Biomedical Ethics.

Dranove, the Walter McNerney Distinguished Professor of Health Industry Management at Northwestern, presents “Putting a Price on Life” Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Drawing on Oregon’s 12-year old Medicaid initiative in which more than 700 medical interventions have been ranked from most cost effective to least and the British National Health System’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), which examines the cost-effectiveness of expensive treatments and recommends against paying for the least cost-ineffective technologies, Dranove will discuss the growing acceptance of rational rationing and outline the promises and pitfalls associated with a rationing approach to health care.

An essential element of rational rationing is attempting to quantify the seemingly unanswerable question: what is a life worth? When health care is rationed, a threshold for cost-effectiveness is established and coverage is denied for treatment that falls below that threshold. In England, NICE routinely denies coverage for interventions that cost more than $93,500 per year of life saved. Other systems use similar valuations.

Dranove argues that if the value of a life is based on the best available evidence, then the threshold used by NICE and others is much too low. Properly implemented, Dranove believes rational rationing could lead to more health spending, not less, but with the promise that the money is spent wisely on something of unsurpassed value.

A specialist in medical economics and cost-benefit analysis, Dranove joined the Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1991 after spending eight years teaching at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is the author of three books, including 2000’s “The Economic Evolution of American Health Care” and is in the process of completing a fourth, “Pricing Your Life.” Dranove earned a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.

Hitting a High Note: Lawrence Freshman Alisa Jordheim Wins National Arts Program Award

Missing an entire week of school left Lawrence University freshman Alisa Jordheim so far behind on her school work, she had precious little time to spend worrying about what the judges thought of her performance.

Jordheim spent a week in Miami, Fla., in mid-January as a national finalist in the Arts Recognition and Talent Search (ARTS) program, but rather than finding out the results at the end of the program, participants are notified how they did by mail. Snail mail. After a week of waiting, Jordheim learned she could add the title of 2005 ARTS winner to her growing list of achievements.

A soprano, Jordheim was named one of four “Level I” national winners in the ARTS voice category following a week-long program of master classes, interviews, performances and enrichment activities in nine different disciplines. She received a first-place prize of $3,000 for her winning efforts and becomes eligible for a $10,000 ARTS Gold Award, which will be announced later this year.

“I’ve learned if you dwell too much on the end results, you run the risk of being disappointed,” said Jordheim, a 2004 graduate of Appleton North High School. “You go in expecting nothing, and then if the results are good, that’s icing on the cake.”

Jordheim was one of 130 finalists selected from an initial pool of nearly 6,500 students from 33 states, Canada and The Netherlands who applied for the program. She was one of 10 voice students invited to Miami from 943 applicants in the category. Finalists in the ARTS Week program do not compete head-to-head, but are judged individually against a standard of excellence established for each discipline.

William Banchs, president of the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, which sponsors the ARTS Week program, called the students who are selected as finalists “the best of the best. They are our country’s artistic future.”

At the still tender age of 18, Jordheim, who has studied in the voice studio of Lawrence Associate Professor of Music Patrice Michaels the last eight years, has already compiled an impressive resume of musical accomplishments, including three consecutive first-place finishes in the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition. She said the ARTS Week program was unlike anything else she had ever experienced.

“We kept a very hectic schedule – 7 a.m. to at least midnight every night — and the entire week was filled with performances and activities. Each discipline had a showcase performance in which every artist performed as a soloist or displayed their works for all the participants, staff and the public,” said Jordheim, who along with Marcos Ortega, a senior at Wauwatosa East High School, were the only two students from Wisconsin to earn a finalist invitation to Florida. “As a vocalist, I sang in as many as four master classes and ‘coachings’ a day in addition to my showcase performance and audition, which were the two main factors of judging.

“I felt truly honored to be invited as a finalist to Miami and I am so thankful to have met all the genuinely talented artists who were there with me,” she added.

Among many highlights in her young career, Jordheim has performed with pianist Christopher O’Riley at the International Young Artists Music Festival, sang as a soloist at the Xian Conservatory of Music in China, performed on Public Radio International’s “From the Top,” singing duets with Bobby McFerrin and been featured in McGraw/Hill’s latest 8th-grade music textbook.

First conducted in 1981, the ARTS Week program is open to high school seniors and other 17- and 18-year old artists. Student vocalists, actors, dancers, filmmakers, classical and jazz musicians, photographers, writers and visual artists vie for individual cash awards ranging from $100 to $3,000, as well as the opportunity to share in a $3 million college scholarship package.

Organic Farming Focus of Lawrence University Address in Sustainable Agriculture Series

Jerry DeWitt, coordinator of the sustainable agriculture extension program at Iowa State University, discusses family farming operations of all sizes that have made significant changes in their operations and moved successfully towards sustainability in the third installment of Lawrence University’s environmental studies lecture series on sustainable agriculture.

DeWitt, professor of entomology in ISU’s agronomy department, presents “Organic Farming in the Midwest” Thursday, Feb. 17 at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Focusing on diversification, entrepreneurial activities and creative production and management approaches, DeWitt will discuss ways farmers and ranchers have improved their operations through the use of specialty crops, organic agriculture, local networking and value-added strategies, among others.

A member of the ISU faculty since 1972, DeWitt grew up on a small family farm in Illinois and earned his Ph.D. in entomology at the University of Illinois-Champaign. In addition to his service with the ISU extension program, DeWitt works with the U.S.Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program in Washington, D.C. An avid photographer, he has chronicled the traditional American farm and farm families with pictures for the books “People Sustaining the Land” (2001) and “Renewing the Countryside: Iowa” (2003).

The 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.

Homelessness Issues Examined in Lawrence University Panel Presentation

Homelessness in America has been called “one of the most misunderstood and least documented social policy issues of our time” by Political Science Quarterly.

Today, an estimated 3.5 million people experience homelessness annually in this country and 1.35 million of those are children. More than half of all homeless families have been homeless for six months or longer. According to the Institute for Children and Poverty, the average age of a homeless person in the United States is nine. Across the nation, experts estimate that in any given community, one percent of the population is “at risk” of becoming homeless.

Lawrence University will examine the issue of homelessness and the ways people can make a difference toward solving the problem in the panel presentation “Homelessness Today, Housing Tomorrow” Wednesday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. in the Underground Coffeehouse of the Lawrence Memorial Union. The program and is free and open to the public.

Sharing their perspectives on the issue will be Debra Cronmiller, director of the Fox Valley Emergency Shelter in Appleton, who will discuss the extent of the homelessness situation locally and the efforts being made to address the situation in the Fox Valley area; Ed Shurna, the executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, who will outline the coalition’s work and the importance of community efforts to combat homelessness; Larry Hamilton, a former homeless person himself who is now an activist in Chicago working on behalf of rights for the homeless; and Jeff Newton, a volunteer for the Chicago Coalition who is currently homeless and who will offer a first-person account of the challenges facing a homeless person and just how susceptible many people are to falling into that lifestyle.

The program is sponsored by the Lawrence University Volunteer and Community Service Center with support from the Class of 1965 Student Activity Fund.

Civil Rights Legend John Lewis Speaks at Lawrence University Convocation

U.S. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a leading figure on the front lines of this nation’s civil rights movement, speaks on the importance of student activism and involvement in the protection of human rights and civil liberties in America Tuesday, Feb. 8 in the third installment of Lawrence University’s 2004-05 convocation series.

Hailed as “a genuine American hero” for his courage in the face of discrimination and human injustice, Lewis delivers the address “Get in the Way” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence University Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

The son of Alabama sharecroppers, Lewis, 64, grew up in the segregated South of the 1940s and ’50s, a time when signs for “Whites” and “Colored” were commonplace. Inspired by radio news broadcasts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.and his message of peaceful reform, Lewis committed himself at an early age to human rights activism.

While attending Fisk University, Lewis organized sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters in Nashville and participated in the famed “Freedom Rides” of the early 1960s, occupying bus seats reserved for whites only. At the age of 23, he became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helping organize student activism and earning recognition as one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement, joining King, Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph, James Farmer and Roy Wilkins.

As SNCC chairman, Lewis was a principal architect of, and a keynote speaker at, the March on Washington in August, 1963, in which King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Two years later, Lewis led a march for voters’ rights in Alabama that ended in violence when marchers were attacked by state troopers in a brutal confrontation that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” News accounts of the event helped speed the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that same year.

Lewis entered public politics in 1981 with his election to the Atlanta City Council. He joined the U.S. Congress in 1986 and has represented Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District in Washington the past 19 years.

Profiled in a 1975 Time magazine article entitled “Saints Among Us,” Lewis’ efforts on behalf of human rights and civil liberties have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Non-Violent Peace Prize, the John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage Award” for lifetime achievement, the NAACP Spingarn Medal for outstanding achievement and the National Education Association Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award.

Lewis earned a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University and is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition, he has been recognized with nearly a dozen honorary degrees from Duke, Harvard and Princeton universities, among others.

His biography, “Walking With The Wind: A Memoir of the Movement,” was published in 1998.

Environmental Sociologist Discusses “Sense of Place” in Lawrence University Environmental Studies Series Address

The importance of maintaining one’s “sense of place” and the need to create human connections to physical spaces will be the focus of the second installment of Lawrence University’s environmental studies lecture series on sustainable agriculture.

Gregory Peter, assistant professor of sociology at UW-Fox Valley, presents “Who Grew Your Supper? Sustainability, Sense of Place and the Legacy of the Land” Thursday, Feb. 3 at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Peter will examine the generational connections farmers have traditionally maintained with the land and how those relationships are becoming increasingly jeopardized. In an age of growing industrial agriculture — a go-big-or-go-home environment — there are fewer farms, fewer farmers and consequently, an ever-diminishing sense of connection to the land. He will offer suggestions on how community members, in their role as every day consumers, can help promote and support sustainable agriculture.

Peter joined the UW-Fox Valley faculty in 2003 after spending three years teaching in the sociology department at James Madison University. He has written widely on issues of sustainable agriculture, including co-authoring the 2004 book “Farming for Us All: Postmodern Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability.” He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Ph.D. in sociology at Iowa State University.

The 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.

Nothing Trivial About This Birthday: Lawrence University’s Marathon of Minutia Turns 40!

Back when a first-class stamp set you back a nickel and the Beatles’ “We Can Work it Out” was tearing up the pop charts, Lawrence University student J.B. deRosset decided he would try to build a better mouse trap.

While no mice were ever caught with deRosset’s creation, he did manage to ensnare a generation of college students who, for the past 40 years, have turned matters of minutia into an annual 50-hour artform of outrageous questions and answers.

Welcome to the 40th edition of Lawrence University’s Great Midwest Trivia Contest, the nation’s longest-running salute to the obscure and inconsequential, where first-place prizes like toilet seats and bags of Ramen noodles are revered as badges of honor.

Broadcast on the Lawrence campus radio station, WLFM, 91.1 FM, the madness marathon begins Friday, Jan. 28 at the all-too-appropriately insignificant time of 10:00:37 and runs through midnight Sunday, Jan. 30. Fifty continuous hours of off-the-wall questions culled from the minds of a team of student “trivia masters,” all designed to challenge — and occasionally stump — even the best “Googlers.”

In honor of the contest’s 40th birthday, deRosset, who holds near cult-like status among Lawrence trivia diehards, is returning to the scene of the crime, flying to Appleton from his home in Miami, Fla., to spend the weekend as the contest’s guest of honor.

“J.B. is our Great Grand Master, our hero,” said Jonathon Roberts, a senior from Sturgeon Bay who is serving as this year’s trivia grand master. “If it weren’t for him we would just be sitting around staring blankly for 50 hours in a row this weekend. But because of him, we have an actual activity. For many of us, up until now he has just been an untouchable being of history. It will be an honor to finally meet the mythical legend.”

It was the dead of winter of 1966 when deRosset, then a senior at Lawrence, began plotting how to improve an idea he stumbled upon while visiting a woman-of interest who was attending Beloit College at the time.

“Some group at Beloit was putting on a trivia contest at their student union. My only recollection was that it was a lame, pathetic, pitiable attempt,” deRosset recalled of his original inspiration. “I knew it could be done a whole lot better. I came back to campus all enthused about how Lawrence could do a better job at a trivia contest.”

With the help of two friends who worked at the campus radio station at the time, deRosset started tinkering.

“The three of us created the synergy needed to create a weekend radio contest,” said deRosset, 61, who has since built a successful career doing legal and financial planning work for McDonald’s Corporation. “We spent a month or two drafting questions, each of us utilizing our particular specialty. Mine at the time was rock and roll. Somebody else watched too much TV, and another had comic books.”

The first contest — only 26 hours long — hit the airwaves in May of ’66, coinciding with Lawrence’s annual “Encampment Weekend,” an academic retreat in which select students and faculty members headed off to discuss issues of great importance. deRosset engaged those students who were left behind in an intellectual battle of a different sort, asking them to call in answers to esoteric questions asked during the course of a radio broadcast. The team that answered the most questions correctly received a fitting prize for a contest of this ilk: an old refrigerator filled with 45 rpm records.

Forty years later, the Internet has altered the trivia contest landscape — computers and laptops with high-speed network connections have gradually replaced mountains of almanacs, encyclopedias and reference books as the “weapons of choice” — but the spirit of the contest retains much of its original verve.

“Trivia is the perfect relief from the winter blues,” said Roberts. “Everyone is exhausted from the cold this time of year so the idea is, with 50 hours of sleeplessness, we push you over the edge into a world of complete ridiculous exhaustion. That’s the land where real creativity and fun lies.”

“And people love the prizes,” Roberts added. “I mean, where else can you win seven pounds of human hair and a broken TV in exchange for 50 hours of your life?”

At the time, deRosset had no idea his idea would have such staying power. But with the perspective of 40 years, he’s not entirely surprised, either.

“We had such great camaraderie that it was simply a blast that winter of 1965-66 putting together the concept and working on the details,” said deRosset. “I have to believe the same is still true today, even if the academics sometimes get in the way. It is sort of like playing football for USC or the University of Miami, but without the large payoff or the disabling injuries.

“From the listeners’ viewpoint, I don’t believe college humor will ever get old,” deRosset added. “As cable TV pushes the major networks to lower their taste thresholds to newly discovered subterranean depths, maybe the Lawrence trivia contest will not be that different. But I love the team names. I love the irreverence. I love all the strange pieces played during the contest, especially the Monty Python stuff. Most of all I love the brief relief it gives in an increasingly troubled world.”

From “Frying Nemo” and “Apocalypse Cow” to “Smarter Than the Average Bush,” creative, often outrageous and sometimes borderline offensive team names add a playful dash of fun to the weekend.

Playing this year as The West Bank of Kaukauna Concealing Weapons of Mass Deduction, a team of several dozen smarty pants twentysomethings who gather annually from eight states, including California and New York, has dominated the competition in recent years. The Bank, which has won four consecutive trivia titles and six of the last eight, will be among the 60 some teams expected to vie for this year’s off campus title. Joining the 8-10 on-campus teams this year will be a special team made up primarily of recent Lawrence alumni.

Bigger. Stronger. Faster. That is how Roberts promises to make this year’s 40th trivia contest.

“The 40th edition of the contest is a milestone,” said Roberts, “and we’re going to mark the occasion with harder questions, more extreme action questions, more ridiculous skits and more celebrity guest spots. We have been building this up
for 40 years now and let me tell you, trivia, like life, begins at 40.”

To help celebrate trivia’s 40th birthday appropriately, Roberts has organized a special “pre-contest” party Friday, Jan. 28 from 7:30-9 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union for all the trivia teams to gather and meet each other prior to waging their battle of wits.

New Lawrence President Jill Beck will make her trivia debut by asking the contest’s opening question, which by tradition, is always the final “Super Garruda” question from the previous year. All those paying attention should be able to start this year’s contest with an easy 100 points because they will know by now what casts a shadow on Jesus in the DeBakey Room in the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Last year, no team was able to correctly identify the cupped hands on a sculpture of Dr. Michael DeBakey as the source of the shadow.

For additional information on the contest or how to register, visit http://www.triviaxl.com.

In addition to being broadcast on WLFM, the entire contest also will also be webcast at www.lawrence.edu/sorg/wlfm.

Lawrence University Names Hiram College Development Chief Associate Vice President

William Johnson, vice president and chief development officer at Hiram College in Ohio, has been named associate vice president for development and alumni relations at Lawrence University. He begins his new duties at Lawrence March 1.

Johnson brings more than 20 years of fund-raising and management experience to Lawrence, where he will be responsible for managing the college’s major and planned giving programs, corporate and foundation relations, annual giving, donor relations, information and systems support as well as alumni relations.

“Willie Johnson is not only a seasoned and accomplished advancement professional, but he also has a firm understanding of and commitment to liberal education,” said Greg Volk, Lawrence executive vice president. “I am confident that his enthusiasm and leadership skills will be of great value to Lawrence in bolstering an already strong and multifaceted development and alumni relations program.”

As Hiram’s vice president and chief development officer, a position he has held since March 1, 2003, Johnson oversees all of Hiram’s development operations, including the direction of a $53.5 million capital campaign currently in progress.

Prior to Hiram, Johnson spent nine years as the associate vice president for major gifts at Carthage College in Kenosha where he was responsible for the cultivation and solicitation of gifts of $5,000 and more.

During his career, Johnson also has served as the director of corporate relations at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and spent three years as the director of development and public relations for the Iowa Special Olympics. He became his fund-raising career in 1982 as the assistant director of development at Wartburg College.

A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and social work at Wartburg and his master’s degree in business administration from Duke University.

Johnson and his wife, Sandy, have two children, a son Evan, 14, and a daughter, Chelsea, 13.