Katherine Faricy, Music Department, recently was a guest clinician for the Northeast Wisconsin Teachers Forum in Green Bay. She gave a lecture demonstration, "Topics and Styles in Classical Music," and a master class. She also was a featured presenter at the June convention of the Minnesota Music Teachers Association; she gave a presentation, "The Pedagogy of Artistic Pedaling."
Shersten Johnson, Music Department, recently presented papers at the annual meetings of the Society for Music Theory in Madison, Wis., and the American Musicological Society in Houston, Texas. Both papers considered dramatic issues of writer's block in Benjamin Britten's 1973 opera, "Death in Venice." The first paper adapts cognitive-linguistic theories to interpret the way musical and textual forces blend to voice the main character's loss of words. Since Britten's opera construes that loss differently than does Thomas Mann's novella on which the opera is based, the second paper examines how Britten's conspicuous shift of dramatic locus suggests insights into his own understanding of the creative process.
Monsignor James Lavin, who celebrated his 85th birthday at St. Thomas on Nov. 12, recently was honored by St. Michael's Catholic Church in West St. Paul. The parish declared Sunday, Nov. 9, as Monsignor James Lavin Appreciation Day. In his proclamation, Father Kenneth O'Hotto, pastor, recognized Lavin's 15 years as weekend celebrant at St. Michael's, his assistance at penance services and in other spiritual capacities, and his "great love for the people of St. Michael's Parish and School."
Dr. Terry Nichols, Theology Department, is author of a recently published book, The Sacred Cosmos: Christian Faith and the Challenge of Naturalism (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003). The book argues for the complementarity of Christian theology and natural science, specifically considering the Big Bang theory, evolution, mind-brain relations and miracles.
Dr. Jeri Rockett, Personal Counseling, recently presented a program at the annual conference of the Association of College and University Counseling Center Directors in New Orleans. The program, "Diverse Spiritual Approaches to Self Care," included colleagues from Florida State, Florida International and De Pauw universities. Rockett also served as a "consulting director on duty," one of 10 counseling center directors selected from various institutions, who were available to provide consultation to colleague directors. She continues to serve as continuing education coordinator and liaison to the American Psychological Association from the organization.
Jane Shriver, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center, was honored Nov. 19 by the Cooperating Libraries in Consortium (CLIC) with the 2003 User Service Award, presented annually to the individual within CLIC who has done the most to improve service to users of CLIC libraries. In addition, Shriver was a member of the group that received the award for the"Working Group of the Year" – the e-journal's task force that worked on creating and improving library catalog access to the thousands of full-text journals that now are available through aggregated databases. Shriver's work recently has concerned management and classification of digital resources, a growing and important responsibility for academic library catalogers.
Dr. Karoline Szatek, English Department, has been selected for inclusion in Who's Who Among American Teachers 2004. Szatek is among 5 percent of U.S. high school and college instructors to be honored in this way. She also participated in the 2003 National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute, "A Literature of Their Own? Women Writing: Venice, London, Paris, 1550-1700," at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The institute afforded scholars an opportunity to enrich and revitalize their understanding of significant humanities ideas, texts and topics, with a focus on women in early modern Venice, London and Paris. NEH selects very few scholars to participate in these programs.
Dr. Fred Zimmerman, Programs in Engineering and Technology Management, spoke on "The Status of Manufacturing in Minnesota in 2003," at the Nov. 12 meeting of the Medtronic Tech Forum.
