The Scroll

… go round and round, round and round (sing along!) The wheels on the bus go round and round, all around the town. As I was de-cluttering my kids’ bookshelves this weekend, accomplishing the long-overdue tas...

Fall means football and, although it’s early, the 2008 brand at St. Thomas has a new dimension: Intensity. Describing St. Thomas Coach Glenn Caruso as intense is akin to calling Bill Clinton loquacious. I me...

Tonight as I was encouraging my 8-year-old daughter to put on her PJs so we could read and study “math facts” (12 divided by 4 = 3), she whispered rather loudly and with great enthusiasm: “Celie and I have a se...

“So, why do faculty get guaranteed lifetime employment? We staff don’t get tenure. Why should they?” A fairly new and very committed staff member asked this question. That question made me think that there a...

Most recently having worked for three years with the Arizona State University women’s basketball team, basketball always is on my brain. At St. Thomas, while I embarked a year ago on a new higher education care...

When I was teaching at St. Thomas, an old newspaper colleague - then the college relations director at Carleton - would regularly give me a not-so-gentle shot about how much smarter he thought the Carls (studen...

The Jeremiah Program promises single mothers in poverty a chance to succeed. This residential program, with on-site child care and parenting classes, requires a mother to sign a contract that she will enroll in...

I take 172 steps to get from my front door to my faculty office at St. Thomas. Don't underestimate how treacherous my commute can be. When my neighbors haven't shoveled, leave piles of leaves on the sidewalk, o...

The first week of class in the fall never fails to provoke a vivid memory of my initiation as a fledgling journalism professor at St. Thomas. I’d left my job as a reporter at WCCO-TV in 1989 to come here, knowi...

The excitement always is contagious on our campus over Labor Day weekend, when most of our new and returning students move back to campus after a summer I’m sure most of them feel was too short. (more&hell...

The stunning and tragic events of the past two weeks at Penn State University have reminded all of us of the need for constant vigilance. They have prompted parents to question whether they are doing enough ...