2010

Year: 2010

Origins of Moon, Other Planetary Satellites Focus of Science Presentation

Penn State University astronomer Darren Williams presents “The Origin of the Moon and Other Planetary Satellites” Wednesday, May 26 at 8 p.m. at Lawrence University’s Thomas Steitz Science Hall Room 102. The address is free and open to the public.

The program will explore the leading theory on the formation of the Earth’s moon — a cosmic chance collision between a Mars–sized protoplanet and the infant Earth.

Darren-Williams_web
Darren Williams

Williams also will discuss other bodies in the solar system that were formed from “rings of debris” and through gravity capture. According to Williams, examples of planetary satellites formed through gravity capture suggest moons the size of Earth could be commonplace around nearby stars in our galaxy.

A specialist on the origin and evolution of planet-satellite systems, Williams is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.

His appearance is supported by the Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureship Program of the American Astronomical Society, which brings professional astronomers to college campuses for two-day visits. The program is named for American astronomer and educator Harlow Shapley, who uncovered the dimensions of the Milky Way galaxy and Earth’s place in it.

President Obama Nominates Lawrence Alumnus for Ambassador Post

Lawrence alumnus Christopher W. Murray ’75, was nominated yesterday by President Obama to serve as Ambassador to the Republic of the Congo, a position in the U.S. Department of State.

In announcing Murray’s and other nominations, Obama said, “It gives me great confidence that such dedicated and capable individuals have agreed to join my administration and serve the American people. I look forward to working with them in the coming months and years.”

Murray is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. He currently serves as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels. He previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassies in Lebanon and in Algeria. His other overseas assignments include Syria, a prior posting in Brussels, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Jamaica. At the State Department in Washington he has served in the Bureaus of Nonproliferation, European Affairs, International Organizations, and African Affairs. Murray received a B.A in Government from Lawrence University and a J.D. from Cornell Law School.n the U.S. Department of State.

Campbell Scott, Class of 1983, to Screen “Company Retreat” at the Warch Cinema Friday and Saturday

“Company Retreat,” a film written and directed by Campbell Scott ’83 will be shown twice this week at the Warch Campus Center, with Scott taking questions from the audience after both screenings.

The film follows the development of a fictional game show which places white-collar workers on teams opposite their company’s blue-collar workers. The zany characters clash as the stakes rise in the isolation of New York’s Adirondack mountains.

“It’s ostensibly a mockumentary in the Christopher Guest vein about a reality TV show doomed from its inception. It’s about what happens to a bunch of people when they end up in the mountains with nothing to do,” Scott said.

Scott has had a long and successful career, starring in such movies as “Longtime Companion,” “Roger Dodger,” “Music and Lyrics” and “The Secret Lives of Dentists.” His directorial efforts include the movies “Big Night,” “Off the Map” and “Company Retreat.” Scott’s most recent acting performances include recurring roles on the television shows Damages and Royal Pains.

“Company Retreat” will be shown at the Warch Campus Center Cinema at 7:15 p.m. Friday, May 21 and at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 22. Audience members are invited to stay after the film for a brief question and answer session with Scott.

Scott will also be participating in the Lawrence Scholars in Business Entertainment Industry Summit May 22 from 4-6 p.m., where alumni will be discussing careers in entertainment with Lawrence students. Click here for more information about the summit.


National Sustainability Expert Closes Environmental Lecture Series

Debra Rowe, president of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, examines the national challenges, solutions, trends and resources regarding sustainability in the final installment of Lawrence University’s 2010 Spoerl Lectures in Science and Society series “The Greening of Higher Education.

Rowe presents “Education and Action for a Sustainable Future” Wednesday, May 18 at 7 p.m. in Thomas Steitz Science Hall Room 202.  The event is free and open to the public.

The presentation will include information for individuals and organizations on ways to build a higher quality of life based on a future of less scarcity and more sustainable abundance.

Debra-Rowe_web
Debra Rowe

A national leader on sustainability initiatives, Rowe has been a professor of energy management and renewable energy for 30 years at Oakland Community College in Michigan. As director of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, Rowe works with business, education, civic, government and faith leaders to engage them in sustainability initiatives.

Rowe is a frequent keynote speaker at national and international education conferences and has written extensively on the integration of sustainability into education.

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.

Two State Teachers Honored as “Outstanding Educators”

Sharon Easley, an English teacher at Lodi High School and Mary Newgard-Larson, an English and speech teacher at La Crosse Central High School, will be recognized Sunday, May 16 as the 2010 recipients of Lawrence University’s annual Outstanding Teaching in Wisconsin Award.

They will be presented a certificate, a citation and a monetary award by Lawrence President Jill Beck in ceremonies at the president’s house. In addition, their respective schools will receive $250 for library acquisitions.

They are the 53rd and 54th Wisconsin teachers honored for education excellence by Lawrence since the program was launched in 1985. Nominated by Lawrence seniors, recipients are selected on their abilities to communicate effectively, create a sense of excitement in the classroom, motivate their students to pursue academic excellence while showing a genuine concern for them in and outside the classroom.

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Sharon Easley

Easley joined the Lodi High School faculty in 2005 after spending 13 years at the middle school. She began her teaching career in 1975 at Galena (Ill.) High School. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she is the head coach of the Lodi forensics team, serves as advisor to the National Honor Society, helps direct student plays and was instrumental in establishing a foreign exchange program in Lodi that has expanded the world view of both her students and the entire community.

Her commitment to educational excellence has been recognized with numerous awards, including a Kohl Educational Scholarship, a Bellin Fellowship and a Council on Standards for International Education Travel Global Classroom Award. She also has received the Lodi School District’s Commitment to Excellence Award and been the recipient of the Lodi Outstanding Impact Award four times.

In nominating her for the award, Lawrence senior Amanda Van Lankvelt, a 2006 Lodi High School graduate, called Easley “a superb teacher,” citing her dedication to “individual attention and her support that continues long after students leave her class.”

A native of Cuba, Ill., Easley earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in education at UW-Platteville.

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Mary Newgard-Larson

Newgard-Larson has taught at La Crosse Central High School since 1985 and is currently part of the school’s advanced placement vertical team, teaching World Humanities, pre-AP English and advanced speech classes. Known for her creative teaching methods and passion for learning, Newgard-Larson has been recognized with the La Crosse School District’s Excellence in Education Award, a Kohl Educational Scholarship and a fellowship from Northwestern University. The excellence of her work also was recognized with National Board Certification for English language arts.

Outside the classroom she is an advisor to the school’s chapter of Amnesty International and serves on the school district’s literacy steering committee.

Lawrence senior David Ranscht, a 2006 Central High School graduate, said Newgard-Larson “emanates profundity and wisdom and commands respect by her calm, thoughtful, inquisitive, knowledgeable demeanor” in nominating her for the award.

“She is a favorite both among her colleagues and her students,” said Rantsch. “Many students who take her classes in their first two years of high school return for a class she offers to seniors solely based on the fact that she teaches it.”

A former newspaper reporter and features editor in her hometown of Albert Lea, Minn., Newgard-Larson taught a story-telling class one summer in Ireland and for the past six years has served as an English methods instructor at Viterbo University.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Mankato State University and a master’s degree in professional development and education from UW-La Crosse.

Riverwalk Opened to the Public

The beautiful new Lawrence Riverwalk opened today, May 14, 2010. The quarter-mile-long trail is the innovative idea of 12 Lawrence students who participated in an environmental studies symposium with Associate Professor of Geology Andrew Knudsen.

The two-level trail loop, located just east of S. Lawe St. between the Warch Campus Center and the Fox River, features a crushed stone surface on its upper tract (designed to be bicycle and wheelchair accessible) and a natural wood-chip surface on the lower trail next to the riverbank.

The trail includes interpretive signs composed by Lawrence students on three subjects: the historic relationship between Lawrence and the Fox River; the early people who lived in the area; and the geological history of the Fox River. Professors Peter Peregrine, Carol and Ron Mason, Jeff Clark and Monica Rico in the anthropology, geology and history departments, respectively, assisted the students in developing the signs.

Highlighting the trail are two African sculptures created from serpentine stone by members of the Shona tribe of Zimbabwe. The two art works were part of a gift from Milwaukee art gallery owner David Barnett and his wife, Susan, a 1981 Lawrence graduate.

The trail also includes several large limestone benches for repose and reflection.

Crossing Lawe Street, the trail continues past the Sustainable Lawrence University Garden, visitors will notice several improvements including gated entrances to the garden, a new garden shed and arbor, and improved landscaping. Progress on the Gilboy Council Ring continues. A gift from Steven ’62 and Joan Gilboy P’90, it features a fire pit surrounded by a stone floor and limestone benches. When completed, the Gilboy Council Ring will add a picturesque meeting place to the Lawrence campus.

The Riverwalk adds a new dimension to the Lawrence campus. The proximity to the river and the restful quality of the trail, benches and art are welcome amenities to be enjoyed by members of the Lawrence and Fox Valley communities for years to come.



Environmental Series Presentation Looks Relationship Between the Arts, Sustainable Development

Amara Geffen, professor of art at Allegheny College, discusses the economic impact of the arts and their capacity to stimulate civic and community engagement in the second installment of Lawrence University’s 2010 Spoerl Lectures in Science and Society series, “The Greening of Higher Education.”

Geffen presents “The Role of the Arts in Sustainable Community Development,” Tuesday, May 18 at 7 p.m. in Thomas Steitz Science Hall Room 102. The presentation is free and open to the public.

Using examples of endeavors in Allegheny’s hometown of Meadville, Pa., and other locales, Geffen will discuss ways arts initiatives have stimulated creative economies and helped create healthy, vibrant communities.

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Amara Geffen

A member of the Allegheny art department since 1982, Geffen specializes in projects that emphasize community collaboration and creative reuse and repurposing of materials and sites to illustrate the role of arts-based and sustainable community and economic development. Projects she has been involved with include an initiative that merges Earth art with best management practices in the environmental mitigation of stormwater runoff as part of an interstate highway interchange.

Geffen also directs Allegheny’s Center for Economic and Environmental Development and serves as the project director of the center’s Arts & Environment Initiative. She has been the recipient of grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Artists and Communities program for collaborations with students and artist colleagues on behalf of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the greater Meadville community.

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.

Climate Change Challenge Examined May 20 in Honors Convocation

Vermont State Senator Robert Hartwell closes Lawrence University’s 2009-10 convocation series Thursday, May 20 with the address “America at the Crossroads: Accepting the Climate Change Challenge.”

The presentation, at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, will be followed by a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. Both events are free and open to the public.

A 1969 graduate of Lawrence, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in government, Hartwell enjoyed a successful career as a labor attorney before turning his attention to interests in community service and real estate.

His pursued his passion for environmental protection and land stewardship through trustee positions with the Vermont Land Trust and the Vermont River Conservancy. He also is a former director of the organization Vermonters for a Clean Environment.

In 2006, he sought public office, running for and earning a seat in the Vermont state senate. As a legislator, Hartwell has served on the senate’s committee on natural resources and energy and was instrumental in the passage of the state’s most comprehensive energy legislation in 2008.

Hartwell also co-sponsored a bill that placed Vermont’s groundwater in the public trust and regulated large-scale water withdrawals, such as those by water bottling companies.

He has been an advocate for a national “Green” New Deal that focuses on a new energy ethic modeled after President Roosevelt’s New Deal policies of the 1930s. Hartwell’s Green New Deal would place greater reliance on renewable resources, favor tax incentives to create a national car fleet 50 percent more fuel efficient than at present and support a national passenger rail system based on successful models in Europe.

Anthropologist Carla Daughtry Awarded Fulbright Fellowship

Lawrence University cultural anthropologist Carla N. Daughtry has been named a recipient of a 2010 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.

Daughtry will spend the 2010-11 academic year at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at American University in Cairo, Egypt.

During her nine-month fellowship appointment, which begins in mid-August, Daughtry will teach courses on American perspectives on race, ethnicity, diaspora and globalization. She also will support student and faculty research activities through CASAR.

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Carla Daughtry

“This is a wonderful opportunity to re-immerse myself in Cairo and Egyptian culture and enhance my own teaching and scholarship,” said Daughtry, who previously spent a year at American University in Cairo as an undergraduate student in the late 1980s. “My Fulbright year in Cairo will strengthen ties between Lawrence University and Egypt, where Lawrence students have enrolled for a term or year abroad at American University in Cairo. My experiences also should help deepen the richness of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies for students here at Lawrence.”

This is the second time Daughtry has been recognized by the Fulbright Scholars Program. While in graduate school at the University of Michigan, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1992 that also took her to Egypt, where she studied Arabic at Cairo’s Center for Arabic Studies Abroad.

She also spent two years (1998-2000) in Cairo as a research fellow at American University working with displaced Sudanese refugees who fled Sudan’s civil war as part of her doctoral dissertation field work.

Daughtry , who joined the Lawrence faculty in 2000, focuses her scholarship on Middle East and North Africa cultures, transnational and urban refugee communities and ethnic and gender issues.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in international relations at Mount Holyoke College, Daughtry earned two master’s degrees — one in Middle East and North African Studies and one in cultural anthropology — and her doctorate in cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Established in 1946 and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright Scholar Program is the federal government’s flagship program in international educational exchange. It provides grants in a variety of disciplines for teaching and research positions in more than 120 countries.

Irish Restoration Comedy “The School for Scandal” Staged May 13-15

Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy “The School for Scandal” comes to the  Stansbury Theatre stage in four performances by the Lawrence University Theatre Department.

The play will be performed Thursday-Saturday, May 13-15 at 8 p.m., with a 3 p.m. matinee Saturday, May 15. Tickets, at $10 for adults and $5 for seniors and students, are available through the Lawrence Box Office, 920-832-6749.

A Restoration comedy of morals and manners, “The School for Scandal” was originally produced in London in May, 1777.  Filled with disguises, misconceptions and scandals caused by constant, vivid gossip, the comedy is considered Sheridan’s defining work.

Widely popular during its original run of 65 performances over two seasons, the comedy explores the gossip-filled world of Lady Teazle and Lady Sneerwell. Young, newly-married Lady Teazle carries on an affair with Joseph Surface, just to be in fashion, while Lady Sneerwell plots with her allies to destroy the budding romance of Joseph’s brother, Charles, and Maria. The result is a comedic story of lives and relationships entwined by false accusations and misunderstandings.

Senior Caroline Mandler portrays  Lady Sneerwell and junior Alison Thompson is  Lady Teazle. Sophomores Amanda Martinez and Sasha Johnston are cross-cast as the Surface brothers, Joseph and Charles.

The production, directed by visiting theatre arts professor George Grant, a 1988 Lawrence graduate, features costume design by 2006 Lawrence graduate Katrina Schuster.