Press Releases

APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University musicians Helen Kashap and Daniel Schenk earned first- and second-place honors, respectively, at the annual Wisconsin Music Teachers Association Badger Collegiate Piano Competition held May 19 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Both are students in the piano studio of Associate Professor of Music Anthony Padilla.

Kashap, a freshman double major in piano performance and history from Saskatoon, Canada, played two movements from Beethoven’s “The Tempest Sonata,” Chopin’s “Nocturne,” and “Danzas Agentinas” by Alberto Ginastera. She received a first-place prize of $200 for her winning performance. This summer, Kashap will spend a month studying at the Orford Arts Academy in Montreal. Students are selected for the program by audition.

Schenk, a junior double major in piano performance and biology from Royal Oak, Mich., performed works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and Scriabin in the competition.

Participants in the WMTA competition, which is open to students attending any college or university in Wisconsin, are required to play a solo recital of between 20 and 30 minutes in length. The program must include at least three selections from one of five historical periods: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic and Contemporary.

APPLETON, WIS. — Eight Lawrence University senior art majors will showcase their work developed while students at Lawrence in the “Senior Art Major Exhibition 2007” in the Leech, Hoffmaster and Kohler galleries of Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center, 613 E. College Ave., Appleton.

The exhibition, featuring painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography and lamp-worked glass, runs May 25 to August 5. A free exhibition-opening reception with refreshments will be held Friday May 25 from 6 – 8:30 p.m.

The students participating in the show are Blair Allen, Arlington Heights, Ill., Daniel Knowles Butler III, Philadelphia, Pa., Alissa Karnaky, Charleston, S.C., Allison Lara Manasse, Chicago, Ill., Kate Ostler, St. Charles, Ill., Gabrielle Prouty, Mineral Point, Clare Raccuglia, Chicago, Ill., and Chelsea Wagner, Mendota Heights, Minn.

The Wriston Art Center galleries are free and open to the public Tuesday-Friday from 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday from noon – 4 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays. For more information on the exhibition, call 920-832-6621 or visit www.lawrence.edu/news/wriston.

APPLETON, WIS. — Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers bring their unique blend of classic folk-rock tradition and fun-loving showmanship to Lawrence University Tuesday, May 22 for a performance in Stansbury Theatre. The Minneapolis-based quartet Dropping Daylight will open the concert at 7 p.m.

Tickets, at $3 for Lawrence students, $7 for general admission, are available through the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

Kellogg, who began as a solo performer before adding his three-member band that, beyond the standard guitars, bass, and drums incorporate kazoos, accordions and even the keytar into their sound, has sold out East Coast venues with a juxtaposition of heartfelt songs delivered with unabashed flair.

The band’s live show features a heavy doze of what Kellogg calls “shenanigans,” acts of goofy band humor that provide a more festive flavor to the performance than is typically found in the more staid environs of the singer/songwriter world. They’ve been known to add full replications of Napoleon Dynamite’s infamous dance or Patrick Swayze’s quasi-risque lift of Jennifer Grey from “Dirty Dancing” into their performances, which usually include a fair number of covers as well.

Frontman Kellogg released the first of his three solo albums in 2002 and has since released three more with the Sixers, including the breakthrough disk “Bulletproof Heart” in 2004 and their 2005 self-titled CD, which has been described as “a rock album that replaces attitude with sincerity.”

Founded originally as Sue Generis in 2001, Dropping Daylight, with its piano tinged sound, has been compared to alternative rock favorites like Ben Folds Five, the Eels and the New Radicals.

Dropping Daylight was part of the 2006 Vans Warped Tour and also has toured with Breaking Benjamin, Monty Are I, and Jason Mraz. Their first full-length disk, “Brace Yourself,” which featured the track “Tell Me,” was released in the spring of 2006.

The concert is sponsored by Lawrence’s Student Organization for University Programming (S.O.U.P.).

APPLETON, WIS. — The five original members of Madison’s I Voted for Kodos will play their final concert together Saturday, May 19 as one of the headliners of Skappleton 2007, Lawrence University’s annual salute to ska.

I Voted for Kodos and Bomb the Music Industry! will close a 12-hour “skavaganza” featuring 15 bands on two stages in Lawrence’s Buchanan Kiewit Recreation Center. Doors open at 11 a.m. and music begins at 12 noon. Tickets for Skappleton, at $15 each, can be purchased at the door the day of the event.

Winners of the 2005 purevolume.com Bamboozle on-line voting competition, I Voted for Kodos has earned a national following with its catchy hooks and tight harmonies. The band has completed five national tours and shared the stage with such notables as Fall Out Boy, Reel Big Fish, Bowling For Soup and Mustard Plug. But following Saturday’s concert, the band mates will go their separate ways.

Under the direction of producer and lead songwriter Jeff Rosenstock, Bomb the Music Industry! has counted more than 15 different musicians as band members since its founding. BtMI is known to offer fans a chance to perform on stage if they learn a song and bring their instrument to the show.

Their discography includes four albums and their first CD, “Get Warmer,” will be released on Asian Man Records this summer.

Other bands on the 2007 Skappleton line-up include: Reaching Scarlet, Catch of the Day, Chicken Poodle Soup, Hired Geeks, T.U.G.G., Car Full of Midgets, Offend Your Friends, 4th and Michigan, The Skamikazes, The Invaders, Piper Club, Small Kitchen Appliances and Sajak.

APPLETON, WIS. — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and social commentator Susan Faludi, whose examinations of modern gender stereotypes earned her national acclaim, explores America’s psychological response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks Tuesday, May 22, in Lawrence University’s annual Honors Day convocation.

Faludi presents “Sexual Politics and the Tragedy of 9/11” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. She also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union. Both events are free and open to the public.

Based on her forthcoming book, “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America,” which is scheduled for release this fall, Faludi’s address will explore the reasons American culture responded to an assault on U.S. global dominance by calling for a return to “traditional manhood, marriage and maternity.” She will share her insights on why she feels Americans reacted as if the hijackers had attacked the family home and nursery, rather than symbols of the country’s commercial and military might.

Faludi rose to national prominence following the release of her first book, 1991’s “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” which won the National Critic’s Circle Award and spent nearly nine months on the best-seller lists.

From plastic surgery advertisements to male harassment of female co-workers to Hollywood films that often depicted single career women as “desperate and crazed,” “Backlash” examined the societal attacks Faludi observed on feminism and the progress women had made on social, economic and political fronts. The book landed Faludi on the cover of Time magazine, which said her writing “set off firecrackers across the political landscape.”

In 1999, Faludi released a follow-up to “Backlash” that proved to be equally controversial. “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man” explored the cultural forces that were shaping men’s lives and attitudes. According to Faludi, men’s hostile response to feminism was part of a larger social problem within a “consumer-driven, celebrity saturated culture” where civic engagement is undervalued.

A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she was the managing editor of the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, Faludi began her professional career as a copy clerk at the New York Times. She also worked as a reporter at the Miami Herald, Atlanta Constitution, San Jose Mercury News and the Wall Street Journal, earning a reputation as a “superb crusading journalist.”

Her expose on the leveraged buyout of the Safeway supermarkets as an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal earned Faludi a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1991.

A native of Queens, New York, Faludi, whose father was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and her mother a journalist, today makes her home in San Francisco.

APPLETON, WIS. — Was it commonality of values or a non-conscious fear aroused by reminders of the events of September 11, 2001 that fueled George W. Bush’s re-election as president in 2004?

Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology at Skidmore College, discusses the role subtle reminders of death may play in voting patterns in the Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium “Fatal Attraction: Fear of Death and Political Preference” Thursday, May 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Youngchild Hall, Room 121. The event is free and open to the public.

While many pollsters, pundits and Republican Party officials felt Americans voted for Bush because he shared their moral and traditional values or were comfortable with Bush’s approach to the war on terror, Solomon argues in favor of John Kerry’s assertion that the terrorist attack on 9/11 was the “deciding” issue of the presidential election.

Solomon will present research demonstrating that reminders of death or the events of 9/11 increased Americans’ support for President Bush and his policies in Iraq. The research is based on the idea that reminders of death “increase the need for psychological security and the appeal for leaders who emphasize the greatness of the nation and a heroic victory over evil.”

He also will examine recent studies that document the psychological commonalities between conservative Americans and Islamic fundamentalists and discuss the implications these findings have for democratic political institutions.

Co-author of the 2002 book “In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror,” Solomon was one of three psychologists who developed the Terror Management Theory in the late 1980s, which held that people deal with death through two distinct modes of defense: direct and rational, which reduce an individual’s perception of his or her vulnerability to life-threatening conditions; or symbolic and cultural, which embed an individual as a valuable part of an eternal conception of reality that is bigger, stronger and more enduring than any single individual.

The Courtney and Steven Ross Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies at Skidmore, Solomon earned a bachelor’s degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas.

APPLETON, WIS. — A $2.5 million gift from a long-time benefactor of Lawrence University to establish an endowed professorship in environmental studies has been announced by Lawrence President Jill Beck. It is the largest gift given toward an endowed professorship in Lawrence’s 160-year history.

Marcia Bjornerud, professor of geology, will be the first holder of the new Walter Schober Professorship in Environmental Studies, effective July 1, according to Beck.

Appointments to endowed professorships are made in recognition of academic distinction through teaching excellence and/or scholarly achievement.

“Professor Bjornerud demonstrates passionate dedication equally to her scholarly discipline and to her students and their intellectual development,” Beck said in announcing the appointment. “The international relevance of her research in earth science and the evidence of global climate change over time is evident through the translation of her published work into several languages.

“Lawrence is extremely fortunate to have Marcia Bjornerud on our faculty and to be able to recognize her contributions through Mr. Schober’s generosity.”

Schober’s motivation in establishing the professorship grew out of his own concern for the future of the planet and the need to educate young people about the importance of environmental stewardship.

“Man cannot continue to exploit the finite resources of this Earth without affecting his own well-being and that of other species on this planet,” said Schober, a retired resident of Pentwater, Mich. “We must respect all forms of life or consider the probability of widespread extinctions.”

Schober, whose only connection to Lawrence is a niece, Amanda Schober, who graduated in 2001, first became interested in Lawrence after a campus visit that left him impressed with the campus community. He made the gift out of admiration for Lawrence’s educational mission as articulated by former and current presidents Richard Warch and Beck.

“The type of undergraduate scholarship practiced at Lawrence is consistent with my concept of a great liberal arts school,” said Schober. “May it always be so!”

The donation for the endowed professorship is the third major gift Schober has made to Lawrence in the past six years. He previously made a gift of $1.3 million in 2001 to renovate the first floor of Seeley G. Mudd Library. Two years later he donated $300,000 for a digital database for the library.

Bjornerud, a structural geologist who studies mountain building processes, joined the Lawrence faculty in 1995 after six years with the geology department at Miami University in Ohio. She has served as the chair of the Lawrence geology department since 1998 and helped establish the college’s environmental studies program as a major in 2000, serving as its director through 2006.

Elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2003, Bjornerud is the author of two books, the science textbook “The Blue Planet: A Laboratory Manual in Earth System Science” and “Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth,” which was published in 2005.

A storyteller’s history of the Earth and the toll human activity is exacting on the planet, “Reading the Rocks” draws upon field research Bjornerud conducted in 2000 as a Fulbright Scholar on exposed rock complexes on the island of Holsnøy in western Norway. The book has since been reprinted in French, Dutch and Japanese, with a Chinese edition for Taiwan slated for publication later this year.

In collaboration with six students, she also recently produced the pamphlet “Building Stones of Downtown Appleton,” an illustrated layman’s guide to the geological and historical context of the rocks used in the construction of a dozen downtown buildings, including the Zuelke Building and the Outagamie County Museum.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in geophysics at the University of Minnesota, Bjornerud earned master’s and doctorate degrees in geology at the University of Wisconsin.