Award

Tag: Award

Professors Shimon, Lindemann honored with Wisconsin Visual Art Achievement Award

The creative accomplishments of Lawrence University faculty members, photographers and creative partners John Shimon and Julie Lindemann have been recognized with a Wisconsin Visual Art Achievement Award (WVAAA).

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John Shimon and Julie Lindemann were among the 2015 recipients of a Wisconsin Visual Art Achievement Award.

Awarded annually since 2004, the WVAAAs were created to honor artists who have contributed to the wealth of creativity in Wisconsin and to educate the public about the region’s rich artistic history.

The award was presented Sunday, May 24 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend, where a retrospective of Shimon and Lindemann’s work titled “There’s a Place: A Three Decade Survey of Photographs by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann, runs until June 7. They were two of 13 visual artists to receive the award this year.

Art historian Debra Brehmer, director of Milwaukee’s Portrait Society Gallery, accepted the award on Shimon’s and Lindemann’s behalf. She offered a David Letterman-like Top 10 list of things she learned from them in accepting their award.

The artistic duo has long been interested in blending contemporary and historic photographic techniques to tell meaningful stories about ordinary people in their native Wisconsin. By combining old and new photography techniques, Shimon and Lindemann have created a compelling, at times melancholy, body of work. Although rooted in Wisconsin, their images are neither regional nor documentary but deeply personal, reflecting slow, thoughtful meditations on relationships that reveal the human experience.

Associate Professors of Art, Shimon and Lindemann joined the Lawrence faculty in 2000. They were recognized with Lawrence’s Faculty Excellence in Creative Activity Award 2012 and were named 2014 Wisconsin “Artists of the Year” by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Their photographs are featured in numerous museums including MOWA, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

About Lawrence University
Founded in 1847, Lawrence University uniquely integrates a college of liberal arts and sciences with a nationally recognized conservatory of music, both devoted exclusively to undergraduate education. It was selected for inclusion in the Fiske Guide to Colleges 2015 and the book “Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College.” Engaged learning, the development of multiple interests and community outreach are central to the Lawrence experience. Lawrence draws its 1,500 students from nearly every state and more than 50 countries.

 

 

Megan Brown Awarded U.S. State Dept. Critical Language Scholarship

Lawrence University student Megan Brown has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study Arabic this summer at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan.

A senior linguistics major from Saginaw, Mich., Brown was among 575 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students awarded one of the state department’s critical language scholarships. She was selected from among nearly 5,300 applications.

Beginning June 13, Brown will spend 10 weeks in Jordan in a personalized, intensive language curriculum as well as various cultural activities. The scholarship covers all expenses during the 10-week program and includes a $1,000 stipend.

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Megan Brown

Brown, who has studied Chinese and French in addition to one year of Arabic at Lawrence, says “accurate communication is more essential than ever before due to the growing globalization of the world and the growth of the information industry.” She hopes to eventually work for the U.S. Department of State as a foreign service officer and work “for more integrated international relations.”

The CLS program was launched in 2006 to increase opportunities for American students to study critical-need languages overseas and expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical-need languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, Indic (Bangla/Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu) and Turkic (Turkish and Azerbaijani).

Harrison Symposium Showcases Student Research

With subjects ranging from capitalism in contemporary China, to red-haired women featured in the paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to building a better oarsman, the Harrison Symposium recognizes the outstanding research done by Lawrence students in the humanities and social sciences.  The 13th annual Harrison symposium will be held Saturday, May 15, 2010, in Lawrence University’s Main Hall.  Presenters are nominated by faculty and invited to submit abstracts of their research papers.  Based on the abstracts, students are selected to present their work at the symposium in the format used for professional meetings of scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

Welcome Reception
8:45  Light Refreshments – Strange Commons in Main Hall
9:00  Welcome by Provost and Dean of the Faculty, David Burrows

Session One: Panel A, Main Hall 201
Moderator: Professor Barrett
9:15   Kelsey Platt: “Space for the Individual”
9:45   Melody Moberg: “Radically Subversive Domesticity: The True Implications of Rachel Halliday’s Kitchen”
10:15  Alicia Bones: “Aunt Jemima and Aunt Chloe: Moving Within and Outside of the Mammy Myth”

Session One: Panel B, Main Hall 211
Moderator:  Professor Tsomu
9:15   Lindsey Ahlen: “The Impact of Local Media on West African Political Systems and Figures”
9:45   Carolyn Schultz: “Managing Crises: The Arab-Israeli Conflict from the Perspectives of the Johnson and Nixon Administrations”
10:15  Jihyun Shin: “Capitalism in Contemporary China”

Session One: Panel C, Main Hall 216
Moderator:  Professor Carlson
9:15   Marie Straquadine: “Objects of Desire: Women with Red Hair in Rossetti’s Paintings”
9:45   Sarah Young: “Shamanism or “Stubborn Rationality”: Joseph Beuys and the Dilemma of Post-War German Masculinity”
10:15  Dani Simandl: “Girls Gone Wild, String Instrument-Style: Performing Instrumental Music for a Popular Culture”

Session One: Panel D, Main Hall 401
Moderator:  Professor Frederick
9:15   Elizabeth Nerland: “No Middle Ground: The Rise and Fall of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee”
9:45   Caitlin Williamson: “Ojibwe and Canis lupus: cultural, historical, and political influences on contemporary wolf management in the Great Lakes region”
10:15  Gustavo Guimaraes: “Latin American Ethnicity; Not So “Black and White”

Session One: Panel E, Main Hall 404
Moderator:  Professor Williams
9:15   Nicholas Miller: “Building a Better Oarsman: Conceptual Integration and Motor Learning in Rowing Instruction”
9:45   Madeline Herdeman: “Cognitive Models and the Partisan Divide: A Study of the Debate over Health Care Reform”
10:15  Alex Macartney: “A Democratic Purge?: The United States and the Denazification of Austria, 1945 – 1950”

Session Two: Panel A, Main Hall 201
Moderator:  Professor Thomas
11:00  Nicolas Watt: “Ethics in Dostoevsky: A Narrative Analysis of The Idiot”
11:30  John Bettridge: “Tabari, Ghazali and Qutb: The Development of Modern Qur’anic Exegesis”
12:00  Christopher McGeorge: “Subverting Morality: Idealization in Victorian  Art and Literature” ~ 2009 Harrison Award Winner

Session Two: Panel B, Main Hall 211
Moderator:  Professor Vilches
11:00  Jennifer Gabriele: “Federico García Lorca: La obra escrita y plástica de Poeta en Nueva York y la autorrepresentación polifacética”
11:30  Elizabeth Hoffman: “La maternidad, el espacio público y feminismo: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo”
12:00  Matthew Ingram: “La Construcción del Género: La Lucha Lingüística entre la Biología y la Identidad Social”

Session Two: Panel C, Main Hall 216
Moderator:  Professor Jenike
11:00  Rebecca Hayes: “Misconstruing Misogyny: Reworking the Witchcraft Trials of Early Modern Europe Beyond the Limits of Second Wave Feminism”
11:30  Harjinder Bedi: “Social Poetry of Adzogbo: Context and Meaning of a West African War Dance”
12:00  Michael Korcek: “Drag Kinging in Amsterdam: Queer identity politics, subcultural spaces, and transformative potentials”

Session Two: Panel D, Main Hall 401
Moderator:  Professor Rico
11:00 Katie Van Marter-Sanders: “The Various Reinterpretations of the Sultana Tragedy”
11:30  Jennifer Roesch: “The Hindenburg: A Disaster Waiting to Happen”
12:00  Kaye Herranen: “Artists’ Responses to the Firebombing of Dresden”

Best of Show: The Warch Campus Center

awardLawrence University received one of the state’s most coveted construction honors last night (April 21, 2010) when The Daily Reporter and Wisconsin Builder magazine named the Warch Campus Center “Best of Show” at the magazine’s annual Top Projects awards ceremony in Pewaukee.  One of 31 construction projects in the state selected to compete for the award, Wisconsin Builder’s highest honor was a closely guarded secret until it was announced.

Joining Lawrence’s Lynn Hagee for the “Best of Show” recognition were representatives from The Boldt Co., the Appleton-based general contractor for the campus center, and Uihlein/Wilson Architects Inc., Milwaukee, one of the architectural firms working on the project.

A panel of independent judges were asked to consider the challenges the project overcame during construction, the benefit the project had on the community and any advancement it provided to the state’s commercial construction industry.  The project’s team members were praised for constructing a stunning building on a challenging site. Built into a bluff over the Fox River, the judges said the Warch Campus Center presented “every challenge regarding earth-retention, limited space and support systems.”

Here’s  video from the Top Projects Awards.

Warch Campus Center Earns Facility Design Award of Excellence

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Warch Campus Center

The accolades for Lawrence University’s Warch Campus Center continue to roll in.

The most recent honor comes courtesy of the Association of College Unions International (ACUI ), which presented KSS Architects one of its 2010 Facility Design Awards of Excellence March 15 in New York City for its work on the Warch Campus Center.

The ACUI award recognizes excellence in design of college unions as well as other student-centered campus buildings.  Winners are selected on the basis of the facilities’ appearance as well as the process used to arrive at the building’s design and how the new or renovated facility affected the campus.

Nearly 20 years in the making, the $35 million, 107,000-square-foot Warch Campus Center opened last September.  It was awarded LEED-certified Gold status in November by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Greg Griffin, director of the Warch Campus Center, said the building “has greatly enhanced the overall experience” on campus.  With beautiful views of the adjacent Fox River, the building features several outdoor decks and patios, dining options on three of its four levels, student programming space, 24-hour student lounges and a 134-seat cinema with surround sound and state-of-the-art projection.

KSS Architects partner Pamela Lucas Rew said enhancing the campus experience was the goal of the project.

“We set out to create a project that would fulfill Lawrence’s mission and long-term and day-to-day expectations,” said Rew.  “From this, we developed architectural goals to knit together the campus, the site and the adjacent river into a building that communicates these ideas as well as serves the institution’s functional needs.  The ACUI Facility Design Award is about more than design.  It shows us that our client loves their building.”

The Warch Campus Center has been recognized previously with Appleton Downtown, Inc.’s Dreamers and Doers Award, a Top Project designation by Wisconsin Builder magazine and a Concrete Design Award from the Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association.  It was named winner in the 2009 “Best New Construction” category in FOX CITIES Magazine’s annual “Great Spaces Great Places” contest.

Other buildings cited by the ACUI for design excellence were the Student Success Center, Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville; Interactive Learning Center, Boise State University; The Commons, Bates College; Smith Campus Center, Pomona College; and the Joe Crowley Student Union, University of Nevada–Reno.

Appleton Downtown Inc. Honors Lawrence University for Warch Campus Center, College Ave. Median Project

Downtown Appleton, Inc. recognized Lawrence University March 18 with its 2010 Dreamers and Doers Award for the opening of the Warch Campus Center and the completion of the College Avenue median project.

The annual Dreamers and Doers Award, presented at ADI’s annual dinner at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel, recognizes a business, group or individual “who has significantly enhanced, for years to come, the physical and/or economic landscape of the downtown.”

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Warch Campus Center

Nearly 20 years in the making, the $35 million, 107,000-square-foot Warch Campus Center opened last September to rave reviews. In November, U.S. Green Building Council awarded the environmentally friendly building LEED-certified Gold status, the second highest designation on the green building four-level certification system.

The Dreamers and Doers Award is just the latest accolade for the Warch Campus Center. It previously was named one of Wisconsin Builder magazine’s 2009 Top Projects, earned a Concrete Design Award from the Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association and was named winner in the “Best New Construction” category in FOX CITIES Magazine’s annual “Great Spaces Great Places” contest.

The College Ave. median project between Drew and Lawe streets, was a joint undertaking between Lawrence, the City of Appleton and private donors in the historic neighborhood who funded the project.

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College Ave. Median Garden

The revamped median was turned into a natural garden with shrubs, trees and flowers, providing a beautiful entrance to downtown Appleton. Lighted Lawrence University signs on each end of the median remind motorists they are driving through the campus. The median also features two well-defined crosswalks to enhance safety for students crossing the busy boulevard.

$25,000 Watson Fellowship Sending Alex Winter to Asia for Video Game Culture Study

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Alex Winter

Alex Winter got his first taste of video gaming as a five-year old, playing “Sim City” at home in his father’s attic office with his dad. He’s been hooked ever since.

“Video games have been a part of my life my entire life,” said the Lawrence University senior, who soon will turn his life-long affection for gaming into a year-long study of the social phenomenon of the video game culture in East Asia.

Winter was one of 40 undergraduates nationally awarded a $25,000 fellowship from the Rhode Island-based Thomas J. Watson Foundation for a year of independent travel and exploration outside the United States on a topic of the student’s choosing. Winter, whose proposal —“Video Game Culture Studies in East Asia, Korea, China, Japan” — was selected from among 150 finalists representing 40 of the nation’s premier private liberal arts colleges and universities. More than 820 students applied for this year’s Watson Fellowship.

Interactive entertainment — gaming — has grown exponentially since the primitive days of “Pong.” According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, interactive entertainment earned $41.9 billion in 2007 and is anticipated to surpass music revenue by 2011.

As it has evolved, interactive entertainment has moved away from the one game/one player model toward entire communities of players who are brought together through the game itself, creating an international digital community with a unique subculture.

“Video gaming is creating its own, unique traditions every day,” said Winter, a biology major from Seattle, Wash. “Chief among them is a social, cultural network that circles the globe without regard for national boundaries or languages. The interactive entertainment industry is poised to change the world as profoundly as the Internet. We’re standing on the brink of a cultural revolution and now is the perfect time to study this infant culture.”

Winter will use his fellowship to visit China, Japan and South Korea, where the video game community holds mainstream positions much the same way Americans treat sports.

“I intend to spend time studying cyber athleticism, performance, economics and addiction in places where they are exceptionally visible, such as Internet cafes, gaming centers, arenas and conventions,” said Winter. “I want to immerse myself in the culture, performing observational studies and interviews whenever possible.”

Starting in mid-July, Winter will travel first to Hong Kong, the center of a unique economy in which real money is exchanged for goods that exist only inside the video game world. The next five months will be spent in Japan, home to three of the largest interactive entertainment publishers: Nintendo, Sony and Sega.

“The most accomplished players in Japan draw crowds of admirers, which is a fundamentally different style of video gaming than what is practiced here in the states,” said Winter. “Players compete against both the computer and the previous player in what might be called ‘video game performance art.’ I want to explore the motivations of those who perform and those who come to watch this unique style of entertainment.”

In January, Winter will travel to Beijing, home to the only state-sponsored video game addiction recovery center in the world. He plans to meet the doctors who treat the patients whose attachment to video games is near dependence levels and the video gamers themselves to explore how their addiction grew, how it affected their life and what led them to counseling.

During an ensuing five-month stay in South Korea, where competitions with prizes as high as $500,000 are nationally televised events, Winter will explore the country’s specialized Internet cafes and the phenomenon of cyber athletes.

“The possibilities for learning about and embracing my gamer self in a country that lauds its players are exciting and endless,” said Winter.

He will return to China in July 2011 to close his study in Shanghai, which boasts an exceptionally high number of gamers.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the interplay of traditional Chinese culture and interactive gaming in Shanghai,” said Winter.” “Of the three Chinese cities on my itinerary, Shanghai is the most traditional. Its collision and merger with state-of-the-art interactive entertainment will be a telling testament to the phenomenon of merging cultures.”

Brian Pertl, dean of the conservatory of music, served as Lawrence’s campus liaison to the Watson program this year. He said Winter will break “new ground” with his fellowship.

“His project is different. It’s exploring areas that haven’t been tackled by any previous Watson fellows,” said Pertl, a 1986 Watson Fellowship recipient himself as a student at Lawrence. “Alex’s passion for this topic as a scholar and as a participant in social gaming gives him the perfect background for this award. I’m confident he’ll come back with some deep insights and fantastic experiences.”

Winter sees his project not as a departure from his study of biology, but rather an extension of it.

“A background in biological science is fundamentally an education in methodical parsing of cause and effect,” said Winter. “Human culture can be examined as a complex system with confounding factors. My background in science gives me a scaffold on which to build this study and dig into the new sociological frontier presented by East Asian gaming.”

Winter is the 67th Lawrence student awarded a Watson Fellowship since the program’s inception in 1969. It was established by the children of Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the founder of International Business Machines Corp., and his wife, Jeannette, to honor their parents’ long-standing interest in education and world affairs.

Watson Fellows are selected on the basis of the nominee’s character, academic record, leadership potential, willingness to delve into another culture and the personal significance of the project proposal. Since its founding, nearly 2,600 fellowships have been awarded.

Lawrence University Delegation Recognized at Model United Nations Conference

Lawrence University students Angela Ting and Angela Wang earned the “Best Delegation” award as members of Lawrence’s Model United Nations team at the recent 50th annual Midwest Model United Nations Conference in St. Louis, Mo.

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Angela Wang (l.) and Angela Ting

Lawrence’s eight-member delegation represented El Salvador in the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council. Ting, a junior from Malaysia, and Wang, a sophomore from Forest Hills, N.Y., represented the General Assembly Third Committee. They were awarded Best Delegation honors for their work debating the provision of humanitarian assistance to refugees and internally-displaced persons in conflict situations.

During the four-day conference, the Lawrence delegation also participated in debates regarding the role of the United Nations in promoting development in the context of globalization and interdependence, the impact of drugs on development and the U.N.’s role in combating transnational organized crime. The regional conference drew more than 900 students from nearly 80 colleges and universities throughout the Midwest.

Also representing Lawrence were sophomore Carrie Brown, Chicago, Ill., sophomore Gi’selle Jones, Kingston, Jamaica, sophomore Amanda Popp, Palmyra, junior Tasmia Rahman, Dhaka, Bangladesh, sophomore Ranga Wimalasuriya, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, and freshman Mingxia Zhu, Guangzhou, China.

Founded in 1960, the Midwest Model United Nations is a collegiate organization devoted to broadening students’ awareness of world politics by promoting an interest and understanding of other nations in the world. At the conference, student delegations representing various nations work on pressing international issues to gain perspective on the world and the United Nations’ role in world politics.

Warch Campus Center Cited in Annual “Great Spaces Great Places” Contest

Lawrence University’s Richard and Margot Warch Campus Center has been cited by FOX CITIES Magazine in its annual “Great Spaces Great Places” contest. The Warch Campus Center, which graces the cover of the magazine’s December issue, was voted the winner from among eight nominees by a panel of five community judges in the “Best New Construction” category. The $35 million, 107,000-square-foot building, which opened in September, was recently awarded LEED-certified Gold status by the U.S. Green Building Council for its sustainability and environmentally friendly features.

Tom Miller, one of the Great Spaces Great Places judges, said the Warch Campus Center, “blows it out of the water. Eighty years from now, the building will look just how it looks now.”

The award was the second for a Lawrence building in the four-year history of the magazine’s contest. In 2007, venerable Alexander Gymnasium was named co-winner in the “Best Historic Landmark Building” category, which recognizes buildings at least 75 years old and considered “icons of the Fox Cities.”

Lawrence University Campus Center Awarded LEED “Gold” Certification

Lawrence University’s newly opened Richard and Margot Warch Campus Center is so “green” it’s gold.

So says the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), which has awarded the 107,000-square-foot building LEED®-certified Gold status, the second highest designation on the green building four-level certification system.

“This is the news we were hoping for,” said Lawrence University President Jill Beck. “Lawrence is committed to the goal of sustainability and this building is evidence of that commitment. Responsible citizenship is one of the goals of a liberal education and in reducing our impact on the planet we are setting an example for our campus and our community.”

LEED is the nation’s preeminent program for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings and offers four levels of certification for new construction: Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum.

Each level corresponds to the number of points or credits accrued in five green and construction categories that positively impact the project itself and the broader community as verified by the Green Building Certification Institute.

After an extensive review, USGBC determined the Warch Campus Center earned 43 points or credits on its certification scale. A minimum of 39 points is required to reach Gold certification.

“On behalf of the entire design and construction team, we extend our congratulations to Lawrence University on this remarkable achievement,” said Nat Stein, LEED accredited professional and the Warch Campus Center’s project architect for Uihlein-Wilson Architects, Inc., of Milwaukee. “We especially commend the students of Lawrence University who inspired and challenged us to create a building that is environmentally responsible, respectful and beautiful. We are thrilled to be a part of such a meaningful project.”

The $35 million Warch Campus Center is Uihlein-Wilson’s first Gold-certified project. The building’s environmentally friendly features include:

• a partially vegetated roof system of soil and green plants to absorb rainfall and decrease storm water runoff.

• low-flow plumbing fixtures to reduce water consumption by more than 30 percent by standards mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency.

• heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems designed to be 21 percent more energy efficient than industry standards require.

• wood certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council that has been harvested with environmentally and socially responsible forest management practices.

• more than 20 percent of all materials used in the building were extracted regionally (within a 500-mile radius)

• adoption of a Green Cleaning program which involves the use of LEED-certified cleaning products and recyclable paper products

• formaldehyde-free interior building materials to ensure healthful indoor air quality.

In addition, more than 96 percent of construction waste for the building — seven million pounds worth — was recycled and saved from being deposited in a landfill.

KSS Architects of Princeton, N.J. was the design architect of the campus center and Uihlein-Wilson Architects, Inc., the architect of record. The Boldt Company of Appleton served as the project’s general contractor.

Work on the center began in June, 2007. The building was officially opened Sept. 18, 2009.