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Communications

Category: Communications

LU staffers, alums honored in Future 15

Four area young professionals with Lawrence ties are among this year’s Future 15 winners. Pulse Young Professionals Network and the Appleton Post-Crescent announced the 2017 class, which includes:

  • Paris Wicker ’08, associate dean of students for campus programs
  • Elyse Lucas ’10, lecturer of education and art teacher in the Appleton Area School District
  • Fanny Lau ’14, a field organizer with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin
  • Oliver Zornow ’10, community engagement manager for the Building for Kids Children’s Museum and the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra

The winners will be honored March 2 at the Hortonville Opera House.

LU staffers Wicker, Lucas among Future 15 nominees

Paris Wicker ’08, associate dean of students for campus programs, and Elyse Lucas ’10, lecturer of education, are two of 25 nominees for the 2017 edition of Future 15, an annual list of exceptional young professionals in the Fox Cities sponsored by the Appleton Post-Crescent and Pulse Young Professionals.

In addition to Wicker and Lucas, two other Lawrence graduates are nominees: Fanny Lau ’14 and Oliver Zornow ’10. Visit the Post-Crescent’s website to vote.

Voting runs through Feb. 2. The 15 honorees will be feted March 2 at the Hortonville Opera House.

Note: An earlier version of this post neglected to note that, in addition to being a Lawrence graduate, Elyse Lucas is also a current employee.

Next Thursday’s Convocation: Andrew Solomon

Andrew Solomon, a writer, lecturer and activist in psychology, LGBT rights and the arts, will speak at Lawrence’s next Convocation on Thursday, Feb. 2 at 11:10 a.m. in Memorial Chapel.

Solomon’s talk is titled Far From the Tree: How Difference Unites Us.

Solomon won the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (2001), a book that received much acclaim and was also a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. A second edition was published in 2015. More recently, Solomon’s Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (2012) was also an acclaimed best-seller, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He has contributed to the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker in the past.

His latest book, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change, came out last April and, per his website, includes “essays about places in dramatic transition.” View a trailer for Far and Away on Vimeo.

Solomon received a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University and a master’s degree in English from Jesus College, Cambridge. He earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology from Jesus College, Cambridge. President of PEN American Center, he is currently a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical College.

Spiritual and religious life series: Embodying Your Faith

The Rev. Linda Morgan-Clement, the Julie Esch Hurvis Dean of Spiritual and Religious Life, invites all members of the campus community to sign up for a four-week series called “Embodying Your Faith” beginning Feb. 8.

Sessions will begin between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. and end by 6 p.m.

Email Linda Morgan-Clement at linda.morgan-clement@lawrence.edu to indicate your interest or ask any questions, and see the image below for more details.

 

Reminder: Convocation on Friday night

What do Assistant Professor José Encarnación, current student Irene Durbak ’17, alumna Carolyn Armstrong Desrosiers ’10, former non-degree-seeking student Christopher Ducasse, journalist Fritz Valescot, LUCE (Lawrence University Cello Ensemble) and the Lawrence University Symphony Orchestra all have in common?

Find out Friday, Jan. 6 at 7 p.m. in Memorial Chapel when Janet Anthony, George and Marjorie Olsen Chandler Professor of Music, speaks about her 20 years of music-making and cross-cultural exchange in Haiti.

There will be performances of Haitian music, including two works composed by non-degree seeking students at Lawrence, short film clips from Kenbe La directed by Armstrong Desrosiers and Stephan Anunson, and reflections on the transformative power of music.

We hope to see you there!

The road to the Washington Post (and other national publications), and the multiplier effect

Last term, back in November, I had the good fortune to see the Washington Post run a piece I had written which shared my views about how parents can avoid predatory practices in college admission.

I’m writing this piece to the Lawrence community to encourage those of you with a compelling, interesting and/or insider’s view to share on a topic to share that view.

(Encouragement—and the help of others—is necessary, as I learned when I went through this process myself.)

As you might know, to help get the Lawrence story “out there,” we lean on the expertise and connections of others, which is why we work with a public relations firm, Morrison & Tyson (which recently married another firm, Dick Jones, and gave up its name in the arrangement). Our contact there, Maggy Ralbovsky, has many contacts in the media world and knows how to help place articles written by members of the Lawrence faculty or staff, which she has done for colleagues like Jason Brozek, Tim Troy, Peter Glick and Dena Skran. She is the one who helped my article see the light of day.

… but it took more than two months of darkness before it actually saw that light.

I wrote the piece back in late August, right as the school year was starting at Appleton North, and right after my wife and I received a letter trying to manipulate our hopes and fears about the college admission process for our son into financial gain for its sender.

I originally intended to submit it to the Post-Crescent, but first sent it to Craig Gagnon and Rick Peterson in our communication office, to get their feedback on it. (As our media relations expert, Rick is particularly adept at helping shape pieces I and others have written so that they are in a form and have a view that is likely to gain traction with a newspaper. He has pitched thousands of stories himself, so he knows what might work and what might not. Tom Ziemer, our editor, has considerable experience with journalism himself and is another great asset we have on the communication team.)

Craig and Rick then shared my piece with Maggy to see whether she thought it might have a chance at a national audience. (She did.) She read it, made a handful of edit suggestions, some of which I accepted, others of which I rejected, because—at least in my mind—they would have obscured my voice.

Maggy then sent the piece out to her network of cascading options. She thought it might get some traction with the Washington Post, so she started there. If it didn’t catch, we would go with plan B, and plan C, and plan D. (She had at least that many plans.)

After about a week, Maggy contacted us to let us know that Valerie Strauss of the Post had, in fact, expressed an interest, and that she was planning to run the piece within the week.

So we waited a week.

No article.

And another week.

Still no article.

Maggy told us she hadn’t heard anything back from Valerie for a couple of weeks, but that we should sit tight, that it would be worth it.

So we waited another couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Maggy had tried a couple more times with Valerie Strauss, to no avail.

We asked Maggy if we should go with Plan B. She advised that it would be my call (like any author’s call) to pull and move to Plan B, but gently suggested that we wait a little longer, that these things take time.

Another month went by.

And then—poof!—it appeared on Tuesday, November 1, 2016.*

As Craig Gagnon has pointed out to me, this was definitely worth the wait, because the “multiplier effect” of the piece—and others written by members of the Lawrence University community—can be significant as we not only raise the visibility of Lawrence, but also inform people’s views of how we think and work here. (Such efforts matter as we strive to make more people in the world aware of this special place through earned media, in addition to bought media.)

Start with the Washington Post, which runs the piece in print and online, including its social media channels. Their readers, viewers and followers refer, repost or retweet it, and it spreads from there. (If Lawrence grad and ABC Chief Foreign Correspondent, Terry Moran, retweets it, his 1.2 million followers will see it.)

News aggregators, like UBDaily (Undergraduate Business), may pick it up a few days later and re-run it.

Kasey Corrado, Lawrence’s social media director, will also post pieces where Lawrence is mentioned or where a member of the community publishes a view that may be of interest to our followers. She promotes the pieces through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat … how she keeps up with all of the channels, let alone manages them as strategically as she does, is remarkable. (Like Rick, Kasey provides sound advice on what may gain traction and has excellent ideas on how to frame a piece for social media.)

As my mother will often say, “To make a long story short” (usually when she is in the process of making a long story longer), if you’re thinking about writing a piece for a national audience, please write it.

And know that the route from your mind and fingertips to the minds and eyes of general readers far beyond Lawrence may be of indeterminate length and windiness but that your piece will find its way there.

Thank you to all of you who have submitted pieces like this that have appeared in national and regional publications.

And thank you to those of you who have yet to do so, but will.

Your work matters.

 

*It should be noted that this is but one example to illustrate the value of patience. Many/most submissions do not take as long to see the light of day once an editor indicates an interest. (CG)

Winter Wriston Art Gallery exhibitions open Jan. 13

Join us to celebrate the winter 2017 exhibitions in the Wriston Art Galleries!

Opening reception: Friday, Jan. 13 at 6 p.m.
Performance by We Go From Where We Know* at 8 p.m.

Dreams of the Floating World: 15 Views of Tokugawa Japan
Curated by the students in Brigid Vance’s HIST 388: Early Modern Japan
Leech Gallery

The Fine Print: Women Artists in the Dr. Robert Dickens ’63 Collection of Contemporary Art
Hoffmaster Gallery

Lawrence University Studio Art Faculty Exhibition
Tony Conrad, lecturer of art
Rob Neilson, Frederick R. Layton Professor of Art and associate professor of art
Benjamin Rinehart, associate professor of art
John Shimon, associate professor of art
Meghan C. Sullivan, Uihlein Fellow of Studio Art
Kohler Gallery

*We Go From Where We Know’s performance will feature the following LU faculty and staff members and alumni:

Julia Blair ’11, voice, viola
Loren Dempster, cello
John Gates, voice, percussion
Brian Pertl, didgeridoo
Leila Ramagopal Pertl, harp
John Shimon, guitar

Reminder: Convocation next Tuesday

A reminder to the campus community: Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey will speak at next Tuesday’s Convocation at 11:10 a.m. in Memorial Chapel.

Trethewey, whose talk is entitled The Muse of History: On Poetry and Social Justice, has combined her mixed-race background and profound writing skills to convey the plight of the southern black woman. Her first collection of poems, Domestic Work (2000), detailed working-class lives and jobs and won the Cave Canem Prize for a first book by an African American poet. In 2007, Trethewey was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Native Guard (2006), an exploration of death and war. Other acclaimed works include Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), a fictional narrative of prostitution in 1900s New Orleans; Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi (2010), a non-fiction collection; and Thrall (2012), an examination of mixed-race fathers and children.

In 2012, Trethewey was named the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate. She is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and also has held teaching positions at Duke University, the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and Yale University.

Trethewey earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Georgia, a master’s degree in English and creative writing from Hollins University and a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

An informal question-and-answer session will immediately follow the Convocation in the Chapel.

Boleyn-Fitzgerald memorial service Oct. 19

The Lawrence community is invited to join a Buddhist service to honor Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald and the goodness that he lived, modeled and brought to this world, and that is expressed and carried on through each of you. The memorial service will be held Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 5:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center’s Esch Hurvis Room.

During the service, there will be opportunities for guided meditation and for consciously and intentionally turning inward. There will also be space provided in front of the center dais for any who wish to bring a cushion or zafu and join a seated circle on the floor.

A reception will follow, with a variety of opportunities to share memories.

Boleyn-Fitzgerald, the Edward F. Mielke Professor of Ethics in Medicine, Science and Society and associate professor of philosophy, died last month following a lengthy battle with kidney cancer. To learn more about Boleyn-Fitzgerald and the mark he left on the Lawrence community, read a story from the Lawrence news blog.

Grants office to host training sessions

The grants office would like to invite faculty and staff to these upcoming training opportunities:

  1. Intro to Grants @ Lawrence: Whether you’re a grants newbie or seasoned pro, register for this eat-and-learn session where we’ll discuss how internal and external grants work at Lawrence and how the Corporate, Foundation, and Sponsored Research Office can help you accomplish your goals. Join us in Kraemer Room at the Warch Campus Center for a lunch session Friday, Oct. 21, noon–1 p.m. (reading period). Space is limited! Please RSVP to lissette.jimenez@lawrence.edu by Monday, Oct. 17. Let us know of any dietary restrictions while registering.
  2. Introduction to the Funding Information Network: Come and get your hands on this powerful funder database, hosted at the Mudd Library! We’ll teach you tricks on how to identify potential grant funders, plus fellowship and scholarship opportunities. Space is limited in the ITC, so please email lissette.jimenez@lawrence.edu to reserve a seat for either Thursday, Oct. 20, 10-11 a.m. or Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017, 10-11 a.m.