Keeping the Beat
3/24/2006
It was announced last week that 56 finalists from schools across Illinois have been selected to exhibit their works for the 2006 Annual Collegiate Artists Competition. Dominican has more finalists than any other school in the state! Check out our students' artworks from May 4-June 16, 2006, at the State Street Gallery of Robert Morris College at 401 S. State Street in Chicago:
Kristen Burke, "Running Water," Painting
Joseph Lekas, "Aquatic Sky," Photography
Katie Rask, "Glass Bricks," Photography
Meghan Toppel, "Untitled," Digital photography
Chad Williamsen, "Original Scans," Photography
During spring break, a group of Dominican students traveled to El Salvador in a Service Learning Study Abroad course on Election Observation and Democratic Participation. They learned first-hand about people-to-people solidarity in the search for development and human dignity, the promotion of human values, and cultural exchange. A story about the course ran earlier this week in the Chicago Sun-Times. I love the photo and from what I've heard, this was an experience that truly altered lives.
I got a new boss. Cheryl Johnson-Odim will join us in the summer as Provost (chief academic officer who works with the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences [that's me], as well as the School of Business, School of Education, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Graduate School of Social Work, and Institute for Adult Learning). Dr. Johnson-Odim was previously Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Columbia College Chicago and Chair of History at Loyola University, with a Ph.D. in African and African American History from Northwestern. She's a great scholar and will be a terrific colleague. We're very excited even as we're sorry to see our current Provost, Dr. Norman Carroll, step down after 40 years of brilliant service to Dominican.
Meanwhile I type these words to the rhythmic beat of, um, construction. We've just celebrated Groundbreaking Week for Parmer Hall, Dominican's newest academic building. It will be a superb facility for the sciences and other disciplines, and its architecture will continue the impressive Collegiate Gothic style that characterizes our campus and makes that always amazing initial impression on first-time visitors. A little noise now in exchange for a grand new facility for many years to come—not a bad trade-off. Then right after graduation in May we start construction of a new parking garage—wait, no, I mean of course the Collegiate Gothic Parking Pavilion, as our university's President Donna Carroll laughingly calls it.
And yes, it's that time again—the dreaded book order form for courses being taught in fall 2006 is already on my desk. It's always so hard for me to choose! I'm buoyed this time, however, by the completion of a new booklist by my colleagues across the College of Arts and Sciences, which was finished just today. It's a phenomenally interesting list of recommended texts, organized by academic disciplines in Arts and Sciences. The lists—10 texts per discipline—represent my faculty colleagues' considered suggestions for some of the books they think students, prospective students and lifelong learners would do well to consider. I'll post them soon and I hope you'll engage many of them as conversation partners throughout your educational journey, whether with us at Dominican or elsewhere.
It was announced last week that 56 finalists from schools across Illinois have been selected to exhibit their works for the 2006 Annual Collegiate Artists Competition. Dominican has more finalists than any other school in the state! Check out our students' artworks from May 4-June 16, 2006, at the State Street Gallery of Robert Morris College at 401 S. State Street in Chicago:
Kristen Burke, "Running Water," Painting
Joseph Lekas, "Aquatic Sky," Photography
Katie Rask, "Glass Bricks," Photography
Meghan Toppel, "Untitled," Digital photography
Chad Williamsen, "Original Scans," Photography
During spring break, a group of Dominican students traveled to El Salvador in a Service Learning Study Abroad course on Election Observation and Democratic Participation. They learned first-hand about people-to-people solidarity in the search for development and human dignity, the promotion of human values, and cultural exchange. A story about the course ran earlier this week in the Chicago Sun-Times. I love the photo and from what I've heard, this was an experience that truly altered lives.
I got a new boss. Cheryl Johnson-Odim will join us in the summer as Provost (chief academic officer who works with the deans of the College of Arts and Sciences [that's me], as well as the School of Business, School of Education, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Graduate School of Social Work, and Institute for Adult Learning). Dr. Johnson-Odim was previously Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Columbia College Chicago and Chair of History at Loyola University, with a Ph.D. in African and African American History from Northwestern. She's a great scholar and will be a terrific colleague. We're very excited even as we're sorry to see our current Provost, Dr. Norman Carroll, step down after 40 years of brilliant service to Dominican.
Meanwhile I type these words to the rhythmic beat of, um, construction. We've just celebrated Groundbreaking Week for Parmer Hall, Dominican's newest academic building. It will be a superb facility for the sciences and other disciplines, and its architecture will continue the impressive Collegiate Gothic style that characterizes our campus and makes that always amazing initial impression on first-time visitors. A little noise now in exchange for a grand new facility for many years to come—not a bad trade-off. Then right after graduation in May we start construction of a new parking garage—wait, no, I mean of course the Collegiate Gothic Parking Pavilion, as our university's President Donna Carroll laughingly calls it.
And yes, it's that time again—the dreaded book order form for courses being taught in fall 2006 is already on my desk. It's always so hard for me to choose! I'm buoyed this time, however, by the completion of a new booklist by my colleagues across the College of Arts and Sciences, which was finished just today. It's a phenomenally interesting list of recommended texts, organized by academic disciplines in Arts and Sciences. The lists—10 texts per discipline—represent my faculty colleagues' considered suggestions for some of the books they think students, prospective students and lifelong learners would do well to consider. I'll post them soon and I hope you'll engage many of them as conversation partners throughout your educational journey, whether with us at Dominican or elsewhere.
