Updates and Into Summer
5/8/2008
A recent story in the Chicago Sun-Times noted that fashion design student Emily Marxer received first place in the seventh annual Driehaus Awards for Fashion Excellence. Twenty-five fashion design students from local colleges competed to win cash prizes during the professional competition. Emily's work is superb and we're very proud of her.
Earlier this semester we celebrated our first annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Investigations Exposition, in which so many of our students presented some of their very best work. The program is here - check it out! From 8:30 until 5:30, it was one great moment of student brilliance after another. Really, I'd have to say it was overwhelming and probably my best day at Dominican in the last six years-until next year!
We're all excited in anticipation of the upcoming Blues and the Spirit symposium May 22-24, which will bring incredible musicians as well as scholars from all over the country to our campus for concerts and conferences. It's not too late to register!
Recently we celebrated at Honors Convocation and freshman Maria Deri gave a terrific speech about her first year at DU. A few excerpts:
This year at Dominican University, I have come into contact with some of the most warm and brilliant people that I have ever met ... anything from attending a lecture by our current Lund-Gill chair, Stephen Kinzer, on the war in Iraq; listening to E.J. Dionne discuss the incorporation of Catholic values and politics; attempting to digest Sr. Helen Prejean's words as she highlights the injustices of the death penalty; allowing professors to challenge you with new concepts and to challenge them right back with new perspectives; acknowledging a stranger in the hall; and of course, to confiding in the closest friends you've met at school. ... I am urging you to take the opportunity to be true to yourself and to contribute to the life of another individual. ... I realize I cannot control the way in which the world spins, but I can attempt to control my own reactions and to centralize my own efforts into agreeing with my own beliefs. Here at Dominican University, we are committed to caritas and veritas. And, as Dante Alighieri wrote in The Divine Comedy,
Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per sequir virtute e canoscenza.
Consider your origin; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
As far as my goals for next year are concerned, this is an absolute, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. But don't just follow virtue and knowledge, seek it out and partake in it.
At that same event Sr. Marci Hermesdorf, professor and chair of our English Department, in accepting the excellence in teaching and leadership award, offered a beautiful litany of thanksgiving acknowledging her parents for inspiring a love of reading and her teachers for awakening a love of English. She spoke, for example about
Professor Joseph Cotter, whom we affectionately called "dirty Joe," because of his risqué anecdotes and ironic comments about 17th and 18th century British literature. He it was who sparked my love for that literature in particular-literature that I had hated as an undergrad because of an unenthusiastic, uninspiring teacher. What a difference dirty Joe made in my life, not only at John Carroll but to this very day. His passion for his literary specialties was infectious. I knew then that I wanted to teach college students the beauties and intricacies of the 17th and 18th century literature that he loved so much.
She concluded:
And, of course, I am very grateful to you, the students of Dominican University.... You motivate me and give me the opportunity to live out my dream of sharing my love for Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and the countless writers who express in their timeless words the beauty and the truth-sometimes exhilarating and sometimes painful-of what it means to be human. Seniors, I hope that all of you have discovered your dream and your passion here. I hope that you have formed relationships here with people who have inspired and challenged you. I urge you, seniors or not, to have the courage and perseverance to make your dream a reality and to spend your life following your passion, whatever it may be. You will never regret it.
And finally, all of you and all of the people whom I have mentioned have been gifts to me from a generous and loving God. And I'd like to close with St. Paul's words to the church at Philippi: "I give thanks to my God every time I think of you-which is constantly, in every prayer I utter. . . . My prayer is that your love may more and more abound both in understanding and in wealth of experience so that with a clear conscience and blameless conduct you may learn to value the things that really matter.
What a joy it is to get to work with such wonderful students and faculty! It really is a privilege.
And now we're moving into summer. Still time to take a summer class!
A recent story in the Chicago Sun-Times noted that fashion design student Emily Marxer received first place in the seventh annual Driehaus Awards for Fashion Excellence. Twenty-five fashion design students from local colleges competed to win cash prizes during the professional competition. Emily's work is superb and we're very proud of her.
Earlier this semester we celebrated our first annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Investigations Exposition, in which so many of our students presented some of their very best work. The program is here - check it out! From 8:30 until 5:30, it was one great moment of student brilliance after another. Really, I'd have to say it was overwhelming and probably my best day at Dominican in the last six years-until next year!
We're all excited in anticipation of the upcoming Blues and the Spirit symposium May 22-24, which will bring incredible musicians as well as scholars from all over the country to our campus for concerts and conferences. It's not too late to register!
Recently we celebrated at Honors Convocation and freshman Maria Deri gave a terrific speech about her first year at DU. A few excerpts:
This year at Dominican University, I have come into contact with some of the most warm and brilliant people that I have ever met ... anything from attending a lecture by our current Lund-Gill chair, Stephen Kinzer, on the war in Iraq; listening to E.J. Dionne discuss the incorporation of Catholic values and politics; attempting to digest Sr. Helen Prejean's words as she highlights the injustices of the death penalty; allowing professors to challenge you with new concepts and to challenge them right back with new perspectives; acknowledging a stranger in the hall; and of course, to confiding in the closest friends you've met at school. ... I am urging you to take the opportunity to be true to yourself and to contribute to the life of another individual. ... I realize I cannot control the way in which the world spins, but I can attempt to control my own reactions and to centralize my own efforts into agreeing with my own beliefs. Here at Dominican University, we are committed to caritas and veritas. And, as Dante Alighieri wrote in The Divine Comedy,
Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per sequir virtute e canoscenza.
Consider your origin; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
As far as my goals for next year are concerned, this is an absolute, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. But don't just follow virtue and knowledge, seek it out and partake in it.
At that same event Sr. Marci Hermesdorf, professor and chair of our English Department, in accepting the excellence in teaching and leadership award, offered a beautiful litany of thanksgiving acknowledging her parents for inspiring a love of reading and her teachers for awakening a love of English. She spoke, for example about
Professor Joseph Cotter, whom we affectionately called "dirty Joe," because of his risqué anecdotes and ironic comments about 17th and 18th century British literature. He it was who sparked my love for that literature in particular-literature that I had hated as an undergrad because of an unenthusiastic, uninspiring teacher. What a difference dirty Joe made in my life, not only at John Carroll but to this very day. His passion for his literary specialties was infectious. I knew then that I wanted to teach college students the beauties and intricacies of the 17th and 18th century literature that he loved so much.
She concluded:
And, of course, I am very grateful to you, the students of Dominican University.... You motivate me and give me the opportunity to live out my dream of sharing my love for Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and the countless writers who express in their timeless words the beauty and the truth-sometimes exhilarating and sometimes painful-of what it means to be human. Seniors, I hope that all of you have discovered your dream and your passion here. I hope that you have formed relationships here with people who have inspired and challenged you. I urge you, seniors or not, to have the courage and perseverance to make your dream a reality and to spend your life following your passion, whatever it may be. You will never regret it.
And finally, all of you and all of the people whom I have mentioned have been gifts to me from a generous and loving God. And I'd like to close with St. Paul's words to the church at Philippi: "I give thanks to my God every time I think of you-which is constantly, in every prayer I utter. . . . My prayer is that your love may more and more abound both in understanding and in wealth of experience so that with a clear conscience and blameless conduct you may learn to value the things that really matter.
What a joy it is to get to work with such wonderful students and faculty! It really is a privilege.
And now we're moving into summer. Still time to take a summer class!
