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Hiring students for Fall Term?

As the new academic year begins, incoming first-year students, returning students and especially students eligible for financial aid are searching for on-campus employment. If you plan to hire student workers for Fall Term and have not already posted your opening(s), please do so on LUworks as soon as possible.

FOR FIRST-TIME USERS:

FOR RETURNING USERS:

If you have any questions about the log-in process, please call Career Services at x6561.

 

LU art students to be featured at Appleton’s Trout Museum

LU-Insider_Out-of-the-Darkroom
Photo by
Glenn McMahon ’17

The photographic talents of 10 Lawrence students will be featured in the exhibition Out of the Darkroom from Sept. 16 to Dec. 31 at the Trout Museum of Art in downtown Appleton.

Nearly two dozen images will be shown in the museum’s Regional Artist Gallery. The featured students are: Natalie Cash ’18, Michael Hubbard ’17, Cherise John ’17, Regan Martin ’17, Glenn McMahon ’17, Nick Nootenboom ’17, Penn Ryan ’18, Torrey Smith ’17, Chloe Stella ’16 and Sadie Tenpas ’17. All are students of Associate Professor of Art John Shimon.

How to “read the robes” at Matriculation Convocation

Students: Are you curious about the academic garb faculty and administrators wear for special occasions such as Matriculation Convocation, Honors Convocation and Commencement?

Here is an explanation ahead of today’s Matriculation Convocation:

Academic attire worn during Commencement ceremonies and on other formal occasions is based on common styles of the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe. In a time when both men and women wore gowns or robes, it became common practice to adopt distinctive gowns for various professions, trades and religious orders. The ceremonial garb of a modern academic procession, therefore, is descended from the working clothes of a medieval scholar, who was often at least a lower-order cleric. Long gowns were desirable in unheated medieval universities, and the hood may have been developed to cover the tonsured (shaved typically for religious reasons) head.

This tradition of academic dress, particularly as known at Oxford and Cambridge, passed to the American colonies and was standardized by an Intercollegiate Code in 1895. The code sets forth rules governing the color, shape and materials of the three primary items of academic apparel: the gown, the hood and the cap.

Gowns differ according to the level of degree earned by the wearer. The baccalaureate (bachelor’s degree) gown has pointed sleeves and is worn closed. The gown for the master’s degree has an oblong sleeve, open at the wrist, that hangs down. The rear part of the oblong shape is square-cut, and the front part has an arc cut away. The doctoral gown is the most ornate, with a velvet facing and three velvet chevrons on each bell-shaped sleeve. Both master’s and doctor’s gowns are designed to be worn either open or closed. While most doctoral gowns are black, some universities—e.g., Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford—provide gowns in their institutional colors.

For one who knows how to “read” them, academic hoods signal both the wearer’s field of study (the velvet border) and the institution by which it was conferred (the silk lining). Among the hood linings that might be seen in a Lawrence academic procession are those of Brown University (seal brown, cardinal chevron), City University of New York (lavender), Columbia University (light blue, white chevron), Cornell University (carnelian red, two white chevrons), Harvard University (black hood, crimson-lined), Johns Hopkins University (black, gold chevron), Princeton University (orange, black chevron), Stanford University (cardinal red, no chevron), the University of California (gold, Yale blue chevron), the University of Chicago (maroon, no chevron), the University of Virginia (navy blue, orange chevron), University of Wisconsin–Madison (cardinal, no chevron) and Yale University (Yale blue, no chevron). The Lawrence hood is lined in Yale blue, with two white chevrons.

In addition to the institutional colors, colors associated with specific academic disciplines are used for the trim on doctors’ gowns, the edging of hoods and the tassels of caps. The most frequently worn colors in the Lawrence academic procession are: dark blue (philosophy, including Ph.D.s), pink (music) and lemon (library science). Other discipline-related colors include white (arts, letters, humanities), golden yellow (science), purple (law), copper (economics), drab (business), light blue (education) and brown (fine arts).

The cap was the last item to be added to the academic ensemble and is most often hard and square, although variations in softer materials and in shape have been adopted by some institutions and for women. At Commencement, degree candidates wear the tassel on the right front of the cap and shift it to the left front immediately after degrees are conferred.

The ceremonial mace carried at the head of the academic processions by the college marshal (a senior member of the faculty) and the usher batons carried by faculty deputies were crafted by silversmith E. Dane Purdo, late professor emeritus of art, in 1972.  On the occasion of his retirement in 1991, Professor Purdo presented to the university the presidential badge of office, a sterling and gold pendant worn on ceremonial occasions by President Mark Burstein, which depicts the Lawrence seal suspended by a chair of silver hawthorn leaves representing Milwaukee-Downer College.

Welcoming Laurie Ehlers, our new nurse educator

Beginning this fall, the Wellness Committee, Benefits Advisory Committee and the HR team are happy to announce the addition of an on-site health nurse educator as part of our wellness benefits for faculty and staff. The nurse educator will provide coaching and education to individuals and groups through educational sessions. Primary areas of focus will initially be nutrition and stress, following priorities identified in health screening results from the prior years. Tobacco cessation and other programs will also be available.

We are pleased to welcome Laurie Ehlers, R.N., to Lawrence as our ThedaCare occupational health nurse. Laurie started Sept. 13.

Laurie will be available at the following location and times:

Memorial Hall: (Room 102—watch for the ThedaCare sign!)
Tuesdays, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Wednesdays, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

To schedule an appointment, contact Laurie at laurie.ehlers@lawrence.edu or 920-832-7498.

Lawrence has contracted with ThedaCare to provide this on-campus resource for faculty and staff. Anything discussed during your visits is completely CONFIDENTIAL.

For more information, read this nurse educator frequently asked questions document.

 

Schedule your Personal Health Assessment

Lawrence is dedicated to supporting the well-being of you and your family by providing continuous wellness education and awareness programs. Each year we provide faculty, staff and spouses/domestic partners the opportunity to participate in a FREE, CONFIDENTIAL health screening. The purpose of this assessment is to make you aware of health risk factors that can lead to future disease and to support you in taking the necessary steps to achieve optimal health.

New this year:

  • We’re changing the name of our assessments from Health Risk Assessment (HRA) to Personal Health Assessment (PHA).
  • We are bringing back a former vendor, ThedaCare At Work, to administer our PHAs.
  • We will be offering PSA Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) tests as an optional screening for prostate cancer for men over age 50.
  • You will complete your online questionnaire after your PHA appointment is complete and your blood work has been processed by the lab.
  • You are strongly encouraged to attend a Report Delivery group session to better understand your results.

Whether or not you are covered by the Lawrence University Health Plan, we encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity. The PHA has many benefits and is not meant to be a substitute for an annual routine physical exam. In fact, sharing your PHA results with your doctor will enhance your physical exam, since you will already have these results with you to discuss with your physician.

When you participate in the PHA, you will:

  1. Complete a questionnaire and sign a lab consent form.
  2. Complete the PHA screening on campus.
  3. Receive a personal and confidential health risk report with your results. Please review this instruction sheet for scheduling and preparing for the screening and ThedaCare’s frequently asked questions (FAQ) document for more details.

The PHA is voluntary and confidential. No one from Lawrence will have access to your personal results. After all PHA screenings are completed, Human Resources will receive an aggregate report that we will share with the Lawrence community. This report assists us in providing you with targeted wellness programs.

For participating, members of the Lawrence University Health Plan will receive a health insurance premium credit of $50 per participant (employee and spouse/domestic partner) per month.

We invite you to take charge of your health! Register now at ThedaCare’s website.

If you have any questions, please contact Wendy Holub at 920-832-7466 or Rochelle Blindauer at 920-832-6541 in Human Resources.

 

Honors roundtable set for Sept. 22

The Fall Term honors roundtable will take place Thursday, Sept. 22 at 5 p.m. in room 401 of Mudd Library.

At this meeting, Honors Committee Chair and Associate Professor Antoinette Powell will go over the guidelines for completing an honors project. Reference librarian Gretchen Revie will discuss how the library can be of assistance in the honors process, while Andrew McSorley, interlibrary loan coordinator, will talk about interlibrary loan. Students will be asked to say a few words about their potential topics. All students currently working on honors projects or who hope to complete honors projects are strongly encouraged to attend.

For information on honors, please consult the Committee on Honors website.

An additional roundtable will take place at the beginning of the Winter and Spring Terms. Please consult the summary of deadlines on the honors website for the dates.

What have you been missing?

Did you know Marcia Bjornerud has an article in The New Yorker? Or that Peter Glick has an article in Psychology Today? Or that Ken Anselment was quoted in The Washington Post?

You would know these things if you received eClips, a twice-monthly email report that lists and links to stories about Lawrence in the news, Lawrence students and alumni in the news and important articles about higher education.

Send an email to Rick Peterson asking to be placed on the mailing list. Then you, too, will know when your colleagues make national news.

Campus New York Times subscriptions

Interested in getting the daily New York Times on campus for a fraction of the newsstand cost? A Monday–Friday subscription is only $37 for the Fall Term. Sound too good to be true? It may be, but there are no gimmicks. The NYT is delivered each day by 6 a.m. to the Warch Campus Center and is available for pick-up at the information desk any time. We also keep your missed copies for three days, so if you cannot get over here one day, your paper will be waiting for you the next.

If you are interested, email Greg Griffin at gregory.l.griffin@lawrence.edu. Paper delivery began Monday, Sept. 12. Please let Greg know which terms you want to receive the paper, including December break and summer. The faculty/staff rates for each are:

One term: $37
Winter break: additional $16.25
Summer: additional $39
Entire year: $165.75

Send cash or check (payable to LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY) to Greg Griffin, Warch Campus Center (paper delivery starts immediately).

 

Creating a more inclusive Lawrence—A welcome letter from Kimberly Barrett

Dear Lawrence faculty, students and staff,

I am writing to introduce myself, welcome you to a new academic year and begin a conversation about how we will work together to create a more inclusive Lawrence. I am extremely excited to be engaged in the work of fostering diversity and inclusion at this time, both in our country and at Lawrence.

The past year was a turbulent one that exposed the lingering pain of some while causing new anguish for others. But, as is the case in many periods of disruption, we have the opportunity to come together with new awareness to create a stronger institution and community. As author and activist bell hooks once wrote, “We cannot despair when there is conflict. Our solidarity must be affirmed by shared belief in a spirit of intellectual openness that celebrates diversity, welcomes dissent and rejoices in collective dedication to the truth.”

The evidence based on research is clear: Diversity improves the curriculum, pedagogy and co-curricular programs. Taking an inclusive approach to our work in higher education benefits everyone. It increases the cognitive complexity of students’ thinking, helping them to approach the tasks of living an engaged life both critically and with compassion. It helps us teach all students more effectively, better achieving the desired learning outcomes. And finally, it strengthens our democracy by helping create and expand an educated citizenry, including those historically underserved by higher education, who are capable of contributing fully to our shared political and economic success.

In President Burstein’s recent letter about the new academic year, he urged us to create a new path together that welcomes and supports us all and fosters civil discourse. I am developing a framework to facilitate creation of this new path, as well as a theme for our work. The framework is tactical, while the theme conveys the philosophy behind the work. Initial activities related to the framework will build upon the many critical strategies people across campus implemented prior to my arrival. I am grateful to those who have been and continue to be committed to and engaged in this important work at Lawrence. Their work laid a strong foundation upon which to build. Ultimately, conversations with faculty, students and staff over the next few months will determine specific strategies and priorities for the framework.

In order to institutionalize inclusion, the framework will focus on developing and supporting three areas:

  • Strengthening relationships, both within and between various groups on campus. This includes relationships between supervisors and employees, students and faculty members, and Lawrence and Appleton, as well as among and within various cultural affiliation groups.
  • Capacity-building—facilitating programs to ensure all members of our community have the skills, knowledge and resources they need to take an equity-minded approach to their work.
  • Accountability. This will focus on assessment across the organization (institutional, departmental and individual) in order to track and celebrate progress while identifying areas still in need of improvement and additional support.

Finally, in this time when there appears to be so much animosity, mutual hostility and hate, how can we, as our university’s motto urges, bring more light? To me, love is the light. So my theme for our diversity work will be, “Loving Large at Lawrence.” It refers to ideas related to loving learning, loving ourselves and loving community.

Loving learning is about the predisposition Lawrentians have to enthusiastically seek out opportunities to encounter and create new knowledge while bringing all of who they are to the educational enterprise. It also speaks to our understanding that optimal intellectual development occurs when significant challenge is accompanied by sufficient academic and emotional support. Loving ourselves is about becoming strong self-advocates and working to find harmony between the demands of rigorous, engaged liberal learning and self-care. It’s also about accepting ourselves so we can do the same for others. Loving community is based on the idea of Ubuntu, commonly translated, “I am because you are.” It is about acknowledging and supporting our interdependence as we strive to create a just, equitable and inclusive learning community.

So I hope you will join me in working to make sure we are indeed, “Loving Large at Lawrence.” As we embark on this journey together, keep in mind what celebrated scholar Noam Chomsky once said: “Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” I look forward to getting to know you and welcome invitations from departments or organizations to discuss strategies for achieving a more inclusive Lawrence.

Wishing you much success in the coming academic year!

Kimberly Barrett
Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion and Associate Dean of the Faculty
Sampson House
920-832-7451
kimberly.a.barrett@lawrence.edu